In my mind I have written several blog posts between now and the last one that I can see is published here. I have a blog post prepared, just waiting to upload the pictures onto the website, and then ...
I left my suitcase in the Uber car during a busy weekend in Santa Cruz. Bye bye computer. Bye bye pictures, journal entries, expensive Apple laptop, and several hundred dollars' worth of Bolivian currency. Not to mention half of my clothing (I brought very little to Bolivia in the first place), one of each of my regular shoes (I've been wearing a stabilizing boot on the hurt leg), medications and other sundry non-valuable items, but impossible to replace in Bolivia.
This picture is what I'm calling my birthday toad. We went to the hot springs near our home, a little town called Aguascalientes, for my birthday. We stayed the weekend in a little cabana and woke up one morning to find this guy behind the luggage. Happy birthday to me!
After the hot springs, we went to Puerto Suarez (a 3-hour drive) to attend our local congregation and discovered that the next day was a holiday (who knew?) and they were going to have a branch party at a nearby hotel. We already had our swimwear, and knowing we weren't going to be missing any school the next day, we stayed and had a valuable experience getting to know the members of the church there. (This was only our second time getting to our local church, as we have had to travel every other weekend in the opposite direction and have attended other congregations.)
Some of us are becoming very excited about having pictures taken of us doing unique and beautiful things.
At the end of the week we attended a birthday party for our half-expatriate friends. The girl in the yellow is the birthday girl. Doesn't she look like she could almost be a cousin to JJ? And check out the that amazing party tree! Who wouldn't want that in their backyard?
That's all for now. Wish us luck with the suitcase.
