Cristo, camión, and kitty adventures.

Well, its been kind of a slow month. We´re pretty well situated into our new site and adjusted to the water and electricity patterns. We have water during the AM hours and electricity during the PM hours. We´ve gotten into a routine of boiling and filtering about 6 liters of water every morning and slowly storing away a few liters a day. We´ve got around 20 liters put away in 2-liter bottles for when the water stops all together. We´ve heard various stories of water shortages -- anywhere from a day or two to a few weeks. So hopefully we´ll be prepared.

In our site we have a smaller Cristo like the one in Cochabamba. It is on a small hill overlooking our town and has the stations of the cross and a cemetery nearby. A few weekends ago we finally went up for the first time. You get a nice view of our town and the surrounding mountains.

We traveled a few weekends ago up to visit some friends from our training group. There are two girls, Ellen and Stephanie, in towns about an hour away from each other and three hours north of us. Compared to our hamlet of 500 people, Ellen´s town of a few thousand seemed quite large to Erica and I. We went out for hamburgers, got to check our email, and went out to a cool Bolivian bar. We also spent some time shopping for fresh fruits and vegetables that we can not find in our town -- mostly broccoli. We also got to spend some time with Christian, a fellow volunteer in a town just an hour from Erica and I. Christian is just about to complete his two years of service and was able to give up tips and advice for the area where we are all now living. We hope to visit him one more time before he finishes his service and sets out to travel a bit in late June.

(L -- Erica and Christian)

(R -- Scenery near Villa Abecia)

Other highlights of the month have been our developing cooking skills. Erica has had more practice at carving chickens. We now know to ask for the half of the pollo sin cabeza. We also have gotten in the habit of boiling any unused parts, organs, and bones and then feeding them to the neighborhood dogs the next morning. I´ve had more practice with refried beans and homemade spaghetti sauce. We continue to love our stove and realize it was dinero well spent.

We also bought a nice mattress and blankets two weeks ago. For the previous five weeks we´d been sleeping on a wool mattress and using our sleeping bags as it has gotten colder. The wool mattress is the standard Bolivian style -- about 3 inches thick and very hard and lumpy. I woke up every morning with a sore back. We spent a full month´s salary for one of us, about $150 to buy a US style mattress and boxspring. It was considered quite lujo (luxurious), and we got some odd looks as we loaded it onto the top of a taxi.

Transporting them out to our site also proved to be an adventure. We didn´t think it wise to take both pieces at once so we opted to leave the boxspring at the PC office in Tarija and have our supervisor bring it out in a truck when he visits at the end of June. The mattress we took to the bus station with us as we were preparing to head back to our site. It is also standard Bolivian practice to ship or bring large items -- desks, chairs, stoves, etc. -- along with you on a bus trip. But we had a problem with the mattress. The cargo/luggage doors on the underside of the bus were not large enough to fit the mattress through. We had already bought our tickets for the 3 or 4 hour ride and had about 30 minutes before it was supposed to leave. We quickly had to make a decision; stay another night and try to find a larger bus, or send the mattress "encomienda" on another bus line. Basically send it as true cargo and hope it would be delivered to our site. We opted for the latter option. As Erica loaded our regular bags onto the bus I ran across the street to a shipping company and asked if they could fit the mattress. Of course they said yes, but they did not have an office in our small town. In order to receive the shipment we would have to be waiting on the side of the road the following evening as the bus passed by. If we missed it, our mattress would continue on to La Paz, another 22 hours north of us. I signed a small slip of paper, handed over 40 Bolivianos, wrote "Barajas" on the plastic covering the mattress, and said a small prayer that we would in fact see our lujo mattress again. We got on the bus and rode out to our site, half expecting never to see it again.

To our surprise, and to the credit of the Bolivian bus system, our mattress arrived as advertised the following evening around 8:00pm. I was down buying us some sandwiches and Erica waited by the side of the main road for the correct bus to pass by. It stopped at our town and a guy hopped out and called, "Colchon para Barajas." Erica let the guy know she was Barajas and out came the mattress from a larger cargo door at the back of the bus. We´ve slept like babies every night since.

