From Bolivia

Hey, everyone. We are in La Paz! Tomorrow morning we take a bus to Cuzco, Peru and we´ll spend the weekend at Machu Picchu. The real reason that I started this entry was to post some great pictures that we have made here in Bolivia, but this computer doesn´t seem to like uploading pictures. It is funny, because this is the same computer that last time wouldn´t let me put up a title for the entry. Oh well...

We´re Not Dead!

Sorry about the lack of entries to the blog, especially considering the earthquake in Peru. Thanks for your concern and love! We have really been running around since Jill got here to try and see everyone and do everything that we can. Here is a quick photo update.

This is the head of surgery and I at end of the last surgery that I was able to attend. We took out half of 2 ribs that had a tumor attached to them... that´s right I said we. I scrubbed in and got to stick my hands in. The surgeon used a hammer and chisel to cut the ribs in order to take them out and you could see right into where the boy´s lungs were working. Also, if you look close, you can see that our scrubs are wet from sweat. It is hard work to pry open and hold open a hole in someone. The boy is recovering fine, but since this is his 3rd relapse, his prognosis isn´t too good...

Finally, Jill got here! And we kissed! She also brought me the new Harry Potter and we have been reading it out loud together.

This is the Lopez family that got baptized when I was a missionary here. The first night that Jill was here we went to the temple with them. Since my mission they have a new son in law, a new daughter in law, and two new grandchildren. They have all been sealed in the temple.


Osvaldo Lopez and I worked to get this group organized at the hospital. Osvaldo is the young adult leader of the church in his city and asked the girl to my left in this photo, Irene, to be a representative of the church in the hospital. She is a nursing student and wanted to volunteer, so now she comes twice a week to the hospital and coordinates projects between the youth of the church and the kids at the hospital. I also got around 120 beanie baby stuffed animals donated for them to hand out on Children´s Day last week.

This is the start of our vacation. We snuck across the border to go to Iguaçu Falls in Brasil. Technically you have to pay for a $100 visa, but we didn´t. The part that we are standing on is a platform that is on the edge of another waterfall, as in, you could look over the guardrail and down 150 feet or so. Iguaçu Falls is more of a complex of waterfalls than just one waterfall. It was very cool.


This is the church in Saltos del Guaira, an area on the border with Brazil where I was a missionary for 6 months. The man standing next to Jill is Felix, who is now the leader of the church in that area; he and his family have really been changed by their baptism.

The girl under the blanket is named Liz, Felix´s daughter; all of the girls were in love with Jill.

A friend lent us their little motorcycle to show Saltos del Guaira to Jill.

We have a change in the itenerary... tomorrow we will fly to Cochabamba, Bolivia, instead of riding the bus there. It will cut at least 40 hours of travel time and give us those precious hours to instead focus on Machu Picchu. We will also gain a little wiggle room for any situations in Peru. We are loving life! Once again, sorry about the last two weeks without any entries. We love you all very much.

To Paraguay and Beyond...

Yesterday I felt that I have had an experience comparable to John’s tumor, body cutting, tissue tearing ordeal. At my work we have the opportunity to house not only girls but horses as well. Horses are awesome to ride and fun to watch their teeth being worked on, and add a certain therapeutic element to treatment. Personally, horses are also scary. They are big and get spooked easily. They have metal on the bottoms of their feet and they weight so very much more than me. To me, they are unpredictable. Yesterday morning I went out with the girls to feed the horses. One of the girls, stroking the horse’s nose, began to shout. She had blood on her hand. I rushed over to see horse skin everywhere and a gaping gash through skin, muscle, and who knows what else between the eyes of the horse. Apparently he had collided with other horses in a rush to get his dinner (It looks about the same feeding 14 teenage girls at dinner!). Here is where John and my interests/reactions part. I felt sick and panicked seeing and the inner nasties out. I frantically started calling everyone I knew. One of the girls removed the horse and put him in a separate stall by himself while I was trying not to pass out. I stoked the horse while trying not to focus too much on his bloody head. I don’t know how John likes this cutting of tissues/bloody stuff! Gives me the willies!

On a different note, should anyone be interested I go to see John/meet Paraguay on Friday!!! YEAH!! I’ve been listening to a lot of Spanish and Portuguese music in preparation. I also followed a Spanish speaking family around in Wal-Mart for a few minutes until the kids started to notice me and stand around me speaking stuff I didn’t understand. I really am very excited to finally get why John loves Paraguay so much and learn to love it myself. I won’t be there very long, but I love people and places easily! I love John and can not wait to see his face again! Six weeks is plenty long and I want him back in my everyday life badly. I am so grateful for/to Jack and Pam – you have raised an amazing, smart, kind, thoughtful, hardworking and strong son. I like him a whole lot.

Well there is lots of work to be had and cleaning to do before departing. A bit of exciting news – I do have red tomatoes now along with ripe lettuce and beans!!!!! I originally put just a period after that sentence but realized it deserved so much more! Too bad I won’t really be here to enjoy the feast. None the less I do hold a small amount of pride in my meager accomplishment. :) Much love to all!

Surgery

Well, I got to see another surgery. This time I was there from the very beginning. The patient was an eleven year old girl with a large tumor below her lungs and near her aorta and kidneys. The doctors wanted to do a biopsy and evaluate the extent of the tumor growth, so they opened her up and looked around. I got to look over their shoulder.

The idea is really simple, "something is wrong, so let´s take a look." I mean, we have our insides with us all the time, but we don´t ever get to look at them, which is kind of sad in a way. It´s like being married to someone and living on seperate continents. It would be so cool to see how all our little organs do their thing, maybe we would be nicer to ourselves if we could see all our internal squishy machines working so hard to keep us going.

