Bound For Bolivia

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2010-04-04T11:43:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the lack of posts, but we have been packing, traveling and unpacking again. We had a 4 hour delay in Santa Cruz to start our trip home, and let me tell you, Santa Cruz airport has NOTHING to do in it with 3 kids for 4 hours. The Bolivian airport security screening was by far the most aggressive of any of the airports we passed through on the way down or on the way back. All bags are thoroughly searched before getting on the plane, all electronics must be turned on or they won't be allowed on the plane, and everybody is subject to a full body pat down. I would assume, that this is due to the concern of people smuggling out drugs from the country.

Arriving and getting through security in Miami was a breeze. I guess they assume that since Bolivia is so tough, that they don't have to be. Anyways, we whipped through security in Miami and got in to our hotel at about 9:30 instead of 4:30 so we just ran to a gas station next to the hotel and grabbed some junk food and went right to bed. The trip home from Miami the next day went smoothly without any delays, and we were all happy to land in Saskatoon. We immediately grabbed our bags, and headed to the joint Wendy's/Tim Hortons on Miller for a real burger and some coffee for the road.

The first day or two of being home, have been a little strange, especially grocery shopping, which made me pretty grumpy the first couple of times. In Bolivia, there is no choice for what kind of food you get. If you want peanut butter, there is one kind. Here there are 15. I also got really annoyed at the huge lineups at the tills. In the market, there are a ton of people, but you get things done in a hurry, and in the small supermarket, there are very few lineups and very good service.

I am sure we will all adjust to normal life again in a few days after returning to work and school, and hopefully will not forget any of the good and bad experiences that we have had while we were in Bolivia.

I would like to finish this blog off by quoting one of my favorite authors:
"Don't cry because its over. Smile because it happened." - Dr. Seuss

We Are Being Invaded

2010-03-30T10:18:00.000-06:00

Sorry for not posting last night, but it was way too busy around here for that. We have been invaded by a group that just arrived and they were unloading, moving and just generally everywhere last night so it wasn't possible to get to the computer. We now have 17 new teenage girls and two chaperons as roommates. To make room for them all, Lukas has moved to the couch in the living room and Logan and Jordan have moved to a big foam mattress in our room. It also means that kitchen space and dishes are in short supply.

Everybody knows I love spending time around large groups of people, so I have resorted to finding a chair outside to get some cave time. Its not working very well however because somebody is always coming outside to wander or just to chat.

This afternoon, we are headed over to Jorge and Vivianna's place for coffee and then we are at Kens place where his boys are cooking us a big supper since we will be heading home soon.

New Houses and The Clasico

2010-03-28T20:56:00.000-06:00

Today was a very full day and everyone is tired and cranky as I write tonight's post. We started the day out with the usual Sunday routine of church where Melody taught the little kids to sing This Little Light of Mine and they performed it at the end to great applause. Following church we went for the usual after church lunch which consisted of.........chicken, yuca, rice, plantain and french fries. I can tell you that when we get home, we will not be eating chicken any time soon.

As soon as we got dropped off from lunch by Ken, we were immediately picked up by Corrina for our afternoon visits to some of Melody's students houses. The two we went to see today are Jenny and Sandra. These two are both married with kids of their own, but attend El Jordan to learn new things to bring money into the house. Sandra just moved out of the one room that her husband, 3 kids and her had been renting that shared a bathroom with 4 other families into their new house that they had been building for a while. Their new house is a simple 4 room brick house that her husband and his friends had worked on brick by brick as they could afford them over the last couple of years. Its very basic, but a HUGE step up for the family.

One of the biggest differences for them is to have an indoor kitchen. They still don't have running water in the house, so they still have only the one outdoor water tap but the kitchen is still a big step up for them. Melody spent lots of time with Sandra, so seeing their house and saying goodbye to Sandra was quite an emotional moment for them both.

We also got over to Jenny's new house which isn't finished as of yet, but any time they are not working, they are at the new house working on it. Jenny is the oldest student at El Jordan, and has been married for 18 years. Jenny says it is only in the last three years that her and her husband have really started to believe that they are worth anything in the world, and that any money they have is important and valuable to them and not to waste it. Jenny's husband is a welder, and the way the pay system works here is that they are paid 14 times a year. Once per month, and a second pay cheque at Christmas. The 14th pay cheque is almost another bonus cheque, but the way his company works is that they pay it out every 5th year for the past 5 years. That means that they get a big cheque once every 5 years. Instead of wasting it as they had in the past, they immediately paid for a plot of land. Ever since then, they have been buying building supplies every time they have any money and have been building their house ever since.

Its been two years of manual labor, but they now have a very small 4 room house almost ready to move into. It does not have an indoor kitchen or bathroom, but is a giant step up for this family. When we arrived, they were taking a break in the future living room. Here are some pictures of what two years of sweat will get you.

They only have a couple of things left to do before moving in, but they are not the cheapest items. They need to buy windows which will be single pane with wood frames, and they need to either cement the floor or tile it. After that they will be moved in and they are really looking forward to it. Right now, 6 of them live in one room the size of their new living room.

We finished up the visit, and made our way to meet Jorge, his son, Tonchi and Ken to go to the Clasico soccer game between Oriente and Blooming. I can honestly say I have never been to a sporting event with the atmosphere of this soccer game. One end of the stadium is painted blue for Blooming, the other end is painted Green for Oriente and the people who do not want to get trampled sit on the sides. We were on the sides, but they fans are rabid no matter where you sit in the stadium.

From the minute they enter the stadium until the time they leave, they are chanting, singing, banging drums or blasting off fireworks. On the way in, I had bought a Blooming flag to wave, but the police on the way in took my flag stick leaving me with only a flag. They took my flag stick, but you can take FIREWORKS and lighters in. Boy do they light fireworks. When the teams come out, the ends of the stadium light up like they are literally on fire and a giant smoke cloud goes over the field.

A couple of things worried me. The first is that the sections of the stadium are separated by chain link fence, and on top of the fence is barbed wire. I have seen the videos of the South American soccer riots that ended with people trampled or squashed on the fence, and that was the first thing that jumped to my mind. Didn't happen today however. The second thing that worried me was that they had police in full riot gear with helmets and shields every 20 feet along the side of the field. Again, we didn't need to worry, because they spent the whole time watching the game. Our officers would never go to a raiders game and just watch the game. They would watch the crowd the whole time. :)

The game was high spirited because the two teams hate each other, and two red cards were eventually given out. One to the Oriente goalie for a vicious elbow to the jaw on a player trying to head a ball, the other to a Blooming player who tried a slide tackle about 2 feet above the ball which resulted in the Oriente player going off on a stretcher and not returning. Oriente ended up winning the game 2-0 which made Logan happy since he was the only one really cheering for Oriente. The final goal was right in front of us and was a beautiful bicycle kick goal. Even though Blooming lost, we still exited the stadium blowing our Blooming horns. A good time was had by all.

Arachnophobia and Waterfalls

2010-03-27T20:30:00.000-06:00

Melody taught her class this morning, and it went well. I could go into more detail, but I can't write very much about painting fingernails cause I'm a guy.

At noon, Ken came over and we were supposed to grab lunch quickly and head out to some waterfalls in the middle of the jungle a couple of hours away. Well, first we had to give Ruddy some money to buy us some tickets to the soccer game tomorrow night, then we had to pick up Roberto from work, and then we had to go back to Ruddy to give him more money because they had upped the ticket prices since last season. To keep it brief, we ended up hitting Burger King (the only fast food joint here), and eating on the road at 2:00.

The road to the waterfalls is the same road that goes out to El Camino, but instead of continuing on that far, you ironically turn at the exact spot where Logan split his head open a few weeks ago. Keep on going until you get to the river, drive THROUGH the river, then you get on what they call a road in Bolivia. Basically, it consists of a series of large rocks, mud pits, mostly dry creek beds and pot holes. It had rained earlier this week, so anywhere that was shady, was foot deep mud and anywhere sunny, was foot deep dried ruts.

The road was entertaining enough, but this time of year in the jungle is also giant spider time apparently. All along the side of the road every 10 feet are huge 5 to 10 foot wide spiderwebs with very large scary spiders on them. We stopped and took a bunch of pictures which I will upload tomorrow when I get my camera back from Ken. He borrowed it to take passport pictures for his boys because he is trying to bring them to Canada later this year. Anyways, these webs are the kind that you see on Discovery Channel or Nature Channel. They are very impressive, especially in the sunlight, and are much stronger than the little webs we have at home. I poked at one with a stick and really wasn't able to break it without swinging the stick at it. Then I ran back into the truck when the spider started running from the middle of its web to where I was whacking.

We continued on the road for the next hour or so and we all took turns whacking our heads on the windows as we hit the big bumps. I took the worst knock while I tried to take a video of us going through a really bad section of mud when the truck slid into a really deep rut and I smacked my head on the outside of the front window. The kids thought it was hilarious however until they smacked their heads on the windows too.

We finally arrived at the entrance to the waterfalls where they have some bbq and camping sites and everyone had to go to the bathroom. Of course, as is the tradition in Bolivia, the bathroom will cost you 1 Boliviano, and only after paying, do you get some toilet paper. If you need more, you pay again.

From the parking area, its a bit of a walk down a jungle path to the start of the waterfalls. The only problem was that over the path, are the same huge spiderwebs with the same huge spiders. Not just one or two, but 40 or 50 of them. Lets all take a moment to flashback to the single large spider in our house and Melody's reaction to that. Now lets all picture that reaction times 50. We eventually got her to go down the path and we got to the waterfalls and started the long path up to the top. It was frequently slippery, but thanks to firm grips on the childrens' hands, nobody was injured other than some dirty clothes. Several places along the climb, there are pools of water that are deep enough to jump into, and there were adventurous people doing so all the way up. Lukas wanted to walk over by one, and proceeded to slip and slide about 5 feet down the falls before he got his footing back.

We kept on going and eventually reached the top with the biggest of the waterfalls and a nice pool at the bottom. The kids splashed around a bit, and Ken showed the path up the cliff to jump into the pool at the bottom of the falls. Lukas wanted to climb all the way up, but we stopped him half ways where it got a little steep and slippery. Ken went all the way up and after some prodding, jumped the 20 feet or so into the pool. I have a nice video of it that would take about 3 days to upload, so it will have to wait until we get back to Canada. By the time we got back to the city, it was 8:00 so we just grabbed some food at a restaurant and went home.

It was a good day, and we are all really looking forward to finally seeing a professional soccer game tomorrow after our visits to some more of Melody's students houses in the afternoon. The family is split on who to cheer for because it is a Classico game tomorrow which has the two Santa Cruz teams playing each other. Logan and Jordan are cheering for Oriente and the rest of us are cheering for Blooming. No matter who wins, there will be fireworks a plenty. (no, really they regularly shoot off fireworks in the stands at soccer games here)

The Internet Tubes Are Unclogged

2010-03-27T10:27:00.000-06:00

Now that the internet appears to have straightened itself out, here are the pictures that I tried to upload with yesterdays blog post.

Everybody say "AWWWWWWWW, isn't he cute."

And here is a picture of all of us with them. Note Lukas having a moment of self reflection. (grumpy moment)

Company Is Coming. Where Are The Ribs???

2010-03-26T21:51:00.000-06:00

Today was all about hosts and guests. We started out the day with a visit to Martha and Margoth's house that they share with their three kids. Both of these ladies were in Melody's classes and were kind enough to invite us over for lunch with their family at their house. The two families share the house so they can afford a place to live. The house is basically two rooms, one of which is a bedroom and the other of which is another bedroom/kitchen, then in the back is a bathroom. The running water is in a tap in the yard which doubles as their sink area.

When we arrived, they had a nice little carbon fire going with a grate over top. Down here, they don't use briquettes or wood, they use carbon which is basically pre-burned wood. It lights really easily and burns nice and hot. Its perfect for outdoor cooking when you don't really have an oven or a fire pit to contain the wood fires. We all sat down and chatted for a few minutes (Ken acted as translator), and then they put the meat on the grate. They cooked up some beef skewers and some sausages over the fire, and when they were almost done, they brought out a lettuce and tomato salad, arroz con queso (rice with cheese in it), and boiled yuca.

Bolivians are a very gracious culture when it comes to having guests, and this was no exception. The food they put forth is probably the most and best they could afford, and it was all very good, especially the skewered beef. There weren't enough forks to go around, so I ate my food with a spoon and knife, and we had to share cups. We have had the cheese rice many times since we got here, and today was the first one that I actually liked. They also had a fresh batch of chicha to drink. It was the first opportunity we have had to try it, but unfortunately, it was not to our liking.

After we ate, the kids got a chance to play with the 4 and 5 year old girls and to kick the soccer ball we brought around with the little boy. We thanked them very much for their kindness after a little conversation, but we had to get going because we were having Tonchi, Jorge, Vivianna and Noelia over for supper tonight at our place.

Our guests for the evening had requested something that they wouldn't get in Bolivia, so we had decided to make lemon potatoes and pork ribs for supper with a spice rub that I use at home. The only catch is that they don't really eat pork ribs here, so we knew it would be a challenge to find the ribs as well as the spices that I needed for the rub since most of the food here uses next to no spices. We made our way to the first butcher shop and when we asked for pork back ribs, she held up a strip of some kind of pork meat, so we knew we were not going to find them there. I am pretty good with my meat cuts, and I think that one may have been something we would have made sausage or dog food out of.

We then tried the supermarket and we managed to find most of the spices I needed except for onion powder which apparently doesn't exist in Bolivia that we are aware of. We also went to the meat counter to ask about the pork ribs. First of all, the supermarket here doesn't really carry much pork. This is a chicken and beef kind of country, but they did have some pork today. Sure they have ribs.......they are attached to the side of the pig. They just aren't detached from the side of the pig. So, that was when Ken remembered his friend whose family runs a pig farm and has their own butchers on site.

Ken called his friend and very carefully explained that we were looking for pork back ribs. She called the butcher at their place and he said "Sure!!!! I know exactly what they want!!! Skin off right??" I had Ken confirm the description again, and we ordered 5 kg of ribs to be picked up later in the day. Total cost $12.

Ken showed up at our door with a bag in his hand and declared "Here they are."

I brought them into the house where Melody and Lukas were peeling potatoes like crazy, and since we were running short on time, had everything laid out to season the ribs and throw them in the oven. I opened the bag........now this is the scene in the movie where the camera starts in close on the actors face and his eyes get all wide and then the camera pulls back from the look of astonishment on the actors face. Then it cuts over to the image of what the actor is looking at. So to give you that image, I opened the bag and there before me was a 5kg side of pig with one rack of ribs still attached to the side of the pig. ONE!!!!! We are having 7 people over for supper and I have ONE rack of ribs and a side of pork meat that is unbutchered.

Has anyone seen the show on Food Network called Dinner Impossible. Now I know how he feels all the time. I got the sharpest dull knife I could find out of the drawer, and started to disassemble the different muscle groups from the side of the pig, and carefully removed the rack of ribs so we would have that one pristine rack to be served. Then I ripped, tore, hacked and darn near gnawed off the silverskin and fat layers from the pork so we had a bunch of nice rib thick pieces of pork. We threw the spice rub on as fast as we could and threw them in the oven. Think the fun was over???? Nope.
.
Remember that ovens here are propane? The problem with propane ovens is that the temperatures are very difficult to keep constant, and its almost impossible to have a temperature in the over below about 350. For ribs in the oven, I want 300 degrees, no more, no less for a good 2 to 2.5 hours. When I checked them 1.5 hours in, they were done, and the sugars in the rub that were not on the meat had turned to a black caramel that had coated the bottom of the aluminum cookware. But at least I still had that pristine rack of ribs as my show piece.

