Picture updates

Here are a few pictures from the past week.  Other more recent events include the first broken bone that I have seen any of the kids get.  That was Thursday, Luis was running around and fell really hard on his shoulder.  They gave him some ibprofin and he was laying down.  I went to check on him and noticed he had a big lump on his shoulder.  I told Gina and Gladys that they better go get him checked out because I thought his collar bone was broken.  Sure enough, he did break his collar bone.  So now he is in a little sling for the next 3 weeks, which really stinks because thats pretty much the rest of his vacations.

Today Samantha and I went to Pastor Auden and Wendy's house to clean it up and do their laundry because they have to leave 3 days earlier than they thought because they lost their daughter's passport.  So they left the house and all their dishes and laundry because they had to leave in such a hurry.  I made bacon cheeseburgers for lunch and Sam made red velvet cake with cream cheese icing.  It was an excellent lunch and a good way to get on the internet.

Enjoy the pictures

The Wedding Crasher

Cool guy section

My Peruvian moms

This is at 5:00, the time at which the bride is scheduled to be walking down the isle notice the guy center stage with no shirt on.

Little boys waiting for my mom to come open the door to play games

Day at the beach

House mom Gina with the Baby

Eating a mango

Wedding and Fun

First off sorry for not posting in a while.  We haven´t had internet in the school or orphanage on account that our supplier has not paid their bill. Ya, our supplier has not paid their bill.  And also forgive me for this post being a little short but right now I am in an inernet locutorio crammed into a cubicle that is 2 inches wider than my shoulders and my legs stuffed inbetween the computer tower and the cubicle wall.  Also, I don´t want to upload any photos right now because the thought of me inserting my usb drive into one of these computers makes me a little sick to my stomach.  Lots of viruses out there.

This last weekend Maribel, the orphanage director got married.  All the kids went and everyone was dressed up very nicely (I´ve got lots of good pictures to share later).  It was a very typical Peruvian wedding, at 5:00 when Maribel was supposed to be walking down the isle there were still shirtless guys putting the finishing touches on the flower arches.  She did walk down the isle just a little later.  Everyone ended up having a great time and we had no major incidents.  I did however meet a professional wedding crasher.  This gentleman met one of our friends the morning of the wedding and they started talking,  he conviced our friend that he was a good instrumentalist and would love to play for the wedding. So he did.  He played the harp, the guitar, and the accordian and he was indeed very good.  Then somehow he ended up sitting at the table next to all the groomsmen and bridesmaids then at the end of the wedding he ended up entertaining all the kids with a bunch of silly songs.

My parents just left yesterday and hopefully they can call my Peruvian cellphone through skype to let me know they got there ok.  They did a really good job of entertaining the kids and freezing water bottles.

Ok I really got to go because my time is running out.  Sorry if the spelling is bad the spell checker on this only has two languages, espanol and espanol(castellano).

Next time I will try and figure out how to post pictures and hopefully some more details.

Camping trip

I just got back from a three day, two night camping trip with all the kids of the orphanage.  Well, I call it camping, they call it staying at someone else’s house.  That’s because my definition of camping is pretty much staying anywhere that there is no electricity or running water and lots and lots of mosquitoes.  We stayed at Gina’s parents house who live out on the farm.  They are surrounded by rice fields and irrigation canals but not so much of anything else.

To get all the kids there I made three trips back and forth each with a load of supplies and kids.  On the first trip I carried 7 mattresses on the top of the van.  Before you freak out they where only about 6 inches thick each but still that is a lot of mattress.  It was enough to make one of the tie down ropes break on the way there and send them all flying down the highway.  By the time I got turned around to go pick them up a friendly gentlemen in another van had stopped and gathered them all up.  I drove up to thank him and get the mattresses back on top of our van for all the kids, however the man insisted that the mattresses were his.  That is of course because he found them and risked his life gathering them up on the road.  I told him that was ridiculous and of course he knew that the mattresses belonged to us, however he would not give them back without some sort of finder’s fee so I have him 20 soles.  I really could’ve probably gotten away with giving him 10 soles but I didn’t have any smaller bills on me.  So lesson learned always carry small bills in case you have to “tip” someone.

