Christmas / Navidad / Nadal

Christmas has been a bit weird since we grew up, not as much fun as when you’re little, but this year has to rank up their with the oddest…  I thought that last year in Peru, with everything on Christmas eve was weird enough, but at least it didn’t involve me singing the ‘Fairytale of New York’ with my mum in a tiny, brightly lit bar full of pensioners…

Christmas eve started at about 3 pm when I finally got out of bed… mum had made some snacks because there was apparently going to be food in the bar we were going to (Hepburns) I then sat with mum on the couch and watched about 10 episodes of something called ‘Psychic’ which is some kind of police drama.  We finally got ourselves ready and headed out at about 8 pm.  Hepburns was half full and me and Anna going in probably brought the average age down to about 60…  Mum insisted on buying all our drinks and ordered us a rum and coke each.  There was more rum than coke – Spanish measures are large to start with, and the barman was being generous with the  Christmas spirit.

About half an hour later the place was crowded (and the average age had increased with every new person to come in) and the barman and his wife had passed out hymn sheets and we had all joined in with a few well known British carols.  Then the Christmas karaoke started.  After the second rum and coke I was feeling quite jolly and ended up singing with mum,  then,flushed with success due to the rapturous applause I’d had, I decided to help Anna out singing ‘All I want for Christmas is you’ by Miriah Carey… not necessarily a wise choice… there was a lot of karaoke, some dancing to silly songs (see the video of Anna on Facebook) and the discovery of some kind of vodka that, when mixed with chocolate milkshake, tasted just like a crunchy bar (Thank crunchy it was Friday…).  Thankfully they stopped the Karaoke then… and then it was midnight and I had to go round and kiss everyone a happy Christmas.   The promised food had never materialised… half an hour later we had to help mum walk to the taxi and then had to walk her downstairs to prevent accidents…

Christmas day itself was a lazy affair (Mum and Anna both had hangovers), I stayed in my pyjamas until it was time to get ready to go out for dinner and played on Mario Kart (on the Wii) and the Big Brain academy (on my DS) both of which were presents from Anna.

Dinner was superb.  Mum had booked us into a restaurant in Albir with a 68 Euro menu.  There was no choice, they brought the food out and we ate it – and what food!  We started with a glass of that pink champagne stuff , then had a Prawn in some kind of Pesto, followed by 3 types of duck pate with a truffle mayonaise, then a seafood thing, with puff pastry and one of the nicest scallops I have ever tasted, then sweetbread (pancreas…) which was nicer than I thought it would be, then a sorbet to clear the palate, then venison with some kind of cabbagey-mash, then a delicious pudding with hazlenut icecream, mousse and pastry.  There was nice wine throughout the meal (I drank most of a bottle of white by myself as everyone else was drinking red) and then coffee to finish.   We were all so full that after we’d finished we just wanted to go home and sleep, which is exactly what we did!

Today has been another lazy day – I didn’t get dressed until I wanted to come out and use the internet!  Hopefully tomorrow I’ll actually get out of the house in the daylight and get some fresh air…

Anna is currently making a traditional English Christmas dinner, so I ought to get back.  I am soooooo looking forward to the parsnips.  You just can’t get them in Lima!

The rain in Spain…

So, we finally left Amsterdam 4 and a half hours late because of snow on the runway and touched down in Madrid at about midnight.  By the time I’d got my bag, got a taxi (I wasn’t prepared to attempt the metro at that time of night) and got to the hotel I was seriously tired and just got into bed.  5 hours later my alarm went off and I had to get up, shower and get breakfast before catching the train to Madrid.  It turns out that the thing I had forgotton was my toothbrush… what would Chris Evans say?

I love the train – there’s more space than I had on the plane, and they put James Bond on (admittedly in Spanish with no subtitles, but that’s OK – you don’t really need to listen to the dialogue to follow it, you can tell who the baddies are just by looking and a gunfight and car chase are the same in any language!  I actually understood more than I thought I would).  I even got an hours sleep.  It did rain for the entire journey though, and flat, grey, wet fields are not all that inspiring a view.

On arrival in Alicante I walked up to the tram station in the rain, stopping in a cafe for lunch – where else but Spain would you be offered a Tortilla buttie?  Just what I needed!  The tram jouney was enlivened when 3 boys who were obviously stoned out of their trees got on and tried to buy tickets from the on-board machine.  I have never seen people giggle at a ticket machine so much!  Neither had a ever seen such a brilliantly disapproving face as the one on the VERY prim woman sat opposite.  Hillarious!  The view out of the tram was gorgeous though – the coast round here is cliffs and turquoise-blue sea, just beautiful.

