my first carved pumpkin

If you drive to our house from Warsaw you will most likely pass through a small town where most of the Warsaw expat community lives...No wonder that right next to the road we encountered a store selling seriously overpriced pumpkins. I would have never bought a pumpkin for carving but we had two American experts in the car with us so we ended up with a pumpkin. One way or the other - the little monster ended up looking great. He  should have been awarded the pumpkin of the village award. All those traditions related to death are quite perplexing. Halloween a day before Saints day and then to top it all we went to see The Tibetan Book of the Dead. One thing is sure - until now for billions of years nobody has ever managed to escape the cycle of being born and dying. At least in that sense we are all very equal. Including the poor pumpkin (more pix in our flickr gallery).

Still alive and kicking in Szczecin

It almost feels like our life stopped - at least from the posting point of view. It took me over two months to get my act together and post. I guess our new or actually old lifestyle kicked in. The corporate job deprives you of everything except some money.

Last year I read at least 20 books. Nowadays I cannot concentrate enough to be able to finish the second book. Last year we used to go out - nowadays we come back home and think only about going back to sleep to recover energy for yet another day. Last year we were faced with amazing landscapes and sights every day. Nowadays I see the same things on Discovery Channel TV from time to time...In other words I get all those things in a transformed easy to digest McDonald's sort of way, through some media instead of living them.

All this just makes me think that our decision to travel last year was probably the best decision we have ever made in our lives!!! Check it out - travel around the world for a year and then turn on Discovery. See how it feels :)

I must say that the fact that one needs to work at least eight hours per day is kind of totally out of balance in comparison to what one gets out of it. I think that working five hours per day would suit me perfectly. I would feel that I have a life. It is amazing that the whole world is fine with giving up their almost entire life to work. Especially that we probably live only ones. I hope that the next step in development of socities will be to give people more free time to enjoy themselves...

I guess that even our camera got upset with the fact that we do not use it and broke...

Anyway it ain't that bad - we still travel every other week somewhere or we get visitors to Szczecin - Berlin is amazing for the weekend and London anytime. Rita's cousing gave us a great excuse to go there. As hoped our kid will have a playmate :)

Motorbike driving license

After criss-crossing Nepal and Thailand on motorbikes we decided to legalize our motor biking status and signed up for driving school. We liked the feeling of riding a motorbike so much that basically it was just a question when we could do it.

We have a couple of favourite destinations where we want to ride the bike and doing it with a driving license made more sense. Especially from the safety point of view (getting a driving license should have in theory helped). Anyway we have Brazil as one of our favourites. There is no question that we are going to do it again in Nepal. India is also quite tempting but I am not sure we are ready for that. The highlight in that region could be though Bhutan. I have just read in a German motorbike magazine about tours there. This could probably me the highlight !!!

As to the driving license - obviously it costs one fifth of what we would need to pay in Germany or anywhere west from Polnad. We are more than half way through and we finally understood why people in Poland drive like crazy. I would dare to say that they basically have no idea what proper driving is supposed to look like since nobody ever taught them about it.

The theory lessons instead of at least 10 hours took us around four hours and to large extent had nothing to do with riding a motorbike. Rita had to sit there though she did not understand a word - nobody was concerned - most important thing was the fact that she was physically there. Our practice lessons are of the same quality. We are told what we need to do during the state exam and basically left alone to practice. We have never heard the word technique or safety. It is seriously a joke. It costs next to nothing but also provides you with nothing. As Rita summed it up - we have learned more in Nepal during our half a day course with a Dutch instructor than during the month of the "Polish" driving course.

If everything goes well we will have our motorbike driving license by the end of September - in terms of skills however we will stay where we were. Unfortunately. Some things seem not to change in this country...

The Resident

The resident moved in with us. For now being only 4 cm's does not takes much space. It does like to eat lots and likes to dance whenever we decide to peep in. The bears sleep during the winter and the resident decided that for Rita it is already winter time. Considering the awesome Polish summer this year (rains everyday) it is a good choice. The resident will most likely get bored and decide to join the outside world some time during the acquarius period...