Roll the clock back about an hour from where we are and we will now talk about the potatoes. We made lemon potatoes and had them ready for the oven in the other suite which they said we could use as well. The time comes to put them in the oven, and we go over to do so and find out that the oven is too small to fit both pans of potatoes in on the same rack, and there is only one rack. ARGGGGHHHHH. I managed to wedge in the rack and the broiler pan as a second rack and get the door closed.

Everything finishes up fine just as the guests arrive, and we manage to put out a meal of bbq pork pieces, lemon potatoes, green beans and ONE PRISTINE RACK OF RIBS.

So, whats the moral of the story??

Next time, just cook chicken, yuca, plantains, french fries and rice.

p.s. I tried to put pictures in, but the internet tubes were all clogged up today so it was taking too long.

Wooden Slides and Termites

2010-03-25T17:59:00.000-06:00

Following the daily homework routine, we made some cheese empanadas for lunch (oh I am so making these every second day at home). Ken came by and we took the last of the school supplies and muffin crayons to another home for boys and girls. This particular place would be where I would want to be if I were a homeless Bolivian child. Most of the kids there are there because their parent or parents are in jail, they were on the street, or they were recently orphaned and the authorities cannot find any other relatives to take them.

The way this place works is that they have several small houses on their complex. In each house, they have a combination of boys and girls of various ages along with a "parent" figure who is a volunteer. Each house lives like a little family with the boys and girls treating each other like brothers and sisters. All the food is prepared in a single large kitchen, but it is all delivered to each of the "homes" and they eat with their family at a table in the home. The kids all go to school, if they are old enough, at a school about 2 km away. They either walk, or take the bus to school. When they get older, they get paired up with a mentor in whatever area of a career they are interested in. One girl, who is a sister to Andres from Ken's place, is working with an oncologist. The kids intern with the mentor for two years and then when they are old enough, the mentor will help them get into college.

For the little ones, they have a baby room, a pre-school room and a kindergarten room. Just outside of that building, they have a small play area with two swings and a wooden slide. Yes, I said wooden slide. No, I don't mean the slide is made of wood and then the part you sit on is metal, I mean everything is made of wood. Doesn't that sound like a fun time kids? Whhhheeeeeeee slivers!!!!

They have a couple of small round buildings that house their tools etc, and washing machine. All the clothes are hug out to dry in a gazeebo type building.

The best part of this home, is the way that they raise money to keep their heads above water. Walking around this large piece of land, you would think you were in the rain forest. There are big and small trees everywhere along with all kinds of flowers and butterflies. The reason for that is that they supply trees and plants for landscaping to make money. The net result is a very beautiful home for boys and girls who need one.

The only problem that I found with this place, was the giant termite mound on the grounds. Don't believe me, here is a picture. Note the scared look of Lukas trying to get away from the termite mound.

That big mound of dirt next to Lukas is the giant termite mound. The locals assure me that this is a small example. They commonly reach up to 20 feet or higher.

So let me get this straight, they have giant termite mounds here. Hmmmmm. Lets build a slide out of wood. Great idea. What could possibly go wrong??

After we finished up at the home, we headed to the Ramada. Nope, not the hotel, the market.

The Ramada market is my least favorite of the markets we have been to for a couple of reasons.
1. It winds through a series of streets and between buildings and is very easy to get lost in because you rarely see the sky through the blue tarp roofs.
2. It gets really hot and stuffy under blue tarp roofs.
3. They put the stores so close together, that there is usually only a foot or two between the stalls to walk through.
4. The stalls are never in the same place twice so its like the maze in Harry Potter that changes every time you turn a corner. The store you wanted to go back to from last week, isn't where it once was.

Anyways, the Ramada market is also the place to get shoes. Both Jordan and I were in need of new shoes, so we headed down there and after about 40 minutes of being lost in the maze, we found the place we were looking for, right next to the stand selling aborted llama fetuses. You heard me right, they sell aborted llama fetuses in the market. (time for the segue into Mutual Omaha's Wild Kingdom) You see llamas regularly abort their fetuses in the wild for some reason or another. The Bolivians have always believed that they are good luck, so when they start a new building, they put an aborted llama fetus in the concrete somewhere for luck. Think that would pass code in Canada??

Anyways, back to the shoes. Jordan found some little Reebok runners she like for 10 bucks, so she was happy. I had seen some sketchers behind glass that I wanted to look at last week so after the 40 minute search, we had arrived at the same store. We know they are real sketchers because the real ones are always locked up in a cabinet, just like any other real items down here. We asked if we could try on a pair of size 9 shoes, and were told that they only have the one pair. Turns out that they only carry one pair of each style of the real shoes, because most Bolivians can't afford the real deal. Lucky for me, all their Sketchers are size 9.

Of course, I forgot to wear socks today because it is 30 degrees again, so normally in Canada that is not a problem because they have the "store" sock for you to wear. Guess what??? Another difference from Canada. They don't have a store sock. They have a plastic bag. So I slipped on the plastic bag and tried on the shoes. Its a little hard to decide if you like a shoe when you look in the mirror and see the shoe and a plastic bag on your foot. I eventually decided on which shoe looked the best with the bag and bought them. Sketchers at home normally cost in the $130 range, but in Bolivia, they sell for the low low price of $47. Sold.

Tomorrow we have a lunch appointment at the home of some of Melody's students, and then we are cooking a Canadian supper for some people from Ken's church. Should be an interesting day.

Moving In The Rain

2010-03-24T07:47:00.001-06:00

Tuesday started out with Melody getting her hair done by one of her students and the kids all working on their homework as usual. After lunch, we had planned to go with Ken and Ruddy to visit Ruddy's mother. His mom lives in a very small place with Ruddy's older brother, another lady and her two daughters. The yard is made up of a single water tap, a couple of lean to shelters for storage and a kitchen, a wooden outhouse, and two very small rooms as the house.

We arrived to find that there was nobody home but her dog and her 5 puppies, a bunch of chickens and a couple of ducks. You can see the outhouse and the kitchen in the picture below.

Ruddy went to the neighbors house to see if they knew where is mother had gone. It turns out that she went a few blocks away to help a friend of hers. We found the house a few blocks away, and quickly found out that they were moving. Ken asked what was going on, and the family was not able to keep paying for their house, so they were having to move back out to the country to live with some other family members. Ruddy's mother was there because she had given them some things to use, and she needed to pick them up before they left.

We carried all of Ruddy's mothers things to Ken's truck to move them back to her house. She had given them a mattress made out of the plastic burlap bags that farms use for grain, which was stuffed with straw, and a very old propane oven along with a few other odds and ends.

We packed all of Ruddy's mothers things, and then we packed all of the family's belongings in the truck that was going to take them all up past Samai Pata in the mountains. Their total family belongings was basically a straw mattress bed, a garbage bag full of their kitchen items, a small bookshelf, and a table and 4 chairs. We had all their stuff moved onto the trucks in about 15 minutes. Imagine packing all of your belongings on trucks in less than 15 minutes.

As we drove back with a full truck to Ruddy's mothers place (the boys and I were in the back of the truck holding stuff down), the rain started to really come down. Normally, I look forward to the rain here because it cools me off for a few minutes, but in this case I didn't. Here is why. In Ruddy's moms yard, everything is dirt, when the rain comes down hard, everything turns to mud. By the time we got back, there was two inches of slippery mud everywhere in her yard. I chose a poor time to wear my Birkenstock sandals.

We got everything moved into their places, and went inside to talk. The walls in the house were all cracked and the roof was lined with a tarp, to catch all the leaks. She was very friendly and explained that the walls were cracked because the neighbor's son had taken his dads truck one night and crashed into the wall right against her bed. She thought there was an earthquake and thought the place was going to collapse on her. She laughed about it now, but you could tell it was serious at the time. It was also another expense that she hasn't had the money to fix.

She explained that they have been trying to buy the property for the last 10 years on a purchase contract for $4000 USD. They have about $1500 USD left to pay on the property, but now the owner wants a lump sum payment of $1000 right away. If they can't come up with it, he is going to try to move them along and find another buyer or renter.

We left her with some knitted dish cloths and gave the two girls who live there each a stuffed animal. They became the only toys they have.

Pretty sobering stuff, but they all still manage to smile.

Felt Marker

2010-03-23T06:57:00.001-06:00

The only real item that Logan has requested while we are down here has been a nice chess set. They sell them in most of the stores here and they are Incas vs Spaniards. Logan had finally settled on one a week or so ago, and we negotiated a fair price and ended up buying it. The way the chess sets work here is that the pieces are stored inside an Inca style painted box made of wood that doubles for the board. When we paid, the lady placed all the pieces inside the board and taped it shut.

We had been quite busy over the last week or so and had not had a chance to have a game even though Logan has been pestering me every ten minutes to play. When we finally got around to playing, we tried to remove the tape, but along with the tape came the paint. Uh Oh.

Ken was going to take us back to the store and explain to the shop keeper what the situation was yesterday, but he got busy, so he sent Ruddy over to help us out after explaining what had happened to him. Ruddy is great, but he doesn't really speak English, so I knew it would be a fun time. We got down to the store, and Ruddy explained the situation to the lady working at the time.

First Problem:
They record the items they sell in a ledger with the price it was sold at. That is not a problem by itself, but the recorded value in the book was a few Bolivianos less than what we paid. That's because we got the special Gringo price which is a little higher and presumably, the shop clerk at the time pocketed the extra.

Second Problem:
They didn't have any more of the same chess set.

Now the negotiating began. Their first attempted solution was to pull out a black felt marker and try to draw the lines that had been removed by the tape back on. Uh, no thanks. They were unwilling to refund our money, so that left Logan looking for a different set within the same store. He ended up happily choosing a smaller set with nice little pieces similar to the style of figures that used to come in Red Rose Tea when I was a kid.

The next issue was the difference between the price of the new set and the old one. They wrapped up the new set and handed us 100 Bolivianos. That made a net loss of 30 Bolivianos from what we had paid for the first one. Ruddy was doing his best to understand us and to pass that along to them, when the same group that were present to assist us with Logan's head wound showed up out of nowhere and helped us with the translation problem. I eventually got sick of arguing and told Melody to take what they were offering because really we were spending 20 minutes arguing over 30 Bolivianos. That's 4 dollars. Four dollars is not enough for me to lose my temper over. Four dollars and fifty cents might be, but four dollars is not.

Logan left happy with his new set (tape free this time) and we all cooled off a bit with a ice cold glass bottle of Coke. Six ice cold bottles of Coke.....12 Bolivianos, or $1.60. Getting all the souvenir shopping done....priceless. I hate shopping.

I Got Nothing

2010-03-22T15:31:00.000-06:00

Sorry I haven't written in the last day or so. We haven't been doing much other than trying to finish all the souvenir shopping. So, I got nothing so here is a rabbit with a pancake on its head.

Don't worry if you don't get it. Just go ask Tony.

Ever Have Banana In Your Ear????

2010-03-20T19:40:00.000-06:00

Busy day as usual around here. Did I mention it was hot again??

Melody started the day off by teaching a class this morning. Yes it's Saturday, but this was a special one for teenage girls who wanted to learn how to do some facials. Imagine that, teenage girls wanting to look good. Then we had the usual change of plans take place. We had originally planned to play in a soccer game this afternoon with Ken's boys and their friends, but Corrina invited us out to their property outside of town for the afternoon. Hmmmm, lets think about that for a minute. We could:
A) Run around in 34 degree heat for an hour and probably have a coronary, or
B) Drive out in the country, play with a monkey, kittens, pigs, chickens, fish for pacu and make empanadas from scratch.

That's right, B it is. Corrina came and picked us up in their truck, but it was already 90 percent full, so Lukas, Logan and I got to ride in the back with all the stuff. Didn't sound too bad until we hit the sand and mud roads with ruts the size of the grand canyon. If I don't have a broken tailbone again, I will be shocked. It was all good after we arrived at their place in the country however.

We were greeted by Bruce who we hadn't seen in a while. He is a bit bigger than the last time we saw him and a fair bit louder. Remember, he is a howler monkey and eventually, he will be 3 feet tall and can be heard about 3 km away when he howls. I fed him a banana so he would stop making noise for a while, after he smashed some in my ear, he was happy and laid down with Lukas after chewing on my banana ears a bit.

After Bruce settled down a bit, the kids went over and looked at the chickens, pigs and fed the turtles. Then we got down to making the empanadas. The dough is pretty basic, and they are made very much like a perogy, but the trick is in the folding of the edge so that none of the cheese comes out. In Bolivia, they make all kinds of empanadas, but cheese seem to be the favorite. The cheese here is very salty, and the dough tends to be a little sweet, so it balances nicely. Everybody had a chance to try making some.

Eventually all 45 were made, and they were cooked in a pan of oil over a fire until they were gbd (golden brown and delicious).

Also present were the usual array of animals on any Bolivian farm. You have your parrot:

Your turtle:

And of course your giant poisonous spider hiding in the rafters below the thatched room but right above your chair:

Tomorrow will be another Sunday of church, followed by chicken, rice, yuca, plantain and french fries. I can hardly wait.

Happy Fathers Day to Me

2010-03-19T16:49:00.000-06:00

That's right, its Bolivian Fathers Day!!!! So in honor of Fathers Day, we went to the maternity hospital downtown to distribute the toques that were generously donated by Bernice and a couple other knitters out there. This particular hospital is dedicated to just delivering and taking care of babies. Corrina knows one of the doctors there and he was able to get us in. Doesn't sound like a bit trick to get in does it??

Wrong. First of all, nobody under 12 is allowed in the hospital, even if they are with dad coming to see their new brother or sister. That means that dad goes in and leaves the 5 year old in charge of the 2 year old outside the hospital door while he goes in to see mom. The second catch is that you have to provide a piece of ID to the guard at the front door in order to get past the front gate. Nobody can just wander into the hospital like in Canada. As a matter of fact, the guard at the front, wouldn't let us in until we gave her a toque for her 6 month old niece. How's that for security??

Once in, we started slapping toques on heads immediately as there were people everywhere because it was discharge time. We chatted with a few of the new parents on the way out thanks to Corrina and Heidi translating for us, and some were better off than others. One couple from the country had no clothes for their baby as of yet, other than the blanket they received from the hospital, so they were very appreciative of the toque.

We had about 130 toques and thought we were in good shape, until the doctor took us to the area for pre-mature babies and explained that there are 40 babies born a day in the hospital, and 70% are premature due to poor pre-natal care and that most mothers continue to be on their feet all day through their pregnancy. They also deliver most babies by caesarian section because it is faster and the doctor can move on to the next baby quicker.

The hall outside the pre-mature area was lined with incubators, and in the ward, were 27 babies either in the incubators or being fed. We put toques on the ones that were out and gave the rest of the toques to the nurses to distribute. Everyone was very thankful for them.

Unlike all of my kids when they were babies, every last baby had a full head of hair.

The other thing I learned about Bolivian hospitals is that they have a really good cafeteria in the hospital that cooks actual meals from scratch for a very good price. We stopped for a drink in the cafeteria on the way out of the hospital, and the people next to us were having lunch. Each meal looked and smelled fantastic.I have had 3 kids of my own, and never once during the three visits to the hospital, did i have a meal that I would class as good.

