Hello great big world!

Well, things have been interesting the past couple of weeks. First, I had a tooth pulled 2 weeks ago. I have another one that gets the same treatment Thursday. The alternative was root canal and crown for both, but that was a bit out of our budget. The dentist I have is awesome. He studied dentistry in Boston, so his English is great, and he got addicted to classic rock and roll, so instead of hearing Kenny G’s version of some pop song, I get to hear Bob Seager sing “Turn the page!” He is good at what he does too, which is a bonus!

Second, I had another QBE event. We are gearing up here for the 20^th Anniversary of the UAC. During this time, we will have activities every day for the 1^st week of October. Alumni, Donors, Fund Board members, and friends of the UAC, will be here seeing what has become of the campus, and celebrating the past, present and future of the UAC. The students have a competition with the other departments, or carreras. There are athletic events, talent shows, and many other events, like theater.  The reason that I point out theater is another amusing story of locking the dorms at night. I went up to quiet some of the Ag students that were practicing a tradition Bolivian song that they will perform. This involves a big Bass Drum, a Snare Drum, and a number of various sized Pan Flutes. These kids were playing and singing so loud that we could hear them through the wall and feel it in the floor. They were sorry for being so loud, but they were really enjoying themselves. So I locked up that dorm and came back to our apartment. I had just gotten into bed when I start hearing shouts and noises from that same floor. I thought the band had reformed. As I walked to the door, I realized that it wasn’t the band but the room next door. I heard the Spartan cheers from the movie “300.” I would hear the movie version, and then I would hear students copying it. When I pounded on the door, it swung open. The first thing I saw was a student standing on a wooden foot locker, waving a machete. I thought that I had gotten there just in time to see bloodshed. Then everything slowed down as my gaze moved about the room to see where the nearest threat might be. Being observant, I took in that everyone had a machete, or a wooden sword. I also noted that everyone was wearing a cape of some kind.  But when I saw the painted on beards, that was when I decided that there were no threats here. They were thespians practicing for their production of “300.” I actually laughed out loud in the room as I told them to quiet down for the night. Never a dull moment!

I had the honor of being a "tourist" for one of tourism students. Eddy had to give me the tour of the upper and lower campus. I dressed for the part, as you will see in the pictures that Susan posted. It was a great honor to be selected by Eddy, and I appreciated the effort that he put into showing me the campus, and telling me all the ins and outs of the UAC!

I have been working on a new project. Susan will post pictures of it the next time we are in La Paz. I am building a railing that is attractive, with ferns and flowers planted in 2 liter bottles and old gutters. It will keep students and children from falling 5 feet onto the concrete floor below, and be aesthetically appealing at the same time!

Things have changed here so much in the past 12, years that I have seen. I can’t imagine what the first students would think of us now! I am just so glad, and blessed, to be a part of this wonderful mission. The students and faculty here are just so thankful for the assistance that we provide. It is always a good feeling to know that you are making a difference.

It is also very comforting when I am having a bad day, fighting with the projects I have, or being sick, to feel a light but solid weight in the middle of my chest. The cross given to me by our home church has been a wonderful touch of home.

That is all for now, but know that each and every one of you is in our prayers, as we hope we are in yours!

