A quick apology for not having any photos, I still haven´t figured out how to read the spanish instructions on the computer- they will be on here next time I promise!So its been a little over a week since I arrived in this gorgeous place and I can see how time is going to fly over the next 3 months! I was picked up at the airport only 1 hour late by an employee of Projects Abroad and this was to be my first lesson about Bolivian time (there is nver a meed to rush afor anything). I was taken to my host families home and fell in love straight away. You walk straight into a courtyard with an orange tree and mandarine tree in the centre that is surrounded by buildings. I´ve now discovered that at one time there were 15 people living here- now there is just a mere 6 with myself included. The family is very traditional and are gorgeous. I have a mum, 2 uncles(twins), a grandma, a brother and a sister. The sister doesn´t live with us as she´s married with 2 very cute kids. They feed me like there´s no tomorrow and actually put more food on my plate than anyone else´s. I swear I´m going to roll out of this place but you won´t hear me complaining, I´m loving the food.
One of the Uncle´s works for tourism so took it upon himself in the first weekend to be my personal tour guide. So when he asked me if I would like to join him to attend the Andean New Year celebration on the Sunday morning I thought why not? He tells me that we will be going to watch the sunrise at one of the hills in Cochabamba, I think beautiful. We arrive at the wee hour of 0600hrs and we sit with all the other traditional Bolivians- clearly I´m the only white person there. Then he tells me to go have a look at the llama that we are going to watch be sacrificed. I tell him, once when I was a little girl I watched a cow have his throat slit trying to be cool in front of my brothers so thanks all the same but I think I´ll sit watching this one out and wait for the sunrise. I´m handed cocoa leaves to chef, my uncle tells me to chef 20 at once, I try about 5 and get them stuck in the back of my throat, later found out you don´t actually swollen them…might have been useful to know a little earlier. Anyway I tell the uncle that I think they taste horrible, he tells me its like your first beer, you don´t like it but you learn to love it! So the sunrises, we all raise our hands to the sun to take in the power of the new sun and I think great time to go home and back for a snooze befote family Sunday lunch. How wrong was I. Uncle tells me, now we need to drink something to celebrate to mother earth. Now we all know that I love a good beer but I was like its 7:30am...but on the flipside I was yet to taste the local ale so needless to say I agreed. Now we were a few hours into the morning and I asked the question ¨Where does one go to wee on a hill?¨ Answer- squat in amongst the cactuses- luckily it was only my finger that got pricked! As for the traditionally dressed ladies they don´t even bother with hiding, their skirts are so big and full they just squat anywhere they like! Anwway we had a very merry morning and were quite the pair when we rocked up for Sunday lunch.
So the area that I´m in is still at quite a high altitude, everything gets so dry and cold at night- I definately did not pack appropriately thus it has only taken me 1 week to catch a ripper cold. My host family keep trying to make me wear a mask and I just giggle at the idea, I can´t believe how may people wear them here. But I´m blaming it on orphan germs- everyone of their noses is full of snot and they all cough-poor kids--I say poor me. Looking after kids is quite hard work, especially this lot. I would describe it as having a room (9-10kids) with every kid having ADHD. Seriously all these kids do is hit, kick and bite each other, they are tough nuts, but very very cute at times. My favourite is the little girl who is more interested in eating the pencils and glue than actually playing with it. My host sister is the kindergarten teacher at the orphanage and there´s a nurse called Lucy who is lovely. And much to my horror they are both on holidays for 2 weeks starting today, so luckily there are 2 other volunteers that work in the same building as me that can speak Spanish otherwise I may have a breakdown. But back to the children, like I said they are terrors but so cute at the same time. The orphanage has around 80 children in it but I work in what they call the Garteria. The Garteria has a babies room for kids up till about 2 years which a local lady is in charge of. I go in there any chance I can because they are a mixture of cheeky and adorable even when they do wee all over you because they don´t have nappies. There´s a room for 3-4 year old which I work in and another for 5 year olds that another volunteer works in. Tomorrow its the orphanages anniversery where all the different houses and the garteria have to perform a little concert, it should be very cute. As the kids share all the clothes half the boys are dressed in little girls clothes and viceversa which makes it a little difficult to tell what they are as they all have there hair cut short. Their house mums must have just cut it on the weekend, there were some awesome mullets getting around today.
As for the other volunteers, its an interesting mix of people of different ages but the majority are 19/20 year olds who liven things up a bit and will be my weekend traveling companions so I´m betting its going to be back to the good old uni ways- god love it!! We went to s soccer match the other night- it was hilarious, the fans were out of control, shooting fireworks into the opposing supporters, I´ve never seen people move so quickly. And as for the medics carrying the stretcher, we saw at least 4 people stretchered off to the sideline just so they could ran straight back on- one guy even jumped off the stretcher mid way and ran back on the field-ridiculous! And I´m pretty sure I´ve not witnessed shall we say such favouritism from the umpires for a local team.
I´ve started my spanish lessons and have a wicked teacher- she´s kinda the alternative type, she teaches yoga and believes in the alternative therapies and crystals and all that jazz. I swear she spends most of the lesson just laughing at me, but hopefully in a few more weeks I´ll actually be able to communiacte with the rest of the family that doesn´t speak spanish-- as you can imagine meal times are a little awkward as I sometimes zone out as I can´t keep up with there conversations and then things go silent and I look up and realise they´re waiting for my answer...sad to say this has happened more than once.
This weekend we´re off to a semi jungle area about 3 hours from here where you go to play with the monkeys and other animals--its meant to be like heaven there, I can´t wait! But for now its a few early nights and lots of hot tea…………..
