Bolivian Cultural Dances

I was in the city this weekend and there was a parade full of dances including the Chacarera (from Tarija) which is one of my favorite dances. I was able to take videos of some of the dances which I am going to try and upload. If they work I will be so happy you can enjoy in these wonderful dances! Now you will actually be able to SEE what I am talking about. In other news, things are wrapping up in my site since the school year is coming to an end. I am planning a halloween party for the kids so that should be fun. Thanksgiving PC style is also coming up and there will be a party in the city for all the volunteers. My re-connect is also coming up in November where I will be going back to Cochabamba to meet up with my whole group. I am very much looking forward to November! Oops, camera died trying to upload video. Next time!

Up the mountain we go!

This is San Fransisco

At the start of the climb

So in my last entry I think I said I would talk about how the Artesania fair went. The fair is held each year in a different town and all of the towns in the area come out to showcase their artesania work. Some towns are off the paved highway between Tarija and Bermejo, aka my site BUT some of the more rural towns are in the mountains. This year the fair was being held in San Fransisco- a very rural town 3 hours into the mountians. So last weekend I had to hike up a mountain for 3 hours before getting to San Fransisco where the fair was being held.This basically meant that the women in La Merced’s women’s group were also hiking and carrying everything (their artesania work and food to sell at the fair) on their backs over the mountains for 3 hours. Every time I would hike up a steep hill I thought it would end, but it did not. The mountains went on forever until I was very sweaty and out of breath. Coming back down was not that much easier because after awhile it does hurt on the knees. In the end I am glad I climbed that mountain because it gave me a greater appreciation of where I live and made me respect the people who live out there even more. Not to mention that there are people who live even further out there after San Fransisco. Anyway, getting back to the fair...my friend Hannah hiked up the mountain with me and we participated in a dance with my women’s group. Our costume consisted of a sheet that was pinned up by the shoulders. In the pictures I am putting up of us my counterpart is the woman on the left of me. So the day consisted of setting up the display of the women’s artesania work in the morning and later on the judges came around to ask questions to all the groups who were displaying work. From what I heard the judging consited of the number of works women were showing, how long they took to make and if they were hand made or machine made. In the afternoon some people presented some short skits or role plays, followed by the dances. So that's about it for the fair. I am also including a picture of me and my student from one of the lower grades. She is a very sweet girl and is always trying to play with me. The picture with her is one of my favorites. In the end the whole experience was wonderful and made me feel even more connected to my women’s group and community.

