viajes en bolivia

i’m back! after five days, four nights, and countless hours (actually not countless, the estimate is around 25) spent on various forms of locomotion traveling through the jesuit mission circuit which is north, north east of santa cruz, i’ve finally made it back to santa cruz, the place that now feels like home here in bolivia. and man was it an adventure! three of the girls that are volunteering here in santa cruz and i took a bit of time off from volunteering to travel through this circuit of little towns that were there are beautifully restored jesuit churches from the 18th century and get the opportunity to see another side of bolivia outside of santa cruz. i actually almost chose not to go on the trip, but i’m so glad I did because we had a blast, made a ton of memories, and saw some really beautiful (and some not so beautiful) parts of bolivia.

it would takes pages upon pages to type out all of the stories that came out of our little trip, so instead of spending so much time writing out all the probably boring details, i’ll just give you what would be the chapter titles and a quick description if i were to write a book about the trip:

1. journey east on the death train- our journey from santa cruz to san jose de chicuitos on an eight hour train they call “the death train” for some unknown reason that only cost $3
   a really cool picture i took while on the train (i think the train ride may have been one of my favorite parts!)


2. samuel, his classy taxi, and the town of san josé- in san josé we stayed an orphanage called padre alfredo (katie works at the santa cruz branch of the orphanage) for free and then went on a tour of the city with our taxi driver/guide samuel (see picture of him and his car)
   the girls with samuel's sweet car. he jokingly told us that it was the latest model in san josé, but hey, it got the job done!
   


3. three flat tires and a three kilometer hike later…- turns out we missed the only bus out of san josé for the weekend so we had to negotiate a cut rate taxi ride to the next town on the circuit, san Rafael, with our trust taxi driver Samuel. the 130 km bumpy, incredibly dusty dirt road took us about 5 hours to travel, including three flat tires, and finally having to walk the last 3 km into town because we had run out of spares and the car couldn’t drive with all four of us on a flat tire. this was definitely one of the most memorable of our experiences on the trip.
   
4. the screams in hell must sound like roosters- we arrived (walking) to san rafael pretty late, got dinner, and then found a hostel. the hostel was really basic, but it wasn’t too bad… until the roosters started crowing 15 ft outside our door at 2:30 in the morning and didn’t stop until we left to catch our bus at 6:00 in the morning. none of us slept well at all and i now cringe at the sound of a rooster call.
   
5. santa ana: the underrated jewel of the jesuit missions- the next stop was santa ana, a very rustic village with a cool little lake. it felt genuinely bolivian and was one of our favorite stops, but we were only there for the afternoon.
   
6. luxury living in san ignacio… NOT!- next came san ignacio, the headquarters of the restoration project and the biggest town in the circuit were we stayed in a very cheap hostel. but we definitely got what we paid for. the pictures speak for themselves… but the town was really nice.
   super classy place...
   
the church in san ignacio

7. i’m now a bolivian cowgirl- while we were in san Ignacio we went horseback riding around the outside of town and around a big lake which was really fun, and super cheap. a little over an hour for less than $3!
   
8. the first shower in four days!- the church in concepción was one of my favorite b/c it had really beautiful details, but sadly my camera decided to freak out just in time for me to not be able to take pics of it (luckily Aubrey got some great ones, but still really frustrating, b/c it’s still not working). we weren’t in concepción for too long, but highlights of our stay include the nicest hostel we stayed in (where we finally got to shower) and a couple great meals
   
9. a long bus ride home- and then we headed home and all of us were squirming to get off the bus by the time we finally got back
   

so there’s a few snippets of the trip! i can’t wait to tell you some of the full stories when I talk to you in person or when i get home in just over 3 weeks. oh how quickly the time has gone. i only have a week and a half left in bolivia. and in the mean time, the volunteer house has filled to the brim. i think we have 8 people in the house now and i’ve heard 3 are coming this week. a couple are leaving soon too, but still i’m not sure where everyone will go. i hardly know what to do with so many people around, but i think having such a full house will make for a fun last bit of time here. please keep praying for my relationships with my fellow volunteers and for the work that’s going on in the orphanage.

