School's Out!

Hey everyone!

Yesterday was our presentation day and with the end of that day came the end of my studies here in France!

Hell week is over!!!

It has been an amazing quarter and I definitely learned a lot about public health in Europe. Next up: 9 days in Paris and then on to Spain! (Where I have a layover in Copenhagen...). I am so excited to see the family in Barcelona and equally excited to go home after that. I miss the puppies.

It's 11:16am and I was supposed to go out and wander around with some people 16 minutes ago but it's raining pretty hard here right now. Yesterday it snowed a lot, but the snow here is weird. Even though it looked like an all out blizzard, the snow was falling straight down like rain, and it barely stuck. That much snow at home would've been at least 3 inches. I don't think it was quite cold enough to act like real snow should.

I'll keep updating the blog, I'm not done with Paris yet!

Love,

Hillary

SNOW in Paris!

Hi everyone!!

I woke up today and pulled back my curtains. 20 minutes later I looked out the window to see that there is snow coming down, and it's coming down hard. There is a cascade of flakes, it looks like a blizzard outside and it hasn't let up in over an hour. One minute the flakes will be all in a tizzy and they'll be heading towards the ground like it's a race, and the next minute the flakes seem to be suspended in the air. I drew a picture for you! (Click on it to see it bigger).

Looks like I need to invest in some gloves.

-H.

Swiss chocolate, swiss knives, swiss cheese..

Hi all!

I just returned from Geneva, Switzerland a couple of hours ago. We didn't spend much time there. Our train got us in at 12:30pm on Monday and we left Geneva on the 5:00pm train tonight. When I think of Switzerland I think of ski lodges on snow-covered mountains, rich people storing their billions in banks, and neutrality. Unfortunately we had a tight schedule and we barely left our hotel neighborhood so I didn't get to see the pretty mountain towns that I'd imagined..or even walk past a ginormous and intimidating modern-looking bank.

When we arrived in Geneva it was very cold and pouring rain. Luckily our hotel was a one-minute walk from the train station. The hotel hadn't assigned rooms to people, so Bruno (our teacher and the head of our public health program at Sciences-Po told us to match up on our own and tell him what we decide. People started pairing off left and right and I felt like I was back at middle school worrying that no one was going to ask me to room with them. I was even more worried that I would have to room with one of the people on this program that have no notion of how to not be an annoying person. I took initiative and asked one of the girls I get along with who wasn't paired up yet to be my roommate.

At 2:45pm we headed for MSF. We were going to walk there but because of the train we took the cable-car bus two stops and walked into a very unassuming building. There is no way I would've ever guessed that inside this building was the headquarters to Medecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders). I didn't even see a sign. We listened to a speaker talk about the history of MSF for an hour and a half, something we had all already learned while in Paris (not to mention that we're all global health minors and probably knew it before coming to France).

His lecture was very dry and I found myself struggling to keep my eyes open. I entertained myself by drawing the MSF logo on my notebook. After his lecture we were supposed to hear a doctor speak to us, but because of the Haiti cholera goings-on all of the staff were all over the place so we got a last minute lecture from a more lively woman (who had reporters waiting for her once she was done), she talked to us for a half an hour about a new nutrient supplement and the controversy surrounding it. Apparently there are intellectual property rights battles surrounding the liquid. It is made of peanuts, milk, water, and something else. I couldn't figure out what she was calling the stuff, it was either "plumpy nuts," "plant peanuts," or "plampinuts." There was nothing else scheduled for us at MSF so we were released at 5:00pm and told to meet in the hotel lobby a couple hours later to walk to dinner.

As we were leaving I noticed the front desk was displaying MSF apparel for sale. I asked the guy behind the desk if they were for sale and he said yes but they only accept Swiss Francs and they don't accept credit cards. Yomna and I decided we'd try to look for an ATM and then we'd return to buy something. We were told that the closest ATM was back at the train station near our hotel. We started walking that direction, searching earnestly in the pouring rain for any sign of an ATM. As we left a pharmacy that couldn't give us change in Swiss Francs we quickly realized that ATMs were not located every couple of blocks like they are in Paris. We tried to go into a bank but found the place completely empty.

Look closely at the picture below. The ceiling was made to look like the night sky!!

We left the bank feeling very confused about our preconceptions of Swiss banking. This was supposed to be Switzerland! Land of banks! Where was the top security? We walked in like we owned the place and only saw one person in an office behind a curtain.

