A few more exciting tales from South America

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Firstly, thanks to all those who have been reading our blogs and sending us comments and messages of support etc. It means a lot and they´re really nice to read whent the dreaded homesickness occassionally hits!

Right, when we left you last, we had just finished our first week teaching the kiddies and had sampled some rather fantastic milkshakes.

Fast forward to today (monday 21st May at 7.30pm) and we have completed our second week of teaching and are now embarking upon the third. We no longer work with the little-un´s in San Jeronimo, we now work every morning in a boys home for 90 minutes, teaching english. The home was created as a place for boys to live if they became orphaned, or they were sold by their parents, or they were beaten (it´s a very long, sad list). About 25 boys live there in all, and they all help to maintain the place i.e. cooking, cleaning, making things to sell. They´re a very close-knit family, and the boys alternate days in which they learn English with us. The classes are pretty difficult as we have to do proper lesson plans and they are all of different abilities, but they´re all very eager to learn and it´s been a really great experience teaching them.

We´re still working at Seeds of Hope in the afternoons which is definitely a challenge as the kids are mad and very hyper-active. Our Spanish is improving more and more each day (Alex had a whole conversation with a taxi driver the other day in perfect Spanish!!!) Our pile of presents for people is growing each day, and we can now both haggle with the market people like old cockney pro´s.

We´re going white water rafting on saturday which will be immense. Yesterday we went to a neighbouring town called Urubamba (90 minutes away) and saw the ancient Inca agricultural concentric circles, which were huge and amazing to look at, and we also explored the salt plains, which was basically a side of a mountain with rock pools all over it, filled with salt water. Many pictures were taken of both sites, although it is hard to appreciate the splendour of these sites without actually having been there!

On saturday, Alex went on a walk across some of the local mountains and saw some of the Inca ruins and rock formations, including some old temples with rock carvings.

Charlie has already bumped into an old school friend out here, and another will arrive in Cuzco tomorrow (small world, eh?) We´re having a good time here and looking forward to the trek in a few weeks.

Lots of love to everyone.

Chabberlander

xxxx

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