Ciudado: Esto es una novela (Warning: This is a novel)

So I knew I was going to ramble in this blog, but after this first one, Lord help anyone who manages to make it through all my posts. I’ve been in Cochabamba for UNDER 12 hours (when I started writing this) and I already want to share every last detail with you.

But, let’s backtrack a little and give you a brief re-cap of my adventures to arrive in this amazing city:
1. My flight from DC to Miami was delayed THREE HOURS. Giving me 15 minutes to make my connection in Miami to La Paz, but managed to make it because it was only two gates down and it too was delayed about 15 minutes.
2. However, that further delay caused my already tight connection in La Paz to be only an hour instead of an hour an a half. I was convinced I would miss the flight and have to sit in La Paz dealing with altitude sickness for twelve hours before the next flight to Coche. The lady sitting next to me on the plane to La Paz was trying to make the same connection and was much more optimistic about our making the flight. She won. Let me just say though that customs and immigration in Bolivia is NOTHING like the U.S. – it took all of about 20 minutes to go through both and claim my luggage. And although the La Paz airport is even smaller than the South Bend airport (who knew it was possible??) they had luggage runners who loaded all of your stuff up on a cart and literally ran it to the check-in counter for you. With my luck though, by the time I got my second bag there were no more runners so I was attempting to manage my way through the airport myself until about half way to the counter when one of them, on his way back to the baggage claim, asked if I needed help. This lead to an extremely awkward interaction because he was basically already taking the bags out of my hands before I could respond and sprinting away with them (me comically running after him). When we got to the check-in counter he stood there waiting to be paid, I gave him the $3 I had left of my American currency and he stood there saying he needed more. I wanted to say that was ridiculous because he’d only taken my luggage half way, all of about 100 feet, but I honestly did not have another dollar on me so I started whipping out the quarters I had and he was rambling about how he couldn’t exchange those…anyway, moral of the story if you ever fly in Bolivia you do NOT need the runner men because the airport is ridiculously small (La Paz is the second biggest airport in the country). This embarrassing interaction made me extremely frazzled and then I completely skipped past the airport tax part between check-in and security, making a fool of myself yet again as I tried to get through security and didn’t understand what else they wanted from me.

BUT after all of that I managed to make it onto my flight to Coche and didn’t even suffer from much altitude sickness (thank god because it was 6am when I arrived). Melissa, the volunteer coordinator, was waiting for me in the lobby of the Coche airport and drove me to my home, Jerusalem. I started to unpack and get settled when my roommate, Jordan, woke up. Poor kid was still groggy and I’m on an adrenaline rush from my hectic travels in La Paz and the excitement of my arrival. We sat and talked while he had his cereal and coffee for a bit, he gave me a few insider tips and we shared sentiments about our mom’s not being particularly thrilled with our being so far away for such a long time and awkward interactions (in my case, emails) with the old volunteer coordinator Tomas (the one who told me all I need to eat is bread, rice, and potatoes), and about how we’re going to try to speak Spanish around the house so that we take full advantage of being here (he said there was an American boy here before me who came for 6 months and didn’t get any better at Spanish because he didn’t use it except when necessary) - but then I let him have a bit of his morning as I tried to get a nap in before we went to where he works, a house called Nazareth, for lunch. The problem with my nap however was that the boys at Jerusalem LOVE to blare music from about 9am to 6pm at night (today was all Spanish music, but according to Jordan they’re also huge Lady Gaga fans – I have a feeling we’re going to get along fabulously!). So it mostly was just me laying in bed “resting my eyes” until about 11:30.

At noon we walked to pick up one of the boys, Imberto, from kindergarten and brought him to Nazareth. The boys at Nazareth range in age from 5-14 and are the most stable of the populations of houses with Amanecer. Jordan is the only volunteer working there and the kids all adore him – they were literally using him as a climbing pole at one point before lunch. And they were also all convinced that I was his “novia” (girlfriend), as is apparently the case with all the girl volunteers that visit the house with him that are under the age of 40 – so in the boys eyes he has about 15 different novias haha

And for those of you who were wondering how “Katie” would translate in Spanish, apparently Carla was prepping me for Bolivia when she started calling me KAH-TEE over the weekend of the 4th. But once the kids get it down (at first they like to say kah-tee-ay when they see it spelled out) they love my name because it’s different from anything else they’ve heard so they would call out “Kah-tee! Kah-tee!” – we’ll see how the younger kids handle it when I finally get to meet them tomorrow.

