My Week M.I.A.

Only 11 days left until my ISP is due?!?!  (Which is why I'm writing blog posts instead of sorting data/photos.  Hehe.)  So this week has consisted of:

On Tuesday, going back to Guardería #2 to observe the art teacher with the older kids (3 and 4).  I only stayed part of the morning because one of the classes had a birthday, so they had a little party instead of art class.  In the afternoon I went to a fiscal (public) kindergarden that had almost 300 4- and 5-year-olds.  Overwhelming doesn't cover it.  I helped out in one of the 4-year-old classes, which had around 30 kids and one teacher and one assistant.  The kids ALL wanted my help and to tell me random things about their lives ("My dad's name is XYZ!" "I have a little sister and I'm going to share my juice with her!")  Definitely have sympathy for the teachers and kids there.  Thirty is A LOT of 4- or 5-year-olds.  Some kids didn't even come that day because there were blockades in the city.   I was really popular--especially at recess, when I "invented" a game of helping the kids jump off the bleachers.  Some of them also gave me food!  (I also got a free school snack like the kids, of a muffin and Pilfrut, aka fruit juice in a little bag.  Seriously, google it. But bagged juice is really normal here.)  That night I went with my friend Ayoola to a modern dance class.  It was hilarious....there was a lot of booty-shaking, which I epically failed at.  There was a surprisingly even mix of ladies and gents.  I think dancing might not have the female image it does in the US.  But it was fun!

The rest of the week I spent at Guardería #1, the main one I'm doing my ethnography on.  One thing I've noticed there that's really different is snacktime.  The guardería provides some food (but not from the government like at the fiscal school) but also the kids bring things.  The professor pools all the snacks together for everyone to share.  The kids all wash their hands, and go sit at their little tables and sing a few songs, ending with "sleeping."  When their heads are down, the professors put out the snacks, which come on a communal plate for each table and juice for each kid.  Then the kids "wake up" and share all their food.  They are actually pretty good at sharing, and the professor always reminds them that they have to take one at a time (as opposed to shoveling).  On Friday we went to a farm with all the kids, and they had snack in a long line on the floor of the pavilion (like I did during my village stay in Tocoli).  They had bread (ripped in pieces), rice, grapes, oranges, pizza (ripped in pieces), and sandwich ripped in pieces (all stuff the parents had sent with their kids).  One of the kids took the last piece of pizza, and his neighbor asked if he would share.  And he did--no argument!  All the professors were shocked when I told them sharing snacks wasn't allowed in the US.  Maybe if we were a little more chilled out about legalities, people might learn some important lessons.

I was careful to make sure you can't see their faces, but trust me, they're cute.

Here's my kitty Peluza, cause he's my favorite.  He's sleeping on the spiral staircase!

On my ISP

It’s been a while.  Whoops.  I’d say I’ve been busy, which is true, but also nothing has been feeling really urgent to blog about.  (I also have to write down everything I do/observe/think/feel in my work journal.  And that gets tiring….

So, we’re a little over a week and a half into ISP.  So far, the main stuff I’ve done:

1. Decide on a topic.  I’m putting this first not because it happened first chronologically, but because I’m benevolent and don’t want to confuse my faithful readers (also mild OCD tendencies).  First I was going to look at social class and early socialization and how that works with young kids in Bolivia.  After explaining this to my mentor at the daycare center/preschool (I’m just going to call it the guardería because that’s the Spanish word and I keep writing it accidentally anyway), my SIT (program) advisers said it was a little too big of a topic to do in 4 weeks.  So enter my next idea—focusing on how the preschoolers relate to the written word (in the classroom, books, activities, etc.)  My guardería mentor said that was good, but that how kids learn is studied all the time.  She suggested looking at the teachers at the guardería and why they chose to work there, despite less-than-awesome pay (the teaching profession in Bolivia operates outside of minimum wage).  And to also look at the parents, and why they send their kids to this particular guardería even though it’s not the cultural norm here to have other people care for one’s kids.  So we set off on that topic, until this Friday I talked to my SIT adviser, who said that I probably wasn’t going to get really deep answers from parents and teachers.  (ie. Why did you become a teacher?  Because I like kids.  Why did you send your kids here?  Because I want them to get a good education.)  So now I’m doing a general ethnography on the guardería, which is great because it can incorporate all of my previous topics to some extent, but also lets me wait and see what info I discover.

