A tale of two cities

Having started this week at the orphanage my life is now becoming increasingly bizarre; my days now consist of a 7am start and breakfast with my firends Matt and Leah before catching one of the tiny minibuses (collectivos) out to a part of town called Obrajes. The drive in itself is awe inspiring (and only paralysingly terrifying the first 5 or so times), crossing between the mountainous peaks that La Paz calls home. The driving style here is much the same as that of the rest of south America, think dodgem cars, the main difference being that when you shunt the guy next to you in La Paz he falls 2000m to his death.
We get to the orphanage for about 9am everyday and stay till half 12, I'm assigned to work with the 1 year olds and our morning activities mainly consist of getting the babies up and washed, giving them their morning snack, and later lunch, and putting them down for their lunchtime nap. Truth be told, most of this activity is auxilliary as they have a mamita to care for them the main reason these babies need volunteers is to provide human contact, so we spend a lot of time playing and cuddling and helping them to walk. Despite the fact I thought I would HATE working with babies (having almost no experience) I am really starting to enjoy the volunteer placement (Beki, don't die laughing... I'm serious!). The orphanage in itself is a wonderful facility, but that does little to deter from the sad fact that there are 10 babies in my salle (group) alone. Most of the babies in the orphanage are the unwanted results of the Bolivian sex trade, and they have little chance of adoption here as the process takes a minimum of five years and the adoptive parents simply get assigned a child at the end.
And so my mornings are preoccupied with this sad reality, and my afternoons see me back at the Loki and out and about around La Paz taking advantage of the 40% staff discount we get at local buisnesses, eating deep fried mars bars and going out dressed up as rock stars. For me La Paz couldn't be more of a city of devision, and keeping up with my crazy double life is exausting but at the moment I'm really enjoying myself and am even starting to construct some semblance of routine here.