There are more people who believe they are Napolean, than have done Peace Corps

April 23 2008

my dear friend Ben is an inspiration. His crackpot ideas always make me laugh and thanks to him we have this lovely blog title.

So I am here stuck in Sucre waiting for transport to my site. Tuesday the Priest said he would call and update me on the condition of the truck, it is in the shop. No word until today when I found out that yes I probablly wouldn't leave until Friday.
TIB (this is Bolivia)

Stuck am I without my fellow B-47's to hang with, but thats cool I can finally upload pictures. And I will use these extra days to get a coffee maker, a good pillow and some paint to make my space comfortable, my own little nest. Then off to site for a few weeks to start the PDA-ing looking for projects and integrating. The plan is to break the kids into groups and invite a group a week to cook with me. The reasons for this are threefold.
One: I get to eat some variety.
Two: The kids get to try something different
Three: We become friends faster and I can learn their names

other preliminary projects seem to be worm composting, English classes, planting gardens, and working with the University student on our bee colonies. I believe he is writing a thesis on Apicultura. Vamos a ver ( we will see). Quick wins are what we are looking for at this moment so I don't feel totally useless and the school recognizes my abilities and dedication. Don Hugo, the administrator of the building has grand plans for starting a nursery and fish farming. And I am interested in cleaning up the olives and grapes, but must figure out the growing seasons and such. There is such a market in Sucre for organic and locally grown products because of all the tourists and the restaurants that cater to tourists. So I think we will be looking at marketing the products the kids make which is just totally rad. We can design a label and everything, t-shirts even.

Speaking of t-shirts the Sucre crew has grand plans. Said plans I can not divulge at this time due to some surprises for IST (in service training) in three months when we all return to Coch for two weeks. But I will say the Sucre band will definitely have a shirt, or two or three. You see the band has many names for we shall play many types of music and need different Alias'.
So far we are
The Albino Cockroaches: our grunge soundings
The Chicken Burgers: our classic rock musings and
Los Perezosos de Cinco Dedos (The five fingered Sloths/lazies): our Bolivian creations

Not much else to say since I was all pumped to get to site and am now stuck...but i have no doubt the next two weeks will pass like molasses and before I know it I will be back in Sucre to celebrate my birthday and will bring with me long long posts since I will have so much time to write an think these upcoming days. Actually maybe I will have a short story, I was thinking of writing one about two tree stumps we chanced upon one night at Marqa. I shall work on a draft.

Till then keep well all of you. Me I am doing just that for I am realizing, re-learning, understanding that there is nothing better than patience and knowing that time just happens and what you do in it is reliant only on what you wish to do most. Doing something that you know will work instead of worrying about what is stuck makes life a whole lot easier. With that said, I love that I am in Sucre and look forward to whats next.

peas and love and beets, always beets to eat and jam to
lebo

Read this second, more recent April 14^th, 2008

We won; our garden won one of three prizes! And Carla told us today it actually was the best

Well watered, good variety, well weeded, presence of organic pesticides (marigolds), fenced in..Awesome.

What else, passed the handbook exam, theoretical bees and product transformation, and practical plant and seed and pest identification, so does that mean I am qualified to be a pcv??? I guess.

Lots to say but crazy week ahead with swear in and leaving host families so when there is time to reflect I will say more. Post office stroke continues, the winter is approaching with chilly morning breezes and I am throughout it all still here being.

Here is my commitment statement to Peace Corps that we read the other day.

One year ago I lost my identity. It has been twelve months since I have spent at least five hours a day in a studio where my mind was focused on movement, musicality, expression, speechless existence in space. I used to get antsy after a week of not dancing, my muscles would twitch and I had so much energy I wouldn’t sleep. It is bittersweet to realize I haven’t felt that again.

