Here’s the low-down on the Villa Maria Team’s second week out at the project…muchas gracias to Connie for sending this one through!
Second week of our Villa Maria jourmey and everyone started getting used to the cold weather and unreliable shower temperature. We were just finishing our first house and did more constructing work for the classroom. Wednesday was the school parade where the parents and children all dressed up in costumes and did a parade for everyone. Someone asked if we could join the schol parade and lucky Emily said yes so May and Matt went to the market and bought us some red and white( the peru flag colour!) fabric and turned them into ponchos! Have to say it was an amazing experience to be part of it, and of course the children did ten times better then us…
On Peruy Independence Day we had a day off, it was good to have some time to relax and just play games with the local kids. Later in the evening, we managed to throw a mini house party with Lucho´s huge sound systems and our ipods plus lots of beers that they bought earlier in the week. Everyone was having a really good time and it was nice to spend time with the Peruvians. The next day we were ínvited to attend the Peru Parade, which was much bigger than the school parade with the President and all the Peruvians soliders. So we thought we were special as the local police sent us a formal letter with some green/yellow jackets but turned out we were just the same as other general public!
Since we went to bed very late the night before in our drunken states, it was a bad idea to set off at 6am for the parade. AS you can tell, nobody was in a good mood for the two hour long parade on the other hand noone wanted to miss it too! I don´t know how we managed to stand there for seven hours (five hours waiting and two hours long parade) but we did, by the end we were so glad to go home and sleep…It was a great experince though. What´s more exciting is that Emily has confirmed next week’s Haucachina trip, we are going to spend two days there sand boardng and relaxing by the pool! Looking forward to the mini holiday!