Greetings! Sorry for the late update, it's been a nice lazy weekend. Since our last entry we have done several exciting things. On a trip with our coworker Brigam, we went to check on more gardens in a village about 40 minutes outside of Santa Cruz (I forgot what it's called). To get to the village we had to go through a brick factory. It was pretty cool. They dry the bricks by standing them up in rows like this on top of each other.















Nothing that we'd ever seen before. The workers wanted to take a picture with the "pretty american girl" but Ben let me know that although they have a lot of bricks here, they don't have a lot of morals, so that was an interesting experience. There are always animals walking around the street but this was the first time we'd seen a family of pigs!















One of the families that we checked on has a son that the former interns met. This little boy was very young when they met him, very sick, and just not in good shape at all. When they saw him they thought he looked like Chucky, the scary doll from the movie. Since then they've all called him Chucky even though his name is David and he probably is just learning to speak. He is the boy in the picture with us. His family told us that he doesn't like to wear pants. It was really cold outside too, so we thought he must still be sick although he's slowly getting better.















Two new animals! We were on our way back to catch a taxi to take us back to Santa Cruz and Ben saw this parrot just walk out of the doorway. He tried to fly but we thought it looked like his wings had been clipped or something. Then he kept trying to walk on the little half inch ledge next to the door! He sure was beautiful though. Then, we saw this cow. When we watch tv we always see these cows being sold on television and it was wierd to see one in real life! See the fence? We are on the inside of it. The cow is walking in the road, and it was followed by two other cows, but no human leader or anything! Strange sight.














That same night we had our business class again in La Guardia. This was the second class Ben and I were at and this time Ben got a little section to teach something. I thought he did an excellent job, but I also had no idea what he said. Here he is teaching too fast for the camera!















On friday we went to a school just outside of La Guardia. There were 9 classrooms that ASCEND had helped the community build, and they fit 400 students into them! All the kids looked like they'd never seen "gringo's" before (white people) and stared and Ben and me alot. It looked like the school covered kindergarden all the way through middle school classes.

This was one of their classrooms. Pretty nice for the area but definitley cramped for space. Ben and I thought that they must have half the kids outside while the other ones are in classes to fit 400 students there.

After we looked at the space for the new library, the local people had a lunch for us that was very traditional. They served us the cinnamony drink again and I thought it tasted like donuts this time. We also had a soup with rice and vegetables in it that also had a leg or thigh or breast of a hen sitting in the middle of it. It was a different presentation that I'd ever seen before but the soup was delicious! Before we left they gave us two huge bags of some citrus fruit that looked like an orange on the inside but was yellowy green on the outside.















After our time at the school we went to look at another facility. While the boss Luis was talking with another man, we all decided to play soccer. Ben and Erwin were kicking around for a while to start off with. This place must've been another school, but there were no kids in it, so it might not be finished yet. This place also had lots of eucalyptus trees, which I haven't seen since we left the states!

Every park and school has basketball courts and they also have built in soccer goals under the basketball hoops on every single court. I've never seen anyone play basketball on it.
This was a cool shot they didn't even know I took. They eventually made me play goalie and we had a little game. There was a house in the background and horses were walking by, with no owner visable at all.

It was really pretty cool. Then we left and when we got home this lizard was waiting for us on our porch. He was pretty cool looking and a good model.

Another cool thing is that all the public telephones are in the belly of some kind of bird like this.















Well, I'm sure we will have more in a few days. Our schedules are picking up and so is my spanish, but very slowly. We hired a woman to cook and do laundry for us and she made a fantastic lunch today and prepared a drink made from starfruit and other things for us. She only comes twice a week but it's definitley worth it. They say that winter only lasts a couple days here and that it'll start getting warm again soon but will start getting really really windy.

That's all we've got now, Adios!!

Marian and Ben