Stuff and things

Captain's log: Stardate 21111.5

We've just finished our second week of work. Everything hurts, but it's probably good for me, maybe... 

This week I've done more work with the website, still trying to sort out the translation stuff, but I think I've cracked it now using the xili-language wordpress plugin. Just need to fiddle a bit more to get it working the way I want. 

I also worked with the kids more, doing bits of silks and juggling. I learnt to club pass, which was way easier than expected. 

We went to a language exchange thing in order to sell bracelets made by the kids and their families, music CDs made by the kids, and raffle tickets. I now appear to be on Bolivian television: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWgsxfbdsgg which is slightly weird but cool, hopefully nobody from immigration sees that and recognises me ... 

Yesterday we went out with the kids to a field nearby to do some theatre exercises, lead by n new American volunteer called Janet. On the way there was a herd of sheep in the middle of the field and one of the girls ran forward and picked up the tinniest sheep ever, and I got to stroke it and squealed quite a lot :) SO CUTE! The kids were mostly unimpressed with the theatre exercises, refusing even to look each other in the eyes, we have a lot of work to do, trying to build up their confidence and self esteem.

I also worked with one of the older girls to help her with her maths homework, for around an hour yesterday, and it looks like I've got more to do on that next week. She said I was a good teacher and way better than her school's teachers, so that's nice, and know I now how to do maths in Spanish.

I had another Spanish lesson on Wednesday which went well, it's quite amazing how much my language skills have improved in the last two to three weeks, but my vocab is still really lacking, so understanding people is still really hard.

We had a meeting about visas, and the process is under way, this weekend I need to update my CV and translate it into Spanish. Not sure why the Bolivian government wants that but it shouldn't be too hard.

We went to "urban fest" last night, which was slightly strange, and seemed full of hippy stands. Amy was pleased as she managed to get a soya burger, which was actually pretty good. The music started as pretty terrible hip hop, but progressed into some more dub stuff later on, so that was better. Despite it being a "clean" alcohol free thing, I managed to "win" a beer from someone working a stand by spinning poi and playing with my contact ball.

Last weekend we went to a kitchen shop and I spent £6.50 on a pretty decent sharp knife. Our host mother was amazed we had spent so much, since all of hers were around £2, and unsurprisingly blunt as hell. This is slightly strange as she seems to mostly spend her time cooking. I tried to make scones, but I used weird flour, and they came out a bit hard and chewy :\ oh well. I plan on making an apple crumble this weekend, and it seems like we've been invited to a BBQ tomorrow, so that's cool.

I've been working on my Tron thing a bit more too. I know have an arena floor and I can drive my bike around using the arrow keys. The lighting is weird and so I need to work that out. Tthe bike is too square, but that can wait. I need to add walls and scenery, multiple floors and a physics engine to deal with jumps. However the next thing on my list is to add the light trails. This is a bit tricky as it's constantly updating, so I need to look into OpenGL streaming techniques, which sound a little complicated. I need to work out how to render to textures, so I can do reflection, and make the bike glow more. So yeah, lots to do, but it's still kind of fun. Wish I had more time to work on it, as I'm slightly worried I'm losing momentum and will get bored in probably not too long. Luckily we have a 1 month break from work in a couple another 3 or 4 weeks, so I can get back to it then, although we'll probably use some of that time to travel a bit.

I finally have a phone, it's possibly even worse than Amy's :( however it was free, given to me by the lady who runs performing life, and I can use it until I get a new one or stop working there. So at least I can call Amy now, and stop bothering her for what time it is.

Finally, the charity we're working for is trying to raise a bunch of money to help fund a local lady go to university in America. If any of you fancy reading more and / or donating then the link is here: https://www.generosity.com/education-fundraising/part-2-sending-escarlet-to-college

Very quick update

Captain's log: stardate 14111.5

Today we went shopping for fruit and kitchen equipment, nothing exciting really. However at one point we were walking and I see a weird dog on a lead ahead of us. Turns out it wasn't a dog, it was a lamb being walked like a dog. Further more it had a purple Mohawk. It was adorable, unfortunately we didn't have any cameras with us :(

That is all.

