Salar de Uyuni

Hey folks!

Here is a great article I found explaining where I'll be for the following 6 days.

http://wikitravel.org/en/Salar_de_Uyuni

I bought a coat, leg warmers, thick leggings, and a sweater in preparation for this trip. The salt flats are supposed to be beautiful and freezing. I'm hoping the Chicago winters have prepared me for this trip. This is also, I hope, the last mini trip I'll be taking to somewhere colder than Cochabamba. The other place I want to go, Villa Tunari, is supposed to be wonderfully warm and tropical. We leave Wednesday at 12:30pm for a 4 hour bus ride, then at 7:00pm we catch an overnight train arriving at 8:00am where our tour guide will pick us up. The train was out of second class seats, so we had to buy first class tickets. I am sure you all know how upset that makes me. :-)

I get back sometime Tuesday. Until then!

Hillary

"Art" Exhibit and Lazy Sunday

Hey guys!

I wanted to let you know what I did this weekend because it was vastly different from La Paz but just as fun.

Friday I hung out with my housemates and the Irish guy and watched "Run, Fatboy Run" (a stocking stuffer from mom) and had a glass of red wine and chatted. That was the night I made Corn Flake puppy chow.

Saturday I finished "The Reliable Wife" so I could lend it to my airport girlfriends(which I did today at our coffee/book borrowing lunch). We watched soccer all afternoon and then headed over to the main office/house for the "art" exhibit. I put art in quotations because it was a british girl's sugar sculpture of what seemed to be a hat with fabric and feathers all over. It was her only piece of art. See- Sustainable Bolivia has an artist in residence at all times, and I think the norm is to show off what you've been working on while here. There was a live band in the small backyard that had amps (which were completely unnecessary). I chatted with people when the band wasn't playing-when we could hear each other-and talked to the Spaniard again. It was a relaxing night and I was in bed by midnight.

Sunday I got up early to go with a couple girls to the market for fruit. On the way to the market one of the girls introduced me to a breakfast drink called a vitaminico which has oats, honey, bananas, and some other fruit thing. It was delicious. One of my housemates leaves tomorrow so we were having a celebratory brunch for her (scheduled to begin at 1:00pm). (Not as delicious as the Jamba Juice breakfast yogurt parfait peanut butter thing -ahem Rachel and Dad- but good). My contribution was a fruit salad with pineapple, apple, canteloupe, bananas, and oranges. We also had juevos rancheros, guacamole, scones, crepes, cookies, and an assortment of juice drinks. The first soccer game began at 10:00am and some volunteers who don't live here stopped by to watch as well. We ate at around 2 and watched more soccer. After the game we put in Dear John, followed by Adam. It was another great day and I got to bond with my housemates.

So- Wednesday I'm leaving for the Salar, I'll try to find a web page describing it and post it tomorrow, because I only half know what it is. It's really far away so I won't be back until Monday or Tuesday of next week. The Salar is, as far as I know, salt flats. It is supposed to be a must-see, beautiful, and freezing. I'm spending tomorrow buying some more warm clothes. This also means the blog might not be updated until the middle of next week- and you can look forward to another saga describing my trip!

Love always,

Hillary

Catching Up

Hey everyone!

Since the La Paz trip I haven't written about what I've been up to because I've been writing about La Paz. I also wanted to give everyone a couple of days to read those long posts. So here is a "catch up" post!

I got back Monday night very late and went to work Tuesday morning with a cold. I left an hour early, and called in sick Wednesday so I could rest. It worked, because I felt completely better by Thursday morning. Wednesday the 23rd was like "Dia de San Juan," a celebration to honor the coldest night of the year. Apparently it's celebrated mostly in Puerto Rico, and then here for some reason. They celebrate by staying up all night burning things in the streets (tires, cardboard, etc.) and eating hot dogs. I did not participate in this and I don't think any of the volunteers in my program did. Oh and by the way, I'm pretty sure one of the male doctors thought I missed work on Wednesday because I'd had too much partying on dia de San Juan. Not the case.

Wednesday night I did however meet up with the two American girls I'd met on the plane from Miami. We had dinner at a place called "Brazilian Coffee" that has sushi, Bolivian food, and pasta. It was a lot of fun and we're meeting up again Monday to do a book swap! One of the girls has finished all four of the books she brought, and I finished "One For the Money" and "The Reliable Wife," which Rachel and Grandmama loaned to me. It was really awesome to chat with them because we've all been here for the same amount of time; everything is still new and exciting to us. Whereas for some of the people in our organizations, they are already jaded and tired of Bolivia.

On Wednesday I also electrocuted myself trying to swap a plug into my adapter. Must remember not to touch the prongs when I do that..

I met a girl at work who is Bolivian but speaks some english that she learned while in India (along with Hindi). She was really cool, 24, a nursing student, and it's nice at work when we talk because she can practice english and I can practice spanish. I was considering asking her to meet for lunch one day so we could do a language partnership thing where people learn each other's languages. Then, Friday, she got all "Christianity is the best" on me and kind of freaked me out. It was nice of her to invite me to church, but the way she was talking made it seem like she can only hang out with Christians. I told her I have friends from every religion and she kind of stopped talking about it. I still might hang out with her, we'll see. There was this guy at work who'd fallen down some stairs and had lots of stitches on his arm. He came to replace his bandages, and I saw that half of his stitches had sort of failed, because there was a HUGE circle of dead skin and dark muscle where his stitches should have kept going. It was really gross but cool to look at. This girl and some nurses and the front desk guy got into a conversation about India, and she was explaining some of their customs. She loved it over there and wants to go back to work there for 5 years. The conversation was kind of like the gay conversation because it was like seeing how much other people know or don't know about certain things. She was explaining the Caste system, ways of dress, wedding rituals and so on. At one point the cashier front desk guy (that I work with for the first hour) asked me why the U.S. doesn't want relations with Cuba or Iran. Everyone looked at me and I was like "uh...how am I supposed to explain this in spanish..uhm..I'm just not going to." I just said that it isn't that simple.

Friday I bought a cell phone but it still doesn't work because apparently there is a law that extranjeros (foreigners) have to register using some form of ID like a passport number. All the other volunteers have had to do this as well. You can get around it by having a Bolivian do it for you, but if something happens and you need to fix the phone, you have to have that same Bolivian fix it. Sooo I'm going back to the office Monday to get it taken care of. Oh and on Friday I also made puppy chow! I can't find Rice Chex anywhere here, so I used Corn Flakes and it was a huge hit! I also didn't realize how much I missed puppy chow. I also had to melt half a Toblerone because I ran out of chocolate.

I FOUND TORTILLAS!! I thought they didn't exist here because I couldn't find them at all, until my housemate told me that they're in the refrigerated section. Oops! But I bought a pack of twelve on Friday and now I am out. I didn't realize how much I loved Mexican food until being here. I think Nina's mom's handmade tortillas have spoiled me. But the tortillas here are better than at home, they taste like Nina's mom's.

Tomorrow I'm going to write about the "art" exhibit at the main office, and my lazy sunday which turned out to be wonderful.

Peace out! Love,

Hillary

La Paz- part 3

We last left the story at the point at which the girls went to the bathroom and vowed to meet up with everyone soon.

Monday (just after midnight Sunday):

We walked in the direction of all the people and found the plaza. At the front of the large plaza was a stage with a band playing indigenous music and there were tons of vendors on the ground selling warm clothing, and just as many vendors with carts selling various hot food. The majority of people were Bolivian but there were also plenty of American and European 20 something hippie tourists. We found an alcove with stone benches and a bathroom, which we took turns using. After we put on all of our layers, we called the boys and within ten minutes Javi, one of the French Canadian girls named Ali, and Javi's two friends we'd met at the slides (who had said Saturday night that the Tiwanaku celebration was too cold and they weren't going to come) walked toward us and said they could take us to where the French Canadians had gathered.

We started following them toward the front of the plaza, and once we reached the stage on our right, we took a sharp left onto a path that lead to seemingly nowhere. When we asked where the French Canadians were, Javi's friend with the dreadlocks said that one of the Canadian's grandpa had a house here or something, and that's where they were. We walked down the path were there were no people and streetlights were sparse. Down the next path to our right there were no streetlights at all and we walked into an enormous field that can only be described as the end of civilization. I don't mean that as a joke, I mean, that straight ahead at the end of a field several miles long, were the dark outlines of mountain ridges. I can say with almost certainty that there were no more people out there. We quickly took a left and soon came upon a low mud wall and entered through a 4 foot tall "door." We passed by the shadow of what may have been a tiny room and behind this wall was where we found the French Canadians, and the Idiot, gathered around a fire. After failing to get them to join us at the celebration, we took our drinks and left them.

Sarah went off looking for anticucho "cow heart" and Maren, who had brought a hula hoop, began an impromptu performance that attracted a pretty large crowd. I even saw one person videotaping it. Apparently she is so good at hula hooping that she has a hula hoop that lights on fire! Javi's dreadlocked friend walked around with a hat and made about 12 bolivianos off of her. He gave most to Maren but kept some as his commission. We soon ran into the rest of the Sustainable Bolivia volunteers who had arrived in La Paz that morning and went straight to Tiwanaku. At this point they had all been there for over 12 hours and most of them just wanted to get on the first bus back to Cochabamba. Half an hour later, all the French Canadians showed up with the Idiot. Idiot was surprisingly quiet, and probably incredibly drunk, and he convinced Sarah to take him to find some food, and I didn't see him again until we found him asleep in the van the French Canadians had taken to get there, at 8:30am. We all decided to go back to the alcove (where we'd found the bathroom) to sit down, now that we had met up with everybody. As we walked over to the alcove, I was talking to Elizabeth and at some point I said the word "kiss" in a sentence. As I said "kiss" some Bolivian dude next to me said "kiss?!" After ignoring him, I finished my conversation. I grabbed onto the person in front of me to keep track of everyone, and I thought I felt Elizabeth grab onto my sleeping bag to keep track of me. It wasn't Elizabeth however, because she immediately grabbed my arm and yanked me to her other side. The only other person it could've been was the random dude that was following us. He followed us to the alcove with this big goofy grin and told this Sustainable Bolivia volunteer, Davy Jones, that he liked Americans. He tried to give everyone mints, which we all refused. After a 30 minute queue for the public bathroom (our secret bathroom was locked), Francesca (an Italian Sustainable Bolivia volunteer) and I returned to the alcove to find the random dude gone.

We decided to go dance with the crowd to keep warm, and somehow we'd dwindled down to me, Maren, Elizabeth, an 18 year old Korean French Canadian girl, Sarah, Francesca, and another Sustainable Bolivia volunteer Kim. We'd lost over half of our group again. It was 3:30am and Sarah asked us to wait right there so she could go to the bathroom. We knew it would be another half an hour or so, but they didn't open the gate to the ruins (where the actual sunrise celebration occured) until 4:00am, so we said no problem, "we'll be right here when you get back."

She never came back.

Just after 5:00am Maren told us to go ahead and she'd follow us in 15 minutes if Sarah didn't show up. We decided to head over to the gate to get our tickets into the ruins and hope that we met up with them later. Oh by the way, Sarah didn't have a phone, and the signal up in this town was horrible anyway. Once we bought our tickets, Elizabeth got an angry phone call from the head of the French Canadian group, looking for the Korean French Canadian girl. She had us leave this girl at the ticket booth until the French Canadians left their hut and met up with her. The frustrating part was that they were mad at her for splitting up, when all they were doing was sitting in a hut in the middle of a dark field of nothingness.

Now me, Elizabeth, Francesca, and Kim, continued on through the gate on a path lined with little fire pots. We joined a mass of people lined along a fence that surrounded the ruins. In the dark we couldn't see the ruins at all, but there were two huge lights turned to face us that effectively blinded us when we looked toward the Incan ruins. The lights were in the fenced in area next to cameramen, reporters, and a couple of indigenous women. We sat down amongst the standing crowd and dozed for a few minutes until Kim thought she saw something happening around 6:00am. It was a false alarm but we remained standing waiting for sunrise. As the sky started to lighten, everyone realized that the huge lights could ruin the effect we were all waiting for. Shouts of "apagan las luces!!" (Turn off the lights!) occurred every now and then for over an hour. Around this time we looked over and saw Davy Jones standing about 10 feet away from us. He'd been there the entire time we had been, but we couldn't move closer to him because of the crowd. Around 7:15am I started to wonder what counts as sunrise..because the sky was very light already, but there was no sun in sight. The sky was also very cloudy and blocked most of the sky. The President, Evo Morales (who is the first indigenous president of Bolivia and who made this Aymara new year celebration a national holiday this year), came and joined in the ceremony, which involved standing upon one of the ruins tossing things into a fire. A band played the national anthem and around 7:45 we decided this counted as sunrise and we left the crowd. As soon as we got out of the crowd Francesca and Kim found the rest of the Sustainable Bolivia people they'd come with, and they all left. Elizabeth and I still needed to at least find Maren so we could get back to Javi's house, where all of our things were. As we waited at the gate, the sun peeked out from behind a cloud, and everyone in sight put their hands up to form a triangle around the sun. (This is what is supposed to happen when the sun peaks over the horizon, but we missed that due to the clouds). We waited at the gate for 20 minutes or so and at this point the French Canadians passed us, having lost Ali, and then a minute later Maren, Javi, and Ali walked up to us. We all walked back to the van that the French Canadians had taken to get to the festival, and there we found Idiot asleep across one seat, and Sarah asleep across another seat.

As Sarah got out of the car, the dog that I mentioned in "La Paz- part 2" jumped out of the car and trotted off. Javi chased after the dog, and the 3 girls I'd come with (plus Idiot) found a taxi van and headed back down to La Paz. In the car we found out where Sarah (my roommate) had been all night. She said that after she went to the bathroom she decided to start walking. She showed us from the van where she'd been, and it was about 5 miles from the celebration, on a highway road with no streetlights in the middle of nowhere. She said she liked being out where no one else was, where she screamed and cried and "it was amazing because no one could hear me." She explained that no cars would stop for her, and that eventually she caught a taxi trufi that took her back to the city. She recognized a sign and found the van, got in without seeing idiot, and went to sleep. When I pointed out that she could've been hurt during this excursion, disregarding the fact that we'd waited an hour and a half for her to return from the bathroom, she replied "yeah I was lucky, but lots of stuff can happen at any time." She is sort of like Luna Lovegood; sweet, oblivious, and a bit eccentric.

As we lowered our elevation returning to La Paz, and as we got closer to noon, the van got ridiculously hot. I was famished and ate 3 packages of Chips Ahoy cookies, which came out to 12 cookies. I stripped off my coat and sweatshirt, but I still had 4 pairs of pants, 3 layers on top, a hat I refused to take off for fear of what my hair looked like, and two pairs of warm socks on when we got out of the car to climb up to Javi's apartment. Idiot helped me roll up my sleeping bag and offered to help carry it, which at this point I was more than willing to let him do. I took back my sleeping bag when Elizabeth and I stopped to pick up some yogurt, and we finally got back to the apartment, an inch away from heat stroke, to shower and eat our yogurt. I tried to roll up the sleeping bag and put it in its bag, and to do this I took it into the living room which was empty but for the Idiot.

I saw him out of the corner of my eye watching me attempt to stuff this thing into it's bag. It had taken the store owners 20 minutes to do this when I bought it, so I didn't have high hopes that I'd be able to. As the bag ripped as I stuffed the sleeping bag inside it, I looked up at the Idiot, who winked at me. I couldn't decide if I was amused..or just creeped out. I think it was both. Javi's dad Gaston ended up showing the Idiot how to get home or something, because they both left. Javi and the French Canadians returned soon after this, having found the escaped dog in a field. Javi's mom served us soup and rice with chicken and vegetables for lunch. After some soccer viewing and a rest, we headed to the train station and caught a 4:00pm train due into Cochabamba at 11:00pm. On the train I realized I'm missed father's day and frantically tried to send apology texts to Dad and Daddy Greg. Surprisingly, there is no signal in the Bolivian mountains.

I went to sleep Monday night with a sore throat and a stuffy nose, reminiscing of the unfair beauty of the obnoxious Idiot.

And so ends the saga of La Paz and the Aymara New Year/Winter Solstice celebration!!

I had a really good time and am so glad I made that last minute decision. The cold I got was worth seeing La Paz, meeting more people, and having a great adventure. And I'm finally caught up on sleep!

Besos,

Hillary

La Paz- part 2

Hola amigos!

So where did I leave off? Oh right, Saturday night I went to sleep and the 3 girls I came with went out and did not return until 4:00am.

Sunday:

I woke up at 8:30 fully awake and hungry. I looked down (from the top bunk I was sleeping on) and saw all three of the girls asleep and it didn't look like they were going to get up anytime soon. I sat in bed for awhile then at 9:00 Elizabeth woke up to catch the very end of the soccer game that had started at 7:00 that she'd wanted to watch. I climbed down from my bunk and had a peanut bar thing that they sell on the streets and then one of my last granola bars from the U.S. I read a little bit of the book Grandmama gave me, then I brushed my teeth and became extremely thirsty. At this point it was 10:20 and I didn't want to leave the room because I'd have to interact with the family, and even though they were super nice, I felt weird. I made myself go to the kitchen and got a glass of water. As I drank it at the table, the French Canadian girl who is living with this family for the summer came and sat down across from me. (She is in charge of a group of volunteers from Quebec who are working in La Paz for the summer and they will come into the story later). By 11:00 I'd eaten bread, a mandarin, an orange, scrambled eggs, yogurt, juice, and tea. It was wonderful. I loved these people. Around 11:30 the girls wanted to eat. I didn't want to be behind on eating an get hungry before everyone else, so I ate some more eggs, yogurt, tea, and bread.

Sidenote: the dad's name is Gaston. I mentioned to Maren that I thought Gaston was supposed to be a french name, and she said "did you think that only because of Beauty and the Beast? Yeah, me too."

Elizabeth and Sarah went for a run, which you wouldn't have been able to pay me to do in La Paz, and I spent the afternoon reading, watching some movie with Clive Owen and Naomi Watts, and watching more soccer. Anna and Gaston served us lunch of homemade soup, salad, roasted chicken, and this fried cheese dish. It was phenomenal. Around 5 we headed out to what I thought was going to be a quick trip to a store so I could buy some sweatpants. As we left the house Anna told us that we could borrow sweatpants from her sons, and that we should head over to a party with some Capoeira people that Maren knew. So off I went to a party wearing hiking boots, tall socks, 3/4 length sweatpants, my big white thrift store shirt with the french writing (some of you should know this shirt very well), a blue sports bra, and a Northwestern hoodie. We weren't sure where we were going because Maren couldn't quite remember exactly which building it was. (She had spent time with a lot of these people when she studied abroad in La Paz several years ago). As we stood on the sidewalk, I thought I spotted a Costa del Marfil (Ivory Coast) flag hanging from a building's window.

"Hey!" I said, "people here really like the Ivory Coast..weird." Maren informed me that in fact that was a Brazil flag, and "oh hey, actually I think that's their building!" So, with a little help from my inability to recognize flags, we found the building and went up to the apartment. And this is where the night began.

It turns out that this was in fact a birthday party. As soon as we walked in I noticed that all the boys were wearing marching band looking party hats, and all the girls were wearing bunny ears. I never did figure out what the theme was supposed to be. I sat against a wall with the other girls and the birthday girl, who was very nice and wearing a tank top with no back, ensured that we all had bunny ears on. Then the dog passed by and it was a Schnauzer!! (Standard size). It was perfectly groomed and really soft and black like my dogs and I spent awhile petting it, missing Tiger and Asia. I sat around talking to the girls from Sustainable Bolivia that I'd come with, the French Canadian I ate breakfast with who had joined us, and a girl from Holland.

One important thing to note, is that for the entire time we'd been in La Paz, anytime we mentioned Tiwanaku, the first thing out of anyone's mouth was that it is freezing. When asked if they were going to go up this Sunday, every one of them laughed and said "no I don't think I'm going to do that again." At the party I was mostly avoiding eye contact with people, when out of nowhere the dancing began.

Alright, I thought, just be cool. Even though latin guys are notorious for being good dancers, that doesn't mean this will be a disaster. Just..just get up and walk away from the dancing area. Yeah, that's it. The birthday girl apparently did not know of my plan and brought two guys over to me and Sarah and told them to dance with us.

