La Gringa: Allison

2009-10-19T21:10:00.000-07:00

A story by BBC about child labor in Bermejo.

By Andres Schipani BBC News, Bermejo

Fiser's mother wants him to return to school some day
To see children's silhouettes at sunrise, bent as they chop canes with machetes, is to see the scale of poverty in Bolivia, where often every member of the family, no matter how young, has to work.
Fiser, 10, is one of Bolivia's many child labourers.
"I am not going to school any more. I left it this year when I started working here," he tells me.
His hands are covered in blisters and dark with a sticky dust after hours harvesting sugar cane.
Child labour is illegal in Bolivia, but it is estimated that almost a third of the country's children and adolescents (320,000) work in extreme conditions; in the mines, Brazil nut plantations and the sugar cane fields.
Boys like Fiser earn less than $5 a day during the six months or so that they work harvesting sugar cane, often from sunrise to sunset.
Such work is considered one of the worst forms of child labour by international bodies such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the UN children's agency, Unicef.
Ciro, 13, is typical. "I'd like to study or maybe work in something better, something lighter. But I work most of all for my family, my family is really poor so they have nothing and I need to help my six little brothers," he says.
"I wake up at four in the morning and come out to work until six in the afternoon, sometimes until eleven at night. The work is really, really hard."
Temporary migrants
Until recently, many farmers were moving away from sugar cane because they could get better, government-guaranteed prices for other crops, such as soya, rice and the local crop, coca - the raw material for cocaine.
The work is hard, very hard... I don't want to do this any more, but I have no choice
Luis, 13
But now, the price of raw sugar is hitting highs not seen for nearly three decades and farmers are switching back to sugar cane. Whole families are moving across Bolivia to work in the fields.
Sugar cane has a particular economic advantage: the harvest provides an income for a relatively extended period - roughly between April and November.
It is a way of making a living in Bermejo, a poverty-stricken area of south-eastern Bolivia on the border with Argentina.
Most of the heavy harvesting work is still done manually. Children aged between seven and 17 set crops alight to remove all unwanted foliage and then chop down the canes. Later, the top is cut off and the rest of the cane is stacked and loaded for transportation.
Luis, 13, started working three years ago.
"The work is hard, very hard, exhausting," he says. "The canes are heavy, cutting, chopping all day, last year I had a terrible back pain from work. I don't want to do this any more, but I have no choice."

High prices mean sugar is once again a sought after commodity
About 60% of the sugar cane harvesters are temporary migrants from Bolivia's poorest areas. They live in shacks that are little more than mud huts, or under blue tarpaulins on the edge of the sugar cane plantations.
There is no hygiene; no privacy. As the local saying goes, they have "sweet canes but bitter lives".
"It is not a secret that children of all ages work in different conditions, in different sectors in this country," says Unicef's Bolivia representative Gordon Jonathan Lewis.
"As long as poverty exists, and the magnitude and the prevalence you have in a country like Bolivia, you will always have the need for children to contribute to households and local economies."
But in the sugar cane harvest, the exploitation of child workers can be extreme, Mr Lewis adds.
This view is echoed by Anastasio Rueda, a sugar cane trade union leader in Bermejo.
"Sometimes the boss takes advantage of them because they are young, and treats them badly. There are accidents. And of course there are children who do not want to come to work because the job is harsh, but some parents force them to," he says.
Forceful approach
Now, nearly 20 years after the Convention of the Rights of the Child was agreed, Unicef is trying a range of ways to tackle child labour.
One is a "Child Labour Free" stamp for certain Bolivian products, like sugar. Together with Unicef, Bolivia's government has drawn up a plan to reduce child labour by 2015.

Angelica does not want her son to have her "rotten" life
"The plans exists, the public policies are in place, the legal framework is there but right now we really do need a much more forceful approach," Mr Lewis says.
Some parents would prefer their children to be at school rather than in the fields. Unfortunately, money compels them to take their children into the fields with them.
That is the case for Fiser's mother, Angelica, who is working alongside him.
"He helps me a lot. He used to be at school but I need him to come to work with me, at least this year, then he can go back to school. Now we need the money so his little brothers can eat and go to school."
Angelica knows about the harsh reality of child labour herself as she has been toiling in the cane fields for a pittance since she was 10. She is now 44.
"Now he got used to work and he doesn't want to go back to school because he earns some petty cash and knows I need help," she says.
"But I tell him, even if it is a huge effort, he has to study so he doesn't end up like me, old and working in the sugar cane harvest. The children should have that opportunity. We are rotten already."

South American Trip Part III (this is it, I promise)

2009-01-12T16:13:00.000-08:00

Puerto Madryn, Argentina

After the lovely Bariloche, Eme and I booked it further south to the Atlantic coastal town of Puerto Madryn. We found another traveling couple and rented a car to check out the sites.

First, we drove south to Punta Tombo, the worlds largest Magellanic penguin colony (outside of Antarctica). It was crazy! As soon as we stepped out of the car there were penguins milling about everywhere! You could walk right up to them and pet them, if you wanted to lose a finger that is.

There were over 200,000 breeding pairs with their nests and eggs. The chicks had apparently just started to hatch. We were lucky enough to find one nest with a little grey chick. So cute! But I didn't get the greatest shot of the chick... so this penguin on it's egg will have to do.

You want a hug?

The next morning we headed north to Reserva Faunistica Peninsula Valdes where the highlight of the day was, by far and away, the boat ride out in the bay to see the southern right whales and their calves. I've attempted whale watching a few times before, but have never had any luck so I was really excited to finally see them and was pointing, ohh-ing and aww-ing like a little kid! I was absolutely awe struck watching these giants peacefully diving and interacting with their calves. One came within 10ft of the boat to check us out!

Montevideo, Uruguay

I ended the trip with a few days in Uruguay. The capital, Montevideo, was a lot like it's Big Sister Buenos Aires, but a lot smaller, tranquilo and on the coast. It seemed to have a cool vibe, but unfortunately I didn't get to spend too much time there.

One of the cities many plazas.

Garbage collector

Punta del Este, Uruguay

I was on a mission to hit the beach before heading home to Winter in the States. So I headed to the famous/infamous (?) Punta del Este, playground of the buena gente (folks with money). It was off season so it wasn't too crazy. Not too many boob jobs on the beach.

It looks sunny and beautiful in this picture, but it was also quite windy and hard to really be comfortable just hanging out in your suit on the beach (I'm a wimp). So unfortunately I didn't get too much beach time . I rented a bike instead and rode around town.

The local harbor where dingy old fishing boats are parked along side million dollar yachts.

Part II

2008-11-28T15:08:00.000-08:00

Rurrenabaque, Bolivia

Tiwanaki Ruins, outside of La PAz

Valparaiso, Chile

Yay!! Go Obama!!

Mendoza, Argentina

On a bike tour of the vineyards.

Barriloche, Argentina

A black glacier. Wierd, huh?

South American Trip '08 Part I

2008-11-26T09:27:00.000-08:00

Mancora, Peru

So after all the stress of evacuation it was only fitting to start the trip with some r&r at the beach. A group of us headed north, way north, to Mancora, Peru. A cute little beach town practically on the border with Equador. We didn't do much but lay in the sand, play in the waves, take naps, eat ceviche, and drink cerveza for five days. In other words, it was absolutely perfect.

A little game of sunset soccer.

Huaraz, Peru

A few of us girls hesitantly left the beach and headed for Huaraz and the Cordillera Blanca (Supposedly the most beautiful region of the Andes, but personally I think Bolivia has got more pristine, beautiful places. People just don't know about them.) Anywho, I acquired giardia from my last plate of ceviche on the beach and was incapacitated for the first couple of days in Huaraz and couldn't do any hiking with my friends. They had to leave for Lima, but I stayed for a few more days to explore the area solo.

A little town outside of Huaraz. There was a festival going on and everyone was dressed in their best bright and colorful clothes.

Parque Nacional Huascaran. Named after the tallest peak in Peru. (note- that is not actually Huascaran in the background)

Now this is actually Huascaran. In the foreground and behind the camera is the remains of Yungi, a town of 30,000 that was completely buried by an earthquake and the resulting landslide from glaciers on Huascaran, in the late sixties. Only a handful of people in the whole town survived by running to the tallest part of the cemetery which was built like a wedding cake. This cathedral was built on the site of the original. Now the site of the disaster is a park for tourists and New Yungi was rebuilt nearby.

A bus that was partially dug out of the rubble. They're not sure if there were people in it or not when the landslide hit.

Potosi, Bolivia

Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain). Once one of the most productive mines in the world, fueling the once richest city in the world, Potosi. Production has since slowed down dramatically, but miners continue to work and die (40 per year) in incredibly harsh conditions.

One of the "nicer" sections of the mine. You could actually fully stand up. There are many long sections where you have to literally get on all fours a crawl through dark spaces (the only light is from your head lamp) and try not to choke on the dust. How the miners actually drag heavy bags of rocks through these spaces I have no idea. We spent just a few hours in the mine and we all came out with scratchy voices (from the dust I think) and completely exhausted from crawling up and down the mine shafts. My quads were hurting for days. And the miners do it 12 hrs everyday!

Fun with dynamite. A demonstration of how miners put together dynamite, light it, bury it, then run!!

