Hi fans
My nose hurts. I think it is the altitude. A lot of the others have dodgy stomachs. We think it's the altitude. Or perhaps the difference in food and water, that's the other thing we like to blame. Nikki did actually have a bit of a fever, Zaida looked after her well and gave her jelly and coca tea, and said a prayer for her. I think it's the altitude. Darryl isn't feeling too well today, and neither is Zara, and Beth wasn't for a while, and Mariam wasn't either. We're dropping like flies, but I'm sure by next week when we start properly at our projects things should be better. The altitude may have changed by then. Talking of which I'm slightly scared of my impending trip to La Paz on Friday, as the altitude there is very high - around 4-5000m. I think we'll have a lot to blame on it.
Today me and my group went to meet the directors of our project for the first time - they were lovely - 2 ladies, I can't remember their names now, but we'll be seeing a lot of them over the next 2 months. There were also 2 other volunteers from Holland there, who will be at one of the 3 centres that Mosoj Yan works at. I invited them to play volleyball (which we had been invited to through our Spanish school - on Fridays), but then realised they will probably be very very good at volleyball as they are Dutch, so I may live to regret that.
We learnt about the 3 different centre that we will be working at - we will be in pairs, 2 at each one. In a nutshell, they are:
By the end of this week, we will know which pair is going to which centre for the next 8 weeks. David will mainly decide that, but he also knows about us and our previous skills / experience. There should be a fair bit of English teaching. We had to fill in a form today about these kinds of things, one of the questions was 'what is your speciality?'. I don't really consider that I have a speciality, so I wrote that, but I hope I can be involved in a variety of things, like English teaching, some crafts (I learnt how to make beads out of magazines with my friend Jo who volunteers at the guides, so I wanted to do that with them), maybe some gardening, baking, playing my ukulele etc. (Mariam and Shiv are amazing singer songwriters, so so far I have not been brave enough to even take the uke out of its case...).
After the meeting with Mosoj Yan we went for an ice cream with Melanie. She knows where the offers are at - today it was 2 for 1 at an ice cream place in town, so I had a chocolate one, and Darryl got a frutilla one. Not sure quite what fruit frutilla is, but I think he liked it. I'm now back home and just found out dinner is not for another hour, which gives me a good bit of catching up with the blog time.
I think I left the last blog at Saturday morning after our visit to La Cancha market. I have been wearing my new skirt, and all my new jewellery most days since then. I've already had an order via the blog for a ring like the one I put in my picture. Also had another comment that most of the jewellry looks like that of a teenager - ha ha, thanks for that (you know who you are). I thought it was very mature looking actually.
Saturday afternoon, we went to look for postcards, then had a coffee at Cafe Paris (for the Westerners) in town, by the main square. We got a taxi there, and I said take us to plaza 25 de mayo please. To which el taxista replied - that square doesn't exist. Oh. How about plaza 14 septiembre then? That's the one. These dates must have some kind of significance, but for now it's on my list of things to find out about. I think it's to do with independence from Spain, and possibly founding of the city of Cochabamba. Anyway, I digress. The coffee was weak, I have to say. I wouldn't go back there just for that, but it's a nice location by the main square (see picture below). Also we did meet 2 new people - Camilla and Anna, who are working for another organisation, and Camilla had been the worship leader at the church we went to last week. She has bright ginger hair, that's how we knew it was definitely her. (NB - the worship part of the church service is when they do the singing - it's my favourite bit as you learn more Spanish vocab from the big screen at the front and if you want you can wave your hands in the air (I haven't done that yet)).
After the weak coffee and some funny chat with the others (Darryl, Tom, Nikki and Beth), we went to meet the others in the main square for baby washing. What this involves is that every Saturday afternoon, the Quechua women can bring their babies (from around 3 months to about 5 years old) and we wash them, and wash their hair, and re clothe them. They then swaddle them back together into their shawls, and swizzle them around in their big blankets (they're called agauyos) onto their backs and off they go - I'm not sure exactly whither they go (always wanted to get that word into a blog), perhaps they live outside town in the hills and mountains, we're not totally sure. The kids obviously get dirty again pretty quickly, but it's a lovely thing to do for them we thought. Me and Nikki manned one of the 3 little baths, and most of our kids were really cute, we only had one that cried. One of us poured tepid water on to the babies and then a bit of shampoo for their hair, whilst the other did their feet and legs and arms etc. We tried to chat to them a bit, but not many were that chatty - not too surprising really. One of them brought her little chunk of watermelon she was eating with her, I don't think it will have tasted too great after shampoo and water were poured all over it, but she clutched it like it was the last bit of watermelon on earth.
