The picture I almost got with Tony Kiedis

I only had a couple of hours to pack since someone had already been dispatched from Tarija to pick me up in our site when I found out I'd be flying to San Diego to meet Mark.

One of our first days in San Diego, we decided to participate in the US economy. We took the bus from our hotel to the Old Town Transit Center, from where we could walk to lots of places to shop. We were looking for the Target in particular, and we knew where it was in general, but couldn't see it. So we started walking the right direction, cutting between buildings that got in our way. We stumbled into a courtyard that had very prominent video surveillance and realized where we had found ourselves.

If you are unable to zoom in to read the sign, it says: "San Diego Psychiatric Hospital."

Getting around without a cell phone sucks. At the Transit Center, the first payphone I tried had no dial tone. The second had a tone but also a background noise that covered up the voices on the other end of the line. Both were suspiciously sticky. Who cleans payphones, and how often? Finally I found another bank of phones that worked. We had purchased a 7-Eleven prepaid phone card, but it lasted way fewer minutes than it advertised.

I'm really impressed with all the readily available technology, lots of people with blackberries in particular. I have a 3X5 spiral notebook with important phone numbers and lists that I was referring to as my palm pilot until someone politely mentioned that palm pilots are like, SO, out. I prefer mine because it doesn't have to be charged or sync'd. I almost lost it during a trip to Target where I put it down underneath some DVDs I'd been looking at. I freaked out briefly but found it by retracing my steps.

My parents and Mark's mom arrived in San Diego that weekend because we weren't sure how long we'd be in the states. My brother and his wife and kids also came down from the OC, so I got to meet my niece for the first time and spent some time on the beach with them. After that day, Mark and I decided to make the trip north to get to see our moms more. Since we had no vehicle (and my driver's license had expired) Mark and I decided to take public transportation as much as possible. Our adventure began at the Old Town Transit Center in SD where we took the Coaster to Oceanside and then the Metrolink to Laguna Niguel, both trains. My sister-in-law picked us up at the station with the kids and took us to their house where we had our first home-cooked meal of the trip. We hung out and talked, I hit a home run with my nephew's whiffle bat (losing the ball to a storm drain), and then my brother took us to a drop off point where our good friend Evan picked us up to go to his house in Cerritos. In LA, we got to spend time with Evan and some other friends, including the maid-of-honor and best man from our wedding, who live on opposite sides of the 405 freeway from each other. We all met up at Lara's house, played Rock Band on the Xbox 360, and ate italian food. On July 2, Mark and I celebrated 3 years of marriage by buying ourselves bagels and professional massages- two things we can't get in Bolivia. If you'd asked us a month ago, I don't think either of us would have imagined we'd be celebrating the anniversary that way.

Before I left our site, I had been working 2-3 hours a day on the mural and this is how I left it:



The white circle in the upper right corner is going to be the moon. The Peace Corps symbol is in the lower left corner, since they're the ones who funded the paint for the whole project. The emblem of the school will eventually appear in the lower right corner and a compass rose will be in the upper left. The names of the countries have not yet been added, as well as some revisions of national borders and black in-fill around the globe for contrast.
These are closer up shots of the 3 national symbols that I painted on the Bolivia map. The first is a flower called the Kantuta, which actually grows on a bush near the mural (not shown). The following flower is called a Patujú (pah-too-HOO) and grows in the tropical regions of Bolivia.
Finally, the escarapelo badge, which we were adorned with when we swore in as volunteers back in April 2007.

We were invited to attend a quinceñera. It was hosted at the local evangelical church, so we sat through a service first, and then the ceremony began. There were 14 pairs of children of various ages- each pair represented a year of life and walked down the center aisle dramatically before taking their place in a human tunnel for the birthday girl to pass through. The church was decorated with toilet paper, in the way that we'd use colored streamers, bows, and ruffles everywhere. After the ceremony, we were invited to share cake with the other 100 attendees. The cakes were made in true Bolivian fashion- they looked great but weren't that tasty. Bolivians rarely use butter in their baking. Instead they use lots of baking powder and egg whites.
I was able to be in El Puente for the 24th anniversary of the high school there, Colegio San Miguel. The night before the anniversary, the students paraded across town with candle torches and performed traditional dances in costume. Below is a picture of the senior class of CSM in their Caporales uniforms. Yes, that is velour.

There are a couple new political offices that have appeared in our site: The autonomia office showed up just prior to the June 22 vote, and the MAS office (friends of Evo) appeared leading up to the August 10th recall vote.
Here is some graffiti that appeared in the main plaza of Tarija. My favorite part is that they spelled Evo with a B, a common mistake in a language where the letters sound very similar. I've gotten into specifying that our last name is spelled with a B grande as opposed to a B chico.
I took a self-portrait with Roque before I left since Mark hadn't seen him recently.

