Home sweet home

So guess who's back in the US and bored out of their mind? I AM!

After an interesting flight back to the US, in which I made friends with a soulless French Canadian and a nun, did not have my bags searched by customs (grrr), and fought with the baggage people in Miami, I am finally home, and looking for things to do. Tomorrow Sam, Claire and I will be playing ukulele in the park in exchange for life advice, so if you're around, come life advise us. Also tomorrow night, we're going to Chris' Jazz Cafe in Philly (http://www.chrisjazzcafe.com/) to see my friend's band play...so you should come too.

On Thursday I leave for New York for my DAAD training, and I won't get back til Sunday night, so after that, we'll party. So yeah. Call me/text me for things to do, before I reverse culture shock like it's my job.

Adios!

Pictures

Finally! The hostel computer works for uploading pictures. yussssss.

Anyways, here are some of my personal favorites of the photos that the kids have taken:

by Maribel, age 17:


by Alison, age 10:


By unknown kid:


By Andres, age 12:


by Belen, age 11:


by Eddy, age 11:



by an unknown kid:


by Rolando, age 7:



by Maribel, age 9:


By Marco, age 11:


by an unknown kid:



by Ariel, age 9:



by Beymar, age 12:



by Leo, age 7:


By an unknown kid:


by Richard, age 10:


There are like a gazillion more, but I guess you´ll just have to come to our exhibition in the fall to see them :)

Adios!

that´s what she said and ukuleles

I would just like to write a victory post to the best that´s what she said joke ever, made by yours truly, right before we went out drinking with a couple of brits last night.

I had just gotten ice cream, and we were all sitting on a park bench waiting for me to finish so we could go out. I didn´t feel like eating the rest of it, so I offered it to everyone in turn. The one british guy declined, and when I made some inane comment about really really really not wanting it, he said "just put your tongue in it and lick out all the good stuff." Hee hee. Hee hee. That´s what she said.

Michelle fell over laughing, but the Brits just kind of stared at us, until the guy said "I handed that to you on a silver platter didn´t I." Yes British man, you totally did. They laughed eventually.

In other news, we were playing ukulele by the pool yesterday, when another British dude wandered over and asked if he could have a go. He said he played guitar, so I was like "sure british dude, knock yourself out." He totally rocked out on the ukulele, and then started singing some crazy improv song about pirates and their parrots picking out the eyes of his enemies. It was awesome, and for that alone, I´m glad I am where I am. Yet again, Tina converts a guitar-playing soul to the ukulele.

In other other news, there´s yet another british dude in the hostel who has the sickest porn mustache I´ve ever seen in my life.

So that´s about it. Going into the center of town today to see if there´s anything interesting going on. Michelle leaves tonight, so tomorrow, it´s just me all lovely day. Will post again before I leave, see you all in two days!

sakdfvhnjksabvhl

So I´m back in Santa Cruz, and it´s just me here (til Thursday) and one other girl from the program (til tomorrow). The rest of the group left , and for reasons that I can explain later, I tried to do the whole fly-standby thing and get out of here this morning with everyone else. As it turns out, American Airlines wanted to charge me 230 dollars just to fly standby, because they blow like no other. So now I´m back in the hostel, chilling out, and trying to think of some interesting things to do.

Last night we were all chilling out in one of the rooms playing "One time, in Cochabamba..." and keeping the other people in the room awake. It was really fun, but now I´m kind of sad. Guess who doesn´t want to be in Santa Cruz? I DON´T. urgh ness.

So I should probs stop moping and go make friends with the two swedish guys I met last night. adios!

Last day in Cochabamba

So we´ve officially said goodbye to the kids in the orphanage-that sucked. Then we had our last day in Loma Pampa--that was fun. Then the photography mural I made for the community center got ripped apart by people who wanted the photos--that sucked.

All in all, last few days here have been kind of bittersweet. On one hand I don´t want to come home, but on the other hand, I feel like my time in Bolivia is over and it´s time to move on to other things. As a sidenote, there is a giant group of Germans staying in my professor´s hotel, and I made friends with one couple who told me that they had to listen to me talk for awhile before they heard my accent. YUSSSSS. Although they were probably just being nice.

