Todos Santos

Todos Santos (All Saints) is a Bolivian holiday celebrated around the same time as Halloween in the States. It´s my favorite Bolivian holiday (so far) and was the best bonding experience I´ve had with my host family thus far. There´s a few elements that I would like to take with me and incorporate into Halloween when I´m back in the States. Mainly, it´s just taking time to remember and (most importantly) celebrate the lives of the dead. I think it´s really nice to just set one day aside and remember people... because otherwise they can be too easily forgotten.

It reminds me a lot of Dia de los Muertos in Mexico. Basically, people take a day, or two, to remember and celebrate the dead. In my host family the day before Todos Santos we cooked a big meal making specific dishes that recently departed ones had liked and set a special place for them at the table. Then on the day of Todos Santos we had a delicious parillada (bbq) and headed over to the local cemetery to hang out and pay our respects.

This is the Cruz de los Viejos (Cross of the Old Ones) that greets you at the entrance of the cemetery and symbolizes all the ancestors that became before us. There must have been about a thousand candles lit underneath this brightly decorated cross.

This is my host mom Doña Ana and my niece Adriana, a real cutie. They are holding up pictures of Doña Ana´s son Rafa (passed away about two years ago) and her husband (five years). They were apparently both really into horses. Rafa was quite a popular, accomplished rider in Bermejo. He actually died in a tragic horse riding accident that I´ve talked about on here before.

This is Rafa´s and Doña Ana´s husband´s grave site. One of the prettier graves in the cemetery. I asked to go with them to the cemetery to see the graves. I was a little worried that Doña Ana might get emotional because I heard that she gets pretty emotional whenever talking about Rafa and I´m really not good in dealing with situations like that. But we just sat there in contemplative silence while other people would come up and pay their respects and Doña Ana would show them her pictures. The overall feeling at the cemetery was humm... how can I describe it? It was neither somber or overly festive. But it felt positive. Like people were genuinely remembering their loved ones, but happy to be there all the same.

I stopped to take a picture of the relatively more simple grave sites and this woman saw me and invited me to a drink which I was instructed to first pour some onto the grave as an offering to the decest. She told me about how the elderly woman in the grave didn´t have family when she became ill and that she took care of her during her last year and now she was the only one to visit her. I was touched by how this woman so openly shared her story with me. Definitely one of the most significant and personal cross cultural experiences I´ve had thus far.

Tupiza to Copacabana

Ok... wanted to elaborate on the vacation more, but I think I may have broken my finger playing football after turkey dinner (yes I am an idiot). So typing isn´t working out too well right now. This will have to do for now.

Just got back from my first real vacation! (I do not count a weekend in Salta as a real vacation) A whirl wind tour through western Bolivia. My friends from Brown, Dawn and David, came down and meet me in Tarija. From there we made a brief visit to Bermejo and then it was off to Tupiza, via el norte de Argentina and the absolutely gorgeous Quebrada Hamahuaca. For anyone headed to Tupiza I highly recommend traveling this route rather than through southern Bolivia. Not only are Argentinean buses clean and comfortable and the roads paved, but the scenery is sooo pretty.

Just outside of Tarija.

From Tupiza we set off on a four day/ three night jeep tour through the desolate south western corner of Bolivia and the Salar de Uyuni (the world´s biggest salt flat). It was basically four days of straight driving through some of the most remote, but beautiful territory in Bolivia. We passed by extinct volcanoes, colored lagoons, deserts... all around 4000m or more. We saw a lot of wildlife.... about a million llamas (although they´re not so wild anymore), vicuñas (like llamas but smaller), vischacas (like a chinchilla), lots of flamingos and a fox. No condors though... that was a bummer.

This is the Isla de Pesca (Fish Island) in the middle of the Salar. A cactus covered island in a sea of salt.

We came across some pretty impressive ruins. An abandoned village said to be about 1500 years old (not sure if I quite believe it), still in great condition. The first ruins I have visited thus far in Bolivia. The town was huge relative to all the other more ¨modern¨, still occupied, towns around it. The people apparently made a living mining silver, but like so many others were robed by the Spanish then victim to a subsequent plague.

Some minor technical difficulties. The break was stuck on the rear tire. Solution... take it off. You don´t really need all of your breaks anyway, right? The kid... oops I mean full grown man in the red jacket was our guide and driver. We didn´t realize how tiny he was until he got out of the jeep. We shared the jeep with a really cool Irish couple (there the one´s in black. Some of the most well traveled people I´ve ever meet. So now I´ve got a place to crash in Ireland ;)

The beautiful Laguna Verde. Green because of arsenic and other nasty chemicals. We took a cue from the flamingos and stayed away from this lagoon.

So cheesy.... but we couldn´t help ourselves. This is one in about a million dorky photos we took on the Salar.

Infamous Potosi. Once the richest city in the World. The mountain is still mined to this day under very harsh, some may say cruel and inhumane, conditions.

El Cemetario. One of the most tranquil places in the other wise chaotic city of La Paz. This huge cemetery is a nice retreat from the smog filled noisy streets of La Paz. I almost had a heart attack climbing up the almost vertical streets to get there. But it was well worth it. La Paz is just nuts. It´s a huge city in the middle of a relatively small valley surrounded by dramatic snow capped mountains. You can see in the picture how the buildings crawl up every inch of the valley seemingly defying gravity. It´s the weirdest contrast between ugly urban sprawl and natural beauty. At night on the Prado, in the middle of the valley, you´re surrounded by lights on the valley walls all around you. A very bizarre feeling.

These fine items are for sale in the witch´s market (more like a few random stands than an actual market). Well... I´m not exactly sure what the armadillo is for, but the dried llama fetuses (yes that´s what they are) are buried under new houses and other buildings to please Pacha Mama (Earth Mother) and bring good fortune. No... the fetuses were not killed for this particular purpose. They were found in previously slaughtered llamas used for food purposes.

El Centro. I think this picture gives a pretty good idea of the chaos of La Paz.

The totally chill (definitely more my pace) Copacabana. It´s really weird feeling like you´re at a beach town while looking at snow caped mountains in the background. The countryside surrounding Lago Titicaca is soo pretty. This is the largest body of water I have seen in 10 months! There´s some thing very calming about water.

The even more tranquilo Isla del Sol (Sun Island). The birth place of the sun in Incan legend. Turns out the birth place of the sun wasn´t so sunny. We actually got a hail storm while on the island. We had to hike up ¨an easy 2km of stairs¨ (hostel description) at over 4,000 m with our packs to get to our hostel at the top of the hill. I felt like I might die as local kids carrying other peoples packs (almost as big as themselves) were waltzing up the hill. But it was all worth it. Once my vision came back into focus... I could appreciate the absolutely amazing view of Isla de la Luna (Moon Island), the lake and the snow capped mountains behind it. As you can see from the photo every inch of this island is terraced. It´s pretty impressive what people will do to make a living.

