Week 1!

Hola folks!

So this will be quite a long post so you may want to go to the loo, grab a cup of tea and get comfortable. Ready? Ok so the flights went fine bar the usual cramped seats, a bit of turbulence and the fact that we were not always sitting together. Hannah had a 'few' problems getting through immigration in Miami and we weren't sure if she was going to make the flight to Lima so we waited and waited right up until the final boarding call which was when we saw her sprinting through the airport with no shoes on! It was such a releif that she was there so we made it a movie moment and cheered and hugged her altogether haha!  We were all pretty exhausted once we arrived in Lima so went straight to bed at the hostel we were staying in.

 Saturday morning was spent at the British embassy getting paperwork sorted and phoning our folks to let them know we were all in one piece. At lunch we went to a little local place where they were doing a 2 course plus drink menu for 8/sol  (£2 to us). My first taste of traditional peruvian food and i loved it! Chicken foot soup to start which although sounds unappetizing it was really good, then chicken and rice and potatoes. The rest of our day in lima was spent wandering roung the streets while people literally yelled 'GRINGAS!' at us.... its not offensive, just locals reminding you know that your white and have bright eyes. On sunday we flew to piura and arrived at our project at around 9 am. The drive through Piura was a complete shock. I knew it was going to be different but not THIS different. Most of it is pretty much a shanty town, with a few wealthier districts and a shiny town centre. The area we are in is called 'Los Algarrobos' and is apparently pretty dangerous so we arent allowed to go out and explore the streets in this particular part which is a little frustrating. However the aldea is lovely and the children are BEAUTIFUL! They are so friendly and excited that we're here. At the moment, while we're settling in, me and Lou are working in the babies casa. where there are about 7 kids aged 0 to 5. Most of them are toddlers and they have so much energy keeping up with them in 30 degree heat is difficult! On day 2 of being at the aldea there was a mahoosive fiesta for the aldeas 24th anniversary. It started with church in the early afternoon followed by the director (Angel Wong) making a few speeches and all the kids singing the national anthem a few times, then a huge barbeque with meat, rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn etc. so many carbs! We were introduced to some of the aldea folks in cuding George (whos introduction came along with the warning 'sorry, he sings a lot' which we later discovered after 3 hours of listening to him singing) and Victor who speaks really good English! He explained to us that all the kids there were either abandoned or their parents are in jail. Loads of them have scars which are from past days burgling houses which was pretty sad to hear. 

 In the evening Victor took us to the centre of Piura to have a look around and warn us where not to go and what not to do which was really useful. Again people stared at me and Lou a lot as northerners don't see blond haired blue eyed people very much at all, so we stuck out like sore thumbs. The next day was pretty ordinary. We just spent the day playing with the babies again. In the evening we headed to 'Plaza Vea' supermarket to buy cleaning things. We took a mototaxi which in my opinion should be used in every single city in the world... they are crazy fun! their pretty much just a motorbike pulling a beach shack behind it.  Anyway, once we got home we spent 2 hours scrubbing our bathroom top to bottom. WORST.JOB.EVER! People at home would probably still be disgusted by the way it looks but to us its sparkling! We think the director may have gotten wind from security that we were cleaning cause he turned up at our door with a bag of things he'd just bought us including mops, brushes, floor cleaner, clothes detergent and even toothpaste! Such a lovely man! We spent wednesday night budgeting our money and eating bananas (1/s for 8 or 2p each)! Just thought i'd throw that last bit in there even though its not in the least bit exciting.

Anyway, thats pretty much it for now. Good effort if you managed to sit through that whole shpeel! Ill try to make the next one shorter.  Also apologies that my blogging is far from poetic... Im just scrawling my initial impressions!

Ciao! xxx