well i love you all and miss you so much. please stay in touch. i’d love to hear how life’s going at home!

finally pictures!

i'm gonna keep the words short on this edition of "rachel's blog" but give you some long awaited pictures of the beautiful kids i've been working with. every day they steal my heart a little bit more.

this is angel. i think he's 2 and he has down syndrome and he's adorable! i play with him alot and feed him every day at lunch. he can be really grumpy at times, but i'm telling you, there's nothing cuter than his smile and laugh when he gets excited or tickled.

this is cristian, he also has downs, but he's 7 i think. he's so loving and sweet. lots of fun.


this is javier. he's actually the one who bit me a couple weeks ago. the woman in the picture is one of the mámas at the orphanage.

in other news, i'm going to do a bit of traveling this weekend. me and three of the girls i'm living with are going to do the jesuit mission circuit which consists of a string of towns that have what are supposed to be beautifully restored jesuit missions. it's going to be my only chance to see bolivia outside of santa cruz, so i'm really excited to see another side of bolivia. so please pray for safe travels and my relationships with the girls i'm traveling with.

well, i've been on the internet for too long now and i'm worn out, but i'll blog again when i get back. i hope you all are enjoying your summer. i really do miss you all, and i'll be seeing you in not too long!

packed like sardines

i would like to dedicate the beginning of this blog update to the ridiculousness that is the transportation system here in santa cruz, bolivia. and may i just say, that i’d hate to see what the rest of bolivia is like, with their notoriously terrible roads, after seeing how bad santa cruz’s are, santa cruz being the posh, rich city in bolivia.

so first of all, there’s the fact that i’ve mentioned before that the concept of a stop sign only barely exists here. i think i’ve seen three the whole time i’ve been in bolivia, and those were all in places you can do i u-turn on the highway… so one may ask, how does one know who has the right of way in a four way intersection? good question, one that Ii myself asked for quite some time until one of my housemates provided me with the answer she had read in lonely planet. the way it works is that as a car nears an intersection, they simply honk their horn, and the first person to honk their horn has the right of way. simple enough right… well, this crazy system often causes mass amounts of confusion and near crashes along with an amazing amount of sound pollution from the never ending source of honks coming from everywhere in the city. even now, typing up this blog from the comfort of our house, with all the doors and windows closed, i can hear honks coming from every which way.

next, there’s the bus (or as they call them, micro) system. mind you, I spent a fair amount of each day on these micros. but anyway, the system is quite similar to that in chile, with the small difference that the busses are smaller and the rates are cheaper. the crazy thing about them is how many people the drivers like to squeeze into these busses that have no more that 15 actual seats. just this evening for example, ana and I were coming back from getting coffee around 6:00 and we ended up being the last people to comfortably fit onto the already full #65 micro that would take us back to our house. well, comfortably fitting isn’t how the micros function, so after we get on, a bunch more people end up cramming on as the driver urges people to keep moving backwards into some imaginary free space in the back where you can cram endless amounts of people, until the micro has given an all new meaning to the saying “packed like sardines”. we counted around 40 people crammed onto this little bus on the trip home. in situations like that, the notion of personal space completely disappears as the bus turns into a huge mass of bodies, all constantly bumping into each other in their attempts to keep standing over the bumps and turn.

and the insanity goes on and on. I could write pages and pages about the road conditions and crazy ways of driving, but I won’t bore you any more for one day.

in other news from down south, two new volunteers have arrived in the volunteer house. their names are shawn and megan and they both are from the northeast and go to Princeton. megan is actually only here for two days today before she heads up north to work with an orchestra in a little town, but shawn will be here the rest of the time I’m here. I haven’t really gotten a chance to talk to him yet, as he got in really late last night, but it’s nice to have new people in the house.
as for the orphanage, things are going great. this week I’ve started working on making flashcard/picture communication systems for some of the nonverbal children. I got together with one of the tías to come up with a list of needed pictogramas and now I’ve been working in any free time I have on the internet (which is difficult to come by b/c I have to go to a café with wifi to get wireless) to find pictures and format the cards. searching for pictures has proved to be really frustrating and tiring, but it’d be so great to make some really nice cards for them and have something to leave behind when I go.

