Indescribable

3 months has gone and past. It's amazing how fast time goes by. I can't believe this experience is already over! It has been the hardest thing ever to leave my amazing friends, family, and kids. I can't describe the place they have in my heart and how close we have gotten. It has changed my life more than I can say.

Price
expensive plane ticket
more souvenirs than I should have bought
way too much food due to an expanded stomach

Priceless
gained 3 new sisters a brother and a second mom
many friends forever
wonderful changes in my perspective from this beautiful culture
learned how to love unconditionally, to over 50 kids
been told 'I love you and will never forget you' by all of those kids
seen how much the kids loved me by their tears and pleas not to go when I left.
received a note from Victor David (my 12 yr old best friend) saying I am the best friends he's ever had and poems he wrote me about never forgetting me. He says he will wish every night that I return to the Aldea someday...a treasure beyond value

*most of the kids are in the pictures of their houses. Some are missing, mostly the older girls.

It doesn't get any better than Tia Carla. She is truly and angel on this earth.

Casa 1
divas for sure, but the cutest ones out there. Exhausting, but loads of fun

Antonina
She gave me a death grip hug and wouldn't let go begging me not to go. Almost broke my heart.

Casa 2
by far the cutest house in the Aldea. These boys are precious!

Victor David.
 I don't have words to describe the relationship I have with this kid. Best friend is close, but doesn't seem like quite enough. If anything just the relationship I was able to develop with him was enough to make this trip amazing. He will be forever in my heart!

                                      

                                                    Jose
                                                     He will melt your heart in a second. That is a fact.

Casa 9
A mystery. You never know what to expect from this house. Everyone is fighting over who gets to take Lucho home.

Casa 10
There is no description for this house. Energetic crazy house. You always had to watch your back for a sneak attack from these wild girls. 6 of the 11 eggs on my birthday came from this house...

Casa 8
Sweet. They are all so sweet in this house. They definitely weren't shy about showing their love for you and doing all they could to make sure you were taken care of and welcomed.

Casa 5
My second home. My boys!!!! (minus a few who were being bums and sulking because I was leaving and refused to get in the picture) I LOVE these boys! They are hilarious!! I spent most of my nights hanging out in their house goofing off with them. They gave me a hard time a lot, but were also really protective of me and didn't any of the others mess with me. So many good times with my boys!

Miguelito
kept insisting I was his girlfriend. then again would also argue anyone who doubted he was a cat...very precious. Has walking and mental disabilities, but that doesn't make his heart less loving. Loves to mess around with the boys.

Classic!
Doesn't get any better than this. To make it clear Miguel was laughing a second later and proceeded to leave his pants hoisted up high until someone fixed them a long time later against his protests. Ruben-the wedgie giver- is the biggest stud on this planet. That is all there is to say about him. 

Yunior
An amazing guy. He is 16 years old, a very hard worker, and has the kindest personality I have ever seen. He is always going out of his way to take care of others and to make sure everyone is happy. I would look forward to when he came home from work every night so I could go and talk to him about anything. He has the best laugh I have ever heard, I didn't hear it once without it making me laugh. He didn't really know very many of the past volunteers because he works and is gone most of the day, I am so grateful I took the time to get to know him and become close with him. He has blessed my life tremendously. He is one of a kind.

My boys
This is about as normal as it will get for a picture with them. I can't even begin to describe how much i'm going to miss my boys! A blast every second with them. 

Juan Carlos
I don't really know how to put this one into words...Similar to Victor David, best friend just doesn't seem to do it. Younger brother to Yunior he has similar qualities, but with a more spastic flare. My last few days at the Aldea he refused to talk to me and completely ignored me because he was so upset that I was leaving. He finally came around the last night and broke down and told me what was going on. It was so touching to see how much he cared. He kept telling me not to worry because it will only be 3 years until he turns 18 (the age they have to leave the aldea) and then he is coming to the United Sates to find me. I wish that could happen more than anything! Similar to Yunior he works a lot and hasn't gotten to know a lot of the past volunteers, and would tell me how glad he was he got to know me and that I cared enough to get to know him. Getting to know him and being able to help him understand how to be a better person and live a good life was extremely rewarding. I can't imagine what it would have been like without this great relationship.

No question that the price I paid to come was easily outweighed by the priceless benefits I've received. Best decision I could have made. No regrets, no doubts. I recommend this to anyone in a heartbeat!

Pictures!!

Victor being a China! They love to do this and tell me about the Chinas, so funny!

Our big match against the older boys

Manuel...so cute with his little raspy voice and missing teeth

Trust fall. They loved it!

Somehow I don't think that's going to work out for ya bud...

some of my boys :)
Juan Carlos, Junior, Miguel, Ruben

This is what I call cheating

Hiking in Cajamarca, so beautiful!

Birthday eggs...Ruben so generously shared this one with me
(sorry the pic is sideways I forgot to rotate it and it takes ages to upload so its staying like this...)

Classic

We did a craft with the kids where they all made crowns and were princes and princesses

Forget Hawaii, go to Mancora

Border Patrol? Nope just walk right in

Meet Eugine the crab, he was our pet for a little bit

Puenta Sal

Another beach with another name that I dont know...

That is a little monkey I got to hold in Ecuador, sweet I know.

Ugliest puppy known to mankind

Okay so I know I've kind of been slacking in the updating my blog area...I apologize and will try to do better. Internet is really sketchy here and I usually don't have it for that long so sometimes (a.k.a. this past month) I run out of time to do the blog. So here is a quick update on this month;

-I convinced the older boys they weren't too cool for life and to talk to me and now they come over everyday to play futbol or just joke around. They are hilarious!

