We are back at school! Learning Spanish in Sucre

Hola! We have decided to spend 3 weeks in lovely Sucre and learn some proper Spanish. We now have separate teachers. Vivi with me and Mariella with Craig - both really sweet as you can see in the pictures. We spent about 4 hours with them one to one every day. Excellent. I feel a lot more confident already after only one week. Craig spends every spare minute doing homework and rehearsing his verbos irregulares (What a swot!). I am very impressed!!

Our "landlords" are full of surprises, every day something new! Yesterday morning we were informed that our classes are cancelled and we are to help paint the house they just moved out of instead. What? I though my Spanish failed me but sure enough we spent about 9 hours painting and cleaning and tearing off wallpaper in their old home. Apparently the date they are meant to hand over the keys came around quicker than expected?!¿!?¿!?!¿?!¿?¿?

Don´t ask. It is a bit tricky to say no when you are living under somebody´s roof. I almost started crying when she brought a kettle of hot water to help STEAM OFF the wallpaper....
Did you know that in Bolivia they do not have wallpaper and hence no wallpaper glue. Instead they imported the wallpaper from Holland and used shoe glue!! Just to make sure you can tear off the entire plaster layer with the wallpaper. Oh dear me! I wish I had that day on video. Much more hilarious in retrospect though! My arm is very stiff today...

I also enjoyed having bed lice!! Thank God only lice and not chickenpox! Nothing a bit of VERY smelly spray could not sort out! And this morning the Bolivian nanny came back from her holidays and thought she would inspect all the rooms in the new house and (without knocking) pushed our window open to find two fairly undressed strangers in bed... She fancied a chat anyway! As you can see, we are having a fantastic experience.
Maybe I will continue the blog in Spanish soon!

On Sunday we went to the famous Tarabuco Market which is about 70km outside Sucre in the middle of absolutely nowhere. This is where all the locals buy their clothes and household goods. They get there on trucks and the vendors on donkeys! It was fantastic to observe a sea of colours and traditional costumes, bizarre foods, all sorts of offerings to Patchamamma (including of course Llama foetuses) and loads and loads of wonderful weavings which the Tarabuco tribe is famous for. We bought a whole pile of table cloths for a few Euros each, they are wonderful and bright, full of sunshine! About time we get another parcel ready for shipment!