Public Transportation and the Llama Dance!

hola amigos y familia - so it´s saturday and i´m hanging out in cochabamba (with the cochabombinos as those who live in cochabamba are called) at the internet cafe. i had language tutoring this morning for two hours with one of the language teachers. we have optional tutoring on saturday mornings (private language tutoring for free!) and most of us signed up so we can get our spanish skills up to par. the whole public transportation thing is kinda crazy around here though...takes forever to get anywhere but i think we´ll get used to it...i left my house at 6:10 am this morning to walk over to meet 3 other volunteers to catch a trufi to quillacollo where we then had to connect to another trufi to cochabamba...it was nice that we got into the city kind of early though because then we stopped at a place for coffee (i got real oj!) and then headed over to meet the teachers at the hotel that we had our retreat at when we first arrived in coch. the two hours of tutoring was really cool...i enjoyed it a lot actually and made getting up at 5:30 this morning worth it...just chatted en español por dos horas with one of the teachers about anything from immigration to my semester at sea to whether or not bolivians can distinguish chinese from japanese from korean, etc. i think these saturday morning sessions will be very good for improving my spanish (plus giving me a reason to get up and go into the city to access internet and hang out with other volunteers).

earlier this wk we had some tech training...random sessions and presentations about what some of the other volunteers did in their sites for projects and we also found out all the potential sites for MED (microenterprise and development) volunteers...looks like a bunch of them are in the santa cruz departamento which is the one close to brazil that gets all hot and has mosquitos with malaria...good for those that like hot weather, but i´m hoping to be placed somewhere where i don´t have to spend all day sweating and wanting to take showers when i can´t. speaking of...i should probably take a shower this wkend since it has been since weds morning and now its saturday afternoon. maybe i´ll wait until tomorrow though...tonight all the volunteers were invited by one of the host moms who happens to actually be a teacher at the local high school as well to have pizza dinner at their place and then we´re heading up the mountain (to somewhere that supposedly has a beautiful view) to some hot springs...think stinky sulfur water. don´t think that í´m going to partake in the hot springs because public places with water kind of skeeve me out...think hot springs in budapest steph? but it´ll be good just to hang out with other volunteers and see what it´s all about because it´s supposed to be quite pretty up there en las montañas.

another exciting thing that we´ve done the past two nights is practice our dancing! apparently we (as in all 20 volunteers) are going to be in a parade next saturday for the 8th of september. we are doing a dance called the llamerada (as in llamas) and we´re supposed to have this crazy dance that involves spinning around while staying in formation along with wearing these costumes that they are renting from somewhere far away...that have...you guessed it...llamas all over them! i´m pretty psyched to be participating in my first bolivian parade and having it being associated with llamas! i am sure there will be some good pics and i´ll try to post them when i get them.

okay, that´s all i have for now...next wk should be bundles of fun when we get to go shopping for ingredients during spanish class on tuesday and then we get to cook lunch with our teacher on thursday together! time to go get myself all up to date on US news...what is this crazy business maria sharapova getting upset at the US Open and idaho senators resigning over scandalous business...*sigh* what is this world coming to...alrighty, send me email everyone and update me on your lives! yo estoy perdido en bolivia...i think that means i´m lost in bolivia...without updates!