hola todos! como estan? hey everyone, how are you?
ojala que todos esten bien. i hope that you all are doing well.
lo siento que yo no he escrito en tanto tiempo. sorry that i have not primero quiero decirles que
yo estoy bien y que estoy feliz. first i want totell you that i am well and happy.
la semana pasada yo estaba muy ocupada. last week i was really busy.
ahora voy a contarles sobre mi viaje a santa cruz, concepcion, el carmen ysan miguelito del sur.
now i am going to tell you all about my trip to santa cruz, concepcion, elcarmen and san miguelito del sur.
fue un viaje muy largo, por eso, no puedo decirles cada cosa que me hapasado. pero voy a contarles las cosas interesantes.
it was a very long trip and because of that i can´t tell you everything thathappened. but i am going to tell you all of the interesting things.
lo siento, ahora solo voy a escribir en ingles. ojala que sus traductoresfuncionen. i´m sorry, now i am only going to write in english. i hope thatyour translators are working.
ok, so we spent last wednesday night at the training center. it was freezingcold and there is no heat there. i ended up staying up all night talking tomathias and a few other people because our feet were too frozen to sleep. itis amazing how it can be so hot during the day and so cold during the night.the weather here is crazy.
on thursday morning we got up at 5am to eat breakfast and get on the road.we left at 6am on the peace corps bus with don roque driving. don roque isthe best bus driver anyone could ask for. he used to drive for really important people, like ambassadors and stuff. but he says he prefers todrive for the peace corps because gringos are nicer than important bolivian officials.
thursday we spent on the road and drove out of the valley into the chapare.
from visiting. it is a tropical jungle type area where they grow a lot of coca to make cocaine. it is a dangerous area because the bolivian governmentand foreign patrols are always making huge drug busts there. we stopped forlunch in a place called villa tunari. it was beautiful. it was hot and humidand there were ladies selling delicious tropical fruits everywhere. it is amazing how different everything was when we had only driven about 4 hours away from cochabamba.
after lunch we continued on to the city of santa cruz. it took us until about 6 pm to get there. the city of santa cruz is much different than cochabamba. it is newer, cleaner, and the people look different. there were a lot more foreigners and bolivians with lighter skin. there were a ton of american restaurants and products to be bought. they even had a subway restaurant. santa cruz and its people currently oppose the bolivian government, because the president gives more funding to the people in the highlands, where he is from. the people of the tropical low lands have pretty much had to fend for themselves and have successfully built what theybelieve to be the greatest city in bolivia. because of all of this santa cruz, the city and province, would like to become independent from the rest of bolivia. they want autonomy and the country has been on the verge of civil war for a long time. it is an interesting time to be here in bolivia to see what happens.
anyways, we stayed the night in the beautiful city of santa cruz in a prettynice hostel. they hostel even had hot showers! it was so awesome to take ahot shower after not having had one in almost 50 days. i never felt so cleanin my life. in the late evening i went out with a few friends to a cubanrestaurant and ate the most delicious fried bananas that i have ever had andi drank the most wonderful lemonade i have ever tasted...or maybe it just
seemed that way because i was so hungry and thirsty lol.
the next morning we continued on our trip to the city of concepcion. we drove about 6 hours to get there and went through some of the most amazing countryside i have ever seen. we went through an area that looked like the savannas in africa and drove over countless bridges. at one point we crossed a bridge over what seemed to be a mini desert. it was actually a dried up river bed. don roque told us that during the rainy season the river gets so high that they sometimes have to shut down the bridge. it took us a long time to get over the bridge because they are currently working on repairing it. they had the bridge open to traffic in one direction for 30 minutes and then switched to let traffic in the other direction for 30 minutes.
