Well! Much has happened since my last entry. I will tell you about the placements first. I am no longer working at the boys orphanage. They are sweet but it is so badly organised there that no one tells the volunteers what to do except help the boys with their homework - which my spanish is not good enough for and which no one needs help with anyway. Other than that they seem to shower all morning so there is just a big empty square in which to wander aimlessly and occasionally hide from the directora in case she comes and tells me I am useless. So, following this revelation, me and Jen desided to work with the disabled children instead. When we visited the place before (it is part of a hospital where about 50 physically and some mentally disabled kids live because their families can´t look after them) me and the other girls all decided it looked too hard because almost none of the children can speak and many cant feed or go to the toilet by themselves. After having nothing to do at the boys though, me and Jen decided we wanted a challenge so we started there last monday. It was pretty good and it is really obvious that the children are all really in need of attention so we mostly played and smiled with them. Sadly, near the end when I was finishing feeding a very sweet boy called Christian, I started to feel sick and when we got back I was sick all night and then ill for the rest of the week. Because I think that I got ill there, and also because I now associate the smell of the food with feeling sick, just walking in when we went yesterday made me feel nautious and by the time it was feedingtime, I had to leave. I am really annoyed because they clearly need help there but everytime I go in I just feel like I´m going to be sick so I really dont think i can go back. I will really miss Christian and some of the others - although not this mean one that attacks all the others when no one is looking and who tried to strangle me yesterday.

So, yeah the past week or so has generally been annoying what with being sick and feeling useless etc. I have never missed my mum so much. Sunday was ace though - I was pretty much recovered and we went rafting on this BEAUTIFUL river. Every single view looked like a painting. Along the banks there were occasionally some kids who seemed to like it a lot when we waved and shouted HOLA to them. They probably just thought we looked hilarious screaming and getting drenched in our rubber rafts. All the guides were great too and one of them gave me his ice cream on the way back on the coach.

So, I am hoping for better things this week. I am now going to go to the safehouse 4 days a week (and going to see if I can do extra English lessons because of that) and Chincheros on friday. It was wicked when I went, wow! 2 fridays ago. It does seem like ages. The kids are pretty well behaved and really enthusiastic - especially one or two of the boys who like to shout out the answer to everything. Because it was our first lesson and we wanted to see how much they knew, we played lots of games like simon says and shouting out a verb and they had to do it. (´Dance!´ was the best one for that although a couple of the shy girls were less keen) I was mostly the shouting out person and was having a great time! stand up! sit down! turn around! DANCE! jump! run! DANCE! hahahaha. I felt like a right sargeant major - it was great!

Anyway, I am hoping my safehouse girls are as good. Actually I should proably start planning a lesson! I have to go in an hour! ARGH! I am going to go now and do that. We are going to Puno and Lake Titticaca this weekend which should be AYMAYZING. More news later. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX