Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Bienvenidos a Cochabamba (Welcome to Cochabamba)

So I’ve been in Bolivia for two days now and I’m settling in and trying to learn the city.  Cochabamba is a vibrant, busy city with people and cars everywhere you look.  All of the buildings here are painted with bright colors.  The new building going up outside my bedroom window is being painted black, white, and bright pink.

Our first stop in Bolivia was Santa Cruz, where we went through Bolivian customs.  We arrived in Santa Cruz with a Christian Mission group from the US and all of us trying to get our Bolivian visas at the same time was certainly interesting.  There was only one man working the desk where you apply for visas and he didn’t seem to speak English, which did not make things any easier since my Spanish is not great. Thank goodness Gabi speaks fluently. She helped Maria and me through the airport after we passed through customs.  The planes in Santa Cruz not being used were simply parked outside in the grass.  There were no hangars at all, which really surprised me.  There were also, what looked like to me, broken down airplanes which have just been sitting outside the airport and will probably be left to rust and decay there.

When we arrived in Cochabamba we had all our luggage (thank God), found some ATMs, and took a taxi to our hostel for the evening (again, thank goodness Gabi could speak Spanish to the driver).  We were a little early to the hostel, but they allowed us to check into our three-bed suite (1 queen and 1 bunk bed).  However, when we arrived the sheets had not been changed on the queen bed and there were no sheets on the bunk beds.  We were promised multiple times that someone would be in to change the sheets, but we ended up taking matters into our own hands around 10 pm.

On Monday morning, we checked out of the hostel and took a taxi to the Sustainable Bolivia house and office (we got sent directions in Spanish for that by someone from the SB office, so we at least knew how to get there).  The Sustainable Bolivia office is in a residential area on a smaller street, so most taxis don’t know the street name.  Once we got to Sustainable Bolivia I was relieved to be able to speak with pretty much everyone there.  The house has a beautiful backyard with herb gardens, apple trees, fig trees and some hammocks and chairs around it all, which I can’t wait to relax and read in.  Once we went through the brief orientation of the office and house and signed some paperwork, we went on a walking tour of the surrounding city with some of the other volunteers.  So far I have met volunteers from Ohio State, Boston College, and a university in France, but there are many I have yet to meet.  The walking tour was great to get some big landmarks for the city of Cochabamba around where Sustainable Bolivia is, but I think I probably could take that tour 10 more times and still not really know where I am.

After the tour, I went to meet my host family with Alex, the director of Sustainable Bolivia.  We decided to take public transportation to the house since my luggage is a backpack, however trying to stuff it in a truffi (minibus/van) and not stop traffic in the process proved difficult, but not impossible, since that’s what we did.  My host mother, Teresa, lives about half a block from la Plazuela Cala Cala, which is a large roundabout with many banks and shops near it, as well as one of the nicest hotels in Cochabamba.  Since this is a pretty popular spot, it’s easy to take a truffi to Cala Cala and walk the half block from there.  Teresa’s home is a beautifully furnished house with 4 bedrooms, 1 ½ baths, an office, a computer room, formal dining room, living room, sitting room, and eat-in kitchen.  Another Sustainable Bolivia volunteer from Ohio State, Jenna, lives in the main house with Teresa.  Behind the main house is another house where Justi, Teresa’s housekeeper, lives with her family, and my “casita”.  The best way to describe my casita is a studio apartment with an upstairs office.  Basically, it is waaaaay too much room for just me and my one backpack of items to fill, but it is incredibly nice to have my own space and my own bathroom.








I am struggling a little bit with my conversational Spanish, as this is not what is generally taught in schools in the US, so Jenna has been carrying most of the meal-time conversations, and Teresa asks me very basic questions that I mostly respond “Si”, “No”, or “Me gusta mucho” to.  Hopefully once I start taking Spanish lessons at Sustainable Bolivia and listening to more Spanish conversations I will pick it up pretty quickly.  Justi cooks all the meals for us and of the two meals I’ve had, they were both awesome.  She is even cooking vegetarian for me!  For lunch, rather than the pork that everyone else had with their meal, she made me some pumpkin schnitzel!  Lunch is the largest meal of the day here, and many people go home from work for lunch from about 12 pm - 2 pm.  So far we have also had freshly squeezed orange juice with our meals (yum!)


Anyways, I still have a lot to learn, and I while I visited with SODIS, the organization I will be working directly for (which is where Jenna works too) today, I don't start my work there until tomorrow. I am incredibly excited for my 10 weeks to get started and I can’t wait to get my hands dirty working on projects with SODIS.  For now, that’s all from Cochabamba! More soon.

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