Top is Nikki with the baby bath, below is Shiv doing a very cute little girl's hair, and Lee to the right.
We then passed them over to the drying station, where the others were drying them and dressing them. Their mothers came in to the tent sometimes and starting non-surreptitiously shoving lots of the clothes into their bags / shawls - they're only meant to take one set of clothes, but obviously saw it as a good opportunity for taking more than their fair share. These things always happen, and you can't really blame them I suppose. Next time we'll try to be a bit firmer and explain that the clothes are for all the other babies, not just them.We then played with the kids for a bit in the square, and chatted to some of the other westerners there, then went off for some pizza. Ordering the pizza was quite like a replay of the brazilian potato saga - we had 2 pizzas, 2 jumbo pizza slices, and extra fanta. Sounds straightforward right? Apparently not when I'm involved. I didn't realise Tom had pretty much got it covered, so I just kept repeating the order to them, whilst Tom rolled his eyes at me, envisaging about a million more pizzas coming to our table. All was fine, and the pizza was really tasty.
That was the end of Saturday, all in all a really interesting day full of new experiences. Then came Sunday, which was similarly full of new experiences. Which is probably why I had to take Monday afternoon off to lie down in bed and recover from a minor episode of exhaustion. Anyway, Sunday started with a visit to Zaida's church, which is Asemblia de Dios, and was full to almost bursting by the time we arrived around 1030. The pastor came to meet us, as Zaida must have told him about us, he came and shook all our hands, and me and Mariam noted that he smelt very nice (that was probably a little bit ungodly of us). He shook our hands with real meaning and warmth, as did anyone else we met that morning in the church. There was a huge feeling of love and congregationality in the church - it was of, I suppose, a lower class, than the international church we'd visited the week before, and perhaps was more expressive therefore. On stage were the musicians and singers, and opposite us on another balcony were 2 small girls in angelic white dresses, dancing, flanked by 2 older ladies in blue dresses. Before starting the actual sermon, the pastor introduced all of our group to the whole church - we were on the front row of the balcony, so we waved down to them all, and got a little bit embarrassed too - but what a lovely welcoming thing to do.
A nice man called Nick, who works at an orphanage connected to the church, translated most of the sermon for some of us. I liked listening the the sermon in Spanish and trying to get the meaning of his words - some of them got a bit shouty, which I guess was the bits he wanted to emphasise, they often contained the words 'jesus cristo' or 'hijo de dios'. It was very moving in fact, even though I didn't 100% understand it. There were a few other people who said various things, one lady seemed to be saying bad things about islam - the Spanish for muslim is musulman, which makes me giggle. I don't think it's appropriate to bad mouth other religions in order to promote your own, but perhaps I got the meaning wrong anyway, so I'll stop on this theme now.
