Twenty

March 9, 2016

                Yesterday was one of the best birthdays I’ve ever had. Somehow the SMs and other staff always find a way to make birthdays here super fun and special. We’ve continually found ways on every staff birthday to make something that you wouldn’t think you can get in our small town of Bolivia such as lasagna, brownies, biscuits and gravy, grits, coffee cake, and Papa John’s pizza (Miguel got that one in Santa Cruz.) Anyways, I shall now proceed to describe my birthday.

                Normal morning for the most part. Woke up at 5:26 am, had house worship, staff worship, a tiny bit of free time, breakfast, and then went to teach class. During all of these things, people so kindly told me happy birthday which was always very nice. Class actually went really well! This semester has been crazy because my 6 students are all crazy, but yesterday was pretty decent.

                Now here at Familia Feliz we have this tradition that if it’s your birthday, you get thrown in the river. I didn’t know when I would get thrown in, but I had a feeling it would be sometime during lunch. I go to lunch, get my food, and sit down at my table with the girls. Very soon after sitting down, everyone begins singing happy birthday and I turn around to see none other than Candace and Kevin carrying 2 cookie cakes to me. Cookie cake? COOKIE CAKE! Oh my goodness I had told Candace the other day all about how in my family we always eat cookie cake for our birthdays, never normal cake. I told her how much I missed cookie cake and how it would be so cool to be able to have one here in Bolivia but how that is impossible. SHE MADE ME COOKIE CAKE. I love Candace so much. And not only did they make me cookie cake, they used frosting on top to make a Pikachu because they all know how much I love Pokémon.

In all of the excitement of singing and seeing the cakes I was grabbed by some of the older boys to get carried to the river. There is no point in fighting it; I know I’m going to get thrown in the river one way or another. So yeah, they threw me in which is whatever (if you would like to see me getting thrown in you can find a video Jonatan posted on my Facebook) and as I am emerging from the water to walk back to the big house for my cookie cake I see a ton of people standing there. I thought wow there are a lot of people here. I guess everyone just wanted to see my reaction about getting thrown in. Wait no that doesn’t make sense.. And then the moment I realized what was about to happen was a moment too late. I had completely forgotten that for staff birthdays right after getting thrown in the river you get pelted with eggs and flour. So yeah, that happened. I got killed with that stuff, all up in my hair. It was over Sean.

I walk back to the big house with many children and staff laughing at my flour and egg covered head and go straight for my cookie cake. It. Was. So. Good. All of the staff had at least one piece and loved it. As I am eating my piece I ask Dani what we are going to do for our afternoon class that we have every day together and she tells me not to come, happy birthday! So sweet. I had no objections. And that actually worked out really well because it took ages to get all of that flour out of my hair.

I was thinking it would be kind of nice to skip work hour because it was my birthday, but I decided against it and went to work hour as normal at 3:00. My group basically just went around campus for a while and grabbed the giant palm leaves that fall off of the trees and put them in a huge pile to burn, nothing too terrible. At this point I was pretty much thinking that my birthday celebration was over, but as soon as I went to dinner I knew that it wasn’t. Candace, Kevin, Darian, Andrew, and Dani all weren’t at dinner. So that is definitely not normal and definitely meant that they were in Miguel’s house making me something which was super exciting to me. I purposely only got a little bit of the vegan Mac N’ Cheese knowing that there was something else for me later and went to my table. I decided to ask Keila (one of my older girls) where Candace was. “She is walking in the woods.” Oh really? “Keila, why is Teacher Candace walking through the woods?” “To get better respiration.” Oh, okay thanks. I’m sure that is what Teacher Candace is doing. Yeah, I knew something was up.

I go back to my house and begin journaling about the day as one of my girls pops into my doorway and tells me to stay in my room. Aw! My girls had been planning a little surprise thing for me for a while now, so I pretended like I didn’t know what was going on and agreed to stay in my room. They finally tell me to come into the living room which they had decorated with little colorful paper chains, candles, and a beautiful little bouquet of flowers. The girls and Candace had baked another cake for our house! And Keila had baked bread and chopped up tomato and cucumber for little sandwiches. It was so fun and sweet and I know they also all enjoyed it a lot because they all had permission to miss the first 30 minutes of study hall.

