Christmas party

So the last day of our mission at Bruce Peru Cusco has arrived on the 16th of December, which was the last day in school. We decided to celebrate the closing of the school with a big party for all our kids, volunteers, teachers and the most important local sponsors and dedicated it to Christmas with inviting a real Santa Clause with loads of presents. The kids have been preparing already for the last two weeks with a little performance so we also tried to do our best; we seemed to have loads of luck lately receiving help from all around without even asking for it. A week before the event I was walking down our street in Cusco to the laundry when one of the neighbour hostel owners greeted me and asked if we needed some help for our Christmas party. He is one of the members of the Confraternidad del Señor de los Temblores, and with a little bit of co-operation we ended up receiving the traditional hot chocolate and Christmas cakes with presents to all our children as a donation, though I shall state we are independent from any religious organization.

Complying with the Peruvian time schedule we finally began our celebration about 45 minutes late but all our kids nicely washed and dressed!!! They behaved so well as we never saw them and the room was full with dwarf like little creatures with their red and white Santa Claus hats on their heads. They sang and danced traditional Peruvian and Quechua songs and dropped their jaws when our favorite Spanish teacher entered the room with a perfect act in a perfect Santa Clause outfit (thanks to Helen and Andy, the owners of The Real McCoy pub, where we organized our best charity pub quizzes). All of them had a little quiz to answer seated on the lap of the Papa Noel before receiving their presents and we learned that the best deed of most of our kids during this year was that they washed their cat, bless them!!! So after we run out of gas to boiled the hot chocolate and had to change also the stowe to a bigger one we finally got through the celebration with dancing and a lot of photos with the kids, who we saw probably the last time...

To properly say farewell to all our staff we invited everybody to the volunteer centre for a traditional Hungarian spicy porkolt lunch with hot wine. After we all got tipsy and cheerful we received the nicest present from our Peruvian colleagues; they all gave one by one - including our cook - a little speech saying thanks and wishing us the best wishing that one day we would return. Indeed it would be the best time to start working together now, that we got through the hard part and we learnt to know each other - and the language! But as my father used to say always it is best to quit the party at its best moment... So we left with the good feeling, that we found a new director, Mario top take over the centre from us and so a new home for our beloved bunny! Bless Monika, our German neighbour, who was so sweet to take in Chaplin with such care and love, though the little bastard greeted her by peeing on her mat!

So we left Cusco with Bryan, our volunteer from the U.S. the same night with a bus to Arequipa to enjoy the last days in Peru with a breathtaking canyon trip to Colca!

Eaten alive by parasites

Except for the Christmas party our last venture was to test the kids for parasites. Thanks to our volunteer Bryan who checked all the samples of the kids. It was a tedious process but worth the cause. We had to make all the kids bring fresh excerements samples to school in plastic cups we provided to them. More or less 80% of the kids did turn up the next day with them in the school. We agreed earlier with one of the doctors to use his cabinet and microscope to do the screening of the samples. So once we got the samples the only thing left for us was to go to the lab where Bryan was to check them. Michelle, me and Rita assisted Brian with his work.

It was quite exciting since all of us wanted to see some interesting animal. Indeed, there were quite a few as over 70% of the kids were infected with something (for me however it was difficult to see what was normal under microscope and what should not have been there). You can take a look at the few species I am talking about here:

• ascaris
• e. histolytica
• giardia
• trichuris

If you do a thorough job of googling you can find some horryfing pictures with more mature stages of life of them (only for people who want to see something really horryfing). There were more problems but I think I do not need to mention them. One kid had four parasites what is quite unusal and even Brian who is a professional in this field was astonished.

By the way - the next day we had a farewell launch in one of the schools - traditional guinea pig. I was not to eager to eat it anyway but I think the biggest surprise was that the food was prepared by a mum of the kid that had four parasites...Anyway the food was very good and we were honored to be served with a guinea pig. We tried not to remember what Bryan discovered the day before...

Anyway our doctors will now prescribe the medicine for the kids and for some time they should be ok. Nevertheless, one would need a more thorough teaching plan for the kids and their parents - preventive measures in the field of hygiene. We started it but the new directors will have to follow up. As for us we decided to test ourselves right before leaving Peru - just in case :))

Christmas present idea

Giving Christmas presents is always a challenge. What would be though better than the ability to get a business as a present?

Lately we came across an organization that enables to loan funds to an entrepreneur in a third world country and then get the money paid back to you. Since we know people who did it, we know that the probability of getting the money back is very high. You can loan as little as 25 USD.

www.kiva.org creates a possibility to help somebody create a business and at the same time to give the money to somebody you care for as a certificate. We think it is a great idea!!! You can check the business plans and communicate with the persons you will be helping.

Check it out - it is much better than buying one more thing that you are not sure somebody you care for needs!!!

Our last 10 days in Cusco

We have basically only a week left in Cusco and we will be heading back to Europe. Quite a strange feeling after a year of traveling & quite strange to leave the center and the kids...Time to move on. Otherwise everything becomes a routine :)

One of the more important things left for us to do in Cusco is to prepare for the Christmas Party - we have prepared 40 big presents for each of our kids. We received lots of clothing and toys as donations so I think that the kids will be very happy. We have also managed to secure sponsors who will prepare the traditional Christmas chocolate and give small presents to the kids as well. The only thing we still need to do is decorate the room for the party and make sure Santa Claus comes on time to give the presents to the kids :)))

Most of the things we wanted to do for Bruce Peru have been accomplished...this week we will still test all the kids for parasites. Lets hope they bring the samples for testing as we requested them. One thing that might still cause some problems is our rabbit - we have tentatively found him a new home but he became sick - we are giving him medicines every day but we cannot see any progress. The creature is now terribly thin and quite miserable...Hopefully he gets better within a week otherwise there is going to be a problem with moving him to a new home...

On Friday we celebrated the International Volunteer Day. United Nations organized quite a few events around the world. We had a great chocolate cake prepared by our cook!!! It is incredible what kind of cakes she can make considering the kitchen equipment for baking we have.


We have lots of new pictures from our volunteers. There are lots which are really nice so take your time and have a look.

- pictures from Michala & Sarah (from Denmark) - set 1; set 2
- pictures from Katie & Tom (from Canada) - set 1; set 2
- pictures from Caroline (from Belgium) - set 1; set 2 ; set 3

Together with Rita we also want once again to say thank you for all their efforts and donations we have received only thanks to their circle of friends and family. There are no words which can express our gratitude and we are happy that also next year we will be able to take good care of the kids thanks to them. Very BIG THANKS especially to everyone in Canada!!!

Most exciting places which you should have visited in 2008

There have been strange things happening to us throughout our honeymoon yearlong trip. First of all it seems that we have chosen the most exciting places on earth to visit:

- it started with Nepal where we arrived to a burned down border town in the middle of the strike
- then Tibet got sealed off - just the second when we wanted to enter it. We never made it there
- right after we got the visa to Myanmar the country got hit by an awful cyclone. Nevertheless we made it there
- once we made it to Buenos Aires the local farmers started burning cars in the middle of the city
- when we were about to visit Bolivia half of the country got blocked by farmers protesting against planned reforms
- in Peru we managed to live through at least two strikes which made Cusco inaccessible
- right now the only modern airport we have encountered in Asia - Bangkok - got totally blocked by protesters
- Mumbai where we started our trip got almost run over by insane terrorists...