Aside from the mattress we also got a wonderful package from the US from our good friend Evan. He asked us a little while ago what we would like. We said movies and books. Evan sent us 11 DVDs and 10 books. We´ve watched the entire 6 episodes of Star Wars and the trilogy of Indiana Jones. I´ve also read 4 of the books so far. Thanks Evan!

We also had our first experience riding in the back of a camión, or truck. Believe it or not, riding in a camión is an approved Peace Corps transportation method. They just urge us not to do it at night. We do have the option of large buses to bring us into Tarija, but they only come early in the morning between 6-8 AM and sometimes in the afternoon around 1pm. On this particular day we had lost electricity to our building the evening before and our landlady was out of town. A neighbor found the short in the main power box and a few of us tried to fix it, but we were not successful. So around 2 PM after waiting by the road for almost two hours, we hailed down a truck hauling garlic, squashes, and onions. We climbed up a ladder and made ourselves as comfortable as we could amongst the bags of garlic. There was a Bolivian family already settled in complete with blankets and bags who looked at us kind of funny. I doubt they see many gringos traveling this way. We were surprisingly comfortable and not too cold. The ride was nice as we were able to have great 360º views of the valley and mountains. The driver got out twice to check his tires and all seemed to be going well. When we got to the next town from us, and about the halfway point for Tarija, the driver checked the tires again... and this time he did have a flat. By then it was almost 5pm and was starting to get cold. The town we were at was higher up in the mountains, just over 11,000 ft. Our driver set out to find someone to repair the tire and told us just to wait. The Bolivian family did not seem worried so neither were we. Fortunately, there in another PC volunteer, Bill, in the town. We tracked Bill down and he came out and waited with us for the tire to be fixed. And waited. And waited. And waited. Two hours later I went to look for our driver and found him down the road with the truck just about ready to go. Another 20 minutes or so and we finally set out again. By then the sun had set and we still had to get over the summit. We climbed back up the ladder and settled in. We were not quite as prepared for the cold so we used whatever we could find in the back of the truck to keep warm. We ended up laying deflated intertubes over us to stop some of the wind. The night ride was cold, but the stars were beautiful. We could clearly see the Milky Way and spotted several shooting stars. Around 9PM we finally arrived in Tarija. What was usually a 3 hour bus ride had become a 7 hour camión adventure. I think we'll take the bus next time.

(L -- waiting for the tire to be fixed)

(R -- Tire fixed, heading out again)

Finally, we adopted a kitten a few weekends ago. She is a grey tabby that we named Salta. The Spanish verb "saltar" means to jump, and this cat loves to leap and climb. I adopted a cat in Mexico, Maya, who turned out to be slightly crazy. She was entertaining, but not too social. We lucked out with Salta. She is very playful and affectionate. She has also proved to be social so far and very curious. The last week was great as we got to know her and she became more comfortable with us. She definitely has helped this feel more like home. I´m sure we´ll have more stories and pictures of her as the time rolls on.














(L -- Salta climbing our door) (R -- Salta getting to know Bobby)

Oh yeah, and work... well right now we´re officially working eight hours a week. We teach two two-hour computer classes at the high school on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. We have ten students in each class from the school. We´ve had four weeks so far and are having fun getting to know the kids and learning their skills and weaknesses. We´ve also had time to reflect on the extreme differences from our last teaching gigs in Sacramento -- eight hours a day, three classes of 35 students each, five days a week, grading papers on the weekends. Wow! Erica also spends a few mornings at the Alcaldia (the mayor´s office) and I have been trying to spend time with the Direccion Distral (School district offices). All that time is simply spent chatting and getting to know the workings of the organizations and the people. We´ve had requests to teach English, and the school wants Erica to teach some art classes and me to start up the school band. I imagine soon we´ll start on those projects. But since our focus is supposed to be environmental work, we´re trying to take things slow.

