Brownies y Técitos

Ah food…que lujo! I ate a brownie today…one of the guys in the agri-business group baked brownies from scratch today and was selling them for 2 bs so I decided to splurge and treat myself to one (although I probably could have eaten like…10 of them). It was quite delicious! The agri-business trainees also made banana bread another time to sell to us and that was also quite tasty. I think I am missing my daily sweets and accessibility to the pantry at work…Barry! Where is that slice of cake we are supposed to be sharing? Speaking of people in Stamford…I’d like to use this opportunity to wish Danimal a happy belated birthday (sorry, missed it last week when I wasn’t around the computer when Facebook was supposed to give me a notification!)…hopefully you had a good one (haha, are you even reading this? Barry – tell him to read this) and that there were baked goods involved (although no personalized cookies this year). I’m in the process of coming up with other foods to make con mi familia…my host mom said she wants to learn to make lasagna so I think I’ll do that…and then I was thinking of doing more breakfast foods since they’re easy (and I like them)…like french toast…and then more pancakes with other fillings, like apple cinnamon pancakes or banana pancakes…when my host mom asked me what you can put in them, I just told her to use her imagination! After all, with pancakes the sky is the limit…although…if there were strawberries around here I could always do the classic strawberries and whipped cream. Pamela’s anyone?? Ahhh…I need to stop talking about food, I’m driving myself up a wall with these food cravings. Even though the food in my house is pretty good (my host mom is probably the best cook out of any of them) I’m glad it’s Wednesday tomorrow when we go to the training center and then go out in the city afterwards for dinner. The past two weeks I’ve had pizza for dinner on Wednesdays in a restaurant and they weren’t half bad but I’m thinking it might be time for something different. Maybe like…a massive pile of pastries or something like that. A whole freaking pan of brownies sounds like a good idea right about now. I do enjoy the little “tecitos” that my host mom gives me though…it’s the random cup of tea in the late afternoon/early evening to tide me over before dinner always served along with a little chat about anything from education to sewing to pets…apparently when I get out to my site I will be having tons of te-citos and café-citos which are when people invite you in to have a cup of tea or coffee and you just sit and chat and get to know them while hanging out. Think of it as the Bolivian equivalent to a trip to Starbucks (which they don’t have here BTW)…but they do have Subway (in Santa Cruz I think!)

Eeek. Today we realized in Spanish class that we basically have one week to make our one last push to improve our Spanish prior to our second language interview where they basically gauge what level you’re at. Apparently I need to show “domination” of the past, present and future tenses during my interview along with being pretty fluent to achieve an advanced level so I’m going to try really hard this next week to practice as much as I can. Why am I writing a blog entry en ingles en la computadora then? No tengo una idea! I attempted to learn a phrase today in Spanish that was the equivalent of “jia1 you2” in Chinese…like go team! Or something of the sort…kind of like what I’m using to psych myself up for this last week’s push in learning Spanish. I didn’t even know how to describe it in English though, is there an equivalent for that? Like…let’s go! Keep it up! Or the literal translation…add gas? Haha…this colloquial phrase translation is not going very well. I do enjoy my Spanish dictionary a lot that I bought before I left though…we’ve had many a good laugh in class about the kinds of words that it has in there, many of which I don’t even know the meaning in English…such as the translation of “ghetto blaster” (apparently has something to do with a big boom box?)

I did have a lovely conversation with my Spanish teacher today about natural gas before lunch though…the teachers come to our host community for classes and they eat lunch at our houses (alternating houses each week) and I was trying to pick up some business vocab so I was talking to her about my limited knowledge of the natural gas industry and we read an article in the newspaper about some investment in natural gas production. Now I know how to say trader (comerciante) and risk management (gestion de riesgas) in Spanish…if that’s not an accomplishment I don’t know what is.

If I’m rambling…it’s clearly because I have nothing important to report. No llama dancing in these past few days, I’ve hung up my llama shoes…with tech weekend coming up where we actually get to put our skills to use...we’re going to be working with an artisan group (a group of women weavers) to do an activity where we demonstrate the importance of order fulfillment (aka getting your product to your customer in the US on time) and I volunteered to help lead the “conclusion” portion which basically involves public speaking…in Spanish. What. Am. I. Doing. Oh man…who’s the person that got a C in Oral Communications in college??? But…I have to say that I am glad I’m forcing myself to do this because it makes me research pertinent vocabulary prior to our trip this weekend so I only semi-look like a fool (you would think it would be the people that are more advanced in Spanish that volunteer for things like this) and there’s no time like the present to actually do that whole “do one thing everyday that scares you” thing. After all, the next two years are going to be public speaking in Spanish and giving charlas (mini-speeches) so I’d better start now if I want to be halfway decent by the time the next two years are over.

In other news, I’ve started running here. It’s HARD. It’s bad enough in the US when I shuffle around the streets of Stamford…but here you can definitely tell that there’s less air to be had and my normal 10 min per mile pace has slowed down to…give or take 15 min per mile. Lindsay and I are adopting a Tuesday/Thursday schedule to head out to the cancha (soccer field) and running laps around it for half an hour since the roads are a bit too rocky to be prancing/shuffling along. I don’t understand how people can adjust to playing sports that require endurance and sprinting…like basketball and soccer…I get winded even walking the 15 min to and from tech class! I guess the only solution is to keep on going and your body gets adjusted to it though…and I heard that if you head to somewhere at a lower altitude then you feel like you can run forever so I’m just looking forward to that when that time comes.

And shamelessly – if anyone wants to send me anything…I’d really like some magazines (old news or business weeklies…Business Week, US News, Time…you get the idea)…I am feeling a bit out of touch with the current news in the US and a nice weekly magazine would summarize the stuff that I don’t catch when I make it to the internet café…address was posted in earlier entry before I left…it would be much appreciated and I would send you…special llama products? Oh alright, maybe just a nice snail mail letter, in return. Heh heh…and Mom – if you’re still reading, can you send me that Better Homes & Gardens cookbook when you get the chance? It’s the one with the red and white checked cover…much easier to adjust recipes that you find in there rather than taking the hour trip to look stuff up on the internet when I need it.

Ok, off to study the imperfect tense in Spanish. Adios!

P.S. Send me your snail mail addresses people if you want a special treat! It costs me like 1 USD to send a letter but I’m working on making my rounds! To Joyous821@gmail.com...gracias!