Piñas y Panqueques

One of the latest discoveries for me has been the dirt-cheap price of fruit around here. To my amazement my friend Sarah bought a pineapple (a HUGE one! not those measly ones you find in the supermercado in the US) for only 3 bs! That’s the equivalent of around...38 cents in the US? Ridiculo! Haha…even though pineapples aren’t my fave, I think I’m going to start purchasing some to share with my family since we don’t really eat that much fruit. The only pain is lugging it around with you on the bus. Other prices of fruit are 1 bs (around 15 cents) for 6 small bananas and 4 large tangerines (or mandarinas as they call them aqui) for 1 bs. At first I was a little scared of the fruit because of what they told us about what gets us sick…and the fact that I think my prior digestive issues were due to watermelon that I ate…but now I’ve eaten apples, bananas, pineapple and tangerines with no issues so far (crossing my fingers on the tangerines I ate this morning) so I’m feeling like I’m going to be getting my fair share of fruit in Bolivia as long as I’m not lazy about purchasing/washing it. In other news, palta (avocado) season is coming up around here so I’m looking forward to making some fresh guacamole in Spanish class. It’s great how we get to decide what we want to do in our language classes…not just grammar exercises from books…but one day we went to the supermarket in Coch and then Sarah and I cooked fajitas and chocolate chip cookies on Thursday with our teacher for class.

Last night we had our first dance por la llamerada! Yes, I say our first dance because not only did we perform it twice…but we are performing again today (Saturday) since festivals around here last more than one day. I was definitely amused by the whole spectacle…we were all dressed up in our costumes and dancing with these legitimate group of Bolivian dancers that were leading us…and the way we were doing some of these steps…let’s just say I equate them with looking at the person that is across from you, then scampering awkwardly and doing a spin move in the air of 1.5 vueltas (or turns) and then kind of kicking your feet up doing heck knows what. Total embarrassment. It’s alright though, I think the people there appreciated that we were trying no matter how uncoordinated we were. I definitely had a few collisions with the people around me during the dance along with dropping the little stuffed llama that we were holding in our one hand and getting my little knit string/handkerchief that we twirl around all tangled up with the person dancing next to me. I (think) I’m posting a pic here of me with my host family (minus Wilbur, the son that went off to school in Oruro) and me and my friend Kasia doing our “alternative” dance pose…we had created a separate dance that involved the wave and random squatting (aka the latrine dance) in case we forgot the actual dance moves and needed to keep on moving. Luckily we didn’t have to bust those moves out because I’m not sure if everyone would have been able to handle our eccentric dance moves…I’m going to go out on a limb and say that those moves are not part of any traditional Bolivian dance.

This morning I made panqueques (pancakes!) with chocolate and bananas for the family. I think they were a little much for my family because no one managed to finish their two pancakes except me (being the porker that I am)…lately I’ve had this ravenous appetite that leads me to believe that I may be harboring a tapeworm that is larger than the one that I had in the US in my stomach. I’ve always been a fatty when it comes to craving foods and eating when I’m not hungry but here I’ll sneak into my room after meals and have candy and crackers or trail mix or whatever processed foods I stash in my suitcase because they taste delicious. My meals here in general are pretty healthy though…my host mom is a really good cook (she cooks for her work for some of the teachers at the local school and she used to cook for a pension for like 90 people a day, which is not really a restaurant but maybe something more like somewhere boarders might go and get food) and I get a lot of variety in my meals. Most people around here get lots of potatoes but I don’t get very many at all…I’ve had a few french fries and a boiled potato now and again but mostly I get rice and noodles with a variety of toppings. Some of my faves have been the fried egg, fried banana or plantain slices, beets, and I even had a curry-type dish the other day that was made with pumpkin! Food, glorious food! I think that’s one of the things I didn’t think I was going to miss at all and that I did a lot at first…but now I’m adjusting and learning to like the food because it’s all fresh although there’s no fish and very little meat (that’s health though right?). My host mom was telling me about how the volunteer that stayed with them last year was a vegetarian and ate all organic stuff and used all organic soap, shampoo, etc. and how she didn’t comb her hair and was a hippie. Definitely a contrast to me but change is good right? Too bad I don’t do yoga because the last two girls that stayed here did yoga with my host mom...

We’ve had a bunch of work assigned to us lately and more coming up since our training schedule is a bit compressed. We only have 8 weeks of training in comparison to the 10 weeks that past volunteers got so I have to be working really hard at my language skills and what not because in an ideal world I would test out at an advanced level of Spanish at the end of my training but I heard that even moving up one level (e.g. for me from intermediate low to intermediate mid) is already a tough enough challenge. I think my plan is going to be not only to take advantage of tutoring opportunities (basically discussion for a half hour on Wednesdays with a teacher and 2 hours on Saturdays) and speaking with my family, but seeing where I can get a newspaper once in awhile since for me reading and knowing how words are spelled and being able to visualize them is pretty important for me to be able to remember them. Next weekend is already Tech Weekend where we get to put some of the skills we learned into practice with a group of artisan women at one of the sites that a current volunteer is at…and then after that we have other “big” events coming up like a whole Tech Week where we travel to another volunteer’s site and we’re going to have a booth at a tourism fair in Coch for World Tourism Day and we have to create all the informational material and interactive games and stuff for it. And in about a month (October 9th!), we find out our sites! It’s pretty exciting because that’s when you know where in Bolivia you’ll actually be for the next two years. At this point I’m pretty torn between what I want in terms of more Business Education vs. Consulting vs. Tourism…and then whether or not I want a more rural or more “urban” site and whether or not I want a site mate and be further from a big city or closer to a big city without a site mate. We’ll just have to wait and see though; I think it depends on if I can get to an advanced level of Spanish and what everyone else wants. In general I think I’m pretty agreeable…my concern is being able to get through the first 3 months at my site when you’re finally off on your own and dealing with the “real” PC experience rather than worrying about if the site I got is what I really wanted because at this point I have no idea what I want!

That’s all I got for now…going to chill out for a bit before I have to get ready for dancing again! Tomorrow I’m going to be heading into Quillacollo to use the internet to work on a project we’re doing along with having washing my clothes (first time!) by hand on my to-do list in the afternoon…should be an interesting experience since I heard it takes forever and I have no idea what I’m doing…

Ok, the uploading on blog didn´t work...check out flickr for the photos...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/83263910@N00/sets/72157601924749546/