Weeks 2,3 & 4 continued.....

So it looks like I spoke to soon about not being ill in Bolivia, yep I´ve had the pleasure of driving the porcelain bowl this weekend, such a pain when you´re spending the weekend away from the comforts of your home.

On the weekend I heading for a town called Totora with 3 other volunteers and my Uncle who is a tour guide. We spent Saturday being shown around the town, very small town but really gorgeous. You really notice the difference when you get out of the city, the people in the country are so friendly and welcoming. And I guess you really get to see how the other half live, these people really have nothing compared to those in the city. We had a tour of the museum and the town and learnt the local story about a lady who was the victim of rape and had a child that she in turn cooked up and served to the father of the child- there´s even a movie about it, its called Cruel Martina, we´re having a movie night on Thursday night to watch it, not sure what I think about it.

We headed to 1 of the 2 ¨restaurants¨in the town on Saturday night and I´m sure this is what caused the ill stomach. The next day we headed to Incallajta, the largest Inca ruins in Bolivia. It was amazing, these ruins were huge and it is so interesting to learn about the history of them, but probably the best part was that we had them all to ourselves. Needless to say I found the climbing at 3000ft a little challenging considering I was the color of a ghost from the night before but I was determined, it was well worth it.

When we returned back to Cochabamba my family had prepared a massive BBQ lunch for us and despite the nausea I tucked in good and proper, it was just what the doctor called for (well so I thought at the time). Happy to report that it is now Monday and I´m nearly back to my old self.

I would like to update you all on whats happeneing for the orphange. It just so happens that another volunteer from last year from Australia is hear at the moment for 3 weeks. She has set up her own organisation in Australia which she fundraisers for and is attempting to gain corporate sponorship. Her organistaion funds the wages of the Doctor of the Guarderia and looks and what other projects she can help with. Now, at the orphange there are 5 casitas (houses) which house around 80 children and they dont have any any running water. The only access that they have is a hose from the other side of the grounds which the have to fill up massive buckets for everything they do. You can imagine how hard everyday tasks are to complete let alone things like teaching these kids hygiene when you dont have access to water. So the government has agreed to fund some of the money and with the money that people kindly donated I will be able to split the remaining costs with Tess to get this project underway. We have also managed to buy some essential items for the kids such as underwear, socks, shoes and jumpers. The government have a certain amount of things they supply the kids with, but as you can well imagine, 2 pairs of underwear per kid per year just doesn´t cut it. And with whats left over I´m having a great time buying much needed books and supplies for the Guarderia, so once again thank you to you all that have helped make it possible. Next weekend all the volunteers are having what they call a ¨dirty weekend¨, each month they pick a different orphange that we go to fix whatever needs fixing and this weekend we´re heading to my Guarderia which I´m excited about, so I´ll be sure to post pictures, but for now its off to practice more spanish, goodness knows I need the practice.

Weeks 2,3 & 4

So its been a hectic few weeks here in Cochabamba but I´m still living the good life. Only one case of the squirts in 4 weeks is fine by me, especially when you see the amount of food I´ve consumed, nothing is going to stop me from enjoying the cuisine. The last 2 nights I´ve been to a small local celebration of teh 200th Anniversery of La Paz. Basically Bolivians just love an excuse to party, no different to any other country I suppose. And to us travellers jsut another excuse to eat the food and sample the booze. I had the pleasure of sampling some cow´s heart and might I say it was the most tender meat I´ve ever had.

Speaking of eating things, today I had the pleasure of combing the knits(headlice) out of some of the girls hair. I had been pretty cautious about wearing a headband everyday as I´m terrified of catching the little buggers and will be even more cautious after seeing them in every childs hair today. But one of the girls is like a professional nit picker, she was grooming all of the other girls heads. She reminded me of some monkeys that we saw at a national park the other weekend (thats a diferent story though. This little gril was running up to me each time she found a live one so that I could squish it with the back of my nail (you can imagine how thrilled I was about this priviledge). The only problem I had was once I had killed the nit the little girl carefully picked it off the comb and popped it into her mouth----GROSS!! Now please do not think that these children are starved- they´re not, in fact some of them would make pretty good little telly tubbies but they just eat anything that looks edible its incredible.



The park that we visited 2 weekends ago was called Parque Machia, its a National Park for rescued animals that they try and rehabilitate back into the wild. We stayed in the town and visited the park for 1 day. The attraction is definitely the monkeys, they just wander around everywhere and just swing from tree to tree, it was so cool to see them in their natural environment. We had what we thought was going to be a leisurely stroll to the waterfalls- how wrong were we- 2 hours later and a few mini mudslides we were back to the beginning- all in good fun, after all it has been a while since I´ve had to work up a sweat. Sorry to cu the story short but I need to run, will be in touch soon.