Some highlights from April
- Our SALT group took a trip in April to go and visit one of the SALTers who is placed outside of the city in the mountains. We took a long bus trip and then a bumpy ride in a truck to get there. The mountains in Moro Moro were absolutely beautiful and I enjoyed the chance to be outside of the city and back in nature again. We took a couple of hikes and also visited some of the places where the MCC team is working on water projects and dry latrine projects. We also made apple cider from the cider press that some of the MCCers had created in the fall. I think it was the most delicious cider that I had ever tasted. A new fruit that I got to try is one that is called 'tuna'. It is the fruit from a cactus and it tastes like a mix between watermelon and papaya. I didn't know that you could eat stuff that comes off a cactus.
- My job at the After School Program was filled with special events in April. One of the days was called Dia del Nino or Day of the Child. It was a special day where we played lots of games and made hotdogs to give to all the kids. It was a really fun day and the kids loved it (and they were really wound up all day, because they played games and got candy and cake at their schools). We also had a cleaning day where only the teachers came to work on a Friday and we spent the day deep cleaning everything in the Biblioteca so that things were clean again. One Saturday all of the profes also went to a workshop on child abuse, and on a Friday night we had a sleepover with all of the girls. It was a month filled with fun experiences at my work.
- April also included Good Friday and my family went out to the campo (country) to spend the day at my host mom's family's house. We ate a lot of good food and spent a fun time with tons of cousins and relatives. Also, when we were out there, someone spotted a sloth and all of the kids (and me) ran out to see the sloth that was walking along in the field. I was soooo excited to see a real sloth in the wild! I remember watching sloths when I lived here as a little kid, but I had not seen any yet this year. Needless to say I took lots of pictures and was incredibly happy the rest of the day!
- Another experience that I had with wildlife was with some ants in my room. There are teeny tiny ants here that are called sugar ants. They are smaller then a grain of rice. I had been seeing them walking around in my closet for a couple of weeks, but they are always walking around, so I didn't think anything of it. However, when I opened my drawer of winter clothes (which I have hardly touched this year) to put things away after visiting Moro Moro, I dug down to the bottem of the drawer and discovered that the ants were making a nest in my clothing! There had to be hundreds of these little guys and when I discovered them they started to run! So I grabbed my clothes and ran outside (dropping ants all over the floor and having more crawl up my hands and arms) and beat my clothes on the ground and then hung them up outside. Then I cleaned everything out of the drawer. Luckily these are not ants that bite, they just tickle when they crawl on you. However I have now declared my closet a death zone for ants and I squish every little ant that I find walking through my closet. I am hoping that they spread the word that my closet is a closet of death for little ants and that they build their ant nests somewhere else.
- May 1st started out as Dia de Trabajador or Day of the Worker, and so the first Monday of May we celebrated Worker's Day by having a day off of work! It was nice to have a day to rest and we also had a nice lunch given to us by Stansberry later in the week to appreciate all of the staff who work there.
- I got a roommate in May. Her name is Rebekah and she is a student at EMU who is working in Bolivia this summer. Since I have an extra bed in my room, she moved in with me and we have had a fun time talking about life and about Bolivia, and she is a part of the church and youth group as well, so we do a lot of stuff together.
- During May MCC had a Focus Weekend. We had 2 days together as an MCC team. The mornings were always a time of Workshops on Conflict and Resolution and the afternoons we played games or learned how to make Bolivian foods or sang together. It was a really nice time to see all of the MCCers again and also to have the SALTers together as a group again.
- At my job, we had a parents meeting in May to hand out evaluations of the kids that come to the After School Program. Each teacher had to write up evaluations on their students of strengths, weaknesses, and suggestions for the parents. I realized how much my Spanish has developed this year as I filled out the evaluations and then spent 2 hours talking to each of the parents who came to the parents evening. Overall, everything went well.
