A Month of Holidays PART 2

to continue....

I arrived back to my house in Santa Cruz on the 8th and that night was met (at about 11:00pm) by a crowd of singing people. My birthday was the next day and a bunch of people from the church had come over to give me my birthday serenade (see below)!

That was pretty cool. They sang a ton of songs and we all ate jello and empanadas (dough wrapped around cheese... pretty good, no?) and drank coca-cola. It was fun, even though I felt a little awkward because I wasn't exactly sure how I was supposed to act as the sung-to person.

The next day my family (the most fabulous host family in the world!) gave me a meal with my favourite foods and then a cake! (see below.... me with my host parents... the cake later had candles... that refused to be blown out... honest. I blew them all out and then they relit - a few times. Silly candles, they even kept going once they'd been pulled out of the cake).

The day after my birthday I was off again with my friend, Kat, to La Paz. I would like to relate to you the journey there (which was scheduled to take 24 hours... to start us off, we left 2 hours late):

Hour 1 - Heidi and Kat don stoic faces and excitement is high for the trip to La Paz

Hour 2 - Light begins to dim and eyes roam outward to watch fading landscape

Hour 4 - Sleep descends

Hour 7 - Bus stops for an undetermined amount of time. Kat and Heidi make a mad dash to the bathroom bushes - bus leaves unexpectedly and made chase ensues. Heidi and Kat clambour onto bus, victorious, tired and slightly abashed. Endulge in salty crackers.

Hour 8-9 - Flota jumps line and passes a plethora (and I mean a very large amount) of parked trucks and buses causing two sketchy road blocks and some very amused passengers.

Hour 15 - Still in unimaginably long line [later discovered to be the cause of a road collapse] - but much further along. Heidi and Kat wipe sleep away long enough to lament over their static position and "ooh" over the gorgeous scenery.

Hour 18-19 - Arrive in Cochabamba (half-way point??). Happy yet numbed by the late arrival. Buy snacks and nibble on tasteless crackers. Bus leaves late. Wonder how stupidly late the bus will arrive in La Paz.

Hour 24 - Kat and Heidi realize a bus should not be judged for its outward appearance. Their esthetically-stunning flota (bus) sucks.

Hour 27 - La Paz sparkles into view. Breath is taken away - literally.

Hour 28 - Starting to lose patience. Traffic is heavy - so are our bladders.

Hour 29 - Safe exit from flota. Kat and Heidi make hurried escape away from terminal.

Hour 30 - Undramatically, yet exhaustedly, arrive at Arthy's (hostel). Play a short-lived game of pool. Wander aimlessly to bed - sans shower.

So, we did eventually arrive.... and we slept a lot. And then, the next morning, we peaked outside with our backpacks on and became quite frightened by the frenzied activity outside. La Paz turns out to be an amazingly crazy, busy city. I have never seen so many people running before. The first person running made me stop a second and watch. I wondered what was wrong... turns out a lot of people run in La Paz. Perhaps they enjoy the exercise of carrying a briefcase and jogging up enormously steep hills at a giant altitude of 3600m. Then again, perhaps not. It was a little amusing for Kat and I since we'd been getting use to the slower Bolivian pace in Santa Cruz. We wandered a bunch around La Paz and I shopped a ton! La Paz has got such an amazing artesans' market! I wanted to buy one of everything!... almost.

After a few days in La Paz we signed up for a tour to Lake Titicaca. That turned out to be an amazing trip! The lake is absolutely gorgeous! I got a little ocean-sick (as in... I started missing the ocean). The lake is over 8500km2 (squared kilometers), so there were places where the other side was not viewable. It was spectacular. We stayed on a tall Island on the lake called La Isla del Sol (The Island of the Sun), which was 4000m into the sky and took an incredible amount of will-power and lung-capacity to climb. Thank goodness for a cool little plant called muña, that we held close to our noses as we walked and inhaled its abundant supply of oxygen. We stayed at a really nice hotel there and ate some fish native to the lake. Absolutely delicious!

