Becca goes to Bolivia 2010

I must, and will catch up on blogging.  I don't like being behind on blogging.  I feel like I can't go do anything else fun or blogworthy until I have blogged about all previous activities.  And, I like doing fun and blogworthy things.  


But, hopefully all this blogging will be worth it someday when I can print off all my blog posts and, voilà, have a history of my life.  And, by doing all the hard life-history work now, when I get old I can just sit around and knit and watch game shows and stuff (must re-learn how to knit first) and not worry because practically every second (both meaningful and meaningless) of my life will have already been documented via blog.  


So, put on your seat-belts people...in the next couple of weeks I will be on a blogging frenzy and will be inundating you with a plethora of pictures...more than you may be able to handle.  


Please allow me to start off with a little summary and explanation of my Bolivia 2010 trip.  


I went to Bolivia with a group from SHe Humanitarian that works in conjunction with Choice Humanitarian to do various, you guessed it, humanitarian projects.  They work in Bolivia, Kenya, Nepal, and Guatemala.  


SHe stands for "Singular Humanitarian experience."  It is an NGO started by one of my mission companion's brothers (that's how I found out about it) and a bunch of his friends.  They wanted to provide opportunities for LDS singletons to travel and serve at the same time.  


All of the SHe volunteers are single, all are LDS, and pretty much everyone is in their late 20's or early to mid 30's.  So, it is a perfect group for me because I fit right in age-wise, and I got to meet people who share my love of travel and humanitarian work, and people with my same marital and social status.  


I didn't anticipate that one of the best things about going on the trip would be that for the 10 days of the expedition (plus some) I would get to feel completely normal.  


And, it has been YEARS since I've felt completely normal.  And I loved feeling normal, even if it was just for a short time.  That's just not a feeling you get to have very often as a older LDS singleton.  Moments of feeling normal get more and more scarce as the years go on, and I rarely feel like a normal human being or get to have a moment of forgetting that I'm single...forgetting that I'm different. 


Every year I feel more and more awkward and out of place in the world, in the church, in my family, and just in general.  And it's not really anybody's fault.  It's just the way things are.  Because I'm not normal.  I don't fit in.  I am out of place.


I can't relate to most people my age because I'm not married and I don't have kids and I don't know what that's like.  And since I'm missing out on so many of the experiences that make up adulthood I don't even really feel like a real adult.  It's like I'm stuck in some weird limbo.  I'm not a child or teenager anymore, but I'm not really an adult either.  I'm a singleton...and a Mormon singleton, the worst type of singleton you can be.  (Except maybe the Amish...I'm betting single Amish have it pretty bad too.)


But anyway, I'm not trying to have a little blog pity party.  I'm just trying to explain why it felt so absolutely refreshing to get to be in an environment where I fit in, because I don't really feel like I fit in anywhere anymore.  


But on my Bolivia trip with Singular Humanitarian I got to feel like I was normal...even if it was just for 10 days.  Because we were all in the same life situation, and in that little micro-environment we were all temporarily normal (except that one weird guy).  And, it was awesome.  Fitting in feels so great.  I can't even imagine what it would be like to get to feel like you fit in all of the time.  Those of you who get to live normal lives have no idea how lucky you are.  


Singular Humanitarian is going to Nepal in November.  And, although it would be a lot of money, I'm so tempted to go...even if it would just be for that temporary fix of fitting in for a moment...because feeling normal felt so good.  


Humanitarian trip to Nepal= thousands of dollars
Getting to feel normal as a singleton= priceless? (I'm still trying to decide)


Anyway, I actually spent three weeks in total in Bolivia.  I got to La Paz a few days before the expedition began since I was coming from having spent nearly a month at sea level with my parents and most of my time in Bolivia was going to be spent between 13,000 and 15,000 feet above sea level.  I needed to give my body time to adjust to the altitude so I wouldn't get severe altitude sickness.  


Then I met up with the SHe group and we spent a day in La Paz getting ready for the expedition, eight days in the Altiplano region of Bolivia doing various service projects (of which I will explain more later), then we headed back to La Paz and some people went home but a bunch of people (including me) stayed a few days extra and biked the World's Most Dangerous Road and then went to Isla del Sol for a couple of days.  Then after that, everybody went home except one other girl from the expedition and me, and we went down to southern Bolivia for a few days before returning to La Paz to fly out.  Anyway, somehow that all added up to about three weeks.  


And, it was a good three weeks.  Pictures soon to follow...