Good choice of places wouldn't you say? Not many more places we could have visited where there was trouble this year (actually Kongo, Afganistan and Sudan are some of those places - Rita got job offers from UN to go to each of those places this year :))

I guess it means fun for Warsaw since we are going to spend some time there next year :))) Everyone there get a survival kit handy :)

Secondly, more on the positive note - when we arrived to Peru and started volunteering we both hoped that we won't have to do fund raising. First of all because we had no idea how to do it and secondly because we knew it is going to be damn hard. Of course, we ended up doing it. But guess what - when we started and calculated how much money we needed we both kind of became speechless and very skeptical. We needed USD 4800 - and we were ready to accept the fact that we won't raise even a USD 100.

On the 10th of November we have reached that target so we decided to raise the bar to USD 5800. Well, today we are over USD 6000 !!! Amazing...half of it we raised online and half of it through our activities in Cusco.

Our last event was a big party at one of the dance clubs. We were to receive 50 US cents from each drink during the party. We had to make the publicity, do the decoration including blowing over 300 balloons right before the party and hope that people show up. We did our best and hoped at least that it won't be an embarrassment in terms of how many people would show up. The party turned wild - there were at least 150 people and we raised USD 300!!! We were a bit lucky though. Somebody made us a favor and send the tax authorities to the party. So we really received 50 cents from each drink - they watched over the guys serving the drinks so that they give the bills until 6am and then made them pay us!!! We think it was not a coincidence that they came - we even suspect who was the one that made the tax authorities come but we are not totally sure. One way or the other it has been the most successful fund raising event considering the effort - result ratio and the fact that there were some wild things going on (as you can see on the photos...) We did not plan dancing on the tables but it did help keep the right atmosphere throughout the party.

Still alive in Cusco

It was a longer than usual break between posts. Perhaps it is because lately we have been getting sick - suffering from food poisoning. Strange that we managed to survive for so long without getting sick and then suddenly everyone was having serious problems. Or perhaps it is because instead of running the show usually with no more than three people (including us) we were seven (for a week even nine)...So it was much more fun...Temporarily we also have another rabbit - our cook bought her and Chaplin takes care of her for the time being.

We have also been preparing some new events for the kids - tomorrow we have a big party at one of the biggest dance clubs in Cusco - we get 50 euro cents for each drink sold. Lets hope lots of people show up.

Anyway sometime ago I was forced to be the quiz master as we are still doing the pub quizzes- for the first time in my life - until now we had a volunteer from England doing the quizzes. She was really good so I had quite a challenge to much her performance.

I think it went well except for the fact that we raised a much lower amount of money than usually. I felt pretty bad about it. On the other hand there were less people as well. At least it seemed everybody enjoyed the contest but somehow did not donate more than was the minimum entry fee to the quiz. However, strange it might sound I still enjoyed myself very much - it felt good to be running the show the way I wanted :)) You never know whether thanks to the quiz we get a new volunteer or a new valuable contact.

This week we again had native speakers lead the pub quiz - they did a great job and we raised more money. We also sold some jewelery made by our Danish volunteers sold, and me having a role as a DJ during the music section of the pub quiz...Now I can call myself DJ Tomekkk :) Alternatively I should go to the store where they had this amazing mannequin to get a suit since we have also enrolled ourselves into a two day seminar about exporting to EU :)) That's tomorrow and the day after...

The world of our kids...

Our schools provide us with full spectrum of problems one can encounter with kids in terms of learning. One of the problems that I have hard time dealing with are the few kids that somehow cannot learn. We have a couple hyperactive with clear attention deficit disorder - those are ok because if you are patient with them sooner or later you will see some progress. We have also a couple of under aged kids (like 4 or 5 years old ones) due to the fact that often the parents do not want to let their sons and daughters go to school if we do not take the smaller ones. Those obviously are sort of a pain for us because we do not really cater to that age group. Nevertheless, usually they are harmless.

The ones that really scare me are the few that seem not to understand anything they right. They learn to count (and mostly they can) but they are not able to recognize numbers or letters that they have been writing for months. The maximum time they will remember what they have written is five minutes - after that no way. Just like in the movie Memento they somehow do not have short memory. Our teachers try all sort of tricks and are incredibly patient - but it does not help too much. Since we are not a special school and we do not have that kind of background to deal with those kids the best we can do is find them a psychologist.

We have also a couple that seem a little bit retarded and need some more time to learn - but there is hope there. I might be wrong that some of them are a little retarded because of the way they have been brought up or because of the diet their parents "devised" for them...but this is as much wrong as I can be. All the rest of the problems we have with the kids is thanks to the parents. The fact that they have up to ten kids and cannot afford one (afford means that they have trouble with feeding them), the fact that they do not know anything about hygiene, that they make them work instead of going to school, that they make them take care of their smaller siblings...It is not uncommon that they do not allow us to take the kids for vaccinations (because it is going to be bad for them?!) or are not able to administer pills everyday to their kids (we take the kid to the doctor, pay for the medicine and just ask them to give the pills to the kid). With no effect. Last time when I went for the third time with the same kid to the doctor he advised us to take the kid for a week to our centre so that it can finally get better ?! Our kids though are quite good in taking care of their drunk parents after any local holiday (then mysteriously the attendance in the schools goes mysteriously down). In return they usually get back to school badly beaten.

Apart from the parents there are a couple of other institutions that can and should assume the responsibility for this state of affairs - special thanks for the problems of the kids go obviously to the Peruvian government which does not seem to care about kids out of school, does not have any family planning programs running and runs primary schools that are a shame to the word "school". Catholic Church does not help in family planning on its end. It is a vicious circle and most of our kids unfortunately face relatively grim future. It is really scary...

Anyway where I was heading is the way we teach in schools. Both of us have a certain feeling of failure when we see that some of our kids do not make any progress. Actually I think that this is one of the last things which unfortunately we will not be able to change here. We would need another 6 months and somebody really proficient in teaching methods - most likely we would end up implementing one of the concepts (Waldorf, Montessori or HighScope) but it won't happen. I regret that very much because I think we could move our schools to another level and really help the kids. The good thing however is that together with Rita we started studying those concepts and we will continue for the benefit of other children later on in the future :))

Our new Christmas Campaign

Some of our previous volunteers came up with the idea of another campaign to help get some donations for Christmas to the kids. Actually December in Peru it is also the last month of school year. Right before Christmas two month summer holidays start for the kids. We would like to have a graduation party and at the party give little presents for the kids. We have already quite a few from our previous events but still need some. Last weekend we have designed the poster below and got it printed in a very nice format. We kind of became experts in getting great posters printed. Our Sandra is again going to be all over the town :))

The idea of the campaign is to get 40 hotels and restaurants as partners where people will be able to leave their donations. Once in a while we are going to pick up the donations. Since there are nine volunteers at the moment it should not be that big of a job. The first reactions from prospective hotels and restaurants are very encouraging.

We have also managed to agree to have a party at one of the more popular venues in Cusco where some part of the proceeds will go for our cause. Perhaps we will also manage to introduce Beer Pong in the place where we hold our pub quizzes with the proceeds going to us.

About the donations:

We have to say we are VERY PROUD of all the people who have donated money to our kids. Thanks to you we make their lives a little bit less miserable and give them a bit more chances for the future! It is kind of amazing because all in all we have collected almost USD 4800. Just as we have targeted. Honestly we did not really believe it will be possible and here we are - in the beginning of November and we have reached our target!!!!!

It is almost the end of school year and we are preparing the kids for the entry exams to the state schools. It also means that we have to pay a small yearly fee, get uniforms, notebooks and pencils for kids. Since during the break of January and February we will have to recruit new kids for our summer school - condensed program helping kids who would probably not make it to the 1st grade without our 2 months preparatory summer school - we are also going to have new expenses.

