. On Friday afternoon, we boarded a bus for Quillacolla, which is a suburb of Cochabamba. We went along with a number of other students from the school.
When we arrived, about 10 minutes later, it was hot and the streets were packed with vendors of all kinds. The bus driver dropped us off and said something about us having to go find our tickets for our seats. We wandered around, trying to follow a makeshift map, thinking we were looking for a house where our tickets would be. The parade had already started, and most streets were already blocked off. Hundreds of people were trying to cross at different points, the police were trying to direct people and stop people, and we were just plain confused!
After about 20 minutes, we managed to cross under some bleachers, but some of the group got separated. So we waited and got trapped on the other side of the parade. A few of the students were getting very upset! Our kids were getting a bit weary and we were wondering if we would miss some of the parade.
We finally found the place and realized, it wasn't a house, but a set of bleachers where a lady was selling seats by the side of the street. Geez, why couldn't we have been told that? (because that would have made it less exciting...). The bands were passing by, blaring music and boy it was loud and awesome! We got our tickets, and squeezed on the tight bleacher to sit and watch the parade.
Boy, it was quite the show. There were over 60 groups with 50 or so dancers or participants in each group. The route....4 km, and it was hot. Many of the dancers had beers or cups of chicha in hand along the way. As we sat, the woman behind us shared her chicken and chicha with us. Chicha in Santa Cruz is a drink made from rice or a grain and it's sweet. Everybody drinks it. But chicha in Cochabamba is red and fermented, so only the adults tasted! It flowed more readily than water, carried in sandbox buckets, shared with wooden dippers.
We watched the amazing parade for about 3 hours before we decided to head home. The chicha and cerveza were flowing and taking it's effects on many of the on-lookers, so we thought we'd take our kids back to Charo and Nelson's place. The parade still wasn't finished and the party hadn't even started....
The festival for the Virgen de Urkupiña happens every year for an entire weekend, and is quite the cultural show. We were glad to that we had the chance to go and see it.
For the official website on the dance groups and more information, click here
On Monday afternoon, we took our kids to la guarderia (a daycare) which was a short walk from our host home. The kids were excited about playing with other children and Asha kept yelling, "Me! School!". It was in fact her first school experience and she was thrilled. As we walked to the school, I felt a sense of relief, knowing that they would be well cared for and we could concentrate on our classes.
Every day at the school, we had a different teacher in a small little classroom. Most students were one on one with one of the 8 teachers. The school had a courtyard with rooms off it. It was quite the quaint little place. There were two bathrooms (you supply your own toilet paper) and a little canteen that you could purchase jugo de platano, water, or sandwiches during break.
The first hour or so the teacher and I would talk. I figured out after what I thought was just chit-chat, was an opportunity to accomplish a couple of things. First, with a new teacher every day, with her own style of speaking, I improved my listening comprehension skills. Some teachers corrected me, others listened more and asked me lots of questions. A few of the teachers were passionate about politics and religion, others talked about home births and solar ovens. I learned some v-e-r-y interesting and bizzare things from my teachers. But I think the idea was to inform me more about Bolivia, her history, her struggles, her development among a whole variety of topics. I don't know at what point it was, whether it was in my class or at home with Nelson and Charo, but I felt myself change.
When we first came to Bolivia, not being able to communicate or understand, I would get an anxious, nauseated feeling settle in my gut when in an all Spanish environment and just want to hide. I felt helpless and isolated. After I learned a bit of Spanish, I was not anxious so much as I was uncomfortable because I didn't trust that I could understand when spoken to. Then after a while, I was only nervous with people I didn't know, and still fearful of new situations where I would have to respond to someone in Spanish. When we arrived in Cochabamba, I was on edge around our host family (although it was all me, because they were so warm and welcoming) because I didn't feel confident to understand what was going on.
But one day, I can't remember which one, that changed.
It was like a wall was broken down and words became clear and meaningful. I didn't dread being spoken to by a stranger, I stopped translating every word and things started to just register. I could sit and listen to a conversation and understood what was going on. And if I didn't, I knew how to ask for it to be explained. I actually read an article in the paper and could figure out what was being said.
It was like a light went on. I have been waiting for that for a while. They say that language acquision grows, then plateaus, the grows, then plateaus. And goodness, I've been on the plain for a long time and it's been frustrating! Not sure if it's because Cochabambinos pronounce their S's, unlike Santa Cru_, or if it was the hours of being spoken to by someone different every day, or the fact that Nelson and Charo loved to visit, and weren't shy about correcting me or clarifying for me when I had a blank look on my face. Or maybe it was a combination of it all that helped push me over the edge. It was a very empowering feeling to move to the next level.
