Home sweet home...

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

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

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

More pictures soon!

¡Donde hay trabajo!

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

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

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

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

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

¨Salta la Linda¨

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It´s name was Tunari

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

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

A cristal clear lake at ~15,00 ft.

Yeeesss!!! The summit!!

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

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

The detour

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

Here I am stuck in Bermejo with NADIE!

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

What am I doing?

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

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