Pop tarts...

Hi everyone

Tomorrow we're going to the Salt Flats, very early, for the weekend. I haven't blogged for a while, though it's been on my to do list. Last weekend was carnival and I took thousands of photos which I will put a few here and write more another day about.

The last 2 days I've been in bed with a funny tummy. To be expected I suppose, but I've never had such bad stomach cramps. Zaida has been bringing me soup and cups of tea and generally been very sweet checking I'm ok. It's generally been a pretty boring 2 days, apart from the fact that Lee, who is in the bunk bed above me, has also been off sick - she had a swollen tooth, which was an infected root canal related tooth incident. She had 2.5 hours at the dentist today including a massive needle apparently, so I can't complain too much about my sickness which really only involved stomach ache and sleeping a lot.

We finished painting the lockers at our centre, and visited a few schools this week to give out leaflets to encourage the kids (mainly the girls) to come to our centre for our workshops after school. It was so lovely to meet some kids finally and they are so unbelievably cute. Obviously I don't have any photos as that would be a bit against the child protection policy, unless they all sign a consent form... maybe later.

I discovered they sell pop tarts here and bought and ate loads of them in a typical obsessive way. Perhaps that is why I got ill.

Over and out for now. pepinillo xx

one of the dancers

some more dancers

lockers - with roof, berfore painting

during painting

a close up, almost finished lockers. I'll take another of the fully finished version next week...

El techo

Today me Tom and Diana came one step closer to getting the lockers painted and finished and protected from the weather by a little roof. We have some green wavy plastic roof which we got from the DIY shop up the road from our project. Today we decided, after much discussion, to attach it to the wall in a certain way, at a certain angle. We found a drill (which gave me an electric shock), searched high and low for extension leads which worked (one person had to hold the plug in at a particular angle to make it work), bought screws and rawl plugs, drew a line on the wall where the roof should go, and climbed up the ladder with the drill, and 20 minutes later we had attached the roof to the wall. It wasn't perfect, I'll admit, but it was a solution and given that we have now spent probably 4 days of our entire lives trying to sort the lockers and roof out, we were really proud of ourselves. However, this being Bolivia, Carla and Veronica (2 of the staff), came out and ummed and ahhed, and for the next 2 hours we all ummed and ahhed, and basically the end result was the roof came back down, was chopped in half, nails were bought and tomorrow we will do a whole different thing with the roof. The funny thing is that I'm pretty certain that Carla and Veronica had told us to put it on the wall in the way we did in the first place.

Here's what we achieved today: 0

But, it was quite amusing (in hindsight), that that much chat could be had over a piece of green roof and some rusty old lockers. I wonder if we will have solved it by the end of the 10 weeks here. I was going to take a before and after picture to show you all, and I'm so glad I had forgotten my camera and couldn't, because in reality the after picture would be identical to the before picture now. We could have bought new lockers and done something else with our time, but here time does not equal money, and it is certainly proving to be true that it is all about the fact of discussing and doing things together, rather than actually doing things in a way that makes any sense or has any meaning or is about the end result. I'm starting to see it as kind of being part of some strange work of fiction.

Yesterday we watched a film called Evo Pueblo, which is the story of Evo Morales's life. It was interesting, mainly because we couldn't get the subtitles to work so had to try to follow it in Spanish. I fell asleep for a bit of it, but will keep it and watch it again when my Spanish is fluent.

That's all for now. Hope you're having productive Westernised fulfilling days that make sense. xx

It's all about the water...

Hola companeros

 
There is a water shortage in Cochabamba. This means we shouldn't take long showers, or shower twice a day. However for the last few days, water has been the main part of el carnival (related to the massive carnival in Rio, but not quite as big a deal here) - what most people do during carnival is throw water bombs at you as you innocently walk down the street minding your own business. Pretty much for the whole month of February. This is funny, but also slightly annoying. You have to be on your guard - I have been splattered a lot so far, as have most of us. It is actually illegal to throw water bombs or use water guns, as sometimes people fill them with ink, or even worse, with ice. Throwing a water balloon thrown from a moving car at top speed is actually really dangerous, and you can be fined for it (but generally you're not - it's one of many rules that are just there to be broken). Today and tomorrow are public holidays so that people can drive around throwing water bombs or getting drunk. We went up to the restoration centre to do some games / workshops with the girls there this afternoon. Luckily we had only spent a small amount of time planning, as guess what - all we did was have one gigantic water fight, with buckets, guns, balloons, and weird spray-y foam too. It was in fact hilarious, and I guess the water shortage can be put on hold for a few days...

