I didn´t take this pic, I stole it from facebook, but here are faces to names.. Renato, William, Jhonnathon, Phil (who is no longer here..sniff sniff)

Eating llama on the salt flats
Andres, William, Lewis, Katie, HannahSR and myself at wally

A pic of the Chirpie chirpie!
Katie, me, Emma and HannahSR on the island at the salt flats

Hola..

Lo siento, it´s been a while since my last update. The reason is my very busy schedule at the minute. Literally no time for the blog but here I am - alive and well, with lots of stories to tell!

Things are going well at work. I feel that my Spanish is improving and so my relationships with the girls at the centre are improving as they now initiate conversation with me more. For a while they had sort of accepted that I dont speak much Spanish but now it´s getting better and I´m having more fun with them.

There is a new girl with her 2 and a half year old daughter living at the centre. Esmeralda and Nicole. Esmi is 20 and she is lovely, she´s a fantastic mother. It´s quite sad though because her and Nicole lived at the centre for a year in 2006. So obviously whatever she moved onto didn´t work out and she´s found herself back here. However, talking to her she says she doesn´t want to be here for more than one month - she just needs to sort some things out.

There´s another new girl called Paola. She´s very hard to understand as she seems to have a different accent, I think she may be from Santa Cruz. Though I´ve been getting on well with her. She likes to paint nails and she´s very good at it so the first day I met her she gave me a manicure which was a good girlie bonding thing to do! I really enjoyed that day.

There have been a few special days in Bolivia recently. The Day of the Mother was 2 weeks ago. It´s a really big deal here, much nicer than in the UK. Here all mother´s get a half day off work and are fussed over and really truely shown how they´re appreciated. At our centre the girls were baking a huge cake for 2 days and prepared a drama which they performed on the day for the female staff. Tommisita is the house mother who lives with the girls 24/7 and she´s like a mother to all the girls. So throughout the day girls who used to live at the centre kept calling to see her, bringing her gifts and everything. It was a really lovely day. The Day of the School Teacher was last week. It´s a huge public holiday. Not for us though.. we had the day off from our centres but on Friday we started a huge gardening project.

The garden at Heather and Katie´s centre is huuuge and a mess. There´s a man called Hans who is a gardener and we are working with him to try and make something of the garden. We´ve started building a chicken pen so they can keep chickens to eat.. they´ve also bought 2 rabbits which they are breading for food as well. We may work on a vegetable patch as well. We think we are going to take every Friday from now til the end off from our projects to go here and sort the garden. On Friday past we were doing mostly building work more than pulling weeds. All the girls were saying to me Áw Rachel your dad would be so proud of you´. I had to reply, "no, actually he´d be saying thats no child of mine" haha I was terrible! Didn´t have a cement mixer so I had a go at mixing it with a shovel, only for Hans to quickly steer me onto another job! Anyway. It´s got so much potential, as does the house. Unfortunately we got some bad news last week that the owners are selling the place. Mosoj Yan just rent it at the minute and I don´t think they can afford to buy it. It´s dirt cheap for what it is, 3000sqft site with huge potential if it was in the UK. It´s selling for $250,000. So we don´t know what´s going to happen. Katie and I were chatting and we realised that her dad would love to tackle the garden, and dad - you would love to play about with the house! I´ll get you his number, you two should talk.. haha

Our accomodation is beginning to bother us a bit now. Not so much the house but the water situation. We don´t get much water from our kitchen tap, it´s a dribble. But there are taps outside so that´s ok..but the toilet doesn´t flush very well. It could sit for a whole afternoon and the flusher just not work. Then last week the kitchen sink completely broke. The pipe under the sink had been leaking a bit and we´d contacted someone about fixing it but.. well, this is Bolivia. So after another week the pipe completely came apart so we managed to hold it in place with an upside down bucket, otherwise when water went down the plug it just went straight onto the floor. So it was fine, it did the job. Then came Saturday ie clothes washing day. So I got up and told everyone I was about to do my washing, I´m taking the bucket so don´t use the sink. So that´s ok.. Then I decided I wanted the basin that was in the sink as well, but it was full of water so without even thinking I lifted it, tipped the water out, and flooded the entire kitchen. Such an idiot!! After me telling everyone else not to use the sink! Nightmare. Anyway the plumber came out on Saturday and fixed it. It still doesn´t work. Dad, we need you! I promise I´ll never take your handyman skills for granted again, ever!

Two Sundays ago the man who runs the English service at Calama returned from his trip to Africa. The service was awesome as usual. My team lead it :o) I did a couple of readings - thanks to those guys who sent me chords for that song, I didn´t do it in the end but in a fortnight I´m leading childrens songs I think.. eek! So I´ll def do it then. There´s always a 30min break between English and Spanish services when they have tea and coffee, but this week the kitchen was being used for something else so no refreshments. So Evan, the man in charge (a fantastic man - love him. he speaks fluent English and is just a really nice man) invited everyone out to this Saltena cafe round the corner from the church. Saltenas are a really Bolivian snack, kind of like cornish pasties. He then bought about 20 saltenas and bottles of coke for everyone! Then we all went back for the Spanish service. It was so kind of him! Lyndsay, you reading this?! haha

We´ve begun a weekly game of "wally" with our Brasilian friends. It´s my favourite night of the week - it´s such good fun! Full of laughter and fun. Wally is like volleyball and squash. The same size and layout court as volleyball, but it´s indoor and the ball is allowed to bounce off the walls. Last Wednesday we played and after we went to Dumbos for ice cream. It was really nice. It was HannahSRs birthday so I spoke to the waitor and asked was there anything special for birthdays so later he brought out a little cake with a candle for her and as he came out all the Brasilian guys started singing and clapping. It was awesome!

We had to say goodbye to another good friend here on Saturday night. English Dave is gone. We will miss him lots he´s such an awesome guy and we´ve really enjoyed getting to know him over the past 2 months. It won´t be the same without him around. It was very hard for him to leave after 9 months here. I´ve only been here for 2 and I can´t even think about saying goodbye yet.

I think I´ve left out loads but I´m super tired right now - didn´t get to sleep til 2.30am last night. Katie´s not well she had to go to a medical clinic in the middle of the night last night. She started to get a stomach ache when we were at dinner last night and we came home with her after an hour. Then me and HannahW and Emma went to the cinema and when we returned she was screeching and squirming in pain on her bed with HannahSR by her side so after a while of this not improving we rang our emergency number and were advised to take her to this clinic. We had to get Ross Mary, our link with Mosoj Yan and Tearfund, to go with her as a translator, and she had to get one man from her church to drive - this all around midnight. It was an awful time. She´s better now but still not great - has to go get tests done tomorrow.. I´ll keep you posted. But for now this is all I can manage!