-Katie and I are teaching a dance class...yep ironic since neither of us dances much

-We went to the temple of the Sun and the Moon which was AWESOME!!

-The kids started school so they are gone in the mornings meaning we take the babies and watch them for a few hours.

-We had a big party for the day of the woman that included lots of dancing and laughing

-I have perfected the art of making crepes

-We went to Cajamarca to visit the other volunteers there. It was a blast! It is gorgeous there! We hiked up to a waterfall  (which was absolutely freezing but worth it to go under it) and to some caves. We also did a bit of shopping in the markets and lots of games and treats

I am now 19!! I had an amazing birthday spent with the kids.

Apparently a big Peruvian tradition is to smash eggs on the birthdaygirl/boy...I ended the day with 11 eggs in my hair, Katie with 9. Most of the time one kid would have the egg and about 5 others would chase you and then hold you down for the one with the egg to come and smash it then they would all rub it in to make sure it was nice and disgusting for you. After smashing their own eggs on us the other volunteers so kindly locked us out of the house and wouldn't let us in making it impossible to avoid all the eggs. Victor David and Juan Carlos each did a sneak attack acting all nice and innocent talking to me then BAM i've got egg oozing down in my face. Then to add to that they shoved our face into the cake smearing chocolate frosting all up in there. Needless to say a long shower was included in the night plans. It was an amazing day!! Then the next day our friends in Trujillo threw a party for us and we got our faces shoved in another cake, this time successfully clogging my nose with frosting. It was really fun though so I can't complain.

Pictures will have to come later because we are leaving in a few minutes to travel up North, I'm way excited!! 

Busy-Crazy-Exhausting-Bliss

Meet  Pip. They have lots of baby chicks so we all got to pick one to be 'ours' and named them. (Mine is cuter than Carrie's, just sayin)

On the walk to the pool...beautiful!

We had a runaway cockroach and I didn't really want it under my bed while I was sleeping so we convinced it to come out.

There are little rectangles above our doors and most of them have glass but a few don't, including the one to our front door. On occasion it has been necessary to send a little kid through that gap to unlock the door. We wanted to see if I would fit...I fit enough to reach down and unlock the door, but not get all the way through. 

We had secret friends for Valentines day with the young adults but didn't have time or the supplies to wrap them so we improvised and used paper towels from the bathroom...

Flor got adopted on Thursday. She is so stinkin cute!! I miss her so much!

One of the activities with the young adults was fun random activities, one including one where we got wrapped up in balloons and our teammates had to pop all the balloons. The catch is their hands were tied behind their back...it was hilarious.

Chan Chan = absolutely incredible!! 

This is Alfredo. He's coming home with me. 

We helped them make valentines for each other and then delivered them on Monday to all the kids. They were all so excited! It was really cute. 

classic game of chicken in the pool. We take them swimming every monday, wednesday, friday. A lot of them don't know how to swim though so I spend a lot of time teaching them how to swim. We put a huge log in the pool and the kids love to try and stand on it and balance but since there's at least 10 of them trying at the same time they find it kind of difficult. Entertaining for me though! (no that isn't a coloring fluke, the water really is brown due to all the algae floating around in it) 

Random Facts

We were serenaded by a big Peruvian band in tights.

The kids in the Aldea are hilarious. Especially when the boys laugh in a high pitched squeal, gets me every time.

In February they have a festival where you throw water balloons and everyone, so we are going to get soaked everywhere we go. The older boys in the Aldea have already started a war, they don’t stand a chance.

All of the sidewalks and floors at the Aldea are slippery because they wax them regularly…needless to say there’s never a shortage of entertainment from people slipping.

It’s not a good thing to be skinny in Peru because then they’ll just try to give you even more food to fatten you up.

 I don’t know why they even bothered to paint lines and arrows on the roads or put up stop signs, they really don’t mean anything.

We had 26 people in a combi (kind of a mix of a van and bus…don’t really know how to describe it) that had 15 seats. I was on a wooden stool that decided to tip backwards after 5 minutes, so for 30 minutes I was trying to balance myself on a wobbling stool on bumpy roads so I wouldn’t tumble back onto the clump of people packed in behind me. Not unusual circumstances.

I still love Peru.

Peruvian parties are insane. We had a dance party with the young adults from our ward on our roof for Carrie’s birthday that went from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. They named it the ‘white party’ and we had to dress in all white (shirts, pants, shoes, everything) which actually looked really cool until at the end when I sat on a stool that was wet and muddy…that didn’t look so cool. It was so much fun but I am exhausted!! They kept making me and Katie dance ‘americano’ for them, ha good thing they don’t know what it’s supposed to look like. They all got a big kick out of seeing us white girls try to dance their dances, so much so that I only got to sit out a few songs the entire time. Fact, our hips just don’t move like theirs do. They would all watch us and laugh then try to tell us we were doing good…yeah real convincing. It might have helped if someone would have been willing to teach us, but they didn’t want to, they were enjoying watching us look like fools too much to teach us how to really do it. But they tried and couldn’t do our dances so we got to laugh at them. All in all it was a very entertaining night.

some of us at our white party

my friend Brian, we taught Wendy and Candy a game called chubby bunny and they loved saying it so much they nicknamed Brian chubby bunny...I don't think they really know what it means ha

the band that sang to us

typical view of Peru. I love it!

the view on the drive to the Aldea. There are sugar cane fields forever!