"Its Bolivia"

The tittle of my blog is courtesy of a student of mine. We were waiting on all of the forth graders to go by so that our line of students could move. So I was laughing with my kids, talking about how we were suck in traffic during rush hour. Then my little girl says, "Don't worry about it, there's always traffic, its Bolivia" in the sweetest voice. It has been a great joke with all the other new teachers. We have to remind ourselves that things work a little different down here that even eight year olds know to joke about it.

More about school and students next week. I haven't brought my camera to school to get pictures yet.

So now that I am all settled in my house, we have tried exploring the city a little. On the first week we were able to go a coworker's house for dinner and drinks. We all decided to go and watch an indigenous festal/ slowest parade ever! We were there for about an hour and we only saw a few dancing groups go by, nothing like the parades in the states. It was a show of bright colors, sparkles and dancing. The costumes with beautiful with color. We were told that most of them cost about 2,000 US dollars, which is a lot of money down here. There would be men trying to organize the dancing with a large handle in their hands. We were guessing that they weren't making much sense. It was a fun way to see should of the culture in Santa Cruz.

This was one of my favorite costumes. It had so many sparkles :)

The men's costumes were just as colorful!

Amanda, Stephanie, and I have tried a few of the markets around the city. The first one was a smaller one in near the middle of town. It was a craft fair, so I was able to get a few larger earrings. I was having withdraws since I didn't bring that many down here. There were a ton of beautiful wooden crafts and cloth bags. It is the prefect place to get more tourist like things.

On Saturday all of us got on our walking shoes and went to the closet fruit and vegetable market. It was able the size of 3 football fields. I would have loved to take pictures of the market, but our maid told us not to wear any jewelry, so I thought that a camera would be out of the question. There was tons of vegetable (so many different types of potatoes) I guess it is just not fruit season yet. Bolivia has around 30 different types of potatoes I have been told. I can't wait to try them.

One of the strangest things about Saturday is that we avoided the cops like crazy. Down here they can ask you for your visa at anything to make sure that you are allowed in the country. We didn't bring our copies of our passport to the market, so we didn't want to run into trouble. It was strange for me to avoid the police. I have never had to do that before.

I can't believe that I have only been here two and a half weeks. It feels like I have done so much in that time.

New House

It has been a world wind of the last 2 weeks. The school has for sure kept us busy with looking for a house and setting up the classroom. So where to start, I guess from the beginning...

I got off the plane at 7:00 am after 24 hours of traveling. The elementary principal picked me up and I went to meet up with all the other new teachers, well the few that had arrived. After a quick breakfast (although my body had no idea what time is was) I jumped in a van to be whisked around the city to look at houses. We saw about 14 houses and apartments through out the day. There were very few that were furnished. That was one stress that I didn't want to deal with. So I ended up rooming with 2 other teachers from the states in a very large house.

My house. The landlord took the picture when I was goofing off, oh well :)

Amanda, Stephanie and I have all lived alone for the last few years, so we are all adjusting well to the roommate life again. The house has 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, study, 2 living rooms, a large kitchen, baloney, back yard. So there is plenty of space for visitors :)  One of my favorite things is that I have 2 very large doors from my bedroom on to my balcony. It makes me feel very southern for some reason.

Still need to buy a chair for the balcony outside my room to drink tea at night :)

The city of Santa Cruz is very large! It is quiet a shock going from Glenwood Springs to a town this large. I am still getting my bearings on were everything is. It could take a little while because every taxi you take goes a different route to take you to the same place. It is also not the safest place. I can't go walking to school even by myself. They want us girls in a group of three and no walking at night, ever. So I am trying to get used to being driving around in a taxi. But at least I am able to give directions to my house in Spanish pretty easily now. I do have to say that it is really strange living in a place where you can't walk around and feel safe. I may have taken that for granted in Colorado.

I have been able to keep myself really busy. The other teachers are so nice in inviting us new teachers to join them out. If I were to tell all those stories I would be here all night. So I will save some of those for another time.