Clausura

We’ve now started summer vacation! In Bolivia, the school year goes from February to November, so Maria and Nathan got to participate in the last two months of the year. Last Friday evening we went to the “clausura” (end of year program), which was held in the gym of a university here in Santa Cruz.

The program was a collaborative effort of grades PreK-8, and the students and teachers had obviously put a lot of work into it. It centered around the theme of caring for creation, and was a combination of music, dance and choreography – it felt like the opening ceremonies at the Olympics or something… not quite as elaborate of course, but that kind of feeling! It included the following sections:

• Creation
• The water and its contamination
• The air and its contamination
• The land and its contamination
• A rebirth and new opportunity

Nathan and Maria enjoyed it, and we did too. They were both “birds” in the section on “the air and its contamination.” We went with Carl and Kathy, the other MCCers who were in orientation with us and whose children are at the same school, and also took Juana and Nati, the women who provide child care for our families (no replacement for grandparents, but it was really nice to share the evening with them). Carl and I took some video clips and I had fun piecing them into a little movie of the show. It’s about 8 ½ minutes and includes some text from the printed program. I hope it helps give a little idea of what it was like even though the quality isn’t great – see if you can find Nathan and Maria flapping their wings! Their part goes from 1:52-3:18 on the video and then there are a few photos at the end.

~ Lynn

La Paz

Last week Laurie and I both had the privilege to travel to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, a beautiful city at an altitude of roughly 12,000 feet. Built in a "bowl" formed by a canyon in the high plains of western Bolivia, the city has very few level spots - you feel like you're either going up or down, and pretty steeply! It is also in the heart of the western part of the country where much of the indigenous population lives and where President Evo Morales enjoys broad support, so it feels very different from Santa Cruz in terms of climate, culture and politics. It was great to have a chance to experience this first-hand to get a better feel of the diversity of Bolivia that we hear so much about.

I went (Tues-Fri) to attend the IV World Mediation Conference (Spanish website/English website) along with two other MCCers. There were many inspiring and challenging speakers, and it was also an excellent opportunity to make contacts with other organizations that we may be able to partner with in the future. We were surprised when Evo Morales appeared at the opening ceremony and spoke for about 25 minutes. I videoed his speech and will try to post it here soon in case anyone's interested.

I got home Friday afternoon and Laurie left Saturday morning to continue accompanying an "MCC learning tour" group that had spent the past week in Bolivia. In La Paz they visited an artisan group that sells products to Ten Thousand Villages, and also enjoyed a tour of the city. On Sunday they went home and Laurie made the 1-hour flight back to Santa Cruz.

It was kind of fun to be flying around like that, but it's also nice to all be home together again! Below are 16 pictures to give you a taste of La Paz.

~Lynn

A month later...

Not sure what happened to us in October. It’s not that we were too busy to blog, but just trying to find the balance of living our new life here and not being too tempted by all the possibilities of connecting to home via email, blogs, facebook, etc.

Here are a few snippets from our past weeks in no particular order:

MCC Retreat- We enjoyed an MCC retreat in early October at a nearby Catholic retreat center. The MCC team here is 48 people (if we counted right) so there are endless folks to get to know. It is a multi-cultural group—about half are Bolivian and the other half come from US, Canada, Honduras, Nicaragua, Germany and Paraguay. We had some input sessions, free time for soccer, volleyball and swimming, a talent show, a campfire with strawberry-flavored marshmallows. One mortifying moment that stands out was when I was asked on the spot to pray in Spanish for the whole group.

Spanish- But speaking of Spanish…we’ve been pleasantly surprised at how easily we’ve entered into work and life here in Spanish (other than prayer…) There is always more to learn (those crazy Spanish prepositions…), but we’re using phone and written Spanish a lot more than we ever did in Guatemala or Lancaster. We both just finished a two-week Spanish review class so we’ll see what we can put into practice.

What are we doing? Lynn is getting engaged in his work as program coordinator for the “peace and justice program” here. It's exciting because it is an area in which MCC hopes to expand its work over the next few years, especially given the context of tension the country has been experiencing recently. A key first step is expanding institutional connections with other organizations working at peacebuilding efforts, and Lynn has enjoyed participating in a variety of meetings as part of this. Another interesting aspect has been helping develop a vision for taking a current project that works with small libraries and expanding it into one that works more directly with schools and has a more intentional focus on peacebuilding. He also enjoyed a series of meetings that resulted in a concept paper for a project in which MCC would support a new “peace commission” being formed by a Catholic parish in a marginalized/conflictive part of Santa Cruz that MCC has been relating to. We’ll see what happens with that!

I’m currently getting some orientation to the Connecting People role that I’ll be inheriting from another volunteer who is leaving in December. Some of the details are still getting worked out, but basically I’ll be working with the SALT volunteers (one year program for college-aged folks from North America), learning tours that MCC sponsors and with IVEP (International Visitor Exchange Program)—a program that sends Bolivians to North America for a year of service. Getting excited about the work is not hard for me. I believe in cross-cultural exchange even though it is messy and sometimes difficult to do well. I will learn a lot. I’m also still navigating this new phase of me having half time work outside of family and home. Some days it feels great, other days I’m less sure.

School days- Nathan and Maria have been in school six weeks. They leave the house each morning wearing mustard gold tee shirts with navy or jean bottoms. The school day is 8am-12 pm with a snack/recess break in the middle. Some interesting things about their day—all the kids brush teeth after mid-morning snack, they have English class three times a week (Nathan watched part of the movie Bambi last week), and Maria’s teacher likes to braid her hair at recess (!!?), birthday celebrations are a fairly regular occurrence during the school day (parents bring in a cake and there are games, dancing, and party gift bags…the works)!

Nathan seems to feel the change more than Maria, although he looks forward to computer time and gym class (soccer) and seems generally content to go to school in the morning. I occasionally do get a lump in my throat when I drop him off in his class in the morning and see him go in and sit down at his place while the rest of the kids are chatting it up and having fun all around him. We’re taking it one week at a time though and encouraging him to stick it out. Sometimes I tire of people saying that children learn language so fast—it doesn’t happen overnight and it involves some of the same struggles that adults face. A bright spot is that there are two other MCC kids from Canada who are also new to the school. Nothing like a little English camaraderie! Maria is more obviously thrilled about going to school every morning. We enjoy hearing her talk to herself in Spanish at home. We’re very happy with the teachers in both classrooms—they’ve been warm, caring and patiently explain things to us. Last week there was a little science fair exhibit time for parents to see some projects that each class made with recycled trash.

We can’t leave out Jesse- lover of tools, maker of mud soup, collector of mangos. Jesse keeps us busy and laughing and pulling our hair out! He stays with Juana each morning while I’m at the office. He loves his trips to the tienda across the street for candy and popsicles. Jesse has also discovered soda.

Below is a slide show with 28 photos and captions from a variety of activities over the past month.

~ Laurie