Toro Toro ridiculousness

So Toro Toro was pretty much ridiculous, and also the three most physically grueling days of my life. The first day we were there, we went on a 2K hike, and then spent three hours running round inside a cave. And while most of the cave wasn´t so bad, there were some parts where you had to literally squeeze your body through tiny little rock crevices and twist around to drop into little tiny holes and all sorts of silliness. We were told that it was a test to see who could physically handle the cave on Saturday.

Friday was a long long long hike. 10Ks through the Andes, up and down giant rock cliffs and scrambling over boulders until finally we got down into the bottom of a canyon, where we got to play in the waterfall. However, the waterfall turned out to be full of recently melted glacial water, and it is my personal opinion that diving into a pool of ice would have been warmer. However, now I can say that I have swum in a pool of recently melted glacial water.

Saturday was the hardest day by far. I decided to go try the really really hard cave, and the first 30 meters were you pulling yourself through a crack in the rocks along a rope. And it didn´t get easier after that. Some parts of the cave, we had to shimmy with our backs against one wall, and our hands and feet against the other, with a river down below. Other parts, we had to slither on our bellies through miniscule holes tht you didn´t think you could fit through.

The scariest part inside the cave was the first time we had to swim, mostly because it was dark, and the water was deep enough that we couldn´t touch the bottom, but we couldn´t see it either. After I got over that, the swimming was actually kind of cool.

However, the scariest scariest scariest part was when we got outside the cave. Our guide (who was a crazy little spider monkey man) told us we would be swimming out through the waterfall. Apparently something got lost in translation because we actually came out over top of the waterfall--and then had to scale a rock face on a slant with no handholds of footholds, and oh yeah, if you slipped, you feel six hundred feet into a gorge. So I had a mini freakout because I don´t like heights (note to self: six hundred feet above a gorge on a rock face is a bad time to get sensible). After scaling that one part of the rock face, we then had to shove our tippy toes in a crack in the rocks and shimmy the last part to the trail. It was the scariest thing I´ve ever done in my life and I am currently working on forgetting that it happened.

For the record, I wasn´t sore at all after any of the Toro Toro days, even though it was very physically demanding. I am, however, still sore from jiu jitsu on Monday.

Tuesday we had our despidida, our good bye party with the women´s group. I missed most of it because I got put on babysitting duties (not that I mind). We taught the kids how to play duck duck goose (pato pato gallina), stuck in the mud, and then somehow erupted into a spontaneous conga line (if you check out my professor´s blog, there´s a picture of me and said conga line.) It was quite fun. Today we have our goodbye party at the orphanage, at which I fully intend to cry my eyes out.

Anyways, that´s the story of my life right now. Leaving Cochabamba Monday, and Bolivia on Thursday. Will be home Friday. Do not want to leave :(

Charque and caves

So on the way back from jiu jitsu the other night, I totally made friends with the cab driver, who then felt compelled to point out all the interesting sites along the way to where I live. This included bars, cafes, restaurants, etc etc etc, until finally he said "Look! That´s a charque place. Do you have charque in America?" No. No we do not.

So how many of you have heard of charque? Probably none of you. But here´s what you need to know about it: you shouldn´t eat it. Why someone would feel compelled to eat an animal as magestic, glorious, and and noble as a llama is beyond me, but apparently, it´s is the big meat around here. Mean and stupid-ness. SAVE THE LLAMAS. EAT MORE COW.

Anyway, not much interesting has happened in the last few days. For the record, monkeys apparently enjoy going up to bird cages and strangling the poor parrots. Probably the parrots annoy them. Tomorrow we are off to Toro Toro, where we get to see some sweet caves, and then have to choose whether to see dinosaur footprints or shell fossils (dinosaurs, duh). Apparently one of the caves we have to actually swim down to get to...woot!

Photography project is going well, even though one of the cameras got stolen last week. Will attempt to post pictures in the next entry.

Adios!

EDIT: Soooo, uploading pictures is not functioning, looks like you guys may have to way for photos until I get back to the US of A. I´m sorry, please don´t hate me

new friends

so here are some cool random people I´ve totally made friends with:

an old norwegian couple staying in my professor´s hotel

a crazy german man in the same hotel who wears bright red suspenders

three random british guys who freaked out when I started speaking english

an australian who keeps monkeys from strangling birds on his day off. On his regular days, he walks a puma for two and a half hours.

That´s all that´s new an interesting. My little sister just got back from Germany, and now I am Germanysick. Not homesick. Germanysick.

Rainforest Madness!