Around 7:00 Darian shows up at my house pretending she needs to pee and also asks if we’re doing our new game night that we’ve been having every Tuesday night of this semester. (The two staff members that are in charge of study hall on Tuesday night are Jonatan and Mariluz, so we Americans have been doing game night during that time.) Candace and I both say yes of course we’re having game night and we tell all of the girls to go to study hall so we can head over to Miguel’s. I grab Taboo and we start walking over. During our walk over to Miguel’s, Darian randomly blindfolds me, which was absolutely hilarious. For the rest of the walk we all just kept cracking up about how awkward and hilarious it is that I definitely know Darian is the one who blindfolded me and how hilarious it was when Darian blindfolded Candace on her birthday. She said it’s her favorite thing to do.

I am then guided into Miguel’s house and told to sit. The Taboo game is taken out of my hands and then they take my blindfold off. I am surrounded by the other SMs and Miguel who then place an Oreo milkshake and a bowl of French Fries in my hands. We have the best group of people in the world here at Familia Feliz! I love them so much. Everyone tells me happy birthday once again as they also grab milkshakes and continue making more fries. And it’s still not over yet! Miguel tells me that he has a gift for me, walks into his room, and comes out holding a box of Cookies and Cream Poptarts. Holy cow these people know me so well. (By the way, it’s definitely not possible to get Poptarts in Rurrenabaque, Bolivia, but you can get them in the very far away city of Santa Cruz which we’ve only been to when flying to and from America.) They tell me that I need to share the Poptarts though and I open up the box to find.. Not Poptarts? There are a thing of candles for weight and then letters and cards from each staff member to me. SO SWEET! And then as I am thanking them all for the cards Kevin weirdly hands me a pack of Poptarts. And then Andrew. And then Dani. And then Darian. Oh haha, so they did actually buy me Poptarts, just trying to mess with me.

So next I basically got one of the greatest gifts ever. There is this Youtuber, Miranda Sings, that my roommate Candace and I love and watch together when we can. And rather than making me a card like everyone else, Candace dressed up like Miranda Sings and made a happy birthday video for me on my IPad. Candace wanted me to watch it alone because it’s embarrassing, but we’re all a family here so we all watched it and died laughing together. After Candace’s Miranda video we played Taboo for the last 30 minutes that we had before the kids were done with study hall. It was super fun and Candace and I won (we make a great team) and that’s how my birthday went! I am so very blessed to be surrounded by all of these amazing people out here in the jungle. Don’t get me wrong, I really do miss my family and friends in the states, but I’m definitely happy to have my SM family by my side.

I rode a cow

January 25, 2016

                This past weekend most of us volunteers were invited to the house of Jesús, David, Manfred, and Jahel, four brothers who happen to be great students at Familia Feliz. I was not sure if I wanted to go or not because the trip sounded very sketchy, but Darian, Candace, and Kevin seemed very excited about going so I figured if they can do it then I can too. Ashley very nicely volunteered to stay at the orphanage with the couple kids we have right now and the rest of us set out on our journey Friday morning.

                First it was a 4 hour taxi ride. Now in Bolivia there are not very many paved roads. So just imagine the bumpiest car ride you have ever been on and multiply that by 37,000 and that was our entire taxi ride. Not to mention that air conditioning does not exist here and it’s 1,000° hot so the windows were rolled down the whole time causing huge amounts of dust and dirt to enter the taxi with us. We were all orange when arriving at our destination. The journey to their house was definitely not over yet. We all sat on the side of the road at a house belonging to people that I think Miguel knows trying to stay in the shade. It has been EXTREMELY HOT lately and Friday happened to be one of the hottest days we’ve had yet. The temperature was 102° and the real feel was 122°. Yay.

We waited for about an hour because Manfred was supposed to be bringing us horses for the rest of the journey to their house. Apparently it is either a 6 hour walk or about a 4 hour horse ride from the house we were at to their house. None of us were about to walk for 6 hours in that heat (the first 5 hours of the trip is just open field, there is no shade.) Miguel finally said that we needed to start walking because we needed to get to their house before dark. Jonatan instead suggested that we ask this man if we could borrow his horses. None of us SMs were opposed to that idea so Jonatan did indeed walk over and ask a random man if we could borrow his horses. It worked out really well because apparently the man lives in the direction we needed to go and said we could ride his horses until we got to his ranch. He had 5 horses with him so Candace, Darian, Armando (one of our students that came with us) and I were all given our own horse which meant that Miguel, Kevin, and Jonatan would have to walk until we ran into Manfred with more horses for them.

The horse ride was very interesting. I honestly do not think that I can write about the horse ride well enough to do it justice, but I suppose I will try. Throughout the ride there were huge herds of cows close by and whenever we would pass by them they would all stare at us and sometimes even start following us. At one point a ton of cows started running (I have no idea why) and mine and Candace’s horses decided they would start running as well. It was a bit startling at first because I do not have too much experience with horses and it kind of felt like I would fall off because my huge backpack was making it difficult for me to sit in the saddle correctly. Not to mention, it kind of hurts a lot when a horse is trotting or cantering and you don’t know how to ride properly. But probably one of the funniest things in the world was turning around and seeing Candace screaming at her horse to stop running and looking so freaked out.

