Journey back to Cochabamba Part 2

I got to the Javier and Roxana’s at just gone midday, it was great to be able to have a shower and smell clean again. Sitting on a bus for many, many hours you don’t usually get that clean feeling. It was great to meet up with Javier and Roxana again, I had really missed them and it was great to link up again.

I thought that I would be able to stay awake until I was going to go to bed in the evening, I was wrong. I went to bed at 3 and woke up at 5:50, so it was sleep well needed. I did get up really quick because I knew I was supposed to be going to the youth meeting that Javier runs at 6 so I jumped out of bed and went downstairs, but he had gone. But thankfully Roxana was going a little later on, so I wouldnt miss anything.

The youth meeting consists mostly of professional people, doctors, opticians, bankers. In Bolivia I have not been used to this enviroment because of working with mostly poor people. But it was great to see the zeal that these youth have and it shows that God is also working among the richer people in Bolivia too.

Escapades with Sunday lunch.

Well I had bought most of the food before, I had invited a few extras to come so I meant buying a little more food. I am really grateful to Javier and Roxana looking after me, so I wanted to cook them a typical English dish, good old roast dinner. little did I know how long it would take to cook.

First of all I had to prepare the chicken, its surely not like the way that they come packaged at home. First of all I had to take the feet from inside, I dont think that most westerners have even seen chickens feet, some places here they are a delicacy. They look a bit more like rubber than something you would eat. Then I got the shock of my life, I took the chicken all the way out of the bag and there it was, the head still attached. Working in the kitchens back home, I had never encountered a chicken with its head still attached. So it was a bit of an experience trying to lop it off.

Scroll down past the photo if your squeamish.

I think if we had to do this in Britain there woul be alot more vegetarians around!!!

I did it in the end and then got it ready to put in the oven. Just to let you know that this was all before church. So it went in the oven with the roast potatos at 9:30 and we got back from church at about 12:40 and it still wasn’t cooked. I knew that it would take a long time due to the altitude but I didnt realise this long.

To cut a long story short, we had lunch at about 3:30 because it took so long, the veg that takes about 15 mins to cook at home, took over an hour. But in the end it all tasted great and there really wasnt much left. We had to wait another hour after for the crumble, due to space in the oven. But it was worth the wait to have some good old English crumble.

After the late lunch I had to go to the train station to reserve my ticket to Cochabamba. I got that all sorted and then I came back to the house. In the end I left the house at 10:30pm and my bus left at 11pm. It was a pretty painless journey of 7 hours, it did mean that I got back to Cochabamba at 6 in the morning. Thankfully there was people up when I got back to the guest house, and from there I went straight to bed for another well deserved sleep.