So we just got back from our three day excursion to the rainforest which was mad cool. On Monday, we went on a hike through the rainforest, saw some wild monkeys, and also had to cross a river five hundred feet up in the air in a car thingy suspended on wires. Cool but terrifying. The scariest part was when our guide had to cross the river to get the car: all he did was clip a rope to the wire, sit in it, and then pull himself one handed across the river.

Also on Monday we got to run around in this jungle park for adults (and a random four inch long ant dropped out of the sky and bit one of the adults we were with). Anyway, the park was really fun, there was a zip line that I somewhat crashed (because I didn´t understand the explanation of the breaks), and then swings. Which were terrifying. They were suspended from trees way way high, and you had to sit on this little piece of wood and then put the safety harness (read: piece of rope) under your arm pits. I only did the four meter one, but some kids in the group did an eighteen meter one. Imagine jumping off a five story building, sitting on a little piece of wood, in a park you know has never been inspected for safety. That´s why I only did the little one.

On Tuesday we ran around to some farms, which did not have animals and were therefore not nearly as cool as I had hoped. But we did go to the national ant drug police people, who told us in depth how to make cocaine. This is not joke.

Wednesday was cooler, we went to a monkey park, and I PET A SPIDER MONKEY. There were also parrots and things, and I made friends with the Australian volunteer dude who was keeping the monkeys from strangling the birds. Then we got to hike through more rainforest, down to a waterfall that I jumped in.

The best part of Wednesday was when a spider monkey (with a baby hanging onto it´s back) got onto the bus and proceeded to run around before stealing a guy´s sandwich and jumping out the window.

The story of the day is a play in two parts, taking place in our crappy hotel (thanks Rutgers) on Tuesday night.

Characters:
Tina--a particularly awesome invidual
Patricia--Tina´s overly patient roommate
Robin--Tina´s more than slightly intoxicated friend
Angry Hotel Lady
Rainforest Ants

Act I: In which Tina returns to her room at two in the morning to find hundreds of Rainforest Ants in her bed and all over her stuff. Tina promptly freaks out, cannot deal with said ants. Poor Patricia (who just wants to go to sleep) offers to take the ant bed but Tina cannot allow her, and makes Angry Hotel Lady de-ant the entire room.

Act II: In which Robin, in his state of drunkness, decides that as an american, he has to live up to Good Latin Guy standards, and freaks out because he does not want Tina and Patricia sleeping in the room with de-ant fumes. He insists that Tina and Patricia switch rooms with him and his roommate, which they eventually do.

Moral of the story: Tina likes the rainforest, but not when it crawls all over the sheets by the hundreds.

PPBBs, or, How I Got My Ass Groped By A Fourteen Year Old Bolivian Boy

so! much has happened since I last wrote (sorry, but lack of internet kind of puts a damper on your blog.) Here are some things in a nutshell:

1) We saw Harry Potter at midnight (hells yes). Not a very good movie, and dumbledore's death sequence was somewhat ruined by the fact that the girl next to us was loudly on her phone talking about her bedroom door.

2) I got super sick two nights ago, wound up in a bolivian hospital (lovely) where I got an IV because I was throwing up water. Moral of the story: hospitals suck no matter where you are, but I feel much better now.

3) We're currently in the rainforest! And it's awesome. and on the way here, I SAW A LLAMA. HA.

So here's the story of how I got my ass groped:

The day after Harry Potter, two of the other girls in the program and I had just walked out of a restaurant after lunch when we ran into a kid we know from the barrio. He works shining shoes, and we felt bad for him, so when he asked if we could buy him food, I told him yes. we sat him down, and he ordered a plate of food. I was feeling really sick (pre-sick to whatever made me go to the hospital), so I wound up leaving early, and a few moments later, Patricia had to go to class. so it was just Jovanna with this kid.

I took the bus all of two blocks, but felt so guilty about leaving her alone with the kid, that I got off and walked all the way back. On my way, I called her. "You're going to hate me," she said. "Why?" I asked. "Because there's more of them." As it turned out, three other kids had wandered by, and Jovanna, feeling sorry for them, had let them order food too. The bill wound up being almost 150 bolivianos (divide by seven for dollars), but a random guy next to us (who turned out to be from PA) thought it was so nice, that he picked up the tab. Yay, random acts of kindness! So Jovanna and I bought them ice cream.

