Hi everyone!
A lot has happened since my last post, good and bad. But first things first. for some reason I can´t post pictures on my blog, it is very fiddly and takes ages. SO! If you wanna check out some pictures from my trip so far, this public facebook link should work;

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=617245&id=643950153&l=917e4c75c3

Also, I wanted to thank you all for your lovely messages! Makes me feel a lot less lonely and weird about writing this blog. So muchos gracias a todos!
So first the bad.....
Caroline and I were on our way to the Rainbow house for our bi-weekly visit with the children, we were walking up the road when we saw Soledad (one of the house children) coming our way. This was troubling because Sole is not allowed out by herself due to epilepsy, and also just because she is young and its not safe. We asked where she was going, but failed to receive an answer, so we walked up to the house with her. Upon arrival at the Rainbow house, we found the kids running amok, with no adult present and Yelson was missing. This should not happen. Because it was our first week, we didn´t know the numbers of the Kiya Staff, so just decided to stay untll the house mum showed up. However before she had the chance to do so, the phone rang, it was Ely, one of the Kiya staff. I heard her ask Lizandra if she could talk to the house mum, Lizandra replied ´she´s in the bathroom´. Lie. I asked for the phone and set the record straight with Ely, about finding Sole walking up the road, Yelson´s absence and the absence of an adult at the house. This caused Lizandra and Soledad to panic and run out of the house. They returned ten minutes later with Rosa, the house mum, and Yelson. By this point both girls were not too happy with me for ´telling´on them and Rosa was desperately trying to explain herself.
We had a meeting with Ely the next day in which she explained that it´s fine if Rosa wants to go out, she just needs to inform Ely so that either she or one of the volunteers could watch the children. So that was fine, the two girls however, should not have lied or have wandered out onto the road. I ended up receiving the cold shoulder from them both for two days before they got over it. But what to do.
SO now the good.....
We had a second visit at the house on Monday and this one was wonderful! (YAY!) It was Ely´s birthday the next day so the children and I made her a big birthday card, then we played an hour of Ludo and topped the evening off with lots of dancing to Shakira. It was a great bonding experience and I feel so much closer to them now. I also found that Yelson and I get along very well, he is my new ´amigo´and we laugh lots together. He has a very cheeky sense of humour, when the drama was unfolding at the rainbow house, all the did was giggle at my obvious distress!
So overall a pretty up and down week. We´ve had three rounds of Spanish classes, and I´m picking it up quite quickly which is good. The children at school have been so much fun, when they aren´t fighting or not listening ot me ;) We celebrated Ely´s birthday on Tuesday where I (the vegetarian) ate the most mouthwatering lemon grilled chicken imaginable. It´s the first party I´ve been to where I am everybodies junior by atleast 15 years! But fun none the less.

So tomorrow I am taking Lizandra out for some one on one time, then this weekend off to Cuzco (YAY!!!!!!) Love Cuzco.

So yes thats it!
uhm...yeah.....YES. Ok so hope everyone is happy and healthy.
And good karma.
ANd please comment!

P.S. Wardy, Luisa says ´Hi and will you ever be married in Peru´ haha

ok lots of love people!!!!!!!

Chloe

The Rainbow Centre!

The first few days at the Rainbow Centre have been intense! They are currently short staffed so us volunteers have a lot of responsibility resting on our shoulders, which is why it has taken me so long to blog :p Anyone from the second and third generations of Team Peru will know that it doesn´t take much for me to get emotional when it comes to the Kiya children. So when I first walked into the centre and recognized so many faces it was all I could do to stay in control of my tears, thank god I lasted through the day dry-faced! I was remembered by most of the staff, the children however needed their memories jogged a little before they remembered that this was not my first visit to the rainbow centre. Many asked about various members of Team Peru, and asked me to send my love. The children were particullarly happy when they found out that I was friends with Prof Alex and Prof AC. A very enthusiastic Lizandra begged me to ask Alex to please please return to Peru, so Alex there you go! Because the children found it hard to pronounce Chloe, I have now been named ´Claudia´, always with the word ´profe´ in front (teacher), a title which I quite enjoy. Because it is summer school there is not much teaching going on, and the kids were divided into classes according to age. I have my own class(!!!!) that I´m in charge of and my kids(!!!!) are the 6-8 year olds. Those of you from Team Peru might remember Juan Cito from the rainbow house, he is in my class and he is extremely fiesty :) After school Ely took Carolin, Suzanne and I to the Rainbow house were the orphaned children of the centre live with a surrogate mother. These children are Solidad, Lizandra, Juan Cito, Marco, Yelson, Fernando and Matilde. All these children, except for Solidad, are related and came from an extremely poor and abusive family before being taken into the care of Kiya. Now most of the children are in mainstream school, and Lizandra is working. Fernando now has a room at the Rainbow Centre where he works. At the rainbow house Ely talked us through the various emotional, physical and mental problems that each of these children have and what our responsibilities would be concerning them. One of my jobs is to take Lizandra to work, and pick her up when she is done, another is to try to take two children on one on one outings once a week. After this information sessions we were let loose to bond with the children. I immediately sat down with Lizandra. I had forged a strong bond with her three years ago, and it was to her that I made a promise to return to the Rainbow Centre. As soon as I sat down Lizandra started talking about school, her cell phone, profe Alex and how much she missed him(!). After half an hour of gossiping, she became serious and she told me her life story, She talked about living in a one roomed mud hut with her abusive father and mentally ill mother, about how her mother was so ill that it became her duty to look after the children while her brother Yelson cleaned the house. She told me her life was hard, and that she understood that her mother was ill, that it wasn´t her fault, She sat quietly for a while then she looked and me and said, ´My mother was very beautiful,when she was in hospital one day Ely came to see me and I thought she would say your mother is better, she is fine now. But she said my mother was dead. I miss her, even though she was ill. I miss her. I wish you could meet her.´She then went on to say that she could not believe how great her life was now. That everyday she thanks god for bringing Suzy Butler (the founer of Kiya Survivors) into her life, that she loves Suzy with all her heart. That now she knows that she and her siblings are safe and loved. I sat there listening feeling like my heart was going to burst, Lizandra had matured so much since the last time I saw her, she was so willing to open up and talk about such hard years of her life. It is a conversation that I am going to remember forever, and makes me even more dedicated to the cause and the children here.