Glad I wasn´t on that bus (we decided to take the lower route). This is the reason why the length of bus rides are given in time ranges and not precise hours. Ya never know what you´re going to run into. Who knows how long these poor people were stuck in the middle of nowhere while the drivers shoveled dirt futily under the tires.

B-44 Blogs

Looks like this blog thing is pretty popular. It turns out a lot of others from our group have their own blogs. Really well done too. I going to have to start picking up the slack over here. So check them out to get a better perspective because while there are similarities between our stories no one Peace Corps experience is like another.

Summer Project

The Gran Chaco

So the whole reason I was on that horrific road was to get to Camiri to attend a taller (workshop) on environmental ed. and how to use this ¨maletín didactico¨(didactic briefcase). The maletín is a box of five educational text books all about Environmental Ed. related to the Chaco. They´re really well done and I think would make a great resource for the teachers over here in Bermejo. From the books I found out that Bermejo is actually part of the Chaco (just barely, but we definitely are). I knew that the vegetation and climate was similar, but didn´t know exactly where the boundary lie. So that was pretty exciting to find out. Not only are the materials directly relevant to Bermejo, but now when all the Chaco volunteers brag about how bad ass they are I can join in ;) I think I will be a really valuable asset to the Chaco team. For instance, when challenging the Altiplano gang to drinking competitions...ha! The Chaco is the second largest forested area in South America (the first being of course the Amazon). There is a distinct rainy and dry season. Whereas in the Amazon it´s wet all the time. It extends through parts of Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina.

The idea was to attend the taller to see how it was run, get the materials and then organize general environmental ed. tallers for the teachers here in Bermejo and hopefully give away copies of the same materials. The taller was less than amazing (definitely an eye opening experience into the way things are run in Bolivia vs. the states), but it was good to see what elements I liked from it and can incorporate into my own taller and what I did not and can cut out. Part of it was training on how to give tallers in general so since I completed the training GTZ (a German organization, based in the Chaco) will now give me the maletins´ for my own tallers in Bermejo! So now I don´t have to make copies of anything and all the teachers will have their own maletín which is great. A couple of volunteers that attended the taller as well are going to help me give the tallers here in Bermejo in Jan/Feb. Where going to plan the best taller B-jo has ever seen! So I´m pretty excited to have this project in the works. Many of the teachers I´ve worked with have told me they want envir. ed. materials (any materials really) and now I have found really good ones. So I feel like this will be a really worthwhile project. Something that will definitely benefit the schools down here.

World´s Scariest Road!

This is actually a picture of The World´s Most Dangerous Road (also found in Bolivia) but you pretty much get the idea..

The road from Tarija toVilla Montes is by far the most terrifying road I have ever been on. I´ve heard it was a horrible road, but I didn´t realize quite how bad. I think the majority of people try to sleep through it so they don´t really know how bad it is or maybe they´re just a lot more badass than me and don´t whine about it so much. But I had the pleasure of being awake most of the time and a window seat with a nice view of the potential for disaster. The nine hour trip snakes through a huge sub- Andean mountain range. The road is unpaved and the majority of it is one way. Barely big enough for a car let alone a monstrous flota (bus). And did I mention this was a night trip? Which I think may actually be an advantage because you can see the headlights of oncoming vehicles from far away. I have never been so freaked by a road in my life! The first three or so hours was scary, but the road seemed to be wide enough with at least a few feet between the flota tires and the edge of the cliff with sporadic turnouts to let oncoming trucks squeeze by. I got car sick with all the turns and whatnot and I´m pretty sure I heard someone puke somewhere in the bus through my earphones. But that´s about as bad as it got. My friend actually got puked on by some kid on this same road, but that´s another story... Sometime after Entre Rios (which they are sending a new volunteer... poor thing. I don´t think I´d ever leave my site for fear of the road if I was her!) I open my eyes and catch the image of a camion(truck) a couple hundred of feet in front of us going around a bend. The lights from the truck illuminate the profile of the mountain. And then I realize just how bad this road is. We´re not talking about a gentle 45 degree slope, it´s more like 80. With a drop of who know´s how many hundreds of feet. All I know is it´s so far down you can not see the bottom. It looks like a cliff with a tiny road cut into it and a miniature truck driving by. It looks fake. It´s so steep there aren´t even trees growing on it. It´s just rock. That´s when I start to freak out. Are we really doing this!?! Then I look out the window to see how close to the edge we are and, no joke, I can´t even see the ground underneath us. Just a black abyss... That´s how close to the edge we are. Then I look to the other side of the bus. We are right up against the rocks on the other side of the road. Nope...no room there. And then every nightmare scenario passes through my head. What if another truck comes up the road!?! There´s no way a truck could pass us. If we try to back up... we´ll back up right over the cliff! And then I notice all the crosses along the road which up until that point I had been trying to ignore... two here, three there... a disturbingly common sight. At one point on the road there are so many I think it´s a cemetery for a second. Then I realize we´re still in the middle of nowhere and again they´re by the side of the cliff... oh that must have been a flota... great. This guy in front of me turned around and he must have seen in my face how freaked out I was because he tried to reassure me that there wasn´t much left to go. It was one of those rare times when you think to yourself wow... Í really could die...There´s probably a significant probability of death driving this road. The only reassurances were that the driver did not appear to be drunk (which believe it or not is a really big problem here, they recently started random breathalyzer tests for flota drivers) and he probably drives this road every night... so at least he knows it well. Well... all in all I lived to tell the tale and I will never take that road again!! They should really make it easier for people to travel through northern Argentina to the other side of the Tarija department. There is a new Trans- Chaco road in the process of construction that should make travel a lot safer, but who knows when that will be completed. Bolivia is kind of notorious for it´s roads. It actually has the distinction of having The World´s Most Dangerous Road. Sorry... this entry is kind of morbid I know. But hey thats´s part of living in Bolivia - the treacherous roads! I´ll do my best to avoid them from here on out.

Milestone

So it´s been six months in site (a fourth of my two years in site already over) and nine months total (a third of my total service)! It is absolutely crazy how the time has flown by these last three months. Having actual work and a schedule really helps the time go by. I am thankful to be in a site where there is plenty of work. I know it´s been tougher for other people. Although, I could easily be doing twice as much work as I am... I feel that I´ve gotten off to a pretty good start. It´s a good mix of working in the schools, but still having plenty of time to prepare charlas and crack open the ol´spanish book.

Yes... spanish still torments me. It has definately been the hardest thing for me over here. The only thing that´s made me cry :( It just gets really frustrating sometimes. I´ll have a good conversation with someone feeling like I understood everything and could get all my points across and then the next minute not understanding a word someone else says and then they say ¨Oh you don´t speak spanish very well?¨ And you feel like a complete idiot saying that you´ve been here for 9 months and actually work here, but you still can not understand them. Ofcourse I could always learn more, but more than anything, I´ve come to the conclusion that it all depends on who you talk to. Some poeple just don´t understand the whole talking clearly and simply thing. What can you do? But I have been told by several people recently that my Spanish has gotten a lot better... so that´s nice to hear.