Now, here's what you need to know about bolivians. In my personal experience, they are much more touchy feely than americans. Especially the pre-pubescent ones (who, for the record, are much nicer than their German counterparts). For example, the kids at the orphanage will throw an arm around you for no reason, climb in your, lap, etc etc etc. so when the shoe-shine boy next to me put a hand on my knee, I wasn't entirely bothered. We were all having a conversation and talking about how much money they make a day (30 bolivianos--divide by 7), and so on and so forth. So I wasn't really paying attention, and he was very sweet, and again, I wasn't really bothered when he ran a hand down my leg. I was, however, more than bothered when he said to another boy "And this one's name is Tina," and grabbed my ass.

The worst part was that I couldn't say anything about it, because I didn't want to offend anyone (I realize that logic is faulty. I was buying a street kid ice cream, he grabbed my ass, and I didn't want to make him sad by saying anything about it. I know that's retarded. I KNOW. But that's the way it is). Anyway, he got ice cream and a bit more, but if it made him happy, whatever I guess.

Some things

Here are Three Things That Are Really Easy To get Used To About Bolivia


1) Dogs.

Dogs are everywhere. Seriously, everywhere. Evil, dirty, mangy mutts rooting around in garbage cans, attacking your taxi, and fighting really loudly right outside your window at two in the morning. It´s actually pretty sad, but my host dad explained to me that most of them are born and die on the streets. Despite the fact that they´re completely wild, I still want to pet them.

2) The sidewalks.

Walking in Cochabamba is an adventure. If the sidewalk is paved (which it may or may not be), you can rest assured that giant sections of it will be jutting out of the ground, sinking into giant potholes, crumbling into loose rocks, being buried under giant piles of dirt or bricks, or just not there. Surprisingly, it´s not so bad to get used to.

3) The traffic.

The amount of cars and buses and motorcycles that manage to cram themselves into the streets is actually pretty amazing. You´ve got to give them credit. Even New York City would be jealous, I think.


Here are Three Things That Are Impossible To Get Used To About Bolivia

1) The traffic.

While the sheer volume of traffic isn´t hard to get used to, the complete ridiculousness of the drivers is. Try being on a crowded bus, standing in the open door (because the buses don´t close them) as you´re blasting down an alley at forty miles an hour and passing another bus with less than three inches to spare. No seriously. Try it. You´ll like it. You think I´m exaggerating? I think you haven´t been to Bolivia.

2) Not throwing the toiler paper in the toilet.

It´s just weird. I´m sorry. But the Bolivian plumbing system apparently blows and as a result, you have to throw toilet paper into a little trash can that´s right next to the toilet. I DO NOT LIKE THIS.

3) The mannequins.

I hate the mannequins. I hate them I hate them I HATE THEM. First off, they´re everywhere, second off, they look SO REAL and third they are SO CREEPY. You know what´s not fun? Turning around only to find the American you though was behind you is actually a mannequin with dreadlocks and his tongue out, leering at you. They leer. They fucking leer. And I hate them.

In other news: yucca is the most delicious thing ever. I finally figured out why I can´t understand anything the maid says: because she has a thick aymara accent. My little sister is seriously 8 months old. Don´t get into unmarked taxis. I successfully haggled with a quechua lady.

Adios!

this is why you don´t get into an unmarked taxi

because the asshole will rip you off, and then drop you ten blocks from where you´re actually supposed to be.

urgh.

some serious update-ness

sorry in advance, this one is going to be way long, I´ve done way stuff since the last entry.

so, reason for extended absence, my family has internet but my computer can´t configure to it for whatever reason, so I´m in my professors hotel. i just got back from the orphanage and I´m 45 minutes early to go to the barrio, so...yay free internet!

okay! so! things that have happened!

1) we left santa cruz on the 3rd and flew to cochabamba. the night before I was wandering around in the hotel gift shop and totally made friends with the peruvian dude at the counter, and somehow our "hola, como esta"s turned into a two hour long spanish lesson in which he pulled random things off the shelves and taught me the words. it made me happy to know I can make friends even when I have no idea what they´re saying.

2) after flying into cochbamba, we went back to bolivia cultura (the main office of the program) and had a spanish pretest (urgh) and then an orientation on safety, not drinking the water, not getting into unmarked taxis, not getting robbed, etc etc etc. cochabamba isn´t as dangerous as I thought it would be--you just can´t be stupid.

