Training Draws To A Close

Well does it seem like you've been reading blog entries for almost 3 months? Cause it doesn't seem like I've been writing them for that long. But when I think back to my bare face and lack of spanish language skills, 3 months sounds about right. I haven't started dreaming in spanish yet, but I've only had dreams about people who speak english. Once I get out to my site and make some spanish speaking friends, it might happen. I've also started learning Quechua, the language of the ancient Incas, which is spoken in many parts of South America. Everyone at my site speaks spanish, but if I can bust some Quechua out for them, it will go a long way to impress them and let them know I'm for real. Funny sidenote, the word for "head" in Quechua is "uma" just like a Case med student I know...which is how I remember it...thanks Uma!

This will be my last blog entry as a trainee, the next time you hear from me, I will be an official Peace Corps Volunteer. Our official swearing in ceremony is in 2 hours, which should be excellent. I'm looking forward to finally being able to call myself a volunteer instead of a trainee. It's been a pretty good final week all in all...I left my family wednesday morning, but am planning on going back tomorrow for one last lunch together and to give them some photos. They have been trying to convince me to stay and it's going to be tough to leave them but that's what it´s all about...moving on and adjusting. I was packing up my room the other night and my sisters were in there kind of pouting around and it was making me sad too...my room was so empty all my stuff was packed up...so then I was just like "alright girls, this is too sad, let's have some fun with the camera!" They pretend to hate getting their picture taken but they love looking at it once it is taken. Below are the results of the modeling session.
The Girls In My Clothes...Hilarious!

Jesica pretending to be Michael Jackson...

"Benjamín y Las Locas"

It's a little bittersweet...saying goodbye to my host family and new friends is going to be tough, but I am also really excited to finally get some work done. A wise friend once told me (actually in a discussion about the Peace Corps) that I perform best when I have a job to do...whether it be a Stater Project to get done or an Emeter to rework. I was talking with a current volunteer who´s work I will be somewhat taking over and he was giving me the lowdown on a bunch of work around my site that is waiting for me...I see so much potential for work and am really looking forward to being busy with things to do...I'm usually pretty good at throwing myself into the job to be done and I don't expect this to be much different...except now to relax I'll be reading in a hammock or cooling off in the river.

Last Saturday we had our big going away with all of our host families, which was super fun. We did some traditional dancing to entertain our host families...there is a dance here called the Cueca which you dance while swinging a hankerchief in the air and all the gringos had a competition to see who was the best cueca dancer. My partner Susan and I didn't win, but my friends James and Katie were incredible and got the trophy. Check it out.
Susan and I Cutting the Rug

The Cueca Champs James and Katie

We also put together a little song to sing poking fun at all the things about living in Bolivia that were a little different for us...like constantly going to the bathroom or being chased home by dogs every night...here is a shot of us performing.

We´re So Musical

I also got some awesome packages this past week. The Big Aunt Leslie sent me some much needed cookies as well as some treats and toys to give to my sisters, which they totally loved. They even gave me some cool bracelets the next day...it was so nice of them because I know they had to pay for them with their own money...I'm gonna miss those girls. My other package came from my parents and included m&m´s (incredible), fruit roll ups (so good) and some of Pat Hennard's famous Beef Jerky (mind blowing). The m&m's are long gone, but I'm doing my best to conserve the jerky...everyone in the group loves it and I love telling them that it's Ohio Jerky and that's just a small sample of the great things in Ohio. Many thanks to the package senders...you rock!

I think that's really all I have for now...tonight after swearing in and a free dinner on the Peace Corps, our theme for the party tonight is rock stars and I've decided to go as Johnny Cash...I've got all I need except that he never had a beard...but it´s not worth it to shave just for one night. I like my beard too much. If it seems like I've become obsessed with my facial hair, I apologize...it's the little things that amuse me anymore.

Keep the emails coming, I love it. Cuidense queridos.

Ben

**Book update: After getting through Herman Hesse´s spirtual journey "Siddartha" I plowed through Jack London´s "Call of the Wild." My granpa Von Allmen gave me Call of the Wild like 10 years ago and I finally got around to reading it...you were right, Pop, it´s pretty good. A story of survival by evolving and adapting to our new surroundings...quite applicable if I do say so myself. I'm going to read Ishmael again next, then probably move onto Diarios Motocicletas (thanks Steph). I've also started in on my Bible a bit, which is new for me...it's interesting reading it objectively and not based on faith...but that's a whole other conversation for another day.

