Three years ago, when the current President took over Bolivia, there was a big push to get the dog population under control - especially in Cochabamba where there are an estimated 600,000 dogs wandering the streets.

They debataed it their legislative sessions and eventually voted that the dogs would be picked up, eradicated or whatever. Then before the session broke up one man asked a simple question: These dogs eat an estimated one million Kg. of garbage from the streets each year - when the dogs are gone, what is going to happen to all that garbage? No one could answer that question, so the dogs still rule the streets.

They are everywhere. From roving packs to single muts. This is dog heaven. Joeline is trying to solve this complex problem by bring her own dog here, a four pound Maltese. Oh, that animal will last a long time on the streets!

In Viet Nam we never had any problem with dogs. You never saw an old dog in Viet Nam. Well, that's probably not entirely true. If you looked close enough in almost any dish you ate, you could probably pick out parts of Rover. But here, I guess they have never developed the stomach for dog. They do, however, have the stomach for cow stomach soup. Ever been in a cow barn that has not been cleaned for awhile? Cow stomach soup tastes like that barn smells. One of the 12 Labours of Hercules was to clean out, in a single day, stables which had not been cleaned for years. After one bowl of cow stomach soup I have come to appreciate that Labour.

The other night at Open House, the Senior Class had a fund raiser. They grilled cow heart. (This is definatley not India. Here a cow had better watch her back)
They cut the cow heart into strips, coated it with some sort of peanut oil substance, and grilled it right there at school. The people lined up for it. I decided to tour all of the classes, let the lines die down and come back later. It took me about an hour to visit all the classes and when I got back the lines were gone and so was all the cow. They sold out, 300 strips, before I could get back.

Otherwise, Open House was wonderful.