Hola Tarija 2nd Aug

Late on the 1st I finally arrived in Tarija Yay !. I did sleep well that night. :). I am staying with some Australian Missionary friends Andrew & Paulina Cox and their 2 Daughters Lily and Gabriella.

The rental system in Bolivia is totally different to Australia, once you sign the lease here you can do almost anything to the property except knock down walls. The downside is that if anything breaks or needs fixing its your problem not the owners! so this meant that

we went into town to find some things to do some plumbing repairs.

The Bolivian mind also works differently to ours in so many ways; Just one example is if something breaks you replace it, a simple part for a shower head or a toilet cistern that we could easily buy for a dollar or two is simply not available here so although they could get the part they don't forcing you to replaced the whole unit.

Tomorrow I start private Spanish lessons with a small language school run by a New Zealander and his wife :)

On Saturday is the 186th anniversary of Bolivian Independence and there are big celebrations, starting with a march of all the school students on Friday,many of whom will doing folkloric dancing down the road.

Saturday is the Military march and concert at night and Sunday is the big march of all the unions and organisations.

Andrew tells me there are over 45,000 connections between Spanish and English.

Crossar for instance is the verb to Cross as in cross the road. Also manly english words ending in ly are the same in spanish with just mente ie probably becomes probablmente or contamindado for contaminated

There are some "false friends" however ... embarazada doesn't mean embarrassed but pregnant.