As we left the bank we saw a bureau du change across the street! Yomna and I changed over 50 Euro and hurried back to MSF. The man didn't seem happy to see us, he informed us that the guy who was in charge of the apparel wasn't around, and that they didn't have all of the merchandise there. I was about to get nasty and tell him that we'd take the shirts they had behind the glass in the counter until he said he would make a quick phone call. As we waited Yomna pointed out a white board that listed all of the staff who were departing for service over the next several days, their debriefing meeting times, and their location of work. People were listed as going to Sudan, Swaziland, Niger, and one or two places in the Middle East that I can't remember. Eventually he got off the phone and was about to tell us that the merch guy wasn't there but then cut himself off and said "oh, he's right here." The man behind us asked us what we wanted and he went downstairs somewhere to bring up sizes. The sweatshirt was 80 Francs (about 70 Euro)! I didn't get a hoodie but I got a t-shirt, which was much more reasonably priced.

When we returned to the hotel I drank some tea and tried to ignore a sinus headache. I tried to get into my room but we were only given one key and my roommate had it and she wasn't there. I got one from the desk and took some sinus medicine and laid down for 20 minutes, channel surfing.

At dinner we were served traditional Swiss fondu.

There was a band singing, yodeling, and playing traditional Swiss instruments like the saw, the accordion, and this thing:

First they brought out orange le creuset pots with handles full of slightly boiling cheese and placed them on little...hot plate things with a little flame inside. We watched Bruno show us the proper procedure. First you take the long skewer/tiny fork onto which you secure a hunk of bread and you dip the bread into the hot cheese using the skewer/tiny fork. Bruno let his bread sit in the hot cheese for a long time before taking it out but the bread gets really soggy that way. I decided that what I liked the best was to dip half of the little hunk of bread into the cheese to improve the proportion of cheese to bread. We had two birthdays on Monday; Yomna and Amanda's 21st birthdays! The band brought them up a few times to play their Swiss instruments and it was really cute. When it was time to bring out the hot pot of chocolate fondue and the fruit trays the band played happy birthday as we all sang.

The experience was great but the food wasn't good enough to make up for it being so absurdly unhealthy. I don't know why, but food in France has a tendency to be made with alcohol. Almost all of the desserts (except for the ones at patisseries) taste like someone poured two shots of rum on them after cooking them. Well, Geneva is in the French speaking-side of Switzerland and, true to form, the cheese tasted faintly of alcohol. We had really good white wine with our meal, but I hate when my food tastes like alcohol. Also, the cheese they used didn't even taste that good. Several people said they didn't like the cheese that was used. The chocolate was delicious but they served it with apples, oranges, cantaloupe, and pineapple. I was really surprised that they didn't give us strawberries or bananas. Nothing went well with the chocolate, and the cantaloupe with chocolate tasted like vomit. All criticisms aside, it was a very fun dinner!

It was still raining by the time we left the restaurant around 10:00pm. I was dead on my feet when I got back to the hotel. Sunday night the new people in the room next to me had friends over and they were up past 2 am. They kept doing that random loud bursts of laughter thing. Remember the girl I spoke about before from New York who spoke like my Ben & Jerry's co-workers? I could hear her voice clearly. I could hear every word she said. I had waited since I went to bed at 11:30pm for them to quiet down, but I finally knocked on their door at 1:30am and asked them politely to keep it down because I had to get up at 7:00 to go to Geneva. My roommate came back from her weekend in Brussels and Amsterdam at 6:00 am and didn't see the point in sleeping for just one hour, so she stayed up. So I only slept from 2:00am to 6:00am the night before. At the hotel my roommate wasn't back yet so I changed into my PJs, vowed to ignore any knocks on my door, watched BBC news for half an hour in bed, and then went to sleep at 10:45pm.

I will post day 2 in Geneva soon!

Love,

H.

Monet's Garden and the Seine at Night

Bonjour!

Do you remember in the Musée Rodin post that I told you the weather was really nice in Paris last weekend? Friday we did Museée Rodin, and Saturday we decided to venture out to Monet's Gardens. I had wanted to stay in and do some work, but I knew that this was probably going to be the last weekend of warmth before the flowers started to die. (I was right, it is now in the high 40s).

