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.