About to begin, again...

Sooo I’m one day away from moving to my site. I’m officially a volunteer, as of last Friday! But to backtrack a bit…

After I got back from site visit, training was (not is…) tough. It was several afternoons of fairly vague and frustrating exams, but we all got through them ok. I think they were just more to review what we’ve done than to test anything (I mean, those who didn’t pass still got to swear in). I also was stressed out and sick with a mean cold the week I got back. My host mom really helped me out, giving me chamomile vapors for the congestion…definitely a remedy I recommend. It’s just boiled water with chamomile flowers (I think pure chamomile tea would work, as would most “soothing herbs” like peppermint or lavender), that you breathe in under a towel. So I got better from that sickness and just a few short days later I got something realllllly bad. I won’t describe it in detail, but we found out it was a one-two combo of amoebas and intestinal bacteria , which totally put a damper on my final week with my friends, and made it difficult to sit through all my final interviews and hours of information sessions. Well, I got on meds, which give you the same symptoms for a while and don’t allow you to toast your new volunteer status, but they do work. I think I’m all better in time to go to my site (but I’m going to try hard to not get those bugs again, especially when it would require a 7 hour bus ride to get diagnosed and medicated).

So, how does one move in Bolivia? It’s kind of interesting actually, when you’re moving places without the convenience of mail-ordering, UPS, and your own car to drive to the nearby IKEA. But there is this cool thing. You “encargar” (=encharge?) your giant boxes, cardboard-wrapped bedframes, mattresses, water filters, etc. (because claro, no se puede comprarlo en su sitio = obviously, you can’t buy that in your site—unless you’re a lucky city volunteer). What is to encargar? You bring the stuff to the other side of the bus terminal from where you’d buy your normal ticket. This is the “encomienda” (no translation) side. You find a company that goes where you want your stuff to go (our first leg was Cochabamba to Santa Cruz), give them your stuff, pay a fee, label your stuff, and cross your fingers. They load it onto their bus and when the bus gets to the destination, they’ll hold it in their oficina de encomiendas at that terminal, until you come to collect it. Basically like a shipping service, but through the bus system…I think it’s a pretty good idea if you take care to protect your stuff and not send expensive stuff. When I move my stuff to my site tomorrow, I’ll be piling it onto the top of a much smaller bus, but the great thing is it’s TOTALLY normal, and nobody minds the hassle.

The good news is that I have a house (someone from the Santa Cruz office actually made the trip to my site to set up my living arrangement, score!). The bad news is I have very limited information about it, so it’s hard to know what to buy exactly. I can get many things I would need about 3 hours away, so if I’m suddenly in need of some furniture, then I can go to that town, I guess. I’m just going to buy the very basics, and a lot of groceries because those will be a lot harder to obtain.

So how am I feeling about everything? Nervous, definitely, but at the same time pretty tranquilo. We have the first three months where we have to do a community diagnostic, but it’s also expected that you just spend a lot of time hanging out and getting to know the people. The point is that you shouldn’t start making any big plans based on what you think your community should have, but rather based on a thorough study and working knowledge of the place. I really believe that this is what sets the Peace Corps apart from other development agencies, even if the projects at times seem less fancy and grandiose. If you work this system well, you can create sustainable changes in peoples’ lives, I believe. I’m really excited to just be able to set my own schedule to a degree, cook for myself, read some books, make some Bolivian friends (though I’m so sad to leave all my training buddies…it’s cruel and unusual punishment to essentially haze us with such intense shared experiences, and then separate us. In fraternities and ritual cultures in the world, you haze a group so as to make sure they’ll stay together!) and get going on the volunteering thing.

I’ve changed my mailing address on the side there, though anything that had been sent to Cochabamba will reach me as well. If you’re so inclined, I actually would LOVE birthday cards/letters/presents this year (the big day is June 14th)…but my standard “donate it to a good cause” still holds, I realize how expensive it is to send anything to here, and I suppose I don’t need anything that I can’t get. But oh a new American Apparel tri-blend thick-strapped oversized tank top sounds like a dream right now. Just if you do choose to send something, please follow the guidelines, to be sure I can receive and appreciate what you’ve sent.

I’m safe, I’m happy (with the usual qualifiers), and hope you all are too.