Facial Hair, etc

Just a quick update, I put up a bunch of photos to go along with the last few posts, so if you have a minute...scroll on down and check out the well drilling shots and there's even one of the cock fight I went to. And for those of you who have asked for an updated beard shot, see below."Grizzly Adams DID Have a Beard"

Bienvedios a Hardeman

Greetings Bloggers,

I will begin by saying that I had a great entry all typed up to talk about my site where I will be working for two years, but due to technical difficulties it was lost. So I'll briefly recreate it, but there was a lot of in-the-moment feelings in it that are hard to just remember and write about.

About 3 weeks ago I found out I would be spending my time here in Bolivia in the small farming town of Hardeman. It's located about 4 hours north of Santa Cruz city, which is one of the country's largest cities and definitely most modern city. I rode out there with my work partner, a guy named Don Marcelino, who then proceeded to not be around for the rest of the site visit and I henceforth got very little info on what I'd be working on, but that's just the way Bolivia is sometimes. I will be living with another family, consisting of two sisters in their late 20s, one with an 8 year old named Bianca and the other with a one year old named Daoul, and also another nephew of theirs who is 10 named Cristian. They all seemed very nice and my room is in a brand new part of the house with a tile floor and even a ceiling fan! Which is going to come in major handy since it's really stinking hot in Santa Cruz. It's in the lowlands, at only about 230 meters, whereas the city I've been living in up until now is like 2800 meters or so. Last week was pretty much the middle of winter and it didn't get below 80 degrees, even at night. But it cools down when it rains. At least I won't have to wear shoes cause I've come to really despise wearing socks.

I spent about 3 days in my site and am pretty happy. I am the first Peace Corps volunteer they have had, which has it's good and bad parts. I have no predecessor, so I don't have to worry about behaving like they did or do the work they did. At the same time, it will be a little harder for me to integrate because the community doesn't really know what the Peace Corps is. Some people asked me if I was a doctor, which I considered saying yes to. There is a school in town run by an Italian nun who is interested in me teaching English, which I think will be cool...getting in with the kids in town will definitley help me out.

The few people I did interact with were very friendly and I think it will be a really great place to spend my time here. On the bus ride back to the city, as the bus was slipping and sliding down the muddy road, I had this strange feeling of comfort and that I was ready to do this...I really felt up for it. I guess that might sound funny, but those kind of moments can be few and far between, especially when it comes to work. It's easy to say it when I'm around all my friends all the time in a comfortable place...but I had just spent 3 days speaking nothing but spanish, understanding even less because the Santa Cruz accent is so different, and meeting all new people. And then I felt like I was ready for it, which is quite inspiring.

I'll go into more of the details on Hardeman once I get there.

Keep on rockin in the first world.

Ben

A Sort of Homecoming Followed by Election Day

We returned from our trip Saturday night around 9pm, when my sisters and little cousins came running out of the house to greet me in the street…one of them had even bought a bottle of soda to celebrate…it was strange to have a feeling of “it feels good to be home” in a place where I’ve only lived for two months. Perhaps it was just the tiredness from tech week, but I was very glad to be back and get back into my routine. My sisters had even written “We miss you Benjamín on my door with a black magic marker. Sweet little kids. There was a party next door at grandma’s house for another cousin’s birthday, so I went over for a bit and danced some and chatted with my host relatives. There was a family friend who supposedly spoke English, which always means they try to speak to me in English. His vocabulary consisted of “Hello! Excuse me! Shutup! Excuse me! Family! How are you! Shut up!” And randomly, he was wearing an Ohio State sweatshirt. I tried to explain to him that it’s where I went to school but he was too focused on his awesome English to understand. One of my mom’s cousin’s, Reuben, is obsessed with Jean Claude Van Damme movies and always loves talking to me about him and other people jump in, arguing that Stallone or Bruce Lee are better, but ol’ Reuben sticks to his guns. It’s strange the things from American Culture that the people pick up on here.

