Guess what everyone, I am now officially a volunteer and not just a trainee!! Whoo hoo! And not only that, I am no longer writing you from the lovely comforts of Cochabamba, but am in fact in my new home of Charagua!! Yep, today is my second day here and I really don’t know what to think or how to feel yet. It’s really beautiful here, that’s for sure. But what the hell am I supposed to be doing for the next two years??? That is a scary thought!! And I’m already having English withdraws. I mean, I went from speaking it everyday with everyone in training to being dropped in this little village with only Spanish, and not only that, a funky Spanish (they drop every s, it’s weird, it’s like at the end of every word they don’t know what to do with their tongues)! Needless to say, I can’t understand a damn thing anyone is saying.
Well, let’s back up first. I have no idea where I left off. But let’s just start at swear-in. That was Friday, April 18. We had a nice little ceremony in the afternoon, in which I was forced to sing the Bolivian national anthem (and ours, too) and that night we went out to a delicious dinner of non-Bolivian food. It was so good!! I’m sure I’ll be dreaming of that night for the next two years. Saturday we had to go to a bike safety class (I don’t know why, but if we ever want to get one in the future, peace corps will pay for it if we prove that we were at the workshop) and later that night all the Santa Cruz kids and I hopped on a flota to Santa Cruz. We left at 9pm and got there at 8:30am. Again, not the funnest thing in the world. But anyways, Sunday we just relaxed and walked around the city. Monday was a whole different story. We had an official orientation of the Santa Cruz regional office in the morning. We just met the staff and all that jazz. The office itself is a tiny little box compared to the one in Cochabamba, but the people are wonderful and it’s in a nice part of town. Up until lunchtime we talked and talked and talked. But after lunch it was on. Shopping, that is. Seriously, you have to be mentally and physically prepared for the markets here. They’re all open-air, all boiling hot because they drape tarps over everything so you’re walking through basically an oven of used goods, stinky to an unimaginable degree (boiled potatoes, fried intestines, sweaty bolivians and car parts all mixed together), and packed with people and stuff. Anything you could ever think to buy (well, to a degree) is all there, sitting under the sun. The only hard part is trudging through the crowds (you literally are rubbing against every single person you pass), finding what you want (asking people does nothing in this country because most people don’t know what you want, but instead of saying no and making you feel bad, they’ll say they know and then point in whatever direction they feel like pointing), and then trying to bargain with the vendors to get the prices down. It’s a jungle out there. And to my shock and dismay, there is also no bathroom anywhere. That has nothing to do with anything, it just makes matters worse when you have to go pee, your hands are full of random cleaning supplies, and there is no bathroom in sight. Luckily after a couple more minutes I think I sweat the rest of my bodily fluids out, so it wasn’t too much of a problem. Well, back to the shopping. Monday I bought a bed and bed frame, sheets and pillows, a table, cleaning supplies, pots, pans, plates, cups, bowls, blankets, food, and I don’t know what else. I’m also now realizing that there is a ton I forgot!! I’m going to need to take the journey back to Santa Cruz pretty soon. All they sell here is toilet paper, cookies, and soda. After buying all that stuff we had to haul it into (or on top of) a taxi, take it to the train terminal, and then store it in the train area. Yeah, that’s right, we took a train. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but believe me, it wasn’t. I’ll get to that later. Anyway, by that time it was dinner time and then bed time!! Tuesday morning we went back to the terminal to move some other boxes and suitcases we had shipped from Cochabamba ahead of us, only to discover that the warehouse was down the street near a circus. So we walked down there, waited to find our stuff (I was actually pleasantly surprised that it was all there), took a taxi to the terminal again, waited for the train storage thing to open (over an hour late), elbowed our way through pushing and cutting (you know, like cutting in line) Bolivians, and finally got them to store our crap. By that time we had just enough time to go grocery shopping then go back to the terminal to catch our 3:30pm train to Charagua.