Ah...that was a lot to get off my chest. The conversation with Lizandra left me somewhat overwhelmed and it feels good to put it all out there and ´tell´someone.
No pictures yet! I didn´t want to bring my camera into school on the first week. SO next week I´ll post some.

Please leave comments, It would be nice to feel like there is an actual conversation going on and that I´m not jsut babbling to nobody in particular, even if thats exactly what I´m doing!

Lots of Love from Peru!

Off to drink some Pisco Sour tonight, here people party on Wednesday :)

xxxxxxxxxxx

Profe Claudia :)

Urubamba!!!!

Again, I have not yet made it to the Rainbow Centre, it is still closed for Christmas Holidays and re-opens on Monday for Summer school. This is more fun for us volunteers because summer school focuses more on being creative and fun, with a bit of learning on the side. It´s a really important time for the centre because during summer school the centre is open to all the children in the village, not only those with special needs. This is essential to integrating the special needs children into society and educating the locals about special needs. SO I will more exciting news to report hopefull by Monday or Tuesday. Flying into Cuzco proved to be a bit of a challenge because Andrew, our wonderful Kiya liason in the UK, failed to tell us whihc airline we were flying with. Caroline and I proceeded to the airport armed with the knowledge that our flight left at 10:10. That was all we knew. Unfortunately there were two flights leaving at this time, so I had to ask a bewildered woman at the check in counter to please look at my passport details and check to see if we were scheduled to fly with her airline, luckily we were! There were several groups of volunteers on our plane, all from different NGOs, I meet a fellow nineteen yar old volunteer from Oklahoma, it was his first time out of the US.

At Cuzco we were met but the lovely Ely who has been with the centre for nine years. She showed us round the volunteer house and the village. A few hours later we met Suzanne a third volunteer who has already been here two months, she British and in her late fifties, making me by far the youngest one in the house....intimidating :p

But yes, thats it for now, sorry that was quite a boring post :p

My room at the volunteer house ........................ Staying healthy

Peru at Last!

-Newark Airport -Sunset Lima -Fountain in La Plaza de L armas

-Sacrificial Knife -Statue of the first Liberator of Peru

-Beach in Lima -Oldest hotel in Peru -Bishops something.....(?) :p

So while I am not yet at the Rainbow centre, I have landed in the beautiful country that is Peru. I was immediately greeted by a wave of humidity, a crowd of very loud short people and the smell of sweat, exactly how I remember it! I met Mario the Kiya driver, and an hour later we met Caroline, another volunteer who is 28 years old, but we get still along great, we are both find of laughing :) . We were then taken to the Lima Wasi hotel which has been renovated since the last time I stayed there, it is quite the fancy hotel now :)

We did a bit of exploring in order to find lunch and I could not believe how tourist-y the area has become! We turned the corner and were faced with a Starbucks, Dunkin´ Donuts, T.G.I Fridays, Chili´s, Tony Roma´s, etc etc. All we were looking for was some Peruvian food, which we didn´t find, and hence we settled for Pizza Hut. Sigh.

We took a City tour of Lima at 2pm, we had a very charming tour guide named Alfredo from whom I learned that Lima has a population of 9 million, and Peru itself has a population of 29 million. Also 60% of Peru´s exports are mined goods, such as coal. We also learned that the first five star hotel to be built in Peru was the sheraton, and we were shown the oldest hotel in Peru where Ernest Hemingway and Mick Jagger were said to have tried their first Pisco Sour. After that, Caroline and I enjoyed an exotic dinner at Starbucks. Now we are off to bed early because Mario is picking us up at 7(!) tomorrow morning for our flight to Cuzco.

So I´ll will see you in Cuzco!

Lots of Love,

Chloe

Just leaving for the airport now, it seems that my flight is on schedule despite the snow :)
I'm still half asleep so this post will be far from inspirational, but I will say that I can't believe I am finally going back!

Yay!

:)