Tidbits

So I have trouble remembering what I write on my blog, but I feel like I should give a rundown of some things that I forget aren't normal to USA-ers.

-stuff is cheap.  I bought a pair of headphones for 30Bs, or a little more than $4.  I got TOTALLY ripped off by a taxi driver who charged me 75Bs when I probably should have been charged 40 or 50.  But that's still $10-ish

-stores here mostly don't have windows, they just have metal garage doors they open every morning

-people drive fast, and you have to cross the street assertively

-our house has one bathroom...really not as big of a problem as I'd have expected

-all the houses have water tanks on the roof, and sometimes the tank runs out at the end of the day and you don't have water till morning

-you don't buy eggs in dozens, you go to the store and say how many, and then you carry them home in a plastic baggie

-every morning my family gets fresh bread, which is SOOOO delicious and soft

-I have not seen Ziploc baggies (aka yummy bread does not stay that way past a day)

-bricks are bigger, and have six square holes in them....it seems like having holes in bricks would be unsafe, but practically all buildings are built with them, and I guess cement blocks do it

-houses/buildings all have fences, of cement or metal

-the fences usually have metal prongs on top, or barbed wire, or electric wire, or pieces of broken glass stuck in the cement

-vendors have little carts on the street where you can buy gum, cookies, crackers (which in Spanish are also called cookies), or yummy peanut butter bars, for cheap

-you can't put toilet paper in the toilet--there's a little trash can next to the toilet

-most of the showers I've encountered (including at my house) are not separate stalls...there’s just a shower head in the bathroom and once you’re done you use a rubber scrape-y thing to push the water into the drain…I actually prefer it to a stall shower since I like cleaning up the water (¿OCD much?)

-the micros (MEE-crows, aka minibus) and trufis (TROO-fees, aka XL hippie van) don’t have stops, you just wave when you want them to pick you up, and yell “ESQUINA POR FAVOR” (corner, please) when you want to get off

-Cochabamba is NOT a tourist city; it’s rare to see other non-Bolivians except the ones in my program

-I forget words/spellings in English and there are always those phrases that just DON’T translate into English (of course these also happen in reverse but I expected that)

-graffiti is EVERYWHERE, and it’s political

-I have my own room

-the windows in our house don’t have screens

-all the fruit here is organic and from Bolivia

-SO much variety of fruits. also potatoes

-“salsa” does not mean the stuff you put on tacos.  If you say “salsa,” people will ask “what kind of salsa” because salsa means sauce

That’s all I got for now.  I’ll add on later if I think of anything else!