we arrived in concepcion around 2pm to get some lunch. concepcion is a large town, but not too large. the dirt is red and clouds of red dust fly up behind all of the cars. it was very hot and dry. it was like being in a red desert. there is a law in the town against 2 story buildings, so all of the restaurants and offices are only 1 story high. we ate lunch in a restaurant that belongs to an italian immigrant who is a friend of the peace corps. he even made a delicious eggplant pasta dish for the vegetarians in the group. after lunch we got back on the bus to go on to el carmen. el carmen is an isolated peace corps site about 2 hours from the city of concepcion. the current volunteer there is named kevin and he will be there for another year. he met us in concepcion to direct us towards his site. to get to his site we had to drive through the tropical forest on a bumpy dirt road. the bus broke a lot of tree branches trying to squeeze down the narrow path, but we eventually made it. we arrived in el carmen as it was getting dark, which was kind of scary because the town does not have electricity. we safely arrived at the small library where we were going to stay, which thankfully has a solar panel which provides electricity. the local women cooked dinner for us and we ate by flashlight in the school meeting building. kevin made pasta with tomato sauce for the vegetarians and i would have to say it was the best meal i had ate in bolivia. since there was not a lot of room in the library a couple of my friends and i volunteered to pitch our mosquito tents outside and sleep under the stars. it was a beautiful night with a nice breeze, great weather for sleeping. we all laid there for a while looking at the stars. i had never seen so many stars in my life. i even saw the southern cross constellation, it was one of the most beautiful things i have ever seen. it was an awesome experience to share with my friends and i am sure that none of us will ever forget how beautiful the sky looked that night or how many shooting stars we saw.
in the morning we woke up to the sound of pigs...who were invading our campsite. it was actually pretty funny. we got up and ate breakfast, which was delicious tropical fruit salad, and then got our things together for the health fair we were putting on. we had a health fair in the field behind theschool. my group presented the topic of nutrition. the other groups presented on the importance of healthy family relationships, brushing yourteeth, and washing your hands. my group played a rely race game in which the teams had to race to classify foods in the correct food group. it was a lot of fun and even the adults of the community had a great time running around and shouting. it was a great experience. after lunch we all went to the local soccer field to have a gringos vs bolivians soccer game. the bolivians kicked butt and the gringo guys were really mad, but us gringa girls just thought it was hilarious. in the evening the towns people put on a great folk dancing show for us and did what looked like a may pole dance. they were celebrating el dia de san juan, st. johns day. all the gringos even were invited to join in the dancing, we had a blast.
on san juan´s day people have huge bonfires and burn replicas of the things they would like to be blessed with in the coming year. it is sort of like their new years celebration. people burn fake dollar bills, small wooden animals, and even tiny dolls if they want more children. we went to one of the fires and got to watch. then at midnight...the people go crazy. they spread out the bonfire and take turns walking over the hot coals. it was one of the most amazing things i have ever seen. they say you have to walk across within 10 minutes after midnight and that if your faith in God is not strong enough, then your feet will get burned. i have never seen anything like that. after walking across the coals the young men take off their beltsand chase around the smaller and younger people and hit them on the backside. it seems really violent and strange from my cultural perspective,but to them it was completely normal and acceptable. they say they hit thes maller people to make them grow up strong and healthy.
the next morning we left and went back to concepcion to prepare for the teacher workshop that we held monday through wednesday. we stayed at a boarding house that is normally used by teachers visiting from the countryside. it was a pretty nice place, although the showers were ice cold. thankfully josh had sent me a solar shower in the mail that i was able to fill up and use. it is amazing how happy little things like having hot watercan make you when you have been out of the states for awhile. sunday evening we all just hung out in the town and i had dinner with aaron, mathias and tristan. i tend to hang out with the guys more than the girls in my group,the girls are always wanting to dress up to go dancing and sing karaoke...which are not things i like to do lol. we had dinner at a restaurant owned by a man who studied in ohio during his college years. heis a really nice guy and makes wonderful vegetarian food because he was taught to cook by a former peace corps volunteer.
on monday we had our first session for the teacher workshop. about 30 teachers showed up, although 50 had signed up. we had activities and discussions all day long about different learning styles and how to adapt lesson plans for children with different needs and learning styles. i faciliated some of the discussions on using positive language in the classroom, which was easier than i thought it would be. the teachers were really receptive and open to sharing their ideas and admitting their past faults in the classroom. the 2nd day of the workshop the teachers were split into groups and rotated to different sessions. my group held a session on how to integrate the ideas of gender equity, democracy, and human rights into math activities. we worked with the teachers on creating story problems and manipulatives to use in their classrooms. it was a lot of fun. in the afternoon we broke the teachers up into groups to work on creating a lesson plan, keeping in mind all of the things they had learned. i worked with a group to prepare a math lesson for a first grade class. it was going reallywell, but then i got called for my site interview with the peace corps assitant director. while i had my interview with my APCD, wendy, about which site i would be placed in, one of the bolivian teachers decided to take charge of the group and change all of the ideas we had come up with...which i was unaware of until the next day when we had to present the lesson to real live children in a local classroom.