Here's Roque "helping" me with the laundry.
When visiting my best friend Lara in Brentwood, Southern California, I met Anthony Kiedis. He's the lead singer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He was sitting outside the Peet's Coffee about 2 blocks from Lara's apartment with a couple of 12-year old blonde groupies. I embarassed the begeebers out of Lara and Mark by dragging them down there to try and get a picture with him. I walked straight up to him and said, "I'm really sorry, but would you mind taking a picture?" He said, "wait a minute... what is your name?" and shook my and Lara's hands before admitting that he wouldn't feel very human if he started taking pictures with just anybody. I mentioned that we were home from the Peace Corps and he asked where we are serving. When I told him we are living in Bolivia, his eyes lit up and he asked, "So, have you smuggled in a bunch of cocaine?" I bet if I had, I would have gotten his picture. I got a little (more) nervous at this point and started spitting out random coca trivia such as where he should visit in Bolivia to see the plant growing and how many kilos of leaves it takes to produce a kilo of the powder. Answers: the Chapare, 900. After that I'm not sure what I said but the conversation ended pretty soon after. Mark had run away earlier and Lara was relieved that I had finished violating the number one rule of living in LA, that you don't get excited about meeting celebrities. We got something to drink and sat at a table out of ear and eyeshot of him and that was it. Mark told me that he saw Anthony check me out as I walked away. I'm just a little obsessed now but I'm managing by reading his autobiography. He's had a pretty crazy life, and it now makes a little more sense why he asked about cocaine so frankly.

We had already noticed the slower pace of life in Bolivia compared to the states. What I've been told is that the concept of time in Bolivia is based on the Incan idea that time is circular. Any event in time occurs somewhere on the circle, and if the event is missed it can be recaptured on the following trip around the circle. This is much different than USA time, which is more linear, thus the appearance of efficiency, punctuality, and difficulty letting go.

The last time I'd been in the states was late August 2007. During that trip I pretty much bottomed out in the depression rut I was in at the time. It is comforting to notice that I feel 200% better on this visit. So what has changed? Since the first trip, I have learned enough Spanish to understand what people are saying 85% of the time and also enough for me to express myself in Spanish. When I couldn't do either of those things, it was very frustrating. I've made friends in our little town with whom I share baked goods and tea, women who I will miss when the time comes for us to leave. And I've found projects that I enjoy and feel capable of working on.

We took the greyhound/crucero bus from Norwalk to LA Union Station, then on to Stockton via Coalinga junction. Compared to the bolivian bus system, greyhound was way disorganized although once we were on the bus it was ok. They seem to not keep track of the number of tickets sold for a certain route relative to the capacity of the assigned bus. Therefore, the bus that arrived at Norwalk was full, leaving us to miss our connection bus in LA since we had to wait for a backup bus. The next bus arrived an hour later, took us to LA Union, where we had to wait another 3 hours. Since there are no assigned seats and there is uncertainty about there being enough seats, everyone waits in line as soon as a gate is assigned to a certain bus line. It was a colorful group hanging around, not excluding us. I'm pretty sure we ran into multiple people recently released from the psychiatric hospital, who seemed to be comfortable talking to us because of Mark's hair. In general, the population of greyhound riders were mentally or physically disabled (thus unable to drive themselves) or of lower socioeconomic status. The only reason anyone would ride the bus is because it is significantly cheaper than Amtrak or flying. The inherent cost is the loss of many hours of your life, waiting for greyhound to get their act together. We saw no businessmen traveling on the bus, but most people had cell phones. We were having to use the payphones to update people on our location. The bolivian bus system is used by people of all walks of life. Busses are frequent and relatively reliable. When you buy your ticket, you reserve a particular seat and you know it's yours. You get a claim ticket for any luggage you place under the bus. All this comes for 2-3 dollars. We paid $50 each to get from LA to stockton.

Mark's dad, Matt, picked us up at the station in Stockton and took us out to dinner with his family. It was dollar taco night at the restaurant where Matt's son David works, so we grubbed there. After dinner, Matt was kind enough to drive us to Cameron Park where Mark's mom lives. We spent the 4th barbecuing and watching TV, the first down-time we'd had on the trip so far.

While we were in Sacramento, we broke Luna out of the boarding resort, took her to the vet for vaccinations and a nail trim, and then took her to Folsom Lake. She and Mark hiked around for an hour while I took a nap in the shade of a tree and then we ate a picnic lunch. Luna's gained about 10 lbs since her surgery last spring, so she was looking a bit barrel-shaped. Once she's back in our care, we'll be able to get her diet and exercise worked out to get rid of that weight, which is bad for her mildly displasic hips.
We were also able to get a glimpse of Maya, Mark's Mexican calico, who is living with an aunt and uncle in Sacramento. She keeps to herself, spending the night in the basement and coming out to bask in the sun during the day. Finally, there's Javier, the grey tabby living with my parents. He's living the good life and looks very healthy. SACRAMENTO:
We had dinner at El Navillero, a family owned and operated mexican restaurant in south Sacramento. Mark's been going there for years. It was so much food! We also went to the Leatherby's creamery, a family ice cream parlor that was one of our favorite Sacramento dining establishments. Luna's not the only one who has gained 10 lbs lately.

Debating with Republicans. One of Mark's relatives claims that if Obama is elected, he will make the white man pay. I reminded her it's a good thing she's mexican.

Mark left a week before me to return to Panama. He was checked out by his knee surgeon and cleared to return to Bolivia for two more weeks of physical therapy. I had only been booked a one-way ticket to the states, so when I called to schedule my return flight, there weren't many flights available. This enabled me to stay with my parents for an additional week during which I was able to visit friends in the bay area and to be moral support for my mom's surgery.