Well, that kind of got dumped on when my last day one of my teachers pulled out a form with all the different tenses on it. It was labeled Presente, Futuro, Past Perfecto, Past Indefinido, Past Imperfecto, and Past Pluscuamperfecto. ??? Hilda asked me to to conjugate a bunch of verbs, in primero singular, secundo singular......okay, I'm lost. I felt like everything that I had learned just jumped out of the window. I couldn't even remember how to conjugate the regular verbs.
It was almost break, and I felt like crying. I got a sandwhich AND the banana drink just to make myself feel better. I sat in the sun and listened to everyone talk in German, the switch to Spanish, and then to English. Oh, for pity's sake! So I headed back to my little classroom and hoped the next two hours could be salvaged, along with my self esteem.
Hilda and I worked on it, and I realized that I knew how to do it all, it's just that I have no idea what all those tenses are called. I know that if I worked at a specific time I say, trabajé or if there is no beginning or end to my work, but it was before, I say trabajaba or if I just worked then I say he trabajado. But do I know what they call that? Noooo....that's the problem. But is it really? Maybe I should have asked Hilda that. Because I had no idea what a long and short vowel was, or what an adjective was, but that didn't stop me from mastering English.
So I plugged along at the crazy extensive form and figured out what I was doing. It ended quite well, that Hilda said that my Spanish was great after a year and I should be proud of myself. That was very meaningful; check, self esteem recovered. She pulled out the student sign book and I wrote a few words of thanks using my new vocabulary. Hilda thanked me for coming and said that my husband and I were great students and that we are a wonderful family. She hoped that we would come back and visit or maybe even take more classes so they could see us again.
I got a bit choked up as we left our last class. Lots has happened this week. Lots has changed this week.
We were headed home for lunch and then the afternoon held something that we'd never experienced before.....
On Saturday morning we woke up and I was glad that we all showered the afternoon before. The water is warm enough, but the air chills you as soon as the water is gone. Brrr....
It was nice to have a leisurely breakfast with Nelson and Charo. The kids played a bit and then we decided that we were going to head to the plaza. We wanted to see downtown and maybe do some shopping. We took a micro to the centre and enjoyed riding in a very colourful and tall bus. The buses are old Dodge school buses, but painted with psychedelic colours. I couldn't figure out how Cochabamba lucked out with all the tall buses. Everyone there is so short and in Santa Cruz, I always have to duck to stand in the micro!
We had a nice time in the plaza. It's called 14 de Septiembre, because that's Cochabamba Day, just like 24 de Septiembre is the name of our main plaza, the day of our city's anniversary. An interesting way to commemorate the holiday. We fed the pigeons (shudder, those things are gross...it's fun for the kids, it's fun for the kids) and walked around. The downtown has a very colonial feel to it, very different from our downtown. We located the artesenia market and did a bit of shopping. Afterwards, we headed to a restaurant with a great play park and huge burgers for lunch. We had been eating some great typical Cochabamba food and were looking for something different.
The next day, we went to El Cristo since Sunday is the safest day to go up on the hill. We took a taxi from our host home to the top of the hill, but the bottom of the stairs. They aren't kidding it's hard to hike up with thin air! And of course we had to carry Asha because "her legs weren't working". That's her latest thing now or "Me duelen". !!
Once we got up, it was quite the sight to see. We took lots of pictures and visited with some of the other visitors. Some were from Florida, and another was a Bolivian lady in her traditional skirt from Chapare. Carl and I took turns climbing the 10 flights of stairs up in the inside of El Cristo with Joel and Kezia. At each level, you could look out out a porthole to the grounds and city below. Joel was disappointed that we couldn't climb all the way to the head, but Kezia figured that with so many people crowded up there, it would probably just topple off.
We spent the morning there, then made our way back to the centre for lunch. In the afternoon, we headed home to have a nap. The evening was spent visiting and doing a bit of homework. Thankfully, we had met with the directors of our school, Janine and Joaquin, and had made some arrangements for child care and classes the next day. Here's hoping that makes the difference as we start the week of classes....
Once we arrived at Charo's house, we met her two daughters, Claudia and Fabiana. She served us some bread, jam, and coffee for breakfast. We visited for a little while about our trip and then she said that we must be tired and should rest. Oh, I was so thankful! We put the rest of our things in our room across the patio, and got the kids settled in the beds to sleep the rest of the morning away.