So the train. When I think of a train I think of a nice Amtrak with single seats, nice big windows and of course, a bathroom. Well, this train was a little different. First of all it looked straight out of a 1920’s movie. I think it might have been, actually. The seats were school-bus style (straight backed and shared), the tiny windows barely opened (and when they were opened sticks and branches kept whipping me in the face. I wore my sunglasses all night to protect my eyeballs.), and the “bathroom” was a small closet with a hole that opened up onto the tracks. Seriously, you could watch your pee go down onto the ground below you as you watched the tracks go by. It was crazy! And as for snack bars, there was occasionally some Bolivian women (passengers) who would walk up and down the isles trying to sell you stuff they brought to eat. It was weird. And not like cookies or crackers, but like smoked chicken and potatoes. Who brings tons of smoked chicken in their bag to sell on a train while going home? Anyway, we pulled into Charagua at midnight (yeah, I was very tired at this point, but also slightly on an adrenaline rush because there is no intercom or anything on the train, nor does anyone tell you where you are. Since it is pitched black outside, you pretty much have to just go with your gut on whether or not you’re at your site. Therefore, I was up all night, looking out the window and hoping that I didn’t miss my stop). After getting there we unloaded our stuff, then signed some papers to get our shipped stuff, then flagged down the only two taxis functioning in Charagua to take us to my house (~7km away). Finally by 2am all our stuff was unloaded and it was time to pass out.
The next morning at 6am Charagua was up, and so was I. I wanted to sleep more, but the light shines right into my room and people were chatting right outside my window loudly. But it didn’t really matter because I wanted to get started fixing up the place anyway. All day yesterday I cleaned, unpacked my stuff, fixed the kitchen, organized as much as I could, and talked with the neighbor lady. I still haven’t set up my bed yet, but I’ll get to that eventually. Who knew you need tools to put stuff together? Oh yeah, about the bed. Bad bad bad choice on my part. It is like a rock, except it’s stuffed with hay or something. Seriously, I keep getting jabbed with whatever they are, wheat husks or something, in my sleep. This is going to be a long two years!! Also, since my real mosquito net isn’t hung up yet (I can’t do that until my bed is ready), I have to sleep in this stupid travel net that is about the size of a sleeping bag. I look like I’m in a cocoon! If I move my head up even the slightest amount it smacks into the sides of the net. I have no idea how people taller than me deal with it!
Let me describe my “pad.” First off, much to my dismay I am currently paying more than anyone else in Bolivia per month for this place. And I’m talking by quite a lot. In fact, I might have to move in a couple months (we’re required to stay here at least for the first two months) if I don’t have enough money to pay for food and whatnot. But I guess we’ll just wait and see. Anyway, I have a bedroom which opens out onto a little patio area. It’s really beautiful. Then, through another door I have a bathroom. And through yet another door which also opens onto the patio is a small room that I’m going to use as my kitchen. The only sucky thing is that it doesn’t have a sink. I never thought it would be so hard to have a kitchen without a sink. Every time I want to boil water or something I have to walk across the backyard to a spicket (I don’t know how to spell that word). After dinner I also have to do my dishes by headlamp while getting eaten alive by mosquitos. I fill a bucket with water from the spicket, add soap, hunch over and scrub everything as best I can. Then I unload the washed stuff onto a table (still soapy), empty the bucket and fill it with fresh water in which I rinse the soapy stuff. Yeah, I definitely need to get more buckets. The only thing I’m worried about is not having enough water. That’s a problem here, and also I have to pay extra for utilities, so I try to use them all sparingly. Anyway, I know it’s hard to get a mental image of this place (I’ll try to send a picture next time I’m in the city, the computers here are WAAAYYY to slow for that), but just know that it’s cute and pretty. I mean, it has a good share of sand (the floors are mostly sand just because the streets are all sand, so it gets everywhere), spiders, and toads. Oh yeah, the night/morning I got in, I was greeted in the bathroom by a huge toad that jumped onto my leg from the dark while I was peeing. I nearly had a heart attack until I realized what it was. Oh, the good times of campo living!!
