Mi Vida en Cochabamba

I am really enjoying living in Cochabamba (Bolivia), the "City of Eternal Spring", where the sun has shone every day. With an altitude of 2,570m and population of 600,000 it is much warmer and bigger than Sucre. As much as I love travelling, it feels good not to be a tourist. I am living with a wonderful Christian Bolivian family with 2 girls and 2 boys (13, 12, 9, 7). They all go to a bilingual school so I can resort to speaking English if I get desperate for making myself understood, and I often help them with their homework, which has been a learning experience for me too (eg. who actually remembers that there are long vowels and short vowels in English?!) We all go to church together on Sunday, just a few minutes walk from home. Last Sunday was "Day of the Pedestrian" in Bolivia (strange I know, but there is a "day" for everything here!) so all 7 of us went for a long bike ride on the empty streets...but my family only do this once a year so they all had sore bums and were using jumpers as seat cushions! A few streets away is a friend I knew at high school, with her husband and 4 children. They have been a fantastic support to me, and it was through them (via my boss in Perth) that I was set up with my host family, Spanish school and volunteer work. Baby Jessica is only one week old so it is great to be able to help them out sometimes - my first time babysitting the other 3 kids (5 years and under) was a hair-raising and patience-testing experience; there was mashed potato everywhere, texta on the high chair, tantrums about getting ready for bed, and plenty of reasons for crying once in bed...aaargh! I have a 45min Spanish lesson 4 mornings per week, which I enjoy, despite the frustrations of not being able to put the grammar into practice...but finally I am starting to use the past tense in speech. The school is mainly for mission workers (usually from US, UK, Australia or Canada) so its a nice little "gringo network" - I went to a games night last night and we played Risk until 2am so I had to stay the night. In the afternoons I do volunteer work at 2 different projects. For 2 afternoons I am with a NZ couple who run a community extension program linked to a Salvation Army hospital. They have a mobile clinic (Dr, dentist, nurse) which drives out to poor communities; I help with their education program for children. We play games, sing, do crafts, Bible lessons, and talk about health. Actually, the only thing I do is lead games - Aussie rules footy was a real hit with the girls! We also give them milk (if the mothers remember to bring water and gas) and animals (chickens, guinea pigs, rabbits) for them to raise. There is a mothers´ program too (health education, crafts, micro-credit) but I decided to opt out because I felt it was long-term community development work that requires relationship-building and therefore better language skills than I currently possess! The second project I only started at this week. Julie, an amazing English woman, has built up an after-school drop-in centre for children. The kids are free to play when they arrive, and then they go into 3 classrooms (based on age) for spiritual lessons, crafts, stories etc. On my first day the normal teacher of 3-6 year olds was ill, so I had to read stories and pray with them (in Spanish) all on my own - they are not well disciplined at home so I think saying "it was crazy" is an understatement!! Because I am out in the middle of the day and lunch is the biggest meal of the day here, my family pack a sandwich for me and save my lunch for me to eat at night time, like gringos are accustomed to!! But you can easily live here with little money eg. a set lunch menu (3-4 courses) can be as cheap as A$1.50 and a bus ride is 25 cents. So far I have only witnessed one "bloqueo" (when they block off the streets in protest to the government) and we were able to use an alternative bridge, and one public transport strike. Can´t think of any more observations for now...oh, there are only 2 things that annoy me here - the barking dogs and dust everywhere...otherwise my life here is ALL GOOD!