Beth in Bolivia #4

hola todos!

lo siento que yo no he escrito ningun mensaje en tanto tiempo!

sorry that i have not written any messages in so long!

espero que todos vayan bien. i hope that all of you are doing well.

ok, first before i get into the advenutures of beth in bolivia i must clearup all of the false things that were printed in the news herald newspaperarticle that was in the paper yesterday.1. i did not attend MSU as it says in the title...i went to CMU2. i never called the lifestyle here primitive, i would not use a word likethat in reference to someone´s way of life or culture3. i did not work in a bilingual head start classroom, nor did any of thechildren speak spanish. i told the reporter about how we posted words inspanish around the class room, nothing more.here is the article link in case you still want to read about it, sorry forthe confusion. i feel really bad having those un-truths printed about me insomething that many people will be reading. if anyone feels like emailinganne sullivan at the news herald, please do. though i doubt you´ll see aretraction.http://www.thenewsherald.com/stories/060807/loc_20070608001.shtml

ok, now i need to explain why you have not heard from me in so long. last weekend i went on a tech field trip to tiraque to work in a children´s home.it was awesome and i wrote an hour long email about it earlier this week...and then the computer proceeded to eat it. so i got pretty angry and left the internet place without sending anything. now i´m going to try to re-cap last week.

last friday the whole integrated education group took a bus 2 hours up intothe andes to a place called tiraque. in tiraque there is a children´s homeowned by an evangelical church. we went to put on a self esteem, teambuilding, and leadership workshop along with various computer classes. wearrived at the home on friday night and were given a very warm welcome bythe children and staff. the center is home to about 120 children rangingfrom 5 to 19 years old. not all of the children are orphans, some come fromlarge rural families that can not afford to feed them and send them toschool. those children live at the home during the week and go home to visittheir families on the weekend. so when we were there, there were probablyonly around 70 kids there. the center is pretty large and has its ownsoccer/basketball area. the children work pretty hard, because the center istrying to become self sufficient. they raise pigs, bees, and fish to eat andsell. they also have 2 green houses, one was built by a peace corpsvolunteer. the children take turns doing the chores and taking care of theyounger children. the children sleep in bunk beds and each have a smallwooden cupboard with a lock to keep all of their things in. the latrines aresquat latrines, though pretty nice compared to some of the other ones i haveseen. we spent the time before dinner playing with the kids, and thebolivian boys challenged the gringo boys to a game of soccer. the bolivianboys beat the gringos to a pulp, it was pretty funny. the bolivians reallyseemed to enjoy watching all of the gringos get frustrated and get the ballstolen from them. i spent the evening playing with a group of smallchildren. we played some of the games i learned in argentina and we sangsome songs. when it was dinner time the bell rang for the children to lineup. they all stood in lines and the peace corps trainees had the opportunityto introduce themselves. the children sang us a welcome song and said aprayer before we ate thanking god for the food and for the gringo visitors.dinner was simple and nice. we had a potato, some rice, a fried bananaslice, a fried egg, and a piece of sausage. i happily gave my egg andsausage away and traded a gringo meat lover for his fried banana slice.after dinner we were served tea, which was really nice because the weatherhad turned really cold really quickly. after dinner was cleaned up we put onour workshop. i was in charge of the ice breaker activity. we played a gamewhere everyone stands close together in a circle and one person stands inthe middle. the person in the middle says something about themselves, liketheir favorite food, and anyone who agrees or feels the same has to movefrom their spot quickly and find another spot. the person left without aspot has to stand in the middle and share. the point of the game is todemonstrate that although we are different, we still have a lot of things incommon and can all be friends. after my activity we played severalleadership and team building games. the children really seemed to enjoy itand were not happy when we had to leave.

after leaving the children´s home, we went to the hotel...that was notreally a hotel. there were not locks on the doors, no running water, andthere was garbage under the beds. we finished setting up our travel mosquitonets on top of the beds and went to sleep. the travel mosquito nets arehilarious, you set them up like mini tents and climb in through a drawstringhole. i´ll have to try to send some pictures.

in the morning we had breakfast, bread and tea, at the hotel. we went backto the children´s home and spent the morning playing and giving computerclasses. the center has 5 computers which were part of a past peace corpsvolunteer´s project. we worked with them on how to type a document, save adocument, use paintshop, where to put your fingers on a keyboard, and thatsort of thing. the kids were really excited about it. my group worked oninserting clipart and wordart into microsoft word documents. i had a reallygood time and i learned a lot of computer terms in spanish by working withthem.

when i was not giving a class i was playing with the children. it is soheart warming and heart breaking at the same time to be with them. they havesome much love to give and all they want is love and attention. we had ablast playing a variety of tag games and singing songs. i learned a lot ofnew games and songs that will come in handy when i´m at my site. it isamazing how happy these children are, although they have next to nothing. itreally makes you appreciate what you have, and it also makes you feel kindof guilty. these children have been neglected and mistreated by the world,yet they are some open and willing to reach out to others. we could reallyall take a lesson from them. it reminded me of the children i met in braziland those i worked with in argentina. it really opens your eyes.

while i was playing with the children i met an amazing little boy. his nameis evo, which is the name of bolivia´s current president. he is a 5 year oldorphan that was picked up off the streets of cochabamba. no one really knowshis story, but he says his name is evo and he is 5. this little boy is oneof the kids who lights up the room with his smile and energy. he reminded meof the preschoolers back in mt. pleasant (who did not speak spanish asstated in the newspaper article lol) for some reason he really clung to meand was interested in playing with me. he was full of smiles and hugs. icould not stop hugging him and singing with him. i really had never had anexperience which both warmed and tore up my heart at the same time until imet little evo. you could tell that he had been neglected and deprived ofaffection, but he was determined to make up for lost time and make sure thateveryone around him felt loved. all he wanted to do was hug everyone, dance,and ask 1000 questions about your life and why the gringos were there toplay. i had such a hard time leaving him. he had clung to me in what seemedto be a never ending hug. i just wanted to put him in my backpack and takehim with me. i´m sure that i´m going to have a lot of children touch myheart in that way while i´m here.