We´re looking forward to July. Erica´s parents are visiting the first week of the month and my b-day is in the middle of the month. We´re planning on going backpacking in a nearby national park. Our guidebooks say there is a beautiful 2 or 3 day Inca trail starting at just over 10,000 feet and dropping into a lush valley. We´re trying to find a map and some more info. Then in late July our whole training group has a week of meetings back up in Cochabamba. Our three month"reconnect" they call it. It will be great to see everyone again and hear what people have been up to.

So we´ve enjoyed our relatively slow month and are looking forward to July. Stay tuned for pictures from the parents´visit and our camping trip!


Until then...

Chicken heads, centipedes, and mutant potatoes, oh my!

About one month after swearing in as volunteers, life is pretty darn good in our site. We have travelled from our site to Tarija and back several times now. The bus ride seems shorter each time, and sometimes actually is. On our second trip to site, we got to load a mattress, two chairs, and a kitchen stove under the bus along with several other bags. It´s actually standard practice here, but we were still a little self-conscious about the amount of space we were taking up. Those three household items have greatly increased our quality of life, along with the recent purchase of small speakers to play music and hear movies played on my computer. We also splurged on a blender/juicer machine just like the liquado (smoothie) ladies in the central market have. After seeing some other rooms in town, we are grateful to have the amount of space that we do. Officially, we´re just renting one big room with a bar at one end left over from its days as a Karaoke bar. But our land lady has been kind enough to let us use an adjacent, open area for our kitchen. Not only is our land lady pretty cool, but she also has a pretty rad dog, Oso, who likes to hang out with us and is very tranquilo.

Mark helping the bus driver unload our stuff upon arrival in site.

View of our room from the bar.

We love to cook, but it´s certainly a new experience not having a refrigerator. Some things rot and/or liquefy incredibly fast, such as broccoli kept in a black plastic bag. Lesson learned. I´ve been really enjoying the act of peeling and cutting up vegetables and fruit... it´s rather like meditating. We´ve started a composting bucket which fills remarkably quickly. My intention is to eventually have a worm composting bin, but for now we´ll give the food waste to our land lady so she can feed it to her sheep. I´m relatively comfortable cutting off the parts of potatoes that have been housing little white grubs, and I even found a couple of potatoes that made me laugh.

Plant products are not the only type of food that have gone under the knife in our kitchen. Our first experiment with the local fresh chicken, technically half a chicken, went very well. We unknowingly bought the half of a chicken that included it´s neck and head still intact. It was relatively easy to recognize the parts that we would normally eat in the states such as the breast and thigh, and we did our best to use as much as we could. But we were still left with a decent amount of bird that we didn´t know what to do with. Luckily, trash day came soon and we gave it to the basurero. The Szechwan Chicken that we made was the best meal we´ve had so far in Bolivia, thanks to a Peace Corps cookbook we bought called ¨Donde No Hay Cocinera.¨

Mark completing the last step of the tasty refried beans.

One night were were enjoying our homecooked meal of refried beans, rice, and tortillas when we heard a horrible noise on our roof. We ran into the common area between our room and our neighbor´s and found that two cats were fighting INSIDE the roof, between the corrugated metal outer roof, and the plaster and wood false ceiling. It was one of the most horrible things I´ve witnessed so far in Bolivia (besides seeing the old man in Cochabamba who had stepped in front of a bus) and there wasn´t anything we could do about it. Eventually, the aggressor cat calmed down and they left the building. As we went back into our room, Mark noticed a large bug hanging out near a hole in the wall/ceiling in our kitchen space. We stared at it for a while, I with goosebumps and making disgusted noises, took a couple photos, and watched it crawl back into the wall. After consulting with a coworker at the mayor´s office, I confirmed that it was a centipede, that if it bites us that would be ¨malo¨, and that I will kill it the next time I see it. Now, every time we pass through the kitchen into the common area, I have to look up and make sure it´s not dangling down ready to attack. Did I mention it was about 6 inches long? Sorry I didn´t include my hand in the picture for scale.