Work day 2

Captain's log: stardate 10111.5

Today started much the same as yesterday, up, breakfast, trufi. However there were kids around in the morning, only one at first, but in the end there was about 8. I got to actually teach them some circus stuff. I showed one kid a new juggling thing, and we started working on passing. I taught a girl how to "thread the needle" a poi move, and I taught two kids how to do a drop in silks that they hadn't seen before. So that was all pretty good, but quite tiring. At around 12 we stopped and had lunch with them, which was rice with potatoes, chicken and mush. The charity provides a full cooked meal for the kids every day they are there, to ensure they get at least one proper meal per day. I brought some brownies to share as well, which went down well :)

After lunch we got a lift in the circus director's car to Montenegro, another town about 30 minutes further away from Cochabamba. There we met another larger group of kids, about 30 or 40 in total, who had varying skill ranges. Some of them were standing on each others shoulders and doing three way club passing. The ability of some of them easily equalled some of what I saw in CUJA. Shortly after we arrived, we were informed that they had found a rat hiding behind the fridge, so we pulled it out and there was sudden pandemonium as around 20 kids chased this rat around swinging juggling clubs at it. Eventually it got splatted, resulting in tiny embryos being scattered everywhere. So yeah that brings a new meaning to the game of "bat the rat"...

After that there was juggling and silks and aerial hoop and diablo. I started working on using a teetor board, which is pretty fun, and only slightly dangerous above a concrete floor. however there were kids juggling on them. At one point the circus director was stood on one, with a kid stood on his shoulders both of them club juggling. Also there was a goat in the garden with us, just hanging out.

Around 1630 a meal was served to this group of kids, and then a birthday cake was produced. The charity makes a big deal of birthdays in order to encourage kids to provide birth certificates allowing them to get the necessary IDs required in the proces. So we sang happy birthday and ate some cake. Then 8 of us piled into a small car. The circus director, me with amy on my lap in the front, the chef and her very young son, another volunteer, one of the kids, all in the back, and another kid in the boot, it felt like piling a bunch of clowns into a mini..

It's Amy and my 6th anniversary today, so we went for food in town, and had a quinoa beer and a kebab, then came home. Need to sleep soon, so tired. At least I'm not working tomorrow.

Work

Captain's log: startdate 06111.15

Today was our first day of work. We woke up at 0730, had breakfast and then set out. We walked down the hill, and waited at the bottom for a trufi. A trufi is a car or minibus or any kind of vehicle which has been converted to hold as many people as humanly possible, they run set routes  pretty frequently and serve the purpose of buses, it costs around 20p to use a trufi no matter how far you go. They are usually pretty rammed, with 8+ people fitting in a normal sized car + the driver, and sometimes up to 17 in a minibus thing + babies + animals (I heard a story of a sheep sat on a seat like a person with it's hooves over the back of the seat in front, and another of a goat eating a ladies scarf, however I've never seen animals on them yet). So yeah we waited a bit and then got in the first trufi that turned up. At first I didn't get a proper seat and had to sit on a bench with my neck at right angles for about 10 minutes, but then some space freed up and it was much better after that. It took us an hour door to door, so not bad, but not great either. I spent the journey thinking and making notes on the structure of objects I want to use in my Tron thing.

We started the work day off with a meeting in a mix of English and Spanish. There are no kids at that centre on Mondays, so I got put to work looking at the website. It's a wordpress site, which is massively out of date, and some of the plugins no longer function correctly. I didn't want to just update everything without making a backup first, so I spent most of the morning trying to figure out how to back everything up. I eventually succeeded in backing up the database, but I don't have the appropriate logins for the host, so I can't back up the site install. Nobody else seemed to have these details either, so that's the next mission.

The office didn't have water today because someone was cleaning something out in the street, and so there's no water until tomorrow ...

Around 1230 we went for lunch in a cafe thing not too far away. The choice was meat soup or different meat soup. I had the soup, as did Amy with the meat fished out. I followed this up with meat and rice, as the chicken and rice option didn't sound appealing (yes really, there was meat and rice or chicken and rice....). My meal was £1.20, and Amy's was 60p (as she didn't have the rice and ...), on the downside Amy fished out part of a chicken foot with a claw still attached....