3) then I met my family! who I love! it´s the mom, the dad, and an 8th month old girl who is SO cute. there´s also an indigenous maid which was kind of awkward because I´ve never lived in a household that could afford a maid, but she´s really nice, and we´re totally friends now. so yeah. the little girl is possibly the most adorable thing ever, and I learn way vocabulary from her because my parents are always asking "que es esto?" and she replies with whatever it is. so yeah. woot! there´s also a random british girl who I never see, but that´s okay. anyway, the first night, my family took me to a birthday party where people were doing national dances and wouldn´t stop waving potato chips in my face.

4) then we went to the barrio! half an hour ride up a mountain and then hiking up more mountain. the view is beautiful but the community is so so poor, it´s heart breaking. families get one barrel of water twice a week. the richest guy in the barrio is the president, and one of the things that makes him so rich is that he has a bathroom (read:maggot infested hole in the ground). so yeah.

about the projects:

today my group starts our service with the barrio´s womens group. i´m not entirely sure what we´re doing, but I´m under the impression it´s some kind of needlepoint. on sundays I´ll start my photography project, but since there are like fifty (no lie) kids who are interested, we´re splitting them into two groups. half go to english class, half do photography, and then they switch off. the lady in charge of my group is way excited about project, as are the other kids I´m with, so we can´t way for sunday. the only thing is, we have to supervise the kids with the cameras...or else they might get stolen/sold. it´s that sort of poverty.

in addition to the womens group, I got permission to go hang out at the orphange too--which isn´t really an orphanage, it´s a home for boys whose families can´t take care of them. most of them have wound up on the street,and more than a few have been involved in drugs. but they´re so so cute and I love it. I made friends with a bunch today when I totally busted out the mad paper crane making skills, which turned into boat making, which turned into paper airplanes, which turned into paper airplane throwing contests. at some point in there there was tic tac toe and animal drawing, and we were having so much fun, a few of us stayed for lunch. which was cow stomach. which I didn´t eat. but as soon as I walked in the dining room with my plate of (plain) rice (heehee) and entire table of kids stood up and were like "tina tina! come sti with us!" so I did. we discussed our favorite animals, favorite foods, and then somehow erupted into a game of hide-the-silverware-from-tina-and-make-her-find-it. when we left, a couple kids climbed on the roof to wave goodbye.

some more random things! the city is beautiful, everything is mad cheap, you can haggle with the little indian ladies in la cancha (the giant open air market) and I got a sweet bookbag with a llama on it. bolivia is way more coloful than america. anyway, we gain a lot in development, but we definitely, definitely, definitely, lose something too.

stories of the day:

1) I was watching baby einstein in spanish...and learning

2) while trying to explain that cochabamba was abetter city than santa cruz, I mixed up the word for better (major) with mujer, and told my parents that cochabamba is more of a woman. oops.

anyway, must run, other people are arriving! adios!

edit: oh! i forgot to mnetion how yesterday I hailed a taxi ALL BY MYSELF, told him where to go ALL BY MYSELF, and then made friends with him ALL BY MYSELF (and in spanish no less). YES.

an excellent idea

so you know what would be a great idea? I think a really great idea would be downloading skype, buying ten dollars of skype credit, and then calling me :) (seeing as after tomorrow, I may or may not have internet)

here´s my number:

70340476

no time difference, so call me whenevs!

besonders wenn du deutsch kannst sollst du mich anrufen, vor ich die ganze Sprache vergesse(Skype-Kredit ist dafuer nuetzlich :) )

had orientation today, freaking out about lack of spanisch, off to cochabamba tomorrow, will meet family then, freaking out, yep, call me!

as a random side note, I GOT SELECTED BY THE DAAD (daad.de) TO BE AN AMBASSADOR FOR GERMAN STUDY ABROAD! yuuuuuuuuuuus! so so so excited! that means that a week after I get back from bolivia, I have to jet to new york for a weekend of training so that when I get back to Rutgers in the fall, I can successfully convince lots and lots of people to go to germany. woot!

YAY!

okay adios

heart bolivianos

I LOVE THE EXCHANGE RATE!

Seriously. Giant two liter bottles of water for less than a dollar. Taxi rides across town for less than two. I´ve only been here two days and I've spent less than twenty dollars, which included two taxi rides, food, and the hostel. seriously, seriously awesome.

In other news, we've moved out of the hostel and are chilling in our sweet hotel (thanks rutgers). rest of the group doesn't get here til late tonight, so i'm going to go find random things to do. adios!