Peace,

Jeff

Mail call

Today I am going to tell you about mail call. It was very reminiscent of my days in the Army when Sal (the mechanic/driver here on campus) knocked on our door to deliver some mail. He sorted through a whole handful of postcards, airmail envelopes and assorted other items. I felt like a little kid waiting for my first letter from the grandparents! There were items for everyone in the Guest House, which we took to pass along, plus a note for Sister Jean, but nothing for us. I was a little let down that we didn’t get anything. I didn’t realize I missed getting mail. I think most American adults would agree that we don’t really look forward to receiving mail usually, because it’s often just bills and advertising circulars. That got me to thinking about mail in the US versus mail here. At home, we kind of take our mail for granted. The carrier brings it to the door (or at least to our mailbox) every day, and then we glance through it and, if you’re like me, throw most of it in the recycle bin. Here, mail is nowhere near so routine. For one thing, we only get it when someone goes and picks it up in Coroico, which is 30 minutes away by car at best (one way). On a rainy day like today, it’s more like 45 minutes because the drivers have to go slower on the muddy, slippery road. For another thing, nobody in our whole area, even in Coroico, gets mail delivered to their home. All of the mail for our area goes to this lady’s living room, where you go and pick it up whenever you have time and space, and she has to be home for you to get it, which is not always a given either. The mail is not really much of a service here, and people don’t use the mail the way we use it at home. Most people don’t even really have an address, even in the city! This makes finding a new place interesting, to say the least. But think about the implications for communication when everything is done either by phone or in person. For example, we have to go back to La Paz in a couple of weeks to pick up our visa cards (these are permanent ID cards sort of like a green card in the US). This is a 6-8 hour round trip that costs about $10 per person. At home, these would just be mailed out to you. Heck, they even mail your passport! In Bolivia, very little seems to travel by mail. No advertisements, no party invites, no political leaflets, no bills! It is a very good example of just how different life here can be from home. And I’m not saying it is necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, just different. That’s your nugget this week – each day, when you get your mail, think about it. Just stop and be intentional about it for a few days. Think about your mail while you’re handling it. Maybe you will experience some sort of epiphany, maybe not, but it is certainly an opportunity to change how you think about the ways in which we communicate with each other. And, while we are thinking about mail, please consider sending us a note or a postcard, if you feel moved to do so. It would be very cool for there to be a few items for us the next time there’s mail call! Here’s how you address it:

     The Cornforths

     UAC-Carmen Pampa

     Coroico, Nor Yungas

     La Paz, BOLIVIA

     South America

Blessings to you all and peace,

Susan

A week in the life...

   I have to tell you about our class project for my Education students, because it is already so much fun! Delaney and I have made many, many loaves of banana bread since we got here. Why not? Bananas are cheap and tasty, and the bread is easy to make. They make a variety here that is a bit more cake-y (in fact, they call it cake). So we came up with the idea of baking banana bread as an English learning lesson. The students were a little stunned (their last project was much more 'academic,' so they weren't sure I was serious), but they are really on board with the idea now. We divided the class into four teams (there are 18 students), and this week they picked names for their teams and created a team poster that's blank in middle for now. I love the team names they chose: The First, Bad Boys Blue, Star Girls, and Crazy Guys. This class is such a fun, creative group. Their four posters are very different, but all delightful. They are all on black backgrounds, one has all the names formed by punching holes in neon colored paper and gluing the 'holes' in the shapes of the letters, one has stars and glitter and ribbon (guess which team that poster is for?), one has brightly colored blobs of paper with fancy lettering on them glued strategically on the poster, and one has shaded chalk drawings of local tree varieties (very beautiful!) We rolled them all up carefully and stored them for later in the department office. Next week they will choose among four recipes -- CALLING ALL BAKERS: if you have a recipe you'd like for us to consider, please email it to me at jsdcornforth@gmail.com by Monday, September 16 at 10pm. One of the choices will be my recipe, but I would love to use yours for a couple of the others!! I am also hoping to get a local recipe for the banana-bread-like cake they make here.

   I will keep you posted here as our project progresses. Baking Day is currently scheduled for October 9, and there will be a Taste Test starring some of the other staff/faculty from the UAC. I'm hoping some of them will dress up as celebrity chefs for fun! The winning team gets 5 bonus points for their project grade and bragging rights, of course. :)

   My other class (Agronomy majors) very much likes music, so this week they submitted songs in English that they would like to learn. I have a model I have been using with songs I have chosen before now. We listen to the song while gathering every day for the week, then after the weekly quiz on Fridays I give them the lyrics either with some words missing or an extra word on numbered lines, and we listen to the song twice for these words. Then we go through the song again to check our answers. After that, I help with new vocabulary (using the Eng-Span dictionary as necessary) and help the students tease out the meaning of the lyrics and, ultimately, the meaning of the song. The students are really looking forward to doing this with their songs. We will do one of theirs each week between now and the midterm, by which time I expect their vocabularies in English (and mine in Spanish) will probably have doubled!