Being back in the states left me feeling self- conscious about certain things. I think my sense of what was socially acceptable was a bit altered. For example, I noticed that people weren’t talking about their general digestive health as much as PC volunteers do. My nephew was talking about how he enjoyed swimming in the pool, but it sounded like he was saying “swim-in-poo” so I discussed with him how gross that would be. My brother was not amused- fair enough. When we were traveling on public transportation, I noticed that I’m used to it being okay to strike up a conversation with a perfect stranger. Also, blatently staring at people for extended periods of time is perfectly fine in Bolivia. In the US, not so much. As far as getting around town, I’m totally used to making judgment calls at intersections and I’m sure I could’ve been ticketed for jaywalking multiple times.

In closing, I'd like to thank American Airlines, for waiving my checked baggage fees. A 65lb rolling suitcase and a 55lb duffle bag- pretty far over the normal person's baggage weight.

The Day I Made Our Landlady Cry

I´ll start by going back to Good Friday, when I was invited to participate in a Bolivian tradition. Sulema, who runs a local restaurant, invited me to join her to make 12 different plates of food without using red meat. I peeled potatoes with a knife for a while and then gave in and fetched our peeler, which all the women were amazed by. Sulema told me I must leave her all of our things when we leave. Earlier I had given her two cat toys (which she offered to buy from us) for her youngest daughter, Mallen (pronounced My "N"). After peeling potatoes and fava beans, we cooked up several plates- falling short of the required 12. The various dishes were: sardines with potatoes, squash and potatoes with fresh cow cheese, chicken foot soup (also featuring chicken stomach), and arroz con leche. I didn´t get any of the latter which was the plate I was looking forward to the most. Later, Salta feasted on the leftover foot and stomach that I brought home for him.

On Easter morning, I attended Catholic Mass, which was originally planned to start at 8am but didn´t start until after 10am. The church was overflowing, with lots of people standing. Inside, there were very few decorations, one being the currently vacant glass display case normally encasing Jesus. Marigolds were used as "Easter roses" to decorate the pews. The service included a wedding, multiple baptisms, and communion. This was my first Catholic communion, and I didn´t get any wine! Only the adults from the wedding and the priest got wine, the rest of us only got a little dry wafer (and a blessing). The priest took an extra couple of swigs to empty the chalice before rinsing it with holy water, which he also drank. After the service, I joined a group of older women and the priest to zapatear (literally ¨to shoe¨ but meaning to dance) in front of the church with a fiddle player, Don Ramon. He invited me to the wedding reception to drink chicha and wine, eat soup and a plate with chicken, potatoes, and corn on the cob.

Work at the school garden has slowed down since the weed takeover during the rainy season. I did get to help the principal harvest onions we planted back in September. We dug up 10 kilograms in about 1 1/2 hours, using pickaxes. Unfortunately, about a third of the crop had been ruined by an accidental flooding during the time that the onions should have been drying out.

I completed my first mural ever, in La Merced, the site of Alana. We started by preparing the wall, then traced on an outline of Bolivia.

We then had the elementary students help color in each of Bolivia´s 9 departments. I added BOLIVIA over the top.

The final steps were to write in the names and paint the flag of each department. It was dark when I finished, so I wasn´t able to take a great picture of the finished product. Tuesday, April 1 was the anniversary of the school, and we finished on March 29th, so it´s good we got the mural done in time. Here´s one of my helpers.

During the second to last day of painting, the river nearby got noisy all of a sudden. We ran down to see what was happening and saw it rising. Along the banks of the river were 40 year old peach trees growing and cows grazing. I spoke with a worried farmer who said that in 1992, the river rose above where we were standing, up into the town itself.

On the last day, Alana and I ate lunch with the kindergardeners. There was one 4 year-old girl with strawberry colored hair who in the middle of her meal announced, "I like to kill birds and eat them."

In order to get from Alana´s site back to Tarija, I had to flag down a mini-van sized taxi on the road. The ride was very entertaining since it included a soundtrack of Dire Straights, Rod Stewart´s "If you think I´m sexy," Men at Work, the original "I will survive," and "Eye of the Tiger."

Another map project I´m working on is creating a manual for Peace Corps for other volunteers to be able to paint South America maps in their sites. This would complement the already existing World Map project, which is distributed to PC volunteers worldwide. I figure my manual would be useful for volunteers in latin american countries in particular. Below is a picture of a the World Map project completed by a previous volunteer in Alana´s site.

We have begun the World Map project in El Puente as well. There is a large cement retaining wall behind the high school that is a perfect location. The oldest students are working on their own map of Bolivia while Mark and I lay out the grid to enlarge the world map to the appropriate size. The dimensions of world map will be about 2.25 X 4.5 meters. That´s over 6X12 feet.

