Last friday the 8th of march was a bloomin busy day at Ushpa!

As it was international women's day the alcadia, a government group, came to give breakfast to all of the ladies from women's groups and from the community, and some of the staff were going round giving out roses, and someone had made millions of paper roses to give to all the all of the women.

Also my kids were doing their medical tests that day, so when I came into the classroom there was only 1 in there, they were all upstairs in the health clinic waiting to be checked by the doctor and the dentist with their parents, and it was only at the end of the day that they had all finished. So a nice quiet day in Inicial 2!

Then we had the first ever very exciting Noche de Jovenes. In order to keep the youth off sex drugs and booze, we put on a big show with the help of Performing Life and Educar es Fiesta, to present a load of arts, so they could give their feedback on what they would like to be involved with and we can organise it for them!

Apart from making a table stage, putting up balloons and taking photos, I just sat back and enjoyed the show. There were circus acts; juggling, juggling with fire, acrobatics, dancing with fire, tightrope walking, breathing fire, unicycles etc etc etc, there was also a hip hop group, stilts, and all of my new 4-year old friends off the block got really scared... There was also an anime room and a drawing competition.

There was a really good turn out and a lot of people gave feedback, some of it was less useful, like 'porno' and another kid who wanted to do tattoos but mainly everyone was interested by the dancing!

Here are a few photos!

Then I had planned to climb the 5000m Pique Tunari with some friends on Saturday, but after hearing that going without a guide is definitely not a good idea, that a lot of people climb the wrong mountain, that there is no signal anywhere around but at the top of the mountain, and it is really hard to get home, we decided to maybe try and organise ourselves a bit better and do it on Sunday instead.

So we ended up going to the Cristo in Cochabamba....

With beautiful views of the whole city (that aren't the same in photos as there's too much smog).

We met this guy who runs from his house which is 10km away up the XXXXXsteps to the Cristo every weekend. We got talking, and per chance, he has one of the very rare maps of Pique Tunari where we wanted to go! So we went back to his house, his name is Ricardo, we went round the corner to get some juice and I think I may have not closed the door properly... so his huge dog got outside, and there were about 4 or 5 dogs all fighting. Ricardo went out to break it up, he hit his dog with a iron bar to make him let another small dog go out of his mouth, but he felt nothing! So he had to strangle his dog, and when he finally got him back inside he had the other dog's blood all over his face... Owowow. But anyway, we stayed for a while and he lent us the map! Which was just a dotted line across some contours and next to some lakes, I am not going to pretend it was very clear, but it's better than nothing.

And then found this really lovely, quiet square in the middle of town in front of the Templo y Convento de Santa Teresa with a fountain and music playing and we had a lovely Argentinian meal there...

On Sunday, we decided not to go to Pique Tunari as, even with the vague direction of the path, I think it would not have been easy. Plus it's really cold up there. So we went to Incaracay instead, mountains and apparently Incan ruins close to Sipe Sipe which is about an hour from Cochabamba.

We walked along a cobbled road for about half an hour and asked about 7 different people where the path up the mountain was but nobody knew, apart from these two boys who were looking after cows (one of them was jumping on a cow and shouting 'yeeha!!)

So we climbed, for about 3 hours. It was hard, and also the two friends had way longer legs than me. But here is us, looking triumphant at the top:

Well actually it wasn't quite the top. There was something at the top of a mountain about another hour away that looked like a mix between rocks and ruins, but we decided that wasn't for us. It only took us an hour to get down and a nice cool beer at the bottom was deserved. That was pretty much my weekend!

In other news, Salar de Uyuni this this weekend!

Oooh and I bought a camera yesterday! In the market, down an alleyway about 3 blocks worth of pure jeans, I bought my little canon which so far I have managed to keep safe!