   Our weather here has been beautiful the last few days, and very Spring-y. It's noticeably warmer, especially in the afternoons. We've had a couple afternoons where that warmth has translated into thunderstorms (no tornadoes here, but the lightning is impressive), but all-in-all it's been very pleasant. The change of seasons is definitely upon us, although the summer rainy season is still over a month away.

   We love and miss you all, and you are never far from our thoughts. Our prayers are with you!

         +Susan

Happy Godly Play Day!!

Hola everyone!

     Our adventures continue… There are so many things to tell you about this time, I’m not even sure where to begin. Firstly, our residency visas are finally almost done. We did the final paperwork on Monday, and now we must wait 4-6 weeks to get our cards (they’re called carnets here). The government just automated this process somewhat, so we can check online, and when the website says they are ready, we have to go to La Paz one last time to pick them up. Not that this will be the last time we go to La Paz, just the last time we have to. It will be a great relief to get that done. We ended with having to pay a pretty hefty fine, almost $100 each. This is because it costs 20 Bs. per day once your temporary visa expires, which ours did on August 10, so 20 Bs. times three people times almost another month equals about $300. It was a little painful, but not totally unexpected. Of course, it wasn’t anything we had any control over, either, which made it that much more painful!! Most of the extra time was in waiting for Interpol to issue the certificates saying that we aren’t wanted international fugitives. I wonder how that would have been handled if the NSA leaker dude had sought asylum here? Hmm…

     Secondly, Jeff developed a mighty toothache a couple of weeks ago, and Hye-Jung recommended a US-trained (and English-speaking!!) dentist in La Paz. Jeff saw him Monday while we were in town, and he needs 3 root canals! Even here, where medical and dental care is so much less expensive, that is a budget-buster, so we will have to take the alternative route and get the three teeth pulled. This will only cost about $150 US, rather than almost $1200 with root canals and crowns. It is a shame to remove teeth that could be saved, but that is the only fiscally sane option.  Please pray for him on Monday, when he will travel back to La Paz to have the first of 3-4 appointments to get this taken care of.

     On a brighter note, the weather is definitely changing here. Spring is in the air! It is always green and beautiful, but the nights are not as cool, and the afternoons are getting nice and warm. Today there was a delightful breeze, so we opened all the windows, set up Jeff’s screen door contraption in the doorway, and hung out our sheets and blankets to freshen. It was also a very nice day to hang laundry, as it will undoubtedly be dry by morning – rather than the 4 days it took a couple of weeks ago because it was rainy and cool for 3 days and nights in a row!! Tomorrow looks to be much the same, so pillows and towels will get the same treatment. It is especially nice to have that warm, dry wind and sunshine, as it does a great job of eliminating the musty smell things get when they’re damp for days or weeks on end.

     Next, a few words about our daily lives… Our Spanish is getting much better. Mine is improving the fastest, mostly because I have daily interaction with my students and I get much more opportunity to communicate with people than Jeff and Delaney do. Delaney is having a wonderful time with the kids and the library, and is beginning to feel as though she understands her patrons and they understand her, at least some of the time. Plus her two weekly storytimes are really helping with her pronunciation! She will also be taking on some administrative duties in the main offices over the next few weeks, and most of the staff there speaks limited English, so she will have many more opportunities to improve her skills. Jeff spends much of his time working with a very specific vocabulary in his daily maintenance tasks, but he is building relationships with the machine, woodworking and construction staff, so his Spanish is coming along. We finally have our home all settled in and comfortable, so that we can all start and finish our days pleasantly, and we can all rest well. A special thanks to Hugh and company for getting Jeff and I a much better bed!!

