{"id":39,"date":"2008-06-29T02:56:15","date_gmt":"2008-06-29T08:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.walczakphotography.com\/blog\/?p=39"},"modified":"2008-11-09T15:42:35","modified_gmt":"2008-11-09T21:42:35","slug":"viva-santa-cruz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.walczakphotography.com\/blog\/?p=39","title":{"rendered":"Viva Santa Cruz!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 4 days we will be on a plane to Santa Cruz, Bolivia.  Woohoo!!   Chris and I are leading a group of young adults for three weeks as we work with the <a title=\"Iglesias Menonita\" href=\"http:\/\/www.iemb.org\/bienvenido.html\" target=\"_blank\">Mennonite churches in Santa Cruz<\/a> and help out at a <a title=\"Guarderia Samuelito\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mennonitemission.net\/Resources\/Publications\/UrbanConnections\/story.asp?ID=1177\" target=\"_blank\">daycare<\/a> run by one of those churches. The program through which we are doing this is called <a title=\"Youth Venture\" href=\"http:\/\/mennonitemission.net\/Work\/Service\/YV\/\" target=\"_blank\">Youth Venture<\/a> and is a part of <a title=\"Mennonite Mission Network\" href=\"http:\/\/mennonitemission.net\/\" target=\"_blank\">Mennonite Mission Network<\/a>.  This is my third time to Santa Cruz, and I&#8217;m really excited to get back there and see my Bolivian friends.  Our last time there was in 2004, so many of the children are grown up now. I&#8217;m also excited about meeting the 10 girls on our team and getting to know them.  We have been in communication online, and it&#8217;s quite evident that they are also very excited.  They range in age from 17-23.<\/p>\n<p>For those of you who don&#8217;t know, <a title=\"Bolivia\" href=\"http:\/\/www.worldatlas.com\/webimage\/countrys\/samerica\/bo.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Bolivia<\/a> is located in the middle of South America and is one of two land locked country on that continent.  Bolivia&#8217;s border did extend to the pacific ocean at one time, but that land was lost in a war with Chile in the late 1800&#8217;s.  Bolivia used to be a very prosperous country, but is now the poorest country in South America.  The Bolivian people are very kind and hospitable.  There is currently quite a bit of political turmoil going on in Bolivia, so it will be interesting to hear more about that and try to understand what all is going on.<\/p>\n<p>This post is just an introduction to what we will write more about later.  The plan at this point is to post every day while we are there.  I hope to get the girls involved so you will be hearing directly from them.  There are a plethora (I like saying that word but don&#8217;t get to use it often) of internet cafes in Santa Cruz and they are fairly inexpensive to use for an hour.  So we shouldn&#8217;t have a problem reporting in on a regular basis.  Be sure to check back regularly so you can follow along with us on our experiences.  Here is our travel schedule:<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 We fly out of Chicago O&#8217;Hare on Thursday, July 3 at 9:50am.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 We arrive at Miami International at 1:50pm.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 We leave Miami at 3:20pm, arriving at Viru Viru International just outside of Santa Cruz at 10:00pm (I believe that Santa Cruz is the same as Eastern time).<\/p>\n<p>Be sure to bookmark this page so you can come back easily to see what we&#8217;re up to.  We will update in a few days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 4 days we will be on a plane to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Woohoo!! Chris and I are leading a group of young adults for three weeks as we work with the Mennonite churches in Santa Cruz and help out at a daycare run by one of those churches. The program through which we are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walczakphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walczakphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walczakphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walczakphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walczakphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.walczakphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walczakphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walczakphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walczakphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}