On Sunday we had made plans to visit Yoli’s uncle Adonai again, since he told us that weekends are the best time to come by. We had some breakfast and then spent time together talking about Ecclesiastes chapter 3, which is what our friends in the Bible study in St. Louis studied Saturday.
Kilometro 52
I took my first trip outside the city of Santa Cruz on Saturday. We traveled about 50 kilometers to Casa Hogar Nacer, a boys home to rehabilitate street kids.
The turtles are in heat: my visit to the Zoo
Friday was another one of those turnabout days. When Yoli was in the States, I took her to the St. Louis Zoo. So Friday she took me to the Santa Cruz Zoo. I noticed the zoos had one thing in common immediately: the same 3-D, block-letter column spelling the word ZOO from the top down.
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A trip to the market
Thursday was an interesting day. First, the weather has been unusually mild the whole time I’ve been here. There were a few hot days, but overall I have to say the weather has been great. Today was especially mild, and it sprinkled a few times.
Thursday morning, Yoli and I had breakfast together and then I dried off the clothes I hadn’t finished yesterday. After that we were ready for our main activity of the morning: going to the market.
A story about El Jord�n (no, not Michael)
On Wednesday we visited El El Jordán, which is a place street kids can go to when they want to turn their lives around. At El El Jordán, there are people the kids can talk to. They also can come to learn something practical, like typing or macrame (a type of knitting or sewing), that they can use to earn money. There is also a dentist’s facility and a nice library. I spent time searching for Waldo in a “ñDondñ esta Wally?” book.
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About money…
To answer my dad’s question about currency and exchange rates…. Here the currency is the Boliviano (the “b”, pronounced “bee”). There are 7.52 Bs to 1 US dollar.
Bureaucracy gives us a headache instead of fixing a knee
A few days ago, Yoli hurt her knee somehow when standing up to leave a restaurant. We’re not sure exactly what happened, but it swelled the next day and she couldn’t bend it much. Her family tried several different creams, but I’m not sure they did a lot to help.
So, yesterday we went to the Caja, which is a big health center for all workers who have national insurance. Yoli had made the appropriate insurance arrangements the day before and had secured an appointment. When we got there early in the morning, it was already packed with people.
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It’s not easy being green
Today I’m getting over my first (and hopefully last) bout of Montezuma’s Revenge. We’re not exactly sure what caused it. Theories range from some salteñas I ate on Sunday night to my drinking of tap water at the seminario (which I mistakenly believed was filtered).
Regardless, I’m feeling better. This was something I knew would happen eventually. From now on, I’ll be boiling all my water at the seminario and storing it in water bottles. That should help.
Good weather and the Lord of the Rings… who could ask for anything more?
Well, I’m still behind with my entries. This entry was originally written Saturday.
Saturday was Registration for the seminario. There were many students who came to get registered for classes. They come from all over South America, and some of them are Indians. Originally I was supposed to help calculate the total cost for students’ books as they came through the line. But it turned out that they didn’t need me to do that, so I stayed in the office with Yoli and the other secretary, Noemi (not Yoli’s sister). I ended up working on the website. I did some basic layout things and also visited many other seminario websites for ideas. I also am thinking about revising the seminario’s logo using Adobe Illustrator. We’ll see how that goes.
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The Club, Bolivia-style
Day two of my Bolivian experience ran the gamut. This entry was written Friday night, but I couldn’t post it until Saturday (today).
I woke up early Friday morning and prepared to take a shower. Thankfully the guest shower has hot water. It doesn’t use a hot water heater like in the U.S. Instead it is an electric shower head that heats the water as it flows through the head. I was a little scared of the thing, truth be told. I envisioned being electrocuted or something. Actually, it worked well. The problem was that the water pressure was too high and caused the bottom of the head to pop off. I had to screw it on several times before I got it tight enough to stay.
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