Hello People! Things are still going well in my site. I am still helping out at the school and my friend from a nearby site came to visit me the other day so I now have some pictures of me in action. In the pictures I am working with the younger kids at the school and we are doing a race where they have to match up the correct pictures of different types of foods to their nutritional groups. We played the game a few times because it always takes repetition before they really understand. We have been working on the same general theme of the basic food groups for the past few weeks now. I just have to figure out a new way of presenting the material every class. The older kids are showing some progress but it does take a lot of repetition. Even though there are only 3 food groups in Bolivia, (they have a different system than the states) the kids still have a hard time remembering what types of food are actually in each group. Aside from school stuff I also had my first “practice” with my women’s group for a dance we are going to be doing at an Artesania festival coming up in 2 weeks. The dance is very simple and the women have only been talking about practicing it for the past 3 weeks. Generally meetings start 30 mins. late which is pretty good for Bolivia. There are volunteers who have said they waited 1-5 hours for some meetings to start but the women in my community are pretty good. What I found funny was that on the day we FINALLY started dancing there were probably only 3 women from my community in attendance. So my friend and I are going to be dancing (she was visiting that day) as well as one of the nurses in training from the health post who is from La Paz. See all doctors and nurses have to do some practice in the campo (for very little money) before they go back for some more school and finish. It’s sort of like a service they do for their country before becoming real doctors and nurses and it’s almost like volunteering since they don’t get paid much. Anyways, the point of me saying this is that the nurse who is doing the dance just arrived in my community so already half of the members doing it will be sorta like outsiders. It’s ok though, I am glad I have something new to do now for the next couple of weeks. Oh and also the place where this Artesania fair is going to be held is in another town I believe is called San Fransisco and to get there the women from the group walk something like 3 hours up a mountain and possibly at night. SO this means I will be walking up a mountain in a couple of weeks. It’s an interesting way to integrate myself but I think it will be really good. I am also glad I have been getting to know more about the other communities near me. I think it’s great that when an event is going on somewhere everyone from nearby towns always seems to know and some people decide to go and celebrate. This weekend I am supposed to go to Entre Rios which is another town a bit further away for what I believe will be another tournament. I have been wanting to go there because I hear it is very nice. On a final and total random note, one of the girls from my classes came to visit me last weekend. She just showed up at my door after lunch. I was in the middle of reading so she came in and I gave her some hot chocolate. We ended up playing chess (yes, she actually knew more or less how to play) and even though I could have won like a million times I kept helping her out with her moves and telling her where to go. I know I am no master chess champion but somehow I still managed to help out a little Bolivian with her game. We also played pick up sticks which she kept winning so that was fun. I also had to make my lunch so I did and offered her some. She asked me where are the potatoes? I thought that was very funny and I just started laughing. Well that is my random story for now. Of course a few days later I get a knock on my door at 8AM (this NEVER happens) and I look outside and the same girl and her friend are standing there. They wanted to make sure I was coming to school. That had to be like the cutest thing ever. PC always warned us that at the beginning a lot of kids might always be around our house but in my site I have total privacy and no kids did that at all so this is a first for me but I think it's nice they feel more comfortable coming to talk to me now instead of just staring at me which is what PC was talking about when you first arrive at your site. Ok so that's it for now. I am having a good time getting to know more of the kids at my site and will be back with more stories as they come.

1st month in site

My room and kitchen

The house where I live (you can't see my room from here)
Well I have def. moved into my site since the last time I wrote. My first couple of weeks there were really slow but I now have more or less of a schedule. I help out with the English class on Monday and on Tuesday I teach nutrition. On Wednesday I go to the women’s group meeting. The rest of the days are free but I usually visit my friends at their sites or come into the city sometimes or hang out in my community and talk to people. I went to a ¨tournament¨ type of thing where the nearby communities got together to play one another in different sports. It was mainly for the younger kids in the elementary schools. The next day the professors played eachother...and then drank. I also went to a mini festival at my friend’s site where I got to see lots of local/traditional dances and one which is really popular here in Tarija called the Chacarera. The music has guitar and violins but I had never heard it before I came to Tarija. The dancers were really good. The women wear these long dresses that they twirl around (think Flamenco but slower) and the men wear what I would call a Latino cowboy type of look with boots that they do a complicated stomping step in as the main part of the dance. Mainly I have been having a great time here getting to know the customs and culture of Tarija. More people in my community know me and I know them which is also very nice because I am beginning to feel like it is more of a home now. I bought a stove and have turned half my room into my kitchen so I can now cook which is great. I am also looking forward to the re-connect with my group in November beacuse I will be able to see my friends I have not seen for the past 4 months! Well it was a slow start at the beginning of August but I feel more confortable in my community now that more people know who I am. The kids I teach nutrition to are the younger ones (K-3rd grade) and they are really sweet. The older kids (4th-5th) work on the English. The challenge is in preparing activities that different grade levels can participate in all at the same time while still learning something. My counterpart has been really helpful in supporting me in the classroom so I am very thankful for that. The younger kids are what keeps me motivated because even though they might get off track sometimes you can generally tell they are happy and excited to learn about something different, especially when we play games. Well it’s the middle of September and I feel like I’ve just broken the ice in my community so I hope everything continues in a positive direction from here on out. I miss everyone back home dearly so feel free to send me an email anytime cuz I would love to hear from you: aliskov@wesleyan.edu Be well and take care!

Site Pics

I know I need to write more but here are some pics of my site for now!

Site Visit and Swear-In!

