“Hey! Do you realize we’re in Bolivia?”…”¡Hay huevos en la calle!”

So this past weekend was quite gringo-filled…it was Tech Weekend which meant we didn’t have language class on Friday morning and we all hopped in the PC bus (which we call Moby Dick for its size and appearance) and took a little road trip with the training staff to some of the surrounding communities that are sites of some of the volunteers. We stopped at La Angostura for lunch (the first fish that I’ve eaten since we’ve been here!) and then continued on to Tarata which is this little colonial town that is the current site for one of the volunteers working in tourism training guides, teaching English and doing some business consulting with a one-woman weaving operation. We went on a tour with the guides that she had trained and I attempted to follow along with what was happening although I didn’t really retain anything being that I have a difficult enough time in English remembering historical facts but overall it was a good experience to see what a potential site is like (it’s one of the ones that someone in our group is going to go to and replace Patti, the volunteer that is there right now). Tarata is famous for being the once capital of Bolivia because three different presidents were born there, including one that was kind of nuts apparently and made the capital there while he was in office. After that we stayed in this little hotel where we occupied all the rooms and had a parrillada which was this AWESOME bbq that the training staff arranged for us…ridiculously tasty meat cooked in this massive roast along with caesar salad(!) and these yummerific brownies that our two 2nd year volunteer tech training helpers had made.

The next morning after breakfast we headed to Arani to do our activity with a group of tejadoras (weavers) that another volunteer, Karen, works with. They were sooo cute! They knit all these things out of alpaca…super warm, light, soft, durable, you name it…and also pricey. Sweaters that they export to the US sell for around $200…but here we can buy them for around $50 since there’s no shipping cost involved…birthday or Christmas gifts perhaps? We did a game where we divided them into groups and had them make bracelets while we planted “distractors” such as Howard feeding one of the women soda to demonstrate the importance of fulfilling orders on time, an issue that this particular group had problems with in the past. The best part was definitely the dinamica (or icebreaker) that they used to divide the women into groups…each person got a little slip of paper with an animal on it…chancho, vaca, perro, gato, oveja…and then everyone had to close their eyes and make the noise of the animal and through listening find the other people in their group. 30 people stumbling around a room with their eyes closed making animal noises…and half of them traditional Bolivian women anywhere from early 20s to my grandma’s age snorting like pigs and moo-ing like cows…pretty much priceless. It was great to see the actual work of some of the volunteers in their sites and it gave all of us a taste of what’s to come!

Then Saturday night we had our first night out in Coch…one of the 3rd year volunteers who’s just finishing up his service as the PCV Leader for micro-enterprise volunteers had a bbq at his house and then we went out to a bar afterwards for some dancing. Interesting highlights of the night were definitely the prediction game we had…of who would get together with who…via anonymous ballot and announced in a circle (and one of the predictions did come true that night!), the would-be liability in the US of having an actual fire pole in the bar that went from the 2nd level to the 1st level where people could just slide down (you wouldn’t think that is a smart idea in a place where they’re serving alcohol) or climb up in the case of one of the current volunteers, and the adventure getting back to our little village from Coch where the trip usually takes around 1.5 hours in trufi. 6 of us hopped in a taxi and had agreed upon 50 bs for the trip back to our community but then halfway there the taxi driver stopped and tried to rip us off by saying we needed to take two taxis since we had more than 4 people…we decided not to take that crap and ended up taking a trufi and then a taxi. The taxi ride was quite amusing though…at one point No Doubt came on the radio and we all started belting out Don’t Speak with 6 of us plus the driver stuffed into the taxi…I think the driver was quite amused by us and Tyler had the comment “hey, do you realize we’re in Bolivia?” and it’s funny how you’re like ah…we actually are in Bolivia…and the amusing randomness of the situation that people had to be there to understand. Like when we were in Tarata and on the tour…we had just finished up visiting a festival that was happening at a church in the town and were walking on the road when all of a sudden Daniel, our future boss/APCD, was like, oh look it’s Chuckie! So scary…there was a van driving by and in the passenger seat someone was holding this Chuckie doll (as in Child’s Play) up in the window and you couldn’t see the passenger behind it so it looked like Chuckie was just sitting there in the window staring at us…only in Bolivia man. It’s like how only in China I would be held hostage in a KFC by a man selling us bootleg DVDs when the police came to try to bust him. Ah yes. Another Bolivia moment…Monday night I was in my house with the fam and there was a trufi that had its lights shining in front of our house for awhile so my mom went out to investigate. Lo and behold…huevos en la calle! (Eggs in the street!) My mom ran back in the house to get my sister to come help…basically our neighbor across the street has chickens that they use for egg production and they had like literally at least 1000 eggs in those crates that hold 3 dozen and they were all in the street! Some broken some not…apparently they had put them in the back of a taxi/trufi to bring them to the market to sell or to the little tiendas in the neighborhood to sell…and the back door wasn’t closed right and when they hit the bump in our rocky unpaved road…the door came open and all the eggs fell out in the middle of the street! Definitely que pena…but it was one of those, oh man, you have to laugh a little moments too…at least 10 people out there sifting through a bunch of broken eggs finding ones that weren’t and then putting them in the crates…all while there is this mad windstorm outside (it gets sooo windy at night here) with dust blowing everywhere and then other people scooping up the “scrambled” eggs from the potholes in the street and putting them in containers so they wouldn’t go to waste! One kid was like, look I got a whole yolk! Ah yes…our boxer Randall will be eating eggs for quite awhile for dinner…