Below is Adonia Chambi, our neighbor and one of my best friends in our site. I help her with her English and her family gives us fruit and vegetables from their store. We´ve gone to play basketball a couple times but then the ball got punctured by a variety of spiny plant parts on the court. We decided to try leaving Salta in our site while we traveled, and so asked Adonia to feed and water the cat as well as making sure he comes in at night. An additional benefit of having her watch the cat is that she was able to save our vacation by sending us our passports, which I had left in site when I came into the city. Luckily I´d gotten the phone number of her house before I left. I called her and described where our passports were (and what they looked like, since she´s probably never seen one before) in our room. She then put them in a plain brown envelope and sent them to us in Tarija through a system called ¨encomienda¨. Encomienda means you send stuff on the bus to be dropped off (with receipts) at an office. We´d asked her to use one of the bigger buses that passes by in the morning, but she must have missed it and used the smaller, more local bus called the Guadalupana. The "office" of this bus is located in the busy campesino market, and consists of a public storage unit sized garage with a teenager keeping track of what comes and goes with a handwritten roster. As we approached, I saw our envelope sitting on top of a bunch of others and was relieved to know that the system really worked, even for somewhat irreplaceable documents. I now have more faith in encomienda than I do in the national mail service (which recently ended a 2-week strike).

Another girlfriend of mine is Eugenia, who runs a store across the street from us. She and I decided to make a birthday cake for a community member. Another of our neighbors, Dementia, has a store as well. One day she was washing her hair, which is normally stored in braids. Once we took this picture, she asked us to take a picture in her store as well.

So you´re probably wondering what this entry´s title is all about. We live in a complex with about 5 other rooms, all under the roof of Doña Nely. She´s a 67 year-old Bolivian who has never been out of the department of Tarija. Her husband died about 20 years ago, her only son lives in El Puente, and her daughters live in Santa Cruz and Spain. Recently I´ve been becoming aggravated over the fact that whenever I see her, she tells me I´m doing something wrong. For example, I have lots of potted plants and she complains about how much my watering increases her water bill. I have offered to pay a little more, but it seems she just doesn´t want me to have the plants in the first place. She doesn´t like cats, saying that they are from the devil and that they are ¨cochinos¨ (pigs) because they poop in the dirt. Yesterday, she started up about my plants again and it was the last straw. I started to cry, which is what I do when I´m angry and not expressing myself, so I went inside to hide. She figured out I was crying and asked about me so I came out and did the best I could to explain how frustrating it is to always be criticized. Of course, I was still crying a bit and she started to feel bad, too. All in all, I´m glad I told her to be nicer, I just wish I didn´t have to cry about it first. We´ve noticed that she´s often nicer when she´s a little drunk, so maybe I should just invite her to a beer when I want to talk to her. Here she is with her dog, Benjamin.In early April, we spent a great week in Cochabamba getting to catch up with other B44 volunteers as well as some of the new B47s and outbound B41s. The first three days were spent attending personalized appointments with physicians, dentists, dermatologists, and orthopedists. Mark and I each had only one cavity, due to older fillings. It was by far the most painful drilling experience I´ve had, due not to lack of technology nor talent on the dentist´s part, but because it was a deep cavity in a back molar. It´s all fixed now. Mark had a better experience with the dentist. We both got flu shots, which left me with a dark bruise on my arm and Mark with the flu itself. Unfortunate timing, considering that we left for Costa Rica the following weekend (see more about that below). The last two days in Cochabamba were spent discussing our projects, visiting various NGOs in the valley, and getting security updates from PC staff. Here is our group (down to 21 from the original 29 members)

That´s right, Costa Rica! We went to see one of my best friends, Marina, get married at her Irish fiancé´s parents´ house in San Isidro de Heredia, about 30 minutes northeast of the capital city, San José.
Costa Rica was far more developed than Bolivia is, with metered taxis, highways casinos, and TWO Denny´s restaurants. Of course, we had to take advantage of classic diner food. On three separate occasions.After the wedding, we headed out to the Caribbean to get some much needed beach time. On our way there we stopped for a lunch break and were left behind by our bus. A man at the rest stop helped us flag down an emergency taxi and called the bus driver to wait for us. Miraculously, the taxi caught up with the bus and we were able to continue our trip.

We passed through Puerto Viejo to Punta Uva, where we stayed at a small resort called ITAITA. We highly recommend that place if you ever go to Costa Rica. There were very few guests at the resort, which was composed of small bungalows with patios and hammocks- a five minute walk from the beach. That night we were unable to find an open restaurant to have dinner at, so the resort manager offered to make us a plate of gallo de pinto. As we were eating, a crab crawled onto the patio trying to get into the kitchen and was shooed away by an employee. The next day we realized that the ground around the resort was covered in crab holes. As we walked around, the crabs would retreat into their homes almost mechanically. It reminded me of some sort of amusement park ride. Hanging around the bungalows were small, chirping geckos, which reminded me of our visits to Mexico. Punta Uva is about 5 km from Puerto Viejo, a very touristy place. We rented bicycles and rode there the first day for lunch and to act touristy. We found a great restaurant with strawberry daquiri happy hour and delicious coconut shrimp and spent as much time as possible there. The next day we rode our bikes south to Manzanillo, where we ate a picnic lunch on the beach and later got ripped off at the only restaurant there. We do NOT recommend Maxi´s restaurant because it was expensive and the food wasn´t that great. However, on the road between Punta Uva and Manzanillo we heard an explosion of howler monkeys and were able to locate them hanging out in the trees. During our picnic lunch, I carved up a fresh mango and chowed down (the mango juice all over my face can´t quite be made out in this photo).



On May 10th, we were invited to Bobby and Rocio´s wedding in Tarija. Bobby is an agriculture volunteer from our group who had been dating Rocio, a bolivian, for about a year. He plans to stay in Bolivia after completing his service, and his mother is going to move here from Florida to retire as well. The photo below includes (from left to right) Bill, Dan, Bobby, Christian, Mark, and Tim.