Simple idea, and they made the procedure look simple. They just cut her open, layer by layer, cauterizing any bleeds, until they had reached the abdominal cavity. Then they stuck their fingers in and felt around, then they stuck their whole hands in and felt around, then they cut a chunk out of the largest tumor in front for the biopsy. They showed me the aorta pulsing to deliver it´s cargo to the bottom half of the body. "Veedy dangerous," says the doctor. They are actually hoping that the tumor is malignant, because it has wrapped and attached itself to the aorta. With malignant tumors, you can do chemo and radio thearapies, but if it is benign, it will continue to grow and strangle that artery; the only option if it is benign would be a risky surgery to remove the growth from the aorta.

I also made a small change to the Mita´i website. It sort of looks cooler, I think. I have also been training one of the secretaries to update it and she has also been making a blog for the hospital itself.

This weekend I am going to Saltos del Guaira to see my friends Felix and Lili. As a missionary, my companion and I taught them so that they could get baptized in 2003. Their 2 sons Fernando and Alejandro were also baptized. I hadn´t heard anything from them since the mission, but it turns out that about a year and a half ago, Felix was put in charge of the church in that town.

One week till Jill gets here!! I am very ready to see her again and for her to see, hear, and taste Paraguay. I was going to put smell too, and Paraguay has a lot of good smells, but there may be more bad smells than good ones.

Beard Update

So I didn´t sleep but instead thought of something so here I am again. Here are some more photos. I took it just now using the timer, cause everyone is asleep. I like my beard.

This is a picture of Raúl and I. He is the real estate guy that took me to meet Cuevitas, the famous soccer player. Today was a really nice cool winter day with sun, and as you can see by the redness on Raúl´s chest, we sat outside all day after church and just talked. It was a good day today.

This is my beautiful wife, Jill! Did you all see her entry too? The other day she called and was really sad because someone weedwacked her flower garden. Then today she messaged me and told me that a dog dug up her vegetables.

Okay, this one doesn´t really have to do anything with the trip, other than the fact that I miss riding the scooter with my wife.

Superseis

This past week one of the things that I did was to make a powerpoint presentation for Mita´i to use in a meeting with the supermarket chain "Superseis." When you shop at Superseis they ask you if you want to round up your purchase to the next 1000 guaranies, and then they (supposedly) give the difference to charity. So Mita´i wants in on the action, hence the meeting and the powerpoint. I don´t know if they actually want me at the meeting, but we´ll see. The presentation was the result of a very long meeting that I had with the president of Mita´i, Monica. She is a well-to-do Paraguayan-German mother of a cancer survivor. Most of the meeting was her asking me questions about Mormons, sharing her feelings on almost every other religion, her husband´s job, her special diet of biblical foods, her opinion on international loans, and me listening while eating lots of food that her cook had prepared. Everyone who has even a little money here in Asuncion has a maid or a cook or a maid/cook. Sometimes I love the idea, but sometimes it drives me crazy. Like when Monica takes care of talking my head off and her cook takes care of everything else.

Something cool this week - I got to scrub in and see a surgery. I got there as the surgery was finishing;I went back to the surgical wing, introduced myself, and they said that they had a surgery going on right then and why didn´t I go watch right away. So they gave me scrubs to put on, and then the cap, face mask, and booties. Then they told me to wash my hands and just put me in the door. No introduction to the surgeon or anasthesiologist or anything. So I introduced myself and they welcomed me in and I watched as the surgeon stiched his little patient up. Everyone here is really confused when I tell them that I haven´t gone to medical school yet, because here you go to medical school right after high school. So they always ask if I´m a doctor, then if I´m studying medicine, then they are confused as to why a 24 year old kid wasn´t already in if not done with medical school. When I asked them what was wrong with the patient, they gave the diagnosis, which of course I didn´t understand. So I asked them what that was and they pointed to the kid´s manly parts and said that they didn´t work. If I didn´t understand the formal diagnosis, how would I ever understand anything besides, " this part here that I am pointing to doesn´t work, stupid." (the stupid was inferred) The patient was probably eleven years old or something around there, and whatever they did required stitches all around the penis and some on his inner thigh. It kind of looked like to me that his penis was attached to his inner thigh and they had to seperate it and kind of reconstruct it.

The interesting part was when they finished and the anasthesiologist started to wake the kid up. He hurt a lot and started to move around, wanting to touch the stiches and his wound. The nurses were doing something else and the doctor couldn´t hold the kid down by himself, so I held the kid´s legs. It reminded me a whole lot of docking the lambs with grandpa. The interesting part was that the anasthesiologist didn´t put local anesthesia on the surgical wound until after he was awake and hurting. Maybe there was a reason for that and maybe not, but it seemed like kind of a dumb idea for the ten minutes that the kid was crying and we were all holding him down until the local anasthesia kicked in.

This week I would like to see a complete surgery, hopefully a tumor removal or something. But for now, I need to sleep, people.

On The Home Front . . .

Jill here. No, I am not writing from Paraguay or some other exotic foreign wonder, but it occurred to me the other day that in a small way I am currently a part of this big adventure. I am spending my weeks in Provo looking forward to the not so distant day when I meet up with John. While he works in a hospital and makes his mark on the hearts of others, I too am working-and thankfully finding time for fun. I am glad to have work, as it seems lonely at my house without John. With no John to come home to I have picked up a lot of extra shifts, and in turn have learned a lot more about my job. I feel like I have been a team player, and that feels good. I am also glad for the time to paint, garden, sew, build relationships with friends/family and work on myself.

I'm sure most everyone is thinking, how is Jill taking this? And I can't and won't lie... I MISS JOHN! I miss him like crazy and realize how lucky I am to have him in my life. He's so funny, cute, honest, and kind... it's sad not to have him around! I am very glad however for the opportunity that he has to be in a place he loves with people he loves, serving and giving to others. He is a good man. I know that we are both being blessed because he is there.

I was able to fly to Colorado for a week and go camping with my family. It was so fun! We talked and laughed, fished and swam! We also hiked the much feared hike of Water Dog Lake. We spent a rainy night in the tent trailer playing games and eating snacks! Thanks to my awesome mom there was much much much good food to be had! It was fun to be around my sibling and see my parents, as I don't get that opportunity very often. It was also fun to see my niece and nephew.

