And they call this summer...

Well it´s supposed to be summertime, but I think I´ve worn a sweater and/or scarf every day except one this week. They say it´s unusually cold this year - that usually during rainy season although it rains it is also sunny and warm the other half of the time. Not true this year.

It was actually a fairly eventful week - on Thursday Albertina and Martha got into a fight when we were bathing the kids in the morning. More like Albertina decided to start screaming at Martha about not putting an undershirt on the kids after she bathes them while they are waiting for Albertina to put the rest of the clothes on - instead of saying "maybe next time you should put an undershirt on them" Albertina instead started screaming about how she didn´t want "mala atención" (bad attention) from the director and nurse and she NEVER leaves the kids sitting like that. To which Martha started yelling back to defend herself that indeed Albertina HAS left them like that ocassionally and she doesn´t always leave them sitting like that but she was trying to bathe them quickly because they were all running around the bathroom. So they didn´t talk to each other for the rest of the day and then got called into the office at 3:30 and were there until 5...leaving me with all the kids (and eventually a helper came in when it was time to take them to eat) for an extra hour than I´m supposed to work. And to add on top of it I was the ONLY volunteer in all of Amanecer working on Thursday because the strike was still going on and no one could get to work and the two other girls that work with me at Solomon were sick. Needless to say when I got to Diego´s house after work I was not in the best of moods and promptly passed out for about half an hour.

Other than the incident on Thursday everything has been going well. Two more of my girls moved up to Sala 2 this week - Nadia and Adrianna. Adrianna was one of my favorites (she´s in my Facebook picture) and was also an avid fan of shouting my name. So it´s sad not to have them around anymore, but great because now when I pass by Sala 2 BOTH Johnothon and Adrianna shout my name and I feel loved. Now that Jen has 3/4 of Sala 2 filled with kids from Sala 1 I sometimes get jealous and feel the need to proclaim "They were mine first!!"

I don´t know when my next blog will be - it´s a crazy few weeks coming up. On Friday I´m traveling to Oruro for the 2nd largest Carnival celebration in the world and then the following weekend is Carnival in Cochabamba. I´m excited for the next two weekends but I also think they´ll leave me quite exahusted. Just giving my fair warning as to why I wont have updated in a while - that´s mostly for you Mom.

No hay mobilidad en Cochabamba

Today is Day 2 of the transportation strike in Cochabamba. Aka there are no trufis or micros (the public transportation system) throughout the whole city. On Wednesday all of the drivers protested because they want to raise their prices from 1.50bs to 2bs. Although 50 bolivano cents doesn't seem like a lot, seeing as it is a third of the current price it's causing quite a commotion. [Sidenote: They also can't raise it any less because there is a problem with change in Bolivia and particularly among any coins less than 50 cents - 20s and 10s exist, but are very rare. ]The people do not want the prices raised because they are convinced that if they raise the prices of public transportation they will raise the prices of other things as well - such as milk, bread, etc. Unclear how the two are related, but in the minds of Bolivians there is no question to the link.

The protests started on Tuesday with the people protesting the rising prices with marches in a nearby town called Quiacollo. I actually was unaware this was going on except that I noticed it took a particularly long time for a trufi to pass that would take me to the gym after work - soon came to find out it was due to the fact that since all of the trufis I usually take come from Quiacollo they were blocked from getting through the masses of people. Wednesday the trufi drivers responded by marching through the city - starting out peacefully - on all the main roads and creating blockades and, eventually, starting fights and throwing chairs, stones, and other related objects. Luckily though I was relatively unaffected because I always walk to work - for my roommate Hanne though it was a different story - she had to walk over an hour to get to work.

Today the strike continued, although more or less without the mass marches, just without running transportation. It was also announced that it will be an indefinite strike and tomorrow will be even more dangerous because there will be marches by BOTH the people and the trufi drivers - aka lots and lots of fighting.