I eventually got to Anna’s at 4 pm on Tuesday (having left my house at 4 pm on Sunday and getting about 8 hours sleep in total in between!) sat and listened to Mum talk at me for a bit and then went out for a chinese.  I fell into bed at about midnight and slept for 12 hours – bliss.

Today I have bought a few new clothes (I’m sure I’d packed more t-shirts than were actually in my bag when I unpacked…) and to celebrate mum’s birthday we are having pizza (classy) as none of us can face going out in the cold again!  Who knows what delights tomorrow holds…?  Hopefully it will involve finding somewhere closer to my sister’s house that has free WiFi…

My winter (summer) holidays.

Well the first part of my epic journey, to try and see the majority of my friends and family spread across Europe, is underway.

On Friday night at 6pm (local time) I boarded a KLM flight from Lima to Amsterdam.  As usual I had forgotten a) how little leg room there is b) how nice their food is.  After watching 2 episodes of The Big Bang Theory, dinner was served. I had a nice conversation with the Norwegian woman sat next to me, and then I watched Slumdog Millionaire which, if you haven’t seen, you should watch.  I then tried to sleep. I dozed a bit, but was very relieved when I realised that it was light outside and they were serving breakfast!

We landed slightly ahead of time and then there was the inevitable dull wait for my bag.  The hotel (www.citizenm.com) was really easy to find, and is delightfully geeky  I did little more than drop my bags, have a wash and play with the room control pod for 5 mins, before heading back towards the Airport to catch the train into Amsterdam Centraal.

Once in the centre of Amsterdam I wandered aimlessley in the general direction of where I thought the Art museums were.  It had been pouring down when we landed, but soon the sun came out and I had a rather lovely afternoon meandering through the streets of Amsterdam getting some sun.  Eventually I arrived at the Van Gough museum and spent a couple of hours looking at pretty pictures.  Decided that Sunflowers is not that good, but really like the cherry tree ones. What you don’t get from the prints is just how thick some of the paint is – they are really highly textured!

As the museum was closing I decided to take another route back towards the train station, with the hope of finding food on the way.  In the end I went into a Mexican place just opposite the station as it was the first place I came across where I could understand the menu.  The owner was delighted that I spoke to him in Spanish, and then kept telling me how cute I was, which I found unnerving, especially as he was old enough to be my father!  Nobody else I had met that day seemed to be pleased that I was speaking Spanish.  Can’t think why…

Amsterdam, even though I have been there before, was a bit of a culture shock having lived in a predominantly Catholic, fairly conservative country for the last 18 months.  Tattoos, piercings, odd clothes, men holding hands and kissing each other in the street are just not things you see often in Lima.  Still, it is lovely to be looking at familiar trees, flowers and birds again – I got slightly over excited the first time I saw a jackdaw – even the grass is the right sort really feels like I’m back home (even though I’m not).

I got the train back to the hotel thinking that it wasn’t that late as it was still light, only to remember that it doesn’t go dark at 6 in northern Europe in the summer, and by the time I had showered, repacked for the morning, played with all the room settings some more, checked my email and got to bed that it was about 11pm.

Getting the plane the next morning was a piece of cake.  I went down for breakfast at about 7.30, left the hotel (having checked myself out on a funky little computer thing) at 8 and by 10 past was stood in the EasyJet bag drop queue.  No worries.  I think I will book myself in at the same hotel on the way back – it really takes the stress out of getting to the airport when you know you can walk it in 5 mins!

Thus ended the first part of my travels.

