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

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

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

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

Partying with Bolivian Rock Stars

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

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

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

Pictures

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

It's Official!

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

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

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

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.