So, yeah, that’s what’s happening right now. Just getting myself together, and then I’ll go try to figure out this little town. I know I’ll be freaking out about being here in a week or two, but I’m not ready for that quite yet. But I do still miss all of you and hope you’re doing good!!
Okay, this next part is being written like an hour after I wrote all that. I just found out that my water filter is super broken, so I have to go to Santa Cruz tomorrow to get it replaced!!! I was just on a train for 9 hours!!! I can’t sit still any longer!! I think I might go crazy if the flota smells as bad as the last one!! But oh well, it’ll give me a day to pick up some things I forgot. Anyway, that’s the latest update.
Oh yeah, one more thing. My new address is:
Av. Rene Moreno #17 Piso 5
Edif. Royal Palm Plaza
Casilla 3998 Santa Cruz
BOLIVIA

Ok, so I´ve had a week of rest and I feel sooooo much better. And guess what, I only have one week left!! Yikes!! I´m soooooo scared! I mean, I like my site and everything, but I don´t want to leave Cochabamba or all my trainee friends!! It´s going to be so sad. But anyway, here´s the schedule. Monday and Tuesday it´s class like usual. Spanish, Guarani, and going over our test scores for our technical classes. Yeah, we had tests!! How rude! I though I was done with classes! Guess not. So Wednesday we leave our host families for good and go to the training center with all our stuff for another day of testing and meetings. You know, spanish tests, talks with so and so, and who knows what else. Wed, Thurs, and Fri nights we´ll be staying in a hotel in the city and going to classes at the training center during the day. Friday, however, is our last day and we do the whole swearing in ceremony and then go out to a fancy dinner. I´m excited about that! I hope it´s gringo food!! Saturday we have to take a bike safety class (yeah, are we like 5 years old now?), and then we´re on our own. It´s up to us to get ourselves to our regional cities, and then onto our sites. We have to be there by next Wednesday or else we´re considered lost and they get pissed. My only concern is that I think the road into our site is blockaded right now, so it better open up by next week or we´re screwed.
Oh yeah, this Saturday we had our thank you dinner for our host families. It was soooo much fun! The only crappy part was that we were supposed to eat at 12pm, but didn´t eat until 230pm!! That is so typically Bolivian you don´t even know. I´m going to be the most patient person in the world when I get back, or at least not think it´s weird when people are multiple hours late. The only crappy part was that we had to dance " la cueca" in front of all the families. It´s like the traditional dance of Cochabamba. It involves waving a bandana around (both boys and girls) and stomping your feet a lot. It´s apparantly really pretty when done correctly, but we just looked like we were rioting cowboys running around in circles. Oh well, it was kind of fun. Yeah, so after that ended 3 hours later than it was supposed to, we all went to the city to celebrate some birthdays. We actually found a n "American" bar and it was amazing ly fun. Pool and everything, although they did have this weird bolivian dice game that I guess you just can´t avoid, but no matter. The only weird part was the drunk, short, bolivian dude with a mullet, blue jogging pants (the waterproof kind) and a red sweatshirt running around the bar singing american music. Actually that was pretty entertaining!
Ok, that´s all the news there is for now. I´ll let you know if I can get to my site anytime soon, and if so, I´ll tell you alllll about it! Hope all is going well and I miss you!!

