Visiting your past

This god damn time flies. Almost half a year already passed since Christmas. Although it was supposed to be a calm year it seems we managed to spin it out of control. I would call it business as usual. This is anyhow not what I intended to write about.

Some weeks ago we decided to find the roots of my family - at least to certain extent. From my fathers side I have sort of Eastern roots. His family comes from the part of Poland that now belongs to Ukraine. This kind of skewed my personality though I never managed to acquire the Eastern Polish accent from my grandfather. I was shocked to discover at some point tof my life that central Poland Poles are eating potato pancakes with sugar as opposed to salt, cream and garlic as we always did at home...

My grandfather turned 88 this year so I decided that it is the last opportunity to show us where he comes from. He has never been to his village since the end of the second world war... So we took him and my dad and off we went for a longer weekend...The part of Ukraine we visited is God damn poor...people on the fields seem to be doing industrial agriculture by hand even on such days as 1st of May (national holiday in most parts of Europe). Lviv was great and full of young people eager to have fun. We must go there again...

Anyway we found the village. We found the church. We met people in front of the church who had no problems showing us where my grandfather's family lived. He himself was a bit confused since things did change...We found the house - and went in. There I saw the same grapes growing as on my grandfathers summer garden... and understood why he always wants to have wallnut trees (the village was full of it). The old lady leaving there shared the same misery as my grandfather. The only difference is that she was repatriated from Poland (as a Ukrainian) to this nowadays Ukrainian village. She was misarable and very unhappy about her life and what happened to her family...

We also visited the cemetery in the village where suddenly my grandfather exclaimed - oh this is where the colony was... I wondered what kind of colony he is talking about. He then went on how Polish government during the time of between the two world wars was sending hundreds of his citizens to colonize the area. Obviously I have never heard about it in Poland. According to our version of history we have never done such things :)))

We made it back - it was great - though somehow my grandfather used so much energy for this trip that he had to spend the whole week afterwards in the hospital. But he is doing fine...At least he showed us something I really wanted to see.

Spring in Poland

Although we live only a 1000 km North from my home town, I am quite stunned by the turns the weather makes around here. Until the mid of March I was kind of desperate for some sun and signs of spring - without any hope. It was rainy with a constant overcast sky, and cold. When finally the sun entertained us with some of its rays, I said now it is coming! The warm days with breakfast on the veranda are not so far. And the following morning we woke up to enjoy a winter scenery quite like the ones in the Alps - with about 40 cm snow covering everything with white fur sitting on the trees. Not that it was not stunningly beautiful, it just crashed my hopes. But not for so long - this week it was over 20 C plus! With sunshine, birds singing, flowers blooming in our garden, so heaven on earth :)

But before one could think that I have no better business than observing the weather I have to say our lives also took unexpected turns... We are again on the move, in a way it was almost becoming boring - staying in the same place for 3 months is not so typical of us anyway :) As of April the 1st Tomek is back to working life for an 18 months project - and it is not a joke, as it ought to be on this day. We are organizing our new, temporary home in a place called Szczecin, about 600 km to the NE from Warsaw; one can say the possible furthest point in Poland from the capital.... Not that we would have looked forward to this move, but since we anyway planned to spend a year or two in this country, it does not particularly matter where. It is in a way a good location - right next to the see, 150 km from Berlin with a highway and boat connections to Scandinavia. You can even fly in and out with Ryanair!