OK, yes there is SO much catching up to do it’s not even funny. I have been so crazy busy since swearing-in that it’s all going by like a blur. Last time I wrote I think I said I would talk about my site visit so let’s start from there. I had a really good site visit! My site is among the mountains and lies about 1.5-2 hours outside of the city of Tarija. The name of my town is called La Merced and I am nearby 3 other volunteers so I am very happy about that. There are a whole bunch of fruit trees in my site: organges, madarins, peaches (apparently there is a whole peach season) oh and avocadoes. There is a small 2 room school house that I will most likely be doing a lot of work in with children who are elementary-middle school ages- more to come on that. My work partners are 2 women who are very nice. One is a teacher at the school and the other is the head of the Junta Escolar which I am told is sort of similar to the PTA in the states. Anyways I am super happy I got placed with women work partners beacuse I think it will make integration easier and just an overall more confortable work setup for me. During my site visit I was in the city of Tarija for a few days and then spent a few nights at my site. I mainly hung out with my work partner’s daughters (19 and 13) and they showed me around the town. It’s a SMALL place of about 230 people and something like 50 families. Now that her girls are grown up they go to school in the city. They told me they come home some weekends and that I would see them again. They showed me around their property and we took a small hike and I saw the mill that they use to help harvest the corn. We also walked across a hanging bridge or as I would like to call it: the bridge of death. It is basically a bunch of wood boards and some wire. I also got introduced to some people in the community so that was nice. I also visited my friend Hannah’s site (B-45) who is 10-15 mins. down the road from me as well as Susan (B-42) who is more like 20 mins. away from me. Chris (B-45) is 30-45 mins. away in the opposite direction. I like that I am away from the city but not too far and yet still have volunteers who are close to me. On the last day of my site visit baby pigs were born overnight and I got to hold them the next day! They were SO cute, and it’s probably the only time they will be cute so I was glad I was there for that. When we flew back to Cochabamba there was only like a week and half left of training but it felt like an eternity. The last few days at the training center were especially hard to sit through because we kept reviewing things we had gone over a million times. Then we got a bunch of forms we will probably need throughout our service and took our final exams. There was a handbook exam, safety exam, cultural exam and technical skills exam. Eveyrone passed and we all swore in last Friday. The swear-in was quick and with few speeches. A volunteer from B-45, Brandon, gave a speech about our group that was HILARIOUS. It was seriously one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard. My friend recorded it on her camera. After the swear-in everyone went out in the city and got dressed up in costumes. The theme of the party was “people at a truck stop” but that turned into go as anything crazy you can think of. I went as my friend in the group and wore a lot of pink- something everyone should know I wouldn’t normally do. We also had people go as: a snake charmer, a sexy cholita, ravers, Hugh Hefner, Bolivian teenagers, a Wal-Mart cashier, cat robbers and the list goes on. So the last few days in Cochabamba were probably the most fun I’ve had all training! Then we all said our sad goodbyes as everyone left all over the country to go to their sites on Sunday. My flight left in the afternoon and I was in Tarija in an hour. So I am now in Tarija and moving into my site. It's been a few crazy days so far and we shall see how it continues to go with getting everything to my site.

