Thanks to all the generous people who donated towards the project, we now have a brand new computer lab up and running!

Over the last couple weeks, Henry, the nephew of one of the sisters I work with, and I purchased, assembled (from parts), and installed software on 16 brand new computers (14 students, one teacher, and a server). It was a lot of work, but now they are all set for the students to start class next week.

I still have quite a lot of work to go getting the material for the course completed, but that doesn’t all have to be done the first day. I specifically only have one section for the first semester (Feb-June), so I will have time to finish up the text and plans.

I’m still looking for feedback on them, if you can spare an hour and want to learn about photo editing (for free!), the first two sections (Introduction and Photos) are up online.

I took a couple pictures and made a short movie of the classroom. There will be lots more once the students get here.

One of the computers in operation.

The computers sitting ready for use.

The Video:

Get it in 720p.
Also on Youtube

Yesterday (in addition to being New Years) was a big day at the Institute (Vocational School), thanks to many of your generous donations, we got our first computer for the new lab up and running!

Here’s a picture of Henry (one of the people who has been working with me on this) using it:

Thanks to everyone who has contributed, we are almost at our goal!  (If you’ve been wanting to and haven’t yet, its not too late though.)  If all goes well I’ll have another update in a couple weeks with the whole lab there!

Wow, I thought there were a lot of fireworks around on Christmas Eve, but as John Donaghy pointed out in the comments below, that was nothing compared to New Years! Just about every block (except ours with the convent on it) had someone who was shooting off big ones, and almost every house had people shooting off smaller ones. It was absolutely amazing. We watched from up on a balcony, and I tried to get video of it just to give an idea….but it didn’t turn out too awesome. Most of the big fireworks you see in it are between 200yds and 3/4 mile away, but we could see them going all the way to the horizon.

Get it in HD, also on Youtube

We want to wish a special Merry Christmas to all our family and friends back home.

See the video in HD, also on Youtube.

Its been tough being away from the ‘states and we’re very grateful for all the support everyone has given us over these last few months.

So yesterday evening we went over to the orphanage in the next block, to drop off a christmas present for the girls and hang out with the volunteers there.  We returned back to our block at around 9:30pm, and as we were walking up, we could see that the field in front of our house was on fire!
Apparently, some kids from across the street had thought it would be fun to toss some flaming logs from their fire into our field, which had just been cut down last week and was full of long, dry clippings.  Needless to say the field went up like a match.
Luckily the wind was blowing away from our house, so we didn’t have to worry too much, but we didn’t want to go to sleep with it on fire, in case the wind changed direction or something.  So we got the three buckets we could find and a garden hose that had so many holes it could only get a trickle of water through it, and started fighting the fire.  It only took about a half hour to get it under control.  However, there were a couple spots that were basically overgrown compost piles, and they were still burning down in the bottom, and the fire was spreading to areas that hadn’t burned yet from the bottom up, so we spent the next couple hours pouring water on them and trying to keep that from re-starting.  Eventually we figured it would probably be OK for the night, so we went to bed.  Then, less than an hour later, it started to rain, and that pretty much took care of everything.

Here’s a video from that night when we got home, its pretty dark, but you can get an idea for it.

You can also get it in HD here or on youtube.

Here’s a video I took this morning showing what burned.

You can also get it in HD here or on youtube.

Fire update:  As we mentioned, we couldn’t put out the parts that were burning really deep down so we left them.  Tuesday around noon the fire flared up again and doubled in size the burned area.   Tom got up from his nap to monitor it when it started creeping it’s way over to the bushes in front of our house again.  Once again it subsided over night and so we left it and went to bed.  Then Wednesday when we got back from our Nth trip to Immigration, it had spread again, this time spreading the length of the field away from our house and tripling the original area.  Today, Thursday, it finally burned up the pile of branches that were on top of the under ground fire and so all of the fire area is exposed.  We think tonight it may finally go out.  What a crazy week before Christmas!

Hey everybody, sorry I’ve been so quiet on the blog (and facebook) lately, I’ve been working really hard to prep for the class that I’m going to be teaching starting in Feb.  I have good news on that front though, the first section of the text that I’m writing for the class is complete!

Now, I have a great opportunity for you, the devoted reader to our blog.  You have the chance to learn all about multimedia design, starting with photo editing…for free!  The first two sections (an introduction and the section on photo editing) are available on my website, just click here to check it out.

If you’ve ever wanted to help teach valuable skills that will help people get a leg up on poverty, here’s your chance…and you don’t even have to leave your house (you could come to Bolivia if you want though).  I’m looking for people to read through the material and give me any feedback they have so I can incorporate it.  I’m going to start the translation of this section to Spanish at the beginning of January, so if you have a couple free hours after Christmas, check it out.

Remember, this is a chance for you to help the less fortunate and learn how to make all your digital photos look good all in one, talk about win-win!

Again, the web site is:
http://teeks99.com/multimedia-intro/MultimediaClass.html
please e-mail me any feedback you have, my address is teeks99@yahoo.com.