so that’s life as of now. today’s friday so that means the weekend’s ahead. I think we may take a short bus ride south (or actually maybe it’s east… idk…) on sunday to a town called catoca where there’s supposed to be a lot of good authentic bolivian food and a good artesenía (pretty much an open air souvenir shop), so that should be really fun. I haven’t gotten to see any other town but santa cruz, so it’ll be great to get another taste of bolivia.

well, keep the updates coming and I’ll do the same. I love you and miss you all lots!

¡cumpleaños feliz!

welp, i’m officially an adult now. 21 years of age. craziness. it’s weird that another birthday has come and gone with me out of the country, and in the winter at that (luckily the winter hasn’t been very wintery here, so i still felt like a summer baby!). the girls i’m living with really made it a great day though. here’s a rundown of the day’s events:

the day started with me waking up and walking out of my room to find katie and ana, my two housemates, stringing up to scream happy birthday with a house full of balloons and decorations. it seems that they got up early to decorate and then waited for quite a while until i woke up so that they could surprise me. then, moments later i was greeted by katia, our “mom” and her little boys to a great rendition of “cumpleaños feliz” (the song) and then a really beautiful birthday cake for breakfast that the girls had gotten me at a local bakery.

since there’s just girls in the house now, we’d decided it would be great to make my birthday into a girls’ pampering day, so after getting ready, we set out to look for some sort of a spa. we went to one that katia had told us about only to find that their most basic massage was $25, which by bolivian standards is ridiculously expensive, so we ended up going to another place that did manicures and pedicures that was down the street. we all got complete manicures and pedicures (my first manicures and pedicures ever!) for less than $15. after being pampered, we went to this Italian restaurant we’d read about in the lonely planet book called la bella napoli which was really really good. after that, we were tired from all the food and pampering, so we came home for a bit, then went to a café so that katie could meet a friend, did some souvenir browsing, came back for more chilling out, got pizza for dinner at our favorite little pizza restaurant, and then finally finished the day by taking turns pinning up our hair to sleep on so that we’ll wake up with curls (also a first for me). none of us are very girly girls and not accustomed to doing silly things like we did today, but it was really fun to just be goofy and girly for a whole day. oh how great living with girls next year is going to be!!!

so yeah, that was my birthday! it was just a bunch of little things, but my sweet housemates really made it a special day. they were so thoughtful in planning ahead and going the extra mile to make my day memorable and prevent any temptations to be homesick.
in other news, it seems that we’re supposed to get two new volunteers in this week. we don’t know much about them except they’re a boy and a girl and they’re supposed to get here wednesday and thursday. i won’t completely believe that they’re coming until they’re actually here, b/c they say people are coming sometimes when they’re not, but it will definitely be interesting getting new people here. it’s such a weird thing having this somewhat constant come and go of people. just as soon as you get used to a certain dynamic, it changes as a new person comes or old ones leave. keeps you on your toes I guess and keeps things from being boring.
well, i’ll leave you with a prayer/quote i read a couple of days ago in a.w. tozer’s book the knowledge of the holy:

“teach us, o God, that nothing is necessary to Thee. were anything necessary to Thee that thing would be the measure of Thine imperfection: and how could we worship one who is imperfect? in nothing is necessary to Thee, then no one is necessary, and if no one, then not we. Thou dost seek us though Thou dost not need us. we seek Thee because we need Thee, for tin Thee we live and move and have our being. amen.”

thank you Lord that you don’t need us, that you can do anything and everything without us, yet You still choose to love us and use us and delight in us, who mess up and are so imperfect, yet your grace covers all of that. that simple fact blows me away…

p.s. i got some photos uploaded! more to come, especially after i get some of the kiddos, but enjoy!

from the left, mauricio and joel (katia's sons), tom, ana, and steve on the boys' last night. we went to a big thing they had at mauricio's school for día del maestro (teacher's day).

steve and i on their last night.

