Kids, disease and new volunteers!

Getting back from Mancora meant having to change attitude significantly. The constant lying on the beach was traded in for a more regular day at school, which as bad as it sounds, is really something we were looking forward to. Seeing the kids again on the first day of school was great, and this time with even more kids we hadn´t met yet. Because summer school was more about the fun and games, regular school has allowed us to get more one on one time with the kids which is really the most enjoyable part of it all. AC was as usual paired up with Benjamin, a 5 year old with downs syndrome and weak chin muscles. Work with him usually consists of making him exercise his muscles by blowing up balloons or just attempting to make him talk. I was given a student named Robert, also with downs syndrome. He has a hard time socialising with the other kids, so my job was primarily to play games with him and make him feel more appreciated before returning to class with him. We´ve both been attending the regular classes as well, trying, and not always succeeding, to keep the kids under somewhat control. Went to rainbow house after school yesterday as well, was as always a pleasure to be there with the rainbow house kids who mostly don´t attend the regular school at the rainbow centre. One of their substitute moms decided to leave recently, and so we had to go also to see how the new "mom" was coping with having 6 kids run around.

We now have two more volunteers at the rainbow centre, both girls. CIS, I really look forward to your visit, especially for some male company. Nobody dares take the trip to cusco with me to watch football anymore, for example. Nevertheless, both new volunteers are very nice and sociable. Because we´ve been quite busy recently, the only chance we´ve had to really get to know them has been around the dinner table where it´s getting harder by the day to cook with no oven, forcing you to really be creative with the stove.

My day today was not the best i´ve ever had. Experienced a hurting stomach and some nausea last night, and at school this morning when my stomach wasn´t feeling the best, AC forced me into a collectivo to Cusco in order to see the doctor. She insisted on coming with me in case something happened on the way, but I felt bad for ruining her day at the school. Got to the doctor, took some tests and found out I have 4 different kinds of salmonella, one strong kind and the other 3 either on the way up or dying out. On top of that, some parasites as well. Already forgot the name of it, but it was much less serious and easily killed with some pills supposedly. I have had to buy a bag full of antibiotics which, probably for the good, means no drinking or unhealthy eating for the next 10 days. I feel perfectly fine today, making it quite frustrating, and unless I feel significantly worse in the next few days, I don´t have to drop by hospital. In denmark, salmonella is made out to be the worst thing since cancer, but down here it really isn´t as serious. They know how to deal with it, and it´s very common. There are no serious symptoms in my case at least.

Will be back to update soon,

Alex