Since my last blog entry i've slept on an island in Lake Titicaca with no electricity for a night, explored the streets of the world's highest capital city and been grateful to still be alive on many occassions due to the sketchy South American bus system.

I'm currently and have for the past three weeks been living and volunteering in the second largest city in Bolivia, Santa Cruz. This city is unlike any other place i've been to in South America so far and it's definately not what i'd expected out of Bolivia being the poorest country in the continent. The city has a lot of wealth coming from the gas fields in the east, agriculture and supposedly the cocaine industry. As most of the wealth is over this side of the country, it means the majority of the people in Santa Cruz are against the socialist president Evo Morales. Just last week there was a day long riot in all of the lowlands because Morales' government has said all privately owned land now belongs to the government.

The house i'm living in is that of the program director, Teresa. She's young and a lot of fun to go out with. At the moment it's just her, an Irish volunteer named Helen who speaks fluent Spanglish, our house maid Esperanza and myself. Tomorrow we've also got a new American girl coming into the house.

Otherwise, I've been volunteering teaching guitar at an orphanage in the mornings and running two English classes in the afternoons. The kids at the orphanage are really enthusiastic about learning and pretty quick at picking stuff up, so even though i have some troubles with not knowing musical terms in Spanish, we seem to get by helping each other out. I've also had a lot of fun teaching English at the American english institute. It's weird being put in the teachers shoes after only having just finished high school so recently. I can compare many of the students that i teach here to those that were in our final year of high school.

My visa for Bolivia runs out this Friday, so i'm hopefully going to Paraguay if my visa comes through. I'll let you know how it all goes in a couple of weeks.

Jesse Doyle,

International volunteer