Bright and shiny Monday morning (ok more like 3AM) I left for Miami. Upon arriving I encountered some hippie types in the van to the hotel. You guessed it...fellow volunteers. (Britta from MN and Russ from GA who is sick right now) Once in the hotel we lunched and then sat through two days of some chipper, short, man talking at us.
There are 29 volunteers (14 guys, 15 girls) and we are a rather homegenous group: mostly white, well traveled, with no hand-eye coordination.
Here are 4 of us!
I missed some part of this because an illness I had right before leaving flared up again. Since there were no docs I had to go to the hospital...wore a gown and everything. I got a shot in the fanny and no lellow lollipop. Oddly, I didn´t hear anyone speak in English the whole 6 hours I was there.
Tuesday at 6PM we went to the airport and sat there for a very long time. I was the only one to watch the State of the Union but I had many requests to give a summary. Flight to La Paz at 11 and a layover for 8 hours until our 20 minute flight to Cochabamba. Many poor little sick volunteers. Our first meal in Bolivia was Burger King. sad.
I´m not sure I can explain Coch. It is a medium sized city and it´s tranquilo. Bolivians (here come the generalizations) speak pretty slowly and are friendly. Our staff is particularly awesome although my language teacher seems a smidge strict. There is the requisite nice bits of town with everything that you would expect in an American city and then there are the people who live in their cars ¨down by the river.¨
grounds of training centerThe mountains are huge and beautiful and above the city there is the largest statue of Christ in the world. At night it is lit up blue or green. (Don´t worry. after some sleep more adjectives will be used)
Mostly our time has been occupied by interviews about our site, our language abilities and our job placements. We had our first language class and first immunizations today. Two other people are in my language class. I think we are the grammatically correct afraid to speak-ers. On a side note, it´s surprising how dirty you can get and I´ve broken every nail so far. The horror.
There are plenty of older volunteers here and they keep dragging us out to eat and drink. I´ve already broken a rule but you´ll just have to guess which one. I think the food is pretty good but I´ve been eating in restaurants mostly (pizza, burritos, y pique machu) Pique is a traditional dish with potato wedges, hot peppers, meat, tomatos, sausage and a hard boiled egg. It´s traditional and apparently the only spicy thing here except laqua which is like salsa. I have to learn to finish large meals becuase it is uber offensive not to. The soup is phenomenal.
Everything that they tell us, particularly distasteful things, are followed with ¨Welcome to Bolivia.¨ For example, ¨Don´t chew coca or we´ll kick you out. welcome to Bolivia.¨¨Don´t throw toilet paper in the toilet. Put it in a wastebasket. Welcome to Bolivia,¨ ¨Don´t eat raw tomatoes or you might get a brain worm. Welcome to Bolivia.¨
So it´s Carnaval here and it is a custom to throw water balloons at gringos and pretty ladies (and I´m both thank you!) Every day as I walk to class these niños lay in wait to dump buckets on me (literal buckets). Lately I´ve been chasing down the little punks and emptying my water bottle on them but it´s kinda unpleasant to pass a day sin waterbottle. One of the other volunteers actually picked up a child and shook him upside down. I think I will adopt a less drastic solution... a supersoaker. Or my community action plan will address water conservation.
Ah the community action plan. We are supposed to scope out our communities and figure out what issue we should address and with which target group (eg trash and kiddos). My group got hooked up with a school but when we went to visit the teacher to discuss possible ideas he got it into his head that we were presenting that day. Sixty-six little eyes looking at us expectantly. Eeeps!
Jesus loves me this I know because he glows in the dark. Really!
Other things to worry the parents- There are stray dogs everywhere and many of them are crazy. We have learned to carry rocks around just in case we need them. My tech trainer actually recommended that I bring a large stick. So far I haven´t needed either but I don´t really want to see how well my rabies shots work.
There have been some huge thunderstorms. This causes the volunteers to dream pretty exclusively about war, bombs, and pretty ladies carrying large needles. I guess the thousand vaccinations are getting to us.
We´ve had several field trips...the archeological museum (fascinating culture! Our guide made some sort of joke about lobotomies and the NY Yankess but I´m not sure I understood.), some art galleries (where we were forced to talk to the artists), Mt. Tunari (llamas!), and of course the waste management plant. If you care for further details on any of these do tell.