But with all our new events in the pipeline, new volunteers and their networks we hope to raise still more money therefore we have increased our target on our fundraising page!!!

We have new volunteers !!!

We have managed to do a lots of things in our Cusco centre. We have new teachers, books in the schools, lots of clothing and presents from donations and we have been quite successful in fundraising. The only things we felt we were not successful in was attracting new volunteers. The first thing we did when we arrived here is we designed little fliers. We did not play on emotions and honestly we failed miserably. Then we found fliers from previous campaign "Don't feel sorry for street children" that was supposedly much more successful - and we restarted it some time ago. Even though we met with some criticism that it is playing too much on emotions.

Today all in all it paid back. We will have at least two volunteer girls from Ireland for a week, and perhaps two longer staying Danish girls. All of them in addition to a Canadian couple that has just started today (and the three of us - me, Rita and our Belgian volunteer). So we will be at least seven starting tomorrow and running like that for some weeks!!!

All great!! We have also been today to the doctor with our girl who had an infected toe and she is doing better. Not great but ok...

Sucre & La Paz

Arriving to Sucre feels like coming from hell to heaven. I guess the Greeks were wrong and the Greek under world of Hades is somehow above heaven not the other way round :) Though Potosi hell at over 4000 meters is also actually under ground - in mines...

We did not expect the positive things by any means. I have been to Bolivia before about five years ago and I did not remember any city that would be close to anything that could appeal to me. I just so a couple but thought it was a representative sample. I was wrong. We arrived after a 3 hour taxi ride to Sucre. We took a taxi because we did not want to risk another hell ride in a bus (nice normal taxi costed us two EUR each - 4 of us in a taxi - I wish taxis cost that much everywhere else in the world). We arrived and we could not believe our eyes. Sucre is a beautiful town with nicely kept houses all painted white, nice green parks, lots of restaurants and nearly perfect climate of around 20 celsius year round. Even though it is at 2600 meters above sea level it felt like heaven. We could not believe it and we were SO happy not to have to freeze at night... Just great - we missed excursions to nearby sights but enjoyed ourselves tremondously.


Good things end though and we took yet another night bus to our last stop in La Paz. In the morning after we arrived we let a taxi driver take us from the bus station to some hotel we did not know anything about (good choice because it was very good quality for the money). Kind of unusal because one should usually not trust such kind of advice. In the city we walked around and honestly apart from markets there is not much to see. Again you can take excursions to some sites or attractions around the city but we did not feel like doing it.

Instead we opted for two things - witches market and a movie theater. On the witches market we bought overselves all sorts of little statues that should make us live long, in happiness, health and have lots of children... The only good luck amulet which we did not buy are the llama fetuses (see on the picture right) which are generally good for your house. We found them a bit to grouse and feared the strict abortion laws in Poland - would they arrest us on the boarder for violating them - do abortion laws include animals? Hopefully they do - is a llama fetus different from a human fetus? Anyway we wondered around the city, enjoyed good food and decided to go to the movies. We ended up in a beautiful modern cinema (kind of multiplex but without a feeling of a shopping center) were we watched a movie entitled "Blindness" - we did not know anything about the movie. We walked out totally shocked - it is like your worst nightmare come true plus shows the worst side of human race. We had hard time putting our act together for at least a day. We went to see one more movie next day partly about Bolivian history but it did not impress us. The only thing we had left was to get back to Cusco - but as we learned later it would not be as easy as we thought...

PS: The sign on the first picture translates to: "Saint Rita - lawyer for impossible cases¨ :)

Visit to a doctor

We had a very interesting day in school today - actually after school. One of the kids - actually Rita's favorite started crying at the end of the day. It happened at the end of the day and we though that some other kid had earlier harmed her in some way. This was not the case - she showed her big toe which looked terrible. Our teacher at once diagnosed that she has a pulga in her toe...went to the little store opposite our school, bought a needle, took our school first aid kid, placed on of the school benches in front of the school and proclaimed that she is going to clean her wound and take the pulga out. Upon hearing that I decided to occupy myself with the only other kid left in the school. Improvised operations of this kind are not my thing. A little later I heard our kid screaming like she would about to be killed and saw Rita holding her and crying. At that point fortunately everyone was of the opinion that we should take her to the doctor...We have a network of doctors who help us with the kids for free and the appointment we managed to schedule was in three hours so we took our girl to the center where she voluntarily went through a transformation. Rita took her to shower and washed her with all kinds of special soaps and shampoos . I in the meantime looked for knew clothing and shoes for her (instead of plastic sandals she had - we have now lots of donations we got during our culinary event). After all this she looked like a little princess. We fed her - there is no problem with her not wanting to eat as she seems to be able to eat more than me. I think she felt very happy though she has not spoken a word since she entered our center. She just complied with our proposals.

Then we went to the doctor - he tried to persuade her to voluntarily succumb to the anasthetics injection but she refused so together with Rita we ended up helping the doctor. I was leaning over her waist and holding her leg while the doctor was giving her an injection. She was screaming horribly and Rita was holding her head and crying with her...

The poor creature was in the end very brave. After the pain of the injection subsided she sat on the bed where the doctor operated her and looked at him cleaning her toe. In other words she screamed only when she really felt the pain. She also did not become cranky or angry with us that we took her through all this pain. We took herto her "home". She must have been very tired because she fell asleep already in the car. At her "place" we tried to be tough on her mother to make sure that our girl gets the antibiotics and painkillers as prescribed...we also demanded that she shows up in her new clothes in the school during the next days. Usually the parents sell the new clothes we give to the children so nowadays we try not to give new clothing but things a bit worn. It is still incomprehensible for me how could this lady have ten kids and be so inept in taking care of them that from a relatively little wound you end up in this terrible situation. Not to mention that she was not too eager to send her to the doctor at all at the first instance...

We are back in Cusco as one can see...we will still though post two stories from our trip across the South American continent...this is just a daily update :))

Chaplin the father

Chaplin - our bunny became the father of ten little bunnies. After two days though they all died though they seemed perfectly healthy. Chaplina did not feed them... We all felt she was kind of weird.


Chaplina must have liked it with us because when taken back to her home rejected all food...She lived with us for a week when Chaplin worked on the little bunnies...

Potosi

Potosi shocks - that is what Lonely Planet has to say about the town located at4100m above sea level. Well for me Bolivia is a shock. Starting from the beautiful salt desert which we crossed staying more or less at around 4000m above the sea level all the time ending on the desolate state of Uyuni and the non existing road to Potosi. Non-existing means that there is no road, not that there is some road in a very bad shape...Anyway we have arrived at 2am after this grueling experience on the bus and checked in to our hostel. By the way the nights in Potosi are freezing cold...The town as such resembles Cusco so in a way it is quite pleasant. As long as you can stand being at 4100meters. On our first day in town we have visited the beautiful Museo & Convento de Santa Teresa where still five nuns live and where there lots of things are just like they were 500 years ago...quite amazing and shocking in comparison to general Bolivian conditions we have seen so far. If you make it to Potosi you should not miss it cause the tours are great!!!

Geneally however, people come to Potosi to see the mines. Sounds innocent until you actually do the "tour". Rita was not so eager since it is generally advised that the ¨tour" is not for people having claustrophobia. She does not have it in a sense but she does not enjoy dark closed spaces. Anyway without much persuasion as soon as we got one of the travel agents offering the tours she signed up...so there we were - next day at 8.30am we should be at the travel agent to start the tour...