2. Volunteered at the guardería where my mentor works, with the prekinder kids.  They’re adorable.  I help them with their book work, where they trace and color (and sometimes paint and glue).  I join in their cute games of pretend on the rug or do puzzles with them (this guardería does a LOT of puzzles—twice a day for all the ages—so these kids are GOOD at puzzles.)  So the kids think I’m fun, which is always nice.  It also means they come up and tell me things, and I have to pretend to understand or extrapolate since they’re too little to explain what they mean using other words.  (The worst is when they ask me what something is, in a book, puzzle, etc.)

3. Visited another guardería today, as a reference point.  This one had a surprising number of white kids (Cochabamba doesn’t have a big white population, except foreigners, and there aren’t a lot of those either.  When I see a white person on the street, it’s like a rare animal sighting.  “Look!  A white person!”).  I sat in on two art classes with 2 year olds and almost-2 year olds.  They were also pretty adorable.  A few of them thought I was HIL-A-RI-OUS since I made some fun animal noises.  Winning.  (Although it’s not as easy as you’d think, since animals make different noises.  Like dogs say “Gwow” instead of “woof.”

I also should mention that my project has involved calling many strangers on the phone, in Spanish, to ask if I can interview them.  It’s gone pretty well so far.  Granted, they’re all people who know my SIT advisor, but they’re still remarkably friendly considering I’m a stranger/foreigner/person they have no obligation to help.

Dogs and Bolivia

Bolivia has a different relationship with dogs.  Fact.  There are lots of street dogs.  They are generally viewed as a nusience nuisence nuisance or potential danger.  But they generally don’t bother people.  Going for a run is a different story…once I enter their “territory” they will bark at and possible also chase me (usually for a few strides until I’ve left their territory.  Like in those adventure video games.)  But for the occasions where dogs actually continue the chase (often in groups) the only way to get rid of them (I’ve tried others) is to bend down and mimic picking up a rock and throwing said imaginary rock at the dogs.  This almost always works, except for once or twice where the dog noticed that I was not actually throwing a real rock.  At that point I picked up a real rock and threw it in the dog’s general direction, and it backed down.  I’m not sure how I feel about this.  Maybe it makes me feel a little superior, that dogs know not to mess with me.  After all, it’s not like I actually hit them with rocks, right?  But the thing is, the only way they’d react like that was if someone actually had hit them with rocks.  And that makes me sad.

So on to another dog-related theme.  I have 2 dogs in my house here.  Coco is the “well-behaved” dog who nonetheless barks at everything if he’s outside.  Lukas is the dog my family found on the street, who has bad manners and bites everything, but just wants to befriend the stray dogs that go by.  I have decided to teach Lukas “manners,” starting with “sit” and “down,” but now including “leave it” which I think will help him behave better.  I’ve enlisted my host sister to help me, and we’re really excited because Lukas is a fast learner.  He also loves food, so that helps him learn better.  But in the 2 ½ weeks (WHAT?!?!) that I have here, I think we can get Lukas to be much better behaved!  So there's my legacy to leave with my host family.  Ayni!

It just gets fancier!

If you haven't already, check out my new pages!  They show up as tabs along the top of the blog.  You can check out my "Munchkin Moments" from the preschool, and if you want to improve your Spanish you can check out the vocab tab.  (Honestly the second one is mostly for me.)

Diminutives

Now to talk about a subject near and dear to my heart.  Diminutives!  Bolivians love 'em!  English doesn't really have them, at least not to the same extent.  Diminutives basically function by making anything and everything little/cute/friendly/a term of endearment.  Basic structure:
Spanish word + ito/ita/cito/cita
Examples:
pan (bread) + cito= pancito
perro (dog) + ito=perrito
Mamá + ita= Mamita
Lauren + ita= Laurenita

See how fun?!
The weird thing is, you can basically use diminutives ALWAYS.  For example, you can call your parents Mamita and Papito to show you love them.  Or parents can call their kids Mamita and Papito to show they love them.  I call the kids in the preschool 'papito' when I forget their names.  My friend's host mom called a random little boy on the micro 'papito' when she asked him to close the window.  SO VERSATILE.  Food isn't particularly cute or little, but we always have jugito (instead of jugo), ensaladita (instead of ensalada), and fideito (instead of fideo).  TOTALLY going to miss this in the US (or maybe I'll bring it back..?)