The reason for throwing all this water, we found out from Mauge today, is that because it is coming to the end of the rainy season, people throw water around to remind the gods that they have had enough of the rain. Mauge told us about traditional beliefs and Christianity merging together, or at least existing together. I think this is called syncretism. She explained that Bolivians like to believe in literally anything that they think may help them somehow, as they have quite a fatalistic, external belief system - ie that life is just bad and that's just the way it is, so anything that comes along that looks like it might be helpful or useful in that struggle is quite welcomed. This means that missionaries may come here thinking they have properly converted lots of people whereas in reality it's quite a superficial conversion.

Here are some other typically Bolivian things we have recently experienced, as forewarned in meetings with Mauge and David. At work the other day we had a team meeting, thankfully Diana translated the details for us - it's not really good enough to only get the gist when you're in a planning meeting. It was as David had said it would be - pretty circular and went round the houses a few times. They were talking about fundraising, and did we have any ideas etc. We had a few ideas, which it seemed they had thought of too and had reasons why they wouldn't work. By the end, we got to Plan D, which I suspect all along was Plan A, which was that me and Tom go out and find 15 people between us who may be interested in supporting the work that our centre does. These people would come to the centre and have a tour and introduction etc, and then hopefully be inspired to give us money. So this is our mission for the next few weeks - if any of you readers know any rich/sympathetic people in Cochabamba, do please drop them a line with my details.....

The other thing we got to understand a bit more was Bolivian time. On Sunday we helped Zaida move house. She said it would be good if we could get there at 11. So we set off at 1045 and got there for 11. She was surprised to see us and nothing was packed into boxes yet. I didn't realise until later that when she said 11 would be good, that meant we should have started thinking about leaving ours at 11, and probably it was rude of us to have arrived 'on time' (English time). It's weird to try to understand this shift in thinking, so probably best not to try to understand it and just remember it next time. It goes against my way of doing things, so would be hard to get used to in the long run - I like to be at least 10 minutes early for most things - I have been known to get to airports 4 hours in advance (for an internal flight in Mexico, where timetables mean just as little as they do here - oops).

Another new thing for me this last week was to take part in a protest march against violence against women in Bolivia. Cochabamba has the highest rate of violence against women (not sure why  - perhaps connected to unemployment etc). We met up in Plaza Colon, all of us that are working with Mosoj Yan, and the girls from the centre too. We had some signs and banners and leaflets that we gave out along the way. I think the people of Bolivia are quite used to people doing marches, so although it stopped the traffic, it certainly didn't raise too many eyebrows. Everyone I gave leaflets to thanked me kindly, and seemed to read them. We stopped outside the government building, no one came out to talk to us, then we stopped outside the palace of justice, and no one came out to talk to us there either. Here's some pics:

And here's the fairly scary looking armed police at the entrance to the government building in the main square (I gave each one a leaflet):

Other things that've happened this week:

We got the lawn mower working! Well, Gonzalo did, he's the manager of one of the other centres. Turns out you had to pull the lever on the handle at the same time as pulling the engine starter thingy. Don't want to say I told you so, but I had said that we should try that.

We went to the market at La Cancha with the staff of our centre, to look for a different space they could use for when they do lessons and workshops there. They did have a space, but sadly can no longer use it. There's a train station right in the middle of La Cancha, from where a train goes about once a week, who knows to where. They showed us the vegetable garden they had there too, which sadly now can't be used either. So far we haven't found anywhere, but hopefully we will. We then bought some bits and pieces like paint and sandpaper, so it was good to learn some new Spanish vocab (sandpaper is surprisingly not papel de arena, but lija). We got a small bus back to the centre, and saw some police being quite violent against some illegal stall holders at the market. It's best not to look the police in the eye apparently. They remind me of the pigs out of the 1984 (it's been a while since I read it so not sure if that's a correct analogy, but generally they reminded me of pigs in some way or other).

