Journals
Tuesday,Sep 6 2005, 01:18:07 PMBolivia News
Tuesday September 5th 8:30 am
What is going on. today is more of a free day then I am used to. but more because i already wrote my 3 page spanish paper last night. We are going to go to the supermarket here in cochabamba in order to buy stuff for dinner tonight. WE are staying in the training center tonight so that we do not have to wake up at the but crack of dawn to arrive at the training center by 8 am. Write me back and I really hope that I here from you guys sooner rather than later.
GEoff
Sunday September 4th 2005 3:30 PM
Well the ags lost by a field goal last night. I can’t even begin to express how mad this makes me. I mean here I am over 2000 miles away and I want to hurt something. Maybe I should go throw rocks at rabid dogs or something. For a side note, Bolivia is definitely not a place for animal lovers to come. Animals here are for working, beating, and eating. There are so many dogs in the street that chase you at night etc that you have to learn to throw rocks at the dogs or else you have a good chance of getting bit.
This morning I woke up at 530 to help my brother milk 20+ cows on his grandparent’s farm. It was pretty cool and not very difficult because they have 2 milking machines. Oh yeah I also saw something that I have no idea what it was at first. I was herding up the cows and noticed that one of the cows had something sticking out of what I assumed was its butt at first. My anatomy knowledge of cows is very limited but on closer inspection I realized that the cow was about to give birth and what I was looking at was a hoof coming out of a very different part of the cows anatomy. Anyways I got to see the birth of the calf. I also did my first washing of clothes today since I left dallas. It was definitely the first and last time that I am going to wash my own clothes. Hand washing stinks. I am totally going to pay someone in town here to do it for me. It wouldn’t be so bad if I had a minute of free time but I really don’t.
Last thing about doing laundry here in Bolivia, well here in Bolivia they sometime use electric lines to hang up laundry to dry and these lines look similar and are similar places to the clothes lines. So, uh, yeah when you hang wet socks on the line that is going to the outdoor speakers on the patio it pretty much shocks the hell out of you. Not that I was that dumb or anything ;) . Right. So next time you come to Bolivia and hand wash your own clothes make sure you socks are fairly dry and you don’t hang them up on a live electric line.
Geoff
Saturday September 3, 2005 7:30 AM
It has been a long time since I last wrote. Everything is going well here. It is hard sometime though to think about the lack of opportunity that some of the children have here. I just don’t think that even with all of my travels I have ever encountered as many poor children as I have here in Bolivia. I guess that is why I am here. In order to make things just a little bit better for the kids here.
Other news. This is really funny. We went to a high school yesterday that is a decently funded by Bolivian standard and is kind of in the outskirts of Cochabamba. Think a Buda outside of Austin type of school but much less money and almost all farming children. What a different system of education they have here. There was not much classroom discipline and many other things that are hard to describe. No books, only handouts and some chalk and a chalkboard. That is not the funny part about all of this though. So the bell rings for the passing period. Let me start over, there are basically 2 of us that are very tall and gringo looking compared to the rest of the group. Me and this other guy Jonathan. Anyways when the passing period started we were bombarded by teenage girls 14-18 who wanted our autographs and wanted us to write something in their books. I am talking totally backstreet boy style here. Swamped . . . what a strange feeling thinking that someone wanted me to sign an autograph LOL can you even imagine. We could barely make it out to the Peace Corps land cruisers that were taking us back to our houses. I totally knew I should have formed a boy band in high school. Not that my head is big about this experience or anything LOL.
Geoff
Wednesday,Aug 31 2005, 11:15:28 PMMore to come this weekend
I typed this out on a friends computer but it didn´t all come out alright. so I will be posting like 6 pages on saturday or sunday.
Tuesday august 29th 2005 9:42 pm
Today was a great day. I ate well, and was able to go to the market where I bought several things that I needed. Going to the market was cool because I was able to get some things that I wanted to buy. The public transportation system here is good because not many people can afford cars. It is interesting the way they worked everything out. As for my town they call me the Michael Jordan of ...
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Saturday,Aug 27 2005, 12:09:49 PMTyped and posted Sat aug 26th
Fri august 25th 2005 1:32 pm
Things are going well here in bolivia. For those of you who know about culure shock. i am definately in the honeymoone stage.
Thurs Aug 25th 2005 3:46 pm ...
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Tuesday,Aug 23 2005, 04:55:57 PMYesterdays journal entry
Hey guys well I am here safe in miami and have been doing initial training / meeting people / and just getting to know some of the 20 people that I will be serving for the next two years with in Bolivia. We just all got back from little havana where we ate great cuban food, a first for me. Everyone seems really nice and I think that I will definately have a chance to make some interesting friends over the next two years. One of the guys who is serving is a U.S. Citizen who has a mexican mother , has never lived more than a summer in the U.S. becuase his ...
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Monday,Aug 22 2005, 03:33:42 AMFinal Goodbye, for now at least
Well I sit here at my house in Bedford, excited about what lays ahead for me but sad that I am leaving so many great friends back here. It was with a heavy heart that I left College Station this subdat morning. I don't know how I can put in to words how great each and every one of my friends is. I always knew that I had amazing people in my life, but I suppose that until the finality that came with my last drinks with friends that some people never have in a lifetime, my last night at the chicken, my last night singing guitar late night at Mary Lake, my ...
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