Claire takes on the world….

This is going to be the most random selection of photographs, I`ll just throw up as many as I can before my time on this thing runs out and I get tapped on the shoulder. I`ll have more up soon on my smugmug.

My matador outfit! I´ve been trying to get this up for ages. This is before I acquired snot-of-child on my sleeve.

This is the cake cart. I haven´t managed to find it again since. Damn good cakes. There you can see Elsa buying them for us.

These are the Brazilian dancers we met in the Brazilian Embassy. Seems they like posing as much as I do.

This is a very bad photo of the multicoloured bus we thought we were going to have a wild night on!

This is the woodwork class in Casa Del Niños. You can see the houses they made the other day.

An internet place we found. there was nothing under the sign so the net cafe must be up there some where. I was too busy marching in my matador outfit to find out.

The Nutty Professor, The Matador and a freaked out Cielo. What a team.

Cakes. Dont think they need anymore of an introduction. You have no idea how hard it is walking past shop after shop with cakes like these.

The coolest house in the world, the Boat House. Apologies, the only photo of it I have has me in it. This house is in the middle of grey half made building and has a mini desert next to it. It´s incredibly out of place but that makes it all the better.

In other news: results are in. I have a degree!!

I’ve discovered that being one of the last two people still on a bus when it is driving into it’s little bus house for the night and still looking out for your stop is stupid and crazily optimistic. That’s the predicatment myself and Michael found ourselves in in the dead of night (or it may have been 9pm). I’ll tell you about that soon. But first:

12 hours earlier
Monday was our first day of work in the special needs school down the road (dammit I’m back to not remembering names here). I’ll have the name of the school for tomorrow. This establishment is one of three set up by the Irish priest, Fr. Tony, who’s been here for 12 years. His other two are Casa Hogar, in which I live, and Casa Del Ninos. It’s a primary school but a good few of the students are older than primary school age. For one reason or another they fell behind in school and failed a year. Some of them repeatedly fail and end up hating school so much they refuse to go. It’s not their fault they fail really, with only 4 hours of school a day there’s not much chance for any special attention from the teacher. This school gives the student a chance to work on their weaknesses, be it maths or spelling, and then the plan is to get them back into mainstream school.
[read on]

It’s theatre season here in Lima, Peru. The ‘Festival Internationales de Teatro’ is underway and I finally know what’s going on! The drama thing I’ve being talking about is a festival with drama groups from different parts of South ... [Continue reading this entry]

I have finally found a computer that doesn`t have a panic attack when I try to upload a photo. This is one of a typical street where we are. It`s one of Michael`s photos, I`ve never actually been on the street. ... [Continue reading this entry]

You know, I don’t think there’s a better way to spend a Wednesday afternoon than marching around a place named after the 3rd of May in a Matador outfit. I’m still not sure whether we were opening the festival or ... [Continue reading this entry]

I yet again forgot to spell check. I´m on someone else´s dial up and it´s late. Terribly sorry. I´ll fix it at my next earliest convenience. I’m more than likely never going to win any awards for my parenting skills. I ... [Continue reading this entry]

Michael and I are now an formidable force with our matching pocket dictionaries. There’ll be no more charade-playing. We now speak Spanish although it can take up to 30 seconds to answer a question depending on how hard to find ... [Continue reading this entry]

After three days in the city I may not be fully qualified to judge and evaluate the place but I will anyway. We’re staying in one of the many suburbs of Lima, just off the map in my Lonely Planet ... [Continue reading this entry]

After this summer I believe Michael and I will be the best charade-players Ireland has ever produced. Unfortunately that game doesn’t seem to have reached Peru yet. We both got knocked over by the language barrier today, the first day ... [Continue reading this entry]

Seeing as I talked so much about him I guess we should have a photo of Cassio. This is my Brazilian journalist buddy who was the greatest tour guide ever. One thing that ... [Continue reading this entry]