Siste time!

I can't even think of where to begin this post. I feel like I should be finding some way to conclude this whole incredible semester, but I know it's absurd to think that I'd be able to do that, even with pages and pages of writing. I'm flying home on Tuesday and I really can't wrap my mind around what it will be like to leave this place.

We had our final presentations of our projects this past weekend. Most of the projects were thirty minute presentations about our topics, methodology, and findings, but for me and Laura (those who wrote children's books) and Nicole (who wrote a week-long curriculum for a fourth grade class), they consisted of a brief presentation to the group and then we got to read our books to a group of kids who came to the evaluations specifically for story time. It was without a doubt one of the most rewarding experiences of my entire life. This project felt more meaningful than any other work I've ever done, and to have the opportunity to present it to the people it was meant for was absolutely incredible. Afterwards, the kids asked me a bunch of questions about the book and gave me terrific feedback. I went back to my seat glowing after the presentation. It was one of the best feelings I've ever had.

Evaluations made the previous week, when I got approximately 3 hours of sleep over a five-day period, completely worth it, which is impressive, considering the illustrations were the most daunting task I think I've ever taken on. I had decided that, since I'm hardly an artist when drawing by hand, I would undertake an alternative form of art for the illustrations for the book. Inspired by the Eric Carle books I read so often as a child, I decided to make collages. The Monday before the projects were due, I went to a paper store to buy my supplies. I learned several new words when trying to explain to the woman behind the counter that I needed thick paper (cartulina), paint that works on that paper (tempera), and a brush for the paint (though I forget that word), among other things. When I asked for scissors, she brought out a pair that may have actually been made of paper themselves and told me they would cost 2 bolivianos, approximately 26 cents. So I asked for a more expensive pair and we settled on a 5 boliviano pair, which comes to less than one dollar. Okay. They were essentially those scissors you used in third grade, before you were allowed to use scissors with points and metal handles. But the woman assured me they would work on the cartulina, so away I went with my bag full of art supplies.

The illustrating process then proceeded to take me all week, possibly a result of the spontaneous study break I took in order to, oh, you know, take an eleven hour bus ride to the salt flats of Uyuni, widely known as one of the most beautiful places on earth. Okay, okay, so maybe I shouldn't have impulsively left the department of Cochabamba during the last week of our final projects, but I have wanted to go to the salt flats all semester and never had time, and my friend Angela (a Bolivian friend, no less!) called me on Monday night and told me she had free bus tickets to Uyuni and we'd only have to pay for the tour. This is unheard of, and there usually aren't even buses that go from Cochabamba to Uyuni; you have to go to Oruro and find one from there. And need I say that typically you have to pay for the bus fare? There was no way I was passing up that opportunity. I agreed on the condition that she promised that it would be only one night, so that we left on Wednesday morning and would be back on Thursday night. I told myself I needed a study break, so on Wednesday morning, after pulling one of several all-nighters that week, I hopped on a bus with Angela and three of her friends to Uyuni...only to find myself at a blockade about twenty minutes outside of the city.

Blockades are the Bolivian way of getting demands met. Since many cities are connected by only one major road, anyone who wants to make an annoying scene just has to get together a group of people and a pile of rocks and no one is going anywhere all day. What I don't understand is why they don't find a way to blockade the airport instead. I find it very frustrating that typically all they manage to accomplish with road blockades is piss off the working- and middle-class people of Bolivia while the elites, the people they are trying to move, continue to jet around the country in the air. But road blockades are an age-old tradition of the Bolivian people. We pulled up at the blockade, only second or third in a line of cars and buses that continued to grow in length and in restlessness all morning. Almost immediately, all of the street vendors in the area began to load up their trays and circulate throughout the crowd with chicharrón con maíz tostado (little fried pork bits with toasted kernels of corn), choclo con quesillo (corn on the cob that you eat with a salty cheese), pollo frito (fried chicken), helados (ice cream), and cold bottles of water and soda. Needless to say, I bought everything in sight, being an American with the tendency to hoard and the constant terror that at some point I might actually run out of food. I paced in anxious circles around the area, occasionally participating in the increasingly irritated chants of "queremos pasar!" ("we want to pass!"), though not too actively for fear that I would be caught on the news cameras that had begun to accumulate around the scene (we weren't allowed to participate in street demonstrations). Eventually, four hours after we got to the blockade and about twenty minutes before we were about to give up and go back to Cochabamba, the police showed up and cleared the blockade in some way that I'd like to think did not involve tear gas, though I really am not sure. And we continued on our way to the salt flats!

We got to Uyuni a little after midnight that night and asked the bus to drop us at a cheap hotel. Upon entering Hotel Avenida, also known as Ciudad del Gringo (that may not have been its official name but that's what we called it), we discovered that it was indeed quite cheap, possibly the cheapest option in the entire touristy city of Uyuni. The narrow passage that led to the rooms was lit by a single flickering bulb hanging from the ceiling and the peeling salmon colored paint on the walls gave away that it probably had not undergone any renovations in a while. I am used to sleeping in places like that, being a budget traveling gringa myself, but Angela and her friends were less pleased. We had a light dinner of sardines with lime on crackers (that which remained of the snacks we had packed almost an entire day earlier) and went to bed.

