Happy Bday Santa Cruz

Tomorrow, the 24th, is the birthday of Santa Cruz! so tomorrow is a holiday and i have the day off. i've been working at Centro Menno for a little over a work and love it! Centro Menno is a drop/in welcome center for colony mennonites when they come into the city for business. we have mailboxes for them, a little book store, and a library. i am working mostly with the library, so i've learned the checking in/out of books, how to wrap books with seran wrap like stuff, and other library stuff. i love to read and always wondered what it would be like to work in a library, and i think i'm really going to like it. every monday we package some type of periodical that either get sent out to colonies or put in mailboxes. so far i've packaged a children's newspaper and a mennonite newspaper from canada. i'm hoping that it will help me become a better giftwrapper :)

there are 2 couples who run centro menno and write the "menno bote," another periodical. 3 have roots in paraguay, so in the morning and afternoon we break and drink tarere (sp?) a typical south american drink that is made fun crushed leaves and cold water and is drunk through a metal straw. there are all these rules for drinking it, like always pass it in a circle without skipping any one and you say "thank you" only when you are finished drinking and don't want anymore. i definitely love the laidback attitude. and then throughout the day people are always dropping by. i love to just listen and watch. low german is different from the high german i studied...4 years ago? but i can pick up on some things. i have confused some people already because i'll say one short german phrase and they assume i'm fluent and they're off! once they see the blank look on my face they apologize and some speak english!

i'm getting the hang of the micro system here. for the most part i really like it. but sometimes i'm about 6 inches too tall for the ceiling. and sometimes traffic is so bad that the micro i waved down can't get to me and just keep driving by. but it is really cheap (1.5 bs (1 US$=7 bolivianos) and a fun place to people watch.

also had my first experience with sickness. last week tuesday after volleyball practice i ended up being sick through the whole night. only stomach flu action thank goodness, but it was paired with no sleep and a constant loop of michael jackson songs running through my head. (i have never listend to mj more in my life then during my SALT expereince. probably will never again.)

i have my first vball game on friday night! go catolica!