Jenny in Bolivia: Adventures with Alison

I arrived in La Paz around 5:30 this morning so when I was driven to my home stay I told my house mom, "quiero descansar" and I slept for a few more hours. My whole day was spent with my roommate Alison. She is a medical student at Northwestern and will be graduating this spring. We got to know each other over tea and bread that our house mom left out for us. There are also two guys living here. We have seen them in passing but don't really know what they are doing here, maybe working. Anyway, our house mom Olga made us some delicious soup with hard boiled egg, chicken, potato, and rice. Lunch in Bolivia is the largest meal of the day and it is polite to stay after eating and talk with the host. Olga only knows a handful of words in English so we speak in Spanish with her. After lunch we sat down with her for about an hour and showed each other pictures of our families and some baby pictures. She showed us some pictures of her sons and videos on her trip to Europe. Olga is very sweet and she speaks slowly and clearly. I can understand almost all of what she says.

After our conversation with Olga, Alison and I decided to go outside and explore. My first time out in La Paz in the daylight, woohoo! And the weather was very nice, a bit windy but a hot sun (don't worry I wore sunscreen, Mom). La Paz is incredibly beautiful. We walked across a bridge to a spot with an breath-taking (literally because of the altitude) view of La Zona del Sur of La Paz and the Teleférico (look this up!). The views really can't be captured in photos but I included some anyway. I told Alison that I couldn't wait for my mom to see this when she comes to La Paz. On our walk, Alison and I tried our best to speak mostly in Spanish. We got back to our apartment just in time to leave again with Gonzalo, my program director and Spanish instructor, for my orientation. We explored the movie theater/mall across the street. I will definitely be taking advantage of that. I have my eye on Un Viaje en El Tiempo (A Wrinkle in Time). We took a taxi to La Plaza Murillo. Gonzalo explained that when the Spanish came and established colonies, the first thing they did was to create plazas with government buildings, a church, and a prison. He told us we would go to a museum there later this week. From there we walked down the main street through the city and Gonzalo pointed out some good places to eat. He told us about types of fruit that they have in Bolivia that we don't in the U.S. and said he might bring us some to Spanish class (one was called "tuna"- basically a prickly pear I think). When Gonzalo dropped us off, Alison and I went to the market and bought some warm bread rolls for dinner. Alison bought an ice cream bar and I bought a hair brush since I forgot one. That was pretty much my day. All in all pretty wonderful. Alison is an awesome adventure buddy and amiga and I am excited to do more exploring in La Paz and cool day trips with her.

FYI: This blog is time consuming and I might cut down on the details in the future, sorry in advance :) Feel free to leave comments, I love hearing from my fans.