Expect the Unexpected

                Hello friends and family (and random blog readers if I happen to have any)! As I write this it is pouring outside, which, because the rain is typically accompanied by cooler weather, is always a wonderful treat as we get closer to summer here in the southern hemisphere. There have been a lot of interesting happenings since my last post, so in order to keep this one to a reasonable length, I’m just going to focus on these events and may not have any particularly deep thoughts. But they should at least give you more of a feel for the culture in Bolivia, and I’ll do my best to think of something really meaningful for my next post!

                So in my last post, we were getting ready for Halloween celebrations! Being the volunteer in charge of heading up all the preparations for Halloween, I have to admit I definitely got more stressed out about this than I should have. Halloween isn’t celebrated too much in Bolivia, but since there are always American volunteers here at the Hogar, the girls are used to having big Halloween celebrations. Because of a couple of years the majority of the girls literally ended up crying because they were so scared of whatever haunted house the volunteers put together, the religious sisters, or madres, here said we could do something for Halloween, but nothing too grand (which is obviously what the girls wanted). So we decided to have a costume contest and make apple pies for the winners in the categories of most scary, most pretty, and most funny costume (I have become an expert at baking apple pies!). We informed the girls a week ahead of time about this so that they would have time to get their costumes ready, but the only problem was we realized the day before or the day of Halloween that the girls didn’t really understand the concept of costumes. Apparently the volunteers had gone with more of the haunted house/ scary movie thing in the past and because Halloween in Bolivia is viewed by a lot of people as the devil’s holiday, a lot of the girls understood dressing up as something scary but didn’t understand the concept of funny or pretty costumes. They would come up to us and ask, “How do I dress up? Do I just wear black and look scary?” But luckily we had (sometimes only one) girl that dressed up in each category, so we were able to give away the prizes. (As for us volunteers, most of us dressed up as minions, which was a repeat costume for me, but I was okay with that J). We also had a scavenger hunt where all of us volunteers hid ourselves in the hogar with candy, and if the girls were able to find us, they got a piece of candy, since trick-or-treating with 100 girls and five people giving out candy would not have gone well. Basically the moral of the story on Halloween was that we still had a lot to learn about Bolivian culture and how to fit in!

                Speaking of interesting facts about Bolivian culture, one thing that I have had to get used to here is being ready to leave on a random excursion at any time without any advance notice. I can give you many examples of this just over the past couple of weeks, but I’m going to focus on two. First of all, one day a couple of weeks ago, I was opening the library like a normal afternoon when the madre in charge told all of us volunteers that we were leaving to go on a trip right then. The main purpose of the trip ended up being to look at a water tank because we are potentially having a new one constructed, and apparently the best way to get in touch with water tank architects is to go find a water tank being constructed and then go talk to the people constructing it! But after that, we also went to visit a smaller orphanage outside of Montero in the Bolivian countryside. We were on our way there when we saw two cowboys (or the Bolivian equivalent of cowboys) riding their horses on a ranch next to us. Upon seeing this, madre asked us if we wanted horses. I really like horses, so of course I said, “I would love a horse!” thinking she was joking. Following my reply, she promptly told the driver to stop the car, got out, and shouted out to the random horseback riders, asking if we could ride their horses. So we took turns riding one of the horses, which was a lot of fun. The hogar that we were visiting was really cool as well because it is also a mini-zoo with different types of monkeys, turtles, goats, chickens, bunnies, and weird ostrich-like birds that really reminded me of Kevin from the movie Up, especially because there were little baby ones following us around. I unfortunately don't have any pictures from this excursion because I didn't know to bring my camera, but I do have some pictures from another excursion to Santa Cruz where the girls sang at madre's brother's fifteen year ordination celebration mass!

                My second example of typical Bolivian culture was from last Monday. We have lunch at the convent once a week and one of the sisters was talking to one of us about some pretty waterfalls around here, and said she would take us one day. We ended up mentioning this to madre during our water tank excursion, and she said that maybe we could go the next week. So that Sunday at 9:30 pm, the madre working at the hogar tells us that we are leaving to go to the waterfalls at 5:30 am the next morning, and that we needed to bring plates and cups. We get up and meet at the convent, and the sister there asks us if one of the older girls is with us, because apparently she was supposed to be coming too (which she also did not know until we woke her up to get her). Then because it was raining, madre told us that we might move our trip to go hiking in a different, colder area, and to go back and bring warmer clothes as well. Naturally, we thought it was just going to be us and the madres because we were not told otherwise, but we get on a bus, and there are about 50 people on this trip! It turns out that it was an already-scheduled trip for a young adult church group and volunteers and teachers at the kindergarden. We also assumed the waterfalls were relatively close, but when we asked someone on the bus, we were told that it was about four hours away!

                About an hour away from our destination, we get to a sign for the waterfalls and start heading into what looks like a construction site with a creek in the middle. We were all fairly disappointed, expecting a bit of a better view, but it turns out, we weren’t heading to the creek to stop, but we drove the buses right through it! Then the dirt road continued for another hour, during which point the bus in front of us got stuck three times, and everyone had to get out to dig it out of the mud and add leaves before about fifteen guys would push it forward. But finally we made it to the waterfall, and it ended up being beautiful and definitely worth the trouble, like the majority of our unexpected excursions!

Pushing the bus out of the mud

Amazonian waterfall!

Me and Madre Clara!

PS.  I have one last bit of exciting news. One of our girls and her baby brother got adopted! This doesn’t happen very often here, especially when the girls are older, partially because there are very stringent adoption rules about which countries can adopt from Bolivia (the US is not one of those countries). Of course I was excited for them, but sad to see them go as well. I’ll miss them! Luckily I got some pictures with her before she left J.