so on wednesday we were in a local 1st grade classroom...and i got the shock of my life when the bolivian control freak teacher handed me the lesson plan she made and told me that we were going to do it her way. she let me present to the children about 5 minutes and then told me something like "good job,now let me do the rest". i was angry and so were the other 2 bolivian teachers in the group. the lesson turned out horrible and was not interactive at all. she had the children sitting in their desks copying from the board, which is totally inappropriate for first grade students. anyways, it was not fun, that is all i have to say about that. it just goes to show that people are resistant to change
that evening things started going wrong. my friend mathias started to feel really sick and was throwing up. tristan and i had to go get the peace corps staff to take him to the clinic, he ended up spending the night in the clinic in concepcion. also during the night, my friend erin walked into one of the bedrooms and said "i feel dizzy" and suddenly passed out on the floor and smashed her nose. we had to take her to the hospital as well. in the morning my friend emily started to feel sick, she started to throw up and have stomach pains...so we took her to the hospital as well. it was really scary. mathias and erin were still not feeling better after being on IVs all night and emily was looking pretty bad. the peace corps staff was concerned that it was some kind of food poisoning and that more people were going to get sick, so we decided to take our trip to san miguelito del sur but not spend the night out there in case more people started to get sick.
the trip to san miguelito was only about 45 minutes, but of course it was ona very bumpy road. san miguelito is very small and the people were very friendly. we presented a quick nutrition workshop in the church to the school children and then spent the majority of the afternoon working on a school vegetable garden with the 8th grade students. we had a blast joking around with them and having a water fight with the hose. after we finished the garden we played a soccer game, and of course lost miserably to the bolivians. it was a good time. that evening we returned to concepcion to visit emily, erin and mathias at the clinic. mathias was the only one who was not getting better. he was looking pretty bad and the doctors could not figure out what was wrong with him. we were all getting pretty worried.
we spent the night in concepcion and got up early in the morning. i woke up with a sore throat. i looked at my throat with a flashlight and found out that my tonsils were covered in white stuff, not a good sign. we decided that because we had 3 sick people in the hospital, plus another girl and i with sore throats, that it would be best to get on the road to santa cruzto get all of the sick people to the hospital and my friend jamel and i to get our throats checked out.
in about 6 hours we made it to santa cruz and went straight to the hospital. they admitted mathias right away and gave antibiotics and took stools samples from erin and emily. they gave jamel antibiotics and a shot. when i went into see the doctor the nurse started to page for someone from pediatrics, they thought that i was about 13 years old. it was hilarious.when i had been in the waiting room there was an older woman sitting there with me and there was also another gringa looking middle aged woman. when i came back out after seeing the doctor the old woman was there still but the other gringa was gone. the old woman said in a sad voice to the peace corps staff member, "the little girls mom has already left her". she thought the woman was my mother and that i was much younger than i actually am. it was so funny. we didn´t tell the woman that she was not my mother, we justagreed with her and laughed once we got outside. the doctors ended up giving me 2 shots, one of antibiotics and one for inflamation, because my tonsils were pretty much touching eachother. so i spent the rest of the evening
relaxing and trying not to sit much because the shots had made my backside pretty sore.
emily, erin, and i were feeling better later in the evening, so we went out shopping and to eat. we found an awesome restaurant with mexican food, so we had some quesadillas and drank fresh juice. it was great until erin started to feel sick again and we had to leave. but before we left we bought some delicious chocolate chip muffins for breakfast the next day.
mathias was still sick and erin had to go back to the hospital. peace corps considered flying them both back to cochabamba, but in the end they had to come with us on the bus in the morning. the doctors loading them up with drugs so they would not have to go to the bathroom on the 12 hour trip. i thought that was kind of a bad way to handle the situation, but that is what we did. so we all got on the bus and made the 12 hour bumpy road trip back to cochabamba. and my bottom hurt the whole time pretty much, because thebus was bouncing around and the nurse had given me some pretty big bruises when she gave me the shots. and to make things worse my throat really was not feeling any better. but no worries, i feel much better now.
we arrived in cochabamba around 10 pm, and we took everyone home. they even took mathias to his house, though we all thought it was a bad idea. we had been stopping all day for him to use the bathroom and i did not think he wasin a good condition to go home. and i was right, because the next morning he ended up in the hospital again.
wow, i am going to be late for class. that will have to be all for now. i will try to write later or tomorrow and tell you all more about my trip and my site. i hope you enjoyed my ongoing babble.
have a wonderful day and take care. don´t worry, i am feeling better and soare my friends. mathias got out of the hospital yesterday.
ok, sorry to cut this short. more to come, i promise.
love and hugs to allpaz y amor,
beth in bolivia
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