Tech Week = Fun Week!

First of all, thanks Mary for the magazines! Got them right before I left for Tech Week so I had some nice reading material on the bus ride and was able to share with my fellow trainees…

So I spent the last week and a bit more (Sept 28^th to Oct 6^th) on Tech Week which is basically the capstone of our training where we get to put what we learned into action. We traveled to Semaipata (gorgeous little tourist town), Pucara (little pueblo in the middle of nowhere without electricity but is on the way to La Higuera which is the place where Che Guevara died/was captured) and spent most of the week in Vallegrande (awesome awesome town with great food). There were definitely some pretty classic moments along the way and within our group of trainees we really got to know each other a lot better which was definitely worthwhile. The fun began even before we left the training center (where we slept overnight in our Spanish classrooms and Tammy and I learned the art of how to set up a travel mosquito net)…Colin was eager to get a haircut so we all took turns at hacking at pieces of his hair and giving him a mohawk with his purple bikini line trimmer (which he claims is exactly the same as the beard trimmer that is the same model but just in black…coming from the guy that has the pink digital camera…do we sense a pattern here?)…eventually we managed to give him a decent buzz cut and then convinced Tyler to also get his hair buzzed for the first time in his life. Hey, Peace Corps, you’re experiencing a bunch of things for the first time, why not a nice short haircut? I was almost tempted to give the head shave another try too since it would be much easier to maintain greasy hair if it were only a centimeter long but I held myself back. The next morning we hopped in Moby Dick (the PC bus) and headed on our 10 hour ride to Semaipata…only to be stopped on one of the roads in what seemed like a traffic jam, but actually was a potato jam (only in Bolivia, man…) which was these massive bags of potatoes that were in the middle of the road so no cars could pass…Armando asked a bunch of the guys in our group to get out and help and move the sacks of potatoes but we just had to laugh when they went out there and all they did was stand there and even with their lame attempts to move the sacks of potatoes…in the end it was probably some cholitas (the women in Bolivia with traditional dress and seem to have superhuman strength with the amount of stuff they can carry on their backs) that finally cleared up the problems and then we were on our way again… On the night we stayed in a hostel in Semaipata, a few of the Santa Cruz volunteers came out and decided it was time to go out and have some fun. Sarah, Lindsay and I decided after a nice dinner and ice cream (yum!!!) it was time to head to bed so we went back to the hostel and I set up my lovely travel mosquito net and hopped in ready for bed. It was later that night after Sarah and I had some good laughs about Don Roque finding stool samples in paper bags in his mailbox at the training center (apparently that is what happens when someone is sick and needs their sample analyzed in the lab in Coch) that Jonathan (one crazy loud dude that is one of the current volunteers getting ready to end his service) decided to rouse everyone left in the hostel and get them to go out to Discoteca Che Wilson (apparently THE hot spot in Semaipata, definitely not saying much)…classic lines of him knocking on the doors and calling people “poopyfaces” and asking “Bill, are you awake? Bill, do you like FUN?” in attempts to get people to come out…we eventually did get out of bed and go out for a bit. A few of us headed back early and I would have been pissed (had it not been so amusing) when I was woken up several hours later when Sarah came in with Jonathan and Jonathan’s taunting that I was using my lame mosquito net and threatening to elbow drop me through the mosquito net. Ah yes, another WWE fan. Brings me back to those good old high school days of watching Stone Cold Steve Austin on the tele and flipping the channel really quickly when my mom would walk into the room when I was watching RAW on Monday nights. The next day in Semaipata we went to Las Cuevas which were these waterfalls (with barely any water at the bottom) but people stood under the waterfalls and got knocked down by them and all sorts of exciting fun…after that it was back into the bus on the way to Pucara…complete with iTrip so we had some Snoop Dogg and then Disney song sing-a-longs. Things you never thought would happen in Bolivia…other selections along the way were stand-up by Dane Cook (very amusing) and Margaret Cho (Asian-American humor that was lost on everyone except Tammy and I). In Pucara, we went on this hike to put up these tourist signs that we painted and then we also went to see La Higuera which is where a massive bust of Che is located (which was also pretty neat because this past Monday, Oct 7^th) was the anniversary of the death of Che so Vallegrande was crawling with tourists when we were there. It was pretty classic when we were coming down one of the hills during the hike because some of the volunteers had gotten down more quickly and there was this part where it was kind of slippery with rocks…they were taking bets on who would fall…and some of them were surprisingly accurate with Lindsay in front of me falling once…then about two feet in front of where everyone was…falling again, and someone managed to call it.

When we finally got to Vallegrande where we spent most of Tech Week we went to the school do to a business simulation…which was actually real businesses where we taught (in Spanish!) about starting your own business and principles like a market study and cost analysis and calculating profits…and then unleashed groups of students on the town to run their businesses which ranged from making jello or chicken sandwiches to holding a dance (full dancing! which apparently full means “cool” around here and they use the word dancing instead of baile or danza like how we use French words when we’re talking in English) and making and selling friendship bracelets. Highlights of Vallegrande were definitely the licuados (whole milk with fruit), bread (one day I ate like 15 rolls no joke, cunapes which are these delicious little chewy goodness rolls of yucca and cheese, empanadas, and whatever other little desserts I could get my grubby little hands on), watching the high school gym class (which was basically these students jumping off this springboard and doing forward rolls onto these mats which ended up as face-plants for some of them), playing catch phrase and going out to a karaoke bar on the last night that we were in Vallegrande. The most ridiculous part of the trip was probably when Claire’s dog apparently ran a marathon (no joke, over 40 km) from Pucara to Vallegrande following a pair of German tourists on their bicycles…usually her dog just follows the bus or whatever for a mile and then goes back…but she just happened to see a dog in the plaza of Vallegrande and was like, hey, that looks like my dog…and she called to it and it came over! Crazy stuff man…coincidence that she just happened to see the dog in the plaza or else it would have been gone for good…

Anyways, tomorrow we have a parillada (yay bbq!) and site announcement day (which we basically already know…I’m going to be staying close to Coch). And I’ve come to the conclusion that contrary to popular belief, PC is going to make me more girly…tonight I went over to Tammy’s place with Lindsay and Brittanie for a toenail painting party (they are now a lovely shade of hot pink…and I finally took off the remnants of the nail polish from the pedicure from Mary’s wedding!) and I’ve been hankering for getting dressed up for something and making myself look pretty even though I am pretty filthy all the time. There is still hope for me yet!

Also, I can start having people come visit me pretty much anytime after I get into my site for a few months (around the new year) but I can’t take vacation until February so if you just want to hang out with me while I integrate into my community be my guest, but if you want to travel with me around Bolivia, you’ll have to wait a bit. It’ll be worth it, I promise! So start toughening up your stomach and get ready for some crazy fun experiences! Chao chicos!

P.S. Will try to post some more pics of stuff from Tech Week, etc. when I get a chance to load some stuff up on the computadora...until then hopefully my descriptions are sufficient!