sunday 22 feb

What can i say? I will add lots of pictures as i feel i want to represent more of the group of kids to you, and also the place we live in. All the trip and activites have been possible because of your donations..

The first picture is the Arequipa center square PLAZA.

The main square has the big Catholic

cathedral which is made out of white
rock called SILLAR. This rock is from the Misti volcano that sleeps beside "the white city". We call down to the plaza when we want to change dollars and get some food.

Every morning if i look out my window i see Chachani volcano and the other picture on the right is Misti volcano.

I love to be reminded that just as this powerfull volcano is looking over the city so is God Almighty who looks over each of us.. He is more powerfull and wonderfull than anything you can imagine. Psalm 19 comes to mind every time..

Today we went for a trip.. we visted an old mill. It was really sunny and the kids had a great time.. they ran around and you would not think that they had a backround that has brought them to this childrens home.. and this is how God sees us -from whatever bad backround we have come from He sees you as people He loves..

This is Seth, another volunteer. Pray for him as he works with the youth and teaches photography to them.

And the rest of the team. Lidia, Julia and Andrew from the U.S, and Lisia from Germany, and Jorge who is going to be on the team for a year possibly. We met up with him and went go-carting with the older dudes...

Peter is really doing well with the kids - they love him to bits..!

Hold on to a good thing! ....................don't lose it...

friday 20th feb

Hi to all, it is raining here! I'm wet and full of mud because we decided to go off for dinner in Sabandia - a far off place in the valley, where you can't really get a taxi back. No one had a phone but they did have a quad bike, so Peter drove and i sat on the back, getting splattered by mud. The dude we payed 5 soles to get to a main road to get a taxi ran behind us. He didn't last too long as he got splatter in mud and was let behind. We stopped a taxi in the pouring rain but Peter had a 50 sole note only. But half way down the trip we got this changed in to smaller coins, like 100 & 50 cents..... hahaha..

A good end to a rather stressfull day. The boys did not obey - they were to go on a tour - there's more to this, but i can't be stressed to retell.. But the boys are not going tomorrow to Sabandia to enjoy the quad bikes and horse riding..

I'm trying to think what we did yesterday..

the picture on the right is of the day trip before some boys were in trouble.. we took them to 2 museums, one of Peru Arequipa and other of pre-inca stuff. This trip and many others were possible because of your donations.
The picture is of three of the groups: older girls, younger girls, and the boys group i'm a tutor with. The younger boys group was not in this picture as they were still in the museum.



These days we have been going with the boys on individual trips, giving them 15 soles to spend. The plan is to go with a tutor. It's like a mentoring project. The boys get a bit of their time, and by going out with a tutor they also may open up more about stuff they want to talk about..

Peter is doing a great job with this. He has been taking some to a playstation shop to play and cinema and go-carting.. I took a boy, Jorge, to meet up with his granny because he has not really seen her or other people from his family.. This was quite a tour and took some finding, going from one family member to another and crossing all part of town.. eventually we did find her. She bought him and his younger brother that did not come with us a big bag of fruit.. After this we went into town and He wanted to buy some ornamental fish.. so we got a wee fish tank and two fish... but the last days his fish have died. so we have got two more.. He is 11 and really loves and is proud for his small family.. He has named the fish Peter and J-d.. the J-d fish died the other day.. i think it drowned..!

Lockhart one, Peru nil

"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you´ll land among the stars." Les Brown, Author
"Controversy creates cash." Eric Bischoff, RAW General manager

