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| This guy was bigger than my extended hand |
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| From last week |
Next irritating thing, I needed to withdrawl another $250 to pay for the truck in order to pick it up. But once again, the bank was out of money. This was a big problem. The bight side was that Eric had just gotten a large chunk of money from his account and said he could cover the cost and I could pay him back when the bank had money.
Next bad thing, after the big truck left, Eric and I took a moto taxi and went to the mechanic. But, when we got there, we found out that they are apparently closed on Sunday's. This was immediately aggravating because now Eric and I had to both pay for 2 moto taxi rides, and then a ride all the way back to Familia Feliz. And needless to say, money is not in abundant supply for us. But oh well, things happen. We've adapted to the culture of everything changing and things not happening as they are planned.
But later in the night is when the "cherry on the cake" came. Beings how the truck wasn't ready, Eric and I needed to called our 2 motorcycle taxi friends (Carlos and Fernando) that we met a few weeks, and ask for them to take us back. Carlos is my guy and he is so much fun to talk to. I am only 1 month older than him, my girlfriend is only 2 months onlder than his girlfriend, his favorite Bolivian soccer team is the Strongest along with me. We were just having a great conversation.
Then he asked me why I am taking a year off from school to work in Bolivia. I told him that it's because the kids here in Bolivia need a lot of help and I really enjoy it. I told him that at Familia Feliz, we teach the kids their school classes, but above all, we show them Jesus love and how to show others his love too. I kept going and told him that the world is a bad place and that there isn't too much time left. I told him that nothing in this world is important. Not our jobs, not our hobbies, not our money, just if we have a relationship with Jesus. He was very receptive to what I was saying and agreed.
He told me that he believes in Jesus and goes to church on Sundays. So I told him that on Saturday, he should come to Familia Feliz for church. He actually seemed a lot more interested than I thought. He was asking what time we started and kinds of services we do. So hopefully I will see him Saturday. But who knows, he may have just been humoring me.
Monday April 8, 2013
Beings how I forgot to blog about this day, my memory of details is pretty fuzzy. So I will have to give highlights for today.
The plan for today was to go and pick up all the wood that we had ordered for the lady's house. Everything is cut and ready to go. So the plan was to head out around 10 and go pick it all up. So, until then I decided to wash my clothes (or at least have of them). After hanging up all my clothes, it was just about time to go, so Gerry, Mike, Samuel, Warren, and I headed out to pick up all the wood. Got there, and there was no problem. Warren had already paid the guy and everything was squared away.
Then for pretty much the rest of the day I worked on electrical stuff with Mike and Samuel. One interesting thing about that was I had to climb a tree and cut some branches down with a machete. But one of the branches that I needed to wack, had an ants' nest hanging on it. Meaning, not only are they all clustered in the nest, but they are also all over the tree! With each wack, I got covered with these biting ants. The infiltrated my hair, my beard, my chest hair, and my shoes. Not a good day to be a hairy man.
After all of our electrical work, Samuel and I headed off to a staff meeting at 4. We are planning on having one major staff meeting for 2 hours every Monday and 1 small one every night. It was hard to believe that we needed 2 hours, but we were able to fill it easily. But I'm not complaining, because again, I am loving the new found communication that we are having here on campus.
Tuesday April 9, 2013
This morning Warren came to my door and informed me of something pretty major that happened last night. Apparently, the only 2 girls left here at Familia Feliz that belong to the lady that we are building a house for, escaped. The packed up all their clothes, stuck a ladder out their window, climber down, and left sometime between 1 am and 5 am. Other than their safety, the biggest issue with this is part of the agreement we had with the lady in building her house. We had agreed that we would try and help build her a house if she would let us help take care of her children. Simply because the father has ditched them, and she works all day long. This leaves all her children, including babies, home alone with no house in the hot sun. Then, shortly after we told her that we found the money to build her a house, she took Bismarck and John Alex back. Now, the day after we pick up all the wood for their house, the other 2 girls disappear.
