Surprisingly, I was not noticeably sort today, even though
it has probably been one of the longest days of travel that I’ve had so far. I
woke up at 5:30 to catch the bus from Sajama to Patacamaya, which took three
hours. I took another minibus from there back to Oruro for 2 hours. After lunch
in Oruro, I took a regular bus back to Cochabamba.
I was set to go meet my Couchsurfing host then, but he had
some emergencies and I stuck around instead. It was the first time I experienced
an attempted robbery – some guy tried to grab my phone out of my hand and run
off, but he didn’t anticipate that I would be able to hold onto it, apparently.
That, oddly enough, wasn’t what I thought was weirdest/most unnerving about
that situation – it was actually that I wasn’t
unnerved by that. I just calmly shot the guy a look and kept on walking. I wonder how I would have reacted if I was any less experienced as a traveler.
On Tuesday, I went back to work! I was with the babies once again, and it was nice to come back to them after having some much-needed time off. That is 100% accurate. Instead of the two usual teachers today, there was only one and a new lady. It was nice that she tried to talk to me, and I thought it was hilarious that she asked how to tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese people (though vaguely reminiscent of the 1940s pamphlets that tried to do the same thing in the United States) and if people ate elephant in China. I wasn't really sure where that second question even came from, but it was interesting nonetheless!
Wednesday was much of the same, except a little girl came to help us out in class! She was very sweet and nice, and tried to interact with me a lot despite my inability to speak to her and the difficulty I had in understanding what she tried to say to me. In the evening, I met up with Daniel, my friend from UT who is here in Bolivia for a week! I went to meet him in the cafe after his Spanish lesson with my same teacher, and we just walked around the city center a bit. We ate a good amount of street food (he was curious about almost everything) and then went back to my place, where we talked a little bit about how we want to travel around the rest of Bolivia. Overall, good day!
On Thursday, I had a lot to do! Volunteering was great, and since it was Daniel's first day working, we went back together and walked through La Cancha market. We tried freshly-squeezed orange juice (the lady actually squeezes the juice right in front of you) and this weird rice-like grain drink that I would never had tried on my own. When I got back to where I'm living, my host, Carlos, told me the unfortunate news that they had a family thing come up and I would have to find somewhere else to live starting next week. I was actually really glad that I had contact so many people in the beginning because I found one who responded to me a little later and still willing to host me! Thank goodness.
I also had my Spanish lesson today - I don't think I've written too much about them, but I had been a little "ehh" because I had been learning a lot of words like "wood" and "wool" that I'm pretty sure I'm not going to use on a regular basis. Today, I met my teacher Carla at a cafe and we actually went through prepositions and almost a million verbs, so I'm a little overwhelmed but also glad that we're finally getting to practical stuff. I actually also feel a lot more confident in my speaking ability - even though it's still a struggle, I can understand more and speak more of what I want. Progress! I also tried something called a cornetto at the cafe - it's like a stuffed croissant, basically. It was quite good.
Daniel and I also have plans to travel to Santa Cruz over the weekend. I basically spent most of the night trying to plan our trip and I actually found a Couchsurf for one day! We'll probably have to go with a hostel for the other night if we decide to stay on Monday (probably will since Santa Cruz is such a large city). That's okay though! Couchsurfing is seriously a wonder. I can't believe I only really discovered it recently.
On Friday, I had a normal day at the nursery and then walked through the market once again! I tried this huge donut that cost about $0.25 and a samosa-tasting pastry for about 80 cents. Bless the low cost of these great foods.
Off to Santa Cruz! I've heard it's quite nice and it looks like there is a variety of fun things to do, so stay tuned!
Wednesday was much of the same, except a little girl came to help us out in class! She was very sweet and nice, and tried to interact with me a lot despite my inability to speak to her and the difficulty I had in understanding what she tried to say to me. In the evening, I met up with Daniel, my friend from UT who is here in Bolivia for a week! I went to meet him in the cafe after his Spanish lesson with my same teacher, and we just walked around the city center a bit. We ate a good amount of street food (he was curious about almost everything) and then went back to my place, where we talked a little bit about how we want to travel around the rest of Bolivia. Overall, good day!
On Thursday, I had a lot to do! Volunteering was great, and since it was Daniel's first day working, we went back together and walked through La Cancha market. We tried freshly-squeezed orange juice (the lady actually squeezes the juice right in front of you) and this weird rice-like grain drink that I would never had tried on my own. When I got back to where I'm living, my host, Carlos, told me the unfortunate news that they had a family thing come up and I would have to find somewhere else to live starting next week. I was actually really glad that I had contact so many people in the beginning because I found one who responded to me a little later and still willing to host me! Thank goodness.
I also had my Spanish lesson today - I don't think I've written too much about them, but I had been a little "ehh" because I had been learning a lot of words like "wood" and "wool" that I'm pretty sure I'm not going to use on a regular basis. Today, I met my teacher Carla at a cafe and we actually went through prepositions and almost a million verbs, so I'm a little overwhelmed but also glad that we're finally getting to practical stuff. I actually also feel a lot more confident in my speaking ability - even though it's still a struggle, I can understand more and speak more of what I want. Progress! I also tried something called a cornetto at the cafe - it's like a stuffed croissant, basically. It was quite good.
Daniel and I also have plans to travel to Santa Cruz over the weekend. I basically spent most of the night trying to plan our trip and I actually found a Couchsurf for one day! We'll probably have to go with a hostel for the other night if we decide to stay on Monday (probably will since Santa Cruz is such a large city). That's okay though! Couchsurfing is seriously a wonder. I can't believe I only really discovered it recently.
On Friday, I had a normal day at the nursery and then walked through the market once again! I tried this huge donut that cost about $0.25 and a samosa-tasting pastry for about 80 cents. Bless the low cost of these great foods.
Off to Santa Cruz! I've heard it's quite nice and it looks like there is a variety of fun things to do, so stay tuned!
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