last days in coch

Feliz Pascua to one and all!

Well I am in my last few days in Cochabamba. Tuesday night will be my last with the Urena women in Sirpita, and the memebrs of Bolivia 44 will pass the remaining days in a hotel in the city. Saturday will be the swear in ceremony, where the PC will treat us to a fancy dinner and will give me an excuse to dress up real nice and maybe paint my toe nails. Yesterday we had our goodbye and thank you party for all of the host families. It started off a bit slow and disorganized due to some last minute changes, but we had all the family members laughing their bombachas off as soon as the gringos began to perform our renditions of traditional Bolivian dances. My fellow agriculture trainees and I rented Chacarera costumes and basically embarrassed ourselves in front of 100 Bolivians. It was wonderful. Many fotos were taken, and as soon as I get my hands on them Ill be sure to post them.

It will be quite sad to leave behind my host family. Ive grown very close to them, and I really prefer hanging out with them to hanging out with other gringos. But so it goes. Im sure that Ill build many a close relationship in my site. I'm so so so very excited to get there and settle in. I realized today that I have not lived in one place since I was about 15 years old. Its going to be wonderful to build my little room up and buy and make curtains and paint and all of that.

Ive been taking Guarani classes and am absolutely loving the language. The structure is really quite different, but Ive got some materials that should help me improve my skills bit by bit. I also have spoken to a number of people in my site who would love to exchange Guarani lessons for English lessons. Id rather give geography or nutrition classes instead of English, but I suppose I have to cater to my audience at first. One cool cool tidbit about about Guarani- the verb to be born ´(a)a´ is the same as the verb to fall. This comes from a piece of Guarani folklore that says that all men and women are children of the sun and moon, who were born of a lady who was impregnated by the wind of Tümpa, or God. Im sure hippies would love that story. I just think its a really neat linguistic tidbit. I cannot WAIT to add more tidbits.

One other piece of business-mail. If anyone feels inclined to send me marshmallow peeps or letters or copies of national geographic i can be found at the following-

Jacqueline Brysacz
Villa Montes, BOLIVIA
South America

Thats right. Just my name and the city. Villa Montes is 15 minutes from me and has about 20,000 people. The lady who works in the post office knows EVERYONE in town and refers to the 4 volunteers in the area by first name (Jacqueline and three other fellas.)

Ok well Im off to spend la pascua baking up a storm with my favorite ladies in Cochabamba. I hope you are all doing well and youre in my thoughts.

Tümpa ndive,
Jacqueline