"Do you want to dance?" asked one of them. (This whole thing is in spanish).

"Uhm..I can't dance." I mumbled. He laughed and said "Why not?"

"I can't, I'm..I'm bad. I'm not any good. I don't have any..what's the word in spanish..rhythm?"

"Me neither, I'm not good either."

He ended up getting me to dance, the poor guy. He was also lying about not being able to dance. I don't know what it is about spanish speakers but dancing seems as easy to them as walking, which sometimes I have trouble with as well. Meanwhile, I haven't showered since Friday afternoon, I look like a bum, and I'm wearing hiking boots. Needless to say, I was probably painful to watch but he danced with me for the whole party. He was trying turns and switching hands and foot and hip action and,.. I stepped on him twice. Javi (the boy whose house we were sleeping at) made this fruit juice in the kitchen out of ice, passionfruit, lime, mango, and some other fruits I can't remember. It was the best juice I've ever tasted in my life, and he made it from scratch in 5 minutes.

Eventually it was time for us to go because it was 8:30pm and the French girl had to meet her group at Javi's house. They were all going to join us for the winter solstice celebration. I looked toward the door and the French Canadian, Lily, was standing at the door, and it looked like this really cute guy was whispering in her ear. Or, I thought..is he kissing her neck? No..he must be whispering something..this is odd. The cake came out so we had to stay to sing happy birthday, and the boyfriend, little brother, and two best friends made speeches. Then they pushed the birthday girl's face into the cake when she blew out the candle. Finally we left and Maren informed me that Lily had just invited the cute and drunk stranger to the celebration with us. Apparently he had been making out with Lily on the dance floor in the living room throughout the entire party. I don't know how I missed that, but I also decided maybe he was kissing her neck and not whispering something to her after all.

We all met back at Javi's house and got layered up with the French Canadians and by the time we left I was wearing Under Armour leggings, fabric leggings, my 3/4 sweatpants, a pair of socks, a pair of knit wool socks, my hiking boots, a tank top, an Under Armour type top, a long sleeve shirt, my NU hoodie, and a coat. All the cute stranger had was jeans, a t shirt, and a coat. I carried my gloves, hat, Javi's old sweatpants, and two scarves in a bag because we had a 1.5 hour car ride to the town that is at an even higher elevation than La Paz, and I figured the car ride would get hot. The van in which Javi's friend was taking people up only fit the 8 Canadians, so us 4 girls, Javi, and the cute stranger took a taxi to a van/shuttle area by the cemetery to go up to the town. The ride out of the city at night was magnificent. The city is surrounded on all four sides by hills that are covered with little houses, and at night the lights from these houses makes it seem like you are in outer space and that there are tons of stars lighting up the night rising halfway up the sky.

We squeezed into the van and on my left was Javi, on my right was the boy, whose name turned out to be Gabriel, and behind me were the 3 girls from Sustainable Bolivia. Javi and this boy, who earned the nickname "the Idiot" later in the night, immediately started mixing a Brazilian drink with clear looking rum and sprite. I had the good fortune to sit right between this as they attempted to pour liquid into cups on the bumpy road. They graciously offered me a drink, which I declined. I explained that drinking combined with my pension for car sickness would be a bad combination. Gabriel, who we will refer to as the Idiot, started talking to me. The idiot told me he is a 21 year old from Brazil and is currently a med student in Bolivia. As I talked to him I realized he was amazingly gorgeous. I don't just mean he was cute. I mean he was breathtakingly good looking. Unfortunately, he was also very conceited and obnoxious. I turned around to talk to the girls and I noticed that he kept staring at me. I tried not to look at him. At one point he spilled on the woman in front of me and she turned around to ask him and Javi to stop. Maren decided that it must be the Idiot's beauty that lets him get away with a lot of crap. Javi whipped out his charm and got all of them laughing and even shared his iPod with them. The idiot began trying to convince me to visit Brazil. "If I visit Chicago, would you visit Brazil?" He asked. "Don't you want to see paradise?" Gag. I explained that I have absolutely no time to visit Brazil, even if I wanted to. He then tried to teach me some portuguese in exchange for learning some english. Neither of us did very well. He also kept offering me a drink; "Salud? Cheers?" Eventually in english I blurted out: "Do you want me to throw up on you?! Because I will." Although he didn't understand my words, I'm sure he got the message because he stopped asking.

At one point everyone fell asleep and he decided to profess his love.

"Te quiero, te quiero, me entiendes?"

"No you don't."

"Si, si, te quiero, I love you."

"No, you do not."

"Recuerdas mi nombre?" (Remember my name?)

"Si," I answered, "Gabriel."

"Y, me olvide, como te llamas?" (And, I forgot, what is your name?).

At this point this guy was so ridiculous that his forgetting my name barely phased me. We got out of the car amongst tons of vans and people in the dark in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. He tried to help me carry my stuff, which I didn't let happen, and us 4 girls split from the boys to find a bathroom.

And thus ends part two! I will post the third and final part of the story tomorrow!

Love,

Hillary

La Paz- part 1

Hey guys!

I'm going to tell the La Paz trip story in two parts, that way I won't get lazy by the end, and it'll also be painless to read! Hopefully.

Since I've been here I've continuously heard about this Aymara new year celebration that takes place just outside La Paz at sunrise on June 21st. This is a very short article explaining it: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jKbCwUkGnBBNY-GiytdvGNzHiCJA

All I knew about it was that everyone stays up all night to celebrate and that a llama is sacrificed at sunrise. I also knew it was really cold, as June 23rd is known as the coldest night of the year in Bolivia. My plan was to possibly attend the smaller ceremony in Cochabamba so I could sleep more and escape if the cold was too much to handle. After an invite from my new roommate to accompany her and a couple of others to La Paz, my plans changed. I didn't want to regret not going on an adventure. It turned out to be an awesome and interesting trip, and here's how it started:

Friday:

After a quick run to the ATM, and some fast but careful packing to include all my warmest clothing, I was on my way with my roommate Sarah to her Capoeira class, which was performing in a main plaza in Cochabamba and meeting at 7pm. After the performance we'd be catching a 11:00pm bus to La Paz, due in at 6:00am. Capoeira is an art form from Brazil that looks like a cross between karate and breakdance, and it is performed in pairs. It was a cool show that went a little too long but two of the three girls that I went to La Paz with are in the group and it was fun to watch them. The next two pictures are from the performance. They start in a small huddle and pair off to perform in the circle to represent what seemed like story-telling from the musicians.

For the rest of the show the circle is widened and everyone takes turns "fighting" and dancing. They rarely touch each other and those who aren't dancing are singing. The whole thing looks like it came right out of The Matrix.

