"Oh My Lentil"

The rainy season has arrived here in Bolivia.  My weather app is pretty much useless now (Not that it wasn’t before with the spotty service) as it forecasts thunderstorms every day.  Whereas I would normally be depressed by the rain ruining all my plans, I am actually loving it so far. With all the rain, our normal high temperatures have dropped from the upper 90’s to the mid 80’s (Not so great when it comes to the cold showers).  Rain also means that we have study hall instead of work which has given me the chance to get ahead in planning my classes. With the end of the school year rapidly approaching, (You must remember that your winter is our summer--and coincidentally--rainy season) this will hopefully give me the extra time I need to write final tests and get grades finished in the midst of all the other year-end craziness.

When the final school bell rings, many of the kids will return home with the exception of the few orphans who live here year-round. Summer break spans all of December, January, and half of February.  During this time, I am allowed three and a half weeks for vacation. Leaving the country for vacation is a difficult process further complicated by the constantly changing visa rules and requirements.  It took a while to get all the legal stuff figured out, but now that it’s taken care of, I can start to plan my trip. Perhaps the most exciting part of the trip will be meeting up with my brother, Corbin, who has a couple weeks off from dental school.  We’ve got some really cool ideas so far, but nothing is set in stone yet, so I will wait until my next post to reveal some of the details.

When I’m not traveling, there will be plenty of work for me to do here at Familia Feliz.  With the new director taking over and other volunteers leaving, there is A LOT to do and figure out.  All the classrooms, the five kids’ residences, and the “big house” communal area need to be deep-cleaned and receive some minor repairs.  We also have crops and fields to maintain, grass to machete, hungry mouths to feed, and the remaining kids to take care of. On top of this, we have to divide up the classes for the next semester and begin lesson planning.  With a skeleton crew during vacation, this could be quite the undertaking. Thankfully, we have a hardworking group who will stop at nothing to provide the best possible experience for the kids.

With everyone working so hard, it has been difficult to find time to bond with the other volunteers here.  I originally expected to become very close to the other SM’s almost instantaneously, but that wasn’t the case at all.  After three months of being together, we are finally starting to bond during some planned get-togethers. The most noteworthy so far was our costumed harvest party (NOT a Halloween party).  All the SM’s came up with a homemade costume and then we met up to vote for the best one and play some group games. It was a fun break from watching the kids that provided some much-needed bonding time.  There are already plans for another party in the future.

As mentioned, I am now past the three month mark here, and you may be wondering how much Spanish I’ve been able to learn through a third of my time here. I’ve come to the realization that the learning process for a language is unlike that of any other subject.  The greatest difference is in how much time it takes to learn a language. Originally, I was very frustrated in how slow I seemed to be improving. Now, I have a little more perspective; it took me 20 years of constant practice to learn English and I still stutter sometimes!  Because I can always fall back on my English, Spanish will take me at least that much time to learn, and likely more. I say all of this to make the point that learning a language is a life-long undertaking. One year in Bolivia isn’t going to turn me into a perfectly fluent Spanish-speaker.  

With that in mind, I do feel I have made leaps and bounds of progress since I first got here.  I can safely say that I have broken out of beginner Spanish and feel as though I am in the early intermediate stages.  Anyone who has taken high school Spanish will probably agree with me that the hardest part is the conjugations. Every verb has different endings depending on the subject of the sentence and the desired tense of the verb. Speaking is a constant struggle of sorting through all the endings floating around in my head and choosing the correct one before the other participant in the conversation has fallen asleep from waiting for so long.  Maybe a slight exaggeration, but with all those endings and even a couple tenses that don’t actually exist in English, things start to get pretty confusing.

Understanding the kids’ rapid and grammatically incorrect speech is even more difficult for me.  Even when they use words that are in my vocabulary, I have to take a second to figure out what they are saying.  While they can be hard to understand, the kids have provided me with some very colorful Spanish euphemisms that I don’t think I would’ve learned anywhere else. I think my favorite would have to be, “Ay miércoles!” (Ahh Wednesday!) which is used in the place of the Spanish cuss word for excrement.  Things must be working in both directions, though, because the kids have picked up, “Oh my lanta!” from one of the other SM’s. I’ve even heard a homespun derivative, “Oh my lentil”, which, in my opinion, is hilarious and quite applicable given the amount of lentils we eat here.

This post wouldn’t be complete without appeasing all my haters.  I didn’t go through much of a rebellion stage during adolescence, so I felt that I had to make up for it in college by growing out my hair.  Very few, if any, of my friends and family were big fans of the “man-bun” look, but it was a fun experiment. (I’ll have you know the female students here begged me not to cut my “cabello grande”. A favorite post-vespers activity of theirs was putting my hair through all kinds of torture in order to “style” it)  I’m quite relieved to say the look is gone and won’t be coming back--at least anytime soon. My 11th graders won a competition for the best classroom behavior and were given the reward of cutting my hair in any way they desired. Surprisingly, they gave me a pretty spiffy-looking shearing, and reminded me just how nice it is to have short hair, especially with how hot it is here.

Recently in my devotions, I’ve found that learning a language and a building a relationship with God have some similarities.  Just like learning Spanish, building a relationship with God is a life-long undertaking. It’s crazy to go out for a year of service and expect to come back with a perfect relationship with Him.  Spiritual journeys have ups and downs just like learning a language, but the important thing is that we just keep plugging along and trusting the process. It may take a whole lifetime, but the reward is worth it.

TL;DR

Rainy season is here in full force.  I have the opportunity to travel with Corb during my three week summer vacation--details coming in the next post.  Preparing for the next school year will be un montón of work, but it will only serve to bring the volunteers closer together as a family.  Spanish is hard, but at least I’ve picked up some fun veggie-cuss words. The ‘do is gone. God and Spanish have more similarities than you might think.

 Costume Party: From left to right

Back: Jesus, Banana Tree, Coco, Gucci Gabi, Farmgirl, Kim Possible

Front: Mermaid Man from Spongebob???, Paco the Taco, 70's wear

Before 

During 

After 

The damage

Our one remaining pup (the rest were sold)

Our birthday tradition

Nothing to see here, just audio from a practice for our upcoming
Christmas program (also the highest note I think I've ever hit)

I'm gonna make Franz the best American Football player from Bolivia