Bolivian Highlights

i know that many of you who read this blog have not had the chance to get to Bolivia yet so i thought i would make this blog about the highlights, both good and bad, in a typical week here. We have been feeling a little homesick, well, maybe more than a little, for Holland lately, so hopefully seeing the good that goes into a week here written out will take some of that away.

This past Sunday our church was running low on our family supply of coffee so after the service Braeden and i got in the car and drove around looking for the building where our coffee is roasted. We had been there only once but luckily we found it after only having to turn around once. We got to watch the roasted beans get ground and packaged and while we were waiting a new batch of beans was getting roasted so the whole room filled up with the smell of coffee. if you think JP's smells good, try standing next to a fresh batch of roasted beans.

On Monday we had a doctor's appointment for the baby. We have the sweetest doctor from our church who has her own hospital in the middle of town. The best thing about her hospital, her and her husband provide free care to patients who can't afford to pay. The worst part of the hospital, that means the waiting room is always full. We eventually got in to see her and she says everything looks good so far. She had a hard time finding the heartbeat at first because the baby was kicking so much.

On Tuesday we took our intern into town to purchase her ticket to go home and to souveneir shop behind our post office. Our intern wanted to mail a postcard so we figured out the process for doing that, which is surprisingly easy so everyone watch in the mail for some postcards from us!

On Wednesday we worked on, and are currently working on, how to get construction money out to the jungle of San Lorenzo where we are building the next orphanage. Unfortunately you can only fly by small planes into this area and the missionary pilot we work with is gone for the summer. Since my parents left we have been calling every few days to ask the hangar to find out when the next flight to San Lorenzo will be and we never get straight answers. We will call one day to hear that there are no flights that week and then call to re-check the next day and they will tell us there was a flight the day before. Our construction workers are getting frustrated and so are we.

On Thursday i was going to make homemade Chinese food for Braeden like i used to do back home but they had run out of every type of asian sauce at the grocery store and had no vinegar to make it from scratch. So we switched to tacos only to find that they were also out of every kind of meat. We had grilled cheese that night.

On Friday Braeden and i went for a walk around our neighborhood and found some piles of dead leaves that looked and smelled just like October in Michigan. Apparently Bolivia does get other seasons. That night we were invited to a teacher's house from the school my sisters go to. We did something i always try to avoid, taking a trufi. its the local transportation here, a bus that takes you along a specific route for only about 25 cents a person and you never know what kind of driver you are going to get. We got one that thought he was driving a racecar and not a huge bus filled with people standing in the aisle.

On Saturday we got ready for baby washing which includes loading the car up with four washtubs, a stack of large towels, a stack of small towels, four buckets with shampoo, soap, washcloths, gloves, a bag of hair ties, brushes, nail polish, five bags of oranges or bananas, two suitcases of clothes that have to be sorted every week to make sure that we have enough of each size for boys and girls, and six large jugs of hot water that Braeden fills up every week from the kitchen. Plus ourselves. Baby washing went well this week. We didn't have as much help as normal but our regular volunteers were so generous in jumping in where ever they were needed.

And that is a typical week here, each day fairly similar with all the phone calls and the same responses to frequently asked questions, but also refreshingly different with surprise visits to the coffee roaster and the water going out a day before baby washing. Today we are getting ready to pay the bills for the ministry which involves taking money out of ATM machines that sometimes eat your cards or don't have American dollars that day. i am sure we will have some interesting story to tell by the end of the day.