Sucre: Días Tres

Weather: Its still sunny here... but the forecast doesn´t look to great for the rest of the county. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/9555541/Violent-wind-storm-sweeps-across-Paraguay-and-Uruguay.html?frame=2345288

Llama Count: 0.25 There was a plastic one in the nursery.

It´s not every morning you wake up to discover a passed out Irish girl lying on the floor in dangerous proximity to your bed, clutching a water bottle as though it was her salvation, and still wearing all clothes and shoes that she left in the night before.

Good morning Sucre, time for homework on the roof terrace, and a breakfast of amazing... and at this point last night all the power shut down in the internet cafe and the whole street was plunged into darkeness.

Attempt two I had an amazing breakfast of mango, kiwi, and Dulche de Leche ( a bit of bread as well.)

Then it was time for volunteering  forty snotty children between the ages of baby and 6 normally have two minders, this morning they had 4.5  (I am a wimp- I needed to go in a group, I am also an incompetent child minder and am firmly the 0.5.) It turns out Bolivian children are like miniature boxers, both in the appearance of the dog breed (snub nose, big eyes, funny legs) and the sportsmen (I am covered in bruises from one particular brute.) They are quite affectionate though, and if they could be genetically configured to scream less, vomit less, slobber less, they would make quite good pets. 

So I spent a fair few hours removing chess pieces of the mouths of three year olds, and singing ring a ring a roses repeatedly, and it was actually a suprising amount of fun.

The nursery is mainly for children from the countryside who are from one parent families. According the Australian organiser there are plenty of these in Bolivia, apparently most Bolovian women consider themselves to be on the shelf if they aren´t pregnant by twenty. Added to this are the factors of a Roman Catholic education system, extremely high rates of domestic abuse, and road traffic accidents. The result is overflowing orphanages, and under funded day care centres (set up so the parents can work.) 

Despite the fact the nursery is on a building site inside it is not too bad (the large exception to this is the general toilet mess and lack of running water.) The toy selection is pretty basic, and the children are really very grubby (especially the babies, the nursery has a fairly lax nappy changing policy.) They also all have rotten teeth, one girl in particular has black stumps instead of teeth. However, they are exceptionally well fed,  the food is provided partly by the Spanish school I am attending and partly by a local not for profit tourist company. 

Later I have another Spanish lesson...  My mistake of the day went roughly along the lines of ´my potato is a farmer and my breast is an artist.´...

 Apparently there is a very specific way you have to pronounce Mum and Dad.