We woke up to a bright, clear day, perfect for visiting the brilliant and expansive salt flats (provided you have a good pair of sunglasses). We bought a tour from the agency next to the hostel, grabbed a quick breakfast of coffee and toast (and in my case, scrambled eggs-need that protein), and got into a Toyota SUV to begin the trek out to the flats. Our group consisted of the five of us and a hilarious French boy who we soon discovered was deaf (after Judy, one of the girls, asked him, "So, are we going to be friends?" to no response). Luckily, Angela speaks ASL, so although it's different from French sign language, we were able to communicate with a mixture of signs and other hand motions and writing. I was so impressed that he was traveling alone in a country where he doesn't really speak the language. I'm so glad he was on our tour; he really made it an even more beautiful experience.

Our guide brought us around to various places around the flats, and as we got further and further into the flats the salt got whiter and whiter until suddenly it was blinding to look out of the windows. We asked him if we could stop to take pictures, and when he pulled the car to a stop, we jumped out and scattered in all different directions, running as fast as we could. I think it must be a human instinct to run towards the horizon when you sense you're standing on the edge of something infinite. After a few seconds of instinct, however, reality took over-we were something like 4000 meters above sea level, and running is not easy when you're not used to living in the altiplano. We collapsed on the ground, which was so bright it looked like its own source of radiant light. Then we took the standard salt flat pictures-posing with someone standing far behind you so that it looks like they are miniature, and jumping because it just seems like the right thing to do. Then we got back into the car and continued on to eat lunch at a salt hotel (yes, a hotel made of salt) where Marcus would be staying for the night. Afterwards, we visited La Isla del Pescado, the most touristy part of the whole trip, but it was worth it. We climbed to the top of the hill on the island and looked out at the entire flat (and the sea of Toyotas down below-it looked like a commercial) and it was completely breathtaking. I realized afterwards that I hadn't thought of the work I should have been doing the whole time, and it was really refreshing. We headed back to Uyuni, hopped on the bus, and slept. Despite a slight inconvenience in Oruro, where we stopped at 2:30 in the morning to change buses and didn't leave again until 4:00, it was a relaxing trip and we made it back to Cochabamba around 8:00, when I proceeded to get back to work and try to make sense of the fact that I had just taken what will probably be the coolest, most spontaneous trip of my life.

I just realized I haven't mentioned yet that Ali is here! She bussed down from Colombia starting about two weeks ago and arrived at 5 in the morning on Monday! It's so incredible to have her here, not just because I've missed her painfully so much of this time but because I'm finally getting to share this beautiful new home of mine with someone from what seems like my previous life. I know I won't ever be able to convey so many of these experiences with anyone who hasn't been here for all of it, but I'm also thinking that it's kind of special to have something that is only mine. Not like a secret, but just something that I can close my eyes and think of and smile. I don't feel ready to leave, but I know that I will be back.

Thanksgiving is gone; Capitalist Christmas is here

Christmas decorations have been up all over the city for a month. I guess with no Thanksgiving to get in the way, it makes sense to start capitalizing on the holiday season right after Halloween (which is also becoming a major holiday here, and is pronounced "HA-low-een", which for some reason is so much more fun to say than hall-0-WEEN. Try it.) but it's still strange to have to squeeze by plastic Christmas trees covered in an abundance of gold garland every time I go to my favorite salteñería. It seems to me that there are not stores specifically meant for trinkets like there are in the US (i.e. the aptly named Christmas Tree Shop), but rather arbitrary restaurants and clothing shops have put out their Christmas stock as if it were to be expected that you would only have to make one stop for all of your empanada and ornament needs. I've stopped trying to make sense of things here and I'm just trying to soak it all in before I leave in three weeks.

Speaking of leaving...I don't even know what to say about it. I feel so torn between how badly I'm going to miss this place and how excited I am, for instance, to have the luxury of pants that fit because they have been dried in a dryer. I swear I'll never complain about having to walk down a flight of stairs to change my clothes from one machine to the other. When I feel really sad about leaving, I remind myself that first of all, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I'll be back someday soon, and second of all, there are countless amenities that I had no idea I would miss until I got here. For example, bathrooms. I've come up with a list of criteria (complete with a point system) for the ideal bathroom here (I've yet to find it), all things that go without saying in the US but are quite the luxury here. It is something like this:

BARE NECESSITIES
light (2 points)
working flush (2 points - or 1 if the "flush" is a bucket that you dump into the bowl to flush it)
sink with running water (3 points - I'm an avid hand-washer)
toilet paper (4 points - although this could go under "bonus points", it's so rare)
trash can (1 point - you can't flush toilet paper here)
paper towels or electric hand dryer (2 points)
lock (5 points - I've upped this point value after too many walk-ins to count)

BONUS POINTS
toilet seat (1 point - you learn to squat)
soap (2 points - you learn to carry hand sanitizer)
window or fan (3 points - as you can't flush your poopy paper, this is a welcome addition)

I think I may be missing some from the list; I haven't ever written it down, I just think about it every time I'm squatting in the dark and scrounging in my pockets for substitute toilet paper.

