Todaywas the 89th birthday of Save the Children. We celebrated with some delicious chocolate mint cake and some Bolivianish singing.

Yesterday we visited El Cristo, a statue of Christ that is just over 33 meters and sits on top of a hill/mountain that overlooks the city. You get a terrific view of Cochabamba.

Also on Sunday we went to a parent meeting at one of the escuelitas (little schools) to give a little promo for the program and vitamins that their children are taking. In Bolivia it is customary to have parent meetings on Sundays mornings which often run until the afternoon. I thought this to be a little odd, but its the best day to do it since everyone works during the day and Saturday is used to buy groceries and run errands. It was impressive to see about 240 parents (I know because it was my job to count) at this meeting without any more incentive to come than to hear what is going on in their school and community. Even more impressive was that it was not just moms. There was quite a showing of dads.

Working here has definitely demonstrated to me how much my Spanish is lacking. I fee like I am learning Spanish for the first time. There are so many words they use that I have never heard and so many words they use that they have never heard. Yesterday, my co-worker, Sibia who is Boliviana, was trying to explain a kind of fruit to me "una palta". I eventually realized she was talking about an avocado and said you mean an "aguacate", the only word I have ever heard used for avocado and a word, to my knowledge, very commonly used. However she had never heard of "aguacate" before and kept saying no its "palta". After a 40 minute bus ride of this conversation, Sibia found a "palta" on the street and it was in fact an "aguacate"....just not in Bolivia, here it is a "palta". Something of this nature occurs at least everyday.