Next morning the tour started a bit late with the preparation for the visit to the mines. We got dressed in proper mining gear as you can see on our pictures. Right after that we were transported to the miners market where we were told about the history of the mines etc an we were to buy presents for the miners who we were to meet (we were to visit working mines). It was intriguing but still kind of what could be imagined as possible in the 21st century - meaning that our guide (to the left on the picture below chewing coca leaves) told us that he has been drinking till 5am last morning because on Sundays it is customary and that he offered us 95% sugar cane alcohol (holding it on the picture) to taste and see what the miners drink. Looking back perhaps it was a bad idea not to taste it. Check out the dynamite together with the detonators on the table to the left of our guide!




Anyway he said that buying this alcohol to the miners is a bad idea since most of them have alcohol problems - the same with the buying cigarettes. So we bought dynamite which you can buy just like you would buy potatoes, coca leaves and some soft drinks. It was like buying a Christmas present. We asked about the dynamite since it was kind of weird that anybody could by it together with the detonator just like that on the street. We were told that Bolivia is not like US and people do not blow themselves or others for the sake of it...Obviously Bolivians are different from human species... Then we went to the private processing plants where the first warning signals started reaching our brains...such appalling conditions and lack of safety etc. was not exactly what we expected. I think there is not to add about those pseudo enterprises except that for sure they would win any competition for inefficiency etc.

Anyway our bus took us to the mountain which looks more like a trash dump. We imagined that we will go through some gate or enter something what would at least resemble a mining enterprise. We were very wrong - the mines are private enterprises (locals call them cooperatives)...meaning it is just a hole in the mountain and anybody can wonder into it...There are probably zillions of such holes around the mountain.

Immediately upon seeing what is going on and the black hole in the mountain Rita panicked and proclaimed to me that she is not going in. In a way I was grateful that she did it before entering the mines... I was right about to tell the guide that she is not going in, when she changed her mind and entered the tunnel...The good thing was that our first stop was in a ¨museum¨ where we had some time to get used to the circumstances. The first photo of this post comes actually from this museum - it is the God Tio. In the museum it was kind of dark so we could not follow too much the text next to Tio nevertheless a couple of days after the visit to the mines we have seen an excellent documentary - The Devil´s Miner - where we learned that this ugly creature was created by the Spaniards and is until today worshiped along Jesus in a strange mix of blended Christian and ¨local¨traditions...the story goes like that: at some point when the locals had enough of being exploited by the Spaniards, they went on strike. The Spaniards knowing that locals fear all sorts of Gods created this ugly creature and told them that he will kill them if they do not go back to work...so they immediately did. Since in Quechua letter D does not exist they named the God Tio (meaning uncle in Spanish, instead of Spanish Dios). Nowadays the miners offer him cigarettes, alcohol and coca leaves...

From there on basically because the way was so tiresome it was difficult to panic...there was no time for it. So off we went often crawling through very narrow passages etc. There was so much dust and it was so hot that one did not know what is better - breath through the mask or try to inhale through it what made you feel like in a sauna...with the slight difference that instead of steam you inhaled dust...I have to emphasize again that because it was so tough to move there was no time to think about the dangers etc...


We have seen miners pulling 2 ton wagons, shuffling the stones on them and preparing detonations...we have survived though during the next three days we were not able to walk as our muscles hurt so much from walking two hours in a very awkward for us positions.

About the mines - workers start working there at very young age and die around 40. There is no security nor any kind of oversight over what is going on...It is just unimaginable though only a couple of years ago something like that was happening in Poland near Walbrzych (so called Biedaszyby for the ones knowing Polish) where mines were closed and consequently people illegally started to mine for themselves (there was also a movie made and some articles published in Germany - der Spiegel). The scale is though not comparable - moreover in Potosi this is legalized madness - actually an example of real free capitalism which definitely cannot be encountered anywhere in western world - extremely interesting considering that the country is ruled by Evo Morales who hates US, capitalism and tries to nationalize whatever is possible. Nobody knows how many people are in the mines at one time but definitely over ten thousand. No one seems to care for their well being - perhaps except Tio who they fear so much... I recommend everyone to watch the movie The Devil´s Miner to understand what I am talking about.

The Desert Trip

We arrived to Chile, San Pedro de Atacama after another never ending bus ride. Chile was a great surprise in the positive sense - things were working, on time, service was excellent and in general the feeling was very different from the other Spanish speaking countries we visited so far. Though we arrived to a village in the middle of the Atacama desert you could indulge in all the goodies one can dream of after a long bus ride: a hot shower, excellent restaurants, Internet and an extremely relaxing middle-of-nowhere feel. We did not plan to spend a long time there as the idea of going to the Atacama desert was mostly rooted in the idea of taking a 3 days 4 wheel drive jeep trip through the desert to Bolivia.

So we enrolled to one of the various gorgeous trips around San Pedro to see the moon-like landscape, the sunset and the rise of the full moon. Which was on the other hand preventing us to participate in the famous astrology expedition - as the Atacama desert being the driest place on Earth providing the clearest sky for astrological and astronomical studies. Check out the ALMA project, it makes me feel like starting to educate myself in astronomy and move there to participate in the research. Maybe we have a chance to hitchhike in the Galaxy some day and not rely only on our dearest friends, the dolphins :))) So the following morning we set on a trip for the coming 3 days during which we crossed the highlands of the Atacama desert, arriving to Uyuni in Bolivia.

So on the 16th of October 8am we were on front of the Bolivian travel agency waiting a good half an hour before anyone local arrived - so long Chile, welcome to Bolivia :) We departed finally around 9 am with a bus to the Bolivian border, where 2 jeeps were waiting for us - all together 12 people. The groups quickly developed into an Irish-English only group of 6 and into a more exciting cocktail of 2 Swiss, a Japanese, a Spanish, a Polish and of course one endangered specimen from Hungary. (South-America is also a place where the border guards are staring at my passport and looking for visa information for 10 minutes before admitting that I have the right to exist, moreover to enter their country without a visa.) During the first day we cruised through a volcanic landscape with lagoons colored by different minerals and beautiful pinkie flamingos. We also had the chance to submerge in a natural hot spring, strongly recommended by our guide as we could not hope for hot water for the rest of the trip... But I am not going to waste words on the first 2 days of the trip because I anyway could not describe them better than the photos.

BUT the third day! That was beyond my expectations; we woke up at 4 am to see the sun rising in the salt flat of Uyuni. Imagine 10 meters of pure salt with a surface resembling to a frozen lake except that it had huge cracks over its surface. And imagine that all you can see in 360 degree is the same whiteness with some volcanoes in the distance. And silence. So thick that you can touch it. And absolutely no life. I have never saw my shadow as long as 50 meters when the first rays of light made its way to the horizon! And when the sun finally raised it is so blinding, that you cannot keep your eyes open, it is as hot as in an oven and the sun roasts you despite of the 30 factor sunblock. Crazy. By 7 am we arrived to the Island of Fishermen, which is in the middle of the salt flat full of cactus of 10 meters high and hundreds of years old. We spent hours of staring into the whiteness, making crazy photos playing with the unusual visual effects the landscape offered. Finally we visited a former salt hostel on the edge of the flat which is effectively built of block of salt. To our amusement we came across 3 guys on bicycle crossing the desert and one of them was Polish!!! Yes, there are much more crazy people than we are...

