Thoughts on food....

I've written here about my love of empanadas and my lack of self control when it comes to food.  But I've been thinking about that more and trying to figure out exactly why that is.  I am not always hungry when I eat.  I do enjoy the taste of fresh bread and empanadas and ice cream, but is there something more?  And then I wondered....what if my eating habits were things I learned as a vegan, which no longer apply but are still habits? 

First, I eat constantly in the US as a vegan.  I'm pretty much running year-round, and that takes up a lot of energy.  When I first went vegan, I was hungry a lot, until I figured out how to change my eating habits--eat more often.  Snack a lot.  Etc, etc.  And when I'm hungry as a vegan athlete, I get a snack instantly, since I know waiting will just make me hungrier, and I'll be closer to my next running event.  (Running soon after eating=bad idea.  Moral of the story=eat RIGHT NOW.)

Second, vegan food is not as heavy.  I don't eat most things that are dense in fat/calories, like cheese, milk, hamburgers, etc.  I eat things that are dense in vitamins and minerals, like vegetables, soy, more vegetables, rice, etc.  So that means I eat less "stuff" at once and then eat again sooner.  (P.S. This is based on my experience and my feelings, don't try to call me out on any of this.)  So my stomach isn't accustomed to eating lots of cheesy things and things that are "heavy."  So I eat some, but then want more later on because, hey, snacking is a vegan's best friend!

The thing that brought this all on way when I was standing waiting for my micro, SO CLOSE to an empanada store.  I wasn't hungry....so I decided I didn't need an empanada.  Novel idea, eh?  But why the sudden self-control?  Could it be that my old habits are changing?  (Of course, since I'll be returning to the US on the 15th of May, gotta switch back to vegan-habits.  So I did get the empanada.)

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!

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!

La Defensoria

Today I had class at 9, per usual, with the afternoon free.  Class was at the house of the program director, not per the usual.  Ismael's house is very Asian-themed....the gate has a Chinese symbol on it, there's a  studio Ismael uses to teach his daily Tai Chi classes, there are Chinese and Bolivian things all over the walls...and there are also tons of windchimes and stone frogs, because Ismael likes them.  So we all sat on pillows in the Tai Chi studio and learned about the Bolivian lowlands, aka the east.  And after class we ate vegetarian salteñas and birthday cake for my buddy Ali's birthday.  (We all have buddies so no one gets lost when we go places.)  For those poor souls who have never had a salteña, they are delicious fried cresent-roll-ish dough with veggies/potatoes/mystery liquid inside.  They are AWESOME.  They do tend to end up all over, because of the juice (which always manages to leak out somehow...but WORTH IT.

After class, I went with Allyson and Sophie (two girls in my education reform project group) to the Defensoria de la Niñez (a group that defends children, from things like child abuse).  When Colegio Bolivar went coed, the Defensoria helped protect the girls.  We went in and asked if we could talk to someone about what happened.

We talked to a nice woman there, who told us that the Defensoria got involved to protect the girls' right to education and to not be discriminated against.  The girls entered the school with psychologists and social workers, who apparently also faced some attacks.  One interesting thing she told us was that the girls' parents didn't want them to go because of all the attacks, but the girls wanted to (I think not only because it's a good school but on principle).  Now all the public schools in the city are mixed.  We asked if any other schools had had this type of problem when they mixed (years ago for some of them).  She said that there were some problems, but more subtle, like expelling the girls for not wearing the "correct" (boys') uniform.  At Colegio Bolivar they wanted to make the girls buzz their hair, like the boys have to, but the Defensoria wouldn't allow it, since it violated the girls' right as "little women."

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!

Back to Cochabamba

At 8am on Sunday, we left Tocoli.  Eliana and I were not excited to hike either up or down the mountain with our luggage (to either get on the bus at the bottom of the mountain or take the path to meet it by the road).  So we hiked perpendicularly (off the beaten path), and figured we’d run into the road eventually.  And we did!  Some people from Tocoli were hitching a ride on the (coach) bus with us, so we tripled up and it was just a bit cozy.  We stopped in the little town of Ancoraimes for la Fiesta de la Cruz (Festival of the Cross).  It started as a Christian festival, but has sort of morphed into just a party with food and marching around.  We stood in the church and listened to the priest talk in Aymara, and then everyone left the church and marched in a circle around the town square.  There was music and some singing, but it was in Aymara so I couldn’t sing along.  Next we met up with the villagers of Tocoli, who prepared an Apthapi with potatoes, corn, bread, and bananas.  Yum!

We drove to the airport in El Alto, and I ate a quesadilla and a cinnamon roll—DELICIOUS.  We also saw the Bolivian soccer team!  I felt mildly disgusting, after not having showered/brushed my teeth/changed my clothes/put on deodorant for the past 4 days.  I actually couldn’t take off my hat because my hair was so greasy.  Just getting the full rural experience!  It’s wicked cold there, so why would they shower and change clothes every day?  I think I’ll have a hard time adjusting to the fashion pressures in the US—I only have maybe 10 outfits here in Bolivia (but only 2 pairs of pants and 2 skirts) so everyone here has seen me wear the same clothes loads of times.  But I feel like in the US, people expect me to have an unlimited closet of clothes…let’s reject all that consumerism, yeah?  

View of Ancoraimes before the festival had begun

Leaving the church

The Apthapi

Climb Every Mountain…

I guess I should give a run-down on our house.  It had 2 stories, with the stairs outside the house.  There were maybe 3 rooms downstairs, and a little kitchen in a separate building.  Upstairs were 2 rooms, Eliana and my room and our host parents's room.  There was a little tiny courtyard with a clothesline, some benches, etc.  The house did have electricity, but for cooking our mom started a fire in the little stove.  That's why the walls were black in the kitchen, from the soot.  There was a little hole for the smoke to go out, but clearly it didn't always cooperate.  There was running water from a tap in the courtyard.  One thing that struck me as funny was that all the storage room doors had locks.  It seemed like only the people of Tocoli would be this far out on the mountain.  I wondered who the locks were there for.

When I woke up at 6:30, no one was home!  Eliana and I were worried our parents had left for the day to go farm or something.  Around 7, our host mom Rosia came back, and told us our host dad Sixto had gone to La Paz.  Rosia gave us pito for breakfast, which came in the form of a bowl of brown flour, a cup of hot tea, and some sugar for us to add.  When we combined them all, it made a sort of brown gruel, which actually was pretty tasty and VERY filling.  Rosia taught us words in Aymara, but they were really long and when we asked her to repeat them so we could write them down, she would say something else.  (I did learn “yuspajara” for thank you, “kala” for rock, and “wawa” for baby.)  When we tried to talk to her in Spanish, she would mostly just say “yes,” even if it wasn’t a yes/no question.  Her Spanish was hard to understand, probably from the Aymara accent, and I’m sure our Spanish was hard for her to understand from the English accent.

We kept trying to help with cooking or cleaning, but our host mom kept telling us she didn’t need help, so when her nephew Rene came by we opted to go hiking with him and his host students Annie and Kate.  Rene took us all around the mountain and showed us cement water things (tanks?) and told us how the water came down the mountain and was distributed to the houses in pipes.  We saw a neighboring village in the distance (whose name was long and hard to pronounce.)  Rene told us stories about one of the previous students, Mateo, who was crazy and swam in the chilly lake and drank whiskey with Rene. Rene kept mentioning some sort of job we’d be doing after lunch that involved moving/removing rocks, but I wasn’t very clear what he meant.  We visited Rene’s other uncle, who was hosting Sophie and Katie.  The uncle wasn’t home, but the aunt was.  She was knitting a toddler sweater to sell in La Paz.  She was the fastest knitter EVER.  Sophie and Katie told us she started the sweater 2 hours before, and she was almost to the neck. 

Eliana and I went back to our house, for a lunch of potatoes, rice, carrots with onions, and cheese that squeaked when I ate it.  We talked to Rosia about the plants that grow, and potatoes seem to be the only thing.  The carrots and onions came from La Paz, and they don’t have fruit.  We brought two bags of carrots, flour, and oil for the families who hosted students, so they’d be able to feed us.  After lunch, Rosia told us she didn’t need help with anything and insisted we rest (that was a common theme of our stay).  Eliana and I napped for 2 ½ hours, and I dreamed that I kept trying to get up to help Rosia, and then I would “wake up” in my bed again and start all over.

