Captain's log: Stardate 29081.6
Performing life is primarily funded by one man: Tony who runs hope for the Children a charity in the US. Once a year he takes a small group of young adults from the US to south America to see what we are doing. This visit was a couple of weeks ago, there was Tony and five others, all between the age of 17 and 21.
It starts with me leaving the house at 0600 Friday morning and taking a taxi to pick up Marye our National director and then going to the airport to meet them. Their flight arrived on time, which being this is Bolivia, is pretty amazing. They had been visiting another project in Peru, and so had flown from Lima to Santa Cruz, and then changed for their flight to Cochabamba. They were all pretty exhausted and so we took them to their hotel and gave them a couple of hours to sleep. A couple of hours and a little breakfast later we head to the office, where we have about 50 kids of various ages from both our circus and music programs waiting for them, with a big welcome banner. After a short introduction I started to find and organise items for the scheduled show that evening, while Tony's group and all the kids took part in a very large music class / performance.
Both of the cooks from our centres were there cooking sopa de mani on two small hobs for everyone, which including staff / volunteers was around 70 people. So after the music class, we all ate and washed the plates. Then we loaded everyone into two busses that we had rented and drove up the mountain to see Cristo, south America's largest Jesus statue (yes larger than the one in Rio), the second largest in the world, coming after one in Poland. We spend a little while wandering around and looking at the view, and then try and herd everyone back onto the busses, we managed to not leave anyone up there, which we were slightly worried about.
Back at the office, we shipped off all the kids and then reloaded one of the busses with everyone else to head up to our centre in Buena Vista for our first show of the weekend. We arrived about two hours late, which is not too bad really. I ran off leaving Tony's group with the Buena vista kids and head to the cancha (covered sports area) to get everything set up for the show. Luckily I had previously run a workshop on how to set up the speakers, and so I delegated that to Amy, and set about rigging up the aerial equipment, which involves climbing 8m - 10m up the side of the cancha and trying to throw a rope over a beam (If anyone reading this in the UK has some old climbing equipment that they don't mind donating, then please get in touch). We were ready pretty quickly and the audience started to show up.
We started pretty much on time, and it was an awesome show. One of the best we've ever done (at least since I've been here). We had payasos (clowns), juggling, fire, silks, trapeze, acro balance and some live music. It's incredible how much the kids have progressed from when we opened the centre at the end of last year, and even in the last three months since the last show we did in Buena Vista. There was a large crowd watching and everyone (including Tony's group) were very impressed.
After the final act, we packed up quickly and headed back to town. Tony's group was going to a nice restaurant for a late dinner and since Tony was paying for all the expenses during this trip, we went with them even though we were exhausted by this point (I need a sign: Will clown for food). Eventually Amy and I get home at around 0100 and fall straight into bed.
The next day we all went to our other circus centre in Monte Negro, where we were having classes all day as normal (or would have been as normal, if it hadn't been a Saturday). I spent a bit of time teaching Tony's group how to juggle with mixed results. After lunch they went to visit a couple of families who we have worked with in the local area. One of the programs we have (well had, it's changing now) is the bracelet program. Where a few selected families make a bunch of bracelets, which Tony sells in the US. All the money goes to the families which they can use to set up a business or build their own house. So Tony and his group wanted to go and see how the money had been used and also to meet some of the families.
After they got back we had some dinner, and set out to the venue for the second show of the weekend, another cancha attached to one of the schools in the area. We set up quickly again and got started. This show too went well, a large audience and some incredible acts. One of the kids who left our program some years ago, was back after juggling his way around Argentina and Brazil, and he is truly amazing, juggling three fire clubs while riding a giraffe (6ft unicycle), passing them behind his back, under his leg and just generally incredible stuff.
We dropped all the equipment back in the centre and headed back to town again to grab some more free food (woop). Finally getting home at around 0130.
The next day (Sunday) was the last day of the visit, but started with yet another early morning. We all went to the office where we met up with the kids from the music program and the kids from Buena Vista. Some of Tony's group helped the music program with recording a song, and the others played some circus and theatre games with the circus kids. After a bit of lunch, Tony's group and some of the volunteers and staff went to Quillacollo for Urkupiña. Which is a big festival / party with lots of music and dancers in crazy costumes. Unfortunately I didn't go, as I had to burn some CDs to give to each of Tony's group with some photos, videos and the song they had recorded that morning.
