Born In the USA

I just walked into the kitchen here to find my host father listening to and dancing about to Springsteen: "Born In the USA" Haha! Teddy was also cooking pasta for dinner...he says Italian is his favorite food and has a bunch of cookbooks to help him make pasta dishes. Olive oil is very expensive here and usually only used in restaurants so Teddy's pasta dish tonight was a special treat!

Today was the first day of the Aymaran New Year. That being said, the students at the Institute were invited to attend a traditional Aymaran New Year welcoming ceremony this morning at 6 am. The purpose of the ceremony is to welcome the sun on the first morning of the new year and offer special sacrifices (AKA llama) up to God. The Aymaran people acknowledge the closeness of this holiday to the Feast of St. John (San Juan Bautista)...and many indigenous Bolivians celebrate both the New Year and Feast of St. John separately yet with the same spirit of praise and thanksgiving running through both. Historically, the Aymaran people were forced to label their New Year festivities as "a celebration for St. John" to avoid punishment for their worship that some (the government) viewed as paganism. Since the early 1990s Aymaran's have freely and openly embraced both celebrations and popularity among governmental officials has helped to strengthen appreciation for the celebration. (For the past few years, the President Evo Morales has welcomed the sun on this first morning of the new year with the Aymaran people in La Paz.)

My new friend Olivia and I thought we would try and make this early celebration here in Cochabamba...easier said than done! Olivia lives about 5 minutes down the street from me and it being pitch black it wouldn't have been safe to walk to either one's home, so I decided that I would call a cab (By "I" I really mean my host dad, since he was the one that got on the phone with the cab company at 5:30am!) and then pick up Olivia and together we would head South to the New Year ceremony. To make a long story short...My taxi driver got LOST (yes, even though he looked at the address that I had and said that he could find the place) and Olivia couldn't figure out how to get out of her house (many, many locks on the inside of her house family's door!) Needless to say neither one of us made it to the ceremony!

Later on in the morning, we took a tour of downtown Cochabamba with some other students (led by Sr. Cathy and Fr. Ray). We saw the big cathedral downtown and a little about the life of the city itself. There were many clefas (glue sniffers) around....a sad sight as well as traditionally dressed poor beggars lining the streets...the beauty of the architecture and the scenery was humbled by the surrounding poverty. We took a trip up the Concordia mountain to see The Cristo de la Concordio (Christ the Peace) sculpture, which is believed to be the largest statue of Christ in the world. It surpasses the more famous statue in Brazil by just a few centimeters. Both the Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) statue in Rio de Janeiro and this in Bolivia are 33m (108 ft.) tall, because Christ died when he was 33 years old. Cochabambinos say the extra height is appropriate, since Christ actually lived "33 years and a bit." Haha...very clever, Cochabamba.

We ate lunch outside at a restaurant/retreat center that had the nicest dogs! (Oh and the food was good too...but these dogs were really the true delight I thought...2 huge German Shepards and one little black and white pup!)

Tonight I studied some more from my Spanish book and enjoyed Teddy's pasta dish with Lilian and Teddy and their daughter Chile's family. I am starting to feel more comfortable with the language and more at home in my neighborhood!

My brain still hurts constantly from translating in my head and always trying to figure out what is going on around me. I am finding that I can talk with the little kids better than I can with adults. I think it is because the adults give me too much credit and start having sophisticated conversations about literature or politics or pop culture....vocabulary that I do not have. HOWEVER, I can talk with anyone under 8 about toys, cartoons, kids books, etc....no problem!