Home Safe

Just a final note to let you all know I've made it home safe. It is wonderful to be back in the Northeast readjusting to this life in the late summer humidity. Thank you all for reading this blog and sending me lots of love and encouragement through email and so on over the past few months. I look forward to being in touch now that I'm back in the same hemisphere. Much love to all!
Nora

From Bolivia to Georgia, Waging Wars and Civil Unrest

These past few days have been both interesting and politically exciting here in Bolivia. We've made it back to Cochabamba through blockades and protests with few hold ups. Since we've been back here the streets have been crowded with people shouting, protesting and marching either for or against the major political figures in this country that went up for reelection on the 10th. As far as I can tell there has been little to no coverage and or explanation of this situation in the States. I don't have much time but here is what I can say briefly:
Evo was reelected by a larger margin which is great but not so surprising. Evo ultimately is not where the frustration and violence really lies. Instead, the governors some of whom were supported and others who were surprisingly voted out are what have and will cause most of the unrest. Here in Cochabamba our governor, Manfred Reyes Villa, a very conservative anti-Evo Politician was voted out. He has anounced that he refuses to recognize the vote against him and will continue to govern until he is forced out...which unfortunately is likely to happen with probably more violence than anyone would really like to believe or admit to. Hopefully by the time all of this sparks up I will be on the flight home.
Equally if not more disturbing is the current violence that is taking place in Georgia. I feel so far away and helpless but have many friends over there who I can only hope are safe and have not lost any of their own loved ones. Whether you pray, meditate or just think good thoughts, please send some that way. It is amazing how useless one can feel in the face of so much war.
And yet, these last few days promise to fly happily by with final visits with friends and family here, a few more adventures and a couple days of carnaval right at the end.
Much love and health to you all!
N

Silver Mines and The Milkyway: The Travels Continue

It was just 40 degrees outside my covers when I woke up to trekk to the Silver Mines in the old city of Potosi in Southern Bolivia. Since the program has been over I´ve been traveling with a great friend, Whitney all over parts of this coutnry I have been wanting to explore. We´ve been taking buses everywhere, which is not without trial, breaking down in the middle of nowhere, getting stuck at road blockades or protests, having to hike through the lower Andes to finally reach the little cities and pueblos we´ve been sleeping in over the past week or so. When we made it to Potosi we were unsure about visiting the mines. I´d been strongly advised against it by a number of Bolivians who seem to feel ashamed of the conditions of this place or just wouldn´t want me to have to see such profound poverty. But Whitney and I both decided that the mining culture that continues to exist today in this country is such an important part of trying to understand both the hisotry and current state of affairs in Bolivia. They say that the mining in Potosi almsot single handedly funded the Industrial Revolution and for a short period of time was the richest city in the world. It is hard to believe this walking the streets of modern day Potosi where poverty and exhasut fumes from the trucks, the machinery and the mines themeselves cloud your every view. I can say now that it was a good decision to go down into the ground and tour the working conditions and climb through tiny crawl spaces of crumbling zinc with an ex-miner. However, I can´t say that it wasn´t one of the scarier things I´ve ever done in my life. It felt good to walk back out into the sun and to breath a little lighter. Afterwards we celbrated the 1st day of August with yet another llama sacrifice and some dancing. The Bolivians are never short of things to celebrate, friendship, love, fridays (yes indeed, every friday the miners spend the day drinking and chewing coca...as far as I can tell it is the least they deserve for the kind of work they live through, if they even make it through their because of the rampent lung disease that kills hundreds).
It felt good to get out of Potosi where I found it bitterly cold and particularly hard to breathe. What awaited were even colder nights, longer days and an entirely different kind of view of this here country. Our bus broke down on the way to Uyuni, the entrance of the Salt Flats, so we sat for hours by the side of the road, recounting travel stories, humming some Gillian Welch tunes and trying to stay upbeat. When we made it to the pueblo we were met by even colder weather and hoards of gringos waiting to venture out into this bizarre and lovely natural wonder. We spent three days out on the salt flats driving in what seemed to be somewhat of an antique toyota land cruiser. Within the first fifteen minutes we had a flat tire which set us up well for the adventures that would ensue. There are hardly words that can describe this corner of Bolivia. Every time we turned the corner the climate would change from dry arrid desert to lush green bushes, to cactus forrests, to miles and miles of white dense salt, back to arrid lands covered in clay, fields of rock in the distance that seemed to have fallen from the sky. It was a strange and enchanting place which will be best understood, if at all by the photos I will bring back with me. One of the nights out there Whitney, a couple other traveling buddies we´ve pìcked up along the way and I stayed in a small village called San Juan. We visited pre-Tiawanuku mummies (so we´re talking at least 30 centuries ago!) that sat just above the village in old crumbling rock caves. Some of the mummies still wore hats and were visibly in the process of further decomposition. It was an eery and myserious hill, scattered with ancient people, clay pots and tools. The horizon out there was enormous and as soon as the sun set the sky peeled open with milions and millions of stars I have never seen before. All I could recognize for sure was the long white trail of the milkway reaching from one side of the sky in a beautiful arch all the way to the other.Last night we jumped on another bus to Oruro where we will be before heading on to the jungle just South of Cochabamba for a few days. We plan on laying low the day of the referendum but I will be sure to give an update, though there is no doubt in my mind that the results will make international news fo those of you who are interested.
Today is Independence day in Bolivia (I heard a rumor that they are showing our documentary in DC tonight where there is quite a large Bolivian population...but I´m not sure about that one). They are celebrating 183 years of the republic, parades, music, chicha and the like. Whitney and I are off to continue our travels.
Much Love,
N