The plan for today was to go into town cross over to San Buena (where we are building the house) and inform them of our start date so that they could round up about 10 people to help us carry wood up the hill. However, now, we needed to track down the mom and see if she had anything to do with the girls disappearance, see if they were ok, and see if she was planning on sending them back.
On the way into town, Gerry, Juan, one of Missy's kids and myself were in the back of the truck. Then, without any warning, I got a terrible pain just to the left of my right shin. Out of an immediate reaction, I reached down and swatted out my leg. I was able to kill it. I huge yellow and black hornet/wasp thing. And let me remind you, everything terrible is twice as big in Bolivia as any in the states.
Even though I was able to kill it, I still gave it another smash simply out of vengence. That little booger hurt a lot! For probably 2 or 3 minutes, I just had a shooting pain in my lower leg. It was not a fun experience. But fortunately it felt fine afterward.
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| What my dinner consisted of |
Wednesday April 10, 2013
Today was a full day of work. In our staff meeting on Monday, we decided that we wanted to take one more full day and work in the rice choco. There is so much rice that we were unable to harvest due to time and lack of manpower. Since so much time has gone by, the rice is becoming unharvestable. So we cancled classes for this morning and took all the kids out for one last rice hoorah.
We divided all the kids up into different teams with each volunteer. Fortunately, Eric gave me first pick of which 3 kids I wanted. This was a relief because I was able to pick who I believed were good workers; Armando, Edgar, and Juan Carlos. After the dividing took place, I was awarded one more child, Emiliana, because a couple of the volunteers had to stay back to work on the electricity.
I thought I had the dream team. Thee guys and a very nice girl. Well, I ended up being half right. Armando and Edgar worked really hard all day long and were real champs about it, however, Emiliana and Juan Carlos worked well for about 30 minutes before they became pretty worthless.
This was pretty frustrating as we all had a quota to meet. As soon as each team hit 2 bags, they were done for the day. This was hopefully to get the kids motivated to work hard and fast. For my group, it only worked for 3 of us. Fortunately however, we were able to fill up our 2 bags in about 3.5 hours (granted, I think our bags were a little bit smaller than some of the other groups).
I had no problems the entire day until we had about an hour left, thats when my foot began to hurt pretty bad. I didn't think much of it, and it wasn't bad enough to stop me from finishing our bags. But after we finished and went back to the house, I looked at my right ankle and it was swollen up pretty bad. I'm really not exactly sure what happened because I don't recall rolling it or anything. My best guess is that it is something from the big wasp that stung me yesterday going into town. But I would think that I would have had a reaction sooner.
After a much needed rest, Mike asked me if I would keep digging this afternoon. I wasn't sure if I could even do it because my ankle was getting a bit bigger and it was getting a little harder to walk. But, you know me, I said yes. So this afternoon I spent a couple hours digging.
While doing this, Armando came over and asked if I needed help and if he could dig with me. I was really surprised because I had told him that since he worked so hard this morning, he was exempt from working in the afternoon unlike Emiliana and Juan Carlos. He was super excited when I told him. But now, he was voluntarily asking if he could work with me. Just him and I. So that was pretty cool and made me pretty happy.
Thursday April 11, 2013
I think today was a big hit. We had about 70+ kids in attendance and they all seemed to have a blast! At times, it was very hard to keep them organized and behaving, but overall, they were quite well behaved. It seemed as though that some of them couldn't focus on anything other than the water balloons that we had stored in the kitchen.
After several short events that led kids to trip and fall and hop and scream, it was time to bring out the balloons for several balloon related activities. These games had them locked in the zone.....the zone of attack! All anyone wanted to do was grab balloons and start pelting each other like rampid beasts! But we had to struggle to keep the beasts locked up for a few more minutes until we had war....
