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.