I also work in eight schools doing environmental education. Three of those schools have projects left over from a previous volunteer and apparently I am supposed to make sure that they’re sustainable. How I’m to achieve this hasn’t been communicated to me. But I’ve been having some issues with communication lately. For example, my friend stopped talking to me for two weeks because I didn’t wave at him enthusiastically enough as he passed on his motorcycle. In my defense, I wasn’t wearing glasses so I didn’t actually recognize him until too late.
This weekend, after several hellish English classes and a splendiferous session cleaning out the tree nursery with my fourth graders, I went to visit another volunteer in her site. We sat in her new library for a few hours, made ghetto sushi, hung with some buddies and finally went to the bar (I’ve visited several times and we never manage to make it there) to dance. Evidently I have some sort of dancing talent…but I think that Bolivians just have limited exposure to black people. On Saturday we went out to the town of Incahuasi (house of Inca in Quechua) to watch an auto race. It started two hours late (of course) but the campo outside of town is so beautiful and we occupied ourselves by talking and drinking beer. We met a man nicknamed Underwear who carried me across the river so I could take photos. There was also a corn fair so we ate a lot of corn-based products.
Sunday we came back to my site for a fair to promote eggs as we are friends with several of the technicos who work on this project…including the boy who I slighted with my weak wave. Steph and I ate lots of egg-based products including a slightly disgusting batido (egg beaten with wine). Then we all went to a barbecue afterwards where once again I impressed with my dancing ability.
As Dad says whaddelse. I got asked out by a 60 year old man. Got my butt kicked in basketball last Sunday. Peace Corps cancelled a project development workshop for my group. Attendance to this workshop is mandatory if you want to ask for funding….so we’re a bit screwed. The politics are heating up again as they amend the new constitution, accuse volunteers of being spies, and stay out of that situation with Columbia .
On Father’s Day so we had a party at work where the guys had to sew buttons, dress babies and peel potatoes; I can say that they can all do those things better than me.
For Easter I planned to hike up to the stations of the cross on the mountain above town but my students me fallaron. Instead I was kidnapped and forced to peel thousands of fava beans for the traditional Good Friday lunch of locro (fava beans, pumpkin, corn, peas) and aji de haba (fava beans, cheese, sardines, corn, peas, potatos and hot red sauce). Gas was had by all.
That´s so not very newsy...really all my time has been taken up with teaching english, planning to teach english, and complaining about teaching english. Besides that everything is going swimmingly and I have a few good garden projects on the horizon.