To get to Monet's Gardens from Paris requires taking a train to Vernon and then a bus to Giverny. A lot of times at home I find myself planning all the excursions that I do with friends. I usually find out how to get there and I look up ticket prices and all of that stuff. So far in France others have been planning things and I either get invited or I tag along. It's a bit of a relief because everything doesn't fall on my shoulders, and if something goes wrong it isn't my fault. However, I usually do pretty well figuring out how to get to places and looking up ticket information and everything. I like to have it all figured out before I leave so that I'm not standing around with no clue what to do next. Relying on others can be frustrating when we get to a station and the person who planned the trip has no idea what our next step is. And since I didn't plan it, I can't help and I start to doubt where my instincts are telling me to go.

This has happened a few times in France, and it sort of happened on our way to Monet's Gardens. It wasn't a big deal, but we ended up waiting in the wrong line for about 20 minutes because our trip planner didn't know where to go, only to find out when we got to the cashier that we needed to go up the staircase to the right and into the main terminal. (The staircase that I thought we should go up but didn't say anything about because I didn't want to be wrong since I didn't plan this).

We eventually got our tickets and waited for the monitor to assign a platform to our train. We had half an hour before our train was scheduled to leave, so I strode off in search of platform 9 and 3/4 (the Paris stop, of course). I found platform 11, and I found platform 9, but there was not platform 10! I'm not kidding! In this picture platform 9 is clearly labeled, but the platform to the right, which one would assume should be number 10, is not marked! Every other platform was labeled. We figured the Beauxbaton witches probably take platform 10 to get to school.

The train was pretty cool looking, the seats in second class were purple and pretty comfortable. I looked over my shoulder at first class and saw this guy through the door. He was watching something on his laptop. It was anime. There was a close-up on the cartoon girl and her transparent white top and lacy black bra! I kept looking and the screen flashed to an anime boy fighting with another boy, and then it went back to the girl. She was talking, but the screen only showed her cleavage! Why would you watch this in such a public place? Part of me was disturbed but part of me thought it was really funny.

After the hour long train ride we caught a 20 minute bus to the Giverny stop.

The stop wasn't directly at the Garden entrance, it was a few blocks away. We didn't really know where we were going but we followed all the other tourists down the highway and eventually found the gate that lead to the village that held Monet's house and gardens.

Once we reached the garden entrance we had to wait in a short line to pay our entrance fee. At the register the woman said something to me that ended in "Brasilienne." We learned this word in class, it is the feminine form of "Brazilian." I gave her a confused face and asked my friend in the intermediate french class to figure out what she wanted. Then in english the lady said;

"Are you Brazilian?"

"No," I said, "..I'm from the states.."

Then, she took my money and gave me my ticket. I thought maybe she was asking so that she would know what language to give me an information pamphlet in, but I didn't get an information pamphlet and neither did anyone else. This is like the 3rd or 4th time someone has assumed I was Brazilian. I must say, I think it's pretty cool! It's more fun than being assumed American, thats for sure.

The next several pictures are from the garden:

Monet's house peeks out behind the wall of yellow flowers:

The boat pictured in many of Monet's paintings:

After seeing the gardens and walking around the house (no photos allowed in the house), we grabbed lunch in the village before walking back to catch our bus. I had a chicken, ratatouille, and cheese crêpe. It was really good! There was a group of 3 older women sitting behind us. They were from Arizona and asked us why we were in Paris and then about our study abroad program. It was cute.

When the train pulled up to our very crowded stop in Vernon, every seat was taken. We all piled on and stood in the aisles. I had no intention of standing for an hour, so I found a way to sit on the ground. One of my friends got onto another car and said that her aisle was so packed, they had to take turns sitting down!

It felt really great getting back into Paris after being on that supremely uncomfortable train ride- I was out in the open air and I could breathe!

I was really exhausted from walking around all day. When we got back to the dorm around 7:30 I immediately got into my PJs and plopped down at my desk. I opened my e-mail and there was a group invite for that night to go on a Seine boat tour. I sighed and contemplated skipping it. I knew that this would be one of the last warm nights we had left. After a few persuasive words from Hira, my neighbor, I decided to pull on some pants and go.

This was another one of those times where I found myself tagging along in a group with someone else who had planned the trip. We had meant to get on the 10 O'clock boat tour but people were late so we had to plan on making the 10:30 train, the last of the night. We waited outside the Metro stop in the Latin Quarter for the last person meeting us. She had gotten on the wrong train and was running very late. We decided we couldn't wait anymore and at 10:10 we went off to wait for her at the boat's dock.

The girl who planned this had written down the address from the website, but she wasn't exactly sure how to get there. We walked around for awhile and went back and forth across the Seine and down to the river a couple of times. At some point the other girl met up with us and we ended up finding the right bridge, running down the steps, and boarding the boat at 10:27.