Capturing Imperfection

Departures are never easy and although I wasn´t the one to go, saying goodbye to the others and finishing such a huge amount of work was quite emotional. The end of the prgoram here was made better by a lovely farewell fiesta we had at Ismael´s. After getting lost at the market and running like crazy to make it to the premier of our documentary on time I walked down Ismael´s street exhausted. I could hear Lupe, his wife´s Hari Krishna music blaring from the outdoor speakers. My family here calls Ismael and Lupe bohemian´s with a flavor of criticism. They aren´t wrong though. I guess it is all about perspective. The joy and ecclectic worldview that the two of them share are quite lovley to behold.
We showed the film in their Tai Chi room, sitting on soft pillows in our socks (which is only strange because Bolvians never take off their shoes...walking in socks or barefoot causes illness...they tell me). The families and friends recieved our work very well and we were all relieved to have finished on such a good note. We began the after party with a Qóa, an offering to the Pachamama, mother earth. The four of us students and aspiring documentarists held the corners of a large green paper. On top it was covered in confetti, coca leaves and prayers. We lowered it into the fire and each took turns pouring a bit of chicha to the four corners than taking a swig calling out, Jallalla (ahyaya) Alleluia! Then the dancing began. For hours we circled around the patio laughing, stepping to the rhtyhm. Each of our host fathers in turn took us into the middle of the circle to give us a twirl. It was a beautiful night.
I am excited to begin a new kind of observaiton here that will also be participant but in different ways. I´ve been focusing so much on capturing - images, experiences, words etc. in the past few weeks and working hard to compile them all, no matter how imperfect. I´m looking forward to having time to visit a few more places here, to reflect on all the work and continue a bit of Spanish learning before heading back. So many things about this journey so far have been imperfect, miscommunications, language barriers, technical difficulties and the list goes on but in many ways that has made it more interesting at the very least, if not more beautiful.
The excursions to come promise more beauty.
Love to all!
Nora