BOLIVIA!!

I´m in Bolivia! And it´s awesome!

But first...airport stories! (of which I have a lot.)

Play, so my flight from newark to miami was pretty uneventful, but then I had a six hour layover in miami which then turned into...an eight hour layover. anyway, while I was waiting for a plane, the following amusing things happened (insert colon because I can´t find it on the bolivian keyboard.)

1) I made friends with a guy who was trying to guess what musical instrument I was carrying (unsuccessful). eventually I showed him the ukulele and he pulled out his bass guitar, and we bonded over our four string instruments.

2) >I made friends with a tiny little bolivian lady who needed to use my phone to call her son in Maryland. I understood enough of the conversation to get the general gist of what she was saying about me, and then the son started texting me...urgh.

3) Flight was delayed almost two hours, but flying over the andes at sunrise was seriously worth every penny i spent on the plane ticket. awesome. awesomeawesomeawesome.

so now, santa cruz stories!

when you get a visa, it´s 135 dollars for american citizens because bolivia´s mad at the us´s immigration policy for bolivians, so they in turn charge americans just to get in. anyway, I gave the guy my hundred thirty five, and he looks at one of the dollar bills and said something in spanish that i didnçt catch. the ice lady behind me translated (colon) "he says he doesn´t like that dollar bill and he wants another one." except I didn´t have anymore. she gave me a good dollar bill and I gaver her my...slightly wrinkled one.

bolivia is pretty awesom,e it looks pretty much as I had imagined. there are palm trees and other random shrubbery. horses and cows graze on the sides of the road (sans fence). I saw a kid holding up traffic because he was juggling in the middle of the street. driving is ridiculous. drivers are ridiculous. crossing the street is like playing roulette. more than once while we were in the taxi on our way to the hostel, construction had closed the lane but no matter. we just went over the median.

añso, there´s a lot of dirt. seriously. also a lot of buildings falling down. and needless to say, I stick out like a sore thumb. it took me a while to figure out why everyone would slow down and beep, even if there was no one in front of them, but then I realized they were beeping at me. urgh. awkward. I´m not hard to miss.

so yeah! I´m sure I have other stories but I can´t remember them right now. adios!

packing packing packing

so this chronic overpacker is having huge issues in the packing department. I was determined to pack light, which has meant ditching the second suitcase + carry-on and getting a giant LL bean backpack instead. however, IT'S STILL NOT LIGHT. I'm carrying forty pounds on my back and fifty pounds in my (ONE) suitcase. I console myself by reminding everyone around me that much of the stuff I'm taking to bolivia won't be coming back--the five cameras, for example, the box of cereal (thanks mom!), my 3 pound bottle of conditioner, and my almost-as-large bottle of shampoo. in addition, I'm taking a bunch of gifts for my host family--soccer balls, towels, an ipod shuffle, and some picture books. none of which are heavy, but all of which are taking up space. plus I already made (what I consider to be) huge sacrifices in the clothes department--I cut down the clothes I'm taking by like, 50 percent, so go me. yeah light packing.

about how I'm an idiot who booked a flight to arrive in Bolivia...two days before everyone else. So now I have to survive all alonez with spanish 101...woot! at any rate, I decided that in the interest of safety I would hostel it as oppose to couchsurf it, and the hostel is bizangin. so yeah!

anyway, adios, will post again from Bolivia!

A Slight(ly major) Change of Plans

So my professor just emailed me. While he was in discussion with the nun who runs the orphanage I'll be working at, my photography project came up, and nun was not to happy. Apparently Bolivia has this ideas where foreigners are out to abduct Bolivian kids, and the nun doesn't want pictures taken of the orphans because she doesn't them getting sold. So don't get the wrong idea, America. Abandon your Bolivian-childnapping schemes now.

So, scratch the orphanage. Instead, I'm doing my project in a local women's group, and giving the camera to women instead of kids. Suffice to say, I'm kind of disappointed, and while I don't believe in things always working out for a reason, I do believe in things always working out. Sooooo, that's that. It'll be cool. Hello women's group! I hope you're excited, because you're going to have to put up with ME!

As a random sidenote, I just walked through a spiderweb, but I can't find the spider... :/

Adios!