We went to watch the dancing in Plaza Sucre one night - our friend Diana is dancing in the carnival this Saturday and had told us that there is dancing most nights at the moment to practise for it. There were different types of dances all around the square, so we joined in the one called Caporales. This is a very traditional Andean dance, from the fields, los campos. All the moves represent things you would do, for example pulling each others hair, or fighting with sticks etc. Apparently they still do fight to the death for reasons like being the new chief of the village, or over a girl etc, and this is where this type of dance comes from. Very interesting.

Thursday was el dia de conmadres - basically girls/young women hang out and get drunk. Seems like the run up to carnival is just any excuse to celebrate / drink / throw water balloons. It was el dia de conpadres the week before.

I learnt that it is el apoca de paltas at the moment - the avocado season. Zaida told me that if you have an unripe avocado and you wrap it in newspaper and then in a blanket and put it in a bed for a few days it will nicely ripen. I bought one tonight at the supermercado, and am going to try it. Like you would look after a baby I suppose (apart from you probably don't wrap them in newspaper). Zaida also told us that she used to live at the restoration centre, where Leanne and Leonie are working. She was there for 3 years, with Santi when he was young. She knows most of the staff when we mention them, and goes to visit them sometimes. She said that it was set up by a Finnish woman, who was her friend at the time - it came to her in a dream that this was what she should do, so she did it. It was then merged in to Mosoj Yan later on and became what it is today. Zaida works with young single mothers in some form or other, or rather volunteers I should say. She helps them if they are being abused by their partners, or their children are, or if they need things, or need to go to hospital etc. She is so lovely and generous it's quite amazing, given that she doesn't exactly have that much herself. It's amazing what people will do for others. She has certainly not had an easy life herself. And recently she's been quite stressed as she had to move house and a good friend of hers died - we are going to take her out for dinner soon to say thank you for everything she does for us.

At work we have been continuing the saga of preparing the lockers to be painted - we have bought a green plastic roof to protect them from the weather; we mowed the lawns; prepared the outside walls for painting too; cleaned some of the chairs. We also went to one of the directors' leaving do - which involved not understanding a single word that they all said to each other as it was quite fast and all kind of reminiscing and private jokes etc. I resolved there and then to book some more Spanish lessons for this week, which I have now done. Even when I can't understand things it's always nice to hear Spanish being spoken, and I am definitely learning new words every day. Today I learnt the word for slippery (resbaladizo), as that is what the floor was during the water fight.

We played volleyball on Friday again. It's actually called Wally - it's Volleyball inside, kind of on a squash court sized court, and you can use the walls too. It's hilarious and we ended up rolling around laughing - it's good stress release after a long week. Last time we played me and Mariam realised we were both pretty competitive and got upset when certain people on our team kept missing the ball, ha ha.

Found a nice new coffee shop that does much better coffee than Cafe Paris. Me and Nikki sat and made flash cards and had a mini croissant with ham and cheese too. Things like that really make me happy...

Friday night the other team were away for the night with another volunteering group they'll be doing some work with. It was strange to have the house just to ourselves, and especially the whole room to myself. They stayed in cabins on a lake somewhere, sounds dreamy, and went canoing and played games etc.

On Saturday night we went to Alicia's church to watch her in a kind of play they were putting on. It was to illustrate 3 specific verses of the bible, which were from Timothy (2:4, 2:5, and 2:5 I think, in case you want to look them up). I liked what it was saying - kind of about how you need to work now in order to enjoy things later. I think the bible probably has a lot of good things to say. That's probably one of the most profound things I've ever written. Perhaps that's why millions of people read it. We did some songs, and were heartily welcomed to the church - Saturday evenings are for jovenes (youths), and when we turned up, we were instantly everyone's new best friends, it's amazing how friendly they are. You certainly would never get a situation at a Bolivian church where you are left standing on your own. The pastor made us stand up and say hello my name is Lucy/Nikki etc. I was pretty sure that was what he'd asked me to do, but obviously you kind of doubt your Spanish and I didn't want to stand up and say hi my name's Lucy to everyone when that wasn't what he'd told me to do. So I asked him to repeat what he'd said again, just to be sure. It was funny and embarrassing but also really welcoming and kind. Aftewards we had a small slice of pizza with Alicia, then one of our new best friends gave us a lift home! Maravilloso.