A Few Photos From the Past Few Weeks

Waterfalls and Politics

There´s a rooster here that crows in the morning before the sun comes up. It seems I´ve been awake early enough quite a few times to hear him.But as soon as daylight breaks it´s quiet for at least an hour, no rooster and osmetimes even no dogs barking while the day begins in the Northeastern barrio of Cochabamba. This weekend I was up before dawn to trekk out to an amazing waterfall about three hours from the city. Carmen, my sister and her chico brought me along with some o the others. My arm is a bit bruised from the ride, constantly hitting the metal bar at my side as we charged over craters, potholes and roe through places with no roads really at all. Somebody told me recently that only 20% of the roads in Bolivia are paved. I beliee them and have the warwounds to prove it!
We climbed into the side of amoutnian over rocks and rivers exclaiming at the beauty until we came to the atually falls and were taken a back by the raging crystal waters that seem to fall from the sky. We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting and sleeping by a river at the foot of the mountain while sheep and cows grazed nearby. It was heavenly, like some other world!
Politics are stirring up some tension these days as they usually are here but especially because in a couple of weeks the government is holding a coutnrywide referendum for the president and all of the governors. It is kind of Evo´s democratic response to a pontential coup. Politics are so intertwined with bloodlines and ancestory that unfortunatley there is still a lot of bloodshed on behalf of political opinion. Opinionated, I htink is a good word to use to describe many o the bolivians I have met and spent time with. It is not at all about everyone having their own opinion but rather giving your life, fighting as hard as you can for what you think is just. This kind of passion is both inspiring and overwhelming. It is very different coming from a country, or better to say, an upbringing that values intellectual respet for the individual. Of course respect is a strong Bolivian value but it seems to have familial and communal identity as its back bone instead of individualism.
This idea f community is on of the pillars of our doucmentary taht for being relatively short is an increible amount of work. This final week is the most intense yet. Finishing a project like this often is overwhelming but the hardest part has been balancing workload with family obligations and still having a few adventures here and there. This family has been really wonderful to me but also more or less the most ifficult part of being here. I´ve esperienced some of this before as an exchange student and on other travels but not quite so accutely. It is very hard to become accustomed to the problems of another family. Ligia is always telling me things I´m not supposed to know or tell the others.It´s a funny obligation and I often miss my independence. And yet, it will be strange to say goodbye at the end of this week because all challenges included, I have become somehow accostumed to this little life I am leading here in Cochabamba. Small details like family struggles, editing one clip for hours, trying to find the right bus to the right part of the city etc. all make me feel like I have been here forever living a small, present life. But truly time has flown by.
Much Love,
N

Going to the Doctor and Making the Movie

I finally convinced myself to visit el medico yesterday and was diagnosed with an advanced sinus infection which,sorry if this is too much info for some, unfortunately has included its fare share of bloody noses which can be quite painful up a few thousand feet in the mountains. But I´m stocked up on meds and tissues now and feel better just knowing what it is. Editing continues in all its glory and pain. We´ve been trying to split up our days - a few hours editing, a few hours at the market or exlporing parts of the city the other girls want to see before we wrap things up next week and they head back up North. It is a grueling process to go through days worth of footage and synthesize it into a 20 mintue doc using the best of our material if we can. Though yesterday our profesor Ismael, former rockstar, current tai chi master, former exile, current filmmaker, told us that we sometimes have to kill our darlings, cut our favorite clips from the movie for clarity or continuity. Killing your darlings feels just about as awful as it sounds. Below I´ve included a little clip that actually is making the movie. I tried to upload a little preview of some footage but my goodness it is just to glitchy at this internet cafe. I´ll look forward to sharing more pictures and videos in mid August.
Life continues South of the Equator, N

Bolivian Prose...

This Kitchen Table:

We sit at the kitchen table at dusk
and they tell me secrets I can´t understand.
We sip tea with sugar
and spread fruit on stale bread.
They say there are tigers by the Amazon.
They tell me this is the richest country in the world.
In the mornings we sit at this table,
same cups, same people, same bread
and we stare at the steam from the hot water, keeping our secrets to ourselves,
holding onto our dreams from the night before
while the parrots are just waking in the tree outside
and a Mexican man preaches about Jesus on the radio.

