Happy 2012!

This is in Lincoln Park. This sweet Bolivia woman saw the little boys playing and offered to buy them all ice cream.


I (Becky) want to post some more pictures soon of our everday (i.e. public transportation we take, streets we walk on, views of downtown, etc...) so I´ll try to do that soon.
We spend the weekdays in between the girls´ home and the boys´home and our host family´s house. Mark will begin taking Spanish classes this coming week and in the meantime he and I have been working on verbs and various phrases that are commonly heard in our day to day here in Bolivia. On the weekends, we hang out with our host family and sleep in. I usually take advantage of the cable TV to watch a movie. Mark has been editing photos of our time in Spain as well as putting together a video that Niños Con Valor can use to hopefully get some more sponsors for the kids. As one of Mark´s self-imposed Spanish writing assignments, he described his average day here in Cochabamba so I thought I´d include it below.
¨Me levanto a las ocho y quince y desayuno después. Tomo té negro y como pan con mermelada y frutas con yogur. Vivo cerca de la casa de niños. Está veinte minutos a pie. La casa de niñas está más lejos. Tomo un taxi por diez minutos. Llego a voluntar a las nueve donde juego con las niñas el volíbol, fútbol, y rompecabezas. Al mediodía voy a la case donde vivo con una familia para almorzar. La doña de la casa es una cocinera muy buena. En la tarde, cambio a la otra casa y a veces necesito editar fotos y video. Antes que viajé a Bolivia, fui en España y caminé el Camino de Santiago. Es una peregrinación como hasta Roma o Jerusalén. Cuando tengo tiempo libre, me gusta salir con mi esposa en la ciudad para beber un café o algo y a veces me gusta mirar una película.¨
Translation: I get up at 8:15 and I eat breakfast. I drink black tea and eat bread and jam and fruit and yogurt. I live close to the boy´s home. It´s about 20 minutes by foot. The girl´s home is a farther away. I take a taxi for 10 minutes. I arrive to volunteer at 9 where I play volleyball, soccer and puzzles. At noon, I go home where I live with a family to eat lunch. The mother of the house is a very good cook. In the afternoon, I change to the other house and sometimes I need to edit photos and video. Before I traveled to Bolivia, I went to Spain and I walked the Camino de Santiago. It´s a pilgrimage like the one towards Rome or Jerusalem. When I have free time, I like to go out with my wife to the city to drink a coffee or something and sometimes I like to watch a movie.