Here are the ladies: Stephanie, me, Julia, Rocio, and her friends.

EAPs, Robberies, and Probation

So it has been awhile since my last post... 5 months now. As Erica reported, we had a rough time toward the end of the year being robbed the day after Christmas at the Tarija bus terminal. What Erica did not say is that I was also robbed about four weeks prior while in Santa Cruz with my mom. This robbery complicated things for us in more than one way. I´ll try to make this tale as short as possible...

My mom visited during the Thanksgiving holiday and we had a great time. She flew into Bolivia via La Paz and we met her at the airport in Tarija. We spent one night in Tarija and then headed out to our home in El Puente. Mom brought us lots of goodies and presents from Erica´s parents as well. Here we are looking through our booty.

We spent five tranquilo days in El Puente. We cooked some good food, took mom on some short hikes, and she met our friends and work partners in town. She had a wonderful time in our site and fell right into sync with the slow campo lifestyle. We headed back into Tarija for Turkey Day and so that she could meet the rest of the Tarija volunteers. Here we are waiting for the bus in El Puente.

We enjoyed a nice traditional US Thanksgiving meal and had a rare opportunity to be with all 20 or so Tarija volunteers. After Thanksgiving we went on a hike just outside of Tarija to a set of twin waterfalls. The same place that Erica and I would later spend Christmas day. We took a lunch and spent the day at the river enjoying the water.

After almost two weeks in Bolivia it was time for my mom to return to California. We do not have an international airport in Tarija so she was flying out of the city of Santa Cruz on an early morning flight. Because the flight was so early she had to leave Tarija one day prior and spend the night in Santa Cruz. Mom did not want to go alone, so I bought a ticket with the plan to accompany her for the night and then get back to Tarija. Well things did not work out so smoothly.

First of all, Bolivia is a very passionate country and is currently going through a sort of political identity crisis. Just before we arrived last January the country voted on an "Autonomia" referendum. A choice was put to the people whether to grant greater power to the departments (states) and therefor take power away from the federal government. Well 4 of the 9 departments voted in favor of Autonomia and one was 51%-49% against. Offically the referendum did not receive a majority of the total votes and lost, but the four departments that voted in favor believed they had a mandate from their people and moved forward on the path toward Autonomia. The federal government disagreed with the local governments and there has been tension ever since.

Tarija is one of the departments which voted in favor of Autonomia and we have seen countless marches, work stoppages, hunger strikes, and massive roadblocks (known as bloqueos.) Whenever things start to get a little crazy Peace Coprs activates their Emergency Action Plan. (EAP) In the year plus that we have been here we´ve experienced at least 6 EAPs. During an EAP we are not allowed to travel and have to call into the central office every day. The central office then reports to Washington DC on each volunteer´s whereabouts and status. We were told during training that one of the easiest ways to be kicked out of Peace Corps was to be non-compliant during an EAP. Follow? OK, back to the mom story...

So in the days around Thanksgiving things were again heating up in the political spectrum. There was talk of huge marches and department-wide work stoppages. The morning my mom and I were to fly to Santa Cruz, Peace Corps initated an EAP. To make my situation more complicated, I had not applied for vacation leave and just hoped to travel to Santa Cruz and back under the offical PC radar. So with an EAP in effect, and traveling without permission, I flew with my mom to Santa Cruz. We checked into a hotel and went out to a movie. When we came back I noticed that some of my things had been gone through. Upon closer inspection it was clear that I had been robbed. My iPod, GPS, and a decent amount of cash was gone. We found evidence that someone had climbed through the window and helped themselves to my things. My mom was quite angry and we tried handling the situation ourselves but were really getting the run around. I made the decision, knowing I was in violation of PC policy, to call the central office in Cochabamba and essentially turn myself in and ask for their help. We had purchased PC insurance for our stuff but needed an offical police report and a PC report in order to make a claim.

In regards to the robbery, PC was wonderful. There was a US Embassy police unit there within 30 minutes and they walked me through the whole process. They brought out their own investigative unit and dusted for and found a good set of prints on the window and in the room. Eventually we got back cash value for everything lost. On the administrative front, I was worried. The next morning, as half the country was honoring a two-day work stoppage, I had to call the head administrators and hear what my fate would be. I was told not to return to Tarija, as they were considering begining Administrative Separation procedures. I had to write a letter pleading my case and had to submit copies of my flight to prove that I had not been traveling illegally for an extended period of time. After two days of sweating it out, they allowed me to return to Tarija and El Puente and to continue my service. Erica and I both received memos that we were on notice and any further violation of PC policy would earn us a ticket home. Officially, I was busted for "Non-compliance during an EAP" and Erica for "lying about the whereabouts of her husband."

I felt pretty shitty and was really down for awhile after. We were both embarrassed for a number of reasons and of course did not want to have to explain why we were kicked out of Peace Corps. The incident also made me realize even more how blessed we are to be here in Bolivia and how fragile the situation can be. Even though we`d been here almost a year and had some rough times, we were no where ready to go back home.

