3 weeks left

Well we only have about 20 days left of our trip in Bolivia and it's going to go very fast. Sorry for not updating the last two weeks. We've gotten distracted and had several things to do and I've been a bit lazy. Since the 4th of July we have continued doing our business classes three nights out of the week and we've had our English classes on Saturday mornings. Last Saturday none of our kids came so we didn't have anyone to teach. There are two really cute kids that come most of the time so we promised to make cookies and cake for them on our last day.

Last week it got really cold and actually snowed in La Paz! We got some rain which was exciting, and the wind continued. In our cement house it was pretty cold for about 3 or 4 days nonstop. One of those days we got to learn how to make Empanadas with one of our coworkers moms. It was really fun, especially since it was cold that day.


The onions made us cry...alot.

This is how we cooled off the Empanada filling...stuck it on a chair and put it outside. The filling was made of pretty much everything from ground beef, chicken, eggs, and peas, to cilantro, spicy seasonings and lots of oil.

No rolling pin to be found so we used a glass bottle. The dough is basically flour, melted butter and some water but is actually pretty tasty.


The way she pinches the ends give the Empanadas a really cool design.

Then they get deep fried in a LOT of oil.

Yummy!


The next exciting thing that is upon us now is the new arrival of American kids to be here for the next two weeks. We met them on Monday and they all look like they're still in high school. Excluding a couple chaparones, they aren't any kids older than me. It was really quite fun to speak English again.

Last night the whole office went to see them at their hotel and play some soccer. The field was really big and Ben got quite a workout. After the soccer game Ben and I took some of the participants shopping for clothes because two of the girls had their bags lost by the lovely Miami airport, and one girl and her mom went looking for soccer cleats, so we took them. Then they allowed us to crash their dinner with all 26 kids and however many adults. We ate at this Brazilian pizza and pasta place that was sort of like a buffet but you didn't have to get up. They would bring around trays of pizza, tell you what it was and ask if you wanted a slice. It wasn't typical pizza, it was brazilian pizza and that means lots of ham and bacon pizza with cheese and onions. There was a cheese and garlic pizza that Ben ate that must have had at least 6 cloves on the one slice alone! My favorite one is hard to describe. It had lots of cheese on it, and pizza sauce doesn't really exist there, and then had milk, yes milk, on the middle of the pizza, and then these crunchy stick things with pieces of steak. They were very very good.

Then there were the desert pizzas! They were really good too! There was one with condensed milk and coconut, one with chocolate spread and chocolate sprinkles (my favorite), one with chocolate spread and strawberry jam on top, and one with some peanuts and peanut spread. Very tasty. Sadly we didn't take any pictures, but it was also really cheap so we plan to go back there sometime before we leave.

Hopefully we will get to see the americans again and get to crash more of their dinners. It's fun for us and we get to be helpful because with 26 americans that don't speak Spanish, we figure we can be of some help somewhere and offered to help out while they are here. Hopefully we will get to be able to soon.

The rest of this week is supposed to go as usual, with the possibility of helping the group of Americans. We have our class in La Guardia tonight and our class at the office tomorrow night. Fortunately it has warmed up a lot and I have made good use of the extra mattress and the balcony that we have to take naps on and relax on.

A funny thing happened yesterday. Ben and I went to the grocery store to get chocolate and bread and butter. We got to drive the boss's car all by our selves through the Bolivian roads, which was an adventure in itself! We found a bunch of cans of soda and Root Beer was one of them and we wanted it! Mine was no trouble but Ben's was. In the style that only happens in movies and cartoons Ben picked his can and it was like slow motion! All the rest of the cans slowly toppled to the floor and they just kept going and going and there was no way to stop them! It was hilarious and intensely embarrassing. It was amazing.

Well, thoe are the highlights from the last two weeks. I'm sure there will be more exciting things to come, and we will be sure to keep close updates on our last three weeks in Bolivia!

Best wishes and hopes to everyone back home.

Adios!

Marian and Ben

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

Hello again!

We apoligize for not being as consistent about updating but time is going faster than we think sometimes. Here are some pictures from the Hotel we stayed at that weekend. It was called Buganvillas and as Ben wrote in our last post we had a really good time there.
We had a nice room with this living room, a mini kitchen, and small dining area. It was very nice and a pretty cool experience.