I enjoyed my rest in my warm mosquito net bed and woke up to my regular breakfast of hot chocolate and butter bread. This day (Sunday the 2nd of July) was election day in Bolivia. It was a special election, to elect the representatives who will write the new Bolivian constitution. The current president, Evo Morales, is from the party known as MAS, which stands for “Movemiento A Socialismo” or “Movement Towards Socialism.” MAS also is the Spanish word for “more” so they have tricky little political slogans like “Contigo somos MAS.” (With you we are MORE). Evo has huge support from the local country folks, mostly the poor people. He himself is an indigenous guy, the first indigenous president the country has ever seen. For the first time ever, the people finally have a president that looks like the majority of the citizens and doesn’t have the interest of only the rich aristocracy in mind. I think all in all it’s a good thing for the people here, but he ends up putting his foot in his mouth a lot. I guess the U.S. isn’t the only country with a president whose strength isn’t public speaking. It’s ok, it’s not like it’s that important, right?

Election day here is quite an experience. First of all, it’s the law that you HAVE to vote…they don’t give you the option. If you have money in a bank here in Bolivia, they will freeze your account if you can’t prove that you voted. Even if you go and abstain, you have to go. They don’t sell any alcohol in the country for 48 hours prior to election day, and meetings of more than 5 people are prohibited. No one is even allowed to drive, there is no public transportation. They take it pretty seriously. I walked with my parents to the local high school, where they had to vote, and my brother was even working one of the voting booths. It was cool to see how pretty much the whole country stopped so everyone could vote. When we got back, the party continued at grandma’s house, everyone came back over for lunch and the festivities went on. There were a couple of guys there playing Bolivian music, which I got on film and was really really cool. I also kept getting a lot of compliments from my host family (aunts and uncles) telling me how much they admired me for what I was doing and that I was a very good person. The dad of the two of my cousins that I teach English to especially had some nice things to say…it was days like this that help me realize why I’m here. I spent the afternoon making jokes and drinking the Bolivian beverage of choice…a corn beer called “chicha”…out of pineapple. It was quite fun. I even had a really great conversation about another issue on the ballot called “autonomía” which would give the 9 states of Bolivia a little more independence. The way it works now is that everyone pays federal taxes and they get evenly redistributed, which leads to the richer states with oil reserves and manufacturing are supporting the people of the poorer states. So, obviously, the people of the poorer states DON’T want autonomía and the richer ones do. My mom’s other cousin Jorge always asks me about what I think about politics…I guess because I’m from the states. The vote was really just to serve as a suggestion for the new constitution writers, so it will be interesting to see what happens.

Late in the afternoon my dad took me to a local watering hole where there was a real-life cockfight going on. I chalked it up to another cultural integration learning experience which I thought was pretty cool. The taped on these metal talons to the roosters and let them fight for 40 minutes or until one dies or they call it off. People were betting and cheering and I was taking pictures. Pretty cool. Yeah. Sweet.

When I got back to the party, we danced a little more, drank a little more and heard some more music. It was kind of strange, I felt like I could have very well been at my Aunt Becky’s house, discussing this and that with Uncle Ron or Aunt Joyce or whomever. Without a doubt the best part of the day was when I decided to head home and Uncle Oscar gave me his Bolivian hat…initially I told him I couldn’t take it but he insisted. It’s really awesome and when I wear it I feel like the dogs bark at me less and the Bolivians in the street talk to me more…which is great. And it matches my beard. Check out the picture below. Do I look Bolivian to you?

Days 6-10: 19 Hours Drilling a Well and an Udder-ly Fantastic Breakfast

The second half of our trip took us to the largest state in Bolivia, Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is all in the lowlands and therefore very hot and humid all the time. It was the middle of winter and we were cooking during the day. We arrived in the late afternoon at sort of a compound which was founded by missionaries, I think. There was a high school, an elementary school, and a vocational school. There were also hostal-like buildings for us to stay in. It was here that we would drill two wells to provide them with some more water. Two current volunteers had set up the well drilling and would be our instructors.

So Wednesday morning we got up at 7am and after a quick breakfast we split up into two groups to drill the wells. Our team was headed up by a volunteer named Buck, who basically has spent the last two years living in a jungle-like community and tells stories of eel hunting in the swamp with some locals as well as a spider monkey he raised after some friends of his killed its mother on a hunting trip. Needless to say, this guy was a badass and we all learned a lot. When I say we were “drilling” a well, it’s probably more accurate to say we were pounding a well. We set up a pulley system using some logs and on one end of the rope was a primitive “bit” that we would use for drilling the hole. The rope went up through the pulley and on the other end was a team of us basically pulling as if we were rowing, constantly up and down, so the bit could pound into the ground. Some photos I think will clear up the confusion.Oiling the Pulley Before We Began Drilling

Did I Mention Drilling Was Dirty?

