Well my evening out with the GVI team was a success! I made my way over to Casa de avilla to meet up with the team to head out for the evening. We walked to the main square through dusty roads and dimly lite alleyways. It was far busier round here than where I was on the first day. Again the people are friendly and although you have to keep on your toes you don't get the impression that you're going to get ripped off whicb is a relief.
After 15 minutes or so of walking we arrived at the restaurant where we were to eat. There was about 15 of us in total, myself and a south african girl named Lucy were the new kids in town. We were treated nicely and everyone made the effort to say hello and have a conversation with us. Patrick the team leader for GVI had already phoned ahead and told the restaurant that we were coming therefore the meals had already been choose and prepared for us, rice dices, lasagne, loads of cheese and potato based dishes! bread, cheese sticks, the food just kept on coming. I filled my face as usual and washed it down with a bottle of red wine that I shared with one of the other guys. It wasn't long before we were laughing, aminly at me asking loads of questions as you might expect! It was one of girls last day on the project so it was kind of a leaving do for her as much as a welcoming one for us as well. Madaline the girl that was leaving had been working at the school where I'll be going so I was able to quiz her a bit on what the school and kids were like. She told me the school has 70 children in it aged between 4 and 10. The kids are lovely as you might expect however they are kids so they will try there luck and of course be a bit cheeky i'm told. For the first two weeks I'll be working along side Patrick as his assistant getting settled in and learning the ropes. After that I'm on my own. I'll be teaching a class of 8 children aged between 8 & 9. I'll start in the morning at 08.30am, work through until 1pm, take an hour for lunch then in the afternoon from 2pm, the kids that want/need extra help stay behind until 3.30pm for extra tuition/help with there homework. It's daunting for me as you might expect but I'm here for a challenge and really can't wait to get going. Hopefully I'll be writing up my blog over the next couple of weeks saying that my spanish is coming along nicely and with a little help from the other volunteers my lesson planning will be OK as well. Anyway, back to the night out!
We left the restaurant after a couple of hours and went to a couple of bars, most are playing music and have a lively atmosphere. You can buy 4 rum and cokes for 12 sols which works out to be about £3 total. At these prices it's wasn't long before I was grinning like a cheshire cat and telling the other volunteers about the things I like doing, festivals, singing, the odd moonwalk when I feel very happy and hanging out with my pals back home.
We ended up in a bar/club towards the end of the evening, it had a couple of large bars, a dance floor and a kareoke room which had a large screen on the wall and around 80 seats/tables. The room was packed, mainly with Peruvians and the odd western scattered around. I can assure you I didn't know this place had a kareoke bar I promise... however! old habits die hard so I stuck my name down and sang the kinks you really got me going, it was about the only one I recognized on the sheet! for a moment I was a bit nervous that the words were going to come up on the screen in Spanish as all the other songs sang were! Lucky for me it didn't, it was in english however I had to wait for about 12 songs to be sang before mine came up and even then I had asked the guy if he had forgotten about me, in truth I don't think the peruvians were too keen having people from the UK sing, I don't blame them to be fair, get a bunch of wronguns in there from the UK and it really does change the atmosphere.. as it was I snag my song and made a few peruvian fans while I was at it :) a group of us after the song went next door and danced for an hour or so before heading home. I had to get a taxi back to my hotel and to be fair I had no idea where it was, lucky for me some of the guys were able to explain where it was from the limited information I could give them. It was around 4am by the time I got back to my hotel... I woke the next day with a stinking hangover, just about made breakfast before getting back to my room and crashing out until around 2pm... the hotel was having some work done on it so between 9am and 2pm there was banging, drilling, talking, dogs barking and doors banging, not the best sounds to try and sooth my head to but at least I was able to lie down drink water and attempt to rid myself of my rum and coke hangover..
So it's Sunday morning now and I'm just about to start my orientation/induction so time I got a move on..
Later folks xx
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