The End..kind of.

Hola

Well, as of 7th August my team has officially ended and everyone has gone their separate way. Except Hannah Woods and I. Those of you who have facebook will have noticed my statement that I am 'no loger bound by the Tearfund contract'. This, of course, means that I no longer work at Mosoj Yan or represent Tearfund, now do they have any responsibilty for me now. HannahW and I got our flight pushed back a couple of weeks so we can spend some time enjoyig Cochabamaba independently before we have to return home.

Our plan is to do an intense two week Spanish course (ie 4 lessons per day, every day) and around that fit in a few morning at Peter's orphange, at the community centre, with Gladys and the Nucleus project, and some touristy things as well. We want to explore the city a bit more, and we bought a disposable camera for these two weeks for some photo safari fun!

HannahW, Heather and I saw the other three off at the airport on Thursday afternoon. It was a strange feeling being at the airport watching my team board a plane that I should have been on with them. A feeling, though, that had been there for the whole previous week as well. The week was filled with goodbye parties for 'the Tearfund team'. Literally every single day from one Thursday to the Thursday they left had at least one goodbye party.

It was Connie's the first Thursday as she went back to Canada; Friday night the Mosoj Yan staff held a party for us with speeches, gifts, dancing and the first tears; Sat night our Spanish teachers cooked (hired a chef) dinner for us; Sunday after we led our last service at Calama the English service (and Brasilians who helped out with music) took us out for lunch; Monday I went back to Albergue, my first centre, with the Hannahs and said goodbye to the staff and girls there; Monday night we said goodbye to our friend Gerry from Singapore (yep,thats his whole name haha); Tuesday I went back to Trabajadoras to say goodbye to staff and girls there; Tuesday night we played wally and went for icecream as our Brasilian goodbye; and Wed night we spent the day as a team and went for dinner and then bowling. So really it goes without saying that it was a hugely emotional week for everybody. For me it was exceptionally bizarre having these goodbyes but knowing I'll see most of the people again in my extra weeks. But my teammates wouldn't. Bizarre week. There's no other way I can describe it really.

Tino and Ross Mary, from Mosoj Yan, drove us to the airport on Thursday. Ivan came too with his 3 weeks old son, Paulo. William (who is back from Brasil, finally! yay!) and Jonathan came too. Some girls from the seminary came too but they were too late and missed us. It's so nice that people come out of their way to the airport to see their friends off. It's so surprising to us because it's something that's not really done in the UK. Of course there were many tears at the airport. HannahW, Heather, William, Jonathan and I stayed with them until they went through the gate. After that HannahW and I headed to La Cancha. We needed some retail therapy.

It was only Thursday morning that HannahW and I found out where we would be living in our extra two weeks. We hought we had it sorted but that kind of fell trough. This is Bolivia - people are very laid back. We sort of adopted this laid back attitude (yes, even me) and still on Wed night joked that we didn't know where we would be sleeping the next night. On Thursday morning we spoke to the director of the seminary and he offered us the apartment upstairs. It's the one Connie, phil, Dave all lived in at one time or another. The apartment I'd wanted since we decided to stay on longer. It's a long story but basically the people who were living in it up until now were swapping with us. They moved down into oiur old place while we moved upstairs. The move didn't happen until Friday so Thrusday night we had to spend in our old place just the 2 of us. It was strange without the others! We love our new place and are very excited about starting this new part of our time in Bolivia.