Friday 10 September 2010

Festivals and less psychotic tandems...

Yesterday was another super glue and paint filled crazy morning at school, preparing for today's festival. After lunch Annie tentatively met her new tandem partner after MUCH fretting. Thankfully she turned out to be a delightfully normal person, with no sharing of traumatic past history. In the evening we stayed in with the other volunteers and created home made peruvian cocktails involving vodka, lime and an awful lot of sugar.

Today we went to the school to finish preparations for the festival before leading a group of 30 wild children to a sports hall in the town. This involved clambering over railway lines, rivers and the children running wild amongst cars on a main road... english health and safety would have fainted! After a long walk under intense sun (Rebecca now has a lovely diagonal tan line from her bag), we arrived at the sports hall to watch the various shows each of the 6 local schools had prepared. This started with a rather raucous rendition of the peruvian national anthem followed by the Cusco national anthem, during which we stood awkwardly whilst hundreds of small children screamed the words into the backs of our heads. It wasn't the most pleasant of experiences as we then proceeded to sit through several "performances" during which the 'audience' ran around and generally did their own thing. After witnessing our days of hard labour in action (papier maché rocks and banners about how books were your best friend), we made a hasty escape with the threat of potentially missing lunch. That would have been tragic.

We then met up with our respective tandem partners again. Rebecca and Layla headed off to San Blas to explore the arts market and admire the view from San Blas Mirador whilst Rebecca attempted (under request) to explain the word wanker, which Layla then decided she would look up on google after failing to understand the explanation! Annie and hers stayed and chatted over coffee, which was very pleasant.

After this we came home and packed for Machu Picchu tomorrow. We're very excited!

Rebecca's tandem partner, Layla. At the San Blas mirador looking out over Cusco.

Traditional dancers from one of the school's at the festival

View from the mirador

Children of Tancarpata school with the signs we made!

Walking to the sports hall with the children (tan line is exactly where bag strap is here...great)



Us with some of the girls, the room behind is where we have worked this week

This is a bit like where's wally. They reeeeeeally wanted their picture taken! Especially red coat guy who apparently felt the need to show ALL of his teeth in this photo.

Annie with some of the children, they flock to wherever the camera is being pointed!

Most of the children from the school in the playground...there's only 30 in the school

Part of the play 'Leyendas de nuestra America' by the children of our school

Next time we write will be after Machu Pichu! So we will have lots of photos to share. We get back late on Sunday so tune in on Monday!
Lots of love,
Rebecca and Annie
xxx



3 comments:

  1. The children look SO angelic !! Can they really be SO wild when they are on an outing??I believe you!!ok!
    Manchu Pichu--How exciting ! Camera will be on overdrive.

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  2. Methinks Wally won't be heading directly for a career in primary teaching?
    Quite jealous of the adventure though would make a few changes: Less children, more blue sea, bit more oxygen.
    Is the Spanish improving? xxx

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  3. Annie looks so maternal! Have seen the pichu pics on your facebook- looks SPECTACULAR. I look forward to the added commentary of it via your next blog. Home life is dull, reading about your adventures is a welcome slice of excitement.

    Also, don't wanna boast, but I found Wally.

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