Feliz Cumpleanos

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Thursday August 10, 2006

Today is Grandpa Wiebe’s, Uncle Gary’s, and Grandma Sywulka’s birthdays! Feliz Cumpleanos to all! As they would say here in their broken English, “is today your happy birthday?” lol. But frankly there are so many people who are pretty competent at English here, because you take it in school all your life and you buy products in English, and watch English movies with subtitles.

So for this special birthday edition, I will tell the birthday people, Enchanta Munakwiki: I love you very much (in Quechua). J

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Well, yesterday we saw the camp Grandpa Wiebe founded, Kewina, which was originally called Candelaria. Mom was very happy to revisit the place of fond memories and we even got a tour by Jose Luis, the camp director. It was so beautiful to hike up the mountain! That’s the Bolivia I’ve wanted to see my whole life! And then we went to the lake and got stuck in the mud and had so much fun! The lake dries up significantly in the winter (which is now) and so we went over a grand expanse of mud and rivers to get to the “shore”. We watched people bringing in their fishing nets and rented their boat to get across and Jonny got his wish of rowing a boat. Mom lost Libep’s socks in the lake and we all returned to the car muddy and tired.

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So anyway, now mom’s sick and so she rested today and has improved a lot. We were treated to Estancia (a touristy steakhouse) for Grandpa’s birthday and then I went to get photo prints on the Prado. We’re going to give each family our family picture, and then whatever photos we’ve taken of them this trip. Photos here are taken seriously, we go to places and they pull out crinkled copies of us at the Grand Canyon from the mid-nineties.

Anyway, we’re enjoying the guesthouse, it’s really a tight-night community, people sit outside and talk the afternoons away after they go to language class, and everyone is so friendly. We also enjoy being with the grandparents, but hope we’re not wearing them down too much with our adventures and appetites.

That’s all for now, buenas noches.