So after I got back to Tarija we went back to El Puente and immersed ourselves even more in our small town life. We spent a solid month in site before returning to the city for Christmas, when we were robbed again. Blah!! Peace Corps security was wonderful again and helped us through the process. We went back to EL Puente for 5 weeks this time and didn`t return to Tarija until Carnival in Feburary. Again, the extended time in site was great as we attended several b-day parties and other various fiestas. Without a doubt the robberies have helped us integrate even more into our small town culture.

We are enjoying cooking and learing new recipes and improving our chopping techniques. Some of our favorite meals are: spaghetti, beef & broccoli, tacos/burritos, Thai peanut chicken & vegies, and various soups and breads. We´ve also established a mini-routine of cooking with neighbors and have learned a few bolivian dishes that we look forward to bringing back home with us. Here I am rolling out tortillas with our wine-bottle rolling pin.

We have also been enjoying getting to know better our fellow volunteers. It has been great to meet good people from all over the country. We visited our friend Emilia in her site a few hours south of Tarija. Emila is from Virgina and is in the same project we are, but a year ahead of us. She has been a great source of info and help for us.

We´ve also grown close to a couple who met down here, Dan and Julia. Dan is from Minnesota and is a Micro-Enterprise volunteer and Julia is from Florida and is an Environmental Ed volunteer. Both of them are city volunteers so they enjoy getting out to the countryside (campo). They came out to El Puente for a few nights and we had a great time. One day I took Dan on one of my favorite hikes to the top of a 10,000ft. peak a few miles from our house. Here we are relaxing after our outing.

So overall things are good, we are happy and healthy and continue to marvel at this amazing country. We´ve learned to better appreciate the good and the bad and can hardly belive we´ve been here well over a year now. We´ve become pretty good at washing clothes by hand, have totally adapted to only 1/2 days of running water and electricity, and are still surprised that we´ve lived without a refrigerator for a year and eaten as well as we have.

One thing that is still a little difficult for us is the amount and frequency of drinking in the campo. We´ve seen things pass as normal here that would be scandals in the US. Here is a shot of a restaurant that was right across the street from our house. Can you spot the man who maybe has had a little too much vino?

Finally, we´ve loved our cat and being friendly to all the animals in town who look like they could use a good scratch behind the ear. They all most definitely help keep us sane and remind us of home.

Hasta luego,

Marcos

We done got robbed...

The day after Christmas we were at the bus station waiting to return to our site. Mark left for about two minutes to check which bus we’d be on and to get some food. A man sitting next to me asked me a question, and I wasn’t sure whether he was speaking Spanish or English or Quechua, or just mumbling. I asked him to repeat himself several times and finally said I couldn’t understand him. He got up and walked away and I got a bad feeling. So I checked our luggage and noticed that Mark’s backpack was gone. I was hoping that he’d been wearing it but when he returned it was clearly not so. The guy who was asking me questions was just distracting me so another guy could swipe Mark’s bag. I was so mad- I’d never really felt like I could punch someone until that day. I ran around the terminal looking for the guy and of course didn’t find him. We filed a police report and I got to look through a digital mug-shot collection, where I may have identified the dude. Unfortunately, they didn’t know where he lived or how to contact him. Luckily, we have insurance, so the cost of the items stolen would be replaced. What is lost forever are 3 months worth of pictures on our camera and about half of Mark’s wardrobe and personal things. Mark was really good about it, as I felt bad that I’d been the one in charge of our things. I guess the lesson we learned is that we may be safe and known in our site, but that in Tarija we’re just a couple more gringo tourists. So we’ve cranked up our travel security and smarts to avoid future losses, such as camouflaging our gringo backpacks in colorful plastic bags that all Bolivians use to travel.

I finally attached legs to the worm bin, after searching for a way to pre-drill holes into the hardwood so that I could tighten screws all the way by hand. The last step was to collect enough shredded paper (2.5 kg or about 5.5 lbs) to compose the bedding that the worms will live in and eat, along with food scraps from the kitchen. I had shredded about 1 kg by hand, and then I discovered that the PC office in Tarija has an electric paper shredder. The shredding advanced much faster with the help of this wonderful tool. When I got back to our site with everything ready but the worms, I found that our neighbor had moved the bin, thus bending some of the legs that were already a little unstable. At first I was pissed, but then I realized it was good that this weakness was discovered prior to adding another 10-15kg of mass into the top-heavy bin. So I’ll have to redesign the legs, maybe using large PVC pipe. Perhaps the bin will have to be floor-bound for the first round of worms, but I’m concerned that it might leave the bin more vulnerable to unwanted bugs.

I broke my first guitar string ever-and replaced it!

