Blogs from Cochabamba Department, Bolivia, South America - page 25

Mine was good. The morning was spent chilling after another night on the town on Friday night. Went with a large bunch of hospital folk to a (hmm, how to describe it - night club sounds very hot, sweaty, big and it was not of these, well, it was quite warm, of course) a disco place in town. There were a few of us with the idea we wanted to go dancing and it kinda snowballed into quite a big group, including Dra. Muñez, who had a birthday that day. The place was quite small, with seating and tables around a dance floor and lots of latin tunes playing. The music is great, even without knowing any of the songs, you want to dance along, which we did with enthusiasm for quite some hours. When ... read more

Snappy title, huh? But I´m not going in for attention-grabbing headlines, I just want to update you all on how things are going in the burns unit. Things are going ok in the hospital. I feel very accepted here and the main staff that I need to know seem to trust me and let me do my thing in the context of all the medical and physio therapy going on. Alex is doing great, his gunky wounds around his neck and arms seem to have healed massively. Yesterday, he was NPO (nil by mouth) and someone left a beaker of juice near him and he was screaming for it. So Marianna and I took him out of his cot, I suspect for the first time since he´s been there (and he was there when I got ... read more

Hello readers Thank you for all your lovely comments, it makes my day when I open up the blog site to find so many people reading and saying things to keep my spirits up. It´s just lovely. I´ve had a really hard day today, I´ll explain that some other time as for now I want to tell you about the English classes we´ve started up here for some of the staff. When I looked into working here, it was thought that there wouldn´t be much opportunity for the hospital to take advantage of one of the things I have to offer - the fact that I can teach English (as a foreign language - TEFL). Clearly being able to speak fluent Spanish would be handy, but English did not seem to be of use. I qualified ... read more

Hello all, Quick fact for you: at the current time of writing, my blog has had 601 views. Blimey. I know I´ve got some faithful blog-followers out there, but I have also heard of people passing details of my blog around, so it´s lovely to think folks are enjoying my witterings on! Not all those views are people actually reading it, but even half that number is highly impressive!! Thanks to all of you for writing to me, either by mail or placing comments on my blog, you have no idea how much support all that gives me! And also a huge thank you to every one who has donated some money to the hospital. As of checking just now, there is a massive 645 pounds in my hospital account. I have spent less than ... read more

Well, well, well.... today i say gooodbye to Bolivia, as I enter the final stage of my South American experience. Tonights bus will take me into Chile, where along with a side trip into Argentina I will live out the last 2 and a half weeks of my trip. This is a bit of a change in plans, as i originally planned on still being at the sanctuary for another week, but life never listens to plans very well!! The sanctuary we went to has two parks and we headed for the furthest one out, because we heard they were in most need of volunteers, but 30hours later we arrived at midnight, slept on the kitchen table because they had no space, and in the morning after much confusion, we found that they were almost overrun ... read more