We were then shipped off with one of the other new volunteers a Dutch girl, to alto buena vista, which meant taking two more trufis. We got a bit lost at the interchange, which was next to a bridge that collapsed a couple of weeks ago, and so it took about 2 hours to get there in the end, although it was meant to take around 90 minutes.

We arrived in alto buena vista which pretty much looked like a building site with random piles of rubble everywhere and the usual assortment of stray dogs. We found the centre and wandered in, at which point this mass of children descended upon us, giving us hugs and asking questions in Spanish, Amy disappeared leaving me to find them off and try and understand them. They kept giving me circus props to use, so they could gauge my abilities, I think they were impressed. A small girl of about 4 years instantly befriended me and proceeded to follow me around for the proceeding hour or so, continuously talking to me although I understood very little of what she said. We played skipping and then she sat on me while I showed her and the others my contact ball, which is now appropriately scuffed and scratched. They had a set of silks their, so I climbed that and did some things, there's no safety mat, it's just hanging above a concrete floor, so I was careful and didn't do anything too exciting. I think it went well, and all the kids seemed to like us, so that's nice.

Eventually they all disappeared and we were released, so we went and took another two trufis to get home, although first I went to a shop for some water, which came in a small bottle sized sealed plastic bag, kind of weird but apparently that's how water works there. It took us another hour or so to get home, in more overly cramped conditions.

So that was my day, lets see what tomorrow brings. Now I'm going to write some code, eat some food, and maybe have a beer.

New house, tron and work

Captain's log: Stardate 07111.5

We moved in to our new room last Sunday, and so have been here almost a week now. It's pretty nice. There's no hot water (as is pretty standard in Bolivia), however the shower has a heating element in, so if we turn the water pressure to basically nothing then we get some water that resembles warmth. The family own two dogs, a tiny fluffy thing called Paco and a much bigger one called Nico. I'm starting to get used to them although they still annoy me. Paco is actually kind of cute for a dog, and looks kind of like a gremlin, however is kind of hyper and seems to like trying to eat my shoes / feet. We have a kitchen outside which we can cook in, while Paco and Nico watch intently and get in the way. We have to get all the kitchen equipment from inside though, which is a bit tedious, so I'm planning on buying a few basics soon.

A stray cat that often sits on the window ledge.

Nico.

Our shower, so far it hasn't set on fire.

These are quite standard in Boliia, so hopefully it's fine.

Paco, being fluffy.

Our oven, 6 gas hobs + an oven.

The rest of the outdoor kitchen area.

The view from our window, you can see the city in the distance.

A giant cactus that appears to be held up by some string,

in our front garden.

Amy sat on our bed, below the captain America poster ....

We had a meeting yesterday with a charity that organises circus, theatre, music workshops for impoverished kids, as well as helping them get off the streets, into schools, and working with their families to improve their living conditions. We appear to be starting work on Monday, and they seem pretty flexible on stuff, so I'm hoping to do a 3 day week, and spend the other two working on my own projects and improving my Spanish. Amy is thinking of learning Quechua, so that she can do home visits and talk to the families, since no one else at the organisation can speak Quechua ATM. Additionally they close for a month from mid December -> mid January, so we'll have plenty of time to explore the country, learn languages and work on our own projects.

After the meeting we went to Migración to extend our tourist visa for 30 days, which all went well. However we aren't technically allowed to volunteer on a tourist visa, however nobody cares, and we should be able to sort out actual residency visas now that we have volunteering lined up :) So everything seems to be going to plan.

Meanwhile I've spent practically the entirety of the last week working on modelling a lightcycle in Blender, and texture mapping it. It's been pretty tricky and I've learned a lot. I'm not entirely happy with it, but it's good enough for now. The goal is to recreate the lightcycle scene from Tron legacy, and possibly turn it into a game. Now I've got the model sorted, I'm working on loading the completed object into my OpenGL application. To do this I had to sanitize the .obj file that Blender exported because the object loading library (ASSIMP) I'm using was having problems with a few aspects of it. The remaining plan is as follows: Show the light cycle, be able to drive it aronud. Add the light trail, add the multi level environment from the movie, improve the graphics, and finally make it playable over the internet with multiple teams and multiple bikes per team. It's a lot of work to do, but I'm hopeful I'll get it done over the next few months. I've set up a github account so if you're interested in the code, then you can see it there (get in touch for details).