Time for an update

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It has been a while since I last updated so this could be a long update. I have been very busy recently. The football in Pisac has been better. Nico and I have been put in charge of a group of about 10 and have been allowed to do what ever we wanted pretty much, which has much more fun. We try to do some new works they don’t normally do which they seem to quite enjoy. Football in Calca and Cusco are still good as well. I have been working regularly with the same group in Cusco, which I quite like because I have gotten to know them. They are not particularly good but are really fun to work with. They are all about 11 or 12. Most recently though I have been working with the oldest kids there who are about 15. Before I used to dislike working with them but now my Spanish is much better I can do more complex practices and speak with them more a well so it has been really good as well. Last week though I was put with ten kids of about 4 or 5 years. That was torture. They have an amazingly bad attention span that makes everything difficult. When we played a game one player was always running away from the ball and another spent most of the game behind his opponents goal for no apparent reason. I think Calca is still my favourite I think though. The young kids in particular are really fun and some of them are really good too. My favourite session was actually this week. The coach had to go and do something so he left three of us to do any practices we wanted. It was nice to have the freedom. Calca is always really sunny as well! It has never been raining while I have been coaching there.



Outwith the football most of the friends I had made here have gone home now. Very few volunteers spent Christmas here. In the weekends leading up to Christmas I did a couple of ruins by myself. I don’t mind doing them by myself because it means I have more freedom and can take as much or little time as a like. It one ruin a random group of Peruvian girls asked to take a picture with me because I was the “Gringo”. Very surreal. The best ruin was Moray, which is like a big bowl, a bit like an amphitheatre. Got some really good photos there. On December 23^rd it was my host brother’s son Adriano’s first birthday. There was a really nice party with a clown and loads of balloons. I made a bunch of balloon swords. After the kids party I stayed up drinking with my host brothers until about 2 in the morning. Good fun. On the 24^th I went to Cusco and had lunch with all the volunteers still here. There were about 10 of us. It was a good laugh. The tradition for Christmas in Peru is to stay up until midnight on the 24^th and then eat so that’s what we did. At 12 we had paneton, wine and hot chocolate. We also had loads of fire works. For about an hour the whole of Pisac was just constant banging. Most of the fireworks here are just really loud and not very pretty. For New Year I went to Cusco. It was good fun but I got pickpocketed during the day so I had to borrow money from some other volunteers, which kind of ruined my plans for the night because I didn’t really like borrowing much money. It was still a good night. The main Plaza was full of people and equally full of fireworks. It was not a very wild night in the end. I was in bed by about 1.30. I actually drunk more the next day when I got back to Pisac and my host dad decided to cure his sore head by getting drunk all over again, so I joined him in that.



All the schools here in Peru are closed at the moment so all the volunteers working in them don’t have teaching etc. so projects abroad organised community work, which I helped out with when I didn’t have football. We painted a hospital and recycled some old hospital equipment. The recycling was a bit dull but I enjoyed the painting. It is quite relaxing work. For my second month I am working in a care project so this week I started working in summer school. It is good fun. We do art, teach some English and do games outside. Yesterday we made paper aeroplanes and had a competition. I work at the summer school from 8.30 till 12.30. I usually still go to football in Cusco or Calca in the afternoon even though I am technically not football project anymore because they still want my help and enjoy it.





There are loads of volunteers arriving at the moment. There are about 8 of us in Pisac, some in Calca, Yucay, Urumbamba and Cusco with more on the way. I have a volunteer in my house now, which is strange after being alone with the family for two months. She is very nice though and I think we will get on well though. The way our different projects work though we only really see each other in the evening.



My Spanish is much better than it was when I arrived. I went out in Urumbamba the other night with two people I had met in a bar in Cusco a few weeks earlier and spent virtually all night talking Spanish. In Peru it is normal to buy big beers rather than the normal sized bottles in Scotland so there are loads people dancing around with 1 litre beer bottles.



Still really enjoying it. Looking forward to the next month because I am planning to go to Machu Pichu and lake Titicaca, which is exciting. Heaps of new people to meet as well from all over the world. When we went out once there was me from Scotland, 2 Germans, 2 Japanese, a Czech, a Chinese, a French and a Canadian. Crazy. The weirdest thing to happen though was coming downstairs to find a cow in my dinning room. Only in Pisac!

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