One Week to go

This is the Orphan´s singing in Plaza San Martin

This is Soledad´s House finally finished! She hasn´t yet moved her Wawa Wasi into her house yet but I will come back and visit in Febrary before flying home to see it and post pictures so you are able to see where the money has gone.

This is all the volunteers and the host family we are staying with. We were all celebrating the Birthday fo their younger son Dan.

Everything has calmed down over this side of the world as everyone is getting into ´lazy mode´ for Christmas. We had a really nice night last Saturday after getting back from Cusco. We ended up heading into Central Lima to see the Orphan´s sing which was amazing. These were kids from another orphanage who sing every year in Plaza San Martin. They were in one of the buildings and each child was standing in a window singing out to everyone who was standing in the square. It looked and sounded incredible with all the lighst and everything.

I went to the Wawa Wasi for the last time on Thursday which was really sad. The School has now closed for the holidays so the Wawa Wasi´s are closing too. As they had all loved Spot so much I went and bought a couple of new books for them as well which they all adored. They would have ´reading time´ where the Mum would get all the books out for the kids and they sat around the table reading them and then exchanging them with the people next to them. It was adorable. It was also really good having Mum sitting down with them going through the books, teaching them their numbers and colours. I am hoping now to be able to buy some books for the other 11 Wawa Wasi´s just to try and help their education in the slightest way possible.

On Tuesday we had the Christmas Party for La Punta, which consisted of all the party games I hate the most including Musical Chairs, trying to copy dance moves and another groups game. It was lots of fun though and the girls loved it all. We also bought a Pinata for them which went crazy! They took it in turns to have a good bash which also meant whacking the wall in the process and also getting rather close to our heads. Then as soon as the lollies started to fall out the girls all dived on each other and scrambled to see how many they could get. It was utter chaos but a great afternoon. On Friday they had their own Christmas Party that they put on for us and other outsiders, some were members of their family. It was really sweet having them sing and dance, they even had all of us up practising our dance skills which were rather questionable.

We were also went to a Grade Six Graduation this week which was really really cute. All the girls were in Lilac and were so dressed up, they had their haird done and everything and all the boys were in their suits. Unfortunately none of us (the volunteers) had any idea that it was a dressy occasion so we were all extremely embarrassed in our casual wear, especially as we were called up in front of everybody! They even did partner dancing which was really cute, all the parents were standng on a balcony above them looking down on the dance floor. I just felt glad that we didn´t have to do anything like that when I was their age! After all the official stuff was over with they had a ´crazy hour´ where the music went really loud and they had clowns come in blowing whistle and pretty much the idea was that they just went crazy for an hour. Once again the parents were all right above just looking down on them watching all of this happen, it was quite a funny set up.

On Monday we had an interesting day. A group of us decided that it would be really nice if we cooked dinner one night to give our amazing cook a break and so she could sit down and enjoy a meal with us. Little did we know what we were getting in for having to make a meal for 11 people with no working oven. We ended up with a very interesting pasta dish that was questionable, a potato salad and a greekish salad as well. Luckily we had tim tams for dessert which saved the day! It´s the thought that counts... right?