I danced for 13 years, 11 of them were wonderful. For 9 years I was beautifully trained in the Vagonova classical Russian Ballet Technique. I am fourth generation in line directly with Agrapina Vagonova herself. It is a delicate technique very stylized and precise, but with a frothy majestic overtone. The last four years I trained at Marymount Manhattan College Ballet and Modern Dance. My dancing was too pretty and too exact it didn't fit into the 20th century distortion that George Balanchine brought to Ballet. I totally respect what he did, but as liberal as I am, when it comes to Ballet I am a pure classicist. The Modern I loved, it was so different and allowed me to move in so many new ways. But with Ballet we clashed they wanted me to change and I was so insulted and stubborn so I didn't. It was good though because it allowed me to realize that it wasn’t for me and I began to feel really selfish. Growing up in a family where social justice defined everything dance just didn’t suffice.

Leaving dance was on of the hardest things I have ever had to do. It defined me; I didn’t really know who I was without it. It took me two years to finally stop; who was I going to be if I didn’t dance? On top of that everyone was telling me I would regret leaving and that I couldn’t let my talent go to waste, and I listened to them instead of myself for two years.

My parents were great, behind me 100% but they reminded me I would have to do something after graduation. So I looked to what made me happy and it was travel and language and sharing and learning and teaching and giving back and I was lead to Peace Corps. I didn't know what it would be like at all, but the idea of it fit and so I jumped. The biggest decision I had actually made for myself in years and it feels so good, still, to be rediscovering. I think that’s why I am so happy all the time because I am seeing things in a new way. Everyday has been fascinating learning something new figuring out who I am in a new place, but mostly I love that I am here able to appreciate where I come from knowing there are things I bring to the table with the expectation that there are even more things I can take away. I know I can do some good, help kids to learn so they have more opportunities and ways in which they can work to give something back, to their communities, to Bolivia.

My favorite book my mom would always read to me is Miss Rumphius, the Lupin Lady.

When Miss Rumphius was young her grandfather who lived in a house by the sea would tell her of all his travels to exotic lands. And Miss Rumphius would say "When I grow up I too want to travel the world and when I have seen it all I too will live by the sea."

“That is all very well, little Alice", her grandfather would say,

"But there is a third thing you must do"

"You must do something to make the world more beautiful"

So Miss Rumphius grew up and she visited all the exotic lands, climbed mountains rode camels found deserted beaches and when she was old moved into a house by the sea. But she wasn't happy; she still had one thing left to do. She had to do something to make the world more beautiful. So after a walk one evening where she saw remains of the summer’s lupin she pulled out a seed catalogue and ordered boxes of seeds. That spring Miss Rumphius carried seeds in her pockets wherever she went and the people thought she was crazy. But when the summer came and the lupin were everywhere in the town, along the rode, in the hills and the children could gather bundles everyday Miss Rumphius knew she had succeeded in her third task. She had done something to make the world more beautiful and she was happy.

I too am committed to the third task. So I’m going to maintain some bees, help harvest some veggies, learn a few sentences in Quechua that generate laughter and plant lilies of the valley, my favorite. I’m going to share something and learn something all the while making the world more beautiful.

Sometime in the beginning of April

If one has food porn

One should have adequate FPV (food porn vocabulary)

So a common topic amongst us here in PC Bolivia is our dietary adventures. It starts out with, so rice or pasta with your potatoes today and then quickly evolves into what we have discovered has been termed food porn. Yes we give into the desire and can’t help but talk of all those delicacies we have willingly left behind for two years. So we have been salivating and dreaming these past few weeks during training and yesterday when we found the German bakery in Sucre with divine chocolate cake we, Ben (JB- just Ben, there are three in the group) and I decided we really needed a word to describe our delight when we are able to treat our taste buds. We decided it had to be something like transcendence because that is naturally what we feel when consuming. So simply enough we came up with tranze, tranzear in the verb form, thanks to Helen, so we can say me da tranze and me pone tranzeado.

