Ok. So I guess I didn’t explain enough about Carnival. It’s a war zone. I’m partially traumatized after only two days of it. Apparently it lasts three weeks. Since we had Monday and Tuesday off, some volunteers and I took a micro (bus) into the city to go to an internet café. Well, once there we got horribly lost (looking for food when all the stores are closed for holiday is not a good thing) until we found our way back to the hotel we stayed at when we first arrived here. Once we knew where we were, we decided to take a relaxing stroll down to the park area. Bad idea. Literally hundreds of people, old and young alike, were at war with water balloons and squirt guns. At the time there were only two girls, so we got killed! We were soaked from head to toe with dirty giardia (sp?) water. Even when we left the park we would get drive-by soakings, or people would dump buckets of water from the buildings above us. It was so much fun, as long as you didn’t think about all the dirty water that just went into your mouth!! It even stopped traffic.
Then today, my family went to a party at the uncle’s house where we had a HUGE water fight! I was picked up and dumped into a pig trough of water. It was sooooo gross! There were buckets of water and shaving cream (yeah, there’s shaving cream everywhere, too) all over the place. A couple of the other volunteers came too. Then the uncle made us all drink “rum” that did not taste like rum and I hope to god I don’t get intestinal troubles from drinking the water here. But when mixed with lots and lots of coke it was pretty good. We then jumped into the back of his heavy lifting truck (I don’t know how else to explain it) with a couple gallons of rum, a 100 gallon bucket of water, a couple bags of water balloons, and some water guns. We then drove down the street of my community soaking anyone we went by. It was so much fun. Until some kids retaliated by throwing buckets of mud on us. At least I hope it was mud, I don’t really want to think about what else it could be.
Two more things I forgot to mention. 1) I don’t have a toilet seat. Yeah, no one has mentioned it, so I don’t know if that’s the norm or not. But I’ve seen it in the back yard just lying there. Whatever, hovering for two years can’t be too bad. 2) I am extremely sun burnt. At 8200ft I’m pretty much touching the sun and this gringa skin dosen’t stand a chance. Even with SPF 50 my nose looks like I’m a perpetually drunk Santa Claus. Oh well. Skin cancer, schmin cancer.
As far as the training goes, we’ve only had a couple classes. We are divided into three groups: agriculture, environmental education, and natural resource management (mine!!). Everyone in natural resource management (7 of us) is focusing on watershed management, which means we’ll most likely be placed in the most remote areas of Bolivia. Other people, say the ones in agrobusiness, will probably be in more urban areas helping people market their goods. I’m actually really excited about my possible projects. The only thing I hate right now is that we’re swamped with reading and group projects. We’re going to have to give a presentation in Spanish and turn in a written report of a community analysis (which is super in-depth) in a couple of weeks. We also have to start our own gardens and produce actual crops by the end of the 11 weeks. And seriously, we’re booked from 8 to past 6 (but that actually turns into past 9 because we have to get home, help cook, eat, and then clean up) everyday except Sunday. I don’t see how we’re going to do all this! But besides all of that, I’m having a really good time. The weather is practically perfect here and everyone is so laid back. But don’t worry yet, I still miss all of you and wish I could see you right now!!! Soon enough. Soon enough.