The Fiesta

This past week has been manic, but one of the best yet. It's great to finally settle down somewhere and have a routine for a change. Backpacking is fun and all, but the constant stress of going new places every 2 or 3 days really got to me. This week was my first proper week of volunteering. I help out with all sorts of stuff: serving food at the school, cleaning the school and aiding various construction projects (at the moment we're building a new kitchen). Most of the time its madness, especially when school gets out. I don't envy the teachers! At the end of the day, all the children get dropped off at home by a schoolbus (run by the foundation). One of the jobs is to supervise the children on the bus, basically to tell them not to hit each other or stick their heads out the windows, but I haven't had the privilege of doing that yet. Maybe next week. The staff are all incredibly friendly and it's good attempting to speak Spanish with them. That's one of the bonuses of working for AoH - we get free Spanish lessons, 3 hours a day, so I'm picking up a lot of new phrases quickly. Plus, it really encourages you to integrate with the local community. The people have been surprisingly welcoming to us. The main technician/construction worker invited me and a few other volunteers to play football with him and some kids from his pueblo the other day. We got our asses kicked but it was still a lot of fun! All the volunteers stay at the Castillo (litteral translation: The Castle), which has a kitchen and common room we can use as well as some workshops which we use for building stuff (eg. shelves for the classrooms). Funny thing is, the main cocaine checkpoint for the area (Chapare) is right next to the Castillo, and there's quite a bit of traffic coming through. It's not a threat really, most people know to take other routes to transport the stuff. The Castillo has a great vibe to it. The founder of the foundation also lives there - a ridiculously friendly, but slightly eccentric, Texan who tells a lot of interesting stories about his philosophy and motives behind starting the project.

On Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evening there was a huge festival on (San Antonio). Bolivians sure know how to party! Lots of free booze, dancing all night long and a brilliant atmosphere. Monday night was definitely the craziest. The girls and guys were wearing really ornate and colourful costumes, performing some local dances to the beat of a brass band that was marching behind them. People set off a lot of fireworks. Very impressive stuff for such a small town. Most of the time the streets and plazas are relatively desolate but the whole place came alive for the fiesta. An amazing thing to experience. I've met so many cool volunteers as well. For the majority it's Israelis that pass through Villa Tunari, but there were a few French-Canadians this week, an French-Belgian couple, and an English couple. Shame that most of them left on Friday: we're down to 5 volunteers now (from 12), so that means we're gonna have to do a lot of jobs at the same time this coming week. Probably because of the World Cup that more people aren't coming to volunteer. I've been following it avidly at lunchtimes and get to see at least one match a day. No interesting results as yet, apart from the 2-0 win for Ghana over Czech Republic and today's 1-1 draw between France and South Korea.

In short: I'm having an amazing time.