After church, we went to see a 'feria de perros' - essentially a 'parade of dogs'. Every Sunday around that area, there are dogs for sale - they are expensive, swanky dogs, their prices start at $350 US dollars upwards. There were also some rabbits and cats too. Zara went crazy for them and grabbed a tiny little puppy from an old man for a photo. He didn't seem to mind, neither the dog nor the man. We perused the animals for a while, went home for lunch, then went out to watch the football. Here's Zara with the little puppy:
Normally in England I would not go to watch football matches, but when you're away you do things you wouldn't normally do, as can be seen from my 2 trips to church so far. Even the theme music to Match of the Day makes me cringe and run out of the room. But here we all are, and most of us went to watch it - we took Santiago (Zaida's son) too, who liked it. It was one of the local Cochabamba teams, called Wilstermann (doesn't sound very Bolivian does it), against Santa Cruz. We won 4-0. Hooray! I find it hard to get that excited about football, so here's some photos I took that sum up what I did for most of it:
This is what was actually happening on the pitch:
I thought this one was a good summary of the 2 religious experiences we had that day (look closely):
Just now whilst writing this blog, I've also been bombarding Alicia with questions about Spanish grammar. Here is something I'm very excited about that I've learnt: the people from the Andes (Cochabamba, La Paz, Potosi, and Oruro) use the preterito perfecto tense more than other past tenses; the people from the Oriente (Santa Cruz and Sucre) use the preterito. That is to say, if you're an Andino, you are more likely to say this sentence: I have eaten a banana today, whereas if you are from Santa Cruz or Sucre you are more likely to say this sentence: I ate a banana today. I find this FASCINATING, and am going to talk to Angelika at the Spanish school about it, because apparently she once explained it to Alicia, and it's a bit complicated / very interesting (some might say fascinating). I will definitely keep you updated, unless you choose to unsubscribe from Bolivian grammatical / cultural updates.
In other cultural news - I am reading a book called Foreign Familiar, which is all about the difference between people from hot cultures and those from cold cultures. It almost boils down to the differences between collectivism and individualism. The reason that perhaps hot cultures are more open and generous with their time and more interdependent, is that because it's hot they go outside more and see each other more, whereas people in cold cultures stay in their houses more so they don't have as much of a feeling of being around other people etc. That's kind of a summary of the first section of the book.
I will go now, and leave you with a picture I think is funny - of Leanne on skype to her niece, whose 2nd birthday it was - we sang happy birthday to her and then the boys threw confetti on Leanne:
Bye, hope you've enjoyed reading. pepinillo xx
My nose hurts. I think it is the altitude. A lot of the others have dodgy stomachs. We think it's the altitude. Or perhaps the difference in food and water, that's the other thing we like to blame. Nikki did actually have a bit of a fever, Zaida looked after her well and gave her jelly and coca tea, and said a prayer for her. I think it's the altitude. Darryl isn't feeling too well today, and neither is Zara, and Beth wasn't for a while, and Mariam wasn't either. We're dropping like flies, but I'm sure by next week when we start properly at our projects things should be better. The altitude may have changed by then. Talking of which I'm slightly scared of my impending trip to La Paz on Friday, as the altitude there is very high - around 4-5000m. I think we'll have a lot to blame on it.
Today me and my group went to meet the directors of our project for the first time - they were lovely - 2 ladies, I can't remember their names now, but we'll be seeing a lot of them over the next 2 months. There were also 2 other volunteers from Holland there, who will be at one of the 3 centres that Mosoj Yan works at. I invited them to play volleyball (which we had been invited to through our Spanish school - on Fridays), but then realised they will probably be very very good at volleyball as they are Dutch, so I may live to regret that.
We learnt about the 3 different centre that we will be working at - we will be in pairs, 2 at each one. In a nutshell, they are:
- Motivation centre - this involves going out to find the street kids and try to encourage them to come into the centre, and building relationships and trust with them. They can come in to the centre of their own accord and do whatever various workshops are on offer there too.
- Restoration centre - where about 10 girls can live for a year to rehabilitate and learn new skills and rebuild their confidence, after being on the streets, or in abusive situations at home.
- Working girls centre - works with girls who work on the streets, selling things, but hopefully who are not yet on drugs or other dangerous situations. As they aren't going to school much because of having to work, the aim of this centre is to teach them things they would otherwise be learning at school, and other skills such as baking, crafts etc.
By the end of this week, we will know which pair is going to which centre for the next 8 weeks. David will mainly decide that, but he also knows about us and our previous skills / experience. There should be a fair bit of English teaching. We had to fill in a form today about these kinds of things, one of the questions was 'what is your speciality?'. I don't really consider that I have a speciality, so I wrote that, but I hope I can be involved in a variety of things, like English teaching, some crafts (I learnt how to make beads out of magazines with my friend Jo who volunteers at the guides, so I wanted to do that with them), maybe some gardening, baking, playing my ukulele etc. (Mariam and Shiv are amazing singer songwriters, so so far I have not been brave enough to even take the uke out of its case...).