We will soon be heading out for Fathers Day supper with Ken and the boys because it is after all Fathers Day, and I am a father, and Ken is like a father and besides is Renalo's birthday.

Today Was What Yesterday Was Supposed to Be

2010-03-18T19:54:00.000-06:00

As the title says, so it is. Since Ken and I were under the weather yesterday, we made our way out to El Camino boys home, but first we had the opportunity to tour a school down the street from where we are living. We have the opportunity because the father of the Principal is staying in the same place as we are and he arranged for us to go for a visit this morning.

A few things really stand out as being different from Canadian schools.
1. The level of respect that the students have for the teaching staff is light years beyond what we have in Canada. When the principal comes into the classroom, all the students immediately stand up and say "Buenos Dias Director". This is something they instill from grade 1 on through grade 12.
2. The classrooms are very basic. Chalkboard, desks, paper, pencils. No posters on the walls, no cubby holes etc for the kids things. Its basic and straight forward learning.
3. Any time the kids speak to an adult, regardless of being a teacher or not, they stand very straight and speak very clearly.
4. Discipline is handed out when necessary. Yes I mean that type of discipline.
5. Everyone has a school uniform. We asked about this and it was for a few reasons. First, it instills the idea that we are all on the same team here and the goal is to learn. Second, some students are very poor, some are very rich, but the clothes they wear to school are all equal. School is an environment for learning here, not a popularity contest or fashion show.
6. School starts at 7:30 in the morning and goes till 12:00, then a whole other set of students start at 1:00 and go till 5:30.

The schools don't have much in the way of budget, and we noticed that the phys ed class going on in their open air roofed gymnasium was using a couple of soccer balls that were barely holding together, so we provided them with a couple of new ones from the items donated. They were most appreciative and the grade 12 class even sang us a song in English before we left.

After leaving the school, we headed out to El Camino to teach the boys how to use Powerpoint. The morning class had a couple of boys about Lukas' age in it who really wanted to learn, but could not read or write, so Lukas helped them out where he could, and we helped them spell the words they wanted to have in their powerpoint. I had downloaded a bunch of soccer pictures from the internet for them to use in their presentations and everyone finished the class with a powerpoint about their favorite soccer team. After the first class, broke for lunch. As you can imagine, lunch at a boys home is not always the greatest. Today was one of those days. Lunch today was a boiled potato, rice and a mixture of some kind of fish (half bones) with onions and tomatoes. It is a healthy lunch but not the most tasty.

It was a bit of a sad day at El Camino unfortunately today. As I had mentioned in a previous post, El Camino raises rabbits and chickens to assist in their food supply. Sometime last night, a poisonous snake got into the rabbit pen and killed 28 rabbits. The remaining 10 had been bitten but had not died as of yet. Mike (one of the workers at El Camino), put the remaining 10 rabbits down. None of the 38 rabbits could be used for food due to being killed by poison. That is a large loss for the home. It just so happened that today was also axe day for all their chickens as well. Every so often, they slaughter their chickens and freeze them. This just happened to be that day.

The afternoon class with the older boys also went well. They have remembered most of the things they have learned in Word from before, so they whizzed through what we had planned to teach them in Powerpoint, and we were able to teach them extra things that the younger boys didn't get to. By the end of class, all the older boys had nice presentations with animations and sounds all over the place.

We finished up class, and waited for Logan to finish his chess lesson with Mike. Mike is the resident chess expert at El Camino, and he teaches all the boys how to play chess. They find that it teaches the boys patience and planning. Both of those things have been missing in their lives up until now.

On the drive back into Santa Cruz from El Camino, we stopped at the school that some of the El Camino boys attend to see it is like. Just like the one in the morning, the respect level was amazing, and everybody was in uniform. The kids all think its funny to see 3 "gringo" kids at their school so they all gather around.

I am pretty sure that Melody wanted to bring the one in the picture with her home to Canada.

We finished the day off with a quick trip to the grocery store, where I picked up some meat that I re-butcher when I get home for supper and Melody baked some brownies for her class to eat tomorrow.

Tomorrow should be an interesting day. After Melody's class tomorrow, we are going to the maternity ward at the hospital where we will deliver the knitted toques that were donated, and have a quick tour. Tomorrow is also one of the Ken's boys birthday and its Bolivian Fathers Day as well. Lucky me, two fathers day this year for me!!! I'm just glad we are leaving before Bolivian Mothers Day.

Change of Plans

2010-03-17T19:49:00.000-06:00

It was Wednesday, and that normally means out to El Camino boys home, but this morning when we got up, Ken and I both were feeling under the weather, so we called out to the home and made arrangements to move our classes to tomorrow. By late afternoon, I was feeling much better and everyone was getting pretty bored, so we arranged to have Ruddy (one of Kens boys) take us to the big Wednesday market to look for a couple of things we needed.

Ruddy arrived at about 5:30 which sounds late, but remember, nobody eats until almost 8 here anyways, and we grabbed a taxi to the market. We were lucky enough to get Mario Andretti's Bolivian cousin as our driver and he got us through the heavy rush hour traffic in record time. This was accomplished by driving at about 50 miles per hour in the oncoming traffic lane when our lane was backed up. We all arrived safely so all is well.

The first thing we needed to get at the market was a shirt to replace the one that Roberto (the nice guy who helped us out when Logan split his head open) used on Logan's head. We had been meaning to do something for him, but he wouldn't have accepted cash for his ruined shirt because that is against the rules of their society, so we figured the least we could do is get him a nice shirt. We ended up with a nice American Eagle t-shirt (yes, the real thing) which we will drop off tomorrow on the way to El Camino.

We couldn't find the other items we wanted at the market, and most of the fruit vendors had already packed it in for the day, so to thank Ruddy, we asked him what his favorite restaurant was and offered to buy him supper since we were all starving. Ruddy smiled right away, which i knew meant it was going to cost me, but he happened to choose a restaurant that I had been wanting to go to since we got to Santa Cruz. He took us to Casa Del Camba, which is widely regarded as the best Bolivian restaurant in the city. Surprisingly, the prices were not as as bad as I had thought they would be.

First off, the place is huge. They could probably seat 400 people between the bar area, open air seating, roofed seating and the back area. The second item is that the menu was all in Spanish (I know, we are in a Spanish country), but this one used a whole bunch of words that we were not familiar with and that Ruddy didn't know the translation for. We ended up figuring out what most things were by hand signals and animal sounds. Their menu offered everything from alligator to Argentinian bbq dishes.

We ended up ordering the traditional buffet for 4 which means that we are going to get enough food for 6 hungry adults. First they brought a big plate of yuca to the table and two plates of salad. The salad was a nice mix of beans, tomatoes, beets, lettuce and cucumber. The yuca was the usual deep fried yuca. Yucka.

After the starters, the rest of the food was brought in earthenware bowls and was an assortment of traditional foods. We had the rice with cheese (which I still haven't acquired a taste for), a mushy rice with duck, a rice with charque dish, spicy chicken with potatoes, and a stewed beef dish. There were also some pickled peppers and some hot chili paste.

Every last dish was fantastic. We enjoyed the stewed beef so much, that we asked Ruddy to order another plate of it. Little did we know, that we had just ordered an entire meal of stewed beef which also came with more cheese rice, the beef, and another salad.

We managed to eat the majority of the food and got the rest to go. We arranged for a taxi to take us home and then to take Ruddy home. On the way, we hit several red lights. At each red light, there were kids. Tonight, there were kids juggling, doing devil sticks and just plain begging. Each light had 3 or 4 kids coming up to the car windows while one of them did their tricks. At the occasional light you also find an elderly person who just sits there with their hand out as their only means of support. We have decided to give our change to the elderly people more often than the children, but always try to talk to the kids, especially when we are with Ken because he wants to befriend them and help them get into a home and get them off the streets.

Anyways, it was kind of a wasted day, but everyone is feeling much better now. So far none of the kids have had any issues at all with the food or the water. Here's hoping it stays that way.

Inca Ruins and Wilderness Donkeys

2010-03-15T18:05:00.000-06:00

We're back.

The trip to Samai Pata was interesting and a very much needed break from the heat and the day to day of teaching in Santa Cruz. About an hour out of Santa Cruz, the altitude starts going up and the temperature starts going down. The drop in humidity and temperature was enough to help get rid of my heat rash that had developed on my arms for the last few days of last week.

On Saturday, we drove for a couple of hours up to a resort with cabins on top of a volcanic mountain with a small lake called Laguna Volcanic. If there is any place that I would sell it all, pack up the family and stay forever, that is the place. There are 7 cabins next to the little lake and a small hotel with 12 rooms. Each cabin has two hammocks, a kitchen, two bedrooms and a small living room. Each hotel room has a bedroom and a living room and a balcony overlooking the pool and the lake. The hotel has a small restaurant and bar area with a ping pong table. On the other side of the hotel from the lake is a small 9 hole par 3 golf course. Just to add to the whole South American feel, there is a rhea (South American ostrich like bird) that wanders around the property freely. There are also a whole bunch of other birds that come by the lake to keep you company as well.

The restaurant gave us the opportunity to try some more of the local ingredients, but unfortunately the supper was not as good as we had hoped. I did manage to try out an iguana steak, but I would not recommend it should you have the chance as it was very tough. Breakfast the next morning made up for it however as they brought out two baskets of baked goods ranging from local breads to croissants, lots of fresh fruit and different cheeses. We hung around all morning after breakfast until we had to check out. We all wished we could have stayed there longer.

We hit the road and continued along the road for about an hour until we came to a spot with waterfalls where we had some buns for lunch and cooled off a little. The water was very cool, and there were orange trees growing near by so if we wanted a snack, we could just pick one at will.

It was a nice break from the winding, very bumpy mountain road, but we had places to go so we continued on our way. Our next stop was a place that I have wanted to go to since we got to Bolivia. As a matter of fact, it is one of the places I have wanted to go since I was a kid. The place is called El Fuerte and translates to the fort. It was an Inca ritual fortress site which was then taken over by the Spanish when they arrived. The Incas carved a giant stone with all kinds of their spiritual symbols and little alcoves for their offerings to the gods. The Spanish arrived and assumed that the Incas had hidden gold in the monument and of course, dug into it looking for the gold that was never there. The Spanish stayed however and used the site as a fortress.

The road up was really poor and was always a long ways down on one side or the other, but it was worth the terror to get to the top. It was about a 5km hike from the parking to go through the site, everybody was certainly tired when we were finished, but it was a terrific experience. After we braved the drive back down, we finally continued on to Samai Pata and stayed in a small hostel type hotel run by an elderly Dutch couple. It was very peaceful and had some beautiful gardens.

This morning, we got up at a decent time and had breakfast, then we decided to do a little back road exploring in the truck before we started back for Santa Cruz. We ended up on the top of a mountain guarded by what I liked to call wilderness donkeys. Everywhere you go in the mountains here, you run into packs of donkeys or cattle on the road who usually don't like to get out of your way. Here is one such gang.

I have no idea how anybody tells who these animals belong to as they are not chained or fenced and just seem to wander wherever they want to. They are not threatening and they do like to pose for pictures as you can see.

The ride back to Santa Cruz was a little more exciting than the ride out because we ended up getting rain most of the way which made the road a lot more interesting since there was water running over the road in a few places and it was all quite muddy. We made it back and are all tired and probably a little more touchy than we should be, but all is well.

Marlin Perkins Where Are You?

2010-03-12T20:05:00.000-06:00

Vague reference I know, but it is very appropriate for tonight. I wasn't going to blog today since we are getting ready to go to the mountains tomorrow, but the last 20 minutes made it a necessity. It all started with Melody walking down the hallway and stopping in her tracks and calling me. This is normally followed with a little spider on the floor in front of her which she really really hates. This time however, it was no ordinary spider, it was something about the size of a tarantula. I don't know my spider species well, but this baby was impressive and I kid you not, the largest living spider I have seen outside of the zoo or a pet store. See for yourself.

If this would have been Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, and if I was Marlin Perkins, I would have sent Jim in to get him. (if you don't know Marlin Perkins, click here).

Anyways, after taking the required pictures (Tony, you need to take pictures before you squish them so people believe the size), I promptly squished him. Yes there was a large amount of innards to be cleaned up. So while I am consoling Melody, she looks up at the ceiling and sees a fast moving object. Needless to say this did not help the situation much. She tells me it went behind the door, so I slowly (yeah, by this time, I'm a little freaked out myself) open the door and behind it is a lizard. Lukas was still up and Logan shot out of his room when he heard the commotion and immediately begged me to catch it.

I was not aware that lizards have afterburners, but this one did. I proceeded to chase him up and down the walls of the hallway until I cornered him and pinned him to the wall with the flyswatter and then got him into a container much to the delight of the boys. What we didn't notice was that he had pulled the old lizard trick of dropping its tail off. What basically happens is that a lizard in distress, will drop its tail off just behind its back legs, and it continues to squirm so the predator goes for the tail while the lizard takes off to live another day. So when we got back inside after letting the lizard go, there on the floor was a dismembered tail squirming away on the floor like a worm.

Sorry, no pictures of the lizard or the tail because it was all a blur. All said, I will be doing a thorough inspection of the bedrooms before we go to bed tonight just in case spiderzilla has some relatives who are out for revenge.

Be back Monday.

Errands to Run, Pottery & Traditional Supper

2010-03-12T07:58:00.000-06:00

Sorry for not posting yesterday, we got in a little late and there were 15 new roommates in our guest house so it was a little hectic around here. We had to run around and drop off some of the school supplies, soccer balls and toques that we brought down here to a couple of other group homes and see how some of the other homes run. The morning looked like it was going to be a bit of a waste because we couldn't seem to get a hold of Ken to get things going, but luckily, one of our roommates from Bolivia was kind enough to offer to teach the us all how her family makes perogies. Sounds funny right? Wrong. Nancy is one of many German descendants in Bolivia who still hang on to most of the German cooking and way of living. Most of them are Mennonites whose families came here when WWII broke out and most live on farms or farming communities.

Nancy is staying here while she goes to University but goes home every weekend and brings back food items from her farm. This week, she happened to bring in a bunch of fresh cheese curd, and offered to show us how they make their perogies with it and share them for lunch. Any chance to eat fresh perogies is a yes for us, so we took her up on the offer. They were excellent and about 4 times the size of the ones we eat in Canada.

After lunch, Ken came over, and we packed up the stuff for the homes and headed out. We have been trying to spread the wealth out over more than just the places we have been teaching, since there are lots of places that need supplies and it gives us all a chance to see how the different places do things. Following the deliveries, we headed out to Cotoca which is about 20 miles out of Santa Cruz and is famed for their pottery. A fair number of things that are used in everyday life here are still made out of pottery so to show the kids, we took them out to Cotoca to show them how its done. Pottery is so important to Cotoca that they have a giant statue on the way into town of a lady making pottery.

We spent some time looking at the pottery which was very well done, and usual, very cheap by Canadian standards. It was once again really hot, and Lukas started to have a migraine, so we grabbed some cold drinks and headed back to Santa Cruz.

It was getting late and we were all hungry when we got back. Everybody eats at around 8 in the evening here which is hard for us since we are used to a schedule, but we have managed to keep the kids from gnawing their hands off with lots of fruit to hold them over until supper. We wanted to try some more traditional food, so we headed down to Los Cabanas. These are a series of thatched roof open air restaurants next to the Pirai River. It is a very popular heritage site where all of the traditional foods are still prepared. We didn't have any of Ken's boys with us today, so Ken picked the restaurant. As you will see, I'm not sure it was the best choice.

