Language school officially over!

Yippee! Language school is over. I officially graduated yesterday and then celebrated with my classmates in fine style with a talent show followed by a banquet and dance. Gotta love Bolivia - almost any celebration includes dancing. :)

I leave for Paraguay on Wednesday, June 17th, to visit the Waterfalls of Iguazu for a short vacation but first I get to visit the Paraguayan consulate in Bolivia where they have assured me that it takes just a day to get a vistor's visa. Hm. I've scheduled 3 days just in case! Wish me luck.

In other news, I celebrated a birthday recently and thought I should document what I look like at this age and since I only had a webcam, this is it. Thanks to everyone who remembered the day and/or sent me something in the mail. Maybe someday that mail will actually make it to me.
My bolivian host mom cooked all of my favorite dishes and made a fabulously huge rum cake. It was delicious - seems that Bolivians show love through food!

I'll post some vacation pix the next time I write. In July I start my orientation and will start working. I can't wait!

Coch it is!!

Well, it´s final. I will be living in Cochabamba full-time. I will NOT be moving to El Alto after language school is finished. After a long and soul-searching series of meetings, the members of my region (and I) decided that it would be best for me and the other new missioner, Michelle, to stay put in Cochabamba. At first I had a really hard time with the idea of staying here. It didn´t feel right and I had put all of my hopes and dreams into a city/location that was in the altiplano. I was looking forward to the cold, to seeing my breath in the morning, to living in a place that was almost 100% indigenous. BUT, things have changed and I am now happy that I will be able to stay in Cochabamba, known as the land of eternal spring. (Eternal Spring? Hm. We´ll see about that.)

I did have the opportunity recently to visit La Paz/El Alto and both cities are wonderful and I will definitely be back there when I can fit in a visit. The feel is completely different from Cochabamba. Definitely more cosmopolitan in La Paz and more ´campo´-like in El Alto. El Alto is located outside of La Paz and it is starkly beautiful in my opinion. There are mountains surrounding both cities and the air is very thin. You really have to work at just walking around. (13,500 ft. above sea level)

The next questions will be: Where will I live in Cochabamba? Where will I work? What will my life look like? Exciting and a bit scary at the same time. I´ve been really spoiled here so far. As I´ve been in a language program, I have been living with a host family who makes all of my meals, does my laundry, etc. I am actually looking forward to having more control over what I will eat but I will miss my host family and the area of the city in which I have been living. Wherever I do live will be in a poorer area and I think both Michelle and I aspire to live outside of the city of Cochabamba in a rural area. Yikes. . . my only requirement so far has been that there is running water. Yeah, I´ll get back to you guys on that. hahaha

Let me know if you have any questions. I´m winding down my time in language school. 2.5 weeks to go! Woohoo! Immediately afterwards I am trying to take a ´cheap´vacation. Wish me luck.

Where's Grandma?

Some days I feel like I am getting nowhere with my language studies. One day last week, I went downstairs to eat lunch with my host family and noticed that my abuelita (grandma) wasn't there. This was highly unusual. I asked my host mom where she was and my host mom replied, "She left."
"Oh, you mean she left for the meal and she'll be home later?" I asked.
"No. She left."
This worried me because in my mind, 'she left' meant that she wasn't living at our house anymore so I asked where Grandma had gone and this was the reply I got:
"Lauren, she left. She is free to do what she pleases, she is an adult. If she wants to eat or live somewhere else, it is up to her."
Hm, I thought. Abuelita doesn't go ANYWHERE alone. I started to panic that a) there had been a falling out and Grandma stormed off and b) I really wasn't understanding any Spanish any more so I continued to pursue my line of questioning.
"I don't understand. Where exactly is Grandma?"
and again the reply was:
"She left. She is welcome in this house at any time, but she is free to go if she chooses."

At this point, I gave up. I guess Grandma left. Why not just say, 'She had lunch with her sister.' or 'Grandma decided to go back to Aunt Claudia's house for awhile.' Gee, I think that would be too easy. Instead I got, "She left."

A few minutes later, I thought I would try to strike up a different conversation:
"Will you guys have another student next semester?"
"We have no idea. It's really up to the institute to offer students a 'homestay' and then there's the question of if the institute will have enough students to place with host families."
Alright, I thought, that was fair enough; they answered the question the way I had posed it. But it didn't answer what I really wanted to know, so I tried a different tact:
"Do you guys WANT a student next semester?"
This question was practically greeted with applause. "Now that, Lauren, is a good question." And I preceded to get the information I was seeking.

I guess the moral of the story is I have to stop thinking like an English speaker and start thinking like a Spanish speaker (or Bolivian, in this case) in order to find out exactly what I want to know. I think I might be starting to get the hang of it.

p.s. Grandma reappeared sometime in the afternoon that same day. I didn't bother asking where she had been because I was afraid I would get the same line of answers I had received before. (And I couldn't ask her directly because I can't understand her yet, she had a stroke last year that limits her speech.)
But I guess she didn't leave after all. :)

Holy Week

Last week I went to Chiquitania to visit the Jesuit missions of the colonial period. I happened to be there for Palm Sunday and here is a shot of the procession, which started at the cemetery and ended up at the church. A lot of people were there and even the dogs came along. :)

It was a good trip and I've included a few shots of the art here. They incorporated the indigenous spirituality into many sculptures, statues, and . For example, St. Francis is shown with an anteater and some kind of South American bird and pirahnas. Not quite what we're used to seeing in the US, huh? The Mary is an indigenous Mary, and the colors are also native to the area.

