Vivemos en La Paz

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We've nearly arrived at the two week mark in La Paz... and so far we have successfully managed to blow up/stop from functioning a nice list of appliances... the school's photocopier, the fridge (yet to confirmed), two transformers and yesterday, the vacuum cleaner. A good record for less than a fortnight! The voltage here is 220V, but some of the appliances are 110V because they are from the States. Other than that we have been occupying ourselves settling in to life in Bolivia. La Paz is in a canyon in the Andes with the city sprawling up the hillsides... and it is one of the highest cities in the world at 3600m, which means that walking a short distance feels like running a short sprint.

We have moved into our own apartment and put our backpacks into the closet. Furnishing the apartment has been a slight challenge when we can't speak the language very well, don't know where anything is and when the markets are on the edges of steep hills. Over the last week I have become nicely acquainted with some of the nooks and crannies of the mercado negro and with how to ask for a discount.

James has started his job and discovered that the science 'department' at the school simply consists of desks and textbooks. The school is at its very infant stages and is very under resourced. They have built a brand new lab, which is primo, however there is nothing in it! No chairs, no white board, no chemicals, no lab equipment. And school starts in tomorrow... it will be an interesting start to the year. It should be very exciting and rewarding to be able to part of the school at this development stage.

At this stage I have not acquired myself a full-time job, but am in the process of hunting down an organisation where I could help... not an easy task. In the meantime I have been attending Spanish class with a friend for a couple of hours every day. But I have discovered my New Zealand accent isn't very helpful for my Spanish... as our tutor put it, 'hay problema'!

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