Thanksgiving was last Thursday (or for those of us on this program, Friday) and it was such a lovely and crazy experience. Heidi offered to host us all at her house if someone else planned the whole thing, so Laura took on that task, while Luis and I agreed to do the turkey. You may ask, why would you offer to cook a turkey for over 30 people when your oven is probably the model that came out immediately after the Easy Bake Oven and you are in the middle of a week full of interviews all over the city and, oh yeah, you've never cooked a turkey before? Well, I don't really have an answer for that question, but we did it! I went with Antonio (one of the people who works in the office of our program) to the supermarket on Tuesday and we picked out the biggest turkey they had and I lugged it back to my apartment and rearranged all the shelves in the fridge in order to begin the long defrosting process. Alas, when after two days it was still a solid block of ice, I turned to the "cold water bath" method. I think that the cold water bath implies more of a bucket or a large sink, but as everything in this country seems to be slightly smaller (or maybe I'm just sensitive because I'm an extra large gringa in a short person country), the only place where the turkey would fit was Luis's bathtub. We dumped the bird in the tub and began preparation for the feast. We managed to procure a meat thermometer from Heidi, as well as a bottle of rosemary and another bottle of some other unidentified spice, which we mixed together along with other unmarked bags of spices we found at the corner store near Luis's house. Presumably we used olive oil, pepper, garlic, rosemary, bay leaves, sage, and thyme, but we're actually pretty unsure of the exact contents of the rub. Still, I must say, when we slathered it on the (finally defrosted by 5 am Friday morning) turkey, it smelled reaaaally good. Luis's oven has no temperatures written on it, so we popped it in at "level 3" and waited. We had gotten up at dawn because we were worried it wouldn't be done in time for lunch, and of course that little plastic tab popped right out at 10:30 am. Awesome. Still, I think the sitting in its juices did it good, because that bird was de-licious. And now I can say I've cooked a turkey. In Bolivia. It was quite the experience.

As for my final project, which I suppose I should mention, it's been going really well! I haven't finished writing the book yet, but I've been writing it simultaneously while conducting my field work, and I think it's good I haven't finished yet because everyone I speak with gives me new ideas about what to write. It's so rewarding to present my idea and my partially written story to people and have them say, "Wow, that same thing happened to me!" I met this 18 year old girl who literally gasped at every plot point I described to her and then excitedly gave me her number so that I could run the story by her when I'm finished. I'm so encouraged by the excitement that others have about my project. I'm excited about it too, of course, but to hear it from others is so much more satisfying. I really hope that I can reciprocate all of this support and assistance that I've gotten from so many people.

That said, I do have my setbacks, of course. Today I hopped on a taxi-trufi out to Tiquipaya, which is about a half hour away, to interview a teacher and (I hoped) the director of an alternative "eco-active" school there. To get there, I have to take a trufi (public transit) to the main street in Tiquipaya, then hop in a taxi that knows where this school is (it's pretty much in the woods). I was planning on stopping by the school to talk to the director and then going to teacher's house, which is close to the school. I stopped by the school and the secretary told me the director had just left and would be back tomorrow, so I went on to the teacher's house. When I called him from outside his house, he answered and said, "Oh! I'm actually at the airport right now; I forgot we had a meeting!" Frustrating. I know I should have called him before I left my house but I'm still not used to the Bolivian way of checking in over and over again about something. So I walked back to the center of town, and by the time I got there, I was in a great mood once again because literally every person I walked past on the street greeted me with a smile and a "how are you?" I wish people were this kind in the US. I'm not looking forward to arriving in Boston in bundle-up-in-your-coat-and-don't-talk-to-anyone times.

I can't believe how much everyone is willing to help me with my work here, and not resignedly but enthusiastically. I genuinely think that I'll be a kinder, more open person when I get back to the states because of the generosity of almost everyone I've met. It's a totally different world here.

The procreation of inanimate objects; new friends; a very clean scorpion

I'm not sure how it happens, but I have no doubt that when you leave your personal belongings alone in a room all day for several months, they find a way to reproduce. I'll leave the scientific explanation to someone better equipped to analyze such phenomena but suffice to say that the three bags with which I came to Bolivia have no chance of containing the contents of my room. Hence the decision to blog at three o'clock in the morning, since certainly no more packing will be done until I can procure another vessel for my things. I'm moving into a new apartment tomorrow for the last month of the program, and in the meantime getting a taste of what packing to go home will be like. It's going to be difficult to avoid the impulse to give away half of my clothes around midnight of December 21st.

I should probably be going to sleep but in addition to the packing-induced adrenaline coursing through my veins, I'm kept awake by the excitement of the Leonids shower that I might get to see in an hour or two! My host brother is the only other person in my family interested in getting up before dawn (or staying up most of the night, in my case) for the slight chance of seeing the meteors. It's cloudy here right now, and the shower isn't expected to start until around 5, and all of the articles I've read about it say that the places to see it are North America and Asia, yet I am holding out hope that the skies will part and the sun will wait a half hour or so to rise and the Earth will tilt a little bit back on its axle and the sky will be ablaze with streaks of fire. We'll see.

