Cupcakes!

Based on the comments that I recieve, many of you view my experiences here as positive and many of you also believe that I get sick a lot. I thought briefly of cataloguing the times I wrote that I was sick with a brief explanation but decided against it because besides my three-month wicked snot-fest, I have been okeydokey and parasite-free. And things really are going well here but I gotta say that this past month has been inexplicably rough. Let´s see if I can inject some humor into it so you can get a taste of my crankiness without lobbying for me to come home.

In college, I had a theory that whenever I had one of those days that everything went wrong, the cafeteria would serve cupcakes. Or maybe because there were cupcakes I had a bad day. Who knows?

So last I wrote, I was in La Paz translating a document for USAID. I hate translating. Odio traducir. Seriously, people who don´t even speak English will argue with you. "Are you sure that´s the right word?" I got to meet the official US Embassy translator. He was...interesting. He was shocked to see that I was a young punk in jeans and a t-shirt and I was shocked to see that he sported an 80s rocker hairstyle. He spoke verrrry slowly and didn´t seem to grasp the concept that you can´t translate directly...and that spell check is essential. Also a bummer, I swear it was hailing in La Paz...and if you´ll recall I didn´t have shoes.

La Paz got a little better after I found a little taco place, finished my work and bought some new shoes. I decided to stay the weekend and chill and headed off to an art museum. All the artists were Bolivian and the house itself was splendiferous. At first the guide talked to me in pidgin Spanish. I swear he pointed at me every time he said "you." After about five minutes of this, and a more or less fluent question from me, he went off. I learned more than I will ever need to know about Bolivian artists. (well. maybe not) I was also invited back to a new gallery opening. I think at this point he may have been hitting on me. After the museum I got Chinese food and ice cream....which I mention only cuz it was spectacular. Friday my friend came into town and we went to the cemetery to check things out for Día de los Santos. Bolivian families go from house to house eating (Trick or Treat almost) and then to the cemetery to eat, drink, pray etc. The tradition is to bring loaves of bread shaped like babies. They´re called t´antawawas which means bread baby in Quechua. My friend actually brought me two! Cemeteries in Bolivia are a bit different. The graves are like cubby holes, stacked on top of each other. Because La Paz is a big city they are about two stories high or maybe 12 cubbies stacked up. I tried to ask about the general hygiene of that but was afraid it might seem morbid. Still curious though. And sorry, no photos. I wasn´t sure how disrespectful it would be because neither my friend nor I have anyone buried in that cemetery. Saturday we went up to Lake Titicaca and Copacabana. So pretty. For lunch I had trout. That afternoon we went back into the city to the market which was scary and big and crowded where I felt ill...fever, aches. So I went to my hotel and to bed. The next day I slept pretty much all day: in the taxi to the airport, in the airport, on the plane, in the taxi to the bus terminal, on the bus, all night.

Here´s where it gets fun. Monday, back in my site, I felt more or less fine. I went to the schools like I had originally scheduled and they told me that they hadn´t been informed that I´d be out of town (aaaaaaaaaah!) and therefore wanted to postpone our thrice-postponed class (aaaaaaah!). I felt wholely unreliable. That night I swear my fever was so high that I lost a few brain cells. I spent all morning calling the clinic, the doctor, the doctor´s wife until I finally got an appointment. I had salmonellosis! Figuring I wouldn´t recover overnight, I called the school to postpone our four-postponed class. (My co-workers came to visit me and asked me not to tell my parents that I was sick because then they´d think Bolivia is a horrible place.) So word, as it tends to do, got around that I was sick, and the family who feeds me every Monday and Wednesday offered to feed me Thursday too because they were afraid I´d restrict myself to crackers and rice and bananas and starve. (The family is of the Adventist pastor and I teach their 9-year old English. He´s one of my favorite people.) Sooooo I went to walk with the Pastor to his house on Thursday because they have a mean mean dog but he left without me so that when I arrived at the house the dog bit me on the knee. I hit it (to disengage its teeth from my flesh), yelled at it, and promptly burst into tears. The family came home to find me in the patio, crying and wheezing with the dog facing me barking.

Late that week I realized I lost my bank card, I snapped my glasses in half and a mean German priest yelled at me in front of a small group of Bolivians. I had neglected to greet him when I walked into the church hall and he of course attributed my rudeness to being an American and just had a complete cow. He made me cry. My crying prompted a sympathy response of many people telling me what shmo he is and recounting all the other mean things he´s said in the past.
Other sad things included my pension closing. I chose the pension cuz my friends eat there, they always have vegetables and Don Julio takes special care to explain to me what exactly is in the meals. Once, when he only was serving guinea pig, he offered to cut the meat off the bones for me so that I wouldn´t have to deal with a guinea pig carcass on my plate. (I had soup instead)

Lets see. I also got a wicked sunburn. I had to go to the funeral of a small boy. And when I showed up to the school on our scheduled day, they had no idea that I had rescheduled with the director and they postponed yet again (aaaaaaaaaaah!). In fact, a kiddo came up to me and asked why I had "failed" his class by not showing up twice. And now my favorite nine year old and his family are moving away! And my favorite technico was in a motorcycle accident!

