Claire El Parento
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 just saw an episode of Scrubs (In English HURRAH!!) and in it Dr.Cox was treating his 3 year old as his buddy. I think myself and Dr. Cox may have something in common. Apparently one should occasionally say no to a child, which as it turns out I cannot do. I had a cold today. In a building devoid of toilet paper I needed my tissues. Some of the girls took a liking to my tissues and suddenly I only had an old one that I convined them was too dirty to play with. We decided this evening there would be no ipod until their homework was done. After about three seconds of persuasion Licelith was listening to the ipod while doing her work.
I discovered at dinner this evening that children are not the best at secret keepers!. We had what I think might have been baby food. The liquidized vegetables were lovely. I didn’t however take to the ‘mushy-pea wannabe beans’ concoction as well I should have. The children around me looked hungry so I put on my concerned face and asked Maria if she would like some of my beans. She politely said ‘no, thank you’ and went up to the Senorita in charge and said something in Spanish. Looks were thrown in my direction. To rub salt in my fresh wounds she then went into the kitchen and got another big plate of beans and vegetables. I turned to Licelith, my trusty sidekick, my fellow cheesy pop music lover, and offered her my beans. She gave me one of those big-eyes looks, hopped off the chair and ran off to the Senorita. This time I knew what was being said and when I asked her on her return she informed me that she had indeed squealed on me. She had a right little giggle about that. I waited until all the people in charge were looking the other way and made a dash for the kitchen. An hour later two of the children were still in the dining area. No one gets up until dinner is fully eaten.
I’m not sure if I should keep blogging throughout the summer. Most of my days will be more or less the same now that we’ve gotten into a routine. I’ll be travelling in September so might have more to say then.
However this evening it is 8.30pm, everyone seems to be in bed and the TV only speaks Spanish so I might as well tell you about my day in the office. The children here in Casa Hogar were gone to school by the time we got up at 7.30. School starts crazy early here because the teachers teach in shifts. The younger students only have school in the morning and the older ones in the afternoon. So I knew I’d have a morning of teenagers in Casa Del Ninos. CDN is only a 5 minute walk up the dusty hillside from our casa. If anyone wants to check it out I think the website is www.casadelnino.com.pe There might be an ‘s’ after nino I’m not sure. We start work there at 8.30. Michael was sent to work in the computer room making a poster for the upcoming Drama festival. I would usally like designing posters but graphic designer trumps media student so he got the gig. I got the job of glueing the dates of the festival to the massive sign hanging from the front of the building. When I asked for a paintbrush I got a smile, which was nice but useless! So I ended up painting on the glue with my fingers. Wouldn’t have been too bad had we had running water to sort out my hands later. For some reason we only have running water up there in the early mornings and evenings. I also stapled without a stapler. Cool huh?
I moved up to the roof-with-a-roof to do some hanging out. I thought seeing as it’s not so long since I was a teenager I could mingle with them. But I discovered I suck too badly at table football to be one of the guys. Some of them make it look like an art. They were completely unimpressed with my tactics which included twirling the little players round and around until I hit something (which at one stage happened to be a child’s hand). They couldn’t see why someone would let a footballer be upside down, even for a second.
I gave up on that and mosied over to the pool table. Pool here is played with three people. Each using the black ball to sink the yellow balls. They keep count of how many yellow balls they have sunk. It’s not a Peruvian thing, just a CDN thing. I was playing with two nice young ladies, Diana and Isabella who kept their Spanish basic enough for me to learn a bit about them. I was brought back to my own teenage years when three boys came over wanting to get rid of us and kept moving our yellow balls over to the edge of the pockets to speed up our game. They were laughing and playfully digging each other as boys often do. I’d love to finish this with ‘I stepped in and told the boys to leave the girls alone’ but in the heat of the moment I completely forgot all my Spanish and ended up saying something in Irish, I think!. It’s all a nervous haze. We finished our game after one of the little girls stood up for us and the boys got the pool table.
I ended the morning session with some table tennis. I think the lad who was playing against me was damn glad when 12 o clock rolled around. I said ‘One more point’ but he’d already grabbed his bag and legged it out of there. We must have been playing for a good half an hour.
The plan is to eventually teach the kids down in the library in the mornings. Some of them take English which I would love to help them out with, in fact I would almost pay some people to learn English at this stage. But today was our first full day there so we were just settling in.
We had the most delightful meal for lunch. Our cook in CDN is the same woman who made us food at her housewarming on Sunday. Man that woman can cook! I still can’t get used to the Peruvian custom of eating and then drinking though. I need something to wash down the food as I eat. I think I may have to be rude tomorrow so I get to fully enjoy that woman’s cooking.
We went for a stroll around the neighborhood that’s called ‘3 de Maio’. They like calling streets and places after dates here. We walked among the rubble and half made buildings. It looks like what I always imagined Egypt to look like. It’s cool and has character, the only bits of the walk I didn’t enjoy were the 188 steps we had to climb to get back to the casa. I’ll get photos of this place up soon, Michael is the photographer I’m the writer. I’ve decided to call myself a writer because it sounds way better than unemployed and technically when I call myself a student I’m lying.
The afternoon was spent much as I’d spent my morning, but with much smaller people. One guy asked me to play chess. I’d played chess with a friend just a few days before I left Ireland and didn’t do so bad, so I felt sort of confident. The guy absolutely annihilated me!. I was so bad he called his friends over to see. I felt bad for him because he is so amazing at chess that no one would play him, and it seemed to be the only thing he wanted to play.
I fared a lot better at Hopscotch. I think that’s my game. My competitors didn’t even come up to my waist in height but I didn’t let that stop me. I needed to redeem myself after the chess and I believe I did. I also discovered during this game that the way to communicate with the people is not only speak in Spanish but to do it with an Italian accent. It’s the way most of them speak. Also, to emphasise a word it’s good to put your hands out in front of you, palms up and shake them a little bit.
Tomorrow we are getting dressed up in costumes from the drama department and are going to be paraded around town. I’m not sure whether we’re promoting the upcoming festival or if this is the opening of it, but either way I’m very excited. I’ll get my photographer Michael out to record event.
Tags: 2 - Peru
cybersusst
hey clare,
clare fitzpatrick who is friends wth ur brother gave me the address, wow its brilliant, and yes i wud describe u as a writer!!how r ya? nrnrim still busy here workin, u kno funds and stuff!went for a swim with cathy and cathriona yday but technically were not allowed by i dunno law or summit, do they not kno who we are??nrnranyway hope u get this take care of youselfnrCiaraxx
Hello! That´s crazy I didn´t even know my brother knew about this blog. Aw I miss swimming. The only pool here is outdoors, not sure if I´m brave enough for that!