I just sent in my QPR (Quarterly Progress Report) that we´re required to send in to Washington to prove that were actually doing work and that the Peace Corps is a worthwhile endevor. And I figured out that I´ve worked with about 575 people these past few months. The vast majority being kids from first to seventh grade and their teachers. Although I feel guilty everyday I don´t work and that number could be larger if only I had planned more charlas. I also feel like it´s important not to jump into too much too fast and get burned out. Working just four hours with little kids can be pretty exhausting. So all in all I feel pretty good about that number. It´s a nice start. The number is actuall people I´ve ¨trainined¨ in Environmental Ed concepts. While it´s good to have a significant number... a number doesn´t include all the other experiences that in my mind are equally important. Like going back to the same class and doing an art project with the recycled paper you made the time before, showing the kids pictures of California during recess and trying to explain life in the states (thanks for sending me that book Mom, the kids all want to come to California now), or participating in the madness of class parties. Which are actually the best moments for me.

There is a really friendly, motivated teacher in one of the schools that I work at in the nearby campo. She actually came up with her own topic that she wanted me to present to the class! Which is a rarity. After I ended the charla she insisted that I stay the rest of the day with the class because ¨no one interesting ever comes to the school¨. So I ended up doing anyhting that randomly pops into my head... talking to the kids about the geography of the United States, playing hangman, teaching numbers in English and somehow I got talked into singing the national anthem. This has actually happened on at least three seperate occassions. I try to explain that I sing horribly, but their so insistant and they look as if they would be crushed if you didn´t do it... so you can´t say no. And it´s so funny... they absolutely love it! They all clap and tell you how pretty it was. Even though you know you´ve totally butchered it... you didn´t even sing the lyrics correctly. So all in all I ended up spending the entire day with the class. The teacher ends up copying all of my notes and having us both formally sign it with stamps an everything (Bolivians are a big fan of formality). Which I thought was kind of odd at the time, but she will probably teach the lesson again which is great. This Wednesday I go back to her class and follow up on the original charla and talk about Endangered Species of Bolivia (which I am supposed to be researching now). So I´ve got to run but other random anecdotes to follow...

Wild Fires

This is definitley a country of extremes. Last rainy season (while we were in Cochabamba training) I was watching horrible scenes of flooding throughout the Santa Cruz, Beni and Pando regions...people being rescued from flooded villages, thousands of floating cow carcasses. Now there are a ton of wildfires burning in the same areas. Though the worst seem to be in the nearby Chaco. There is a volunteer in Villamontes right now helping in the fire fighting effort in over 100 degree heat! (Cha Chi your my hero!) Most of the fires have been started by people burning land to clear for their crops. A practice that is still very alive and well in Bolivia. The sky has been really hazy for the past couple of weeks sending many people to the hospitals with respiratory infections and forcing the closuer of many airports. I even heard the airport in La Paz was shut down for a couple of days. They are predicting that the fires will continue for the next month and a half!! I certainly hope they can get the situation under control a little sooner. I was talking to my friend about the fires saying ¨I can´t imagine how Bolivian firefighters could get control of a situation this bad¨. And she jokingly said ¨Yeah don´t you need hoses to put out f¡res?¨ While her comment was kind of funny...she´s also has a point. And becuase of this fire fighters from Paraguay, Peru and Argentina have already been sent in to help.

Here´s an article I found to give you a better idea-

Some 12,000 forest fires are raging in Bolivia, forcing the closure of all but the biggest airports and threatening the country's natural gas fields and fuel pipelines, authorities said Wednesday. The head of Bolivia's armed forces, Gen. Wilfredo Vargas, said that the army "is on emergency (alert)" to help extinguish the fires. The burning of forest is an ancient - though now illegal - practice at this time of year to clear more land on which to plant crops.

The director of Civil Aviation, Javier Garcia, confirmed Wednesday at a press conference that 30 of the country's 37 airports are closed due to the density of smoke from the fires. The press reported the danger posed by the fires in areas traversed by gas and fuel pipelines, like the Bolivian Chaco region, where more than 7,000 hectares (17,500 acres) have already been burned. The mayor of the southern town of Villamontes, Ruban Vaca, said that state energy company YPFB should be concerned because the fire is about to arrive at several gas wells. The director of land management, Cliver Rocha, said that the courts should "send to jail" anyone who burns their land to expand their cultivation area because they are putting at risk the health of the public as well as the environment. Meanwhile, President Evo Morales met with his Cabinet to analyze the situation and the emergency measures being taken to deal with the fires.

Yee haa!! Rodeo!

Even though I managed to miss every single actual rodeo event at this years rodeo... I still had an amazing time! The first day I didn't realize that the events were going on so early and missed them all and the second day I tried to get a seat in the stands, but it was soo hot and packed full of people it was impossible to see any of the action. Even though I was glad to miss such events as "pato entero" a kind of blind-folded knock the head off the half buried duck game, and the branding of the cattle... it would have been nice to see some bull riding or horse races. But it was just really great to see all those long lost friends again. The group in the Chaco is a lot of fun!

Ohh... look how cute we are. Me and Matteo, one of the sharpest dressed men in the Chaco.

Rodeo is not something I would normally get too excited about in the states, but in the Chaco where all the men claim to be macho vaqueros and cattle raising is such a huge part of the culture you just can't help but to get excited!

My new friends/dance partners.

The regional dance of Tarija and the Chaco is the chaquerera. A dance where the men do lots of fancy foot work and kick up dust with their boots (kind of like tap dancing but much more powerful and exagerated) and the women twirl around in their skirts. And there was plenty of dancing that weekend! I'm pretty sure we were the source of much amusment for all the Bolivians in the crowd with our rediculous gringo moves.

Ex-Presidente

We got to meet Bolivian ex-president Jamie Paz Zamora! How cool is that? We spotted him at a local bar in Tarija and I decided that we just couldn't let the oportunity pass by without introducing ourselves and taking a picture... so I "invitar-ed" the man to my cerveza and we introduced ourselves (I was later accused of flirting with the ex-president which I strongly deny!). He was very friendly to us all, welcoming us to Bolivia and inviting us to his place to see his horses... even though I doubt that is ever going to happen it was a nice gesture. My friend, the other blond, Erin asked the beautiful woman sitting next to him if she was his daughter and she replied that she was his wife. Erin was totally embarrassed... but we all got a good laugh out of that! Of course my eyes are closed for the only picture we got with him!

Not Angry

I´ve been told that I am sounding angry recently in my blog. And I just wanted to make clear that I am not angry... at all. Yes, there are times when I get annoyed and frustrated and I´ve written about those. This is a pretty crazy experience and there bound to be plenty of those moments. But all in all, I have to say that I´m pretty content. Any angry feeling that may come out of my writing is probably just misconstrued sarcasm. I feel that most people who really know me would get that... that it´s pretty rare for me to be really angry, but you never know. That´s the danger with text. It´s up to the reader to put any spin on it they want. I feel, regrettably, that this blog is already super censored... for fear of offending anyone about anything!