Then, the much awaited time had come.....WAR! This was the much anticipated activity of the entire day. The kids could barely contain their excitment. But it was now time to unlock all of the beasts (including myself) and start going crazy! When we started, it looked like a bomb of kids just exploded to different areas of the field to buckets filled with balloons. Then, about 3 minutes later, all the balloons were gone, and everyone was completely soaked.
After we had all the kids take part in cleaning up all the shrapnel of balloons, it was time to eat. The ladies had been working tirelessly all morning making majalito, and tamarindo juice. They made so much of it and gave everyone huge portions and yet still had enough left over for dinner later this evening. I didn't last too long eating in the big house because by this time, I was completely exhausted. I needed to go rest up for awhile.
But just when I thought I would have a few minutes break, Mike showed up at my door and was ready to work on electrical work. I told him to give me a few minutes break and that I would be out soon. It is actually getting to be crunch time for the electrical work because Mike leaves this Sunday meaning that all the electrical work needs to be done before then. So that is what really drove me out of my seat to go on and help out. That was pretty much the end of the day. However, I wanted to write a little something about one of the students; Armando. When I first got here and was a teacher, Armando was in my class and just drove me up the wall. He was one of my most difficult students who never wanted to learn, listen, or obey. Easily one of my biggest challenges.
But over the past 2 weeks of so, he has really grown on me a lot. He has been extremely helpful to me and honest about everything. He helps me remember some rules of the house or does what chores for the day when I forget. He has also taken a pretty obvious liking to me because he is always looking to hang out with me and talk with me. I actually really enjoy talking with him as opposed to some of the other kids because I can actually hold an intelligent conversation with him which I can't do with many of the others. He is definately more mature than most of the other kids.
Also, one last thing to note, my ankle is still very swollen. Good news is that it doesn't hurt too bad anymore though. It is almost for sure that it is from the wasp/swordfish sting that I incurred 2 days ago. So hopefully it dies down here soon, or else I'm gunna be flying back to the States with one less leg than I came with! Just kidding family.
Friday April 12, 2013
The plan for today was to make bread again for the outreach program. Then, while I wait for the bread to rise, I would do some electrical work. However, because it rained so hard 2 days ago, Familia Feliz has no water yet again. This makes life so much more difficult because we can't cook, we can't clean, and we can't bathe. So that pretty much ruined my baking plans.
So I decided to help with electrical because today was Mike's last working day here, and I knew he needed all the help he could get. He had me work on taking down all the high wires now that our cable was going to be underground. While doing this, I ran into a problem. There was a electrical post that was made out of a tree trunk and had wires secured way up top and it needed to come down. However, we only had one ladder and the post wasn't sturdy enough to lean the ladder up against. So I boosted my levels of testonsterone until it was surging through my body, and I used my bare hands to rip down this 6 inch thick wooden post! I do have to admit, it wasn't as impressive as it sounds because the post had started to rot. But it DID sound pretty good, so thats how I blogged about it.
The whole bread making process went completely smooth and without incidence until later on in the afternoon, and that's when Jorge showed up. By this time, Gerry, Jenny, Eric, Samuel, and I were all at the oven talking and hanging out. Then mischievious Jorge walks up with what looks like a really big potato with stems and leaves coming off of it. Non of us had any idea what it was and was asking him if it was a potato or a fruit or what. Then, while Gerry got close to look at it, Jorge accidentally (i think) dropped it. As soon as it hit the floor, it busted open and a ton of wasps exploded out of their, what once was home. All of us took off running in all different directions. Fortunately, no one got stung and all was ok.
Later this evening we had vespers. Normally, the service is just singing a few songs, someone talks for a few minutes, then we shake hands. But beings how Eric and I were in charge this week, we wanted to do something a little more memorable for the kids. So we decided to do a skit!