After I grabbed some pineapple ice cream and a doughnut (ice cream good, doughnut horrible), me and the three other girls made our way over to the bus terminal. Remember how I thought I had gotten close to the bus terminal (an area we are supposed to avoid) last week, and then an angry barking dog lead me away from it, thus saving me from a horrible fate? Well, I wasn't anywhere near the bus terminal then. The closer we got to the terminal the worse it smelled and the sketchier it became. We went in and bought tickets for the 11:00pm bus for $25 bolivianos ($3.50 U.S.) and paid our travel tax of $2 bolivianos. To use the bathroom at the terminal we paid $1 boliviano and received a wad of toilet paper. The bathroom was disgusting and an attendant kept pouring buckets of water into the toilets that wouldn't flush. Oh this reminds me! On a sidenote- there is no soap or toilet paper in the employee bathroom at the health clinic I work at. Ok but back to the story.

Once we found our bus and took our seats in the front row, we settled in for a long ride. Our bus left the station and stopped two minutes later to get gas. We stopped 5 minutes after that to pick up about 6 military men, and a minute or two after that to pick up another passenger from what seemed to be the side of the road. I tried to sleep but only fell asleep twice for about half an hour each time. I did have a dream that I thought Jen Chen cut off half of her hair, then found out she didn't and was relieved. I also dreamt Emily De Witt was scheduling dentist appointments around my free time. LOL. The closer we got to La Paz, the more my ears were popping (because of the altitude difference), and the colder it got. Before I knew it, Elizabeth, who was next to me, was in her sleeping bag still shivering, and I was trying to regain feeling in my toes while wondering how I was going to survive Sunday night.

Saturday:

The bus dropped us off just outside of the terminal, and I was already devising a plan to skip out on the celebration. It was probably 20 degrees outside and none of us were prepared for anything below 50. Sarah didn't want to take a taxi to breakfast, so we walked for about half an hour to a cafe, meanwhile I was taking a mental note of every legit looking hotel I saw that I could check into Sunday night. It was not yet 7:00am and the cafe we found was filled with westerners who were a part of a bike tour called "Death Road," and they were about to leave to bike down one of the most dangerous roads in the world to go visit a winery or cocoa farm or something cool like that. An Israeli girl died on that road just last month. After we informed the tour guide that no, we weren't stragglers who needed to board the bus, he bonded with us over the most recent U.S. soccer game where we were robbed of a goal.

After breakfast we headed up to Maren's friend's apartment, which was actually his parent's place, where we would be staying for the weekend. By the end of the climb up to this apartment, I thought my heart was going to fail, or that I was going to suffocate, or possibly collapse from exhaustion. That's how intense the altitude is in La Paz. All weekend I thought the steep hills combined with the altitude was going to kill me. Also, the apartment is on the 6th floor and there are no elevators. We dropped our things off and headed straight to the markets to buy anything warm that we could find.

This is a picture of a witch vendor's cart, from which you can buy llama fetuses (in the picture below) which come in many different sizes. All of the witch's carts that we passed had llama fetuses. Later in the day I walked right past an assortment of pigs feet laying on a tarp on the ground.

We walked for about two miles uphill to meet Maren's La Paz Capoeira friends at the cemetery, who were gone by the time we got there. The heat in the middle of the day is a strange sort of intense, like it is here in Cochabamba. If you are in the sun it is about 90 degrees, but in the shade you can become chilly. It was in this intense heat that we climbed past countless vendors to reach the cemetery. This picture is from the top. All the hills look like this in La Paz; covered in reddish colored square houses from top to bottom. The city is nestled between mountains and hills on all four sides. It was beautiful and a bit odd- for someone who has always lived near a large body of water, it made me a little claustrophobic.

In total we found a fleece lined coat, tall hand-knit wool socks, knit gloves, a hand-knit wool hat, a warm scarf, and a multi-use scarf for sitting on or using as a blanket. I also bought a fleece-lined sleeping bag. By the end of our shopping spree I felt much more prepared for Sunday night and had no more thoughts of hotels.

We came back to Maren's friend's Javi's house and chatted with his parents and watched 1.5 games of soccer before turning it to VH1's most sexiest people in the 90's. It made me feel really young because the girls I was with were 25, 27, and 28, and half of the people on there I didn't know. For example, did you know Joey Lawrence of the Lawrence brothers and from Brotherly Love was on a show called "Blossom" and had a brief music career?? After relaxing we left to meet up with Javi's younger brother for dinner. At dinner the lack of sleep and full stomachs made all of us really tired. Instead of going back to the house, we hung out with Javi and his two friends at a weird sort of outside slide/staircase/bench area. (That's me in the brown).

We went back to the house and everyone prepared to go out for the night. First, they were going to a party held by some French Canadians volunteering in La Paz who would be meeting us in Tiwakanu for the celebration on Sunday, and then on to a bar called "Gold's." I decided to skip this as it was 10:30pm, and even though they figured they'd be back around 12:30am, I didn't think I could keep my eyes open for another twenty minutes. I went to sleep as soon as they left, and they didn't return until 4:00am.

That's it for now folks! Tomorrow I'll put up part two!

Love,

Hillary

La Paz!!!

Game time decision- I'm going to La Paz in a couple hours with several people from Sustainable Bolivia for a winter solstice celebration! I won't update the blog until Monday :-)

-Hillary

The Brazilian View of the World

Happy Friday!

Before I explain what I learned from a couple Brazilians today, I want to thank everyone for reading my blog. :-) I love reading the comments from my friends and family and it makes me really happy that I can share my trip with everyone!

Now, let's get down to business. There are a lot of Brazilian med students who have been working in the clinic a couple of the days I've been there. I think they all go to Medical school here in Cochabamba, either that or they are all spending part of their training taking classes out here in Bolivia. When there is not much going on in the clinic, two of the guys engage me in conversation and ask about U.S. related stuff, about myself, or about how I'm liking Bolivia, etc. All of the students are much more patient when they talk to me than are some of the other employees who sometimes become a little impatient. They commonly act things out with hand gestures when talking to me. (That might be a Brazilian thing too, like the Italians, I don't know). Their accents are harder to understand than the Bolivian accents, and they all speak portuguese when they talk to each other. I think today was their last day in the clinic before their winter break. (Yes, winter break). Anyway, today I found out that the people of South America can't stand Argentinians!! They consider them haughty and stuck up! I related it to how Americans think of the French. I also found out that Brazilians find British english much easier to understand than American english, but the worst for them is Australian english. They mentioned Crocodile Dundee when referencing Australia, and said the BBC is easy to understand, but CNN is hard because we talk too fast. The younger male med student speaks a tiny bit of english, and he said he learned what he knows from first watching an english movie with subtitles, then watching it again without them. It's all muy interesante, no? It wasn't long before the conversation got even more interesting.