Bolivian Oblivian

Now I consider myself to be a pretty mellow, laid back sort of person. Not much really gets me too upset or bothered. I have even been called oblivious on several occasions (with the nick name Oblivia) to things that are going on around me. But Bolivians take it to a whole other level. Whether it´s the dogs barking and tearing each other apart in the middle of the night, children screaming and fighting, obnoxious drivers with their horns, water overflowing from the tank on top of the house for an entire day, a drunk passed out in the middle of the sidewalk... Bolivians just don´t seem to notice or get annoyed by these things.

Dogs can bark for hours at nothing and nobody will yell at them to shut up...ever! I have never heard anyone at my house yell at the dogs to be quite. And a spooked chicken can be running around going bizurk for an hour and nobody seems to mind. Where I´m about ready to kill the chicken myself. And I don´t want to say that Bolivian parents ignore their kids or anything, but jezz... their kids can be screaming or otherwise doing very obnoxious things like fighting with other kids or destroying something five feet away from their parents or teachers and they don´t yell at them to knock it off. And if they do yell at them it´s like half an hour later than you would expect it. One of the first experiences I had with my host family was one such instance. We were sitting around the table drinking tea and making small talk while Paulo my ten year old host brother is sawing a pen in half with a dinner knife. It was pretty distracting I kept looking from Paulo to Ana and back to Paulo waiting for her to tell him to quit it, but it never happened. This went on for like twenty minutes. Well... maybe Doña Ana is more oblivious than most, but I´ve witnessed plenty of other scenes like this. At the Internet place where I´m writing this the woman who works here often brings her little daughter and half the time the girl is pounding on the keyboards or drawing on the walls. And the mom does nothing. Even in the class rooms while the teacher is there the kids are wailing on each other and finally after ten minutes the teacher will tell them to cut it out. And as a side note, I´ve noticed that the kids are kind of aggressive here. I don´t really have that much experience with kids so I don´t really know how much rough housing is ¨normal¨, but it seems like the kids (the girls too) are always hitting or knocking each other down if not in an all out battle. It´s kind of disturbing.

Then there´s the drunks... while alcoholism is a families´s dirty little secret in the states, it´s very public here. It is not unusual at all to find someone passed out in the middle of the day using the sidewalk for a pillow. I have seen men laying awkwardly face down with their limbs twisted in weird positions, like they´ve just suffered from a narcoleptic attack while walking down the street. I have even seen a man passed out on a little bridge with the bike he was riding still between his legs and his pants pulled down to his knees. And you wouldn´t believe how many drunks I´ve seen walking around with wet pants. And when people pass them you don´t even seem to get the head shaking and finger pointing you would expect. They just simply walk over or around them. And when people get really smashed at parties there is no one telling the drunk guy to slow down, stop being an idiot or even to go home. ¨Oh he´s just drunk.¨

Then there´s the all the little things. Like the ridiculous use of the horn here. A cab driver looking for a passenger will honk at every person walking down the street. To those obviously not looking for a cab. Then when someone stops in front of someones house to pick them up they will honk obnoxiously until the person comes out. Not one or two soft honks but loud, long, repeated honks. There is a garbage truck that passes through the neighborhood at about six in the morning a few times a week. And the truck blasts it´s horn seriously every thirty seconds. And it is loud! You would think that one soft honk every block or so would do it seeing as it´s so damn early in the morning there is little other sound or movement going on. But no... every thirty seconds. And then there´s the sound of water splashing down the side of the house for an entire day, or a door banging in the wind...am I really the only one hearing these things?

I sometimes wonder if I´m getting more uptight over here or it´s just that I was less exposed to situations that seem so obviously annoying the states. Or maybe when I get back nothing will bother me at all! I guess I won´t really know until I go home.

**The whole point I was trying to get at here but didn´t have time to elaborate (I only had so many B´s on me) was that Bolivians have a much higher tolerance for behaviors or situations that, in my opinion, would annoy most Americans. They simply just don´t get worked up about things the way we would. In some respects I think this is a good thing. It´s true that we do spend too much time sweating the small stuff. But for others... especially the alcohol issue, I think it´s a really bad idea to be so indifferent. This is just something I´ve been thinking about lately. It is a generalization about one of the differences between Bolivians and Americans that I´ve observed and, with all generalizations, there are exceptions.

Summer time

This is my abode windowless house. Haha... just kidding! My room is actually pretty sweet by PC standards. I don't want to put any pictures up cause I don't want people getting jealous..heehee. This is actually the view from outside my door into the backyard where we have several stunning Lapacho in bloom. There are three varieties- yellow, purple and white. My personal favorite is the yellow. The drive from Bermejo to Tarija is particularly gorgeous these days with all the yellow, purple and white splashed on the mountains. While the blooming of the Lapacho is beautiful it is also sort of bitter sweet because it flowers for such a short period of time... about two weeks.

The Lapacho is in bloom and just like that summer is upon us. It seems just like last week I was I was telling myself ¨All right... I´m ready for summer. Bring it on. No more of this freezing my ass off in the shower anymore.¨ Oh wait... that was just last week. Well for better or worse I got what I wanted. Out of nowhere the heat and humidity crept up on us last Monday. I just looked up Bermejo on the weather channel (that´s right... it´s got it´s own page http://espanol.weather.com/weather/local/BLXX0030?letter=B so when the weather is especially nasty wherever you are you can look up Bermejo and tell yourself ¨Well..at least I´m not there!¨) and it is currently 36C (97 F) with humidity of 28%. And this is just the beginning! I´ve been told in doesn´t cool down until Feb! I see a lot of sitting directly in front of the fan in my future. Well maybe the heat will make make sweat off a few of those extra pounds (which actually is more like 10!).

Home sweet home...

Not gonna lie. Most of Bermejo is pretty grungy...but here are some of it´s prettier parts.

This is the plaza in the center of the ¨main strip¨. I live about a ten minute walk away. There´s a nice fountain (with no water) and some benches to relax. The big trees in the back ground are recovering from being recently pruned. A process in which it basically gets it´s head chopped off. They literally just saw off the top part of the tree at the trunk. This is one of those Bolivian things that is just maddening. WHY DO YOU DO THIS!?! There are these big beautiful trees everywhere in the city that are pruned down to nothing but the trunk.

The lovely Rio Bermejo. The boats are called ¨chalanas¨ and carry people and goods back and forth between Aguas Blancas, Arg. and Bermejo, Boivia. There is a bridge crossing about 3km upstream. The river is pretty low right now, but we have lots of tubing trips planed for the summer when it warms up and we get some rain.

More pictures soon!

¡Donde hay trabajo!

