Day 24: Last One

Our taxis came to get us at 2:30am, and we were off once again,  hopefully we would make it back to the states this time.  The morning was uneventful and our plane left on time.

  After some severe turbulence on the way to Lima, we landed and weaved our way through World Cup fans on their way to Brazil.  The Lima airport was very nice, but not as nice as our plane to Miami was.  We few Lan Airlines and they really brought their A game.  Each seat had a personal entertainment center with more movies and tv shows than you could possibly watch.  I was actually a little bummed when we landed in Miami, because I was in the middle of a movie.

After Miami customs, food was the first thing on my agenda, so we all stopped at a burger place that Tim recommended and it really lived up to expectations.  Everyone said their goodbyes after supper and then dispersed to their individual gates.  I got into Richmond a little after dark and my parents were waiting for me with my favorite order of Chic-fil-a.  Its good to home.

Day 23: I Hate Unions

Our last day! We we're supposed to wake up at about 2:30 to leave for the airport at 3 but I had the bright idea to not go to sleep, which made me a little cranky.  Our flight was leaving a little after 6 but we needed to be at the airport plenty early.  We got there, got all the proper forms filled out, and got to our gate to wait for our flight.  After about 45 minutes waiting, we knew something was a little off, because the departure time kept getting delayed and the flight attendants at the gate were not very helpful.  Based on some of the flight updates on our phones, we feared the worst and these fears managed to be true; our flight had been canceled.  Evidently weather delayed the flight for a while and if they had continued on to La Paz to get us, they wouldn't be able to get their union mandated rest period, so they had to go back to Miami.  Needless to say I was a little ticked off, but tried to get to the check in desk as soon as possible.  Finally a group of us got a flight out the next morning at 5:30 that went through Lima, Peru on the way back to the states.  We took the flight and also learned that the airline was comping all of us rooms at the Ritz downtown for the night.  After I got to the hotel and cooled off, I really started enjoying the free food and rooms that we got.  If we had to spend an extra night in Bolivia, we sure did it in style.

For some reason, I decided not to go to sleep again that night.

Day 22: Lots of Llamas

We got into La Paz early again and took some cabs to Afnon's house where we crashed for a while.  Bolivia was starting to get the best of me and America was starting to sound pretty good.  Not wanting to just sleep in our last day in the country, we ventured out into the city with our old tour guide Jugo at about 10:00 after picking up some cash at the ATM, we were all broke by this point.

After wandering through some witch markets and stores that sold a lot of Llama gear, Will and I wandered onto some guys that were selling paintings on the street.  Game on.  We spent just about all the money we had left on the coolest paintings we could afford, trying to give our private art collections a little kick start.  Since the first time we had been in La Paz, they had finished the installation of a new cable car system.  Wanting to get a bird's eye view of the city, we waited in about a 2 hr line to go on the cable car, and it was worth it.  

This city was so much bigger than I thought, and the aerial tour was a great way to bookmark our trip before we returned to America the next morning.  Supper was street burgers that were incredibly cheap and incredibly good.  I was really hoping that they wouldn't make sick, but at that point I didn't care, we we're about to go home....Or so we thought. 

Day 21: Back on the Bus

Waking up Saturday, we came to the frustrating realization that we were going to be out of our hostel room by about 10:30 that morning but we weren't leaving for the bus station until about 8:00 that night.  We managed to occupy the first few hours with lunch and aimless wandering, but but retreated to the hostel lobby to watch movies in Spanish for the next 4 hours.  Needless to say it was a little dull but there were some cool things to look at around the hostel and there was also wifi which did a pretty good job of occupying everyone.

To make sure we had ample time to digest our food, and because we were bored, a few of us ate supper early before we could board our incredibly comfortable bus ride to La Paz.  There were no crying babies or ringing phones, so it was a very pleasant ride.

Day 20: The Journey Back Begins

For as messy as our room had gotten during our time in Pampoyo, packing was surprisingly quick, largely because we just stuffed our things into our bags.  After we finished cleaning up our mess, we boarded our small bus for one last time to make the return trip to Potosi, bidding goodbye to all of our new friends in Pampoyo before we hit the road.

