January. Like, the whole month.

Well, it’s been a while since I really updated about what I’m up to.  January, as promised, has been dry (we had one strong rain, thankfully) and fairly devoid of agricultural work.  However, I’ve been touting the benefits of mulch and green manures, in hopes that when planting season starts again, maybe some of the farmers will consider planting nitrogen-fixing crops to benefit the other crops, or use mulches to protect the soil from driving rain and the hot sun.

A big activity, however, has been bringing Spanish-language kids’ books with me whenever I go visiting.  All the mothers tell me that they want to have their kids practice their school stuff over the summer (and sadly, there is little way to accomplish this with reading, unless there’s a PC volunteer with a stock of books in Spanish), and the kids really do get an excited look on their face when I bring out Dr. Seuss in Spanish.  Shoutout here to my parents and Grandparents who provided these books!  I think I’ll also be making up some flashcards for math (though I know that’s much less exciting).

I have electricity now!  Feel free to send those DVD’s and mixed CD’s (or books that I can read in the evening, thanks to the miracle of lightbulbs)… I got myself a mini-fridge, which is a real boon to my cooking and health  I can now cook things and have leftovers that I’m not afraid to eat, store dairy products (no ice cream, sadly), and have cold drinks.  I’m living quite comfortably, especially with the fan blowing at night.  Now, almost every house in my town has electricity, so don’t get the image in your heads that I am living in the gringa mansion that doesn’t fit in with the rest of town.

I finished my first novel in Spanish!  I read Isabel Allende’s Suma de los Días.  It took a while, I read in fits and starts, and it began to drag a bit at the end.  Still, I did it!  My technique was to just read, even if I didn’t get every vocab word.  Occasionally I’d read with a pen to underline words to look up later…but I still don’t have an English-Spanish dictionary (I requested one, but I think that request is just as lost as my mail seems to be these days).  I was definitely aided by the fact that it’s more of a collection of stories about her life in the last 13 years (since her novel, Paula, about the death of her daughter), because the other novel I have of hers has been really hard to get through: very slow plot that includes a zillion little details and characters.

I have been running several mornings a week.  Aided by my feline alarm clock (seriously, what is it with the eating/kneading my hair at daybreak?), I usually hit the gravel at about 6:15am, before the heat, wind and lots of cars on the road.  I run to the paved road that connects the Pan-American to the big city a few km down the road.  I’m not sure what distance I really am running, but I feel more in shape than I did a month ago.  Several women, my host mom included, have expressed that they’d like to lose a little weight or at least do some exercise.  I tell them there’s nothing to stop them, but I really want to run alone (I have my reasons).  It would be cool to do an exercise class, but there are definitely some logistical issues.  We’ll see.

Can’t actually believe I’ve already been here 3 months.  Seems like a short time written down, but it’s a significant amount, considering it was the length of training in Bolivia, and I was in my Bolivian site only 5 months and felt so attached to it.  The end of January also marks my 1-year anniversary of getting on a plane to Cochabamba, Bolivia…for an adventure I had never anticipated.