Huayna Potosi, outside of La Paz

A big group of B44ers reunited in La Paz to conquer Huayna Potosi. A mountain just under 20,000 ft. I personally didn't fell fit enough or have the ganas to climb the giant so I went as cheerleader for the team and just kind of hung out in the lodge while the real bad asses climbed.

The girls. Erica in the middle was the only woman of the group to climb the mountain. Huayna Potosi in the distance.

Team Coca Boca (Coca Mouth). Named after the guys' ability to chew ridiculous amounts of coca.

I hiked up the mountain the first day with the team for their practice session in ice climbing techniques. This is as far as I made it up the mountain, but it's the first time I actually touched a glacier!

While the team was climbing I made a flag for us to pin up on the walls of the lodge. I tried to incorporate the themes of America and Peace Corps. Pretty nice, huh?

BOLIVIA EVAC EXPRESS

2008-09-27T08:44:00.000-07:00

Where to begin?? Well for starters we´ve all been evacuated, all 113 of us. Peace Corps Bolivia has been suspended. Meaning they have the intention of starting up the program again someday, but no one has any idea when. Rather than reenlisting I have chosen to COS or close my service.

Over the last year and a half of my service we´ve had countless EAPs (emergency action plans) and even one consolidation where all the volunteers were brought together in one place because of an upcoming referendum and the potential unrest that could ensue. But throughout all the EAPs, marches, protests, riots, and bloqueos I was never actually worried that anything was going to happen to us. It was just something that you delt with being a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia. There had been lots of evacuation talk over the years, but I never bought into it. ¨It´ll blow over just like all the times before.¨

Typical bloqueo outside of Tarija.

Bolivia has a way of getting dangerously close to the edge of disaster then at the last moment, as if suddenly realizing just how bad things are, backing slowly away from the edge. I was never really worried until a little over two weeks ago. It was a gray day. So overcast the sun was totally blocked out of the sky. I was walking through the usually loud and bustling streets of Bermejo, but that day they were almost completely empty. Shops were shut up, mini bloqueos of rocks cutting off everyother street corner. There was a paro civico that day so almost everything was shut down and little traffic other than the occasional moto was on the street. I found the one internet place open in town and checked out the local news.

Just the night before I was watching on the news violent riot scenes in Tarija. They were actually throwing dynamite at one another and one man managed to blow his hand off. Ofcourse a camera was right there to flim the grizzly aftermath. This guy stumbling down the street, dilirious from blood loss, looking down and grabing what was left of his mangled hand with his one good remaining hand. The film crew following him along recording every second, but never actually offering to help. The next day the man was on the news again. This time weeping saying that he made his living laying bricks and looking back on it, the 300 bolivianos he was given to participate in the riot was not worth it. Yes, Bolivians from all political spectrums are regularly given money to participate, or fined for not participating, in political demonstrations. My friend´s family had to pay 300 bolivianos (a lot of Bs for the average family!) for not participating in their town´s bloqueo. And University students can actually have their grades lowered for not participating in marches, protests or other demonstrations. Yeah, to say it politely...it´s really screwed up.

Anyways... back to the point. Things were getting pretty hairy, even in Tarija. Usually, while the rest of the country is going up in flames, Tarija is pretty tranquilo. I saw the unrest as a bad sign of things to come. Over the next few days things only seemed to get worse. Protests and riots continued in many cities. A few people were killed in Sucre and the worst in Pando with over 30 dead. And among the riots the US ambassdor Philip Goldberg was declared a persona non grata and demanded to leave Bolivia. He was accused of citing the violence. A totally rediculous claim, but thats the way politics works down here. It was really just an opportune time to kick him out. So with no ambassador what was going to happen to us?

When I heard that all the Tarija volunteers were coming down to Bermejo I thought ¨This is it. I´m packing my bags.¨ The next few days were a frusterating mystery. Peace Corps seemed to tell us as little information as possible. We were all speculating what was going to happen to us. Were we going to wait in Bermejo while things cooled down? Be flown to Cochabamba where all the other volunteers had been consolidated? Or evacuate the country? I tried to explain to my host family and friends as best I could the situation. That I didn´t really know what was going on, but there was a chance I wouldn´t be back. My Dona insisted on everyone getting together for coffee and bread. She said a prayer for me and we all ended up crying. It was very touching. And before leaving, I was fortunate to run into a group of teachers I worked with that had heard about the situation and they thanked me for everything I had done for them. There´s a lot of times in Peace Corps when you wonder if what your doing really matters. But I knew talking to those teachers that day that they really did appreciate the work I did for them and that really feels good.

Anywho... we headed to the Bermejo airport, a small paved strip in a never ending field of cana. Told we were to board a plane, but didn´t know where. Then the big bellied C130 rolled in. It was a very surreal moment. A crazy mixture of emotions. ¨This is crazy! This is so cool! Oh no, we might not be coming back!¨ When everyone had boarded and the plane was in the air we were told we were leaving the country. But again the ambiguity! We weren´t told which country! It was becoming obvious that PC was telling us as little as possible so that people wouldn´t freak out and refuse to board at the last second, which some people may have done.

Touchdown at Bermejo International Airport

The dreaded evac! It was really happening! We didn´t learn our destination until someone asked one of the military guys on board (insterestingly enough the plane was US owned, but run by Bolivian military personel). First we were stoping in Cochabamba to pick up more volunteers than continuing on to Lima. We were greeted by Peruvian and American soldiers at a small military airport outside of Lima. As well as the US ambassador to Peru and a hand full of other embassy people. We were given a brief meeting and sent outside the city to a bizarre centro vacacional outside of the city. The running joke was that it was a rehab center for those that had previously had tragic experiences while on vacation. We spent the next week figuring out what to do next with our lives- COS, transfer, reinlist. I knew I was COSing so my decision was easy, but a lot of people had to decide it they wanted to transfer to another country and where in a matter of a few days! Talk about having your world turned upside down!

Trying our best to make light of the situation by making a Bolivian stlye bloqueo for the next arriving group of volunteers.

My plan is to travel South America for a few months before returning to the states. I´ll keep you updated!

Thanks for Reading!

2008-07-29T14:53:00.001-07:00

I've become recently aware that quite a few people actually read this thing. So I'd like to say a big thanks to everyone. It really is nice to know that people are genuinly interested in what I'm doing over here. So for you I will try to keep this thing more up to date. And don't be afraid to leave a comment. I really do love to read them. I've just updated my previous blog about the teacher's taller below. So check it out.

Your pal,
Al

Some more random pics

2008-07-19T12:23:00.000-07:00

This is my English conversation class on their last day of class. They were the most advanced students at the Language Institute I teach at. I was really impressed with a few of them. I think at least one of the students English could rival my Spanish! (which is not saying much for me!) All of them passed their final exams, although there were a few that really should´t have. There´s a lot of pressure to pass students (especially when they are paying for the classes!), but I was proud of them all the same. Though sometimes a bit of a pain in the ass, they really are a great group of kids. I miss them already!

This is Pepino (aka Pepi) and the new puppy Pirata (pirate). Turns out Pepi is a boy after all. I swear I have the worst record sexing kittens. I already have a boy named Ginger and a girl named Hobbes. It´s hard to tell sometimes! Luckily Pepina could be easily changed to Pepino. Pepino means cucumber in español by the way. When he´s not tearing apart my room, attacking my face in my sleep and pooping out worms, he can be a real delight.

More to come...

Finally my Environmental Education Taller!

2008-07-19T12:12:00.001-07:00

Finally!! After months of postponements and frustrations I finally had my first environmental ed. teacher's taller! First it was delayed at the last minute (like the day before it was originally scheduled!) because the alcaldia wouldn't give me money to pay for it (after they said they would, of course) then the second time because of teacher's strikes.

The second time around I was able to get funds through the German organization GTZ which I've talked about previously on here (actually, a month later I still haven't been reimbursed, but that's another story I suppose). Anyways, they are the organization that originally donated the Maletines to me. The maletin (briefcase) is a boxed set of four really great educational text books all about environmental ed. in the Chaco. The main purpose of the taller was simply to get these materials to local teacher's so they can use them in their classrooms because as I've said before teacher's are given pathetically few teaching resources here. And the secondary objectives where to learn new dynamic methodologies to teach EE, create and present EE themed lessons, and discuss the environmental problems of the Chaco region.

In all there where 25 teachers who attended with many more wanting to, but unfortunately I only had a certain number of maletines to give away. I had previously worked with almost all of them before so I was a lot more comfortable presenting my portion of the workshop than I think I would have been otherwise. I purposely set up the workshop for the teachers of the two schools I work a lot with specifically for that reason. I figured they already knew my level of Spanish and what to expect of me, more or less, so I didn't get too nervous about it.

Of course there are always a few slackers in every group, but overall I was really pleased with every bodies participation. Five of the participants were actually my housemates and I was pleasantly surprised to see them working on their presentations for the last day of the workshop during lunch at the house! It was a touching moment for me. You could tell that some of the groups really had put a lot of thought into their presentations. It was really nice to hear how "bonito" the workshop was from many of the teachers and how they were surprised that almost everyone had stayed till the last minute, which usually doesn't happen at these kind of things here. So I guess you could say it was a success. Vale la pena! (worth the trouble)

Roxanna (in the dark brown jacket) is actually my host sister and Acelia (in the red) rents a room upstairs next to mine.