Thanks to this change we already had the opportunity to see more of this country: on Monday we went first time in our lives to Szczecin, Tuesday and Wednesday we spent in Wroclaw, Thursday and Friday again in Szczecin, and now we are back to Warsaw again. To be specific, all these destinations are in the far most corners of this country, each of them on average 600 km from each other in a triangle. Considering the laxed days of the past few weeks suddenly it became fairly eventful - and the near future does not look much different either... But all these places are like if they were in a different country. Wroclaw, as Tomek puts it is like if you were abroad; I really recommend it for those who like Krakow or Prague - without their touristy feel it is a pretty town with a very lively cultural life, particularly interesting for those fond of the experimental kind of theatre - see more about Grotowski. Szczecin on the other hand looks more stuck in the previous era - though with a great potential. It has impressive historical buildings and an underutilized old town over the delta of the Odra (Oder) river, but if I wanted to be rather naughty I would assume what is pretty in the town is mostly thanks to its German history, which is unfair, but the Soviet "art noveau" surely did not contribute to its grandness :) And Warsaw - I know most locals despise it - due to the same reason above, but I find something fascinating about its vibe. It is not the rebuilt old town you should look for - though pretty. It is the 21st century skyscrapers next to Stalin's sister, the Palace of Culture, the absolutely interactive museum of the Warsaw Uprising, the crazy-decadent parties and Park Lazienki with its friendly squirrels, posing peacocks and the best hot chocolate I have ever tasted thanks to the Wedel Cukiernia.

And we will have almost white nights - at least compared to the Hungarian standards; now the sun sets around 8 pm, but it will go as far as 10-10.30 pm!

Impossible is a step

We are still in the so called country side 38km from the center of Warsaw. No change in that respect...Life is moving as it used to in the 18th century - I just read fathers and sons by Turgenev and could identify myself with the relaxed pace of the 18th century Russian country side :))

Anyway continuing with our explorations of the neighborhood we decided to check out the train station - last stop of the suburban train from Warsaw. Takes around 55 minutes according to what it says on the internet to get to the center. We decided that some day we might want to try out the this option. It is kind of difficult because unlike in any other place I know so far the suburban trains go only every hour or sometimes even only every two hours. So it is kind of difficult to just show up and expect the train to show up as well. Since the traffic jams are pretty bad someday we might be willing to change to the trains anyway. Now we have the schedule now. The train station is kind of abandoned. There is however something what you can call park and ride. A place in mud under this tree for two cars I would say. Next to this interesting building at the entry point to the platform - the coolest double toilets ever! As we checked they are also used :))) No danger of vandalism.


Anyway I found this interesting post on the internet- the logic somehow should make sense if applied to this train station either way. I copy & pasted it from here. Perhaps this is what I am missing in understanding how is it possible to have such a cool toilet and train station basically right next to Warsaw. Make your own conclusion :)

Sometimes, you have to take a trip through the impossible to find your way from one possible to a better one.

This is otherwise known in popular culture as the milder “things are going to get worse before they get better”. Conceptually, however, this idea can be pushed to its extreme. Not only are things going to get worse, they’re going to get unthinkably, impossibly worse, in a way that is completely unacceptable.

This is universally useful. When applied to design, this translates into considering and trying out unacceptable solutions that fly in the face of your design principles, as possible stepping stones to an acceptable result. When applied to implementation, it means being willing to try something with no apparent chance of success to probe the problem and discover something more.

When applied to thought, it means being willing to consider all variations of ideas, no matter how bizarre, unpleasant, or repugnant, to respect that they may lead to greater ideas than those we came from. When applied to discussion, it means being willing to embrace strong disagreement and confrontation as a building block of consensus.

This is a dangerous idea, and it demands a caveat. Impossible is only a useful step if you can escape from it back into the acceptable. Some steps into the dark are irreversibly harmful. The means does not justify the end.

My wish for the future

I have lately stumbled on a web site acting as an Internet Archive. It is amazing to see the first web sites and Internet based businesses which took off in the middle of the 90'ies and which I remember so vividly. I was actually the lucky one to have internet access at home already somewhere in the beginning of 1995 (I sort of landed a part time job with one of the first ISP in Warsaw). So in Poland I was one of the few lucky ones - even my high school at that time had only one computer with access to the internet. Internet fascinated me and already then captured my imagination as the land of endless opportunities...

