mi querida familia y mis queridos amigos,

my dear family and my dear friends,

lo siento que ha sido tanto tiempo desde que no escribi.

i am sorry that it has been so long since i wrote.

ahorita les voy a contar mis aventuras y historietas de los ultimos meses.

right now i am going to tell you my adventures and little stories from the last months.

primero quiero agradecer a las personas que me han mandado saludos, cartas y paquetes.

first i want to thank those people who have sent me letters, cards and packages.

es muy lindo leer sus palabras y recibir sus regalitos.

it is very nice to read your words and receive your little gifts.

ahorita estoy en la ciudad de santa cruz, pero manaña ya me voy a mi sitio de nuevo.

right now i am in the city of santa cruz, but tomorrow i am already going to my site again.

no se si voy a mandar este correo electronico ahora o desde my sitio en un par de dias.

i do not know if i am going to send this email now or from my site in a few days.

vamos a ver.

we shall see.

entonces ya voy a empezar, aunque realmente no se como ni donde comenzar.

well now i am going to begin, although i really do not know how or where to start.

i think i need to go way back in time...to perhaps around the 11th of december. after returning from my trip to cochabamba i stayed a few days in santa cruz. then there was a little political craziness here in bolivia (which i am sure you can read about on the internet), so peace corps wanted to get us all out of the city as soon as possible. (basically the political situation in bolivia is messed up, half the country is for the president and his new constitution and the other half is not, and then there is a whole group of people who just want to overthrow everything and govern themselves...i actually do not really fully understand what the heck is going on). so because i had to get out of the city, i went to try to buy bus tickets...but they were sold out for days already. so my boss and the peace corps administration staff decided it would be best to send me to the town of Concepcion to my friend laura´s site so that i could just catch a bus to my site from there the next day.staying in the city of santa cruz did not seem like a good option to them, considering there were marches, demonstrations, and a hunger strike going on.

so, i went. it was a good time, got to hang out with laura for a few days and help her out with some christmas activities she put on at the library.

the only problem was that the bus from concepcion to my site was sold out. then the next day it was not going due to bad roads. then the next time i tried to leave the bus still not going to go because the road was bad. so there i was, stuck with no hope of leaving. finally the woman who sells the bus tickets told me that the roads were so bad (more like rivers than roads she said) that the bus would not be heading out towards my site until march. well that was no good.

so then i was in a pinch. peace corps had prohibited travel to the city of santa cruz due to the political situation. so i could not go back there to try to take the other bus i would normally take. but no bus was leaving to my site from where i was until march...so that was not going to work at all. but after long conversations with my boss and meetings about me and my situation at the peace corps head quarters in cochabamba (thats right, they had meetings about me because i am so special haha)...they decided it would be ok for me to travel back to the city of santa cruz to try to take the bus from santa cruz out to my site. so i got back on the same bus i had came to concepcion on and headed all the way back 6.5 hours to the city of santa cruz. which means i totally backtracked and wasted an estimated 13 hours travel from santa cruz to concepcion just to turn around and go back again. at this point it was the 19th of december. i had been stuck for over a week at this point, so i was glad to get going on my way. i made it to santa cruz with no problems and headed out on the bus to my site the very next morning. the trip was uneventful (which is like a miracle because we all know that my bus trips are usually the main topics of conversation for my group emails).

so i arrived in my site on the evening of the 20th of december. i unpacked my stuff. cleaned up my room. and got some much needed rest. travel by bus in bolivia is exhausting.

and then i realized that it was almost christmas and that my boyfriend josh would be coming soon...which meant that i would have to get back into the city in order to pick him up on the 27th. (yet another bus ride, yippee!). this was going to prove to me another sort of challenge. i knew that the bus was unreliable to begin with...but now it was the rainy season and the roads get all muddy or wash out. basically the roads become a series of small rivers and mud holes. plus it was the holiday season, and i was pretty sure that the bolivians would not be driving their buses out to or of the jungle on christmas eve or christmas day. so i asked around my community to see what the situation was going to be like. i found out that the bus would not be traveling from puquio to the city the 24th-27th. that was a problem...since i needed to pick up josh at the airport on the 27th. so i stayed in puquio a couple of nights only and headed back to the city on the 23th of december to spend christmas in the city with my friends and to wait for josh to arrive.

christmas in bolivia was strange. for one thing, it is as hot as a boy scout campfire down here...and to me christmas means freezing cold weather and snow. it just does not look like christmas here. there are palm trees, butterflies, people eating ice cream wearing next to nothing. (that is no exaggeration, the women here in the city dress like supermodels at the beach).

i could not get into the christmas spirit. christmas is a family holiday, and my family 4000 some miles away. i was bummed out, and so were my friends. i spent christmas eve with my friends anna, tristan and mathias. we just sat around all day being bored and sad. there was not much to do. walking around the city hearing christmas music when it feels like the 4th of july is not fun. it is depressing. i missed my family. i missed my friends. i wanted to play in the snow and smell a real christmas tree. but we finally pulled ourselves together. remembering that we should be thankful to have eachother. my friends here in the peace corps have become like family to me.

but then mathias and tristan got invited to go to church with a childrens home and spend the evening with them. so that left anna and i on our own. for while we sat around in bed watching tv and wishing we had something to do. then anna got a phone call from her mom. anna´s mom felt bad for us and told us to get dressed up and go out for dinner somewhere nice, her treat. so anna and i got all dressed up (yes i even put on a dress, shaved my legs, and wore a tiny bit of makeup haha) and went out on the town. we tried to find a nice restaurant to eat at, but it was christmas eve and pretty much everything was closed. we stopped at a few churches close to the plaza and went in to listen to christmas carols and pray, which was very nice. the churches here are beautiful. we walked around the main plaza, which was full of people and christmas lights. it finally did feel a bit like christmas. but we still needed something to eat for dinner. we ended up at an ice cream place called Dumbo´s (yes like the elephant from the disney movie). we both orded huge ice cream sundaes and laughed about how we were out on christmas eve wearing dresses and eating ice cream under palm trees. in the end, we had a good time. although it was still hard to be away from the states and our families.

then on the 27th of december my boyfriend josh arrived to visit! it was absolutely wonderful to see him. i can not even begin to describe how excited i was to go pick him up at the airport. it was his first trip out of the united states, and his longest vacation ever. (he was here for 16 days). so it was very exciting for him...and nerve racking too i am sure because he does not speak very much spanish and international travel is no walk in the park when you are doing it for the first time all alone. but he made it here safely and we spent a couple days in the city before i took him out to the jungle with me. in the city we spent our time walking around, riding in scary taxis (the traffic here is horrible and traffic laws either do not exist or are just not enforced), and eating yummy food at all of my favorite places. i think i would have to say that josh's favorite thing here in the city is a place called yogen fruz. it is the most delicious frozen yogurt place in the entire world as for as i am concerned. it is simple, healthy and delicious. you get to pick 2 types of frozen fruit and then they use a machine to whip the fruit into frozen yogurt. it turns out all fluffy, fruity, and creamy. so needless to say, we ate a lot of it. so after a few days in the city we headed out to my site. and that is where the real adventure began.

fortunately we were able to get seats together on my little micro bus....the bad news is that the seats we had were not very good. josh was seated directly behind a half broken seat that was falling onto his knees. and a little old man sat down in the seat. the whole ride the little old man kept trying to recline his seat back further, not realizing that the seat was not a recliner...it was just plain broken. so josh's poor knees got squished the whole ride. not that it would have been much better for him if we had different seats. josh is so tall that he would have had problems sitting in any seat on the micro. bolivians are not very big people, so their buses are not exactly made to accomodate people over 6 feet tall. josh was a trooper though, and toughed it out. other than that the ride was relatively uneventful. the bus stopped a few times to conduct random business in small communities or let drunk people go pee. one time we stopped because we came to a place in the road where a small stream of clear water was slowly running over the road. the bus crossed over it without problems and then stopped. all of the people got off the bus and started to use the water from the stream to wash their hands and faces, wet down their hair, and fill up their empty soda bottles. (and yes they drank the water from the stream....josh and i did not drink the water but i did use it to wash off my face a little bit. drinking that water would be like asking to get diarrhea haha). a teen boy from my community who was on the bus also decided that one of the little puppies travelling on the bus was probably too hot...so he dunked him in the water. the puppy ended up looking like a little wet rat.

so finally after our long trip we arrived in my site. we were greeted by many people...all whom were excited to see and meet josh. especially since he was the "tallest most white foreign man they had ever seen". it was too funny watching all of my neighbors look him up and down like he was an alien or something. josh is not out of the ordinary looking by american standards, but here in bolivia he is a giant.

we had an awesome time in my site. josh drew attention like he was some sort of famous rock star. the children loved him. we spent most of our time playing with the kids, cooking, washing dishes, washing clothes, and getting water. truth be told most of my time on a typical day is eaten up by mundane daily tasks, like going to get water or washing dishes. so josh got to experience the true jungle life that i have been living down here for over half of a year now. (crazy how time flies by no?) josh learned what it is like to hand wash clothes, bathe with rain water, and use a disgusting smelly bug infested latrine. he handled it all very well, just as i knew he would. the only thing that really bothered him was one particular type of bug. in the jungle we have tiny little bugs that look like gnats...but they are far worse. they do not sting or bite or anything like that....they just like to fly directly into your ears, eyes, nose and mouth. they are everywhere. they never leave you alone. they are quite annoying at first, but i have gotten used to them.

new years eve in my site was a good time. i decided that it would be fun to climb to the top of the water tank and toast at midnight. so that is exactly what we did. of course everyone who saw us thought that we were crazy people. but we went up anyway. we carried up my alarm clock (so we would know when it was midnight) and a bottle of lemon lime soda for our toast. the view from the top of the water tank is pretty at night. especially when they put on the electricity and the whole village lights up. they had a electricity for new years eve, so the view was nice from the top as we did our count down. at midnight we toasted with our delicious soda. then the crazy little bolivian kids started shooting off fireworks....directly up at us! it was a bit scary...but makes the story of new years eve 2007 in el puquio even cooler right?

josh and i had a wonderful time together. we taught the kids how to play "go fish" and use a frisbee. some of the children had never actually seen or touched a frisbee before, so that was a lot of fun. we participated in a church volleyball game that earned josh the reputation of being a "huge white guy capable of instilling fear in the opposition". one of the professors was using the sound system they had hooked up to a generator to narrate the game like we were on television or something. he had a good time making commentary about josh blocking the ball with his "arms that reach the sky" and hitting the ball "with the force of several men". it was hilarious, and i am sure that josh felt like a rockstar or something.

i did not plan very well when it came to our food supply. so poor josh had to eat a whole bunch of oatmeal, potatoes, rice, bread and pancakes...i guess i sort of put him on the ANTI-low carb diet. but being as wonderful as he is, he did not complain too much.

i also decided to show off my baking skills one afternoon...which almost turned into a disaster. i had my chocolate cake batter all ready and had lit the oven to preheat. but then...when i went to put the cake in the oven i realized that it was not hot. the gas had run out. that meant i had no way to cook the cake...or cook anything else...or boil water to drink. it was bad news. so josh and i had to go on a little adventure running around the village asking if anyone had a gas tank to sell or knew anyone who may have one. since there are only 4 or 5 gas stoves in the village (including mine), finding a spare gas tank is not easy. i got excited when i found out the merchant truck had just arrived the day before because i figured some tanks might have arrived on it. so josh and i ventured off to where the merchant parks his big truck and asked him. he was very nice and even spoke a little bit of english with us, but unfortunately he did not have any gas tanks to sell. he told me he sold the ones he did have to one of my neighbors. so josh and i back tracked to my neighbor´s store and asked him if he would sell us some gas to cook. he explained that he had bought an extra tank because his was almost empty, so he really did not have extra. but seeing the mini crisis i was having he agreed to trade me my empty tank for his full one. and then in the evening he could send his son on the motorcycle to the nearest town that may have gas (about 25 km away) to trade in the empty tank. i was so thankful to him that i even agreed to pay his son a little extra cash for going through the trouble of driving out there on the motorcycle. and then when my cake came out of the oven, i went and delivered his family half of a chocolate cake, warm and fresh out of the oven. i think after sampling my cake they were extra happy that they had helped me out.

one afternoon josh and i decided to go on a little adventure to find the river. i had always been told there was a river nearby (but nearby is a really relative term here in bolivia...sometimes nearby means over 20km away haha) and so i figured it would be fun to go see it. we ventured off in the late afternoon walking with nothing but a camara in josh´s pocket. (yes we were being risky...normally you should not venture out into the jungle without at least taking a flashlight and some water...or some bug repellent, but we were just being spontaneous i guess). i asked a few little kids how to get to the river and which trail to take so that josh and i would have some idea where to head.

we ventured through the jungle on a narrow little path that seemed to be used only by cows and a few adventurous motorcycle drivers. besides all the bugs, the jungle is awesome. i love looking at all of the differnt green plants and hearing all of the strange sounding birds. some of the birds make pretty songs, but others make horrific screeching child noises and i do not like it one bit. after walking about a half hour, we came to an open field with cows and a small little mud house. and then josh noticed that there was a river passing in front of the house. so we had actually found what we set out to find. we walked through the open green field and passed by the cows and a few horses and got to the river. the river was not very wide and was not moving very fast, expect for one small part where it ran over a bunch of big rocks. there was a giant twisted old tree growing out of a pile of giant rocks right on the edge of the river and a bit into it. it looked awesome, so josh and i decided we should climb out onto it. it was a lot of fun, though slightly dangerous. i was wearing flip flops...which are not very good for climbing on slippery rocks and trees. but we made it into the tree safely. but then, just as we were starting to take pictures of the awesome little hideaway we had found, the rain started pouring down in buckets. we had no where to go to hide from the rain...so we got soaking wet. it was super hot out, so the rain actually felt nice. but then we realized the rocks were only going to get more slippery so we had to climb out back onto the shore. after awhile the rain finally stopped and we were able to start the hike back. somehow we got a little lost on the way back and ended up coming out onto the main road that leads out of my community, but that was no problem because i knew where i was. so that was our adventure for the day.

when josh had to leave my site (sad face), we planned to take the bus out into the city on the morning of the 8th. josh was supposed to leave bolivia on the 11th, and we wanted to make sure we got him there in time. it was a good thing we planned ahead, because the morning of the 8th we showed up to the bus stop only to be informed (after waiting a half hour) that the bus never arrived the night before, so there would be no bus going out that morning. that was a small set back. so i just asked the girl who sells the tickets if i could get tickets for the next morning....but she told me they were sold out already, plus the bus would probably still not be running anyways. it had obviously broken down pretty bad since it had not made it in yet. so then josh and i were in a pinch. bolivian bus travel is an unpredictable thing, you never quite know if or when you will make it to your destination...or in what kind of condition you and your baggage will arrive. i hated to try to wait to leave my site on the 10th....the day before josh´s flight...because that was cutting it too close. but there did not seem to be much of an option.