GOTTA ADD THIS:
Just had a convo with my 15-year old host brother about brigadeiros (sp?).  They're chocolate yum surrounding an almond, with sugar on the outside.  Like so.

 
Our conversation went (it's better in Spanish):

Andrés: Parece como popo de león.

Me: Pero con azucar.

Andrés: Si. Y un nuez adentro.

In English:

Andrés: They look like lion poop.
Me: But with sugar.
Andrés: Yeah. And a nut inside.

Tis the Season....

....to protest!  But really, after Easter is when people really start protesting stuff (Or maybe it was after Carnival?)  Yup, people are getting out in the streets--marches, strikes, blockades, hunger strikes.  The doctors have been protesting a while now, because they're now required to work 8 hour days instead of 6, but with the same pay.  Friday there were blockades of some sort.  Today the taxi drivers were marching against the new law that only allows any given taxi in the city center every other day.  (From what I understand, odd numbered license plates can enter certain days, and even numbered the other days.  Or something like that.)  And the taxi drivers of Cochabamba are NOT happy campers with this.

http://www.erbol.com.bo/noticia.php?identificador=2147483957939

Aw bummer, I was hoping a picture would show up with that link.  La vida es triste.  P.S. That's my newest Spanish comedic genius.  (In English: Life is sad.)  I told my family that instead of doing my ISP on preschool kids, I'm just going to make an essay about all the reasons life is sad in Bolivia.  Ex: When my host brother took Peru from me while playing Risk, when the micro came by just as I came inside to tell my mom that it wasn't coming, when we eat all the pancakes and then there aren't any more, etc.  Sometimes I amend it to "la vida es cruel" (life is cruel).  I've been on a role with the sarcasm lately.  It also helps that my family knows I can speak better Spanish now, so they don't just assume I'm confusing my words.  I'm still loving my Bolivian family, and we're getting on better than ever.  I made them pancakes tonight, and they were a hit!  Yummers!

Being vegetarian in Bolivia, or why I miss being vegan

So everyone probably knows that I'm a vegan in real life in the USA.  But when I came to Bolivia I decided I had to compromise on that, because heck if people in the US don't know what to feed me, how will people in Bolivia??  (where even vegetarians are fairly uncommon).  So I am now a vegetarian--I eat eggs, cheese, and milk but no red meat, white meat, any other color meat, or fish.  And I'm fine with that....the weird thing is that I still consider myself a vegan, it's like a part of my personality.....just like I'm a runner who's currently not running.  I'm a vegan who's currently....not.  I love empanadas (bread with cheese inside).  I love eating ice cream.  Being vegetarian is way more convenient.

So my main problem with being vegetarian?  Self.  Control.  People always act like as a vegan I have a lot of self control.  Which I suppose I do, in a sense.  But that's also determination to prove wrong all the nay-sayers, and help the planet and save animals from cruelty/death.  Know what REALLY takes self control?  When there's delicious bread in my house here in Bolivia--FRESH bread, baked today, that will go stale unless someone eats it.....so I eat 4-5 rolls every day, even when I'm not hungry.  Or when I walk by the empanada store, and just HAVE to buy one, or two, or three.  (To be fair,  I give them to beggars I pass also.)  Or when I go by the little general store and there is CHOCOLATE, OOOOH I LOVE CHOCOLATE!!! Yeah, none of that happens when I'm a vegan.  I can't just buy whatever food I see, cause it's probably not vegan.  Bread?  Maybe, but who knows?  Empanadas?  No way? Chocolate?  Probably not. When it's a moral issue (animals suffered for me to eat this!), no problemo.  When it's just ME telling myself I'm not really hungry, I don't NEED to eat right now.....No. Self. Control.

And here's the other thing.  When I'm at school, I shop.  Me.  Deciding what to buy.  And I like saving money, so no processed garbage, just fruit and veggies and oatmeal.  So when I get the munchies at 9pm, what's there to eat?  Fruit.  Veggies.  Oatmeal.  If I'm actually hungry, I'll eat something.  If I just have a craving, well TOUGH.  Here, my family shops.  They are awesome and I love them, but WHY DO THEY BUY THE BREAD THAT TASTES SO GOOD??  Potato chips, french fries, cookies.....(I had at least 7 or 8 cookies, in one sitting).  If it wasn't there, I couldn't eat it.   There's my nugget of wisdom through all my rambling:  If you don't want to snarf it all down in one sitting like a starving person eat it, don't buy it.

