I'm in the JUNGLE!!!

I'm in Iquitos, so far I've not done a great deal other than eat and sleep. And it been GREAT!!! Ok so I lie, I have done a few things. Check out more of my photos HERE

That's all for now, I am off to India soon.

Cheers
Zac

Alive and well...

Just a quick note to let everybody know I am alive and well after the recent earth quake here in Peru. Luckily I was in Cusco when it happened and didn't feel a thing.

Thanks to everyone who has emailed to check up on me.

Hey Mum! I was on the radio!

So how did I end up on the radio? And where?

Well the where is easy, Sucre - Bolivia. The why, is going to take a little be longer. So go get a cup of coffee, and I'll tell you all about it.

While I was in Sucre, we arranged for some of the group to go and visit a local school and hand out some gifts (pens, pencils and the like). Anyway the school is one of the poorer schools in the city of Sucre, and I was told it had 800 children. That's about all I knew. So we load up our bus and off we go. On they way out to the school, I give the guys a bit of a run down on what to expect and what's going to happen based on previous school visits I have been on. Normally what happens is we get met by the principal or some other official, who shows us around and tells us about the school, we visit a class or two to hand out the stuff we brought along, the class will usually sing a song or two for us, and then we are expected to sing something for the kids. Now this sounds pretty easy, but it almost always ends in disaster. Get a group of about 15 adults together and then give them about 30 seconds to come up with a song to sing and see what happens. If they are smart they will go with something simple like, Old McDonald or the Hokey Pokey (They call it the Oakey Cokey in England, don't ask me why), and they will normally do ok, for a verse or two and then it disintegrates into either everyone mumbling along looking around to see who knows the words or just straight out fits of laughter. So with this in mind I warned the guys while will on the bus that they might need to sing. So they spent a couple of minutes going over options and came up with 2. Yes you guessed it. Old MacDonald and the Hokey Pokey (we had a mostly Australian group). So the bus ride out spent practicing Old MacDonald, right up until the moment the bus got bogged...

Fortunately by this stage we were just down the road from the school. So we all piled out of the bus and walk down to the school. Where we were swamped by hoards of kids, all about waist high. It was all very crazy, and there didn’t appear to be much in the way of order. But we were led into the Directors office and introduced to the big boss, who proceeded to welcome us, in Spanish. Being one of the only ones to speak Spanish in the group I was left to translate his words of welcome on to the rest. Well he spoke at length for what seemed like 10 or 15 minutes without pause, I then turned to the group and translated his 10 or 15 minute welcome speech into a 30 second version. I am pretty sure I got it all in, well the important stuff anyway. We were then led back outside where a semblance of order had been restored by the PE teacher. I could tell he was the PE teacher cause he was wearing a blue tracksuit and had a whistle on a string around his neck, just like PE teachers everywhere. So the PE teacher got out the microphone and introduced us to the school, and then various students came up and performed in front of the school for us, singing a couple of songs. Except for being paraded in front of the entire school (about 600 not 800, though there only seemed to be about half of them present), everything was going pretty much as I had expected. The kids all then went back to their classrooms, well most of them, there still seemed to be heaps of kids running around, and we were led back into the directors office where we were given lunch. Potatoes and spaghetti, tasted pretty good too.

While we were tucking into lunch, Nela the lady who had organised the trip for us came up to me and explained that a reported had shown up, unexpected of course. So I am thinking reported = newspaper. But no, we go inside to chat with the guy and he is on the phone and I can hear him saying “Good morning” and explaining about the gringos visiting the school, so I lean over to Nela and ask her what’s going on. She explains to me that he is a reporter, for a Sucre radio station and he is going to do and interview with us. So I am doing my best to follow the Spanish and getting pretty lost, but fortunately Nela is doing most of the talking. Then I hear the guy introducing me and he hands me the phone and BAM! I am on the radio. I’m not sure if anything I said was understandable (you try giving a radio interview in a second language), but I told them where we were from, why we had come to visit, and explained what a wonderful opportunity this was for us all. I think I might have repeated myself a little bit, but it seemed to go over well.