We decided to order several different dishes and share them all so we all got to try a bunch of items. We started with canupes which are a mixture of a salty cheese and yuca flower, baked in a bun form. These are very chewy but very good.

Almost everything down here has cheese in it or on it, and that is fine by me and really fine by Logan, so then we moved to zonzo or sonso depending on which area of Bolivia you are from. These are a mixture of mashed yuca and cheese that are then rolled onto a stick and cooked over an open fire or charcoal. They taste like cheesy mashed potatoes.

Then the meat dishes started arriving. We had a dish whose name I can't remember which was basically beef shishkebabs, then the fire roasted duck arrived and a dish called pique macho.

I was getting concerned, but luckily, the duck came with the french fries, rice, fried yuca and plantains. Phew, thought I was going to miss out on those today. Everything was pretty good, but I can live without the pique macho which is basically french fries, topped with beef, hot dogs, tomatoes, cheese and a boiled egg. They really eat a fair bit of hot dogs here, but not as hot dogs. They work them into many of their actual dishes.

The meal went over fairly well, until the end while we were sitting around waiting for our cheque to arrive. That was when a big white dog walked over from by the kitchen, lifted his leg and urinated on the chair of the table next to us. Made for a real conversation piece to finish the meal off with.

We got back home around 9 to find the place full of Americans who were staying over until their flights home this morning. All of which wanted to use the internet connection (very slow/many people = too slow to imagine). We put the kids to bed, but the talking and banging around in the kitchen kept them up pretty late.

We are teaching again today, and will be having a quiet evening in tonight because we will be packing to go to Samai Pata this weekend as I mentioned. There won't be any internet to be had up there, so don't expect any posts until Monday. I am sure I will have a few things to say when we get back.

Computers, Stitches and Hats

2010-03-10T19:59:00.000-06:00

It was Wednesday again, so that means we were back out to El Camino boys home outside the city to do some computer teaching. It was another hot one again today (which means a two or three shirt day for me), so we made sure to take lots of water and fruit with us to keep us hydrated properly. Today we did some training for the younger boys in the morning on Word 2007 where they learned how to create a basic document with some formatting and a picture. Some of the boys have hardly ever seen a computer, so Lukas was put to work helping out a couple of them. He spent a fair bit of time with a boy named Ramon who just recently came off the streets and is still adjusting to life at El Camino. Ramon was really quiet and had never touched a computer before today, so Lukas helped him out by showing him how to use the mouse, and where the letters are on the keyboard.

In the afternoon, the older boys came in and they had mostly used the computers before for listening to music or looking at pictures, so we did more or less the same as the morning class, but got into some of the fancier stuff like word art and picture formatting. They have all asked if we can do Powerpoint next week, so I am going to grab a bunch of soccer pictures and pre-load them on the computers so they have lots of good pictures to use in their presentations. Every last one of them is soccer crazy.

We had lunch with the boys between classes and got to spend some real time trying to talk to them in our broken Spanish and their broken English. Most of them are really excited to see a family and "gringo" kids (white kids) because almost all the groups that come in to help them are all late teens or early 20s and they hardly ever get a family coming in. Many have never had a real family, so they are always very excited to see us arrive. They also like to help the kids do their homework. By help, I mean give them the answers.

After classes today, we stopped by the YWAM girls home on the way home to drop off some of the hats we brought along with us. Walmart was kind enough to donate a whack of girls hats that were last years stock, so we brought the entire duffel bag with us and told all the girls to pick 3 hats. I had figured that we would be out of there in about 15 minutes, but we ended up being there an hour and a half while they all tried on hats, looked in mirrors and critiqued what each other looked like. Logan and Jordan took to playing with the a couple of the girls children to pass the time. Some of the girls in the home have kids of their own, so they stay with them. They also had orange trees right by the house, so we just picked oranges off the tree and ate them while we waited. Some of the best oranges we have ever eaten. The funniest part is that the male gardeners from the home, came and picked out hats for themselves as well even though they were all girls hats. We thought they were joking until they walked back to their work and kept them on.

While we were at the girls home, we asked the Dutch doctor who comes by both El Camino and the girls school, to save us some time at the clinic tonight and take out Logans stitches. She said no problem and took them out in a couple of minutes. Logan seemed most concerned while they were coming out, but he didn't feel a thing. He might have a small scar for a while, but it will fade with time. If it doesn't, he will have a cool story for the girls when they ask about his scar. How many other guys can say "I got my scar when I was in Bolivia helping street kids". That will get the "awwww how sweet factor" and the "hey I have a rugged scar on my face" points at the same time.

We are hoping it will rain for the next couple of days to cool things off here, but even if it doesn't, we have a plan for the weekend. Since we have the weekend off, we are going to drive up to Samai Pata which is up high in the mountains where it should be cooler. There is a hotel for about 30 dollars a night and there are the ruins of an Inca fortress about 5 minutes out of the town which is a world heritage site. I have always been a big fan of archaeology (or any other ology for that matter), and can't wait to see it. The downside is that I hear the road at some points is mountain on one side and 1000 foot cliff on the other. Should make for some interesting pictures.

Speaking of pictures, every once in a while you take that picture that you just think is spectacular. Well here is mine today. Its even photoshop free.

Road Rules

2010-03-09T14:33:00.000-06:00

I believe after the month or so we have been here, we have come to understand the rules of the road down here. At first glance, there doesn't appear to be any rules. Oh sure, there are stop signs, stop lights and lines on the road, but none of these are really ever considered except at the main traffic circles. All the cars have turn signals of course, but they are never used. In their place, is the wave. Basically, you just put your arm out of your window and wave. That lets people know that you are just about to cut them off. Notice I didn't say merge into their lane. That doesn't happen here, you just cut people off, and they are cool with it.

There is a whole lot of honking going on, but if you are not on the side streets, it doesn't really mean anything. On the side streets, it means "I am going way too fast and am approaching a blind side street, hope you hear me honking and stop before you plow into me". At night, the same thing is done with flashing the high beams out of courtesy to those trying to sleep.

The first thing that you need to understand about the roads here is that the majority of people use the buses or taxis. There are a ton of taxis. I would estimate that probably 1/4 of the cars on the road here are taxis. Of those, 95 percent of them are older Toyotas. Most of the vehicles down here are Toyotas as a matter of fact. You basically have the choice of a Toyota or a Volkswagon Beetle. Anyways, back to the taxis. The taxis are dirt cheap and drive like they are trying to win the Dakar rally. To cross the city costs about $2.50 and you never need to phone a taxi company because there are always taxis driving by and you just wave or nod to get their attention. Once in, buckle up if there are any seat belts, because its going to be a fun ride.

Remember I said that the lines and lights were purely decorative? The taxis will place themselves on the white lines right between the lanes of traffic in order to be able to go in the faster of the two lanes when traffic starts moving or to be able to change lanes really quickly to go around other cars or the horse carts. Sounds ok, but you need to remember that most of the streets are only 2 cars wide with no shoulders. Many taxis are missing their mirrors or have them folded back because they were knocked off whizzing by other cars. The second thing about the taxis is that they put opaque sun visors half way down their front window to stop the sun coming in so much. It also stops you from seeing out the front window. So now we have a speeding, swerving, blind taxi hurtling down narrow streets, usually without seatbelts. Whhheeeeeeeee!!!!!!

The strange thing is, I feel perfectly safe with them driving. Everybody knows the signals, everybody knows they are going to be cut off, and everybody is ok with everybody else driving like idiots. The crazy drivers are not the exception that cause the accident. The cautious driver from out of country is the one who causes the accident because they stopped at the stop sign and got smacked from behind, or signaled and changed lanes without the hand wave, or followed the speed limit.

The other interesting thing is that no matter how many cars are in the road or around the traffic circle, it never grinds to a halt. People will always move their cars in between tiny spaces that we would never try at home for fear of hitting each other. We have moved through traffic here in 2 minutes that would have taken an hour back in Canada. Why??? Because nobody is polite, everybody squeezes in the spaces and everybody knows everybody else is going to do the same. There is no delay by waving people in and getting angry about the other guy who didn't let anybody in.

In short, its madness, but it works. It might even work better than what we have at home.

Reality Check & Fun With Passports

2010-03-08T18:19:00.000-06:00

As per the instructions that the German speaking Bolivian employee at the Bolivian Embassy in Canada, I needed to go to the Bolivian Passport Office today, to advise that we were staying longer than 30 days. According to the embassy in Canada, all we had to do was go in and advise them. After speaking with Jorge and Ken, I was a little bit nervous about it. Both of them told me horror stories about having to shell out large sums of money to get the extension thanks to corrupt workers, or having to leave the country for 8 hours and then return and get another 30 day extension. Ken in fact had to do that with one of his last groups that came down. They ended up driving to Peru for the day and then coming back.

Roberto and Eduardo needed to apply for passports so Ken took the three of us down to the passport office and Jorge showed up to help me out since his Spanish is much better than Ken's. First of all, the place was packed, and the protocol is as follows:
1. Go to the welcoming desk and tell them what you want.
2. The welcoming desk gives you a piece of paper and tells you which really long line you need to get in.
3. Wait.
4. Wait some more.
5. Finally talk to someone.

When I got to the front of the line, the gentleman behind the counter did not speak any English (which is fair, because I didn't speak any Spanish). Jorge was nice enough to tell him that we needed to advise that we were extending our stay for another 3 weeks as instructed. The interesting thing is that you could see his gears turning trying to decide how he wanted to handle this one. Apparently, he had options as to how he wanted to enforce the rules as I had been warned. He leafed through the passports and luckily saw the kids passports and just started stamping away with the 90 day visa stamp and didn't ask for any cash. I did notice the "Gringo" in front of me shell out fifty dollars for the same stamp for some reason. Maybe it was his "I'm a free spirit backpacker who doesn't trim his beard or comb his hair" look.

The boys had to come back again in the afternoon to finish off their passport applications which are completed in two days. Yup, in Canada you wait for 3 weeks or more. In Bolivia, you get your passport in two days.

Eduardo is just moving into Ken's place so on the way back from the passport office, we had to go pick up his stuff from his old place. His old place was right next to a cemetery, had a linen curtain for a door and no furniture other than two beds. That's two beds for the 6 people who had paid for floor space in the room. There were a few dirty dishes etc on the floor but not much else. Eduardo had already packed up his two boxes of stuff, so we just threw his life in the back of the truck and we were off.

This afternoon was supposed to be an educational session for the kids since we had planned to go to the Noell Kampff Natural History Museum. We took a taxi downtown to the Plaza 24 de Septembre and walked the 7 blocks down to the museum. ahem. I mean to the Noell Kampff Natural History room. Yup, the museum that has a pretty decent website, is made up of a single room with some nice insect displays, fossils and some preserved animals in formaldehyde. I guess we shouldn't complain since it cost us all of 40 cents for the whole family to get in and we did get to see some really big bug specimens.

So, since the museum took all of 20 minutes to go through, we had some time to kill so we decided to try to finish the souvenir list that the kids had made up. Lukas has already bought his Bolivian guitar, rain stick and necklace with Bolivianite, so it was more of a shopping list for Jordan and Logan and a couple of gifts we were planning on bringing back. Logan has been begging for a chess set since we got down here so we managed to find a pretty nice on with Incas on one side and Spanish soldiers on the other and we managed to negotiate a fair price. Jordan of course wanted one of the Bolivian dolls holding a baby in traditional dress, so we picked up one of those as well and a gift for Grandma.

We finished the day with a long hike looking for a restaurant because it was getting too late to get back and start cooking. We ended up a fair ways from the main Plaza but found a restaurant that wasn't scary. Then we finished the day with the now traditional scary taxi ride at mach 4 through busy side streets. We are all pretty beat from walking so much and will no doubt be out when we hit the pillow.

Too Hot to Type

2010-03-07T19:47:00.000-06:00

Sorry I haven't posted the last couple of days, but it has been ridiculously hot and we haven't done much other than melt. Today was 35 degrees with no wind from 9:30 on. Its supposed to stay around that temperature for the next few days. This is one of those times when we are not hoping for any rain. If it rains for an hour or so, it will get so humid that it will feel well into the 40s.

The weekend was spent teaching Ken and the boys how to bake a few "Canadian" items. Ken had a couple of requests so we showed them how to make haystack cookies (muskrat houses to the Anderson family members), banana bread which they were not familiar with and how to make a rue for sauce or gravy. I can't believe that a country that has about 15 different types of bananas, doesn't have a recipe for banana bread. It was a big hit with the boys and we took a bunch to church today since it was bring stuff to eat to church day apparently. I'm glad it was because there was lots of local favorites there like cheese empanadas, different buns and cupcakes for the kids.

Tonight after it got dark and cooled off, we went down to the town plaza again because on Sundays, there is a artisans market which sets up and stays until about 10:00 at night. A lot of it is the kind of stuff that ends up in Canadian garage sales, but some of it is quite nice. The most impressive one was a guy painting pictures with spray paint. He did a lot of outer space scenes, but tonight, he was working on a mountain scene with trees, a lake, and lightening. It looked very much like a Glen Scrimshaw when he was finished. The kids picked up a few odds and ends at the market to appease them, but we didn't end up buying anything major.

Lukas and Logan took the opportunity to walk through the spray fountain to cool off, and amused all the onlookers. Small Caucasian children are a rarity around here, so everybody points and smiles at Jordan and Logan. The locals have a strange habit of having to touch the heads of Logan and Jordan as they walk by, or they pinch their cheeks. I would bet Logan had his head rubbed a good 30 times at the market tonight. It seems they think it will bring them good luck or something.

Tomorrow, after homework, we have to go to the Bolivian immigration office and report that we are staying over the 30 day limit. Its strictly a formality, but we want to make sure we do everything by the books while we are here.

Time for Butterflies

2010-03-04T19:42:00.000-06:00

We had a day off from teaching today, so Ken thought it would be nice to go to the Biocentro Guembe Marioposario. In English, its the Biocenter Guembe Butterfly Farm. Guembe is an eco-resort where families can go and swim in sand bottom pools, see the monkey island, go into a giant aviary and see toucans, peacocks and parrots and as the name suggests, a large screened in butterfly breeding area. This is all located just outside of Santa Cruz in a jungle type area as you can see by the picture taken from the top of the aviary which was way too many steps as you can see by the height above the trees. In the distance, you can see some of the mountains.

The temperature today was once again about 32 degrees but in the jungle area where the aviary and the butterflies were, the humidity was terrible and I am sure I lost a couple of litres in perspiration while we were out there. It did give all of us a chance to see some of the local birds and butterflies up close and they had signs with what to look for and their names for reference. We even ran into a celebrity, but he wouldn't give us an autograph.

I am not buying Fruit Loops any more.

Being a jungle area, there were also lots of animals who were not part of the tour which gave the boys something to chase after every once in a while. One of the items they tried to catch was this little fellow.

In this heat, they are really warm and move very quickly. The boys didn't really ever have a chance to grab him because he was so fast. Since there is nothing in the picture to give you an idea of size, he was just about a foot long. We saw a few of them throughout the day but this was the closest we got and the only time they stood still enough for a picture.

The butterflies were also very nice to see. There is something calming about standing in a large jungle area with a couple hundred butterflies fluttering around over your head and landing on you if you stand still. Overall, everyone had a good day and nobody receive any head wounds. Logan is healing up nicely and is still milking it every chance he gets. Like when we played Risk, he said "Oh come on, you have to let me win. I have a hole in my head." I politely explained to him that he already had a bunch of pre-made holes in his head. He just had one extra. Logan is also the first of the Anderson kids to have stitches. Knowing Logan, it won't be his last either.