A class of second graders with their coloring book "Juan Bota Todo" read more below.

A class of seventh graders after a charla on "El Efecto Invernadero y Cambio Climatico" (The Green House Effect and Climate Change)... ya pretty heavy stuff considering my spanish, but it went alright. By the way... I did not try to talk about chlorofluorocarbons (which is written on the corner of the board). That was the profe's two cents. I tried to keep it a little simpler than that.

A class of second graders with their coloring book "Juan Bota Todo" about a mean old man who throws all of his garbage into the street and stream. The kids were actually pretty excited to get their own books. We read the book out loud together and talked about what you should and shouldn't do with the trash. I'm going to check back with the kids next week to check their coloring.

Yay...I am finally working! I feel like the biggest slacker saying I´m just getting started working now. But it isn´t entirely my fault it took me so long to get started. First off, PC tells us that we are´nt really expected to do much but settle in and integrate the first three months in site. And my boss, the program director of Natural Resources/Environmental Ed., had told me to hold off going into the schools and having charlas and whatnot until winter vacation was over. Winter vacations ended late July then I had Project Meeting and IST and was away from my site for nearly two weeks. But during my first three months I did have plenty of meetings with directors and teachers trying to plan future activities. Man... that was a trying experience! I have already explained some of my frustrations with that process previously. Since then I have learned that I need to bring in actual materials to show the teachers. Talking generally about what I would like to do, being really flexible and hoping the teachers would have suggestions or ideas of their own doesn´t work. Even explaining that I have this really lindo story ¨El Lorax¨ and I want to read it to the kids and do some activities and talk about the environmental theme doesn´t really get them too excited, but as soon as I brought in a cheap photocopy of the story they´re like ohhh....ahhh.... all the kids should have a copy of this! It sounds pretty simple and now I´m like duh... why didn´t I just do that in the first place, but hey no one told me these things!

A few of my housemates are teachers and they were telling me that the school district provides virtually no materials for the schools. The kids have to pay for their textbooks to be photocopied. The school district provides chalk... nada mas. They were asking me what the schools we´re like in the states and I almost felt guilty explaining that all textbooks are provided by the school district and there´s usually plenty of other materials available. I didn´t mention anything about computer labs, chemistry equipment... and everything else we have. I tried to ¨justify¨ having all these things buy saying ¨ We´ll...we pay a lot of taxes¨ like that´s a valid reason why we have all this stuff and they don´t. It always makes me sort of uncomfortable when people start to ask how things are in the states... especially when they are clearly a lot better. I always downplay everything because well... it´s hard to explain...there´s always the guilt thing and I guess I don´t want everyone to think that all Americans are spoiled brats... even though generally speaking we are. Anyways, I told them I felt really bad about the lack of materials available in the schools and now I´m going to try and make getting more educational materials one of my top priorities.

¨Salta la Linda¨

¨El Coronado¨ umm...I think that´s what it´s called. A neat old colonial builing that has a cute museum inside.

¨El Catedral¨a very gawdy, but very striking cathedral off the main plaza.

The very pretty main plaza surrounded by trendy restaurants, coffee shops and beautiful arquitecture.

Soo cute! A mini pony and an alpaca... just hanging out on the streets of Salta. I love minature animals!

I have just returned from my first vacation in Salta, Argentina. All the volunteers in Tarija rave about Salta, but at the same time joke about how you know you´ve been in Bolivia too long if Salta becomes an exotic destination. And I guess I have been in Bolivia too long because yes... I thought it was pretty sweet.

The vacation didn´t go exactly as planed. First off, the two girls I was supposed to go with bailed on me last minute leaving me no time to find anyone else to travel with. I decided to go anyways because one, after six months of not being allowed to travel I really felt like I just needed to get out and finally take advantage of this amazing opportunity to explore. And two, I was planning to meet up with an Argentinean ¨aquantance¨ I had meet at a music festival a month or so earlier that was going to show me all around the city and the country side. We barely had the chance to hang out when he got a call for a last minute show in northern Argentina, five hours away. So that was kind of a bummer. We were planning on checking out his home town which is supposed to be a cute colonial village and the vineyards of La Cafayate. So instead I spent the day wandering around the city, had a nice dinner by myself and called it a night.

I tried to get in contact with him the next morning hoping to squeeze in a quick trip to the country side, but I couldn´t get a hold of him. I think his phone was screwed up or didn´t have any credit or whatever. So I sent an email hoping he´d think to check it. All told, I wasted practically the whole day waiting in vain at the hostel, hoping he would show up. He never showed and I haven´t heard from him since!! I really couldn´t believe it because the night before he was confesing his love for me. These latin men are so passionate!! You really can´t take them too seriously. Me and my gringo friends have come to the conclusion that ¨I am in love with you¨ in latin america is really the equivalent of ¨I am sort of attracted to you¨ in the states. So it´s a mystery what happened to him. But it really wasn´t so tragic after all because it wasn´t much of a love connection anyways.

But things started to turn around... I meet three very attractive southern argentineans and made dinner with them at the hostel. Their accent was so different from what I´m used to in Bolivia. Even though I could barely understand them I loved it! It made me really want to visit southern argentina and learn how to speak like that... and maybe meet some more blue eyed, dark haired, educated, good looking men. Anyways, by that point I was hoping that the other guy didn´t show up because I was having such a good time with my new friends. We ended up going out later that night. At like two o´clock in the morning! Argentineans like to party late. And had a good time.. so at least it ended on a high note. It was really nice to have a capuchino in a trendy coffee shop on the plaza and imagine the people next to you are having some intelectual discussion on politics or what have you. And the variety of restaurants and night life blows away anything in Tarija. And I hear that there´s a mall with a McDonald´s that I missed!! For some reason now that it´s not available... McDonald´s sounds incredible! Next time...

It´s name was Tunari

Natural Resources and Environmental Education Project Meeting. We got to spend the night in a super lujo (lux) hotel.

View from the summit. The mountains of La Paz in the distance!!

A cristal clear lake at ~15,00 ft.

Yeeesss!!! The summit!!

Remember the expression ¨kickin´ ass and takin´ names¨? We´ll...it´s name was Tunari. A bunch of us from B-44 took the free weekend between project meeting and IST to climb Mt. Tunari, the highest mountain in central Bolivia. At 16,600 ft. it was definitely the highest I have ever been in my life and probably the most difficult hike (endurance wise) I have ever done. The hike itself is not really that technical, but the elevation makes puting two feet infront of you difficult enough. We took a truffi up as far as it could go and began the hike at about 14,500 ft. at 8:00 in the morning. We stumbled back to the truffi at about 5:00 in the evening.