ana, myself, and katie at a restaurant called la bella napoli where we ate great italian food for my birthday.

katie and ana in the plaze in the middle of santa cruz.

goodbyes are the pits...

sitting here in the super posh setting that is alexander coffee (a cafe near the main plaza in the center of santa cruz), my new home away from home due to the wifi access i can get here, i'm exhausted and at a loss to explain the weird mix of emotions that have been swirling through my head and heart all day. this morning tom and steve left our little volunteer family for the last leg of what has been eight months of traveling around south america. these two guys were two of the original three volunteers in the house when i arrived, and while that was only three short weeks ago, i feel like they really became my brothers in that short little bit of time. i guess that's not so hard to believe when you consider that for three weeks we spent almost every hour not spent in our separate volunteer projects together, living in the same house, eating our meals together, even sharing the same bathroom. and now these boys who i have come to hold so dear are across the country in la paz, and there's absolutely no telling when, if ever, i'll get to see them again. as they left this morning at the oh so early hour of 5:15, i felt what has become the all too familiar pain of goodbyes that may very well be for forever. not to be melodramatic or depressing, but these types of goodbyes, where you invest in someones lives and become so incredibly close, only to see them go with no guarantee of return, have become commonplace in my life since i've gone off to college, and while this situation is by no means new to me, i still feel like i don't know how to deal with the emotions that they bring. now, i'm torn between joy for the experiences i know the boys have ahead of them on their last bit of the journey and feelings of great blessing for having had the opportunity to share three weeks of my life with these super fun guys and feelings for extreme sadness as i realize how much fun and excitement they brought to our little volunteer family, how weird it will be without them, and how sad it is that today's goodbye may not be a "see you later". so for now, i feel a little numb, a lot tired, but i guess mostly grateful for the experience. every time this happens, as hard as the goodbyes are, i realize that investing in someone's life is always worth the heartache of leaving.

in other, less depressing news. yesterday was a really cool day at the orphanage because i finally got to meet the speech pathologist who comes in to work with the children on thursdays and saturdays. for the last two weeks i had missed her for various reasons, but yesterday we got to sit down all morning and talk about each of the kids, about being a speech pathologist in bolivia, and about the huge need the country has for more people trained in our field. it was so cool to see an in the flesh example of my career here in bolivia. and let me tell you, speech pathologists are ridiculously needed. at the moment, bolivian universities don't offer a degree in speech pathologists, so the few that the country has have to go abroad to get schooling and then face the daunting task of finding very scarce resources for their practice once they return to the country. eoneses (i think that's her name...) was practically begging me to come back to bolivia once i have all of my schooling done b/c the need is so great. we'll have to see about that... i can't even think that for down the road, but it was so interesting to get the perspective that eoneses offered. getting this perspective was one of the things i had really hoped to achieve in my time here, so needless to say our morning long talk was great.

in other news from the orphanage, the kids continue to crack me up and amaze me the more i get to know them. wednesday i came home with little teeth marks etched into my shoulder after being bit by a little boy named javier who has a tendency to freak out for no good reason (he's only 3, but man can he bite!). i also eat lunch at the orphanage every day and the food continues to be an adventure. today's meat was... well actually i have no idea what it was. and i'm always a bit shocked to look into my friend mauriel's soup bowl and see an alien looking slimy chicken leg protruding from the steaming liquid.

and then, there's the fact that today is my last day to be a kid. well... let's be real, i'll keep being a kid after today, but legally speaking, i've come to the end of my childhood (stop crying mom and dad, i'll always be your baby!) it is a weird feeling though, being on the brink of the great 21 years of age. it'd mean a bit more if i were back in the states, but it's still a pretty momentous birthday. it's weird celebrating it down here, so far from all of you that i love, but i guess that's just how it had to be.

well, i was going to upload some pics, but i'm having trouble with it so i guess i'll just try again the next time i update, i'll try to get some pics of the kiddos at the orphanage up as well! welp, i love you all. keep the updates coming!

chicken hearts!?!?