A little more than an hour into the ride we see Manfred and his cousin riding towards us bringing along 4 extra horses (not including the ones they were each riding.) We all pulled off to the side under the shade of some trees and they gave Jonatan a horse and Candace a new one. The random guy said his house was “más allá” and that we could continue to ride his horses until we got there. Manfred continued in the opposite direction to meet Kevin and Miguel (who had fallen way behind) with 2 horses for them. After eating some trail mix with many melted M&M’s that Darian brought back from the states and so kindly shared with us, we continued on in hopes that Miguel, Kevin, and Manfred would catch up with us later.

Our next stop was when we reached the random man’s ranch. I was really dreading this because this meant that somehow the 9 of us were supposed to share 6 horses. We dismounted the man’s horses and patiently waited for Miguel, Kevin, and Manfred (and also applied more sunscreen.) Once they got there we tried to figure out the best way to get us all on a horse and ended up working it out to where Candace, Miguel, and I had our own horses with a lot of the luggage and the others shared. Oh and fun fact. Apparently I was the most experienced rider of us girls (which is still hardly any experience) and the horse they gave me happened to be the one that the most experienced one of us was supposed to ride. And later I found out why. My horse was full of energy and just wanted to run and run. Right off the bat my horse ran to the front of the pack where Kevin and Manfred were leading. I made my horse slow down and just walk like the other horses and we all continued on in the heat.

Okay so new fun fact. We all ran out of water. Rather than lugging enough water for 7 people for the whole weekend (at the boy’s house they just drink out of a pond or something) we brought along Miguel’s Berkley water filter. But of course we weren’t going to fill it up until we were actually there. Anyways so for the trip so far we had all been drinking out of our water bottles that we had filled up before we left Familia Feliz that morning but now it was like 3:30 in the afternoon and still a lovely 122° so we were all out of water. Manfred said there was a place that we could stop at on the way to get water. He said the water was “feo pero sirve” which basically means the water is ugly but it works. Normally I definitely would not have drank that water but I was very very thirsty and knew we still had at least an hour of the trip left. Kevin and I stayed on our horses and Manfred went into this little house thing and filled up our bottles so I honestly didn’t even see where the water came from. But I drank it. The others soon caught up to us and most of them got water as well. We started back on our journey again.

Manfred told us we were maybe an hour away which was very comforting because I was sick of that journey. It was hot, I was still thirsty, I was hungry, I was tired of my horse walking me through trees, my legs and feet were disgusting from the mud/water splashing on me when my horse would walk through the puddles (which was frequently), and I was very sore from sitting on the horse for that long. Candace and Jonatan stayed up with Kevin and I this time and Manfred and his cousin randomly decided that they would walk the rest of the way. Maybe sharing the horses was uncomfortable and obviously Manfred thought we were a lot closer to his house than we really were. I was still leading the pack and decided to purposely trot with my horse. I tried this technique that Kevin explained to me about trotting and it hurt a lot less and was actually kind of fun! I saw Kevin start trotting behind me and was very happy because I didn’t necessarily want to go ahead all by myself. Well. The next time I turned around no one was in sight. Whoops. I guess Kevin didn’t want to keep up with me after all. But I decided that I really enjoyed traveling that quickly with my horse; it was exhilarating. So I figured what’s the worst that could happen and kicked my horse to pick up the pace.

So I think there is a huge difference between trotting and cantering. When my horse began cantering he got faster and faster and my feet came out of the stirrups and I began bouncing up and down and I think I almost flew off my horse. It was pretty scary. After just going back to normal walking for a bit I tried again and began to enjoy it and suddenly I realized that my backpack was a lot lighter. My horse and I stopped and I got off and walked back to pick up the things that had fallen out. Not too many of my things had fallen out (thank goodness) but 4 of my things did happen to land in one of those lovely mud puddles that I talked about earlier. The sheet I brought, my towel, one of my shirts, and my hairbrush. Great. As I was gathering my belongings Kevin, Candace, and Jonatan caught back up with me and basically just continued on. I squeezed the water out of my things and put them back in my backpack with my rain jacket in between them and the rest of my clothes. Miguel, Manfred, and Manfred’s cousin also caught up with me and I explained what happened. I then did something rather selfish. Since I thought we were a lot closer to the house than we really were I asked Manfred if he could carry my backpack so I could keep running with my horse because I liked running with my horse. He took my backpack from me and I was off.

