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.

Feliz Navidad de Bolivia.

Our wonderful host family and the Christmas Eve dinner that Esperanza prepared for us. The turkey is stuffed with bacon, beef, and chicken and there is also a roasted chicken. There was yucca and cheese croquettes, salad, rice, etc... What a feast!

On Christmas Eve day, we spent the day at the girls' home and this spunky gal wanted to do Becky's hair. Becky kept saying that it hurt and the "hairdresser" kept saying "tienes que aguantar" which translates into "deal with it".... basically.

The little girls prepared a dance where they dressed as cats.

The youngest from both the girls and the boys home prepared a skit reenacting the Christmas story.

The kids!

(For the children's privacy, we won't be posting their real names on this blog or in any e-mails. If you're looking for sponsorship ideas or if you're curious about the organization in general, you can click on the website below:
www.ninosconvalor.org


One of the young boys has a national sponsor and she organized a visit from her company to bring all 34 kids Christmas gifts. They all got new towels, socks, a set of clothes, and some goodies. The kids are sitting on the steps of the boys home which is called Pedacitos del Cielo (Little Pieces of Heaven).

Watching a movie.

This child loves Tio Marco (i.e. Mark). When Becky (Tia Rebecca) kicked him the soccer ball, he quickly replied that Mark does it better. Cheeky, huh?

The little boys all have their own water bottles which they faithfully carry around when they go on their outings. Even the 2 year-olds know they have to hang on to their water bottle.

So far it's been fun to get to know each of their 34 names and after only a week, they have all made us feel very welcome. It's been great for the two of us to be able to work together and to work with kids as both of us have had much more experience working with adults and/or teenagers.

Our house is a very very very fine house....... but no cats (name that song)

Our youngest roommate Laura and her uncle Gustavo putting together the Christmas tree.

Stage 2 of putting together the tree. Here is Laura again. They ended by putting a manger scene at the bottom of the tree. Baby Jesus doesn't get placed until midnight on Christmas Eve.

View outside our bedroom window.

View outside our bedroom window. Cochabamba sits in a valley but we're still at a fairly high altitude.....somewhere around 9,000 feet I think.

Our house for the next two months. Isn't it beautiful? Bito the English bulldog guards the backyard.

We made it to Cochabamba! More pictures to come soon......

We´ll post some pictures soon but for now we just wanted to let y´all know that we arrived safe and sound in Cochabamba. Our luggage arrived too. This is the first time I (this is Becky writing) have checked bags since Air Pacific lost all my favorite personal belongings back in 2002 so at all of our four stops, I expected to have to say goodbye to our stuff. Ha. We missed our connection from Santiago, Chile to La Paz, Bolivia so Iberia put us up at the Hilton for two nights. Pretty sweet! During our unexpected layover in Santiago, we took a bicycle tour with Peter Murphy´s (some of you may know him from Gordon College) company La Bicicleta Verde (www.labicicletaverde.com). It was a great introduction to a city that we hope to get more acquainted with after our time in Cochabamba.
We arrived in Bolivia on the 16th and had a 7 hour layover in La Paz. The man in front of us in line at the airport was covered in ice and when we looked outside, there was hail pouring out of the sky. The airport in La Paz is the highest airport in the world and we did feel a little light-headed walking around and up the stairs. We arrived in Cochabamba just after midnight and stayed at one of the guest houses of Sustainable Bolivia (this is the organization taking care of our housing, transportation, etc...). Yesterday we met our host family and we are now unpacked and ready to spend about 7 weeks here in the same place. After staying in places for one night at a time for the last few months, it is really great to unpack and have a closet and a dresser again. Our host family is so friendly and have made us feel right at home. Esperanza is the lady of the house and she has two daughters, one son, a nephew, and a granddaughter who are all living here with her. The house is more than big enough for all of us and we have our own room and we share a bathroom with one of the daughters. Laura, the granddaughter´s favorite TV show is Curious George which makes me think we´re going to get along just fine.
Okay, more to come soon. It´s hard to believe Christmas is next week. We love you and are thinking of you.

Next stop: Cochabamba, Bolivia

So we are leaving Spain today after being here for almost 7 weeks. Our flight stops in Santiago, Chile and then Iquique then La Paz and then finally Cochabamba. Hopefully our baggage makes it through all those stops. Yikes! Thanks for your comments, prayers, and text messages. We continue to use 917 300 9120 to receive texts and phone calls (if and when we have wi fi and our ipod touch is charged) so please stay in touch. More pics and posts to follow shortly.

Segovia: December 12th

This aqueduct is 2000 years old and was built by the Romans. In the 1970s, it was still a functioning aqueduct but they decided to stop the water flow because of the way the water was wearing on the rocks. Imagine that 2000 years later, it was still working! It´s about .8 kilometers long.

Mark and José. José and Becky have been writing letters for the last 10 years. Becky met José when she visited Segovia in 2001. José was a wonderful tour guide and a gracious host. He drove us around the city for a few hours showing us all the sights. What you see in this picture is the Alcazar which is a castle or palace. This was the castle that Walt Disney copied when creating the cartoon drawings for the Sleeping Beauty Castle.