We never did help Rene move rocks.  When we saw him the next day, he said he just napped too.  At 4pm, our family ate pito again and drank tea.  Eliana and I sat outside the house with Rosia and sang Disney/Julie Andrews songs.  We asked if she knew any Aymara songs, and she told us they didn’t have words.  We saw a cute dog, but Rosia threw a rock at it.  That’s the way people treat the dogs here.  It’s really sad.

Then Eliana and I “helped” (ie. watched) Rosia cook dinner.  She told us that only women cook, not men, and not little girls because they could burn themselves.  I’m not entirely sure how Rosia didn’t burn herself, since I watched her take a metal pot off the stove with her bare hands (and it didn’t have handles).  Eliana took pictures of the kitchen and showed Rosia.  Then she showed her some pictures from La Paz, and Rosia really like this picture of TONS of birds in the plaza (I think people were feeding them).  I said I would be scared to have all those birds around me, and Rosia said, “They could attack you!  And bite you with their little mouths!” and laughed.  Hooray for cross-cultural jokes!

Rosia asked us what stoves are like where we live, and what we eat.  I told her that my family loves rice and potatoes, and that we eat them with vegetables. Eliana and I are both vegetarians, but it wasn’t really a problem since they don’t eat much meat out here.  Next, bed!  I slept in jeans, a tank top, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweater, and a sweatshirt—inside my sleeping bag with two blankets on top.  It gets COLD at night.  I always had at least 2 layers on during the day, usually 3 or 4. 

The room I shared with Eliana

Our house

The bathroom

Eliana and me on the mountain

That's Lake Titicaca

Pito

Where Rosia cooks food

Moving In

[Written Saturday, the 5th.]
Today, I moved in with my host family!  I did some other things too, like talk about expectations, draw pictures of my fears, and play some percussion instruments (in the morning) but going home with mi familia boliviana was the most exciting part.  All the families came to our hotel around 12:30 to pick us up.  My host parents, younger brother, and sister came to get me in their family’s baby-blue jeep.  My Bolivian parents use it for their job as gardeners.  (I keep writing this in Spanglish and then I have to change it into English.  I guess that’s a good problem to have.)  We live in a part of the city that’s more uphill and close to some mountains (I can see them out the window).  Out the window I can also see a temple (random fun fact). 

Before lunch, we (my sister Andrea, my older brother Bruno, his girlfriend Abby, and I) played Clue.  Lunch was yellow rice, cauliflower in white sauce, fried bananas, little purple potatoes, and everyone else had some chicken.  We were seven—my mom, my dad, my 12-year-old sister Andrea, my 14-year old brother Andres, my 21-year old brother Bruno, and his girlfriend Abby.  I talked with Bruno about politics, which was interesting to hear from a real Bolivian instead of just reading in books.  My host parents showed me that they had cow’s milk, soy milk, and water in the fridge, and they said I could always take anything if I get hungry, because this is my home.  (I had to hug them both after that.)  They told me that food in Bolivia is almost always organic, since it’s from the Bolivian countryside.  They told me about a lot of natural remedies that they have here.  And I talked about being a vegetarian with Bruno, and he said, “Oh yeah, animals are treated really badly in the US, right?”  So of course I said yes, but I never thought about factory farms only being a US thing.  I guess I just assumed all animals are treated badly, but here it would make sense that the campesinos (country people, as opposed to city people) wouldn’t be pumping the animals full of chemicals and squishing them together in tiny buildings (necessarily).

After we went down the block to a little store for ice cream and globos (balloons).  Then I learned to play Puerto Rico, a board game where you colonize Puerto Riceo and send barrels of goods back to Spain.  There were lots of little nuances so next time it will be a lot easier for me.  Next it was tea time!  We ate bread, jelly, and tea, and I gave my family the Amish jam I brought.  They told me it was SO good, and made sure that I knew they appreciated it.  Then Andrea, Andres, and I filled up globos and had a long water balloon fight outside in the street.  I brought my computer to Bruno’s room downstairs so he could help me set up the WiFi.  I facebook-friended Andrea.  She loves singing and can sing every word to tons of songs in Spanish and English (especially Selena Gomez.)  My family members actually know a fair amount of English words, like hot sauce, worms (parasites), and …more that I can’t think of.  Andrea and I played Tetris on facebook, and she destroyed me (I did win once, but the next time I lost 0-20 so that canceled it out.)  Then Andrea and I watched Selena Gomez music videos and sang along, and took silly pictures on Photobooth.   There are LOTS of treasures from that photoshoot.  We came back to the house (we were downstairs in Bruno’s room, which has a separate entry) and showed my host mom our pictures and ate the yummy banana cake she made (with banana-flavored soy milk).   I love them even more than I did yesterday!  