The Rowing Team

Well drilling is a very messy and henceforth very fun job which I really really got into. My friends began joking that I actually preferred being dirty, which isn’t too far from the truth. By the end of the day, I was literally covered with a coating of very sticky mud...so much that I couldn’t feel the mosquitoes landing on me. I went to put on some bug spray and all it did was make the dried mud wet, I felt none on my skin. It was awesome. Well drilling is also pretty hard work and by the time it was all said and done, we had spent 19 hours pulling the rope and pounding the bit 25 meters into the ground till we hit a good aquifer. We were all a little bit loopy by the end, but it was quite fulfilling. I bet I would call it the single hardest day of work I’ve ever done…and I’ve put in some tough days hucking plaster for Joe Ranz. I’ll get into more details of well drilling in a later post.

After about the most satisfying showers of our lives, we snuck in a few hours of sleep. The next day was pretty laid back…we spent it learning how to make the primitive pumps and installing them into the wells. The main advantage to using this primitive technology is that it is very cheap…everything you need to drill a well can be found at the local hardware store and it’s pretty simple to teach the locals how to do it. This method was developed in Bolivia by a Baptist Missionary named Terry Waller, who now travels all around spreading his technology. I can’t remember the name of his organization right now, but I’ll tell you more about it later.

So on the third day, after finishing the wells, a group of us got up at 5:30 am to go to a fairly modern dairy (also in the compound) to milk some cows. It’s a local tradition to bring some Singani to mix with fresh cow milk and toast to your health. We got there and they let us milk the cows and there were even a few of us who drank milk straight from the udder! It was quite yummy I must say, and then when we mixed it with the Singani, it tasted like a warm White Russian. GW, you would have loved it. It’s been pretty fun learning the customs here and participating as much as we can. There is a lot of talk about integrating into the culture and I think learning about and doing things like this really helps.
Breakfast of Champions


We then headed off to another nearby volunteer’s site to check out his dry latrine project. His site is called Okinawa and is actually a Japanese colony that sprouted up after World War II…there is a very large Japanese population there, and people are even still emigrating there from Japan today. It’s rich in history and culture and was a cool experience. Probably the best part of the visit though was eating at the sushi restaurant they had there. After busting our butts for about 8 days straight, it was really nice to sit down to a really good meal…even though the wasabe came out of tube. Sushi is Good

That pretty much brought the work of Tech Week to an end, and we stayed that night in Santa Cruz city, eating more really really good food and relaxing a bit. Saturday we spent about 10 hours in the Peace Corps Land Cruisers heading back to Cochabamba, during which I finished my book, Travels With Charley by Steinbeck. It was quite fitting that on the last leg of my first trip in Bolivia that I finished a book about him traveling and learning about the people of the U.S. I highly recommend it to travelers young and old. Many thanks to the best damn Stater Buddy in the land for the gift.

A Tribute to our International Training Staff

Before I go on, I feel like I need to introduce two important folks who have been with us all throughout training. They are our training coordinators, Sue and Armando. Armando is from Mexico, is married to a Bolivian and has one 8 year old daughter. He’s about 35 or so and has been living here in Bolivia for 3 years, all that time spent working with the Peace Corps. He is a pretty incredible guy and very funny as well. He’s a great cook (he’s provided some great Mexican meals for us), an excellent musician and his English accent is a riot. He speaks very good English, but likes learning new uses of words, and we’ve done our best to educate him on how to use swear words in English. If you’ve never heard a South American person use swear words, I feel sorry for you. Armando steers the Basic Sanitation ship, always jamming to is iPod in the car and sweet talking toll booth workers to let us through when no one else can. He’s definitely always looking out for us.Our Mexican Friend Armando Supporting His Mexican Heritage

The training team is rounded out with a woman named Sue, who is from New Zealand and also has an excellent accent. We’ve all learned new words from her as well...like using “bonnet” and “boot” instead of hood and trunk on a car. Sue is 40 and also married to a Bolivian and has 3 young kids. Her husband is in charge of an NGO here called Water for People, which works with local governments to provide water for communities who don’t have it. They get their money from the states and do their best to redistribute it among those who need it. Sue is a total hippy, having spent a few years cruising around Central America with no real destination, on what she calls her “Political Awakening.” She has some crazy and fun stories to tell, and we have a good time poking fun at her Kiwi accent.Our Crazy Kiwi Friend Sue