BUT THEN...an angel in the form of a man on a motorcycle pulled up in front of the bus stop and said, "hey beth, i have a solution for you to get out of here". and i said, "oh yeah? let´s hear it". so he informed me that there was a pick up truck leaving in a few minutes to head out to the town of concepcion...and from there i could take a bus to santa cruz. i looked at josh and said..."ok, come on". josh was probably a little confused seeing as how he did not understand the conversation i had just had in spanish. but then i explained to him that we would be travelling in a pick up truck. josh probably also assumed that we would be riding inside the truck...but of course that was not the case. we ended up sitting in the back of a tiny pick up truck with 5 or 6 other people, josh´s suit case, my giant back pack, an empty gas tank for a stove, a variety of duffle bags, a big plastic jug and a bunch of old soda bottles filled with liquid. we were packed tight and had to sit on the edge of the truck bed...not exactly the safest arrangement. but we did what we had to do. the ride was quite exciting...the driver was going way too fast and we had to pretty much hold on for dear life the entire way. the ride took little over 3.5 hours...including several potty breaks. the potty breaks were funny. as soon as the truck stopped everyone got off and walked a little ways from the truck, forming a perfect circle of peeing people. it was hilarious. don´t worry though...i ventured a little further into the bushes to take care of my business...i did not want anyone to get a free lookie lookie at my white bum haha. during the whole ride the wind was whipping at our faces and the sun was beating down on us. branches were whipping josh´s body and bugs kept hitting me in the face. needless to say that we arrived in concepcion tired, wind burned, sun burned and extremely dirty. thankfully, concepcion is the home of my good friend and fellow volunteer laura. laura happily took us in for the day, fed us, and let us use her shower. and in the evening at 11pm josh, laura and i all took the bus into santa cruz and arrived around 5am. it was exhausting. but on the upside, we saved money because we slept on the bus and did not have to pay for a room at a hostel or hotel.

the next few days were spent in the city, recovering from out travels and introducing josh to some of the other volunteers. of course we also at a crazy amount of frozen yogurt again haha. we also spent time taking me to the doctor...because i magically contracted an ear infection and a viral eye infection called something something keratitis which causes little scratches on your eyes. but no worries, i am doing just fine now.

but then, josh had to leave. needless to say it was tough to say goodbye and i was sad...but having him with me for over 2 weeks was well worth the anxiety of having to send him off to the states again. and so that was the end of my adventures with josh.

after josh left i went back to my site. and of course it was a long exhausting trip...and of course the stupid micro bus broke down. something hit the underside of the bus and was causing all of the oil to leak out. so we got stuck waiting in the middle of the jungle while the men tried to fix the problem. and as usual, they worked their magic with nothing more than a coke bottle, toilet paper, chewing gum and ingenuity. i swear they must put these bus drivers through some kind of mechanic boot camp. its like they are all related to rambo or macgyver or something. it is truly impressive. finally i made it back to my site and figured that i would finally get to get started on some work for the school year, which starts the second week of february. but, that was not the case. the english professor, the kindergarten teacher and half of the other teachers were not in town. the had all traveled to the city for vacation. most of the teenagers were gone too...off visiting relatives in the cities. so i had nothing better to do than hang out for a couple weeks. i played with my little kid friends a lot and took care of my host family´s dog´s new litter of 7 puppies. we are actually keeping 2 of them, so i am excited. maybe i can win them over and convince them to protect me from the scary evil dogs that try to chase and bite me at night. wouldn´t that be nice? i spent a lot of time with delcy and giovana, my host cousin and sister. we did some baking, climbed the water tower to watch the rains come in, and spent a lot of time climbing trees to eat yummy fruit. it is plum season here, and the plums are delicious. it is also guayaba season. guayba is a weird squishy yellow fruit about the size of a baseball that is watermelon pink inside. it is pretty good.

after 2 weeks in my site i had to make the trip back into the city to get my eyes checked again to make sure that my infection was gone. so that is where i am today. my eyes are doing better, in case you were wondering. the ride into the city was not too eventful, until we got almost into the city. there has been a lot of rain here which has caused major flooding and damage all over the country. they say that the rain is worse than in other years for some reason. (and yes, bolivians do believe in global warming). several people have died due to the flooding of rivers. anyways, when we got close to the city we encountered a section of the road about 300 meters long to be covered in around 2.5 feet of standing water. it looked like a river. but since the people here are crazy...we decided to follow all the other trucks and cars and drive right through that water. it was kind of scary. i was pretty sure we were going to break down in the middle of it and that i would have to swim to dry land. but, we made it without problems. i will never understand how such cruddy little buses can take such big risks and still come out in one piece...but hey, this is bolivia and bolivia is full of crazy suprises.

well, that is all i have for now. for those of you who made it through this one...you get a old star for patience. sorry that it was so long, but i had to cover a long period of time. i hope that you enjoyed it in spite of the fact that it was 1000000000000000000000000000000000000 words long haha.

i would like to wish a happy late bday to all of the december and january birthdays i have missed. and happy early bday to those january and february bday i have not missed yet haha. so...

Happy Birthday

Uncle Paul

Corey

Brendan

Emma W.

Lauren

Uncle Gary

Sara

Jake B.

Basia

Monika

Uncle Mike

Uncle Steve

Julie

Uncle Larry

Aunt Donna

Lisa

Rachel

and anyone else i may be forgetting...sorry!

know that i love and miss you all. thank you again for your continued love and support. i hope that the new year is treating you well. keep in touch and write emails when you can. i like to hear what is going on back home.

take care. know that i am doing well. i am healthy and happy. more adventures or beth meray in bolivia will be coming your way soon. (and one day i just might have to write a book about it all haha)

tons of hugs are flying up over the equator and landing on your doorsteps as we speak. enjoy.

peace and love, beth

Dear family and friends,

Querida familia y amigos,

I hope that you are all well and that you are enjoying the holiday season.

Espero que todos estén bien y que estén disfrutando de la época de las fiestas.

I’m sorry that I have not written an update for quite some time.

Lo siento que no he escrito algo en tanto tiempo.

Right now I am in the city of Santa Cruz. I have just returned for a trip to Cochabamba. I spent 2 weeks there to attend a workshop with my work partner, Professor Pedro Ipamo and to attend Spanish language classes.

Ahora estoy en la ciudad de Santa Cruz. Acabe de regresar de un viaje a Cochabamba. Yo quede dos semanas allá para asistir un taller con mi compañero de trabajo, Profesor Pedro Ipamo, y para asistir clases del idioma castellano.

I don’t even know where to begin with this update. First I guess I should inform you all of the current political situation in Bolivia, as some of you may have seen news blurbs on CNN or something like that. Bolivia is going through some changes. A new constitution has been drafted and was signed a few days ago. This would be fine and dandy if all of the appropriate parties had been present, but they were not. The constitution seemed to have been signed overnight, without following the appropriate protocol. The new constitution will allow the current president, Evo Morales, the power to run of president over an over again…which makes some Bolivians less than happy. Evo Morales receives a great deal of support from the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, who is not a fan of the United States. This is could potentially be reason for concern. The constitution also creates controversy over which city is the capital of Bolivia. Bolivia currently has 2 capitals, La Paz and Sucre. The new constitution however seeks to make La Paz the one and only capital. This would cause a major shift in the location of political and economic power within the country. Today the officials and representatives from all over Bolivia are meeting to discuss a counteraction to the signing of the new constitution. We are not really sure what is going to happen. They have also called for a referendum, which would result in a national vote to decide if Evo Morales should continue as president. The whole situation is confusing. Last week there was an uprising and blockades in the city of Sucre. Last week there was a peaceful gathering of several thousand people in the city of Cochabamba. And there is currently a hunger strike going on in Santa Cruz. I am not sue how many people are involved, but the plaza is filled with tents of people camping out. My friend Anna and I walked through the plaza today to check out the hunger strikers. I had never seen a hunger strike before and was surprised to see such a variety of people. There were even a significant number of children participating. Today is the 8th day of the hunger strike and I have no idea how many days they will continue. The department of Santa Cruz is also calling once again for autonomy. This is an ongoing battle. Half of the country seems to be in favor of Evo Morales, and the other half seems to be against him. This is all I know because the news stations here are not very informative. Even the Bolivians seem to be confused. But that is my explanation derived from what I have seen and heard, accuracy is not guaranteed. I assure you all that I am safe and not in any sort of danger. The demonstrations and tactics they are using to protest are overall peaceful. The Peace Corps keeps a close eye on the political situation and will take precautions and appropriate measures as needed to insure the safety of all volunteers.

Moving on from politics…

I have been out of my site since the day before Thanksgiving because I had to travel to Cochabamba to attend a workshop with my work partner.

Right before Thanksgiving my friend Mathias, a fellow peace corps volunteer, came to visit me in my site. He traveled out to El Puquio by himself on the 20 de Enero micro bus and was blessed with an uneventful trip. We spent a couple days together exploring El Puquio, introducing him to my friends, climbing the water tank, and playing cards. The first day he was with me we took a walk down the road towards San Lorenzo, and we encountered a HUGE TARANTULA! It was awesome. The tarantula was scared of course because we were mean and threw a small stick close to it. I am not sure how many of you have ever seen an angry tarantula...but let me tell you...its cool. When a tarantula gets angry it stands up on its back leg and raises its front legs into the air, like it is trying to make itself as big as possible. So there we were face to face with a giant angry tarantula...and what do you think we did? Well, we took a picture of it of course! Haha.

It rained for most of the time he was in my site with me, so we spent a lot of time playing cards and cooking. And let me tell you, we made the best spaghetti in the world. Well, maybe it was not as good as Grandma Meray`s...but it was pretty darn good, and totally vegetarian friendly. Overall it was a pretty laid back visit, nothing super exciting happened...until we got on the micro to head back to Santa Cruz.

So Mathias and I woke up early the morning before Thanksgiving to get on the lovely 20 de Enero micro bus to head back into Santa Cruz to attend the Thanksgiving festivities. The micro was PACKED. I know this might be kind of hard to visualize for some of you, so I will be as descriptive as possible. The bus is not very big, and it is really old. It has a bit of rust and is always dirty. Inside the bus there are 20 seats...and on this particular day there were over 60 PEOPLE inside the bus. You do the math. 20 seats and 60 people. We were CRAMMED and JAM PACKED into that little ugly bus. And to make matters worse, there were 6 or 7 guys sitting ON TOP OF the bus. Not safe. Inside the bus it was hot, sweaty, dusty and smelled like a mix of urine, body odor, vomit, gasoline, and boiled chicken. Not pleasant.

I was wedged between Mathias and a young girl of about 14. The girl was holding a bag of baby chicks on her lap...and eating chicken right off the bone out of a plastic bag. No doubt the poor little chicks mother. It grossed me out.

In front of Mathias and I was a pair of 9 year old girls who were sharing one single seat. The girls were topless, because it was so hot. Halfway through the ride I noticed that the one girl was checking the other girl`s hair for lice. I said to Mathias, “Look there...now that is what I call a good friend”. He laughed and we watched them for a minute...only to suddenly realize that they were not just taking the lice out of eachothers hair...they were EATING THE LICE TOO! Kind of gross...but at the same time heartwarming. Think about it. Both those girls were probably bored, hungry, and had itchy heads. And they were such good friends that they sat there and tediously picked out the lice from eachothers hair. And then being generous friends, allowed eachother to eat the lice. That is friendship. You scratch my back and I`ll scratch yours.

Because the micro was so packed with people, it was a little weighed down. Every time we came to a big hill the bus driver had to stop and request that half of the people get off the bus to help push. That happened at least 8 or 9 times. It was exhausting. At one point the bus broke down, and we all had to get off the bus. I was thankful to get off the bus because I had to pee really bad. I ran off down the road and climbed into the trees a little to do my business...and during this process I someone managed to slice the back of my right arm on a branch and bleed on my shorts. I know have a thin little scar and a blood stain to remind me of the dangers of low branches.

Remember those people on top of the bus? Well, at one point we hit a bump and a guy fell off...yep...that is what I said. The guy fell off the top of the bus. Thankfully he did not get hurt, and the bus driver was in a good mood and went back to get him. Then the crazy guy climbed back on top of the bus...which seemed like a bad idea to me and everyone else on the bus. But the fact is that he was so drunk he probably did not even feel the fall, so therefore had no aprehensions about getting back on top.

Mathias got to truly experience the infamous 20 de enero bus. I am thinking of making t-shirts that say “I SURVIVED THE 20 DE ENERO MICRO”.

It was a long ride, but it was not so bad because I had Mathias with me...and a bag of mangoes. I love mangoes. I now express my level of happiness using mangoes. Today is a pretty good day...I give it 7 sunripened mangoes.

I spent Thanksgiving at a resort called Bella Vista, which is about an hour and a half from the city of Santa Cruz. The majority of the volunteers working in the department of Santa Cruz attended the event, because Thanksgiving is the only non-Bolivian holiday we are given off work. The resort was absolutely beautiful. The pool deck overlooks a flat green valley with palm trees. You can see off into the distance for miles and miles as the flat land pushes up into rolling hills and eventually rises into small mountains. The sky is endless and overwhelming. It was a hot beautiful day, probably around 93 degrees. Every room had air conditioning, which was a big treat for me because I could hardly remember what it was like to not be hot and sweaty. The Peace Corps provided us with 2 turkeys, which are actually quite expensive here in Bolivia. The volunteers all brought food to prepare traditional Thanksgiving dishes and a variety of tasty things. There was mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, corn, carrot soup, broccoli, black bean salad, wheat bread, corn bread, baked apples, pumpkin pie, cheesecake, green bean casserole, stuffing, gravy, chocolate pudding with bananas, mashed zucchini, and so much more. We had a feast on the pool deck as the sun was setting. It was awesome. And although I missed all of my family and friends, I was happy…because come on, when else in my life was I going to get the chance to celebrate Thanksgiving in my bathing suit at a tropical resort in Bolivia surrounded by palm trees, parrots, and a group of wonderful friends who believe in the same cause as I do? Oh and I forgot to mention the toucans (yep like on the fruit loops box). Don’t be jealous, I took pictures for you all haha.

On to what I did in Cochabamba…

First, a little geography/weather lesson. Santa Cruz in on the eastern side of Bolivia, which borders Brazil. The department of Cochabamba is located in the middle of the country. The city of Cochabamba is located in an Andean mountain valley. The climate is temperate, not too hot and not too cold. The days are pretty warm and generally dry. The altitude results quickly in some serious sunburn, so sunscreen is an everyday must. But as soon as the sun goes down things cool off quickly. Santa Cruz is located in Bolivia’s tropical warm lowlands, complete with parrots, palm trees, and humidity. I personally prefer the weather in Santa Cruz, but many others would disagree.

The Peace Corps put on a workshop called Small Project Design. It was a very helpful workshop in which the volunteers and their Bolivian work partners learned how to plan, design and write up a small project. My work partner, Profesor Pedro, and I designed and wrote up the plan to implement a nutrition campaign in El Puquio. This project would include activities such as presentations in the school, cooking classes for interested persons, a girls cooking club, a presentation at a town meeting, a health and nutrition fair, and the planting of a town garden. Profesor Pedro seems very interested in implementing a nutrition project and I fully support the idea. This would be a multifaceted project that would be carried out over the course of a year or longer.

The second week in Cochabamba was for volunteers only. We met with out bosses and discussed many things. We also attended language classes to give us a little boost on our spanish skills. There were also several fun and interesting activities. One morning I had the opportunity to visit a nutrition rehabilitation center for children. I got a tour of the facility, which was extremely clean and well organized. And then I got to play with babies and little kids! It was heart breaking to see the state of malnutrition most of them were in, but heart warming to feel their little hands grasp my fingers through the bars of their cribs and play pens. The facility cares for children under 5 years old who have been identified as severely malnourished and deficient in emotional and cognitive areas. The treatment is free to the families, but the mothers are obligated to attend weekly nutrition and health classes so that their child does not end up back in the facility.

