Day 4 in Bolivia

Buenos Dias!

It is the beginning of day 4 in Bolivia and we have learned a lot about local customs, about each other, and how the office functions. On our first day of working with the people, we had an all day project to empty, paint, spakle, and sand the "classroom" that they use here for the business classes. It actually is a converted garage, so I was right about that. It did take all day and after we did that two of the staff members, Brigam and Erwin, took Ben and myself to the local "Hipermaxi" or supermarket so we could get some basic food and supplies to hold us over until we got more settled. That was an experience. The currency here is called the Boliviano, and it is pretty nice because 1 american dollar is about equal to 7.85 Bolivianos, so we bought 300 Bolivianos worth of food and stuff and that is only about 38 American dollars. Lucky for us, if we'd bought the same items in America it would have cost close to 60 dollars! Milk comes in a bag, and Brigam bought us one of his favorite drinks (also in a bag). It tastes like apple juice but is extremely sweet and almost like spiced cider mix disolved in water. It was good though.

Our second day of work, yesterday, we didn't do a whole lot. Our current instructions are for me to learn spanish as soon as possible, and for Ben to teach me spanish as soon as possible. We are doing this while looking over several powerpoint presentations to be used to teach their business classes. It's quite an overload for my brain, but I'm getting better each day. Yesterday it was raining hard and very windy from morning through the night. Today it is still very windy but the rain has stopped for now. It is actually a little cold here! Yesterday Ben and I went to go get some snacks to eat and only had to walk about 6 houses down the street to find a woman selling a lot of food and snacks out of her garage. There were bars between us and the food and her, with a little swqinging door thing to pass the goods through. We got 2 liters of pinapple banana juice, 2 chocolate bars, and a really big package of chocolate wafer cookies all for about 13 bolivianos. In American terms, that's about $1.75. It's pretty awesome.

Aside from the nice fact that things are really cheap for us here, we've discoverd some things about the house, and the little community. Rule 1 - don't let your feet touch the ground. This means we're back to wearing shower sandals and socks to bed, and everything. Rule 2 - Don't drink the water. We can shower in it and use it to wash our face but don't drink it. Rule 3 - Don't rely on what the staffmembers say is true. We learned this the hard way by believing that there were no ants in the cabinets, and we put all our food in there. We then went to make dinner last night and realized that we'd be getting a little extra protein with our Hamburger buns. So we had to clean everything out and put all of it in the fridge.

Today is more of the same. I have to learn spanish, and Ben is going to help me along. Ben is going to be going to Laguardia today (I think I spelled that wrong, so we'll correct it later) with the staff to help with recruiting and things. That will be an interesting trip he will have to write about.

Sadly, the batteries from our camera had died, and we have yet to buy new ones, so we have no new pictures...Also, we plan to update this about twice a week.

Adios!