British Evening!

Every month the Mosoj Yan cafe opens fo a cultural evening. We've been to an African night and a Brasilian night. This time we were asked to present Britian! Paulina asked us and we of course said yes. It's such a nice gesture that they gave us a night and want to get to know us and our culture. That's another good thing about working at Trabajadoras - it's where the main Mosoj Yan offices are so I can get to know the office and behind the scenes staff a bit more. So it was on Friday night past. It was fantastic! Best cultural night ever, if I do say so myself..but I'm not because we got a lot of praise for it. Brasil had a dance on their night though, which was pretty cool. They asked us to do a traditional dance but we don't really have one except maybe Morris dancing which we weren't prepared to do so we had to decline that suggestion. Pity. There's a Scottish night coming up in September so we also didn't want to steal Alison's jig!lol

We started preparing at 3pm. The other four of our team came to our centre (where the cafe is) to join Heather and I. It was actually realy nice to be doing something together as a team. We've not done that in a long time - we work in pairs and it's very rare, even socially, that all 6 of us will be out together. We had a really good afternoon setting up, making decorations, playing English music (ie dancing in the closed cafe to Duffy - Mercy..best song EVER) and preparing the food. It was a really good fun afternoon, for me anyway..poor HannahSR was a little stressed about the presentation and Katie near had a hernia over the stew (thanks Alison for coming to the rescue!). Me? I spent the entire afternoon making two huge union jacks! Why can't our flag be one simple block of colour, maybe two stripes would be ok, but seriously.. it's so difficult to make and so time consuming! Although they looked good and Ludwing, our Bolivian friend, now has one in the back window of his car, haha.

The night was great fun, all of our friends came to support us and Alison had gone mad on the invites too. The small cafe was packed out with people. The menu had the usual dishes plus our British add ons - stew, eggs and chips, scones with jam and cream and shortbread. Oh and good old Nambarrie tea! (Thanks mum - I knew I'd find a use for them lol!) It all went down a storm. They loved the stew. The kitchen was complete chaos with no system or organisation whatsoever. Enter me and HannahSR! We tried to delegate jobs and areas (the kitchen's tiny and had too many helpers) and organised the orders into 'done' and 'to do'. It was crazy and I was rather stressed out at one point but then I took a deep breath and said to myself 'this is Bolivia..roll with it'.

We did a powerpoint presentation to music with photos of Britain and facts. HannahSR and I did the talking. She did most, I just wanted to be a part of it so she gave me two paragraphs to read haha. Then Paulina opened question time! Oh wasn't that fun. Bolivians are soo interested in Britain. They asked things I didn't even know the answer to. Lots about the Queen and the flag and the government etc.. HannahSR and Katie, our strongest Spanish speakers did a fantastic job in answering all that was fired at us. There was such a great, friendly, light-hearted atmosphere in the cafe that if we said the wrong word or something stupid in Spanish they kinda laughed but in a nice way corrected us. Of course the whole thing - presentation and questions where in Spanish. The atmosphere was so relaxed that it prompted one guy, who was with Marcus, to wave his British flag (that's what you did to ask a question) and say, "I have two questions. First question, what's the difference in the United Kingdom and Great Britain? Second question, what's your name?" As he looked and pointed at me!! It was hilarious! I don't think I've turned redder and the whole cafe erupted with laughter, haha! It was a hilarious and all round fantastic evening :o)