And that is pretty much it for now. Tomorrow we have the day off as it's carnival, but we can't really go anywhere as everywhere is closed, and we'd be at risk of being totally water bombed. We're going to cook pancakes for breakfast and watch films with popcorn in the afternoon. I can't wait - I found the film about Evo Morales called Evo Pueblo, so I'm going to inflict that on everyone. Zaida really wants to watch it too, so that'll be nice. Santi didn't seem too keen but he is only 17 and probably doesn't want to watch boring documentary style films. We went to a new massive supermarket tonight with Zaida, to buy pancake toppings - we got nutella (!), lemons, oranges and maple syrup. I bought a packet of pop tarts, and we secretly shared them in the kitchen when back - they were Amazing - it's an expensive habit to start though, £3 a pack almost... At the checkout I managed to drop a whole bag of milk (yes they sell milk in bags here) onto the floor - it exploded everywhere, on to mine and Nikki's hair and clothes. Who would have thought that milk could travel that far, that's nearly 6 feet into the air it flew.

Ciao for now lectores (readers), hope all is well xx

A few more pictures:

some lemons in our garden at work

check out the short grass after being lawn mowed

the lockers with their little green rooves (to be attached to the wall properly this week, but we had no drill at the time (that would have made life far too straightforward))

Paulino and the giant reed boat

Last weekend I went to Lake Titicaca. This was the third time I've been there, which some may think is a bit greedy for one lifetime. Thankfully, none of us suffered from altitude sickness, thus proving that most things we worry about don't come to pass, or perhaps proving that coca powder is a very powerful preventative measure. Here's what happened, in una cascara de nuez:

Friday night was the night bus from here to La Paz. It was raining, and I was worrying, as usual, in case the bus veered off the road. In 2005, Bolivia took the forward thinking measure of making drink driving illegal. Phew. We had seats on the top deck, in what they call a buscama - which means a busbed if translated literally. The seats are really comfy, so much comfier than the Megabus. But, unlike the Megabus, there is no toilet. So, no drinking of your water, so more potential for being dehydrated and getting altitude sickness. Anyway, none of this happened. We stopped around 230am for a toilet stop in the middle of nowhere (el medio de nada). Nikki's trousers broke at this point, which she did mention was ok to blog about - they were held together by some string so she managed to fix them with some more string I think.

'We' by the way, was me and Nikki from my team (the others decided against it as are saving up for the trip to the Salt Flats(, the 2 Swiss girls from the Spanish school, Regula and Andrea, and Noelia, a teacher from the school who was essentially our guide. Noelia looks a little bit like Maite, another teacher, and an interesting fact about Maite is that she has 15 siblings. Noelia is very lovely and looked after us really well. The Swiss girls speak very good English (of course), but we talked in Spanish only as we are all trying to learn. They are primary teachers in Switzerland, and funnily enough they live in Kreuzlingen, which is a place in Switzerland that I know, it's on Lake Constanz.

I managed to sleep well on the night bus, and it didn't veer off any roads. We got to La Paz bus station around 6am, I missed the amazing view of La Paz, seen from circling down in to it from above - it's the highest city in the world I think. Actually it's not - I've just googled it - but it's certainly up there in the list - it's 4150m by the airport (13,615 feet). I remembered when I was last in La Paz - we got the night bus there from somewhere else, perhaps Uyuni - and as we arrived in La Paz, the bus juddered to a stop and rolled the last hundreds of metres down to the bus station. They weigh your luggage on to the bus and calculate exactly how much petrol they will need so the drivers can't syphon off and sell any leftovers, thus the running out of petrol that time..... This didn't happen this time, but I certainly recognised the street we were on which was kind of a strange feeling.

