Not Dead Yet and Wow is it Humid

Contrary to what you may have heard, I (Ron) am not quite dead yet, so nobody take the candy from my office desk yet (Catherine and Raequel, I'm looking at you).  That being said, I am no where near 100% but managed to pull through the day today.  I can honestly say I would rather be really sick in cold weather than really sick in 32 degree weather with 90% humidity.

This morning we were supposed to go to the market with Marco to get the popcorn and the other snack that looks like fruit loops but tastes nothing like them.  Unfortunately, with all the rain last night, the market had to wait until later in the day, so we started the day off a little later with lunch at Ken's with the boys and then off to the market to get Melody's phone fixed and to look for shoes for Lukas.  For those you technically inclined, I learned something today about cell phone sim cards.  The cards they sell down here are too big for Melody's Samsung S4 so we were afraid she would not be able to use it, and had borrowed a old t9 samsung phone from Heidi.  Well, we learned a little bit of Bolivian ingenuity today.  Turns our that the larger sim cards can simply be cut down to size and work just fine in Melody's phone, so she is up and running on her unlocked Samsung.

Lukas is being a little picky about his shoes, so after an hour of wandering, we were not able to find anything that met his high standards, so we headed off to El Jordan where we spent the afternoon bleaching and rinsing all the toys that the kids play with.  They have a ton of plastic toys, so it took most of the afternoon to get the job done.  We learned when we got there that Marco went to the market a little later without us and picked up the popcorn etc without us.  They have two kinds of popcorn here by the way.  The first kind is what we are used to and is a bit more expensive in both the markets and the grocery store.  The second kind is made using the giant kernel corn that is native to Bolivia.  I have included a picture of Logan next to the popcorn at the bottom of the post to give you an idea of the size of bags this stuff comes in.

By the end of the day, I was back to not feeling so good, so we grabbed a pizza at THE pizza place and brought it back home instead of cooking and heating the house up even more.

Tomorrow I will be showing Ken's boys how to make a couple of non-Bolivian dishes to stretch their repertoire since Ken is getting a little tired of the same dishes being cycled through.  Then it will be off to El Jordan to prep for the sale on Saturday where they sell all the beadwork, leatherwork, etc that the students make.  You would be amazed at the quality of work on many of these items.  The leatherwork is particularly amazing to me.