Happy 4th of July!

Yes, I know I'm a day late. But this is my 4th of July post.

Here in Bolivia, July 4th doesn't really mean anything special (except to all the Americans who live here...and I guess the English too :p). But I still celebrated our holiday, in the most unique (and possibly most fun) way ever!

My day started with a Sunday school Bible study at Cochabamba International Church with Maite. It was the 3rd week of this particular study, and Maite and I had been wanting to go, but this was our first time actually getting to. It's about 1 Peter (and I think we'll go into 2 Peter too, and maybe other books if it continues?), and it's in English! However, I was the only native English-speaker there beside the American teacher. The study was great, and I'm planning on going every week from now on. Then we went to the church service, which was also great as always. After church, Maite and I picked up some chicken nuggets (I was pretty excited about that) from IMBA (chicken company) with a side of yucca. We took a trufi home, ate our nuggets, and I changed clothes. I then went to IC Norte (this huge grocery store near my house) to pick up some apples and vanilla ice cream. From there I went to CDA 1 to bring the goods and help Jennifer make apple pies. We took pictures of the triplets (see Jen's blog for some cute ones!) while the pies were baking.

Once everything was ready, we took the pies and ice cream and headed to the bridge where a lot of street kids Jen works with live. We ended up taking several of them to pick up some other kids from the market. After driving around and finally finding the people we were looking for, we were heading back to the bridge to eat our pie and ice cream to celebrate the 4th, but first we made a little stop. While we were driving, we saw all these people with different painted backgrounds and props in the median area (pretty big, kind of like a mini park) of the road. I asked what all of it was and Jen explained that the people who live way out in the country come into town to get there pictures "professionally" taken. I guess it's a really cool thing to do for them. But the backgrounds and props were soooo cheesy and tacky (to me anyway), and I thought it was hilarious. I said jokingly that I wanted to get my picture taken there, and Jen and I laughed. She told the kids in Spanish what I said, and one of the kids was like, "Let's get all of our pictures taken here!" Then everyone in the car got excited and they really wanted to do it, so after gathering up all the people we were looking for, we parked on the side of the street and walked over to the picture area. We got so many weird looks, and I'm sure we did look pretty strange, but we ended up getting our picture taken with 2 different backgrounds and buying 1 of each. Jen has the prints, and she's supposed to scan and email them to me soon! I'll post them as soon as I get them, because they're great! Anyway, after all that, we went to the bridge (we didn't actually go under, just stayed at the intersection on top where the kids wash windows for change), ate our sweets, and hung out for a while. The kids took my camera and Jen's (with permission) and took lots of pictures of us and each other (those will also be posted as soon as I can!). Jen drove me home after, and I hung out with Maite and Teresa the rest of the night.

It was the craziest 4th I've ever had, but so much fun! The kids are hilarious and (mostly) sweet, and I think the ridiculousness of the pictures we got, plus having tons of people squashed into Jen's tiny car made it even more fun. Plus the pie was totally delicious! Tonight Maite and I are going to celebrate July 4th again by going out to eat hamburgers- my first time to have one since being here..yum!

Happy Independence Day! I hope everyone had a fun and safe holiday!