As soon as you start to climb you immediately feel the effects of the elevation. For the very last strech to the summit I literally could not take five steps without having to rest and catch my breath again. I was very surprised I was able to make it at all, coming from 400 m in Bermejo. The only problem I had was with my damn contacts. Sunscreen and sweat along with plenty of dust got into my eyes. And I think the contacts only helped to trap them all in. Making my eyes water and burn for about half of the day. So it was a slow go to the top, but totally worth it! It was an absolutely gorgeous day with very few clouds in the sky. We could see the snow capped mountain range surrounding La Paz in the distance! We were all worried about the cold since it is the middle of winter, but it turned out to be a lovely day. It was kind of a bummer that all the llamas were lower down on the mountain and we didn´t get to hike with them. They´re really the coolest creatures. Very inquisitve and calm with there big pretty eyes and narly dreadlocks. I really want to bond with a llama to complete my Tunari experience ...haha... next time...

The detour

So after six taxi raides through northern Argentina and one eight hour bus ride through the middle of the night I am now safely in Santa Cruz. It was decided yesterday afternoon that the situation was most likely not going to resolve itself anytime soon. Actually, it got worse with talks between the government and campesinos breaking down and a few police and campesino confrentations involving tear gas. Not in Bermejo, but in a near by community. So at about 2:00 I was told I should leave ASAP becasue there was going to be a paro civico in Yacuiba the next day (a sort of protest when EVERYTHING shuts down) and then it would be really impossible to get to Santa Cruz. So I packed up my things and got on the road. Luckily I ran into some very helpful fellow travelers because I really didn´t know the best route to get through Argentina. I was planing on getting to the first destination and figuring it out from there. But luckily after crossing the bridge from Bermejo to Aguas Blancas, Arg. I shared a cab with another Bolivian that told me the fastest route to take and how much I should pay. Funny thing is that as we got to Oran he assumed I would pay for a third of the taxi fare! I was like what?? There´s two of us we split the fare, it´s that simple. I was pretty irritated at that point by this guy who was being really friendly to me the whole ride and giving me all this helpful ¨advice¨ then trying to rip me off. And then he goes on to ask me where I live. I make up some fake general location. Then he asks what family I live with (this kind of thing happens A LOT) and I ask him why he wants to know that. And he says he´s going to be in Bermejo the next weekend and he´ll look for me. Is he really thinking we´re going to hang out or something? I tell him I wont be home next weekend and he says well I come to Bermejo a lot I´ll look for you. Alright...you do that. It was kind of wierd. I didn´t get any kind of creepy vibe from him the whole time we were talking. Usually I´m pretty good at sensing those things. Who knows? Maybe he could just be innocently interested in the gringa or... maybe he´s a pervert. You never know. And as a woman over here you always got to keep you´re guard up. This whole subject is definitely worthy of it´s own lenghty blog. I´ll get around to that eventually. But anyway... he saw that I got on the right taxi and told the driver to make sure I got on the right taxi next. In the next taxi I meet up with two other friendly travelers (one was actually headed to Santa Cruz too) that actually insisted to pay a little more for the cab fare, because they were in a hurry and didn´t want to wait for other passengers. He was a total live saver at the absolutely packed Yacuiba bus station finding two miracle seats on a flota that was just about to leave the station. ¡¡¡ Corre Corre!!! (RUN!) As I mentioned before, if we didn´t get on a bus that night we would have been screwed! And we split a cab in Santa Cruz and he made sure I got to my hotel alright. It is nice to meet a genuinely nice person that doesn´t try to hit on you and ask you for your number or where you live. Tomorrow morning I leave for Coch. I´ll be a little late for the meeting, but I´ll be there. I can´t wait to see all my friends and share all our crazy stories. Hopefully by the time I get back to Tarija all this craziness will have blown over...

Here I am stuck in Bermejo with NADIE!

The realities of living in Bolivia are starting to sink in... I am scheduled to fly out of Tarija tomorrow evening for a Natural Resources/ Environmental Education project meeting and then our IST (in service training) meeting the following week in Cochabamba. I wanted to go up to Tarija today and do some last minute work on my presentation in the office. Problem is that between Bermejo and Tarija there are at least six different bloqueos (people blocking the roads with rocks, trees, cars and anything else they can get there hands on). These bloqueos have been going on all over the country lately (with bloqueos longer than two weeks in the Chaco clearing recently). Usually we´re spared from these kinds of things in Tarija because Tarijeños usually don´t seem to get too worked up about any one cause and give up after a day or two. But these bloqueos have been going on for about a week...making travel a huge pain in the ass, if not impossible. This bloqueo couldn´t have worse timing! The only time when I absolutely need to get to Tarija! The whole time I´ve been here there have been no problems (unless you count the mayors office being shut down for over two weeks exactly when I wanted to talk to a bunch of poeple for information to include in my diagnostic...oh well!! When I asked poeple is the Alcaldia atill closed. They would repy ¨yeah there are still problems¨. Uh... how are they going to work out their problems if no one´s working? I seem to be the only one with this mentality.) The governor of Tarija wanted to ¨peacefully¨ break up the bloqueos becase they´ve been going on for so long, but becuase the campesinos have the support of the MAS party Evo says it would be illegal to forcibly prevent the campesinos from blockading. So here I am...stuck in Bermejo when everyone else is getting ready to leave for Coch. Hopefully they will come to some resolution pronto, beacuse if I am the only one to miss my IST and the chance to see all my friends after three months of not seeing them I´m going be really bummed!

What am I doing?

Some of you are probably wondering what exactly I´ve been doing over here. I´ve been pretty vauge in my explanation because I myself am still trying to figure that out. This past month I´ve been meeting with a lot of directors and teacher´s trying to get going in some sort of direction. Some of these meetings have been super easy. I just explain who I am and that I want to come into the schools and talk to the kids about trash and recycling, play some games and do some fun activities and they´re like ¨alright when can you come in?¨. And others haven´t gone so smoothly. I´ve had people get defensive saying that they already talk about that stuff and what am I going to do that´s any different. What are my methodologies? Umm... to have fun. Methodologies? That´s a question I can barely answer in English, let alone Spanish. Let´s face it, I´m not a professionally trained teacher. I was given a bunch of ideas for creating interactive dynamic lessons conserning the environment. I have no doubt that the teachers are addressing some of the same issues in their classrooms, but Bolivian classrooms are not exactly known for there creativity. I don´t know how to say that to teachers without insulting them. Some times I just seriously want to say look- the kids love me, we´ll have fun and I´m making your job easier. What more do you want? Whenever I walk into a school the kids surround me asking me my name, where I´m from and if I´m going to be their teacher. And when I saw yes they all cheer. Ok well maybe this doesn´t happen every single time, but it´s happened enough to tell me that the kids will enjoy whatever I have to say. It´s worth the frustration with the teachers knowing that the kids want me to be there.