I quickly caught back up to Kevin and the others and asked Kevin for another tip on how to canter. He explained it to me and I was off again. Like way way off. I got super ahead and before I know it everything goes from being open field to super swamp/jungle. I was literally traveling alone for like 2 hours (I don’t know what Manfred was talking about when he said at the water place that we were like an hour away). During these 2 hours alone my horse and I began to get eaten by mosquitos and flies which is super fun and I also got really super thirsty again and I also remembered that Miguel said that last time he went to their house he saw 2 alligators on the way so that was a little unsettling. I also began to worry that my horse didn’t know the way. The horse has to know its way to its own house right? I don’t know. Well, it’s debatable.

There was a little sign with some names on it pointing down a random path to the side of the trail and my horse decided to turn onto that path. I began to become filled with joy as I thought oh yes finally I’m there as my horse and I approached a house. I thought surely this was the boy’s house. We finally make it across the humongous yard and there are 2 ladies and a little boy standing there. I say something to the effect of “Hola! La casa de Jesús, David, Manfred, Jahel, y Diana?” And the lady said something to the effect of “Ah sí, su casa es más allá!” (which means yes, their house is farther over there) and points in the direction of the trail we had been on all day. She then asks me if I’m traveling alone and I told her no, that my horse likes to run and that my companions are behind me. She looked a bit concerned that I was alone but it was fine.

I began trusting my horse again as he started walking in the direction that she pointed in (after drinking a ton of pond water and eating some grass) but I honestly did start thinking about what would happen if my horse and I never made it to the boy’s house. It would have been bad, let’s just say that. As my horse and I begin our journey in the right direction again I hear a voice through the trees. It sounded like Jonatan, but I wasn’t sure. Then I heard another voice that sounded a lot like Candace. Then I popped out of this random part of the trail and sure enough, in front of me was Jonatan, Candace, and Kevin on their horses! I got so happy. When they saw me they were all super confused because last they saw me I was running into the distance with my horse and now I am somehow behind them. I explained my story to them and they said that I better stick with them from now on and I had no disagreements.

The rest of the trip was probably about an hour long (leaving the total horse ride at around 6 hours) and it was basically just Jonatan singing which oh my word how did I forget to mention that Jonatan literally sang for the entire 6 hours. Oh and we did pass an alligator in this little swamp thing. And a couple more random cows in the middle of the jungle. And then once we finally got on their property Candace’s horse got really excited and began cantering and she passed by both Kevin and I proudly exclaiming “Look guys! I’m doing it! I’m doing it!” only until moments later she fell off the side of her horse and we all died laughing once we knew she was fine. Apparently her backpack was falling off and in her words she decided to “abandon ship.”

Anyways as soon as we got there we made sure we filled up the water filter as we were all about to die of thirst and we all kind of just sat around for a little bit. Within about 20 minutes the others arrived and we all had a lovely little reunion. Wow sorry that was a lot of writing and literally that was just the trip there. Very soon after getting there I did what was probably one of the least pleasant things of my life. Shower with Darian and Candace around a little pump with a bucket and no soap in the dark. Now the reason this was probably one of the least pleasant experiences of my life is because of the mosquitos mostly. THERE WERE SO MANY. And we didn’t have clothes on because we were showering. So it was basically like we were saying, “Hey mosquitos, here’s a free body for you to come bite anywhere you want so please come bite me.” Literally every 5 seconds you would hear 1 of us yell OW and then hear a SMACK. Oh and then the soap. Candace had brought these little soaps from hotels that Union College sent her and we were all going to share them for the weekend, but apparently she forgot to bring them out to the pole with us. So yeah we all just ended up wetting our bodies and that was our whole shower for the day.

February 19, 2016

So yeah, it’s not January 25 anymore. I got really lazy and didn’t want to finish writing about the trip and then got super busy because all of the crazy kids came back and we’ve been having class and working a lot and I realized I still have not blogged since October. Sorry. Back to the trip at the boy’s house, a shorter version. When we were there we mostly all just sat around outside and talked and relaxed and swung in hammocks. Sleeping was terrible both nights because it was either sleep in a hammock and get eaten alive by mosquitos or sleep in a little 2 person tent straight up on the ground. Like we definitely didn’t have any sleeping pads or sleeping bags or blankets so it was basically just like sleeping on the hard ground with rocks. Also it was SUPER hot and in the tent probably a million times hotter so I didn’t get much sleep either night. Something really exciting though about this trip is that I rode a cow. Yes, I RODE A COW. My life’s dream: complete. It was on Saturday right after we had a worship all together. Miguel told the boys that Teacher Courtney really wants to ride a cow so they went out and got a cow that they thought would be best for me to ride, Flor. All of the other SMs were super excited for me because they all know how much I love cows and how I basically just came along on this trip because of the possibility of being able to ride one, so they all followed along to take many pictures.