Here's a brief commentary on my Holy Week experience: On Holy Thursday the Cochabambinos have a tradition of visiting churches. I wasn't sure what that meant exactly until I participated in the event. Every church creates a shrine and displays the Holy Eucharist. People then go from church to church to pay respects. There are 15 churches that have a theme of one of the stations of the cross. Most people try to visit those 15 churches. Imagine crowds of disorganized people pushing you in and out of doorways, determined to get to the first row to say their prayers. Wow. After the 4th church we visited, I was wondering how many I would be able to stomach, but I didn't completely poop out until the 10th. Outside of the churches, there's a carnival-type atmosphere. Fried food and sugary smells hang in the air and vendors are selling dolls, palms, and 'piggy' banks (of all things!). It was quite the change to go from the quiet of the church to the party that awaited outdoors. My teachers told me it was a night for youth because you actually go to check out the opposite sex. All the guys I saw were already with someone. . . humph!
Good Friday was a day of eating. Yes, that's right, eating. There are 12 traditional meatless dishes served, I assume 12 to represent the 12 apostles. I went on my first Spanish 'Via Crucis', the Stations of the Cross in a barrio (neighborhood) in the southern zone of Cochabamba. We walked to the 15 stations throughout the neighborhood and at each one, the youth of the church acted out the scenes. It was really cool to witness the high level of participation and I even saw people joining us as we walked down the streets. It's been said that the people here can identify much more with the crucified Christ (suffering) than the risen Christ, so the Big Day of holy week is not Easter, but rather Good Friday.
The Easter Vigil started with a huge bonfire where there was yet another play. Good triumphed over evil. The rest of the Mass was fine, but I have to say I missed my old parish in Milwaukee.

Tomorrow I return to language school after a week's break to see if all Spanish has disappeared from my mind or if I had a good break from studying and am speaking better than ever!

Adjustments

I am nearly halfway through my time at language school and this week all the students were evaluated to determine how much each person has learned in the past couple of months. One of my teachers explained today how they determine a person's language level. Surprisingly, it has little to do with grammar and more to do with how well you can get your point across. At least, that is how I am interpreting it. Getting my point across. . . I was shopping with a friend earlier this week and we were looking for post cards. We went into one shop and I know I asked (in perfect Spanish!) for the right thing but the salesclerk looked at me as if I had grown a third eye. Sometimes I feel like I look so foreign that people (such as vendors) assume that I cannot speak a lick of Spanish and are shocked when the words come out of my mouth. I find myself repeating my sentences several times before the shock wears off. I suppose it'll be one of those things I'll get used to eventually, but for now it's pretty frustrating. (If you look at the pictures I posted after the wedding, you can see how there aren't too many tall blondes who are lily-white.)

Today I picked up my carnet, an identification card that declares I have a Bolivian Visa and can stay (legally) in the country for a year. Hooray! It was a long process and my first in-country experience with how the authority seemingly kept changing the rules every time I showed up at the immigration office. One of the most frustrating parts of the process was trying to get my picture taken. Apparently there was only one camera in all of Cochabamba that could take pictures for ID cards and it was broken for 2.5 months. The backup on this was so bad that they were only taking the pictures of 15 people in the morning and 15 in the afternoon. By my third visit to attempt to get my picture taken, I was told of this new rule. The next day four fellow students and I decided we had had enough and we camped out in front of the immigration office a couple of hours before it opened to ensure that we would be the first ones to get our pictures taken that day. It worked, but it took over 3 hours to get the 5 pictures taken. Welcome to Bolivia?!

My home life with my host family continues to go well. We have an addition to the family – Grandma. She decided she wanted to live at our house for awhile. (I guess she switches between all of her childrens' houses when the mood strikes her.) She had a stroke last year and because of it she does not talk very much. I've also discovered that she must be a bit deaf because she likes to watch TV at full volume. All in all she is sweet and is content to be left alone. The other addition to our household will be my host-brother's new wife. I am pretty interested to see how everyone will get along. It can't be easy – to be a newlywed and find yourself in your husband's house where you are controlled by another woman's household rules. The bride and groom are still on their honeymoon so she hasn't actually spent any time at our house yet. Wish us all luck. :)

I realized recently that I am starting to experience the pangs of culture shock. It isn't necessarily manifesting itself in homesickness at this time, but rather safety. Here's one concrete example I can give: The seasons are changing and the sun is rising later each day. Since I enjoy running in the morning, I find myself wondering if it is safe to go to the park. For example, is it just my imagination, or have 'the regulars', who I've gotten accustomed to, disappeared? Where are all my fellow walkers/joggers? Is the park not safe, even though it is well-lit? Normally, I don't think this would faze me. I mean, I lived in a rougher area of the Bronx and literally ran in the dark and semi-dark for a year. But it was in culture that I could (sort of) recognize. Here all the 'rules' seem different.