daylight savings and sucre ravings

So (as I learn from facebook), Perth rejected daylight savings yet again, huh? Classic Perth!

Right now we are in Sucre. Here are some things you should know about Sucre:

• it is the unofficial capital of Bolivia and the Supreme Court is here
• there are a ridiculous number of lawyers´ offices, which I suppose follows
• it is a UNESCO world heritage site and there is lots of lovely white spanish architecture
• a number of people here are addicted to absinthe and as a result there is a bit of a schizophrenia problem (obviously you can´t tell this by looking at the buildings)

But the best thing about Sucre is that on the 25th of May they are having a bicentenarial celebration of independence, and right now they are ¨warming up¨ for it. What this means in practice is that when you walk down the street, or are otherwise just minding your own business, you have (at any given moment) approximately a 50 percent chance of being suddenly accosted by:

• a marching brass band
• a group of folk dancers
• a lycra-clad bicycle race
• a street parade of extremely excited teenagers in various halloween-style costumes
• a man on stilts dressed as Jack from the Nightmare Before Christmas
• a sudden firework or smoke bomb
• a terrible (or wonderful?) rock band consisting of electric-charango and panpipe players
• ...or any other such combination of the above.

Lion and I spend most of our time shaking our heads and saying, ¨What is the DEAL with this city?!¨ Turning up in Sucre at the moment is kind of like wandering into Perth during Prosh (minus the newspaper-sellers), except that the craziness here goes on for weeks.

We have been here since last Saturday night, doing a bit more Spanish study and fancying ourselves as people who might, one day in the very distant future, be able to speak fluently in another language (at the moment I oscillate between believing this is possible and believing it is a hopeless dream). But vale la pena (it is worth it) to try and learn anyway, because it´s actually pretty fun!

It has also been v. rejuvenating to stay here for a while and settle in a bit, because before that I don´t think we´d stayed anywhere for more than five days since Bariloche?! Gosh, how long ago was that, a month and a half? Two months? It´s been good to see so many places, but I was getting a bit sick of all the moving on!

Lion and I had our three-month travelling anniversary on Sunday. That is ... such a long time! Also, it´s halfway through our trip. We didn´t do very much, just cheers´d with jugo de naranja (orange juice) glasses at breakfast and then proceeded to get horrendously homesick for the next couple of days. (But don´t worry, we´re hells of perky again now!)

Our next stop will be La Paz, probably on Tuesday... where I am going to buy a guitar!

Tonight we are going to see a Britney Spears tribute concert (which, I would like to clarify, was not my idea) with another Australian chica from Spanish class, and then maybe we´re going to see a SKA/punk band afterwards with a German guy from our hostel. Looks like an action-packed night in Sucre!