I think Norma (on the left above) is my favorite teacher here. She was one of the first I worked with and has always been really enthusiastic about having me in her classroom and incorporating more EE into her classes. She actually comes up with themes she wants me to come in and talk about (which no one else has done) and has always been especially kind to me.

This group was giving a presentation on Suelo (soil) and started it with a reenactment of a ch'alla or blessing performed on specific holidays on people's land for good luck. Pretty cool. The girl in the middle is another one of my housemates, Emma.

And I have to give major props to Elliot and Gina, other B44er's for helping me out. They provided a nice listening break from my broken Spanish for the audience. I could of done it without you, but it would have really sucked! You're the best!

And here we are at the end of the workshop. Everyone with their maletines. Now they better use them!

Autonomía Carajo!

2008-07-19T12:07:00.000-07:00

Peru Pics

2008-05-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

As you can guess the highlight of the trip was the little city on the mountain top, Machu Picchu. We really got lucky because we were traveling during the off season... right at the end of the rainy season, so there were significantly less tourists than normal (look at this picture! you can´t see anyone!) and the weather was absolutely perfect that day. We arrived in the afternoon when the majority of tourist groups were leaving so we had the freedom to leisurely wander the ruins with out feeling like herded cattle. It was nice just to sit down, enjoy the view and contemplate the history of this place. I wasn´t part of the hippie crowd doing tai chi and meditation with the llamas or anything, but I definitely got a very special vibe from this place. Just as we were leaving a rainbow formed... coming from the deep valley bottom and arching over the ruins. It was perfect. Now only if we had remembered to bring our guide book so we knew what we were looking at...

Our next stop was Arequipa. A really cool city in the south/central mountains. I actually liked Arequipa more than Cuzco. It was a lot less touristy and it probably didn´t hurt that it was warm and sunny the whole time. Unlike Cuzco where it was frigid and drizzling and you had to run the gauntlet of vendors every time you left your hostel. But let´s face it. Cusco is a pretty awesome city. So much history! But now back to Arequipa.

This is the main plaza . All the cathedrals and major buildings are made form this white volcanic rock called silar. Very pretty. Below is a view of the country side and the surrounding volcanoes. Absolutely gorgeous!

After a few days in Arequipa we headed to the Colca Canyon. One of the deepest canyons in the world. The scenery was very reminiscent of the Sacred Valley outside of Cuzco. With all the stone walls and terracing. We woke up very early one morning to go to canyon and El Cruz de los Condores. We got to the cross and waited till the sun warmed us and the condors up to get a glimpse of the Andean Condor. The condor is one of those iconic symbols of the Andes and it was incredible to finally see one in flight.

A beautiful church in one of the many little pueblos on our way to the Cross.

Finally! It´s a condor! (looked a lot more impressive in real life)

Our last stop on the trip was the southern coastal town of Pisco. I was really excited about the prospect of lounging on the beach and sippin´a Pisco Sour after more than a year of being landlocked in Bolivia. Unfortunately, Pisco is not really a place to go sunbathing and frolic in the waves. The beach and the water in the harbor were not what you would call very inviting. The beaches were pretty rocky and dirty and the water in the harbor just looked icky. I rolled up my pants and dipped a toe in, just to say I'd touched the ocean more than anything.

Actually, we stayed at a little place south of Pisco called Paracas, nearby Paracas National Park and Las Islas Balestas. A lot more charming than the devastated ruins of Pisco (Pisco was the epicenter of the earthquake last year and is still slowly recovering).

We took a group tour of Paracas Park. It's main attraction is a natural arch carved by the waves called El Catedral. Unfortunately, the arch actually collapsed during the earth quake and was more depressing than awe inspiring. The Candelabra, a mysterious etching in the sand dunes located in the park could only be viewed from boat. On our way to the Balestas Islands we stoped for a better view and pondered it's origins. Paracas Indians, pirates or Mason's? Who knows?

Shoot!! I erased the picture. Will add it again later.

The highlight of our time on the coast was the trip out to the Balestas Islands (otherwise known as the poor man´s Galapagos Islands). There's a group of small islands that are home to thousands, perhaps millions, of sea birds. Every inch of these islands were covered in birds and their guano... pelicans, cormorants, boobies, puffins and even a few penguins. Not to mention the thousands of birds constantly flying overhead. There was also a large sea lion colony with lots of cute pups. A really neat place.

Ch -Ch- Ch- Changes

2008-05-06T09:04:00.000-07:00

I've just started teaching an English conversation class at a local English institute. There are ten students in the class, mainly 15 to 17 years old. There's one 36 year old who works at the local army post. My old site mate Julia used to teach the class so I'm sort of taking over for her and hopefully I can start it up again for the next year. So yeah... my site mate's gone and so are a few other Tarija volunteers and a new group is already here to replace them (called our shadow group because they are exactly a year behind us). It's sad but, thus is the vicious cycle of PC.

The new guy in Bermejo, Peter, seems pretty chill... just not Julia! No one to swap clothes, drink wine and watch American Idol with anymore! Well... Peter can put back the wine but, we just can't then gossip and watch girlie sitcoms together.

So anyway... I'm bummed that Julia is gone but, pretty happy about the English class. It's nice to have a little more structure to my life! (it's an everyday class) And the kids (so far) are pretty fun to work with. Lots of positive energy. And I'll get more experience with high school kids which is really what I need.

Oh yeah... almost forgot! It appears that I now have a cat. I ran across this filthy, wet, shivering and crying kitten that looked to have been lost or abandoned. She was the most miserable thing I had ever seen and after a few minutes of staring at her while I debated the pro's and con's of taking her in I finally decided that I couldn't just leave her there in the street. (it's that damn guilt again!) So I took her home, gave her a bath and now she's undergoing treatment with the vet, She's so skinny, but hardly eats so I took her to the vet to get her checked out. He's giving her antibiotics. She's not particularly cute, orange and white patches with one blue and one hazel eye, but she's a good cuddler.

Some thoughts on one year

2008-05-06T08:52:00.000-07:00

Well well... it's been a little over one year in site (one year and three months total in Bolivia and eleven months left! Yes... I've officially begun the countdown and not because I can't wait to get out of here, but rather I can't wait to get back to the states! I´m beginning to really miss it.) and looking back on it well... I'm not really sure where to begin. Overall I feel pretty content about my service. Not amazing, and by no means horrible... ya know... pretty good. I suppose that the one thing keeping me from feeling great about it is the feeling that I should have accomplished incredible things by now (don't really know what those incredible things might have been exactly), but it's been a year and I feel like I should have something substantial to show for it. But here I am, still just chugging along, waiting for my big success. Don't get me wrong, I have had many little mini successes, but as far as one great (tangible) success story... I'm still working on it. Everyone says that things don´t really get cracking work wise till your second year anyways so I´ll try not to dwell on it.

I guess it doesn't help that I just got back in site from a pretty long absence (one week in Cochabamba for mandatory med appointments and meetings and two weeks in Peru vacationing with Mom...pics to be included in the next blog!) and after any long absence I feel like I'm starting from scratch all over again. Well... not from scratch exactly, but the energy to get it going again is substantial. A more accurate description would be that the energy to get ME going again is substantial. I guess that's just the nature of having a job with no real structure, one that starts and stops according to my whims.

And it also doesn't help that just before I left I had my first big project (the one I was so excited about, the one I thought would be the most significant and beneficial for my community, my success story!) basically blow up in my face. So to be honest, I wasn't really looking forward to returning. Not because I'm sick of Bermejo or anything (actually it feels good to be back, it's got it's own quirky kind of charm)... it's just that I was kind of dreading starting it all back up again. The fear of failing again I suppose.

It was really great to see everyone in Cochabamba. Besides just getting to spend time with some of the most amazing people I've meet in my life (really we're pretty awesome in PC ; ) it was really reassuring to hear that basically everyone is having the same troubles and frustrations as you. The most universal complaints being: unreliable work partners, cheap and otherwise useless Alcaldias, constant guilt that your not doing enough, people expecting you to do EVERYTHING for them, and the list goes on... and I can definitely relate to all of them!

Actually, I was a little surprised about the guilt one. A little guilt is good, it keeps you from being a completely worthless bum. But I thought I was the only one putting copious amount of completely unnecessary guilt on myself. I've always been kind of rough on myself... definitely guilty of being my own worst critic. I have high expectations of myself and for my Peace Corps service, but there comes a point when you have to realize that there are other factors preventing your success than you (especially true in Bolivia!). And your expectations are not always realistic (doubly true in Bolivia!). So yeah... I'm trying to lighten up on myself! It's funny you run across people that well... your not really sure what they've been doing in their sites all this time, but they are so proud of their service! Then there are others who are like golden glimmering model volunteers. They've done so much cool stuff and still they feel like they should of done more! People are funny like that.

I've definitely learned one thing from this whole crazy experience and that is- Development work is not easy! Especially when you have no money to offer... such is the case with PC. Bolivia is such a poor country that the people are used to having NGO's come in and just handing them projects with little or no investment from the people who are supposed to be benefiting from them. And many times because of that...a year later the big expensive project is a complete failure. Because no one had any investment in it! They don't care if it fails... it wasn't their money.