Eric and I got together one evening and typed up a script that we could get a rough idea of what we were going to say from. Then we typed up a part for a narrarator and asked Samuel if he would read it. Right before we went out to go to vespers, Eric and I put our hair in pony tails and borrowed a couple of dolls from baby Emily. This was because our skit was about two little girls that were best friends, got into a fight, then made up. When we actually performed the skit, the kids seemed to really love it. They were laughing and totally into it. This was a nice change from their normal boredom.
Then in the eveing, Eric and I went over to Missy's house just to hang out. She actually turned her upstairs into a really cozy living room/hangout spot. Once Eric and I got there, we just went upstairs and talked with Missy and a few of her kids. Then right before we went back, she invited us to stay there for dinner! Eric and I will NEVER turn down food again after being here in Bolivia. Especially dinners because our typical dinners at night are a piece of bread and flavored water (which we had already eaten). Readily accepting her invitation, we walked out and found that she had made 14 packs of Ramaan Noodles! Jackpot! And that was the close to a busy, but good day.
Saturday April 13, 2013
Happy Sabbath! As usual, I was able to set my alarm all the way back to 8:30. However, as usual, my body woke me up before me alarm went off. I guess my body is becoming accustomed to waking up that early. I ended up waking up at 7:30 and then just laying there for awhile until the last second I needed to get dressed and get to church.
I was very excited today because Eric was going to be giving the adult Sabbath School class and I was very anxious to hear it. However, as everyone was dividing up for their classes, Juan came up to me and asked if I could help him with his class because his throat was hurting and he had been sick. I said that I had no problem helping him even though I had no idea how I could help him.
Then just before we walked over, Niquisha (one of the 2 new girls that have been here for a while) walked up and told me that she was sorry and that she didn't have any quarterly or lesson for me and that I needed to come up with a memory verse for them. The realization that I was going to be leading the Sabbath School started creeping into my mind. But I wasn't sure yet.
Once we got to our class, Juan apologized to the class, and said that I was going to be teaching today. Then he smiled at me and sat down. Oh boy. Well, I decided that I was going to tell the story of Jonah. Somehow or another, I was able to get through the whole story with my spanish and select a memory verse for them to learn. I also had to come up with 3 different questions to ask them about the story to make sure they were listening. Then once we got back to the church with everyone, I asked them the questions in front of everyone.
Normally, this would be an extremely stressful time for me. However, I actually had a really fun time with it! I was able to tell the story how I wanted to and do some fun acting to go along with it to keep the kids interest. The kids also seemed to really enjoy it and have a fun time. Next week I am on the schedule again for a different kids class. So hopefully that one will go well too. However, I will have a quarterly for that one.
The downside to this Sabbath was that I didn't see Carlos. But I can't say that he just "didn't show up" because it has been raining the entire day. It would have been a terrible drive on a bike to get here and back. We have found that when it rains, Bolivians stay home. Maybe we will see him next week, but who knows.Because it rained, we had to cancle to outreach program for this week. But this afternoon was still actually a lot of fun. Juan LOVES to hear me play the violin and is completely fascinated by it. So he asks me like everyday to play for him. And this afternoon I told him I would, so I brought out my violin and played a couple hymms that I remembered. Then, they wanted me to play some spanish hymms that I didn't know at all. The only times I had heard them was at church or vespers. I had never seen the music to them before, but fortunately I was able to pick them up in 2 or 3 minutes and play for them. They all got such a kick out of it. So much so, that they wanted me to keep playing for the family worship which I did. I had a good time with it and I think the kids really enjoyed it too.
Tonight, Juan, Emmy, and Eric went in with all the volunteers to play vollyball (I volunteered to stay back, so I wasn't ditched). This left me with most of the kids for the evening. The first thing I did was go in my room and bring out tons of balloons and stickers that they could play with. They had so much fun blowing them up and letting them go and decorating them with stickers. Then, it was movie time!
But now, I have to get to sleep because I have to wake up at 4:45 am so I can go on a jungle tour! Super excited!
You Stay Civilized.......Planet Earth!!!!
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