In all honesty, half of my excitement about the meteor shower comes from the fact that my brother offered to wake me up to see it. Before yesterday, we had exchanged approximately thirty five words throughout the whole semester, most of which occurred when my host parents and I came to a language barrier during lunch and all eyes would turn to the end of the table, where Bruno would glance up from under the brim of his baseball cap and enlighten us all with a single utterance: "meat-ball," or perhaps "goblin". He speaks English and German in addition to Spanish, plus he studies medicine, so he is the source of all answers that the rest of us seek. Okay, maybe I'm being a bit dramatic, but he is certainly intelligent and chooses very select moments to reveal the information he hides under his long black hair. But as of last night, he suddenly decided to be my friend! My host dad had been waiting all day to watch "Inglourious Basterds" as a family, which seemed to me a peculiar choice for family movie night, but nonetheless we all piled into the living room for the movie. Before my host dad could get the machines all working, Bruno asked me if I had a program called Mojo on my computer. I said no, and he explained that it's a program for downloading music from someone whose iTunes library is on your network. Apparently he's been listening to my music all semester and wants to take some of it. For those readers who are not of the music downloading generation, asking to steal someone's music is a pretty big compliment, ranking up there with what I imagine asking to borrow someone's groovy polyester top would have been in your generation. So needless to say I was flattered, and he tried to copy the program to my computer after the movie. It didn't work, but the seeds for friendship had been planted. Then tonight he came into the kitchen while I was eating dinner (mini tuna melts on crackers) and began to prepare his own meal. We don't eat dinner as family, and as we both have had a lot of work this semester, I rarely see him at night. I offered him a tuna melt cracker, and he not only obliged but made a face of sincere enjoyment at the new snack, and then introduced me to his concoction: octopus with "salsa golf" (mayonnaise and ketchup mixed together), also on crackers. Food has a lot to do with social relationships here, far more than in the US, and I think our sharing of dinners was the second step to our new friendship. That's when he took the third step, inviting me to watch the Leonids shower with him tonight. It might just be my tendency to look for patterns, but something makes me feel like now it's concrete. I feel so accomplished, but a little disappointed that I'm leaving tomorrow. It's not as if this whole time I was longing for him to be my friend, but as awesome as Lucia (my younger host sister) is, she is fifteen and thus the pastimes we have in common are limited. It would have been cool to have someone closer to my age to go out with, since the law, my host mom, and rules of age-appropriate behavior all prohibit Lucia from coming out with me at night.

The one other event of note from today also has to do with showers, but this time the literal kind. Earlier tonight, I went into my bathroom and noticed a peculiar shape on the floor of my shower. I leaned towards it a bit to figure out if it was a strategically arranged pile of dead pill-bugs, which is commonplace in my bathroom, then jumped back with what I'd like to say was an uncharacteristic yelp upon realizing what it was: a scorpion, its translucent tail poised delicately above its back. I haven't seen a scorpion in my whole time in this country, and now on my last night in this house, there it was, taking a rest in a place where I soon would be barefoot without my contacts in. Even right now, hours later, the thought of it makes my stomach flip. I have no idea if the scorpions here are deadly or just sting like wasps, but I would very much like to avoid both of those experiences. I regret to admit that rather than dealing with it the way I could have (I was wearing sneakers), I sheepishly went into the house and asked none other than Bruno to help me deal with the situation. Judging by the look on his face, he was no more confident about squishing the creature than I was, but in this case I was thankful that machismo lives on in this country, because he seemed to feel obligated to rescue me. Before stomping it to an indiscernible smear of what might as well have been the pill-bug pile after all, he took the opportunity to educate me about the lifestyles of scorpions, including the oh-so-encouraging fact that they travel in pairs, and that the smaller ones have the most potent venom (this one was no more than four centimeters long). Hopefully this one's partner will hang out somewhere outside until after I leave tomorrow afternoon. I want to feel that it's unlikely that I'll see another one in my time here, but something tells me that scorpions don't follow the the same myths that govern lightning. I might make it into a saying just to comfort myself, though. "Scorpions never bathe twice." However, as with everything else here, I can't plan on that. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Food policy, school observations, and the long weekend

Getting behind on this blog is fatal because I feel like so much is happening all the time that I never get a chance to catch up. I realized I wanted to write at least one more thing about my experience in the rural village: my experience in trying to explain the problems with US food policy. It was really surreal, in a way. One night while I was there, my family and I were all sitting around after dinner before we went to sleep and someone asked me what it was like in the US. I feel like it's hard enough to describe and explain (and defend) my life at home to city dwellers here, let alone to people for whom half of my daily activities have absolutely no relevance. As foreign as it was for me to live in a house with a stove made out of mud, washing clothes on the rocks outside, I'm an anthropology student and these things at least exist in my mind, if only in readings that I've done. But when my host dad asked me what products we grow where I'm from and I just answered "corn," we got to this surreal point in time where I knew I couldn't possibly explain the way the food industry works. It's just so absurd. The conversation went something like this:

Dad: "What products do they grow in your country?"
Me: "Well...corn."
Dad: "That's it?"
Me: "Some other things, but mostly corn. You see, we make lots of things out of corn."
Dad: "Like what?"
Me: "Like sugar. And food for other animals, like cows."
Dad: "Your cows eat corn?"
Me: "Well, yeah, to make them fat. Even though it makes them sick, and then they have to give them medicine."
Dad: "They should just let them eat grass."
If only Cupertino Guzman could talk some sense into policy makers.