Anyway, it is hard to believe that Amazon started only in 1996 and Yahoo just a bit earlier...check it out. At that time I had so many ideas to start business on the Internet - ideas that now exist and prosper. I guess I was too young to pull them through - anyway in Poland at that time it was probably easier to start an organized crime group in mafia style than an Internet business. So I have never transformed my ideas into reality...but I know I was right and had a chance...now we also have an idea - and nobody is even close to what we came up with. This time though we will start transforming it to reality. I wish that in ten years my idea will also be listed as a dinosaur in this Internet Archive!!! Not more than that - just being listed there

Adventures of a wegierka in Poland

For the last two weeks I have been commuting to the centre of Warsaw for my Polish language classes, which finally I started with not much optimism to adequately acquire it. This later part of the sentence stands not for my lack of enthusiasm, but for my amusement for the complexity this language makes you face. Aside the impossible consonant constellations, imagine a language where you have to operate with different forms of plural, depending on the number of items you are talking about, e.g ending with 2, 3, 4 or 5 or more, to put it simple. But it is not so simple of course. The funniest thing of all is the Russian I learned 20!!!! years ago coming back mixing the numbers into a pretty Slavic cocktail.

Anyway, what I wanted to tell about is driving in the city. First I had a navigation system to show me the way to my school from the village, which is as a matter of fact 40 km South from Warsaw, not 10 as I was informed... The only problem I encountered besides the huge jams and quite dynamic driving style (read: total disrespect for any kind of speed limit) was the outdated map in the system. Meaning Poland does develop, they made a pretty pedestrian street from Nowy Swiat, where my class takes place. Which I realized the moment I entered the nicely paved street only with ministerial cars, buses and taxis. I hoped that the 10 year old blood red Fiat Seicento will nicely smooth inot the environment without the police flagging me down. Of course I was already preparing my innocent, no cash, no idea where I am, I am so terribly sorry performance when the police did stop me right in front of the turn to the school. I should not say all this cause it sounds all too desrespectful, so please do not take me wrong, from that day on I found another, legal way, but that day I was so proud of myself making it at least that far and even more was able to get away with a stupid face without paying a 100 Euro fine!

Okay, from then on I did not use the navigation system, but a good old map. It worked. I improved my driving time from 1.45 minutes to 1 hour one way - see above mentioning the dynamism of traffic. Than I had to give a lift to Tomek to the airport, to find my way from there to the school, from the school to his parents house, from here to the school the following day and finally to pick Tomek up at the airport. And I lost my good old map. BUT I succeeded :))) On time! And when I bragged about my proficiency of cracking the roads of Warsaw I realized that I have never seen at least 3/4th of the city... Nevertheless I do have a sense of satisfaction, because I am able to make a left turn at a traffic light without a disaster. Okay, you may wonder what is the deal there, but imagine an elbow fight of cars making their turn when the opposite direction also has green, flowing cars in 3 lanes at least blocking your turn and when finally the flow stops, you have red and the cars start flowing from the other angle of the road - both directions. In second best case you are stuck in the middle of all this waiting for the next green... Well, it is not as bad though as it was in St Petersburg, where there were not even lanes, only 7 cars next to each other fighting for the same one spot when turning :) And Budapest is excused only because there are not enough lanes on the roads...

One of the many good things here is that Poland is the country where Hungarians, alias wengierka (female version) are warmly welcome. Come on girls, the best place to cultivate your feminine ego is here - free drinks, big smiles and loads of compliments from cute Polish guys :)))

Google maps

We have been lately exploring the forests around our neighborhood on foot or bicycles but so far have not managed to find a map which would show the routes in the forests. So we have decided to check the one and only oracle in today's world - google maps to get a better picture where can we go. Obviously the first thing was to look for the house where we live. We could not believe it but the house (marked by me on the picture below with red dot) is just not there. Nothing special if it wasn't for the fact that the house has been there already for over a year...not too mention that there should be a clear fence around the plot where we live. We got it installed in 2003...If not that there should be another house next to hours that has been built in 2005...Nothing is there...

I would say it is a shame for google. Pictures from the last century in today's world are sort of a joke and I think they are not even satellite pictures but provided by a funny Polish company called PPWK as can be seen at the bottom of the picture saying everything comes from 2009. (PPWK be a state own enterprise specialising in maps but still is one of the biggest cartographic companies on Polish market).