Its back to school tomorrow for everyone, and back to the doctor for Logan to make sure there is no infection. There goes another 8 bucks.

El Camino Had Logan in Stitches

2010-03-03T20:25:00.000-06:00

I'm going to cover a couple of days in this post, because Melody has been teaching away at El Jordan with a couple of groups of girls/ladies. This particular class, they were learning how to do pedicures. During the course of the classes, the ladies get to asking questions that have nothing to do with the class such as how old are you, how many years have you been married, how old are your kids, what do you do at home etc etc etc. They were particularly good actors when they asked how old Melody was. Melody told them her age (not posted here for my own health) and they all did their best to look shocked and assured her that she only looks 27 and must have gotten married very young. The classes move along, but fairly slowly because of the need to translate everything that is said back and forth.

Since she was teaching and I was waiting for stuff to finish downloading, I took the opportunity to take a few pictures of her class and some of the little ones around the building.

Overall, classes are going fairly well and everybody is having some fun too.

It was Wednesday today and that means we were off to El Camino boys home which is about an hour our outside of Santa Cruz. I am doing some basic computer teaching for the boys out there in their lab. They actually have a pretty good setup that is all properly licensed. The best part is that it was just recently redone and everything is running nicely. El Camino is only about 30 miles out, but the highway doesn't allow for travel at Canadian highway speeds. They also have a nasty habit of building speed bumps into the road every time there is a little hamlet. So the 30 miles takes a good hour to arrive. We gave some of the soccer balls to that were donated to them today and they actually have to ration the balls because they play with them to the point where they are dead in no time. So what they do is give one out to the boys, and then put the rest in a locked storage room so they always have a ball when the old one can't be repaired anymore.

On the way back from El Camino today, we went looking for a suspension bridge that Ken had heard about over the river. Sure enough, after a little looking, we found the bridge and went for a walk across it. The bridge swayed back and forth with every step and made Jordan quite nervous. I couldn't help thinking of the scene in Indiana Jones when he cuts the rope and the bridge swings down for some reason. We eventually got across the bridge and were absolutely shocked when a motorcycle comes up and rips across it with about an inch to spare on each side of the handle bars. That is us on the bridge before I cut the rope and we swung across.

Anyways, after climbing up the bridge, (ok, fibbing a little), we headed back to Santa Cruz but Ken always stops at a little roadside stand where the pop is ice cold. We got the pop and when I returned to Ken's truck with my pop, I opened the back seat door. Unfortunately, Ken has tinted windows in the back, and I didn't see Logan leaning against the door. He promptly fell out spilling his Fanta (made with real sugar here btw) and landed head first on a big rock. The crying started about the same time as the copious amounts of blood started coming out of his head.

As luck would have it however, there were 4 other people there, one of whom was holding a spare shirt in his hand at the time and he immediately slapped it on Logan's head while we got the first aid kit out of Ken's truck and started dealing with the head wound. After a few minutes, the bleeding slowed down to the point where we taped gauze on his head while the right side of his forehead grew a golf ball.

We eventually got into town and by then all the crying had stopped, until we mentioned the doctor and somebody said the word stitches. Then the tears came back again. Melody and Logan went to the hospital, and got right in to see the doctor who put a couple of stitches in Logan's head. He took it like a real trooper and even let us take some pictures.

We are pleased to report that he is doing fine, and will be able to do math again very soon. Oh, the total cost of our little adventure to the hospital was 220 Bolivianos for the visit, sutures, freezing, antibiotics and the ibuprofin. That works out to $30 CAD. Good thing I paid that extra $350 for extra insurance.

Just to Clarify

2010-03-03T16:57:00.000-06:00

Ok, I had a couple of people ask who Stephen Hawking is from the last post. (Actually just one), and I'm not telling who (unless you read the comments on the last post). Anyways, Stephen Hawking is one of the most famous theoretical physicists of our time. He wrote the hugely popular book "A Brief History of Time", which makes very high level physics understandable to normal folks like us. He has specialized in black holes and how their gravity affects light for the last few years. He also suffers from ALS which means he hasn't been able to move his body for many years and is confined to a wheelchair. He talks through a special computer attached to his wheelchair that tracks his eye movements on a screen of letters and words to get what he wants to say. When he is done, it speaks in a very robotic 1980 sci-fi voice. Here is what he looks like.

Or, you could just google him.

p.s. There is another post coming tonight, but the events of today aren't quite over yet. You will understand when the next post comes.

If Stephen Hawking Were Spanish

2010-03-02T14:43:00.001-06:00

One of the things I'm working on at El Jordan is setting up a text to speech program on their computers so that people who do not know how to read can use the computers or learn to read better. Its actually using a program that is designed for English and seems to work fairly well in its native language. Unfortunately, its not doing quite as well in Spanish as it does in English. I have contacted the makers and am hoping that there are some updates or language files that will help fix the problem.

Right now, when it tries to read Spanish, it sounds exactly like Stephen Hawking trying to speak Spanish assuming he spoke no Spanish at all. Lukas of course thinks its the most hilarious thing since bodily function sounds.

Oh, one more thing I found funny today. On the way here, there is a computer "store". It is more of a closet with a couple computers in it. The name on the sign above is this: Internet Hacker

He is either the most arrogant hacker in the world to actually post a business sign for it, or he got his translations wrong.

The Wonders of the Microwave & Nature

2010-03-01T20:04:00.000-06:00

We had a couple of Ken's older responsible boys babysit for us this past weekend so we could get away for a little while and go out without the kids for the first time since we got here. Ruddy and Allen were kind enough to volunteer for the job and showed up with movies for the kids to watch. Neither Ruddy or Allen speak any English, and the kids don't speak any Spanish, so there was a lot of pointing going on but they seemed able to communicate fairly well so we decided to go ahead and go out. (Besides, they had Ken's cell number for emergencies). The had picked up the movies at what I like to call the Bolivian Blockbuster. If you thought that movie piracy was even remotely bad in Canada, you really get your eyes opened up wide here. Any market and most restaurants have kids or booths selling ANY movie you want whether its in the theatre or not, on burned DVDs for about $1.50 a copy. But wait, there's more. You not only get the burned DVD, you get a plastic DVD box like you get when you buy a movie at Futureshop, and you get a full color printed sleeve for the movie as well. All for the low low price of $1.50 So the boys came over armed with The Frog Princess, Planet 51, and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs for $4.50.

Since they were going to provide the movies, we figured we would provide the snacks, so we had the pop and microwave popcorn ready to go for when they got here. This is where the wonders of the microwave come in. I never really thought about it before, but if you had lived on the street most of your life, you probably have never seen microwave popcorn. I have never seen such a look of awe and wonder on a 17 or 18 year old as I saw on Ruddy's face when the bag put in the microwave started getting bigger and the popping noises came out. He watched for the whole 3 minutes and was absolutely astounded. It went over so well, that we cooked the second bag just because we could.

We were out for a few hours and came home to this:

That's Ruddy with a belly full of microwave popcorn asleep on the couch with Jordan.

Now for today's little adventure. The kids have been mowing through the fruit since there is tons of it and its really cheap, so we needed to go get some more and we needed some groceries as well. We took a taxi to the store (taxi's are an adventure all to themselves here), and picked up most of the groceries we needed. Unfortunately, the grocery stores really do not have very good fruit for some reason. Luckily, we are not far away from a street market, and there are about 40 fruit stands in the market full of really great produce (and wasps). I am sure most of you know that I love food, so every trip to the market is a chance to find some new strange food to try. Today was no exception so I picked up some chirimoya which in English we call a custard apple. This fruit looks like a hand grenade and has a very soft, almost squishy inside with lots of black seeds. They are so soft, that one was squished in the bag on the way home and made a heck of a mess. You basically eat it with a spoon since the flesh is very much like an egg custard which is where the english name comes from. Its a pain in the butt to eat, but its pretty tasty and makes REALLY great ice cream.

The second fruit was a bit of a mystery to us as we had no idea what it was but bought it anyways because it looked good. The lady at the stand called it maracuya. We got it home, and thinking it was very much like an apple because it felt like was and was pretty solid, cut it open to find this:

We tried the flesh and it had absolutely no taste at all. So we asked our housemate Nancy who after looking at it a while, recognized it as something they commonly make juice out of here. The catch is that you don't eat the flesh, you eat the mucous around the seeds. Pardon my description, but it has the same consistency as boogers as you can see below:

Everybody tried them, and they are very sour/tart. Lucky for me, that's exactly what I like and nobody else did, so the maracuya is all mine. I think the texture really put the others off more than the taste. The picture with the spoon, isn't the seeds falling off the spoon, its the boogers holding the seeds together as they are lifted out of the fruit. Anyways, more for me.

We had a chance this evening to sit down and talk to Nancy who is also staying here. She is a from a small farming community in Bolivia and is staying here while she tries to get into education at the university here. Nancy speaks Spanish, German and English and makes me feel like I am completely unworldly (which I probably am). Anyways, I was lamenting that I haven't found the meat down here to be very much to my liking because the beef tastes quite different, pork is hard to come by, and its chicken all the time (not that I mind chicken). After discussing it for a while, we figured out why the beef tastes different. In Canada, we butcher our beef, and then hang it to age. In Bolivia, they butcher their beef, then eat or sell it the same day or the next day. They do not age their beef at all. That gives it a very different taste and texture because it still has a fair amount of blood in it and it hasn't had a chance to break down the proteins like aging does. I am sure they would find our beef tastes funny if they came to Canada as well.

Anyways, back to my maracuya.

Goaaaaaaaaaaallllllllll!!!!!

2010-02-28T17:59:00.000-06:00

Many thanks to Tonchi for allowing us to use his tv today so we could watch the gold medal hockey game. It was definitely the strangest hockey watching scenario I have ever had. Picture it. 32 degrees Celsius, ESPN Spanish broadcast with Spanish announcers, 4 locals who have no idea what hockey is about and 3 Canadians screaming their heads off. It was almost amusing to hear the announcers ramble on in Spanish and then hear them say Sydney Crosby or Roberto Luongo with a really heavy accent. The announcers really liked saying Jack Johnson's name alot for some reason and put alot of emphasis on the "John" part of Johnson. Everybody thought it was funny to see the Canadians go crazy with every goal, hit or penalty and to see us crumple when the US scored with 24 seconds left.

It was a slow day overall with church, followed by once again a lunch of chicken, rice, yuca, french fries and plantains. You have to understand that chicken places here are like the Model T. You can have any combination you want as long as its chicken, rice, yuca, french fries and plantains. Your only real decision is whether you want to go to a chicken place where the chicken is fried or roasted. Other than that, its chicken, rice, yuca, french fries and plantains.

Short post today. Way to go Canada.

No Earthquake Here

2010-02-27T14:11:00.001-06:00

Before all the emails etc start pouring in, no, we didn't feel any earthquake here in Santa Cruz. We are actually quite a long distance from where the earthquake took place in Chile as you can see by the picture below.

Speed

2010-02-26T13:31:00.000-06:00

Sorry I didn't post last night, but the kids were a little unruly and we were out a little later than usual down at the plaza. Its apparently some sort of bicentennial this week. We haven't been able to get the exact description of what as of yet, but things are hopping downtown. We had gone done last night to try to track down a guy we had seen the other night who was selling beautiful cloth maps of South America that neither one of us said "hey I want that" until we got back home. Anyways, we went down again last night and should have known something was up by the traffic all the way down there, but didn't until we saw all the people in the plaza and heard the music. There was a stage setup with people singing and playing traditional music and vendors selling everything from coffee to little helicopter toys for kids.

We never did find the guy selling the map, but we did get to hear some traditional music and stayed out too late for the kids to be good at bed time as we learned when we got home. Anyways, today's post is in honor of the internet speed down here. Its been bugging me for a while for a few reasons:
1. The olympics are on, and I haven't seen a single event and haven't found anywhere that is broadcasting any of it. There are two ESPN channels here which show soccer all the time even though they show the olympic rings int he corner of the screen. The internet is too slow for video so its no go on the Olympics.
2. All the software I brought with me to work on computers is of course English. After I install them on the computers, I have to download the spanish language files, or download the spanish version so that people here can use them. It took over an hour and a half to download the spanish language files for Avast antivirus. That is something that is accomplished in about 2 minutes at home.
3. Have you noticed that the blog is a little light on pictures? Thats cause I can't wait all night for them to upload when I write a post. So, if you haven't found them already, I let my computer upload my pictures overnight to my picasa web album site. It is located here: http://picasaweb.google.com/whoopiis/BoliviaPics
If you want to see more pictures, they are all located there. I haven't uploaded any of Lukas' pictures because I just don't have the internet time to do so.
4. The internet speed is too slow for Lukas to do some of the homework he was supposed to do. Mrs. Soles, if you are reading this, Lukas is really torn up about it. :)

Given the internet speed here, I have had to up my reading time substantially. I brought 3 books down with me thinking it would be enough to pass the entire time. I brought Slaughter House Five, Brave New World and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance with me. I had never read Slaughter House Five and had not read the other two since high school. As of today, those are done, and I am now reading Lukas' copy of the Hobbit until I can find a source of more English books to read.

P.S. One last thing. Brenda if you are reading this, congratulations on getting married.

Smoothest Highway Ever....Not

2010-02-24T17:38:00.000-06:00

Today, Ken took us out to another boys home that is about an hour drive south of the Santa Cruz. This home has 35 boys ranging from 4 to 17 years old, all of whom are orphans from the street. The home has an agreement with the private Christian school in the town next to it to provide them an education along with what they are taught at the home itself. I was pretty surprised at the quality of the home overall. They have 3 long dorms where the boys sleep on bunk beds and have their individual little closets. They have a big kitchen and covered eating area, a classroom, and a very small computer room. In addition, they have a pretty decent soccer field, basketball court, and beach volleyball. They also raise their own chickens and rabbits to help with their food bill.

All the boys have to do their own laundry in a row of little sinks, and take care of their own living areas. All of them have choirs to do on top of their studies. We spoke with one young guy who explained that they lose a few guys back to the street every once in a while because the street will always take them back and it feels like home because it was home for so long.

I have a bunch more pictures of the place, but unfortunately, the internet is a little slow tonight. Oh, one more thing, I wanted to show you what a typical meat shop looks like. They do have supermarkets, but the prices are much higher than the market. We have been buying meat at the supermarket for the reason you will see below.

Yup, that's right, 3 dogs and only 2 people. What ya thinks in the burgers? ( please tell me Curtis isn't the only one to get that line)

Would You Eat It?

2010-02-22T18:16:00.000-06:00

Today was pretty uneventful with the exception of a trip to the third major market in Santa Cruz. The trip was necessary, because Lukas, Ruddy and Yimy (pronounced Jimmy) all needed new shoes, and we are still looking for a Bolivian guitar with a neck small enough for Lukas' hand to fit around. This market is where there is a fair bit of shoes, fruit stands, the usual electronics and wood furniture. This one isn't so much a huge building with stalls like the main market, but is more made out of suspended tarps dividing each store and is a real maze.

There were some really interesting things at this market that I hadn't seen at the other ones as of yet including this little gem.

The first question is: Would you eat it?