Even if I am covering the same topic at least it´s coming from another person in a different way. Maybe because I am a gringa, an outsider, it´ll have more impact. I may be being a bit too optimistic there, but you gotta be to do this job. Bermejo has serious trash problems. And telling the kids about it more than once certainly can´t hurt. Even in the schools there´s trash all over the place which tells me the teachers a not enforcing the theme enough. It´s definitely a difficult job. How do you get people to care about their environment? What are the tangible benefits for them? You can tell them over and over again about how trash attracts mosquitos and rats that can harbor disease, that batteries pollute water sources with heavy metals, that burning plastics releases toxins in the atmosphere, a plastic bottle will still be in the landfill 500 years from now...but these are things that are hard to actually observe. They´re too abstract to be really effective reasons for changing behaviors. For me it´s more about respecting the place you live and doing the right thing, not because you´re directly benefiting from it, but it´s the right thing to do. In the states I felt rediculous amounts of guilt not recycling everything that was possible to recycle, leaving the lights on when I wasn´t home, if my sink had a leak. Where did all this guilt come from?? That´s what I will try to tell the kids. Not the guilt part, (actually that maybe more effective) but to respect where you live. I know I´m not going to work miracles over here, but if nothing else I have helped plant a little seed for future action. Environmental Ed. is a relatively new subject in Bolivia and hopfully this generation of kids will be the ones to make big changes.

My Kooky Doña

My new ¨Host Mom¨ is an interesting lady. I feel kind of wierd calling her my Host Mom, because she´s more like my land lord that I ocasionally hang out with than anything else. But PC Bolivia requires us to live with a host family (to live within the same walls/compound as a family). Don´t get me wrong. She´s a fun lady. She deffinitely likes to have a good time and make sure those around her are having a good time too. She´s the first one to pass around the wine at parties and trying to hook people up and make them dance together. But she´s kind of umm.. how can I say this in the nicest possible way...a bit ditzy.

She comes up with these completely random ideas. One of the first days at the house she tells the other girls renting rooms that I only eat vegetables, nothing else. And they look at me and ask ¨Verdad?¨ with surprise. And then I have to set the record straight ¨I eat everything. I eat meat. I ate pork yesterday WITH YOU!¨Hello! That actually was the first meal she offered me so I felt obligated to eat it. It was a thick chunk of pork. Consisting of a thick layer of skin (with a few hairs poking out) and fat. There was virtualy no meat to be found on it. Me and Julia just kept digging in with our knives searching futilely for the meat. ¨This is so disgusing. Are we really going to have to eat this?¨I keep thinking to myself. Thank God Julia was there to explain that usually we don´t like to eat the skin and such...just the meat. ¨Oh...I eat everything.¨ My Dona replied with a laugh...clearly. Of course I could have said this myself, but I hardly knew the lady at that point and didn´t want to seem rude not eating what she offered me. So we choked down a few forkfuls of fat saying ¨¡Que rico!¨ (how delicious!) all the while thinking of the brain worms that we´ve been warned uncooked pork can give you. While I´m on the subject of strange foods... I´ve actually been pretty lucky so far. The strangest thing I´ve eaten was guinea pig at my host families house which is actually like a fattier chicken. Not really that good, but not that bad either. I´ve managed to steer clear of the intestines, chicken feet, tongue and stomach offered to other volunteers.

But back to my Doña. The other day I was making cookies in the kitchen. She asks ¨What are you doing?'¨. ¨Making cookies¨ I reply. Then in the next minute she asks the lady that helps out around the house (the empleada) what I´m doing. The same answer ¨Making cookies¨. Ok maybe she didn´t understand me... yet again. Then thirty seconds later she aks her son. ¨She´s making cookies¨ he tells her. ¨Cookies?¨ she asks again. ¨Cookies.¨ says the empleada. Am I in the Twilight Zone or something? What is going on here? Oh yeah, and another time I asked her if there was a hot shower downstairs that I could use. I was sick and it was freezing cold and I was dreading the thought of using my cold shower. She yells back into the house to her son ¨Is there hot water?¨. ¨No only cold¨ he replies. What?! Did she really not know if she had hot water or not in her own house? I was baffled. Hot water is not something you have from one day to the next. You either have it or you don´t. They don´t have hot water heaters down here. It´s pretty rare to see them. What most people do is buy this contraption they put over the shower head. The water passes through an electrical current and quickly heats up. You know how we were always told water and electricity don´t mix? We´ll aparently down here in the southern hemisphere it´s all right.

Also she´s partaily deaf and doesn´t annunciate very clearly so our conversations have been pretty rediculous. So not only can she not understand me, I can barely understand her. Just the other day I was walking to the market with her. She asked when I got back to town and I told her yesterday at about five. Short and simple answer. Then we run into her friend and she tells her ¨Allison got back from Tarija this morning¨. I didn´t bother to correct her. Things like that happen all the time. But at least she has stoped introducing me to people with ¨This is Allison. She doesn´t understand spanish.¨ There´s nothing like being told you can´t speak spanish to help your confidence. Especially with someone you´ve just met! I got kind of pissed after several times with that introduction and told her, obviously aggrevated, ¨I understood that! I don´t undstand every word, but I generally get the idea. I´m still learning.¨ Muchas gracias!

New Address

Not like I´m expecting anything... haven´t recieved anything so far (are you all starting to feel guilty yet?) But my new address is:

Casilla 2
Bermejo, Tarija
Bolivia

And if you should send some Recess Pieces or National Geographic Magazine make sure it´s in a small box or padded envelope under 4 pounds and the value extremely low balled. And I have a cell phone (yeah... I´m a baller) just send me an email for the number. As always, I hope everyone is doing great!!

Other Uses for Orange Peels

I had recently arrived in Bolivia and was walking down the grubby streets of Cochabamba, probably no doubt lost after following the good intentioned, but ill informed directions of a fellow pedestrian when I noticed a little old Cholita infront of me pull an orange peel from her pocket. ¨Humm...that´s curious.¨ I thought to myself. So I continued to watch the old woman. And to my shock and surprise she brought the orange peel to her nose and proceeded to blow her nose into it. And if that, in of it´s self, wasn´t odd enough consider this. One, she pulled the orange peel out of her pocket. Meaning, after she peeled the orange in the first place, she didn´t just throw the peel on the street like any other Bolivian (and now myself) would do. She must have conciously saved it for some purpose. To blow her nose into? Really? And two, after blowing her nose into the orange peel she then returned the ¨used¨ peel back to her pocket! Was she going to use it again! That was just too much. I couldn´t help but to laugh out loud to myself right there on the street. Now I really knew I wasn´t in California anymore. But I quickly had to check myself. As if I wasn´t drawing enough odd looks already... a wide eyed blond gringa (obviously not knowing where the hell she´s going) walking the streets of Cochabamba.