Arriving in Uyuni after 5 days of Chilean and Bolivian deserts was a bullet in our heads and as a result all 6 of us shaken together in the jeep and sleeping in the same room throughout the entire trip decided not to split but collectively escape to Potosi. Only we were quite unprepared to take a bus ride without a road and to arrive to the city situated above 4000 meters, the highest city in the world :)

Argentinean Steak

I have been on the vegetarian diet for quiet some time - first in India and Asia because it was the safest bet to avoid food poisoning or basically nothing else was offered, then in Cusco because there was a general agreement that our cook should cook only vegetarian. All in all our cook did not too much enjoy the situation because she does not know how to cook veg food and I felt like being a rabbit...So the closer we were getting to Argentina the more I was convinced that we should be looking for the real Argentinian steak. For the time being even Rita converted to carnivorous practices.

We started already on the Brazilian side of the border of Iguazu falls where I proudly announced that this is already it - we have found the real steak. My bro and to my surprise Rita rejected my claims and said that this is still not it. I could understand Greg´s opinion but I felt kind of uneasy about my vegeterian wife´s claims about the steak. The blame went to the strawberry caipirinha which both of them were drinking while I was tasting the local beer. Perhaps something was wrong with it.

Further on my way to discover the real steak we moved to Argentina. After the Posadas (San Ignacio) where we did not find anything close to a steak we took another night this time across the northern Argentina to Salta - we ended up there on Sunday and Argentina is generally closed on Sundays. Except some restaurants it is hard to find anything open and the streets look like a giant vacuum cleaner from space sucked in all the people. Only stray dogs hang around.

Once we got there of course pretty quickly we got hungry - so in the evening we have found the most fancy restaurant from Lonely Planet. It took us quite some time to get there but the steak was FANTASTIC. I have never tasted something better. Around 6 cm high, and the size of almost three quarters of my head it tasted heavenly. Together with Argentinian wine and excellent service I did admit that the previous one was not so great. I have never eaten in my life such a big chunk of meat...I also finally learned how a real medium steak should look like...Everyone including Rita eat one of his own steaks...

The next day we went to a more local place again with great wines but our steaks did not match the ones from the previous day...feeling like pigs after almost a week of eating huge steaks at 11pm (since in Argentina the dinner is served starting at 10pm - before that most of the restaurants are not even open) we decided to move on.

This is more or less what we can say about Salta - the city as such is pretty lame but has very many beautiful places around it - we did not have that much time so we only know it from the stories of my brother. But all in all our one year trip is also a culinary trip - we have been eating everywhere whatever local thing there was to it (including marinated cows tongue in Buenos Aires) and sometimes it is better than travelling itself...especially that the food is really cheap in most of the places but still excellent.

So feeling like pigs we set off to Chile - into the middle of Atacama desert and Greg set off for excursions around Salta...this is where we split with him and Malgo...we are heading back to Cusco to our kids...

Iguazu Waterfalls

Having spent a couple of more days than we could actually afford in the mining hills of Brazil we decided to speed up our journey and sat on an overnight bus to Sao Paulo, from where we sat almost immediately on another night ride to the Argentine-Paraguay-Brazil border.

We arrived in the morning like papermashees to Foz do Iguazu, the Brazilian border town. After a warm welcome in our guesthouse by our host who seemed to step out from one of Pedro Almodovar's movies we headed to visit the Iguazu waterfalls. Luckily we passed by the bird park right next to the entrance of the national park and encountered the most lovely creatures of the sky we have ever imagined. There were parrots in all possible striking colors, some of which greeted us with a big 'hola' or 'ciao'. Than there were toucans, with their huge colorful beaks not at all afraid of humans, moreover sitting quite close to us every once in a while pinching us. And we saw butterflies from the jungle with hummingbirds flying around us, turtles chilling right next to crocodiles and other curious creatures of the Amazon.

But the real attraction were the continent's biggest waterfalls, which we approached both from the Brazilian side and from Argentina. On the Brazilian side we took an independent trip in the form of a lazy walk to the Garganta del Diablo, which is basically an iron catwalk from the shore over the river right to the edge where the water bed breaks and the water crashes down to the abyss. To be precise a multiple crashes, as the falls cover a vast area on both the Brazil and Argentina side. Besides the unbelievable energy with which the water explodes when landing in the deep you experience the most perfect permanent rainbows over the water clouds. The noise is so strong you have to shout on top of your voice to make yourself heard and of course you need not to hope to survive the experience without getting absolutely and totally wet just from the water in the air around the falls. We happened to see the falls at the nicest part of the day just before sunset and concluded the long day with an excellent dinner and a couple of cairpirinas, this time with strawberries, not lime, jummmm!

The next morning we decided to accept the lead of out host to the Argentinean side to see the falls from a different perspective, which for me was even more mesmerizing than the other side. We spent almost the whole day walking zig-zag in the park approaching the river from different points and visiting various individual falls and devil's throat from the other side.

We hardly finished the tour when we headed to our next destination with a 5 hour bus ride to cut our journey to Salta a bit shorter. So we arrived at 10 pm to San Ignacio, right next to Pousadas, which are famous of the biggest Jesuit-Guarani missionary 'reducciones' in South America.

Ouro Preto

It was lately hard to find a place to write a post. Somehow internet cafes are not everywhere... One way or the other we made it to Ouro Preto. A small beautifuly preserved colonial town around 10 hours east by bus from Rio de Janeiro. After walking for a bit we found what could be described as one of the loveliest accomodations in quite some time. It was bed and breakfast place run by a lady who served us great breakfast (small papayas that Rita loved) and made a very cosy place for her visitors...we stayed there for two days wandering around the place. Rita bought herself a very nice ring and we found great places to eat and enjoy the hilly scenery. Together with Malgo they have also spent times visiting lots of jewlerry stores and learning about local precious and semi-precious stones like topaz imperial (I am not sure about the spelling though).

We have also visited a gold mine some 40 minutes by bus from the town. It is not in operation anymore but we were told that all together during its years of operations over 30 tons of gold were brought to the surface - quite an amount. The scariest part of the visit was the ride down with a small train - it kind of felt like sitting on a train taking you right down to hell - and we were the only ones on the small wooden train car as right now is not exactly the high season for tourists in Brazil. On the way back we took a wrong bus so it took us two hours to get back to town - due to that we had very little time to see the Gems Museum...the girls were not happy with that...



We have also had a night out since some of the bars are just perfect for a great caipirinha. Rita found a very nice looking bar where we spent the night enjoying this Brazilian specialty. We ended up in some sort of local gay bar together with locals celebrating the local municipality elections which took place the same time. For us the highlight of the elections was the sky train between two buildings where the results were announced.

All in all the ride to Ouro Preto was our first night bus ride and right after it we have actually made 4 more such rides almost in a row. Thanks God that the buses are comfortable so it is not that bad as it sounds. Brazil is beautiful and great to explore this even this way but we already got committed to our next trip to Brazil - this time all over the country but on motorbikes. This is a perfect place for it with lots of small lovely places and extremly friendly people. Probably the most friendly we have ever met. Anyway we will try to get the motorbike driving license before although we were told that here it is not a must...

Rio de Janeiro

Jesus - was the word of the day - and we have seen the biggest in the word art deco monument of Jesus The Redeemer - a bit pricey as to the costs of getting up there but the view of Rio de Janeiro was spectacular. It is certainly true that city is located in one of the nicest settings in the world...

Our adventures started at the bus station where we arrived - I started by fighting with the taxi drivers who wanted to rip us off. Actually we almost missed the bus to Rio because at the last minute in Paraty we decided to rent bicycles and see waterfalls. Unfortuntaley the trip was very much uphill and on the way back we decided to stop at a great restaurant by the road and almost missed the bus to Rio...anyway we arrived in Rio, I had a fight with the taxi drivers and then we eneded up in the hostel in a 9 bed bedroom paying in total EUR 60 for this pleasure...as we have not eaten we decided to get to know the locals a bit more and ended up in surreal place selling hotdogs under the bridge near our hostel. It was purely for real locals but we were so amazed that actually we spend around one hour looking at the people dinning there... We were not brave enough to take out our camera to take some pictures. We were also sure that we will in the end poison us with those hotdogs but somehow it did not materialize.

