Los Andes and El Mochito, homes away from home

The above are the names of 2 of the smaller aldeas(villages) that are part of my town´s municipality. We will be working in both of them once school starts and this weekend we got to visit both to take a look. Los andes is about 1 and a half miles straight up the mountain we live at the base of. The only way to get there is in the back of trucks. None of our crappy school buses can go that high. Once you get to the village you turn and look back down and can see nothing but clouds. Its the strangest thing to be above the sky and looking down at it. Its not even explainable. Anyhow, I saw the school Ill be working in, and then we celebrated Laticia´s birthday! She lives in Los Andes as a PC PAM volunteer, which means she works with farmers to help better their crops. We went to a cabbage farm and also hiked through tons of coffee.

El Mochito: This town is pretty close to us and alot of the people in Las Vegas work there. It´s higher up the mountain by about 20 minutes. There are mines in this town and so many people are imployed by them. They mine things like zinc, garnet, uranium, silver, quartz, and supposedly gold. This is probably why there are roughly 20 armed gaurds with machine guns surrounding it every time we pass by. They smile and wave, and we do the same.

ok, gotta go,

love, Crystal