We were supposed to meet a trufi, which is a mini bus taxi type thing. Noelia had arranged all this. However, the 2nd of February is the day of a festival in Copacabana, which is where we were then headed, to take the bus to La Isla del Sol, our final destination. This festival, which is the festival del Virgen de Copacabana, meant that all the trufi drivers from Copacabana had been drinking for the last 3 days, and were too drunk to drive, even by Bolivian standards. So the hotel owner had arranged a taxi for us instead. Which was fine, apart from Noelia had to sit in the boot - which to be fair looked more spacious and cosy than the rest of the taxi, and she certainly wouldn't let us move her out of there to the front seat. Off we went anyway, up to El Alto, the high bit of La Paz, and also the pretty poor run down bit (or one of them anyway) - unfinished houses, stray dogs, dust everywhere, markets by the side of the road, more dogs, random diggers and trucks on the side of the road, lots of chicken stalls called invariably 'rey de pollo'. It's a long straight road through this district, and I saw lots of graffiti in support of Evo, el presidente, along the way. The people of La Paz like him, they are Aymara, his people, and poor.

Also along the way, Noelia explained to us (in English so as not to upset the taxi driver as it's quite a sensitive subject) that the people of La Paz do sacrifices when they build a new building. Human sacrifices that is. If you were to dig up the foundations of a lot of the houses / buildings we drove past that day, you would most likely find human remains under them. In La Paz, unlike the rest of Bolivia, you are allowed to be Catholic and also believe in Pachamama (mother earth - the indigenous / traditional belief system). You may not agree with this particular ritual of theirs, so I won't go into more detail, also because I don't want to anger any of their gods as they may be quite fierce. There is a film about this particular ritual apparently, called Elephant Cemetery, but I am yet to google this.

We stopped to get some snacks at a petrol station in el medio de nada, after getting through the jigsaw puzzle of traffic of El Alto. The traffic was particularly bad due to everyone going to the festival in Copacabana. As we set off from our petrol station, Noelia shouted something about biscuits which triggered my memory of having rested them on the taxi roof as I was getting back in. They were now rolling around 200 metres back down the road and in severe danger of being run over by one of the trucks behind us. Me and Noelia leapt out of the car and ran as though our lives depended on it (which isn't easy to do at altitude) to rescue them. All the traffic coming towards us managed to swerve around the biscuits, thank god and pachamama, and we safely got them back. All I think when things like this happen is 'that'll be a good little story for the blog'. And so it was.

The next eventful thing in the taxi was probably me falling asleep. So to make it more interesting I'll tell you a taxi based fact: they use 3 types of fuel in Bolivia - petrol (for rich people), diesel (for trucks), and natural gas (for mainly taxis). The government paid for anyone who wanted to convert their engines to ones that would run on natural gas a while ago, thus meaning that they could get around for a lot cheaper, and also that Bolivia benefitted from its natural gas resources. When we are 7 in one taxi and it has to go up the small hill near school, you can feel it almost stop completely - they are much less powerful with this fuel. When we were in a taxi one day he had to go and fill up, and we all had to get out, much to our bemusement. This was so he could fit more gas in the tank, as it is literally gas, not liquid. I was wondering if when we got in it would therefore explode as we all sat down on to it. Another taxi we were in the other day broke down mid-taxi drive on one of the mainer roads of Cochabamba. All the traffic honked and went around us - I tried to get out but couldn't quite get out in time to help the others who were by now pushing it while the drive steered it. I felt like somone in a sedan chair might feel as they pushed me towards the pavement. We felt really sorry for the taxi driver who stood there with the bonnet open just kind of staring at what was infront of him, scratching his head in a cartoon type way. Leanne suggested calling the AA, but I'm pretty sure they don't exist here.

