Back in Montero (and hard at work)

The trip to Argentina was awesome! I´ll trust my fellow bloggers to fill in the details, but we took great excursions, met incredibly interesting people, and drank awesome Argentinian wine.

Getting back into the country, however, was a nightmare. By the time we had photocopied every document, form, and credit card we had (several times), had a passport size photo made at the store next door (how convenient) and paid the visa entry fees, everyone else on the bus had successfully completed the immigration process and been waiting on the bus for about 2.5 hours. We had to collectively pool all of our money, including Daniel´s and Katie´s (the bus driver even offered to lend us money, but fortunately it didn´t come to that),in order to pay the visa fees and all the costs of photocopying and picture taking. There was no ATM on the Bolivian side of the boarder (how inconvenient). The guy even tried to extort a bribe from Maya because she didn´t have a credit card with her for them to copy. We were thinking, Dude, you´ve literally taken every penny we have by having us run all over this little town jumping through bureaucratic hoops, even if we wanted to pay your stupid bribe (which we don´t) we can´t. By this point we were ready to just stay in Argentina. Fortunately about that time (3 hours later), the bus driver came back into the office, and though I don´t claim to be a Spanish translator, I think he said something along the lines of ¨Stamp these freakin´ passports so we can go, you´ve been holding this bus here for over 3 hours!!¨ Whatever he said it worked, we got our passports, ran out the office and quickly boarded the bus. While we left feeling ticked off and frustrated, I would imagine we are not the first (nor the last) people to leave an immigration office with similar feelings, whether in Bolivia, the US, or just about any other country.

After we got back to Montero, we had lots to show Katie since up until then she had traveled all the way to Bolivia and only seen Argentina. We took her to the market, hit all of our favorite eating places, and made empenadas. We also celebrated her birthday and took her to a soccer game. I think soccer games are the only things that Bolivians are on time for, and for those they show up 2 hours early. Once again it was an energetic and exciting game.

After Katie left on Thursday it was time to start work. Up until now its been pretty much all play and no work. (Well, not counting 5 hours of language school a day, but talking one on one with a teacher learning a new way to communicate didn´t feel that much like work.) Now, however, we will begin working Monday-Saturday, including a lovely mid-day siesta. Hopefully we´ll get our official schedule posted on the blog, but for those who don´t read Spanish or just want a summarized version, we are going to be doing a mix of home visits with the nurses, working with the construction team, various jobs around the clinics, helping translate the web page into English (Maya), working with the accountant (me), and working at one of the local orphanages.

The home visits have been an interesting but also intense experience. Many of the people down here, especially as we go to homes farther from town, live in pretty horrible conditions. They live without running water, electricity, and in homes made of tarps or straw. Many have half finished brick houses on their property too, that they work on building when they have money available. The orphanage we are working with is an all girls orphanage run by the Catholic church. There are about 120 girls there, and the orphanage facilities are quite impressive. At the orphanage we will mostly just spend time playing with the girls or helping them with their homework. We had an awesome time on Saturday and will be going back all Saturday afternoons and spending the final week of October there.

Its going to be nice to stay in Montero for a while and get settled in to a routine. We´ve even been able to buy groceries at the market (amazingly cheap fresh fruits and vegetables) and start doing some cooking for ourselves. Another great thing about working is it allows me to practice my Spanish more; traveling through Argentina with 4 gringos and a Bolivian who speaks fluent English didn´t give me much cause to practice.