Greetings traveller,
Life in Peru is a lot like the movie Apocalypto but with less running about and more fizzy pop. It´s also a bit like the movie Dead Poet´s Society but without Robin Williams. So if you can imagine a cross between those two movies you get a fairly good idea of what it´s like at the home.
We sometimes get to watch movies - almost all of them feature talking dogs. The talking dog genre is perhaps the most underrated of all the movie genres. We saw one yesterday where loads of dogs started running a hotel - crazy (or as the Peruvians say "loco"!)
I´ve had the opportunity to try to teach the people at the home English. Watching me do this is a bit like watching Peter Crouch try to play football. I always laugh when they can´t say a word in English - it sounds sly but you´d understand if you heard them - it´s hilarious. The English language makes no sense either - it´s ridiculously hard if you don´t already know it plus my accent is completely different form the American accent they´re used to hearing. Even when i definitely know the right words in Spanish people tend to not understand because i say them in a Northern Irish accent. Also, i tend to just throw one or two Spanish words into an English sentence in the hope they´ll understand eg. "What a belter day - proper scorchio so it is." This seems to work or else people just do what i do when they don´t know what people are saying - just nod, smile and say yes. I´m not going to try talking in a Spanish accent, however, as when i do i sound a bit like Manuel from Fawlty Towers if he was really angry.
Everything is opposite in the Southern hemisphere - the water in the toilet goes in the opposite direction, it rains up and hamburgers eat people. Everyone is also quite short which is good because it makes me feel big. In fact i´m 3 inches taller than Peru´s tallest man. The other thing that´s different is that people get up very early. I was sick for a while so when we were told in the staff meeting we would be getting the boys up before 6 i started searching desperately through my Spanish phrasebook for the phrase "wind your neck in". Remember it´s their summer holidays - personally i think that´s a bit early. If i was woken up that early in my summer holidays i think i´d go mental before too long. We get up a bit later now though so it´s OK.
We used to have meetings every day at two with staff and interns. I didn´t know what was happening but i sat there in a vain attempt to pick up some Spanish. Sometimes people started making very funny hand gestures (you can only imagine) while they were talking seriously which was hilarious and it took all of my self restraint to not break into a really loud laugh - it was even funnier because i didn´t know what they were talking about and no-one else laughed.
It can be very hard to get enough good food - i´m fearful i´ll lose my trademark curves. I´ve been trying to eat loads when i get the chance - after this i need to go and buy loads of fruit to build up my immune system which has taken a bit of a battering. I´m constantly getting scammed by people selling stuff on the street/people in general because i´m foreign and people assume i don´t have a clue (their assumption is correct). I stand out a bit and may as well wear a t-shirt saying "I love being ripped off" although i fear if i wear such a t-shirt it may only make the situation worse. A fruit lady tried to shortchange me so i just stood there and made the international symbol for money (rub the thumb and forefingers together) until she gave me more money back. Lockhart one, Peru nil. Hopefully i´ll build up a repuation over Peru as someone not to mess with - maybe i´ll tip one of their stalls over to create an example.
My main method of transportation would be taxi - they´re handy but the drivers are mental - i wish you could see the constantly terrified expression on my face as they drive me around. We got a great driver (quite a big, old man) who started doing a dance when this great techno beat came on the radio. He was loving it and so were we. I also saw a van which had a transformer sticker on it - why are there not more of these? If you have one then people will think that your car is a transformer.
We went into a travel agents because they advertised free biscuits and tea if you let them talk to you. I spilt my free tea overmyself a number of times (due to a problem with the polystyrene cup but i´ll not go into detail). The man had a very high voice and, again, it was very hard to not break into a very loud laugh. I wish he´d told me off in his very high voice when i spilt the tea - he didn´t - but that would´ve been hilarious.
We got the chance to take a cheeky day trip to the beach which was great. An old man on the bus was wearing a helmet as he´d bumped his head on the roof on a previous bus journey. I hope to become an eccentric old man like him. The beach was great and i got sunburn again - i´ll never learn. Today we went to the zoo in Arequipa which made Belfast zoo look brilliant. I enjoyed it though - there was penguins and monkeys which kept me happy. The wee kid i was to look after wasn´t as interested in animals and just wanted to go to the play area. He was sick of the way i was pointing at animals and deliberately getting their names wrong. Anyway, we missed the fantastapottamous which only sings twice a day. I also enjoyed criticising zoos in other cities which i´d never been to claiming they had a labrador as their main exhibit and also claiming Belfast zoo had animals "you could only dream of".
Well, until next time keep up the good work and make sure you stay updated. If you need to know any specific details try typing your questions into a website called ask jeeves. If that fails i suppose you can send an email or even leave a question underneath the blog although i probably can´t respond as this technology is beyond me.
Ciao,
Peter Lockhart