Monday afternoon we got…*drumroll please*…a book with information about all of the sites! It makes it a lot more real once we see detailed job descriptions (which will definitely evolve during our two years here) with other info of how long it takes to get to the regional office for each site, how far away it is from a major city or if it’s campo-campo…which means in the middle of nowhere and you better get tough. But I have a lot of faith in the APCD (Associate PC Director) for our project area who is in charge of placing us in the sites…he seems to be a pretty good judge of how tough or wimpy you really are and what you’re looking for so I think he has me pegged as a non-hardcore person (correct)…and we’re still working together on figuring out what kind of job I want to do. Right now I’m looking at a few sites that I’m interested that are spread out all around the country…one is in Tarija (southernmost department/state that is right on the border of Argentina…that means good steak and wine!), two are in Santa Cruz department (hot, tropical, fun/social for PC volunteers), and one we went to for Tech Weekend (Tarata) which seemed decent and is pretty close to Coch. We’ll see though…it’s a big puzzle to get all of us placed in sites that we’re happy with and in general I want to believe what Daniel says…if you’re going to be a good volunteer you’ll be a good volunteer anywhere. And I guess on the flipside…if you suck and hate it…you’re going to suck and hate it anywhere you go. I just hope I get to do something with computers…some of the sites have semi-technical components…like possibilities of working with setting up computer centers or creating computer curriculum for schools or even one of the sites working with tourism has people using Excel to analyze tourist data. I heart Excel! Haha…I’d have to say that’s one of the few skills I’m fairly confident with after three years of plugging away in front of a computer so hopefully I’ll get to use it!

In other semi-American news, I made pizza with my host mom tonight! When I was in Arani over the weekend I bought this massive pan (bread) that turned out to be ridiculously duro (hard)…I was at a loss of what to do with it, was thinking about turning it into croutons or bruschetta or something but then I figured it was the size of a pizza crust so I would try to turn it into pizza. I bought some mozzarella, sauce and salami (yeah yeah, they were out of pepperoni) and baked it up…with my host mom’s recommendation of adding some of the soup broth she had made to outer crust to soften it up and putting some butter on it before the toppings (duh! everything is better with butter!) It turned out decently and the family said it was rico (yummy!) but I’m just glad I found a use for the rock-hard frisbee size bread I bought. Next up for this weekend is making lasagna with them (at special request of my host mom).

We have an exciting rest of the week planned, going to the training center as usual on Wednesday for classes (followed up by dinner in Coch), Thursday or Friday we have our language interviews, Thursday we get to have dinner in Coch in groups at one of the staff member’s houses so we can see non-campo life (yeehaw!) and then this Saturday night we’re all planning on staying in Coch overnight at a hostel so we can go out and partaaay! (since usually we have curfew at midnight) Keep on posting comments! They make me feel loved! And I’ll keep ya guys updated…till later, adios!