After two more uneventful trips all the kids were there and the fun began.  We did a lot of swimming in the canals that day and played some board games that my mom had brought.  We ate lunch and dinner that was prepared on a fire and I took my parents along with the littlest kids up to a neighbor’s house where they could sleep on beds and take showers.  My parents had an eventful night with a couple of sick kids.

The next day we swam some more and I took the older boys bird hunting with their sling shots.  We did actually get one bird which I was pretty amazed at because those sling shots don’t have great accuracy.  Then we did some swimming.  Then we swam some more.

Overall it was a great swim..camping trip.  I am a little relieved however that the initial period of 10 days got shortened to three.  Ten days of swimming..err..camping might have been a little too much. 

 



The House



Dinner table



 



Bird Hunting



One of the swimming holes



Back in Action

My parents and I made it safely to Pacasmayo.  The most dangerous part of the arrival was when we had a herd of kids rush the van as soon as we pulled through the front gate.  It was just as great to see everyone as I had imagined.  Lots of hugs and high fives all around. 

I started my shift right off the bat.  Gina, the house mom of the boy,s has been working 24 hours a day 6 days a week for the past year and a half, so I figured that while I'm here I will make sure she gets some much needed time with her own kids.  In order to do that I'm taking the night shift,  I'm working in the boys house from 8:00 at night till 11:00 in the morning. Don't worry it's a lot easier than it sounds and I am really enjoying it.  I come in around 8:00 and since its summer vacation we all stay up till about 11:00 watching movies or playing cards or board games then we all wake up around 8:00, I make breakfast they do their chores then send them outside.  Ya, thats right, I make breakfast for all 11 of us.  Today I got the kids in a little bit of trouble because I sent them outside before they finished all their chores (hey they told me they were done) and when Gina got back at 11:00 she got on to them for not doing them all.

Another funny tangent here, after about 30 minutes back on my first day I was playing soccer with the kids (by the way don't ever play soccer barefoot on concrete when you haven't been doing it in a while or you get some badly bruised feet) Aurellio who is one of the guards came up to me and asked me how to pay for a shipment of bricks they just got in.  30 minutes here and it's like I never left, haha.

Yesterday we took all the kids to the beach.  There is another volunteer here, Samantha, whose mom and brother were visiting.  Friday was their last day so we figured it would be fun to get all the kids down to the ocean.  I brought a surfboard but didn't get too much surfing in as I was busy pushing kids on it through some little waves.  My parents and I are also taking all the kids out to eat in the evenings on rotation.  Thursday night was the older boys, last night was the older girls, tonight is the younger boys and tomorrow probably the younger girls.  

Monday is my meeting with another orphanage in Trujillo.  We are going to talk a little more in depth about a proposed job opening for me there.  I'll let everyone know how it goes.

Also, I'd post pictures but my mom has almost all the pictures on her camera because I was in the water all day yesterday.  When I get a little bit more free time I'll get the pictures from her and put some up here.  The internet is kind of slow as well so that's making it hard to post stuff.

Video

Video

I made a video but it was too long to put on blogger so I had to upload it to Facebook instead.  Please click the "video" link above to watch a slideshow covering my trips to Peru up until this point.  

Wednesday I return to Peru with my parents.  I am returning during a time of a lot of changes that are critical to the future of Casa de Paz and to my future in Peru.  I also just found out today that I am returning on the dawn of a 10 day camping trip, haha should be fun and have lots of stories from that, although don't expect any updates while I'm out in the wilderness.  

So please be praying that the right decisions are made by all parties involved and that we can make sure all the kids at Casa de Paz are ok. 

I also want to thank everyone that has been so supportive to me not only in the last couple weeks but for the last four years.  It's been great so far and I hope it continues to be great in the future.  

The next time you see a post hopefully I will safe in Peru. 

Hasta pronto.