Well I love you all and am so grateful for the support that you give to John and I. We feel very loved and thankful. We look forward to seeing each other again. I know that I am excited to finally see Paraguay and John is happy to show it to me. Again we love you all very much...

The other blog...

Hi, everyone. Last week was really slow as far as the volunteering has been going; like I said before, everyone really loves me, but doesn´t really know what to do with me. So last week I just kind of spent a lot of time on the internet trying to figure out how to get Mita´i online. Here are the beginning results.

I decided to make a blog at first, because it's quick and free. I think that it turned out okay, but it still needs further tweaking to be more visually appealing. The tweaking will take place once I get some help on the more technical stuff, I ask everyone I meet if they know how to make webpages. If I come across the right people and get the right programs, I would really like to make an actual website, ie www.fundacionmitai.org. I still have three weeks until Jill gets here, so I think that that may be possible.

Over the weekend I talked to everyone about ideas for more development of volunteerism here in the hospital and feel like I made a lot of progress. One of the suggestions that I recieved was to start up a patient visit program with the young adults of the church. It just so turns out that Osvaldo Lopez, one of my friends that lives really close to the hospital here, has the church responsibility of being president of the young adults for the entire city of San Lorenzo and the surrounding area. The idea would be to have him organize the volunteers from the church so that the come for an hour or two each week. Here at the hospital they would have a tupperware bucket full of toys and materials for drawing so that they can come and play with the patients that are staying here at the hospital. The visits would be good for everyone involved; the children themselves recieve the treatments they need, but for the rest of the day they often really don't have anything to do. Being weak from the chemothearapy doesn't exactly let them run around outside, and they really would benefit mentally and physically from more human interaction. The volunteers themselves would of course benefit by fulfilling a need in others. Those that work here at the hospital would benifit by having happier patients and less work for them to do. It would also be great missionary work.

Yenny Figueredo, the mother of the family that I am staying with, did a humanitarian aid type project a few years back involving toys that people sent from the US. They sent so many toys in fact that there are still boxes full of leftovers. I talked to her about it and she would love to get them out of her house and into the arms of the kids here. So that is another awesome thing.

Another possibility - I met a missionary that came here to Paraguay to work in the temple with her husband. She also organizes projects with the church's women's organization, the Relief Society, in which the ladies make blankets and take them to kids at the hospitals. So far they have only taken them to one of the nicer hospitals in Asuncion, but I am going to try to get some of her blankets out to our little hospital.

Interesting story not related to volunteering... On Saturday I met an (apparently) really famous Paraguayan soccer player, Nelson Cuevas. So one of my Paraguayan friends' name is Raul. He is a very successful real estate agent and on Saturday he drove me around to some of the properties that he is dealing with, and introduced me to one of his clients. Imagine meeting a South American soccer star. Okay, it was exactly like that. As we pulled into one of the houses, a guy walks out of his beautiful house with palm trees and everything, all decked out in unbelievably white, brand new, as in I am going to wear this once then throw it away high tech looking soccer clothing, and at his side, is his 6 foot tall woman/trophy wearing sunglasses bigger than her head. The only thing missing was a toy dog under her arm.

So I shook his hand and of course women greet people with kisses down here, so the 6 feet of woman did the double kiss thing and I don't know if I was more scared that she was so beautiful or that there was so much of her. Cuevitas tried his english and said something like "hhhouu add youu?" Then, without waiting for my answer, put all of his energy (he had a lot of energy) into saying "eeeevrytin auu riideee!!!" After that, I was kind of glad that everybody ignored me as Nelson showed Raul some things about the house, and when we left we had to do the hand shaking and kissing and "auu riideee!!!" thing, this time as a farewell instead of as a greeting.

In the Hospital!

I finally made it! I am writing this entry from the General Pediatric Hospital in San Lorenzo, Paraguay. In 2002 I lived about 2 km. from here! About 40 doctors work here and there are about 70 beds for patients. The hospital is kind of like a complex of buildings that are interconnected by nice walkways and of course it is Paraguay so there are lots of plants and green and in general it is a nice place to be.

Dr. Noguera picks me up in the mornings and then she goes home at midday. Most of the doctors here work for the government in the mornings and have their private practices in the afternoons. Dr. Noguera is a mom, so she just goes home to her kids in the afternoon. I thought before I came that Mita'i was going to be in its own little building and everything. It turns out that Mita'i isn't a clinic, but an organization that supports the cancer ward here in the pediatric hospital. Most of the money comes from a similar organization in Italy, and some of it is raised here. The organization was started by some more affluent mothers of children with cancer who were able to send their kids to different countries for better treatment. Bone marrow transplants here in Paraguay are the big goal that both Mita'i and Dr. Noguera have. Right now the kids have to go to Argentina or Brazil for transplants.

I have found that basically everybody loves me for being here and I will be able to do whatever I want. My official assignment is to make a webpage for Mita'i, which should be interesting - let's sum me up: a history major who wants to go to medical school and works in the biology and political science departments and is now going to try to design and build a website in 3 weeks. But it shouldn't be too hard, I guess. Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be able to put up a link to the site so that you can see the fruits of my labor. Apart from the website I can just kind of wander around and talk to whoever I want. There is one building that Mita'i has built which has little rooms and a kitchen and stuff for poor families from outside of Asuncion to stay in while their kids are here for treatment. Also, Dr. Noguera is friends with the Chief of Surgery, who is present at the more serious surgeries, aka tumor extractions, and she said that I should be able to scrub in and observe whenever I want.

Oh, and sad news about the plane in Sao Paulo. Coincidenally, Jill will be flying into Sao Paulo on her way here, but into a different airport. Apparently the airport involved in the accident was right in the middle of the city and consequently there wasn't very much room for any mistakes.

Paraguay!