We officially started work this week with a computer class that we´re going to teach at the high school for the next seven months. Right now we have four 2-hour classes of 10 students, which is way easy compared to our previous school schedule. So at least we´ve got something to do every Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon from 2-6pm. It´s really amazing to see some of our students struggle with moving the mouse and understanding the concept of click-and-drag, since those are things we´ve been aware of since 4th grade or so. The computers are new-ish and in good shape, and the students are really well-behaved and excited to learn. Our first lesson included names of the parts of a computer, how to open a new Word document; change the font style, size, and color; save the file; and create a folder to save it in. For the last 20 minutes of class or so, we made them type up a synopsis of Harry Potter and the sorcerer´s stone (in Spanish, of course) off of the blackboard.

Cerro Tunari and end of Training!

Well its been a little while again... but I think it may be like this from now on. We´ve finished training and have officially been Peace Corps Volunteers for just over a week now. Erica and I are in Tarija city doing some shopping for our new place in our permanent site. We need everything... stove, bed, mattress, chairs, dresser, pots & pans, the whole works. Again we realize the convenience of the US. Since we have a 3-4 hour bus ride out to our site it makes everything more complicated, and the fact that we stay in a hotel when we´re in the city. We´re trying to buy things in small lots so that we don´t have to transport too much at once, and so that we don´t give the impression of super wealthy foreigners moving into a tiny town. We figure it will take a month or two to fully get our place set up.

Anyway, the end of training was good and our swearing in ceremony was fun. We had a day off just before our last week of training and a few of us took advantage of the time and went camping. Actually, we had been eyeing a great mountain all of training and been saying,"One day we´ll climb it..." We knew that after training we´d all be split up and may not have another good chance, so our one day had arrived.

Mount Tunari is the name. We had a great view from our communities all during training and it beckoned to some of us. Some days it would be covered in snow, some days obscured by clouds, some nights the moon hung just above it, it was beautiful. We learned that it was the highest mountain in central Bolivia, and is prominently featured on the label of the local beer, Taquina. A few weeks into training a group of 5 or 6 tried to go up and summit, but they had bad weather and got a late start and ended up on a different mountain. I tried to buy a map at the Military Geographic Institute, but they told me they had sent the map to La Paz. I wasn´t quite sure what that meant, but we decided to try anyway.

(view of Tunari from road outside our house in community)

So three of us, John from Michigan, and Mike from Colorado persuaded our teachers to let us out of class early on a Thursday and we took a Micro to the town of Quillacollo, about 20 minutes out of Cochabamba. There, we looked for a taxi that would drive us as high as the road would go. Our plan was to camp that night, then get up at dawn on Friday and make a push for the summit. We had read that there was a town at about 4200 meters (13,776 ft), and that there was a trail leading 5 or 6 hours to the summit. For perspective, Cochabamba is about 3000 meters (9,840 ft.) It took a bit of haggling, but we finally found a taxi willing to drive us up the mountain. We rode for about 1 1/2 hours, though a few small towns, over a few small streams, and finally reached the highest point on the road. Unfortunately, there really was no town. It was already dark so we hiked up just a little more and made camp. John checked his GPS and we were just over 14,000 ft, already the highest any of us had ever been. Both John and Mike had climbed 12,000 foot peaks in Colorado, and the highest I´d ever been was just under 10,000 ft in Desolation Wilderness near Lake Tahoe. That was years ago with another group of great friends, and we also have some incredible pictures, one photo in particular I´m sure we will never forget.

So we had some food and tried to sleep. Mike and I shared my tent and John slept in his military surplus Bivy sack. It was a rough night. Sleeping at that altitude was difficult because our pulses were racing. Although we were tired and laying down, our hearts were beating as if we´d just run a mile. To make things worse, about 3AM we were hit with freezing rain. Mike and I were pretty OK in the tent, but we were worried about John. It stormed for about 2 hours before clearing up just before dawn. Mike and I managed about 5 hours of sleep, John closer to 2 hours. When we woke up there was ice covering the outside of the tent and our food had frozen. We packed up, ate a little, and headed out from camp a little after 6AM. We all had slight headaches and our hearts were still racing, but the sky was relatively clear.