I do like the Peace Corp's philosophy- small projects with community investment (the theory is they are more successful and sustainable that way), but damn it's really hard to do! You'll talk about these ideas for projects and everybody is like yeah, yeah, that sounds great! But when you actually need to collect the money or have people show up to work it's a totally different story (I'll be sure to include my project horror story in here later so you can see exactly what I'm talking about).

Wish List

2008-05-05T09:01:00.000-07:00

So a few people have been asking lately what I need. And the short answer is that I don't really need anything. I can find pretty much all of the essentials down here and the "I just can't do PC without" things like Carmex SPF chap stick, Assie spray in conditioner, and Oil of Olay anti-aging cream have pretty much been taken care of till I leave here thanks to some awesome friends and family. But there are a few things that, while not per say "necessary", would be pretty amazing to receive...

red vines (twizzlers are not an acceptable substitute)
reeses pieces
chex mix
pesto sauce packets (and any other handy sauce mix like that)
Chinese rice crackers
one of those Hickory Farms sausage logs (I eat a lot of crackers down here)
new music, movies or tv shows (i-tunes cards!!) I now have a computer!
interesting "light" reading material (Rolling Stone, Nat. Geo., Jane, ect...)
perfume samples (anything citrus, floral or sweet smelling) or a body spray!

Carnaval Oruro Style!

2008-03-31T10:09:00.000-07:00

Aftermath of a globo/espuma (water balloon/foam) war. During pauses in the parade we would either initiate globo wars with, or do the best to defend ourselves from, other spectators watching the parade. Actually the globo/espuma fighting can be really fun if you want to play. I never actually initiated any fights with anyone, but if somebody tried to get mess with me I had no qualms about going after them. I didn´t care if it was just a little kid! haha...I can´t tell you how good it felt to espuma some punk kid right in the face after all I went through last carnaval! And I should also mention that the spectators are much more respectful of the dancers in Oruro. If you tried to throw a water ballon at one of the dancers you would be publicly humiliated.

Los Diablos (the devils) getting ready to dance.

Every group of dancers some a few hundred strong, has a band backing them up. A lot of the band members don´t look so good. A combination of exhaustion from walking the parade route with their heavy instruments and drunkenness (mostly drunkenness). But this band was pretty awesome. Sharply dressed and full of energy.

These dancers are performing the Tinku. My favorite Bolivian dance. It´s basically a reenactment of a fighting ritual that the Tinku people still do to this day (to the death!). Both the music and the dance is really high energy and really exciting to watch.

And last but not least... my favorite Carnaval character the Oso! It´s supposed to be a bear, not a deranged giant rat.

More to come...

New Years in Buenos Aires!

2008-03-31T09:07:00.000-07:00

I didn´t get to do too much sightseeing since I was only in town for a few days, but we did manage to check out the Recoleta. A little city of mausoleums. Some sparkling new, obnoxiously huge and made of black polished granite (can not even begin to imagine how much something like that would cost) and others, like the the one above, hundreds of years old crumbling apart but full of character.

We celebrated New Years Eve with a rooftop BBQ. It was so hot and humid! We were wiping off sweat while watching the fireworks ring in the New Year. All the girls were looking cute in there dresses and heels while the boys were all shirtless a drinking beer...real classy guys. The girl in blue is my awesome site mate Julia and the shirtless man is her boyfriend Dan, another Tarija volunteer. Check out my cast. All that for a little broken finger!

A huge crowd was gathered in front of the Casa Rosada, the Argentinean equivalent of the White House, holding up pictures of loved ones (the majority of them very young) and banners with sayings like ¨Never Again¨. A tragic nightclub fire the year before had killed over a hundred people. Basically the place was ridiculously packed full of people and when a fire broke out they ran for the emergency exits only to find them chained shut, trapping them inside. The trial for the club owners was taking place that week and the people wanted to make sure their friends and family members were not forgotten.

Sippin´ on a McDonald´s soda on the Subte (subway). I felt like I had been teleported 20 years into the future. Bought the very hippy t-shirt in one of the many cutesy cheap little boutiques in Palermo. Argentineans are very stylish people.

Another blow to US/Bolivian relations

2008-02-16T09:17:00.000-08:00

The following article was run by ABC news last week -

In an apparent violation of U.S. policy, Peace Corps volunteers and a Fulbright scholar were asked by a U.S. Embassy official in Bolivia "to basically spy" on Cubans and Venezuelans in the country, according to Peace Corps personnel and the Fulbright scholar involved.

"I was told to provide the names, addresses and activities of any Venezuelan or Cuban doctors or field workers I come across during my time here," Fulbright scholar John Alexander van Schaick told ABCNews.com in an interview in La Paz.

Van Schaick's account matches that of Peace Corps members and staff who claim that last July their entire group of new volunteers was instructed by the same U.S. Embassy official in Bolivia to report on Cuban and Venezuelan nationals.

The State Department says any such request was "in error" and a violation of long-standing U.S. policy which prohibits the use of Peace Corps personnel or Fulbright scholars for intelligence purposes. "We take this very seriously and want to stress this is not in any way our policy," a senior State Department official told ABCNews.com.

The Fulbright scholar van Schaick, a 2006 Rutgers University graduate, says the request came at a mandatory orientation and security briefing meeting with Assistant Regional Security Officer Vincent Cooper at the embassy on the morning of Nov. 5, 2007. According to van Schaick, the request for information gathering "surfaced casually" halfway through Cooper's 30-minute, one-on-one briefing, which initially dealt with helpful tips about life and security concerns in Bolivia.

"He said, 'We know the Venezuelans and Cubans are here, and we want to keep tabs on them,'" said van Schaick who recalls feeling "appalled" at the comment. "I was in shock," van Schaick said. "My immediate thought was 'oh my God! Somebody from the U.S. Embassy just asked me to basically spy for the U.S. Embassy.'"

A similar pattern emerges in the account of the three Peace Corps volunteers and their supervisor. On July 29, 2007, just before the new volunteers were sworn in, they say embassy security officer Vincent Cooper visited the 30-person group to give a talk on safety and made his request about the Cubans and Venezuelans. "He said it had to do with the fight against terrorism," said one, of the briefing from the embassy official. Others remember being told, "It's for your own safety."

Peace Corps Deputy Director Doreen Salazar remembers the incident vividly because she says it was the first time she had heard an embassy official make such a request to a Peace Corps group. Salazar says she and her fellow staff found the comment so out of line that they interrupted the briefing to clarify that volunteers did not have to follow the embassy's instructions, and she later complained directly to the embassy about the incident.
"Peace Corps is an a-political institution," Salazar says. "We made it clear to the embassy that this was an inappropriate request, and they agreed."

Indeed, the State Department admits having acknowledged the infraction and assuring Salazar that it would not happen again. Yet, it was just four months later that Fulbright scholar van Schaick says he was asked by the same embassy official, Cooper, to "spy" on the Cubans and Venezuelans. A U.S. Embassy official in La Paz, Bolivia said Cooper was referring all calls for comment to the State Department in Washington.

Van Schaick says he never considered complying with the request, fearful he would violate Bolivian espionage laws and that he would jeopardize the integrity of the Fulbright program, which yearly sends hundreds of American college graduates to countries around the world.
"I am supposed to be a cultural ambassador increasing mutual understanding between us and the Bolivian people," van Schaick explains. "This flies in face of everything Fulbright stands for."
The Fulbright program receives its funding from the U.S. State Department and the Peace Corps is a federal agency, but the State Department insists that neither group has the obligation to act in an intelligence capacity. In fact, both have strict regulations against members getting involved in politics in their host country.

The press director at the Peace Corps told ABC News in no uncertain terms that the corps is not involved in any intelligence gathering. "Since Peace Corps' inception in 1961, it has been the practice of the Peace Corps to keep volunteers separate from any official duties pertaining to U.S. foreign policy, including the reality or the appearance of involvement in intelligence-related activities," said Amanda Beck, press director of the Peace Corps. "Any connection between the Peace Corps and the intelligence community would seriously compromise the ability of the Peace Corps to develop and maintain the trust and confidence of the people in the host countries we serve." Read the Peace Corps' full statement.

Like many of the Peace Corps workers, van Schaick is carrying out his research in the Santa Cruz countryside, where a number of Cuban doctors are deployed providing free medical services as part of Cuba's solidarity with its socialist ally, Bolivia's President Evo Morales.
The accusations are likely to reverberate in Bolivia, especially given the already shaky relationship between the Bush administration and President Morales' two-year-old government.
"These are serious incidents that we will investigate thoroughly," says Bolivia's Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca in an interview. "Any U.S. government use of their students or volunteers to provide intelligence represents a grave threat to Bolivia's sovereignty." Bolivian law provides severe penalties in espionage cases. According to Article 111 of the country's penal code, "he who procures secretive documents, objects or information…concerning [Bolivia's] foreign relations in an espionage effort for other countries during times of peace, endangering the security of the State, will incur a penalty of 30 years in prison." In lay man's terms: if any U.S. citizen provides information of use in a spying effort, they would be subject to Bolivia's maximum prison sentence.