after that trip i am now more sure than ever that i am in the right placeand doing the right thing with my life. now i can´t imagine doing anythingelse.

so that was last weekend...now on to the rest of the week.

monday was boring, i worked on my project and finally got it all typed up toturn in. we had tech class in the afternoon and we had interviews with theassistant peace corps director. we talked about site placement, which wasreally exciting for me. the 2 sites i´m most interested in are both in thedepartment of santa cruz. they are called el puquio and la embocada. elpuquio has no electricity, but they bought a generator to run a fewcomputers and the internet. they are just finishing a town library and wouldlike a volunteer to work on promoting literacy. literacy is definitely oneof my favorite development areas. la embocada has never had a peace corpsvolunteer. the town has no electricity or internet, but the peace corps istrying to find some form of communication for emergencies. the town is about15 mintues outside of concepcion, which is a pretty big city. they arelooking for a volunteer to work on nutrition and to train teachers in newteaching styles. i think it would be an awesome challenge to be the firstvolunteer at a site, and i love the idea of working with nutrition, that issomething they are really lacking here.

tuesday was relatively boring. i went into the city and bought some peanutbutter, soy nuts and honey for my little host brother joel. he loves it. i´mso happy that he will eat the peanut butter and soy nuts because i have madeit my personal goal to get him out of stage 1 malnutrition. doña willma isexcited that we found something he loves to eat and that will fatten him upa bit.

wednesday was another day at the training center. we had a presentation onmental health and had our midtraining langauge evaluations. i got a prettygood "report card". we also changed language professors, which means thatnext week i will not have classes with carla on fridays and wednesdays, wehave a new teacher named vicky. she seems pretty nice, but also sort ofstrict. after the meetings and presentations the bus driver roque took us tothe supermarket to buy food for the party on thursday. we made plans to havean american style bbq pool party because it was a bolivian holiday, whichmeans no classes or meetings!

thursday was awesome. first i got up early and went for a run with mathias.we didn´t make it very far, it was cold and the lack of oxygen was hurtingmy lungs. i had breakfast with his host family and then we took a walk tothe cementary. we were told it was close by, but it took us over an hour towalk there. it was beautiful and creepy. the earth was so dry and there wasdust blowing all over the place. almost every grave had fresh flowers, whichwas such a stark contrast to the desert like surroundings. it was a goodexperience to have.well, thursday was a holiday here. so no work and no school. george´s hostuncle has a house with a pool and a sauna. we paid him 3 bolivianos each touse the pool and 5 bolivianos for those who wanted to use the sauna. i didntfeel much like swimming, although it was quite hot out. i hung out in theshade and at the delicious guacamole, french fries, and chocolate chipcookies that we had. of course some of the gringos got a bit crazy and a bitdrunk, but for the most part it was a relaxing party. some of the littlebolivian host siblings came to swim, and they were too cute. they basicallyswim in their underwear or these funny sweater material swim shorts. we allhad a good time goofing around, doing silly yoga poses and gymnastic typestuff. the food was awesome, and it made us all feel like we were at atypical american pool party. it was like being on vacation, but with a bunchof bolivian babies running around.

friday i had my first class with vicky alone at my house. it was kind ofoverwhelming. she is very intense and makes way too much eye contact for myliking. we did a lot of worksheets on grammar, so i feel like i learned alot. i´m just not a big fan of the one on one type learning, it sort ofmakes me nervous. i got through it though and doña willma made us a goodlunch. we had fried swiss chard, carrot and tomato salad...and of coursesome kind of soup with the meat taken out of my bowl. she cooks better whenthe professors are over for lunch lol.

and today is saturday, another wonderful day in bolivia. laura, mathias andi went into cochabamba to go shopping at the cancha. the cancha is this hugemaze like open market where you can get anything from used american clothesto fresh cuts of meat. it is a very confusing and interesting place. youhave to be careful because the child robbers will slice open your bags andtake your stuff without you even knowing. we went looking for the prettyblankets that the bolivian women use to carry everything from babies topotatoes. we found some pretty nice ones, but they were expense. so we endedup buying the cheaper lower quality blankets. laura and i want to carrystuff like the bolivians do. mathias found a cool hat and i also bought somesmaller pieces of colorful fabric to make head bands. i´ll let you all knowif my joann fabrics skills and my mini sewing kit are able to produceanything worthwhile.

after we left cochabamba we came into quillacollo to eat lunch and use theinternet. we ate at an ice cream place called moby dyck´s. it has ahilarious picture of two little gringo kids and a whale on the front window,so we had to check it out. i had a cheese bread type thing and a peachyogurt smoothie, it was so good. then we all ordered ice cream. it wasn´t ahealthy lunch, but it was a nice change from rice, potatoes, and mystery soup.

so that is my life up until now. this week i don´t have much going on. i´mstarting my independent study of spanish grammar and i´ll be doing a lot oflaundry by hand. it should be fun.

well, thanks for reading my endless babble. i hope you enjoyed it.

i want to say happy graduation to emma wagensomer, who graduated last weekand i totall missed it! sorry!

i also want to say thank you to those of you who have sent me emails. i´mgoing to try my best to get back to all of you as soon as possible. thanksfor your patience, and remember that i really do appreciate getting thoseemails! it makes me feel not so far away and out of touch with the states.

i sent love and hugs to all...i´ll try to write again soon.

*all you need is love, love never fails*

paz y amor, beth in bolivia