Anyway, once we got back to Cochabamba, we had a crazy week of work ahead of us. We had our group projects due last Friday, so Nicole and I spent most of the week observing in classrooms around the city for our comparison of urban and rural education here. I was sort of bummed because I had missed my family (the Cochabamba one) all week and my older sister was here from La Paz with her beautiful baby daughter, but the school observations made it so that we barely had time to make it from one school to another, let alone to come home for lunch. We spent the mornings in a K-8 school in the center of town and we got to see a fair where they displayed all of the "manualidades" which are like crafts I guess, but practical ones like tablecloths and ponchos and home decorations and things like that. I was really impressed by the level of work that even the fourth graders were doing, but Heidi told us afterwards that a lot of times, the mothers do a lot of the work for them. I'd like to think that at least some of them did their own work, though, so I'm still impressed.

Then in the afternoons we went to a school in the Zona Sur, which is further south than the city center and requires a 30-minute trufi ride to get there. It's the school where Heidi's husband works in the morning, so he got us the personal connection, which we found was so important. The director of the school in the morning was the aunt of Nicole's host mom, so we had a personal connection there as well. Without the help of those people, we wouldn't have been able to do any observations, despite the fact that we have official authorization from SEDUCA, the public school board of Bolivia, to observe in the classrooms. Anyway, the school we went to in the afternoons was a convenio, which is a public school sponsored by the Catholic church (the government gives them money to sponsor the schools). I don't understand how that works, but apparently there is not exactly a separation of church and state here, because every public school we visited had an obvious Christian or Catholic influence. The school is great though, and we got to observe in a fourth-grade class, which was simultaneously so helpful for our project and so emotionally enriching. The kids were so endearing and the teacher had great classroom management skills and they all seemed genuinely happy to be there. What a great experience. At recess, the girls would all fight over who got to hold our hands (mine and Nicole's) and drag us out to the playground and then just fawn over us. They would ask us how to say their names in English, and how to say our names in English, and play with our hair. They even told Nicole she had pretty arm hair. Such a crazy but lovely experience. We are going back for the last week of classes (they're about to start summer vacation) when we get back from Santa Cruz next week, and despite the sometimes overwhelming attention, I'm looking forward to seeing them all again.

This weekend was a long weekend because of Todos Santos, the holiday when you remember your deceased relatives and friends. My family didn't go to the cemetery to celebrate, but traditionally the celebration is huge, especially if someone has passed away in the last year. They stay in the cemetery all night with a sort of altar dedicated to the person and celebrate the person's life. It sounds so beautiful and I really wish I had seen it for myself but like many city families, my family doesn't get so into the traditional ways of celebrating Bolivian holidays. We did have company yesterday, though, which was nice. They came over around lunchtime and I assumed they were just guests for lunch, but more and more people showed up and they ended up staying until around 10:00 at night. It was a lot of fun and by the time the evening came around, we had brought out the guitar and we were all singing along and it was really my favorite type of party. I even played a few songs at the request (insistence, really) of my dad, although it took me a while to get up my nerve, and although I couldn't play anything they knew the words to. But I genuinely enjoyed myself and was kind of sad when everyone finally went home. I think the hardest part about being here is being alone at night, because college is such a social place and I'm used to having people around at all times whether I like it or not. Here, I find I'm always alone by 10 or 11, unless I go out to a bar or club. It gives me a lot of time to think, which is sometimes good but other times I wish I could be doing something else. I've taken to playing the guitar a lot, though, which helps, and hopefully by the time I get back I'll have improved.

I have to leave for the airport in about six hours so I should really get some rest. We're leaving for Santa Cruz, a big city to the northeast of us (so it's a lot warmer and more humid than here). I'm really excited! We'll be there for the weekend, which is the first time we're getting to spend the weekend in another city, so we'll actually get to experience the social life at its best there. It's our last excursion as a group, which is strange because we've been together a lot for the past two months and the end of the trip marks the beginning of the independent study time. I'll miss everyone but I'm also looking forward to getting started on my book. It's really wild to think we're here already, but I think I'm ready to take what we've learned and go with it.

Halfway through

Happy Halloween! I just realized that we're more than halfway through the semester now and I can't believe how quickly the time has gone by. I'm starting to tell people that I'm coming back in the summer (although I really have no idea when I'll be back), half as a means of preparing for how sad it's going to be to leave, and half to convince myself that I really will be back. I love this country and I'm starting to feel like I belong here not just as an anthropologically minded gringa but actually as a part of the culture here. I can't imagine what it will be like to go back to the US in December.

I spent last week (the week ending last Friday, not this past week) in a rural village outside of Cochabamba. The bus ride was only about two hours to get there but it's such a world away. We were all assigned homestay families like the ones we have here in the city but they were Quechua-speaking campesinos (I guess the closest translation for campesino would be country people) who are generally subsistence farmers, although some families also sold goods at the market in Punata, a small city about an hour away.