Sue and Armando make a great team and are extremely knowledgeable of everything going on. They’ve been around quite a bit and it’s comforting to see that we are learning from people that really know what they’re doing.Armando behind the wheel on one of our 8 hour car trips during Tech Week

Days 1-5 – Bolivian Plastering, Giardia, and a Brick Sh*t House

We left for Tech Week two weeks ago on Wednesday, June 22nd. Luckily for me, right before we left, two cards and two excellent packages arrived for me. One card from my mom and another from Grandma and Grandpa Ranz...both sent about a month before. Sometimes mail takes a week to get here, other times it’s more like a month. Welcome to the Bolivian Postal Service. One package came from Mike and Linda Ranz with all kinds of Northwest goodies in it, including a can of Campbell’s clam chowder (not quite the same as Anthony’s, but I’m not about to complain), some Clif energy Bars (so good) and of course some M&M’s. Like Linda wrote...”I’m not sure if they have M&M’s in Bolivia, but I sent some just in case...no one should be without M&M’s for two years.” So good. I practiced a little self denial and stretched the contents of the package over 3 days. It was tough, though. Mmmmmm. The other yummy package was from Uncle Ron & Aunt Michelle Von Allmen, of Michelle’s Cookies fame. True to her skills, Aunt Michelle sent the best biscotti on earth, even wrapped up in little bags two pieces at a time in case I wanted to share! Luckily for my friends I enjoy sharing, but after having the first piece I definitely thought twice about it. The biscotti served us well on a chilly morning and had everybody commenting on how talented my family was. I agree.

So with some yummy treats, a sleeping bag, 5 pairs of underwear and some other miscellaneous things in tow, we shipped out. The first four days we spent constructing 3 things: a dry latrine, a ferrocement tank for rain water catchment and a system to reuse gray water. I’ll explain each one individually.

Here in Bolivia not everyone has access to water or money to pay for a bathroom. So they usually do one of two things: crap outside wherever they can find a tree or a bush, or in some of the nicer places they have pit latrines, which can range from just a hole in the ground surrounded by a curtain to a little shack built on top of a little concrete box for the poo to pile up in. Obviously neither is very sanitary, and the latter is better, but the main problem is that when it rains and the waters rise, the tanks flood and the poop is then flushed out and is out in the open. Kids play in it, and pigs eat it, and then people eat the pigs and get trikanosis, affectionately referred to as “Brainworm” here.

One of the solutions to this problem is to build what’s called a dry latrine. First, a concrete floor is poured and on top of it two tiny “rooms” are built. We built ours out of brick, but adobe works too depending on the local environment. The inside of the rooms are then plastered with a mixture of cement and a chemical that helps seal it all together and prevent the humidity from leaving. Then, a concrete “roof” is poured on top of the “rooms,” with two holes left in it, one on the top of each room. This is where the toilet will go. This roof will serve as the floor for the latrine. Walls are built up around and you’ve got yourself a bathroom. A special toilet is temporarily installed on one side of the latrine, allowing poo to drop into the “room” below but capturing urine and allowing it to run down a tube into an external catchment system...usually a large bottle or other plastic container. Keeping the urine and poo separate is one of the keys to the system. After doing your business, you put a cup full of drying material down the hole to help with composting. You can use lime, ash, corn husks, or sawdust. It is also necessary to knock down the pile of poo and mix it around once a week with a stick and throw in some extra drying material. Once the first room is full, you move the toilet to the other side and begin filling that room. Meanwhile, the first room is sealed off with a cap and the poo is allowed to decompose and turn into fertilizer. By the time the second side fills up (usually 6 months), the first side is ready to be cleaned out and is completely safe to touch and use as fertilizer. It is removed from a little door we built into the rooms with the bricks. Thus, it is completely sealed off from all moisture, it does not smell if used properly with drying material, and it provides you with fertilizer you can use for your garden or even sell as a little business enterprise. It didn’t strike me until the end of the day we were laying brick that we were in the middle of constructing a brick sh*t house. Needless to say I got a kick out of it.

