July 29

Ummm....Sis, I love the thought. But I have no idea how to use a blog. I can´t figure out how to post anything on there.
I have no idea all I wrote the other night. I was rushed and didn´t have a to many Bs ( bolivianos), to spend on the computer. Oh I have enough money. but the smaller businesses can´t make change for much over 20 Bs.
We went to the chaco yesterday with the futbol team and had a great time doing rope courses with them and cleaning the pond some more.
The rope courses should be something that Dellwater does! One that I loved was this: Your team has to swing from a log onto a platform that is about 5x5 foot. The first trouble is grabing the rope because you can´t cross a line. The next step it you have to swing across the rope one by one onto that platform. It was so much fun! We fit 27 people onto that tiny platform! We have pictures so you can all laugh later.
This morning we had church. I loved it. A lot of the songs we sang I knew in English and somebody was kind enough to print out a sheet with the words to the songs in Spanish so we could follow along. We sang songs like ¨Lord I lift your Name on High¨, Öpen the Eyes of My Heart¨.
The culture in Bolivia is rather interesting. One thing that they did in church today was they had all the short term groups go and stand up front and then had the WHOLE church line up and greet us. All good and fun, no? Well it was, but the reason I mention culture is because of how Bolivians greet each other. A typical Bolivian greeting to a lady is to shake her hand and then kiss her on the cheek and the lady does likewise to whoever is greeting to her. I must have kissed over a hundred people today! If I had any shyness before then, it´s gone now.
Now Í´m wasting my free time on the internet talking to you guys. Tonight we are going to go to church members houses for supper tonight, then after that we are going to go to the Plaza and have a night on the town and go for ice cream. Apparently Sunday nights is when the Plaza gets really busy. Sounds fun.
Tomorrow we are going to have the oppurtunity to go to a Festival in a little town far away. Lucho wanted to give us an opportunity to see some of the more historical parts of Bolivia and apparently this festival is a good way to do it.
Oh yes. I must mention this. Motos (motorcycles), are the main form of transportation here. You can hail a taxi moto from about anywhere and he will take you where ever you want to go for 3 Bs. All great fun! Except as a girl, your expected to ride side-saddle on the moto unless you want the moto driver to think your hitting on him. So I now can ride on the back of a moto at high speeds across all sorts of bumps, side saddle. I will comment that I don´t mind it, but don´t love it either. There are no posted speed limits here and speed bumps take on a whole new meaning when you can´t grip with you knees. ::ninja smiley::
I have got to tell you about the driving here in Bolivia sometime, but right now I´m off to check my email. Love you all!
Alicia

Hola everybody!I´m here, I´m here! In Bolivia that is. I have been here for three days now (I think, the days are kind of hard to tell apart.) The trip down was okay. All the flights left on time and we had only an hour delay at the airport once we arrived in Bolivia. Then, we had an 8 hour bus ride. Ouch! That hurt! 8 hours on a road with square potholes and some of the scariest driving I have ever seen. We tried to run over people, horses, goats, dogs, pigs, (we thought we were going to have pork for dinner)...and we managed to hit a bird. The country is beautiful out here despite the poverty of the people. There are brightly colored birds, beautiful trees that are entirely flowers called tajibo, and they have mantaqu(sp) everwhere, (coconut trees). The food is excellent here as well! I´ve never tasted such good food. Last night we ate at a church members house and had some of the more normal cuisene around here. I would try and tell you about it, but I don´t know any of the names. Let me just say that almost everything was cheese and bread and most of the time fried. Oh! And the chocolate! Cassie, I´m bringing some home so that we can drink it. The work we have been doing here wasn´t quite what I expected. We went to the Chaco, (camp), the first day and the boys started cleaning the pond and the girls picked up dried branches and palm leaves that had fallen after a storm. It was fun. We managed to catch a few crabs, disturb a giant ant hill, (and I´m mean giant!), and Luisa and Laura made leaf ¨minis¨ skirts out of large palm leaves. (more to that story later. )The second day...Ummm...what did we do? Oh I guess that is kind of today...I told you all the days were melding together. I´m tired, to sum up, the first day we got here, we ate and went to bed. Second day: We did an out reach program at a tiny town whose name I can´t pronounce or spell. It was so fun! First we went out and invited people. We did that by teaming uno American with uno Bolivian. I ended up with two boys, (Marc said that they both counted for a half. I never did learn their names) and we went out to the very outskirts of town and gave out tracks along with inviting people to the school to come see a show! We had a great time, I can´t speak a lick of spanish and they can speak random words of English. One fun thing that we did was asked somebody if we could have a couple of her lemons to eat from a tree outside her fence. She said yes and we managed to shake some out of the tree between the three of us. I was the tallest so I grabbed a hold of the branch and the other two boys managed to jump and grab the lemons. After munching on that snack and heading back to the school, (lemons are sweet here), we saw another tree with some other kind of lemons on it. But the difference was that it was in somebody´s yard. I THINK we ¨took¨ them without permission and then got caught. It´s okay though, the lady said it was okay in the end. The show at the school was awesome. The La Palmera school has a group called King´s kids who do choroagraphy(sp) and they put on a show for us. They are very good! Then we put gliders together with the little kids and gave out candy. Eek! I´m running out of time and money! These keyboards are going to drive me crazy! Deb, edit my post and correct my bad grammer for me please.For lunch we went to a really fancy resturant here and had the best beef in the world! There are no words to describe such a lovely taste. It was good. ( and no Dad. It has no name).Then we washed the chairs for the church. They were old white, plastic lawn chairs that needed washing. Then, after dinner, we went to a futbol game! Our team won! 9 to 1. Eek! Love you all!