While I was in Cochabamba I had a minor health issue. I woke up one morning with a huge painful bump in my armpit. Okay, maybe it was not huge. It was the size of a nickel and felt like a marble under my skin. It did not stop hurting or go away for a few days, so I decided to go to the medical office. I found out that my mystery bump was some kind of infected abscess. A clogged pour, sweat gland, burrowing insect, or a variety of things could have caused it. The bottom line was that it needed to be drained. Mauricio, the Peace Corps doctor had me lay down on the table and he proceeded to jam a HUGE NEEDLE into my armpit to try to drain the abscess with a syringe. It did not work. So he gave me some antibiotics and sent me to the emergency clinic to have it taken care of by a doctor there. It was not a fun time. I had to lay down on a table covered in a white sheet topless with one arm above my head. There was a huge blinding white surgery room light hanging down from the ceiling. I was scared. Thankfully, my friend Laura was with me. She even took a picture of me laying on the table haha. The doctor did not use and anesthetic…and the procedure was painful. I knew he was going to slice open the abscess, but I was not prepared for what it actually felt like. It felt more like he laid all of his weight into my armpit and punctured the stupid bump. Laura watched the whole thing and claims she never saw blood come out the way it did from my armpit. It felt really strange and it burned. Then the doctor squeezed the bump. It hurt or course, but I had to laugh when he commented on the amount of puss that was inside the bump. After he cleaned on the wound, he stuffed some sort of drainage contraption inside, so that the would not close up before all the goo drained out. Sort of nasty, but cool at the same time. After I got up, I looked at the table and saw a huge blood stain. I had never seen that much of my blood spilled out…but it did look sort of cool on the white sheet haha.

I had a good time in Cochabamba with all of my friends. I got to see the volunteers from my training class whom I had not seen since August. A lot of people looked much different. In fact, the majority of my friends looked different. People had either lost or gained a ton of weight, grown beards, or just looked generally more like hippies haha. And in case any of you were wondering...I have not shaved my head yet and yes, I did break down and finally shave my legs. But I still highly reccomend that all women give the hairy legs thing a try. It is liberating.

Well, this is getting to be a long email. But I have one more little life lesson to share with you all.

Life Lesson: WATERMELON IS A DANGEROUS FRUIT

So I was walking down the street yesterday afternoon with my friend Anna. I was heavily weighed down by the excessive amount of things I was carrying. I had my bag and 2 packages that finally arrived from the States. So there we were walking down the streets of Santa Cruz City, chatting away. And then all of the sudden I felt my foot slip and I stumbled forward. Then my legs collapsed under me and I found myself laying on my side in the middle of the sidewalk. I quickly lifted myself up and looked down at the ground trying to figure out what happened. And there I saw it...a stupid little watermelon rind. I had slipped on a piece of watermelon rind. I took an inventory of my body parts as Anna looked at me in shock. She probably wanted to laugh at me because it was exactly like those cartoon situations where someone slips on a banana peel...but in my case it was a watermelon rind. My right ankle and leg were a little scratched up, no big deal. But the stumble before the actual fall took a HUGE CHUNK out of my right big toe. And it was bleeding all over the place. A flap of skin about a half of an inch wide was hanging off the tip of my toe. My toe nail was all scratched up and looked like I had dipped my toe in a mixture of dirt and blood. It was nasty and it burned really bad. Thankfully we had some clean water with us to wash off the street grime before we continued on our way to the hostel where we were staying. But by the time we got there my flip flop was stained red from my blood and my toe was throbbing. It was nasty and painful. So beware, watermelon is a dangerous fruit.

That is all for now. Thanks to all of you who made it through that email. I will be back in the city for Christmas and to pick up Josh...who arrives on the 27th! Yahoo! So I hope you all have a great holiday season. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in advance. Happy Birthday to all of you December Birthday people....I do not have my birthday list with me right now so you will have to excuse me for not being able to give personal birthday wishes.

Oh I forgot...here is something I should have included in my November update.

You will never guess what I did on my last day as a 21 year old...so I might as well tell you right now.

On the 14th of November I had an overall bad day. First, I burned the birthday cake I was trying to bake myself because I got distracted playing jump rope with the kids and I forgot about it. Then I accidently put the baking soda in twice when I tried to make another cake...which resulted in the cake overflowing the pan and burning on the bottom of my oven. Thankfully, the 3rd attempt to make a cake was successful. But by this point, I was frustrated and my room was super hot from having had baked 3 cakes on a 90 something degree day. I was feeling pretty down about the cakes and the fact that I was going to spend my birthday away from all of my family and friends. My host family had gone off somewhere and I was alone. It started to get dark out and I shut myself in my room. I lit some candles and started to jump rope and do excercises in my room. I was getting super hot and sweaty...number one because I was working out and number two because my room was still boiling hot from baking 3 cakes in a poorly ventilated area. Then all of the sudden it got pitch black outside and clouds started rolling in. I could hear the wind from inside my room. I looked out the window and saw the lightening start to flash. A storm was coming. Then, the sky opened up and the rain started to pour down. And as I stood there sweating to death looking out the window, a brillant idea hit me. Without hesitation I proceeded to fling off my clothes. And then I ran out my door BUTT NAKED into the rain! Thats right...I ran outside BUTT NAKED. It was pitch black out, except for the flashes of lightening. No was was home and no one was around because it was pretty late and there was a thunderstorm raging. So I proceeded to bathe myself in the rain that was coming down, and it felt amazing. The rain cooled my skin and washed away my anger and frustrations. I danced around a bit too...haha. And then I ran back into my room. But it had felt so refreshing and exhilarating that I just had to go back out. So I ran back out again and danced around in the rain yelling and laughing out loud. And then I ran back inside. But of course that was not enough. So I ran out again and spun around until I was super dizzy...and then I went back into my room. I threw myself down on my bed and laughed out loud for quite some time. I felt like I had been born again...it was like a new start. That rainstorm was surely a gift from God. I had never felt better in my entire life. I had never done something like that before. And it was a perfect way to celebrate my last night as a 21 year old. So if one day my children or anyone else asks me what the craziest thing I ever did when I was young I can say...Well, when I was 21 years old I joined the Peace Corps, moved out into the middle of the jungle, and danced butt naked in the rain during a Bolivian thunderstorm.

I know some of you are probably in shock after hearing that. I myself never thought that I would be dancing naked in the rain. (No one saw me I assure you, because if they had I am sure that I would have heard about it the next day haha) But that is exactly what I did. It was extremely out of character for me. And it felt good. I have no explanation for my sudden loss of inhibition. Something inside me just snapped. I was not going to share that story with you all....but then I changed my mind. I thought some of you might get a kick out of it and that it would serve to demonstrate my increasing insanity and new outlook on life. Being out there in the middle of nowhere all alone really does something to your brain. It teaches you to just let go. Don´t sweat the small stuff. Give in to your impulses sometimes. Life is too short to be uptight and reserved all the time. You have to get out there. Experience life. Follow you dreams. Enjoy the moment. Just let go. So go ahead, do something crazy. Do something out of character. Throw a dart at a map and GO THERE. Climb a tree. Jump in puddles. Squish your toes in the mud. Roast marshmallows over your gas stove. Fake sick and call into work. The possibilities are endless. Don´t just dream the dream...LIVE IT.

I love and miss you all. Thanks for the emails, packages, letters, love and support. I really do appreciate it...even if it takes me forever to thank you for it.

Millions of hugs are flying across the equator right now and landing on each and every one of your doorsteps. Enjoy.

Hugs y paz, beth

PS. For those of you who are thinking that I might be turning into a crazzy hippie....you are probably right. I will not deny it. Haha.

sorry this took so long to get sent out!

Dear family y amigos,

Well, hello everyone! I hope that all is well and that you are all enjoying good health and tons of happiness. I apologize that it has been awhile since I last wrote a group update. I have been out at my site for about a month straight now. (Seriously I have not been more than 7 kilometers from my house). The internet in my site has been kind of unpredictable, which is understandable seeing as how I am in the middle of the jungle!

First, some sad news…my host family’s pet parrot was stolen. That’s right, stolen right out of the tree in our yard. We have no idea who took it, but we assume they have already sold it. Apparently little green parrot is work about 50 bolivianos, which is quite a bit of money for the people out here. But, who knows…she could have magically re-grown her clipped wings overnight and decided to migrate. So if you see a little green parrot that answers to the name Señorita Maria Lorita, let me know.

So now I would like to take this opportunity to share with you a few little anecdotes and life lessons that I have acquired and learned since the last group update.

Life lesson number 2: ALWAYS LOOK AT YOUR TOWEL BEFORE YOU DRY YOU FACE

This lesson may not apply to your life right now. But it is a very important thing for me to remember. A few days ago I was taking my bucket bath out back behind my house. I was going about my business and failed to foresee the impending danger. When I bathe I throw my towel over a huge rock. When I am done bathing the first thing I do is dry my face. So I reached over, with my eyes still shut, to grab my towel and dry off my face. At the last second I decided to open my eyes, and it was a good thing I did….Because there, crawling around on my towel, was a HUGE MILLIPEDE! I mean HUGE! It was about 7 inches long and FAT! I had nearly wiped my face with that big old bug! It was alarming. Needless to say, I let out a bit of a scream and threw my towel. Which was a bad idea because it landed in the dirt and got all full of mud…but at least the millipede fell off and I was able to finally dry off. So, if you are ever camping or something like that, make sure you look at your towel before you start to dry off.

Life lesson number 2: ALWAYS CARRY A BIG STICK AND A FLASHLIGHT

Last week I was visiting some friends who live on the opposite side of the community. It was getting late, and starting to get dark out. There was going to be no electricity that night, so I figured I should probably head back home. My friend, a teenage girl named Maria, offered to walk with me to the plaza, so that she could help me safely pass the house where the crazy dog lives. I of course accepted her offer and we began our journey. It was a really good thing that I had my flashlight with me. It was already quite dark and there were a ton of strange animals out. The grass was wet from the rain we had had earlier in the day, so all of the creepy crawling things were out to play. On the way we saw 2 huge TARANTULAS, 3 HUGE TOADS, 6 HUGE MILLIPEDES and 1 BIG SNAKE! If we had not had my flashlight we would have surely stepped on some of them. Finally we were getting close to the house were the crazy dog lives, and sure enough…he leapt off the porch and came charging at us barking like crazy. Maria and I stopped in our tracks and yelled at him in Spanish. That didn’t seem to work, so I yelled in English and he stopped barking. Maria decided that it was no safe for me to go on alone. So I continued to walk until I crossed the plaza. But then all of the sudden, the village’s other crazy dog, a big white dog named “loco” (which actually means crazy), came charging at me barking his brains out. I got scared, so I decided to turn around and try to call Maria to come help me again. But she was long gone into the darkness. Then because the big white dog was making so much noise, the other crazy dog came running at barking from the other side of the plaza. So there I was, stuck in the middle of the plaza, with 2 crazy dogs running around me in circles barking and charging me every so often. I did not know what to do. As most of you probably already know, I am scared of dogs to begin with. But I managed to calmly walk to the nearest house and knock on the door. I did not even know who lived there, but luckily it was the home of one of the teacher’s brothers and he recognized me in the dark. He immediately saw my problem and said that he would walk me home, but first he had to get something. I figured he come back from inside his room with a flashlight. But instead he walked out back and got a HUGE STICK. Then he said, “let’s go” and we headed off the porch into the midst of a pack of dogs, because at this point every dog in the village seemed to have come to join in the fun of scaring the pants off the poor gringa girl. So my friend, Nicolas, raises the stick above his head and makes like he is going to swing down and hit one of the dogs. All of the dogs started to back off. So we continued like that the whole way back to my house. Me holding the flashlight and Don Nicolas swinging a huge stick at all the dogs. Eventually I made it home safely and was very grateful to Don Nicolas, he probably saved me from being mauled by dogs. But now I know, if you are going to go out at night…always take your flashlight and a huge stick, just in case you encounter a pack of wild dogs.

Life lesson number 3: DO NOT COOK PANCAKES IN YOUR UNDERWEAR

Cooking pancakes in your underwear is a bad idea, no matter how hot it happens to be in your house. A few weeks ago I was sweating to death in my room and I was for some reason overcome with the desire to eat pancakes. Pancakes are delicious and easy to make, so I thought I would give it a whirl. As usual, I had been sitting in my room stripped down to my underwear in an effort to keep from sweating to death. I did not even consider getting dressed before I started to make pancakes, as cooking in my underwear has become a daily activity. So I started to mix up my batter, heat up the stove, and put a bit of oil in the pan. You must remember that my stove is a tiny little thing, less than 2 feet tall, so I have to squat in front of it in order to cook. So I started cooking my pancakes, squatting in front of the stove. Then, as I was flipping a pancake a HUGE DROP OF SUPER HOT COOKING OIL splattered out of my pan and landed directly on my inner thigh. It was HOT. I SCREAMED a bit and ran across the room to get some water to put on my leg, because it hurt badly. My pancake that I left on the stove proceeded to burn…so I did not even get to eat the pancake. And to make matters worse, a huge quarter sized blister instantly formed on my leg….which my medical handbook classifies as a 2nd degree burn…not good. So lesson learned, do not attempt to cook pancakes in your panties. Always wear pants when cooking with oil haha.

Well friends, I am sad to say that I do not have time for more stories right now. I am in the middle of working on a project that I have to present next week in Cochabamba. But, that means that I will be in the city for about 2 weeks straight, leaving me plenty of opportunities to write another update for all of you to read.

Take care and know that I love and miss you all.

Happy Birthday to Cody, Suzie, and Grandma Meray! And any one else I might be forgetting…Katie Fox too!