They are trying to implement the latrines all over, but in can get tricky to get people to use them properly. Sometimes they don’t want to mix with their stick or can’t afford drying material (about 30 cents for 6 months worth or so) so they just go to waste. One of the biggest things they have tried to get across here is that it does absolutely no good to build things like this and just leave. The most important part is to do education and training so people understand the importance. One of the biggest differences with Peace Corps from other institutions is that we take the time to do this education. So many NGO’s come in and want to spend their money, so they build a bunch of these but don’t take any time to educate the community and the latrines without fail end up being used as storage or as chicken coops. We pride ourselves on providing sustainable changes, not just giving free handouts.
The Latrine

Our second project was building a rainwater catchment system with a ferrocement tank. In places where it doesn’t rain much, it’s important to be able to conserve what little rain they do get. One of the ways of doing this is basically setting up a system of primitive gutters and let all the rainwater run into a tank for storage. Most of the roofs here are sheet metal, and gutters can be easily made by taking a piece of 3 inch PVC pipe, slicing down one side and sticking it on the end of the sheet metal and directing it to the tank. A picture may explain it better.

It was fun building the tank because I got to show off some of my well honed plastering and cement skills. Once we put up the metal frame, we had to stucco it three times, twice on the outside and once on the inside. Not a big deal back home, but here we’ve got limited resources, tools, and skills. First of all, we had to wash the gravel for the concrete base by hand...picture 10 gringos around a muddy hole washing buckets of rocks with dirty water...not quite the most fun I’ve had, but the scenery was nice. Also, we had to sift all of the sand through a screen to just get the fine stuff. Then we got to finally mix the concrete and cement up. I got to be on the inside when we were doing that layer and unfortunately for my friend James and our Bolivian mason Don Angel, I had what I can honestly say was the worst case of smelly gas I’ve ever had in my life...and that’s saying a lot. So picture three guys in a 10 foot diameter tank for about 4 hours, 2 getting asphyxiated from the raunchy stank escaping from my backside and me laughing my backside off, wishing my dad was there to say “Man, that stinks. Isn’t that neat?” Despite the stench, we got the inside layer up, waited for it to dry and again put up the sealant stuff that keeps the humidity out...more plastering but less farting this time around. It was fun to use the ol’ trowel again, but we were definitely lacking some key tools I’m used to having at home. Welcome to the Peace Corps.
Finishing the floor of the tank from the ladder

Our third project was a gray water system. What is gray water, you may ask? There are two types of waste water, gray water and black water. Black water is anything with feces in it, which is poisonous and gray water is everything else...water from the kitchen, clothes washing, and even urine, which is sterile. Usually gray water is allowed to simply run onto the ground and in the water trenches along the road...which is a bad idea. Its obviously not sanitary for kids and dogs to be playing in this kind of wastewater. For example at my house, the water from the kitchen sink and our clothes washing sinks runs right out the back into one of these ditches. Our black water from our toilet is sent into a tank that screens out the solids, hanging onto them and letting the liquid disperse into the ground, which is about as good as you can ask. Sewers aren’t coming anytime soon to this community.

So they have developed a way to not only prevent this gray water from going to the ditches, but to put it to good use. All the gray water is captured from the household and piped into a little brick box...where anything solid sinks to the bottom and anything greasy floats to the top...whats left then flows into pipes that are used to irrigate a garden that you build. So technically every time you wash stuff down the sink, you’re irrigating your garden. We built our gray water system in the same place as our tank...which was a school. It was kind of tricky to get all the levels right but eventually it worked out and the water flowed like it should have.

I can’t go much further without mentioning the fact that at this point, one by one our group began to get sick. A few had food poisoning, there were about 4 with giardia and almost everyone else had unidentified stomach problems leading to unfriendly discharges from one end or the other, or both. After 10 days of traveling, only 2 of us remained completely unscathed, and one of them was me. Perhaps it’s the vitamins I’m taking (thanks MJ) or just Buckeye luck, but something was definitely going my way.

Despite being pretty tough work days, we had a pretty good time. We were all learning new things and hanging out in the evenings, talking about our possible sites and playing card games and what not. We even had a bonfire one night to celebrate the festival of San Juan, which is supposedly the coldest night of the year...we didn’t have marshmallows but one of our training directors named Armando played pretty much every Beatles song on the guitar as we all sang along...which was extremely fun. Thus ended the first part of our trip.Giving a hand-washing talk to some kids at the school where we built the tank.

The Gauntlet of Tech Week (2006.07.03)

So we have just returned from our week of Technical Training, where we travel a bit around the country and actually construct things, putting to use the things we’ve learned up until this point. It’s fun to get away from the daily dregs of classes, with people talking at us all day and finally get our hands dirty and do some work where we can see the results firsthand. The following few entries retell our trip.