So we all got dropped off with our bags at a school in Pairumani, one of the villages where we would be staying (we were spread out among several communities), and representatives from our families were waiting there to bring us home. The homestay coordinator read off our names and then our family names and they came forward to claim us and it was deliciously awkward as all of these huge white people bent down to greet these short brown people, not knowing if we should kiss on the cheek (the Bolivian city greeting) or both cheeks (an alternative) or do the handshake and the pat on the arm (often the campesino greeting, but not always), or some poorly coordinated combination of the three. Then we all piled into taxis to go to our new homes, and somehow we managed to fit four students and our family representatives into each taxi (at least eight people, occasionally more), and off we went. It was a great introduction into how the week was going to go because we got to see how welcoming these families were as well as how awkward and bumbling we were going to be all week.

My family consisted of: my dad, Cupertino; my mom, Paulina; a 21-year-old sister, Elizabeth; a 15-year-old sister, Aida; a 12-year-old brother, Milton; a 9-year-old sister, Gladis; and Aida's 9-month-old son, Alex. We also have a sister Miriam, who lives in Punata and who I got to meet on market day, but she doesn't live at the house. I loved that they named their kids names that are difficult for Spanish speakers and almost impossible to pronounce for Quechua speakers. Elizabeth was more like "Elizabed" and Milton was "Miltu" most of the time. Aida was the one who came to get me and we got to the house, which is three separate rooms and a kitchen around an open patio. There were about four people sitting outside eating lunch number one (they eat two lunches, one in late morning and one in early to mid afternoon) and I made the decision to greet them all in Quechua. Big mistake. The floodgates opened to a sea of words and verb tenses I haven't learned yet, uttered with a different accent and at a much faster rate than my professors ever spoke. I caught some conjugation of the words "sit" and "eat" so I took a seat on a stool on the patio and someone brought me out a huge bowl of soup filled with pasta, potatoes, chuño (potatoes that have frozen underground before the harvest--they're delicious), and vegetables.

The campesino culture, like every culture I guess, has a large focus on food not just as sustenance but as a means of social interaction, so even though I had already eaten, I couldn't refuse the soup. Unfortunately, I also could not refuse bowl number two that they offered me. I finally managed to convince them that I have a weak stomach and was spared a third bowl, and just as I finished washing my bowl with the water that they bring in with a hose from the nearby river, my sister Aida (the 15 year old) asked if I wanted to go with her up into the hills. She lent me a sun hat and we started the trek up the hill, me with my asthma and her with her 9-month-old son (such a juxtaposition with Lucia, my 15 year old sister here, who seems so young to me) slung across her back in a large blanket. We hiked for what felt to me like several hours but I think was probably less than one, and when I asked her why we were going up the hill (she spoke some Spanish) she said, "We're just walking." It was gorgeous and luckily she reminded me before we left to bring my camera so we stopped every once in a while so I could gawk at the incredible landscape that they see every day. The hike probably should have been good way for me to orient myself and figure out where everything was, but I was distracted and still had no idea where we were or which of the tiny tin roof houses below us was ours.

After we got back to the house I helped my host mom with the laundry. She didn't speak any Spanish but I knew the word for washing clothes so I think I proposed my help to her kind of like a cartoon cavewoman might, saying "I wash, no?" and gesturing around at things. That was how most of my communication went for the week, although my host dad spoke almost as much Spanish as me so talking with him was usually pretty easy. I love to think about what I must have looked and sounded like all week, pointing at everything and saying things like "What that?" and "What dog name?" On the rare occasion that I recalled enough Quechua to say a brilliantly complex sentence such as "Where did your dad go?" I typically did not understand the answer, and the person I was speaking to and I would come to some sort of agreement about what we were talking about via waving around and acting out various verbs. Luckily the days were pretty standard, with breakfast, chores, school (for Milton and Gladis), lunch, going to plant potatoes or beans in the fields, lunch again, more chores, dinner, and then bedtime, so it wasn't so hard to figure out what I was supposed to be doing all the time.

Out of sheer luck, Luis, who has become my closest friend in the group, was my next-door neighbor in the campo. It was so strange, because we were all pretty spread out and some people didn't live near anyone at all, but my house was about two hundred feet from his. Our families were related to one another (his host dad was my host dad's brother) so we did a lot of planting together and sometimes I ate dinner at his house. He also had younger host siblings and at night sometimes we would all go to the basketball court at the school (which was about a ten minute walk) and play soccer with the kids. It was so much fun and really speaks to the welcome nature of the people there that we could go with any age group of people and they would include us in what they were doing.

On the last two days Luis and I got to observe a classroom in the school, which was great for me because it was something I'd be interested in anyway, plus it worked as research for my group project with Nicole about rural and urban education here, as well as for my final ISP (independent study project), the children's book. I've now observed in five or six different classrooms here, and the kindergarten classroom in the campo was one of the best.

Okay I'm about to go out but I'll try to write before I leave for Santa Cruz on Tuesday!

