House and Everyday...

View of where house is from Cristo (The Christ statue):

Here is the family minus me...Abuelita, Andrés, Carolina, Estrella, Maritza, and Lucho

The front patio: Going up the house:
The living room/dining room:
But we ate out here in the main hall. As you enter the house, the main hall is technically still open to the outside, with a roof over it. Then all the rooms are off of the hall.The kitchen:
My room: I had tons of sweet posters of BackStreet Boys, Shakira, Ricky Martin... The window looks out onto that main hallway.

The store:

Me doing laundry... don't put too much stock in this photo. I only did this once, the rest of the times I took my clothes to a laundrymat, which means leave them there and come back for them the next day.Mke:

Chilaver:




Luqui: (or Lucky?)

A micro, the type of bus I took everywhere:

Playing Andres' favorite game "Puerto Rico" with cousin Bismark:

Soccer and Entrada de Urkupiña

On Sunday the 12th I went to the ¨clásico¨ soccer game between the two teams of Cochabamba: Wilstermann and Aurora. Ian sided with Andrés and Aurora (the underdogs) and it was decided that I would side with Lucho and Wilstermann since I had a red T-shirt:)

The game was less boring than I expected it to be:) Our team won 2-0 and when a goal was made they would send up red smoke and make A LOT of noise. After the game I almost got drenched when someone from above dropped water (or something) down onto some girls wearing Aurora gear (luckily I was with the winning team:) )

The entrada de Unrkupiña is basically the opening celebration for the festival of the Virgin of Urkupiña which took place from the 14th to the 16th. I went to the parade which was really interesting. There were lots of really pretty and interesting costumes along with different kinds of traditional dance.

Traditionally on the second night of the festival many people walk 15 km to the site if the virgin where they chisle off a piece of rock, get it blessed, and pray for something they need. Then, if during the next year the thing that they prayed for comes true, they should walk back and returm the rock. Another tradition involves buying a miniture represting the thing you are praying for. So you might buy a mini house or car or office (good luck in work) etc. I went to part of this festival with Carolina, the mother of a girl f rom our Dept. at OSU, and she got me a mini suitcase filled with money, passport, credit cards, plane tickets, for a safe journey. Then we had it blessed at the chuch you see below.

La Paz/ Lake Titicaca/ etc

So this past weekend was our trip to La Paz and Lake Titicaca. I wasn´t feeling well for the majority of the trip but it was still awesome.

We left Friday morning and got into La Paz around 10am. We had Friday free to do what we wanted in La Paz so we did some more walking around and a little shopping. We also went to the Coca Museum.

That night we went to a nice restaurant called Mongo´s which I think I really would have enjoyed had I been able to eat more than the bread off my sandwich:) I did eat some Quinoa puree, which was kind of like oatmeal.

We stayed at the same hotel that Bee and I stayed at when we came into La Paz. So that was nice. The shower was awesome! (My shower experiences here have been somewhat varied...)

The next day we took the bus to the Tiahuanaco ruins. They were the tribe that existed for 2700 years before the Inca. The Inca actually started with a group that was exhiled from the Tiahuanaco. I´m not sure how the lunch was here because while everyone else was eating I laid in the back of the bus with a delicious mug of coca tea :P

From there we went on to Copacabana, a city on Lake Titicaca. We were there during the festival of the Virgin of Lake Titicaca so there were just TONS of people there! The hotel wasn´t as nice but it had an awesome view. We got there kind of late so I went straight to bed (everyone else went to dinner).

(view from hotel room)

The next day we got onto a boat to on the lake and over to La isla del sol (the island of the sun). The boat ride was great and so beautiful! The lake is bigger than you would have ever imagined! By the way, Titicaca mean ¨rock of the puma.¨ Once at the island we visited the ruins of a palace and then hiked up to the pueblito. From the top you can see Peru. We had lunch (I ate this time:) ) at a restaurant with an awesome view of the lake. On the hike up and down we also saw lots of llama and donkies.

