A day off! And a day´s work...

me!
one of the old railroad routes Not even half way up out of La Paz
Illimani-the largest ice mountain

It has come to my attention that the more pedantic amongst you are fussing about dates. Unfortunately, the dates automatically show up as the day when I post the blog, not the date I am writing about, and there is nothing I can do about that. So there!

Yesterday I found a friend called Andrew. He´s an american quaker, also here to teach in the schools. He has already been here two months and seems to me to have near perfect spanish, so he´s a good person to know!

We both had the day off yesterday, so we decided to go and walk up to one of the many look out points of the city. In the end, we climbed right up and out of the valley La Paz is in, which was an absolutely deadly climb! When we got to the top it was like we were on a par with the Andes, and we probably weren´t that far off. The view was absolutely incredible, one of those where there is no way you capture it on a camera, so there was no point trying really. We also found the old steam railroad lines and where the mountain had been cut out for them. I am amazed they have not been taken up for scrap metal! Near the top we found rows of huts where the witchdoctors, or ´master consultants´ as they advertised themselves, were literally brewing weird smelling concoctions over fires on the mountainside. It was pretty stange, even for Bolivia!

Anyway, it was really good to have someone to talk to and not feel guilty about my appalling spanish. I think I was the first person he had talked to in english for months too! We are both busy throughout the week in different places but it´s good to know someone to be able to talk to, even if it´s not that often!

Today I had an art class and an english class. I have somehow got myself into doing art classes, although I am not quite sure how to go about them as I feel I just somehow picked up art myself; I never did GCSE where you actually learn the basics. Oh well. I got them to draw the meeting house as I thought buildings are a nice easy square-ish shape!

My english lesson today was a pain. This teaching lark isn´t all a doss!

They are all ages and it´s a disastrous mix. They speak less english than I do spanish. I just about managed to get the lesson done but it´s a struggle! It´s not the english that is difficult, it is getting them all to sit down/still, be quiet etc. Kids!

It is the biggest class I have though, and the others aren´t mixed ages, so I think Wednesdays are going to be the hardest days. Once we are all used to each other it´ll be ok.

Hurray! Tomorrow is an easy day....