Emily:
It is raining today..the most rain we have seen since we've been here. We had a great thunderstorm in the night. I only woke up once from the thunder thanks to our very old and very loud airconditioner next to our bed...it all kindof sounds the same.
We went on the senior retreat this weekend. It was a great getaway, and was fun getting to know the students better. One kid, who I hear is always doing wacky and crazy things, took my challenge of eating a spoonful of melted butter and chopped garlic. I instantly felt sick and was sure that he had an allergy to garlic that had somehow gone undetected his whole life. I spent the next half an hour worried he would suddenly die and it would be on my hands, the new girl, and we would have to leave Bolivia because of the resentment of the rest of the students and his parents. Oh, the drama in my mind. He was fine. And definitely not allergic to garlic. He swallowed it and continued on with his good time. Aaaaaaahhh.

Chad: That's it. I've had it! I am officially declaring war on our shower. I have tried to remain positive, I have tried to stay optimistic, and I have tried to negotiate. There is nothing left but to proceed with open hostilities. Our shower thankfully has warm water. The problem is that it always fluctuates between freezing and scalding. Despite a month of tinkering and experimenting I have been unable to successfully negotiate a setting that will allow for a warm and comfortable setting. Last night was the final straw! I was showering, since I am a night time showerer, and had worked up a thick lather of shampoo. Meanwhile the devious shower shifted temperatures yet again. Because of the scalding temperatures I was unable to rinse the shampoo from my hair. I tried to circumvent the scalding water to increase the flow of cool water, but burned my arm in the process. After finally reaching the cool water I was forced to wait several minutes while the water began to slowly shift temperatures in its ocillation between scalding and freezing. While waiting for a reasonable temperature I got shampoo in my eyes. As I waited for the scalding water to cool my eyes burned and stung. There was nothing I could do. Upon completion of my shower I looked in the mirror to see my eyes red and irritated, but alas we had no visine. Thus I have officially declared war on the shower, and I am fairly confident that Emily will join the cause being that she is empathetic to my plite.

Emily: We had a great cultural experience on Saturday night. We went to a wedding with our field director, who performed the ceremony in a church out in the country. It was "scheduled" to start at 8 and didn't actually start until around 9. There were people answering cell phones, chatting in the back, and little kids sleeping on the dirt floor of the church...all during the ceremony! At the reception afterward, the bride and groom did a sort of march through the reception, and stopped to have pictures taken with the pastor, his wife, and the two of us---we tried to sneak out of the picture, but the groom pulled us back...we had never even met them:) I thought it was pretty cool... to be brutaly honest, at our wedding I probably would have thought, "who are these people?...get them out of my picures." Anyway, we stayed for a while (you usually don't leave before the meal), but after a couple of hours we decided to jet...when we got up, the girl who got us our table kept asking Chad why we were leaving..the food was still coming:) They have a completely different mindset..where we are time oriented and need a schedule, they just enjoy being together. It doesn't matter that they wait three hours for the meal. I was completely tired by the time we got home at 1 AM but couldn't help wondering if maybe I could learn something from the experience:)