The story you are about to hear, although frightening and awful, is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. In fact, I am still living the story, so it may need to be continued later on. I am also running on no sleep and fried chicken, so sorry if it doesn't make much sense. I'm not going to use paragraphs, just because it's all one big blur to me and that's how you should read it. It all began Saturday night at 9:30 (right after my last blog post). The group of 11 Santa Cruz kids and I get on a flota (big crappy bus) to Santa Cruz. First of all, these buses don't have air conditioning, so it's like a sauna in there, and to top it off, they give you these huge wool blankets to use that you have no place to put but on your lap because there's no room. So you're left suffering in the sauna with windows that don't open (yeah) and a wool blanket on your lap. In addition to that, they decided to play a war movie in spanish with the volume turned up full blast. So even as I tried to close my eyes and drift off to sleep, I could still hear nothing but bloody screams and cries of agony for two full hours. But in reality, that was nothing to complain about. Because even though I didn't sleep, we got into SC Sunday morning and had the whole day to check into a hostal and walk around the city. It's gorgeous, but really hot and humid. I must say though, it's growing on me. So Monday morning we meet with our counterparts (the people we will be working with for two years) from 8 to 5pm. My guy's name is Federico and he seemed pretty friendly and helpful. Hopefully I'll get to work with him a lot. They say most counterparts don't really stick around that long. We'll see. Anyway, 5pm comes and we go back to the hostal to unwind before dinner. However, just as we got there my friend Matt gets a call from Ivan, the safety and security officer of PC. He tells him that I, my site mate, him, and one other dude have to go back to Cochabamba immediately because there is about to be a 48 hour transportation strike starting at midnight and we need to get out before that. Apparantly the street down south towards my site "might be dangerous due to petroleum strikes happening in another site." I grabbed the phone and started arguing against it because I wanted to see my site, but the final word was that we had to go back that night. So with a sad heart I pack up my bags, we get a taxi back to the bus station and take another 11 hour overnight crappy flota ride back to Cochabamba. We arrive in Coch at 6am, I get home at 7am, unpack my bag, and lay down to catch up on my sleep. Right then Ivan calls me and says "what are you doing in Coch? The strike didn't happen, so you can come back now if you want." I nearly lost it at him. I refused to get back on a flota, and surprisingly he agreed to fly Ben (my site mate) and I back to SC right then. (Matt and Wes, the other guy still couldn't go because of the protests in their sites). So without time to think I had to repack my bag and take a taxi to the airport. As a side note, while waiting for the plane to be ready and trying not to fall asleep, we noticed fire coming from the wings of the plane and firemen blowing out the flames. Literally 5 min. after that, they boarded us. Luckily I was too tired at that point to care at all. Talk about desensitized. All I could say was, well at least we're not taking a flota. Anyway, we get back to SC, the same city we left the night before, at 1:30. We expected to meet my counterpart and go right away, but apparantly our transportation was in the repair shop, so we had to wait until 8:30pm before we left. I was already on edge, and having to wait 7 hours to begin the 6 hour journey was killing me. We had our huge bags with us too, so there wasn't much we could do without being paranoid of getting robbed. But whatever, 8:30 finally comes and we meet Federico. The transportation turns out to be a fricking pickup truck. Yeah, the kind with the two seats in the back that an infant can't even fit it's butt on. I was pissed. I couldn't believe we had to drive 6 hours in the back seats of a pickup over night! But oh it gets worse! Federico says he has to take another car, and for us to take this car with some other dude we don't know and a driver. At that point all we could say was OK, because how else are we going to get there? And oh yeah, the truck bed was full, so we had to keep our bags and the driver's bags on our laps!! Huge travel bags on our laps, overnight, in the backseat of a pick up truck! I swear that's what hell is modeled after. So after about an hour I realize that our driver is drunk, chain smoking cigarettes with the other guy, and chewing coca leaves to stay awake. The truck reeked of the vodka they kept passing back and forth and the smoke that kept getting blown into my face. It was unbeliably awful. Then to make it worse, the road to our site, which is notoriously bad anyway, was even worse that night. It took us 9 hours to get there!! We fishtailed into the side of a cliff a couple times, had to wait for a truck in front of us to dig its way out of the mud, and stopped him to buy more coca leaves to chew. I of course didn't even shut my eyes for fear of flipping our car off a mountain (I really don't know what was around us because it was so dark) and had a burning headache. Finally at 6am