Bite me, tropical diseases

So yesterday I had to go to Hurtado, the RU student health center, for some Bolivia vaccinations. Just for the record, I hate hate HATE shots. You know when you go to the doctor's office, and there's always that one kid that runs up and down the hall screaming bloody murder when the nurse pulls out the syringe? That was me.

So I was a complete anxious mess by the time I got there, and then I had to sit down with one of the doctors for like an hour to decide which shots I needed. First they tried to convince me to get a TB skin test, but I told the dude that I was absolutely positive that I did not have tuberculosis. Then they tried to get me to buy a prescription for altitude sickness, which I told them I'd get over. THEN they wanted me to get a rabies vaccine as well (as if the 170 price tag on the other three vaccines wasn't enough). I told the doctor I would stay away from dogs. He said to make sure I stayed away from bats too.

Note to self: Do not make friends with dogs or bats.

But they STILL wouldn't let me get the shots until I consented to a pregnancy test. Why, you ask? I don't know. I told them I wasn't, but they didn't believe me, and I had to take it anyway. But good news people, Tina is (officially) not pregnant.

So then I got the stupid shots, and now I am incapable of getting typhoid or yellow fever, and 70% incapable of getting Hep A. But for the record, I would avoid getting a typhoid shot unless absolutely necessary because it BLOWS. I was really, really sick last night, my whole body hurt, and my arm was so hot I could feel it through my sweatshirt. So don't get the typhoid vaccine. Also, Hep A burns like a bitch. But if you feel like getting injected for fun, yellow fever is totally whatever.

Adios!

Excellent news!

GUESS WHAT!

So my professor emailed me yesterday to tell me a couple of things:
1) he's excited about my photo project
2) he's assigning me to the group of students working at a local orphanage, so I can do my project with the kids there...which is AWESOME!
3) he said if need be, we can use program funds to buy cameras in Bolivia (Rutgers spends money to help students? Temperature in hell today: forty below).
4) he's going to write about me on his blog, so check it out.

That's all that's new and awesome, adios!

Pilot

HI FRIENDS!

guess who's back on the internet!

so as most of you know, unless you live under a rock, I'm going to BOLIVIA this summer! Why Bolivia, many of you have asked? I don't exactly know. I thought about going back to Germany (Rutgers has a summer program in Berlin), but at this point Germany is like my "safe place," so I decided it was high time to push my own buttons. I may or may not have gone slightly overboard...we shall see. At any rate, I get to go chill out in a barrio for six weeks and make friends with the Quechuan indians. Oh, and all of this on...zero spanish. Yes that's right friends, I am THAT person, the only one in the group with no spanish. I'm taking 101 in camden before I go, but we'll see. German will probably not come in handy.

Anyway, I figured I'd do another blog because (numerous) people have asked for it again. Why, I don't exactly know, but if the stupid things that happen to me can entertain you/allow you to procrastinate from work or whatever, by all means, read my crap, I'm happy to provide.

So here's what I know about Bolivia so far:
They speak spanish.
They have llamas.
The indian women wear bowler hats.
I'm going there.

That's all I got. I'm leaving June 29th out of Newark, getting to Bolivia on the 30th, and coming back August 15th. In between I'll be living with a Bolivian family, working in the barrios, putting a roof on a community center, making friends with llamas, learning spanish, and hopefully doing my little photography project.

About my little photography project! Most of you already know the story, but I'm collecting old digital cameras and memory cards to give to kids (probably in the orphanage where we're apparently working). I'm going to arrange some sort of art show down in Cochabamba, and then hopefully another one at Rutgers in the fall, and any support is way appreciated. So far I've got four cameras (So thank you Monroe family, Claire's sister, my sister's friend, and Rashid!) a bunch of memory cards (thanks Jen!) and like a million batteries (thanks Karen!) I've also got two more cameras on the way (thanks Dave/my sister's other friend!), which puts me pretty close to my goal of 7-10 cameras. Next challenge: getting them through customs without getting charged import tax...woot.

In other news, I have to get like a million shots. In other other news, did you know that the "We're not in Kansas anymore" is a misquote? The actual quote is "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." Well I've a feeling I'm going to get lots of retarded stories out of my six weeks in Bolivia, so bite me Dorothy.

Anyway, will post again as I get closer to take off. Soooo...adios!

P.S. My professor is doing a Bolivia blog too, check it out for the scholarly, professional, no-cursing version of our life in South America:
http://bolivia-ru.blogspot.com/