Hola chica!

Hi guys!

As you can tell from the date when I wrote my last entry - WE haven't gotten bored yet! Yes, I can  officially say WE now. Last weekend Ursina arrived in Arequipa. She is another volunteer from Switzerland and we will both stay in Arequipa till the middle of July.

It even happened to be so, that she lives with us now. Since she didn't know where she was gonna stay until she left Switzerland last Tuesday - my auntie offered to let her stay here. So here we are now. Ursina lives with us and it's kinda cool to know, that I won't be living by myself once Clarita leaves to Switzerland.

So this has been my third week working at the orphanage. Crazy how time flies by! This week we were able to finish our first project! We painted two 2m x 1.5m pictures of Minnie Mouse and Barney and his amigos. It was sorta messy at times - little Fernando walked around with white hair for 4 days, because he messed around with the paint. But hey - at least it seemed like they were enjoying it quite a bit. They did a pretty amazing job! I will post pictures as soon as we will have put them up on the wall.

Our new goal is to craft some things the kids can play with. So far the afternoon program only consists of taking a nap for 2h and then watching tv for 3h till it's dinner time. People seem to really be trying, but it's incredibly hard to change something if you only have 1 person watching 35 kids all afternoon. As I mentioned before, handicapped kids are still not accepted here. Therefore it's extremely hard to find personnel. So we just try to come up with super easy things, with which the kids can play by themselves. Right now we are making memory cards with the kids.

I really love working there! It's not always easy, especially since the Doctora (boss) is still at the hospital. It's still a pretty big chaos. But the kids are just too adorable! It's great to see them smile and to get hugs from them all the time. They are all wonderful kids and I'm grateful to know them all. One of my highlights this week was, that every morning when I entered little Jahir (about 5 or 6 years old) came up to me and said: "Hola chica!". Just too adorable!

I also got the chance to take more Spanish classes. Two times a week I get to go to Spanish class in the evenings. That really helps!

Ya life is crazy here, but at the same time super good! Lots to do and most of the nights I fall in my bed drop dead tired. But the experience is definitely worth it! So if you ever have some time on your hands and you don't know what to do (I know I know, it's rare - but it's supposed to happen every once in a while) - something like this is definitely an amazing experience!!!

laughter, dancing and gratitude

Hi there folks!

It's been a while since I've written my last post. But here we go now. This was my first official week of work. Little sleep and lots of Spanish, but nevertheless I had a great week.

On Monday, I was supposed to start work at 8.30 am. Since I thought that there might be a lot of traffic at this hour I already left my house at 7 am. Well.... let's just say I underestimated the peruvian way of driving by a LOT! I arrived at work at 7.45 am (normally it takes about 1h to get there). So even though there was twice as much traffic, we got there 15 min. faster than usually. Since I didn't wanna be waaay to early for work, so I decided to stick around the placa and read for a while. But at 8.15am I was tired of waiting and so I went in.

I helped the kids eat their breakfast. Although I kinda felt like I was more in the way than being a big help. But hey it worked out somehow =).

Afterwards I got to go to Milene's class. She teaches the 13-15 year old kids, who are deaf. It's pretty cool to watch them communicate thru sign language. This way of communication has always fascinated me. And I can't believe how fast they can talk!!!
I've been able to join them in the mornings all this week. The kids were super sweet and taught me a lot of words in sign language.
It's pretty funny, that whenever the teacher turns around to write something on the black board they start talking like crazy. So one might have the impression - oh how nice and quiet- but in fact they are just as talkative as any other students ;)

In the afternoons I usually am with the kids in the aldea. The aldea is the actual orphanage. Only 35 out of all the kids stay there. There are only kids with multiple disabilities. They are all super sweet. Even though they don't really have anything, they are always smiling, giving you hugs and tell you how much they love you.

All of these kids were abandoned by their families. A lot of them were found on the street and therefore many of them have severe traumas.
But for me, I found that it is important to understand, why their families abandoned them. It's not because they are all cruel, but these people from the slums are just incredibly helpless, so that they can just really see no other way.
Next to the fact, that they have no means to provide for these kids, it is still the case - that kids with special needs officially don't really exist here. The government only provides very little help for these kids (or better none).

So often times, if families do keep these kids at home, then they hide them inside their little hut all their life. So the project made it to one of it's goal to help families. They want to make them aware, that having a kid with special needs is no shame and they help them provide the means so they can take care of these kids at home. One example is Carlitos. His grandma is taking care of him. His mother and father had a severe accident. Due to the help of volunteers from a near university, they were able to build a little hut with a bed, where Carlitos can sleep now. Regularly the therapists drop by their habitation and have some therapy sessions with him.

I kinda felt bad when we left because the grandma looked at me really sad and asked me if I brought her some bread. Of course I had none with me - so I didn't have anything to give to her. But this shows how people are grasping just for the most simple things like bread.

This week we also had visitors from a University. They came and put on some music. Some of them dressed up. They danced with the kids. It was great to see how much fun the kids had. I had the opportunity to dance with a kid, who can't really walk. He is only like 5 or 6. But he's already got the rhythm down! =) Awesome!

Ya, all in all things went a little crazy this week. The coordinator from Switzerland came to visit us. I had the chance to spend some time with her daughter and we came up with some projects for the kids. For starters we will paint two 2m x 1.5m pictures to put up in the living room. I'll put up pictures once we will start.

Also things kinda went crazy, because the Doctora, who is in charge of the orphanage, had an emergency operation on Monday. She probably won't come back for another month or so. Nevertheless it was great to see the kids smile and making my day bright and beautiful! They are all super sweet and I'm really grateful, that I have the opportunity to be here. 

As for the weekend I had some time to relax. We took a little trip out to a tower in the barrio of Sachaca. Great view all over Arequipa! Incredible how BIG it is! The pictures don't really do justice.

I really had the chance to think about gratitude this week. How grateful we can be to always have enough to eat and to drink, to have a home, to have a family, to live in beautiful countries and to have everything we need. Looking in these kids faces, knowing they don't even have half of the things we do and still being happier than most people are, really amazes me and there are definitely so many things I can learn from them. Truly: GRATITUDE IS THE BEST ATTITUDE!
I am grateful for all the many blessings in my life.