Hugs y paz, beth in bolivia

¡hola todingos! hello everyone!

espero que todos esten bien y que esten muy sanos. i hope that you are all doing well and that you are very healthy. primero quiero decirles que yo estoy muy bien, muy contenta, y no estoy enferma. first i just want to tell you all that i am very well, very happy, and i am NOT sick.

next, i just want to answer a common question. many of you are wondering why i always include a lot of spanish at the beginning of my emails. it is not because i have forgotten english, it is because i also send these email updates to the cousins in argentina. i like to give them something that they can easily read without having to decipher the meaning of my words using a translation program.

well, i bet you all are excited to see another edition of "news from the pook" as i fondly refer to these updates as. so, here we go!

right now i am in the town of concepcion. some of you may recognize the name "concepcion" from previous emails. this is the town where my training class and i put on a teacher workshop during our technical training trip back in july. today i am here because i am visiting my friend laura, this is her site. concepcion is part of the jesuit mission circuit, which means it has a lot of tourism to see the big church. concepcion is also home to a community of mennonites...and we know what that means...doughnuts! yes, the mennonites make wonderful doughnuts. concepcion is very different from my site, el puquio. concepcion has over 10 schools, 24 hour electricity, safe drinking water (no boiling or filtering required), restaurants, hot showers, and best of all...ice cream! compared to my living conditions, concepcion is like a 5 star hotel, complete with continental breakfast and pool.....and ice cream.

i arrived here yesterday with my boss, wendy. wendy had driven out with her assistant, katie, to visit me at my site in order to sign some paperwork and meet with my work partners and i. then she kindly offered to give me a ride into concepcion, where she was headed to visit my friend laura in order to have a meeting with laura´s work partner. i of course accepted the offer...which means i got to ride in the peace corps owned SUV. that´s right, a fancy SUV with air conditioning and everything! it even has a CD player. i got spoiled indeed. the air conditioning felt like the north pole compared to the weather i have been experiencing in el puquio. for the past few weeks it has hit the mid 90´s almost every day....but its ok, i am getting used to sweating profusely at all times and sleeping almost naked hahaha.

so let me give you all a summary of what has been going on down here in the southern hemisphere. since you last heard from me i have not left my site until yesterday. i have been spending my time in a variety of activities, including the usual english teaching.

i have also been starting to work with the kindergarten class. let me tell you about those little crazy dudes...

so kindergarten in el puquio is very different from kindergarten in the states. in the pook it is a 2 year program for 4 and 5 year olds. there is one teacher, profesora lorenza, and about 30 energetic little kids. the classroom basically empty. there are only a few tables and chairs...no pretty colors, no toys, no games, no crayons, no puzzles, no books...nothing. the children are expected to bring a pencil and notebook everyday to class and to sit in chairs and copy things from the blackboard. of course, that is not what happens. they are out of their seats all the time, running around, crying, screaming, hitting, kicking, name calling, and nose picking. the teacher has her hands full. the truth is that there are really only 20 children officially inscribed in the class, but then there is a group of younger children (between 2-4 years old), who show up for class with their older siblings. the parents of these children are not around, they go work in the mines or in the fields all day. so these little ones have no where else to go but to school. it puts an extra burden on the teacher, and really disturbs the learning of the other children. the teacher is aware of the school´s lack of ability to provide materials and experiences for young children, and trys her best to implement dynamic learning activties and games, but she has trouble keeping their attention. she has asked me to help her find ways to keep the childrens attention, help them learn, and create materials for the children to work with while they are at school. so i have been working on this problem. i have been preparing stories, animal cut outs, and songs to share with them. i spend a couple hours with them a few afternoons a week. the teacher basically has me take over the class for her so that she can observe the attention keeping techniques i use and so that she can get ideas for how to read stories better and how to create learning activities at low cost and with locally available materials. this summer we plan on getting together and working on producing more lesson plans, materials and activities to use next year, because this school year is over the first week of november and there is not much time to get anything big started. i am looking forward to working with her, because i feel like she is really interested in learning new things and implementing new ideas in her classroom. the children in her class who are supposed to be moving to the first grade are very far behind where bolivian curriculum says they should be. they do not even know the basics very well, like numbers, shapes and colors. it really makes me sad to see that, so that motivates me even more to continue to work with them. since i studied early childhood education this is an area that i am extremely passionate about.

i continue to work with the high school english teacher, who is my work partner, profesor pedro. since there is less than a month left before school gets out we have decided to not prepare any new lessons. i explained that i think it is more important that we make sure that all of the students have actually learned the material and vocabulary we have introduced in the past few months. plus, the end of the school year means that the school exposition is coming up. at the end of the school year the teachers have to prepare the students for a final exposition of all that they learned during the school year. the local fathers are invited to the school and given lists of the curriculum used in every grade. the fathers then have the opportunity to quiz each group of students on anything they should have learned during the past school year. that means that the students must be on top of their game and ready for anything. the students must also prepare individual projects and presenations in math, science, or language. i guess this exposition is the community´s way of evaluating the quality of education their children are recieving and their way of judging the teachers. so it is a pretty big deal and the teachers all get nervous. profesor pedro wants me to help the students prepare a skit in to demonstrate the students knowledge of english. i am really not too worried about the students performance, if they mess up i am going to be the only one who knows anyways...since the local fathers do not speak english haha. i am sure they will do fine anyways, most of the kids are pretty interested in english and have actually learned quite a bit in the past few months.

other than working in the school i am currently trying to find a way to start working on nutrition and cooking. i am hoping to find a group of women to work with me on the planning so that it can be the community´s project, not just a "peace corps" project. that way they will be able to feel proud of themselves and be more apt to attend events, meetings, and workshops. my friend, doña maria, is very interested in working with me. she has even offered to let me use her kitchen to hold cooking classes if i would like. i think i have talked about doña maria before, she owns a small store from which she sells the basic goods, like rice, toilet paper, crackers, and sometimes tomatoes and onions. well, speaking of doña maria and her tomatoes...let me tell you a funny little story.

for several weeks in el puquio there was not much food in general, no eggs, no flour...not to mention no tomatoes. the trucks that are supposed to bring in the goods for the few little stores did not come in because there was a storage of diesel to fill up the trucks with in order to make the trip out to the jungle. needless to say, the people were getting a little bit angry... and hungry. so, one afternoon i was sitting at doña maria´s store with her talking. she was getting worried because she had very little left in her store to sell. i felt really bad, because i did not have any way of helping her resolve her problem. just then, the micro bus pulls into town. i watch it go by and notice there is a crate of tomatoes and a few boxes on top of micro. i say to doña maria, "hey, did you ask someone to bring in tomatoes from santa cruz?". she says, "yes, i did send money with the driver to bring me me some vegetables and soda". and i say, "well i think they are here" and pointed to the bus. she got very excited. then, because her son was off working at the mine, i offered to go get her goods from the bus stop for her. doña maria is in a wheel chair and unable to leave her house with out a lot of assistance, let alone push a wheel barrow full of goods. so i take the wheel barrow and walk across town to the bus stop. and i ask for doña maria´s goods. first i got the tomatoes...and i pushed them across town to doña maria´s house. then i went back and brought 4 cases of soda. and then...i went back...and picked up 4 cases of beer! haha. that´s right. imagine beth meray pushing a wheel barrow full of beer across town. what could be more hilarious than the crazy white gringa girl pushing a wheel barrow? why a crazy white gringa girl pushing a wheel barrow full of beer of course! so for those of you who know me quite well, i am sure that you can appreciate the image of me pushing a big old rusty wheel barrow full of beer across the plaza in the middle of the day. sadly, there are no photos to document it. but i am sure it was a sight to see. and of course doña maria was very appreciative of my services, and offered me a nice dusty can of warm beer...which i declined politely. and then she offered me some tomatoes and a can of warm soda, which i ethusiastically accepted. i figured a can of soda would taste good, even if it was warm. but oh was i severely mistaken. the soda tasted like warm liquified rotten corn mixed with stomach acid. imagine that, yum. i choked it down anyways, to be polite...but i will never again drink the bolivian soda that comes in a green can. i have learned my lesson. and to end on a happy note, the tomatoes were delicious.

hmm...what else is new. i have been getting to know more of the local children. this is because i have introduced them to the jump rope. for the past week or so i have been jumping rope every afternoon, and sometimes in the morning, with the children i live with and their friends. it is a lot of fun. my clothesline has become the main attraction for the children of puquio. although i have no where to hang my wet clothes, the children of puquio now have a new game to play. they come from near and far to jump and listen to the crazy gringa sing silly songs in english. we have a lot of fun. i have been teaching them to count in english so that we can count their jumps. they really enjoy it. i have also been taking the opportunity to work on mathematics through jump roping. i let the children write down how many jumps they each did on a piece of paper, and then we add up how many jumps they did all together combined. it helps them learn to add and to work as a team to reach a goal. they have some much fun they do not even realize that they are learning. in the near future i plan to host a jump rope competition or a jump-a-thon. some of the kids are already getting really good. one little boy was able to do 97 jumps in a row without stopping, that is pretty impressive for a 7 year old.

big news, beth has a pet parrot! that´s right, a real live genuine green jungle parrot. well, ok it is not my parrot, it is a family pet. my 16 year old host brother noel climbed a tree and captured it. at first i felt really bad for the parrot, being swiped up out of his nest and all. but he seems to be adjusting well to living with people. his wings are clipped so he can not fly away, but at this point i am not sure if he would want to. he gets the royal treatment from me. i always talk to him and give him lots of food. his current diet has been apples and instant oatmeal. i am told that flocks of wild parrots eat and destroy corn fields, so i am going to try to get our parrot some corn when i go into the city. i have constructed him a little house wand perch using sticks, yarn, and a cardboard box. he seems to like it. having a parrot around makes me happy. i like that he already voluntarily climbs onto my finger and that he squawks back at me when i speak. it reminds me of the pet birds my grandma used to have and my old pet cockatail sunflower.

oh, and i am not sure if i mentioned my other pet before. well, okay...not exactly a pet. let me explain. there is currently a foot long lizard living in my room. i can not catch him, and i do not know how he got in...but he is there. and he is very fast. no worries though, he does not bite. he just eats bugs...which is a good thing. i have not seen a single tarantula in my room since he arrived. haha. i guess having 1 lizard in my room is better than having a nest full of baby tarantula spiders right?

more news, i think i have set the world record for least water used to bathe. we have been having a problem with our water system in el puquio. the problem is that the man who is supposed to run the motor to pump the water out of the river and up into the tank gets drunk alot...which means he forgets to do it. and for some reason, no one else seems to know how to do his job. and because of this, there have been several days when we did not have water. i had to use my water very sparingly, because i had no idea when there would be water in the tank again. so i decided to see how much water is really required to bathe. and the answer is.....less than 2 liters. i filled up a 2 liter pop bottle and was able to wash my hair and body without using it all up. i thought it was impressive. i am not sure how clean i really was...but you have to consider the fact that i am almost never really clean. i mean, how can i call myself clean if i bathe with water so dirty that i must boil and filter it in order to be able to drink it? i am a dirty smelly sweaty person, and i am ok with it haha. oh and for those of you wondering...nope...have not shaved the legs recently. all you ladies should give it a try...not shaving your legs is a liberating experience hahaha.

ok, well that is all i have for my update today. perhaps i will have a story or 2 more to write tomorow if i get a chance. if not, you will all hear from me again at the end of the month when i go into the city of santa cruz. i hope you have enjoyed this edition of "news from the pook".

know that i am always thinking about you guys. i love and miss you all. don´t worry about me, i am doing fine. i am truly "viviendo el sueño" ..."living the dream". so all of you up there in the northern hemisphere, take care and keep in touch. i love hearing from you guys. and thanks for reading my super long emails haha.

sending hugs and lots of love.

paz, love, and hugs, beth in the pook

keep rockin the free world

¡hola todos! hello everyone!

happy birthday to my grandpa walega and grandpa meray. happy anniversary tomy parents. happy birthday to all of the september birthdays. and happybirthday to the october birthdays (in case i do not get a chance to emailagain soon)

primero, quiero pedirles disculpa por no escribir en tanto tiempo. yo hesido bien ocupada.first, i want to apologize for not writing in such a long time. i have been pretty busy

antonio, liliana, y familia, voy a pedirles disculpa for escribir todo eningles en este mensaje. ojala que este funcionando bien su traductor. voy aescribirles un mensaje con todito en castellano cuando yo tenga un poco mastiempo. gracias y espero que todo este bien alla en argentina.

ok, so here we go. i know you all have been waiting a long time for thisupdate. i believe it has been about a month since i have given an update onmy life here in bolivia.

i`ll start with the basics. yes, i am doing well. yes, i love my site. yes,i have started to work. and no, i have not contracted any crazy diseases.

i have been recieving lots of questions and requests for information. i willdo my best to cover all of your questions and fill in the missinginformation.

since you last heard from me a lot has been going on. i stayed in my site inthe middle of the jungle for an entire month straight. i did not even straymore than a couple kilometers from my house.

i will start at the very beginning. in my last email i shared the story ofmy trip in the micro bus to santa cruz. now i will share with you the nextinstallment of my crazy bus stories....here is what happened on my way backinto my site from the city of santa cruz.

i already shared my "and a tree fell in front of my micro" story...but now imust tell you what happened on the way back to my site on the very samemicro bus. the name of the micro bus is "el 20 de enero". by the end of myservice i will probably be able to write a book entitled "the top 20adventures on the 20 de enero".so we get a late start and leave santa cruzabout 8:00am. everything seems to be going fine until we get to the bigbridge and get stuck waiting to cross for about an hour. that was no fun. itwas hot, dusty, and the micro was overflowing with people. i had some manwith giardia standing about 3 inches from my face the entire time...forthose of you who do not know what giardia is, it is a gastrointestinaldisease caused by parasites. it causes issues such as lots of gas, sometimesdiarrhea, and burping. (the burping and gas smell like sulfur and rotteneggs, ewww!) we cross the bridge and are moving along, but then the motorstarts to make some funny noises. we pull over and the driver messes withthe engine and checks the oil and whatnot. and then we go on our way, butthe motor continues to make strange noises. the micro starts to goprogressively slower. we are probably only going about 25 miles per hourwhen we reach the town of san ramon, the last populated area before headingstraight into the jungle. we have lunch in san ramon, and supposedly someonefixes the problem with the bus. so we all get in and head into the jungle. ilive in a region called lomerio, which is known for its hills. so here weare going up and down up and down these hills...about about 20 miles perhour. sooooo slllllooooooowwwwww. the motor starts making an even strangersound... like it is going to explode at any minute. gray smoke starts topour out, but we can not stop. we are in the middle of no where. we keepchugging along until we get to the village of san pedro, where they luckilyhave a public phone charged by a solar panel. we stop the bus in san pedro,and the driver announces that we can go no further on his bus. he says thathe will have to call back to san ramon and tell them to send another bus. wewere already about 2 and a half hours away from san ramon, so we were stuckthere for awhile. we waited by the side of the road next to some mud hutsand a herd of cows for 3 hours, until a new micro bus showed up. then we hadto unload all of the cargo from on top of the first bus and put it on theother one. finally, we all got on the new bus, with the new driver. but mystory does not end there. so this new driver has never made this trip, hehas no idea where he is going and is unfamiliar with the roads in the hillyjungle. anyways, we start off. it is getting dark and the bus driver refusesto go over 35 miles per hour because he has no idea how to drive on therocky jungle road. so we move along slowly until we encounter a sort ofsteep hill. this driver does not think the bus can make it up the hill withso much weight, so he makes us all get out. so we all get out and walk upthe hill while he makes the bus chug up the incline slowly. the whole regionis hilly like that, so we ended up having to get out about 5 or 6 times towalk up a hill in the dark... in the middle of the jungle. it was not fun,and the people were getting cranky. then we ran into a final obstacle...afallen tree in the road. we had no saw, or axe. we had nothing to cut itwith. it was too big to move by ourselves. most of us were convinced wewould be spending the night in the micro in the middle of the road. thensomeone got the brillant idea to try to go off roading...to make a new patharound the tree. so we did just that. all of the men walked around theshorter end of the fallen tree and stamped down the tall grass, threw asidestones, and moved branches. and then, the bus drove through with no problem.it was a miracle. i was sure it was going to get stuck or pop a tire, but itdid not. so finally, at 9:30 pm, i arrived at my site. that´s right, i wason a micro from 8am until 9:30pm, constantly having to smell giardia man and sweating too death. but i survived haha. that is my micro story. hopefully ido not have another one for awhile.

