stylin´shades

Everybody got new shades a couple weeks ago...here they are showing off their stuff. Aren´t they cute?

Fish restaurants and other silly things

Last weekend we also took the Hogar de Amor kids to a crazy restaurant outside of Cochabamba that served good fish and had activities for kids on a ¨lake,¨that was really the dammed backwaters of another bigger brown lake. The kids had a great time and we did too...here´s Andrew on the zipline chair with one of the littlest ones (check out the brown water background)...the place did have paddleboats, giant slides, and other toys for kids, but they liked the zipline best (only 50 cents per kid...who can beat that?).

more Salar shots

Here are a couple more of my favorite shots from the Salar. Kimi and Gary, the couple we traveled with just sent these to me. It´s always fun to see your same trip from another person´s perspective...Kimi took some great shots..they are posted somewhere on flickr under Kimiandgary/salar de uyuni. Here I was trying to jump as high as I could but found it was kinda tough in hiking boots, and I don´t seem to jump as high as I used to when I was a bit younger!

This is a picture of Andrew and I the last night in a Salt Hotel...everything is made from salt blocks except the bathroom fixtures! We ate by candlelight, slept on salt platform beds, and walked on soft salt grains that felt like sand but looked like white rock salt (and yes, I did lick the wall to see what it tasted like--SALTY!)

cookie baking and jewelry making

As Andrew said, since we´ve been back, we´ve worked every single day, but it´s been wonderful! We´ve gotten to do a few things out of the norm...at the Baker´s house, we made snickerdoodle cookies with the girls on Monday, rotating through 3 groups (did you know that 3 batches of snickerdoodles makes 167 cookies minus all the dough eaten by 26 girls!?). Hmmm..were these hands clean? They were until I said, ¨ok, now you can eat whatever is left on your hands!¨ You should have heard the smacking lips and seen the looks of disbelief (this was a very un-Bolivian thing to say)!

While we were in the kitchen making cookies, three British volunteers were out on the patio making bead jewelry with the girls. They were very creative, making earrings, bracelets, necklaces and doorway decor. This is Leydi and Lizbeth modeling their creations!

More Salar de Uyuni Photos

Here are some more funky perspective photos from the Salar de Uyuni. You can click on them and make them bigger, but if you look closely you can see that we were far from experts in taking them. Supposedly the Israelis are the true professionals. Thousands of them come every year to the Salar and all they want to do is take photos...they do hundreds of different poses. They (the Israelis) are rather "famous" among the guides. Ours told us that if they receive bad evaluations from tourists the tour company assigns them a group of Israelis as a punishment. Most of them come right after their mandatory year of service in the army, which might explain some of their wild behavior.

The photo below shows us and the two other Americans we were traveling with...they were great travel companions and are actually living and working in Cochabamba as well. The cacti are found on an "island" in the middle of the Salar where we visited. They say the cacti date back thousands of years, when the Salar used to be covered in water...it's a very eery ecosystem.

Comments???

Sorry, I messed up the settings on our two last posts. They don´t allow you to leave comments, thus please feel free to make comments here. Also feel free to make coments on older posts, we now have it set up so that we recieve emails about any new comments regardless of where you post them.

Salar de Uyuni

The Salar de Uyuni lived up to our expectations. It is an amazing place...like a frozen lake with disappearing horizons. Here is a photo of it at sunrise.

Because of the disappearing horizon on the Salar de Uyuni, you can take some crazy photos. Here is one of me crushing Jen with my foot. We will probably post a few more in the future, but I have run out of time today. After getting back from our trip we have to work 12 days in a row...thus time is limited.

Here is a picture of the landcruiser we traveled in. It did quite well except for flat tires. On the third day we set a new record for the driver...4 flats in one day! This one was the worst - if you look close you can see that the truck is tilted to one side (back right). After jacking it up and taking the wheel off, the jack sunk into the ground...it took three other jacks to eventually rectify the problem. Gracies a Dios that he was not under the truck at the time!! The driver and cook (husband/wife) were amazing though. They could change a tire in under 7 minutes (I timed them).

