Home again, Home again, jiggity jig

well, here it is... coming down to the final week here in Bolivia. 03 DEC I'll be back in Boston. Woah! It seems like such a different world. Getting a bit anxious, but I'm not worrying about it too much. I guess that's where compartmentalization comes in handy. I'm more worried that there won't be enought turkey on thanksgiving... more on that later. It occurred to me the other day that perhaps my tempermental affinity toward intense/extreme sports could be somewhat correlated to how I was raised... largely to blame would be what I saw/heard about my father doing while I was growing up... including, but not limited to the following: 1) Rollerblading down Mt. Vesuvius, an active and very steep volcano in Italy with his buddy Bob with nothing but helmets and hockey sticks. right. 2) Crashing off a cliff while mountain biking in Puerto Rico 3) Skiing faster than is in any way reasonable 4) Doing double-daffys off huge jumps 5) Earning the nickname/callsign "FLASH" while playing soccer... 6) Building me a 2 story tree fort with a Tarzan swing off the top (actually, I think my mom did that while he was on deployment to some random country... lets blame my mom too) 7) SCUBA diving with my mother (yup. blame mom also.) 8) Being a Naval Flight Officer and general badass leader 9) Generally not putting up with shit, like people cutting lines at the ski lift (once, he popped the skis off some a-hole who was trying to cut everyone. nice!) 10) Doin gainers off diving boards 11) Doing backflips on trampolines 12)... and both my parents for teaching me how to do everything, like soccer, baseball, tennis, volleyball, swimming, bike riding (well, that didn't take much teaching really. I kinda just rode off...), throwing disc (blame uncles Andy and Mike for that also), and doin work like it's my job. oh and wrestling. So I'm more or less "supposed to" have a going away party... but I don't really feel like it. The Maryknoll Fathers, brothers, sisters, lay missioners, and we few short term volunteers are going to have a thanksgiving dinner on Tuesday, so I figure I'll just say my goodbyes then and call it good. I'm pretty worried that there won't be enough turkey. Apparently there will be 2 turkeys for 30-40 people. I eat a lot of turkey. and I'm also concerned about the stuffing and cranberry sauce situation... not sure if there will be either of those in attendance. Egad. There's a cultural difference I have not yet overcome... distinct lack of cranberry sauce to go with Turkey! whatever shall I do? haha. So I went down the road of a thousand speed bumps today... called "Siglo XX" on maps. It's got about 25 speed bumps in less than a mile. It's more than aggravating. Also encountered the strange Bolivian child's lack of ability to creatively or critically think. Jason tried to get the kids to write about what animal they would be if they could be an animal and what they would do... as usual, the pages were decorated impeccably and had basically Illuminated texts containing... nothing but the title and writing prompt. Missing the point entirely. One kid wrote the plot for Confu (Kung-Fu) Panda in about 20 words and decided to be done. Almost creative! Well they're getting there anyways. se la vi, supongo. 239 hours? wow.