so now onto some more mundane things. my work load is increasing. i havetaken on a few high school students for private english lesssons in theafternoons in addition to the classes i co-teach 3 days a week in theschool. teaching english was not something i originally thought i was goingto be doing, but that is all everyone talks about here. everyone wants tolearn. my abuelita (host grandma) told me that if i teach her some englishshe will teach me some of the indigenous language, besiro. besiro isawesome, let me tell you. whenever someone speaks it they sound like the areslurring all of their words together. i was excited to discover that a lotof the sounds are similar to the english vowel sounds...and there are a lotof sh sounding words. it is going to be tough, but i have decided that imust learn at least 100 words this year. right now i know and can pronounce4 words, a good start right? haha

back to teaching english. it is hilarious. it is rewarding to see theirappreciation and enthusiasm. and i love when they try to greet me in englishwhen they see me around the community. i have taught them to do the highfive and to say "what´s up?". i find that they pay more attention to themore boring aspects of english grammar as long as they know that i willteach them something funny or interesting before the class is over. theyreally enjoyed my lesson on the words for clothing items. their favoritething to say is flip flops. my kids think it is the most hilarious word inthe entire world. and pretty much no one can say it correctly. it soundsmore like flishps flaxsh when they say it. i love it.

some of you were wondering about the weather down here. it is hot here, veryhot. the thermometer on my alarm clock told me that it was 93 degrees in myshaded room at 7AM the other day. and because we do not have electricity,there are no fans here. in order to combat the heat the people here haveseveral survival tactics. the children strip down until they are nearly ortotally butt naked and hang out at the water pump splashing eachother. theadults bathe as many times a day as they have time for between getting theirhouse work down and keeping track of the kids. when they have to workoutside, everyone, men and women, will take off their shirts. thats right,yesterday i saw a woman chopping wood in her bra and some really shortshorts. i wanted to take a picture, but i didn´t. haha. the rainy season hasnot yet started yet, but we have had a few good downpours. the landscape isturning greener and flowers are starting to come up. i will have to updateyou all on the bolivian rainy season in future updates, because i am toldthat those few storms i have seen are nothing compared to the downpours i amgoing to experience.

some of you have been concerned as to whether or not i am making enoughfriends to not feel lonely as i did in the beginning. no worries, i ammaking a lot of friends. i am pretty close with a few of the high schoolgirls. they come to check on me and to hang out in my room. it is like beinga big sister. they tell me their problems, dreams, and aspirations. i washappy to find out that the majority of them plan on going on to study in theuniversity after high school. there are not that many girls in high schoolin my community. many of them drop out because they get pregnant or becausethey need to work as house maids to make money for their families. thecurrent senior class only has 3 girls in it. many of my friends are alsoreally young children. there is a 2 year old boy named fabio he has reallytaken a liking to me. whenever i walk by his house he waves to me and says"hola guapa" (which means more or less "hey good-looking" or "heybeautiful"). it always makes me laugh. my first and best friend though is awoman named Maria. I am not sure how hold she is, but she is probably in herlate 30´s. she owns one of the communities few stores where you can buythings like rice, candles, toilet paper, and sometimes candy. she is crippedand does not have use of her lower body and legs. she gets around prettywell though. she has a bed set up in her store that she sits on and she usesher arms to pull herself up the shelves to get what you want to buy. shealso has a wheelchair to leave the house with everyone once in awhile. sheis a very friendly person and has a great personality. she tells me storiesabout her children and keeps me informed on community gossip. she hasrecently started to make bread to sell and always makes sure to save somefor me, because bread sells out quickly. she is really interested in mywork, and i think she will be someone who can help me organize events andworkshops.

many of you have also been asking about what i am actually going to bedoing. for now, i am teaching english along with professor pedro in the highschool. i plan to continue the private english lessons and turn them into asort of english club. in the near future i also plan to start working withthe government sponsored program to teach the older community members how toread and write. i think it would be fun to work with the little grandpas andgrandmas. they are very enthusiastic about learning to read and write. inaddition to that, i would like to start a nutrition campaign. i am hoping toteach in the elementary school, put on workshops for the parents, and have acommunity nutrition and health fair. i am also hoping to put on some cookingclasses and perhaps start a town garden. originally the school said theywanted to make a school garden to use for the school breakfast program, butnow they do not seem as interested. the school director told me that he isnow more interested in having the school children raise chickens to selleggs. i do not know much about raising chickens, but perhaps i will helpwith that.

i am also planning to create and workshop on health, excercise, andnutrition to take on the road. a few of my fellow volunteers have expressedthe desire to collaborate on this project. what we plan to do is create aprogram and presentation that we can implement in various places. we takeour show on the road to other volunteer`s communities as a way to inspirethose communities to get interested in health and nutrition. this would givemy fellow volunteers and i the opportunity to have an impact on many peopleas well as the opportunity to travel around bolivia. and in the process wewill be able to help many volunteers get their communities excited aboutworking with them and learning more.

next topic, many of you were wondering what i have been eating. well, i willstart off by assuring you all that i am not withering away to nothing. i donot have a great variety of food to eat, but i am getting enough to eat. ieat a lot of oatmeal, powdered milk, tea, peanut butter, tomato sauce, andcrackers. when fruits and vegetables are available, i devour them. myclosest peace corps volunteer neighbor has been supplying me with grapefruitand veggies from her community´s garden project. unfortunately, she will beending her service at the end of october and leaving bolivia. when i travelinto the city i am able to buy fruits and veggies to take into my site withme. i usually can buy mandrin oranges, bananas, apples, green peppers,onions, and peaches. the only problem is that bananas, green peppers, andpeaches do not stay fresh very long in the hot climate. since i only travelinto the city once per month, i do not have fruits and veggies most of thetime. i am probably going to have to start to make trips into one of thelarge towns are not quite as far from my site as the city of santa cruz is.i will probably end up visiting my friend laura in her site a lot. she livesin a town called concepcion which is about 4 hours away from where i live.her site has electricity, running water, internet, cell phone reception andmost importantly...a fruit market!

you all will be happy to know that i have read a crazy amount of books inthe past month....because that means that i was out doing other things. ihave tried really hard to get out of my room and be more social. my sociallife consists of attending the community soccer matches, visiting doñamaria`s store, going to the youth activities at the evangelical church, andusing the internet...yes, internet...let me explain. in my community we havethe office of an indigenous rights group. they have computers and all ofthat sort of office equipment. they get electricity from a smallmotor/generator that is run off of gasoline. recently they some how recievedfunding to put in satellite internet. there are 3 computers currently hookedup to the internet, but only 1 of them really works. i am able to get on theinternet for a few minutes every couple of days. it is hard to get a chanceto write any long emails or do any work because ALL of the children want achance to use the internet. the high school teachers even have started toassign internet research assignments. whenever i go to try to use theinternet i am usually surrounded by dozens of children trying to read overmy shoulder and asking me tons of questions while i am trying to check myemail. so that´s right my friends, el puquio has communication with themodern world. it still boggles my mind that they have somehow hooked up asatellite in the middle of the jungle. thats right, we do not haveelectricity, running water, a reliable public phone, radio, or cell phonereception...but we do have high speed internet! so when you think of elpuquio (the pook) imagine a quaint little village in the middle of thejungle where women carry water on their heads and children run aroundnaked...but then add a noisy little motor and huge satellite dish hahaha. ilove it.

here is a funny story for you all. it is funnier if you have seen the benstiller movie "zoolander". here we go...so one day i am in the office tryingto help some of the teenagers set up email accounts. they think it isamazing that they can sign on and send instant messages across the room.they think that i am magic because i can work on a compute well and becausei can type quickly. so, one day one of the computers was acting up. it keptturning off for no apparent reason. since i happened to be hanging aroundthe woman in charge of the computers asked me if i could help her. so, ichecked it out and discovered that the fan inside the computer was notmaking noise and that the computer was really hot. there were a lot of kidsaround so i was trying to explain to them what the problem was. they did notunderstand me so i took the panel off the side of the computer to show themthe fan inside. when they looked inside they were shocked. they all startedasking "where are the files?" "why are there no files inside the computer?"and "where is the internet?". i wanted to bust out laughing, because it wasjust like the scene from zoolander. i never even considered the fact thatthey had not ever seen the inside of the computer. it had slipped my mindthat these children have not been exposed to technology and would thereforenot understand the concept of things like the computer and the internet. iam still trying to figure out a simple way to explain to them how theinternet works, but it is hard to explain such an abstract concept.

let`s see...what else can i say? i have been doing well. i am enjoying mywork and i am loving the climate. the hot sunny weather makes me happy. ilove the fact that i have been wearing nothing on my feet but flip flops andsandals for over a month straight. i have not felt cold at all in the pastmonth. some people say they would rather been cold than sweaty and hot...iprefer to be hot and sweating to death then have cold hands and feet, butthats just me. i am looking forward to the approaching summer season. i amanxious to see exactly how hot and humid it is going to get. i have neverlived in the jungle before, so i have no idea what i am in for.

well, that is all for now i guess. perhaps i will have time for anotherupdate tomorrow before i leave the city. i will be here until wednesdaymorning, so i may have time for a few more stories. if not, i will try mybest to put out some mini updates from my site. but as i have explained itis hard to get much done when there are dozens of people around trying toget your attention or make you hurry up so that they can have a turn. youcan all expect to hear from me at least once a month though, because i comeinto the city every month to buy food, get my mail, and see my friends...soi can speak some english!

i hope that you all are doing well and that you are enjoying the beginningof fall up there in the northern hemisphere. i love and miss you all.sending hugs your way.

and i repeat...i am fine. healthy. happy. and i do not have malaria or anycrazy jungle disease.

and i again, i miss everyone. send me emails. and for those of you who wantmy mailing address to send letters or anything you can fit in a box (under 4lbs)...here it is

(I took the address out)

until next time...take care, be happy...life is good.paz, amor and hugs, beth

hola todos! hello everyone!

como estan? ojala que todos esten sanos y felices. how are you? i hope thatyou are all healthy and happy!

bueno, aqui estoy en la ciudad de santa cruz. well, here i am in santa cruz.estoy aqui para el fin de semana, no mas. i´m just here for the weekend.

first, let me just tell you all that i miss you and that i really doappreciate all of the emails and love that you have been sending me. itreally makes all the difference and keeps me sane.

i just survived my first couple weeks out in my site, its called El Puquio(aka the pook) if you have forgotten. i don´t remember exactly where i leftoff in my last group email. i will just say that the last few weeks of julywere a whirl wind of stress and insanity. i had to get all of my thingsbought and packed to get out to my site, i had to bid a sad farewell to myhost family, i had to prepare for my swearing in ceremony with theambassador (yes i met the ambassador!), and bid farewell to all of myfriends who will be stationed all over the country. i don´t really recallany interesting details from those few weeks. here are a few of thehighlights...

we had a party for our host families, which was really fun. all of the peacecorps volunteers had to learn a couple traditional bolivian dances and wehad a dance off. i of course did not do very well, we all know that bethcan´t dance haha

the peace corps paid for all of us to stay in a nice hotel of a couplenights in the city of cochabamba before our swearing in ceremony. the hotelwas amazing and the showers were really hot! it is amazing the little thingsthat make you happy after you´ve been living in a 3rd world country forawhile.

we also found our way to the burger king restaurant while we were in thecity, where i had the most delicious chocolate shake i have ever had in mylife. or maybe it was just good because i had not had a chocolate shake in months. again, it is amazing how happy the little things can make you.

the swearing in ceremony was really nice. it took place in a pretty gardenand the ambassador was there with all of his security guards. it was nice toget dressed up and see everyone looking good. it was funny to see everyonewearing suits, ties, and dresses...because i have been seeing these peoplelook like dirty scrubby hippies for the past 3 months haha. the ceremony wasshort and sweet, and we were all officially sworn in as peace corpsvolunteers. we had to sign a contract and everything.

anyways, so i stayed in the city for 2 days after i sworn in. i spent thosedays hanging out and saying goodbye to my friends who would not betravelling to other areas of bolivia and not into santa cruz with me.

i took the overnight bus into santa cruz with mathias, tristan, laura and afew other people. we spent the next 2 days shopping in santa cruz for food,beds, sheets, pots, pans, and lots of other things. i bought myself a ministove with a little oven and 2 burners. and i had to buy a propane tank forit as well.

then i had some really good luck. the peace corps decided that because theradio was not working in my site that they were going to drive me out to mysite and try to set up cell phone service there with some kind of specialdevice. that meant that i would not have to try to lug all of my things withme and worry about getting them on and off the bus. it made me so very happybecause i was really nervous about being able to get all of my stuff out tomy site. i had a lot of big things to take, my stove, my water filter, abunch of cookware, and my propane tank...plus a box of food and a suitcase.

so lets begin with my adventures...i arrived in el puquio at my site on thefirst day of august. it was an exciting day, especially since the peacecorps took me in the land rover and the tech guy carlos was going to try to set up cell phone service for me. we spent the morning unpacking and settingup my room. my closest neighbor from the community of san lorenzo was therewith us, her name is vanessa. she is awesome, but she will be ending herservice in october so i won't have her around very much. carlos tried reallyhard to set up the cell phone antenna for me on the town's water tower...butit did not work. my site is too far in the middle of the jungle to pick upany cell phone signal, even using the peace corps high tech devices. aftermany failed attempts carlos and the other peace corps staff member, miriam,left me to fend for myself as the newest resident of el puquio.

so there i was in the middle of the jungle, all alone. no cell phoneservice, no internet, no reliable public phone, no form of transportation,no electricity, no running water, no one who speaks english. it was a verystrange feeling. for the first time in my life i was completely on my ownwithout the ability to contact friends, family or anyone who might be ableto help me if i were to have an emergency.

the nearest town with a medical clinic is 5 hours away on a bus, a bus thatonly goes out on wednesdays and sundays. i did not know really anyone...idid not know where to get water or where to buy food or where to go to findanyone to help me. i was kind of freaked out. i knew that i was goingsomewhere very remote and off the beaten path, but i could not haveanticipated that feeling of extreme isolation and helplessness. i had amillion and one things rushing through my head. like...what if i get reallysick? what if there is a family emergency and no one can contact me? what ifi blow up my room with my propane tank and new stove?

i spent my first evening sitting in my room freaking out, until my bolivianwork partner, professor pedro, showed up to say hello and invite me topresent myself at the town meeting. the town meeting was a 3 hour long event which was attended by mainly the men of the community. the meeting topicswere electricity, bringing in the internet, the upcoming independence dayevents and ME! when it was time to talk about the new peace corps volunteeri was invited to speak in front of the group. it was sort of nerve rackinghaving about 100 men sit and stare at you. so i presented myself, i said myname and why i was there and all of that kind of stuff. then i opened thefloor for questions. they asked all sorts of personal questions, like if iwas single, if i was going to marry a bolivian, if i was a catholic orevangelical, what kind of food i like to eat, where am i from, why did ichose bolivia, if my parents were mad at me for leaving them...and manymore. it was kind of tiring to stand up there and be interrogated like that,but i got through it.

the next few days in my site were a whirlwind of confusion. no one seemed toknow that i was coming, so no one was prepared to introduce me to people orshow me around. everyone seemed suprised to see me, like they did not knowthey were getting another volunteer. i spent a lot of time by myself, justorganizing my things and setting up my room. i also tested out my new stoveand tried to cook some good meals out of the limited food supply that wasavailable to me. the new stove works really well, it is just sort of scaryevery time i have to light a match to ignite the stove burner. i feel like iam going to blow myself up. but i'm sure i will get used to it. i made a lotof veggie dishes, because i had to use up my supply of veggies before theyrotted. veggies don't last long because it is hot and humid. i also ate alot of oatmeal, because it is easy to make.