PS. My Bolivian mama made rice and veggies today and it was TO DIE for.  All Indian style, with some curry.  MMMMMMMM.  I love my mamita!

Trip to the Movies--Bolivian Style

On Wednesday, I went with my 12-year old awesome sister to see a movie at the theater.  Wednesday is 2-for-1 (as in 2 people, not 2 movies).  We were planning on seeing the Lorax, but once we got there we decided to see Viaje 2 (directly translated as "Trip 2," I don't know what the English version is called.)  The Rock is in it.  In Spanish he's refered to as "la Rocka."  How cool is that?

So once my sister payed for our tickets, I realized there was only one!  So I asked where the other one was.  She told me "It's two for one, remember?"  Apparently 2 for 1 here means two people for one ticket, not two tickets for one price.  Then we bought snacks--a GIANT thing of popcorn and drinks for each of us. In summary:
Ticket                25
Giant Popcorn   17
Water                 10
Giant Soda         15

Total: 67 bolivianos, aka about 10 US dollars.  WINNING.

Also, the movie was fun.  It was Spanish-dubbed, but it was action-y and the language wasn't that hard to understand.  The only part that wasn't dubbed was when the Rock sung "What a Wonderful World" and changed the words to make fun of another character.  They didn't even have subtitles, so I was the only one laughing in the theater.

Look! My blog is fancy!

Guess what?  I figured out how to add tags on my blog!  So if you want a conglomeration of all the things I've written about a certain topic, check out my side bar on the left!  I also added a search bar, so you all can look for things I've written, and more importantly so I can figure out what I've written....

Today was my first day at the prekinder class.  It also is Kid Day today (like Mother's Day/Father's Day, but with KIDS)!!  So the kids played games and all got goodie bags (I also got a goodie bag, for my "inner child."  WIN.)  One of the games involved 6 sausages tied on a long piece of string, and the kids had to eat the sausage without using their hands.  Kind of like reverse apple-bobbing?  There also were musical chairs and a spoon race.

So there were 8 kids in the prekinder class, 7 boys and a girl....they were all 3 and 4 years old, and were totally cute!  They had German class first, and then we played some games with the whole daycare, then snack, more games, and then quiet games until the parents came.  I helped out with supervising and playing with them, and corralling them to do things.  I have a eight cute new friends , as they all though I was interesting (a new person=extremely interesting).  One little boy immediately decided to sit on my lap....he's also not a native Spanish speaker, so we have a connection!  One of the boys told me my hair was pretty (it was in a braid), and then told me it looked like a cholita's (a possibly/probably derogatory term for indigenous women, who commonly wear their hair in long braids).  Racist?  Offensive? I don't really know.  I also got some kisses from the kids (on the check, because that's very normal) and one of the boys told me he loved me.  I stayed there from 7:45 till 12:30, and on the way home I bought a yummy empanada (I had to break a bill to get change for my bus home, but I'm SO going back!  I walked in that place and never wanted to leave--smelled so yummers!)

My Normal

Here in Bolivia, people blockade roads.  And have strikes.  And protest stuff.  On Monday my micro (aka bus) had to take a different route since there was a blockade.  When I told my family, they were just like "Oh yeah, that happens a lot.  Someone's always protesting something."  Today there was rumored to be a strike.  Last night I heard about it and was a little concerned I wouldn't make it to classes on time (I live 3 miles from class, and 2 miles from my adviser's house).  Class was moved to my adviser's house, but walking 2 miles is still a bit of a hike and running with all my notebooks (which were due today!) was clearly out.  Luckily there were taxis when I woke up this morning (at 6am, to finish my journals and print my 8000230000 page-long ISP proposal).  But here, people protest stuff.  It's really intriguing because we have nothing like it in the U.S.  If some group of people blocked Route 84, a) It would get cleared almost instantly b) People would just detour some other way until it was clear.  In Bolivia, blocking a highway between 2 cities is a way to get some serious attention, because sometimes/often there only is one highway between 2 cities.  (This is mountain country, highways aren't a piece of cake to build.)  So is it good that people are more politically active/aware, or is it bad that they can't express their discontent within the political/judicial system?

