Dia de la Madre and upcoming holiday!

Mother´s day competition....just before the furious hair plaiting began
potato peeling competition
Me and Lupita....unfortunately the best picture i have of us!
The beatles get everywhere....the ´liverpool´karaoke bar
Fiesta! ( dancers with scary masks!)


Last Sunday it was ´Dia de la Madre´(Mother´s day) here.... don´t worry, you´ve not all missed it- only here! Of course, any excuse for fiestas etc so it was non-stop partying and dancing in the streets on Sunday, and then there was no school on Monday. Honestly, you can never get anywhere in these streets between dancing and protests.

And then today at school they had celebrations where the mothers came in and there was singing and the children did a play and then everybody had a meal, which was nice. There was also some interesting competitions for the mothers to take part in, for example, who had the longest hair, who could plait their hair fastest(all the women here have long plaits), and a even a potato-peeling competition! I suppose they are pretty traditional competitions for the women here, but it did seem a little odd to me!

It was a nice change to lessons and a fun, if slightly bizarre morning anyway. Although, saying that, I have only had one day of school so far in the last two weeks as the road onto the Altiplano was blocked by protesters for most of last week so there was no way of getting there. Yes, they only have one road in each direction out of the city! Bad planning? I´m starting to wonder if thats the idea as the daily protests would not be able to cause havoc if they had a more efficient road system.

As i´m mentioning protests, the whole of Bolivia has gone into uproar as FIFA have banned international football games on pitches 2,500m above sea level. Which rules out most of Bolivia´s pitches. In protest, roads are blocked as everyone is playing football in the street. Even the President,Evo Morales, was playing football outside the presidential buildings this morning! Not that Bolivia really has much to offer the international football scene, however the country is generally outraged.

My bank card (second, as i lost the first one which was stolen on the day i got it, ahem) has arrived...again! I am not taking it out of the house though as i am terrified of losing it again. Tomorrow I am going to see ´Pirates of the Caribbean´, which i am looking forward to, woohoo!

Mostly I am planning for my little holiday, starting on Friday, to Argentina. I say planning in a very lose sense of the word; planning is impossible here as you cannot book or make plans for where to go unless you are in the place you intend to travel from. Hence, it is all very see what happens! I definitely have to make it across the border though, as my visa is about to expire in Bolivia, so when I come back I will get a new stamp for more days. Noooo I am dreading taking my passport into the big wide world and losing it.

Anyway my plans so far are to get the bus to Oruro, Bolivia on friday and probably then the train to the Salar de Uyuni, which is a huge salt lake in a place called Uyuni, with really surreal landscapes and vegetation. After spending a day there, I plan to head down to the border and to a city called Salta in the north of Argentina, which is supposed to be quite lively. I don´t know whether I will actually make it any further south as I have only ten days to get there and back on very unreliable transport! So should be fun, fun, fun. I will take lots of pictures to put on here!!

PS pictures for this blog on tomorrow....this computer won´t let me upload them :(

New home!

me (looking startled) and the kettle(looking not so startled)

the shower of death

my room

kitchen

living room

After 3 weeks of bread, I finally received my bank card on Tuesday. I immediately went for a huge meal and then, once again, packed my bags(which is getting more and more difficult) and moved out of the hotel and into my new house. Nobody else is there at the moment as Lupita is visiting her family in the south and sophie only lives there at the weekends, so it´s just me and the cats. There´s a black cat and a white kitten, which are very sweet, despite my lack of fondness for cats.

The house is great!! It´s so nice being able to make a cup of tea when I want and such things. I have been enjoying cooking and cleaning and sorting my stuff out and other such domesticity, although I am sure it will wear off soon.

I also have not watched TV for so long, which I haven´t really missed, but they have world channels so I have been watching CNN and BBC world a lot as I have no idea what is going on in the world. When I turned it on this morning it was all about Blair finally stepping down, so have seen an awful lot of Blair montages today, which is a face I haven´t seen in a while! I also watched "Back to the Future" yesterday too, as they have loads of american/british films with spanish subtitles, which is great.

Anyway the house is in an area called Sopocachi, which is a really nice area and very quiet and safe. I don´t know the full address but I will post it on here as soon as I know. We don´t have hot water other than in the shower, so there is always water boiling on the stove, and there´s a little kettle that whistles when it boils. I think I am pretty lucky to be somewhere with a hot water shower. I have put a picture above of the shower....the showers all throughout south america are like that and look absolutely lethal to me. This one is one of the safest I have seen, but they all heat the water directly in the shower head by running electric currents through the water using wires which just dangle about over your head! I´m always really paranoid about touching them when I wash my hair!

My room is good too. I have a little balcony which is quite nice for catching some sun. I need to put up the rest of my photos, but I have lots of lots of everyone and not enough blu tac! I don´t think it exists here actually so I may have to resort to drawing pins.

Anyway that´s about it. Things are going well, at school, at the pub, and now at home. Off to work at the pub in an hour actually so.... toodle pip pip!