For some reason I didn't quite catch, the two Brazilian male med students started explaining what "gay" and "transsexual" mean to a Bolivian nurse who joined in our conversation every now and then as she did some paperwork. I couldn't believe this educated and modern Bolivian woman actually didn't know what it means to be homosexual. And then, the younger guy said that being a gay man means that you want to be a woman. This was where I had to step in and correct him before she went on to live her whole life thinking gay men and women long to become the opposite sex. He agreed with my correction and explained that gay is when a man wants to be with a man, and a woman with a woman. Transsexual, he explained, is when a man or woman dresses as the opposite gender. She looked very confused, and the young guy was explaining it in a mocking tone I didn't like. The slightly older med student interrupted and explained to her that there are plenty of gay individuals who are great people. I asked if gay men and women can marry in Brazil, and they can't. I assume they can't in Bolivia either since this woman didn't even know what it was.

On a separate note, I also learned that Brazilian beaches have warm, clear water, and that the best time to vacation in Brazil is between December and February. Later, there was a "despedida" or going away party for the med students. At the despedida I ate a kind of chocolate cake and then an egg salad sandwich. The two clinic doctors made speeches and the students seemed to really be enjoying themselves.

After work I went to a german grocery store called "Super Haas" that I hadn't yet been to. They had a great variety of food! It was way better than the corner store I'd been going to, and much closer than the store in the rich area that has frosted flakes. Among my purchases were Chips Ahoy cookies, a can of ginger ale, and Kraft mac and cheese! The weirdest thing is that I can't find tortillas anywhere! I bought beans and I have rice, but I might be eating them with a fork because I don't think they eat tortillas here. They also don't have granola bars here. Two of my roommates have them but they got them from either their mom or their visiting American friend..

Talk to you soon! Love,

Hillary

Moving Day

Hola amigos!

So, bug problem solved! Tonight after dinner I'm moving into a shared room inside the house. I am really relieved that this was solved so quickly.

Today I got out of work 45 minutes early because nothing was happening. So where do you think I went?! I went to see the Zac Efron store!!

It was lame. They sold polos, and possible gowns as well. After that severe disappointment, I walked to Plaza Colon, in the trendy area I've mentioned, and got ice cream from a store called Dumbo! I realized only too late that Dumbo also serves food. If I hadn't already bought the ice cream I would've sat down and had lunch, but to save face I walked around the Plaza first. I thought about returning to Dumbo to eat, but decided to try this Brazilian restaurant right next door. I had this pineapple milk juice drink and a really yummy fried dough with spicy chicken inside. It was wonderful. I will be returning there often.

Not much else to report today! Happy early Friday! Love,

Hillary

Oh Hell No

Alright, so as you all know, my room is not connected to the house.

It's next to the house, probably 7 feet away. It's location behind the bushes brings to mind a tool shed. As you all also know, I do not like bugs. In my first week here I've found a small spider, a large bug resembling a rolli polli, and a cricket in my room. Spread over 6 days, and that isn't too much to bear. Then this afternoon, I found another cricket that also looked like a very small centipede. After I killed it with my hiking boot, I tried to forget about it and move on. About an hour ago I noticed another cricket/centipede thing on my wall (where it still sits right now). It is small, so I tried to ignore it. Then, as I looked up from my computer screen, I saw a big black spider the size of my palm, right above my door. This was the last straw. It was moving somewhat quickly so, after I brushed off a small panic attack, I ran out the door and as luck would have it, my only male housemate was walking right past my door. He killed the spider and I immediately e-mailed my volunteer coordinator to request to move to another private room in this house as soon as one opened up.

At this point I was having extreme difficulty sitting on my bed and not looking up toward the walls of my room every minute. It was just as I was writing the e-mail that I saw a much smaller spider near my window (which doesn't shut). I killed this one with a shoe and a wad of tissues, and finished my very dramatic and pleading e-mail. Then I decided it was time to call it a night and go brush my teeth. I also asked my housemates if they ever had bug problems. Which of course they didn't, because as my Canadian housemate put it, "we live inside.." I solemnly walked back into my room and decided to spray my doorframe with Off Deep Woods. As I turned to look at the wall, ANOTHER BIG BLACK SPIDER CRAWLED INTO MY ROOM FROM A CRACK IN THE FRAME. Oh Hell no. It was like a scene from a horror movie. I felt trapped. I couldn't leave because the spider was huge and was on my door. I waited for it to move to my wall and I ran to the kitchen semi-hysterical and got another one of my housemates to come kill it. By the time we got back to my room, it was gone. You'd be wrong if you think that would be enough for me, I had her check behind the wardrobe and she found it and killed it.

I decided to send another frantic message to my volunteer coordinator just to make my point. I also might be sleeping on the couch tonight if I see one more thing in my room.

Love, a very traumatized,

Hillary

Drug Transport, The Bachelorette, and Zac Efron

Hey guys!

This is day 7 of my time in Cochabamba! I have now lived in Bolivia for one week. Since everything is so new to me, it feels more like one month than one week. This morning I spotted 13 stray dogs on my way to work.

It took an entire day and night, but I was able to download this weeks episode of The Bachelorette off of iTunes! It is probably not normal how happy that made me, or that I was willing to wait that long for it to download.

Moving on- today at work it was a pretty slow day. By ten o'clock most of the patients were gone and I was able to weigh a couple of kids. I also was asked to call patients into the nurses room once it was their turn. You'd think this was easy, but the names here are not easy to say, especially because they do things like pronounce the letter "r" like a "z" about half the time. I kept having to ask the nurses how to say a name before I could turn around and yell it out loud. At 10:30am one of the nurses handed me a mini cooler carrying vaccines, and said "vamanos!" She was really nice and smiley and I followed her across the street. She was still wearing all white and I still had on my medical shirt from the dentist in the clinic with toothbrushes all over it. I asked where we were going and she said the name of something I didn't know, and said it is very far and we have to take two different taxis to get there. We took the 131 which went down the America street (the rich area). I was glad to have the opportunity to learn about a new taxi trufi route, especially through this area that I have become so curious about. After all, it is where I got my frosted flakes! We passed by several trendy looking restaurants, which shocked me because I haven't seen anything trendy since I've been here. All the stores and restaurants we passed looked much more like places I see in the states than anywhere else in Cochabamba.

And then it happened, we passed a clothing store with a logo that was hard to read so I was staring at it trying to make out the word. On the window to the store was a huge picture of Zac Efron wearing a shirt with that logo on it! Other than the 9 year old picture of Britney Spears taped on the inside of a bus, Zac Efron is the first American star I have seen a picture of here, and definitely the first on an advertisement. I realize it could be photoshopped onto his shirt, but who cares! Needless to say I will be returning to this shop...soon.

We made it back to the clinic right as it was time for me to end my shift for the day, and I turned around and came back to my neighborhood to grab a bite to eat and sit down and watch the Bachelorette.

Really quickly I want to explain something I ate yesterday. First of all, the food here is mostly fried stuff and/or chicken or some other kind of meat with white rice. My lunch was fried chicken, fries, and what I believe was a plantain. I usually hate plantains, but I LOVED this one. I found out that in the states people commonly make them with bananas, but here they use plantanos (not to be confused with platanos which are bananas) to make this food. It was served to me without the peel but otherwise a whole banana (well not banana..plantano) and it was baked like a sweet potato. It was salty on the outside and tasted banana-y on the inside. It had the consistency of a potato. It was great!

