Natalie0210

Hello all! I'm currently in Arequipa, in the south-west of Peru. Since my last message I have been busy busy busy, as always when I travel... We did the silver mines in Potosi - well I did. Sarah got about 100m in and had an attack of her claustrophobia but I battled on. It was amazing to see the men at work, chewing huge wads of coca leaves. at some points I had to crawl on my hands and knees and my asthma was a struggle, but I did it. After leaving we laid on our backs in a thermal lake and stared at the blue blue sky... From there we went to Sucre, a beautiful colonial town with lots of culture, at a much lower altitude and with lovely weather...we spent two days enjoying the ... read more

Right. I know all has been a little quiet on the blogging front, but that´s because things haven´t been too exciting here. For the past 3 and a half months I´ve been working as an English teaching assistant in a university in Santa Fe, Argentina. The work has been fun. I assist in english classes with students aged 18 and above. They have a good level of English, so I concentrate on conversation, fluency and pronunciation. The teachers are all lovely and have appreciated having me there. I have been living with a family - a mother and a 6 year old girl. They are very nice but i don´t see them all that often as our schedules are very different. During my time in Argentina I have travelled to Buenos Aires (big, scary, not at ... read more

Hi everyone... So, I´m in Manaus at the other end of the Brazilian Amazon from where I wrote to you last. I´m alive and well (just about) and still having a great time. There is now only a week left of my travelling before my jaunt home (so excited!), so I´m cramming in as much as I can before then. The boat trip was an interesting experience...on my deck alone there were 400 people slung up in hammocks right next to eachother. There were 3 toilets for over 200 women, which made personal hygiene a little difficult. Sleep was also hard to come by, as if anybody moved in their hammock there was a domino effect all the way down the line... I met some really cool people though and had a great time. I arrived ... read more

So, here I am, travelling round Brazil alone like an incredibly independent mature human being! It is sooooo weird having filled in details that don´t include Lençois, Bahia. Leaving was one of the most difficult things I´ve done. I really loved it there and the people and places were just about unbeatable. My last weeks were fantastic and my friends and boyfriend really spoilt me. I had Délio, Vinny, Coquinho, Gabriel, Edson, Mariana, Aninha and Evando there to see me off at the bus station, which as you can imagine was a tearful experience. I´m already trying to plan a way to go back as soon as humanly possible! I left on Monday on the 11.30 bus and slept alll the way to Salvador. Arrived 05.30 and stayed the whole day in the bus station, getting ... read more

Hi all! Sorry, very lazy of me to miss another week, but as you all know I´ve been having a pretty hard time being here with everything going on at home. I´ve wanted so much to be there with you all, especially as things haven´t been easy here either. One of the kids had been stealing from me and all in all things were getting rather on top of me. But, you´ll be glad to hear, things are looking up. 1) We have a new volunteer, an English guy who seems really committed to the project, he speaks good portuguese and is really nice. So that´s a huge step up. 2) We have blackboards now - might seem like nothing, but I´ve been trying to get it sorted for three months and life is sooooooo much ... read more