Anyway, back to Copacabana - we stopped at a small museum en route, where we met Paulino who showed us many pictures of giant reed boats. Reeds in Spanish are torturas. I bought a small reed boat to remind myself of Paulino and his adventures, as he was pretty cool. He had made one of the giant reed boats in Barcelona, and one in Chile - this one he sailed with 6 others to Tahiti and back, over 3 months. Can you imagine it. As we left, he was still poring over his photo albums of the construction of the boats, him with various other boat making people, other reed related things. I wished I could speak fluent Spanish so I could understand him completely, he must've been pretty cool by Bolivian standards. Here is a photo of him looking at his photos:

my mini reed boat

We got our first sight of the lake here (my third, ahem). The others had probably seen it sooner, but I was fast asleep up until this point. On arriving in Copacabana, I was instantly over excited at the sound of pan pipes and drums in the town. All the men and women were dressed up to los nueves, the men in their best smartest grey suits, with garlands of flowers around their necks, and the women in traditional Aymara dresses (they have a particular name which I can never remember, but 'traje' seems to cover it - it means suit). They were all drinking from big communal bottles of beer, throwing confetti around, playing or listening to music, and doing the Inca version of line dancing. It was amazing. We went to eat some lunch - trout, from the lake, with chips, not from the lake - then looked some more at the festival and some stalls selling typical Bolivian things. Sadly we were on a bit of a time frame so couldn't stay to watch the festival descend into Bolivian oblivian madness, but it was pretty exciting to have been there on that particular day.

A small boat took us a few minutes over the lake to another bit of island (am slightly confused as to what was island and mainland, and what order things happened in, but I don't think it matters too much). The taxi came over on a separate little boat/barge thing. There were some boat/barges with entire buses or lorries on them, which made me chuckle, especially as it seems flota is another word for bus, or one of the bus companies, which also surely means floating? One of the little boats was called Elvis - here he is:

a bus boat

We ate some strange nut/seed/corn type thingys while we waited for the taxi to get to the other side. These are called darwi (Noelia said it's like Darwin without the n). There were really tasty, more so than they looked. We then drove some more to another bit of island to take a boat for a bit longer, to get to the Isla del Sol. The scenery was stunning, like a gigantic, non touristy version of the lake district, with snow topped mountains topped again with puffy clouds. Here is a picture as it will be better than a description:

On arriving on the Isla del Sol, we walked to see the Templo del Sol, where they used to do sacrifices to the sun. I tried to imagine being an Inca in those days, and just living on this massive lake, and seeing just a few other islands around you, and that's your life. I suppose you'd eat potatoes and quinoa and corn and have some sheep, and occasionally sacrifice someone to make sure the sun still shone the next day. There is an island nearby called Isla de la Luna - this used to be the home of just Incan princesses or perhaps still is - I can't really tell what is present / past fact or fiction anymore about some of these things. We didn't go there, in case they sacrificed one of us, but also because it wasn't on our itinerary. We then had to walk for about an hour across part of the Isla del Sol, to get to our hotel. The first part of this was up steep steps. At altitude this is not easy at all, and most of the rest of the way was steep. There were piles of hail along the way, but the sun was blazing down on us and there was not a cloud in the sky. Whence had it come?? Mysterious if you ask me, but no more so than lots of other things. I took a photo of some llamas, and 2 small Bolivian girls ran over and blocked my way until I coughed up 1 boliviano for the pleasure of taking a picture of their llamas. I was not impressed - this is what I got for my 10p equivalent:

Isla del Sol is very touristy, there are signs in English saying 'pizza restaurant, gourmet pizza chef', and numerous internet cafes along the way in the first part of the island. I don't like being one of many travellers after being a relative rarity in Cochabamba, but such is life and it is a really lovely island, despite the 10p llama photo charge incident. I can understand why they have to do it, I guess it's annoying having your island invaded by westerners who have loads of money and don't understand you or your culture particularly well and just want to eat American style food. Anyway, after my minor low point, we got to our hotel and relaxed while looking at the amazing massive view of LakeTiticaca, and drinking coca tea. Donkeys brought the Swiss girls big rucksacks to our hotel, thankfully for them. It soon became freezing cold and I wore all the clothes I had taken with me, which I thought were too many when packing but now thought weren't enough. We could barely speak during dinner we were so tired, but we managed a game of cards and watched some thunder and lightning flitting around us before passing out in our beds which thankfully had very thick blankets. I slept amazing well, and had some strange dreams - that I'd flown home for the weekend to have a roast dinner which I'd then forgotten to eat.

