I've made a huge mistake...

So, when Kara left with the car to pick up Marvin (lab jefe) from the highway, and they returned walking to the clinic we were appropriately concerned.  On our drive out to clinic, it had been pouring and we knew that the roads in Palacios would be bad.  We had been warned by previous coordinators who had themselves gotten the car stuck...  Kara did have the bad luck of encountering a tractor on her way back and in her efforts to pull to the side and out of the way, she did not realize how deep the water was there.  Well one thing led to another and her expedition returned to the clinic on foot...

 

 I have to be careful with this blog, since with 6 and a half months remaining in our Bolivian adventure, there is more than enough time for me to create a similar blog-worthy debacle.  What complicated this situation was that there was a visiting endocrinologist, Dr. Terry Unterman, who needed to return to Santa Cruz that afternoon! 

 

Put your back into it...

Dr. Unterman was a good sport--more than happy to help with our collective efforts to pull the car out.  But, as you can see in the above picture, it was really stuck.  We had 4-5 people pulling from the front, we tried pushing it back in reverse, but nothing would work.  Our spirits were beginning to drag...

I wasn't quite ready to joke about our situation...

Fortunately (especially for Dr. Unterman) another tractor happened to come by while we were attempting to free our vehicle.  They were muy amable and offered to help us--they even had a metal chain pull our car out.  The wheels of the tractor give some idea of the force it was able to generate, and we had our coche back in a matter of seconds. 

Gracias para su ayuda!

So Kara was able to take home the title of first coordinator to get the car stuck (this year).  Although I hope we will be able to avoid this scenario, since the rainy season hasn't even started yet--I have some sincere doubts.  Dr. Unterman may have gotten a bit more than he expected with his one day trip to Palacios, but at least he got to go home with a story. 

Empanada Making

Since we have been here we have found out that there are "days" for everything here. Day of the Dogs, Day of the Mujer (lady), Day of the Social Workers, Day of the Students, etc.  Several weeks ago we celebrated "Day of the Doctor" and got up early to make and eat empanadas before clinic.....in reality Mumi had already made the dough and the filling, we just helped to put them together! They were delicious.

You can see the dough Mumi prepared ahead of time...and her adorable granddaughter Ariana

The process begins. Mumi is actually using a pasta maker to roll out the dough.

 My hands, putting the filling of potatoes and chicken into the dough. Interesting fact, notice that the filling is red. However, there is no spice that makes it red, they literally use red food coloring in powder form because it looks boring if its not red. In order for it to be a true empanada here, it has to have the food coloring; if not you will definitely be criticized.

 The process at work, me folding the filled empanada.

 

Probably my best folding job.....looks pretty good. Twong, this reminded me of the day we made dumplings!

 

 Pepe, doing the frying.

 Finished product, golden brown and very tasty

Ready for our pre-clinic feast!

Samaipata

So I just posted all of the photos from Samaipata...we actually visited this town a while ago but never wrote about it.....sorry. I just figured out how to post a lot of pictures quickly to the blog so forgive me because I did not go through the pictures before posting them so there are probably some very boring pictures in this album.
Anyways Samaipata is a small town about 2 and a half hours away from here. The drive there was slightly terrifying at times (also very pretty) considering we were moving along a narrow road curving through the mountains. While there we enjoyed walking around the city and having a very traditional lunch of majadito (a rice dish) and a giant bottle of juice (don't worry we only drank half of it). We then went to visit El Fuerte, a Pre-Inca and Incan archeological site very close to Samaipata.

4. samiapata

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