7 things

I am fairly new to blogging – I’m not really a computer geeky type and this blog was really a way of letting people keep an eye on what I’m up to in Latin America without sending them mass emails of the kind my mum is so fond of.  To be fair not many people read the blog – I prefer to think that this is because I don’t update it very regularly rather than the more likely scenario that I am just not that interesting…  However one person who does read it is Lorna (www.lornajane.net) and she recently tagged me in her blog (apparently – I am not 100% certain of what that means – I think it means she mentioned me and put a link to my blog.  If so I think I have just tagged her in return – this is all very complicated!).  The purpose was to get me to join in the memetic ‘7 things’ activity (rules at the end of the post).  I can’t actually tag 7 other people as it suggests as the only other person I know with a blog is Lorna…

 

1. When I was born I had an extra (but boneless) finger on my left hand.  It had a tiny nail and everything.  The doctors broke this news to Mum by telling her it seemed like I had extra fingers and extra brains…  Just goes to show you should never believe what doctors tell you!  They removed it by tying string round it so that it was starved of blood and fell off (in a similar way to how farmers remove lambs’ tails).
2. In Latin America it is usual to have 2 first names and 2 surnames (your mother’s maiden name and your father’s family name) hence many people here keep trying to put my first names as Cally Margaret and my surname as Anabel Nixon.  I got a VERY strange look in immigration when I told the man that my mother’s surname and my father’s surname were both Nixon (at the time I didn’t know about the 2 surname thing and didn’t understand why he thought it was odd!)
3. I have just put up 12 new photos in my front room.  six are of fungi, three are of insects, one is of an arachnid, one is of an amphibian and one is of a  reptile.  According to my boyfriend this makes me quite weird for a girl.
4. I am secretly addicted to Strictly Come Dancing and watched almost the entire of the recent series via You Tube.  I was gutted to find out that the videos from the final were taken down by the BBC before I got round to watching them.  I  would be perfectly happy to pay the licence fee if it meant I could use i-Player.
5. My first properly distinguishable words (after the mama, dada kind of things) were Peter Sissons.  This provides a source of great mirth in my family.
6. Whenever I leave fruit too long and it starts getting infested by fruit-flies I try to look at the colour of their eyes to see if I can spot any mutants.
7. When we were young my sister and I used to play schools with our teddybears and dolls.  We even used to make them exercise books, set them work, complete it for them and mark it.  Now she is a primary teacher (maths specialist) and I teach biology to secondary pupils.

 

The rules;

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some wierd.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

2nd Jungle Trip

As a biology teacher you dream of being able to do decent ecology practicals. The chance to teach the entire iGCSE ecology module to the whole of year 10 in 9 days in the Amazonian rainforest is a dream come true. However taking 2 groups of 67 pupils to the rainforest is not an easy undertaking. Thankfully Harry organises most of it, although Peruvian logistics makes it more interesting. I am sure that if you were taking a school group through an airport in the UK you would have to tell them in advance and they would arrange for people to get you through check-in, security, airport tax etc. Not in Peru. Chaos comes close to describing the scene in the airport. Add into this ‘Peruvian time’ and things get VERY tricky. In the end, after waiting for kids to get out of Starbucks and dealing with many officious airport staff we made it onto the plane – but we had to run from security to the gate!

 

Composting

 

 

 

Our first flight took us to Cuzco where we stopped to refuel, and then we continued over the Andes to Puerto Moldonado where we were met by our guides and taken to the offices of Rainforest expeditions for a cold drink of aguaje juice before splitting into groups. The kids that did geography went to a place to talk about sustainability and we went to a ‘tierra de los niños’ run by a local school – it is basically an area of land that has been legally given to the kids from the school for them to run as they want. They have planted a range of gardens with local food and medicinal plants. We were doing a ’service project’ to help them clear an area for their vegetable garden and paint the signs for the different things they were going to grow. Unfortunately they had very few tools and so most of the kids went for a walk into the surrounding countryside with the guides. We were also treated to traditional music and got time just to talk and play with the kids. It was good fun despite the suffocating heat and humidity!

 

Having fun

 

 

We then met up with the geographers at the port and boarded our boats for the hours trip upriver to the lodge at Posada Amazonas ( http://www.perunature.com/pages/home_posada.htm ) which is probably the best lodge in the region.  I had a room to myself which was an unexpected luxury, but only because I was going to be there for the full 9 days and the other staff were only doing 5 days each.  It is an amazing trip.  Each day the activities start at 5 am (4am get up, 4.30 breakfast…), lunch at 1, afternoon activities at 2 pm, dinner at 7 pm and late activities at about 8.30.  The kids get to do all of the different activities;

 

After the rain

 

 

Lake – visit an oxbow lake that is home to a family of giant river otters, where they get to fish for piranahs and learn about food chains.  A chance to have a swim in the river on your way back!

 

Sunset

 

 

Birds – walk to the 37m Canopy tower and climb up to see what life is like at the top of the forest and then go to a hide overlooking a clay-lick.

