Weeks -1 and… 0!

Hi folks!

This last message will be rather short, since we will need all our time to pack our stuff and to clean up our room today.

Last week, we organized our last reading sessions. To make the story of ‘Peter Pan’ even more attractive, we made our own audio book and created a big board game. The children were not the only ones to have a lot of fun – we really enjoyed it too!

  

 

After that, we visited the ‘Museo Inka’, a beautiful museum about pre-Inca civilizations, the Inca culture and the impact of the Spanish conquest on these cultures. We also had some salsa lessons and went dancing twice in Cusco. Finally, we spent a lot of time on buying our last souvenirs and on finding stuff for Urpi Sonqocha with the money that Jasper’s sister so generously donated.

 

This afternoon, we had to say goodbye to the children. Even though we gave them a lot of presents (a basketball hoop, a basketball, Twister, 12 Disney movies, pictures of ourselves with the children, tissues and candy), and even though Liesbet and Sadith had decided to organise a small party so that they would not get too sad, it was not the easiest day for us. Some of them started to cry and others wouldn’t let go of us. Saying goodbye is never easy, certainly not after five months…

 

 

 

Tomorrow, our plane leaves at 15:20p.m. If everything goes as planned, we will land in Zaventem on Saturday, at 18:30p.m. local time!

See you all very soon!

Weeks -3 and -2

As you already know, we spent the last two weeks visiting museums and Inca sites with our ‘boleto turístico’. Amongst the museums we visited were the ‘Museo histórico regional’, the ‘Choco museo’ and the ‘Museo de arte contemporáneo’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

What we most enjoyed were the Inca sites. We first visited Qorikancha (which, in Quechua, means ‘golden temple’), in the centre of Cusco. This site used to be one of the most important temples in the Inca Empire and was dedicated, amongst others, to the sun, the moon and the rainbow. Its walls were once entirely covered with gold but when the Spaniards arrived, they rapidly took all of it away and started to build a church on top of the temple. What is visible now is the entire Spanish church and only some remains of the Inca temple. But even these few remains are enough to prove the immense architectural talent of the Incas.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After Qorikancha, we went to Pisaq, which is located at some thirty kilometers from Cusco. It took us more than two hours and a lot of sweat to visit this wonderful site surrounded by beautiful mountains.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weeks -5 and -4

Hi folks!

The last few weeks, we organized some ‘lessons in hygiene’. Some of the kids really needed them... We made a PowerPoint presentation in which we taught them three simple rules: clean your nose when necessary, don’t sneeze or cough without using your arm (we don’t want their hands to be full of bacteria either) and don’t sneeze or cough in other people’s faces. It would be nice if they at least learned the last one :p

Seeing that time is closing in on us, the next couple of weeks we are going to try to spend as much time with the kids as possible. Saying goodbye will probably not be a fun job…

 

 

 

By the way, here you can see the movie we showed the kids in order to illustrate our presentation.

 

As some of you may already know, we saved our visits to the Inca sites and museums in and around Cusco for last. Last Friday, we bought a 10-day tourist ticket with which you can visit the most important things in Cusco. Yesterday, we started our tour. We took a bus to Tambomachay and then walked our way back down to Cusco (11km), visiting the Inca sites of Pukapukara, Qenq’o and Saqsayhuamán on the way. Especially the last one was worth the while. In the morning we had quite some rain but, as usual, in the afternoon the sun came out and we even got a bit of a sunburn :)

 

 

 

The walk down to Cusco was really beautiful. We crossed a lot of open fields and woods, and even encountered some horses suffering from a severe identity crisis. Maybe they wanted to be able to produce cow’s milk? Who knows.

 

Whatever we thought we would encounter on the trip, we definitely didn’t expect to find Jesus along the way. He was probably tired of hanging around Rio de Janeiro and decided he needed a change of location.

 

That's all, folks!

P.S. We returned to the hairdresser’s last week, and this time we each had to pay only €2.5.