La Paz, La Paz

Hola Hola!!

I hope that everyone is well. I am wonderful! I am now in La Paz, La Paz, and everything is going great. I can already tell that it is going to be alot more intense than the training that I have become accustomed to. We have spanish in the morning from 7:30-11:30, lunch, than 1pm-5pm we have tech training. So far this week we have not done a whole whole lot, but I still really tired. Yesterday we had 2 guys come and talk about there program. They lead youth in different projects. The one the emphasized was a radio station that the youth produce and talk about what ever topics they feel to be relavant, such as sex, love, violence etc. It was interesting but really hard to understand. The whole thing was in spanish and they both talked really fast so I understood the jist of what they were talking about but am sure I missed alot of the details.

Today, a volunteer whos site is actually here in La Paz came and talked with the group about what she has been doing here and helped explained a projected named "Encargado de mi vida" (In charge of my life). Former volunteers created this program and it is used to go into schools and teach sex ed and promote abstinence to 5th and 6th graders. That might seem young, but it is customary(or not uncommon) for boys to have there first sexual experience at 13 here and girls by 15.

Tomorrow we are having a guest speaker come in and talked about domestic violence and than another come and talk about commericial sex workers (CSW) and a former csw will be talking with the group also as I understand it. On thursday and Friday we are doing training for mens health and traveling to the police academy in town and giving charlas (lectures) to the men about mens help. Everyone needs to be thinking about me on friday because it has to be in spanish and I am basically petrified right now.

I think that is about it for right now. My family in La Paz is really nice and I have an amazing house. I will try and take a picture so I can post it and show everyone. I am sure that I am forgetting something, but right now I feel out of things to talk about. Please continue to email and call me. I love hearing what is going on, because I am definately pretty disconnected from everything in the states. Take care.