But the U.S. citizens who reported being approached in this way by the State Department official said no mention was made of any legal risks arising from complying with the request to keep tabs on foreign nationals in Bolivia. There is no indication that any of the volunteers made reports to the U.S. Embassy.

Van Schaick says he is keenly aware of the Pandora's box now knocked open. The Hoboken, N.J. native, however, was adamant that the incident be brought to light -- in the hopes for change. "I came forward because the Bolivian people have a right to know," former union activist van Schaick says. "Asking Fulbrighters to spy is just not OK."

Three of the other four Fulbright scholars currently in Bolivia say they were never asked about Cubans or Venezuelans in their briefings. A fourth Fulbright scholar declined repeated requests for an interview on the subject.

I can´t really say to much about such a politically controversial situation like this on my blog. But I´d like to personally thank Mr. Vincent Cooper for getting us into this mess. There about 130 PC volunteers here in Bolivia that are here for all the right reasons and you´re ¨slip up¨ puts all of our credibility into question. Thanks.

More Pics...

2008-01-09T12:12:00.000-08:00

Some pictures that I really like for one reason or another...

This is just a pretty flower on a giant cactus on the Isla del Peces in the Salar.

"I'm too beautiful to be a volunteer"...haha! What is with that look?! This is my buddy Kilo at Rodeo right before the most amazing parrillada of my life. Relax folks... parrillada is a BBQ!

This is my buddy Loro. I made the mistake of being nice to him and ever since he's managed to crawl up my huge flight of stairs (well... huge for a little loro) every morning and squawk and shriek to wake me up at six in the morning. That was until his mysterious disappearance... I swear I had nothing to do with it! I actually kind of miss that little guy.

These are kids from the first class I ever worked with. After about five minutes of watching me and wondering what I was doing... I managed to convince them that picking up trash was way cool! These kids were sooo adorable. When I waved goodbye to them a group of girls all looked at each other and said something between themselves. Then the next second they all come running to me and each give me a goodbye kiss. I was too sweet! (It looks like the boy on the right is trying to make the moves on the cutie in pink)

One of the things I really like about Bolivia is the frequency of band music and parades. This was a parade in Tarija after Dia de Santos. Can't wait to see the "mack daddy" of all parades in Oruro for carnaval this Feb!!!

These are Julia's Kids. A group of kids from the local orphanage in Bermejo. We took the kids out of the city and to the campo for an afternoon of soccer and raiding oranges form a nearby orchard. I know it's wrong to have favorites.... but these two are mine! The kid in pink is probably 8 years old and not even four feet tall, but he is the most bas ass futbolero you've ever seen! He's like waist tall but dribbles straight for you like he's going to run right over you. It's hilarious! Me and Dan tried not to laugh every time this kid got the ball. The other one is just so cute. He's always holding your hand and asking about some plant, your earrings, why your in a cast. It's probably a good thing foreigners can't adopt Bolivian children cause otherwise this one might end up coming home with me.

Todos Santos

2007-11-21T09:54:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-21T08:50:00.000-08:00

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

2007-10-29T07:10:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-25T08:18:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-10-24T09:24:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-08T16:11:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-07T08:04:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-09-14T08:26:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-14T08:06:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-13T13:34:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-12T09:34:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-09T12:39:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-08-24T13:33:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-08-23T13:23:00.000-07:00

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¨

2007-08-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

¨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

2007-08-05T10:33:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-25T16:13:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-07-24T09:10:00.000-07:00

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?

2007-06-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-01T17:03:00.001-07:00

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

2007-05-28T12:12:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-23T13:00:00.000-07:00

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)

2007-05-15T11:06:00.000-07:00

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! ;)

2007-04-27T12:03:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-22T08:25:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-17T11:43:00.000-07:00

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.

It's Official!

2007-04-17T09:54:00.000-07:00

The highlight of swear-in was by far the speech given by Marcos, a fellow member of B-44. A central theme was illness. We did a dynamica in which you had to stand up if you have had any of the mentioned illnesses. ¨Stand up if you´ve had diarrhea (the whole room was standing for that one) a bacterial infection, amoebas...¨ and so forth. Then we got into the more obscure diseases... A girl in our group actually had shingles. A disease usually reserved for eighty year old men. Another guy was recovering from typhoid fever! Which I thought was a disease you could only contract while playing The Organ Trail. We even got vaccines for that one! And another guy discovered he had gaot after being injured during an escape from a three year old clefero (glue sniffer). He was told to cut down on beer... which might as well be a death sentence. Another guy broke his elbow. In fact out of 29 of us only three miraculously managed not to get sick. And oh my goodness I didn´t really think it was possible but the boys sure enough lost weight, lots of it. Guys that were already skinny to begin with lost 25 lbs! But thankfully they´re starting to gain some of it back. I managed to gain only 2 pounds. I escaped training with only a bacterial infection (i.e. bad diarrhea for a couple of days), but I guess now we can add laryngitis to the list. Because that seems to be what I am suffering from now. I´ve been getting over a cold all week. By the way, it´s really miserable to have a cold in 90 degree, humid as hell weather. There isn´t a fan installed in my room yet and I thought I was going to die my first night, but fortunately it´s cooled down quite a bit. I feel pretty good now, my throats not sore anymore and I feel more ¨with it¨ but I can barely manage to squeak out short sentences. I gonna google laryngitis right now and see what I can do about it. Wish me luck!

Damn we are sexy! All 29 of us made it through training! The first time in over five years.

Bermejo Otra Vez

2007-04-12T14:41:00.000-07:00

Alright... more about Bermejo. I´ll be working with the school district helping to incorporate environmental ed. into the cirricula. There´s sort of a test pilot program with the three biggest schools going on right now. I´ll be working closely with these schools and hopfully expanding the program to the other schools. There´s a vivero which is kind of run down right now. I´m planing on helping my site mate clean it up during the first couple of months while my spanish gets up to par. Then I´m hoping to orgainize some field days with the school kids there. My site description also mentions starting eco-clubs, environmental fairs, reforestation projects.... There´s lots of work to be done! Kind of overwhelming. In reality I could keep myself busy just working with the largest school. But I don´t want to turn into an substitute teacher, which can happen very easily if your not careful.

Plaza Principle, Tarija

I am so happy to get Tarija as my regional city. It makes Coch look like a hole. There´s lots of trees, narrow one way streets, cute little plazas, less trash, less cars and the air smells clean. And it´s just super tranquillo. I don´t know how to decribe it. But the minute i got there I just felt at ease. No one´s in a hurry. I didn´t fear for my life in the taxi.

We´ll actually the taxi ride to Bermejo was absoulutely terrifying (long story why I had to take a taxi there). For one, it´s a little conserning having a tank of gas six inches from your head (most of the cars run on natural gas) I just kept imagining the taxi exploding in a firey ball of flames. Secondly, we must have been traveling at least 80mph down the road which was ¨mostly¨ paved. And then there are the random dogs, donkeys, cows and boulders you have to dodge. And all this was at night on a pitch black winding road. The nice slow bus ride back to Tarija was much more enjoyable. The whole public transportation situation here in Bolivia has been pretty interesting. Definately worthy of it´s own entry.

But back to Tarija. I´ve never been to Spain, but I imagined this is how it must be. Narrow one way streets, small side walks, coloful houses hugging the hills. We were all eating lunch outside on the plaza. We had a few B´s to spare to we bought a botttle of red wine (which is so cheap here because this is the region where all the grapes are grown!) and to top it off had some cheese cake. It was perfect! Definately not what I imagined for a Peace Corps experience, but I´ll take it!

First Impressions of Bermejo

2007-03-29T14:01:00.000-07:00

So everytime I told mentioned to somebody in Tarija that I was headed to Bermejo they would cringed their face and complain ¨Oh it´s so hot!¨ then they would add something about the bugs. Seriously, by about the twentieth time hearing this I was about ready to tell people to just shut up and let me figure it out for myself. Honestly, who wants to hear that. But every now and then somebody would say how pretty it was. And that´s what would keep me feeling positive.

Pretty doesn´t do Bermejo justice. It´s is absoluetly gorgous! Ok maybe not the actual city itself, but the surrounding area is tan bonito! We´re settled in between lush tropical mountains and two big rivers with white sandy beaches. It´s the jungle down here. I really had no idea before. I saw a tucan (a tucan!) on the bus ride back to Tarija.

Apparently I was pretty lucky in terms of the weather... it´s was cool the whole time. Everyone kept mentioning how refreshing the weather was. I´ve never considered overcast and slightly drizzling to be ideal weather conditions, but I have a feeling my sentiments will soon change.

Bermejo is a typical hustling and bustling border town. Tons of Argentinians travel over here (I guess) mainly for the ropa usada (used clothes). When you donate your clothes in the states you think you´re helping the poor or homeless, but the majority of it (the nice stuff anyways) finds it´s self in third world markets. There are lots of little marcados with a wide variety of fresh fruits and veggies available. The area grows mainly sugar cane, citrus, and bananas. And we can get fish from the local rivers, which is kind of a big deal in Bolivia.

Apparently, the population of Bermejo has exploded in the last ten years. Now the population is around 50,000 to 60,000 but varies considerably depending on the time of year. There are a lot of migrant workers that move across the border to harvest the crops in Argentina. I´m guessing that there are more poeple here now, because the city seems to be pretty lively.