     Finally, I just wanted to thank everyone for their prayers and support. It is wonderful to have our faith community at home always there for us, never underestimate how important that is to us, and to the people we serve here. We have been welcomed with open arms, and we will always have a family here, but none of this would be possible without the physical and emotional support we have gotten, and will continue to get, from all of you. As we work to build bridges here, we are always mindful that a bridge is nothing without its solid foundation. We are very much enjoying the calendar that was a gift from St. A’s (special thanks to Mark D.!!) It says that tomorrow is the first day of Godly Play. Enjoy! We will be thinking of you and hoping for a very special morning filled with little voices and busy hands.

Blessings and love to each and every one of you,
Susan

Poverty and hunger

Hello everyone,

I thought I would talk a little about poverty and hunger in rural Bolivia in this post. We have spent a lot of space and time on this blog discussing our experiences here in Bolivia, but there are some things that are hard to talk about here. Bolivia's standard of living has visibly improved tremendously since we were here in 2001. However, that does not mean that poverty and hunger have been eradicated. There is still a long ways to go. There are still beggars and homeless people throughout the streets of La Paz (the mothers with small children are particularly heartbreaking when they cover themselves and the children up with a thin piece of fabric for the night and huddle in a closed doorway to sleep). There are still many poor and hungry people in the Yungas as well. They are far from invisible, in fact, many work the transportation network selling food or other items to passersby all day and well into the evening. Many live in rickety shacks clinging to the lip of a hill or along the dusty roads. There is power and water available, but one must be able to afford it. There are homes along the road to Coroico and in Carmen Pampa where there is no power. Clean water is still a concern, although here on the upper campus our water is mildly chlorinated now.

Most people here live without common items we take for granted, such as a washing machine, an oven, a hot water tap, TV, heat, the list goes on. Many people, even the poor, have cell phones, largely because they are ridiculously cheap and easy to get. It seems like every house has a sign up advertising that they sell the recharge cards, as most cells are pre-paid. I would guess you can make enough selling cards to pay for your own, they are so ubiquitous. 

The food here is simple and cheap, but there are plenty of people eating only lunch still (this is considered the main meal of the day). The cooperative here on campus feeds students, who must contribute financially and help out in order to eat there. This is in addition to their mandatory community service and the extra hours of service that scholarship students must work. The good news is that this program does feed students who otherwise could not afford to eat and pay for school, so it is no longer necessary to eat behind closed doors. The loss of fifty scholarships when USAID was ejected from the country in June means 50 fewer students to feed and house, but it is also 50 fewer students attending classes.

That all being said, I want to tell you about my students' first set of projects, which they completed this week. If you stopped any student on campus here and asked them why they are here, they would all say either that they are here to help their family/village or that they are here to improve Bolivia. This can sound like a pat answer sometimes, but it is very true. My assignment to them was to think about themselves, the UAC and Bolivia 20 years from now, in the context of the approaching 20th anniversary celebration of the UAC in October. What would change? What would be the same? Then they were to condense their thoughts into a Six Word Memoir in English and turn it in. The variety of dreams represented by what they turned in is truly astonishing. Some of the dreams are very big, some are very personal. Some could never have been condensed into only six words!! (This doesn't count against them in my grading process.)

The English Department will be sharing these both here at the UAC and on Facebook as part of the anniversary celebration in the coming weeks, so you will get to see them all, including those from the other classes. Please watch for them, as they are all worth reading!

Ciao!

Susan

Our home away from home

     If you would like to receive an email whenever we have a new post, please click the FOLLOW button and there will be directions. ALSO: I am labeling our photos and adding more today and tomorrow, so I will comment at the bottom of this post with a new direct link to the album when they are ready. Please check back!! 