We have been all around the city and found it beautiful from the point of architecture and little cafe´s - it is a heaven for Rita's constant desire for chocolate cakes. We spent quite some time in them. Of course we had to visit the famours Copacabana beach - and it lived up to its expectations for a beach in a huge city - it also made us understand why the Brazilians always win all world soccer and volleyball competitions. Basically the whole beach is lined up with fields where kids play and train those two sports. Actually what they can do with the ball is quite astounding. The last night Greg and Rita decided to have a coconut drink and both loved it - as you can see below...


As to Brazil - it is still quite a surprise as to how organized and developed this country is. For some reason we expected one more shanty country struggling to put toghether a couple of nice squares and we found something amazing though expensive. This is actually the only bad thing about Brazil - it is expensive to travel around and the places to stay though very nice are also way too expensive in comparison to many countries we have so far visited. It can though be also scary - last evening we took a city bus from Copacana to the bus station where we were to depart for Ouro Preto...the bus took us through neighbourhouds that made as speechless and we prayed that the bus driver does not kick us out...leaving the bus would mean quite interesting problems for us and somehow after all those posh districts we have visited we were not prepared for districts from "Mad Max" movie.

Once more BIG thank you for all donations. We have also created a blog for our BrucePeruCusco center - have a look here and read about our culinary event fundraising...

Sao Paulo & Paraty

Small update: since we did not manage to get pictures from the beautiful town of Paraty please, check out the link - the place is wonderful...perfect for retirement :)

It is quite a trip to Lima by bus from Cusco - it took 21 hours and to certain extent was quite funny. The road winds so much that I have slept holding a plastic bag tight in case I have to vomit...it was a close call but we both survived without having to use it. Actually when we boarded the bus I have somehow not taken it into consideration that the trip is going to be quite hard on us. Since I have been running all day and did not have not to eat - the first thing I did on the bus is had a 1 liter of strawberry yogurt and a big bag of chips. I regretted it very much afterward...

We arrived though on time and already feeling quite ok since the last six hours of the trip where on Pan American highway which is a stretch of straight road by the coast. Another good thing about arriving to Lima again is that we have felt somehow much more self confident...we have been already staying in Peru for three months and we developed some home feeling. We had an excellent dinner in one of the most amazing shopping malls in Miraflores: the three floor building is carved in the ocean side rocks with a magnificent view over the waves. Tomek had his red meat and Rita her ceviche, raw fish marinated in lime, hmmm, jummy! Survining the night in our hostel with earplugs we headed at 5 am to the airport full of expectations to see Greg and his girlfriend in Brazil, Sao Paulo.

We had personalized choice of 32 different movies on the plane (economy class, LAN, which we still enjoy as frequent fliers from our previous jobs...) and we ended up both independently choosing Sex and the City!!!!

After 6 hours waiting at the airport of a city, where more people live than in whole Hungary, we finally got all together and headed to our hostel. Sao Paulo for us was a place to escape from with its prices and urban jungle with very little attraction to our taste, but we enjoyed the first experiments of making ourselves understood in a Portuguese speaking country in Spanish :)

So we were on the bus the next day towards Rio, with a stop in the old colonial town of Paraty, which is a real gem. What we missed in Sao Paulo we found in Paraty with its colonial old town, lovely beaches and carpirinas! So we headed to a boat trip with island hopping, snorkling and most of all stretching ourselves on the sun, a real treat. Though the weather is not always friendly to us with rain pouring like in Macondo, we feel like being in Paradise. Brazil is like a dream come true!!!

Swimming pool adventures with the kids

Before we made it out of Cusco we had taken the kids from all schools to the local swimming pool. It has been our first time since we came to Cusco that we took the kids out (generally due to financial reasons). It has also been Peruvian kids day - so a good reason to undertake something special. Of course it required lots of coordination and we were quite concerned how we are going to handle our quite hyperactive group.

The task proved not as strenous as we have assumed in the beginning. All in all we ended up with around 25 kids which showed up with signed permissions from their parents and we set off to the swimming pool. One group ended quite late at the pool due to a minor accident of the bus they were travelling on. Nothing at all happened to them but they arrived an hour late. All the kids happily went to the dressing room though two did not reappear from it - there was no way to make them stop crying and agree to come to the swimming pool. Already in the swimming pool though the kids were very obedient and did not require excessive amount of attention. Everybody had a small sandwich after the event and we took the kids back to their homes...quite funny that you can fit around 12 kids into one taxi in Cusco...


All in all no casulties - except one kid with bleeding lip (happened still before she made it to the swimming pool). The bad thing was that the father of this little girl was especially worried about her going to the swimming pool. I guess it is some kind of Murphy's law...Nothing else comes to my mind when such things happen.

In the center Chaplin has been at work - working hard to make sure that the rabbit of one of our teacher's gets back pregnant. I must admit that our Chaplin is much more fit and smart than Chaplina :))) In fact everybody is looking forward to her departure next Monday...right now Chaplin lost all interest in interacting with us and she was making a mess in the patio...

We are going to Brazil

Yes, we are going to have a roughly three break before we come back to Cusco to stay until the end of the week. It was a great feeling to pack - putting to your backpack only the necessary things you need to survive made me feel great - how little you need to be so happy :))) We also cannot wait to get to warmer climate. It has been lately terribly cold at night here. Anyway we will miss the kids and hopefully the kids will miss us...Our trip will take us to the east coast of South America and then we will make it back to the west coast more or less by bus or any other cheap transportation...

During this week we have been concentrating on preparing our culinary event - below you can see the banner of the event during our pub quiz we held this week (on top of all other things)!!!



Kind of crazy - but our pub quiz has again been very successful and now we will be able to have it every week. We have already sold lots of jewllery designed by Rita. The rest of the items will be hopefully sold at the Saturday event. The worst thing about the culinary event is that we will miss it - we have to leave Cusco by bus tomorrow to be able to catch the plane from Lima to Sao Paulo. The bus ride takes a meager 21 hours! But the seats are business class so it ain't that bad.

The good thing is that we are having here the founders of Bruce Peru so they will represent us at the event. Later on I will also post a small movie from the event...after coming back from Brazil.


So in the coming weeks you will be able to see lots of new photos and posts...For now enjoy the jewllery shots in our gallery...

Last week before a break

Chaplin is chilling on our sofa - this is his favourite spot. He is actually resting for a good reason - on Monday Mrs. Chaplin will arrive for some time. Our new teacher asked as for some services from Chaplin. She will bring her female rabbit with hope of baby rabbits...so we let Chaplin chill on the sofa before he will be sent on this noble mission.

The good thing is that this week we were having all teachers in the schools. At least one of the teachers is very good - the other is better than the teacher that we had before but we are not sure she can manage the whole class in case she has nobody to help her... at least she has great respect in the eyes of the kids...this definitely helps to keep order in the class. Volunteers are generally abused by the kids - the kids do with them whatever they want. I am the best example of it - unfortunately.