My site mate has been showing me around the city (so happy I have a site mate) and introducing me to people I´ll likely be working with. She is really great. Super friendly and easy going. I can tell were going to have some good times together.

I will be living in a sort of complex with 3 other women above my host mother´s house. Apparently two of them are hardly ever there. We each have a bed room, a share a bathroom and ¨kitchen space¨. I will be transforming the patio to a kitchen. I was hoping for a little more space. If it turns out to be a little too cramped I can always look for a new place in a few months. But the upside is that the family is really friendly and apparently the mother throws little music festivals in her back yard, which is huge! So there should be some fun stuff going on around he house.

It´s so nice to be so close to the border. In adition to having all the random crap you could ever want at your fingertips... we´re only four hours from Salta, Argentina. Which is supposed to be an amazing city. It´s as easy to travel to Salta as it is to Tarija. And Buenos Aires is a 24 hour bus ride, the same time it takes to travel to Coch by bus. I´m already excited about future trips to Argentina!

to be continued...

Parte 3

2007-03-27T10:03:00.000-07:00

So after escaping the kook with the glove... we head on to another current volunteer's site in the Chaco. We spent four days in the little town putting on two environmental fairs. One for the town in general and another for the school in the older part of town. It was kind of crazy, but overall I'd say it was a success. I painted faces, which was a total hit, and helped put on a puppet show. Other's in our group played environmentally themed games, recycled paper, had informational booths...

We spent two mornings in the school presenting a lesson on biodiversity and human impacts to a class of 7th graders. That was probably the most rewarding activity of the entire tech week. First off, kids love having gringos in the class room, so no matter what you do... they'll love it. But we really tried to make it interesting for them with lots of little games and outdoor activities. The teaching methodology in Bolivia is archaic to say the least. Mostly consisting of the teacher talking at the students and the students regurgitating the information back to them. There is virtually no creative, independent thinking going on. It's actually quite sad. These kids are really being cheated of a decent education. To be fair their, are good intetioned, hard working teachers out here. But talking with other Bolivians it doesn´t seem to be the norm. We spent virtually no money on supplies for the lesson. So lack of funds doesn't necessarily have to prevent teacher's from creating more interesting lesson plans. Which is a good thing to know. It´s more of changing the ways in which teahers teach. Which is no small feat, but part of the reason we´re here.

Even when presented with a simple activity (like draw your house and what you do with the trash) they just have this blank look on their face. Like they don't quite believe that's really what you want them to do. They are extremely reluctant to do anything on their own. It takes a lot of encouragement to get them going. But once they get started they love it.

The classrooms in Bolivia look straight out of 1950's (or what I imagine the classrooms in the 1950´s looked like). There's a chalk board and desks, nothing else. Just bare walls. Nothing at all for the kids to look at. I drew this poster of a mini ecosystem with plants and animals and one of the kids in the class actually brought it to his house to show his family! It's the kind of thing that is so sweet, but breaks your heart at the same time. It goes to show you how big of a deal a simple hand draw poster is to these kids. It makes you realize how good you had it in the states.

My part of the lesson was to explain biodiversity and why it's important. That everything is connected...when one species disappears, many others are affected. There was a perceivable moment where it all clicked. When the kids were like "oh yeah...if the lady bug disappears, then their will be more little bugs that will eat all the flowers and the iguanas will die" And I was like YES! (Ok... maybe not an "actual" food chain, but it got the point across.) To actually teach somebody something is a great feeling. One of the volunteers in our "teaching team" was actually a teacher back in the states. It was very encouraging to hear from him that I should definitely pursue teaching as a career.

By the time we were finished we were convinced that it was perhaps the best ever lesson taught by PC trainees ever. And our trainer agreed with us...ha.

Parte 2

2007-03-21T14:30:00.000-07:00

Alright... so now I will attempt to write about some of the actual work we did during tech week. We stooped by a current volunteer´s site and filmed a little tv spot with the local school kids about environmental issues. I was really impressed with the kids. They were ready to go with scripts and had all of their lines and roles ready. The kids in the Chaco were also a lot more outgoing and extroverted that the kids we have spent time with in the valle of Coch. I know now I´ll never have a problem finding school boys to practice my Spanish with! It´s really great to practice with kids. You definitely feel like less of an idiot.

So we spent the afternoon going through a couple of practice rounds and filming. Then we spent the rest of the evening madly scrambling to edit the film in time to air it that evening at the school with the kids. We had some frustrating technical difficulties and unfortunately had to cut a lot of the footage, but we managed to include the most important parts (the kids skits). Luckily, nothing really ever happens on time in Bolivia so we didn´t feel to bad about the spot airing about an hour later than we had originally planed. But all the kids came back to the school and we all watched the spot together... 3 times in fact. In small towns there´s basically one tv station that is controlled by one guy and he pretty much decides what the town gets to watch. So we took over the station for the evening. The kids loved seeing themselves on tv and didn´t seem to mind that we had to cut some footage. We learned an important lesson - that it doesn´t have to be perfect to work.

The whole time we were in this little town this crazy guy always seemed to be where ever we were. Right as we walked into the hostel this guy comes out of no where introduces himself, shakes peoples hands, except for me... I got a sloppy kiss on the cheek. Then he walks into the bathroom, soaks himself under the shower. He walks back out and rambles on about something. Then we start to realize he´s kind of koo koo. Anyways, he was everywhere! As we were filming footage around town, in the school (no teacher ever told this kook to get out of there, why I can´t understand), standing by our table while we ate. After the screening of the spot with the kids we´re all clapping and getting up out of our seats ready to wrap things up and leave when he comes up to me shakes my hand and I can tell he´s going in for another kiss so I back up, but he´s still holding my hand so he awkwardly manages to kiss my shoulder. And everyone is watching this totally awkward scene. All the kids laugh and I try to get away as quickly as possible. Even as we where packing the car getting ready to leave town he appears again! This time with a latex glove on one hand and a stethoscope around his neck. I got into the car and closed the door. Man...I always manage to attract the nut balls.

My Site!!

2007-03-19T15:46:00.000-07:00

We just found out all of our sites!! I´ll be headed to Bermejo! I figure it´s safe to disclose the location of my site on here since it´s a pretty big city (population of 60,000) It´s not like a little tiny pueblo where if some weirdo asks ¨Where´s the gringa?¨ someone´s going to show them my house. It was my first choice of sites so I´m pretty happy right now. All I really know about it is that it´s hot...real hot...like regularly in the 90´s and humid. Which means its very green. And there are siestas! Apparently, it´s just way to hot to try and work in the middle of the day. I´ve been told it´s a pretty area with rolling hills and lots of rivers. It´s the very most southern tip of Bolivia, right along the Argentinian border. There´s supposed to be great Argentinian wine and beef. I meet the other volunteer living there and they love it. Apparently there is plenty of work to be done. I´ll be working with the school district incorporating environmental ed. into the curriculum and holding teacher´s work shops. I´ll also have the opportunity to work with the local tree nursery, holding work shops with school kids, which I am really excited about. The only down side is that it´s probably one of the most remote sites. It´s not going to be easy to visit a lot of the other volunteers...but I get to fly to Coch whenever we have conferences and whatnot. A lot of people are stuck with 15 hour bus rides. My regional city (where we have the PC office) is Tarija, it´s about a four hour bus ride and is supposed to be a really cool city.

Semana Tecnica - Parte 1

2007-03-18T09:30:00.000-07:00

On the road...notice the bull horns from the sweet skull we had attached to the land cruiser.

We just got back from the madness of semana tecnica (tech week). It was only about 9 days but felt like a lifetime. But it was mostly great. We started off our trip headed to Villa Tunari, a cute little tourist town in the Chapare region. As a PC volunteer we are normally not allowed to stay in the Chapare region, merely to pass through it. The reasoning being that this is the area where the vast majority of coca is grown and well... it´s just not a good idea for gringos to be wandering around the coca fields. But don´t worry, the town of Villa Tunari is safe. It´s actually a tourist destination for a lot of Bolivians. It´s kind of a shame we´re not allowed to stay there because it is a really beautiful area. Very lush and tropical. Steep mountains and winding rivers. You could tell how beautiful is was just passing through by moonlight.

We were allowed to stay the night there because there was a landslide a few weeks before and a big chunk of the highway was only open for travel in our direction late at night. And when I say there was a landslide I mean like half a mountain collapsed onto the highway. It was a very impressive sight! There was a stretch of road about 100 yards long completely covered in mud. When we passed they had cleared enough for one lane of traffic to pass through. And the line of trucks and buses on the other side of the road block was incredible! Seriously, the longest line of traffic I have ever seen in my life. It must have been over 15 miles long. I have no idea how long those people were waiting there or how long they would have to continue to wait, but our trainers were guessing that it would be a two day ordeal for the ones in the back of the line. Imagine spending two days on a bus! Bienvenidos a Bolivia! That was actually the reason they flew all of us back to Coch from Santa Cruz yesterday. It´s not clear whether there was another problem with the road or the same, but they didn´t want all of us to be stuck in the middle of the jungle...which I appreciate.

Parque Nacional Amboro.