(The internet is turned off right now at my house.)

The Drop Off

[Okay, this was actually written on Friday, about my day on Thursday.  I didn't proofread because I have lots of better things to do!]

Yesterday we had a "drop-off," where our group was divided into groups of two and sent into the city of Cochabamba with a name of a place to go find.  My partner Ali and I had to find la Cancha San Antonio (San Antonio Market), more specifically el Mercado Artesanal.  So we set off with our map, which didn't have either place marked (or the hotel where we live).  We asked about 5 or 6 people for directions on the way, and ended up walking about 8 or 10 blocks.  (Maybe more…it took about 50 minutes to walk.)  We considered taking a micro (bus) but weren’t sure if that was dangerous, since we were told not to flag down taxis EVER.  So we walked.

In Bolivia, stores are organized by what they sell.  We walked down a paint area, a pharmacy area, etc.  Finally we got there!  When we left it was lunchtime (1:30) so the streets were really empty.  By this time it was pretty crowded.  Once we found la Cancha San Antonio, we looked for el Mercado Artesanal, which turned out to be a little part of the market that sold traditional things like guitars, dolls, rugs, colorful indigenous ponchos, etc.  We were supposed to talk to some people there and learn about the market, so we talked with a man selling rugs for a little while, but he clearly wanted us to buy something so it was a little weird and we weren’t sure if what he said was really true (he said it took his wife a whole year to make a rug—they were maybe a foot by 2 feet).  I have a picture but the internet is seriously struggling, so I can’t post it. 

Then we hung out at a shop on the edge of the market and people-watched.  Then we talked to the two women who ran the stand.  They were probably around our age and said that they took the micro to the market and most of their customers are tourists.  They asked where we were from and when we said the US they got really excited!  They asked if we had markets in the US, and if people take micros, and if there are pickpockets.  Then they got really serious and told us that there are a lot of pickpockets in Cocha and we should always watch our purses.

At this point it was 3:40 so we decided to walk home.  I was pretty sure I knew the way, but we wanted to check just to be sure…too bad neither of us had the hotel’s address.  Oops.  Luckily, we made it back, only ten minutes late (which is no big deal because Bolivian time is way different.  “Ahorita” (literally “right now”) can actually mean just about any amount of time.)

The food here has been really good!  I think the hotel knows that some of us are vegetarians.  (I think there are 5 or 6 of us and one of our program directors is a vegetarian.)  So we’ve had lots of potatoes and yummy soups, and different juices (pineapple, I think papaya, etc).  One soup we ate had papas fritas (fried potatoes) so it was like eating french fries in soup!  Also lots of flan and tea.  Lunch is a big meal—soup, a main course, sometimes a second course, and dessert.  Dinner is just one course, although so far they’ve been buffet style so I can eat plenty.  (Large dinners are not typical in Bolivia.)

The Never-ending Day

Tuesday, Jan 31, 2012

4am-wake up

6:50-arrive ate JFK airport (no traffic—YAY)

8:10-Past security

8:25-Board Plane to Panama City

9:30-Take off

2:30-Land in Panama City

What thing I learned: Copa airlines is SO great for vegans.  I booked my flight marking “vegan” and also called to confirm a few weeks before.  I was fully prepared to be offered chicken or beef, request a vegan meal, and get a blank stare before being told they didn’t have any.  But they asked me straight out, “you wanted the vegetarian meal, right?”  I crossed my fingers that it was also vegan, and Copa didn’t let me down!  I got a lovely (okay, well this is airplane food, but I was happy to get anything) rice and veggie dish, with a roll, a granola bar, and a salad with some yellow slices I thought were oranges but turned out to be yellow tomatoes.  Copa airlines has my loyalty for life.

