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Published: September 4th 2006
Hello all!
We´ve been in Huancayo for just over a week now - working and playing hard of course!
We arrived here on a Friday and so had the entire weekend to settle in and do some sightseeing. We´re staying in an apartment in a district of Huancayo called Chilca. It´s the poorest area around and you can definitely tell as you leave the wealthier areas.
Our first free day we travelled to a town called Chupaca. It was our first time on a local bus which was...an interesting experience to say the least! There is no system to the buses - just a conductor that hangs out the side of a minivan yelling its destination to any pedestrian that dares to pause en route. The traffic here is similar to Lima and you wouldn´t think you were in a small town. It is a war between cars and pedestrians in which there are no rules, and many casualties on both sides. Motorists prefer to drive on the right but its only a tendency. A bare majority of cars have headlights, far fewer have tail-lights and there is a general amnesty on traffic lights. No signals are used, in any circumstancs - and into this we plunged!
We visited a livestock market which is famous in the area, and were told that traditionally once business closes for the day, traders spend all of their profits on beer - much like England you see! We then went into the main plaza where there was some dancing going on. It was obvious that we were the only tourists for miles yet this show still went on purely part of everyday life. This was interesting for us as we´d just come off travelling for two weeks to mainly tourist towns were everything was so catered for tourists but now we´re in the real Peru. We carried on through the market where they sold everything from bread to sombreros and bananas to frogs meat.
We took a taxi to another small town called Chongos (least thats what it sounded like though its not on any map so we´re unsure!) Our transport was again an experience. As we jumped into the back seat of the cab so did 5other people and 2 in the front seat and I´m convinced there was someone on the roof!
We decided to sample the real Peruvian nightlife after all it was Saturday night! We went to a bar first and it was full of old couples - we´re talking 40-60year olds hitting the dance floor. There were a few younger people but not many and honestly it kind of freaked us out!! We carried on to a club or discoteca where there were more young people (but still quite a few oldies!) They played mainly salsa and the popular reggeton music which is very popular here. There was also some bollywood music and a few bursts of ´losing my religion´and ´living on a prayer´which was nice! We spent our sunday resting and relaxing in the main plaza and eagerly anticipating our first day of work the next day!
On Monday morning we visited the orphanage and spent some time with the different aged children there. At first we introduced ourselves in English to some boys aged 11-16 who were having an English lesson. Then we spent about half an hour wih some special needs kids who were great fun and then time with babies aged 0-2. The orphanage is surprisingly well funded as more than one organisation has pooled together to build and run it. Though if the buildings weren´t painted bright pink and green I think it would look more like a prison!
We then went over to another school where one of the girls we live with teaches. Its a school that provides free education to children that live in Chilca. All of the children have varied social and health problems but are still able to enjoy a stable environment at school and interact with other children. We were sort of thrown into the deep end when we were handed a board pen and a handful of kids aged 4-6 and told to teach ´parts of the body´ in english for an hour! Totally unprepared we managed to blag our way through it and finished with a few rounds of ´head, shoulders, knees and toes!´ At break time we engaged in some quizzing of English vocab with the kids but that soon got dry and we found a ball and played basketball and piggy-in-the-middle! There´s nothing like sport to break all barriers...though I´m not sure who had more fun them or us!
In the afternoon we went to the office of PeruForYou (the organisation we´re here with) for our Spanish lessons. We were told, however, that they needed English teachers for a group of teenagers. We were apprehensive at first - teaching people our own age but its turned out to be the class we look forward to most. The class is free and so none of the kids are forced to be there but they are. This makes it easier for us because they actually want to learn. They also want to know about us and England too so we have fun! The abilities vary in the group and we try to cater for all of them but its difficult at times and we just hope that what we´re teaching is useful!
We´re now set into a pretty good routine. We spend 3hours in the orphanage with the children - just playing, feeding, changing them etc. Then after lunch we teach English for 2hours and have our Spanish lesson for 2hours after that and by the end of the day we´re exhausted but still have homework to do and lessons to plan! We start work at 9 which means we dont have to get up too early - which would be great except there is some dude on the street that rings a bell every 15mins from 6am onwards!! We travel between places using taxis, walking and the crazy public buses which we´ve now become quite accustomed to (which is slightly worrying!)
There´s not much to do around here except going out at the weekends and the area isnt safe enough to be going out for a drink after dinner or anything during the week. So we´ve been spending weekday evenings practising our Spanish with the Peruvian teacher that lives with us and speaks no English!
The family who´s apartment we´re living in have been in Lima for the past 2weeks as their 3 year old daughter was diagnosed with cancer a month ago. She has 2 large tumors which are causing her kidneys to fail. We´ve been getting regular updates and it turns out that there is nothing the doctors can do for her and chemotherapy will just make her worse so they´ve given her a year to live. They returned last night and it was nice to meet them. Even after 2weeks of check-ups, hospital visits and a long arduous journey from Lima with a 3year old and an 8month old the parents were unbelievably upbeat and glad to meet us.
A week of lessons and meeting new people awaits us before we head back to Lima for the weekend for my birthday. The food here is great - all homecooked and lots of local specialities but we are both craving a pizza! As there are virtually no tourists here (we´ve seen 2others) the town doesn´t cater for them! So the restaurants only have local food for the locals to eat at! The hot water is also not working in the apartment, so after 10days we´re slowly getting used to cold showers. It´s not great but with everything the family is going through noone has the heart to tell them that there is no hot water! So we´re both looking forward to some western food and hot water when we get back to civilisation, I mean, Lima on Saturday morning!
Unfortunately as we´re trying hard to fit in here our cameras haven´t been out muh so we don´t have any photos to show you but we will do after our 3weeks here for sure! Until then we have added a few rather amusing photos to our first blog courtesy of fellow travellers we´ve been lucky to meet on the way so...enjoy!
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Laura Mendip 10
non-member comment
Halo ladies, hows life without the GHDs? I reckon you should stick with that 1st club - show the oldies how it's done in Bath. Good luck with the spanish lessons and the road safety! See you soon, stay safe x x x