Found a new hobby

Yeah that´s right the president came to Villamonte to join in a parade we had. I have now seen Bill Clinton and Evo Morales. Although I don´t remeber seeing Bill Clinton because Me and Jeremy ( Mom doesn´t know this story in highschool yet) decided to stay the night with his cousin at the Birmingham southern campus. We ended up drinking a whole bottle of Vodka very fast. I won´t say how fast. But let´s say after 15 minutes the vodka tasted like water. So i don´t remeber much of the night except when i puked outside of devinci´s pizza in Homewood and jeremy told me it was the most beautiful vomit he had ever seen. Well needless to say we laid out on the grass listening to Clinton the next day. Anyway, this parade was pretty cool, there were mixed emotions about Evo just like there are in every country. But overall it was alot of fun.
Well I have found a new past time. I went fishing this weekend with some guys i work with. We did not use fishing poles and that is what made it tremendously fun. All you do is use a hand line. I was immediatley converted to this technique and plan on never changing. You can feel everything going on in the line. The water moving by, the undercurrents and the river bottom. Then you pull that fish in with sheer muscle. I was worn out after this. The catfish are huge down here. The biggest was atleast 7 inches long! I ended up catching 5 catfish. Yeah we got catfish down here. We didn´t cook ém up this time but we are going next sat. and i am going to bring a frying pan, oil, eggs, and flour. Whip us up some fried catfish. Never thought this moment would ever happen.

still doin what i love best

Well this is the tree we tried to save. Guess we didn´t do a good enough job. We tried but the parents and school officials decided that it was dangerous because limbs could fall and hurt somone. It was weird seeing someone concerned with safety because you don´t find that much here. Also the tree was in perfect health. So you accept the loss of the tree and then have fun cutting it down. The guy who runs the tree nursery was the one initially cutting this tree. But he was messing up the most important part of the cut. He was messin up the notch! so I took over and fixed it all up and the tree fell right where i wanted, In between two basket ball goals. It made me miss tree work and runnin chain saws. After watching him I realized at how much better i was at running my surgeon´s tool.
Well i went on another inspection the other day. It was quite interesting. It was very beautiful but that wasn´t what made it interesting. It was the drive there and back. So the inspection is about 100Km away. We bring two spare tires. Of course we blow both of them on the way there. So now we are in the middle of nowhere and we decide to keep going. So we do our thing on the inspection. Me, not really understanding what the hell we are actually doing. So then we stop at this town to try and find a gomeria, tire shop, and nobody is there so we keep going. Well you know what happened? Can you guess? Of course we blew another tire. Now comes the first time I have ever been pissed of in Bolivia. If you are stopped on the side of the road no one will stop and help you. Not even to say " well that sucks" and drive off. So miracuaously we walk to a clearing and after about 30 attempts my cell phone works out in the middle of nowhere. So then we sit and wait for 3 and half hours. Then everything is gravy and i get home at 11. So that was fun. Well everyone be good and sometimes be bad. Talk to ya´ll soon.Jonathan

Goin on a bike ride

Well here is another picture valerie. I truly loved your poem. You should quit your job and start writing poems about me. I think you could make a good living. If you can´t tell in any of these pictures I have lost some weight i think around 20 pounds. But it was a much needed 20 pounds to lose. I weighed in at 210 when i came here. I feel a lot healthier too. Peace corp is a great weight loss program due to all the lovely ways you can get sick. Which i must say i don´t get sick that often especially now that i cook for myself. The parasites haven´t popped out to have a look yet so i think i killed them with that puro alchohol. Lord knows it did a hurtin on me. So to tell you what i have been doin down here so ya´ll think i am tryin to do some good. Right now I am trying to work with a woman named Cira and start a recycling project for the city so some less then fortunate women can make a little bit of dough. I hope to start visiting some of the schools to start Eco-clubs. But i have been told that almost all eco-clubs fail. But i am going to try anyway. Also in two weeks i will start teaching some english classes for about 6 kids. As for my real job in the morning, with the desk and all, I don´t do that much and I am not very happy about it all. I have been mandated professional phoographer. I recieved this because I have a digital camera. It makes me wonder what i would be doing there if i hadn´t of brought my camera. But next mon. I am going to talk to my boss about this and tell him that this is not the reason I joined Peace corp. But besides that I have made some pretty good friends. One guy is Johnny and he is real cool. I work with him to plant grass, we are about to build a soccer field. But that is pretty much my work for right now.
So the reason this is titled goin on a bike ride is because erin, another volunteer 10 km away, and I are going to ride 90km tomorrow. It should take around 8-9 hours depending on if my bike breaks down. I just bought this bike last week and within two days the damn pedal fell off, my tires are completely out of wack and the tools to tighten my spokes don´t exist. Oh yeah the name of my bike, ¨THE HURRICANE¨, that is what is written on the side of it. So erin and i are going to leave tommorow morning about 8 and hopefully arrive around 5. I really can´t wait, it is pretty flat most of the way there, so it shouldn´t be too long but i am bringing extra money in case we have to get a taxi. So that is a little of what is happening. I hope everyone is doing wonderful. Bob how are you doin brother, send me your e-mail address so i can write you some. You seem to have tons of schoolin goin on right now. But i miss you all and love most of you, just kidding i love you all. ciao- sledge