i was going crazy though a few times because all i wanted was somethingchocolate to eat...but there is no chocolate in my site because it wouldjust melt on the store shelves. so i had to get creative. in my desperation i mixed chocolate powder ( like nesquick), powdered milk, and peanut butterinto my bowl of oatmeal. it was really really good. i am not sure if you areall familiar with those no bake oatmeal chocolate cookies, but that is whatit tastes like. so you should all try it if you get a chance. haha.

i am not going to lie, i went through a period of a week or so when i barelyleft my room. i was afraid to talk to people and i was just overwhelmed. iwas going out of my mind. and when i had gone a week without speakingenglish i started to really freak out. thankfully my nearest neighborvanessa came in for a visit the next day and brought me a big bag ofgrapefruit. she really saved me from having a total melt down. during myperiod of freaking out and self inflicted isolation i thought about alot ofthings, i slept a lot, i invented new recipes, and i read a lot of books.here is the list of books that i have read so far.

the life of pi (wonderful book, a true must read)the children of men (not too bad)the bridget jones' diary (hilarious, but a chick book)she's come undone ( i highly reccomend this one, though it is strange)the bean trees (a heart warming classic)the count of monte cristo (sort of confusing, but it sucks you in)the 158 pound marriage (this was one really sick, don't read it)

as you can see i had a lot of free time on my hands to read. i was really inbad shape, but no worries. i am doing great now and this trip into the cityto see my friends really renewed my enthusiasm. apparently the whole lockingyourself in your room and not talking to people reaction is completelynormal and happens to a lot of volunteers throughout their service. some ofmy friends had similar stories. so don't worry, i repeat.. i am ok.

during the days when i was not freaking out, i did manage to get a fewthings done and make a few friends. i attended an english class and helped out one day, i attended the neighboring town's festival, i went to a soccermatch, and i attended a few of the evangelical church's youth choirpractices. i would say my best friends so far are a group of 14-16 year oldgirls who attend the evangelical church. they have been really warm andwelcoming and they stop to chat even when they are busy carrying water orsomething. i think i'll get to know them pretty well.

speaking of carrying water...i have to carry water about maybe 300 metersfrom the public tap to my house. the public water tap is a nice place totalk to people, because there is always someone there getting water. thebolivian women are really talented at carrying the buckets on top of theirheads, but i have not mastered that skill yet. the only bad thing aboutgetting water is the bugs. there is this one type of bug that looks sort oflike a wasp, and it loves to drink water. they swarm around you as you tryto get water and they fall into your buckets. they also land all over youand they bite you...it hurts pretty bad. i have gotten used to it though,the bites don't leave big marks thankfully.

the electricity situation in my site is interesting as well. starting the2nd of ausgust the bolivian president promised my community and thesurrounding communities that they would have electricity every night. iguess the government is going to supply a fund to buy the gas to run thegenerator. so we have had electricity from 7-10 or 6:30-9:30 every evening,which is great. the only problem is that my room does not have a switch toturn on and off the light. so i can't turn off the light in my room if iwant to go to bed. i am usually tired by 8pm, because the roosters wake meup at 5:30 or 6 am...so it is no fun having to lay there and wait for thelights to go off.

apart from just walking around and talking to people, i have not done much.i don't have to start working on a project until november. i have these first couple months to do a diagonostic evaluation of my community and findout what the people want to work on. i will however probably start teachingenglish before november. the english teacher, who is my work partner, doesnot actually speak english. he teaches out of a child's vocabulary book andhe does not know how to pronounce the words, so he is going to need somehelp. there are a few high school students who are interested in improvingtheir english. one boy said he would like to be a translator one day, and ifhe wants to do that he is going to need a lot of academic support.

the school schedule is interesting in my town. the highschool kids go toschool from 8-12 in the morning. many of the students come in from theneighboring communities. they walk an hour or more to get to school everyday. during the 4 hour school day there are 2 breaks that last 30 minutes,so they really are only in class 3 hours per day. the elementary school kidsgo to school from 1:30 until 5pm, with 2 breaks as well. i am not sure howmuch the children could be learning with so few hours of class, but i shallfind out and let you know.

i figured that i needed to start excercising so that i can stay in shape. ihave been taking evening walks down the road out of my town. the road is awinding hilly dirt road straight through the jungle. the hills are steep soit is a good workout, but you have to be careful to not slip on the losestones going down the hills. it is beautiful to walk along and see thesunset over the trees. you can hear hundreds of birds and see flocks ofparrots flying over head. i plan to continue taking daily walks, it gives metime to relax and think.

the people in my town are wonderful. they are very friendly and curious.although some of the younger kids seem really scared of me, like they arefreaked out by my white skin or something. some of them run away and others just freeze and stare at me. their parents usually get a good laugh fromtheir reactions. the elderly people are adorable. they have lived such toughlives, they all look about 100 years old. many of them still work reallyhard all day long, some of them even still go to the mines to work. many ofthem speak mainly the native language, which is called besiro. it is reallycomplicated with different vowel sounds. i really hope to learn it though.it would be rewarding to learn a dying idigenous language.

well that is about it. i don't know what else i can say about the time in mysite, because i really spent a lot of time doing nothing. hopefully nexttime i come into the city i will have some good stories to tell you all.

before i close i would like to end with the story of my adventure in the bustravelling here to santa cruz. this is probably just one of many wonderfulstories i will have by the end of my service. (this is the same bus thatleft me stranded in the middle of no where)

so i´m in the stinky, smelly, sweltering hot, dusty 20 de enero bus. we aredriving through the hilly lomerio area, up and down up and down...like aroller coaster, but a bad one that you would never pay to ride on even if itwere the last roller coaster on earth. all of the sudden the wind starts toblow and the trees start swaying and creaking. it is the dry season in thejungle so everything is all creaky and dead looking. then out of no where,this big gust of wind blows and we start to hear this wretched crashingsound...and a huge tree falls across the road right in front of the bus. idid not see it fall, i was in the back of the bus...but i saw how close itended up to the bus. it was kind of scary. it could have easily fallen onthe bus and crushed us to death. anyways, so we all have to get out of thebus...and we just stare at this tree. the bus driver goes to the back of the bus and looks for a saw or hatchet or something...but of course he forgot topack one. all he has is this old rusty shovel that looks about as old as theinca empire, with which he proceeds to hack at the tree with....making 0progess. so here we are, in the middle of the jungle...it is a windy coldsurazo day...and all this guy has is a shovel and he thinks he is going tochop apart a stinking tree about 2.5 feet in diameter. thankfully, one ofthe passengers walked up the road a couple kilometers to the nearest town tofind some help. he came back with a guy and a chain saw. so this chain sawguy became our hero and chopped up that tree and had us out of there in amatter of 10 minutes. this episode delayed us almost 2 hours, but it wasworth it to see everyone cheer when the chain saw dude showed up. the busdriver felt like an idiot for not having a saw or something. anyways, it was an adventure haha

ok, well that is unfortunately all for now. i will be coming into the cityin about a month, so you can expect to hear from me then. but, maybe we willget internet in my site and i will be able to communicate with you allbefore then. we shall see. so until then i hope that all of you are doingwell and having fun. don't worry about me or miss me too much, i am happyand doing well. i think i have gotten through the overwhelming adjustment period.

i apologize for any grammatical errors i have made...or any incoherentconfusing stuff i have written. my brain is fried and my english is getting bad ha ha.

ok so take care, write me back if you get a chance. thanks for all of yourlove and support. be good and don't forget about me! i send love and hugs to all.

*all you need is love, love never fails*paz y hugs, beth meray,

pcv ( OFFICIAL PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER! YAHOO!)

hola everyone! espero que todos esten bien. i hope that you all are well.

first, before i forget. ERIN EVANS, please do me a favor and forward this message to the bookstore and bookstore people. for some reason i keep getting error messages and i don´t think that they are getting through to everyone. thank you! oh and forward it to janine too...i have her on my list but i am not sure she is getting the emails or not. ok thanks again lol.

lo siento que yo no he escrito en tanto tiempo. sorry that i have not written in so long. yo estaba de viaje a visitar mi sitio en el departamentode santa cruz. i was on a trip to visit my site in the department of santacruz. fue un viaje largo, y ahora les voy a contar la historia de mi visita.it was a long trip, and now i am going to tell you all about my visit.

we left bright and early...well actually it was a little after 5am and it was dark...for the bus terminal on sunday the 8th of july. laura and i tooka taxi, which was not cheap, it cost 30 bolivianos. we arrived at the bus terminal and successfully checked in our bags and met up with tristan,mathias, and elizabeth. we had to wait around for a while, our bus did not leave until 7ish. so we had some snacks and looked for a bathroom. the bathroom at the bus terminal is disgusting. it is super dirty and you have to pay 1 boliviano to buy a bathroom ticket. then you have to stand in line to get your piece of toliet paper so that you can use the stinky bathroom.it is not fun. finally at about 8am our bus actually left, we sat there atthe terminal not moving for an hour. while the bus was sitting still a bunch of ladies came onto the bus selling everything from candy and coffee to sleeping pills.

the bus ride was super long...about 12 hours to be exact. we only stopped once for 30 minutes to have lunch and use the bathroom. it was horrible. i had to go to the bathroom so badly and the bus does not stop for anything. of course there is a "bathroom" on the bus...but it is smaller than a closet and basically a hole in the floor. someone was always in it and it smelled like poop and vomit.

anyways, when we were about 10km from the bus terminal in santa cruz the bus got a flat tire. so that meant that we all had to get off and unload our stuff from under the bus. then we had to pay to take a taxi to the hotel. it was scary. it was about 8pm and really dark out. luckily we flagged down a nice taxi driver who happened to be driving around with his really cute 4year old daughter. so we arrived at our hotel and dropped off our stuff really quickly because we were all very hungry. we went to eat at a place called alexander´s and it was wonderful. they serve a mixture of mexican and american food, and it all tastes really good. after dinner all we could think about was going to sleep, traveling by bus makes you really tired.

monday morning we got up early to go to our counterpart/ workpartner orientation day. the event was held at a fancy hotel. the point of the orientation was to introduce all of the volunteers to their work partners,the bolivians from their future sites who are going to be working closely with them. a lot of the work partners showed up late, there were blockades and other transportation problems. there are always blockades in bolivia, some group is always trying to make a statement by blocking off major roads.my work partner showed up an hour late, but i was just happy that he came at all. i was really nervous about meeting him. his name is pedro ipamo and he is the english and literature teacher in my site, el puquio. the funny thing though is that he does not actually speak english, so i have no idea how he teaches it haha. he is a sort skinny little man, about 30 years old. he has a wife and 2 children. the children are 7 and 4 i believe, a boy and a girl. at the orientation we just got to know eachother and went over peace corpspolicy in regards to work partner relationships. basically he is responsible for helping me get to know the community and finding work. my responsibilityto him is to help him on projects he has interest in and to keep him informed of what i am working on. he seems like a pretty nice guy. the orientation was not too long, we got done about 4pm. my work partner pedro pretty much ran out of the meeting and told me that he would see me in elpuquio. he apparently had some personal business to attend to and would not be traveling with me to my site.

monday evening we all just sort of hung out and got some dinner and ice cream. the ice cream in santa cruz is amazing, they have a place called bitsand cream with is a lot like coldstone in the states. i was sort of worried all evening though because i was told there was a problem getting me a bus ticket to go to my site the next day. i was supposed to be traveling with 2 other volunteers, the girl who is currently at my site and a guy who has a site not too far from mine. late in the evening the peace corps called me to say that someone would pick me up in the peace corps land cruiser to take me to the bus station at 6am. so i went to bed early to get some rest.

in the morning my adventure began. armando picked me up in the peace corps land cruiser at 6am and we went to another hostel to pick up lauren, the current volunteer in el puquio, and chris, a basic sanitation volunteer whose site is close to el puquio. chris will be ending his service when i swear in, so we won´t actually be site neighbors. lauren, the current el puquio volunteer, is a 26 year old girl from new york. she is really nice and really friendly. i was glad to have her traveling with me. so we got to the bus terminal at about 7am and armando dropped us off. the bus station is crazy. there were so many people there and so many old broken down looking buses. when i saw the bus i was supposed to get on i was kind of scared. it had cracks in all the windows, it was covered with dust, and none of the wheels looked the same size. there were already a lot of people standing around it and there were men loading things on top of the bus. it is amazing the types of things they put on top of buses here in bolivia. on top of my bus, which is called the 20 de enero, there was a bed frame, an oven, 3 huge sacks of grapefruits and oranges, a wheel barrow, and countless bags,back packs, and suitcases. it was crazy to see. the bus only has about 20 seats on it, but that doesnt mean that only 20 people travel on it. in fact,lauren, chris and i only had 2 seat tickets. that meant that chris had to stand for the trip. the seats are really small and he is a tall guy, so it is not easy for him to get a good seat on a bus. the bus was crammed full of people. i sat all squished between people with my back pack on my lap. so in this bus with only 20 seats i counted about 40 people. it was insane.everyone was on top of eachother and there were babies crying and little old ladies yelling in their native languages. finally the bus left the terminal and my adventure began.

the first big event in the trip is the bridge crossing. we had to cross a bridge with is under construction at the moment. that means that traffic flows in one direction for 30 minutes and then in the other direction for 30 minutes. this causes quite a back up of traffic. my bus ended up being stuck for about an hour waiting to cross the bridge, which i guess is a shorter time than it usually gets stuck. the nice thing about being stuck at the bridge is that people come by the bus windows and try to sell you things.they sell bread, coffee, oranges, hot chocolate, and various other things. i really wanted some hot chocolate, but there is no bathroom on my bus...so ithought it would be better not to put any liquids in my body.

i forgot to mention how crazy cold it was. in santa cruz it is normally hot and humid, but every once in while a cold wind comes from the south pole called a surazo. this freezing wind makes the weather all cold and cloudy in southern south america. in fact, there was snow in argentina for the first time in years. a lot of people died of the cold in argentina, paraguay and in bolivia. it was really sad. i was personally unprepared for the coldweather and spent the week freezing my toes off. it was not very much fun.

ok, so back to the bus trip. so after the bridge the bus trip was pretty uneventful for awhile. we made one stop to go to the bathroom and get some lunch before the bus headed down the bumpy dirt road which would be our path for the rest of the day. when we stopped for lunch it was only about 11 am. the road to my site is a crazy bumpy old dirt road that goes straight through the jungle. the dirt is red and the trees seemed to create a wall on each side of the bus. there is really only room for one vehicle to go through, so the bus lays on the horn when it goes around curves to alert any on coming traffic. it is really kind of scary. the bus goes really fast and everyone inside bounces all over the place. it was not very comfortable at all. several times along the way the bus had to slam on the breaks and stop in order to move trees, branches or rocks out of the way so we could go through. it was pretty annoying. but then things got interesting...

after hitting a bump in the road the bus made a funny noise and we stopped completely. the driver started yelling and everyone got off of the bus. a couple of guys went under the bus and the driver came out asking if anyone could give him glue, chapstick or toilet paper. some lady gave him toliet paper and he went back under the bus with an empty coca cola bottle and a roll of toilet paper. i was so confused as to what he was going to do.minutes later, he emerged from under the bus with the coca cola bottle full of oil and without the roll of toilet paper. it was crazy. we all go back on the bus and we kept going. i wish that i would have gone under the bus with all of the little kids to see what he did to fix that bus, it was some kind of miracle haha.

