Emily: I feel a complete writers block. I will post some pictures.

Happy Birthday Aileen! We went to a restaraunt called "La Suisse" and had steak fondue.

Chad: yeah so we just got robbed. Emily and I took her dad, Joe, to our favorite restaurant. Emily hailed a taxi to take us home. She picked a bit of a run-down taxi in order to give Joe the opportunity to experience a memorable ride in a taxi. This taxi had no panelling on the indside, just the metal framework. It also had wired hanging all around on the the indside. It stalled at least three times on the way back to our neighborhood. There were no handles to roll down the windows. Basically this was a ghetto piece of junk taxi. When we got in he mentioned something about us slamming his door too hard. I figured he was up to something, so when we got to our neighborhood, we had him take us to a park about two blocks from our house. When we got out he got out with us and claimed that we had broke his window. Now I talked him through the logic that there was no broken glass on the street when we left, that if it had previously been broken it still would have make a rattling of glass sound, etc. I also pointed out that all the other windows were already missing or were cracked. He persisted though and demanded that we pay for the window. He also informed us that it was not Bolivian manufactured glass, but rather it was quality glass. Evidently he owned one of the junkiest taxis in Bolivia (no small feat) but had German-glass windows installed on his jalopy. Here it is often simpler to simply pay someone and be done with it. If the police got involved they would simply demand some type of bribe and demand that we pay the taxi guy anyway, so although ridiculous we payed the guy 100 bolivianos. That sounds like a lot, but it's really only like $12. It really is kind of a funny story.

Emily: On Friday our school had what we hope is it's first annual "Servant Day". The junior high and high school students were sent in groups to different locations to work on a variety of projects. Some went to orphanges, others to churches, and one group went to do an evangelism survey in a small village near Santa Cruz. I went with a group of junior high kids to a church to help paint a mural in a Sunday school room and dig out a tree. The picture was taken on our return to school.

Also--my sister is having a baby girl on Friday!! She will join her super cute brother in the sparkly blue tinkerbell sunglasses:):)