The boat tour was really beautiful! I don't plan on doing it again unless I'm here in the summer because up on top the top deck sitting in the wind it was freezing!! Eventually I had to go down with a few others and sit underneath in the enclosed section of the boat.

Wow, this post had a ton of pictures! So that was my Saturday. I'm back from Rennes and the temperature seems to have plummeted in the few days we've been gone. The dorm has turned on the heat, and I find myself with a little cold. I have a lot of work to do this weekend, so my plan is to take a nap, relax a bit tonight and try to ward off this cold, and then do work Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I have midterms next week, my second and final sitting of the GRE, and then Friday I leave for Portugal!

I'll update again soon!

Love,

Hillary

Lazy Sunday and Musée Rodin

Hey guys!

Today is Sunday and tomorrow I go to Rennes for a few days with the other public health kids. I figured I ought to catch everyone up on the past week before I'm off!

Last Sunday:

Last Sunday afternoon I went out with a few people to the Bastille Sunday market. On Sundays in Paris there are a lot of markets all over the city, but a friend had read that this one was particularly good. It took a few metro changes but we finally arrived at the Bastille. We didn't know exactly how to find the market, but decided to simply follow the crowd. It turned out that the market was directly across the plaza from the metro stop- we found it easily.

There were some musicians playing outside the market when we arrived around noon- when we left the number of people playing with them had tripled!

We bought a couple baguettes, feta cheese, hummus, eggplant spread, a pack of figs, and a pack of strawberries. This was our lunch. It was delicious! While we ate an American guy (who was with a woman) in his mid-20s asked us where we were from. During our conversation he told us he was in France on his honeymoon and he'd studied in Paris on study abroad back in 2002. He told us their next stop was Spain and he wished us a good semester. He was so adorable and chatty- they seemed really happy. While he was asking us about our semester, a homeless woman walked up and pointed to some of our food. I wasn't paying attention because I was talking to the couple, but apparently my friend tried to give her a strawberry. She shook her head no and pointed to the figs. She handed the woman a fig and the woman took it and walked away.

We saw a lot of interesting things in the market; pig feet, pig head, chicken decapitation, and eels! The fact that there were two of them reminded me of the eels from The Little Mermaid! Karma's a b*tch, you nasty eels!

After the market we walked in the direction of home. On the way we passed a fence- behind the fence were ostrich! We had found the Jardin des Plantes. Inside this garden is a Ménagerie (zoo) and the National History Museum. We didn't enter the zoo part because you have to pay and because the line was really long.

We sat on a bench for awhile and I discovered that one of the girls went to Copeland Manor elementary with me for a year! She's a year younger than me and she moved after her 1st grade year- which means when I was in 2nd grade, she was right there at Copeland in 1st grade! How crazy is that? She was naming off people I know and apparently our moms have mutual friends. She also lived one street over from me!

It was really nice in that park. It was starting to look like fall, leaves were falling and trees were half bare. There were all these groups of little school kids running around. It felt like home. Eventually we got off the bench and paid to walk into this huge greenhouse place.

Inside there were many different species of plants and a small stream.

After walking through the greenhouse we walked up a hill towards this small gazebo. You could walk the path which wound in a circle, or you could climb straight up to it through these small holes in the hedges. Guess which route I chose!

Cool fountain that caused us to try to speak parsletongue to open the secret door:

Friday:

This weekend the weather has been really nice! We took advantage of that fact and have spent a lot of time outside during the last few days. Friday we walked over to Musée Rodin. I had no idea how close we were- we are only a 15 minute walk over! On the walk over we passed a Lycée (high school) and all the teenagers outside were still dressed better than me! I'm talking wedge heeled-boots, black skinnies, and boyfriend blazers! It is truly work to keep up with these people.

I've been to this museum before, but last time it was cloudy and kind of cold. This time it was sunny and nice and warm. Here are some cool pictures from Musée Rodin:

The Thinker:

This old couple looked so cute I had to take a stalker picture:

Beauty and the Beast flower!
I really like this painting:
This is a famous sculpture called The Kiss:

That's all for now! Look for a post about Saturday at Monet's Garden and my nighttime Seine river boat ride. I'll try to post again tonight but I have to pack for Rennes, eat dinner, and I have a Skype date- so it might have to wait until I return.

Until then!

Hillary

"Europeanners"

Hey there!

Today's post will be an assortment of unrelated topics, all of which I want to tell you about but none of which are big enough to deserve their own space.

