KATY!!!

A little sneak peak into the wonderful welcome I get every morning when I come in to work :) Although this is an awesome video, nothing can fully grasp the amazingness of the experience.

March: The month that stole me away from my blog

I think I’ve set a new record for length of time between blog posts and completely and totally shot my New Years resolution of at least two posts a month. My bad. Good news is that the reason I’ve been so MIA is that I’ve been SUPER busy and loving every minute of my time down here. Because it’s been so long since I’ve written I’ll try to make this as brief as possible, unfortunately leaving out some of the more intimate details, but I think the bigger picture is better. Either way, this is going to be a novel, so grab a cup of coffee and make yourself comfortable if you’re planning on sticking through until the end.

The first weekend of March I went to Oruro for the biggest Carnival celebration in Bolivia. It was an absolutely amazing, overwhelming, and ridiculous experience but I’m definitely glad I went. We had a fairly large group (about 70 people in total) with the majority being gringos from a group called Bolivia Sustanible. BUT the good news was that we slept in two different houses, the 50 people from Bolivia Sustanible in one and the other 20 of us (mix of gringos and Bolivians) in the other. We got in late Friday night and immediately went into the center to see the festivities. The streets were jam-packed with people, the music was blaring, and the atmosphere was completely contagious and unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. Kind of like the high of a Notre Dame football weekend but with traditional Bolivian costumes, music, and dancing. Saturday we woke up early and went to the stands to watch the parade from 11am until 4am – a LONG day, but an incredible day nonetheless. Although I’ve been to other entradas while I’ve been down here, nothing will ever compare to the atmosphere and the costumes and energy I experience in Oruro. Sunday was the same entrada, but they reversed the order of the dancers, although there were significantly less people in the stands and MUCH more water-balloon fights. Also a ridiculous experience. We arrived back in Cochabamba at 1am Sunday night and luckily had Monday and Tuesday to recover because they were holidays.

The following weekend was Carnival in Cochabamba, but I didn’t go to that entrada (although we did walk around a bit) because I was still recovering from a cold I caught as a result of the festivities the weekend before. I think my greatest relief was that once the Carnival in Cochabamba was over I no longer had to worry about getting hit by water balloons while walking around the city, although generally they weren’t as much of a problem as people prepared me for.

March really was a month of festiviites because the weekend after all the Carnivals ended we had a wedding celebration for two of the volunteers from Amanecer. It was an absolutely beautiful wedding that the priest said in both Spanish and English and they had invited some of the older boys and girls from the houses the two volunteers work at.

After all of these different festivities I surprisingly still had the energy to take a 10-day trip to visit my cousin Liz in Chile. I flew to Santiago at 2am – who knew flights existed at these times? But apparently that’s the only hour you can get to Santiago for a reasonable price from Bolivia…which has it’s advantages – like the booth for charging Americans $120 to enter Chile being vacant and me somehow avoiding that fee. We spent two days in Santiago and then flew south, with her parents, to Patagonia and did 4 days of hiking/camping/glacier-seeing in the Parque de Torres del Paine. I really had no idea where I was going or what I was getting myself into because Liz was good enough to be the travel agent for our trip and arrange everything – but it was an absolutely unforgettable experience. We saw rainbows 3 of the 4 days, experienced wind, rain and snow and hiked for over 4 hours every day (my body was kind of hating me by the end of the trip). I owe Liz for asking me to come with her because if it wasn’t for her I never would have made my way down there. I had another 2 days on the other side of Patagonia in Santiago – being in a big city in South America really disoriented me because I felt like I could be in Chicago or another big US city. The positives of this being that I got to fulfill my salad, Diet Coke, and Starbucks cravings that I’ve had for the past 8 months.

Although I had an absolutely amazing time in Chile I was definitely ready to come “home” (Mom, I’m putting that in quotes for you…don’t worry I still consider the US my real home) and back to Cocha at the end of the trip. I even went into visit my kids for an hour the day I got back because I had missed them so much – and that was only after being gone for 10 days! The best feeling was coming into work on Monday morning and walking into the bathroom to all of them screaming “KATY!!” – which they have taken to doing almost every day this week and warms my heart every time. I took a video of it on Friday and I”ll try to upload it here so you all can see a little of what I experience every morning.

Things are going really really great here and I can’t believe I come back to the US in 44 days. That’s less than a month and a half! But, for those of you who don’t already know, I’ve decided to come back in August for another 4 months as a result of deciding not to go to WashU in the fall and instead apply to VCU for the fall of 2012. I’ve really found myself down here and I can’t imagine doing anything else with at least part of the next year free I have. Although when I come back I’ll try to change up a bit what I’m doing – helping with volunteer coordinating, fundraising, and working at one of the homes with the older kids (that’s if I decide after being home for 2.5 months that I don’t miss my kids terribly and want to go back to seeing their smiling faces at least twice a week while I do office work the other days).

I’m sorry this is just a snap-shot blog of the last month or so, but I promise to try to add some more detailed posts the next few weeks as I experience starting to get ready to come back state-side.

And I’ll leave you with this brief video of the 21 beautiful children who brighten every one of my days down here and have stolen my heart…and my name (because most of them respond to “como te llamas?” with my name instead of their own…whoops). - Okay the first upload attempt didnt work, but I'll try again soon when I have a better connection!