I got up early, chatted to my folks before heading off to school. My teacher today was Lucha who is great fun and I like her method of teaching. We did lots of exercises to drum the verbs into my head. I had a great hot chocolate on my break made by the woman in the little adjacent cafe. I chatted to the other students in the cold, shaded courtyard. Today the weather is cloudy and cold, the first time I've experienced this since I arrived. I continued learning my verbs for the indefinite past and imperfect past. This is quite confusing as there are quite a few rules to remember when deciding if the past is imperfect or not. I seemed to do okay when we revised the areas so shouldn't be a problem. I returned to my house and watched some higlights of the World Cup warm-up matches. We then had lunch which was; floating potato soup, chicken and rice then fresh papayas. I had a 2 hour siesta after my lunch and then joined Marco and Melanie (French/Swiss) going into town. We caught a bus and got off on the party street "Calle España". We found a great little cafe called "Cafe Francés". I had an apple crepe and a Cafe Monaco (coffee with thick, sweet chocolate..delicious but maybe a little too sweet!). I left the cafe with my head buzzing from a combined effect of strong coffee and lots of sugar. We walked towards the rich area of Cochabamba and I got my leather shoes shined (having been fixed by a little handyman on my street) by one of the many street shoe-shiners. The little guy was cool and did little tricks with the polish tin and brush. It was only 8p to have my shoe shined..crazy! We walked to Palacio Portales (Simon Patiño's house) and paid for a guided tour. Myself and Marco had been here previously for the Argentine cinema night. We discovered Simon Patiño had been born in Cochabamba and was a miner. He bought a mine which everyone said was empty; this turned out to have the biggest tin deposits in the world at that time. Needless to say he became the 10th richest man in the world at that time. He built this house with Italian stone masons, all the materials were shipped from Italy. However he never actually lived here as it took 12 years to build and before he moved in he suffered a heart attack and couldn't live here because of the high altitude. The house is spectacular; the ceilings are all hand painted and the interior is outstanding. After our tour of the house and art gallery in the basement we walked to the nearby Buffalo's steak rodizio. It's inside a shopping mall on the top floor (a poor man's Princess Square) and is absolutely incredible. The inside of the restaurant is so ostentatious; there is a huge salad bar with everything. The waiters continualy walk round with steak and cut off slices on to our plate. It's never-ending with the waiters coming round with huge hunks of juicy, tender, grilled steak. I've never eaten so much meat in one night, I was absolutely stuffed. We were happily eating and chatting when suddenly a huge group of Americans (from Texas) came in and started queueing for the salad bar. These people were big, huge jeans, baggy t-shirts, cameras around their necks and loud! A big guy came over to us while we were speaking and interrumpted with "Y'all speak English" we pretended we didn't so he ended up chatting to some guy on another table. After the meal which only cost 5 pounds, we walked to some bars in the rich area. We ordered some beers and Melanie also ordered a martini which was really bad. I've yet to taste a good cocktail in Bolivia. We got a taxi back to Villa Juan and then I went to bed. However at 2am I was awoken by a "zzz.." oh no! not a mozzie. I was determined to kill it and so crept around my room looking for it. Finally I found it...splat! Presumably my blood splatted on the wall as the little b***** had bitten me a few times.