we finally arrived in el puquio a little before 6pm i think. it was almost getting dark. lauren i said good bye to chris and got off the bus. el puquiois a really cute little village. the buildings are cement that is painted white with orangish terra cotta color shingles. the houses are cement or mudwith straw and palm leaves on the roof. the town is no more than a 15 minute walk from one end to the other. the roads are dirt and form a square arounda little tiny plaza. there are 2 tiny churches, a catholic church and an evangelical church. the village is entirely surrounded by a jungle like forest. because it is winter here everything was sort of dry, and not very green. but it was all still really beautiful. the water comes from a small pump down by a river and is pumped up to a tiny water tower and several public pumps by a motor that runs on gas. there is one school and they just built a new multi purpose field for soccer, basketball and volleyball. there is also a grass field that is used for big soccer games, which happens to be located right in front of where i will be living.

so my housing...i will be renting a room from a family. i did not get to meet any of them though, it was winter vacation and they had all gone to the city. there are 4 children, 14 and under. the mother works most of the time in a town 4 hours away and the father works in la paz, which is really far away from el puquio. so the grandmother, who lives a few houses away, sort of watches the children while their parents are gone. it is kind of a strange situation. the house is really cute and nice, it has all tile floors and a new roof. there is a covered tile patio that wraps around the house. i will be renting the bedroom that can be entered from the patio, so i won´thave to go through the house to get to my room. i will have more privacy.the room is really nice, the tile is pretty and the windows have mosquito netting and glass on them. the lock on the door also seems pretty secure. the room is about the size of a college dorm room, enough space for a bedand a desk. lauren said she would leave her bed and desk and a few other pots and pans for me so i don´t have to buy a lot of stuff when i move in. i am really happy that she is doing that, so i won´t have to try to get it all on the bus. the kitchen is a seperate building that is run down and made of wooden planks. it is pretty dirty and full of bugs, like spiders and cockroaches. i am going to have to do something about that. the latrine is disgusting, but will have to suffice for now. the structure is a partically finished wooden shack with a wood and dirt floor. the toilet, if you will, is a hole in the ground covered by a wooden box with a hole in it. the wooden box part which you sit on is missing some slats at the bottom and thehole in the box is bigger than the hole ground, therefore you have to aim carefully or the pee splashes up on your feet. it will be an experience, that is all i can say.

my few days in el puquio were a whirl wind of confusion. i did not get to meet many people, as most of the town had left for vacation because therewas no school, and the people who were there were locked up in their houses because it was so cold and windy. lauren and i spent most of our time drinking tea and playing cards in her room. during the afternoons when i was warmer, she took me to see the school, library, and meet a few of the teachers. she also showed me the little stores where you can buy food. there really is not much food in my site. the stores sell just a few things,oil,salt, rice, noodles, sugar, and flour. sometimes there are eggs,potatoes, and coffee. i was also told though that when there is a holiday or party coming up the people import tomatoes and other veggies from other towns. i was kind of shocked to find out that there is no bread for sale in the town. lauren says that the people are lazy and it is too hot usually to cook bread all day. when one of the villagers makes bread it sells out in a matter of minutes. i guess i will be learning how to bake my own bread. i will also be bringing in veggies from the city. thankfully, during the summer there are a few local mango trees i will be able to pick from, i look forward to that. i am also thinking that a school or community garden would be a good project to work on in my site.

i wish i had more to say about my site, but i really did not spend more than a few days there. most of my time was spent sleeping and trying to staywarm.

i left on friday morning at 7am on the same bus that brought me into el puquio. this time i did not have much luggage because i left a whole suitcase with lauren so that i won´t have to bring so much when i move in.the ride back was hot and dusty. the bus was jam packed with people and there was a little boy who would not stop crying. it was a pretty uneventful ride until we made our stop to go to the bathroom....

ok, here is what happened. so i get off the bus and tell a person on the busand the driver to not leave without me. so i proceed to go find the disgusting public bathroom aka hole in the ground. at this point we are stopped in a small roadside town in the middle of no where. so i do my business and i come back out to the road...and the bus was gone. i looked upand down the road, no bus. to my suprise i did not freak out. i just stood there for a minute thinking of my options. i had money on me and a cellphone. so i took out the cell phone only to find out that there was no signal...well of course there was no signal...i was in the middle of the stinking jungle! a woman comes up to me and says "oh my goodness the busleft! it left you behind!"...i say "yeah it looks that way"...she says "well i have a brother, and he has a motorcycle, i can go get him and he can take you on the motorcycle to try to catch the bus"...i say "ummm...uhhhh...well i don´t know what to do". (the peace corps has a rule against riding on motorcycles, but this was an emergency). so just as i was about tell this lady to go get her brother, i see the bus coming down the road over the horizon. i was so happy. a guy gets out of the bus, and apologizes to me and i get on the bus. apparently the guy who apologized was from el puquio and had seen me on the bus. when he realized that i was not on the bus anymore he made the driver turn around. the whole ordeal was pretty quick, i was stranded for 25 minutes tops, but it seemed like forever at the moment. so i guess i had good luck that day, i have no idea what i would have done if the bus had not come back. i guess i would have taken my chances and got on the motorcycle. needless to say, the guy who made the bus come back is my 1st friend from el puquio.

so that was my adventure. the bus ride on the way back only took about 9 hours, it was pretty fast. i got back to santa cruz in time to meet up with mathias for dinner. we had a good evening exchanging stories about our site visits. mathias has to ride a train called "the death train" to get to his site, and he did not have any warm clothes to wear during the freakishly cold weather. everyone seemed to have a story to tell. it was great, ireally feel like we got our first real peace corps experiences.

we spent friday night and all day saturday in santa cruz. my friends and i exchanged stories, hung out, ate a lot of food, drank a lot of hot chocolate, and ate a lot of ice cream. it was nice to relax with them and just chill out before heading back to cochabamba for more training. we tried to come back to cochabamba on saturday night, but all of the buses were sold out. it was crazy. there were lines in the bus terminal and people yelling and pushing to try to buy tickets. they were not selling tickets for sunday,so we really did not have any other choice but to stay in santa cruz saturday night and try to catch a bus in the morning. tickets go on sale at 6am so mathias, laura, tristan and i got up super early and were at the terminal before 6am to buy tickets. there were long lines still and people pushing. so instead of waiting in line to buy a ticket on a good bus, we decided to take our chances and buy tickets on a shady dirty bus company´sbus. we but tickets and were on a bus to leave at 7am. the ride was pretty uneventful, except there was no bathroom...not even the mini closet with a hole in it type of bathroom...and poor tristan was having intestinal issues, i´ll let you use your imagination haha. about 9 hours into the ride the busbroke down in the middle of the foothills. we were on a ridge with a valley on one side and a hill on the other. the bus had been making funny noises and finally just stopped. we were still about 3 hours from cochabamba. so we had nothing better to do than take the opportunity to get out of the bus and climb down the ridge to go to the bathroom. i have gone to the bathroom outdoors more times in the past 2 months than i have ever in my entire lifeup until now. it is really not so bad after awhile. we were stuck for about an hour while the bus guys tried for fix some type of belt that was broken.so we ended up playing some rummy on the bus and eating lots of cookies. we finally made it back into the city about 730 pm. tristan had a rough time on the bus, so we let him choose a place to go for dinner. we ended up having some chinese food and did not get back to our host families until about 10pm.

overall it was an exciting trip. i am anxious to go back to my site and move in. i am really looking forward to working with the people in my community. i will most likely be working with the english teacher, the kindergarten teacher, and in the library. i am also hoping to make a town garden and possibly organize some after school sports and clubs. it should be an adventure and i am more sure than ever that i am here doing what i am supposed to be doing.

i swear in next friday and will start to travel to my site again next weekend. this will be my last long email for awhile, as there is no internet in my site. in my site there is a public telephone and a sometimes functioning radio. there is no cell phone service and there is only electricity 2 nights a week for 3 hours, but they are working to improve that.

i just want to thank you all for supporting me through my training and for reading my emails. i like to be able to share my stories and adventures with you. i miss you all and i hope that you all are having a good summer. keep sending emails, i will eventually read them. when i get my new mailing address i will let you know...i want to get some letters!

ok well that is all for now. i have to take 2 tests today, a culture testand a technical skills test. i have to be able to identify plant diseases and mix up natural pesticides, it should be interesting.

thanks again, i will probably check my email a few more times before i go to my site, so send any questions or comments you have.

take care and be safe, and don´t worry about me...i am doing great

*all you need is love, love never fails*

paz y amor y hugs, beth in bolivia

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

hola todos,

beth is alive! i am back from my trip and i have so many things to writeabout. i unfortunately do not have time right now to write a long update. ihope to do so later today, tomorrow or thursday.

my trip was truly amazing. we had a ton of fun and i saw so many wonderfulthings. i will write in detail about it all soon. but just to get youinterested...i saw dozens of people walk across hot coals to celebrate eldia de san juan! it was so awesome!

a lot of my friends got sick...salmonella, amoebas, giardia, shagella...buti only got tonsilitis and or strep, so no worries. they all got sick fromplaying with dirty dogs and eating poorly prepared meat dishes, in my caseit paid off being scared of dogs and being a vegetarian. i will share moredetails in my next email, because some of the story is actually quite funny.

in case some of you are dying to know...i got my site assignment yesterday.

beth is the newest member of a community called El Puquio!

El Puquio is a small community in the tropical lowlands that consists ofabout 300 or so people. there is 1 school and 2 churches, electricity from7-10 pm every other night, radio communication, a sometimes reliable public phone and seldom available internet service. it is one of the truly "middleof no where" sites. the climate is hot and humid, much like a michigansummer...but hotter. i will be involved in helping promote the use of thenew library, after school recreation activities and possibly teachingenglish and health in the school. there are 115 elementary students and 65 high school students. my counterpart is the english and literature teacher,who is supposed to be a really nice guy. the living conditions will be challenging, hole in the ground latrine bathroom, without electricity in myhome, no cell phone service, a long 10 hour bus ride to the nearest bigcity, and i will be carrying water from a public pump. but no worries, i am up for the challenge.

ok, more to come soon. i hope that all of you are doing well. happy latebday to aunt june and anyone else i missed. i really need to catch up onbday and holidays. happy early 4th of july to you all, celebrate for me!

thanks for all of the emails that you have been sending, i appreciate it. iwill write back soon.

love and hugs to all

and i repeat, i am doing fine. i am healthy and have not dropped weight,that is a good sign.

*all you need is love, love never fails*

paz y amor, beth

hola todos! hello everyone!

feliz dia de los padres atrasado! happy late father´s day!

escribi este mensaje ayer, pero la computadora mala lo comioi wrote this message yesterday, but the bad computer ate it

lo siento mucho! i´m so sorry!

ojala que todos esten bien y que hayan disfrutado el dia de los padresi hope that all are well and that you all have enjoyed father´s day

bueno, no voy a escribir muchas cosas interesantes, pero tengo una historiade mi visita a la sala de emergencia el viernes

well, i am not going to write a lot of interesting things, but i have astory about my visit to the emergency room on friday

primero, hay que decir, ESTOY BIEN! no te preocupes!first, i have to say, I AM FINE! don´t you worry!

es muy dificil escribir en los dos idiomas, y solo voy a escribir en inglesahora, lo siento. espero que tus traductores esten funcionando bien!it is very difficult to write in both languages and i am only going to writein ingles now, i´m sorry. i hope that your translators are working well!

here we go, all during the week i was feeling funny. i was up a few nightsmaking exciting trips to the wonderful smelling latrine, but nothing tooserious. i always felt better in the morning. on wednesday i was not feelingtoo well, i had a headache and my stomach felt hungry even after i ate. butafter a few taking a few aspirin i was feeling good. thursday i was feelingjust fine. i only felt a little funny after i ate and drank a lot. thursdayevening we had a cooking class and i learned to make a bunch of quinoasalads and home made peanut butter. the food was so good ,and allvegetarian. i thought all of the good food would make my stomach feelbetter, i think i was wrong. then friday came along...

friday morning i woke up with a funny feeling in my stomach. i felt like ihad not eaten in days and there was a hole right through my belly. i atesome bread and drank some warm chocolate milk, which made me feel better. myhead felt a little bit funny, but i made it through my spanish class whichwas held at my house. for lunch doña willma served my professor and i saladand fried swiss chard. it was not anything unusual, but i felt sick to mystomach right after eating. so i took some pepto bismol and started to feelbetter.

friday afternoon we had a presentation on nutrition at the training center.it was going pretty well but then the lady started talking about oldbolivian remedies for sickness, such as bathing children in urine to lowertheir fevers. i started to come down with a case of nausea. i thought it wasjust because the lady was grossing me out, so i went and got some water todrink. the water just made my stomach feel even worse, but i made it throughher lecture.

after the lecture we had another round of cooking classes. we were learninghow to make squash bread, dried fruit in a special oven, and home made jellyand preserves. i was in the group in charge of making the papaya andpineapple jelly. so i was just standing there chopping up the papaya, whenthe smell of the papaya started to make me nauseous. i tried to continue,but then the papaya started to look like raw meat to me, which reallygrossed me out. the waves of nausea came over me and i had to leave thekitchen.

once i was sitting outside i felt better for a little while. i talked tosome of my friends and they brought me some rolaids to make my stomach feelbetter. then after about 15 mintues, i started to have intense pains in mystomach. my entire stomach felt like it was trying to jump out of my mouth,but i never did actually throw up. the pains got worse and i started havingreally loud rumbling noises in my stomach. it felt so strange. my friend puther hand on my stomach and said she could feel everything moving around.

i decided to go lay down in the training lounge on the couch. it felt niceto lay down, but after awhile i ended up curling up in the fetal positionbecause i could not handle the waves of pain that were coming over me. ifelt like i really needed to vomit, but i could not. after i layed there forawhile i started to get scared, and therefore started to cry. some of myfriends came in and found me and told the technical coordinator that sheneeded to call the peace corps doctor for me. she she called and i talked tothe doctor. she didn`t know what was wrong me with so she said i needed toget to the clinic as soon as possible.

so my whole training class piled into the peace corps bus and my friendserin and tristan helped me get on to the bus. i curled up again in the fetalposition on one of the benches and could not move. i was pretty scared,because i knew i must be pretty sick. so of course i was crying the wholetime and my awesome friends were singing me little children´s songs andrubbing my back. i do not know what i would have done if i had not beenaround so many great people. the ride to the clinic was sort of long andbumpy, which did not help my stomach at all. erin and tristan agreed to staywith me at the clinic, which made me very happy. i did not want to be therealone.

by the time we made it to the clinic, my entire right leg was asleep frombeing curled up. when i tried to get off the bus i could not walk, andtristan, being the great guy that he is, pretty much had to carry me off thebus. i am sure it looked pretty bad to everyone on the bus, because i don`tthink they knew my leg was asleep. it just looked like i was too weak towalk.

