Saturday, April 4, 2009

Traveller Not Tourist


I am in my destination city where I will be doing volunteer work for the month of April. The organization is called Traveller Not Tourist, conveniently located at travellernottourist.com, and currently has two projects, an orphanage and school. I´m in the school, and it´s basically an after school program for kids in a poorer neighborhood on the outskirts of Arequipa in Flore Tristan. It takes about forty minutes by bus to arrive to the school from the TNT house, which is where I´m living. The house is amazing and huge. We even have internet here, although some keys on the keyboard don´t function, like the parentheses. There is a tiny jardín, garden, which is basically a nice patch of green grass you can get to after walking through the house, as in not by the road, where we can read or just soak in the sun. A school is on the other side of the wall of the garden, so we hear the bell every morning at 8am. There are two beds per bedroom, most rooms have their own bathroom. Mine doesn´t, but it isn´t a big deal to me. The ´communal´ bathroom is right outside my bedroom door, and whoever is in my bedroom are basically the only people who use it. The other volunteers are extremely amiable and for the most part are from the U.K. or Australia. Some people know Spanish, some are taking classes for the first time. It´s a great mixture. I´ve helped with some translating/talking on the phone for girls who know little Spanish. I like it.

2 comments:

  1. So exciting. Also, I was reading this out loud to Steve, and it took me a lot of thought to pronounce jardín, because here the "j" is pronounced like a "y"

    Yogging. Apparently you just run for an extended period of time.

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  2. Ooh, how exciting! I love that you're doing this, girlie. Live it up for Him :)
    Love!

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