The days seem to fly by

Yesterday, after spending the morning in the orphanage, I decided to go to the school in the afternoon. They are a bit short on volunteers this week as four people recently left, plus I really wanted to see what it was like. The school, Flora Tristan, is run entirely by TNT volunteers and offers free English classes to the children of the community for two hours every afternoon Monday through Friday. It's located on the outskirts of Arequipa, in an obviously quite poor area. It's strikingly different from the rest of the city, very dusty, everything the same color. The kids were really sweet, very used to new people coming in and all greeted me respectfully. One thing I noticed about the kids is that they all have really dry skin, especially their cheeks, red and chapped. It does get quite cold there at night. It was really just a harsh looking place.

I was in the Babies classroom, ages 3 to 5. I thought, perfect, just the age I am used to. But it was defintely different from being in a classroom at the British School. There seemed to be no rules in the classroom and the kids mostly all shouted at the same time. They were super cute though, and it was only for an hour, so we just did our best to keep them entertained. After words all the kids go to this basketball court to play for another hour. It was fun to play with kids, picking them up and twirling them around. It was quite different from the orphanage, but also a great experience, I'm glad that I have now been to both places.

Today was a very busy day at the orphanage, we were just told today that a new baby is arriving, supposedly later today. I don't know much else yet, like whether it's a boy or a girl or how old it is. But we were very busy preparing today. They wanted us to clean everything and we basically reorganized the babies' room. The best part of the day though was when we gave two of them a bath. It was seriously one of the cutest things I have ever seen, they absolutely loved it. When water was poured over baby Cristian's head, he would close his eyes and just squeel with delight, waving his arms around. It was really a lot of fun watching them enjoy themselves so much. They don't get baths like that very often so it's very exciting for them when it does happen.

We got the go ahead for the babies' birthday party, which we are going to have in the volunteer house. We have started planning, it's going to be great. We haven't told the kids about it yet though, they are going to be really excited. One of these days I will bring my camera in so that I can share some pictures, I just keep forgetting.

Here's something random about the city I live in that I wanted to share. In Peru, the garbage trucks play music so that people know to bring out their trash. I have heard this many times, usually they play children's songs. This morning, while eating my breakfast, I heard the truck that passes by my house, and the song it was blaring was none other than the band Aqua's smash hit "Barbie Girl." It's pretty hilarious, and a very accurate version. Apparently they always play that song. I wonder if the driver ever gets sick of it..