Another uneventful trip put us in Potosi for the day where we wandered around for a while before retiring to our rooms for a bit.  Dinner was at El Fagone, the steak restaurant that I wasn't quite able to enjoy last time on account of my stomach bug.  This go around however, was much much better.  A few of us ordered a sizzling plate of steak, sausage and chicken for supper that was absolutely delicious.

I could have probably eaten two portions, but ice cream for dessert was going to have to do for now.  Wanting some more ice cream, a few of us went back to 4.060 for some after supper drinks and more ice cream.  We probably stayed there for too long but it put a good cap on probably the most fun night I had in Potosi. 

Day 19: The Final Countdown

With the pipe team in full swing, I was working solo with my team of locals today, because everyone else was helping install plumbing. We worked at Helogio's house for most of the day, almost finishing his latrine.  The afternoon we went back to our 2nd site and put the roof on that one.  As a final tally for our time there, 3 of our 4 sites were completely done, 2 of those 3 had already been plumbed and the last one just needed a roof to be put on.  A pretty productive trip when you think that there were 3 other groups that were just as productive as we were.

The pipe team actually ran out of materials because we were more productive than we thought we would have been.  If that doesn't measure success than I don't know what does.  The idea was to pack some that night, but we ended up playing another soccer game.  We added Afnon to our team from the night before, and played some 4 v 4.  After playing 2 games and taking away 2 wins, we had to call it quits because it was way too dark to keep playing. All in all, a pretty good way to end our time in Pampoyo.  

Day 18: Shower Time

On our second to last day of work, everything progressed like normal on our site.  The pipe team was slowly getting bigger as they were installing the plumbing in multiple latrines and it was pretty awesome. The design was pretty simple but worked amazingly well.  The water was actually hot and everything worked perfectly.  It was amazing to see the finished product in action, even if I didn't get the chance to install one myself.  The whole day was spent either prepping for a roof or roofing, so that the pipe team could plumb as may as possible in the next day.  Capping off a productive day, Warner, Alex and I played a soccer game that night. Unfortunately we lost in sudden death overtime, but it was still a great game and I was still exhausted after it was over.

Day 17: Things are coming together

Tuesday was our first full day back at work and it had a late start because of last night's festivities.  We finally got to our job sites at about 9:30 but our crew wasn't even awake yet so we had go to Helogio's house (our group leader) to wake up the troops.  Allison and I were the only ones left because Lux was off helping another group and Will was still putting roofs together.  We put the roof on our 1st site so that it could be plumbed and ready for use on Wednesday but were done with all of that by lunch.  We moved to the 3rd site that afternoon and did virtually the same thing that we did that morning.  We were also working all day without Luis, one of our group members that was feeling some of the effects from the night before.  Pampoyo definitely likes to party.

Day 16: I missed you Pampoyo

After 3 days of being sick in Potosi, I think I can speak for a lot of people in saying that we were ready to head back to Pampoyo.  With only a few days left to work, we quickly unpacked and ate some lunch when we got back to Pampoyo before getting back to work at about 1:00.  It was astonishing to see what our teams had finished since we had been gone.  We worked until about 5:00 before going up to the school house for a post baptism party that was much more elaborate than I was expecting.

The town had rented and outfitted the room with huge speakers for the night's festivities that proved to be plenty loud.  After some waiting we had a great dinner of llama and different types of potatoes that was delicious.  Some toasts followed dinner and then we pushed the tables aside and started dancing.  This dancing was still just bobbing back and forth with the music, so Will and I decided to kick it up a notch and grabbed Hannah and Perry and danced with them.  It was kind of a competition between me and Will and it was a pretty close one at that, but ill give him the victory.  We had call it quits at some point because the dancing wore me out.  Will kept partying late into the night but myself, Warner and some others called it quits in order to get some rest for another work day tomorrow.