It's fascinating for me to watch this whole process go underway because it's something I would never experience in the US. I personally don't understand why the trufi drivers are striking when they could just raise the prices and see if people still use the transportation or not. The first day I was confused about who was striking - why would drivers strike if they could be making money and driving their trufis?!

I've been warned to stay far away from the city tomorrow, but part of me will be urging to join the march on one side or the other just to see what goes down. Don't worry Mom, I won't actually do it, my curiosity will just be peaked.

Rain rain go away...

It´s officially rainy season. And I can already tell it will be the test of my patience at Solomon.

This past week it was rainy and cold (granted nothing compared to the cold in the States right about now – although the Mama´s love to dress the kids like it´s negative fifteen degrees outside with sweaters and hats and pants when it´s a mere 50 degrees outside) EVERY day from Monday-Friday and by the end of the week I was dead. Which is saying a lot considering it was a Sabina MWF week. The poor kids were going stir crazy because they had to stay inside every day all day – eve when it wasn´t actually raining, if there was the slightest bit of water or puddles around we had to keep them inside for fear of them wreaking havock. I understand that 21 one to two year olds and puddles and mud doesn´t paint the prettiest of pictures, but by the end of the week I was ready to risk that havock for my mental sanity.

Although my main memories of the past week are of crying, screaming, insanity there were also a fair share of adorable moments as always. Probably one of the biggest highlights of the week for me was seeing that Edson, going on 4 but not moving up to the next sala because of his inability to walk, could do the “Chu chua” dance – something a little like the Spanish version of the Hokey-Pokey where they add a body-part action ever verse and end with ¡lengua afuera! (tounge out!) so that you end up singing “ la la la la la la la la la la” instead of the words. The second-to-last verse goes a little something like this…

¡compañía!
brazo extendido (arms out)
puño cerrado (fists closed)
dedos arriba (thumbs up)
hombro fruncido (literally means “puckered shoulders” )
cabeza hacia atrás (head back)
cola hacia atrás (but back)
pie de pingüino (feet like a pengin)
Chu chu uá, chu chu uá
Chu chu uá, uá, uá
Chu chu uá, chu chu uá
Chu chu uá, chu chu uá

I also went climbing on Wednesday after a bit of peer pressure from Jen (who works at Solomon with me) and Diego to give it a try. The last time I climbed was at summer camp when I was twelve. I envisioned the climbing walls I´d seen in the States – with the multicolored fake rocks – but instead ended up climbing a cement wall with cement knobs in the middle of the soccer stadium while all the venders were setting up for the nights game. Hilarious. Although I did manage to make it all the way to the top – after about ten minutes and about 4 descansos (rests). I´m told I was held back by not having the propper shoes which was why I had such difficulty and that I did better than most people on their first try – I still think they were just being nice to me and Diego was doing his boyfriend-duty of flattering me. Today Jen told me they installed some new cement knobs in the wall so it´s a bit easier…who knows maybe I´ll give it another try sometime soon. The next thing on their peer-pressure list for me to do is paragliding…which I was initially 100% against (I have nightmares about the free-falling feeling in my stomach) but when we swung by the office of the place that we would do it with after climbing and there were pictures on the wall of people doing it AND I was reassured that there was no free-falling involved…I´m starting to get convinced.

This week has also been a bit rainy and cold, which has kept us inside more than I would like but less than last week. So hopefully, considering this is now an Albertina week, it will continue at least at this rate if not with some nicer days.

Also, today Johnoton, the notorious peleador (fighter) in our sala finally moved up to Sala 2. And even though we´ve all been saying for months that he needed to move up, taking him over to the Sala 2 lunch table and leaving him there was not an easy task. He was also probably the most avid of the kids in my sala of screaming my name all the time, so when I saw Sala 2 on my way out this afternoon and he walked over to me and took my hand and said Katy! my heart melted. Although it was also hilarious to see all the kids in my sala accepting the new girl to come up from recien nacidos (new borns) and standing around her in a circle pointing and screaming ¡wawa! ¡bebe! (wawa is the word for baby in quechua which is the language spoken in the campo) even though she is about the same age and size as all of them.