First weeks at school

Hello!

All is well here, it is hot and sunny and we have this lovely view from our bedroom window on the roof.


its a grand way to start a day, especially knowing that the volcano could errupt anytime soon...














we´re settling in, got to show what we were really made of when we hit arequipa´s finest discoteque last week with all the germans. we blew them away with our anglo saxon moves.

the weird meat got to dave at first but all´s well now. think its best to steer clear of 3 day old rice with nondescript meat stirred in, even if it does cost 20p.

We are doing summer school in a little town outside Arequpia called San Isidro. We cram ourselves onto a little bus every day and attempt to teach hyperactive children from 9am-1pm, they´re made even more exitable by the millions of bananas we feed them in an attempt to get them on our side, this works for precisely 10 minutes. The only other way to placate them is just to carry as many of them as possible at the same time, which they find great fun- it does, however, make you look like a child smuggler. To the right is Alex, as you can see, he eats quite a lot of the bananas, but he speaks like a 1920´s new york gangster so alls forgiven. he is possibly the funniest penguin child we´ve ever met.


Its all exhausting but they are lovely, mostly. This is Miguel, we think he´s a bit simple. but it is fun to dress him up in our clothes.
















This week we have been doing our own music class, which involved making little guitars and trumpets and attempting to get them to play drums on buckets. It has been sort of a success....No Phil Collins´in the making though.
















Today we took them all to the cinema to see the Princess and the frog but they seemed more interested in the handryers.which is completely understandable as the one toilet/hole in San Isidro doubles up as a kennel for around 20 dogs.


Thats about it, we´re off to the Colca Canyon this weekend to see some big birds and eat some small mammals. Bye for now from Alex´s dad.

first week down south

Hello there!
having been here almost a week we thought we´d put up some pictures of our various jaunts around peru. our hostel in lima was pretty special, with turtles and parrots roaming aroung and eating your toes and screeching ´hola, hola´at every turn.




Better than that though, the first bar we walked into to have a celebratory beer was playing good old phil collins- what a treat! we could have been back in milverton!

Here´s a wee picture of Lima


We arrived in arequipa on friday after an intrepid 20 hour journey across the desert, we were a little scared about this trek as the road is notoriously dangerous- but we got on the bus and soon found the large man sat opposite us was sporting a t-shirt that read ´Oregon Women´s Basketball Team 1998´. We knew that he´d protect us from those banditos!

Nonetheless, ELO kept us entertained....


So now we are in arequipa, which is beautiful and hot!


We´ve eaten many a strange meat floating in soupy water and drank us some Inca Cola which tastes like jiffy bubblegum.

Dave has accidently dyed his beard and hands orange as we bought suncream with fake tan in by mistake.


We´ve moved into the house we´re renting whilst volunteering here, the other volunteers are entirely german and female- ooh
we´re going to have a good time! ...we also found some tuna called ´Fanny´which kept us entertained for a good 5 hours.


So long for now from the Southern Hemisphere!

We´ve arrived

After a long flight and a very sweaty bus journey from Lima, we have arrived in Arequipa and are about to go meet the people who run the project!
More details and photos to come!
Soph & Dave.

Almost ready for the off.

So, we are almost ready to go to South America. Tomorrow we will fly to Amsterdam, and then on tuesday it'll be a 13 hour flight to Lima!

We have packed all our medications;



A useful and informative language book;












and obligatory stupid travelling clothes.....



When we land in lima and get to our first hostel we'll try and post another one, there's no escape...

laters taters!

Soph and Dave.