We made it to Bolivia!

Well, we've made it to Bolivia, and since we got married last Friday this has been the only chance we've had to update. So here are some highlights and pictures.

Before we got married we had to get our shots in anticipation of going to Bolivia. We both went to go get yellow fever shots, but the Ben asked about geting another one for me. So, I got an unexpected shot for Hepatitus A. The nurse was nice to me and gave me a Spongebob Squarepants bandaid for being such a good sport.


















The wedding went beautifully and it was such a good beautiful day, couldn't have asked for better weather in D.C.

We took close to a million pictures in about 45 minutes, and after that was all over we went and had some delicious thai food for lunch. We are still waiting to get some of the pictures back, but the ones we have seen so far look amazing!

There were two or three other couples getting married that we knew from SVU on the same day and a few other couples getting married at the same time as us, so it was pretty crowded that day.









When we came out of the temple everyone was crowded outside the doors with camera's ready to shoot us. It was exciting and we both felt like celebrities with our own paparazzi! Lots of flashes and no idea where to look when.






















All of the Griffins! All of the Sayers and Reams and California family members.

Our reception was terrific and gorgeous and delicious. Ben and I had such a good time, the food was delicious. I heard lots of good stories about Ben from his good friends, and Ben was excited to see so many people from where he grew up. We gave out some disposable camera's for people to take pictures with all over and a couple ended up in the hands of Ben's nephews, so those will be excellent to look at when we get back.














After we took off from the reception we went to Washington D.C. for a couple days for a brief honeymoon. Ben told me not to expect much, we were only going to the local Econolodge (yeah right!). However, I was pleasantly suprised when we pulled into the Omni-Shoreham hotel right in D.C. It was beautiful and so much fun to get room service and fancy plush towels. Much better than any Econolodge.

On Saturday we went to the Zoo in D.C. and had a great time watching the animals, and trying to find them in most of their "habitats". We saw some interesting creatures I don't remember the names of, and bought our first little memory ornament which is a painted wooden carved panda. It's cute. We saw an ENORMOUS lobster that was practically as big as Ben's torso, we saw comodo dragons, all sorts of monkeys and bugs, and an elephant getting weighed. It was pretty exciting.



















The next day we walked around D.C. got ready to leave for Utah on Monday and had a good time relaxing. Ben showed me some of his favorite spots to go to and we enjoyed excellent weather. We flew to Utah that next day after packing all our stuff into the car and figuring out that there are often two streets with the same name and that they might also be in completley different parts of the state. That means we got lost. A couple times. Fortunately Ben was correct that our plane left an hour later than I thought it did and we got on the plane to Utah.

We had to make a stop in Chicago for an hour or so, we got dinner and hung around before we left for Utah. We got to Utah an hour late because of a pesky weather system we had to go around. We got to Utah around 9:30 pm Utah time which was 11:30 pm our time, and we were beat. We had expected that since our Internship company, ASCEND, was taking care of our housing while we were there, that they would be coming to pick us up at the airport. However, apparently they didn't think so, and we were stranded at the airport unable to reach anyone, and after Ben got to know the airport layout very well looking for anybody, and after hearing our pages over the PA system several times we figured, might as well get a hotel room and figure the rest out in the morning. So, we did. Next morning they called while we were at the free breakfast, and eventually someone came to pick us up much later. However, the excitement didn't end there. The guy who came to pick us up oops! locked his keys in the car, so we had to wait for his girlfriend to come give him the extra set so we could get to the Intern Training that we'd already missed a day of. The training that week wasn't that bad, and we sort of discovered that the definition of "Intern" should also include "doing the office busywork that nobody wants to do". We built desks, organized their junk piles in their attic, and drove to Deseret Industries to make substantial donations. To get back at them, I put a severe dent in their bowl of salt water taffy that was in the conference room and Ben drank all the juice in their fridge.

Our housing set up just got better. After the night in the hotel we ended up staying in the Vice Presidents condo right in the heart of Salt Lake City, only two blocks from temple square. It was really really nice. After that quick week of training, and learning that part of our luggage alotment had to be designated for 200 sunglasses to take to Bolivia, and some other events, we headed to Bolivia Saturday afternoon. We had a stop in Dallas and then in Miami, but ultimatly made it to Bolivia.



Two very nice people were there to meet us this time, huge relief, but they didn't speak much english, so Ben had to translate for me. Having traveled about 24 hours straight, we were exhausted and very frazzled and dirty. We got to our house where we got the tour, we live right above the office which is convenient, and right accross from a soccer field and next to a coconut tree. There are palm trees everywhere! The house we are in is in a pretty middle class type of community, and there have been kids playing soccer all day. Somewhere closeby is a full marching band we can hear.















Ben in front of our house and me in the kitchen that has no food in it.


This is the classroom Ben will be teaching the business classes in. Yes, it looks like it used to be a garage. Pretty resourcefull. On the way to our house we saw within the first few minutes, a sign warning ostrich crossing and other strange animals, as well as a dead and severely bloated "burro" in the middle of the road.







After we had a chance to settle in a little bit and the rest of the staff here got out of church they took us to lunch at this fantastic restraunt that is all done up in the style that Bolivia was 50 years ago, from the clay plates and bowls to the white outfits the servers wore. There was even a live band playing very traditional music. We tried several new things and were so exhausted it was difficult to remain on our chairs. There is a drink called Chicha that they love made from peanuts and a bunch of cinnamon. It's really rich but pretty good. We also got to try this potatoe like thing called Yuca that is really good, and just tastes like a harder fried potatoe. We were then served some very traditional dishes, and a plate filled with chicken. I swear we've both ate a whole chicken and maybe more in that one meal.

I haven't learned spanish yet so this is very hard to adjust to, and Ben says his spanish is rusty and so it's a little hard to communicate with them. Tomorrow we are going to an outdoor market to buy food and other things we need so hopefully we'll be able to do that. The currency here is called the Boliviano and I don't remember exactly what the rate is but it's pretty cheap having US dollars. Meaning that we are going to hire a lady for the equivalent of $1.25 a week to do our laundry and we can eat breakfast, lunch and dinner for the equivalent of $3 each day. Now we finally have some time to rest before our first in-country meeting at 9am tomorrow morning.

Hopefully it won't ever take this long to update again. Adios!

Ben and Marian









This is Ben on our balcony!