Christ, Barenaked Ladies & a Butch Cassidy Wannabe (5/26/06)

It has been a good week here in South America. I’m slowly adjusting bit by bit…getting used to doing strange things like sleeping in a mosquito net and boiling and filtering my water before drinking it. Before I know it, these kind of things will seem commonplace.

This past Sunday, I went with my sisters to watch our brother Cheeno play soccer with his team. They ended up losing, but it was fun to watch and reminisce about my good ‘ol YMCA soccer days. At first we were sitting in the shade, but it got too chilly, so we moved to the sun, but that got too hot, so we went back to the shade. That’s pretty much how it is all the time here…the best strategy is to dress for 50 or 60 degrees and hang out in the shade. Since we are so high up (the city is at about 8000 ft), the sun is really strong, but it’s cool when the sun isn’t around. Just something else to get used to. That afternoon, I went with my brother and sister to visit Cochabamba’s Christ Statue, which is supposedly the largest in the world. I heard a rumor that said this: The Christ statue in Rio is something like 34 meters tall…one meter for each of the years Jesus was alive, so the Bolivians did them one better. Since Jesus didn’t die on his birthday, he was actually 34 years plus a few months, so the Bolivians prorated the number of extra months and made it 34.2 meters tall. So this Christ has a few inches on Rio’s. Sounds to me like a way to justify making it just a little bit bigger so they could claim they had the largest in the world…South American machismo at its best. Anyway, we hiked up over a thousand steps to where the statue overlooks the whole city as the sun was setting…it was quite a view. We walked around a bit, had an ice cream, and came down on the gondola they have for the folks that aren’t up for climbing. Pretty good Sunday.

Campaigning for Scharer/Kreiner at the Christ Statue

Spanish classes are coming along pretty well. I’ve definitely had to work to get my Spanish to come back, but it’s slowly returning. Talking with my family helps a lot, especially trying to decipher what they are saying amongst each other…it’s the best way to learn new words as well as the nuances of Bolivian Spanish. Wednesday night I went out to dinner with some other volunteers and afterwards as we were walking to catch the truffi, for whatever reason I began to sing “If I Had $1,000,000” and my friend Sydney chimed in with the call backs…and for a minute I felt totally comfortable and relaxed. Kind of funny how all it takes is a song sometimes…that will be something that sticks in my mind for quite a while.

Then today (Friday) instead of going to class, our language teacher took us to a local factory that makes stuff out of Alpaca wool, which is REALLY comfy and smooth. I ended up buying a hat to keep my head warm (one less thing for Grandma Ranz to worry about) and found an awesome poncho that I’m going to go back and buy…check out the picture below…who needs Robert Redford when you’ve got Sundance Ranz?



The whole factory prides itself on using natural processes and only Bolivian Alpaca wool. They’ve got some pretty cool stuff and it’s all really comfortable. Feel free to check them out at www.fotrama.com. Unfortunately, not all of their styles fly off the shelves…my friend Josh was modeling one of their less popular designs…

A Cosby Sweat-ah!

Not too many crazy adventures yet. It’s strange…I’ve only been gone about 3 weeks…and while day by day it feels like it’s going by really quickly, it also seems like I’ve known these folks in my group for a really long time…way longer than three weeks. I must say I haven’t been all that impressed with the training quite yet…all the information they are giving us seems valuable, but to me they could be presenting it in a much better fashion. I’m already really sick of listening to person X talk about topic Y, then having them split us up into 3 groups for smaller discussions, and then having the groups present to the entire group. It’s not bad, it’s just surprising me that after years of training people, they don’t do anything more advanced than what we always did in high school. There are definitely bright spots though. Monday and Friday afternoons we have hands-on tech classes, where we learn a lot about exactly what we could be doing at our sites…for example on Monday we did a little plumbing. A couple of pipes in the local water system were leaking so we dug down and replaced the broken portions…it was great to get my hands dirty (quite literally) and help out the community too.


The Pipe We Fixed

All for now, until next time,

Ben

One thing I miss about the US: The food. Most food I have had here has been ok, but nothing amazing yet. I honestly think being sick last week was caused by Skyline & Putz’s withdrawal coupled with the realization that it’s going to be a LONG time before I get more…

One thing I don’t miss about the U.S: Buying Gas. While I do miss cruising around in White Rice, it’s great not caring a bit about gas prices changing. By the time I get back we’ll all be driving hybrids and carpooling to combat the $4 per gallon gas prices like the rest of the world.