Or perhaps my house has been erased from the pictures for national security reasons - sounds more plausible :))) Thank you PPWK - continuing with the good tradition from communist times then whole towns were not on maps due to their national security significance :))))

Tip of the week

Now with some sort of Internet at home and a satellite dish which I managed to install on the roof we made ourselves feel homely. I guess soon it will be time to move on :))

Anyway this kind of environment entices you to start following world happenings. I try to stay out of it since somehow I feel being manipulated. Especially the TV with its news channels seems to show the world from one angle. You end up with BBC, or CNN and it seems unbearable. The Polish equivalents spice it up with the local happenings giving me quite hard time too:)

So we have figured out that Aljazeera in English seems the best bet for some fresh views. Check it out if your cable provider allows you to think differently :))) It ain't that bad.

Seems I have too much free time eh? So next week we go snowboarding to Austria to get some fresh air.

This was the tip of the week. Hope that I will still make it into US some day :)

Our new home

Rita did add some pictures of our home... You can see for yourself...

The month of the movies...

The scary thing about this year is the fact that I have made just one post. It means that I have only 10 left (excluding) this one and the year will be over. In principle then year 2010 is just around the corner...This is a very disturbing thought - especially since Rita is reading right now a book entitled "A short history of nearly everything" and telling me that the world is 4,5 billion years old. No wonder in fact if the time is flying so fast.

I guess there is no time to spare. So during the last two weeks we managed to visit shortly Berlin, Amsterdam, lovely Utrecht and watch a couple of great movies. The millionaire from Mumbai was an interesting one but the newest movie from Woody Allen - Vicky Cristina Barcelona - explained in various ways why Spain is not only our next traveling destination but a destination where we could stay longer. Apart from that the South Korean movie Hanyo from 1960 which we saw during the Rotterdam Film Festival is one of those movies one MUST see. It is just great - make sure you watch it till the end...The Russian movie Mongol was also not bad though not much dialogue.

Apart from the fact that the unpacking of 200 boxes we managed to accumulate during our corporate and student times took us ages and it also made me feel realize something about me - the best thing was getting read of things...it is kind of pleasure for my mind which is hard to compare with anything. I guess something like the shopoholics experience just in reverse.

But we are almost done so it feels when we get home...not like coming back to the warehouse.

I guess nothing changed - except for the fact that we do not sleep on the buses. And that we do not post pictures on flickr. Though Rita promised some so during the next few days some will show up...

Back in Europe

It has been a month since our last post. I do not really know what happened that we were not posting but here we go again. We intend to continue with our blog. I enjoy it and Rita supports me by giving some encouragement to go on :)))

Since the last post actually we have travelled quite extensively. We saw condors near Arequipa in Peru taking a private tour to the second deepest canyon in the world, we figured out that our plane tickets back to Europe are on different days so we cannot fly back together, we went to Hungary and figured out that Rita has too many things that fit to the van we had so we had to do two back and forth trips, we spent lots of time in Poland preparing our accommodation for the next year, went to Berlin and we are now in Amsterdam for a week. I would not call it a break from travelling. Thanks God in fact because the thought of having a "organised and repetitive" routine in life gives me chills. Either I am getting old or something changed in me.

We had a great year travelling around in 2008 though one year is clearly not enough to be able to seriously say that - yes, I have seen a lot. One would need a couple of years of constant travelling to be able to say that one has seen at least a part of the world. It was just an appetizer.

We have gave it a thought how to continue with the blog and will decide for one of the following options:

- interesting things happening to us in Poland (for now the winning thing is the fact that 20km from the boarder of Warsaw it is impossible to have Internet - none of the GSM providers has coverage of our village; nobody else either - in total we asked over 50 companies) My other favourite is the electricity provider which needs two years to change the tariffs so that I do not pay a 60% premium over the normal price - still 8 months left. I already know that there will be lots to write. For now I think that the absurdity of the way the country is organised makes Poland a piece of art (somebody said that in the 80'ties during the communism but I think this is still exactly the case)

- starting your own company (since we came out with complicated ideas the implementation might also be quite challenging)

- Or we continue with the travelling theme since it seems we will be on the road anyway during the year and we will definitely move to a different country soon

We have some new photos on Flickr still from Peru so you might want to have a look at them... Hasta luego - we take our bicycles and go on chilling in Amsterdam !!

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¨ :)