(morning at 14,000 ft, Mike on L, John on R)

We followed a dirt road for a few hours and passed one small community of about 5 brick houses. We talked to some kids, asked them for directions and took pictures of their llamas. Already the views were incredible and we felt like we were doing something special. Oh, I should mention that the reason we had the day off was that it was Semana Santa, or Good Friday. Bolivians have a custom of going into the mountains on this day and we were told there may be others making the trek up Tunari.

We stopped to eat some more and filter water around 9:30 at a small reservoir. We could see llamas in the distance and still had views of the little community we had passed about an hour prior. The kids told us we wouldn´t be able to see the true peak until we were past the reservoir. Without a map, we were pretty much going on instinct and feeling, but luck was on our side as there were still only passing clouds. John check the GPS at the reservoir and we were over 15,000 feet.

(John filtering water and reservoir at 15,000+ ft)

We left the reservoir and really began feeling the elevation. I was carrying my large pack with the tent and decided to leave it at this point and continue on with only my Camelbak and extra clothes. John and Mike also dropped weight from their packs and we continued up, all feeling much better. Soon the road was no more, but we had our first views of the true summit. We filtered more water from a stream at around 16,000 feet and scouted a route up a ridge and to the summit.

(ridge and summit)

(Mike and John coming up the ridge)

About 11:00 we began the ridge and the final push. It was quite hard, our heads hurt and it was steep, but we were so close. And still the weather was cooperating. It took a little over an hour, but we finally made it up the ridge and gained a summit. After a few minutes we realized we were not on the true summit, and now we could see a small group of people below us. We went down a little and around, then back up and finally reached the true summit. It was awesome. We were exhausted, and honestly not 100% sure we were on the true Tunari. After about 30 minutes three Bolivians reached the summit also. One was a mountain guide who confirmed we had reached Cerro Tunari. The highest mountain in central Bolivia, 5200 meters, 17,056 feet. Amazing. We shared cheese, crackers, salami, and the celebratory cervezas we had carried along. The clouds cleared for a little while and we had views of the Cochabamba valley below and the entire Tunari mountain range. It was beautiful.

(Cerrro Tunari, 5200 meters)

(Bolivian mountain guide, in low-tops and sweat pants) (John and I on summit, Cochabamba in background)

Knowing we had a long trek back we left the summit a little after 1pm. The walk down was also hard, we were tired and now our heads and legs really felt the effects of elevation. We went as fast as we could, but the Bolivians passed us after about an hour even though they stayed on the summit longer. After coming down about 2000 feet we saw the llamas again and sat and watched them and ate a little more.

(road with ridge and summit in background)

About 5pm we reached the community and to our surprise there was a small bus parked there. We had seen a large group of people on another mountain earlier in the day and learned that they were a group of Dutch missionaries who were touring South America. They had rented a bus and come up to the mountains also. We really had no way to get back to the city, our plan was to hail a truck, so we waited for the Dutch group to come down and we asked them for rides. Thankfully, they obliged and only asked for 10 Bolivianos each (about $1.25). The ride home was interesting. The Dutch group was mostly kids, from 14-18 years old. They had only been in Bolivia for two days, coming straight from Europe. They also were not so well prepared for hiking at elevation. While we had pretty serious gear -- hiking boots, fleeces, rain pants, gloves, hydration packs, etc -- most of them hiked in Converse and jeans, and carried small water bottles. Most of them were pretty sick during the ride home, some were throwing up out the window and one guy had fainted during the hike. We were grateful for our US gear.

(waiting for the bus)

We got back to our communities in Cochabamba around 7pm that night. I ate a hearty dinner and tried to go to sleep. To my surprise my heartbeat was still racing and I had a hard time falling asleep. By the next morning my pulse was pretty much back to normal, but still a little fast.

So the three of us had an amazing time, shared some good stories and some good laughs, and made a memory that will last a lifetime. We also all climbed much higher than we´d ever been and were all surprised that we passed the 17,000 foot barrier.

The next day we had our family ceremony and a week later our swearing-in ceremony. We´ve now all gone our separate ways to our permanent sites in Bolivia. John is in the altiplano, near Oruro, about a 10 hour bus ride from Tarija, and Mike is in the chaco, near Santa Cruz, about an 18 hour bus ride from Tarija. We´ll all be back in Cochabamba in July for a 3-month "catch up" meeting. There is already talk of going to the mountains again. We´ll see.

