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 :)

New house mate in our center

On Friday Rita managed to bump into yet another carnival celebration in Cusco while getting back from her school - it seems that the festivities are not slowing down even though it is already the third week since they started. This time though it was more like Rio Carnival with lots of dancing, costumes and girls in high heels and short skirts... I stayed at center that day so I missed all the fun.

At 7 am on Saturday the girls went to the market to make shopping for the entire week - Rita, Sonia, our cook and Alana, our volunteer from New York. They came back with tons of excellent photos (and fruits & vegetables in varieties we have not seen before) and a new flat mate. Some of photos are really gruesome but definitely worth seeing. Have a look at our new flat mate below:

He is beatiful - not scared of us or anything else around so he roams freely around the house and the patio. Incredible - I used to have a rabbit when I was small and now I have one with incredibly fluffy fur...he eats quite a bit and quickly understood that he is not allowed to enter the rooms. Nobody can really explain how come he is so friendly - it is kind of strange as obviously he was raised for food and fur...Anyway he is a great pet and almost as smart as a dog. Next we are getting a book on how to train house rabbits. He is definitely a favourite of mine just like little Sandra below - I mentioned her earlier so now here comes her photo. We need to take her to an optician to check her eyes and get her proper glasses or whatever else is needed.

Through the last week we have also been working on some ways to do some fundraising for the children of our Cusco center - lots of them have various untreated problems just like Sandra. As a result we have created a fundraising web page (see also on the left side of the blog) through which everyone can make small donations with a credit card. We will appreciate all the help...

Cuyeria in Cusco

We have a new flatmate in our center. His name is Choclo - he is a baby and scared to death - basically does not move whenever he hears somebody around. Right now he lives in a carton box. One of our volunteers received him as a gift from our social worker. Basically Choclo is quite lucky - non of our Peruvian friends have ever seen a guinea pig as a pet. In Peru Choclo's relatives are considered a delicacy. There are restaurants specializing only in serving guinea pigs and most of the tour groups with home stays coming to Cusco end up preparing a guinea pig for dinner as a way of immersing in local culture. For the time being I do not want to develop too strong bond to our new friend as it would be extremly difficult to think that then we would have to it him. Not that we plan but he is kind of doomed as I think he cannot stay with us forever. Anyway for now we were told he cannot get water because his belly will blow up so he eats apples etc. and seems healthy.

Otherwise, the week has passed very fast - we have some new children in the schools - my favourite new student is little Sandra who needs however to have her eyes checked as she is a little cross-eyed. We will need to find a doctor for her. Otherwise, she is a great student and very conversational girl.

We have also made preliminary arrangements for pub quizes where we are going to raise some money (it flips me out a bit since I will have to lead them) and we still have not managed to renovate our bathroom - no one dared to touch the "mud" walls - but we might finally do it this weekend. The plaster we used earlier comes off the walls just like it was the case before we started renovating.

The best thing however, about our days after school is that we have an excellent cook so we have everyday a good lunch and a great Peruvian soup...Everything is vegeterian so sofar Choclo is safe :)

Cienciano Cusco

Weekends go fast especially if you are aware of them. Last six months we did not know what day of the week it is but by now we do know again how to appreciate weekends. This time we planned to go out of Cusco but did not manage to fulfill our plan. Finally though we managed to visit the art district of Cusco. We have also been to a football game of Primera División Peruana - between the local Cienciano and one of the teams - Universitario. Surprise, surprise after the first half Cusco team was loosing...during the second half though the guests could not run anymore and in the end lost...It was Rita's first visit to live football and at first she did not like the wild crowd. After some time though managed to find her favourite sector with live trumpet music...All in all the spectators were less lively than I would expect from Latino's :))) We are all cursed by stereotyping - aren't we? We went to the stadium with lots of kids from a different NGO and all enjoyed ourselves as long as there was sun - no sun means that you freeze as I have mentioned a couple of time before.

Otherwise our week has started very nicely - we have new volunteers - one American girl speaking Czech so I can practice my Polish...and of course our cook is here so finally we have food, we do not do shopping and general feeling of cleanliness creeps slowly in...We even started renovating the bathroom but got stuck on the point of how to put plaster on adobe - the walls of our bathroom are basically earth structures - same as used thousands of years ago by all sorts of local tribes. We might have a solution but we are still double checking - nobody dared to strip the walls of left over paint as to have the adobe stick out completely. Rita was of the opinion that then the whole structure will collapse. It is a bit like a crush course in home renovation.


The best thing however is that we are going to travel again - not yet but soon and to new places for us!!!

By the way my brain still refuses to process Spanish in a way that anything sensible would come out of my mouth. Russian and German dominate the field and Spanish cannot find its place in my brain - scary.

