Time Out in Coch!!!

So this past week we got to have dinner at one of the staff members’ houses on Thursday night as part of a “city visit” which originated several years ago when PC trainees would ask the staff members or trainers…”do you have electricity/running water/a refrigerator/etc. in your house?” thinking that all of Bolivia was the same as the community in which our host families are for training. And of course the answers to these questions were yes, which made all the trainees wonder what their houses looked like and what middle-class or upper class homes in the city of Cochabamba looked like. I was super psyched when we found out we (me and 3 other aspirantes Tammy, Bill, Alex) were going to be going to Bill’s house (the training coordinator who also happens to be from Buffalo, NY and is a big fan of the Bills…har har, Bill is a Bill’s fan) and then Armando’s (one of the MED project trainers) family would be joining us as well. Since Armando was responsible for the ridiculously good parillada (bbq!) that we enjoyed on tech weekend we expected great things for dinner. And we were not disappointed! We had this amazing Mexican food (quesadillas, enchiladas, tacos) with pico de gallo (that we helped make!) and then on the way home on the PC bus we got to see the other ridiculously nice houses (from the outside) that the other trainees had dinner at from the APCD to some of the language teachers.

This past weekend we followed up by having some more time in Coch…it was one of the trainee’s birthday (Mike) so we all decided to stay in a hostel in the city so we could go out to dinner and then out to a discoteca. We ended up going to La Estancia for dinner (which if anyone comes to visit me and I’m in Coch I will take you there!) which was this amaaaazing steak restaurant with this really good salad bar to boot. I had this awesome steak, two full plates of salad and a peach juice (one of the best things about Bolivia is the fresh juices) for 50 bs or around $6.50. Definitely will be hitting up that restaurant again when there’s a special occasion. It’s also next to a Chinese restaurant that one of the language teachers recommended to me so I have reason to head back to that area! After dinner we all went back to the hostel and had a few drinks and then headed out to the bar and discoteca. It was a good time…we ended up at a discoteca complete with fog machine and strobe lights along with these little ladders and platforms you could climb up to dance on…what more can you ask for?

Other memorable moments of the weekend were the fact that I took my first hot shower (oh alright, lukewarm) since the first week that I was here when we were staying in the hotel for the retreat before we moved in with our families and getting to just chill out with people (while we weren’t at class!) and having cable TV at the hostel! We got our share of trashy TV that we were missing by watching a few episodes of the Ex-Factor, the ridiculous show where they put ex-es together for a weekend to see what happens. Quite amusing, quite satisfying, yet quite a horrendous representation of American pop culture. No wonder some people have certain perceptions of Americans… Also, Lindsay and I got to have lunch with Emily (another CMU grad, “Rochesterian” and former MED volunteer in Bolivia…are we twins?) and her Bolivian boyfriend. It’s always nice to hear about different volunteers’ experiences and see how things have changed in the past three years with the organization and what we know so far about the community that we’re staying in.

Anyways, for this coming week I have a ton of stuff to do…we start our tech week late this week where we have a day at the tourism fair so we have several projects we’re working on for the tourism fair and a business simulation that we’re putting together for high school students for tech week! Eeek! We haven’t been very productive lately so we’re going to have to get our act together to get everything done since it’s a pain getting together in groups since most of us live so far from each other and we don’t have access to internet to do some research on our projects. Such is life though, I’m actually looking forward to having some more time-consuming work to do that relates to what we’ll actually be doing as volunteers since at this point we’ve had lots of lectures but limited hands-on training.

In other news, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish a very happy birthday to Conti (sending you a virtual toilet plunger at Grand), Channing (hope everything is going well…haha, I don’t know if you’re even reading this), and Pri Pri (I’m sending you a virtual scorpion and set of pijamas that will most definitely be useful for going out on the town to buy a bottle of wine)!