I´ve been learning what to call each dish as we lunch together everyday
for hours - joking, teasing.
Sometimes I laugh and everyone winks. I don´t understand their secrets,
though everything I do understand comes from hours spent sipping tea,
eating stale bread, the laughter, the winking and the silence
that wait at this kitchen table.

Kitchen Tablle II:
Let me tell you a story
is always how meals begin
and hours later even the food and the drink are forgotten.
Hours later I sometimes have forgotten how to smile,
trying to console a broken hearted woman in Spanish,
or explain to her that I can´t stay here forever
because more than anything else, I don´t want to.
Instead I tell her how grateful I am for her gifts to me
and how sorry that life is so hard.

After lunch I drink a ritual cup of coffee with her husband.
He tells me what its like to mine gold
and that he used to drink his cafe con cognac to keep warm on the job.

But really he loves to drink chicha.

In the afternoons we drink our coffee black,
no alcohol, no milk, sometimes a teaspoon of sugar.
Since he´s too old to keep working coffe is the new gold.
There´s a man whos sells the best coffee in Bolivia, he tells me,
somewhere on the street.
He pours hot water in the cups while he steeps rich dark grounds
in a small pitcher by the stove.

I stare into black water.
Somewhere in the distance I hear him laughing.
He told me something funny.
I lift my head from the grounds, and here we are again in the kithcen.
The faucet still dripping even though the water´s been off for days,
raw meat and the bread machine on the counter.
I steal a glance at the cacao fruit sitting in a basket by the door.
I can taste it´s sweetseeds on the back of my tongue.
I return to the conversation and offer back a little chuckle,
not wanting to laugh too hard at soemthing I didn´t really get.
I´m not sure he knows I´m lost to his stories, though I´ve learned the nuances of his accent.
They still seem like secrets, just waiting to be discovered
right across the kitchen table.

Adventures Part II: Sacred Lakes and Ancient Ruins

Before I went to Copacabana it seemed silly that no one could describe it as anything other than un sueño, a dream. But having visited this pueblo on the highest navigable lake in the world, I can now understand why. This beautiful, dark blue water that by day sparkles as if it were a field of diamonds and glows like the moon by night is where it is believed human beings sprung forth into being. And truly there is something very powerful about this place where incredible myths and legends are known to come from.
We took a boat out onto the lake one of the days we were up there to Isla del Sol where the sun is said to have lived when the whole world was still dark. On one of the pathways you can see two enormous footprints where the sun leaped from this island to the sky and thus the world began. We hiked around the entire island, which is quite large, through deserted mountaintops and two tiny pueblos, one that relies on farming fields terraced against the mountainside and another on fishing. We ate amazing fresh trout and tiny fish - whole bodies, eyes ad everything. After lunch we hiked some more then took the boat to a sacred island where we jumped into the freezing cold water. Seriously I think the water may have been just above freezing!. As I struggled to surface from a rather harsh and deep plunge I felt lucky to be treading in the sacred waters of el Lago de Titicaca, though it was a very scary jump and it took me hours to catch my breath.
It is not easy to stay healthy while traveling and already I have been sick twice. I´m sure the cold waters didn´t help, even if I am a little sacred now. This time around it is just a head cold instead of a stomach infection which was not as romantic as it sounds in Garcia-Marquez novels. But the added pressure of this cold on top of the altitude made our visit to the ancient ruins of Tiawanaku particularly surreal. There is a saying here for when you are feeling totally spaced out which is, estoy en la luna. It really did feel like I was on the moon, walking back in time, clay and copper underfoot in a feverish daze.
Tiawanaku is a fascinating place. I learned that the time of the Incas was actually quite short in Bolvia´s history. In reality the Tiawanakus lived here for about 27 centuries before being taken over by the Incan Empire. Many archeologists compare the Tiawanakus to the Greeks and the Incas to the Romans. The Incas are so well known because they are the people the Spaniards first encountered here. Can you imagine windows, tables and temples still standing today so many centuries later? Structures, tools and bones are still being excavated in these parts.
This week we are beginning to log and edit our footage.The studies here have been and continue to be incredible and incredibly exhausting. I have had moments, especially while ill where I have thought it´d just be easier to hop on a plane and spend the rest of the summer relaxing in the Northeast but ultimately I am grateful to have these courses here and the time afterwards to do a little more traveling. I´m like a rubberband without any give...my mind keeps stretching and stretching.
Here´s to getting healthy!

