Condensed Past Week

Hi everyone!!

I'm leaving in a few hours for a night bus to La Paz. From there we're going to make our way up to Lake Titicaca for Saturday and Sunday nights. Monday night I'm staying in a La Paz hostel that has a micro brew! I'll be back on Tuesday so expect a "Lake Titicaca" post by Wednesday night! For now I thought I'd give you all the condensed version of my past week.

I changed rooms because one of the double rooms became empty. Now I have a full length mirror and no roommate! The light went out a few days after I moved in there but it was too high up for me to reach, even standing on a chair. I went the whole weekend circulating between charging my electronics in the daytime, and plugging in a lamp around 5pm when the sun goes down. Monday the repair guy came in to fix the bulb but all he did was take it out, he didn't put in a new one. Tuesday he came back and now I have light!

There is a new guy at work. He's only going to be here for a month and now he's got 2 weeks left. He's 23, mormon, and speaks very good portuguese because he did his mission thing in Brazil for 2 years. My first day back to work after the Solar was Día de los Trabajadores de Salud (health workers day), so the only people who came in were the two doctors and a few nursing students. That left me and New Guy to check in patients and answer questions all on our own, without Waldo! Waldo is the guy who works the front desk and tag teams with me while I check patients into the computer. The next day at work Waldo was back. The way we do it is Waldo talks to the people as they come in, he takes their insurance card, passes it to me, and then he goes to get their file while I check them into the database. Well, this day New Guy decides he's going to try to intercept our process and take my job. This is the only responsibility I really have at work. As Waldo goes to pass me an insurance card, New Guy stands up and takes it from him. Waldo took it back and told New Guy that I was the one he passed the cards to, and after I was done New Guy could take the card to the nurses room a few steps away. I felt so special! I also feel sort of bad because all New Guy does is walk 5 steps to the nurses room and put some paper on a desk. And he only does this like 5 times between 8:00 am and 9:00 am and then his job (as well as mine) is done. But whatever, I was there first!

I made Rachel cookies here! I had to add an egg, use less sugar, cook it at a higher temperature for longer time, and add more flour to adjust for the altitude in baking, but they turned out amazingly! We only have one cookie sheet.. that is actually a cake pan.. and a tiny oven, so it took a few hours to get it all done, but everyone loved them and it was worth having to go to 3 different stores to get all the ingredients I needed.

Last week I went to Super Haas, the German grocery store, and on the way I passed a disturbing sight. There are tons of homeless people in Cochabamba, and tons of women and children begging, but this was different for some reason. On the corner right outside of Super Haas was this lady sitting cross-legged, breast-feeding her baby, not trying to conceal her chest at all. Directly in front of her legs were two 3 or 4 year olds asleep on a heap of some kind of clothing or blankets. As I walked past her I looked at her face and she had the eyes of a teenager but her skin was tough looking and weathered. She was also filthy and seemed extremely small. Bolivian women on average are probably 5 foot 1, but she must have been closer to 4 foot 7, I could see that even though she was sitting down. She looked a little, well crazy for lack of a better word, and young and old at the same time. She held her hand out and pushed it in front of me so that I had to bump into her arm as I walked past. Normally I wouldn't have given it a second thought but something about that situation disturbed me. I felt sad definitely, but also sort of alarmed and disappointed. I don't really know exactly but I thought I'd mention it.

Oh, last week after work I also saw a Medicos Sin Fronteras van! (Doctors Without Borders). It was really cool. I also visited Palacio Portales, a mansion in Cochabamba that gives tours. Simon Patiño owned the house back in the early 20th century. He was Bolivian and got rich when he bought a mine that was later found to be a tin mine. He built this house and had everything imported from Europe to copy the French, Italian, and English styles. He never actually lived in the house but everything but the 3rd floor is used for cultural events. (The third floor is where his grandkids live when they visit once a year to look after his foundation). It was beautiful and didn't feel like Bolivia, which was odd. Everything was an imitation of famous design styles in Europe, so it felt sort of like an insincere mansion, design-wise at least.

Last Friday I went to a restaurant called Kabob that is mediterranean style. It smelled delicious but I'd already eaten dinner and I just went to tag along. I'm definitely going back though to try the chicken kabobs. (All they have are kabobs of various types of meat and one vegetarian option). I left dinner to meet Clara and Sarah for a drink at a nearby wine bar. Sarah's boyfriend Dave met us after a little while and we had a great time sitting around chatting. The wine bar was actually pretty impressive but very tiny. We also stopped by a bar called "Muela del Diablo" (Devil's Molar). We grabbed a table and talked for a little while more before calling it a night. It was a very relaxed alternative to what some of the SB volunteers spend their nights doing: club hopping and salsa dancing until 4:00 am. Which is, let's just say not for me..

