I thought I would share with you some of Alana’s words. She is picking them up really quickly now both in Spanish and English. Some of her favorites are eyes, nose, teeth, ears, toes, mama, dada, button, colours (her colouring pencils), pees (for please), Q (thank you), Gras (her form of Gracias Thank you), por vor (her form of Por Favor, please), aqui (here), allí (there), esta (this), and mas or more (especially when talking about food! Definitely her father’s daughter!)

Over these last two weeks with her grandparents here she has been learning more words and started to string them together. Like the other day saying Daddy in the shower. Nanny (snoring noises), no esta aquí (it’s not here)

Other FH people in Sucre

Simon, Melissa, Charlotte and Matthew Snell are another British family working with FH that came out in January. They have a really good website that you can follow this link to find out about them www.snells.org.uk

There is also an American family The Plantengas, Derek, Claire and Noelia that will be joining us here this month and this is their blog http://www.derekandclaire.blogspot.com/

Messing about in the River

Last month we spent a day at a river 45 minutes drive from Sucre with a couple of other families. It’s a popular spot called La Palm. It was a hot day that just got hotter as it went on (it’s surprising what a difference dropping a bit in altitude does do the temperature), but it did mean that the water was bath temperature warm, which was great to sit and play in, especially for the kids. While we were there to just have some fun, for other families it was time for all of them to have a bath and wash their clothes.

H is for....

H is for health and safety

Which is a bit of a joke really as people drive around without seatbelts in cars only fit for the scrap heap with bald tires and cracked windscreens. Entire families travel about on one motorbike, including babies and toddlers, Scaffolding consists of a few planks nailed loosely together with people hanging over the edges to fix other fittings. Plug sockets spark every time you try and fit a plug, and the pavements and parks are full of trip hazards. So its just as well the culture of litigation hasn’t reached these parts.

H is for Hail

So we are now into the Bolivia summer and to get it going at the end of September we had a huge hailstorm one afternoon, which produced grains about 1.5cm in diameter and turn the road outside of the FH office into a brown river. We were very impressed by it and Alana enjoyed playing in it and making a snowman or a bird (see which you think it is). Though it was fun to watch others were not so impressed. A friend of our landlord’s had spent the last few weeks keeping the birds off of their fruit trees only to see the hail destroy most of the fruit. Also some schools suffered damage to their roofs in the storm. Another part of Bolivian summers is huge thunderstorms, for most of this afternoon it has been raining and thundering. But these are not like what we have in the UK. The thunder rolls loudly around the hills for a long time and it produces some very large and bright bolts of lightening. So that combined with the noise of the hail banging on the tin roof across from our house it was not surprising Alana got a little upset by it today. All this said we hope that it doesn’t rain too much this month as Sarah’s parents are coming out we want some good weather (those not too hot) to show them around (as well as to be able to fly into Sucre). And also for the country as a whole because last year there were a number of problems here with floods in the cities and countryside.

Our Garden

The road in front of the FH office

H is for House
Not our house but a play house that a guy I met in prison here made for Alana, complete with cooker, shelves, table and chairs. She really enjoys playing in it, though does not like it when her friends come around to play, as she has not yet learned to share her toys with others.