To give you a description, it is called Pacay and is once again, a strange fruit. It grows on trees and hangs like a long seed pod which is exactly what it is. You split it open like a pea pod, and inside are a bunch of hard black seeds covered in what looks and feels exactly like white fur. Now, who can guess which part you eat???? That's right little Billy, you get a lollipop. You eat the white fur. If you can get past the way it feels in your mouth, it tastes very much like a slightly green banana. There isn't much fur on each seed, so its a little labor intensive but worth the experience. They are also dirt cheap at 4 pods for 5 Bolivianos or roughly 75 cents. To give perspective, each pod is about the size of a cucumber and the seeds are the size of a quarter.

After trying the Pacay, we continued on our search for shoes and were lucky enough to find a pair for Lukas and a pair for Ruddy but Yimy was not able to find exactly what he wanted. Its amazing to see how cheap some of the brand names we buy back home are here. A new pair of sketchers for me costs $45 to $50 without being on sale. These are the real deal, not knock offs. You can tell because they are behind glass instead of piled on a mound of other shoes or just sitting on a shelf.

There were lots of other foods being cooked and prepared which were recognizable and smelled decent but I steered clear of due to concerns over my health. If it would have been in a restaurant, I would have tried several of the "pork parts" dishes that were available. There was fried pig skin, dried llama (with the leg still attached), beef tripe and lots of different chicken parts. We did break down and buy some candy which was basically sugar balls dyed pink. We didn't know that we were not supposed to eat them until after we had finished a bunch off. Yimy explained that those candies, although edible, are meant to be thrown into a fire and burned for Mother Earth. Oops.

Tomorrow is a full day of teaching for Melody and a full day of computer fixing for me and Lukas. Jordan and Logan will be hanging out with the Bolivian kids in the daycare for most of the day.

Since some of you may be getting bored with my style, I am going to have special guest writers this week and let Melody and Lukas put up a post or two, so you get their opinion on things.

Space Bubbles and The Search

2010-02-21T15:30:00.000-06:00

We went to church this morning and one thing became very quickly clear. This culture has no consideration for space bubbles. It is customary when arriving at church, to shake hands with the men, and to hug and kiss the cheek of each person in the church. For those of you who are not aware, I have a space bubble and it is usually about 5 feet in diameter. In Canada, where space bubbles are known to exist, most people will respect the bubble. Down here, the space bubble is an unknown entity and it is my job to fit in here, not the other way around. This means that the morning was spent having my bubble popped at very regular intervals.

Church was thankfully air conditioned and one other item crosses cultural borders. That item is that if a computer/audio/visual aid is not functioning, the Information Technology Professional will be pointed out in the crowd and brought to the front to troubleshoot and fix whatever the problem is. In this case, the problem was the usual projector/laptop issue that I am quite familiar with thanks to my work and life outside of work. Unfortunately, the problem was a broken pin on the cable and there was no spare available. Ironically enough, there was a computer business right next door and I could see the cable we needed through the window of the business.

After church, the world wide tradition of lunch out is still applicable, except here instead of Grainfields or Smitty's, it was Hot Burger. It was actually better than it sounds. Now the search is on to find a television somewhere in this city to watch the Canada vs. USA game from the Olympics tonight.

Saturday at the Market

2010-02-20T18:12:00.001-06:00

Melody needed to track down a bunch of spa related supplies for her next class if they existed here, so we all headed down to the big market to look for them. If it exists in Bolivia, its somewhere in the market. To give you an idea of what the big market is like, picture two superstores each across the street from each other, filled with 10 foot square individual stalls filled from floor to ceiling with whatever they are specializing in. Then picture the walking space between the aisles at about 2 and a half feet. There is everything from audio adapters to real ambercrombie and fitch clothes. There is also a ton of very good knock off items ranging from Prada to Gucci and every trendy brand in between. Some of them are pretty high quality and can be bought for next to nothing. Then in the aisles, there are people pushing carts with snacks, drinks or one off items that they try to sell you as you squeeze through. The one offs tend to be expensive watches (the real deal) at bargain prices for some reason......

We found a stall that sold soccer jerseys and bought each of the kids a soccer uniform (jersey and matching shorts). Jordan and Logan went for Santa Cruz Oriente (the green Santa Cruz team) favored by Rudy, and Lukas went for the Santa Cruz Blooming (the blue Santa Cruz team) favored by Ken. Each person in Santa Cruz has their favorite local team and when you think of passionate fans, multiply that by 100 and you are getting close to the way these people love their team and despise the other one. Grown men regularly cry at soccer games here when their beloved team loses a regular season game. Anyways, we got all three kids uniforms for 135 Bolivianos which converts to about $19.

There are other parts of the market that I was not so fond of however. There is an area along the side of the building on the outside, that is the pet market. Here you find people selling puppies of various kinds and other animals. Its the other animals I didn't like so much. The picture below shows two baby parrots for sale in a box. Normally, these birds are taken from the wild and sold, which doesn't help the wild population and usually results in birds that are either unhealthy physically or mentally.

One other fun treat about shopping here is that your meat is usually very fresh. You can tell by the heads on the chickens. Yes, those are indeed chicken heads. Doesn't bother me so much, but its a whole different world here shopping for meat. You don't go to the market or even the supermarket looking for a cut of meat. You go in and look at a big section of the animal and ask them to cut whatever you want off of it. So, in my case, since I know my animals due to my love of cholesterol, its almost a perfect scenario except for the flies.

Tomorrow, we are going to the local church in the morning to experience what a typical church service is like. There wasn't any church to attend last week due to Carnival, so this is our first opportunity to see how things work. We are told it is very informal and to dress like its hot, because its going to be.

Everybody is doing well and staying properly hydrated. Its 33 degrees out at 8 oclock at night right now, and it is only going to go down to 28 overnight. Some of you might be saying, I wish I could trade you, but believe me, with the humidity to go with it, and the pitiful air conditioning (virtually none), you don't. Everybody says hi,.

Achachairu, Classes and Ice Cream

2010-02-19T19:38:00.000-06:00

Melody had a long day today since she taught two classes today. This morning was a 1 on 1 session with a girl who has been doing manicures and pedicures already. Melody said she was pretty good, but needed to work on her cleanliness and be more careful not to knick her clients when trimming the cuticles. The afternoon class had 7 girls show up. This class was a fair bit more challenging because none of them had done any spa services before, she had to work with the translator and most of these girls have not had more than a grade 2 education, so everything moved along very slowly. Overall the day was pretty successful.

If any of the girls have kids of their own, they are provided childrens activities in another room and a snack to keep them busy while their moms are in class. The kids room has lots of little toys that have been donated and just lets the kids be kids for a while.

Like I mentioned before, lunch time here runs from about noon to 2:30 in the afternoon, which bugs the heck out of me, but thats the way it is. One of the new things we have come to enjoy is a fruit called achachairu. Its a strange little fruit that has a thick rind on it that you crack with your thumb nail, then you squeeze it until it splits open. Inside you find a fuzzy white ball which doesn't look very appealing, but trust me it tastes great. It has couple of big seeds in the middle, so you don't get much for your work, but they are dirt cheap so there is lots to go around. Here are some pictures.

It was a ridiculously hot day today and very humid, so Ken suggested we go down to the plaza tonight for some ice cream. He has been bragging about it ever since we got here so we agreed. I have to say he was right. It was some of the best ice cream I've ever had. I tried a berry flavor called mora which is very similar to blackberry and will be trying to find some fresh ones at the market the next time we go. I also tried to take a couple of pictures of the Cathedral but didn't have my tripod so this is the best I could do.

Sick

2010-02-18T18:08:00.000-06:00

I must have swallowed some of the water during the Carnival warfare earlier in the week, because last night was not very good at all. My guts were all messed up and I had a fever shoot way up. I can tell you its very strange to be in a place that is 30 degrees and feel absolutely freezing cold. Luckily, Melody brought most of a pharmacy with her, so I took a wonderful cocktail of medications before bed last night and feel much better today. I kept my food intake fairly basic today with a lot of toast and not much else and think I will be back to my normal self by morning.

Today was spent finalizing notes for class which starts full time tomorrow, doing homework with the kids and of course going to pick up my new glasses. The kids also spent a fair amount of time outside today looking for snails which they caught and put in a plastic Fanta bottle.

On the way to pick up my glasses downtown, I took a couple of pictures that I found interesting. The first one is of billboards for Canada. The translated words are Canada, your door to the future. Its not actually advertisements paid by our government, but its an ad for a company that fills out the immigration papers to try to get you into Canada as an immigrant.

Bolivians as a culture, seem to feel that "American" goods like clothes etc are the best so they very often will label something as American. This picture is of a wall that had this same thing painted about 5 times all the way down the wall. Its an ad for latex paint.

There are restaurants called American, mechanic shops called American and even things like Farmacia American (American Pharmacy). These places are no different than their competitors except they like to add the name American to their business.

Now, since you have all waited so long, here are my new glasses. Thanks to Lukas for taking the picture.

The Search for Glasses

2010-02-17T17:34:00.001-06:00

For me, today was a search for glasses. Surprisingly, it wasn't that hard at all. After meeting with our translator for a couple hours going over our teaching notes, we went downtown by the plaza, because that is where most of the tourist/foreigner stores are located and figured that would be where the eyeglass places are as well. After walking around a little while, we found what we thought was an eyeglass store. It was all marble and glass, and had a security guard with a shotgun. Almost every atm and bank as well as high end store has an armed security guard here. They never talk or do anything other than open the door, but they are there none the less.

Turns out that the store we went into is only for high end sunglasses, so we had to move along. Ken explained that the tourists and the kids of the super rich Bolivians always like to buy the high end sun glasses and this store caters only to that market. We walked a little further along and found an eyeglass dispensary. The store was small, but very well kept and my prescription was in the same format that they used at that store, so we were good to go. We picked out a nice pair of Tommy Hilfiger frames and she upsold us on the anti-glare lenses etc and the total was $190. The same thing in Canada would run me $500 or $600 for sure. Makes you wonder what the markup is in Canada if they can import the frames from the US, make the lenses, mark them up for profit and still charge only $190.

Long story short, they will be ready tomorrow afternoon and I will be able to see again. Definitely the most expensive water balloon fight I have ever been a part of.

Slow Day

2010-02-16T19:26:00.001-06:00

Today was a slow paced day for the most part. The morning was spent with the kids doing their homework and Lukas doing a math test that his teacher sent with him. Later in the morning, we went to the market to buy some more fruit. This was our first time to the market which is basically comprised of a whole bunch of little tiny kiosks selling everything from chickens to cell phones. We figured we should do it today even though it was still Carnival because we have meetings tomorrow with the translator to go over the class material. Following that meeting, I will be heading out to look for some new glasses.

Apparently I wasn't clear enough last night in my post. Yes I lost my glasses in the giant water balloon fight. They were knocked from my face by a direct hit which caused them to fly off my head, out the back of the truck and under the car behind us in the muddy street, never to be seen again. No, I did not bring a spare pair. We did however bring our prescriptions down just for a situation like this. So for those of you wondering, this what I looked light about 10 seconds after losing my glasses yesterday. Its been one long squint session since then.

Anyways, the market is a great place to buy fruit because it is trucked in very frequently, and there are lots of competing stands there so the prices are better than the store. I would say the same thing about the meat stands as far as the price goes, but I wouldn't buy anything from them unless you like to take your chances since everything is unrefrigerated and there are a few flies buzzing around.

The market is always packed, and its the kind of place where you want to hang on to your purse and wallet rather tightly since you are always rubbing or bumping into people as you walk. We didn't have any problems, but Ken advised us not to take our good camera in for safety reasons.

Following the market, we went to Kens for lunch which was cooked by Sandro, who made the most wonderful chicken dish in the oven. It was definitely the best food we have had since we arrived.

Kens boys went out water ballooning again, but we decided it was best if we rode inside the truck this time for obvious reasons, so we toured a little bit more of the different areas of the city. Day 3 of the water balloon fight gets a little more hairy as you can see by the picture below. This block of people, setup a roadblock on their street so any vehicle coming in would be cornered and unable to get away without taking a few good shots from their balloons.

Nobody cared today whether they got hit or not, since it rained from the time we got up until the time we got home anyways.

The real work starts tomorrow now that Carnival is over, so we are hitting the hay early tonight.

Once Was Blind .....But Now I Can't See

2010-02-15T19:37:00.001-06:00

If you have never taken part in a city wide water and paint balloon fight, I do recommend trying it once. I would also recommend that you wear a helmet, safety goggles and a flak jacket.

Ken picked us up in his truck with 5 of his boys in the back along with 4 rubbermade garbage cans full of water balloons. Most of ours were just plain water, except for one special barrel which was reserved for people dressed in "temporary clothes". By temporary clothes, I am referring to full length cotton smocks of various colors that the hard core participants buy and wear just for Carnival. The special barrel was of course filled with balloons filled with dye of various colors. This dye is more like paint in actuality because it really doesn't wash off that easily at all. Many consider it a badge of honor to return to work on Wednesday after Carnival dyed from head to toe in a multicolor rainbow.

There is really nothing we do in Canada that compares to a festival of like this. Everybody (and I mean Everybody) knows that people are going to throw water balloons at them, so they just smile and wave when they get hit, or pull out their own stash from their hidden supply.

It all started out great with the 5 of Kens boys, Myself, Lukas and Logan in the back of a truck. (All you over-protective parents, please close your eyes for this part) We drove around a few blocks and flung a few balloons and dodged a few coming back at us. All was well until we went to what Ken described as one of the poorer areas of town. Apparently, the poor have more time to plan ambushes. When we got half way down the street, balloons started coming from all angles. They came from the left, right, front, back, and there were even people on the rooftops hurling balloons into the truck. I was first struck on the back of the head, as was Logan and Lukas. Then the paint balloons started coming in and I was hit just below my left arm. That one was obviously thrown by somebody large because that one really hurt. Apparently when you run out of balloons, some people choose to throw soft mud. This was not mentioned in the rules at all. I took one of these soft mud balls directly in the forehead, and a few seconds later, I took a water balloon to the left temple which shot my glasses out of the truck, never to be seen again.

Nobody was hurt other than a slight welt and some bruised pride, and it was all good fun and everyone was left smiling at the end. Its really nice to see an event where everybody no matter how rich or poor takes part and just has fun.

A Taste of Home

2010-02-14T17:09:00.000-06:00

Since we are trying to avoid the giant paint and water balloon fight that is Carnival (at least until Tuesday when we plan to pile into the back of Kens truck and unleash our fury on the locals), Ken thought it would be nice for us to cook the guys a meal like we would have in Canada. So yesterday, we went to the butcher and picked up a big sirloin tip roast. Then we went to the store and picked up some potatoes, lettuce and some other salad stuff.

Surprisingly enough, the food down here is quite bland. They don't use much seasoning at all other than salt, so Ken warned that some of the boys might not like our food, especially the gravy. Ken has not had a roast beef, potatoes and gravy meal in a really long time, and he was quite excited to have some. He also mentioned that the last time he tried to make gravy, it didn't turn out well at all, so he was hoping we could show him how to make proper gravy. If there is one thing I know, its how to make anything that goes with cooked meat, and gravy is no exception.

The roast went in early this morning, and there was lots of drippings to use for the gravy. The boys made a big pot of rice to have with their meal since it isn't a meal down here without rice (and they weren't sure if they were going to like our food). Rice at home takes 15 minutes or so. Rice down here takes a good hour. The time in the water is the same, but they always toast their rice in a pan with oil for a good half hour before they add any water.

The meat, gravy and mashed potatoes turned out perfectly, and all 14 people ate until everything was gone. Everybody loved the gravy (which they called carne sauce because they don't make gravy at all with any meat). Some of them asked how it was made and if we make it with other meats and if we could show them how to make it.

