How to leave a comment

Hola

I have changed the settings on the blog, so that you should be able to leave comments now.

Here's what you do:
Click the bit at the bottom of the blog, that says 'no comments' (normally it will say that, but if someone has already commented, it will say '1 comment' (I presume).
Write your comment in the box
Choose from the drop down list - you can either choose anonymous (but please don't as I won't know who you are and I may find that mildly frustrating, but not as frustrating as almost losing my camera today - it was in one of the many pockets of my bag) - or you can choose the one that says name/URL, and then put your name in (you don't have to put the URL bit in)
It may ask you to fill in some boxes of letters / words / numbers, to prove you're not a robot. If you are a robot, you will be discovered.

I hope that makes sense.

Today we went to see the statue of Christ at the top of the hill -we took the cable cars - los telefericos - I like that word. You could climb the stairs inside him and peer out of some holes to look at the view. I refrained as I don't like small spaces, and am not sure how I feel about climbing up inside someone like that. It reminded me of climbing up someone (a political leader I think, not religious) in Mexico, with Sarah (remember?) and going all the way up to his valiantly raised hand, and peering out of his thumb at the town below. He wasn't quite so small inside, so it was fine.

We then went to 'el globos', for an ice cream. El globos is a western style place, for westerners, or rich Bolivianos. Me and Nikki shared a banana split, and we all shared a dish called Pique Macho. This is a typical Cochabambino (yes, that is the adjective for something from Cochabamba) food, which is bits of beef, and onion, and tomato and pepper (some hot peppers too). The legend / reality goes: back in the day (quite some time ago), women went to work in the fields, and men stayed at home, to cook. As men are generally simpler than women, the most straightforward thing they could cook was this dish as it just requires some slicing of vegetables and meat, and then cooking it and maybe adding spicy sauce. The work Pique means spicy (picante), and - get this, this is the very interesting part - the word Macho, in Quechua (one of the indigenous languages here), means hombre, which means man. There you have the etymology of the word 'macho'. I probably overuse the word fascinating, but that is what I find this kind of thing.

We now have internet in our house, which may mean less conversation / more googling / emailing. This is fine I think, and will be useful when we get started on our projects, as we will need to research some ideas I am sure.

I will leave it there for now, as I'm tired, and want to read more of my book - the days are going fast as we are so busy, and learning all these new things is making me pretty exhausted. Oh one last thing - today we paid for a trip to La Paz and Lake Titicaca, and a night on the Isla del Sol (island of the sun). That's next weekend. I was going to try and refrain from spending all my savings on things like this, but seriously, what else are you meant to spend savings on?

A picture for you, of Christ, from a distance - I'll upload some more soon of the telefericos. We met some Chilean boys in our cable car, and I chatted to them, they are on a road trip for a month. One of them had very nice thick hair, but I didn't comment on that as I am not completely au fait with making hair chat with a Chilean in a cable car yet. I did learn the word for playground - campo juego - there are lots of pretty colourful ones around, even at the top of the hill where Christ is.

pepinillo xx

if you squint you can see him I think. I promise the next pictures will be better.