Tupiza & Uyuni Trip

PINK FLAMINGOS (no, they are not just found in the tropics)!!

On Tuesday the 20th we returned from a 7 day trip to the SW part of Bolivia. Desolate and fascinating country. We took a train to the town of Tupiza where we stayed two night and took a couple of ¨death hikes¨. Jen led one of them, so I am not to blame...maybe she is just learning bad habits from me!! The landscape reminded us of Utah, with canyons and rock formations that rivaled the canyonlands in southern Utah. We then took a four day overland trip from Tupiza to Uyuni with a tour company. The ride was brutal at times, but we fortunately had great company - an american couple from Colorado and a good driver/cook...six of us in a 87 Toyota Landcruiser. The days were long (10+ hours) and the nights cold (40 degrees in our rooms), but it was an incredible trip. The cold was due to the fact that it is officially the winter here and the fact that we were above 4,000 meters (13,200 feet) most of the time (see photo above as proof). The first night we slept at 4,300 meters (14,000 feet)...I didn´t sleep well and had a slight headache...and felt quite disappointed that I probably do not have a future career as a high altitude climber.

Most of the people that live at this altitude are either small time miners, llama herders, or work in the tourist industry. Rough life to say the least...think of sheepherders in Nevada, but in a third world country. Jen says that we have never officially posted a llama picture...here is one for your viewing pleasure (and a fox of some sort).

Power of the People??

If any of you are keeping up on Bolivian news, which I doubt you are, you might have heard of the recent vote on Sunday May 4th by one of the departments (think states) to gain autonomy status. As with all things in Bolivia the situation is rather complicated. They can´t even agree if the vote was legal in the first place, much less what the outcome actually means for the St. Cruz and the rest of the country. At any rate, what this meant for us was a huge "rally/protest" in Cochabamba. They (whomever ¨they¨are...there is debate about this as well) bused in people from the surrounding areas and by some accounts over 400,000 people amassed on the main highway going out of town that goes near our house. This picture was taken a block from our house and shows people marching towards the rally point...we watched for over 15 minutes and the stream of people never let up. Pretty impressive to see this many people all in one place. Thankfully the rally was peaceful and ended by 6pm and everything was back to normal by Monday...pretty crazy stuff...yet to be resolved in many respects, we just pray the outcome is peaceful and benefits the people as a whole.

We actually spent the day exploring the hills overlooking Cochabamba with some friends...very relaxing in that it reminds us of Washington...complete with Lupine, pine trees, and even a slight breeze (something we actually miss here!). Here is Jen and Carl surveying the smog overhaning Cochabamba...people tell us it will even get worse over the course of the next few months.

cute little monkeys!

Realized that we don´t post too many shots of the cute little ones we work with each week. We´re usually just too busy feeding, holding, changing diapers, and playing to shoot photos, but thought this one was pretty cute. She was brought to the house just recently severely malnutritioned...she´s 9 months old but about the size of our 3 month old...cute as a button and gaining weight quickly...poor thing has to eat like every couple hours--doctor´s orders. Bright and beautiful...don´t you just want to squeeze her?

why we go to the Other park

So just wanted to share a shot of the neighborhood park, so you understand why we always pay to take the kids to Other parks...this park looks like an AmeriCorps project waiting to happen...another reason we are looking for a new house-location for House II. The park below even has bumper cars and the ever-popular, huge slides. Jen even wiped out going down this weekend and has the scabs to show for it...boy did the kids think that was funny when she landed on her rear end!