The next night, Saturday, I went to the main house for a space-invader-themed despedida. There I met a dorky guy from Miami who goes to Princeton. He was trying to be friendly but came off as extremely arrogant. He loves NU's campus though! I got bored there quickly. After my eye candy left I went straight over to Sarah's apartment to hang out with Dave, Sarah, and Clara. I'd brought my mace with me to be on the safe side even though I was taking a cab. At Sarah and Dave's place Dave asked to try it out. He put his arm out to his side and sprayed it in the direction opposite of all of us. It came out in a very narrow stream, powerfully. He turned to us, I believe to relay his surprise that it came out so fast, when he started coughing uncontrollably and had to excuse himself from the room! After a few minutes all of us started to feel a weird tickling feeling in our throat. It was from the mace! That stuff is strong! But now I know it works! I also know that if I'm ever forced to use it I need to stop breathing for the few seconds when I'm around it. It's powerful stuff.

The next night I started to feel under the weather, and for the next few days I felt sick and stayed home from work until I returned Thursday. Today at work I went out with New Guy and the nursing students to survey the surrounding hills to see who under 5 has not yet had all of the suggested vaccinations. Lots of dogs decided to prove to us that they could bark louder than their neighboring dogs, and that got old fast. Through one house's gate I saw two of the biggest ducks I have ever seen in my life. I mean this one duck was probably as tall as my belly button. It was white with orange beak and orange feet and was beautiful. I have no idea what they were doing in the front yard of this run down house in the hills of Cochabamba, but there they were! I also saw a litter of puppies that were probably a couple of months old.

I got back from work today to watch our water turn off halfway through washing my hands. The water just stopped coming out of the faucet. I tried the shower, but that wasn't on either. I went to the kitchen where it came out of the faucet in little more than drips. After a minute the kitchen water stopped coming altogether as well. I used a half-full liter water bottle to put some water on the stove to boil for some kraft mac-and-cheese that mom sent me. Two of the burners wouldn't light, but I got a 3rd burner to light.

Sidenote: have I told you how I light my stove here? You have to use a match, turn on the gas, and then hold the match to the burner to wait for it to light. It's either very old school or very ghetto, or both. It takes a full minute or more to light the oven because you have to hold the gas on for 30 seconds, then drop a lit match into a hole in the bottom of the oven, and hope it lights. Most times it doesn't and you have to wait a little while longer before you trying to drop another match.

But back to the water situation. I hadn't showered since Wednesday afternoon, and I was really looking forward to showering before my trip to La Paz, especially since we might not get to shower until our micro-brew hostel on Monday. After waiting a few hours, and watching the toilet water put on a water fountain display, it became apparent that the water situation wasn't going to be fixed quickly. I packed some things in a bag and took a cab to Sarah's apartment to use their shower. It was heavenly.

Wednesday and Thursday of this week, the clinic was only taking emergencies. The government hasn't paid their salaries and so they're cutting back significantly until they get paid. As of today they still hadn't gotten paid but they took in the normal amount of appointments. I'll update as soon as I find out more about what's going on, but when I asked all anyone could tell me was "I don't know, the government ran out of money or something."

By the way, after 5 weeks in Bolivia, I'm starting to really miss certain foods. More than I think I realized. The other night I got into a mild argument about U.S. cereals with Sarah (my Luna Lovegood housemate not my airport friend with the lovely apartment that I've been talking about), who is Canadian. She was saying that all the U.S. cereals have the "bad sugar" and that Canadian bran cereal is healthier than U.S. bran cereal. Something inside me snapped and I felt like I had to stick up for our cereals. I argued that there are plenty of healthy cereals in the U.S., and a lot of them that even taste good too! Like Smart Start, or Cheerios. Sarah tried to tell me that Cheerios are bad for you too, and I blurted out "I don't even want to hear it!" It wasn't as tense as it sounds, but I was as upset as it sounds. And even writing it now, I'm upset again that someone tried to put down my Cheerios! I'm hoping my food cravings for Ben & Jerry's, Jamba Juice, Indian food, and Panera, will not get stronger but hopefully wane rapidly over the next month. Ooh and breakable cookies,..and Brownberry Oatnut sandwich bread,...and Yoplait custard style yogurt..salads.. You get the point.

Ok folks, I'm out! Hopefully when I get back I'll have some great pictures of Lake Titicaca and Copacabana! Oh and not to mention the micro brew hostel.

Cuídanse! Love,

Hillary