After all this excitement we were then taken to visit a class room, where as predicted the kids sang for us, fortunately we didn’t have to sing anything back. Then we were led to the next class room, and then the next, and then I started to get the idea that we would be visiting every class in the school, and yes that was the plan. It wouldn’t be fair to leave anyone out. So we continued our tour of every class, some of them even stayed back at lunch time so we could come and say hello and listen politely as they sang for us. I am not sure how many classes we saw, I think at least 12, but I think there were are few more. By then end we were all exhausted, and a little relieved to get back onto the bus, which had be rescued from the mud by some of the kids or so I was told.

All in all, it was an amazing experience. I have visited a few different school here in South America but I will always remember that one, and not just cause I was on the radio….

I found Jesus, he was at the hairdressers!!!

I went for a haircut the other day, and got a dose of religion at the same time...

I decided it was time to get the hair cut, and I wanted to go short. But short with style, not some dumb bowl cut. So I went looking for the right place while I was in Curitiba. What is the "right" kind of place you ask? Well to start with, I was looking for someone with two eyes. Made that mistake before and got a cut throat shave from a one eyed man... Generally I get it cut by a dude, not sure why... I also wanted somewhere with a bit of style, not just a plain looking hair cut place... So I went out and found the campest looking hair dresser I could find and walked in (his name was Paulo, and he might not have been gay at all, but it was the look I was going for).

And this is where the fun began. My Portuguese is shite, my Spanish is average and my ability to describe what I want in the way of a hair cut even in English is appalling. I got as far as explaining I wanted it cut short, then we gave up and got out a magazine so I could just point to what I wanted. During the pre cut hair wash, we established that yes my name is Zac and yes it is from the Bible. So we begin, the dude is cutting away and trying to make the usual hair dresser small talk and finding the language barrier a slight problem. But we get past the "Ah you’re from Australia? Muchos Kangaroos?" and then onto the other classic South American question, "so are you Christian?"... Of course I go with the standard evasive answer of, well my family is (ha!), but I am not so sure... Now depending where you are this either goes over ok and they let it go, or they start asking "What?!?!?! How can you not believe?" Fortunately it seemed the Paulo was going to let me get away with this answer.

So he keeps cutting and I am thinking this looks alright, not as short as what I first thought I wanted but ok. Then he changes the scissors for some other kind of weird scissors and goes again, by now the hair is starting to pile up. And I am thinking, ok ok, I said I wanted a change... but did I really mean this short? So now it's about the shortest it's been in about 10 years. Ok so I realise that what I think of as short is probably still considered long for most. But hey work with me here, I have had it in a pony tail for about half of those 10 years.

So it looks like we are all done, and Paulo takes me back for the post hair cut wash. So we are washing washing washing and Paulo calls over a girl who works in the shop and they are having a little whispered chat, and I am struggling to follow the Portuguese. But it turns out she speaks English and Paulo has asked her over to translate for me. She tells me that Paublo would like to invite me to go to a meeting with them, and I am thinking ok what the hell is going on here, so I ask what kind of meeting, and she says in the Church on Sunday. And now I am thinking phew, I was a little worried for a minute there, the idea of being invited to church is a bit of a relief as I wasn't sure what was going on. But sadly I wont be able to as I am leaving town that day (true). So there is another rapid Portages exchange between her and Paulo and then she starts to tell me that with my biblical name (thanks Mum and Dad), I should already know this, but Paublo wants to tell me that nothing in life is chance, that everything happens for a reason and that God has a plan for all of us. The whole while this is going on, I am lying there trapped as Paulo washes my hair for me, there is no where to run to, and no where to hide. And after the initial thought of shite, what the hell is going on here, what have walked into, I started to think yeah, this all sounds pretty cool, these guys were really genuine and I think had I been around on Sunday I might have even gone to church with them. Maybe…

Now the point of this story isn't that I almost found God at the hairdressers, but that occasionally you meet people who open you eyes to the world around you. And that's what Paulo did for me. I am not a great believer, but I do sometimes like to think that things happen for a reason, it gives me hope.