So besides our mountain adventure, we also had our swearing-in ceremony. It was the following Friday at a nice hotel in the city. Everyone got dressed up, I shaved my beard, and we became official Peace Corps Volunteers. The US Ambassador was there as well as representatives from the Embassy and USAID. About 6 weeks prior, the group of 29 was asked to pick a "valedictorian." Someone who they thought could represent the group and deliver a speech at our ceremony. I was honored to be selected by the group to be our representative and give the speech. I was a little nervous, but the speech went great. Erica helped me with ideas and work out the kinks and it had a good balance of humor and seriousness.

(Erica and I with our Training Director, Bill Green; Bill and US Ambassador and I)

(Erica with our Project Director, US Ambassador, and PC Country Director; us after swear-in)

After the ceremony we were treated to dinner at a Brazilian-style steak restaurant. Basically it was all the meat one could ever desire, salad and potatoes. There was even some meat that you may never desire, such as shish-kebabs of chicken hearts. To both of our surprise, the chicken hearts were quite tasty. After the dinner we had a small fiesta with current volunteers to celebrate our new non-trainee status. It was supposed to be a dress up theme party, but our group kind of revolted. We didn´t have time or desire to find costumes so most of us went to the used ropa section of the market during a two hour break and threw together outfits. I was being creative with my beard and left some pretty impressive lamb chops and a large goatee. I´ve since lost the lamb chops in case any of you were worried. Erica went with the standard toga complete with a crown of ivy, although she learned through the night that many Bolivians did not really know what a toga was. She educated them on Roman history and US college traditions that night. A good time was had by all.

So now we´re official. We´ve had just over a week of Volunteer status. We´re setting up our house and beginning to discover what our work will be. I will spend some time in the school this week and Erica will go into the Mayor´s office. We have three months to define and write up a work plan so there is no rush. The most important things now are to integrate into our site and begin to understand what the community needs and wants.

We do not have internet access in our site and there is only one public phone. We plan on coming into Tarija about every three weeks or so and checking email and updating the blog. Thanks to all who´ve been reading and again for your support in this adventure.

(last day of training)

Hasta lluego,

Marcos

Getting Caught Up

I´m going to do my best to get across what´s gone on since my last blog. I apologize for getting so far behind- I´ve been procrastinating a new entry. The last few months have really affected me for the better, and I can tell that this experience is already changing me. I´m not sure how well I´ll be able to put that into words, so bear with me. I am extremely grateful to be here with Mark, he continues to amaze me with his compassion and sense of adventure and he´s also a great partner in crime. At the same time, I often feel lonely when I think of family and friends back home. The best way for me to get started is to report some of the things that have happened since late February.

Tech Week (March 9-18)
I was a little worried at the start about being away from Mark for 10 days after living in one room with him for 7 weeks. Overall, it was an experience that allowed me to practice taking care of myself. I think I´ve relied on external things or people to make sure that I feel safe, happy, and comfortable, and I´m now gaining experience and confidence in doing this for myself. I´m also learning to accept the fact that it´s okay to feel threatened, sad, and uncomfortable sometimes, and that it is during these times that I am growing and changing. The point of Tech Week was to visit current volunteers in their sites and to get an idea of the type of projects that are being done and what it´s like in various sites. On day 1, we encountered our first bloqueo, essentially a road block used for political purposes. Therefore we had to backtrack about 2 hours to Cochabamba to take the other road to Aiquile, our first destination. We traveled through the morning, having to skip two appointments due to running late, and in the last hour of driving I started to feel like I had a fever and my stomach was rumbling. I had to have the land cruiser pull over each 15 minutes for me to use someone´s corn field or duck behind a cactus. Finally we arrived in Aiquile. Everyone else in the group went to a presentation about an irrigation project and I promptly ran to the restroom almost in time to use the toilet and the trash can at the same time... if you know what I mean. I slept feverishly from then until the evening of the next day and then it was all over. I felt great for the remainder of the trip, and I´ll never know exactly what bicho (bug) was responsible for my gastrointestinal adventure. Ironically, Mark was vomiting on his trip on the same day. Is there such as thing as empathy vomiting? I take it as evidence that Mark truly is my soul mate.

