From Villa Montes

HELLOOOOOOOOO EVERYONE!

I am writing you all from Villamontes, Bolivia, a town of 30,000, 2 hours north of the Argentine border. I am traveling on my semana tecnica, where we visit potential sites and practice talking about bees and such all around the country. Sorry I have been out of touch for so long, but I have some good excuses, which are as follows: baby chicks, herpes zoster, and my site.

1. baby chicks: The Sunday before Carnaval my friends and fellow trainees, Christian and Chelsea, were hanging out in front of Christians house at about 1 am. It was a Sunday, and carnaval, so a lot of people were drinking. This apparently includes chicken truck drivers, as a truck full of baby chickks drunkenly sped by and a box full of 100 chicks flew off. The driver didnt notice, so Christian and Chelsea came to the rescue and brought them all into cages at Christians house. Unfortunately,. Christian has no idea how to take care of baby chicks, so I adoped about 13 of them. Thereafter the rest of them passed away because of some cold nights and Christians lack of knowledge on chick raising, which is quie sad. Nonetheless, my 13 wawas (babies in Quechua) are still going strong.

2. Herpes Zoster:week after the baby chicks incident, I got a painful rash on my back. I told the PC doc the next day, and she started me on medicine right away. She gave me painkillers and told me to take care of myself and to do my best to control the pain. It didnt hurt all that bad at this point, and I had no idea what herpes zoster was, so I went about my day and night. Then came the next day. Oh man. This thing was quite quite painful. I was okay when at home, resting, but the bus rides and long walks brought me to tears each afternoon for a few days. Luckily on Friday, with research assistance from MR. Stephen Andrew Wood, I found out what herpes zoster is : SHINGLES! I guess it is a virus that lives in your spine and shows when one is stressed or has a comprimised immune system. Apparently moving to a new country is stressful, so it showed on me. I am lucky tpo have gotten it here though, and now, with excellent OC medical care and caring donas who applied white grape leaves to take the pain away and prevent scarring (who knew!) So this is one of the reasons I havent updated in a while, but I am doing much better now.

3.My site: Ah! Im out of internet time, but I think I visited my site today. Its a guarani community in the Chaco, about 2 hours from the Argentine border. Ill write more later but until then, take care!