Top picture is of one of the thousands of mountains of oranges. Its orange season and they are everywhere.

The second picture is of me and my friend/coworker Sibia.

So we have had a slight bump in the road on our first day of data collection. We began the day early and arrived at the school only to find not kids. The teachers decided it was a good time to have a strike after celebrating Mothers Day. Today and tomorrow as well as this coming Monday through Wednesday is "un paro nacional" (a nation-wide strike). Evidently this is not anything too unusual. It was pretty common about five years ago but things have gotten better. However, my co-workers tell me that it is beginning to go down hill again. Though we were told the strike is a call for an increase in pay, my supervisor tells me it is not much more than teachers wanting to enjoy a longer break.

Despite the suprise and panic, the team rolled with these punches in excelent humor and effort. After buying an extremely large amount of chocolate milk for the students, my supervisor commented to someone "vamos a tener que bañarnos en chicolac" (we are going to have to bath ourselves in chocolate milk).

After calling the schools we were supposed to visit this afternoon we found, two that were not observing the "paro". Above is a picture of one class having their blood tested. Though this will put us behind a bit, we think that things will not be too far behind schedule.

On Monday we realized that I will need to go to La Paz to work with the analysis of the data we (and other Save programs in Bolivia) are currently collecting. Therefore I will leave this coming Wednesday for La Paz. I am happy about this in one the sense because there I will have a specific responsibility and role; whereas here, I am more of a general support and I really do not contribute any specific skill. I am a little sad though because I have become quite fond of my co-workers in Cochabamba. It is also ridiculously cold in La Paz!

So, the real problem with washing clothes by hand is not the effort or the time consuming nature of it, but BIRD POOP!!!! You clean and scrub and then the birds come and poop on all your hard work. As if I needed another reason to dislike birds!