Journals
Friday,Jan 19 2007, 01:35:12 PMJanuary 2007
Friday, January 05, 2007 1:42PM Santa Cruz
Well here I sit in Santa Cruz after a brief stint in the United States which was refreshing and full of great friends, family and food. I think the strangest thing about arriving back in Bolivia is that I left the United States and all the luxuries of the first world only to fall asleep and wake up in Bolivian heat, pollution, and poverty. It was a surreal experience and in a lot of ways I felt like Rip VanWinkle. Tomorrow I am off to San Xavier to talk with the head of the tourist guides there as I am considering a move away from San Antonio. San Xavier has several material advantages including asphalt road only 5 hours from Santa Cruz, a Unesco World Heritage Site in their Jesuit mission, cell phone service, running water, email access and a whole bunch of other luxuries. The main question that I have to decide is if the people in San Xavier are willing and ready to do some work as I have become very frustrated with the apathy that I have encountered in San Antonio. Obviously the main drawback of moving would be leaving the friends that I have made behind in San Antonio. I guess I will have to wait until tomorrow to know a little bit more about the whole situation.
Geoff
Thursday, January 11, 2007 8:55AM San Antonio
Well I got back to San Antonio on Tuesday evening after a harrowing journey in the land cruiser. We got stuck three separate times, and had to push the land cruiser, a 4 wheel drive vehicle, because the road was in such horrible condition. The whole time I am pushing the vehicle, with mud halfway up my shin, I am thinking site change, site change, site change. Please get me out of here. I had a very good visit to San Xavier last Saturday and there seems to be so many more opportunities for work in San Xavier. I would be upset at this point if I didn’t get the chance to make the move and think I many of my frustrations will be mitigated by some of the material luxuries. Besides the material luxuries I was duly impressed that the people there were already doing things without the help of any outside organizations, like running an artisan organization, and giving the tourists passing through good advice on the entire mission circuit. The two other volunteers in my group on the mission circuit, Ashley in San José de Chiquitos, and Shannon in Santiago de Chiquitos, are both very supportive of my possible move as San Xavier is the gateway to the Jesuit mission circuit and almost all tourists going to any of the missions go through San Xavier. So I will be here in San Antonio for a few more days before I have to meet Daniel, my boss so he can get on board with the whole San Xavier site change thing.
Geoff
7:00 PM San Antonio
I forgot to write about the most exciting thing awaiting my arrival in San Antonio. I have a whole bunch of Jalapeños growing in my garden. Some were even big enough to eat yesterday with lunch. Yeah!!! In other news today, I had the first game day coming back to San Antonio and we started with story time with the books that Kay gave me when I was back in the States. I wonder if these kids have ever had anyone read them a story before. After game day I gave out the majority of the helicopter balloon toys that I brought from home and San Antonio turned into a whistling nightmare of amateur aviation for a while. As I was handing out the helicopters I could just see a kid passing out from trying to fill the balloon, or a smaller one choking on some of the parts. Neither has happened so far but only 4 hours have gone by.
Geoff
Thursday, January 18, 2007 6:30 PM Santa Cruz
So here I sit in Santa Cruz. The PC evacuated all of the volunteers out of Cochabamba the other day and made the rest of us evacuate from our villages to townes where there are air strips. This is all due to escalating violence that was happening in Cochabamba city. I have been here for two days and they have now given us the all clear for returning to our sites as everything is normal, at least as normal as Bolivia can be!
In other news it is now official. I am moving sites. I will be leaving San Antonio to move to San Xavier. In many ways it is going to be sad to leave friends that I have made during the past year, but in so many other ways I think that I am just going to be a happier person. Alright well I am off Saturday morning to the Lomerío on my last ever trip in the Micro, thank goodness. After that I will be going to Cochabamba for a meeting and then moving my stuff out in the land cruiser on the first Monday in February.