Topic one: The Metro

The metro is one of the best public transit systems I have ever experienced (second only to the Underground). It surpasses the Chicago El system in every way possible. There are stops everywhere and wait times for trains are rarely over 4 minutes- but you'll know how long you'll be waiting thanks to the digital sign that tells you how long until the next train, and then how long until the next train after that. The newer trains have a digital map inside the train cars: On this map there is a small light underneath each stop, the light blinks when you have arrived at that stop, and the light is extinguished once you have passed that stop. Oh and have I mentioned the speed? It's about one minute transit time in between each stop on the metro.

The Metro is a funny sort of place. You are allowed on the metro, but your personal space has to walk and meet you at your next destination. On the metro your entire cabin may be serenaded with a man playing a guitar and not asking for money, a couple with a stereo may try to start a rave in your cabin, or a homeless person may board and announce very politely that he is poor and isn't being helped by the State and if you would be so kind he would gratefully accept any donations you may have. People-watching on the metro is really enjoyable. Today I saw a boy about my age on his cell phone leaning against the wall of the train with a very tall open Paprika Lays Potato Chips tube in one hand, and tucked under his arm he was carrying a small laptop- with no case. The other day I saw the coolest looking family. The dad had a handsome face with a bit of stubble and was around 40, he was tall, slender and extremely french looking. He had a tattoo on his neck with someone's name on a banner wrapped around a big flower. It was cool looking. The mom was a bit younger with long blonde hair and a trench, and the daughter, who was around 5, was wearing the cutest little dress with little boots on. I have seen women and men of every ethnicity and of every level of wealth. It's really enjoyable.

Topic two: Au Vieux Campeur

Today I went on a quest to find a sleeping bag (to help with my bed bug problem). After googling "Paris camping stores" and then using google maps, I found where I wanted to go. The only problem was that the blog I found that suggested Au Vieux Campeur warned that, although this chain carries everything an outdoorsman could ever dream of, because of limited real estate in Paris, Au Vieux Campeur had about 50 different boutiques sprinkled around the 6 block radius they had directed me to. All of them carrying different things. I took the metro and walked to the address I got from the internet. At that address was a pharmacy and a few shops, but none of them were the camping store. I went inside one of the shops and asked for directions. In a mix of french and english she said I needed to walk two blocks one direction, take a right, and then walk for 5 more minutes. I walked that direction and almost immediately after turning right on the correct street, passed by an Au Vieux Campeur. Inside this one all they sold was skis, but the doorman directed me to the one with "sacs de couchage" (thanks google translator for telling me the word for sleeping bag!). He told me I need to walk 4 blocks and take a right. In between the ski shop and the corner 4 blocks away, I passed 4 more Au Vieux Campeurs. One sold only goggles and sunglasses, another sold only cold weather gear, the third sold trekking gear, and the 4th sold backpacks. Around the corner I found my sleeping bag store, and after purchasing one (I bought the cheapest one for only 15 euro!) I walked up towards the main road to catch the closest metro. The main road was one block away, but on the way I passed three more of those shops, one which sold swim gear, another which sold wetsuits, and the third which sold snowboards and snowboarding brand clothing. I turned up the main road and walked past another one which sold only hiking boots. I saw a shelf inside with some spray cans and walked in and bought some leather protectant spray for my shoes!

Topic three: Zara

I went into Zara today to try to find a light jacket (the temperature dropped yesterday to the low 50s). I found a really cute coat but they only had 3 larges. I went up to the man at the counter and asked in french "est-ce que vous avez sa plus petit?" (Do you have this more small?) I asked that in french!! I don't think it was a perfect sentence but he understood me! He told me no, and said the store by L'Opera had it. Then he asked me something I completely didn't understand, and I asked him in french if he spoke english. He did not, and neither did the woman at the register. I wanted to ask him if he could have the other store send it to this Zara, since it's only 1 block from my dorm, but I had no way of saying that. Eventually he just gave me the address to the other Zara. Oh well, I almost had it!!

Topic four: The language of a New Yorker

When I worked at Ben & Jerry's for the Tennis U.S. Open a couple summers ago, I got a lesson in how to speak a whole different language. I'm not talking about a foreign language, I mean the language of the inner city. Until a couple weeks ago, I thought that it was a language that could translate to any city, but I'm starting to realize that what I was hearing was unique to New York. Do you want to know how I know this? I know because I met a nice girl from St. John's who lives in our dorm and is a native New Yorker. The second she opens her mouth I am transported back to yesteryear, to my ice cream-scooping days. Last night around 11:30 she came into my room as Yomna and I were watching project runway on my laptop (I bought it from iTunes). She wanted us to watch a scary movie with her but we were already watching our show and didn't want to watch "Devil."