So first when I tried to get up on the cow as soon as I jumped on it started running. But I wasn’t completely on it yet. So it was kind of hilarious but kind of scary because I was hanging off just holding onto its side as it was running and as everyone was dying of laughter. After that was over, David and Jesús helped me get on Flor again but this time she didn’t run. I sat on her and everyone took pictures and then David smacked her butt and made a noise and she started running again. This time it was okay though because I was actually sitting on her. It was so fun and I was smiling so big the whole time as was on her and I’m really happy I had that experience. After a while, Candace, Darian, and Kevin all also decided to have experiences with the cow which was fun for everyone.

That’s basically all the excitement of the trip and how everything went down. On Sunday, Miguel, Kevin, David, the boy’s little sister, and I left at 5:30 in the morning to try and beat some of the heat and honestly the trip wasn’t too terrible this time. Instead of taking 6 hours, our horses did it in 4 hours and also without the sun beating down on us the whole time everything was just a lot better. The taxi ride still sucked a lot, but it was okay because we were all excited to get home to our showers and beds at Familia Feliz. It’s crazy how I actually look forward to cold showers now. It’s crazy how much I love my bed inside my little bug tent now. It’s crazy how I really look at this place now as my home.

Christmas in October

October 12, 2015 – Christmas Day in October

                It was so cold. It was as cold as that other random “winter day” we had or maybe even a little colder. It technically is spring here right now, but it is still blazing hot almost every day, except for this one random day. When I woke up at 5:15 I began to question if we would have a normal school day. Candace and I began to talk about it and she crawled in bed with me because it was so cold. One of the boys came to our house and told us that we were not having our 5:30 worship together, but just in our own houses. This was a start to a great day. Candace and I honestly continued to stay curled up in my bed to keep warm and eventually she had to go to the kitchen. I fell back asleep and right around 6:30 Kevin yelled to me that we would have staff worship at 6:30, so I finally got out of bed. With many layers of clothes on, I went to staff worship where slowly but surely all of the staff came. After worship Miguel told us that we would not be having class that day. For some reason it already kind of felt like Christmas. Miguel had his laptop and started playing Christmas songs. Miguel, Andrew, Daniella, Candace, Darian, and I all put our arms around each other and swayed back and forth to the tunes of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and other wonderful Christmas songs. When Miguel played “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” we had to bring out a roll of toilet paper because the emotions got real. After enjoying many Christmas songs together for a little while I went back to my house to check on my girls. I told them that we weren’t having class and that they all needed to put on more clothes because it was so cold. For breakfast that morning we had breakfast burritos for the first time (with real eggs) and hot tea. Something was more special about this morning too because Miguel had some kitchen kids serve all of the plates and cups on each table. After breakfast I went back to my house with my girls and let them come into my room. Mica and Joca got in my hammock, Keila got in my bed with me, Rosa got in Candace’s hammock, and I put out the mattress on the floor for Maria and Estefanie. I was so happy because literally just the day before I had downloaded some Christmas music to my laptop. All of the girls were in my room and I played my Christmas music, which they didn’t understand at all. Keila began to look through the pictures on my laptop (which all of my girls have done a million times) and I really noticed that I have a ton of pictures from the Christmas season. Honestly I had convinced myself that it was Christmas on this random day in October. We continued to hang out in the house for the rest of the morning and until lunch. At lunch Miguel said he wanted us to watch a staff only movie in English, which obviously ended up being a Christmas movie. Right before the movie Kevin brought over a pumpkin pie and a pecan pie that apparently some of them had made in Miguel’s house that morning. Miguel also brought stuff to make hot chocolate with it, so it was obvious that all of us were under the impression that it was Christmas. We watched two cheesy Christmas movies, The Heart of Christmas and The Christmas Shoes, as we sipped on our hot chocolate and ate our pie. Many of us sobbed throughout the Christmas shoes, but we all enjoyed it very much. Soon after our movies we had vegetable soup for dinner and then all went back to our different houses. The older boys had a little fire behind their house (compliments of Andrew) so my girls and I decided that we would have a fire too. Right there in our front yard we collected random sticks and leaves and things and made a little fire of our own. We all sat around the fire and eventually started singing hymns (in Spanish of course) and had worship out there. The next day turned back to normal with classes, work, and heat; but Christmas was good while it lasted.