Tech Week

Hey People! You need updates and I’m bad with blogging so let’s get to it. Tech Week was very similar to Tech Weekend but this time instead of being in Cochabamba we went to Santa Cruz to visit some sites. The bus ride took 11-12 hours to get to the city where we spent 1 night. The next day we went to a site called Concepcion which is about 5 hours outside the city. Conce (as everyone calls it) is a somewhat larger site and has all modern living necessities such as internet, calling centers, running water, electricity etc. We did a Teacher Taller or Workshop there with some teachers from Conce and surrounding communities. That lasted a few days where we talked about different learning styles of students and how to implement classroom activities to accommodate theses students. We made up lesson plans with the teachers and went and taught at the local elementary school. From Conce we went to visit 2 much smaller and more rural sites. Both do not have electricity and only one I think has running water. One of the sites is called El Carmen and the other San Miguelito Sur. In both sites we did health fairs where we talked about nutrition and hygiene. We spent a couple of nights in El Carmen in the library that was built by a couple of PCVs a few years back. We slept on mattresses on the floor and in our mosquito nets. Some people even slept outside. They only have latrines in these types of really rural sites and let me tell you if they are constructed weird (aka might be leaking) such as in one of the sites well then they become very not fun to use. I was very glad to get back to Conce where the bathroom was decent. As for the showers, they are cold, but they feel good. Everyone showered a lot on tech week, yay! When we got back to the city we went out one night with some of the SC volunteers to a salsa club. I had a great time getting to know people so that was chill. Then we headed back on the PC bus. I felt like the ride back took FOREVER but we made it! The Monday after tech week everyone found out their sites. I forgot to mention we had another interview about our site placement over tech week. Anyway, on Monday we had a big BBQ where we found out our sites. The sites were in these red clown noses (like balls) that were stuck cleverly inside a big PC Piñata. We broke open the piñata and everyone grabbed a random ball. We went one by one in the center of the circle to yell out the site of whoever we had in our hands. I actually had my own site! That’s when I found out I would be going to Tarija! I was so excited and it was so much fun. So now I know my site and it’s called La Merced. It’s about an hour an a half outside of the city and VERY close to other volunteers so I am very happy. This past week I have been here in Tarija on my site visit getting to know everything. I have so much to tell about the site visit but I will save it for my next blog and when I get back to Cochabamba. We are leaving tomorrow evening but I will be there in an hour since Tarija people get to FLY (sweet deal) because we are farther away aka Southern Bolivia. What I can say for now is that I had a great site visit and am very excited to start work there in a few weeks!!! Once we get back we swear-in in 2 weeks I just can’t believe it : )

Tech Weekend

Pointing to where I am from on the world map by JICA and PC

School Room in Tiraque

Hello Everybody! I have not had time to update the blog these past few weeks as much as I would have liked but here I am to give you all a quick update on what’s been going on over here. Tech weekend was really good. Like I said we went to Tiraque which is a small “town” or pueblito about 1.5-2 hours outside of Cochabamba. We met with the volunteer who currently works there and he showed us around where he works with children and youth- some have parents but some are orphans. The kids stay at a “hogar” or home that I believe is run by an Episcopalian organization. The volunteer doesn’t affiliate much with the religion and it’s more about him helping out the kids with whatever they need. They have a few computers so he does computer classes with them. When we went there we were also able to practice (in groups) giving a computer class. My group taught some of the older kids how to write letters. We did very simple letters and I think they enjoyed it. We did other workshops that dealt with confidence and self-esteem. We saw the greenhouses some volunteers had helped build a few years back and that was pretty cool because veggies are still growing there. We also played with a lot of the younger kids and ran around and had fun. The weekend was very short and went by quickly. Coming up next, or in one day, we have Tech Week. This means we will all be going to visit three more sites but this time for a whole week. The sites we are going to visit are outside of Santa Cruz and they are: Concepcion, El Carmen and San Miguelito Sur. Only one of these sites will be replaced by a volunteer from Integrated Ed. We have a lot of activities planned for tech week including a teacher training workshop and nutrition fair. I will be back with a longer blog update when I get back. Now on the social side of things this past weekend was my birthday weekend and Willy and his brother put together and awesome BBQ for me-Bolivian style of course. This means there was a lot of meat and sausage. I invited everyone from my group (most came) and we had a great time. I have pictures of the party and tech weekend but I will be back later to post them up cuz my camera is at home. I just wanted to get a quick update posted so you all know I am alive and well. CIAO!

Sites!