As soon as she walked in I knew that Yomna and I might not be able to finish our episode before the night was through. This girl can talk. I mean, I might say four words and she says five thousand. She can talk for 20 minutes with no interruption from me..except an occasional "mhm." Last night one of the topics she talked about was all the St. John's people who say they are from New York, but then she finds out they're from Connecticut or Massachusetts. She explained that one girl on her program is only eating bread and water because she wants to get a bigger chest and butt.

...

I don't know. I'll just say that there are definitely differences between the students from St. John's and the NU students. For one, I never see any NU kids outside the building smoking, but it seems like there are always 2 or 3 kids from St. John's smoking outside. And it's always different people so it's not like it's 3 of them that just smoke all night and day. Secondly, we were all warned to be quiet when talking with windows open, or when walking outside the front door down the passageway in between our building and the church building to the door that leads to the street because the sound gets trapped in the passageway and everyone can hear everything you say. It's the St. John's kids who lean out their windows to yell to each other, or who play "kick the water bottle" in the passageway. But I'm straying off topic, I was just so fascinated that two groups of students- and both from good schools- could be so different. Back to the St. John's girl.

At one point she started ranting about one of our RA's (a subject she hits on repeatedly). She told us that she told him earlier yesterday that "he was f*in stupid- I told him right to his face! Everyone hates his f*in a$$." Apparently one of the reasons for this is that the RA walked into a girl's room who was skyping with her parents and started asking her about being Albanian, saying he felt sorry for her country because of the religious division. Apparently he told her that her religion (she's Muslim) is a violent one. Now, I don't know if that's true, which- if it is that is unacceptable- but this is what St. John's girl had to say about it:

"I told him, 'who are you to talk, you're f*in Polish! I could say a lotta things about you. You from the most communist f*in part of town!!' Yo it's mad rude to be like sayin' 'I feel bad for your country' and sh*t. All these Europeanners don't know how to talk to people."

She's engaged to be married next year. She's the one that found the mouse in the refrigerator. "I opened the door and saw the mice ran out the refrigerator! Then later that day I was in the kitchen, and I saw another mice!" Oy ve. She's a really nice girl but I'm worried that her grammar is going to rub off on me if I listen to her talk for too long.

And that's where today's post ends! Bon week-end!

Love always,

Hillary

Welcome to the Jungle! We got fun n' games!

Hey there lovely people!

This past weekend I spent 2 days in a place called Villa Tunari/ Chapare (I'm not sure which name means what but they refer to the same place). It was in the Amazon! I had a wonderful time and I took some pretty sweet pictures I want to share with you.

Saturday:

I met my airport friend Clara at 8:00 am midway between where we live. The plan was that we were going to meet up with some friends of hers and catch a bus to Villa Tunari. We'd get there around noon and from there we'd find a place to stay and see about booking a rafting excursion. What actually ended up happening was that Clara's friends were still asleep when we walked into their hostel. After they packed we grabbed breakfast and grabbed a cab to the intersection where people pick up buses to Villa Tunari. The breakfast was this fried dough with cheese on the inside and sugar on the outside. They gave us our warm drinks in a plastic bag- there was arroz con leche (rice milk), this drink called apí which is purple, made out of corn and in my opinion gross, and this other corn drink I forgot what it was called. I tried the green corn drink and stopped after a few sips. When we got to the intersection we could either go on a bus for 10 Bs or a van for 20 Bs. Both rides left when they were full of passengers, and that would take however long it took to fill the buses. I desperately wanted to take the van, which also would be an hour and a half faster. The weird thing about traveling with people is that everyone has their own definition of cheap. In my mind less than $3.00 for a 4 hour ride in a mini van was well worth it, but to others getting the best deal possible is what's the best option. I was with Clara and two other girls, one from Perth, Australia, and the other from Hampshire, England. The pound is even better than the dollar so for her it was even cheaper but she was the one who seemed to have the biggest problem with it. Eventually though we all decided to take the van, and we left almost right away.

As we got closer to the jungle it got warmer and more beautiful by the minute. Our 4 hour drive was the shortest of my travels so far and yet this direction (north east I think) saw the most drastic changes in scenery.