Sunday was rainy and grey, and breakfast was delayed, perhaps due to this or perhaps due to some other Bolivian mystery. I more than happily fell back asleep under all my blankets when Noelia announced this. Sleep like that is priceless, when you think you have to get up and then you don't. It's like how I imagine winning the lottery must feel. Anyway, it had to end at some point, and we did get up and eat breakfast - eggs, bread, and coffee - and set off, all the way with a lovely protective dog from the hotel. She decided to be our guard dog for the walk to the Incan ruins at the other end of the island, which involved growling at a man in a field towards the end, who ran at her and threw stones until she stopped. She chased a sheep for a while, who was pretty powerless but put up a good fight until Noelia intervened. Towards the end of the walk she found a new friend and forgot all about us. The Incan ruins were most notable for us eating our packed lunches there, overlooking the sea, where I saw some ducks floating about too.

And so ended our little Isla del Sol adventure, as we walked down to the boat stop, past the beach where you can rent out tents for the night. I walked in the Lake for this bit, which was in fact a first as far as I know. We picked up our bags that we had left at the hotel from another part of the island - the boat driver cleverly reversed our boat to a little house on the shore and a man ran out of the little house with our things. I think the man was little too, or it could have just been the perspective. Here's a picture anyway:

spot the rucksack

The boat ride was choppy back to Copacabana, and I slept some more. We then basically did the reverse of what we did to get there, so I won't explain it. There was still some drowsy vaguely drunken pan pipe music going on at the festival in Copacabana, and I bought some nice green earrings and a Bolivian style cardigan for my new(ish) niece Esme - hope it fits. We left the Swiss girls in La Paz after having dinner with them at a Western type place - chicken fajitas - wahey. The Swiss girls were staying on to travel around Bolivia some more, then one of them is returning to Cochabamba, and the other one is going to South Africa. Me Nikki and Noelia walked a few blocks from the fajita restaurant to the bus terminal, past a lovely church with the lights of La Paz in the background, past some jugglers juggling at traffic lights in the hope of making a Boliviano or two, past women settling down for the night on the pavement, with their babies and blankets. The poverty in La Paz is evident everywhere, and the poorest people live higher up around the rim of what they call the upturned hat of the city, where oxygen is less and conditions worse.

The night bus was just as comfy as it had been on the way there, we sat downstairs this time, there was still no bathroom, but I slept amazing well - only waking a few times in a bus related panic - I think it was quite a lot of downhill and sometimes the road is very very bumpy, and I may have been dreaming of drunken bus drivers.

Appendix 1: some more random pictures:

The lowly kitchen knife

Hi everyone

Today we started at our projects. Me and Tom are at the working girls centre in the centre of town - for the next 3 weeks or so we will be painting and gardening and getting it ready and looking nice for when the girls start coming in again which will be more like the end of February. They also go out and do visits to the girls' families, to try to talk to the parents, presumably about the importance of schooling etc, and maybe we get involved with that, but I'm not sure yet. I know you are all desparate for a blog update about our little weekend away to Lake Titicaca - this is coming soon but might take a while as we did quite a lot.

At our centre there is another volunteer called Diana, from Germany but half Columbian and speaks Spanish like a local therefore. She's been here since August and is staying a year altogether, so it's great to have her there as she knows the staff and can translate when we can't communicate well (being German she obviously speaks English like an almost native too). She's only 19 would you believe it.

Our first task today was moving 3 large lockers from one side of the garden to another, where we will paint them. This was not that easy, but me and Tom came up with the clever plan of cartwheeling them across the garden, as they were too heavy and cumbersome to get a good grip on for carrying. We were pretty proud of our cartwheel technique, but had to keep an eye on the open lockers whose doors flung open and then nearly got squashed in the process. We cleaned the lockers that were open, and emptied out various bits of cobweb/a pair of old socks (surprisingly clean), a packet of what looked like mini cheddars, and then began one of those tasks which is like those ones they give people for eternal punishment - a large bunch of keys, and a large amount of locked lockers. We had to figure out which opened which locker, if at all, as the staff weren't sure if they were in fact the locker keys at all or from some other cupboards in some other room, or other city, who knows. We soon realised that for some reason all the keys worked in locker number 11, so missed that one out from then on. We managed to identify about 9 other ones that fitted and opened lockers (imagine how exciting it was when that happened) (but that was only 9 out of 40 lockers so not a great success rate). Tom then got a makeshift hammer (ie a piece of wood), and started hitting one to see if it would just magically open. It didn't. We need a plan C.