Recent Adventures Part I: La Paz y El Alto

They call La Paz un gran hueco, a big empty basket. It is an enormous valley in the Andes. The center of the city rests over 1,000ft below the rim where El Alto makes up more than 1 million of the inhabitants of this area. El Alto, the so called rim ofthis bakset, has grown exponentially in the last 20 yers by immigration in from el campo. This land up above seems infinitely expanisve. There is hardly any access to water or electricity and it seems that in reality if you just squished all the people in the countryside together and hardly changed their routines or customs it would becom this sort of coutnry-city mix. The world feels extrememly different 12,000ft in the air, I often felt like I was drowning just trying to breath in a bit of oxygen. The specificity of this city is also quite tangible. The poverty and crime in El Alto ar enoromous social hurdles and many of the people here struggle on a daily basis to feed themselves and their children. In places of xtreme struggle it seems there are often counterparts of equal beauty. While in La Paz last week, Emily, a delightful and hardworking young woman from South Carolina, jumped on a microbus and wound our way up to El Alto to take some footage of a children playing music and dancing at a cultural center that we had heard about. We eventually found it hiden in a small building of the road where dogs were figthing, children sitting on hte stoops of their hubles casitas, the sun beating down ith undesirable force. The cultural center opens its doors to all the children of El Alto, Many of whom line on the streets and have had to leave elementary school to work (which could be anything from selling gum and cigarettes on the street, yelling out prices and destinations of the micros to robbing...just to make ends meet, narely). I as amazed by these children. They greeted us joyfully and were excited t oplay the songs they had been learning. One young boy told me that he loved music for the rhythm. He grabbed my hand and brought me to the patio where he began to dance and asked if I would film him.
Bolivia is a very unique country in many ways - historically, politically, culturally. The longer I m here the harder it is to reconcile class and race discrepencies that not only exist between Bolivia and the rest of the world but also in between social groups in country. The intensity of different experiences and concepts of life are potent and often feel like insurmountable barriers. Last week a woman wouldn´t sell me bananas because I am a gringa. I left her shop with a stomachache but ultimately can´t justify feeling sorry for myself in the face of the struggle that woman and many others I have met here eal with every day. It is equally unhelpful to feel sorry for those who live that struggle. It is not the first time I have felt this way whiel traveling and I suppose what I have learned before and am learning again is the value in bearing witness to these kinds of challenges and hoping that good intentions can carry you at least part of the way to some form of understanding.
To be continued...

Subtitles

Couldn´t figure out how to title each picture so what you have below are vistas of the Andes around Cochabamba, a few shots of the city, the solstice celebration, farmer´s market en el campo, musicians,a couple photos of other students, and a few shots from El Alto (the city above La Paz...12,000 ft!). Enjoy! Much Love, N
ps- In the first picture I am standing next to my little brother, Juan. I´ll try to include more family photos next time for those of you who are interested...mom.

Photos

Brief Update: Off on Adventures

I have an early morning flight tomorrow to La Paz, another large city here in the mountains. They say it is much colder there so I purchased some llama socks and a scarf made of alpaca wool today at the big market downtown. It must sound crazy to you all to want to wrap up in wool and sit in front of a fire, but my goodness the nights here are so cold and the mornings seem even colder. I hear it is quite hot and humid up there.
Our adventures this coming week take us into lots of interesting settlements outside of La paz where many campesinos have migrated in order to make more money or because they have been forced off of their land by corrupt politicos. The migration situation in Bolivia is countrywide and rather shocking. Many families are torn apart by this phenomenon that began only about 15 years ago. More on that at a later date...
We all also intend to visit Copacabana, Tiawanaku (ancient Incan ruins) and Lago de Titicaca, the highest lake in the world! More stories and updates to come...off to pack. Hope you are well. Much love from the heart of the heart!

