A typical meal here is a piece of grilled chicken over rice, with slices of fresh avocados and tomatoes and some type of fresh pressed juice. We have had a lot of different types of juices, we’ve had strawberry, lemon, lime, watermelon, coconut, peanut, orange, papaya, mango, apple and several types of fruit that we’ve never seen before that we’re told only grow here in the Amazon. In case you skimmed over it, we have had peanut “juice”, which wasn’t actually half bad, it was kinda like a mocha type thing. Overall we have really enjoyed being able to be at a homestay for our time here in Cochabamba because it’s allowed us to experience different types of food that we probably wouldn’t have tried, or thought to have tried on our own. We still haven’t eaten Guinea Pig though, apparently it’s pretty good and a local delicacy, but we’ll work our way up to that.
While we’re on the topic of food, there are generally only three type of soda here in Bolivia: Coke, Sprite and Fanta. I would say that we are fans of soda because there’s not much sugar in the foods here, and it’s kind of a comfort drink. Well, we were walking around the town just kinda exploring it the other day when we saw a supermarket. Seeing a supermarket doesn’t really seem worth noting in America, but over here pretty much everything is sold in small shops or usually by sidewalk vendors. So, when we saw a market it seemed very out of place. Once inside it seemed like a Thriftway store in America, and luckily for us it had A/C, because it can get pretty hot here at times. But, anyways, we were browsing around the store soaking in the A/C, when we saw that their soft drink aisle still only had those three types. Daniel started talking about how he wasn’t going to be able to drink Root Beer for four months, when we saw that they’d stocked their Root Beer in
the liquor section. I don’t know if they thought it was alcoholic or not, but we decided to assume that they did. Having the word “beer” on the side can be confusing in their defense. At the cash register Daniel ended up having to show his ID to buy some Root Beer. Luckily for him though, the Root Beer age here is 18, so he was good.
Last Wednesday Daniel and I took a taxi into the city center to visit explore a little and to go to the movie theatre. Wednesdays are “date night” in Cochabamba so instead of the high price of $4 per person, it was $2 each. We watched the only movie that wasn’t dubbed in Spanish, it only had Spanish subtitles, it was “Allied” with Brad Pitt. After the movie we got bacon cheeseburgers at the TGI Friday’s right next to the theatre, which was kind of funny because we’ve never even been to one in the States before. Overall, I’d say we had a successful “date night”.
Here’s a little explanation of what our language classes look like. Every week day we have four hours of language class, either in the morning or in the afternoon, depending on the schedule. The classes are one on one, with a different teacher every day. There’s a daily lesson plan, but a lot of it is impromptu conversations with the professor. Over the past two weeks we will have had 40 hours of in-class time, not including the extra time spent talking with the family we live with, those 40 hours equal 16 weeks of 3, 50 minute classes a week in college. In my opinion, having taken both options, this route is obviously much more effective, hopefully it will be for the long-term as well.
At times learning another language seems like learning the rules to a game and not getting to play it, while other times you actually get to play it and it’s a lot of fun. Being able to get your point across and understand what others are saying, especially as it relates to humor is a lot of fun.
We have two more days left at the language school before we travel 10 hours by bus to our next city. We’ll be sad to leave the people we have grown close to over the past two weeks, because the school has been really great to us. When we first arrived they actually had no idea we were coming because we hadn’t had internet access for four days while we were travelling and we didn’t get the chance to email them back. However, when we arrived with all of our stuff, knocking on their door they found a way to make it work; with their own schedules and even found a family for us to live with. Without their last minute help we would’ve had nowhere to go for the past two weeks, so for that we’re thankful.
These are pictures of the Catholic Cathedral in the cities center. We walked in the backdoor during one of their weekday services just to check it out. When we left we felt like the brothers from the movie Boondock Saints. The pictures really don't do it justice, it's quite an impressive place. The cake is in "commenoration" of Bolivia's Plurinational day they had on Monday, but we actually bought it on Tuesday because it was cheaper. There are small bakeries all over the city that have delicious looking cakes.
That's all for now folks.