I'd made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies the previous night and brought some along to share with the girls. They were a hit! Once we got to Villa Tunari we grabbed lunch. In the jungle a fish called surubí is very popular and abundant. I ordered a plate to share with Clara and we all shared some fruit juice and sat in the sun. Our fish came with rice, plátano, and fried yuca which is kind of a poor man's potato. I quickly put on tons of sunscreen and bug repellant. The air was humid (a huge change) and it was about mid 80's. A big group of European tourists ambled over to our restaurant and ate there as well. Since we didn't finish eating until around 3 o'clock, we decided we'd buy rafting tickets for the next day. We didn't know where the rafting companies were but it was a ridiculously small town so we just walked the one main road and found this:

This was outside of the rafting office, it is a dirty chick wandering around looking for food:

No one was there and a woman outside selling mandarins told us we had to call the phone number painted on the wall. We moved on to find another company and a motorcycle drove up with a man and a woman on it. They stopped in front of us and asked if we were looking for rafting. After asking some questions we learned it would be 150 Bs for one hour of rafting. To drive to the spot and back it would take another 2 hours. While that's only $21.00 (and less in pounds), our group found it much too high, and the English girl began trying to bargain. Her spanish wasn't that great and to be honest she was beginning to look like the stereotypical American tourist: speaking loud and slow broken spanish, rude, and completely put off that he wouldn't lower the (fixed) price. I held my tongue because I know that everyone has different budgets and although this girl didn't appear poor, she very well could be working on a limited amount of money. I did agree though that one hour seemed somewhat short, but then again I didn't know how long normal rafting trips are. We found out the next day that in the rainy season the rafting trip is still one hour, but you go twice as fast so you cover more ground. Anyway, we ended up deciding to talk about it together later and we set out to find the hotel we'd read about in our Lonely Planet books. We walked up to a cab and asked how much it would be to take us to that hotel. He said it would be 20 Bs, or 5 Bs each. I'd like to point out that 5 Bs is less than $1.00. The English girl told us that it shouldn't be that much, so I asked him to lower it a bit. He said he wouldn't lower it and that any cab driver would tell us 20 Bs to go to that hotel. So, I said, how far is it? He told us it would take 15 minutes. I wanted to hop in but she wasn't having it so I kept my mouth shut and asked a second cab driver. As I was asking him how much it would be, the first cab driver got out and walked past us- telling the man I was talking to exactly what he'd told us. I don't know if he was going to tell us 20 Bs before the man interrupted, but now he definitely was going to, and that's exactly what he did.

So we started walking along the road in the direction of the hotel in the scorching sun. I agree that in Bolivia almost every vendor raises the price for foreigners. When you ask how much something is, you can see them thinking about it for a moment before they tell you a price. You can almost always haggle a bit and get them to lower the price easily. And also, Bolivians on average have much less money than any tourist, whether they are from Brazil or Chicago. So it makes sense that they would charge a Bolivian less money. I know in Cuba there are two prices on everything, the tourist price and the Cuban price. While raising the price for Gringos may be unfair and a tad presumptuous, it is something I can live with. Especially given that I can usually get them to lower it. This particular type of thing didn't seem like that sort of situation though. We were in a town about 4 blocks long where tons of tourists come through to stay at 1 of 2 hotels near the water, and everyone needs a cab to get there. I'm sure that the rate to the gringo hotels are quite fixed.

On our walk we ran into this bridge with no real footpath and we started talking about that scene in Stand By Me where they get stuck on railroad tracks and have to book it to the other side.

Anyway on our walk we stopped by the monkey park! We didn't go in but we walked up to the entrance and I met an Argentinean with pretty good english selling bracelets. I bought one from him and he tied it on my wrist and then asked if I wanted to be able to take it on and off. When I said no, he tied the ends in a knot and burned them closed. I like that I don't have strings hanging down now, but it'll be a sad day when I need to cut it when I have to take it off to dress up or something. Not that it was expensive by any means ($3.00), it's just cute. The English girl and the Aussie had a few questions for the volunteer coordinators, so we walked down to an office of sorts to talk to them. The English man we talked to was in his late 20's, had no shirt on, filthy dreadlocks and a matted beard, and had tied his shorts up with a string. From inside the office I could hear monkeys screeching! The park also cares for several large cats. We soon left the office and continued walking. After maybe 20 minutes, Clara and I decided together to hail a cab and that man also told us 20 Bs. We all got in and all paid 5 Bs once we'd reached our hotel.

