Copacabana and freakin frickity duncan banotine

Chicken Feast

So hi keen readers, it has been another busy week, at the weekend we went on the big trip to Copacabana with 2000 other excited kids in 40 buses.  The day before we were making sandwiches for them which looked a bit like this:

Ive never seen such a mountain of chickens in my life-

Anyway the big trip: we left the house at 5.20 and arrived at casa esperanza where we work, met the very excited boys and got our uniform.



Me and Lukas in our Casa Esperanza outfit



Then we left in our buses which were soo full some people had to stand for the 4 hour journey!  After 4 hours of  sleep (Anna, one of the german girls had her birthday the night before so we had a chocalate fondoo which was so good) I tried to sleep on the bus but was constantly woken by the guys drawing mostaches on my face :) We then arrived at Tikina and had to cross part of the lake - courtesy of the bolivian navy who have there headquarters there due to a lack of sea in bolivia (Chile stole it off them in one of their unsucessful wars.  However, they are still very proud of there navy and long on getting their sea back).  We then had lunch in the navy base, which consists of a few ferries that took us across,  after that we continued our journey until we finally arrived in copacabana sometime in the afternoon. 

Some of our boys in front of the 'Super Marine Unit HQ'

Arco Iris march through Copacabana

 We then started our proscesion through the town, each project had different coloured caps to mae an Arco Iris - rainbow.  The actual point of the trip was a pilgramage to see the statue of the virigin mary and take a little Mary roud the town on a back of a pickup truck, which was followed by 2000 children singing songs to her.  After 3 trips round the town, a mass in the cathederal and a march with laterns in the evening, we said a sad farewell to our little Mary who was taken out to the lake on a boat - the whole thing was a little bit wierd for me but it was fun with the kids and we had lots of free time to enjoy ourselves!   

Lukas and Johnny on the right (a teacher from casa esperanza who is hilarious and also who pretty much snored that whole night)

Our accomodation was also interesting, we stayed in like a building owned by the church - and we slept with our projects on straw sacks, with like 25 people in some rooms, none of which had windows and were probably only just bigger than my bedroom at home. Luckily me and lukas were in a room with only 15 staff and well behaved kids, and we managed to sleep on a matress.  During the day we decided to treat ourselves and eat out in a restruant, which did look fairly good from the outside and was more expensive for bolivian standards.  After we ordered a small pizza we went and sat down a little bit confused about where the restruant actually was.  We were in a yard with rubbish, empty beer bottles, a random matress (thought about taking it for our room) and caged birds.  We sat down while 'the staff' played cards on a balcony - it was so funny we thought we would make a review of this small quiant lakeside cafe, and took lots of pictures.  After 40 mins of waiting our small luke warm pizza arrived, but considering the circumstances wasnt bad!  We promptly left but not before warning two other tourists who had also uknowingly wandered in about the service.

A happy customer with his Pizza

For the kids in the evening they organised a show with clowns, dancers etc. and a fiesta, which was really good and the kids loved it.  The next day we went back home on a very quiet sleeping bus! The whole trip was a really good experience and everyone enjoyed it, but we were ready to come home.

This week has also been busy and yesterday we had an eventful day.   Me and Lukas were helping the cooks (who absolutely love us) before lunch with some of the boys, we were messing around a bit and lukas was playing with Johnny, who is actually a really nice guy, when he got a bit carried away and sprayed window cleaner in Lukas' eyes.  He washed his eyes straight away for a long time and then went to the doctor and had his eyes washed out again - fortunately he is fine but it was a bit of a scare.  Then later on that day we were in the centre of La Paz after work when Iwe walked past a man I thought i recognised.  I turned around and looked at him and realised it was the duncan banotine from dragons den!  When I realised I was like  'HEY LUKAS IT'S DUNCAN BANOTINE' - dragons den is obviously not popular in germany as he had no idea who he was.  Duncan (i feel like we should be on first name terms now) heard me and said hello - to me I will point out. I didn't have time to ask him but i'm guessing theres going to be a 'dragons den Bolivian special.  So tonight we are going to cochabamba with the Bus, which takes 8 hours - luckily the bus has beds.   We are staying there for the weekend and then coming back on sunday, so it will be our first little holiday.  Oh yeah, Also me and Lukas are about to shave off all our hair for our project - we have about 500 bolis which is about £50 - from the other volunteers to buy something for our project with.  The pictures will come soon.  Ok until the next post, which will come soon!  Bye bye :)