Our next stop was in a much larger town called Valle Grande. Here, we had our first charlas (presentations) with a bunch of boys from the local orphanage. My group had created a relay race to help the boys think about sorting trash into recyclables, organic waste, and inorganic waste or non-recyclables. Then we played a game using a frisbee to demonstrate how plants and animals are connected through food webs. I´m not sure how many of the boys achieved our learning objectives about the environment, but they certainly laughed and smiled. We ate dinner at the orphanage which was homemade mac and cheese, black beans, and avocado salad. Having skipped all meals over the last two days, I was a little concerned whether my stomach would tolerate the huge plate of food I had been offered. But there was no way I was going to offend the orphanage by not finishing my plate. In the end it worked out just fine. The volunteer who works at the orphanage has developed a recycling project where she pays the boys with stickers for every bag of recyclable paper that they bring her. Her cat was not amused that she was dog sitting for another volunteer at the time.

In Valle Grande we also met with a women´s group that makes and sells marmelade and liquors using locally grown fruits. We got to taste each type and my favorite was a peach jam. My least favorite was the liquor made from prunes.

From Valle Grande we visited a town called Moro Moro, to which the road was muddy and slippery. We gave our first official charlas to a group of abour 40 community members. During my charla on compost piles, I was really nervous about speaking in spanish in front of such a large group. I relied on my partner´s higher level of spanish and let her talk as much as possible, while I frantically came up with things to say and edited them in my head. One of the times I got up the courage to speak, I tripped over my tongue a little when I was warning the group that they should keep animals away from their compost piles. I knew I had misspoken at the time, but not that I had used the word "allemanes" instead of "animales." After the fact, another volunteer informed me that I had in fact warned the group to keep germans away from their compost. Overall, the experience of being a minority in a Spanish speaking country has been a humbling one. It´s a little uncomfortable to not fully understand what is being said to you and then to have complicated thoughts and only simple verb tenses and limited vocabulary to express them. I have, however, greatly improved my Spanish skills over the last 11 weeks. According to the Peace Corps language interviews that I had to do 3 times during training, I began at an intermediate-low level and proceeded to advanced-low... a gain of 3 levels. Still, I´ve got a long way to go before I am anywhere near my fluency in English. On the way back from Moro Moro we stopped for a bathroom break and I snapped this photo of one of many pigs riding in a camion (truck).
From Valle Grande, we moved on to Quirusillas, where we spent the next five days with a pair of married volunteers. During this time the five women on our trip shared one room in the local restaurant/lodging place called an alojamiento. As dangerous as it may sound to concentrate estrogen in this way, it worked out alright. I took advantage of the alojamiento´s shower each morning since it was included in our daily fee (in contrast to my now normal shower every third day. Back in Cochabamba in our host family´s house, we had to pay 2 bolivianos per shower and it was also on the third floor and was less convenient). I also met a new flying bug, called the mariwi, which is very stealth when it bites you and leaves behind a tiny red spot that swells up the next day. Each day I applied three different types of insect repellent and it helped a little. On our first day in Quirusillas, the volunteers there brought us up to a lake on the mountain above the town. We were going to drive there at first, but once we got on the muddy road it became quite slippery and we were forced to stop and walk when we encountered a series of derrumbes (landslides). At the lake, we collected some native trees to replant at the local plant nursery, and learned about the medicinal properties of some of the local flora. On our way up it was misting slightly and it created a wonderful vista over the valley.