After the meeting with Mosoj Yan we went for an ice cream with Melanie. She knows where the offers are at - today it was 2 for 1 at an ice cream place in town, so I had a chocolate one, and Darryl got a frutilla one. Not sure quite what fruit frutilla is, but I think he liked it. I'm now back home and just found out dinner is not for another hour, which gives me a good bit of catching up with the blog time.
I think I left the last blog at Saturday morning after our visit to La Cancha market. I have been wearing my new skirt, and all my new jewellery most days since then. I've already had an order via the blog for a ring like the one I put in my picture. Also had another comment that most of the jewellry looks like that of a teenager - ha ha, thanks for that (you know who you are). I thought it was very mature looking actually.
Saturday afternoon, we went to look for postcards, then had a coffee at Cafe Paris (for the Westerners) in town, by the main square. We got a taxi there, and I said take us to plaza 25 de mayo please. To which el taxista replied - that square doesn't exist. Oh. How about plaza 14 septiembre then? That's the one. These dates must have some kind of significance, but for now it's on my list of things to find out about. I think it's to do with independence from Spain, and possibly founding of the city of Cochabamba. Anyway, I digress. The coffee was weak, I have to say. I wouldn't go back there just for that, but it's a nice location by the main square (see picture below). Also we did meet 2 new people - Camilla and Anna, who are working for another organisation, and Camilla had been the worship leader at the church we went to last week. She has bright ginger hair, that's how we knew it was definitely her. (NB - the worship part of the church service is when they do the singing - it's my favourite bit as you learn more Spanish vocab from the big screen at the front and if you want you can wave your hands in the air (I haven't done that yet)).
After the weak coffee and some funny chat with the others (Darryl, Tom, Nikki and Beth), we went to meet the others in the main square for baby washing. What this involves is that every Saturday afternoon, the Quechua women can bring their babies (from around 3 months to about 5 years old) and we wash them, and wash their hair, and re clothe them. They then swaddle them back together into their shawls, and swizzle them around in their big blankets (they're called agauyos) onto their backs and off they go - I'm not sure exactly whither they go (always wanted to get that word into a blog), perhaps they live outside town in the hills and mountains, we're not totally sure. The kids obviously get dirty again pretty quickly, but it's a lovely thing to do for them we thought. Me and Nikki manned one of the 3 little baths, and most of our kids were really cute, we only had one that cried. One of us poured tepid water on to the babies and then a bit of shampoo for their hair, whilst the other did their feet and legs and arms etc. We tried to chat to them a bit, but not many were that chatty - not too surprising really. One of them brought her little chunk of watermelon she was eating with her, I don't think it will have tasted too great after shampoo and water were poured all over it, but she clutched it like it was the last bit of watermelon on earth.
Top is Nikki with the baby bath, below is Shiv doing a very cute little girl's hair, and Lee to the right.
We then passed them over to the drying station, where the others were drying them and dressing them. Their mothers came in to the tent sometimes and starting non-surreptitiously shoving lots of the clothes into their bags / shawls - they're only meant to take one set of clothes, but obviously saw it as a good opportunity for taking more than their fair share. These things always happen, and you can't really blame them I suppose. Next time we'll try to be a bit firmer and explain that the clothes are for all the other babies, not just them.We then played with the kids for a bit in the square, and chatted to some of the other westerners there, then went off for some pizza. Ordering the pizza was quite like a replay of the brazilian potato saga - we had 2 pizzas, 2 jumbo pizza slices, and extra fanta. Sounds straightforward right? Apparently not when I'm involved. I didn't realise Tom had pretty much got it covered, so I just kept repeating the order to them, whilst Tom rolled his eyes at me, envisaging about a million more pizzas coming to our table. All was fine, and the pizza was really tasty.