I’ve been able to integrate a little better into our community by attending birthday parties. The first one I went to was for Alan, the grandson of our landlady, who was turning 3 years old. I was invited to help “motivate” the kids at the party by our neighbor Eugenia. At first, she was trying to get me to dress up as a clown, which was way out of my comfort zone. Eventually I got her to compromise for me bringing our Frisbee and my watercolor set to give the kids temporary tattoos. When we got there, we hosted a kids dancing contest. Originally, we were going to award prizes to the best dancers, but once we started handing out the prizes, those who didn’t win started getting upset. Especially Alan’s older brother, Erik. I took some short videos on our camera and played them back for the kids, who were in complete awe. Then I started giving tattoos. The kids loved them… it was hard to get them to stand in line, and many were demanding more than one picture. The boys’ favorite tattoo was a spider on its web and the girls preferred butterflies and flowers. Dinner was served- a plate of potatoes, corn on the cob and chicken, then we sang Happy Birthday in English and Spanish and Alan cut the cake. It seems to be custom here for the birthday person to take the first bite directly from the cake, no hands. As you can imagine this often leads to the birthday person´s face being slammed into the cake, even if done gently. The last party of Alan´s party was the piñata. I was a little disappointed that there was no blindfold or baseball bat, only a string in the bottom that opened up the thing to greedy little hands below. It also seemed that the kids took as much joy in the confetti that came out as they did with the candy and toys. Little did I know that after all the kids left, the adults would keep partying. Pitchers of ¨chuflay¨ (clear soda and singani or pure alcohol) were brought out and there were only about 5 adults to drink them. I got some of them to play with the frisbee, but that became a lost cause after a short period of time.

There isn’t a recycling program in our site, so we’ve been stockpiling cans that we’ve used in cooking. One day after working on the worm bin and gathering up bent nails left over from hammering, I realized that the nails made a pretty sound when they clinked together. So I took some cans and lids and nails and made them into this wind chime.

A new project that I´ve just started involves another volunteer, Alana, who lives to the south of Tarija where it becomes semi-tropical. Here is a picture of what it looks like when you get off the bus there.
The project is to paint a mural of a map of Bolivia at the local primary school in Alana´s site. So far we´ve covered up the orange brick surface with two coats of white primer and we´ve painted the outline of each of Bolivia´s 9 departments. I´ll go back in a few weeks to help her color in each state, add labels and state flags to each department, and help the students place their handprints on the wall as well. The high school in our site has requested a world map and south america map in addition to the map of Bolivia, so I´m looking forward to doing lots of painting!

Here´s Mark with two of our landlady´s dogs, Oso and Benjamin (from left to right).

Both of the dogs are very friendly and will follow us around town if they have nothing better to do.

Here are all three of our landlady´s dogs, hanging out on a gravel pile in front of her house. Bruno is on the left, Oso in the middle, and Benjamin on the right.
Here are the last pictures I´d uploaded right before our camera was stolen. The pictures show my herb garden back in November. I´ve been able to find plants of basil, oregano, rosemary, two types of lavender, mint, strawberry, celery, and swiss chard. I´m also using my new skills to grow cilantro and basil using a seed bed and later transplanting the small plants to larger containers. I´m going to try broccoli next, since it is not sold in our town.

Here´s the garden now, with the cat included for scale. I recently planted some California poppies- would it break the law to pick them here?

Christmas was a little strange here. We were invited to view the contestants in a holiday decoration contest in our site, which turned out to be funded by the local cement factory. There were only 4 participants, all of whom were administrators at the factory. The decorations were provided by the factory as well as the prizes- a flat screen TV and a DVD player. One of the participants was really excited to meet Mark and I and brought us into his house for us to see his fossil collection. At first we thought he wanted to have us buy them, but no. He was just really into his fossils. He had even drawn a picture of a dinosaur and framed it to hang over his cabinet of fossils.

On Christmas Eve, we were treated to an american style dinner at a local 5-star hotel courtesy of Winston´s mom and brothers. Winston is a Tarija volunteer who will be done with his service in April. His family brought cranberry sauce, stuffing, country ham, festive holiday music, santa hats, and even put together a little gift bag of chocolates for each of us. That night at midnight, the city erupted with fireworks as if it were the 4th of July. The next day, Mark and I hiked up to a set of local waterfalls and spent the day at the river. I was feeling pretty homesick, crying a lot, so we might have had more fun otherwise. I slipped on a rock and got the nastiest goose egg bruise I´ve ever had on my shin.

In order to process the melancholy I was feeling, I started to ponder ¨What makes Christmas Christmas?¨ For me, the answers were: family, fireplaces, wind up toys, homecoming, cold weather, football, and singing silent night by candlelight. Few of these things were available to me, so no wonder I didn´t feel too good.

New Year´s was a lot better for me. I decided to spend it in our site, rather than in our regional city, to see how our town would celebrate. It really paid off, because I was included in many festivities. It started by attending a service at the Assembly of God Church that´s pretty active in our town. I wasn´t sure what to expect, but it ended up being quite entertaining. They had organized skits performed by little kids to convey which actions will send you to hell, such as dancing to the wrong music or reading the wrong literature. There was a rock band (that was pretty bad) that took more time setting up their sound equipment than actually playing. My favorites were the break-dancing teenagers and the toddlers dancing and rapping to reggaetón music. Around 11pm I left to meet up with our landlady and her family to pass into 2008. I had made some cookies to share, and I got to try a tasty pork soup called picana which was outstanding. Alan, the boy whose birthday I´d attended, turned out to be her grandson, so I got to hang out with him, too. We toasted the new year with some apple cider at midnight. The next day, she had invited me to have lunch with her, which I figured was a New Year´s Day activity. About an hour before she was due to come get me, the girl who I´ve been teaching Engligh to next door, Adonia, came by to invite me to eat chicharrón with her family. Chicharrón is a slow roasted pork very similar to Mexico´s tasty carnitas. After a big plate there, I invited Adonia over to our place to hear some of our music, and the landlady showed up. I did have the heart to tell her I´d just eaten, so I went with her. The lunch turned out to be the 60th birthday party of a lady named Martha. We ate chancho al horno, which is yet another pork plate, simple and baked. It was good, but I felt as though I´d consumed an entire pig in the last 18 hours. There was a cake and lots of dancing. I ended up losing my voice because one had to scream to be heard over the loud music. After about 8 hours of this, I convinced my landlady that I couldn´t take any more and was allowed to leave.

