I have beautiful long legs and small feet with ten toes.

…Phrase taken from a “Learning English” worksheet. Unbelievably useful.

Diagnostic over. Carnaval over. Post-Carnaval over. Work starts (kinda). Yay!

You can call me Profe. Or Miss Truong or Ms. Truong, but please don’t call me Teacher! “Hello Teacher! Teacher, can you help me please? Teacher, I don’t understand.”

I just had my first English class yesterday! After far too long of not enough work, I decided to start an English class at the request of many Bolivian tour operators in the community. Of an expected attendance of ten, three actually showed up!

At 7:00 when class was supposed to start, I was sitting outside on the steps by myself. Ten minutes later I find the lady who has the key to the classroom. Then my students arrive, the room has only one lightbulb, no tables and chairs, and a missing chalkboard. So after we buy and install some lightbulbs, run back home for a marker and paper to tape to the wall, move a couple tables and chairs into the room, BOOM! we were ready to start!

I’ve got two classes going on right now. Basic, and a little-more-than-basic. I didn’t know where to start with grammar, since I speak English but never taught it. Not to worry. I talked to a few of my students who have unsuccessfully tried to learn English on their own, and I now have a wonderful collection of old worksheets, grammar books, and a 14-disc set of “Multimedia English”.

My students are also full of advice. My more advanced class has adults in the community who have studied some English and know basic grammar. What I’m trying to do is get them to speak. We all know that we can read and write second languages and still absolutely come up blank when asked to speak. I have a myriad of activities planned, and I told the students our goal is to get the words to flow out of the mouth, even if at times they are not quite perfect. Says one of the students, “Forget all these activities. I heard that all you have to do is kiss a foreigner and you will speak their language. Why don’t you just give us all kisses?”

[Sidenote: Male Peace Corps volunteers working in more rural areas where education levels are extremely low have honestly been approached by community members and asked to impregnate their daughters so the child will speak English.]

My other class is the basic group from yesterday. I was a little nervous about this class. I had mentally noted from the registration meeting that the class was mostly men, mostly men who had hit on me. What a coincidence, I thought. How naïve. My friend looks at me, starts laughing when I tell him who is coming to class, and says, “Please, Tammy, they’re not there to learn English, they’re there cause of you!” This didn’t give me the most confidence, but class went smoothly, great participation, high enthusiasm, and I finally got them to drop the “amigo” from the end of all their sentences. “How are you, friend? I’m fine, friend. My name is Freddy, friend. What is your name, friend? My name is Roberto, friend. I am twenty-nine years old, friend. See you tomorrow, friend!”

English is extremely important in my community and I really hope that my students will stick with it. The biggest challenge faced here is the high attrition rate. Classes start with 50 students and 3 months later there are only 10. I’m trying to make my class more interactive and fun to maintain interest. Somewhere in the middle of class yesterday I started noticing noises coming from the windows. I saw some kids peeking into the windows and thought they were there to mess around. Half an hour later I see 3-4 heads still bobbing around the windows, lips silently repeating the phrases I was teaching. After class about half a block away from the classroom, I turn around and see two teenage girls running up to me who ask, “Can we come to class too?” Of course!

It’s a small start, but a start all the same. [Borat Accent] High Five. Great success…! [/Borat Accent]

Picture Time!

…A visual compilation of my first five months in Bolivia…

My debut as a Bolivian dancer in…. The Llamorada! (Dance of the Llamas) We rented costumes, learned the steps, and danced 3 days straight while people oohed and aahed over the fact that a bunch of Gringoes were doing a traditional Bolivian dance. We were pretty much celebrities afterwards.

In the same festival I saw a dance called the Morenada…

After falling in love with the dance (and the costumes), I decided to be a Morenada dancer for Halloween.

My host family during training. It was tough to get them to smile for the camera.

My birthday. I’m going to be 27 by the time I’m done with service. Uh oh…

Christmas!

I decorated with a foot-tall Christmas tree. Peace Corps salary doesn’t go too far during the holidays…

Celebrated with a family here in town. Tradition dictates that on Christmas eve, families must roast a pig and have a huge dinner at midnight. Our pig took a little too long to cook because the coals on the ground would not stay hot. We ended up eating at about 3 in the morning. It was the most delicious pig in Bolivia. (And I only slightly worried about getting brainworm from the pork.)

New Years!

Other volunteers came to my place and we had a week long New Year’s celebration. On the actual new year’s eve, we cooked, ate, and headed out to the “club” at 11:30. We arrive and find the place completely empty. I guess we somehow missed the fact that Bolivians celebrate new year’s first with a dinner at midnight at home, then start heading out to party at 2 in the morning. Who knew that we would get our own private party in the club, VIP style, with hip-hop music and Tammy on the mike doing the countdown??

Timmy, the dog, who adopted Tammy, the volunteer. Not the other way around.

Dogs in Bolivia are not kept for much more than protection. Timmy kinda sucks as a guard dog, but he’s great at chasing cars, bikes, and motos; he loves trying to fight horses and cows, and of course scaring the chickens.

Who said the holidays were over???

I´m nervous, super nervous right now. Walking outside my house I have to hold my breath and hope that I don´t get hit with waterballoons. It´s Carnaval. What is Carnaval? Men in the streets urinating, drunks who won´t let you walk by without wrestling out of their grasp. Waterguns. Shaving cream. Whistles used as instruments. Fog horns used as instruments. Fireworks and firecrackers exploding above your head. Waterballoons- frozen, filled with urine, filled with paint, launched at the prize targets- females and foreigners. And if you are female and foreign, well... I´m just nervous.

In some areas they have gorgeous parades with people doing traditional dances. I sat and watched them practice for hours in Cochabamba. Where I live, they don´t do traditional dances. But the do form their ¨comparces,¨ little fraternities as they describe it to me. They drink together, party together, eat together, and prance around the plaza with their ¨queen¨on the back of a truck, barely clothed, dancing and getting hit with balloons and shaving cream. How beautiful, they say.

I´m about to head out to Valle Grande where the Carnaval celebration is even more ¨beautiful.¨ I think beautiful means a larger degree of the aforementioned. I hope I make it through. I took a waterballon in the eye the other day from a distance of just four feet away. I didn´t have the necessary vocabulary in Spanish to say what I wanted to say to that kid.

Wish me luck. I hope I don´t become overly belligerent on this ¨beautiful¨holiday.