Also, thank you very much to everyone who has made donations to building a computer lab we will be using to teach this course.  We’re well over half-way to reaching our goal, so if the donations keep up things will be looking good for February!   (If you’ve been meaning to make a donation and keep forgetting, don’t wait any longer…get the details from the other post.)

I hope everyone here has gone to the bathroom recently…because I’m not letting you out of here until we reach our goal.

Just kidding…you’re on your honor not to hit the back button.  

So, now that we’re a few months into our stay in Bolivia, we’ve had a chance to figure out what we’ll be doing here and how that will help improve the lives of the people in the community.  One of the things that I’ll be doing is teaching a multimedia design course.  There are quite a few jobs available here in publishing, television, radio, etc. where they can put skills with photos, graphics, audio, and video to use.  My goal here is to give them a skill where they will be able to support themselves in a way that they can make a decent living for their family.

Though I don’t have a ton of experience with multimedia creation going into this, (getting some with the videos for the blog though), I’ve been reading up on it and think I’m about ready to start with lesson plans.  However, the two things that are holding us back are that the computers currently in the Institute’s lab are really old (some are more than ten years old!), and the internet package that the school has is pretty slow, making it tough to work with some of the great online resources.

Therefore, I would like to ask you to consider donating money to help this new computer lab become a reality.  We’re looking to get about a dozen computers and monitors (about $500 a piece), and get an upgrade to the internet service for the next couple of years (about $30 per month).  If you decide to donate, you can be confident that we will put your money to good use and it will go directly to address an immediate need (classes start in February).

There are three options for sending us donations, you can send a check made out to Thomas Kent to my parent’s house:
Thomas Kent
Bolivia Operations
10342 Colorado Rd.
Bloomington, MN 55438

You can click our pay-pal button:

Or, if you would like your donation to be tax deductible, you can send it through our 501(c)(3) volunteer organization.  Be sure to put Thomas Kent Computers in the memo-line on the check.

Checks payable to: Salesian Sisters

VIDES East+USA c/o Sr. Denise
St. Joseph Center
655 Belmont Ave.
Haledon, NJ 07508

Thank you so much for considering to join us in providing this new aspect of job training for the people here and as always, thanks for all your prayers, love and support!

So, we haven’t been great at posting a lot of the day-to-day stuff we’ve been working on…here’s a shot at changing that. Also, as a teaser, we’re almost done with our video tour of the center we’re working in, so check back soon for more on that.

Anyway, today I was doing my laundry at our washing machine

when Madre Clara, the one in charge of the center (the center is: the day care, kindergarten, vocational school, and orphanage, plus where we live), shouted across the field that she was going to the market in Santa Cruz (the large city of 1 million plus people, 1hr to the south of our city) and that I should come help her. So, I quickly finished up my clothes, and left Laura to put them on the line (thanks honey!). We got in the truck and headed down. Our driver, Javier, was her nephew who is 20 and studying to be an accountant, and trying to learn English, so for the hour long drive down there I ran through basic English phrases with him.

When we got to the market, which is contained in a steel building larger than several football fields, we entered and started to walk up and down the aisles looking for what was on the list. Each aisle has about 5-7ft of width (similar to the aisles in a super market), but there are a ton of people in them, and on the sides of the aisles are hundreds of different stands all about 10ft across. For some of the bigger operations, they will rent (I assume renting is the system here) two or three adjacent stands.

I basically took on the role of Dagwood, carrying the purchases (40 clip-on ties for kindergarten graduation, 20 steel rollers for keyboard trays in the computer lab, 10 aprons for teachers, and the largest container of paper I have ever seen) behind Madre Clara’s Blondie as she tore through the crowded aisles looking at different stands for the best deals. I wish I could have taken pictures or videos of this, but I was a bit afraid to pull out my camera and announce to any pick pockets that might be around that I had a nice electronic in my pocket.   Amazingly, we got through the market in about an hour and a half (it would have taken me much longer) and then headed back to Montero.

I was out in the market at about 6:45 this morning, and there was a man there with a push cart selling freshly squeezed orange juice. I asked him how much it was and he said 2.5 Bs, which is like $0.17, for a glass. I said sure and he immediately went to work peeling and squeezing four oranges. The whole process took about a minute and a half! When was done I gave him the coins and he gave me possibly the best tasting glass of orange juice I’ve ever had in my life. When we finally do head back to the United States I´m really going to miss the great juices here!

So as I was getting set to do some work this morning, Madre Clara (the sister who is my boss) comes up to me and says that I should get my camera, because she needs me to video something.  It turns out, we were going to the prison in the center of town, home to about 160 inmates.  She and the institute had been working with them to get them certificates (they’re super important here…like a diploma from a vo tech school) saying that they were proficient in a few different trades.  Anyway, it turned out there was also a baptism, confirmation, and the bishop was there for it…all at once.

However, the whole time I was there, I was a bit creeped out.   I’ve never been in an American prison, much less a harsh Bolivian one.  I’m not sure of the entire setup, but it seems that there are about 4 cells for all the people.  I think that everyone has a bed in one of those cells, but they seemed pretty packed.  I took a short video of the surroundings, but its kinda short and jerky.