Placement letter!

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” - Gustave Flaubert

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

Finished fundraising!

“We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.” - Hilaire Belloc

So I have finally raised over £5,400 for my gap year. Words cannot describe how amazing this is, and what a relief it was to get that final cheque in the post! It's a huge weight off my shoulders and it has still not sunk in yet, even though it's been over 2 weeks. Everyone is saying to me "Oh my goodness, that's incredible, you must be so proud of yourself" etc, but actually...it's not felt like such a big deal. Sorry to be a downer on everyone... Everyone thinks (me included) that fundraising 5 and a half grand is going to be a massive task, I'm never going to manage it before I go away, stress stress stress will I even be allowed to go away (this is what Mum was thinking until 2 weeks ago). And I'm not going to lie, it did take some hard work. But nowhere near as much as I thought it would take. I heard some horror stories of people not finishing and having to frantically fundraise during their exams and try to juggle revision with planning events. I did not want that to be me, and I tried my best not to be. And, miraculously, I did it. I think a big part of what I raised came from my ceilidh, and another even bigger part from trusts. I was not relying at all on trusts; in fact, I'd almost forgotten about them until about a month ago. I was sitting at about £3,000, and was thinking of other events I'd better organise to raise the next £2,500. I was hoping to have another bagpack since my one in January was so successful; I was hoping to organise a cake sale at school at some point; I was organising an abseil down the Forth Rail Bridge in June (I am still doing that, just to clarify...more info will come soon when all the details are finalised!). And then lots of trusts seemed to have had meetings in March/April which then came flooding in; I got about £1,000 one week. Anyway enough about that, I'm just really glad I've done it now and can relax a bit and concentrate on my upcoming exams!

Heather <3