We met Nelson, Charo's husband, at lunch time and he seemed like a really nice fellow. Right after lunch, Charo walked us to the school for our class, while our kids stayed behind for the afternoon. We arrived at the school and met our teacher. Her name was Tuky and she seemed a bit shocked to meet us. Later on, she explained that she was told some Mennonites would be coming, and she figured we should at least be in overalls and a dress. Boy, we had an interesting conversation with her about all of us Mennonites!
The four hours went by pretty quickly as she talked with us, asked us a few questions about some of our language skills etc. She was assessing our level to figure out where to place us the next day. I was thankful that the 4 hours passed quickly (we had a 20 minute break in between), because I was imagining 4 grueling hours of classes, only to leave with an enormous headache.
After class, we returned home to relax before supper. We were still full from the large lunch, but we could see that Vasilia, the family's cook, was preparing another large meal. Well, I wasn't going to complain about the possibility of gaining weight if I didn't have to worry about preparing any food!
That evening, we visited more with Nelson and Charo and they told us a bit about their family. It was really nice that they were so open and asked us so many questions because they were genuinely interested in our life. For us, this was the first host family experience, we had nothing to compare it to, but it felt like it was going to be a very pleasant arrangement.
The next morning, we woke up and it was chilly! We quickly dressed and got the kids up, since we'd be taking them to class with us. The lady who normally takes care of the children of students, was not in town, the directors of the school were still gone, and Charo couldn't watch our kids. We had no choice but to take all three, with a few activities for them to do. We ate our bread and coffee and hot chocolate and raced to class for 8:15.
Most of the other students were singles from Austria or Switzerland. They had come for 2 weeks of classes in order to travel for a few months in South America. It was a nice little group of students. There was one fellow (and then later another joined) that was from the States. Other than us and the guys, everyone else spoke German during break.
Our kids, well, our kids were as expected for four hours waiting for their parents to finish their class. Joel and Kezia played well for the first 90 minutes, then started loudly arguing about who was going to read which book. Carl and I had to intervene a few times so that they wouldn't bother the other students. Asha, well, Asha was great for 5 minutes, awful the next 5, perfect the next, annoying the next....Tuky said that Asha kept coming in and bothering Carl (we at this point were with separate teachers) and he was getting quite exasperated. Well, we had no other option, except have them change the schedule on Monday for one of us to have morning classes and the other have afternoon classes until we could work something more permanent for child care.
The next day was a bit more bearable with the kids joining us for class. Thankfully it was Friday, and we knew that Monday would have different arrangements.
By this time, we could feel the effects of the dry air and strong sun of Cochabamba. The kids' faces were getting chapped from the air and I was a bit concerned about them getting burned (since I forgot hats). We drank lots of water and I lathered on 70 SPF lotion on my already brown kids, but still....so you can maybe imagine how strong the sun really was. No one there goes without a hat, and the children in the campo have chapped, red faces that everyone knows is characteristic of either Cochabamba, La Paz, or Potosi. We were also feeling the effects of eating really well and sleeping almost 9 hours every night. Oh, it was heavenly. I remember from my first Spanish teacher, Shirley, who said that it's almost impossible to study a language if you are sleep deprived. How true that is!
Our host family didn't have a washing machine, typical of most families, so I had to learn how to wash our clothes by hand. I had brought some laundry soap along, and that third day, tried to figure out the best way to clean the clothes without destroying my hands. I eventually figured it out and I had a great sense of accomplishment. I can wash my family's clothes without a washing machine!
It was finally Friday, we had spent 3 days in classes and with our host family. We were looking forward to our weekend when we could do some sightseeing around the area. Boy, we saw some very interesting things......
So...where to start? Well, it all began with us having a conversation with our CR's about a language school possibility for future workers. In that same conversation, we were reminded that we were up for more language study. "So how about you guys go check out this school and take some classes?" Sure!
Packing and preparing were a bit of a whirlwind. We had to arrange schedules, leave keys, guest house schedules, hire extra staff etc. etc. In all of it, I was packing and hoping that I didn't forget anything.
Tuesday night, as we were ready to leave, we realized that we couldn't find our camera. Lynn had already come to pick us up and we were frantically running around the yard, Marcelo with flashlight in hand. We all suspected Asha had something to do with the disappearance. Seriously, it couldn't have been worse timing. Finally, we gave up, ran across the street to borrow Hans and Elma's camera and quickly loaded up to head to the bus depot. I had visions of my camera stuffed behind a bush on the back part of the property. And it'll probably rain tonight, I thought.