We spent the afternoon in Buena Vista and sat in for a talk about Parque Nacional Amboro and the tourist attractions in Buena Vista. I not sure whether the guy giving the talk understood that we were volunteers, not tourists... but it worked. It would be nice to spend a weekend there. Then we spent the night in Santa Cruz a big cosmopolitan city. I got to go out with a few current volunteers and chat about their experiences. It´s really nice when you find positive enthusiastic volunteers.

Then we were off to visit two future sites of ours. One was a tiny little town with about 600 people. As we passed through it it looked like a ghost town. There was absolutely nobody in the streets. It turned out they were all in a town meeting at the school. All I was thinking was ¨Oh my... I think I could go crazy in a site like this¨. I´m just worried I´d be bored out of my mind, sitting in my room reading book after book. We also visited another site a relatively large city which was definitely more my speed. I´m keeping my fingers crossed for one of the two larger cities among our list of future sites. There´s more structure to the work and there´s always plenty of work to do. No excuses to be bored. And besides that I´d like to be able to eat out at a nice place once in a while, take guitar and dance lessons, have a toilet and shower...ya know those modern conveniences. You lose that small town everybody knows you (and your business) feel, but overall I think it would be a better fit for me. Well see where I get sent. There doesn´t seem to be a lot of competition for sites within our group which is good. We find out where we´ll be living for the next two years tomorrow! Exciting times!

To be continued....

Holly Globos!

2007-02-24T09:33:00.000-08:00

If there´s one thing that´s ticked me off about Bolivia it´s this - jugar con agua (water play). Every carnival for about a month kids, teenagers, and young men go nuts with globos (water balloons), squirt guns and buckets of water. It sounds like a lot of fun, and it is if you want to play. But when your freshly showered (which doesn´t happen often... believe me), dressed sort of nice and are minding your own business walking down the street to a party and some brat kid throws a bucket of water over you... it´s not so fun. And this is after they have spit in the bucket (and they have made sure that you have seen them do this) and you tell them your not playing, you don´t have any globos, your going to a party, POR FAVOR NO!!! And did I mention this water is straight from the gutter running in front of the house... which in addition to sewage has been known to contains random animal parts. Oh man was I pissed!! I had to calm myself down and remind myself that they´re just kids and it´s just water (poo water though!). I was threatening to throw my sandal at them, after it fell off from trying to run away, to hopefully distract them getting me. And looking back I probably would have thrown it at them if I had known they were going to get me after all. Humm...am I being culturally insensitive here? Oh yeah... and it´s just lovely when your waiting for the bus and someone in a passing car squirts you in the face or drive by globos you. And they throw freakin´hard too! Some Bolivian kid actually went blind last year from receiving a globo in the eye! I guess I´m bitter because I feel that I´m getting more than my fair share of the globos because I´m this blond gringa. ¨Let´s get the gringa!¨ I´ve heard more than a few times. I wonder if 26 year old Bolivian women have to worry about this crap?

I´m in down town Coch right now. My friend and I decided to brave the globos and check out the big carnival parade ¨Corso de Corsos¨ down town. Actually... I was pretty surprised. The globo situation wasn´t nearly as bad as I imagined. I thought for sure I would be dodging globos from 5,000 Bolivians, but to my surprise I only got a few thrown at me. By a few I mean around 20. But only a few managed to hit me. You know just as soon as I walk out of this Internet cafe I´m going to get slammed...haha...At least it´s not sewage water in the city...err I think!

The whole globo thing if fun I guess for the kids who want to play. But if you don´t want to play it gets really old really fast. Many Bolivian´s don´t like to even come down and watch the parade because of the globo madness. The poor dancers in the parade aren´t even safe! People from the stands (usually teenagers) are assaulting them with globos and espuma (foam). I just saw a well dressed middle aged woman spray foam right in the face of a dancer. What the hell?! And many of the dancers looked more concerned about protecting their faces than actually dancing in the parade. The parade is really great to watch. There are great costumes and dances, but the whole globo thing really distracts you. Your so paranoid the whole time... wondering if the kids looking at you funny across the street are about to launch one at you. And this is definitely my American mentality starting to show.... I´m just not cool with some random person throwing a globo at me. Actually, I get kind of pissed. I´ve had to bite my tongue (well...sometimes it doesn´t work, but luckily I swear in English) more than a few times and refrain from flipping the bird.

Actually, it doesn´t even seem like the Bolivians really enjoy it. It´s not like ¨Ha! You really got me there! Nice one!¨ One guy gets one in the face then looks at the guy who just threw it at him slightly annoyed, but doesn´t say anything then keeps on walking. And the guy who threw the globo gives a little ¨Ha¨ with a satisfied smirk on his face. Even he doesn´t seem like he´s really enjoying himself. What can I say? It´s weird. I obviously don´t get it.

Around the campfire...

2007-02-18T09:15:00.000-08:00

Dammit!! I brought my camera into the city to finally download some pictures on here and what do ya know? The computer is not only a Mac but in espanol as well... so I have no idea what I´m doing. Sorry, you´re going to have to wait a little bit more.

Anyways... my EE group went camping in Parque Paruimani (not sure exactly the spelling on that) last Friday night. It was a total blast. Our camp site was right next to this river overlooking Cochabamba. We did a little hiking, singing to guitar around the fire, drank some cervezas and had, by far, the most delicious meal since arriving in Bolivia... an amazing BBQ with the biggest slab of meat I´ve ever seen and some grilled veggies, which we´ve all been craving. Look Mom, no carbs! I´m not really that big of a meat eater to begin with, but I was chowing down. I prefer my meat a little well done, but there were girls eating these huge chunks of bleeding meat with their bare hands. It was pretty barbaric, but awesome at the same time. I also had my first experience with Chicha, the local homemade brew, and made it out alive. Although, I was definitely hurting the next day. More from a lack of sleep than anything else.

The next day we headed over to Cochabamba´s first vivero (tree nursery) and learned the basics on raising plants in a nursery. I have always loved plants, so I especially liked this tech session. It got me really excited about the possibility of working within a nursery.

Oh my goodness, it 1 30 already I told my family I´d be home by 2 00. It´s been kind of difficult feeling like your 12 years old again. Making sure you come home for lunch, dinner and whatnot and not staying out too late. But I guess it´s for my own good...

And if anyone would like to send me anything, like letters/pictures, which I would love to receive, or a new battery recharger for instance, send it to :

Allison Brown
Cuerpo de Paz
Casilla 1603
Cochabamba, Bolivia
South America

and make sure it´s under 4 pounds, that way I won´t get taxed on it, and say it´s "ropa usada" (used clothes). If you want to give me a call just send an email and I´ll send you the number.

B-44

2007-02-10T08:52:00.000-08:00

There are 29 of us in B-44. Everyone is either in there twenties or early thirties. I thought that I would be on of the older people of the group. I was imagining a bunch of recently graduated kids. But there are quite a few of us in our mid-twenties. Which is nice. We´ve got two married couples and the rest of us are single (some more than others). And I´ve never been so happy to be single! Everyone is pretty darn cool. No wackos or super obnoxious people. With big groups your bound to get a couple of odd balls, but I must say... we´re pretty awesome. We have a really good group dynamic going on. It will be really interesting to see who will make it through training and the subsequent two years. So far everyone (that I know of anyway) is still going strong.

There are 9 of us un the Environmental Ed. program. I think we hands down have the best job assignment. We learned how to put on a puppet show (so fun!), recycle paper, crochet plastic bags into actual functional bags to bring to the market for your groceries and what not. Guess what you´re all getting for Christmas? Right now we are in the middle of writing a script for a tv spot that we will produce and run in a small community in the Santa Cruz department during our tech week. We are also preparing a charla (talk), for a class of 4th graders in a local school, on reducing garbage. It feels sort of hypocritical to tell Bolivians to stop producing so much garbage because we Americans produce soooo much more. But there is so little infrastructure to deal with all of it here. It´s either thrown on the ground or into the river to be magically ´taken away´. Seriously, there are people who´s job it is to collect the garbage around the neighborhood and throw it in the dry river bed. Luckily this doesn´t happen in our neighborhood, but it´s pretty common in others. Even at my house I have no idea what they do with the garbage. Every time I´ve asked where to throw away something I kind of get this strange look and am told to put it in some random place or another. Never an actual garbage can. I´ve started a little garbage bag in my room. And when it´s full I´ll toss it in the river...haha...just joshin´ ; )

Bienvenidos a Bolivia!

2007-02-01T12:04:00.000-08:00

El Christo, Cochabamba, Bolivia. I had to stand in a crowd of about 500 high schoolers chanting "U-S-A" and "I love you" to get this photo.

Plaza Principal Cochabamba, Bolivia. Where the riots took place in early January.

Sorry if anyone has been worrying about me. It´s not so convenient to get on the Internet over here. At least, not out in the campo where all of us are living now. But I´m here and doing good. We arrived in Bolivia a little over a week ago and so much has happened I don´t really know where to begin. Humm.. let´s see...

