A Year In Bolivia: Days 115-124

I've been spending a lot of my time helping mamá out in her salon and stores, as December is the busiest month of the year for her, making earrings and even selling some to the ladies from the salon who asked me for special designs, going to my tae bo classes, and helping the maid out before lunches.

Last Sunday, I had a really relaxing day. Sundays are always my favorite here but this one was especially relaxing. I spent the morning with Luchiana (my host cousin), had some delicious fish for lunch with my family, and went to a movie with my family later that night.

I'm enjoying spending more time in the salon lately because I've had lots of great conversations with the ladies about traditions and customs back in my home in the USA, and learning about traditions and customs that they have here for the holidays and other special occasions. I'm also loving how the fruit is HUGE here because it's summertime!

On Wednesday, I spent time with one of my friends and we made homemade cupcakes, sugar cookies, and frosting to decorate them with. All my friends here want me to teach them how to make a bunch of desserts! I just liked being able to bake something again! I don't have as many chances to do that here and when I do, it's really expensive to have to buy all the ingredients I need.

In the afternoon this Thursday, I took a 5 hour bus ride with 10 of the Roteract members (the 18-30 year old group that is a part of Rotary) to Sopachuy (a small pueblo/town of Sucre). We had brought along about 13 giant bags of clothes, shoes, and games to give to the poorer people of Sopachuy. We spent all of Friday in Sopachuy, in the morning giving out the clothes in the main Plaza to the people that came, and taking other clothes to the poorer parts of Sopachuy, and in the afternoon, going to the river and walking around the town. It was really eye opening to be doing the service project. I so often take for granted what I have but seeing these people be 10 times more excited about receiving these clothes than a child is receiving candy was just, wow. I can't even put it into words. But seeing the smiles on their faces and the gratitude they showed for us put a smile on my face. We gave away EVERYTHING that we had brought along. Later, some little girls from the town came up to me and told me all about how much they liked my hair and begging one of the other Roteract members and I to take pictures with them. They were so cute. (: We walked a long ways down to the river, which was tucked away in a little valley in the mountains, to swim and spend some afternoon time. It was on and off sprinkling rain the whole time, but it was so beautiful and some of the others even went swimming in the river. That night, we planned to go play billards after dinner, but most of us were so tired that we just went back to our hostel and headed to bed! This morning we were up by 3:30am to catch our 5 hour bus ride back to Sucre. I was so sure I was going to sleep when I got home today but I didn't. I'm just having a kind of lazy day after being tired from Sopachuy!