I hadn´t thought about that little old woman and her orange peel for months until just the other day...I was eating my fruit salad and suffering from my second cold in less than a month. Snot began to quickly run from my nose. I looked around for a solution. The toilet paper was in the bathroom. No! No time for that! I quickly looked down at my sleeves. No, that won´t do! I want to get at least a few more uses out of this before I have to wash it again. So logically, I grabed the next closest thing. And as the orange peel hit my nose that moment on the busy streets of Cochabamba came back to me with the clarity as if it had just been yesterday. And I thought with alarm to myself ¨Ahhh! I am that crazy old woman!¨ And again, I had to laugh at myself. And you know what? I gotta say that cholita was really on to something. While the absorbancy of an orange peel leaves something to be desiered... it´s soft and moist. Gentle on a tender nose. And it smeels good too. Maybe she wasn´t so crazy afterall... or maybe she was and I am too.

Engordar (to fatten)

Yes... estoy engordando. We were warned plenty of times- the boys will lose and the girls will gain, but I thought ¨Oh no... not me.¨ But sure enough I have. I probably haven´t gained much more than three pounds, but on me you can definiely notice it. Because of instead of nicely dispersing itself throughout my body and giving me some, oh I don´t know...curves, it has decided to concentrate it´s self solely on my belly. It would be a cute belly if I were three months pregnant, but I can assure you I am not. Instead it is just freakin´me out! I know most of you are rolling your eyes and saying ¨yeah... your really getting fat there Allison¨ and there are probably others with a self satisfied grin saying ¨Ah hah! I knew it would catch up with you sooner or later!¨

It all started during tech week. When we were eating out for every meal and I had an unsatiable appetite. Really, it was rediculous. I was hungry all the time! By the end of the week I was eating two plates of fried chicken and french fries for dinner and everyone was joking ¨Ut oh... Allison´s tape worm is getting angry. We better feed it.¨ I probably gained a few pounds just during that week. But by the time swear in rolled around I was back to eating the regimented light breakfast, soup for lunch and some kind of meat/ rice combination for dinner. I got back more or less to normal. But ever since swear it´s been down hill. Eating out in Tarija, going crazy buying groceries. Now that I´m finally able to make my own food I definitely go overboard eating three times as much as a normal person would, just because I can. And the street food is so tempting! Everything is fried -fried empanadas, fried beef and egg and papas in a lomito, fried dough with queso and powdered sugar (so delicious!), fried hamburgers and hotdogs. Then there´s the pastries everyone is selling. And it´s all so cheap! 50 centavos here a Boliviano there (which is the equivalent of 12.5 cents) You have to get at least two! And then there´s the fact that soda is really the only thing sold in restaurants. The fruit refrescos don´t really seem to be too popular down here in Bermejo. And by the way, people don´t drink water in Bolivia. I have yet to see any Bolivian drink a glass of water. I think foriegners are solely keeping the bottled water industry alive.

My eating habits have changed so much since coming to Bolivia. Soda?! I hardly ever drank soda. Only at fast food places. And all this fried food! And seriously, I have eaten more french fries and bolied potatoes in the last few months than I have in my entire life. And I´ve started eating beef again. I haven´t eaten it for over seven years. But I´m in the land of beef and wine and I´ve got to try it right? I was never much of a fan of it before, but I have been converted. It´s so good! But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Everyone tells me that I will get over the fried street food phase. And the food here is at least prepared from fresh ingredients. It´s not the packaged crap you find in the states. And I am eating a lot more fruits and veggies than I normally would. So it´s not all bad. I just have to learn not to eat so damn much! ;)

Here are a few random pictures that I really like...

Just another day on the micro. I can not describe how much I love the micros. First of all there are no predesignated stops. You just stand on the side of the road and wave one down and yell at the driver when you want to get off. And just look at how they're decked out! Stuffed animals, stickers, posters, blinking lights. Common accessories are Disney themed stickers, American flag pine tree air fresheners, CD's with pictures of Jesus on them. This particular micros has all three! People really take pride in their old beat up beasts and go all out on the decorations.

This picture was taken at the airport the day we left for Tirija. As of the 1st of April visas are now required for Bolivians to enter Spain. There are many Bolivian immigrants in Spain. Actually it's a big problem for the country. It is losing a lot of it's people. There are many children left to live with their Grandparents while their parents move to Spain for work. And I've been told of whole towns that have no young people because they all went to Spain. Anyways, a bunch of people bought plane tickets right before the new visa requirements were put into effect. Then LAB, a Bolivian airline, cancels the flight and doesn't return the people's money! So a bunch of people were totally screwed. Not only will they be unlikely to ever go to Spain, but they lost a fortune! So people were at the airport basically having a sit-in until their money is returned to them. People think that the whole thing was a political move. It's know that government is not happy with so many people leaving Bolivia. LAB says they will return the money...

Classic! One of them's smoking a cigarette and the other's eating jello. The best tech trainers ever! I'm really gonna miss them.

Partying with Bolivian Rock Stars

So the first day I spent with my new Bolivian family was pretty amazing. The mother´s son (who died last year in a tragic accident) was good friends with Dalmiro Cuellar ¨el voz del chaco¨ who is a freakin´ rock star down here. So every time he passes through Bermejo the band stays at the house. He sings the song ¨Hoy me ire¨ which was practically the theme song for EE during tech week. We listened to it non stop the whole week. It´s hard to go a day with out hearing one of his songs around town, I´ve already got him on my i-pod, he´s got his own ring tone for heaven´s sake! So yeah... he´s a big deal down here. There was an impromptu little party at the house. People were passing around the wine, dancing, and listening to the band play. It´s a big band I think there are over seven of them. Violins, guitars, drums, a small accordion thing (can´t remember the actual name). We practically got a private show. It was amazing! I got ¨te invito¨-ed and danced with the man, among many others. I´m pretty sure one of the violin players asked me to marry him before the night was over, but it was all in fun. ¨Te invito¨ is a Bolivian custom in which someone invites you to drink with them (they have to ivite you first before they can take a sip...very important). They take a sip from the glass and pass it to whomever they invited to drink with them. Then that person has to invite someone else and the glass gets passed along like this all night.

And I have to mention that it´s usually not pure wine they´re passing around. The add coke or (at this party) orange soda! I know... it´s crazy. They take good wine and do this! Actually the orange soda is much better than the coke (which makes you want to instantly vomit) it just makes it super sweet. And when they see you drinking just wine thery´re like ¨Puro?¨ and look at you like your the alcoholic. Drinking puro cerveza is even worse. Yes they add coke to the beer too!! The beer here is about as potent as a bud light. You´ll drink puro but only have a few drinks while they drink this crazy concoction all night and get blasted and your the one who´s got the problem. But that´s just how it goes.

So it was a pretty great night and awesome cultural experience. A good way to start off in Bermejo.

Pictures

As you all can see...I've finally put some pictures up on here. Sorry it took so long, but it's not easy finding a computer to upload all my pictures on. So now hopefully you have a better idea of who I've been spending the last three months with and you can get a little taste of Bolivia. I've tried to put the pictures with their logical entries so just browse through the old entries to see them. I wanted to include more but there's never enough time! Hope all is well and if you haven't emailed me in a while drop me a line. I love hearing from everyone.