First off, I need to apologize to everyone for the lack of communication these last few days; I have been running around like crazy trying to get situated. But let's start with the bus ride from Bolivia to Paraguay...

Ok. Bolivia is half really high altitude mountains and half almost sea-level desert. The half that is sea-level desert turns into the northwest part of Paraguay. It is called the Chaco, and Paraguay and Bolivia fought a war over it in the 30's cause they thought that there was oil there. According to the Paraguayans I've talked to Bolivia had tanks and machine guns while Paraguay had only machetes and pitchforks (one guy told me that Paraguay used bee hives as grenades?!) And in spite of all of this Paraguay won the Chaco War and took its bigger share of the Chaco desert. And there wasn't oil there. There is, however, a giant aquifer there and Paraguay is very worried that the US will invade and steal all their water after we are done stealing all the oil from Iraq.

Remember the Mennonites from the last blog entry? So I get on the bus and who is right in my area of the bus but a real-live, gigantic, blond Mennonite and his little blond family! The dad and two sons (both under 3 years old) were all wearing blue coveralls with long sleeve white shirts and the Mrs. was wearing a shawl and an old style dress. They were speaking what I found out later to be (translated from Spanish) "low German" or I guess old German or something. It sounds more English than German. They had a bunch of stuff and were getting situated, and some of their things were on my seat, so I waited a bit until they were all settled. It took them a while because they were bringing a bunch of stuff back to Paraguay and because of the kids and everything. When they were all done, it turned out that they had only purchased 2 seats and stuffed underneath and overhead all the space that they could with their things, and then each had a kid on their lap. And they were across the aisle from me. So when it turned out that nobody was in the seat next to me I offered them one of the seats on my side of the aisle (thinking that they would put one of their tiny kids in the seat next to me) and they exhaled and were all smiles and the great big dad came over and told me to scoot over and the mom put the kids in the aisle and spread out across the 2 seats that she now had for herself. So for the whole ride I got to be squished by a giant german guy that doesn't use deodorant.

But it turned out to not be so bad cause pretty soon I was stinky too and I told the Mennonite that my grandpa was a sheep man and that made him immensely pleased. So pleased that he started sharing the prices of soy beans and sunflowers and the different prices in Bolivia and Paraguay and that his family actually lived in Bolivia now because the Mennonites in Paraguay had all been corrupted and were all watching TV now. They had moved to Bolivia last year and were going back to Paraguay to "get some documents." Which I guess was true cause when we got to the border he really didn't have any documents for his whole family and had to bribe the immigration officer 60 dollars to let him pass. He later told me that he had just driven his tractor across the Chaco and had eventually ended up in the right place in Bolivia.

The Bolivian immigration officer didn't seem to have any problems with the French and British people that were crossing the border (who didn't speak spanish) but with me he looked me right in the eye and asked me what I was doing in Bolivia and if the date on the entry stamp was correct and which cities I stayed in and the names of the hotels that I had stayed in and how much I paid at those hotels. After a pause he nodded his head slowly and looked kinda disappointed that I really didn't have any reason at all to give him 60 dollars and gave me my exit stamp.

The Paraguayan side of the border was more interesting because Bolivia, along with Columbia, is where cocaine is born. The coca plant, from which cocaine is made, is farmed and used to make a traditional tea or is chewed to make a traditional ball of goo, both of which are mild stimulants. Coca tea is what I had in the coffee shop before church. I just kind of assumed, but later found out that Bolivian Mormons do indeed drink coca tea. So anyway, since there is a lot of coca in Bolivia there is a lot of cocaine. On the Paraguayan side of the border there were drug dogs and searches and pat downs and everything. I was the very last one in line to get my stuff gone through and to get a pat down, but when my policeman came up I greeted him in Guaraní and he was really happy and instead of patting me down just patted me real hard on the back and told me to get as many Paraguayan girl-friends as I could and then he called the other police over and they all told me in Guaraní to get as many girl-friends as I could. Then I told them that I was already married and they laughed really hard and said that I had misunderstood; that they had told me to get girl-friends, not a wife. So I kinda uncomfortably laughed and they all laughed again and nobody checked my stuff.

When I got to Asuncion I was pretty dirty and sweaty and tired and very very excited to be in parts of Paraguay that I had been in before. The first thing I did when I got here was to go to the lomito arabe place - Collin knows what I'm talking about, and in Germany they had kind of the same thing and called it a duner kebab. There is this guy in downtown Asuncion from Lebanon that sells these things that are a kind of wrap with chicken and beef and vegetables and it is amazingly delicious and I am planning on going there a lot.

The second thing was to find a place to stay. Lonely Planet recommended a place in the center of Asuncion that is this old lady's house that she has converted into a kind of hotel. All of the older houses here are kind of indoor-outdoor experiences, in that you if you walk from the front of the house through the kitchen, through the family room, and into your room, you will first be outside, then inside, then outside, then inside again. It is pretty neat for the summertime because everything is open and breezy, and especially when it rains because you can be inside and dry but you are very close and intimate with the weather. Right now, though, since it is pretty cold, being intimate with the weather is about as enjoyable as cuddling with the lunch lady.

So all of that was Thursday night and I took a really hot shower and put a lot of blankets on the bed to keep the lunch lady out and slept like a log. When I got up, I realized that I hadn’t brought any phone numbers and went to the mission office to at least get the number of the Stake President here, who is the one who had given me the email address of Jabibi Noguera, the doctor that I will be working with in the clinic. Did any of you ever go back to your elementary school or high school after you had graduated, and feel “above” the jurisdiction of it? That is what it felt like being in the mission office with jeans and a beard. How mature am I?

