It's been a while, and I've done a lot, so I'm just going to flip through my digital camera memory and bring you all up to speed...

First there was rodeo in Yacuiba, a dusty little town on the border of Argentina. It was crowded and um... dusty, and we all bought cowboy hats to be festive (and because the sun was intolerable). From our vantage point on the highest bleacher, Seth, Susan and I watched many young Bolivians get thrown from bucking broncos. I only have video footage of that though, so you're missing out. Please notice in the picture of Seth and me the lack of guard rail at our backs. We could have plummeted to our deaths. Anyway, here's a picture of some traditional dancers to get your minds off of that nasty thought. Due to the arena being so packed with people, not only did Susan, Seth, and I have to elbow our way through the crowd and step on little children to get to these nosebleed seats, but I didn't even enter one of the days and so missed (so I'm told) a performance involving the burial of a duck up to its neck in the dirt and the smacking around of said duck. But I did almost see a cock fight! Again, too many people. I even crawled up the arena apparatus and tried to peek through a slit between the tarp and the top of the seating. No luck. On to other things...

When we got back to Tarija, Steve, Winston, and I did a two day series of presentations with every class in the elementary school just to further pump them up about recycling and introduce a new recyclable product: paper! Yay for expansion.

Then two moths died side-by-side on my floor. So I took a picture. Having a fumigated house has its weird points. Things just show up dead, and you never even knew they were there to begin with. You should see this spider corpse in my bathroom. HUGE.... and hairy.

I dabbled in cooking with broccoli. Sofía and Ana were helping me wash my vegetables, and Sofía needed to pose as a little green bride with my boquet of broccoli. This is not a good picture of Sofía: She's much much cuter. Anyway, the washing did not rid my broccoli of the aphids, so I ended up with broccoli-aphid soup. It became too taxing to pick all the little floating bodies out, so I just thickened the soup and tried to appreciate the extra protein. What doesn't kill you...

Then it was my birthday! Thank you for all the well-wishes, you well-wishers, you. I spent the day horseback riding and eating delicious foods with two of my favorite volunteers, Sarah and Stephanie. It was an all-around very good birthday.

I have a new roommate! He's an excellent acrobat and shares my love of fresh, ripe tomatoes. I can't decide whether or not I will let him keep staying with me rent-free. It doesn't really seem fair. But get this: I decided to just give him the rest of this tomato, and I set in on the floor next to my oven (aka. his front door). He didn't even touch it! Instead, I woke up in the middle of the night and stumbled into the kitchen for a glass of water and found him shimmying down my shelfing unit from his usual pilfering grounds and running RIGHT PAST the tomato (So I know he saw it)! Mouse, there IS such a thing as a free lunch! Forget what that high school economics teacher told you! If this mouse is really that untrusting, it will probably prove difficult to capture him if and when the time comes.

And here's what I did today! Yay for convenient and great hiking! This hike was a tribute to Nicole Bruskewitz on her birthday. Check it out, Brusk! It's not an altar or a shrine! It's just a rock! A non-denominational rock!

In case the pretty pictures didn't satisfy you and you didn't appreciate the inside jokes, the next blog entry has already been written and will be published after I make you wait sufficiently.

And as always, the opinions expressed in this blog are those of Sarah Anderson and do not reflect the opinions of the Peace Corps or the United States Government.