Also, just want to say: Going abroad makes you learn a lot about yourself, your assumptions, things you take for granted.  One thing I just learned about myself--I CAN NOT spell adviser.  I just changed it in about 20 different locations from advisor to adviser.  Fun fact.

ISP

So…ISP starts tomorrow!  I’ve been spending the past 10 weeks with ideas kicking around in the back of my mind, but I’ve finally settled on a topic.  I will be living in Cochabamba (with my host family—yay!) and studying pre-kindergarden education/socialization here in Bolivia, and investigating how different socioeconomic class backgrounds affect that education/socialization.  I’m focusing on preschool (called prekinder here), ages 3 to 4.5.  I’ll be spending time volunteering in at least one daycare.  Tomorrow I go to the daycare/preschool, which is private but gives scholarships to families that can’t pay.  The kids there are ages 1.5 to 4.5 (NOTE: Autocorrect is in Spanish, so don’t mind any really weird typos.)  I’ll volunteer there with the prekinder class Wednesday through Friday mornings, and have some interviews with the teachers there hopefully.  The director of the daycare is a friend of my academic adviser, and she agreed to be my project adviser.  She’s super nice and has a lot of awesome ideas about education and kids.  I’m also hoping to volunteer in a public daycare, which is free but a lot more crowded and has less materials.  I’m hoping my adviser can help me find one.  I’m also planning to interview some sociology, education, and psychology professors/majors at the local university to learn more about socioeconomic class in Bolivia and how it is passed on to kids.  I’ll keep y’all posted on what I learn!

Deadlines and Haikus

Hey know what’s cool?  I changed the default on Microsoft Word to Spanish, so everything I’m typing has a wiggly line!

Anyway….so the last few days have been pretty crazy, because our ISP (independent study projects) start Thursday (aka tomorrow).  So all our class notes, reflections, and reading notes/reflections were due today, not to mention our ISP proposals and the Human Subjects Research form (a legal thing we fill out to ensure we’re not harming anyone physically, emotionally, etc.)   So lots of late nights and cups of coffee later, I’m DONE with that and ready to start my ISP tomorrow!  All the kids on my program were feeling particularly united by the massive amount of work we all had, and because some people are leaving Cochabamba for their ISP.  So we started writing haikus on our facebook page…here are a few ones I wrote while delirious:

Writing I.R.B.
I wanna do some sleeping
And eat salteñas.

I smell really bad
Fifty points from Gryffindor
For not showering.

I so sad today.
Host fam never eat pancakes.
I gon fix dat hoy.

(My host family told me they never had pancakes, they just saw them in movies!!  I make them pancakes and French toast for lunch yesterday.)

Sleepy SIT babies
Can't stop thinking in haikus.
Procrastination.

Pascua

Hola everyone!  Today I had my first Bolivian Easter (aka Pascua).  I actually had to look up the word for Easter just now, because no one talked about it or did anything out of the usual.  Yesterday I had a few bonbons with my sister in honor of Easter, and I've seen a few more chocolate bunnies being sold in the street.  But Easter--not too big of a deal...the actual big deal was Semana Santa, or Saint Week.  My host sibs had Thursday and Friday off school and Friday was "dry."  Selling alcohol was totally illegal, and no where was open, and there was also no public transport (well, there was a trufi that got me into town at 7:30am, but I had to walk back to my house since no trufis came by--about 2 miles but who's counting?  Actually I didn't even googlemap that, so not me).

Know what else I did this weekend?  Played Risk!  My host brothers bought it in the Cancha, or market (but also soccer field, which gets confusing sometimes).  The directions were in English, so I got to read them and be the bearer of all knowledge.  We didn't actually finish a game, mostly because I kept having to go do other things...but we've started plenty of games!  I also went for a run, oh and worked on my ISP (independent study project).  I'm going to study preschool education/socialization and how it's different among different socioeconomic classes.  I have an appointment tomorrow with the owner of a daycare in Cocha, so I'll let y'all know how that goes.  All weekend I've been working on my 3 "journals/reflections" that I have to turn in this Wednesday...I've reflected over lots of readings and lectures and Bolivian culture things....if I have time I might translate a few of them to put on my blog.  (Writing in Spanish is definitely easier!  Woo!)