Also met a cool guy named Matthew.  The two of us had a whole row to ourselves (aka one open space between us).  He was going to visit his girlfriend in Colombia.  We talked about politics and college and the book he’s writing.  He let me have the window seat so I could see the Panama Canal, which was super nice.  And it had some cool boats….I wish I got pictures, but çe la vie.  (That’s not Spanish, so I have license to spell it wrong.)

I hung around in the airport for a while, probs around 4 hours.  Then boarded the plane to Santa Cruz.  I switched seats since someone wanted to sit with her family, but Copa STILL found me and asked if anyone in our row was “vegetariana.”  LOVE them!

11:30pm-Arrived in Santa Cruz, but TIME CHANGE so say adios to one hour of waiting!  Here it’s 12:30!  Which brings us to…

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

So in Santa Cruz…went through migration, which was a drag.  HUGE lines.  SLOW lines.  I got my bags and the only way out of the airport was through these doors guarded by two camo-dressed soldiers.  I was seriously concerned that they would open into the city of Santa Cruz, and I would be stuck outside in a strange city at night.  Then I decided that since most international airports have more than one terminal, the doors probably just go to the rest of the airport.  Which they did.  I went to the departure area.  It was too early to check in for my flight, which I should have guess by the number of people sleeping on chairs already. 

1:30-Sit down with all my baggage in all its glory and begin the wait.  Lots of reading Runners World (I know there’s an apostrophe on runners but insert it yourselves since I still haven’t slept in a bed for 43 hours.)

4am- Managed to sleep for one whole hour on the oh-so-comfy-airport chairs.  Luckily no dividers between them though, so I’m really taking 1.5.  Maybe more like 1.3.  Whatever.  Don’t want to fall asleep again since I want to check in asap.

4:08am-Weird sensual music videos on the airline-sponsored TV. 

5:00am-On line at the check in, but no one is there!  I made a really cool friend from Netherlands though!  She’s volunteering at a daycare in Cocha.  We chat a lot in English.  She knows some Spanish, too, but she’s hoping to get better.

5:45-Finally people show up to give us our boarding passes.  Security is a breeze.  No removing my shoes, or my laptop, or anything.  Literally under 2 minutes.  No line, for that reason.  Overweight baggage, paid 8 dollars.  Chatted with a Boliviano in the extra fee line.  I made him repeat almost everything he said twice, but then I understood and could talk with him!  Win!

7:20-Guessing here, but we totes did not board on time.  No apparent reason, maybe just Bolivian time.

Chatted with a Bolivian guy on the plane.  His parents live in Cocha but he studies in Spain.  He asked if I was meeting friends in Cochabamba and I made him laugh when I said (in Spanish) that I didn’t know them yet but we WILL be friends!  He’s living in a “habitación” (either flat or dorm) with 2 roomies in Madrid.

CONKED OUT.

8:10-Landed, reunited with my friend from the Netherlands, stalked some gringos who looked my age, and asked if they were SIT students.  Said goodbye to my Dutch friend (I hugged her, she was so nice).

Got picked up by Ismael and Heidi and a bus.  SUPER TIRED.  Ate lunch and was a total zombie.  Vowed to take a nap but got randomly restless so hung out with the group instead.  People trickled in all day, and we had a meeting about school.  We went out exploring in the city, then Ismael and Heidi took us to Universidad Mayor de San Simón (where our classrooms are).  It totally doesn’t seem like a university by US standards.  But this is a city.

Went to Ismael’s house, chewed coca leaves (a big part of indigenous culture), and had a ceremony to Pachamama (Mother Earth).  We stood in a circle and everyone took some coca leaves and we cleansed the bad things away by rubbing a sacred piece of wood on our bodies.  Then everyone put the best coca leaves in a pile of flowers (one leave for each member of your family you are asking to protect).  Everyone put a little of each different color (white rice, red beans, yellow corn, tan sand) on the leaves.  Then we put that and the sacred wood in a fire.  Everyone had a turn to sprinkle dark liquid on the ground and light liquid in the fire as an offering.  Then we ate dinner at his house and came home.  It’s been a fun 44-hour day, but I’m ready for some sleep now.

Sorry for the lack of pics….the internet is muy lento! (very slow!)