New House, New Start!

My lovely friend Eveline who currently resides and lives in New Brunswick, NJ is in the process of overhauling her life. Job, living situation, outlook. I’m about to join her. Okay, so I’m not starting a new job, but I am moving! I found a new place to live the other day and I’ll be moving at the end of this month. I’m looking forward to a lot of things about this new place. One is the more substantial roof that consists of more than just corrugated tin (although it seems like the rainy season has eased up considerably in the last few weeks). Another is the fact that the room comes with what seems like an American-style mattressed DOUBLE bed, yes, that means I am ready to receive visitors (if you want to snuggle up with me, Steph, I’ll even let you sprawl your leg over me if you make the trip down here)! Plus I’ll still have the mattress that I bought when I first got here so I have room for two visitors at a time. I will be giving up a lot of privacy and space and my own bathroom, but I will have a bathroom that I’m sharing with a girl that’s one month younger than me (a sister!) right next to my room so that means no more peeing in a bucket at night when I am too lazy to hike through the garden to get to my bathroom. Also, I’m looking forward to sharing some living quarters with the family since in my current arrangement I have an unheard amount of privacy for a volunteer…that means having more interaction with my family to improve my Spanish and get more of the family atmosphere. The place is a little outside of town but it’s right across the street from Sonia’s house, the artisan woman I work with, so it’ll be nice to be able to visit her and her family (she has the two friendliest daughters) more often. The family also has this gorgeous garden (I saw these massive grapefruits hanging off of one tree when I went to visit) and a nice shaded area that seems like it will be a perfect lounging and reading area. Anyways, I’ll post pictures when I get them.

In terms of work, things are going okay. Success is all a relative term I guess. There’s a ton of potential projects and work for me and I have managed to stay relatively busy the past week with real stuff although I don’t really have any concrete evidence of that. I tried to start a new English class for high school students and adults and actually advertised for it with signs at the tourism office, a popular tienda, internet café, and copy shop…but alas, today for my first class, that I was well prepared for, nobody showed up. I later went with Edson, one of the tour guides that speaks excellent English, to the high school to put out a formal invitation to the classes…still not much response. That’s the Peace Corps way, you’re going to fail the first time you do anything, and probably the second through ninth times as well, but you just try different things and hope that at some point you succeed. You scale back expectations every now and again and come back to Earth from your lofty hopes and take pleasure in the little victories. The mayor and another employee in the mayor’s office gave me a good idea as well when he said he was interested in taking a class and to put out a notice that basically says that if you can find a group of 5 people that want to take classes together, just tell me when and where and I’ll be there.

Beyond that, I purchased a guitar! Hopefully I’ll come back strumming some tunes and actually knowing how to play (unlike my first failed attempt senior year at CMU). I think I’ve reached my maximum book reading for now…I’ve read 27 books since I’ve been in Bolivia and I’ve gotten sick of several authors that I originally was a big fan of (Lawrence Sanders or John Grisham anyone?). It was the Dan Brown syndrome that hit me. I remember when I first read The DaVinci Code I was like, wow, what a great page-turner. Then Angels and Demons was good…and then Digital Fortress seemed a little predictable…and when I got to Deception Point I couldn’t stomach anymore and didn’t even finish it. I definitely recommend the McNally series by Sanders though when you’re looking for a quick enjoyable read. He uses some crazy language talking in the “Archy McNally” voice and half the time I don’t really know what he’s trying to say which kind of amuses me. I’ve currently moved on to trudging through studying Quechua vocabulary and muddling through “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits” which deals with how big international corporations and the impoverished can benefit from creating a new market together. Interesting although I’m having difficulty changing my pre-existing viewpoint to see these theories as being viable on a larger scale.