Homework

I have finished 7 days of language school and have 6 more to go. While I am grateful for the opportunity for this crash course in spanish, one on one with a professora for 4 hours is a little intense. i feel a little rebellious at times and think "i just graduated from college, i´m done with school!" or "english rocks!" but, everyday i have little victories like being able to carry on a partial conversation with my professora or understanding a whack irregular verb.

we have homework every night, and i love it! i´m not talking about the conjugating of verbs or essays, but our ¨"learning bolivian culture" homework! our directors told us to get to know and experience the city of cochabamba, and that is what we are doing. almost every day we ride a micro to the center of the city and explore. cochabamba is such a lively place, full of people, street vendors, plazas, coffee shops, ice cream.....! one thing i am not used to is the dogs! stray dogs or owned dogs freely roam the street and live it up! i took a picture of one dog that was so hardcore it had dredlocks haha.

last saturday we went on an excursion to incan ruins about a 3.5 hour bus ride away. we drove through gorgeous countryside filled with farms and random mansions. since the ruins are in the mountains, we did a fair amount of weaving in and out, up and down. many times i had to close my eyes and give a little yelp because we were so close to the edge and barreling along at a crazy fast speed. it was a gorgeous day saturday and it was a lot of fun exploring the ruins and getting some exercise at a high altitude! i´ve always loved reading about ancient civilizations so i was fascinated the whole time. we ate lunch on what used to be the astronomy tower and that was definitely the coolest place i´ve ever eaten lunch.

on sunday we attended an evangelical church with a profesora who used to work for MCC Bolivia. because we were guests they had us stand up and wave and the congregation all waved back :) after church we climbed up to el cristo, a huge white statue of jesus on top of a peak with his arms open wide. and by climb i mean trudge up one million stairs in church clothes in high altitude. we had a blast! once we made it to the top we were able to go inside el cristo. seemed a little strange but it had a great view of the city and mountains. this el cristo was built after the one in brazil, so the bolivians made it just a little bigger :)

sunday evening we went to a futbol game. it was a big one because both cochabamba teams, wilstermann and aurora, were playing. a profesor at school told us to wear blue, so we did, and when we arrived a the stadium everyone was wearing red! so we cheered for the underdogs, aurora. soccer here is more entertaining/dramatic then in the states. here if players ran into each other or had a ball stolen they drop to the ground a roll around until a foul is called. it usually is. a few times the stretcher brigade was called out because a player was so convincing in his fake injury. aurora won 2-1! so "our" team won!

yesterday we toured an old convent. i didn´t take any pictures because i would have had to pay more for pictures then for the tour. a few nuns still live in the convent and did not want to open part of it up to the public, but if they didn´t the government would have forced them out and taken over the land. these nuns, most over 80, joined the convent when it was still part of an old order where they took a vow of silence and how absolutely no contact from the outside world! i know it was so they could better commune with God, but didn´t Jesus commission us to not be of the world but to go out into the world sharing his love? we can also learn so much from others - i´ve only been in bolivia for 1.5 weeks (crazy) and i can tell i have so much to learn from my boliviano brothers and sisters!