Casa, Clase, Cocina

       A general update. There have been a lot of changes in my house recently. Some changes needed to be made with the houses for the girls to better accommodate Maribel, so Candace and I had to give the other girl’s house two girls and in return they gave us three different girls. It has been about two weeks now with the different girls, but everything is going well! They are adjusting well and I am continuing to grow closer with all of them each day. I started giving all my girls an individual hug when I put them to bed consistently for the past two weeks, and they also ask for a kiss. I’m not big on kisses because my family doesn’t do that much, so I was like nahh, just a hug. My roommate Candace on the other hand is really comfortable with physical affection like kisses on the cheek, so I give them all hugs and then she gives them all a kiss. Last week one night I was really tired and was just going to let Candace put them to bed herself, and right as I was about to get into my bed I hear the girls yell from their room, “Mami Courtney!! Abrazo!!” Aw, they really wanted their hug! I smiled and went over and gave everyone their goodnight hug. I’m glad that I live with these girls. Last week on Wednesday night/Thursday morning it was raining really hard, so we cancelled class because most of the classrooms were flooded. I really enjoyed that day! I hung out with my girls in the house for most of the morning and decided that I wanted to teach them how to play cards. It was a little difficult explaining a game to them in Spanish, but I was able to teach them a game I learned called Slap the Royals. It’s a simple card game, but can be lots of fun! One of my girls that I’m getting really close with, Joca, really enjoyed playing with me and in fact almost beat me. The other girls ended up leaving when they got out, but Joca and I played for about two hours together that morning! Joca has asked me if we could play a couple more times this week, and in fact even creamed me one night. I’m glad Joca and I are able to enjoy that together.

[When Joca fell asleep in the living room and I had to carry her to her bed]

                My class is going relatively well. Candace teaches the 3^rd and 4^th grade language and in late August she told me that one of her students, Fermin, didn’t really know the alphabet. I told her that one of my students, Rodrigo, does know the alphabet and can actually read a little bit. We decided to switch Rodrigo and Fermin for language, so every day after we give the kids a little twenty minute recess I have Fermin for the rest of class and she has Rodrigo. This works much better than whatever we were doing at the beginning because Fermin and Henry are basically at the same knowledge level when it comes to the alphabet and language things. We have worked on the alphabet a lot and they can almost say the whole thing, but they get mixed up when it comes to l, ll, m, n, ñ. I’m not exactly sure how to help them figure out how to remember these similar sounding letters, but we will get there eventually. As far as math goes, Rodrigo can add, subtract, and now multiply, and divide! I am very proud of him. Henry can finally add 1 to everything. For example, he finally knows that 5 + 1 = 6. I have been trying to teach him this for the past 8 weeks, so it is very exciting that he finally understands. Now we just need to work on adding 2 to everything. Maribel can count to 10 as long as I am counting with her. She has a problem with skipping the number 3 when she counts by herself, but recently she has been getting a lot better about knowing that 3 comes between 2 and 4. When she sees 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 objects on a piece of paper or something, she can say how many objects there are. Though teaching these four kids has been a struggle, I am very happy with their progress and love them all very much.

[Finding our names with the letters]

                Every week we have two staff members run the kitchen with a different group of kids. This was stressful for me because I really don’t know much about cooking. The first time I was in the kitchen the other staff member with me was our director, Miguel. Miguel knows how to cook really well, so when I was with him it was more like I was just one of the students helping out rather than actually running things with him. This past week I was in the kitchen again, but this time it was with one of the other student missionaries, Kevin. Kevin has a decent amount of experience cooking, but I was still really worried about everything. Worried about whether we would have all the meals ready on time, about if we would use our ingredients competently so we wouldn’t run out of something we may need later on in the week, and about if we would be efficient with our time so we would not be in the kitchen 24/7. Everyone kept telling me not to freak out and that it would be fine, and Miguel always says that the kids know how to make everything, so there shouldn’t be much to worry about. Well, I survived the week! Kevin and I had a good group of kids who did know how to make most everything and Kevin’s cooking skills really did come in handy. Almost all of our meals were on time and we were not in the kitchen 24/7. In fact, I learned a lot this week! I felt more like Kevin’s partner running the kitchen rather than like one of the kids. At Familia Feliz we make everything from scratch, and we are also vegan so we don’t use cheese or eggs. This week I learned a ton of new things about cooking and learned recipes for different things. One of the things I learned how to make is vegan cheese with carrots, garlic, oil, water, and salt and it actually tastes good when you eat it with pasta noodles, like Mac N’ Cheese! I am extremely grateful for all of the experience I am getting here with different things. Learning how to cook, learning Spanish, learning how to be a mom, learning how to be a teacher, and even learning how to machete! I am so glad that God lead me here to Bolivia.