Overall, everything went well and but we came home a little early because Lukas had a migraine. We did have a little excitement on the way home because we were ambushed coming around a corner by a bunch of carnival water balloon throwers. We just got our windows up in time for them to splash on the side of the truck instead of our laps.

Avoiding Carnival

2010-02-14T07:46:00.000-06:00

Carnival started yesterday, and around Santa Cruz, the first day means everybody starts throwing waterballoons filled with either water or paint. Instead of spending the day dodging projectiles, Ken called and said he was taking a 7 of the boys to an eco resort that had a pool and asked if we wanted to go. Paint filled balloons are tempting (especially to the boys), but we agreed to go. So the 7 Bolivian boys piled into the back of Kens truck and the rest of us piled into the front and off we went.

When we got there, most of the boys scattered to where they wanted to be, because they had been there before and each had their own interests. Our kids headed for the pool to cool off with a couple of the other guys. I decided to take a walk around the place to see what all was going on. I ended up a little off the beaten path in a forested area which had a whole bunch of different butterflies and large ants. The ant hills here outside the city stand about 2 feet tall and the ants range from the size of a dust speck to 3/4 of an inch long. I kept on walking and eventually heard some talking. Down the hill was the edge of a lake, where 3 guys were fishing without rods. They would throw their line in the water using a Y shaped stick and pull it in by hand. One guy was just pulling the fish in the picture in when I arrived.

Everybody had a good day overall, and after I accidentally ordered 2 large bottles of coke instead of 2 personal bottles of coke (so I asked for 10 glasses to go with them), we all had a refreshing drink and headed home a few hours after we arrived.

Carnival really kicked up later in the evening, and the music and fireworks continued on into the wee hours of the morning. Our place is just a couple blocks off the parade route so we didn't get a lot of sleep, but thankfully, it is all over on Tuesday. :)

Home

2010-02-12T19:35:00.000-06:00

Up to now, we had been having orientation meetings, getting settled in to our place, and getting used to day to day life in Bolivia. Today, we were picked up by Ken and taken over to his place for lunch. We were supposed to go about an hour out of town to a home for either street boys or orphaned boys, but the rain came down so hard this morning that the many streets were flooded and Ken said there was no way we would get across the bridge on the road out to the boys home. Instead, we had the opportunity to drive around the town a bit and to take one of Ken's boys to his soccer game. One of the ways that some of the boys get into school/university is to try out for soccer teams and try to get scholarships. Its not easy to do, since everyone here plays soccer, but its worth a shot, and David is pretty darn good at it.

On the way across town, we passed through some of the wealthy area and through some of the poorer areas of the city. The picture here is of a "home" we passed along the way. This particular house is made up of many different pieces of houses that have been scavanged from the ruins or other houses. These people will soon be moved along by the authorities because their home is right where the city is building another road.

We talked with Ken and David on the way to the soccer field about these people and the street kids. You see the street kids at almost every corner trying to make money one way or another. The young ones are either trying to shine shoes, or doing circus tricks like juggling to get money, the older ones are cleaning windshields as the cars stop, still others are running up to the cars trying to sell fruit they have picked. Some cars give a coin or two, but most continue past. I can't blame them really. If you gave a coin or two to every person you passed at the intersections, you wouldn't have any money for yourself and your family.

We eventually got to David's tryout and dropped him off. I obviously had been picturing a Canadian soccer field in my head, because when I saw the field that the University soccer tryout game was being played on, I was completely shocked. The field had grass about 5 inches long, was as bumpy as any washboard gravel road back home and in front of each net was a 10ft by 30ft mud puddle about 3 inches deep. I was also amazed at the skill of most of these young guys have and at the level of violence that they play the game with. This soccer game was as violent as most hockey games back home but with no fights.

David is a little out of shape since he hasn't had much opportunity to play soccer lately, but although he couldn't run as far or as fast as the others right now, he did show great skill with the ball. He impressed so much that he was one of the lucky ones to be told by the coach that his name was being submitted to receive a scholarship. To put that in perspective, this University which these guys were all killing themselves on the soccer field to get a scholarship to has a monthly tuition of about $100 Canadian dollars. That may not seem like much to use, but the average monthly income here is pretty much exactly the same, so you can see how hard it is for people to get their education, especially when they come from the streets. For those interested, David's team fell behind 2-0 but came back in the second half and won the game 3-2 on a beautiful corner kick play.

The Little Can & The Big Wind

2010-02-11T13:00:00.000-06:00

There are lots of things that are different from Canada, but the bathroom alone is a totally different experience. The morning shower here really gets you going. The reason for this is that you get a shock every time you adjust the water. You see, there are no water heaters here so every shower has an electric water heater wired right in that tries to heat the water as it comes out. It never gets more than warm, and the temperature is regulated by the flow of water. The more water, the colder it is. So the attempt is to find a happy medium between a small warm trickle and an ice cold torrent. You really want to get it right the first time because successive shocks are not my idea of a good time. As you can see from the picture, its all expertly wired and really safe.

The next item that is different is the quality of plumbing. Upon our arrival, we were immediately informed that the sewage lines here are not up to North American standards and that toilet paper cannot be flushed down the toilets. This is where the little can next to the toilet comes in. Used toilet paper is placed in the bin and emptied daily for obvious reasons.

All of this sounds quite terrible, but its not so bad. For one thing, the showers are HUGE. They are all at least 6 feet long by 3 feet wide with a drain in the floor. There are no tubs so hence no baths.

Last night was both thrilling and scary at the same time. At night, we open all the windows to try and cool everything off, but at 3am, we were awakened by very loud rain and very strong wind. If you have seen Forest Gump, you have heard about the big ol fat rain, and the rain that comes straight up, but this was the first time I had ever seen rain go sideways. The overhangs above the windows stretch out a good 4 to 5 feet, but the wind and rain was so strong last night that it was coming straight in through the windows. We ran around and closed all the windows to stop the rain coming in, but then we were a little worried that the glass in the windows was going to break due to the wind. It all stopped about an hour later and we mopped up water that came in under the door in the morning. We checked the weather report this morning, and it reported the winds got up to near hurricane force during that hour.

Today we spent the morning with the kids working on the homework that they need to get done for school and we are expecting to be picked up right away for another preparation meeting and supper with a friend. As long as the internet stays up, I will post some more pictures later tonight.

Forgot One Thing

2010-02-10T18:06:00.001-06:00

I can't believe I forgot the highlight of the day. If you go to the pictures on the post below, the last picture or two are of this huge spider Melody found when she was looking next to her bed. If any of you know Melody well, you will also know that Melody absolutely HATES spiders and she set a new land speed record out of the bedroom when she saw it. The boys of course thought it was great and we took pictures before it met its end.

Observations from the First Full Day

2010-02-10T18:04:00.000-06:00

Today was a bit of an orientation day and some basic shopping for food etc that we need to survive. First thing in the morning, we went to El Jordan which is actually a couple of blocks away from where we are staying, and had an orientation meeting and a tour of the school. They actually have a fairly large building, but most of it is still quite empty. The computers were a little better than I had expected so I don't think cleaning them up will be as bad as I expected.

After our meeting, Ken came by and we all went over to his house to meet the boys and have some lunch. Time isn't really important here, so by the time the food was ready, it was 2:30. We were all really hungry by then and luckily, the food was pretty good. The meal consisted of a mixture of ground meat, rice, potatoes, and some other vegetable type plants. This was served with a side of fried plantains (really starchy bananas) and topped with a fried egg. Don't know why, but they love to put a fried egg on top of pretty much anything. Either way, we were all hungry and it was all pretty good.

We then went to get some fruit. Since we have figured out that meal times may vary, we decided it would be best to get some fruit to take with us for such a situation. We purchased a bag of peaches, bag of plums, 2 pineapples, and a bag of a strange fruit with a hard shell. Each bag was about 1 kilogram each and the whole batch cost us about 8 dollars. I will put a picture of the strange fruit when I get a chance to take some. It has a sort of white almost fuzzy looking flesh on it around a very large pit. Tastes like a peppery banana but quite juicy and shaped like a small plum. The fruit stand was fun and there are lots of other kinds to try. I know we also paid a "gringo" price but it was all still a lot cheaper than at home.

From there, Ken took us out to a "hotel" as he called it, but to me it was more of a ranch with two cabins on it where he is hoping to take us this weekend to avoid the full on carnival treatment. The weekend of Carnival turns into one giant water balloon and paint balloon fight in Santa Cruz where people will drive around heaving balloons at anyone they feel like. He said with kids, it is best to leave town for the weekend, so that is the plan. The ranch had a small lake and lots of nicely cared for gardens. They also had two small pigs that followed us around everywhere and a howler monkey which liked the kids but did not like the adults very much.

One interesting thing about Bolivia that is very different from Canada is what I like to call the "Tableau of Smells". The tableau is not necessarily a bad thing. As you drive or walk, every hundred yards or so, you experience a totally different smell. Sometimes its flowers from the plants or tiny stores nearby, and sometimes its sewage. On the drive to the ranch, we experienced the sweet smell of sugar cane fields, the vegetable oil plant and some of the fragrant trees. We also experienced the smell of rotting fruit discarded from the fruit stands, manure from the farms we passed, and my personal favorite, which was some kind of unidentified stench from some factory we passed.

Overall, the day was good and we have learned a fair bit about the day to day things that need to be done or not done here. Tomorrow, I will explain about the driving habits, and also about the little garbage can next to the toilet.

Here is a link to some pictures of our trip and first day.

Bruce: The Video

2010-02-10T17:08:00.002-06:00

Here is a short video of Bruce in action.

Say Hello To Bruce

2010-02-10T10:16:00.000-06:00

Bruce is the one without the shocked look on his face in case you were confused. Melody has the look on her face because Bruce just squished the grape he was eating on her back. Bruce likes to climb up on people and sit on their shoulders with his tail wrapped around the neck for support. He has an amazingly strong grip with his tail and sometimes he squeezes a little too tight. The kids were all over Bruce and he helped brighten up the afternoon of our arrival since we were all tired and a little sick from the altitude in La Paz.

RAIN!!!!!

2010-02-10T10:10:00.001-06:00

I know the picture is a little small, but the internet is spotty and slow here at the moment. What you are looking at is a picture taken from inside the truck we were driving in on the way to the school this morning. What you see looks like a lake because it was raining hard.

In some spots, the water was up to a foot deep, but people are so used to it, they just drive on through.

Trip and Arrival

2010-02-10T09:43:00.000-06:00

Definitely one of the longest days of our lives. We got up at 3:30 in the morning in Saskatoon to get to the airport. The taxi driver had a "hernia" issue so was unable to help at all with the bags. Saskatoon went smoothly and the flight to Toronto was fine. Toronto became another story altogether.

We were scheduled to have a 4 hour wait in Toronto which is fine since we had to grab all our 10 bags and check them through US Customs which took a little while. By the time we got through, we had about 2.5 hours to wait. Just before boarding time, we got the news that there was a little problem with the fuel line in the one engine, so they delayed us an hour and moved us to another gate. Everybody got up and walked across the entire terminal to the other gate, only to arrive in time for them to announce that they were going to fix the first plane, and delay us another hour. Everybody was very happy of course to hear that news and the whole army of us walked all the way back to the original gate.

Eventually, we boarded the plane about 2.5 hours later than we were supposed to which of course made our time in Miami a lot tighter than it was planned to be. For those who haven't been to miami airport, flights from Canada are about six million miles away from the gates for South American flights. It was a good half hour walk to our new gate with all the information and people movers shut down for the night.

We got on the plane finally and made the very uncomfortable to sleep on trip to La Paz, where we quickly figured out what altitude sickness feels like with all three kids getting sick, and the adults not feeling well either. We also figured out luckily that our bags were scheduled to stop in La Paz and not continue to Santa Cruz. They apparently always have pursers on the planes to South America and he was very helpful in getting our bags back on the plane to Santa Cruz.

Either way, we all ended up arriving with all our bags intact.

Strange Requests

2010-02-04T09:46:00.000-06:00

We are all packed and ready to go now and almost all the little details are out of the way. Our house sitter came by for a tour to learn all the quirks and more importantly, how to use the entertainment gear. We have managed to split the weight pretty evenly through the 10 bags and have managed to keep them all a few pounds under the 50lb limit.

We have received some interesting requests from our friends in Bolivia. Apparently there are some items that they miss and can't get down there. So, when we hit Saskatoon and head to our hotel, we are going to have to make a Costco run. The shopping list includes:

Pancake Mix
O'Henry Bars
Cheerios
Arrowroot Cookies
Chocolate Chips

This of course has made me wonder what other items that we take for granted will not be available anywhere. I sure hope they have bacon.

And We Thought the Snow Was Bad

2010-01-30T20:06:00.000-06:00

Its the getting towards the end of the rainy season in Bolivia and if you have been following the news from South America lately, you will have noted that both Peru and Bolivia have had serious issues with flooding and mudslides. Bolivian president Evo Morales has declared a state of emergency due to the massive amounts of rain that has been coming down over the last week.

Santa Cruz has been the heart of the rainfall over the last few days and it has caused a fair amount of problems for the poor sections of town and especially for the homeless people. They have taken shelter wherever they can that is dry and some have managed to get their hands on tarps one way or another to stay dry. Here are a couple of pictures from the area.

Shake, Rattle and Roll

2010-01-29T09:00:00.000-06:00

With all the news in Haiti regarding earthquakes, I have been monitoring the earthquake activity in Bolivia. Santa Cruz had not had an earthquake since 2002 that was over 2 on the scale. Well surprise, surprise, they had a 5.3 earthquake with the epicenter 50 miles from where we will be staying just last week. No damage was done apparently, but its just one more thing to consider. Truth be told, it would be interesting to see what an earthquake feels like as long as its not a big one.

Click here for the USGS website regarding the quake.

Freedom

2010-01-26T13:08:00.001-06:00

I have been following www.kennethswitzer.com because its the blog of our friend in Bolivia, but also to get a better understanding of what we are going into. Ken wrote about a fight between two of the boys in the house the other day, and one part really stuck with me. Its about freedom or perceived freedom. Here is a little bit:

"Freedom is something that often escapes us. Again, that’s even more true for people coming off the streets. Life on the streets masquerades itself as freedom...no one to tell you what to do...live as you want...do as you want...

The reality is, it’s exactly the opposite of freedom. It’s all about bondage and destruction. Years afterwards, many of the guys here are still trying to come to terms with the consequences of their lives on the streets. To be at peace. To experience freedom."

I think this little bit applies to anybody who either decides to or ends up living on the streets or outside of a good family circle. That's true about people in Bolivia or anywhere else.

Now go hug your mom and dad.

Snow

2010-01-26T11:31:00.000-06:00

I had been hoping that we would make it to our departure date without having any more snow to deal with. Apparently somebody had other plans, so the weekend was spent digging and blowing way too much snow out of the back yard, driveway, sidewalk and front walk. Then we were lucky enough to figure out that there was a problem with the traction control system on our van which kicked in every 3 feet and got us stuck. Dr. Ardell was kind enough to tow us back home until I could get a tow truck to Honda monday morning. That chewed up a whole bunch of time on the weekend that was supposed to be used for packing all the donated material into the duffle bags for the trip.

We ended up packing the bags late Sunday night and are happy to report that all school supplies, touques, soccer balls etc fit nicely in the bags and were all spaced out across them so that each one is safely under the 50 pound limit. Thanks to the Dunphys for lending us their bathroom scale for the weighing. I don't believe in having a bathroom scale normally. Its just one of those things that doesn't bring joy to life, like taxes.

