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.

Granada: December 11th

The entrance to the Alhambra. The mixture of Christianity and Islam was so fascinating to see.

Mark really loved Granada. We visited a tetería and had some great tea, walked around the beautiful city, and enjoyed the Alhambra and Generalife. Next time we´re in Spain, we´ll have to spend more time in Granada.