we get into Charagua and check into a hostal. Federico lets us rest until 10am, and then we meet him at the Alcaldia (governor's office). That morning was cold, and since there was no hot water and we didn't give a shit about anything at that point we didn't shower. We couldn't even find a place to eat, so we just showed up at the governor's office unshowered, tired, hungry, and pissed. Great way to start off! We then met all the important guys there and sat through an hour and a half town meeting in a weird-accent spanish. That was a low point- trying to stay awake during a spanish meeting after not sleeping in days, dying of hunger, and wishing 30 ugly bolivian men weren't oogling you, and still trying to look semi-interested in what they were saying. Anyway, once that was over we ate lunch and had a siesta (that's the awesome thing about my town, they have lunch at 12 exactly, then don't start work again until 3pm because of the heat!). So after the siesta we find out my counterpart left. Yeah, he just went back to SC and left us there with his little assistant guy. The assistant guy didn't know what to do with us, so he went to find the other gringos in the town (the kids we are replacing). Finally around 5:30 we find them, talk a bit, then go to dinner. Thank god for those guys because they made us feel so much better. Apparantly their trip in from SC during their site visit took 18 hours!! I would literally have died if I was in the pick up for 18 hours!! They just reassured us that everything would be better once we had sleep and settled in. So all day Thursday we walked around with them and kind of got to know the town. We were supposed to stay until Friday morning, but they were leaving to go back to SC that night, so we decided to go with them, just because we don't know the ropes yet or anything. So once again we find ourselves sleeping overnight on a flota. The only difference is that these flotas are NASTY!! Seriously, I have never smelled a stench so horrible as decades of bolivian BO seeped into the seats. It was foul! I gaged several times during the night. The only cool thing is that the bus was full of Mendonites (those religious people who dress formally and look kind of pissed off all the time even though I don't think they are). Apparantly they live on the outskirts of my town (not just some, like 7,000) and are amazing farmers. Amazing. They put the bolivians to shame with all they do. They're a blend of german and mexican. they only speak spanish and some funky german language. Anyway, the point of me saying this is that I was honored with the privilage of peeing with a bunch of german speaking mendonite women on the side of a darkened road in the middle of the night. I felt a bonding moment there. Ok. So we arrive in SC (after me not sleeping again because of the stinky seats and the fact that the seats don't recline and we're all jammed in there together like sardines) at 3:45am. Ben and I say bye to the volunteers we came with, get off the bus to get our bags and check into a hostal, and discover that we can't get our bags. The bus driver was sleeping, and wouldn't unlock the luggage place for us. I was sssoooooooooooooo mad!! That was the first time I yelled, really yelled, at a bolivian. I must say, at that moment my spanish was excellent. My anger just rolled off my tongue like i had spoken spanish all my life. But when that didn't phase the bus driver, our only option was to get back on the stinky shit bus and wait until 6:30am (when he woke up) to get our bags. There's more i could say about how i was feeling then, but it would take too much energy. Anyway, at this point it's Friday morning and we check into a hostal. All that day was awful. I mean, we tried to sleep, but it's weird sleeping during the day, and then i was afraid i wouldn't sleep that night if i slept during the day. It sucked. We did nothing but lay around and watch tv. Literally. My body felt like I had been beat up. But still i had a faint flickering of happiness because we had decided to take the DAY flota back to Coch Sat. morning. (no more night flotas for me for a while), so i was thinking how wonderful it would be to get back to coch sat. night and have sunday to unpack, do laundry, and relax for a day before classes started again. So sat morning comes, we get up at 5am and go to the terminal to get the very first bus out of SC. Low and behold- we are told there are no buses going to coch at all that (or for the next 3 days in fact) because the road is bad. At that point I just went numb. Here my hope of getting back to have a day to do laundry and get centered again was crushed!! Crushed!! After that we simply took a taxi back to the hostal, I napped for an hour, and now I am writing this haunting tale to you fine folks. I have no idea how many days we will be stuck here, or when I will be getting home. All I know is that I am one mad Gina.
So, that's my story. It's of course to be continued because I have no idea when or if I'll ever get back. I don't even care anymore. I've decided to never plan anything ever again, or at least to expect any plans to go how they should. I guess that's a good lesson. Yeah, so I guess even though I haven't slept in a week and have only eaten fried chicken and french fries for several days straight, at least I learned a valuable lesson.