That's it for today! Love,

Hillary

"¡Ayúdeles! ¡Moverte!"

Hey peeps!

Some things I have noticed that are absent from Cochabamba: stop signs, black people, asian people.

Stuff I learned today: we have a nighttime security guard.

Now on to my day- so today when it came to observe the nurses, it went a little differently. My boss told me to learn by observation and had me sit in a chair by the nurses desk to observe, from which I couldn't see anything. After an hour of this, I felt really silly and got up and stood by the doorway where I could see the action a bit better. My boss came in and before he went back to his office he said, "Hillary, Ayudeles! Moverte!" Which means, "Help them! Move around!" (He said this in an encouraging way not a mean way). I was confused and didn't know how I was allowed to help. Should I steal one of the medical students' patients and take his temperature? What am I supposed to do? There was a patient about my age who had been brought in passed out who was now awake, and my boss told me I should get her history. Her history?! I can barely communicate with him! Thankfully her history had already been written down. The medical students weren't there yesterday, but they were a bit better at teaching. I think they took pity on me because I looked pathetic and lost. One of the medical students, not the nurses, gave me my first task. I was asked to take the temperature of the now conscious girl, which I did! I mean, I've done this at Condell Hospital in Libertyville, but the machine here is different, I'm not at home, and I haven't interacted with patients in a few years, so I was relieved. Then when things slowed down a different med student had me practice taking blood pressure on his arm.

At one point a little later on, there was a 1 year old boy on a medical table with his mom and a nurse. The nurse said something in spanish to someone other than the two she was with, and after I looked around I realized I was the only one in there, and she was talking to me. I went over and saw that the little boy had a fairly deep cut directly below his eyebrow. The nurse said something and I figured out she wanted me to hold his eye shut so she could tape the wound closed. AND WE DIDN'T HAVE GLOVES. It wasn't really bleeding at this point but there was a bit of blood in the wound, and while I held his eye closed and stroked his hair while he screamed, she cleaned the wound, swabbed it with iodine, and tried to tape the wound. In my professional opinion, he needed a couple stitches, but I'm not sure they do that at this clinic. He kept crying, so the the tape wasn't sticking, and his long eyelashes kept getting in the way. Eventually the nurse settled for taping gauze over the wound which worked better. The mom kept trying to get him to stop crying by trying to get him to breast feed, which was a bit odd. Immediately afterwards I used their hand sanitizer liberally. When I told this story to one of my housemates, she gave me a brilliant idea! Getting gloves in the clinic can be what I use my mini grant for! (Every volunteer pays $75 included in the cost for their room that they can apply to use for little projects like this).

Side note, almost every time I've told a Bolivian person that I'm from Chicago, I get remarks about Al Capone and the Mafia. Almost as often as that, I will get a comment about Obama. (I remind them of Oprah, don't worry).

Love,

Hillary

First Day at Work

Hola amigos!

First order of business, a funny story: I met a guy who will be in France studying at the same school I will be studying at in the fall! What a small world!

Today was my first real day at work. Like I said, I had to do the public transit thing on my own this time. It turned out not to be a problem at all. The only problems I had were that I thought I'd passed the health clinic and that I was going to have to do the entire route and circle to get back to the clinic (but I didn't). I also practiced saying "I'm getting off here!" in spanish the entire time, and when it came time for me to say that (as we zipped past the clinic), I froze for a second. Don't worry though, I recovered quickly and was only a block past the clinic. I also grossly overestimated the time it would take to get there and was over 15 minutes early. Let me tell you- it is very cold at 7:45 in the morning in Bolivia in the middle of winter. Not to mention I got up an hour before that. I'm not complaining though, it is nothing compared to Chicago at that time in the middle of winter. It's just weird to pull on jeans and a fleece (and to be cursing myself that I haven't bought a winter hat here yet) when all I want to wear at noon is shorts and a sports bra. But I'm getting off topic.

First I did some patient entry into the computers. There was a girl who was getting checked in who was probably 13 and when the employee asked her if she was a student, she said no, she was employed. I learned that every child under 5 receives free health care in Bolivia. I also learned that the dental exams for anyone over 5 cost 86 (U.S.) cents. At 9:15 the director called me into his office. I seriously thought I'd been fired already. They gave me a sprite and I thought, "oh no here it comes, they are softening the blow." As it turns out he just wanted me to learn how to sign myself in. I was moved to work with the nurses, which I liked a lot more. While I was observing in the nurses room, the dirtiest and cutest street dog I've ever seen walked in and sniffed a little boy about to be examined, and then laid down under the nurses desk. I pointed this out to a nurse and she acted like I'd just told her 2 + 2 is 4. A different nurse halfway shooed the dog out once it started to get close to the scale and the beds. The little kids are so cute. The traditional women carry their babies on their backs in a colorful blanket looking thing that they tie in front of their chests. (It has a name in Kechua but I don't remember it).

I've mentioned this with my room before, but the buildings here are impervious to the heat. This afternoon at the clinic it was probably 80 degrees outside but we were all shivering inside the clinic (and there is no A/C). While we stood outside to soak up a bit of sun, this 3 year old girl walked up to me and tried to give me her squeeky toy duck. I proceeded to play with this girl for the next half an hour, it was awesome. Before I left the director of the clinic showed me a video clip of a music video and a video clip from Lord of the Dance. I didn't understand why but my guess is maybe he knew the girl in the video? He also seems to really likes Irish Dance. He also told me he'd love the dvd or cd from Lord of the Dance, so I might see what I can do about that :-)

I left work and got lunch at a restaurant. I pointed to a picture that looked good on the menu and I believe he called it pollo retornable. I don't know but it was pulled chicken, peas (which I actually didn't mind!), chopped peppers, potatoes, and jalapenos all mixed together. It was delicious, but I tipped too much. I gave a normal American tip because I figured it was better than leaving too little- I intend to return there. I asked someone here and apparently if you tip at all, you don't leave more than 10%. Oops!

Hasta Luego!

Hillary

Shooting, Lab Coats, and Paralysis

Happy Sunday!

What I thought for the first couple of days after I'd arrived were loud children outside my house, I have decided are actually birds that make noises I have never heard before. They are really loud and may be pets because sometimes the neighbors yell at them to "shut up."

It is Sunday and I guess everything here shuts down on Sunday. My new Irish friend told me this, and he is absolutely right because I heard about 1/8 of the street noise I usually hear. Today I read and finished a book Rachel lent me called "One for the Money" that involves crime and shooting and violence. I alternated between my doorway, which gets all the intense sun, and the rest of my room which is too good at insulating itself from all the heat so it is a bit chilly in the middle of the day in 80 degree temps. I heard firecrackers throughout the day that sounded a lot like gunshots, which fed my already on edge nerves from reading this book all day. (I loved the book Rachel!) So that was today- but let's go back to Friday.