     So, many of you have been asking about our living situation. In this post, I will tell you a bit about that. In the pictures we posted, you can see a three-story brick and concrete building with an exterior stairway going up one corner. That is where we live. The rest of the building is a boys’ dorm, but there are three staff apartments on the end closest to the road. We live on the second floor, so we have a nice little balcony of sorts where the stairs landing meets our door. When you enter, there is a main room with the bathroom off to the left, then at the back are two bedrooms side-by-side. Jeff and I share the outer one, Delaney uses the inner one. The main room has three areas: the entryway, the dining/living area, and the kitchen. The entryway is sort of defined by the bathroom Wall, then the kitchen is around the corner. We have defined that space by pushing our two long skinny tables together and making them into the central work/life area of the household. The kitchen side of the table is more used like a countertop, where food prep, baking and serving happen (unless we have guests, no one usually sits here unless they are sitting while chopping veggies). There is a vinyl table cloth over the tables so they are easier to keep clean. We have one of the ubiquitous Bolivian frazadas to throw over it when we have company, as it is in pretty tough shape in places. Our frazada is purple, with red, green and blue veins woven into it. The dining/living room side of the table is where non-cooking action happens. I work here where I can spread out, because my desk in my office space is very small and the office is shared with two others who both see a lot of students so it’s not a very good place to concentrate during the school day. Jeff does his various projects here, and this is also where we play cards, listen to music, etc. There are little wooden chairs to sit here. There is one cushion, but we are going to look in La Paz this weekend to see if we can find more so that we can all have a more comfortable seat.

     Our little bathroom is compact, but nice. The floor is tiled, and that continues about halfway up the walls. This makes it easier to keep clean, and serves another practical purpose because the floor is wet much of the time and a rubber scraper (sort of like the blade on a squeegee) is used on the floor to push the water into a central floor drain so that it has some chance of being clean and dry. The shower is in one corner, with a wrapround shower curtain covering the two sides that are not walls. It has a lip about three inches high that helps keep the water from just running onto the floor, and the showerhead is an electric on-demand water heater. This is a wonderful thing when you live where there is no heated water – the only downside is that the temperature of the water is controlled by the water flow rate, so the harder you turn the water on, the colder it gets. It can be quite the balancing act to get the water hot and have decent pressure to take your shower at the same time, but it is SO much better than the cold showers one took before these were installed! In Bolivia, you toss your used toilet paper in a little trash can when you’re done with it, because the plumbing can’t really handle flushing it, so every bathroom, no matter how primitive or fancy, has a little trash can for this purpose. There is also a little pedestal sink and Cookie’s sandbox.

     In the kitchen, there is a small stove with three burners and an oven, all powered by a propane tank. We have two tanks, that way hopefully you always have one in reserve, although when we got here one was empty, which is why we ran out of cooking gas last week when the truck was late. The propane truck is definitely a QBE (quintessentially Bolivian experience)… the truck comes lumbering down the gravel road to the campus driveway right outside our door and stops. Everyone grabs their empty tanks and stands in line to exchange them right off the truck – it’s a panel-sided truck like you see farmers emptying the hopper on the combine into during the harvest at home. You pay your 27 Bs (about $4) and get a full tank. This was at 5:30 am last Saturday, so it was dark and kind of surreal. J

     There is a sink/drainboard combo in the kitchen (cold water faucets only since there are no water heaters), then a small counter and a small fridge that is about 20% larger than a regular dorm fridge. It has a little freezer in the top, so Delaney’s new experience here has been her first ice cube trays! We have had the ice-and-water in the door her whole life, so this is a new thing for her, although she has used them a few times at Nana’s house before, she has never lived with one. She is a bit obsessive about making sure there is enough ice, although she has discovered that the cubes all melt together in her little bowl and then refreeze in a mess whenever the power is out. LOL!

     There are two sliding windows in the main room that face up the mountain (Uchumachi), and one in each of our bedrooms that face the yard alongside the classroom building that stretches that direction from the boys’ dorm. They have screens, although a couple of them are in bad shape. Jeff sewed one up a little, but the fabric is old and brittle, so he had to stop. We hope to get these replaced soon, we just need to find where to get the fabric.