(view from restaurant) (Bee near the top of the island)

After lunch we got back on the boat to go back to Copacabana. Once there we literally ran to the bus because we were running really late. We got back into the airport right before 7 and our flight was to leave at 7:15. Luckily the flight was late and we made it! Also thanks to our tour guides who had been calling the airline. But once again I got to run through an airport:)

Monday was the Independence Day parade. We went with our family since all of the kids were in the parade. Carola marched with her school in military uniform and Estrella and Andres marched with their school band. That part was nice, and there were a lot of interestng groups passing, but below you will see what it´s like to sit at a parade for nearly 7 hours! At least we had bought seats in the shade.

(Cholitas- women in traditional dress)

(Andres)

(me, Ian, Carola, amd abuelita- I´m not sure how well she was holding up at the parade!)
(several hours into it...)

Yesterday I went to some hot springs with a girl fom my class. Let´s just say they weren´t what I had pictured...it was all right, but the water was pretty dirty and there were a lot of little kids there splashing around. But Stacie and I did go get pedicure after! I´d never had one but it was great, and ticklish:) Plus it was less than 4 bucks.

Today was the last day of class so that´s great. I still have to work though gathering data for a paper I have to write. Our professor Terrell Morgan came over to our house for lunch, so that was nice.

Well, I think that´s all the news, miss you!

The adventure begins!

Hola a todos! I´m not sure how well I´ll keep this up or what it will consist of, but if you want to hear how things are going here, just check back!

Well the journey started out fine enough, but then our flight out of Miami was delayed over 5 hours. This put us in the La Paz airport about 12:30 at night, and getting to our hotel about 2am. The taxi ride there gave us (by us I mean me and Bee Shuman, a classmate of mine) our first taste of Bolivian driving...a bit scary:)

Our hotel was really nice though, although they didn´t have a record of our reservation. But they were able to get us rooms for both nights.

The next day we ventured a little around La Paz. The altitud got to us a little, but not too bad. I was light-headed and a little nauseous. We went to the ¨witches market¨which was pretty interesting. There they sell things for putting on alters or things to bring luck in certain situations. One example is that they sell llama fetuses that are then buried under new buildings to protect the building.

We also went through a bunch of shops of different things, art clothes etc.

We walked around the city some more and went to the museum of musical instruments which was really cool because you can actually play a lot of them.

I tried the coca tea, which is supposed to help with altitud sickness. There are some issues surrounding this tea because it´s made out of the same plant as cocaine, so some people are trying to ban the plant altogether, although the leaves don´t have any of the affects of cocaine. I liked the tea about as much as I like any other tea:)

The next morning we left for Cochabamba and again had some troubles. In short, the airline took our luggagge but wouldn´t take us. So we had to take a bus after all and pick up our luggage at the airport later that night! But the bus ride was actually pretty nice, none of the stereotypes of chickens on the bus and such. And we got to see a lot of the countryside without having to worry about guarding our luggage:)

So I finally arrived at my family´s house later that night. My roommate, Ian, had already been there for a few days so, as he predicted, the family had time to like him better:)

But the family is great. There is the mom (Maritza), dad (Luis but called Lucho), and 3 kids- two girls (Carlina and Maritza (Estrella)) and a boy (Luis (Andrès)). Also the grandma lives there as well (abuelita :) ) They have a dog (Chilaver), a cat (Luqui) and a turtle (Mike). None of them are allowed in the house except the cat always rushes in doors when they are opened. The father is a taxi driver and then there is a store that they run out of the house. (yard and view below)

Classes are going well. We go until 12:30 and then go home for lunch. I have gotten to see some of the city of some afternoons, but I haven´t been to the market (la Cancha) yet. We did go on a bus tour of the city on Thursday. We drove through the cancha as well as several parts of town, and by the lake. Then they drove us up the hill to see El cristo de la concordancia which is the tallest statue of Christ in the world. Ian and I were able to see our house from up there.

Saturday we went on an excursion to see some Incan ruins. That was really great. It was only a few of us, so a guide from our school took us in his Land Rover. To get there and back we took different routes so we were able to see a lot of Cochabamba (the municipality). The countryside is really interesting to see. There is no electricity or plumbing in many places and the majority of the people are farmers. They grow a lot of potatoes. There are a lot of sheep and you see shepards (they were all women or children and generally in typical indigenous clothing) out there with them.