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I seem to have been up to so much since I last updated this blog! Work is going well, the kids are so sweet, its exhausting though. I've been finding out a bit more about the background of some of them and it's so sad, but the kids are amazing, they just get on with things and have fun. One of the girls (she's 4 or 5) lives with her "older" brothers and sisters who are only 6 or 7, as their mum has to work away. The teacher, Laura, at my school said she saw her walking down to the river to wash her own clothes. I've been helping Laura with the lessons, helping the kids with their work (cutting and pasting and painting etc), helping out when they brush their teeth, tying their shoelaces etc, and just generally playing with them and hugging them lots!!
Settling in well here, it feels like home. We're eating too much though, Bilma feeds us so well we're going to turn in to little fatties!! We've made friends with some of the locals too, mainly the tour guides who seem to want to make friends with the tourists! We've been out to a few bars which were experiences! We went to a kareoke bar the other night and we had to leave as we nearly started a fight (well not us exactly but a drunk guy wouldn't leave us alone and another drunk guy wanted to fight him so we left!!). We've also been to play pool at a place opposite our house which was funny as we were soooo bad at it, yet we had a massive audience! Very embarassing! We discovered the beach by the river 5 minutes away from our house a few days ago (there's pics on here) which is so beautiful, had a lovely refreshing swim in the river! I'm getting bitten to death though, the bugs seem to love me! Bilma's been looking after me by bathing them in some water she made from some special leaves in her garden (I can't remember the name!).
This weekend we went away to the jungle for the weekend! We stayed in Cabañas Shangrila, it was so beautiful with views over the Amazon. On Saturday morning we went on a hike through the jungle and went canyoning, which was the most terrifying thing I've ever done....but I'd do it again! It basically involved "spiderman-ing" up waterfalls, with your feet on one side of the water, arms on the other, body kind of horizontal across....the photos might help to explain!! The jungle was fun, apart from when a spider with a bright yellow body landed on me!! We saw lots of bats and spiders, but no snakes! We went back to the lodge for lunch and then headed out in the afternoon to go tubing in the river, lots of fun! After the ride back to the lodge in the back of a truck sat on the tubes in the blazing sun, we lay in the hammocks watching the sunset with a cold beer...bliss! The evening was hilarious, we sat and played cards and had salsa lessons from the guides, but there were so many massive insects everywhere that we were all so jumpy! And we saw a tarantula!!! On Sunday I got up early and lay in the hammock on my balcony looking at the rainbows, I love it here! Then we had a day of white water rafting, so good! Although I'm paying for it now! When we went through one of the rougher rapids I split my knee open, then I got bitten loads, and got soooo sunburnt! So now I'm red and white and in pain! It was worth it though!
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