 

The tower

 

 

Mammals – a LONG walk to a mammal clay-lick where they make wax casts of the footprints and look for other signs of mammal activity as well as learning about nutrient cycles, and maybe having a mud fight.

 

Dusky Titi monkeys

 

 

Insects – Walk to a GIANT kapok tree, taste some termites  and also use the capture-mark-release-recapture method to estimate the population of any ant colonies found on the way.  Also a chance to think about classification.

 

Attack!

 

 

Ecology – Use various techniques to gather data (transects, quadrats etc.) and design their own research project as part of their coursework

 

Rhino beetle

 

 

Night insects – go and look at insects that come out at night attracted by a bright light placed in front of a white sheet

 

Assassin bug

 

 

Night walk – a slow wander through the jungle at night looking for the telltale  reflection of eyes.  

 

Tree frog

 

 

Night Solo – 20 minutes alone, in the jungle, without your torch.  Tranquil or terrifying depending on your point of view…

Day solo – 20 minutes alone, in the jungle, in the daytime – peaceful time to just look at the life going on  around you.

 

Agouti

 

 

Washing up – particularly for those kids who can’t be punctual, can’t use civil language, are far too lazy or are just being a pain!  Dishes from 67 students, 8 members of staff, 8 guides…  not what they’re used to in Lima!

 

The trip is just an amazing oppurtunity – I am so lucky to be able to go!

 

Funny fungi

Jungle diaries Day 10

Today I made a small error, but nothing too major! The geography kids who do standard level biology left with Geoff and Henry and I was left with the remaining kids who were all filling in their booklets. I went off with 2 of the giudes and 2 of the kids to try using the climbing gear – it was good fun, but VERY hard work. I was glad I only had to go 5m off the ground and didn’t have to go to the top of the tree to check on the macaw nest like the guide did! We also saw a mixed flock of tanagers (Thraupidae family) which included some Paradise tanagers (Tangara chilensis) which are stunningly beautiful, multicolored birds! There were also a couple of curious spider monkeys watching us climb (and presumably laughing at how bad we are at it…)

Me tree climbing

tree climbing

After lunch I deceided to let them rest until 3 when we were going to go off on a walk to cut a trail through an area that had become overgrown. We thought the others would be arriving at 6 ish, but they arrived at 3, just as we were about to leave. The guides continued without us, leading to the second problem. We needed the kids to go out in their groups and look for potential design projects. The lack of guides meant that I had to lead one group out for a while to get ideas. It wasn’t too bad really and they came up with some great ideas, but I was constantly terrified that we would come across a dangerous snake or an enraged herd of Peccaries or something dangerous! As it was, we didn’t see much wildlife at all! Just before we set out the taira appeared and 2 of his offspring (cubs, kits? not sure what you call baby taira!) came out of the undergrowth for long enough to get a good look at them – que lindo! We also glimpsed a couple of saddlebacked tamarind in the trees next to the lodge, excellent.

Taira

I got to practice a bit of spanish with the local staff today which was nice – typical touristy stuff – job, family, do I like the food in Peru, do I like the jungle etc. but they understood so my accent can’t be too bad! The dynamics are very different now Harry is back, the kids ADORE him and I’m very much 3rd choice (Loki is here now too!)

Maid in Lima?

Living in a really posh appartment overlooking the park has been a bit of a culture shock in itself, but nothing compared to the strangeness of having a maid.  The amount of dust in Lima does mean that if you don’t want black feet within seconds of geting out of the shower you need to clean the floors at least every other day, similarly everything needs dusting a lot, however these are the least of the maid’s duties.  

I knew we had a maid that came in 3 times a week, but I assumed she just came in to clean the floors and dust, so this morning, when I couldn’t find the clean clothes I had hung out to dry earlier in the week, I was plesently surprised to find them ironed and hung up neatly in my wardrobe!  There is still a bit of me that feels like I am betraying my working class roots though.

Still, when you are in a country with such appalling poverty, and you are earning massivly more than the average wage I supose you ought to employ as many people as you can.  If you are middle class Peruvian the maid does EVERYTHING – cleaning, cooking, washing, ironing, takes your dogs for walks, looks after your children etc.  They prefer working for gringos as they don’t have to do as much for their money and they tend to get better bonuses too!  If it gets my ironing and washing up done I’m sure I’ll get used to it!