On January 13th, our landlady invited us to have lunch with her and her daughters in the common area connected to our room. It actually turned out to be her birthday party which went on for a while with lots of dancing and sharing of food and drinks.

The most recent birthday party I´ve been to was for Alan´s older brother, Erik. It was pretty standard compared to the others except that once the adult part of the party started, the gate blocking the only exit was locked. I asked the hostess to open the gate for me when I was ready to leave, and she refused. She told me I needed to dance more. There were several Bolivians who were equally annoyed by this and we devised a plan to climb a ladder to the roof to escape if need be. I danced for a while, keeping an eye on the gate. Eventually a group of people left and I snuck out with them. By then I´d been there for about 8 hours.

One day I was sitting on our front step drawing as school was getting out. A group of school children passed by and only one boy had the courage to approach me and ask what I was doing. Once I showed him how I was drawing he asked if I could draw on his hand. He liked the spiderweb design I'd been sketching. As I began to draw on his hand, a group of about 15 children swarmed around me to see and eventually began to demand their own "tatoos." After adorning the students with spiderwebs, rats, hearts, and even my own initials, they eventually went home. A few weeks later, I ran into that first boy at a birthday party in town where I had brought my set of watercolors to give the kids tatoos. He introduced himself as Jaxel (pronounced Hacksel) and I gave him a new tatoo with a spider on the web this time. Shortly after the party, I was informed that Jaxel's mom had recently died in a bus accident and that he lived with his grandmother. He soon figured out where we live and now comes by on a weekly basis to refresh his tatoo. He turned 8 last week and I bought him his own set of watercolors so that he can practice too. I've been working with Jaxel to be more polite- saying "por favor" and "gracias." During school vacation, not many kids were around for him to play with and so my husband and I would play american football with him in the street or let him ask questions about the strange stuff in our room. It soon became clear that he was testing our limits on what we'd let him do (he would ask how much our things cost, or he'd come by 3-4 times a day and bang on the door until we opened it). We realized that we had a great opportunity to clarify our boundaries as practice for being parents some day, as well as providing a stable adult presence in Jaxel's life. Although I was uncomfortable at first, I practiced telling him no when appropriate and have continued to work on his manners by demonstrating and reinforcing them. If I haven't affected anyone else in our community, I'm sure that my relationship with Jaxel will be memorable for both of us.

Salta has become a pretty decent hunter. He has caught at least two birds, a huge moth, two mice, and a guinea pig. Unfortunately, he´d rather play with his prey instead of mercifully dispatching them. We usually end up having to take the victim away and let it go while locking the cat inside until he forgets what happened.

Mark and I made homemade tortillas for the first time, which was easy but a little time consuming. Salta, of course, was very helpful. Here he´s sitting on top of our water filter.

The weekend of February 2-3 was Carnaval in Bolivia. The Friday prior to Carnaval is ¨Comadres Day¨ when women get together and party. A friend of our 3rd year volunteer hooked us up with a comadres group called the Sanroqueñas. We got to wear bright pink shirts and we bought baskets full of colorful decorations, fruit, and bread. The baskets are traditionally exchanged between pairs of women who then become comadres by dancing all night long together. Here we are (Julia, Salta, and me) prior to starting the fiesta. Julia is about to finish her service but has decided to stay on as a PCVL/volunteer support person for another 6 months or so.

We paraded from the Church of San Roque down to the avenida in a snakelike fashion, dancing in pairs. We sang along with the band accompanying us... Somos, somos, somos, Sanroqueñas somos. Plata que tenemos, Plata que gastamos. This loosely translates to ¨We are the sanroqueñas. Money that we have, we spend.¨ There was a variation used that said, ¨Money that we have, we drink away.¨ Once we reached the avenida we danced the traditional Cueca dance which is done in pairs and reminds me a bit of the do-si-do from middle school PE square dancing. Each person waves a scarf in the air and it´s pretty fun. It was a little tricky because we couldn´t hear the music very well. Eventually down the parade route, the crowd seemed to be getting bored, so I entertained them by throwing grapes and pieces of bread from my basket at them and occasionally breaking into the running man or the sprinkler dance, both of which were big hits. When the parade ended, the sky opened up so we hunted down a taxi to get back to the starting place to claim a warm meal and drinks that we´d paid for. Unfortunately we would have had to wait in line standing in a flooded raquetball court to get them so we gave up and ordered pizza instead.

One of the most fun parts of Carnaval is the water-play. A little strange for a country where people deal with drought and water pollution, but ridiculously satisfying. During the period of several weeks before and after Carnaval, one can expect to be splashed with buckets of water or hit with water balloons or spray foam in any public place. The volunteers who were in Tarija for Carnaval decided to take advantage of our 3rd year´s 5th story apartment to take revenge for any attacks we´d fallen victim to in the past. Here´s a short, low-resolution video summary of what took place.

(Video coming soon!)

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