Rita on the other hand is now fully immersed in creating jewellery - our kids are supposed to start putting together necklaces & bracelets which we are to sell at our culinary event. So far though it seems that Rita takes most fun of it - and secretly told me that if we cannot sell them at the event she will appropriate them for herself :))

As to the event - today we should receive the invitations and A2 posters for the event from the print house. It has been quite a battle with the print house to get what we want and when we want but today we should really have it happen. Anyway it is our own design and we will try to post both here on the blog though they will probably look not as nice as in reality. We have them printed on nice glossy paper (poster) and excellent paper especially for the invitations (no idea what it is called in English).


Next week in general will be full of extracurricular events. As mentioned on Monday Chaplin is going to have a date. On Tuesday we will have a Peruvian Children's day so we decided that we are going to take the kids to the swimming pool - I suspect that it is going to be adventures for two reasons at least: first previous directors told us that last time there were quite big problems before they let the big group in as the kids were not exactly clean looking so big washing took place. Secondly controlling those lets say 30 kids at a swimming pool might prove quite challenging. On Wednesday we have a pub quiz and a visit of Bruce Peru founder and his wife (the organization for which we are now working/volunteering). It came as quite a surprise for us - actually we have learned it today...one can say that we provoked it as we have written quite a long email addressing the problems we face here and we think the whole organization faces - we got a very positive response to it and request to meet and discuss how can our proposals be implemented...so here we go...

On Thursday then we will probably visit all the schools with our visitors...On Friday something big will happen and on Saturday we have our Culinary event. In the meantime of course we have to sell 70 tickets to the event, go over our problems and accomplishments with the founder of the organization and make sure our Peruvian Chef does not forget anything for the event. Today actually we are to see our DJ play in one of the local pubs - forgot to mention that we will also have a DJ playing background music though...

That would be it I think what we are up to next week... Otherwise both of us also got a haircut - important milestone as going to get a local haircut is a sign of deep trust in the host country...

I started with the rabbit so I will end with the rabbit - the smart ass learned how to open the door of our room at night from outside and stays the night in our room - I guess he does not like the cold outside. The good thing is that when he wants to pee he makes lots noise so that we have no other choice than to open the door for him (he can open the door only one way). He runs to his "toilet" and is right back in the room - quite amazing. Anyway he is quite in demand as at least three people would like to prepare a dish out of him.

Working in Cusco for the kids

It has been quite a long time since we last time wewrote here - it is mostly due to the fact that we had lots to do with the schools - a lame excuse I would say but nevertheless true.

Things change very quickly even in charity organizations which in theory should be operating in much more stable environment than private enterprises. Somehow this is not the case. Perhaps it was only last week and a change that could be associated with the rainy season seems to have arrived in Cusco. Actually it feels more like hailing seasons as half of the time it hails instead of raining. It is also even colder than it used to be - brrr....

To start with we had some great success in fund raising on all fronts. As mentioned earlier we are working on a culinary event in one of the most fancy places in Cusco - Club Cusco. It is actually only members club which lets us organize the event in their premises for free. Our Peruvian chef and his friends will work for free doing all the cooking etc. There is also going to be Peruvian handicraft, our photo exhibition and salsa dancing. You can see the plan of the event here - unfortunately only in Spanish.

All the proceeds from the event are going directly to our organization. Last week mostly due to Rita with her excellent Spanish we have managed to secure 10 sponsors for the event (pubs, restaurants etc.) Since we had two days in which we could not even get a single sponsor sign up we were kind of totally shocked that we managed to secure 3 within two hours. As the last sponsor was a dance club and they did sign up and pay at 11pm we ended up having a party and dancing till 1.30am. It was a great relief and great fun. Though next morning at seven I was supposed to go with our cook to the market to buy food for next week. It is quite an expedition because you actually need a donkey to carry all the vegetables etc. back home.

Now we just need to print and sell 80 tickets but we are quite optimistic. In addition thanks to our efforts now we get everyday excellent food for free from La Retama restaurant for the kids and we have an agreement to bring our kids for arts classes to one of the local museums. Rita's Spanish is by now incredible!!! Hard to believe that she made such huge progress.

One unexpected result of the tours around the city is the fact that we have managed to find lovely restaurants and cafe's and additionally got to know their quite eccentric owners - perhaps also some underground Cusco :)) There is hardly any night club, pub or restaurant in the center of Cusco we have not been to so walking around means you stop every 5 minutes to greet someone and pretend that you are best friends :)

In addition or perhaps first of all we have received lots of money through our online donation page - in total 3230USD!!! (excluding the culinary event)...VERY BIG THANK YOU TO ALL THE DONORS!!! We have no words to express our gratitude to everyone...We will be back with pictures and reports of how the money was used to support the kids.

Considering the current successes in fund raising this week we finally intend to introduce books to the kids - it is a bit more complicated as it sounds because our kids are not on the same level (not to mention age). Therefore each school will need at least three different books which we are actually compiling on our own.

In addition we are overhauling how the classes are led to increase the effective time that kids learn (in a more structured way) and to teach them a bit of discipline.

On the negative side we are missing teachers for our schools. Two of our teachers have quit and we are in the process of finding new ones. For the time being we have managed to find temporary solutions but we need to have a more permanent setup. Rita has talked to the director of two collages specializing in preparing people to become teachers and we had some applicants from them but so far did not manage to get anybody to fill in our vacancies. Keep your fingers crossed for this week. This is critical but also a great opportunity for us to improve the quality of education our kids get. It is though a very strange process - the candidates come - we agree on conditions and then next day they do not show up at all - or alternatively they show up and next day they say that actually the time of the classes does not suit them. Why they have not mentioned it earlier is kind of strange since we made it clear when the classes start. Weird??!!

Another problem that we are facing is lack of volunteers. It would be much easier to run the show if we had more people. Unfortunately this week there will be only three of us. Next week another volunteer will arrive to us from Belgium but in October we will be down to two people. This is quite worrisome. So far we have not been too successful with our fliers so we will change our campaign a bit - from more subdued to playing more on feelings - lets see whether this will play out better and we have more suitable people knocking on our door. On the other hand we are going to tackle this problem by trying to partner with agencies which specialize in recruiting volunteers (we know from other centers that it can do miracles). With those two new initiatives we hope to get more people to help us.

Therefore after all this stress I come back home and train the rabbit...and in addition we have made a small dinner for eight people on Saturday evening with Hungarian Goulash (I guess Gulyás à la Pecs) which tasted to like real Hungarian goulash - all our respects to Rita!!!

A week of strikes in Cusco

UPDATE: The kids loved the food we got from one of the more fancy restaurants in Cusco...we were scared they would not like it because it is quite different from what they are used to...fortunately they really like it so we will nowadays take the leftover food from the buffet dinner every day and take it to one of our schools!!! Below the picture of kids having lunch...

This week was relatively quiet for us. The strikes started last week and we thought they would end there, but they went on all the way till Wednesday the following week. The university students did not like the increase in bus prices so they brought the whole country to a halt - especially Cusco. So we spent three days in the center with various activities indirectly relating to the kids. Fortunately some sort of tentative agreement has been reached and for a month things should be peaceful.

Some time at the center gave us a chance to make a small movie about the kids in our schools.



On Friday we started our search of sponsors for our charity event in Club Cusco for the 27th of September. This leaves us go to all the top restaurants and pubs of the city, meeting a lot of different people with very different reactions to our proposal. But we almost never had to leave with an empty hand, e.g. we managed to land an agreement with one of the restaurants to give us their leftover food for our kids. Today we got the food for the first time and it is a bit too fancy - lets see how the kids react to it as we have noticed in the past they do not like changes in their diet...

All in all until now we have managed to fundraise USD 1600 for which we would like to say thank you to all the donors. We are of course all the time hoping for more...

