My host sister and her husband Eddie. On the right is Eddie´s dad and Barbara who is another volunteer from France that loves with us and Lisa a volunteer from Germany on the left.
This was my class that I helped teach in the last 2 weeks I was working at the orphange. The other guy is Jan, a volunteer from Germany, he´s my hero, he´s 18 and speaks 5 languages and is a really cool guy, wish I was 18 again :)
This is Tom from USA, possibly one of the funniest guys I ´ve met, and this is our Garden that we painted.
Ok, so with a little encouragement from my mum I´ve realised that its time to write again. A couple of weekends ago we had what is commonly known here as a ¨dirty weekend¨, my Spanish teacher was very excited to here what I had planned and needless to say was a little disappointed when I then better described it as a workshop weekend. We fixed boxes and painted muriels on the wall at my orphanage which turned out to be a pretty fun day and the kids loved the final product. The only downside to these weekends is it only leaves us 1 day to travel somewhere and given that I don´t exactly live close to anywhere else in this country its pretty limiting. But luck was on mine and Sam´s (my English companion) side as we went to visit a neighbouring town for the Sunday markets and as it turned out it was the practice day for the dancing for a massive festival that is on here in another 2 weeks. And these people really turn it on for their festivals. Apparently the dancing starts early in the morning and goes till late in the night on the Friday. And when I say dance I mean groups of anywhere up to 50+ people fully decked out in traditional costumes dancing with brass bands behind them down the streets of the town. All entry and exists to the town are shut off. So there are literally hundreds and hundreds of groups of dancers that have spent months preparing for it. The groups practice on random streets in town every evening, there is one group that practices outside my house, its pretty cool, but the pictures will explain better. So the festival is in 2 weeks and on the Saturday morning at around 2am people walk from Cochabamba to Quillacollo (where the festival is held) up to the mountains- its about a 12-15km walk. My host brother has comvinced me to do it and tells me that people do it to cleanse their souls- I told him mine was pretty clean thanks all the same but I could do with the exercise and I have a pair of runners here so I´ll still come along :)
Last week I started my nursing placement here and if I had to choose one word to describe it it would have to be¨different¨. Where to begin, its definately better that I´m actually a qualified nurse or I´d probably spend my days simply observing but on my first 2 days I went with some of the other nurses and doctors to schools to give flu jabs to the teachers, pretty standard stuff but really enjoyed geting back into the nursing role.
Then on the 3rd day a few of the student nurses came to get me and said that we were off to give more immunisations (you also need to remember that no-one at my new placement speaks english so I think a little- or alot gets lost in translation). Anyway on the way down the street they tell me we´re off to immunise perros and gatos and for everyone that means dogs and cats, mmm hmm yep not a standard day in the life of a nurse. So off we went banging on fences in search of cats and dogs to immunise against rabies. I tell you at the first house I had the wind put up me, there were about 5 dogs in the frontyard (if you want to call it that) which is pretty standard for this country and the other nurses and the owner were telling me to get off the street. I looked at the dog and thought- mmm looks pretty harmless to me, what I didn´t see was what looked like a spun out drug addict walking up to the house carrying a massive rock ready to throw at the dog as obviously the constant barking from the animal had completely pissed him off. Luckily the dog and me both made it inside the gates in time, to be fair the guy only had eyes for the dog so I think I was pretty safe. But that day I definately got to see parts of this city that I would never have seen otherwise, the last place I visited was well in the countryside and we had to walk over paddocks of whatever they were farming and arrived to a place that had not 1 nasty dog but 4 of them, it was a wee bit scary having a massive dog fight at your feet while you´re surrounded by cows and other sorts of farm animals, like I said its been interesting. The other days I´ve spent working with the nurses and I spend all morning weighing, measuring and taking temperatures of babies, I love it, the babies here are all cute, there is no exception and I can definitely handle cuddling babies everyday.
Time is going to quickly I can´t believe its August already, my spanish is improving, slowly slowly but luckily everyone is very patient with me. My friend Sam has the same situation as me and my Spanish teacher couldn´t believe that the 2 of travel on the weekends without knowing alot of spanish, honestly its not that hard, thats why charades was invented.
