zoodles

Not too much is going on here. We’re in the depths of winter right now, which I confess is not unlike a Calgary summer so I can’t really complain. But I can see my breath when I have coffee in the morning, so that has to be worth something in terms of privilege to complain.

I feel like I’m coming down with a cold, which is welcomed in a way because it’s finally my turn so to speak. I’ve pampered and spoiled Mauricio through a very long string of illnesses that were more or less due to stress we figure. It looks as though he will fail one of his courses, not for lack of effort or lack of smarts, for he’s overflowing with both, but for lack of skin pigment. I’m not kidding. His faculty is really indigenous and he encounters a lot of racism and exclusion for having light skin. And there isn’t much he can do about it because the university, being run by the state, is the definition of bureaucracy and corruption. I think you’d have to live here to understand it. He’s pretty much ready to throw in the towel, and to be honest I don’t blame him, and I don’t have the heart to press him to finish, it’s literally making him sick. Which reminds me of how I h*te Bolivia in a lot of ways, which then makes me wonder why I’m here again.

Speaking of which, my friend Tandy asked me once, as she was preparing to leave Bolivia, what I would miss when I left Bolivia. Tough question. Well... I'll miss my laundry lady. Sharon raised her eyebrow when I mentioned this in an earlier post, so let me explain. She’s an older woman who comes once a week to do the laundry by hand. Kind of breaks my heart. I decided not to get a machine, because I figure it’s better to give someone a job. We pay her seven bolivanos (about one dollar) for 12 pieces of clothes. Labour is cheap here which I think I’ve mentioned before. She washes them in a communal wash sink outside and then hangs them to dry. When we had the problems a while back and there was no transportation, she would walk all the way down her mountainside, across town, and then up our mountainside, to do the laundry. Really broke my heart. This was supposed to be something I’d miss… well selfishly, yes, I’ll miss having someone do my laundry… I think...

I’ll also miss the fresh bread. Like almost every other hand-to-mouth aspect of life here, people buy bread day by day, and there is a little bakery on almost every corner. The one in our neighbourhood is called Jhenny’s (Jenny’s) named after the baker’s little daughter who works there and who always looks so sad behind the counter. Kids here work a lot. Bread comes almost exclusively in the form of what we would call a hamburger bun. Three for one boliviano, again really inexpensive, so I wonder how they make money. I'd miss fresh bread everyday.

I guess I’d miss the sun too, it shines just about everyday :o)

It isn't every day that my best friend has her first child so forgive me for blogging vicariously through the lives of Cathy, Josh and Finn!!

Abra-cadabra! Well not quite... Though you wouldn't be able to tell by how amazing Cath looks, Finn's journey into this bright world was epic, rather labourious you might say. But mom and baby surfaced from the ordeal happy and healthy.

The political situation settled down just in time for Mauricio and I to get stomach infections. Poor Mauricio was sick for a week with salmonella and a fierce variety of amoeba. I vomited and got better relatively quickly which meant I had to take care of him... Unfortunately I was incapable of achieving his demanding standard of loving concern! I’m just not the forehead-sponging type. Anyway, he got over the stomach problems… in time to catch a cold! Arg!! But Humpty is finally back together again.

Well the nights are starting to get warmer now, which means I can’t see my breath in the apartment. I’m hopeful this is a sign of a warming trend and not just a temperature blip. In the mean time our artificial fireplace is keeping us warm and not doing too much damage to the electricity bell.

At night we gather around it to roast hot dogs and tell creepy stories. Just kidding! But on June 21, the winter solstice here, there is a party called San Juan, a tradition from Spain I think. The event involves hotdogs and bonfires fires. The smoke gets trapped for days because La Paz is like a little pocket in the mountains (well actually not so little), or perhaps because we’re so high up there’s no where for the smoke to go. Well anyway San Juan happened to be the day that our laundry lady comes. Rather than air drying, our clothes were wood smoked that week, so we smelled like camping all week!

I’m on my last of 12 of Shakespeare’s plays (The Tempest) for my distance course. I’ll look forward to watching Prospero’s Books once again. I don’t think I ever really understood it. And my French class will be finishing up soon. I plan to have some more free time on my hands soon!