Things aren´t all bad. My favorite technico is alive and kicking with at least one leg. We had a party for Don Julio. I have spare glasses and a new bank card. I FINALLY did the class. The second graders were a disaster but the fourth graders rocked my socks and were so excited about planting seeds that they actually showed up on a Saturday and stayed way longer than they needed to. In total we planted about 70 seeds to grow trees. I got to visit my two schools in the campo. In one all the kidlets were so excited to show me that their plants were more-or-less surviving (corn and watermelon) and they practiced their environmental poem for me. They presented the poem at our environmental fair. In the other school we read the Lorax and wrote the end of the story in 10 years time. I went back by popular demand to play some team-building games. I did some footwork to let teachers know I´ll be here next year and that we should plan a curriculum when school starts again. And I met all the technicos in the mayor´s office. My English class has 5 more or less dedicated students. (If they miss a class they have to bring snacks. I eat well.) Oh and Thanksgiving rocked!

Just so y´all know, the political situation here is getting a bit hectic.
Protests and paro civicos continue (although not where I live) and I have to call Peace Corps every day to verify that I am indeed alive and well....which I am. Don´t worry.

The Adventures of Super Lenni

The last we saw our intrepid hero she was waiting with bated breath (what the heck does that mean anyway?) to see if her students actually remembered to bring their planting supplies to school....Many adventures have transpired since then.

First our brave volunteer encountered 40 shovel-wielding 4-year olds who had high hopes of planting a garden. She set them to work mixing dirt...because what kidlet isn´t capable of dirt mixing....and successfully created a small garden of lettuce and radish. (Well the seeds were more or less successfully planted. Whether or not they survive under the excessive ministrations of the Kinder remains to be seen.) The very next day Super Lenni mounted her trusty steed and pedaled out to the campo...where they were totally not expecting her. She decided to stay to hang out with the kids, dance, play basketball and just generally celebrate the Dia de Mujer. Unfortunately danger lurked in the form of a drunken community member waiting to ambush our hero and the directora of the school and invite them to get shnakkered. But using their powers of divination (or something) both Lenni and the Directora escaped back to their respective houses without having to participate in any raucously drunk celebrations.The drunk community member is still emotionally wounded by this slight but our hero is pretty sure that she wouldn´t be able to withstand the torture of explaining her feelings about Bolivia or Evo Morales repeatedly.

Super Lenni returned to the campo the very next week to visit a new community (unfortunately for her having to carry her stupid bike up several flights of stairs, across a river and through large piles of sand...next time taxi) and to teach a class about trees. She is pretty sure that some learning was had by all. Lenni also had an encounter with the local gang of kidlets who said "If you don´t come to play with us on Sunday...WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE."

The very next week, our favorite volunteer decided to take a trip to outside Sucre with the grand purpose of helping a fellow volunteer with a puppet show and pizza party. Unfortunately Bolivia is kryptonite to well laid plans and our hero hasn´t done anything planned since then. Instead of leaving on Tuesday, she endured a suprise meeting with her Peace Corps boss. Wednesday (instead of leaving) she endured a surprise meeting with the Mayor, or would have if he had showed up. Instead of making it all the way to her friends town on Thursday she only made it to the city of Sucre due to blockades and the like. This was fine with our hero cuz she was tired and wanted a pizza and a warm bed.

In the grand white city of Sucre (which by the way is Super Lenni´s favorite city now) she met up with her BBT who turned out to be very enthusiastic tour guide. As a result, our hero got to see the Casa de Libertad where Bolivia was born, the castle of the only princes in South America, several thousand churches, dinosaur tracks, the watchtower above the city, the eiffel tower, the national archives, and the first bank, train station and university in Bolivia. She also got to visit several mechanics and battery shops, eat lunch with his family, and have some quality gringo time with other volunteers.

Two noteworthy things: 1. Foriegners have to pay triple the price to get into museums than do Bolivians. Our superhero, defender of justice, had a bit of a cow and yelled a bit about it until she hit on the bright idea of showing her Bolivian ID card. (The definition of Bolivian in the case of entrance fee extends to all who look remotely Latino)
2. What was the second thing? I think it was that while lunching with the family..who were sort of elitist and rude to the wait staff, our hero ran into her old sidekick from Camargo. She leaped out of her chair yelling greetings and hugging him and no one mentioned this strange occurence until about 20 minutes later "Do you know him?"

On the way back to Camargo, our hero was waylaid by her counterpart agency who wanted to send her to La Paz to translate something. That is where our hero remains today...translating a stupid document while enduring a slight altitude-headache. Because she was trapped en route to her home (ie on the bus in the city of Potosí) our hero doesn´t have shoes with her (just Tevas) and is also lacking clean underwear. Such is the hero´s life. But perhaps she´ll stay the weekend here for a bit of vacation.