The Heart of The Heart: A Solstice Celebration in the Andes

I woke up before 3am yesterday morning and hopped in a small micro bus with the other students to drive to the mountains. It was the Andean Solstice, celebrated for thousands and thousands of years by the Inca more or less as I observed it celebrated yeasterday. We drove in the dark up a frightening steep mountside, hugging the corners of the mountain, praying that the tires wouldn´t snag the edge and send us tumbling. The altitude played with our heads and the eeriness of the the night sky made this adventure one I can´t imagine will ever escape my mind. We wound our way in the dark in between bonfires, musicians, animals, policmen, bags of coca and circles of men smoking tobacco. It smelled of burning peet and chicha, the local alcohol. I climbed up a rock face and sat watching the night sky turn into day. As the sun began to rise, the crowds and crowds of people, many of whom had walked up the mountain 8 hours the night before to participate in this celebration, held their palms to the east to welcome the energy of the new year. Men and women cried out prayers and the crowds would reply with a Qechuan phrase equivalent to Amen. After the sun was all the way above the peaks of the Andes in the East, there was a sacrifice of three llamas, and incredible music-both ancient pipe songs and spanish guitar music that was brought here during colonial times. I passed through the crowds somewhat in disbelief of how ancient this country really is. They call Cochabamba ¨The Heart of The Heart¨because we are in the center of Bolivia which is smack dab in the middle of South America. The longer I m here and the more Spanish I understand the more I am beginning to realize what that phrase really means and how much of the world really began down here.
When I arrived home my family was still sleeping but I found Ligia, mi madre, in the kitchen in her usual state, high-heels and sweatpants, one large pink curler in her bangs and a long orange sweater. She greeted me in a panic trying to cook a cake, pancakes and breakfast and lunch all at once. We chatted about her family while I mixed batters and she heated the oven. I am not quite sure what to say about this woman other than that she is just as easy to love as she is to despise. Somehow I find myself adoring her most of the time. We cooked all morning until her relatives appeared and so we ate and talked and laughed all night.
The studies we are doing down here are rather rigorous and I am not only fully immersed in this culture and language but also discovering this new interest in documentary work. It is a pretty wild place to try to make a first film. The group of us, only four women from all over the states, have decided to work together on a piece about the concept of circles in Andean culture and how that is effecting the reclaiming of Bolivian indigenous identity through music. We´ll see where that leads.
I´ll try to put up some pictures this week if I can. I hope this update finds you all well!
Amor y besitos, Norita