Days in the Life of Courtney

Here are some interesting and fun stories of things that have happened to me over the past couple weeks that I wanted to share!

August 21, 2015 - The Rat

                Friday night. After a crazy week of being in the kitchen, having no free time, and finding the snake and many tarantulas in my house, I was ready to be alone and journal. I sit on my bed, get comfy, open up my journal, and literally as I start to write ZOOM. Something scurries across my room. Oh goodness, please tell me I did not just see a RAT run across my room. Yeah, that was definitely a rat. I put my journal down and walk straight out of my house to go to the big house. I know that I need to tell my roommate Candace and probably have someone come over to get rid of the rat. It’s kind of funny because my roommate had been saying how she isn’t really afraid of tarantulas or snakes, but that she is terrified of rats. Well, I walk into the kitchen where Candace and Kevin are and tell Candace not to freak out.. but that there is a new creature in our house. She instantly knows it’s a rat and basically freaks out. Jancy, one of our staff members from Venezuela, walks into the kitchen and I tell him about it. He says that he will get one of the older boys and that we will go into my room to kill it. I didn’t really want them to kill it, but I guess as long as it’s out of my room. Jancy, Josue, and I travel back to my room and I show them where the rat went. I honestly wasn’t scared. It’s just a rat. Well, as Josue is moving things around and looking for it on the opposite side of the room the rat bursts out of Candace’s unzipped suitcase and runs straight towards me. Oh my. So what I said about not being scared is no longer valid and I start screaming and screaming and trying to find something to jump up on. In the process of me trying to find higher ground the rat brushes over my foot! It all happened so fast. The guys look at me and we all laugh. They continue to search the entire room and the rat is nowhere to be found. They search and search and search and this rat is not showing up anywhere. This was a little unsettling because I definitely don’t want to sleep with a rat, but at the same time I guess it’s nice because we’re pretty sure it ran out of my house. The rat never showed up again so I guess in all of the excitement it did run out of the house. We can now add rat to the huge list of creatures that have been in my house, and let’s keep in mind that I’ve only been here for 6 weeks.

August 25, 2015 - The Brave Roommate

                One night Candace and I are in our room chatting while all of our girls are getting ready for bed. They are being kind of loud and crazy, but then they all scream! These kids don’t really get freaked out by too many things, so we quickly rush over. They all scream and point and there is a tarantula quickly scaling the wall in the kitchen. I guess as an adult of the house I am supposed to be brave and get rid of it, but as soon as I see it I start screaming too. I literally join right in with the girls in freaking out, but thank goodness for Candace! She grabs a broom and dustpan and tries to scoop the tarantula into the dustpan to take it outside. Well, what ends up happening is Candace knocking the tarantula onto the floor on accident and the tarantula charging straight for me and all of the girls. Oh my word did we scream and run. We all ran into the girl’s room and I even jumped up onto one of the beds for extra precaution. Candace continues to be brave and chases the tarantula until she actually gets it into the dustpan and takes it outside. I’m not sure how long it will take me to get used to the tarantulas, but maybe one day I’ll be the brave one. Maybe. 

 [The first tarantula I saw at Familia Feliz]

August 29, 2015 - Sleep talking

                I sleep talk a lot. My roommates in high school and for my first year of college would often have funny stories of me sleep talking. Well, one Friday night here my roommate stayed awake a bit longer than I did to type up some things on her laptop. Apparently she hears me yell, “LIBRO LIBRO LIBRO!” in my sleep. Libro is the Spanish word for book. She starts laughing so hard, but obviously tries not to wake me up. Why I was yelling book in Spanish I have no idea, but yeah that happened. Then later that night she said she woke up to use the bathroom and hears me angrily say, “Maribel, it’s the same! Mismo!” Maribel is one of my students, so I guess I was getting upset with her in my dream which is very accurate to real life. Also I think it’s quite impressive that I said “it’s the same” and “mismo” because mismo means “the same” in Spanish! Haha, so yeah I’m speaking Spanish in my sleep! I’m glad my roommate was able to catch that.

