5 weeks in Peru

At the beginning of this week Baby Já (which we’ve found out is short for Jayson) took his very first steps, here is a photo of me being incredibly excited about this!

We’ve began our new timetable halfway through this week, which is really cool! We now help out in classes in the aldea and do arts and craft sessions in the other casas in the aldea-which have been so so so much fun.

                        

The boys have all had their hair cut this week; we find it pretty hilarious especially as they all look like mini versions of my dad now!

This weekend a friend of ours, Luisa, invited us to stay at her house to teach us how to cook Peruvian food. Look out for some posts including the full recipes of dishes we made! 

We got to have traditional Peruvian foods, including Dulci. This is a sweet treat that is sugar with small nuts in. It is presented in wooden bark pieces. 

This is called  Tamal we had it at breakfast, it is strange to describe as it doesn’t taste of much and has a rice/couscous texture to it. It’s cooked corn and chicken meat but it is presented in leaves from the banana plant.

A typical Peruvian breakfast involves a drink of leche (milk) often flavoured with cinnamon, pancitos (small loafs of bread which taste amazing!) and palta (Avocado) with sal (salt). It’s a crazy filling breakfast, as is every Peruvian meal.

Here is our lunch, which there are 2 different dishes: Lomo Saltado and Albahaca Verdes. (Recipe posts coming soon!) Lomo Saltado is a beef dish with fried potato slices (chips) and rice, Albahaca Verdes is a pesto style dish. At home we would consider these to be separate meals however in Peru we eat all this together, yes rice, potato and pasta on one plate, watch as my hips grow ladies and gentlemen!! 

The servings shown in this photo was for 4 of us, it was incredibly delicious and also very filling!!

Luisa took us into Catacaos for a few hours which was really fun, heres a photo of us in the mototaxi!

The 4th week!

Wow my 4^th week in Peru already….only 48 more left!! It’s going so quickly, with so many more things I want to do and places I want to visit!

This post will be more photos than talk of just what we’ve seen this week, as there will be two exciting posts being published this week about the travelling done this weekend, so keep a close eye out!

This week has been extra tiring with most days doing 11-12 hours work with only a small break for lunch, so a lot of my, very little, spare time has been spent asleep or in my new favourite comfort zone.

Yes yes yes, I know you all want to see the photos of the ‘adorable kids’ (not so adorable when they throw their food at you, or throw it up on you, trust me!!) so here they are….

 Yamile has really taken a shine to me this week, which is rather heart-warming, if you say ‘nariz’ to her she’ll now do an eskimo kiss which is super-duper cute.

As always I seem to be a climbing frame

Ariel has attempted to set off a new fashion trend….don’t think I’ll try it personally.

We gave the kids beetroot and orange juice and this was the outcome

‘Oooo is that MAC? What shade?’

To end the super long week we had a shower in Casa 5 (A PROPER SHOWER!!!! Not a bucket of water and a jug, I’ve never felt so clean!) then went to dinner, here is us looking mega cool and clean.

Also, here’s a little shark (probably not a shark but still looks cool) in the Supermarket.

I’d love to hear what you’re thinking about my time in Peru! Do you have any questions? Want to see some pictures of particular things? Leave me a comment below…

3rd Week In Peru

This week we have had a very long week, most days we’ve had to go into work at 7am as some of the young ones in Casa 5 have been ill so the Tias have been taking many trips to and from the hospital all week.  This also meant we haven’t had our usual 2 hour nap time break most days (which has really caught up with me now it’s the weekend!). It really does show how much hard work goes into being a Tia in the Aldea, they are such hard workers, especially when babies wake you up at 1:30am and you don’t get any sleep and have to deal with cheeky children for the rest of the day too! To treat ourselves after a long week we bought a toilet seat, which has made us feel very happy however I feel I deserve another treat after the amount of effort and ‘ews’ it took to put it on the toilet.

Even we can’t manage a nap in Casa 5, if you try it becomes ATTACK OF THE CHILDREN!!!

Despite work we have also been able to spend more time in the aldea, many more of the other children have been speaking to us, despite us being very confused on what they’re saying!

On Thursday evening we attended a fiesta which turned out to be a baby shower of one of the workers in the Aldea. It was actually pretty funny, we rushed to get ready for 8pm (when it began) however hardly anyone turned up until 9ish, typical Peruvian Manana Manana attitude right there! All the staff played games, including 3 pairs racing to feed the other a pot of baby food,

a race to crawl to ‘mama’ and drink the bottle of juice 

and a race to put a nappy on a doll and get it dressed the quickest too! 

We thought we had got away with not having to take part in such humiliating but hilarious activities until Luis and Ronan were called up for a game and we were picked to play too! Hannah and I had to put our nappy training into good use and raced to put a nappy on them both. It involved many many many fits of laughter but everyone was really encouraging of us taking part-it’s lovely to feel so welcomed.

Also this week we have said our goodbyes to one of our children, Luana and her two older brothers have been adopted and left for their new home! It wasn’t long until a new little one arrived though; meet Já, once he stopped crying and realised he was in a safe place now where he can play with toys and be loved dearly I snapped a few pictures of him! So far all I can say is he’s 1 year old and loves his food; he will eat his dinner even quicker than Ariel (which is incredibly impressive!).

In our free time this week we also decided to go do further exploring in Piura. After spending some time in the local park the other day we returned to see what was going on there today. There were stalls selling items and food, with entertainment from dancers, which were very impressive. Hannah and I would love to be able to do some traditional dancing whilst in Peru, despite having two left feet! At the park there is a skate park, I felt like I was 13 again, spending my time at the local skate park with Hannah Beech watching everyone do their impressive tricks.

 

As we couldn’t tell what meat was being cooked we went elsewhere for lunch!

To practise our Spanish we decided a trip to the cinema would be a good idea too, we saw ‘Vacaciones’ which was hilarious, despite not understand what they were saying, I really recommend seeing it for those who love a good comedy!

Our Giant Popcorn!

Here are some other pictures from our Sabado exploring and an exclusive mototaxi ride in Piura…. 

LOOK HOW TALL I AM HERE!!!

A Church in Piura