So it was my birthday this week...

And it was a blast! I think this will be one of the more memorable of my birthdays - of course being in a foreign country has a lot of influence on that. I was woken up in the morning with a knock on my door and all of a sudden there was a chorus of voices singing happy birthday in Spanish, followed by English and then German. I couldn't help but have a smile on my face. It's not every birthday that you get the happy birthday sung in 3 different languages. After the singing we had a wonderful breakfast. Anna and Rose made crepes which were awesome to say the least and the gang had bought me an Arizona tea which I had stated I loved when back in the states. The awesomeness could have stopped then and I would have been happy but they had also purchased two gifts for me. One was an authentic Bolivian hand-woven tie and the other is a Bolivian decorative flute. Both will be treasured for years to come.

After that we (the American and Scottish gang) had to go take care of some more visa stuff. It wasn't so bad though - I treated myself to a bag of peanut M&Ms to make the experience more enjoyable. I have to say - it was a great idea. I don't have much to say about the actual visa process other than it would be impossible if it wasn't for Nina and Carmen. It's not an easy process by any means.

Around lunch time we got to make it to our first day on the job. I got to meet Profe Jose, who seems to be a great and very popular guy. I alluded to what I will be doing in Talleres in a previous post but it seems this will be a pretty laid back position. Kids come and go from the room - some knowing what they want to make and others just wanting something to do. It's amazing to see many of these young kids so determined to build what they have in their heads (mostly cars and things of the sort). I'll be spending some time trying to find some projects that kids would find fun and challenging for Talleres (if you know of any, please shoot me an email). It seems that really my job is simply to befriend the kids and help them create the ideas that they have in their heads. Hopefully it will keep me busy enough, but man, I really need to learn Spanish! It's hard to make friends when you can't understand each other.

This week I have been helping at lunch in Casa de Paso where more than a hundred people come to eat. There is a wide variety of people who come from the kids who live at the house, kids who receive supplemental instruction at the house to young people who live on the street and even people who just want a meal. I can tell you one thing, it's not like the US in the comedor at Casa de Paso. There is virtually NO waste. EVERYONE eats EVERYTHING. No one wastes anything here and that's definitely something that we (Americans) could and should definitely learn from. I have.

Anyways, this week has been great for me to get out of my 'comfort zone' and really get involved with people whom I have really had next to no experience with in the past. These kids are real. They really have no parents and they really live on the street. It's rough. Most look and smell the part as well. It's so easy to be repulsed or overwhelmed and not know what to do and how to react but it's all simple really - we're all people and we all want to be treated as such - we all want to feel love. And that's what I'm trying to do and to be honest, it's all I can do.

In the morning I'm going on a fishing trip into the rainforest with Padre Jose and 3 other volunteers. Lucky, I know. I'm going for 6 days so please pray that I don't catch any sort of jungle virus!