Saturday, June 12, 2010

BOLIVIA-PERU: APRIL 2010!!

Because my husband is being lazy and wont write his own post, I am being his scribe....so here is his story (he's telling me what to write):

In April, I had the opportunity to go to Bolivia with Kate's family to check up on her dad's study projects for BYU, and do a little humanitarian work. We spent the majority of our time in La Paz, which was my favorite city we visited. While in La Paz we visited a lot of small nearby cities where many of the families were in need of food and clothing. We went to the markets in these towns and bought a bunch of food to hand out to multiple families. Spending $30 would supply a large Bolivian family with food for over two months. Some of the most humbling experiences came when i walked into these people's homes (if you could call them that) and saw their living conditions. It's amazing to me that they can actually survive the way they live. After visiting these families we went further out on the Alti Plano and took school supplies to some children in schools there. They were pretty surprised that a gringo was speaking spanish and they were making fun of me because I was so big. As we were handing out coloring books and crayons to the children, I was surprised to find out that they had never seen anything like this before and we had to teach them what to do with the crayons. Before we left to Peru we went and visited a few "supposed" ancient book of mormon sites/ruins....pretty impressive! We also traveled down the famous ROAD OF DEATH (youtube it) to a little jungle town called Curoico. After we spent nearly a week in Bolivia, we flew to Cuzco, Peru where we traveled to Machu Pichu. Although our tour guide wasn't too fond of Americans, we still enjoyed our time there and were amazed at the Mayan architecture. We were even more surprised when our very expensive travel agency lost our bags and landed us in the Machu Pichu HOSTAL!! Kate's mom was completely disgusted so she worked some magic, and we ended up in a very nice hotel for the night. In order to catch our flight home, we had to go back to La Paz, where we spend our last day in South America visiting an orphanage which was a very sad, but gratifying experience. When we arrived at the orphanage I was shocked when I saw a "baby drop off" at the front. Mothers that didn't want to keep there babies could drop their babies in this little turn table thing, and when the mom turned it, it rings a bell letting the orphanage workers inside know that a new baby had arrived. We handed out popcorn, suckers, clothes, and milk to over 100 orphans. I spend most of my time there in the nursery playing with and holding the babies/toddlers. When you'd pick one up, they would want kisses, and then the rest of the babies would reach out their arms waiting and wishing they'd be the next one to receive some attention. There was definitely more than one baby I wanted to take home! After the orphanage we headed back home! That was the best trip I have ever been and hope I can go back someday and help out more people!!

This is the turntable thing at the orphanage




Machu Pichu
Slides in the hillside!


We LOVE inca cola!
Some awesome buildings in Peru
Temple in Cochabamba Bolivia
Families on the Alti Plano


The eat lots of Guinea Pig in Bolivia
City of La Paz
Road of Death

Cute little boy with his dogs in Curoico


Bolivian Toilet
Chalita



School
Market
Christus in Cochabamba

4 comments:

Sam and Lacey said...

WOW! I want to go next time. That is so cool that Jordan got to do that. I am way jelous. The orphange breaks my heart. If I went I would want to take them ALL home with me.

The Little Klug Family:) said...

Ok i am reading this crying it makes me so so sad! That is so great that your fam did that though and Jord had such an amazing expierence that little girl he is holding is seriously one of the cutest little kids i have ever seen! It breaks my heart! I am to tender hearted to see stuff like that:( But that is awesome they were able to help!

Kayla said...

Kate that is so awesome that your family went out and did that! That is insane how much 30 Dollars will last! Love the pics! That orphanage is sad! :( So neat Jordan was able to help them!

Melissa said...

Kate. I'm glad you found me! i'm new to this whole blogging thing. so its nice to see a familiar face! It's so great to see what you've been up to, and i'm happy to see you're having such a fun life. this post was heart-wrenching! what an awesome experience!