     The floor of our apartment is concrete that must have been painted a soft baby blue at some point, although it is pretty spotty now. I have some throw rugs picked out in La Paz, one each for the bedrooms and the main room behind the table, but I have to save up because they are a little pricey. The walls are plain white with a maroon trim around the bottom. We have been busy hanging things on the walls wherever possible, both to get stuff off the floor (we don’t have many shelves to put things away, and there are no cupboards or chests) and to brighten the place up a little. There are curtains at the windows, yellow in the main room and blue in the bedrooms. It is nice to have some privacy after dark. Since we are in the tropics, it gets dark here by 6:30 or so, and the sun comes up about the same time in the morning, although we don’t actually see the sun at sunrise and sunset because of the mountains.

     One of our great joys here is getting up early and listening to the birds. By midday, they are much quieter, but in the morning there is the most wonder cacophony outside! It is often punctuated by the group cawing event of the Andean Guans, who sound a bit like crows but look a bit like quail or pheasant who perch in trees. Some of our favorite birds are the ones with the yellow bellies that you can see in our pictures. We haven’t figured out what they are yet, but with their color pattern and size, we wonder if they aren’t some kind of oriole. There are also red canaries nesting nearby, swallows, and some little wren-like birds with mohawks who have the most beautiful song. The trees out front are always full of birds in the morning, and the hummingbirds are a special treat with their bright emerald or sapphire bodies suspended by their nearly invisible wings.

     You will see many pictures of Uchumachi from our “balcony” because it is often the first thing we see when we go out the door in the morning. It is such an incredible view up the mountain, and it is constantly changing. We enjoy observing the many moods of our mountain.

     I will work on titling our photos this weekend while we have the high-speed connection in La Paz, so please enjoy and share with your friends!

Paz,
Susan

Hey everybody! I’m gonna tell you about what I do every day! On a daily basis, there are so many things to do, but it’s not always the same. Getting up at 5:30 to go use the internet for school on Tuesdays-Fridays is probably the hardest thing I have to do. It may be hard, but it’s also a cool experience to see the sun coming over Uchumachi  (the mountain by us) and come down the valley in the sunrise. At that time of the morning, it’s always cold, and a lot of the time, we’re in the clouds. It’s a really beautiful sight to see. When the college computer opens at 8, I have to go home. As you can imagine, I’m pretty tired, so I usually sleep for an hour or so, and at nine or nine-thirty I get up and eat breakfast. On Tuesdays and Fridays I work at the Biblioteca Del Los Ninos, (the children’s library) from 12:30-2:30, so I usually find something to occupy myself with until a little before 12, when I head down to the lower campus. The children love the library, and are usually eagerly waiting for me when I get down there to open the library. When I go down at other times, I get kids asking, ”Biblioteca?” and their faces are so sad when I tell them no! On Thursdays, we have a story time for the children with a special narrator. The first one was last week, and my dad read. The kids seemed to really like it, and when the reading was over, I decided to let them play games and read books for another forty-five minutes or so. The library has been a real success, and the children are very enthusiastic about it. With this library schedule, my Wednesdays and Saturdays are pretty free. (Sundays and Mondays are the weekends) On these days I usually do some chores around the house (sweeping, washing dishes, taking out the trash, etc.) and then, when I'm done with what my parents want me to do, I do my thing. I watch a movie, dance around my room listening to music, read a book, or maybe write a little. I like to sometimes go out on our balcony to read or write, and just take my computer or a notebook and go sit on the step. It's a really fun way to spend my free time. Sometimes, on these days, we head into Coroico to do some grocery shopping, and that's usually a cool experience. I don't think that, even if I could drive down here, I would want to. The people drive crazy here! The streets uphill are sometimes so steep that I feel like we're on a roller coaster! It's an interesting experience. Another one is our upstairs neighbors, Carlos, Gladys, and their four-year-old daughter Nataly. Every two weeks, it seems, we've gotten into a sort of Bolivia-America food war. The first Monday that we did this,