End of classes, curse of the Inca, ALBA summit

This is from yesterday, but just before I posted it, the power went out, and I have hardly been home since then! I’ll be living in a rural village outside Cochabamba for the next week so I won’t be writing until at least next weekend (apparently there are still places in the world that don’t have high speed internet—who knew?) so once again, mom and dad, don’t worry!

Today, I am blessed with the treat of a free hour of daytime without rushing through lunch or running to class. It's been a while, and it's really nice. I had my Quechua final this morning and for once, the time they allotted was an overestimate and the exam only took about an hour, although we had anticipated over two hours. So after discovering yet another new route home (I'll explain later), I'm basking in the Cocha sunlight and taking advantage of electricity and downtime in preparation for our trip to the campo (rural village) this coming week.

Last weekend was a disaster for my health. Soon after arriving at my house, I had a bout of the ever so pleasant "Montezuma's Revenge," complete with a touch of the Curse of the Inca, a name I've come up with for the specific series of symptoms that come along with food-borne illness in Bolivia. Luckily I have a bathroom immediately adjacent to my room, and for your sake I will leave you with no more detail than that. Lessons learned? First of all, chorizo from a street vendor, a chicken salad sandwich, an entire bag of fine chocolates, and a dinner of costillitas and poroto (pork ribs and beans) don't treat the gringo stomach very well. The other valuable piece of information I learned was that you can go to the pharmacy and buy yourself an anti-emetic and the pharmacist will give you an injection in your right butt cheek, and the vomiting will cease soon after. Cool, huh? I also have a mini stash of anti-emetic pills (although I'm not sure how much good an oral medicine does when you're puking constantly). Ya pues, enough of that.

This week was the last week of formal classes, meaning the days that I will have to wake up before 8:00 from now on are (hopefully) few! It also meant that I had a large assignment to complete pretty much every night. I can't remember if I wrote about this already but I interviewed a children's author before I went to Potosí, which was really cool and extremely encouraging, and I had to write a report about that this week. It's crazy to think we're about halfway through already. The end of classes means the beginning of the independent study project. I had to write a preliminary proposal for my project this week and I realized how much I really don't know yet, and how much work I'm going to have to do. I found out that public schools go on summer break in a couple of weeks, so all classroom observation that I planned on doing during the official ISP period (the month of November) I actually have to do as soon as possible. It's stressful but I'm hoping it will keep me on track with the project, since I really can't procrastinate at all. I'm observing in a kindergarten class this afternoon! I've chatted with a lot of children since arriving here, but I haven’t really been around a large group of kids interacting with each other yet. I’m really excited, but also a little nervous. If there’s one thing this semester is teaching me, it’s how to have serious social skills.

As for the ALBA summit, remember the Día del Peatón I wrote about when I first got here? Well, apparently they liked it so much that they decided to institute it again in my neighborhood and surrounding area. Okay, so it’s actually just that they closed all the roads around the hotel near my house to protect our dear Hugo Chavez (who is staying a block from my house!) from terrorists or something. I’m not exactly sure what the purpose is, but it’s really frustrating because I haven’t been able to get a taxi to bring me to my house in a few days, and they’ve rerouted all of the public transit in a completely illogical fashion so that I have had to learn several new routes to my classes. I’m going to be a Cochabamba public transit expert by the end of the summit. Anyway, the ALBA cumbre is essentially a summit of important leftist Latin American leaders. I can’t believe it’s happening right here in this city! I literally haven’t had a free moment to see if there is anything going on that is open to the public but it seems like everything is closed off with pretty high security, so I’m going to assume that the best view I’m going to get during this thing is a line of police dressed in riot gear (yeah, seriously, that’s what I walked home past this morning).

Now I’m off to grab lunch before my first classroom observation! Uj ratu kama!

Casa, dulce casa!

We're back in Cochabamba and I'm happy to be home. Potosí and Sucre were great (especially Potosí) but so much traveling gets exhausting! I feel like as soon as my ears stop being clogged after one flight, we're on another. It's really incredible how many places we get to experience here, though, and I am grateful for the diversity of the trip. I'm just happy to be back in my own bed.

I can't even think of where to start. As soon as we arrived at the Sucre airport, we got on a bus to Potosí, a "three hour" bus ride, which in Bolivian time meant something like five, although I didn't keep close track of it. Actually, now that I look at the schedule, I'm realizing it says "aproximadamente" (approximately) 3 horas, so I should have known then that we'd get in late. Anyway, the ride was gorgeous, and we even crossed a bridge that Simon Bolivar crossed during the fight for Bolivian independence (this is a picture from the top of one end of the bridge) so it wasn't so bad, but even breathtaking scenery doesn't make an entire afternoon on a bus completely worthwhile. We got to Potosí around 8 and had dinner in the hotel, accompanied by a traditional Potosina music group with pan flutes, drums, charangos (little string instruments), and other folk instruments. We all danced for a while and then went to bed as early as we could. Potosí is the highest city we've been to so far (I think it might be the highest city in the world, but I'm not positive), so just walking up a flight of stairs wiped us out.