An entirely different world: Shopping for toilets and thoughts on Evo

This first week has flown by and yet I feel so far away it is as though I have been here forever. It is incredible how time passes differently while traveling, each moment is full of something - amazing Andean vistas, beautiful festive music, angry taxi drivers, confusing and sometimes frightening miscommunications at the mercados, shops, in class and even at the dinner table. No matter how strong my Spanish may have been before I got here it is rar that one feels as humbled on a minute to minute basis as when immersed in a new language, an entirely different world.Needless to say my heads hits the pillow hard every night (please excuse any misused sayings...í´m in the middle of this language learning process where I can´t quite speak Spanish with fluency and I already have forgotten my English).
Yesterday morning mi madre boliviana, Ligia, woke me up quite early for a quick breakfast of tea and coconut yogurt (heaven on earth...really!). Afterwards we walked a ways down the hill from our casita to a catch a micro (public bus) to ¨La Concha¨, the biggest outdoor market in Cochabamba and most certainly the biggest, most colorful, beautiful and craziest market (and quite the contender for the biggest, most colorful, beautiful and craziezt place) I have ever been to! My family here has a small building behind their house that they want to rebuild so our first mission was to find a toilet for their new bathroom. For this reason we entered La Concha by way of the contraband venders. We walked quickly by piles and piles of scrap metal where men dug for car parts, door hinges, and tools, by stands of plastic toys until we found the perfect toilet sitting by the side of the road. We each took a turn surveying this toilet for any chips or broken edges because as Marcelo (my Bolivian padre) told me, ¨We don´t know exactly where this toilet has come from¨. It seemed to be in good shape so we sent Marcelo home in a taxi, with the toilet to beign installing. Carmen, Ligia nd I continued on.
At the bottom of the street began the vegetable stands that muist have been blocks and blocks long.Each campesino stood behind bags and bags packed full of spoices, corn,potatoes. In the streets lay piles and piles of garlic, oranges, carrots, pineapples, avocadoes, twers of bread and so much more. Somewhere I read that the population here in Cochabamba is 850,000 but including the barrios outisde the city people here say it is more like 2 million. I´m pretty sure that all 2 million inhabitants of this part of Bolivia were at the narket yesterday. We walked for hours essentially moving in one big mass with thousands and thousands of otheres. Whenever the movement stopped the venders would offer a taste of whatever they were selling - guava,grapes, peanuts, pig liver, quinoa and so on. Young children wrapped in textiles slept, their heads buried in their mother´s laps if not right in the dirt, the floor of the market. What a different life it must be for these little ones growing up just outside the ciyt, just outsied the education system and healthcare, just outside of people´s awareness, frighteningly underfoot. Apparently this i all chagning though with Evo Morales in power. Morales (or Evo as he is popularly referred to here), being from the coutnry and full indigneous blood is beginning to reclaim the land, culture etc. for the Qechuan, Aymaran and 40 plus other indigenous cultures that call Bolivia home. Some people aren´t as happy with this as you might think (or as I thought before coming here) because they he has just turned the tables, gone from one extreme to the other - instead of finding a solution fot the profoundly potent racism, classism and corruption - he has just given power to the opressed and in turn is taking away rights from the more comfortable elite classes who feel very strongly about having earned thier places in soceity.All that I have been able to offer so far to these extrememly passionate and challenging conversations is that perhaps it is more important for the pendulum to swing fromt he historically conservative and money hungry side to the other extreme to eventually land somehwere in between corruption and radical reaction. Like they say quite often here, vamos a ver. We´ll see.
today I fulfilled a long desired goal of mine - that is I wnet hiking in the Andes. Surprisingly, or maybe not so, a few hours of hiking doesn´t quite get you very far or to hardly any of the summits. Even though Cochabamba is at about 8-9,000 ft, the Andes are just enormous beasts! Beeen the natural enorphines one experiences and the added feeling of 10-12,000 ft, it really is quite magnificent and surreal up here! I scaled the side of on summit and came upon a small waterfall-cascading icey cold water. It tunrs ou that the winter here is in fact quite cold, even though we are closer to the equator than I´ve ever been, no snow but dry chilly winds that are hard to combat. Unfortunately I brought extra sandals and not enough wool socks. Tomorrow I´ll go looking for some extra layers. I hope you all are enjoying the hot summer sun. I suppose I´ll just skip summer this year. It is vertainly worth it to be here in this mysterious place. One week down, many more stories to come.
Besitos y amor!

ps-also excuse the distracting spelling errors...the key sare in very funny places on these computers.

Hola de Cochabamba

The flight into Cochabamba was like a dream. We cruised low
close to the Andean peaks over shanty towns until we reached the
city tucked in between mammoth summits. These first few days are
overwhelming and mysterious. The city of Cochabamba is a lively place
both historically and currently. I am grateful to have arrived safely and
to begin this time with a lot of joy and curiosity. I will write more when time permits. Much Love.

A Bolivia!

This summer I embark on a new and exciting adventure to the city Cochabamba that is tucked in the Bolivian Andes. I will be living with a family and studying Spanish and Documentary Film with a small group of other American students through SIT (School for International Training). This blog is meant for your enjoyment and to keep you informed of my thoughts and travels as well as some current events. Stay tuned and thanks for reading!