Carry On My Wayward Son

2010-01-21T16:39:00.000-06:00

I know, bad title, but good news. The announced that the carry on restrictions for flights into the United States has been lifted. Why does that matter you say??? Well, unfortunately for us, the only way into Bolivia from North America is from Miami and that is of course in the United States. With the restrictions being lifted, we can be just like all the other rude travellers and bring on way too much stuff and take up all the overhead bin.

Can't Help Myself

2010-01-18T16:32:00.002-06:00

With all the rabies shots etc, I just found this a little funny.

Countdown Continues & Slight Change in Plans

2010-01-18T14:27:00.000-06:00

We are in the final three weeks before departure and with it comes a few new items that we need to do so we don't experience any problems while we are down there. The first item is one that we all are pretty fond of actually, and that is eating a bowl of yogurt with active bacterial culture every day. This is something that was recommended to us in order to up the level of good bacteria in our digestive systems to prevent the oh so common travelers diarrhea that you may have seen the commercials about. Almost all yogurts these days have the active cultures except for the "dessert" yogurts which we don't care much for anyways.

The second item is the chloroquine that we have to take to try to avoid that nasty Malaria disease that the mosquitoes can provide. I normally don't mind taking medication, especially to prevent a problem, but these are roughly the size of a quarter around, don't have a nice slippery coating on them like aspirin does, and if you try to break them down to something more bite size, they are unbelievably bitter. Luckily, we only have to take it every two weeks until we return from Bolivia.

The second interesting item is that we have had a slight change in plans as far as our teaching goes. We have been asked to teach at a second location besides El Jordan. Apparently, our contact in Bolivia has been talking to the people who run YWAM and they asked if we could also come teach at their group home as well. It means a little more travelling between locations, but it also means we can teach more young people so we are good to go.

I also received an inventory of the computer equipment that is down there and what state it is in. After reading it over, Lukas and I will be reinstalling all their systems and getting them in good working order, before we can do any instruction. Apparently they have received very little attention since they were donated and are not running very well. I almost prefer it this way because it gives me the opportunity to possibly show some basic computer hardware skills to the kids and its always easier to bond with someone when they get to be involved instead of just sitting and absorbing information.

One Month to Go

2010-01-08T22:15:00.000-06:00

Its January 8th and we have one month to go until we take of on February 8th. Almost all the details have been ironed out now. Surprisingly, one of the hardest items was finding a hotel that will take 2 adults and 3 kids and have a shuttle that will take us and 10 bags to the airport at 4:30am. Most hotels will do one or the other but apparently it is a very rare combination indeed to find a hotel that will do both. Luckily we managed to find one last night so we are good to go.

Jordan and Logan got their yellow fever shots today which finishes up their shots for now. Jordan was lucky enough to get an extra present for turning 4 yesterday. She got her 4 year old booster shot at the clinic right after her yellow fever shot. She still took them both better than Logan who has grown tired of being poked all the time. He has progressively gotten worse every time he gets a needle. The first one went off without a hitch back in November, but today was preceded by a two minute kick/scream session before he got it. Jordan volunteered to go first after seeing Logan and got both her shots done with no problem.

The lists that Melody has been keeping for everything keep getting shorter as we go along, so I guess everything is progressing as planned for now.

Many Thanks

2010-01-06T20:28:00.000-06:00

In case we haven't got a hold of you personally, email or phone, thank you very much to everyone who has contributed to our cause in person or online through the donation site. It is very humbling to receive donations from people you know and also from several people you don't know.

Many thanks to the people and organizations who have donated items to send down as well. This includes Source for Sports for donating soccer balls, Bernice for the touques for the little ones, the Salvation Army for the school supplies and the many people who provided broken crayons that have been cooked into the muffin crayons. The ten duffle bags that we are taking will be bursting at the seems and we are already shifting the weight around so that no bag is over the 50 pound limit. The best way to test it is to put one of the smaller kids in an empty bag and if the other bag is much heavier than than the one with the small child in it, then we need to be sure its not over the limit. (no, we don't close the bag with the child in it).

When we get down there expect a lot of pictures of kids wearing toques, kicking soccer balls while coloring.

Christmas Supper

2010-01-04T14:48:00.000-06:00

We just exchanged a few emails with Corina who is one of the people working for El Jordan in Santa Cruz. They had been quite busy over the Christmas period putting on a Christmas meal for the poor, homeless and street kids that they call Christmas on the Streets. Basically what they do is prepare food and small gifts and take them out on the streets to the homeless and poverty stricken people of Santa Cruz. This year, they prepared 505 chickens, 200lbs of pork, 900lbs of rice and 7000 potatoes. Thats a lot of spuds to peel.

All the prep work is done by the El Jordan staff and volunteers including some of the students and even younger ones such as the little girl below cleaning the potatoes.

In total, they served 5000 people and ran out of food in the process and gave everyone the best Christmas they could. Puts our Christmas into a little more perspective.

Airplane Security

2009-12-31T10:43:00.000-06:00

By now I am sure everyone is aware of the recent bomb scare on the flight to Detroit. US Homeland Security has predictably tightened up the rules on what you can bring on planes destined for the United States again. This isn't an issue if you aren't landing in the United States but of course, we have to go through Miami to get to Santa Cruz so we are expecting some lengthy delays getting through security thanks to the new rules.

I imagine that the kids will have all kinds of questions about why they have to take their shoes off and what all the big machines are for. I know Logan will love the metal detecting wand when he sees it.

Christmas Visits & New Years Wishes

2009-12-28T00:13:00.000-06:00

Christmas was a busy time for us as we had Melody's brother Aaron and his wife Orishia come and stay with us for a few days followed by Christmas Eve supper with Tony, Suki and his mother, and then my parents arrived on Christmas Day and stayed for a couple of days. Everyone wanted to be sure to see us before we leave at the start of February.

It was nice to see everyone since we don't get out to see Aaron often in Okotoks and the kids really like playing with him. We saw my parents a month or so ago in Regina when Lukas had a soccer tournament but its always good for the kids to see Grandma and Grandpa and Logan was sad to see them go. He really likes to have spend time with them and he especially enjoyed teaching Grandpa how to play chess.

I think all the kids liked their gifts even though they were a little more sparse than previous years as we tried to keep costs down so they can have a little more spending money in Bolivia if they want some souvenirs.

For the first time in a few years, we have nothing planned for New Years Eve and will probably just watch a movie together and relax a bit after the busy Christmas week.

End of the Shots & Out of the Shop

2009-12-18T13:54:00.003-06:00

This weekend will see the last of the shots we have needed before we leave and I for one can't wait for them to be over. I know the kids are looking forward to them being finished as well. Unfortunately, the last one is once again rabies which means another two days of feeling like a retired linebacker.

We have also all had our physicals, eye appointments and for most of us dental appointments and everyone has come out of the shop with a clean operating report, so we are all good to go.

Our duffle bags that we ordered have also arrived at Quinn the Eskimo in Saskatoon and will be picked up today (thanks Becky). We figured duffle bags were the best bet rather than luggage so we can fill them all on the way down with whatever we need, but if we don't fill 10 bags on the way back, we can roll the unused ones up and pack them in the other ones. Instead of the camo military style, we have plain black ones made of the same heavy canvas material that the military uses and we will be sewing our Canadian flags on them so we an identify them better in the airport.

Everybody is coming up to Prince Albert to visit us over Christmas before we fly out, so its going to be a little hectic around the house for the next week and a half. Melody's brother Aaron and his wife will be arriving tomorrow and staying until Christmas Eve, when Tony, Suki and Tony's mom will be coming over for Christmas supper. Its Suki's first Christmas in Canada and we figured they shouldn't be alone over Christmas. Then on Christmas Day, my parents will arrive for a few days. I will of course be taking no time off over the holidays because it will all be used in February, so its going to be a busy stretch.

I probably won't be posting until after Christmas, so I can talk about what the kids got that they might be able to use while we are gone. Two of them can read fairly well, and they know how to find the blog, so no hints will be given. Merry Christmas everyone.

Logan the Author

2009-12-11T14:25:00.000-06:00

Logan's Kindergarten teacher asked him to prepare a small project on Bolivia including a little information about the country, what we will be doing while we are down there and what types of animals live there. Logan took the time (with a little help from Melody for spelling purposes) to hand write the project as best he could. Over the course of a couple weeks, he picked his top 10 Bolivian animal list and got some pictures from the Internet. He wrote short sentences describing what we will be doing and a little bit about the country including the population and location along with a map of our flight route down.

Logan of course decided that this has made him an author and was kind enough to provide his autograph to several of his classmates after presenting his project. He has decided that his next book will be called "Babies With Hair" and that it will be a book of different animals, showing the ones that have hair and the ones that don't have hair. Keep your eyes open for it next Christmas season.

Election Results

2009-12-07T14:31:00.000-06:00

Bolivia just held their Presidential election and as predicted by the polls, Evo Morales won again with just over 50% of the vote. President Morales is a very socialist leader who was at one point a coca farmer himself. Many of his policies are not popular in the Santa Cruz area that we will be going to because many of the industries that he is planning to share the wealth from are housed in the Santa Cruz area.

Bolivia as a whole has many untapped natural resources which should produce a great deal of income over the next few years. They have the 2nd largest natural gas deposits in South America and have half of the world's known lithium reserves in the Bolivia salt flats that has been hardly touched. With the emergence of all the lithium battery use in the world, it would be a great boost to their economy if the lithium mining industry really took off.

Click here to read a little more about the Bolivian election results.

News at Noon

2009-12-04T15:33:00.000-06:00

Tina Mudry from CTV News at Noon was nice enough to invite us on the show today to talk about our efforts in Bolivia. I don't know if we are made for television or not, but I certainly found it interesting.

Vampires and Rabies

2009-12-03T15:28:00.001-06:00

Bolivia is a country where bats can be common. Of course, with bats comes the opportunity for rabies. Bolivia has two kinds of bats that can carry rabies. The first is the insectivorous (Artibeus planirostris) bats and the second is the blood-sucking (Desmodus rotundus) bat. Since none of us are insects, I am not generally concerned about the insect eating bat, but we all have blood in us and occasionally these bats are known to nibble on people taking a nap, but most commonly they feed on cattle. Either way, the rabies vaccine is a must.

For those who are not familiar with vaccinations, apparently there are a few side effects that go along with them. Up until now, we had all been lucky enough to not have any of the side effects that can be related to the various shots. That was until we started our rabies vaccinations. A day or so after receiving the shot, Melody and I both had a fair bit of joint pain and of course when we looked it up, its a common side effect of the rabies vaccine. Good thing that we only have 1 more dose of rabies vaccination left to take.

I can't wait to feel like an retired NFL football player again.

In the Shop

2009-11-24T21:26:00.000-06:00

Everybody is going in the shop in the next few days for a little routine maintenance. We have scheduled doctors, dentist and eye appointments for everyone. We just want to make sure all the mechanics are working properly before we hit the road.

Its also time for the next round of shots to take place. This time we are getting the rabies shots. I hear they taste like strawberry. Too bad they get shot into your arm with a needle. Its gonna put a damper on the Grey Cup party. We will all feel a little better about them when the Riders win the big one.

Thanks to everyone who has taken the opportunity to donate to the cause thus far. If anyone missed getting a letter, let us know and we can email it to you.

Just Leave It On.

2009-11-15T20:59:00.000-06:00

So with all the needles being poked into everyone in the family for H1N1 and the 8000 or so we need to go to Bolivia, the younger kids have been wearing a lot of band-aids on their arms recently. Today, I offered to help Logan take his band-aid off to which he replied "I think we should just leave it on and they can just put the next needle into the band-aid, so when they take the needle out, there is already a band-aid on the right spot."

Why didn't I think of that???

No Turning Back Now

2009-11-11T13:02:00.003-06:00

Well, the tickets are all paid for and we are set to leave February 8th at 6:35 am for a marathon 27 hour travel period which sees us land in Santa Cruz at 9:10 am local time. I think our last flight from Miami is on an Albatross (the bird, not the plane) because that leg of the flight is just over 6 hours. Its actually not that bad because we get a few hours in each airport to organize the kids, get snacks etc and the last flight has us flying through the night so everybody but me can some sleep on the plane. For some reason I just can't seem to fall asleep on airplanes. I always think I'm going to miss something out the window kinda like William Shatner in the Twilight Zone episode. Melody will of course be fast asleep before the plane leaves the runway as usual.

Our flight plan takes us from Saskatoon to Toronto to Miami to La Paz and finally to Santa Cruz and of course the exact opposite on the way home.

The return flights are pretty good because we get to overnight in Miami and get some rest before the leg home. We are back to our home sweet home on April 5th.

That's all for now folks. Off to get more shots.

p.s. If you really want a ton of information on the city of Santa Cruz or Bolivia in general, there is a really great blog from a lady who lives in Bolivia that tells you everything you would ever want to know. She even lists a restaurant I can't wait to go to in Santa Cruz that serves all the local delicacies including armadillo (picture below), crocodile, charque (dried llama or horse meat like jerky seen below hanging to dry in the sun) and pacu (picture below) which is a cousin of the piranha.

Little Info For the Masses

2009-11-09T21:36:00.001-06:00

For those of you who are not familiar with where the heck Bolivia is, its a landlocked country in the middle of South America. The western side of the country is about 3 miles above sea level in the Andes mountains and is where the capital city of La Paz is located. Our travels will not stop there however as we will be continuing on to Santa Cruz which is in the lowlands in the east.

Santa Cruz has a population of about 1.5 million people, but the city is not made up of high rises and looks like a very large small town when you are in it. Click here for the wikipedia page about Santa Cruz.

The main purpose of our trip is to help out our friend Ken Switzer and the El Jordan organization who work with street kids. Ron will be providing introductory computer classes and Melody will be teaching the girls esthetics services so they can make some honest income. Both Ken and El Jordan strive to get the kids off the streets, into schools or classes and keep them off.

Below is the building that we will be teaching in. Our accommodations will not be quite so nice however. If you click on this sentence, you will get a youtube video of a recent rain at the place we will be staying. Gives you a real idea of how nice we have it here.

Shots, Budget and Kindly Donations

2009-11-06T15:47:00.001-06:00

We have started getting all our shots and so far everyone is taking them like real troopers. Not one tear has been shed by anybody so far. Halloween candy has terrific healing abilities if applied immediately after receiving an injection. Many thanks to Dr. Ardell for helping us with recommendations and actually performing the shots.

We also received the part that I hate today and that is the budget information which means that I have to actually get off my wallet and send in some cash to go. It also means that we have to start the fund raising portion of this experience. Lukas has kindly offered all his spare change to help out the cause.

We also want to send a shout out to the Salvation Army for donating a whole bunch of school supplies that we are going to fill our second suit cases with for the kids down in Santa Cruz. Believe it or not, they called us because they heard we were going and they wanted to help out.

Baby Steps

2009-10-04T20:32:00.000-06:00

Welcome to our blog for our trip to Bolivia. We have sent in all our forms and info and have been accepted by International Teams for our trip to help out Ken in Bolivia. Now we start the hard part where we start writing all the class notes for the students and the fund raising part.

The kids are coming up with fund raising ideas to do their part. Luke is planning on raising money by shaving his head to raise funds, and the other two are still thinking.

We will try to update this with as much information as we can as we go along and upload pictures and info when we get down there. Check back often for info on fund raising activities.