I eventually got Dr. Noguera’s phone number and we agreed to meet Monday night at 5:00 to get acquainted and to get everything in order. I also had my laundry done (as in someone else did it) for three bucks. Then, a minor crisis with the ATM’s here occurred; all of the machines said that they weren’t associated with my card. And on the bank’s website it says that every ATM should work. Then I tried calling the toll free number for the bank, but all of the public phones and all cell phones here have toll free numbers blocked. (side note - almost everyone uses cell phones) (another side note - the police, fire, and hospital numbers are all toll free, so basically no one can call them) I went back to my hostel to use the phone there, but the old lady running the place really didn’t want me calling the US from her phone cause it would be expensive. When I told her it would be free and showed her the Paraguayan version of 1-800 on the phone number I was going to dial, she started explaining to me how far away the US is and that the phone lines have to go through water and across mountains and that everything in the US was more expensive. So I couldn’t use her phone. By this time it was already late in the afternoon and I was getting pretty desperate cause I didn’t have three dollars to give to the washer lady. Finally I tried another ATM and it worked. So I know which ATM to use now.

When I got back to the hostel, the old lady running the place told me that she wanted to go to mass and I asked her if I could go too. Nooo, she said, but could I stay and answer the phone and unlock the front door while she was away? “Just tell people you’re the guard from North America. Ok?” I guess she didn’t trust me enough to use her phone but now she wanted me to run the place for an hour. So I said ok, and she left and I answered the door and didn’t tell people that I was the guard from North America.

The next day, Saturday, I planned to surprise some friends, the Lopez family, by showing up on their front doorstep. So I got on a bus and rode an hour out to Anahi, where they live, thinking that I would just remember all of the streets and be able to just go right up to their door. Keep in mind that I practically lived in the streets in the streets of Anahi for four and a half months. So I got off the bus and everything was fine and good, but then the further into the area I got, the less I recognized, and I ended up just walking around the streets for three hours and getting really tired. I knew, technically, that I had been there before, but really was completely lost.

So I eventually gave up and found an internet place and read an email from Jill and felt a lot better about myself, and then I read another of the emails in my inbox. It was from the Figueredo family, one of the families that I met the first time I came to Paraguay. In the email they invited me to stay at their house and said that they missed me and were so glad that I was back in Paraguay and fortunately, they also gave me their phone number. So I called them up and rode the bus back into Asuncion to meet up with them, and they brought me home and made me food and everything was okay again. The Figueredos have been Mormons for a long time, and are better off than most Paraguayans; they have a big house and everything is very comfortable and free and, best of all, I am living with a family. We talked for a long time last night and drank lots of maté and today we went to church and I showed them pictures of Jill and we are all really excited for her to come down.

So tomorrow we will run some errands and then I have the appointment with the Dr. to see exactly what I will be doing for the next month. Sorry about the length of this entry, but it had to cover many days' time. I love this place!

Notes:

I was mistaken about the altitude in La Paz. It's not 15,000 feet like I said, it's closer to 12,500 ft. Sorry.

It snowed in Buenos Aires last week. It hasn't snowed there in 90 years.

My excuse for the run-on sentances and bad grammar of the blog? I have been reading Jack Keruac lately.

The Title Has Returned!

Hey hey hey everyone. I am so excited that I can do titles again that I am going to go back and put titles on the last few posts I have done, so that it will look neater. I am in a cybercafe in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and the guy who runs the place (he is probably 15 years old) is playing Brazilian Techno really loud and there is another kid (who is probably 8 years old) who is dancing very enthusiastically in the doorway. I wonder if it is an elaborate plan that they have made in order to to attract business.

Sorry about the lack of pictures. The camera needs new batteries, and I have been on the bus for a long time. Yesterday and the day before that I came from La Paz to Santa Cruz on an 18 hour bus ride. We got stopped three times so that they could check for drugs. In all there were probably like 3 hours of delays because of the drug police. I sat next to a lady whose dad is half Japanese and half Turkish. Her mom is Bolivian. She was kinda interesting, but she talked for probably half the trip, which when you are on an 18 hour trip, adds up to a lot of talking. She was one of those people who only listen to you for long enough to know what to talk about themselves next. I guess that is kind of like this blog, huh? You all can make comments, but mostly it is all about me! I was also worried because there were like 5 families on the bus who had babies. But all of the babies were pretty good for the whole trip, even though they were really stinky.

Last night I slept in a dorm room with 2 other guys. One is from Sao Paulo, and lived in Boston for 2 years. He was really laid back and cool. The other guy is from Wisconsin and kept talking about 3 things. The first thing was how awesome it was that he spoke Spanish and Portuguese so well, after only one semester abroad. The second thing was how awesome it was that you can get drugs so easily in South America. And I forgot the third thing cause I kind of stopped listening to him after the other two things. I hope that he gets picked up by the drug police.

There are tucans in our hotel. You can hold them and everything. I have almost gotten pooped on like 4 times cause I always want to hold them, and cause they poo a lot. This morning I wore sandals to the bathroom and they both started attacking my toes with their huge beaks.

I leave tonight at 6 oclock for Paraguay. Supposedly it is a 30 hour ride, through the Chaco Paraguayo. The Chaco is probably a lot like Wyoming. There are a lot of cattle and sheep and some Indians, but instead of ´´I´m a Maverick´´ mugs filled with Pepsi like in WY, the Chaco has German Mennonites. Contrary to popular belief, most came over between the World Wars, as in they weren´t Nazis or anything. But there are Nazis for sure. One of the questions on the Brazilian visa application is ´´have you ever committed genocide?´´

Well, I guess the next post will be from Paraguay. Ciao!

The Best Day of the Trip So Far...

Today has been the most relaxing days of the trip. So of course it is Sunday, so I wanted to go to church. Fortunately, there is http://www.mormon.org/, where you can look up the times and places of any congregation anywhere in the world. So I looked up La Paz. There were 3 pages of information, and I asked the guy who runs the internet place which of the addresses was the closest. Pretty soon everyone from the whole cybercafe was crowded around my computer telling me to go back to the first page, then to page 2, then back to page 3 and after about ten minutes and much deliberation, the consensus was that the one on 20 de Octubre was the closest. Then I went back to my new room (a whole $2.50 a night) and went to sleep.

