¡Hola!

So, time to write something about what's been going on here for the last month or so.Throughout February the whole of South America becomes obsessed with the annual Carnaval festivities, and Bolivia is no exception.In fact, the main event we went to here was in Oruro, which is renowned for being one of the best places to see Carnaval in the whole continent, outside of Rio de Janeiro. In the end there were at least four or five Carnaval-related events going on here, which I'll attempt to do some justice to below.

The Carnaval calendar is spread over a number of weeks, starting with Conpadres night, which is essentially is the opportunity for all the guys to go out and wasted on a school night (Thursday) and not get into trouble for being hungover the following day.It is pretty much expected that every guy will go out into town that night, no matter how young, and so most of my male school kids were in a right state the next day too.We went out for a meal to Buffalos (an all-you-can-eat steak house) and then along to a new bar that had just been opened up by a friend of Sustainable Bolivia.I took it fairly easy, as I had to be up at 6am, but it was a pretty cool night.The following Thursday the girls had their turn for Conmadres night - basically the same format, but just a bit more nauseating (joke).Me and some other guys had a game of poker round at mine that night, before heading out to meet the girls after midnight, which is officially 'allowed'.

The following day was when things really started to warm up.The school has their annual Carnaval dance in the afternoon, which was really quite amazing.The parents of all the kids turned up for the afternoon to watch their children perform their dances, for which each class had been painstakingly rehearsing during the last month or so.I was genuinely amazed by the effort that had gone into the whole thing, and just how brilliant all the costumes were.Each class had chosen to perform a different traditional Bolivian dance, of which there appeared to be an endless supply, and they were all really into the whole thing.It was such an eye-opener to see how these kids, who I normally saw kicking a football around or playing with their iPods, were so firmly in touch with, and proud of, their national traditions.There simply isn't anything remotely analogous in England, and it was embarrassing having to have to explain to my Spanish teacher how festive 'traditions' in the UK were limited to pulling crackers around the Christmas table and wearing paper hats!In the end my 10th grade, who had performed a really elaborate maypole-type dance, won the first prize for the show, which I was really happy about since they are my favourite class and I had watched them give up so many of their lunchtimes in preparation.

That night we all headed to Oruro, about four hours south west of Cochabamba, where we would stay for the next two nights.I didn't arrive until about 1am, but we still headed out to the main plaza to see what was going on.The place was rammed and the atmosphere was buzzing, and we had a nice wander about drinking beer and eating these delicious anticuchos (beef-heart shish kebabs).The next day was just crazy, the whole day long.On returning to the plaza in the morning we found that the place had been transformed into an arena of madness packed with thousands upon thousands of people standing on terraces, hurling water balloons (globos) across the street at each other and spraying foam (espuma) in each other's faces.It was impossible not to get completely soaked, and you would often get a globo in the face when you least expected it.

The parade itself was very impressive.The music was really tight, the costumes were dazzling, the choreographed dances were perfectly polished, and each new group was headed by a row or two of stunning nubile young hotties, each endowed with a ridiculous breast-enlargement and gleaming white teeth, who were the subject of the crowd's repeated jeers in time with the music - besos, besos, besos (kisses, kisses, kisses)!Bizarrely, and for reasons I still don't understand, groups of dancers dressed up as bears would also periodically appear in the parade, and would attract a similar chant from the crowd - osos, osos, osos (bears, bears, bears)!It was tiring work having to stand up the whole day in the sun to watching the parade, but some of us managed to stay there all through the night until 7am when the parade stopped.In truth, however, the parade hadn't stopped permanently, and the whole thing would start up again the next day for every single group involved in the parade to do another loop round the town circuit (taking another 24 hours).We left the next morning, but the parade must have carried on until Monday.

Monday and Tuesday were both national holidays, and a traditional Quechua ritual, called Ch'alla - a very special sort of mesa that involves burning various different offerings to Pachamama (Mother Earth) on little fires it the street - filled the air with strange scents.Another tradition, much less humble but equally adhered to, was the throwing of globos and firing of water-pistols at random passers-by in the streets.This was supposed to be restricted just to the Monday and Tuesday, but in reality kids had been throwing globos around for weeks previously; the only difference was that they were practically inescapable for those two days.I got hit so many times on my short walk to the market in the morning that I bought the biggest, fattest super-soaker gun I could find and wandered around for the rest of the day like some sort of hired mercenary, gun-in-hand, protecting various friends as they attempted to go about their normal routines about town.

The following Saturday, after a massive party at the Sustainable Bolivia house, during which Sarah returned from Argentina, it was time for the finale: the oddly-named 'Corso de Corsos' Carnaval in Cochabamba.This was a much more makeshift sort of affair, at least for the first few hours, and the costumes were a bit amateur. Most of them seemed to be either dressed as characters from the film Avatar, or as tanks, taxis or transformers made out of cardboard boxes.The latter were actually quite cool and would periodically stop marching and fold down into their aforementioned form, to a round of applause from the audience, before 'transforming' back into a dancer again.The crowd was much more rowdy in Cochabamba, and the kids there were remorselessly hurling globos very hard across the street, resulting in one or two ruckuses.The parade got a lot more traditional towards the end, and the costumes started to look more like those in Oruro, but by about halfway through the afternoon I was finished - Carnaval had finally got the better of me.

Things have returned pretty much back to normal now, and everyone has fallen back into a routine again.That said, things are never boring here: there has just been a two-day blockade of the city by bus drivers protesting about new anti-drink and drive measures being pushed through, which has meant two unexpected days off school.This has been a welcome bit of respite, since I spent the whole of last weekend travelling to Peru and back to get another 90-day visa.However, mission now accomplished, and with my Masters application out of the way, I'm looking forward to having a bit more free time again to enjoy my last three months in Bolivia.

R&M

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