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.