Amendment

Looking back on my blog, I just want to clarify: Bolivian culture is machisto in a lot of ways, but there have been a lot of recent strides towards legal equality.  I think the US is also machisto, despite having legal equality.  Women still do the majority of housework, get less pay for equal work, and are often blamed when they face sexual harassment/violence.  I'm really thankful for all the opportunities I've had living in the US, but I think we have a lot of things wrong with our country socially and politically (Note: Not a slur against Obama or any party in particular, just the system in general.)  I think being in Bolivia has actually helped me get some perspective on the US and what we do well/badly, internationally and within our country.  Definitely worth it to come here!

Groups projects are no fun

So yesterday, we had class in the morning to talk about our independent study projects.  WHICH START A WEEK FROM THURSDAY!! AHHH.  After that, our group went to lunch at a cafe instead of with our families (a rarity) and worked on our project/presentation about Colegio Bolívar.  For. Six. Hours.  Yes, that did include eating an omelette, a salad, and a dulce de leche (caramel-y sugar-y goodness) crepe, but STILL I was so fried by the time we left at 7.  Then we emailed back and forth until 2am that morning, editing the paper.  Then the next morning I got up at 6 to run to let out some of the stress.  (That was literally ALL I wanted to do that afternoon/night, but we still had work to do and then it was dark).  Our presentation was today, and it went well!  We talked about our interviews with the principal of Colegio Bolívar, the Jurídica para la Mujer, la Defensoria de la Niñez, and the principal of the high school next door to Bolívar.  The 4 main reasons these people (and the articles we read) gave for the resistence to letting in girls were:
1. Tradition of being all boys/ that the school is 99 years old and wants to turn 100 as a boys' school
2. That the girls will distract the boys and/or not be able to keep up with the rigorous academics, thus lowering the school's prestige
3. The law mandating that all public schools be mixed gender was poorly implemented, and the Bolívar community and the literal building were not ready for the entrance of girls
4. The girls cut the line to enroll in Bolívar, and weren't respecting the process of enrolling.  (In actuality, the girls were skipped in the line when the enrollment list was made, so the girls protested to the authorities.  Then Bolívar was forced to allow the girls to enter, cutting out people who were further back in the line and only enrolled because the girls were not included.)

We ultimately said that these four reasons don't hold up, and that they are all symptoms of a wider machisto system (male-ruled/male-centered/anti-female).  We also talked about how these four reasons are not good strategy, because they could have cited some sort of academic reason that girls and boys learn better separately, and at least have had more support from the Bolivian public.  (I believe most people took the side of the girls.)

So WOOOO for being done with that!  Now I just have to plan my independent study project....

What did I actually do last weekend?

Trying to remember.....the only thing I remember doing on Friday was going to dinner with our Spanish professors, since Spanish class is over now and we like them.  BRAIN BLAST!  I remember!  I worked on my Colegio Bolívar project with my group.  I went to the Jurídica para la Mujer with Melissa, and the other girls researched in the library about high school integration.  The project was due today (Tuesday) and is a 10 page paper and a 20 minute presentation.  Then we tried to get a cab for EVER and showed up an hour and 15 minutes late to dinner.  "Bolivian time" generally allows for lateness, but this was a little late even for Bolivian time. But then I ate a quesedilla!

Saturday and Sunday were also kind of blurry....I think I probably worked on my project, slept, ate food with my family, etc.  On Saturday night from 8:30 to 9:30 was Earth Hour!  I was next to the Plaza (well, one of the Plazas, there are kind of a lot) and saw things being set up.  At 8:30 all the lights went out in all the businesses, and there were juggling performances and everyone got candles!  It was totally cool!  Then I went to a club with some friends, and happened to run into a TON of other study abroad kids from other programs.  As I've never been to a US club, I don't know how much they usually cost, but this one was 5 Bs (aka 70 cents) which seemed like a good deal to me!