When we arrived at the terminal, it was so busy. There were hundreds of people everywhere, either arriving or coming. Bus drivers were yelling last minute seat sales before they pulled out, "Boos cama, Boos cama, Boos camaaaahhhhhh". Carl went to pay the entrance fee and I waited with the suitcases and the kids. After he came back, I headed to the bathroom with them before we got onto the bus, since there is none on the bus. Carl waited and watched that our bags made it safely in the compartment of our bus. We were on the top level of a double decker bus and since we were riding "Boos cama", the seats were like lazy boys. It was quite comfortable to recline and almost be horizontal for sleeping.
We got the kids in their seats as we left the city. I was really hoping we hadn't forgotten anything, and of course I remembered the camera and prayed that it would show up. The kids looked out the window for about an hour, and then were getting tired so they curled up on their lazy boy seats and went to sleep.
Asha was quite the thrasher and so I couldn't really sleep well, thinking that she would slide off the seat. Plus, the adnoids on the guy behind me were rattling like a freight train! I finally got a few winks before the bus stopped at 2 a.m. just outside of Chapare for a pitstop. We woke the kids up, as this would be the only time for a bathroom break before we arrived in 5 hours. They stumbled out of the bus as we made our way among the throng of travelers. Traveling by night is much busier than during the day, so we waited in line for the bathroom for a while. Bathroom, well, we'd call it a bathroom here, you folks up north would maybe call it something else....
We got back on the bus, and the kids thankfully fell right back asleep. Mr. Snorer wasn't so bad, and I slept until just as we were arriving in Cochabamba. It was light and it was COLD. When we left Santa Cruz, it was probably 28 degrees, but I could see my breath as I quickly covered up Asha with a blanket. Once the bus stopped, we gathered up our things, bundled up our kids in jackets and blankets and waited until everyone else was off.
I was glad that the bus ride was uneventful. As we stepped off the bus to wait for our luggage, a security guard asked us where we were from. He told us that he would have to take us to an office to be checked out. ??? We collected our luggage and then followed him to a small office where a nice lady asked us how we were feeling. She checked our temperature and then let us know that they were screening all foreigners for A1H1 flu. But we've lived here for almost a year? No matter, we look like we just arrived. That won't change no matter how long we live here. Well, better safe than sorry is their policy.
We made our way into the terminal, found the information desk and called our host family. Normally the directors of the school would pick students up, but they were away. I was wondering what our host family would be like. We waited in the terminal, and I was glad that I brought little gloves along for everyone. The kids were pretty sleepy still, and I was hoping that we'd be able to sleep more once we got settled into our home. Once Charo arrived, I was surprised. She wasn't anything like I was expecting. She greeted us and helped us with our luggage out to the taxi. This should be quite the 10 days......
It´s been a while since I posted. We have I been? I don´t know if there are any die hard readers out there, but sorry for causing you undue strife and anxiety.
We´re in language study right now and have been for the last week. We rode on a night bus to somewhere we´ve never been to, we arrived to stay with a family that we have never met, and have been totally saturated in Spanish.
Except to say that I´ve never experience such a dry climate, and applied so much lotion to my kids chapped faces, the rest of the stories will have to wait until we arrive home. If you sit too long in the internet cafe here without moving, your hands start to ache with the cold.
We´ll return back to our hot and humid home soon enough. And then the stories, they will flow.....
This week was a bit of a hard week for the kids. They were so used to being on holidays, it was quite the effort to get them out of bed. I don't know how many times Kezia was in tears because she just didn't want to go to school.
So it didn't help when we announced to them that we would be going for our last round of shots. We broke the news over ice cream....
It's been a bit of a hassle trying to get our final vaccines. We didn't have time in between moving from California back to Manitoba to get all of them. Carl and I were able to locate the adult vaccines we needed, but the kids ones weren't in the city, weren't in the department, weren't even in the country. Worse case scenerio we could have someone bring them down from the States; oops, uh, well, missed that opportunity. All the international visitors are gone.
When we got the call that the vaccines were in, we weren't wasting a moment or a day, just in case someone else snapped them up. Okay, can you imagine it, parents with their children in tow lining up for city blocks for shots?! Like in front of Walmart when they only had 50 Wii's for sale before Christmas? Not likely, but we weren't taking any chances.
The kids did better than I expected considering last time. I knew they were brave, and Joel chanted his mantra the entire time in the taxi, "Tense up, and it'll hurt more". When it was all said and done, only Asha had a few tears, but mostly out of anger at being restrained.
But it's done. Gosh, we started this a year ago. I don't want to see another needle for a long time.