On Monday we visited a mine in Potosí (this picture is of the entrance). It was a really intense experience. Miners work under some of the most abominable conditions in the world, with very little improvement in conditions since the mining began in the colonial era. They don't have health insurance, the pay is pretty awful (since many of the mines are now cooperative mines, they don't have salary or hourly wages, they just get paid for whatever minerals they can find), and the life expectancy is around 40 or 50 years because most miners die of silicosis, a lung disease, at which point their children take their places in the mine. We were in the mines for two hours and we all literally breathed a collective sigh of relief when we got out, half because we could finally get a decent lungful of air, and half because of how dismal it was inside. At one point, we turned off our headlamps (we were all dressed in mining clothes, including boots and helmets) and it was unbelievable how dark it was inside. You can't see half a centimeter in front of your face. We had all read about the working conditions of miners, but seeing it and experiencing a little bit of it was a different story. I think it took everyone an hour or two to recover from it afterward. It really was very intense.

That afternoon, we visited a school for children of miners and it definitely lightened the mood a lot. The kids were really excited to see us--almost as excited as we were to see them. They gave us a tour of the school and then we danced with the kids for a little while and played with them in their playground. They don't all come from great home situations but they are lucky because the school is very integrated with the families and tries to incorporate the parents in a lot of the programming to help give the kids a better chance at life than entering the mines, which is what an overwhelming percentage of miners' children end up doing. It was so much fun just running around with the kids (who range from 6 to 18, although most of the students are between 8 and 12) and listening to what they had to say. One little girl took my camera around for an hour and just took pictures of her friends and the other students on the program and it was really great to look through the pictures afterward and see what she had done. I think I might go back and visit the school during my ISP, but I'm not sure if I will have time or if it's exactly pertinent to my topic.

The next morning we swam in aguas termales (hot springs) that the Incas used to use. It was so amazing! The laguna is in an inactive volcano, which is why the water is heated, and we just swam in this warm pool in the middle of the mountains all morning. It was so gorgeous and so relaxing. We even gave ourselves spa treatment with the mud. It was extremely refreshing and such a nice recovery after such an active day the day before. We ate lunch there, llama meat on a grill and potatoes cooked underneath the ground. It was so rich! I love the food here so much. It was especially exciting for me because we had just learned in Quechua class about that way of cooking in the countryside, by creating a hot pit in the ground and burying the potatoes for a few hours. It was delicious. Then we had the afternoon free, and since we accidentally missed the tour at the Casa de la Moneda (which is supposed to be one of the best museums in Latin America), we went to an old convent that's been around since colonial times and is still in use. It reminded me of the monastery that Ali and I visited in Arequipa. It was a convent where the richest Spaniards would send their daughters for the rest of their lives, and it was so interesting to see how they lived in luxury at the same time as living very strictly structured, solemn lives. Plus our tour guide was a blast and kept asking Nicole if she would stay and become a nun there. It was a lot of fun, and made missing the Casa de la Moneda a little less painful.

We went to Sucre that night and just went to bed, and the next morning went to Asur, a museum and organization that is working to recover the ancient art of Bolivian textiles. They have an indigenous art museum and also hire women to come to the center and learn how to create the art as it used to be done. It was really gorgeous and so impressive to see the women working so intently. It takes them a day to finish about 1-2 centimeters of a piece, so I can't even imagine how long it must take women in the campo to do it while they're also working the fields, taking care of their children, and cooking all day. It's extremely impressive. That afternoon we visited a cultural center of musicians. We spoke with the director of the group and then ate dinner and watched the musicians perform. There is a core band of them called Los Masis ('friends' in Quechua) and then younger students who study and work there during the day. It was so exhilarating and really a lot of fun. We dance so much in this country! It's exhausting, but it's so much more fun than just sitting and observing all the time. I really love the energy.

Yesterday we went to the Zona Tarabuca, which is an area just outside of Sucre, where they make textiles and play traditional music and essentially incorporate all of the different cultural aspects we learned about all week. It's in the country, so the people speak Quechua, and Luis and Nicole and I got to practice a little with them! We helped chop onions for lunch, then participated in an offering to Pachamama, then watched them perform some music and traditional dances, then ate a delicious lunch once again. I haven't been disappointed for a single meal in this country. I also bought a bag that they had woven right there. It's gorgeous and I feel great about it because I know the money actually went to the artist. It was a really warm experience because the people were so welcoming to us, despite the fact that for all they knew, we were just another group of tourists barging in to examine their quaint customs. I had a great time and I think they appreciated that we were trying to speak Quechua, although the experience made me realize just how useless I am when trying to speak. I need a lot more practice before our rural homestay in a week.

This morning Luis and I explored a bit before we had to leave for our flight at 1. We checked out the famous chocolate place, Chocolates Para Ti, and I bought way more than I should have ("for my family," though of course I've eaten almost half of it already). Then we ended up getting lost and having to take a taxi back to the hotel, which was embarrassing and frustrating, especially since we are supposed to be two of the three excursion leaders. Whoops. Ismael and Lupe were understanding, though, and we made the flight with plenty of time to spare. Now this afternoon I've just relaxed in my room and snacked on expensive chocolates and I'm really happy to be home. We have so much work to do this weekend and I spent so much money this week that I think I probably won't go out much. I'm happy to be here just to relax. I really love this country.