First few days in Huancayo

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Hello again 😊

On Wednesday I met a 24 year old from Germany called Pascale, who is staying around 15mins away from me and speaks english and spanish!! She is very nice and has shown me around the area, it is also a huge relief as i have been struggling along with virtually no spanish at all! (It took me around 20mins to buy some lip balm this morning ... and i´m not convinced that it is lip balm because the man that sold it to me kept doing impressions of rubbing it on his cheeks!!)

I started working at the school yesterday which wasn´t at all as i expected it to be. The youngest child there was 2 whilst the oldest was 12 and many of the older children arrived with younger siblings on their back. The school is less about teaching english, as i had expected, but more about providing an environment where the children can play and act as children for a couple of hours- most of them spend the rest of the day working with their parents. There was a 7 year old girl who soon realised that i couldn´t speak Spanish and whilst i was trying to teach her the colours in English, she was determined to teach me them in Spanish!

I have never known children so keen to learn, as soon as they see Pascale and I, they run up to us smiling and ask what we are going to be doing today. The first thing they do is wash their hands and face as some of them do not have running water at home, we then teach for 1 hour and then they play for 1 hour. Despite turning up feeling tired, coughing badly and wearing the same clothes all week, they never complain and it makes them very happy to play a simple ball game, or colour in. I find it quite hard to accept that this is their way of life, but all i can do is teach them as much as i can before i leave and i am looking forward to the next few weeks very much.

I also started to assist in an orphanage yesterday and will continue 9am-1pm each day. I spent today and yesterday in the babies room, where the youngest was only 3 weeks old. There are 7 babies to only one worker, so they were very grateful for our help. I only had to smile at them and their faces lit up. The orphanage does provide a good upbringing for the children but i still can´t believe how little attention these babies receive. I was thrown in at the deep end when i first arrived- i was asked to change three of the babies- not as easy as it sounds!! Instead of nappies they have two bits of cloth which are tied around them and are far too big, making it very difficult to put their trousers on afterwards- and i imagine it isn´t very comfortable for them. I finished the morning helping the 2-3 year olds with their lunch, most of them used their hands to eat, separating the chicken bones from the meat, by the end of the meal all the vegetables had been passed around the table into one little girl´s bowl, who then threw them across the room! Whilst i was there they were desperate for attention- climbing on the table, out of the window, over the gate and eating the T.V leads! The majority of the childrenwere born to parents as young as 15 and given up at birth. Apparently marriage is very common for 15-17 year olds, but it has serious consequences. The staff at the orphanage are excellent with the children but I find it very sad that the children are in this position and assume that this is normal.


......It has been an emotional and thought provoking few days......



XxX

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Comments

[Megan Mackenzie]

WOW
well done!!! sounds really interesting and challenging... keep it going you will learn so much everyday! love xxxxxxx

[Chloe Waldron]

:)
Hello you :) it sounds like your having such an amazing time, teaching the children and looking after the children in the orphanage. Glad you made friends there,as we had many worrying conversations about that. I miss you, enjoy the rest of your trip. And i hope you get time to do lots of sight seeing that you wanted to do. Take care, see you soon x x