The next day we harvested some hardy grasses to use to plant live erosion barriers in a nearby mountain area called Rodeo. After we installed the live barriers, we were invited to lunch at the landowner´s house and he killed some of his ducks to make soup for us. I couldn´t really handle the duck meat, partially because the piece in my soup still had evidence of the plucked feathers on it and partially because all of its relatives were waddling around watching us eat it. I still tried a little bit, but it was more than enough for me. We also had an interesting beverage called Mochochinchi, which is made from dried peaches that are soaked or boiled in water. It was similar to Snapple Peach Iced Tea, except there was a rehydrated dried peach in the bottom of each glass. Quirusillas had the best fried empanadas (and cheapest, at 50 centavos or about 6 cents each). I liked them because they were only filled with cheese, instead of a lot of unidentifiable ingredients like other empanadas or salteñas usually have. Our last night in Quirusillas the volunteers there made baked chicken, mashed potatoes, and apple crisp for us and we devoured it. We were also introduced to a traditional bolivian practice of mixing red wine with coca cola, which is not nearly as bad as it sounds.
Our last stop was in Samaipata (see above), the most touristy place I´ve seen so far in Bolivia. The town has obviously invested lots of money to make its plaza look really nice and the restaurant we went to was really tasty. We were going to visit a nearby town called Paredones, but unfortunately there were two large boulders in the road that were scheduled to be blown up with dynamite that day. So we turned northwest towards Cochabamba and about 9 hours later we were back. We had the weekend to rest and do laundry and the following Monday at the Training Center our sites were officially announced. Mark and I had already known where our site was for about a month since couples don´t really get to have input into where their sites are. It´s pretty tricky to find a place with the right combination of work projects and need for two volunteers. It was still really fun to find out where the other trainees were placed, and our project directors even dressed up as bunnies for the announcement of sites. It was actually a bit strange.

Site Visit (April 2-8)

We got our first glimpse of where we´re going to be living for the next two years. It´s a little pueblo of approximately 500 people about 4 hours by bus from the city of Tarija in the south of the country. After hearing it described as "Arizona country" by one of the project directors I was anxious to find out what the heck he meant by that, having not ever really been to Arizona. When we got there, we discovered that what he meant was that it was dry, cactus-laden, and had beatiful red rock soil. I had tried really hard to not have any expectations about our site, but after getting there I realized I had been picturing a lush river valley. There is a river, but it is said to be contaminated by mining operations upstream. There is only electricity in the town from 1pm to 1am, which will be a unique challenge I´ve never faced before. There seems to be one phone in town where we can make and receive calls, and the Alcaldia (mayor´s office) in town has internet. I will be working with the technical department of the mayor´s office (see below) and have already been offered a desk and any paper, folders, or pencils that I might need. Mark and I attended a meeting at the Alcaldia and were introduced to the entire staff of about 25 people. At the end of the meeting, the Alcalde (mayor) brought in two huge pots full of boiled "aba" beans. I´m pretty sure they are the equivalent of fava beans in the states, but I´m not sure. They are huge, light green beans with a very starchy flavor. Knowing that the offering of food is a way of showing respect here, Mark and I each grabbed a couple beans right away and learned how to peel them to get to the part that you eat. Unfortunately, a staff member then brought us each a heaping bowl of the beans and we set to work to get them down. Even the staff was complaining that there wasn´t any cheese to go with the beans. Soon enough, most of the beans had been consumed and we headed back to the room we were staying in for a siesta.

Mark and I decided to walk across the valley to the next town, which involved crossing the river.

Saying "Ciao" to Cochabamba

When we got back from our site visit, time really flew by. We had our last few Spanish classes, tried to visit our favorite restaurants, and I spent a decent amount of time visiting with the kittens at our host family´s house that had been born during tech week and had opened their eyes while we were visiting our site. The mom cat, Campinita, really reminded me of Maya, and it was amazing to see her kittens mature over the time we were there.

On Saturday, we had the Fiesta de las Familias at the training center, to honor those who had welcomed us into their homes back in January. We ate lunch and then presented various prizes and performed traditional bolivian dances for the families. We even prepared a demonstration of traditional dances from the United States in the 1980´s in order to educate the Bolivians about our culture. Below is the picture we took with Doña Casilda and her daughter, Carola.Afterwards, Mark and I went out in the city with some other volunteers and we encountered our first Bolivian drag queens. They claimed to be the only drag queens in Bolivia, which wouldn´t be too surprising. I suspected that they were Argentinian based on their height, but it might have been an illusion caused by their platform stilleto boots.