Wow, I guess we have slacked off a bit on the blog. So I'll try to give a little overview of what has been going on the past few weeks of life:

I guess I should start back in the last week of March. Before spring break my class took a field trip out to the farm of a professor out past La Paz near Lake Titicaca. It was really interesting and I learned a lot. We even got to help with the potato harvest. The day we were leaving the farm, some people from the city who had relatives in the community decided to come invade our prof's land. Under the new constitution if you can't prove the land you own is being used for the social or economic good of the country, it can be taken by the State and redistributed. Some have taken that as free reign to invade any piece of land that isn't being cultivated, not taking into account the traditional Andean methods of rotation and giving the land a break. We had talked about this in class and now it was happening, so we did what any good student would do. We put ourselves in front of the tractor until they left.

Then we made out way to Tiwanaku, a huge site of pre-inca ruins and probably the most sacred place in all of the Andes to the people here. I won't go into the details, but here is a bit of it.

Then came spring break and birthday that we wrote about. Then later we had a return visit by Drew and Tim, who we took to the giant slide to have some fun. We've also had a visit from a British cyclist which was fun, and I think that is all for visits. We have women in the house more often now that they are actually taking the coop seriously and come to practice. We've also stopped the Tuesday night bible study for now because we felt we were too busy (how about an event every night of the week except Monday and Friday!) and needed more time together just chilling or being alone, which has been nice the last couple Tuesday nights. We were also recently given a 40 pound pumpkin from the neighbor's pumpkin patch and we have been feasting on pumpkin soup and bread and stuff for a couple weeks now.

Then this past week I went to the festival of Santa Vera Cruz with my class. It is an all night thing where the Catholic celebration of the Vera Cruz and an ancient Andean fertility ritual have been fused together somehow. People come from all over and light their candles and make an altar burning their animals' poop and placing small figures of animals and vegetables around the fire to ask this image of the crucifix that they would be fecund this year and produce well. Also, people wait in a interminably long line in order to place flowers and candles at the feet of this crucifix and pray for children. Those who don't want any more leave small baby dolls at the image, and those who do pick up the ones left by others. It was interesting.




The next morning I took Ann with me to go out to a farm in Sipe Sipe for the the day with my class. We learned a but about the plants there and how each of them has a special use, and then we got to pick our lunch and cook and eat it. We spent the afternoon sitting on the porch just shooting the breeze and enjoying each other's company and the great food.

Oh yeah, and how could I forget? This week WE GOT A MOTORCYCLE!!!! It's a 1995 Honda Degree XL250, 6 speed, with big, knobby tires to go anywhere in this country. Or maybe anywhere at all, maybe we'll just drive it home! John and Jenny got one too as did another teacher at their school so we are going to start a gang and roam around Bolivia. I'm sure we will have some more stories from there soon. I think i'm going to get a driver's liscence today! Here's another one: Shake and bake!