Bolivia, coming or going?

Just read Miguel's couple of posts - lately his posts about Bolivian politics are making me nervous since it's less than 10 days away from my trip. He mentions stats on how many Bolivians are already out of the country and how many desire to leave. And we are thinking of returning? However, those statistics were somewhat the same back in the 70's. In fact your dad had told me that leaving his country was one thing he did NOT want to do. His feelings were that so many keen young and educated minds were leaving the country in search of any menial work just to get into the States. Many of his friends and acquaintances had done just that - smuggled themselves into the USA. It's the fresh keen minds that Bolivia needs, he told me. Besides, why sacrifice to study a professions if you are not going to practice it?
So isn't it ironic that we are now here and even considering a return, if only for short periods of time.
I went shopping today for some family gifts to take along. Always a puzzle of what to take and what size the children are now. Today I gathered such an odd assortment of things that I think the cashier was curious. Of course, everything was on sale - my one rule for shopping. Now how to fit a decorative jar of pickled peppers, wrought iron candle holders, three purses among other things into the suitcase.
I'm still working on grading all those projects, but will plow through a pile each night. End of the year - either kids are doing a fantastic job on them becuase their grade and their summer freedom (who wants to be grounded for bad grades?) depend on this one big grade, or kids have decided that they could care less and throw some lines on paper thinking that maybe I won't wade throught all of it to catch their ridiculous errors. Some have literally thrown their grades away - another reason I'm glad I'm heading out of town and won't be here when parents get the report cards and think I may need to 'explain' as our overly zealous parents sometimes do.
Well, the pile is waiting, can't procrastinate much longer.