Amazing Adventures: Josh Renaud in Bolivia
Part travelogue, part love story, this weblog follows Josh Renaud's trips to Bolivia. Since marrying his Bolivian fianceé, Yoli Zegarra, they have had four kids — with whom they now travel to Bolivia.
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 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.
Continue reading “Bureaucracy gives us a headache instead of fixing a knee”
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.
Continue reading “Good weather and the Lord of the Rings… who could ask for anything more?”
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.
Continue reading “The Club, Bolivia-style”
Here I am at the Seminario Teologico Hebron, and already it’s been a long day!
I arrived at Santa Cruz’s Viru Viru airport at 6 am (Bolivia time). My journey began at 10 am (CST) the previous day. There were a few curveballs during my connections (one flight was switched to a different plane and delayed almost 2 hours) but everything worked out okay and now I’m here.
I guess I haven’t written here about WHY exactly I’m going to Bolivia. Well, put simply, there are two reasons: my girlfriend Yoli and volunteer work.