so how's life in bolivia you ask? ha, it's still weird to me that i would even be able to answer such a question. i'm living in bolivia right now... that fact still shocks me. it's even crazier because i know that as soon as i get used to that fact, i'm going to be packing up and heading to chile (yay for chile!!). oh how life is never the same, always changing.

well, in recent news from bolivia. i'm starting to feel better. this weekend i finally realized that i was never going to get better if i kept convincing myself i felt well enough to go out and do stuff, so i made myself stay in the house all day saturday while everyone else went out and had fun and woke up with just a little bit of a headache sunday morning, a vast improvement on the aching body and dizziness i'd been experiencing for days. after waking up on sunday feeling alot better i debated back and forth for a long time about whether to go check out a church i'd heard about. it really took all the courage i could muster to decide to go in the first place, b/c i was going to have to go alone, but i finally decided that being around some christian community was worth enduring a potentially awkward situation, so i went for it. after making the last minute decision, i quickly got dressed and walked the ten or so blocks to the church. the church is called ekklesia and i'd been told about it by some bolivians i met at new heights back at home. i was honestly terrified as i walk all by myself into the building full of bolivians, not knowing a sole. i chose a seat on the end of an isle toward the back where i felt out of the way and just sat back and waited for the church to start. the church was pretty big and had a really impressive worship band which i really enjoyed because i knew alot of the songs from my time in chile. the pastor was kind of hard to follow, i think partly because i couldn't understand him very well over the PA system, partly because his talk was kind of all over the place, and partly because his sermon was about an hour and a half long. they then took communion, ended with a little bit of worship, and then everyone was dismissed three hours after the service had started.

those three hours i spent in that church service made me realize alot of things about church that i had never realized in quite the same way before. i've always known that church was about community. the very definition of what a church is is a body of believers, not a building or a service where people come to hear some guy talk and sing some songs. obviously those things are great, but they're not what it's all about. church is about participating in the body. we come to church on sunday to worhsip and share with our fellow believers. we come to learn truths about the God we serve and to be encouraged and spurred on in our walks. while it was great to get to participate in coorporate worship, i realized there was little for me in that church, sitting on the end of a row, completely alone, which was definitely not what i had expected to find there. i guess i hoped that by going to a sunday service at this little church i'd somehow experience a bit of the community i'm starting to miss so much, but i realized that community can't be experienced alone at the end of a pew. so... looks like i'll have to look elsewhere for that community.

today, i got up and went to the orphanage for the first time since last tuesday. it was really good getting back to doing what i came here to do, but i'm still a bit run down from being sick, so i only stayed a half day. mauriel, one of the tías that i usually work with the most, and i came up with a game plan of what i should do with the rest of my time in the orphanage. i think we're going to work out a therapy schedule of different kids for me to work with and we'll going to pick specific things for me to work on with each of them. this will be really great, b/c it will give me some direction where i've kind of felt like i've been wandering around for a while. i also talked to her about my thesis project and we talked about what kids would work best, so it looks like i'll be able to get started on that soon as well. then, my day at the orphanage ended with a yummy lunch of... chicken hearts. the kids always eat first, and when i saw these little, dark brown mystery foods on their plates my stomach started to churn. i asked a guy volunteer named robert what they were and he told me "corazon de pollo"... i think they all liked watching me squirm as i told them i'd never tried them before. finally, after freaking myself out about how band they were probably going to be the whole time the kids were eating, my time to eat finally came. i put just two on my plate, not wanting to waste any of course, and much to my surprise... they weren't too bad. i think i'll stick to the breasts, but they weren't nearly as terrible as i'd figured they would be. and now i have a cool story about eating weird food. yay!

well, that's about all i have of interest now. please pray that i would continue to feel better as i get over this being sick junk. also pray that my spirits would rise, as being sick has gotten me a little down in the dumps and lonely. i'm just trying to trust in the fact that i know the Lord has brought me here and i know that He has a reason and a purpose, even though i'm at times having a hard time seeing it.

bueno, i hope you all are well. please send me updates on your lives. emails and comments from those i love really do make my days!

hasta pronto!

a chicken heart. this is pretty much exactly what my lunch looked like today. yummy...