Needless to say the title of the blog came from this conversation as well as

BLG: beard licking good

And

BSI: beard scene investigation

Since when one has a beard, culinary delights can often be experienced more than once thanks to the lingering bits. One can also recall events of the previous evening through the reminder of the caught food. TSM: taste sense memory

We got real into acronyms as well and have begun encryption of this wonder of the spoken word. But least we forget, we also learned how to sign Sucre, Llama and Bolivia. It gave us some lovely ideas for t-shirts so we are working on that hopefully with some success before these last two weeks of training are up.

So my site is loverly. The four days flew by and I was quite impressed at my ability to understand and be understood. It was actually real neat to not speak English for an extended period of time. My last night there I did have a mini English lesson though. We worked on the vowels and sang Raffi’s I like to eat apples and bananas.

Side note: They liked it. For a while now I have been trying to figure out the obsession Bolivia has with tacky. But its not tacky here, it is totally the fashion to have loony toons characters and wwf posters pasted on the micro bus walls, and my 22 year old sister has a whinnie the pooh back pack and it totally flies. So the kids liking the silly song didn’t surprise me but just added to my query…still confused but I think it might be as simple as the bigger, brighter more outrageous the better. It is more fun that way I guess. But where does it come from?

SO the kids, yes they are great. I arrived Monday night to applause and bouquets of flowers and singing. After dinner I was given a tour and ended up in the assembly room where they had prepared a program (yes programs were there) where I got a flower wreath to wear and a box of chocolates and got to hear songs, dance all the traditional dances and sees a few skits. It was the best welcome ever.

The first day I spent with Don Hugo, the administrator of the building, which is btw (by the way) the locale where Jose Marie Serrano wrote Bolivia’s first constitution, we went with the groundskeeper, Don Mario up into the mountains to see why the water flow to the reservoir wasn’t as strong as usual. We found that the spring has been clogged by fallen rocks so were going to clean it on Wed, but then the rains came and they lasted until Friday and it was cold and I was glad for my stripped smart wool socks and silk sleeping sheet, again.

We worked a bit in the gardens, preparing the land for the students to plant in their individual plots and we weeded the grounds too. I helped the cook shell beans one afternoon and chatted with the resident doctor. She is super nice and super proud of her office fully stocked with whatever the kids would need. She loves her job and the kids, it was really inspiring. Actually all the staff is so devoted to the kids, I love that. My last day there a teacher was leaving for good and she cried during her goodbye and well it just made me realize that I am really lucky to be in this place where I have so many friendships to make and things to learn as a result. I was telling mom and dad on the phone today how it is such a different thing to become friends with people you can’t talk to so easily. You know I have just been thinking how can people really know who I am if I can’t speak to them the way I am used to. It’s really hard to be sarcastic in Spanish. And then Spanish sarcasm is different too, hmmm. Quite the challenge but it really feels cool when you do have conversations where things click and you can just tell that it is a turning point. I love thinking about when I really knew my friends were my friends, there is always that moment. Debatable, but there.

Dot.

Venice hostel, white bread tomato tuna sandwich.

Alias.

701.

Western Civ.

Lost in Garre du Nord.

APPI.

Legos in the playroom, I think.

And now I have all these great trainee friends and we are all off on our own going to nourish our little corners and find more friends and defining moments. It is a beautiful thing no?

Lassie the dog is hanging out front I can see her from the balcony; she is sweet, real quiet and curious. And her puppies equally divine creatures, though they like our garden a little too much. But it is growing and surviving and all these school buses are driving by right now and whistling and cheering on the awkward teen couple twirling in front of my driveway. And back to the garden which our teachers have said is the best so far which adds to the completeness of the setting sun behind the row of Eucalyptus, making my red toe nails sparkle in the filtered beams.

Oh did I mention my site is a two hour walk from any transportation. And the priest comes only on Friday and Monday to transport the teachers. And there is a two month period where everyone leaves for vacation. So far no twins, mazes or anyone named Johnny, Juan maybe……