Alex in Pisco – update 3

Man this place is laid back. As soon as we have finished our first day in the school, we are then told that the Tuesday is a local ´new´ fiesta and that everything is closed, school included.

Frustrating to say the least, we even offered to come and paint varying other classes in the school, to be told that we couldn´t have a key. So Tuesday was spent visiting Ica to do some tasting of the local tipple in Pisco which is a grape brandy, along with other wines (not the best on a one bread roll breakfast), and then sand boarding in the dunes. This place is amazing, small cosmopolitan town that is a million miles away in terms of being different to Pisco in looks and wealth and surrounded by miles and miles of sand dunes.

Don´t feel I should go in to the sightseeing too much as that is certainly not what we are here for, but everything run´s so slow here and the NGO we are working along side likes to run briefs about briefs about briefs. Frustrating doesn´t come close, but we have to accept the way they work out here.

To be fair to them the recent brief was totally valid and is to get us to teach the kids from a young age the importance of trees and plants and animals. So we are currently running classes getting them to design their own gardens, making posters and the likes with what they would like in them. Then in the coming days we are going to be transforming another part of the school in to a garden using the kids ideas.

All in all, as slow as it seems to be with us getting hands on and teaching the kids, they really do seem to have a pretty good level of schooling irrespective of how and where they live. I think we are being treated fairly kindly in that we are given the more fun classes like theatre, painting and sports classes instead of maths and sciences.

The kids though are awesome, they just constantly want to talk to you and play, quite amusing when your walking somewhere to hear a little voice saying good morning in perfect English then going back in to rapido Spanish.

Adios Amigos, Alex

Our Pronino volunteers are blogging from Latin
America. To find out more about Proniño, head to
http://dnc.o2.co.uk/home/Pronino.To see pictures taken by the team, head to Flickr.