Friday was my visit to my volunteer site, and my introduction to how to get there. A really nice Bolivian employee at the office went with me to show me where to go to catch a Taxi Trufi, which if I haven't already mentioned, is like a shared cab that has a specific route like a bus. So we walk a few blocks to a busy street and hail the 132, which took us like 15 minutes to find one. It was already really crowded but we got in and traveled about 15 minutes to the Health Center. You pay 1.50 bolivianos when you get off (about 20 cents or something), and to stop you say "Pare por favor!" or "Voy a bajar." The clinic was filled with moms and their young children. I met the director who asked me what I wanted from my experience. I wasn't expecting an interview and it was conducted in spanish so I was really sloppily portrayed because my first response was "no se..uh.." which means I don't know. I eventually came up with an answer that seemed ok. Anyway he was nice and showed me around the clinic and I met the staff which are half med students from the area. Then I watched a nurse give an infant a shot in the shoulder, and the director showed me a desk with a computer and said something about it not working but I have a hunch that my first assignment has something to do with using it. At least I hope so.

We returned to our neighborhood via a bus, called just "trufi," this way she said, I would know both ways. I didn't understand everything she said but I do not intend on using the bus system, it was less comfortable and dropped me off in different spot that has no easy landmarks, albeit a block closer to home. Tomorrow I am doing this on my own and my work day is from 8am to noon. I was informed by Sustainable Bolivia that I need a lab coat. And I had two options for where to go to buy one:

I could A) go to the med school that the employee pointed out on our way to the clinic, or B) go to the corner of Columbia and Laza, which is what the volunteer coordinator believed would lead me to a shop where they sold this stuff, but she wasn't sure. Since I didn't remember how far it was to the Med school, and what exactly it looked like, I tried the cross-street given to me by my volunteer coordinator. It was only 8 or so blocks away so I walked. It was the middle of the day and very very hot. I didn't expect the altitude to affect my walking stamina but it did. I got to the corner and walked up Columbia and down Laza one block in each direction, but found nothing. So I back tracked and walked up the street where the Med School had been. When I was about 2 blocks up on this street, I noticed a Western looking guy pass me by, so I followed him down the street because,...well I don't know why. After about 5 more blocks of following him and looking for the med school, I ran into a big black dog that was barking at everyone. It didn't start barking at the western guy until he was almost past him, so that guy got past fine. Then, it walked towards me and kept barking so I sat on a bench trying to act cool, but I reverted to my intense fear of dogs and got up and crossed the street and headed back towards my house. (It barked at a Bolivian family too and they also freaked out so it wasn't just me!) A 4 year old tried to take my water bottle on my walk back to the house which is strange because this isn't the type of area where kids commonly do that. I decided I wasn't meant to get the lab coat that day and I'd have to hope the Clinic Director could help. I was also frustrated that this was a requirement but no one at the office could tell me where exactly to go. Anyway I've decided not to worry about the lab coat. The dog was a strong enough signal of that- as it turns out I was heading towards the bus terminal where people commonly get pick pocketed. So.. yay scary dog! Oh just a side note- Cochabamba has an alarmingly high number of stray dogs. All of whom, except scary black dog, ignore people and hold their heads down sniffing along the sidewalks.

Oh also! My mom treated all my jeans and all my button down shirts with mosquito repellant for clothing. It is supposed to last a week or so. The day I got here I started to notice my nose feeling tingly every time I touched it. I also noticed the tips of my fingers feeling tingly too. I didn't want to overreact, how could I have contracted some fatal paralysis disease already! Friday morning while waiting at the office to leave for the clinic, it hit me. My nose has been kind of sniffly because of the temperature shifts here, and I've been touching it with my shirt sleeve or my hand. My hands have been constantly touching my jeans and my shirt to roll up my shirt sleeves! This stuff is strong! I made an effort all day Friday to not touch my clothing and it started to lessen. Now that I've gone two days without wearing the treated clothing over the weekend (I've been in sweats and t-shirts), it hasn't happened at all.

Talk to you soon!

Love,

Hillary

My Neighborhood, Milk, and the Weather

Why hello there!

My Neighborhood:

I want to show everyone my neighborhood. We live in a somewhat richer area than most of this region of Bolivia (not the richest, I'll get to that later) but it is generally a safe part of Cochabamba. This picture below is of Plaza Sucre, there are tons of small plazas/parks like this in Cochabamba and this one is beautiful. I took this picture today (Saturday) but the city is extremely bustling and hectic during the week.

I just realized yesterday why the look of Cochabamba wasn't feeling new to me, it's because a lot of Cochabamba reminds me of parts of Southern California. Both places have tall solid cement-like fences, gates, palm trees, loud traffic, and spanish music playing conspicuously all night long. This picture below is my street (my gate is behind those flowering trees).

The Cristo is a big tourist attraction that I'll probably try to go visit but walkers often get their cameras stolen so if I go I'll take the little ski lifts up the mountain. Anyway I can see the Cristo on my short walk around the corner to the office.

Milk:

Finally, I wanted to take a picture of my milk. It is in a bag if you haven't noticed. I also bought salt in a bag because they didn't have them in shakers. I got this milk (and Frosted Flakes) from a grocery store on Calle America. America is an ironic name for this street, I think you'll see why. I went with a housemate via taxi trufi (shared cab) there and this is the richest area in Cochabamba. I could tell this just by the grocery store, which actually had a parking lot. There were lots of imported goods from the U.S. that were pretty pricey (like my frosted flakes) but the most expensive seemed to be the chocolates (they had ferrero rocher!). In line at this store we met a Canadian. The housemate that I went with is also Canadian so we struck up a conversation. Small world, eh? My housemate told me this area has some new, modern high rise apartment buildings and trendy cafes.

Something interesting that I learned from the same housemate (who graduated as an engineer, had a job but didn't like it, and is taking a year off to figure things out) is that when parents are put in jail for committing a crime, the children of those parents move into the jail as well. She volunteers for a day camp type program that provides a safe place for these kids to be until they have to go back to the jail for the evening and night. When she mentioned this to the Canadian teacher at the grocery store, she was as shocked as I was when I learned this.

The Weather:

June 23rd is the coldest night of the year in Cochabamba, after that it gradually warms up and I'm told that by August the nights will be warm. As it is now, the nights are getting colder and colder. Thank goodness the heat in our apartment was temperamental this year, because now it's no biggie. My room blocks out a lot of the heat during the day, which is nice because during the day the heat is really intense. However, this means that it is freezing at night. It probably gets down to the 40's at night and warms up by 10ish in the morning. Oh, and apparently there is a festival in the mountains on June 23rd to celebrate that involves dancing, bonfires, and sacrificing a llama if you stay long enough to see that.

I'm going to update again later with a couple stories. Stay tuned!

Love,

Hillary