I woke up extra early and got ready; I felt pretty sheepish sneaking out of the hippy lair in a white shirt and tie, but it was Sunday morning so not very many of the wild things were stirring. The walk to church was great, gone was the madness of the Saturday market and the only other people about were a few older couples out for their early morning (8 am) walk. I love older people in Latin America, because when you say, ¨Buenos días,¨ they act as if you had just given them a million dollars. They smile and say ¨good morning to you, young man,¨ and want to shake your hand and may God bless you and we hope that your family is okay without you and all of this happens while each party is still walking past, so it´s quite the intense experience.

After a Bolivian breakfast (a piece of bread and a coca tea) I was hoping that no one would see me walking from the coffee shop to the mormon church, but sure enough there were some guys in white shirts and ties that I pretended like I didn´t see. When I got to the church I was talking to some of the members there and it turns out that the guys in the white shirts and ties were also gringos, and also from BYU. This piqued my interest cause Nate, remember, my friend doing research in Sucre who I was going to see but didn´t, was with a big group from BYU. So maybe these guys were from the same group. We went up stairs to one of the meetings going on, and lo and behold, there was Nate! So everyone was surprised and happy, except for the Bolivians until I explained to everyone that I wasn´t with these other gringos, but that it was pure chance that we met up. It turns out that Nate´s internship in Sucre fell through, and he is waiting in La Paz until tomorrow, when he´ll go to another city.

Church was great. The guy who taught one of the lessons is a professional teacher and asked the most amazing questions that really made you think. Someone played the guitar in the Sacrement Meeting, and afterwords a guy with a pin on his jacket that said ¨Don´t Mess With Texas¨ came up and wanted to practice his english with all the gringos, which he most certainly needed. But then we started speaking in Spanish and he was very very articulate, in fact, it turns out that he writes for the Associated Press. So that was cool.

After that, all us gringos went back to the apartment that they are staying in. It´s right in the middle of the most busy street in La Paz, on the eigth floor. That would be like living on Times Square in New York or Center street in Provo, or next to the Pony Express in Ten Sleep. They have a great view of the whole city and carpet and a washing machine and mattresses that aren´t made out of straw. So we went out to eat after that and had a great time.

I hope that you are all well! Thank you very much for the comments, by the way. It has been more lonely than I thought it would be (I don´t know what I was thinking, man I miss my little wife) and it is nice to know that you guys are following along. Colleen (Brian!)- sorry, but I can´t help you out with the Titicaca fishing info. I did stick my fingers in the Lake, and it seemed warmer than I thought it would be. Is that something that fishermen do? One more piece of info about Titicaca- one of its islands is Isla Del Sol, or the Island of the Sun, which is where the Inca creation story supposedly took place. Matt - glad to see you here too, I will definitely call the Solers.

Today really has been a good day. Tomorrow I will get an early start so that I can do all the paper work at the Brazilian and Paraguayan Consulates, and I will probably post again tomorrow because the Brazilian consulate supposedly takes all day to do its thing. Then tomorrow night - the bus to Santa Cruz. Ok, bye!

One More Picture...

Here is one last picture form the top of the hotel. When I woke up at around 8 this morning, that road that you see was completely full of vendors selling fruits, vegetables, fish, flowers, sweaters, RCA cables, knives, and anything else you could ever want. Anyway, I should probably go, I need to find a cheaper place to stay for the night- it cost 5 whole dollars for my place last night.

Ciao

Some Pictures of La Paz...

These are 2 pictures that I took from the roof of the hotel that I stayed at last night. They were taken right at sunset. From the top picture you can sort of make out the shape of the city, which is located at the bottom of a bowl in the mountains. The pictures don´t do justice, however, to the magnitude of the height difference between the top and the bottom of the bowl - around 2,000 ft.

Arriving at La Paz really is breathtaking. After our little boat rides on Titicaca, we traveled for about 3 hours accross a completely flat plain, with mountains off in the distance. If it weren´t for these mountains, the road itself could be in Kansas. The outskirts of the city are the poorer regions, and slowly these began to appear. After about one hour of driving through the slums, with detours down dirt side streets due to strikes and demonstrations blocking the road (all peaceful) the bus turned to the left and we were on the edge of the top of the bowl. We had a complete view of the city. The city itself consists of tall buildings and organization in its center, but as it creeps up the sides of the bowl, it turns brown and chaotic. Richer people live in the older districts at the bottom, and poorer people have filled the bowl to the point of overflowing. The view from the top really was magnificent.

You Need to Move Your Bus Across the Lake? Use My Raft!

Here is a picture of our bus on its little raft. I took it while I was in the boat where all the people had to go. At first I was kind of annoyed about having to get off the bus and pay for another ticket to ride the boat, but when I saw this raft thing I was happy that I wasn´t trapped inside the bus as the raft capsized and it sunk to the bottom of the highest navigable lake in the world. Well, that didn´t exactly happen, but it very well looks like it could have, as evidenced in this picture.

Some other funny things about the bus - this one has ¨Leon de Juda¨airbrushed on the side, which means, ¨Lion of Juda.¨ The owner of the bus seems to be not at all shy about his faith. Also, on the way into La Paz, we passed a big church that had a parking lot full of buses in front of it and a priest was blessing each bus.

My favorite bus thing though, was on the ride out of Lima, when one of the attendants came around and passed out bingo cards! Then he got on the PA system and we all played bingo. The prize? A return ticket to Lima. The winner was invited to give a speech over the PA, in which he fervently thanked the bus company for the excellent entertainment and for the generous prize. He also thanked his family and all of the other passengers for playing. It was great fun.

Pictures!

I found a computer that will let me upload pictures, but it still doesn´t like the title thing very much. Oh well. So here are some pictures. They don´t tell a very complete story of the trip so far, because like I said, I have been on buses a lot. But of the things that I have seen, here is a glimpse into a few of them.