This past weekend we went back to Villa Tunari- the place where the park for rescued animals is. This time we visited the Jungle Park, we were told that it had a great big tarzan swing and both loving a little adventure we thought great, why not. When we arrived I would need to say that the entrance doesn´t do this place justice, it looks like a dive, and I guess it is a litle dodgy but still so much fun. And I just have to clarify the correct term wouldn´t be tarzan swing, I would call it a tree swing. I mean these things are attached to branche of the trees and have a piece of wood for you to sit on, again the pictures explain much better. So we went on the first one and it was fun, not too scary then there was a makeshift zipline, then we arrived at 2 more swings. The girl gave us the choice- being a bit wussy we choose the smaller one, turns out it was a double swing and we still had to do the higher one. After this we were pretty chuffed with ourselves, followed the track to a really nice river, had a little paddle and thought time to head back. At the end of the track we discover the ¨real swing¨, I´m talking 25metres high and they actually had what they called harness for this one. It was awesome-not something I´d do again after you see the branch having a proper swing of itself during the swing but it was good to get the adrenelin pumping. Unfortunately it poored rain that night and the next morning as its very tropical in that part of Bolivia so we headed back to Cochabamba where the sun never stops. We met a really fun Aussie guy at the park and met up for drinks and dinner with him and some other travellers, it was refreshing to get a dose of people our own age and I definately enjoyed some good old Aussie banter. So thats where I´m at, this week will be a short one as its the day of Bolivia on Thursday which means no work and my work are kindly giving me Friday off aswell so I can have a lond weekend to travel.
Last week I started my nursing placement here and if I had to choose one word to describe it it would have to be¨different¨. Where to begin, its definately better that I´m actually a qualified nurse or I´d probably spend my days simply observing but on my first 2 days I went with some of the other nurses and doctors to schools to give flu jabs to the teachers, pretty standard stuff but really enjoyed geting back into the nursing role.
Then on the 3rd day a few of the student nurses came to get me and said that we were off to give more immunisations (you also need to remember that no-one at my new placement speaks english so I think a little- or alot gets lost in translation). Anyway on the way down the street they tell me we´re off to immunise perros and gatos and for everyone that means dogs and cats, mmm hmm yep not a standard day in the life of a nurse. So off we went banging on fences in search of cats and dogs to immunise against rabies. I tell you at the first house I had the wind put up me, there were about 5 dogs in the frontyard (if you want to call it that) which is pretty standard for this country and the other nurses and the owner were telling me to get off the street. I looked at the dog and thought- mmm looks pretty harmless to me, what I didn´t see was what looked like a spun out drug addict walking up to the house carrying a massive rock ready to throw at the dog as obviously the constant barking from the animal had completely pissed him off. Luckily the dog and me both made it inside the gates in time, to be fair the guy only had eyes for the dog so I think I was pretty safe. But that day I definately got to see parts of this city that I would never have seen otherwise, the last place I visited was well in the countryside and we had to walk over paddocks of whatever they were farming and arrived to a place that had not 1 nasty dog but 4 of them, it was a wee bit scary having a massive dog fight at your feet while you´re surrounded by cows and other sorts of farm animals, like I said its been interesting. The other days I´ve spent working with the nurses and I spend all morning weighing, measuring and taking temperatures of babies, I love it, the babies here are all cute, there is no exception and I can definitely handle cuddling babies everyday.
Time is going to quickly I can´t believe its August already, my spanish is improving, slowly slowly but luckily everyone is very patient with me. My friend Sam has the same situation as me and my Spanish teacher couldn´t believe that the 2 of travel on the weekends without knowing alot of spanish, honestly its not that hard, thats why charades was invented.
This past weekend we went back to Villa Tunari- the place where the park for rescued animals is. This time we visited the Jungle Park, we were told that it had a great big tarzan swing and both loving a little adventure we thought great, why not. When we arrived I would need to say that the entrance doesn´t do this place justice, it looks like a dive, and I guess it is a litle dodgy but still so much fun. And I just have to clarify the correct term wouldn´t be tarzan swing, I would call it a tree swing. I mean these things are attached to branche of the trees and have a piece of wood for you to sit on, again the pictures explain much better. So we went on the first one and it was fun, not too scary then there was a makeshift zipline, then we arrived at 2 more swings. The girl gave us the choice- being a bit wussy we choose the smaller one, turns out it was a double swing and we still had to do the higher one. After this we were pretty chuffed with ourselves, followed the track to a really nice river, had a little paddle and thought time to head back. At the end of the track we discover the ¨real swing¨, I´m talking 25metres high and they actually had what they called harness for this one. It was awesome-not something I´d do again after you see the branch having a proper swing of itself during the swing but it was good to get the adrenelin pumping. Unfortunately it poored rain that night and the next morning as its very tropical in that part of Bolivia so we headed back to Cochabamba where the sun never stops. We met a really fun Aussie guy at the park and met up for drinks and dinner with him and some other travellers, it was refreshing to get a dose of people our own age and I definately enjoyed some good old Aussie banter. So thats where I´m at, this week will be a short one as its the day of Bolivia on Thursday which means no work and my work are kindly giving me Friday off aswell so I can have a lond weekend to travel.
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