We wrote a list of things needed to help us in our work (paint, new padlocks, a paint scraper thingy, anti-corrosion spray (if this exists) and some advice about the lockers) and went of to La Cancha (the market) with Diana. Sadly it was by now around noon, so of course the shops we needed had decided to close until 2, according to a man at a little stall. We will go back tomorrow. Diana went home to her Bolivian family for lunch, and me and Tom thought we knew the way back but got slightly lost. The city is on a grid system, so for me that makes things harder as every street looks pretty much the same. And the shops are quite non distinctive - they tend to be: an internet 'cafe', a stationery shop (I spend quite a bit of time in these and I think when I'm older I'd like to have my own stationery shop), a clothes shop, a food outlet. That's kind of it, repeated quite a bit with slight variances. We found a nice place to eat rellenos (stuffed fried things with chicken or beef or cheese in them) which will I think become our local lunch stop - though we do get a packed lunch too.

We started on some gardening after lunch. This involved finding a few pairs of shears, none of which had any kind of cutting power. So we got some lowly kitchen knives and attacked the long grass with those. The idea being that once the long grass was short grass, Tom could use the lawn mower to actually mow it. I was surprised to find there was a lawn mower, but less surprised to find that it didn't work. I think it is just a lack of petrol, so tomorrow we should know. Eric and Lineke, the Dutch couple, were there too, and as 5 people we cleared most of the long grass. They will be there every Monday and Tuesday, and in the motivation centre from Wednesday to Friday with Darryl and Nicky.

We stopped for a few fanta breaks, as it was hot sun by now, and it ends up being quite a work out. We found a few spiders - one white one, which we thought could be poisonous, so Tom removed it to further away. I got bitten a lot by mosquitoes and other buzzy things, none of which I presume had malaria let's hope. They were probably just annoyed to have their grass disturbed. I then started doing some paint scraping to get the walls ready for painting - guess what I used - the lowly kitchen knife. Who knew it could be such a useful tool for DIY and gardening. It reminded me of seeing little kids in Belize mowing their lawns with machetes... Much safer though. I sure hope they wanted that wall painting that I started scraping, as it looks pretty bad now with half the paint missing. The staff pretty much leave us to it, we have to just make sure we get things done that will make everything look nicer. The plan is to paint the lockers and all the outside walls, and if there's time then it'd be good to paint some pictures on the walls, maybe on the lockers too, so it's all nice and bright when they return. The garden needs tidying up obviously, and the swings, climbing frame and slide need painting too to brighten them up. I'm really excited about all this manual work, especially as it's so good to be working with Tom, and Diana and the Dutch couple when they're there. I haven't got to know the staff yet, due to language barrier, and that these things take time. They are very lovely and welcoming and glad of our help though.

After our hard day's work we went for an ice cream (the equivalent of sitting down with a lovely cool glass of beer - we're not allowed to do thta), then wandered to the main square to try to find a map at the tourist office, but this bit of the plan failed. Tom is pretty good with directions, so we will probably be ok if we need to go out during the days to get things. Can always just get a taxi if we get lost as I do know the address of the centre.

In other news - had a Spanish lesson yesterday, an individual one - it was really intense and made my head feel like it was going to explode. Then had a burger at burger king and temporarily lost my wallet but found it again at the school (was due to the intensity of the Spanish lesson I think). Had a really interesting session with David yesterrday morning about the bigger issues of poverty and international development - we have these every Monday, so will soon all be pretty clued up on things. I haven't time to summarise what we learnt right now, but will do so soon I hope.

Ok, that's it for now, and I will write again soon about our other trip. Bye for now xx

Tom and Eric inspecting the lawn mower

Where they will plant salads and carrots etc

Before

And after. Apparently there could be scorpions in the grass but so far not witnessed any.