For lunch we had a mix of lettuce (lechuga), tomatoes (tomatos), onion (cebollo), hard boiled eggs (huevos), and potatoes (potatos) with this brown sauce overtop and then you mashed it all together. It was surprisingly good – I was just excited to have lettuce in my meal after I had been warned that all I would be eating would be rice, beans, and potatoes. Although, this was also at 1:30pm and I hadn’t eaten since the meal on my flight from Miami to La Paz at midnight, so I might have eaten just about anything.
After lunch Melissa took me and Julia (another new volunteer from Germany who arrived on Tuesday) around the city and showed us all the sights and sounds. The city seems really awesome, but it will take a while to find my way around because it’s not laid out in your typical grid-style city fashion and there is a “truffi” system that seems way more complicated than any subway or taxi system I’ve ever seen before. They have microbuses, which look like smaller brightly colored school buses, that have certain routes around the city (sidenote: there was a lady publically breast feeding in the middle of the micro today…talk about culture shock); then they have truffis which are similar to the micros but they are mini-van taxis that anyone can come in and out of (like the bus) and only go certain routes; then there are mini truffis which are the same as the other truffis but these are just cars; THEN you have truffi taxis which anyone can get a taxi sticker and charge to take people places (no specific route – and not very safe because they aren’t connected to a larger company); and finally there are the group taxi truffis which will go anywhere and are safer than the non-group taxi truffi’s. If you’re confused, so am I. I’ll let you know once I figure it out, however they were really good with providing us with “the book” which has the routes of every micro, truffi, and mini-truffi in the city.

Walking around the city I realized I’ve packed entirely wrong for this trip – the Bolivian dress code is basically jeans and a tshirt. Although since it’s “winter”, which just means that it still gets to the mid 80s during the day but gets down to the 50s at night, people wear wool sweaters all day. I have no idea how they aren’t dying. And even the ones who wear tshirts don’t wear tank-tops, which are about half of my wardrobe. I’ve heard from the other volunteers though that at night people tend to dress less conservatively, so I might get to wear some of my tanks and such then, but we’ll see.

We ended our afternoon tour at the grocery store because Julia wanted to buy some things for her apartment (she’s been here longer and knows what she needs/wants…I just aimlessly wandered the aisles). Julia and I walked home and when we split off for my house I ended up walking in circles for about ten minutes because I was about 100 ft from my house and thought I was in the wrong place so I turned and went the other way. Whoops.

I got home around 6 and started writing everything down in my journal and then decided I wanted to do a further exploration of our apartment – I definitely have the biggest (almost twice the size) of the other two bedrooms (so anyone who wants to come visit I have PLENTY of floor space!! Although it is wooden…). I have a twin bed with a mosquito net for the summer when we open the windows, a desk, a big wardrobe (half for hanging half with shelves and a drawer), a night stand, and a little love seat chair. We also have CABLE TV in our common room, which is apparently something all the other volunteers are jealous of, although I haven’t watched it yet haha.

Thursday night Melissa, Jordan and I went to eat diner at Jordan’s favorite chicken (pollo) place – pollo is huge in Coche and everyone has their own favorite pollo restaurant. It was a lot of food, a chicken breast, and three sides (rice, pasta, and French fries) for only 11 Bolivianos (the exchange rate is about 7.02 bolivianos = 1 dollar). I felt like I was wasting so much food, but it was the smallest portion!

This morning I visited the house where I´ll be working, Salmonon Klein. After doing a general tour of the house I met with the director, Emma, who told me I´ll be working in Sala 1 (room 1 = the kids age 1-2). I was hoping for some of the older kids who can talk and such, but they´re all super cute and I know I´ll get attached really quick and want to take them all home with me when I leave. I start on Tuesday (because Monday is a national holiday) and will be working lunes-viernes (Monday-Friday) 8:30am-4pm. Yikes, early days. But it will be good to have a routine.

So now for the rest of the day I´m going to try and find some tape so I can hang the 100 pictures I brought with me, try and buy a cell phone so I can communicate with the other volunteers and don´t have to sit around at home waiting for Jordan to come back and be my social coordinator, and maybe find some food. I really haven´t had much of an appetite since I got here – it´s 1pm and I don’t feel particularly hungry…so unlike me!
I promise not to make (well, I’ll at least try not to make) my next posts so long – I just felt like I had a lot of details to share with everyone about my first impressions and such. I miss you all terribly already, but I also already wish you could all come down here and I could show you everything!!

Ps. Please feel free to comment on my posts – I’d LOVE to hear what you think of all of this! (Slawin and Care this is particularly aimed at you since you share my love of facebook comments)