 [Here is a very angry Maribel in class]

August 31, 2015 - RIP Phone

                It was just another normal Monday in class, or so I thought. At recess one of my students, Rodrigo, grabbed my cell phone off of my desk and asked me if he could use it for math. Sometimes I let him just mess around with the calculator on my phone during recess, but I told him no because he had been acting up in class that day. He continued to try and unlock my phone, but I just ignored it because I knew he would never figure out my password. I got preoccupied with who knows what, until Rodrigo later comes running up to me showing me my phone screen that had a little android bot on it and said “erasing” at the bottom. Erasing. No no no no. Apparently Android thinks it’s a good idea to have your phone delete everything when someone gets the password wrong too many times. Why?? Yeah that’s a great idea, let’s just give whoever stole the phone a clean slate as if they bought a brand new phone. Well, since I’m in Bolivia it’s not exactly easy to just re-download all of my apps because the WiFi is awful. Thank goodness that the previous week I put most of my photos onto my computer, so my photos aren’t gone. But I lost all of my contacts, music, and apps. Hopefully I will be able to at least re-download Facebook messenger and things so that I can continue to communicate with my friends and family. But for now, RIP phone.

September 11, 2015 – Not as much RIP Phone

                Kevin and Ashley had to go back to Santa Cruz this week to finish the rest of their year residency stuff so I sent my phone with them. The WiFi is much better at places in Santa Cruz, so I gave Kevin a list of apps I wanted back on my phone and hoped for the best. They just returned from Santa Cruz today after about 4 days and he gave me my phone back with most of the apps that I asked for on it! I am so incredibly happy! I don’t have everything that I want on it, but I at least have the necessities. I also hooked my phone up to my computer this evening and put my pictures back onto it. My phone may not be quite the same, but I am much happier with it now than I was on Monday! Now I will just have to work on slowly getting my contacts back when I get the chance.

September 7, 2015 - The Tarantula During Worship

                So, we are in a circle having worship in our house. It’s just a normal little house worship with our 5 girls. Worships in my house usually consist of 3 or 4 Spanish hymns, prayer, a Bible story or devotional in Spanish, and then another prayer. Literally while our oldest girl, Victoria, is reading a Bible story a tarantula just falls from the ceiling RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF OUR CIRCLE. Okay I almost died. Every single one of us screamed so incredibly loud and we all ran for our lives. It was so close to landing on me it’s not even funny. What would I do if it landed on me? I think I would drop dead right there. Anyways, we all freak out and run and scream and then one of the girls grabs a broom like she is going to get the tarantula out. But no, as she’s about to try she hands the broom to my roommate Candace and Candace saves the day again! I don’t know what I would do without my roommate. Yeah now I’ll always be looking up in my house because I guess you never know. I’ve learned that the snakes and tarantulas like my house. As long as no one gets hurt, it’ll be okay.

September 10, 2015 – The Oreos

                So in the town that we go to on Sundays, Rurrenabaque, there are places we can buy Oreos and this week I happened to get some. They come in a big package that contains 6 smaller packages and each smaller package has 4 Oreos in it. I’ve been slowly eating them throughout this week, but making sure not to eat them all at once so that I will basically have 1 package each day. This morning I wake up to find only 1 package of Oreos left when there should be 2 and also the remains of an empty wrapper for the package. I thought maybe, just maybe I ate more packages than I thought I had eaten and that I left the wrapper there. I figured it was okay. Well, this evening my roommate says to me around 9pm that she is missing an entire package of M&M’s that she bought in town. I began to think the same thing I did when I first saw my empty package this morning, one of our girls came into our room and ate it. I quickly go over to where my last package of Oreos is and THE PACKAGE IS OPENED WITH ONLY 3 OREOS IN IT. Castigo. Okay for real though why would one of our girls come into our room (which they know they are not supposed to do) and steal our food?? By the way, “castigo” means “punishment” in Spanish.  So yeah seriously castigo. We had all of our girls go outside and machete right then and said they would machete until someone confessed. Finally one of our girls came crying and said she ate my cookies. They macheted until 10:15pm, which is really late for Familia Feliz considering we wake up at 5 every morning and usually go to sleep at 9pm. It kind of sucked for Candace and I as well because we got eaten alive by bugs while we were holding our lights for them so they could machete. We still don’t know who ate the M&M’s, but I think they learned their lesson not to steal from us. As for the girl who ate my Oreos, she will have to work all day tomorrow in any free time she would have had. Man, this all sounds really harsh. These aren’t my rules; these are the rules of Familia Feliz and kind of just how things work here. Last week the older boys had to machete late into the night for eating Andrew’s granola, a couple days ago the middle aged boys had to machete at midnight because someone took some of Jonatan’s food, and earlier this week all of the girls in the other house had to machete late at night because someone stole all of Karol’s chocolate. I guess it was only a matter of time for my house..

 [My family for 10 and a half months]

                That’s about all I had time to type up for these past couple weeks! I hope you all enjoy and thanks for reading!