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HA! And now I am finally here, after all the months of planning and packing and worrying, I am here in the MCC Compound in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. This first week here is one of orientation and some good old fashioned relaxation before we move in with our families, begin language study, and then start our jobs. We are staying here at on the MCC grounds, meeting the other volunteers, both local and foriegn and basically getting a hold on our surroundings. To sum up the city from my point of view, I would have to say that EVERYTHING is different. The way people dress, the way they talk (Camba spanish is a little different), the way we shower, what time we eat, even directional signals and car horns mean different things. This week is about seeing what we can and becoming at least some what accustomed to it before we leave this MCC property for life with our host families. Next Sunday is when they will come to pick us up and take us to our respective homes to move in. Next week we will start five weeks of language study both with tutors and one on one teachers. In the next few weeks we will also be traveling to Santiago de Chiquitos where one of our group will be working, and to Cochabamba for an MCC ¨focus weekend¨. I will know more about these trips later. This morning we had refreshments (called refrijerio) with the other MCC staff and volunteers, and learned about how our financial matters will work while we are here. I have my first wad of currency - Bolivianos - at an exchange rate of 8 Bolivianos to 1 American dollar. Things seem insanely cheap here, though I know that it is all relative. For example, calling home is 50 centavos a minute, which came to 10 Bolivianos for a 20 minute call. But ten Bolivianos is just over a dollar. It is hard to adjust to seeing the Boliviano as having an equal value in this society as the dollar has in ours.

I am also practicing my Spanish as much as I can, which isn´t hard: most of the workers here at MCC are Bolivian, and there is a rule here that if there is even one person in the room who does not speak English, we speak Spanish. The odds are pretty good that the language of choice will be Spanish at any given time. Good practice for life outside of MCC´s walls. Thats all for now; just taking time to relax and adjust and gear up for the coming months.