Well I’m back again and this time with some exciting news. Yesterday in our afternoon session of Tech. training we were given the list of sites where all the Integrated Ed. Volunteers will be going! It is a list of 14 places that includes info about where the regional office is for each place, type of work we might do there, climate, indigenous languages spoken (if any) and types of communication available at each site. It would probably be better if I DID NOT list each site here just for security purposes of PC and the volunteers in my group but I can at least say where the regional offices are. There are three sites whose regional office is in Cochabamba, one in Sucre, three in Tarija and the rest are in Santa Cruz. So the most sites are outside of Santa Cruz- where it’s hot. One of the sites overlaps with Basic Sanitation work but the rest are focused on Integrated Ed. I.E. work includes things such as health, HIV/AIDS, computers, teacher training, working with youth, women’s groups, nutrition, libraries etc. We have interviews next week where we are going to be able to discuss which sites we are most interested in. PC does a good job of taking our opinions into account which I really do appreciate. I am interested in going to Tarija because it is one of the regions I do not know at all and it is also on the border with Argentina which could be nice for possible travel later on. That’s it for the sites.

I thought you might also be interested in knowing more about what we’ve been doing in training. Well we finished our gardening unit and that is my garden in the picture above. Willy and his brother Mauricio came to my house and helped construct this massive fence around it. I say massive because originally PC gave us the idea to use sticks and the tape from inside cassettes for a fence- it apparently keeps the chickens and other unwanted animals away. Anyways, since my house has all sorts of animals I thought a real fence might be better but I didn’t think they would actually pull it off! Now I can only hope that some of my food grows! I bought cow manure/compost from next door to enrich the soil before planting. I planted peas, radish, green beans, parsley, cilantro, beets, habas- really big beans similar to lima beans, and pumpkin. I don’t think everything will grow BUT some of it should so that will be really cool.

After the gardening unit we have been working on education, non-formal education, how to lead workshops and domestic violence. We split into groups and each group will be doing a computer workshop and self-esteem workshop. My computer group is doing an advanced session on how to type letters- formal and non-formal depending on the level of our students. In the self-esteem group we are going to be doing some exercises from some self-esteem books- PC resource. These workshops are being implemented as part of our Tech. Weekend this weekend. We are going to visit a volunteer at his site in Tiraque where we will be giving the workshops to children/youth. I will be back with more updates after the weekend to say how the workshops went! Still staying happy and healthy : )

Love,

Alana

P.S. My address during training and for the next couple of months is:

Alana Liskov
Cuerpo de Paz
Casilla 1603
Cochabamba, Bolivia
South America

Small packages may be sent here. If they are bigger I just have to go pick them up at the post office for a small fee.

It's my BLOG!

Plaza Bolivar in Quillacollo

Hello Familia and Friends! Well I am back in Bova=Bolivia once again writing what I hope is the start of many blog posts to come! I am having a great time so far and everyone in my group (B-45) is really nice. Most people are in their mid-20s plus we have 3 married couples so it's a good mix of people. We arrived in Cochabamba but quickly moved to our training/host family sites which are about 30 mins. to an hour outside of Cochabamba depending on what you take to get there and how long you might have to wait. Everyone is living in a little town outside of Quillacollo. I am in a section called Florida and am very close to the girls in my class and my friends-yes I already have some friends : ) I have Spanish class in the morning for 4 hours from 8:30-12:30 and Technical Training in the afternoon from 2:00-6:00. I am in the advanced language class and we are being given the opportunity to do projects in the city as well as learn another indigenous language over the next 3 months. It's a wonderful opportunity and I'm really looking forward to getting started. In Tech. training I am with the group of Integrated Education volunteers and we are all learning to plant gardens. We are going to be planting our own gardens in our back yards. It's an activity that is supposed to get the whole family involved as well as training volunteers on how to grow food. I spent 2 hours today digging up dirt but that is just the beginning. I'm gonna be working on it more tomorrow and of course over the next 3 months. Each day is pretty tiring but it goes by fast so I must be enjoying it! My host family is very nice. I live with a couple in their 40s, their daughter who is 15 but will be 16 soon and a little brother who is 3. Every family has animals and mine has cats (one is blind), dogs (one has a HUGE tumor between it's legs-scary!), a parrot (he speaks Quechua!), chickens, ducks and guinea pigs. They eat the guinea pigs here but I think my family sells most of theirs. My room is very nice (tile floor) and I have a flush toilet and shower (also tile) so I have a pretty nice set up! I am very happy and not sick...yet. Well that about wraps up my first post. I hope my pictures come out!

Love,

Alana