Cusco - the coldest day ever

Today was the God damn coldest day ever here - it was raining for the whole night and the day was way too cold to be called a nice day. One had to make it through mud up to your ankles to get to school (it was raining whole night) - half of the kids therefore did not show up in school...

So finally we are the proud owners of a small heater!!! It uses a hell of energy but today was way over the limit of my endurance in terms of coldness...

Tomorrow 7.08am, I am going to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics. We have cable TV in the center so I kind of started being more up-to-date with the most important things in the world (CNN just aired a story about a dog killed by some mad man to a local mayor in the US of whom I have never heard). It is a perfect way of wasting time. Anyway no zapping of channels since we have no remote control and it takes around 10 minutes to move from first channel to the 99th standing in front of it...

Anyway after the opening ceremony (or rather in the middle of it) we will go to school for the arts day which we decided to introduce...we will make small puppets with the kids - photos coming up - international delivery possible :)))

Good thing is I started talking sort of broken Spanish - somehow till now I could not do it...though I still say Russian "paka" to kids when finishing school...somehow it comes out automatically...

A day in Cusco - continued

We have just added the first set of portraits of our kids. We have three schools so there will be three sets...With time each picture will tell a story (we have to learn them ourselves)...We are also working on setting a separate blog for the Cusco center...ex and current volunteers will post their experiences from their time spent with the kids etc...

As to current events - we have just gotten our hands on our recruiting fliers. They are black and white and Rita decided to color every single one of them. I told her that it is pure madness - but I had nothing to say to her response - she told me that it is like watching soccer games on TV. When she told me that I ought to watch European Championships when they are replayed instead of live (once we were in Asia usually the games started at 2am), I politely refused saying that it is not right since I cannot influence the game any more. Once I watch them live on TV obviously I DO INFLUENCE THE SCORE (sadly with little success what comes to the performance of Polish team)...Therefore she will color all 1000 pieces so that they have a personal touch and better success rate in recruiting volunteers.Lets see...So far going to the schools every morning is kind of hard on me.

A day in Cusco

Cusco is a probably the tourist Mekka of Peru (if not to certain extent of whole South America) due to its proximity to Machu Picchu...we kind of thought that we will feel like them...though right now our days differ a bit...we have not been sightseeing too much...

Our day starts early
- around 7.30 as we have to start preparing around 40 sandwiches for the kids and boil probably 10 liters of water to make hot local specialty drink for the kids from kiwicha, hava and soya, which are all very healthy and strange tasting :)
- around 9.00 together with the teachers we take taxis to three different schools in three different neighborhoods
- around 9.15 we arrive to schools and we are greeted by all kids without exception demanding to be hugged and kissed...
- around 9.20 the kids first wash hands and get their breakfast
- around 9.40 they brush their teeth
- afterward we start the lessons usually dividing the kids into groups based on their age or knowledge (I usually get the smallest kids and together we start from the basic of counting to 40 or so). This goes on with little break perhaps until 12.15...I can tell you that it is very hard as getting their attention is a sign of genius on behalf of the teacher
- around twelve each kid gets some fruit and after goodbye's we all part (I am usually quite dizzy by that time)
- we are back in the center by 12.45 more or less as we come back with the bus
- as the directors of the center we are responsible for preparing lunch for the rest of the volunteers...in other words cooking
- at 3pm I have individual Spanish class and at 4 pm Rita has her lesson
- right after the class the best part of the day begins...we go shopping for the next day
- we buy 40 little breads, around 4kg of fruits for next day (once we tried buying fruits for 3 days in advance but carrying the load was beyond our capabilities although we have made it to Annapurna base camp without porters earlier this year), vegetables etc. for the volunteers lunch...we could easily compete with the camels
- we are back by 7pm quite exhausted (it is quite a walk to the market and the store - I can assure anyone doubting it - especially at 3400 meters above sea level)
- afterward it is time to eat and do Spanish homework if you are able to think straight still

Actually we have never done it yet but we should be doing fund raising in pubs with pub quizzes etc. in the evenings ...so far though we never had the energy...

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So starting next week we have decided that we will have a maid to cook, do the shopping and clean the center..As my mum put it giving employment is better than charity...We have also designed a flyer to start recruiting volunteers from all sorts of tourists coming here...the "print house" will have first 1000 pieces ready by Monday. More volunteers means that we make the sandwiches less often, we have more money - kids get better sandwiches and in general there is more happiness :) We plan to devise a healthy diet for the kids instead of the cheapest as is the case more or less now (don't get me wrong we are still giving them very good sandwiches which we eat with them)...

In other words we will make the world a better place - also for us :) As for the kids we are waiting for proposals of receipes for balanced weekly diet in terms of sandwiches menu...