We are living in the suburbs of Cochabamba. It´s considered the campo (country) and that´s a pretty accurate description. Although this is pretty tame campo living. My host family has a couple cows, pigs, chickens, guinue pigs (which is considered a delicacy over here, have not eaten one yet...that I know of) and a couple of flea ridin dogs Chile and Chubi. They are my favorite, probably because I do not have to speak in Spanish to them. And they love me because I am the only one that pays any attention to them. There is apparently a big plot of land in the back of the house where they grow guess what! Potatoes (papas) which are some how incorporated into every meal. Everyone says that the women gain about 10 lbs and the men lose about 15 lbs. Which I hope is not always the case because we have some pretty skinny men in our group! We are going to have some dead gringos over here! ha...ha...

View of Tunari, the tallest mountain in Central Bolivia, from my neighborhood.

And I have a latrine and outdoor cold shower. There are only a few of us that got that honor. I was a little bit bitter at first, but actually it´s really not that big of a deal. I can always brag about it and I feel pretty tough after taking a cold show at 6 o´clock in the morning. The latrine is actually amazingly clean and rarely smells. It´s piped to the gutter, not the pit kind. We´ll see how I feel about it when I get sick and have to use it 10 times a day...I guess I will have gotten broken in early if nothing else.

My family is pretty mellow. They don´t shove food down my throat or anything... which some people have had some trouble with. Generally, they want to see us eat a lot and get fat. But my host family had already had 8 volunteers so I think they are used to us Gringitos. I have been having a pretty difficult time understanding them. The accent is pretty different than what I was used to in Costa Rica. They actually speak Castillano which I don´t know what exactly is the difference, but it definitely is different. And it´s kind of a slurred speech. So it´s been kind of frustrating, but it gets a little better everyday. ¨Poco a poco¨ they say. They also speak Quechua amongst each other. I have three brothers and one sister. They are all 15 to 21 years old. There quite, but friendly. I know as my Spanish gets better we´ll all talk more.

The neighborhood is pretty traditional. The short, round cholita women all wear long braids in their hair and this kind of dressy blouse, many times with a checked apron and a skirt that falls past their knees. And I love it! All the women wear hats (the style depending upon what region they are from). I really want to get one at the Cancha (market) soon, the sun is fierce over here! I will take a good picture and post it soon! My description is not doing them any justice.

I´m pretty exhausted right now. Training is intense! We have language classes from 8 30 to 1 00 then lunch, and a moment to catch our breath, then various technical, cultural, safety training from 2 00 till 6 oo. Bye the time dinner´s over I´m pretty wiped out and ready for some lite studying than bed. I think I´ve been going to bed at 9 30 lately, it´s pretty pathetic. I think I´m still getting used to the time change (actually we are one hour later than EST over here), the schedule (not waking up at noon everyday) and trying to understand the language is freakin´exhausting. So it´s like this for the next 11 weeks. I was talking to some current volunteers are they were saying if you can make it through the next couple of months you´ll be alright.

Chillin' at the training center.

That´s all for now.... Ciao!

Oh Bolivia....

2007-01-19T20:24:00.000-08:00

So I thought it would be a good idear to write a little bit about Bolivia. No, it is not an Eastern European country. You may be thinking of Bulgaria. Bolivia is a landlocked, South American country. It borders Peru to the west, Brazil to the north/east, and Paraguay, Argentina, and Chile to the south. That means lots of nearby countries to visit! Yay! I am a little bummed about it's landlocked status. What's this California baby to do!?! Those damn Chileans! I personally blame Pepe for this ;)

Bolivia is probably best known for it's high altitude and is home to the world's highest capital city, La Paz (~12,000 ft) and the world's highest navigable (not sure exactly what that means) and silliest named lake, Lago Titicaca. It has been called the Tibet of the America's for it's remoteness and altitude. It is probably more recently known for it's 'radical' president, Evo Morales, and his stance on the controversial coca industry. Coca is the raw plant material from which cocaine is made. You should take a minute to check out the links I've put on here and read some good articles on Evo and the whole coca issue.

Bolivia was once part of the mighty Incan empire and still has a huge population of indigenous peoples (over 60%). In addition to Spanish, there are three official indigenous languages! I was reading over a brief introduction to the Quechua language (materials sent from the Peace Corps.) and you could say I'm a little bit freaked out! But I guess I'll worry about that when I get there.

Bolivia is the one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere and has a long history of political upheaval. From reading my Lonely Planet (and I know my Lonely Planet should not be thought of as the authoritative guide to the history of Bolivia, but it's convenient) it sounds like Bolivia has had some really bad luck and has basically been dumped on for the most part of recent history.

So it's gonna be crazy!It's going to be a big change, but I can't wait! And hopefully I can do some good...

Cochabamba Chaos...

2007-01-12T22:20:00.000-08:00

Alright just a week till I begin this little adventure. Perfect timing too...apparently there have been some pretty violent protests in Cochabamba, Bolivia. This is where I'm scheduled to be in about 10 days! Leftist Evo supporters have been protesting, calling for the resignation of the conservative governor of Cochabamba. It started out peacefully, but got pretty outta hand when protesters tried to storm city haul causing a violent response from police. Tear gas canisters were flying... fires were set. At least one person has died and many others were injured. Evo sent in the military and more police and it appears that things have settled down. However, Evo supporters have vowed to keep up protests until the governor resigns. I guess the situation was bad enough to evacuate the all the Peace Corp Volunteers (PCV's) living within the city.

So it's a big mystery how this is going to affect our training group. We are supposed to spend the first three months living and training in Cochabamba. Hopefully things will cool off by the time we arrive... or this situation could throw a big ol' monkey wrench into our plans.

It's an unfortunate situation. However, I am not personally very worried about it. I don't plan on picking up a machete and joining the protests or anything. People have the right to protest and should when they are not happy with their leaders. It' s just unfortunate it had to escalate into violence. This is a very critical time in the history of Bolivia and call me crazy, but I'm actually pretty excited about witnessing these changes (albeit from a safe distance!).

America in 7 Days

2006-12-10T14:18:00.000-08:00

We made it! 7 days and I don't even want to think about how many tanks of gas later. But I'm home... and it feels good.

Day 1- Providence, RI to Columbus, OH.

The most grueling drive of the trip and the most horrific display of roadkill I've ever witnessed. I'm happy to say we made it to Columbus without killing any wildlife. We visited my friend Dave, his wife Kate and Dawn's friend Kaleb. I was too delirious after driving all day to remember to take photos. Dammit! Oh well, Ohio pretty much sucks anyway haha....

Day 2- Columbus, OH to Nashville, TN.

As soon as we headed south we started to see lots of things like this...

I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but there are also advertisements for frozen beef patties on the side of the truck...weird. My personal favorites were the "Hell is for Real" billboards (usually located across from trucker porn shops) on the highway. We were a little too slow with the camera to get those.

While in Nashville we checked out the strip downtown and had some fried pickles (which are surprisingly tasty), which Dawn is enjoying here. I'm sure she is just loving this picture on here ; )

We were determined to eat some sort of meat while in the south (i.e. not chicken). We knew we weren't realistically going to get ribs or a big ol' steak. We decided to split a burger which was 'crazy' enough for us. We then went on to watch one of the most miserable bands I've ever seen beg for beer and money. I was embarrassed for them, but the tourists seemed to fall for it. Did I mention we were the only people under the age of 45 in there? I suppose Monday night is not the best night for checking out the Nashville music scene.

Day 3- Nashville,TN to Greenville, TX.

On the way through Memphis we just had to check out Graceland. We couldn't tour the house because it was closed on Tuesdays. Dammit!The luck! That was a bummer, but we did get to walk around the house and see The King's grave site. Elvis is truly an American Icon, so it was pretty darn cool to see that on our trip across the country. Did you know Elvis had a stillborn twin brother, Jessie? Imagine... two Elvis's!

Day4 - Greenville,TX to Carlsbad, NM

We spent a long day driving through the emptiness of Texas thanking God we hadn't grown up in one of those depressing, run-down, roadside towns. We picked up Dawn's brother Dustin along the way at the Midland airport, hometown of G.W. and Lara Bush. Let's just say it explains a lot...

Day5- Carlsbad,NM to Demming, NM.

Finally we got to get out of the car! We started the morning walking through Carlsbad Cavern's National Park. Still one of the most amazing places I've ever been. Absolutely nobody was there, so we practically had the cave to ourselves.

We then headed to White Sands National Monument where there are these dramatic white sand dunes. Gorgeous! It looked like we were in the snow and it felt like it too. We were freezing our butts off !

Day 6- Demming, NM to Tempe, AZ

We started the day with a relatively short drive to Saguaro National Park. We drove around the park and did a little hike through the Senoran Dessert. The scenery was beautiful, the weather was absulutely perfect, and the cacti were amazing.

We then drove to Dawn's friend's place in Tempe, just outside of Phoenix, hit up some bars and fought off the cockroaches in our sleep.

Day 7- Tempe, AZ to Thousand Oaks, CA

We made it to Joshua Tree, National Park with just enough time to drive through the park and walk around a little bit before sundown. As we drove through the park (listening to some 'experimental' Pink Floyd) I felt like I was on another planet. It was a shame we didn't have more sunlight to get out and walk around some more, but whatcha gonna do?

I want to thank Dawn for driving all the way home with me. I couldn't imagine the drive without her. Your a great friend and an overall awesome person! Oh jezz.. I'm getting teary eyed writing this. I'm such a sap! I'm gonna miss you!