This picture was taken in the Cathedral of Lima, which was built in 1555. The bones were discovered in the 1900´s. There is another famous place full of bones which is called The Monastary of San Francisco, which I am saving for when Jill and I come back to Lima. The Cathedral is the official church building in Peru and consequently all of the important people like the archbishops, the viceroys, and whatnot were buried here. One of the famous guys buried here - Francisco Pizarro.

The Monastary was where everyone else was buried, so consequently there are a ton of bones there. None of this is news to Jacque and Brandon.

In this picture you can see many things.

1. This is a picture of the crossing that our bus did at Copacabana, Bolivia, which is located on Lake Titicaca, the ¨highest commerically navigable lake in the world,¨according to Wikipedia. This was a funny crossing because we weren´t told anything about getting off the bus beforehand. All of a sudden the bus came to a stop at the shore and the driver´s assistant announced that the bus would be going across on a barge and that we would be going across on a boat. We had to get off the bus and buy a ticket for like 50 cents to take a little boat across. This picture was taken after we had gotten off the bus and while we were waiting to get on little boats to take us across the lake. So you can see the little boat that we rode in with the Bolivian flag on it. Also, you can see that the other side was not very far. We were probably in the boat for like 10 minutes.

2. Prominent in the picture is the Bolivian Naval Seaman. Or maybe we could call him Lakeman since Boivia doesn´t have access to the sea.

3. You can also see the two ladies in the foreground of the picture with their boweler hats. Every woman over 30 and about 50 percent of the women over 20 wear the traditional hiked up skirt, little jackets made of wool, a woolen shawl, and 2 long braids and a bowler hat, just like in National Geographic. I didn´t want to just take a picture of them in the street ´cause that would be rude, so that is why I point them out in this picture.

I Found a Title for the Poor Little Orphan Entry...

For some reason, this computer won´t let me put a title on this blog. If I could, though, I would give it the title, A Change of Plans. I got into La Paz, Bolivia last night at 6.00. I was planning on going taking a bus to visit my friend Nate in Sucre while I waited for the Brazilian and Parguayan consulates to open on Monday. For some reason I thought that Sucre was only 8 hours from La Paz, which wouldn´t be so bad on an overnight bus. It turns out that Sucre is 16 hours from La Paz, and I don´t really feel like being on a bus for 32 hours this weekend just so I can be with Nate for like 10 hours. Sorry, Nate.

I am also dissapointed, because I wanted to go to Potosí, which is really close to Sucre, but I won´t be able to now. Oh, well, I guess that just means another trip, which we could call, Bolivia 2009. Or something like that. So I am stuck here in La Paz for the weekend, but it will be good, though, because I can do a bunch of research over the internet today and rest a lot tomorrow.

As I have been on buses for the past 3 days, I have mainly only met other tourists, which is neat, but I am not exactly experiencing Peru and Bolivia. Most of the other people on the buses are Europeans. It´s interesting. Everyone is really laid back and willing to chat for the whole bus ride pretty much. In every one of the conversations that I have had so far the topic of ¨where else in South America have you been¨ comes up and I always tell everyone that I lived in Paraguay for 2 years. And then they ask why, and of course I tell them that I was a missionary. And then they scoot a little further away from me and I tell them that I was a Mormon missionary and they scoot even further away. Then they look really worried and uncomfortable for a little bit, then I tell them about the church and what exactly it was that I did in Paraguay and they scoot back closer and we get along fine again. They always say, ¨but you don´t look like a Mormon,¨ which I don´t know if that is because they expect all Mormons to be wearing a white shirt and a tie or if it´s cause of the ultra-hip beard I´m growing.

I am trying not to enjoy myself too much, because Jill is working so hard back home. I always tell everyone that my wife always makes fun of me because she graduated before me, but now she is the one that has to work while I get to claim student status and vagabond around South America. Not that I´m really vagabonding, the buses are really nice. Maybe I´ll feel like I´m vagabonding when I ride the ¨Death Train¨from Santa Cruz to Corumba or on the boat ride down the Paraguayan river.

I was going to post some of the pictures that I have taken so far, but I just figured out that this computer not only doesn´t like titles, it also doesn´t like pictures. So I will find a different computer today and will do another post and put up some pictures. By the way, La Paz is at 15,000 feet. I think that is the highest that I have been while still touching the ground. I have a little bit of a headache and everytime I blow my nose it is a little bloody. But other than that I feel fine. Just had to think of a way to end this post while talking about boogers. Ciao

From Lima!

Hola dese Lima! I´m here and safe and sound and happy. Right now it is about 12 thirty, I leave for Bolivia at four oclock.

Here in Lima it is wintertime, and everything is very foggy. It is not cold, though. I am right in the center of Lima at a kind of walking mall with 2 friends from Germany. My flight got in at midnight last night and the original plan was to stay the night in the airport but it was so crazy that I decided to just get a room for the night. I saw two other guys with backpacks and asked them what they were doing for the night. They were cool and I wasn´t getting a creepy vibe from them, so we decided to look for a place together. We found a place in Miraflores, which is kind of a suberb of Lima for $10 each. It was great, it was more expensive than other places in the guidebook, but we had our own bathroom and everything.

One of the guys is a policeman from a little town called Memmingen in Bavaria. Memmingen is the town I stayed in when I went to Germany with Randy two years ago! The other one is going to be a math and religion teacher in primary school.

It is so nice to be able to talk to everyone! The taxi drivers, people on the street, everyone is so friendly. I will tell you next time about the Panamanian lawyer and the Columbian synchronized swimming team that I sat next to on the plane ride down. We have to go right now, but I will do another post soon! Ciao!

A quick note

I rode our scooter up to campus to return some library books that I had checked out and stopped to do this blog entry on the way. Jill and I are running around trying to get things ready to go. We had a great morning today, we slept in till 9 then Jill made a great omelet while I cleaned up the house. My flight leaves tomorrow at 7:00 AM so we are trying to get in all the together time now that we can.

