Milestone

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

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

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

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

Wild Fires

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

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

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

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

Yee haa!! Rodeo!

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

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

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

My new friends/dance partners.

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

Ex-Presidente

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

Not Angry

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

Bolivian Oblivian

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summer time

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

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