Finally we had a really relaxing weekend with our awaited lie-in hours. Third time this year we had the luxury to dine at a HOME, thanks to our newly established local network. We had an excellent dinner with vine, a long chat with our friends from the US. On Sunday Rita climbed the mountain close to our home with Amelia, one of our volunteer to visit Sacsayhuaman, one of the Inka ruins around Cusco. Though we do not have altutude problems any more, it does feel like being an old bone, running short of breath after a 100 meters walk uphill.

In Cusco as usual during the weekend there was a parade and fireworks...and our bunny became much more brave - running around the house and stealing bananas from the kitchen and dragging them all the way to his nest...

Machu Picchu

Our weekend in Machu Picchu has been one of the best in long time. We felt again like during our first half a year of travelling. We went there with Alanna - our American volunteer - so altogether the three of us.

We have decided for the easier option and took the train both ways instead of doing it the cheap way by overnight bus and then trekking for a couple of hours. We have departed very early in the morning and arrived still to have breakfast in Aquas Calientes. We found a decent hotel, had a walk in the town which is nothing more than an artifical chaotically build tourist town consisting solely of overpriced hotels and restaurants.

The rest of the afternoon we have spent in the outdoor spa drinking mohitos and enjoying the excellent views. The evening was a great surprise, as it was so warm that we could eat outdoors our dinner. After Cusco where it gets freezing cold whenever the sun is behind the clouds, Aquas Calientes felt like heaven. Although we had a very nice place to stay overnight we did not take into consideration that till early morning hours we would have a party right under our windows...anyway we had to wake up at 4am to start the claim to Machu Picchu - it was pitch dark and we had no torches so we had quite a challenge - it took us 90 minutes to get to the top - quite a steep ascent and we felt exhausted but happy to have made it. By that time there were already lots of people lining up for the tickets. Once we entered the whole place was covered by fog and we could not see anything. Since the site is quite huge and I have visited it a couple of years ago - I was supposed to know where the things to see where located - although I tried to convince Rita that we have just passed them but they are not visible I had to take the "blame"of being not prepared :))) Anyway after waiting for hours during which Rita got acquited with the llama's (or where those alpacas?) finally the magnificient ruins revealed themselves to us. They are always amazing and the great thing was that we were all in a daze - I think we will need to go there still one day in the future - I cannot get enough of it - it is just as nice as Angkor Wat...both amazing things in the middle of the jungle.



Our bunny Chaplin is also doing great - it is great to have him around as he is very happy in the morning to see us and during the day visits us in our rooms. He is quite social and pretty much understands quickly when it is time for him to leave to his place on the patio.

As to our BrucePeru Cusco center: lots of changes have been recently introduced which have not always been accepted immediately by everyone.

Anyway our schools start nowadays at 9.00 o'clock instead of 9.30 as earlier. There is a weekly meeting on Friday's where the teachers plan the week - we will still revamp it a bit but at least we have some coordination nowadays... We have also introduced everyday reports from school with attendance lists etc. So we know how many kids are in the school and what is needed.
We will also shortly have meetings with kids that have graduated from our schools last two years. Unfortunately we will be closing one of the schools as we do not have enough kids there...this will probably take place next week...

We have uploaded lots of new pictures especially from our Ticatica school. Most of the new pictures were made by Alanna and are just excellent!!!



Last week we have also had our first pub quiz which was a great success - mainly thanks to the queen of the night - Amelia - our new volunteer made a great show and we have managed to raise 140 USD. As of now we have altogether raised in total USD 1220 which is more than GREAT!!! The biggest amount of it thanks to Alanna's dad...We are really happy that there are people who are willing to help like this. We and all the kids are greatly indebted to them and everyone who has helped so far. We are also in the middle of organizing a big party and the most fancy club in Cusco - where we will have a cooking show, dancing etc and all proceeds from the tickets will come to us - not to mention that everyone who comes will have to bring some clothing as donation - it will take place on the 27th of September...


Once again BIG THANK YOU again to everyone - especially to Alanna !!! We are still waiting though for more so if you can please help...

As to our center - things have changed much as well - we have a repainted the bathroom as mentioned before, Sonia our cook makes great dishes and keeps the place clean, bread gets delivered to us every morning and we save costs by doing the shopping on the cheapest market only once per week...so things are changing and it is a great feeling !!!

Cusco - yet another week

The week has passed - our rabbit is still alive - we were a bit afraid that it might be eaten by a cat since it lives and run freely in the patio. Our Chaplin - the rabbit has by the way fallen in love with Rita - according to the rabbit dictionary we found on the web - the fact that he runs after her and encircles her repeatedly signifies his love for her :))

The weeks pass by very fast - the work we are doing is quite hard - we have lots of ideas and new initiatives going on in the schools and that takes lots of our time. Also lots of problems :)) Besides running three schools (new pictures from the third school are here) and a volunteer center ain't that easy if anyone has any doubts. It is not exactly what we had in the first six months of the year while travelling in Asia. Rita has made amazing progress in her Spanish - I am still struggling but there are signs that my brain finally starts accepting the new language.

Last weekend was quite relaxing - the only real thing we did is visited a local cemetery near one of our schools...favourite place for picnics and kite running - it seems a tradition to visit the graves and drink a beer by it while chatting with the family. Actually only thanks to the fact that we have done kites with the kids and one day went to fly them, we have discovered the cemetery.

Thank you for new donations - we are still hoping to raise some more money so all new donations are more than welcome. Tomorrow we start our first pub quiz night in one of the main pubs in Cusco - we hope to raise some money. of course. The next weekend we will finally go to Machu Picchu...one way we will go by bus and trek the last 4 hours to Aquas Calientes...and back by train...

Pisac - Secret Valley

UPDATE: Pisac pictures are in our gallery and we added some additional things to the post below.

Finally we have made it out of Cusco - on Sunday we made to the famour market in Pisac. On the picture you can see one of the guinea pig restaurants with a little garden for guinea pigs we found - pick you guinea pig and enjoy your food :) - it is kind of just like picking your fish in Chinease restaurant.

It was kind of tough to get there since the buses were full but after waiting for 45 minutes we finally made it on the bus. The way back was tougher - we did not make it on the bus as they resembled the buses in India in terms of how many people can fit in. Perhaps we would have tried if it wasn't for the fact that those overloaded buses drive through high mountain roads - I would not say we trusted their brakes...

Anyway Pisac as such is beautiful and we went on a shopping spree, haggling tough and ending up with lots of Peruvian clothing. Now we are totally local. It was a great thing to get out of Cusco though considering how long we have been here it is strange when we talk to travellers and admit that we have been here for three weeks and have not seen 10% of what they have in two days - we still have those two days to catch up though :))

As to our kids - one afternoon I went to the dentist with a girl but she panicked so much that in the end it was impossible to pull out her tooth...and her teeth are so bad that she constantly gets fever because of them. I kind of did not know what to do to make her relax a bit...That was kind of a failure...anyway still three teeth to go in her case - I will have some chance to make up for it.
Nowadays we also have weekly meetings in our center with the teachers were we put together the teaching plan for the next week and go through the happenings of the previous week. Above Jessica our Huancaro school teacher with her own little kid - that's how she carries him...

We are very glad for the donations we have received so far...Thank you VERY MUCH...and we are still waiting for more - even very small amounts can make a great difference so go ahead and donate...

By the way - a couple of days ago I got to know that there are some professional photos of me on the Internet - so here comes a photo of the male part of my family taken by our friend Kaktus (thanks!) Navigate to "portfolio" and then "people stills" - check the family portraits :)