Updates & Visits

I apologize for not the last day or so.  Things had been rolling along quite well on this trip but some of that initial good luck has started to balance out a bit with some bad luck.  To start off, there won't be many pictures on the blog for the next while and will probably only be much shorter posts than before.  It appears as though the hard drive in the laptop has decided to pack it in.  Luckily, I backed everything up before we left, and being paranoid, I had my computer set to backup all our trip photos nightly to my google account, so all we are out is the cost of a hard drive which may have to wait until we return home.

The second bit of bad luck was that I managed to burn a few fingers on my right hand fairly badly while lighting a gas oven that flared on me.  I wasn't sure how bad it was at the time, but now that the blisters have grown, popped and on one finger peeled off, it is a little worse than I had hoped.  I am taking care of it so there is no infection setting in but it is still pretty gross to look at.

We are just finalizing the plans to get to the salt flats with Ken but it looks like we will be flying up to Sucre and then taking a tour van to Uyuni for about 8 hours and then do a 3 day tour of the flats, geysers, lagoons etc.  if you haven't seen what the area looks like before, I really encourage you to google it and admire it for its sheer beauty.  We have had some issues getting logistics worked out because the Dakar rally is on the flats the second week of January so everything is pretty crazy around there right now.

As for New Years Eve, we have been invited to a party being put on by the church which includes the roasting of a whole pig and of course massive amounts of fireworks (to which I have generously donated due to how much I enjoy seeing things blow up).  Melody and Jordan will be dressing up a bit as all the ladies do, while I will be sporting jeans and one of my 4 new soccer jerseys.  It seems here that the women dress up and the guys wear pants and their newest jersey.  How do I choose between Bayern Munich, German National, Chelsea or Spain?

We have pretty much wrapped up delivering all the hampers to the families that we have left except for one who we will deliver this evening.  I am passing over the ipad to Melody to write a bit about our delivery and visit with Sandra who she had taught during our time down here in 2010.

As Ron said, I will tell you about our visit with Sandra.  We wanted to stop in to see if her husband could set up a visit as she doesn't have a functional phone right now.  To our luck and surprise she was home.  I knew I was going to be happy to see her after almost 5 years (I did private spa classes with her) but I had no idea I would be so emotional.  I walked into her front yard and started to cry.  They have done some work on the house but still have a long way to go before we would consider it complete.  As we sat and visited with her we found out that her husband got involved in a bad financial arrangement and is now responsible for 950 Bolivianos a month ($150 Canadian).  She is working in a spa but only gets to take home 50% of her actual income the rest goes to the spa owner.  As always I really wanted to help.  El Jordan is going to hire her husband to do some painting ( that is his trade but has to drive taxi because there is not enough work for painters), and we decided to give her one of our hampers.  She was very grateful and by the end of the visit we were both in tears, I feel very connected to this girl and would go to the ends of the earth for her.  Ron and I are still talking about other ways to help Sandra, her husband and her 4 kids.