Oh!  And Sunday was Día del Peatón, aka Pedestrian Day!  Driving cars was illegal unless you had authorized permission (cops, ambulences).  So I ran with my neighbor Lauren to the Central Plaza and I met up with my group there to work on our project.  There were TONS of biciclers bicyclers (That was Spanglish) and walkers and people with dogs.  Before we started working we all got ice cream!  YUMMY!  Then we tried to figure out how to write our paper/who was doing what/what conclusions we could draw about Colegio Bolívar and why the integration caused so much violence.  I might have spaced out a little a lot because there were so many people to watch!  Then some little kids came by and asked if we were speaking English, where we were from, etc.  Then a little girl started crying nearby in the grass, so I went over and talked to her (she hit her leg on her little bike).  The 3 kids were all friends and were 7, 7, and 6 years old.  Their parents were vendors working nearby.  They found us very interesting so that kind of ended our project discussion (which was good!  It was getting boring!)  But they were total hams and it was adorable!

By this time it was 6:30ish, so the Día del Peatón was over and cars started up again.  So I took a taxi home after meeting up with Laurenita.

Santa Cruz Struggles

So I was in Santa Cruz from Sunday March 25th until the night of Thursday the 29th, and clearly I have been strugglin to get these blog posts out.  Cool stuff happened, lots of our plans got cancelled, then I came back to Cochabamba with a big ol' project looming (due today (Tuesday)! GAH!)  So here's a quick run-through of the main important stuff.

Sunday, March 25: Took a 45-minute flight at 6:20am.  We usually do early flights.  Struggles, yes?  They're usually only 30 minutes so this was a long one!  Then we hopped on a bus and rode for some hours, maybe four or five.  Santa Cruz is HOT and HUUUUUMID.  When we stopped for lunch we got to walk around town a bit (cute town, I'll post pics eventually, or come visit me when I get home if you want to see them).  Tons of people bought shorts or skirts or dresses.  We all packed hot weather clothes but forgot that hot-ness SUCKS in long pants!  I had on jeans and sadly couldn’t really roll them up very much…luckily I had a tank top under my rain jacket (the jacket I obviously took off),

So then we drove another hour on the bus (did I mention it was hot?) and arrived at Concepción.  Forgot to mention all our suitcases were on top of the bus.  Not really important, I promise they won’t fall off later in my story or anything, I just thought it was cool and adventure-y.  Right before we got to Concepción, we stopped at a buffalo cheese farm.  To the disappointment of our director, they didn’t have buffalo cheese (they said tomorrow they would have it) but there were lots of cool rocks and animals.  I befriended a kitty who sat in my lap, but then a pig came over and took over my lap.  She was pretty darn snuggly.  So then we left and drove a wee bit more to arrive at Concepción.  The hotel was AWESOME and had a courtyard and a pool and some hammocks and a cat!  Our room had a little stairway up to the LOFT, which was right next to the AC unit!  Score!  I slept there!  Then we went to a religious museum and a Catholic Mass.  The Mass was obviously in Spanish (I did catch some of the words of the songs we sang…they were about sinning.)  The church was GIANT, also.

Monday, March 26:  Had a pastry-filled breakfast at the hotel.  We were going to visit a community nearby, but the road was muddy (they were mostly dirt) and it looked like it might rain (which would mean we couldn’t get back).  So instead we went to these BIG huge flat rocks and walked around.  Some of us climbed a tree and other people chilled on the warm rocks.  I climbed the tree (lucky thing I wore shorts).  Then we went back to the hotel and had lunch nearby.  There was a parrot at the restaurant, which was fun.  It liked to give people friendly nibbles on their fingers (at least, he probably thought he was being friendly).  I also should mention that outside our hotel room there was a parrot pay phone.  Instead of that box pay phones have around the phone part, it was a giant parrot with its belly hollowed out.  I’ll post the pics, I promise.

At 2pm-ish, we left Concepción for Buena Vista, our next destination (a 4.5 hour trip).  Partway there, we realized that the shortcut was blocked by the river, so we had to turn around and go the long way.  TEN HOURS later, we arrived at the restaurant for dinner.  At midnight.  Around 10pm we had stopped at a supermarket for “10 minutes” (read: 1 hour, but literally).  So cookies + peanut butter + sleepytime for everyone = NOT very excited for dinner.  Also, the town of Buena Vista looks so similar to Concepción that I really thought we were back there and I was wicked confused.

Tuesday, March 27: We were going to go to a national park today, but the road was too muddy so we couldn’t.  Instead we went to a malnourished children’s center in San Carlos run by nuns.  The organization rehabilitates malnourished babies and toddlers.  We got to hold the babies for a little while, which was really sad.  I don’t know a whole lot about babies, but I held an 8-month-old boy who looked more like 1 or 2 months to me.  A lot of people in my group want to do their independent study project with that organization, and help them improve their funding/education of the mothers.

