One month of volunteering in Ushpa Ushpa!!

I just finished a month of volunteering with Proyecto Horizonte.  I found this organization online and decide to volunteer with them because of the broad community strengthening approach they used.  I was further convinced to work here because of the volunteer coordinator, Eliza´s, quick andi nformative email resonces in getting me set up.  Unfortunately, being in the community of Ushpa Ushpa for only a month made it difficult to gen involved in some of the more in depth project that I would have like to.  For this reason, I quickly wanted to get involved and decided to work in the guardaria with the little kids, teach dance at the colegio and work with a gorun in helping to create a survey to potentially be used in the community to measure the effectivness of PH´s work.  So although I was there for a shot amount of time, I got to get involved in an array of projects.  Working at the guarderia was so much fun and also very interesting to see the educational and teaching styles in another country.  The kids were so cute and the teachers very good.  Teaching dance was so special for me because it is my passion.  I was teaching a group of kids HOW to teach dance themselves in the future.  This was rather difficult as their level of motivation varied but overall it was wonderful to build some real relationships through dance with these older kids.  Working on the survey was the most challenging and interesting part.  Thinking of survey questions in a culturally sensitive light was difficut and stimulating.  My one big complaint about this was that I felt a huge lack of connection between the volunteers and the adults of the community.  Without this interaction it made making a survey about quality of life in the community rather difficult.

Living in Cochabamba was one o my favorite experiences of all my travels (I have now been traveling over 6 months.)  The city is beautiful, comfortable, fun and full of culture (really good food too!)  It is not a tourist city and therefor falling into a real life and meeting locals there felt really easy.  We got to go to Carnival and participate in many local fesivities.

I also loved my fellow volunteers.  Although I did not spen a huge amount of time with them outside of work, the group was always organizing group activites and so there was always something to do.

Overall I have a very good experience with PH.  I am sure if I would have stayed longer I would have had an even deeper experience, but from what I learned while there, I now have a greater understanding of Bolivian culture and also have a clearer idea of what kind of future volunteer work I would like to do.  Miss you all!!