Last week was very interesting. We had a meeting with the headquarters of ASCEND, and are hoping to actually improve the work ethic around here as Ben mentioned also. We went on several visits and taught our classes three times that week as usual. On Wednesday Ben and the rest of the staff went to check out this really nice hotel where the expedition is staying when they come in August. He took pictures and managed to arrange for us to stay there that week too! Fortunately it's right before we leave to go back to the states and will be a great way to end our long trip in Bolivia. Here's what it looks like. It's in the mountains close to an area called La Guardia where we teach our Wednesday classes. Ben says it was amazingly quiet and had some breathtaking views.














Ben and I are very excited to stay here. It'll also be wickedly cheap for us just like the other hotel was.

The next day we went on our usual visits and had our class at the office that evening. We intended to make several more visits in La Guardia the next day but it didn't quite go as planned. Our first stop was to help a woman from our class install a door on her daughters room. Everything went wrong with that door that possibly could've gone wrong. It was too big, made of extremely hard wood, our power tools ran out of batteries, and we accidently smoked up the recharger pack in the wall outlet. Even though we eventually got the door up, it was hardly usable, and would only close when kicked. We're hoping to go by today to fix it, but it took us so long that day that we had to make it work and get on our way. However, that wasn't the most interesting part of that day.

As we have found, if you are at a visit for a long time, the person you are visiting will usually give you something to drink and sometimes even something to drink, depending on the time of day. We went to this woman's house right before lunch, as we weren't anticipating the door taking so long. We had planned to fix the door and go to the hotel for lunch so I could get a look at it. However, she insisted on feeding us enough food to feed her whole family for another day. I still don't know what I ate, but I can describe it. We were first giving what looked like beef soup with a bone in it with a bit of beef still attatched. When we ate it, it was really thick and had little bits of potato that gave the soup the consistency of little pieces of fat floating around in a nasty more liquidy fat. It tasted like bones and fat of a cow. Erwin asked me if I liked it and of course I had to say "Si! Mi gusta!" or something to indicate that I liked it. After the soup she gave us a potato salad and rice sort of dish that was a huge improvement from the fat soup, but definitley not good for me and Ben. We had to eat it anyway. The worst part was the beverage.
When we go to visits and get beverages from the people we are visiting we almost always get coca cola or that cinnamony drink we had our first day here. We think this was an attempt at the homemade cinnamony drink, but we still aren't sure. It had rice in the bottom, that floated up when you drank it, giving it the consistency of vomit. I don't know how to describe the liquid part of the drink but it really made me feel like I was on Fear Factor. The scary part was not knowing what we were drinking. Needless to say, Ben and I had interesting comments from our stomachs all weekend.
We taught our english class to a mighty 2 children that Saturday and discovered that it is pretty hard to keep 2 kids entertained in the forms of "to be" when one of them already knows it and the other has discovered a pencil sharpener.
The rest of Saturday we spent relaxing and lounging around. I caught a bit of a cold that weekend and did not go to church on Sunday because of it. We slept right through church actually because we were both not feeling too hot.
This week has been good so far. Monday was some kind of holiday so we didn't have class that evening. We went on visits that morning and afternoon and one visit that morning was particularly interesting. We ended up in this part of town and at what looked like an American storage facility with the rows of alluminium slide down doors, numbers over the top of each, and cement floors with rather narrow hallways. These were not used for storage. They were people's homes and they were selling things too. I have no clue what they sold, or what the guy we visited even did, but it was very interesting to see a desk in a storage unit with two chairs on each side for the clients to sit in. There were venders going around selling jello in plastic cups, and drinks in plastic cups just like a popcorn man at a baseball game would. It was really dirty and sketchy but Ben said the business part of the visit went well.

Yesterday was Tuesday and Bolivia had a soccer game last night. It was comforting to know that the reason for the gunshot noises was really just firecrackers celebrating a goal. Ben went with some of the guys from the office to play soccer last night. We went on our visits in the morning and afternoon, and rode in the back of a pickup truck (my first time doing that!) from the machanics back to the office.

Today we are going to spend a lot of time in La Guardia again, as we have our class there this evening.

Ben and I are determined to eat nothing but hot dogs today in honor of the Fourth of July and wish we could barbeque something or make a flag cake to go along with it. We wish everyone a happy Independence Day and wish we were there watching the parades too! We have almost exactly a month left and it's going to go fast. Best wishes to everyone and again, HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!

Ben and Marian