Last night Jill and I drove up to my sister Colleen's house to see her family and my other sister Jacque, who had driven down with her family. Kelli, Colleen's daughter, gave me a paper airplane that she had folded and decorated so that I could give it to one of the "sick little kids on your trip, to cheer them up." It was quite sweet and I for sure will take it down. There were amazing hamburgers, the requisite board games, and lots of playing with the nieces and nephews and the dog Liberty. I have a great family, and am sad to miss my other sister Annie and her family, who drove out from Maine to see Mom and Dad in Wyoming this week.

I guess taking this trip has helped me to realize how much there is to do all the time. As in, now that I am going and can't be here, I am all of a sudden thinking of all these things that I would like to do, like go camping in southern Utah, hang out with family more, hang out with my old roommates more, and probably stuff like study for the MCAT and stuff like that should be on the list too. Anyway, it's kind of funny that getting out and doing something big makes me miss all of the little stuff that I don't do often enough while I can.

I am excited for the trip, though. Thanks Mom and Dad for the comment that you posted. I love all you guys and please watch for the next post, which will be coming from the Southern Hemisphere. Ciao.

On an unrelated note...

Jill and I went up to Deer Creek Reservoir today and "swam like cute little fishes" in the words of Jill. The lake was kinda stinky, so I couldn't stop thinking about bacteria trying to break into our bodies through whichever opening they could find. Other than that, though, there was a great view of some of the remnants of one of the snow fields on Mt. Timpanogos. Which reminds me, the other day I was shadowing Dr. Patton in the ER at Utah Valley and a kid got flown in on a life flight from Mt. Timpanogos because he had an arm injury. And not a serious one, as in he walked off of the Life Flight helicopter and into the ER.

Tonight we are going out with some friends to a Brazilian restaurant and a jazz club in SLC. The restaurant is having a grand opening so we're counting on cheap eats, plus it will get our South American juices flowing so we can hit the ground running. Anyway, we don't have much time today. Thanks to Mark, Colleen, and Emily, who have all posted comments so far. We hope you all keep coming back. Ciao.

Why the trip?

The short answer to that question is twofold, or perhaps three or many fold, like a paper airplane. Ooohh, I like that metaphor, "this trip is like a paper airplane, that, when folded carefully and in a certain way, will only ultimately crash into the ground." Hmmm...or maybe not. But anyway, here are those reasons as to answer why.

First off, we both love to travel. It works out well for me that Jill grew up traveling and feels the need to be somewhere else. Paraguay is a special place for us, though, because for two years I lived there as a missionary and as a result feel a deep connection to all things Paraguayan; I still dream on a regular basis about my Paraguayan friends. Jill went to Japan as a missionary, so she understands that weird concept of feeling at home in a strange place, and wants to explore that part of my life. (a future trip to Japan would only be proper...)

Second, I want to do service abroad. Let's face it folks...we live in a very unjust world. You know, the whole "a few have a lot and a lot have not." I don't expect to fix that problem through my efforts on this little trip or by lofty, unrealistic goals of living life completely for others, for that matter. There will always be injustices, in fact, but why should that stop any of us from sharing what we have?

Third, Jill and I made a list of things to do in life and see Machu Picchu was on there. Everybody's got a list like that, whether it's a real list in a notebook somewhere or if it's the digital version in your head. There will always be reasons not to go to Machu Picchu, but there are always plenty of reasons not to do anything. In the words of Tim Robbins in the Shawshank Redemption, you've got to either "get busy livin' or get busy dyin'."

So there are some of the "why's" of the trip. Man, we need to think of a cooler word for it than trip. Like odyssey, or journey, or epic adventure, or the bus bum breaker, or something like that.

One week to go...

Welcome to the "peruboliviaparaguay2007" page. If you haven't guessed, this site has something to do with South American countries that start with "p" and "b," and the year 2007. The page is intended for family, friends, and anyone else that may be interested in countries that start with "p" or "b," or the year 2007.

The idea for this blog is that you all can follow what is going on and I can document what we do as we travel and volunteer in health clinics in Paraguay for the next two months. Even though both Jill and I are going on the trip, I will write in first person singular because for a large portion of the trip I will be by myself. Jill will meet me for the last two and a half weeks of the trip.

Here is the itinerary:

July 4, 2007: arrive in Lima, Peru.
July 4-5, 2007: travel by bus to La Paz, Bolivia.
July 5, 2007: travel by bus to Sucre, Bolivia, where my friend Nate is doing research.
July 6, 2007: take a tour of the infamous silver mine Potosi, founded in 1546.
July 7, 2007: travel by bus to Santa Cruz, Bolivia.
July 8, 2007: travel by train to Corumba, Brazil.
July 9-12 2007: travel by passenger/cargo boat down the Paraguay river to Asuncion, Paraguay. I hope to sleep in a hammock on this portion of the trip.
July 12-August 10, 2007: volunteer at Clinica Mita'i, a cancer clinic for children, in Asuncion, Paraguay. Mita'i means child in Guarani, which is spoken in Paraguay.
August 10, 2007: pick up my wife Jill from the airport in Asuncion.
August 11-13, 2007: introduce Jill to friends in and around Asuncion.
August 14-15, 2007: travel by bus to the town Saltos del Guaira, Paraguay to visit friends there.
August 16-17, 2007: travel by bus to Corumba, Brazil.
August 18, 2007: travel by train to Santa Cruz, Bolivia.
August 19, 2007: rest in Santa Cruz.
August 20, 2007: travel by bus to La Paz, Bolivia.
August 21, 2007: travel by bus to Cuzco, Peru.
August 22-24, 2007: see Machu Picchu.
August 25,2007: travel by bus to Miraflores, Peru.
August 26-27, 2007: relax in Miraflores.
August 28, 2007: fly home to Salt Lake City, Utah.

Here is a map I made in Paint. It took longer and looks a lot more amateurish than I planned it to be when I started to make it. Red represents the trip I'll take from Lima to Asuncion and Blue represents the trip Jill and I will take. If you click on it you can see a bigger version.