We walked in to ask how much it would be for a room for 4 people for one night. Jorge, the man at the front desk, said it would be 90 Bs per person (somewhere around $12.50). The price included breakfast and free access to las pozas, which are the natural pools in the river right below the hotel. As I'm sure you've guessed already, English girl was not pleased with the price and his unwillingness to haggle. We asked how much a room with 2 beds would be, hoping we could share. He showed us a 2 bed room and there were two twin beds that are smaller than our twin beds in the U.S. We'd only pay 10 Bs less per person, and we wouldn't get a free breakfast since he'd lowered the price from 90. We looked at a 4 person room and it looked lovely. 45 minutes later, after we'd looked at the menu to see if the food was decent (eye roll), and to see what the breakfast included, we agreed to stay. While we discussed whether or not we'd stay, Clara offered that maybe we could just stay at the hotel Sunday and check out the pools and not go rafting. It would save money. While we didn't decide on rafting at that point, I knew it was quickly being crossed out of our list of activities. It didn't bother me too much that we probably weren't rafting because I can always do that anywhere else, and the hotel grounds were so beautiful that I wouldn't mind spending Sunday afternoon there. Since it was a tad too early to eat again, we checked out the hotel pool and Clara and I relaxed in the hammock room above the main building. Cloth hammocks are infinitely better than most of the hammocks I've been in at home. The stiff ones that don't curve around you ain't got nothin' on these; I'm so glad I purchased one last weekend. We ate dinner (again I had surubí) and had bananas con chocolate for dessert. After dinner we played a card game called shithead which both the Brit and the Aussie knew, it was very fun and I hope I can remember once I get back. Maybe I'll write down the rules in my journal..hm. Oh, before we tucked in for the night, Jorge asked us if we wanted him to call the rafting company for us. He did, and a man representing the company drove out to our hotel to discuss it with us! Jorge had been sure that the time in the water was closer to 3 hours, but this man confirmed our first belief that it was only an hour. We thanked him for coming all the way to our hotel but apologized, saying we only had one more afternoon and a 3 hour trip where only 1 of that is in the water, just wasn't enough.

Oh I had left my camera in the hammock and a nice American woman found it and returned it. Other than us the only other people at the hotel were 3 Americans and a group of about 6 Bolivians around our age. The Bolivian group quickly became "the laughers" to us because all day and night all we could hear was their laughter.

Sleep was magnificent that first night, and for the first time in weeks I slept in shorts and a tank top.

Sunday:

The breakfast picture speaks for itself:

We spent the afternoon exploring and ventured down to the river to check out the pools. (Not rafting after all). The walk down there showed me how much I truly was in the Amazon:

The little green bits down there are pieces of leaves that are all being carried by ants. I know it's not in motion so it's hard to see exactly how many of them there really are, but I could barely step anywhere on our walk without stepping on a (HUGE) ant carrying a leaf in a line. They came from every direction all in a row. There is a video of the ants at the bottom of this post, enjoy- and maybe play Ants Marching by Dave Matthews if you have it at hand.

HUGE ORANGE BEETLE! There were tons of beetles up by the hotel that were ginormous. For some reason them being in their natural habitats combined with them being large enough to be a small rodent made them less scary. This was not the case with the spiders unfortunately.

The picture below is of a walking tree. A walking tree literally grows new "legs" that plant themselves into the soil and very slowly move along the forest floor. When we got closer we could see several new legs still a few feet from the ground. The limbs have little hooks on them, my only guess is that the hooks help them to plant themselves into the earth.

This is the little lagoon we walked in. I won't say swim because we didn't swim, the water was freezing but the air was so hot.

On the rocks in the water were HUGE spiders. I've never seen these types of spiders before. They were very large, black, and incredibly fast. Traversing the rocks was hard enough, let alone having to watch out for these spiders constantly. We sat on the rocks for awhile and eventually got in the water, which was teeming with tadpoles that seemed to have no fear of us at all. Eventually I decided it was time for me to eat again and Clara and I made our way back up to the hotel. Again I ate the surubí (this time with lemon sauce) and it was wonderful yet again. My total bill when we checked out was 224 Bs(~$32.00). (All of our meals were added onto the bill as a tab like a normal hotel). Not bad eh?!

I've been writing this post on and off all afternoon, I've just finished watching Coco Before Chanel, which I bought here today for less than a dollar. The guy told me it had english subtitles but in fact its options were either dutch or spanish, so I watched it with spanish subtitles and I actually understood most of it! Woohoo!!

Hasta mañana!

Hillary

The Ants Go Marching One by One, Hurrah! Hurrah!