Life I love you...all is groovy

On Wednesday nights we have "english" potluck where we eat good food and speak in English. I love it because dessert is always great and its a chance to catch up with the other SALTers and MCC workers. Afterward, we usually have some sort of devotion time. This week we were asked "what gives us life and what takes away life." i am so blessed because so many things here "give me life." i am starting to feel part of my host family, part of the church community, and a real teammate on my volleyball team. i love walking home from work and randomly hearing "cordy cordy" (say that really fast and that's how everyone says my name) from a church member. or getting to vball practice and actually remembering names and joking around with my teammates.

working at my job gives me life because i love managing cenro menno's library and taking on new responsibilities. centro menno is in a huge transition year because one couple is leaving in february and the other in june. so i can tell i am already an important part of the centro menno team. last monday us SALTers went out to visit a colony and wow, so interesting. one girl said it looked like she was back in Canada. we visited a family with 5 girls and 2 boys and the dad is a mechanic who just got back from buying tractors in detroit. small world. we ate a huge lunch, got a tour of the house, barn, and mechanic shop. then we went up to their balcony hang out, drank coca-cola and entered into a singing showdown. the 5 daughters practice singing old hyms in different parts, so they sounded all wonderful and harmonized. then they said, it's your turn to sing. well, we had just learned to sing an african song together during a retreat, so we sang that. they liked it and asked if we ever sang on the radio...should they be asking about radios haha? they also took pictures of us with their first rate digital camera...so i didn't feel bad about taking pictures of them.

my host family gives me life by just interacting with them and sharing daily life, be it cutting through the back lots to get to church or going to a birthday party. (this one guy was from California so we played baseball with his grandsons and sang "Happy Birthday" accompianied with my host dad's accordion) one night i got home and some people from church were over making bookmarks for Sunday (we're studying 'the purpose driven life' in sunday school) so i helped cut out something with fancy scissors. the championship for the Bolivian soccer teams was going on and my host family's team, Blooming, was tied 1-1 with the other team. my host sister was so nervous she just kept pacing up and down and my host nephew would shot out random plays from the bedroom where the TV is. finally blooming scored and everyone was jumping and screaming and lit off a few fireworks. haha love it. they are also always telling me to "vamos" or come along, and i do. because of that i've played on the church volleyball, soccer, and basketball team. and i ran in a 13km "marathon." ok, didn't run the whole thing, but the last 500 meters was in the futbol stadium around a track, so i ran pumping my arms in the air and singing "the final countdown." afterward someone asked me and my north american friend where we were from. we said the u.s. and we came to bolivia just for this marathon. i think we impressed them. a couple of people also wanted a picture with me the "international runner." i acquiesed, but they just laughed when i said afterward "5 bolivianos por favor"

one thing that takes away life from me is my 10 year old host niece. i think she has add, desctructive behavior, and lacking in serious attention from her parents. she is at my house every night of the week, sometimes til 10, 11pm. i always try to be nice and friendly and spend some time with her, but that never lasts long. she is constantly running around, breaking things, and abusing the family dogs. i try to tell her that hitting a puppy and picking it up by its hair is a bad thing, but she just looks at me with a indolent, blank stare. i had to walk away yesterday because she wouldn't stop hurting the dog, so she through it ate me. yikes. and she always tells me i understand nothing. i get frustrated, but then i have to tell myself it's been 2 months, i'm 22 - she's 10, her parents work alot so she just wants attention, and kids are just raised differently here. so i just pray for patience and then go read a book.

one huge thing...my family bought their plane tickets!!!!! they are coming jan 15-22!! so excited and just can't wait!! hopefully my spanish skills will be stellar and the fam will be wildly impressed. maybe i'll just say words that sounds spanish...i could probably fake some low german for them :)

oh and i now am finally part of calvin propaganda! it only took me 4 years! here's the link to my championing the history department!

http://www.calvin.edu/academic/history/careers/missions.html

Gringita

It´s hot again. This past week was so cold, around 18 degrees celcius. I don´t know what that means in fahrenheit, just that that feels really cold here. It goes from hot and humid to cold so fast here I think that I´m back in Michigan and living with its dramatic weather.

Last weekend I went out to el campo (the country) to visit one of my host uncle´s farms, Las Mil. It´s not very far out of the city, maybe a 1.5 hour drive. We had to ford 4 rivers to get there. I kept laughing because I felt like I was living the Oregon Trail computer game but didn´t even try to explain that to my family. Everything out there was green green green! Las Mil is 1,000 hectares with a dairy and crops and in the latter part of the Andean Ridge. I thought we were surrounded by mountains, but everyone kept calling them hills. Had a few close calls with cows (hey they looked mean and had huge horns) running at us and trying to scramble to the other side of the barbed wire fence. we walked to a river with barely any water but with sand to rival lake michigan´s and played ¨futbol americano.¨ well not really. everyone kept calling it american soccer and it was really like a crazy game of soccer with a football. i think i like this version better.

at night i ¨showered¨ with river water from a bucket, just had to pick out the bugs floating around. i am definitely spoiled with my city life in santa cruz. then i joined the women of the family and was taught how to make rice empanadas. you spread this yuca/rice mixture that looks like mashed potaoes on a banana leaf, put some cheese (that looks like chicken) and onions in the center, and then fold the leaf in half! in the morning they grilled them and they were delicious! turns out i am also a specialty - to the mosquitos. the rare north american, yum. i always wore long pants and bug spray, but my legs looked like i had chicken pox. i was the only one and wow, did they itch like crazy. everyone would tell me no, no don´t scratch, but i confess i do when no one is looking.

on sunday we walked the 3 km to Amboro National Park, a huge forest park with hundreds of different animal and plant species. it was so beautiful, it took my breath away. well that and the uphill hiking in hot humid weather. but for a cool off we went swimming in the river that snakes through the park. my host ¨niece¨ asked me, can you believe you are in bolivia right now in the jungle? i had to answer no, it does not seem real. i can´t believe i´m in the southern tip of the amazon, a place i have learned about my life and never thought i would visit! but one thing that is so hard for me to see is the lack of respect for this amazing part of creation. littering here is second nature, everyone does it without thinking. one girl in our group had a cold and she would drop her tissues on the ground. ah that just kills me!! i see it all the time in the city, but i couldn´t believe people would litter in this beautiful, pristine forest. bah.

i am feeling really comfortable here in santa cruz. just a little too comfortable. thursday, around 7:30pm i was riding the micro 8 to go to volleyball practice. it was an extremely full micro and i remember thinking wow everyone is just all up in my business. the ceiling was really low, so i stood at the front of the micro with my back leaning up against the micro. i was wearing my calvin college drawstring bag and it was tight up against my back. at one point a seat freed up and i gladly sat down. i opened my bag to put in my extra change....and couldn´t find my coin purse......or my cell phone. both were gone. i looked around and all the people that had been crowding me before were off the micro. so i threw a little fit in my seat. the old man sitting next to me put a little more space in between us. the thief must have unzipped my zipper and pulled out my stuff. they work in groups here, so someone was distracting my attention while his/her partner took my things. ahh i´m just mad at being so naive. now i´ll toughen up and always remeber to hold my bag in front of me.