For Shawn Marshall

Shawn - we seemed to have lost your phone number and email - can you send it to Jen or I and/or post it here...thanks - andrew

Self Portrait with Monkey

Although the monkey was a bit camera shy, Andrew´s self-portrait just has to go on the blog (he doesn´t know I´m putting it on). Andrew took a hike in an animal park the last morning we were in Villa Tunari...Jen chickened out as we were told that the monkeys would bother you, take anything out of your pockets, take off your glasses, and oh, yeah,they even know how to take out earrings...yeah, I passed on that one, but Andrew said it wasn´t terrible, but they did find a bead in his pants pocket and climbed all over him!

Into the Jungle

Although the posts are out of order, last week (thurs-sat) we headed west down into the jungle with the Baker´s (Bolivia Youth Ministries from Oregon). They took us to there favorite vacation spot down in Villa Tunari, a semi-vacation town about 4 hours from Cochabamba. The drive was absolutely beautiful as the brown hills and cactus changed to lush green banana trees, bugs, and butterflies,and the humidity rose to almost unbearable. We had a very nice couple days relaxing in the water, swimming, and enjoying great conversation with the Baker´s. They are an amazing family with a heart for children in Bolivia. They have lived in Bolivia for 13 years, raised 5 children now back in the States, and their last, Joanna, lives with them now. We also had some nice visits from your friendly neighborhood tarantulas both on the road and in our rooms (and no, I didn´t stop to take a picture of him in my room), and Andrew got to hold a monkey (Jen deferred).

A beautiful day for the game

This Sunday we went to a local soccer game here in Cochabamba. We´ve been wanting to go, but games are only on Sunday afternoon at 4pm, so we had to wait til our schedule cleared. We saw Wilstermann play Blooming, a tie 2-2. It was a beautiful day to be outside and sitting in the shade! The game provided much entertainment, as often players fall down or fake being hurt and this medic crew runs out on the field with a stretcher (below) and carries the guy to the side of the field, where he promptly gets up and runs back in the game! Quite entertaining at first, quite annoying after about the 10th time. Also Wilstermann is the ¨home¨team so everytime the opposing team had a corner kick, the police in riot gear (sheilds, helmets, batons) run out to protect the kicker from people in the audience throwing full pop bottles at the guy! I was so distracted with all the other things going on during the game, that I completely missed seeing every goal scored...oh well, the ice cream was good!

Too much meat

Andrew made me put this picture on so you could see the size of these steaks...for you meat lovers, they were very good, but crazy big! We went to a churrasqueria (grill) last week, where your choice is pretty much steak or steak. You walk in to a huge grill filled with meat, smoking everywhere, and you order a plate and about 20 minutes later, you get this with french fries and a drink for 45 bs ($5.50). The steaks come from Argentina and have great flavor, but come on...who can eat all that? Andrew and I split it, but you would be surprised at the women chowing down on these, and believe me, they weren´t sharing!

just for the smiles!

Ok, so I had to put this picture on just because you can´t help but smile when you see her! She was covered with chocolate from head to shirt to hands...I guess this is what happens when you let a 3 1-2 yr old help you make chocolate cake; but you better believe she had a blast! When the kids come to our house, they just want to eat pancakes, color pictures, and cook! Of course we usually go get ice cream on our way back to the house, but that could be for me as much as for the kids! As a side note, this little one weighed 11 lbs. at 18 months when she was brought to the home...she will turn 4 next week and you would never guess that she barely made it back then...she has more energy than I can keep up with, but she is a bundle of love!

The Navidad tree

Whoa! I was blown away when I saw this poinsettia tree! Did you have any idea that your Christmas plant could become a tree? And beautiful at that! As Andrew said, I lost about 30 pictures because I was dumb and deleted them off the camara before making sure they were on our memory stick, so hard lesson learned. But here is another photo of the park visits we´ve begun with kiddos. Can you believe these slides...awesomely built into the hillside. Some of the toys in these parks would never pass safety inspection in the states...I went on a slide the other day that was like 25 feet up and I shot off the end of it running so as not to wipe out...can you imagine sending your 4 year old down?