Day 1 - January 19th

Day 1 - January 19th
Threw up on Bolivian lady's washing
was fucking sick
Happy Bolivia!
Used a shirt I found as toilet paper

        I started 2012 in Bolivia. Since October 2011 I'd been living in the city of Cochabamba, right in the centre of the poorest country in South America. I was ostensibly there participating in a voluntary journalism internship, but when I arrived I found that said internship involved much fewer instances of people telling me how brilliant a writer I was than expected, so I transferred my focus to the taking of cocaine.
        By New Year's Eve 2011/12 my drug buddies from the beginning of the trip had shipped back to their home countries in North America and Europe, leaving me with a French girl called Mélanie, who I promptly fell in love with.
        I remember the first time we held hands in the back of this mini-bus on the way to some valley in the middle of the Bolivian jungle. Our fingers crept towards each other on the back seat, and she told me later that when our hands finally met, “you grab onto me! Like really take it hard, like a baby!” Her English was very limited when we met, and her French accent was adorable, I used to mimic it while we lay together in bed, “Hey you SHUTUP Ai-Dan you don't laff about me! Stupid Australian Boy!!”.
        I really loved that girl.

        The volunteer organisation that I went to Bolivia with was called Projects Abroad, they have offices all over the world funnelling young students from developed countries into places in Asia, Africa, and South America to work in various volunteer projects. Jan from The Netherlands was teaching kids how to swim, Mélanie and a few of the others were working at a kindergarten, and I was writing for an monthly magazine called the 'Cochabanner' that was distributed to local universities for students to practice reading in English.
        Projects Abroad set us up with host families, and provided social events during week nights so all the volunteers could get to know each other, it was a fantastic atmosphere. We were all young, and we all loved drinking.
        January 19th would have been one of those 3-4 nights a week when all of the volunteers (between ten and thirty, the numbers fluctuated month-to-month) got together at a bar to drink and figure out if we wanted to fuck each other, and if so, how. Mélanie and I were boyfriend-and-girlfriend by this point, so for me these events were just about the drinking – it's always good to narrow your focus. I remember I'd just gotten back from Peru with Mikkel (Danish) and Sjoerd (Dutch), so this night was probably a bit of a homecoming celebration.

        The bar we were drinking at was called Lapsus, we loved it because they had shisha, and it was pretty much some lady's second house that she had kitted out with tables and chairs for people to drink and smoke in. She loved us because we spent our foreign money there, but I cringe to remember just how much fuss she made over us, and how drunken and awful we were in that place. It's crazy to think she had any other customers, and in fact now that I think about it, she barely ever did. The bar was upstairs in some kind of dishevelled apartment

        “Threw up on Bolivian lady's washing.”
        “Used a shirt I found as toilet paper.”

        These are perfect examples of why I needed to stop drinking. I'm sure I told people the next day about how I went down into the courtyard with Josh from England and how we both threw up next to the communal clothes line, and I would have played it for comedic effect. To be fair, I still do find it a very funny image, some 20-year-old kid vomiting on someone's washing line, but I also understand that it's really not ideal behaviour. Whoever's washing that was would have been so, so bummed in the morning. I'd love to make a bigger deal about how sorry I am right here, but I'm also acutely aware of the fact that there's a whole year still to come.
        But am am very sorry.

Click here to read the next part - Day 2 - January 21st