We met up again in the evening for dinner in probably Cochabamba's fanciest restaurant. We were in a bit of a rush, so as not to miss their flights, so Marye, Tony's group and I had to leave early to get their bags from the hostel, go to the office to pick up the last ever batch of bracelets for Tony to sell back in the US, and then get them to the airport. They made their flight in plenty of time, and a short taxi ride later I was back home.
After that we had three days off work, to recover and it was definitely needed. I had an awesome weekend, it was hard work, and very very long, but so much fun.
Some photos of the weekend, taken by our music director Pablo.
In other news:
I've been doing a bit of work one day a week for my old company to make a bit of money, which is pretty fun. I'm working on writing a library to talk to a FT81X GPU. Which is really interesting. At one point I was having trouble debugging something, and so I used my DE2 FPGA development board as a logic analyser which was a nice quick hack that I was pretty pleased with, and fixed my problem.
Amy's brother Peter is currently on route to visit us. So we have him here from tomorrow morning. Not really sure on the plan as of yet, but I expect we'll spend a couple of days visiting Potosi and Sucre some time during his visit.
I've ordered a few components in the UK, which Peter is bringing with him, for attempting to upgrade some of our broken LED poi, I'm hoping to have a PIC and a short RGB LED strip with 16 controllable LEDs per poi. Not sure how well it'll work, but we'l see.
The foundation was contracted by a friend of ours to film a music video just over a week ago. Which was pretty fun, and came out looking great.
We had a small show in the french cultural centre here, which had decent acts but unfortunately didn't do so well in terms of attendance due to lack of advertising.
We had a fund raising event in a local night club, where we chraged entrance and put on a couple of fire acts. I made caramel flapjack with a marbled chocolate topping to sell as well.
Yesterday was the 4th birthday of our Circus director's twins, so we went to the park for a few hours in the afternoon. I made a chocolate cake and decorated it with strawberries and more chocolate. Not my best cake ever, but the kids liked it.
I think that's all for now, I'm sure I'll have more stuff to post in a couple of weeks.
We met up again in the evening for dinner in probably Cochabamba's fanciest restaurant. We were in a bit of a rush, so as not to miss their flights, so Marye, Tony's group and I had to leave early to get their bags from the hostel, go to the office to pick up the last ever batch of bracelets for Tony to sell back in the US, and then get them to the airport. They made their flight in plenty of time, and a short taxi ride later I was back home.
After that we had three days off work, to recover and it was definitely needed. I had an awesome weekend, it was hard work, and very very long, but so much fun.
Some photos of the weekend, taken by our music director Pablo.
Some of the kids doing music on the Friday morning.
Us on one of the busses on our way to Cristo.
(I managed to put most of the kids on the other bus).
Giant Jesus is giant.
(I kind of want to add giant lasers to shine out of it's eyes).
Us at the base of Cristo.
Fire poi act in Buena Vista.
One of our kids getting into position for the "huevito",
during the show in Bunea Vista.
More silks in Buena Vista.
Payasito.
Live music in Buena vista.
In other news:
I've been doing a bit of work one day a week for my old company to make a bit of money, which is pretty fun. I'm working on writing a library to talk to a FT81X GPU. Which is really interesting. At one point I was having trouble debugging something, and so I used my DE2 FPGA development board as a logic analyser which was a nice quick hack that I was pretty pleased with, and fixed my problem.
Amy's brother Peter is currently on route to visit us. So we have him here from tomorrow morning. Not really sure on the plan as of yet, but I expect we'll spend a couple of days visiting Potosi and Sucre some time during his visit.
I've ordered a few components in the UK, which Peter is bringing with him, for attempting to upgrade some of our broken LED poi, I'm hoping to have a PIC and a short RGB LED strip with 16 controllable LEDs per poi. Not sure how well it'll work, but we'l see.
The foundation was contracted by a friend of ours to film a music video just over a week ago. Which was pretty fun, and came out looking great.
We had a small show in the french cultural centre here, which had decent acts but unfortunately didn't do so well in terms of attendance due to lack of advertising.
We had a fund raising event in a local night club, where we chraged entrance and put on a couple of fire acts. I made caramel flapjack with a marbled chocolate topping to sell as well.
Yesterday was the 4th birthday of our Circus director's twins, so we went to the park for a few hours in the afternoon. I made a chocolate cake and decorated it with strawberries and more chocolate. Not my best cake ever, but the kids liked it.
I think that's all for now, I'm sure I'll have more stuff to post in a couple of weeks.
