So I got the exciting email last week telling me where exactly in Peru I will be! I will be spending 12 months in a Northwesterly city called Trujillo. I was so excited there are no words, I got the email at school, about 5 minutes before I had to leave for my music lesson and it was killing me that I couldn't just spend that half hour researching my placement and the city and whatnot. Then afterwards when I went to class my teacher was all like "Heather, you're looking very perky today" - I have to admit I was a little bit hyper/crazy/doing everything with much more enthusiasm than normal and I'm pretty sure I was close to hyperventilating. Maybe that's too big a reaction to be counted as 'normal' but hey ho, this is where I'll be living for a whole 12 months, so it's pretty important to me. Anyway to inform y'all about where I'll be eating and sleeping from this August 2013, here goes:
First of all, I don't think I have even explained where Peru is in the world. That might help....
Trujillo is a beautiful coastal town, sandwiched right between the Pacific coast to the West and the Andes to the East (this is just ideal for me...as you can probably tell from the title of my blog I'd love to go to the Andes and this will provide the perfect opportunity - yay!)
Trujillo is reasonably large, meaning there is a lot going on yet still preserving that sense of belonging to a community. Pan pipes or traditional Andean music are often heard and the varied geography is some of the most astonishing in the world, with the country being split into three parts: the dry desert in the West; the Andean mountain strip down the centre of the country (along the Western coast of all of South America); and the Amazon Rainforest, covering most of the East and into Brazil.
The lost city of Chan Chan is close by to Trujillo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site with pre-Incan ruins which covers 20km² and was built in 850 AD.
I will be working with around 60 orphans and abandoned children, generally helping with the day to day running of the orphanage, along with organising activities such as arts, crafts and music. I will also encourage the children to study (although I hear this tends to be rather difficult!) which may involve teaching some English.
The home is split up into 8 "family units" comprising of one tia (house mother) and 8 kids in each. Myself and my partner (whom I will meet in July) will be living in a small apartment within the orphanage with a lounge, kitchen, bathroom and 2 bedrooms. There is, however, no fridge, so I will have to survive without my daily doses of milk!
Okay that was maybe my longest ever post (or at least it felt like it - maybe it's just because it was the most exciting post) so I'll leave you with this picture of some really cute Peruvian kids.
Heather <3
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