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.