At last...

Today is February something…I lost track. I arrived on Thursday night, the plane ride was about 35 minutes (it takes between 8-10 hours to drive if that tells you anything about the roads here!!). Mike Timmer met me at the airport. I was so happy to finally be here!! There are three other interns here; Jaclyn, Michelle and Justin.

Yesterday I had orientation in the morning just learning about the culture, how not to get sick, and how to keep from getting ripped off or pick-pocketed. I realized first thing in the morning that I was missing my camera and I felt so sick to my stomach. The only place I could have lost it, I reasoned was in the airplane, or in Mike’s truck. Fortunately, it WAS in Mike’s truck. Whew.

In the late morning we went grocery shopping for snacks for the kids’ outing, then we went to the Timmers so I could meet Bonnie. We met Nate, who has a very cool accent, who drove us to get the kids from Villa Israel (orphanage 2). There are 7 kids there plus the baby of the house parents. Then we took the kids to the park. They rode the bumper cars, climbed everything in sight, ate and ran around. There is one girl who’s 11 and the baby is a girl, and 6 boys. I still don’t know all of their names. Erlan was the youngest boy. He’s three and oh so cute!

Then we wandered around town while Nate took the kids to the doctors, and went to have tea at Michelle and Jaclyn’s Spanish teacher’s house. I still feel like even with a Spanish degree I have a lot of learning to do. I’ll probably try to take one or two language lessons a week. I hope.

The kids from the other orphanage went to the doctor the day before and all of them were malnourished, and have to take de-worming treatments. I asked if that was common here, and I was told that it’s almost normal. The water is really not good, but people drink it. We don’t.

Today we tutored in the morning at Muyurina orphanage. (That´s Jaclyn reading to the kids). The house also has 7 kids plus two that belong to the house parents and one that belongs to the maid who also lives there, the kids were very affectionate and welcoming. The interns each tutor two kids and Maria the youngest just wanders around. I tutored Johnny and I felt so accomplished when he figured out how to add big numbers and spell “igual” (equals). Smart kid. Then Maria sat on my lap and just wanted to play with my sunglasses. After lunch we went with Mike to roast coffee (“Bolivia’s Best Coffee” is a business to support the orphanages), It was a very educational experience. Mike dropped us off at the “Young Professionals” bible study that the interns are involved with.

Oh, and just to clear things up there are 4 orphanages. Only 2 are open, the other two should be finished by spring. One’s in the rainforest and rains have slowed down the building process. Mike says that they turn kids away every day because they do not have room for them. They can’t accept kids until they have room for them. The kids are able to be adopted but there is a lot of paperwork involved and because most of them are older it’s not likely that they will be (says Jaclyn). Plus there are two sets of siblings who should be placed together and most parents don’t want 4 boys all at one time!

Sooo….anyway. We´re going out to the jungle next week for 7-10 days to work on one of the unfinished orphanages. So there might not be an update for awhile. But I´m sure I´ll have lots of good stories when I get back!

Sunday I’ll go to the International Church with the interns and Timmers, but I really want to go to a Spanish church. So next week, (or the next time when I’m not in the jungle) I’m going to try to find a church. I met a girl who works at the Centro de Amistad who goes to a Spanish church. So I’ll probably tag along with her at least once.

Okie doke, Folks. Thanks for all of your prayers and encouragement. I really do appreciate it!

Love.

Kristen

One of these days I will probably try to post pictures…so keep an eye out…