That was the end of Saturday, all in all a really interesting day full of new experiences. Then came Sunday, which was similarly full of new experiences. Which is probably why I had to take Monday afternoon off to lie down in bed and recover from a minor episode of exhaustion. Anyway, Sunday started with a visit to Zaida's church, which is Asemblia de Dios, and was full to almost bursting by the time we arrived around 1030. The pastor came to meet us, as Zaida must have told him about us, he came and shook all our hands, and me and Mariam noted that he smelt very nice (that was probably a little bit ungodly of us). He shook our hands with real meaning and warmth, as did anyone else we met that morning in the church. There was a huge feeling of love and congregationality in the church - it was of, I suppose, a lower class, than the international church we'd visited the week before, and perhaps was more expressive therefore. On stage were the musicians and singers, and opposite us on another balcony were 2 small girls in angelic white dresses, dancing, flanked by 2 older ladies in blue dresses. Before starting the actual sermon, the pastor introduced all of our group to the whole church - we were on the front row of the balcony, so we waved down to them all, and got a little bit embarrassed too - but what a lovely welcoming thing to do.
A nice man called Nick, who works at an orphanage connected to the church, translated most of the sermon for some of us. I liked listening the the sermon in Spanish and trying to get the meaning of his words - some of them got a bit shouty, which I guess was the bits he wanted to emphasise, they often contained the words 'jesus cristo' or 'hijo de dios'. It was very moving in fact, even though I didn't 100% understand it. There were a few other people who said various things, one lady seemed to be saying bad things about islam - the Spanish for muslim is musulman, which makes me giggle. I don't think it's appropriate to bad mouth other religions in order to promote your own, but perhaps I got the meaning wrong anyway, so I'll stop on this theme now.
After church, we went to see a 'feria de perros' - essentially a 'parade of dogs'. Every Sunday around that area, there are dogs for sale - they are expensive, swanky dogs, their prices start at $350 US dollars upwards. There were also some rabbits and cats too. Zara went crazy for them and grabbed a tiny little puppy from an old man for a photo. He didn't seem to mind, neither the dog nor the man. We perused the animals for a while, went home for lunch, then went out to watch the football. Here's Zara with the little puppy:
Normally in England I would not go to watch football matches, but when you're away you do things you wouldn't normally do, as can be seen from my 2 trips to church so far. Even the theme music to Match of the Day makes me cringe and run out of the room. But here we all are, and most of us went to watch it - we took Santiago (Zaida's son) too, who liked it. It was one of the local Cochabamba teams, called Wilstermann (doesn't sound very Bolivian does it), against Santa Cruz. We won 4-0. Hooray! I find it hard to get that excited about football, so here's some photos I took that sum up what I did for most of it:
This is what was actually happening on the pitch:
I thought this one was a good summary of the 2 religious experiences we had that day (look closely):
Just now whilst writing this blog, I've also been bombarding Alicia with questions about Spanish grammar. Here is something I'm very excited about that I've learnt: the people from the Andes (Cochabamba, La Paz, Potosi, and Oruro) use the preterito perfecto tense more than other past tenses; the people from the Oriente (Santa Cruz and Sucre) use the preterito. That is to say, if you're an Andino, you are more likely to say this sentence: I have eaten a banana today, whereas if you are from Santa Cruz or Sucre you are more likely to say this sentence: I ate a banana today. I find this FASCINATING, and am going to talk to Angelika at the Spanish school about it, because apparently she once explained it to Alicia, and it's a bit complicated / very interesting (some might say fascinating). I will definitely keep you updated, unless you choose to unsubscribe from Bolivian grammatical / cultural updates.
In other cultural news - I am reading a book called Foreign Familiar, which is all about the difference between people from hot cultures and those from cold cultures. It almost boils down to the differences between collectivism and individualism. The reason that perhaps hot cultures are more open and generous with their time and more interdependent, is that because it's hot they go outside more and see each other more, whereas people in cold cultures stay in their houses more so they don't have as much of a feeling of being around other people etc. That's kind of a summary of the first section of the book.
I will go now, and leave you with a picture I think is funny - of Leanne on skype to her niece, whose 2nd birthday it was - we sang happy birthday to her and then the boys threw confetti on Leanne:
Bye, hope you've enjoyed reading. pepinillo xx
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