Life in Szczecin

I think there is no stronger drug in the world than type of jobs I find or create for myself. They suck you in and one cannot live without them. I never understood it totally what is happening with me but the thing pumps you up so much that it takes a couple of hours every Friday before my adrenaline goes down to a normal level so that I feel I will have a normal sleep. It has nothing to do with the benefits that the job brings - it is only the urge to accomplish or improve whatever I am doing. It is incredible. It is fun but not much different from being permanently stoned...

Rita gets sucked even more so we are always in the same boat :)))

Amsterdam

It is already the third time this year for me in Amsterdam. The more I come the more I like it. Though I still have trouble navigating. Nowadays I always go for bicycle rides. It does not help much with finding my way but is definitely my favourite pastime there. I love the thing that you can go anywhere on the bicycle - even more that you can go in the evening for a drink and then ride back home not fearing that the police will take your driving license away (like in some other countries were I spend most of my time now). The variety of people and generally the relaxed atmosphere makes me a bit depressed when going back to my highly regulated country where for my own safety I am forbiden to ride my bicycle back home after a nice dinner.

We have had a great dinner at a Thai restaurant where for some reason I started talking to the owner and embarressed my brother. I somehow asked the guy whether he brought himself a girlfriend from Thailand - actually he did but a boyfriend not a girlfriend. I apologized for somehow assuming that it should be a girl and my brother bluntly told me that I have been hanging around too much it those highly tolerant countries like Russia, Poland and Peru...Somehow the openness and variaty of possibilities to live managed to be replaced with some sort of highly unified view of the world hammered into my head by the surrounding environment. I started forgetting that the world is so colorful - I still feel very bad about it.

Whenever I make it to Amsterdam I also try to go to some nice art venue - this time we went to see the Worldpress photo exhibition - good place to see it since the Dutch created the event. I must admit the photos were great and the setting even better. They were on display in the old church in the middle of Amsterdam. I was surprised by the fact of many photos either taken by Poles or having to do with Poland. As soon as such exhibition will be hosted in a church in Poland and at the same time there will be a gay marriage ceremony taking place, I will think about returning to Poland for longer (this is what was going on during our visit there). Until then somehow things are still very depressive here. Somehow Amsterdam manages to remind me why I should not stay in one place - especially a place where I have spent anyway too much of my life...

Back to business

Back to business - this short phrase explains why it is so hard even to write the blog. In the meantime in order to deprive ourselves of free time we moved to Szczecin in the north western part of Poland. It took us ages to find an apartment and in the end we made sort of a mistake with our choice. Since there is no way out of it for the next 12 months I guess we have to live with the choice. It will make us appreciate the next flat better.

About business - Rita has her own company www.asvanyi-plci.com and in that sense became independent. I think she likes it. Suddenly buying things became cheaper as we get VAT etc. back but suddenly all we own is kind of company property.

My life on the other hand is confronted with the absurdity of Polish law. Starting a new manufacturing plant made me understand why for 20 years it is impossible to build highways in this country even if the government has money for it. Talking about all sorts of permits makes me feel like in the good communist comedy from the eighties (I guess only people from the former communist block will understand what I am talking about). The rest are lucky not to know and should feel chosen not to have this pleasure. It is in general kind of schizofrenic experience because you have shopping malls and on the other hand places which survived 20 years without any changes (visit hotel Brda in Bydgoszcz where we went for Macy Gray concert?!)


Alternatively check some former communist companies that still exist - I suggest Famabud in Szczecin or one of the shipyards perhaps...We might even start a travel agency offering such tours. I find it fascinating. Below the beauty we found in our room at Hotel Brda...Classic...


As absurd as things are in Poland one has to say that things are also quite comic in some other places. I had a chance to visit Amsterdam a couple of days ago and noticed that in coffeeshops you can still smoke joints but only without tobacco. If you want to smoke with tobacco or cigarettes you have to step out onto the street :))) - this is what you call real civilization.


A fringe benefit of moving to the north of Poland is the fact that we are one hour drive from the seaside. Things did change there during the last 20 years - but still finding a decent place to relax is quite difficult. If you feel like having a good coffee in a place with nice ambience - well Polish seaside is still not the place to go (we found only one and we have visited already around 10 different villages/towns around here. If you feel like going for cheap holidays then you found the place. Most of the huts serving food even upgraded the plastic chairs to wooden ones :)) And the fish is great!!!

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!!!