It is kind of a desert here.

(A decorative wall I found in Huari)

hello everyone! ive been told that im long overdue on a blog entry, although i am going to have to put my foot down and say its only been 2 weeks. i find it a little difficult to keep up, because it takes time to analyze my life and figure out WHAT and HOW in the world to communicate what seems to be daily life for me.

But to humor you, I am still teaching environment classes to seventh and eighth graders in the school that is right across the street from me. I finished a diagnostic of my community in which I was supposed to be figuring out what my work would consist of...so in addition to these classes I have planned to do workshops and classes in the other schools in my municipality (there are probably 10-15 schools, some of course are tiny), continue working with a trash/recycling/compost (with worms) project involving the town schools and maybe other organizations, start an eco-club with kids, work in greenhouses with the government/ngos/etc to do forestation projects and maybe school gardens, help with some apple trees that are being planted, maybe teach english, help with a literacy program at the old people´s home, etc. etc. etc. A bunch of ideas.

Yesterday and today, however, my boss visited me and we went to the University of Oruro where a bunch of profesores invited us to join a Oruro department-wide forestation project and want me to give GPS and GIS workshops soon. They are getting a GIS lab set-up and wanted me to be involved and were even already offering a desk and work-space. My boss would like for us to be involved, once a week, in various Env. Education, Natural Resources, other specialties (for me GIS) at the university in Oruro....so we`ll see. Monday I`m attending a big-wig meeting about the forestation project, and so it sounds like another branch of opportunity. So that is work...

But to be honest, work is only half of my life. Monday was my birthday, and its a little weird to think I`ll be spending my entire 23rd year right here in Bolivia, I still feel young but for me it`s getting a little older, year by year. I enjoyed talking to many of you in or around my birthday...although I feel like riding a bus constantly and picking out vegetables at the market and dealing with no running water is all normal, I feel very much connected to a vague idea of ¨home¨ and what my family and friends are doing there. I watched the sunset on my birthday: if I walk out west of town, the earth is all sand, and the lake is in the distance, and the sunsets are pretty every day...so here it is on August 20th.

Ok, so this picture does no justice...you`ll just have to come see for yourself how pretty they are.
Also in life, we got 5 new volunteers in Oruro to replace 4 that have left, one of those replacements occuring in my site. So, I got a new sitemate! Since we are the only gringos living in a town of 2,000, we see each other a lot, to say the least =) We climbed up to a chapel that is at the top of the mountain outside of town.

I crossed my first blockade yesterday. My boss came and picked me up in my site and we went cross-country across the pampa (grass-lands...well, it was more salty and hard than grassy) around the blockade of traffice, so I took a picture =)

Here is today, we went and saw some sand dunes right outside of Oruro...crazy. Some university dudes want to do a clean-up campaign of trash here...you can`t quite tell, but there is trash
everywhere.

So...that`s it? Yeah, I think it will be for now. I DO enjoy hearing from all of your exciting lives too, so please tell.