The most eventful month so far

Hi everyone!
For those that have me on Facebook, you probably all know what has been going on with me, for those that don´t your about to be in for a bit of a shock. I´ll start with the biggest news, I am writing this blog from Lima as Rachel & I have left Azul Wasi. It was extremely unfortunate that we had to leave, we both loved Azul Wasi so much even at the worst of times and it was unbelievably sad to see the boys go. I think i speak on behalf of the both of us when I say that Azul Wasi will always have a piece of our heart, por siempre y siempre!

We left Azul Wasi due to the fact we kept on getting ill with parasites. No matter what we tried: Stopping eating the salad, improving the hygiene of the kitchen, teaching the boys to wash their hands before eating & using antibac gel before every meal, we just kept on getting reinfected. It was almost as if we´d go to the doctors for the drug to combat the giardia and as soon as that course was over within 2 weeks we were reinfected. This we had been told had weakend our stomach lining and so our stomach wasn´t able to absorb the nutrients from the food that we ate but luckily there was no long term effects. The more bouts of giardia you have the more likely it would be to reoccur which is probably why we kept on getting it. It wasn´t always just giardia either, a lot of the time we had some form of infection along with it as our immune systems became really low, the last bout i had giardia it also came with a stomach infection!

Now i know that some of you guys (If not all) are worrying about the health of the Azul Wasi boys but rest assured, all the boys are fine. Their bodies are accustomed to drinking the water where as rachel & i´s are not. The doctor said that after a year we would be immune to giardia however Project Trust could not let us stay out there when we were constantly getting ill and after speaking to the Insuarance companies doctor it was recommended that we leave Azul Wasi immediatley which has brought us here.

We´ve been in Lima for exactley 3 weeks now and have been working in La camera britannica (British chamber) helping them do some research. You might ask how the hell we got this but its because our peru reps are the british chamber and so we dont get bored they offered to take us in. They are all really lovely and Rachel & I have got on especially well with Ruth and she has really taken us under her wing is so nice! At the moment we are waiting on finalizing a project move for us both which HOPEFULLY should be done within the next week. Its not that the work experiance here isn´t good but in all fairness this isn´t what I have come out to Peru to do and I can´t wait to get back into an orphanage. We've visited a few since being here and i must admit i do really like on but i wont go into too much detail until anything is set in stone.

Whilst we´ve been in Lima we´ve been staying in the flying dog hostal which is the same group of hostal we stayed in when we first got here but this one is just on the other side of the parque kennedy. Our insuarance money is covering our stay here in order for us to recouperate and get better. We have been able to cook our own meals which is good as we know where it is coming from and how hygenically the food is cooked.

Lima and especially Mira Flores is unbelievably different from Cusco! I mean miraflores is a differnt world to little old Oropesa. I have not seen 1 SINGLE CHILLITA (traditional peruvian dressed woman) since being here in Lima, and this is ONLY what the women in oropesa wore. There are 100´s of cinemas, supermarkets, arcades, resteraunts and fast food resteraunts here. I had such a huge culture shock and im from bloody london! Imagine what it will be like when i actually get back to london ey!

I honestly cannot speak more highly of Project Trust right now, they have proved to be an absolutely HUGE support for Rachel & I and for anyone reading my blog who is contemplating whether or not to go on a gap year with project trust i highly recommend it! There´s nothing better than the piece of mind knowing that someone back home is there to help you out if you have any problems!

Your also probably wondering (and if your not, your gonna read it any way :]) what did Rachel & I do in our last few days of Azul Wasi? One of the things we did was go to MACHU PICCHU!!!! Unfortunatly we had to go via train and not through trecking which is what we orignially wanted to do but this was good enough. We went on the 29th january after booking our tickets literally a day before it was crazy! And in order to get half price MP tickets we had to get an International student card which involved me having to fake a Woodhouse College ID to make it seem like i still went there LOL, thankgod for Microsoft Paint haha. We also had to get a passport picture taking and the way i was looking the picture came out horrenouds. I look like a child that needs adopting and my hair looked as though it could house a family of birds. Im contemplating scanning this picture and putting it here on the blog just for laughs. At the same time though i do appreciate the fact that when I get back I will eventually want a boyfriend and this picture will haunt me for life.

We left unbelievably early in the morning to get a bus from Oropesa to Cusco and then we got on a locals bus to Urubamba then from Urubamba all the way to a town that right at this minute i can´t remember lol! From there we got a train to Aguas calientes where we stayed the night. Whilst there we also bought our MP tickets and bus tickets. We woke up at 3am to get to the bus stop for 3.45am as the first bus leaves at 6am or something and if you want to do huynapicchu you have to be the first 200 people and being that thousands of people go to Machu Picchu every day we had to be early. low and behold we werent the first ones we were infact like the 80th people or something. But we done it and got our stamp to do HuynaPicchu. To be honest I didnt know what it was until Rachel told me. It had warnings on the entrance like *only for the fit and healthy* and i honestly was like "ahhh f*ck" (mind the language tanya lol). It was SO high, SO hard and there were SO many steps, I don´t know how the Incas did it but we got ourselves up there. We waited for the morning mist to clear and then we saw Machu Picchu in all its glory it was amazing like literally breath-taking! After this rachel & I lost each other LOL and spent the remainder of the Machu Picchu journey by ourselves :( WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA But seriously all the sights were just amazing!

We came back to Oropesa that exact same day in the evening, the next day was to be our last full day in Azul Wasi and so we made the most out of it. We got up in the morning early and went to sell all our books we couldnt bring with us on the plane due to lack of space/weight and got around 7 sole per book which is really not even 1/5th of what they were worth but what else were we going to do? Leave them at Azul Wasi? We used the money to buy the boys a chicken dinner each and a cake saying Azul Wasi on it made by our friend Maritza. We said a few words to the boys before we ate, basically saying how much we would miss them and how much we have learnt since teaching them. We read a story to the younger boys and tucked them all in to bed, being a bit silly with them i guess and it was so sad. Valerio kept asking when are we coming back :(

So the next morning came and it didnt come with out stress in true alcides fashion LOL. We had a nice breakfast with the boys and were waiting for the cab that Neptaly went off to get at the end of oropesa and it was really late and very small lol but it got us to cusco. Saying goodbye to the boys was so hard and I had to hold back the tears. Dante was sitting by himself on the tree stump when he left and wiped a tear from his eye as i gave him a hug. That made me sooooo emotional :( . And whilst im writing this now I can feel my eyes starting to well up. They are all such special boys and I really hope that I can one day re visit Azul Wasi as it really has touched my heart. Its such a young orphanage that needs so much help but from the right people who can allow Azul Wasi to flower and grow into the image which Alcides has invisioned. I have learnt so much from living at Azul Wasi and it is an experiance i will never ever forget. When I eventually get back to the UK I want to do some fundraising work for Azul Wasi starting by making them a website which was impossible at AW due to the lack of programmes but it will be done!

So the end of this blog ended up to be a really mooshy one but i couldn´t help it! in 6 days I will have met my 6 month mark, can you believe I´ve been here this long? because i can´t! I don´t even know where the time has gone. I will update another blog soon *I HOPE lol* and also put some pics on since i still have fast internet.

thanks again for reading,
Simply signed, Simply compas
xxxxx