First Days

Hey!

So it has taken me a while to finally write something on here, everything has been so busy and not at all what I expeted!

I am staying at a volunteer house in Lima, with all the other volunteers (which sadly is only about 5 of us). We are staying with a host family who works with IVHQ and are very well looked after. Monday was a Public Holiday, which meant that for the first day of the program we had the day off! We went out to lunch with our host family to try the ´Peruvian´chicken and Inka Cola ( a blue soft drink that tasted a bit like bubblegum... gross) We spent the day siteseeing which was a good way to start the trip.

Today we had our first proper day and ended up skipping orientation and heading straight out the School, where some of the other volunteers are working. Next to the school are the baby homes called the Wawa Wasi. These aren´t orphan children, but rather day care centres for the working Mums in the area (which is a very poor area). Each Wawa Wasi is in a family home and run by the Mother of the house. They have up to eight babies/toddlers in their care at a time.

We spent the afternoon in La Punta visiting the home for girls who have been abused. They are all teenagers who have been taken out of their homes for their safety. That was a greta experience as they clearly loved having us here and were eager for us to join in their games and to do LOTS of dancing.

SO as yet I have not even been to the orphanage. Tomorrow I am off to the Special Needs Orphanage and then on Wednesday off to the regular orphanage. The idea is for us to be shown all these different places and then we get to choose how we get to spend our week. This is great as it means we can spend some days teaching, some at the orphanage, some with the babies which is a great variety.

Well that is all. Currently all the other people I am volunterring with are Americans! This makes me the token Aussie.