Afterwards, we went to the central Plaze in San Carlos.  We made cheese and veggie sandwiches and peanut butter sandwiches, with cookies and an apple each.  Some kids came by when they saw our directors handing out food to us, and we shared with them.  Word traveled fast and other people came by for a sandwich—a few men, a pair of women, and a little girl.  I talked with the little girl for a while.  She told me she’s 9 and her favorite subject is gym class.  There were a ton of chickens walking around the Plaza, and my little friend told me they were wild.  Fun!  Then we had to leave, and she asked when I’d be coming back.  I felt so bad saying “I don’t know, maybe never…”

After lunch we went for a walk on a trail and saw lots of cool plants.  Our guide, Andrea (he’s a man but he’s from Italy, hence the second “a”) knew a TON about everything!  We got to eat some cacao, what they make chocolate out of.  It was white and slimy and tasted nothing like chocolate (the seeds are where the chocolate comes from).

Wednesday, March 28: We left the hotel in Buena Vista to go to Santa Cruz.  We stopped at a cool artisan shop with woven hats and little boxes, and windchimes/wall hangings.  Then I walked around town with some friends.  (Yes, I do have friends!)  As we drove to Santa Cruz, we passed a ton of strip-malls and I felt like I could be back in the US of A.

We got to the hotel and had to drop our things off quickly (we were late for our next appointment, as usual).  Then we went to CIDOB, an organization that works with indigenous people and protecting their rights.  The organization is helping with the current TIPNIS conflict, in which the president (and the Brazilian highway company) want to build a highway through a national park to connect to main cities (which aren’t connected by any other roads right now).  The indigenous people who live in the TIPNIS park don’t want a highway because it’s a protected park and they were given that land to live on.

After CIDOB, we were going to go to Plan 3000, a marginalized barrio on the edge of Santa Cruz.  After a big flood, the victims were relocated to the jungle, where they built a community (which is now Plan 3000).  The government promised they would help these people recover from the flood, but they never did.  The roads there are still dirt, the city dumps its trash there, and the people don’t have clean water.  So we were going to go there, but the leaders never called to confirm so we went back to the hotel instead (and watched Aristocats aka Aristogatos).  It’s cool, in Bolivia you have to be flexible!

Thursday, March 29: Today we went to the Lomas de Arena (aka Sand Dunes).  It’s a bit of a mystery how all this sand (when analyzed they realized it’s from Argentina) got all the way to Western Bolivia (aka landlocked country).  But the dunes were really cool!  As we were driving in, there was a HUGE puddle in the road so our bus driver and our 2 guides got out and walked around in it, to see how deep it was and if we'd be able to cross.  I suggested we caulk the bus and float, but instead we forded.  Luckily, no casualties.  Our bus also did get stuck driving on the road because it’s sandy like the beach around the dunes.  We walked around on the dunes for a while and then returned to the bus.  The bus had gotten stuck again, so some people pulled a chain attached to the front and others pushed it from behind.  Success!!  But then the bus got stuck 3 more times, within the same 200 meters.  So needless to say we were all pretty hot and tired by the time we got to the restaurant!

After lunch we went back to Santa Cruz and had the afternoon free.  I was feeling a little woozy so I hung out in the shade by the hotel pool, and then walked to the Plaza (3 blocks away).  Off the Plaza was a blind museum, with tactile exhibits and the captions in Braille and written Spanish.  There also was a walk-through exhibit where we wore black glasses (that we couldn’t see through) and walked through the “jungle” (leaves on the ground, jungle sounds) and the “city” (trash on the ground and a step that we didn’t know was coming).  Definitely a cool experience!  Outside the museum were some jugglers!  They offered us papaya and then did some juggling for us.

We left that night for Cochabamba otra vez!

Walking around in the giant puddle

Cacao

Parrot phone!

Check out my facebook for the sand pictures--a lot of them other people uploaded and I don't feel like waiting to upload them onto my blog.

Dia del Peatón Teaser

Today was Day of the Pedestrian, so driving cars/buses/taxis/etc was forbidden by law.  Coming soon....my fun day of being awesome for the environment!  Also coming soon, Santa Cruz!