Every time I go overseas Tom Brady wins another Super Bowl, that man better start funding my trips if he knows what's good for him.
Daniel and I were really craving pancakes the other day, but they don't sell the mix here, and we're dudes so we don't know how to make it from scratch. So yesterday we bought some cake batter and just fried it up like a pancake, and I've gotta say it didn't turn out half bad. It tasted like vanilla, and was extra fluffy but a pretty good Bolivian replacement.
I’ve never really looked at or cared about power poles before, but, in Bolivia they’re made out of one of two things: concrete or the most sickly and bent sticks you’ve ever seen. It makes sense because there aren’t many large trees here, but they’re still some sadly humorous looking poles.
It’s currently summer/the rainy season here, which sounds like a contrast at first. But basically what it means is that every once in a while it rains very hard for about five minutes and then goes back to being summer again. It just cools you off and then the sun dries you out again, it’s kinda like living in a washer and drier, which makes our belly button the lint trap.
We saw some white people the other day, which is actually pretty rare. This breed of white people, however, turned out to be German Mennonites. Traditional Mennonites are basically like Amish people but they use slightly more technology, but they’re pretty similar. Apparently there’s 200,000 Mennonites in Bolivia; I guess if you’re gonna play “Little House on the Praire” this is a good place to do it. From what I’ve seen they all wear overalls and collared shirt with a hat and use a horse and Buggy, and they all seem to have families with only bleach-blond haired sons. Ironically, I drove out to one of their farms, with my boss from drilling wells, because we were trying to get one of our machines fixed by them. So I guess they don’t use the stuff, they just have an intimate knowledge of it, and can fix it for other people.
We were walking through a street market the other day when we saw some cheap Nike shoes for sale, the only problem was that just over the Nike Swoosh was written, “Hike” instead of “Nike”. So in other news, Nike rips off a Bolivian shoe line, and only changes one letter.
Evo Morales is the president of Bolivia. He’s been elected to two consecutive five year terms, but that was eleven years ago. He recently lost a vote to change their constitution to allow a president to hold office for more than two terms, but he lost. However, he lost by a close enough margin that he decided to just keep the job anyway. A lot of people are starting to see him as a dictator over here, which he seems to be leaning towards. To help the people realize that they like him there is pro-Evo propaganda everywhere, on tv ads, and painted on almost every wall in Bolivia there’s a blue “Si Evo”. The government graffiti is only broken up by the occasional, “I love you Princess” or “D+J” inside of a heart, which I guess is a kind of graffiti that is universal.
The Spanish word of the day is "Inflamable”. Inflamable is Spanish for Flammable, which is one of those words that’s close to English, but could end up being potentially dangerous.
Coca is a major crop here in Bolivia. You always see people (usually low-wage workers) with a giant ball of it in the mouths, taking up an entire side of their mouth. It really seems similar to tobacco chew’s use in America. It also seems weird calling the U.S., “America” over here because these people live in the continent of “America” too, they always just call it the United States. But all of this is kinda just semantics.
For some reason we can’t listen to the Kanye West song Family Business over here. According to Youtube, Soundcloud, and Spotify “This song is not available in the Plurinational State of Bolivia”. We haven’t had trouble with any other songs, I guess the government over here just really doesn’t like that one song.
Lately we've just been playing in the mud drilling wells and camping outside far away from electricity so we haven't been able to post a blog, and there's not any pictures with this one because its midnight here and I dont feel like doing it. So here's a meme from Bolivia. These women are called Cholitas, which is just the term for any woman here that dresses in this kind of way (Usually with a bowler cap too). And apparently they have Cholita WWE in La Paz.
Ciao ciao for now.