since i had been crying so much, i had given myself a really bad headache, amigraine in fact. so i could not bear to look at all the bright lights. ispent my entire time in the emergency room with my eyes shut tight and mysweatshirt over my face. i do not even know what the place looked like orwhat any of the doctors and nurses looked like. it was pretty scary

immediately when i got there they began to poke at me and ask me questions.i impressed myself and was actually able to answer all of their questions inspanish, i guess my spanish is good when i am in pain and under stress. theytook my temperature, which i was completely unaware of at the time. tristanand erin had to tell me to hold still because there was a thermometer undermy arm. all of the poking and proding hurt my stomach, and they could notdetermine what was wrong with me. so they took me in for an ultrasound. ihad never had one before, and i wish i had been coherent enough to check outmy organs on the computer screen. erin got to be in the room and assures methat they are all there and look good haha. they determined that myappendix, or however you spell it, was not going to burst. that made mequite happy because i did not want to have surgery in the middle of thenight in a third world country hospital.

of course they still had no idea what was going on inside of me. apparentlyi told the nurse at one point, in spanish, that there was an alien inside ofme that was trying to escape from my belly button. it must have been prettyfunny, but i was so out of it that i do not remember what i said.

they guessed that i had salmonella, but i do not know how accurate of adiagnosis that is. they wanted to put an IV in me, but i refused. my intensefear of needles made me strongly oppose the idea, plus they had no reason tobelieve i was dehydrated. i was not throwing up, and it was not coming outthe other end either. and if i took the IV, they were going to make me staythe night. and i really did not want to spend the night there.

for the pain i was given 2 options. they told me i could get a reallypainful pain medication shot in my arm or i could get a painless injectionof pain medication right into my vein that would be quick. of course i chosethe quick and painless option. come to find out, it was neither quick orpainless.

first the nurse tied my arm really tight to find the vein. then she jabbedwhat felt like an 8 foot needle about 8 inches up my vein. it hurt more thanthe pain in my stomach. then she said it was giong to burn a little. wellshe was wrong, it burned A LOT! i laid there waiting to feel her take theneedle out, and i asked her if she was done yet. she said she had to do itslowly...so much for a quick and painless procedure. they she told me i wasgoing to feel hot. she was wrong again...i was ON FIRE! my whole body feltlike it was burning up and the heat came over me in waves. i was cryingthroughout the whole ordeal. at one point i felt like i was naked, as if theheat had burned my clothes off. at that point they let tristan and erin backin the room. and i think i asked them if i was wearing clothes, which wasalso probably pretty funny for them haha. when the shot was over the meannurse didn`t even put a band-aid on my arm. so i had to lay there with myarm bent until the blood stopped oozing out.

thankfully, after about 10 mintues, i felt much better. the pain was gonefrom my head and from my stomach. the only thing that hurt was my arm wherethe mean nurse stabbed me with the needle.

so then, they wrote me up some prescriptions and sent me on my way. i wasgiven 3 pain killer pills, not sure what they are really. and they alsoprescribed a pill i have to take 30 minutes before i eat to protect mystomach, which is probably quite irritated and some antibiotics. i am notsure what the antibiotic is called, it starts with cipro something. in thepeace corps we call this antibiotic the "cipro bomb", because it pretty muchkills everything in your system that could possibly be there. the only badthing is that it destroys the good bacteria in your system as well as thebad, which means that you are more likely to get sick right after you stoptaking the pills before your system has had a chance to recover. i will makesure to take good care of myself though. i have 1 more pill left.

anyways, so they sent me home with my medications in a taxi with erin andtristan. we had to pay 25 bolivianos to get back to the host communities. iwas so completely out of it that i did not know where i was going or how toget back. thankfully erin and tristan were able to guide the taxi driver tomy house. they are truly my heros, i do not know what i would have donewithout them.

erin and tristan got me out of the taxi and made sure i got into my house,and then they left. doña willma was very worried and she thought that it wassomething she had cooked that had made me sick. i told her that there is noway of knowing and to not worry, the peace corps will give her anothergringo to look after. after about 20 mintues, the taxi driver showed up atthe door again. erin had left her bag in the back seat and he kindly came toreturn it. i was shocked that he came back, and that nothing was missingfrom the bag. but of course i had to pay him 10 bolivianos for the extratrip he made. so at least we had some luck that night, which made me feelbetter.

after that i just went to bed, and after the pain medication wore off...icould not sleep. i ate some pepto-bismol to stop the nausea, but stilldidn´t really sleep. the rest of the weekend was better, i started to feelless pain and less nauseous. as of know i only feel sick to my stomach wheni eat, so whatever i had really messed up my digestive tract. but noworries, i am getting better and everyone here is taking good care of me. iwill be just fine. i am on good medications and a strict bland diet, so ishould feel better soon.

thanks for listening to my story. i hope you enjoyed it, some parts wereactually kind of funny now that i look back.

this week i will be leaving wednesday to travel for our technical week,which is actually more like 11 days. we leave early on thursday morning anddon`t return until the following saturday. we are going to the department ofsanta cruz to visit a few sites. we will be putting on a health fair,nutrition workshop, and a teacher workshop. it should be fun and i shouldhave a lot of stories to tell about that. hopefully no one gets sick,because it is an 11 hour bus trip...on a bus with no bathroom! ahhh! lol...iguess that is why they call the peace corps "the longest vacation you´llevery complain about"

the monday after i return we are having a big bbq and they will announce oursites. so get ready for that, it will be awesome to finally know where i amgoing!

i hope that you all are well, thanks for reading my babble. i love and missyou all and i send lots and lots of hugs. take care! write back when youcan!

note...mom and dad and sara...please forward to the kent´s, mrs gaydos, andanyone else that should be under the "friends" contacts

ps. if anyone knows what pain medication caused me to feel like i was onfire, let me know!

ok bye bye for now, i will write again when i return from my trip!

*all you need is love, love never fails*

paz y amor y hugs, beth in bolivia...dont worry, i am doing fine!

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

hola everyone!i hope that all of you are doing well and that you had a good weekend. ithought i´d take the opportunity to let you all know what i´ve been up to.things have been pretty good here, although the cold weather and lack offruits and veggies is sort of getting to me.this past weekend i pretty much stayed at my host family´s place and helpedtake care of the baby and joel, who is still kind of sick. he has a prettybad cough and an ear infection. fortunately i convinced my host mom to takehim to the doctor´s last night. now he is on amoxicillin (however you spellit lol) which is an antibiotic, so he should start to get better. nothingreally exciting happened, i did a lot of homework and i hung out with myfriends on saturday for a little while. sunday i stayed home all day,because i was feeling sort of sick. i thought i was coming down with theamoebas, but it was a false alarm. on sunday i also learned which bananasare used for what purposes, honestly they all look the same to me but iguess there is a difference between the ones that are good fried and theones that are not. i guess there is a slight size and shape difference, butat a glance you would never know. as a result of my banana studies... i´maddicted to fried bananas.on monday i went into quilacollo to use the internet and printed out someinterview questions in order to interview a local dentist for my project. inquillacollo i also bought some listerine, which makes me feel ten timesbetter about my dental health. the peace corps only allows you to see adentist 1 time per year on their insurance, and i thought that governmentinsurance was supposed to be awesome...it is not.while i was in quillacollo i saw a few interesting things. first a herd ofburros crossed the street in front of a bus with a little old lady. i wish iwould have had my camara. it was such a contrast between the modern andtraditional ways of life here that continue to coexist. then i saw a manwith a monkey on his shoulder. the monkey was sort of dancing and he wantedpeople to pay in order take a picture with it. i felt bad for the littlemonkey, because i´m sure he is over worked and poorly fed as are all thepets here in bolivia. most people just give their cats and dogs tablescraps, like rice and tomatoes. and then they complain that the cats anddogs aren´t eating their food. people also are very violent with their dogs.people are constantly throwing rocks at dogs or kicking them. i have no ideawhy some of the dogs stay with their owners at all. this violence makes thedogs pretty mean and you have to be careful when you walk down the road.some dogs will ignore you but others will bark and start to follow you.unfortunately the only way to make them stop is to pretend to pick up rocksand throw them. what i really don´t understand is how they can have solittle information about animals when the bolivian vet and livestock schoolis located about 5 mintues from where i live.anyways, on to my adventures today. today i went to the big expensivesupermarket in cochabamba. i left my house at 8 am and arrived about 9 am.the supermarket is called ic norte. the first step at all larger stores hereis locking up your bag. you have to turn in your bag to a guard who watchesthe lockers while you shop. he puts the bag in a locker and gives you thekay on a long wooden stick you have to carry around with you. i was soexcited when i got in there...because i found peanut butter! they had igabrand peanut butter and all sorts of american brands. i found kit kats,milkway, oreos, smuckers jam, coca cola zero, quaker oatmeal and many otherthings. so of course i racked up a big bill buying peanut butter, somecandy, crackers, soy nuts and a few other things. the peanut butter alonecost 22 bolivianos for a pretty small jar. to me it is worth it. being avegetarian...or trying to be a vegetarian...is extremely hard here inbolivia. to them eating well means eating a lot of meat and potatoes andusing a lot of oil. in fact, i found out last night that my host mom hasbeen putting extra spoonfuls of oil in my rice because she thinks i´m tooskinny. now that i have my peanut butter i´ll have to let her know that i´mgetting plenty of fats in my diet lol.today i have a culture class at 2pm. we are going to talk about traditionalbolivian customs and have an overview on the politics. i´m not really intopolitics, but it is important to know what is going on here. in the largecities there is some anti-american sentiment. the current president, evomorales, is a coca leaf farmer. coca leaves are used to make cocaine, butare also used in many teas and native dishes. people in the andes have beenchewing the coca leaf and drinking tea made with it since the time of theinca empire. chewing the leaf or drinking the tea supresses hunger and givesenergy. it is also an altitude sickness treatment. you can buy coca leaf teaat any supermarket all packaged up like you would find any other type oftea. the peace corps however prohibits the use of coca leaves in any form.apparently a former peace corps worker applied for a CIA job and put on herapplication that she had used coca leaves in peace corps bolivia. she didntget the job and blames it on the fact that she had used coca leaves. shecaused a huge mess and the peace corps has recently had to ban the use ofcoca leaves by peace corps workers. coca leaves are by no means cocaine andare a huge part of the culture here. not using coca leaves or drinking thetea offends most bolivians and is making it hard for peace corps workers tointegrate into their sites. i am however glad it has been banned, so now ihave an official excuse not to use it. i heard it tastes bad anyways lol.anyways, back to the anti-american sentiment....i got off track there a bit.ok so the president of bolivia claims that in his youth an american militaryhelicopter came down on his village of coca leaf growers and killed somepeople and caused damage. there are many different versions of the story,but most of them go something like that. so now people here think americansare here as government spies to bring down the coca leaf growing industry.training is going well and all this week we are preparing to go on our techweekend trip. we are going to visit a boarding school and do a workshop andpresentation on self esteem, leadership and computers. i´m in charge of theice breaker and review games. i´m also in a group that is supposed to teacha group of kids how to create and save a document on microsoft word. itshould be fun. we are going up into the mountains and it is going to bepretty cold at night and in the mornings. i didnt bring a hat and gloves,but i think i´m going to have to buy some.well that is about it for now. check for another update later this week,i´ll try to write one if i get a chance. i hope you all are doing well andhaving a good summer. dont worry about me, some of the things i writeprobably sound a lot more scary than they really are. i´ve been treated wellby all the bolivians i have met, they are a friendly and helpful people.and i have not come down with any weird disease. i´m taking really good careof myself and plan to come home healthier than when i left.ok well take care and write when you can!paz y amor, beth in bolivia

hello everyone, hola todos!

beth is alive! beth esta viva!

sorry that it has taken me so long to write a group email. i have been crazybusy. this training program is insane, they keep us busy every day from 8-6and then expect us to help our families cook dinner and do our homework. sowhere to begin...

right now i´m living in a community called florida, which is outside of abigger town called quillacollo, which is a suburb of cochabamba. i´m in amountain valley at a pretty high altitude. it is very chilly in the morningand after the sun goes down, but during the day it hits the low 80´s. i liveon a cobblestone-dirt road in a tiny cement-concrete-plaster house with ayoung family. the parents are in their early 30´s. their names are don noeland doña willma. they have two precious childre, joel who is 4 and lesliewho is 7 months old. joel is full of energy and always wants to play andtalk with me even if we don´t understand eachother. the spanish here is hardfor me to understand, they speak with a different accent and use a lot ofslang from the indigenous language (quechua). the baby is so chubby andcute. she doesn´t cry much and just loves to be in her stroller. i´ve beenhelping care for her a lot. i get to feed her, which is funny to do becauseshe won´t take a bottle. you have to feed her with a spoon. don noel anddoña willma are really nice, and they talk to me all the time. doña willmais trying to teach me all sorts of things. i´m learning how to peel tomatoesand potatoes with a really sharp knife. she does it so amazingly fast and ittakes me a very long time. hopefully i come home with all of my fingersleft. i´m learning how to cook a lot of native dishes too. which means i´mlearning 1001 ways to cook potatoes and rice, because that is all they eathere. every dish includes rice and potatoes, and sometimes noodles as well.they eat a lot of carbohydrates. they cook the rice here with a lot of oil.first they fry the dry rice in oil. then they boil it in water with oil andthen they drain it and put some more oil on it. it tastes ok, but i know itmust be pretty bad for you. i really wish they would cook more veggies,because they have them around. they mostly just sell all of the fruit andveggies they grow at the market instead of eating them at home.

as for the peace corps training, it involves a lot of sitting and listening.we get lectures on safety, security, diseases, and cultural issues. thereare a lot of scary diseases here that i won´t mention, i don´t want to scareyou all. don´t worry though, i´ve been vaccinated for a lot of thingsalready. every wednesday we go to the training center and get shots. lastweek i got 3 shots, and the flu shot hurt really bad. everyone has bruisesand sore arms from that one. every morning we have language classes in thecommunity where we live. the professors come from the city and we meet ingroups by level of spanish at someone´s house. i´m in the advanced groupwhich is both good and bad. it is good in that i can communicate prettywell, but on the other hand the advanced group has to do individual thesistype project-reports. i´m kind of nervous because it involves doinginterviews and that sort of thing. it should be ok though, i have to go getmy proposal signed on monday morning, i´m hoping to do a project on boliviandental care and the role of the school system. the people here have prettybad teeth. my little host brother has all of his front teeth half rottedout. most adults have a few fake teeth or have tons of gold fillings acrosstheir front teeth. the living conditions in my community are not so good.most people have running water at least a few days a week and electricitymost of the day. my family has electricity and running water most of thetime. we also have a latrine, which is basically a cement toilet that youhave to poor water down after using. it smells horrible. the first time iwent in there i threw up because it smells so bad, but now i´m getting usedto it.

let´s see...what else. hmm, today i´m in the city with my friend laura wholives with the family next door to mine. we went to the supermarket to lookfor some food, because we are already sick of eating potatoes and rice. ibought some powdered milk because we can´t drink milk from the local cows,it is too full of bacteria. i also bought some tomato paste, so i can teachmy host mom to make some sauce for pasta tonight. oh yes, i forgot tomention my host parents are both teachers. my host mom teaches weaving andcrafty type stuff. i have no idea what my host dad teaches, but on theweekend he is the community water and electricity bill collector.

well, for now i guess that is all. i´m having a good time and the people inmy training class are awesome. everyone seems to get along well and we´rehaving a good time. hopefully i´ll have some funny stories next time for youall. i love and miss you all. take care and write back when you can. if younotice someone is missing from my mailing list, please let me know. i don´twant to leave anyone out. thanks!

hugs, beth in bolivia