Wednesday 29 April 2009

Peru welcomes Nathasa

Written by Natasha Jones - GapBreak 2009 Peru

Hola amigos! Have had almost two weeks in beautiful Peru now, its so unique - unlike anything i have ever seen! It´s hard to comprehend that i am actually here!



The first week we stayed in a hostel and did lots of sightseeing and Spanish classes everyday! The Spanish is coming along slowly but surely! It is very tiring sometimes to constantly be figuring out what is being said, but is also very rewarding when you have a conversation in Spanish!

The shops and markets are everywhere and all the clothing is so cool - I bought an alpaca poncho the other day! Bargaining with the shop and market keepers is very fun!

We are now with our families in a suburb just outside of Cusco named San Jeronimo - still quite cityish but quite poor and dirty. I have a mother named Rosa, a 23 year old brother named Ferdinand (who can thankfully speak quite good english!) and a 9 year old sister named Astrid - very cute but very shy. They live out the back of the grocery shop which Rosa owns, and didnt have enough room for us (me and my two housemates - clare and katie) so have rented an apartment close by for us and will be moving in tomorrow! The food Rosa cooks is amazing and very healthy! Despite what some people said, we have started up a jogging group this morning and plan to stay motivated to get fit for treks such as Chocequiero and Machu Pichu which are coming up very quickly!

We have been to a few Inca ruins and museums, it is so intereresting to learn about the Inca people, they were so amazing We will be visiting some more museums in our free time tomorrow. Yesterday we went to the Sacred Valley and a little place called Ollayantaytambo which was so so darling. This weekend is paragliding in the Sacred Valley!
We visited the school that we will be teaching at today - school of about 150 kids in a little village, they had a beautiful welcome for us with balloons and flowers and singing and dancing and the sprinkling of the welcome flowers, and i got up and made a thankyou speech on behalf of the Antipodeans group - unfortunately my spanish is not good enough yet so it had to be translated for the kids! We start school tomorrow, and the lessons we will be teaching over the next 3 months are art, english and sport and our fundraising money is going towards construction around the school - helping to rebuild classrooms, painting, electricity, hygiene lessons for the kids etc.

Lastly, a few little interesting facts - there are stray dogs everywhere and no one seems to mind, the drivers here are crazy and there dont seem to be any strict road rules.

2 comments:

  1. Hey thanks for your blog. I havn't had much success with contacting Maddie Drake. That was a good overview. I know what you mean about dogs in S.A. You can hear them howling all nite long, all over town......!
    Lisa Bloore ( Mad's Mum in NZ )

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  2. And thanks from Sean's Mum too. That's the most news I've heard!! Perhaps you can be the group's official correspondent!

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