(the view of the lake from our hotel)

After our fantastic journey to the lake, we spent a day or two more in La Paz, hanging out... meeting more people from all over (we roomed with a pretty awesome group of people from France and Brazil... that was a lot of fun). It was, all-in-all... a pretty super trip. The trip back was not very eventful. We arrived early to Santa Cruz.

Well, that about sums up my vacation month (actually... a bit over a month). I've really enjoyed the chance to travel and all my freetime, but I suppose I'm now a bit excited to return to a routine. The time will move faster when I start working again and I'm excited to be working with some new co-workers and with some new kids.

Until next time! (hasta el proximo!)

Heidi

A Month of Holidays PART 1

Well, it's been a while since my last blog... so...



Christmas was cool. It was harder than I thought it would be to spend Christmas away from home (especially with record breaking cold and snowfall at home!!). I missed my family's Christmas traditions and found it really odd to have nothing happen on December 25. In Bolivia Christmas is celebrated on the 24th in the evening. My whole host family got together at about 9:30 that night and talked and took pictures by the tree (it was a fake Christmas tree.... a little difficult to get a real Christmas tree here in Bolivia) and at about 11:00 we sat down around a long table and piled our plates with chicken, pork, different kinds of salads, yucca, and other foods... whatever they were... don't remember. We sat together there for about 1 hour, although I took a break from the food with my host brother and niece and nephew and set off some tame fireworks and some firecrackers. That was fun. Once midnight hit, we all congradulated each other on the new year and kissed each other on the cheek and hugged and blessed each other. Then we went inside and my papi handed out the presents from under the tree. The presents weren't big (except for two cellphones), but they were nice and it felt good to be included in their family tradition and holiday. But, then that was that and we went home and I went to bed. Christmas Day came and no one did anything. Honest. It was a day of sleeping and relaxing and doing nothing. I skyped my family a bunch and was able to share a bit in the Christmas I'm use to over the computer. Not quite ideal and I really wanted to squeeze through the computer screen and join the rest of my family in Canada. So, my Christmas was different, but I suppose it's kind of cool to now know how Christmas is celebrated in another country.



New Years was pretty cool. I was invited to go to a party with my host neice in a small town outside of the city, but ended up staying in Santa Cruz and going to the New Years celebrations at my church. Every family was supposed to present something like a song or a testimony or a skit or something. Most families didn't have anything prepared and some whipped up something on the spot, but others had songs ready or testimonies and those were shared. I played a piano piece and felt so good because everyone loved it and my papi (the pastor) got me to play it twice. My whole family also sang a song and I accompanied them on the piano. It was cool to be a part of their family presentation. Afterwards we sang songs and then got into groups to pray for each other and for the new year and for the church. After that my papi prayed until midnight and then we all rushed around hugging and kissing and congradulating each other and hurrying out the front door to watch the awesome fireworks! We had an enormous meal outside our church and then wandered tiredly to bed and collapsed asleep.

A few days later I made a trip to Sucre, the capital of Bolivia. I wasn't able to find anyone to go with me, so I ended up heading off alone.... which was a little bit scary, but kind of exciting. The trip was supposed to take 16 hours, but it ended up taking about 22. The problem? Rain.

Being from the west coast of Canada, I'm use to rain and I like rain, but... well... there's a bit of a different attitude towards rain here in Bolivia. When it rains, it pours, and when it pours, rivers flood and streets flood and suddenly there are no more streets, only rivers. That's what happened at about 1:30 in the morning while I was dozing on the bus. I noticed the bus had stopped, but was too tired to care why. So, I fell asleep and woke up at about 2:30... we still hadn't moved. So, I fell asleep again and woke up at 4:00... we still hadn't moved. I got up and out of the bus with a bunch of other people and we discovered that there was a long line of trucks and busses ahead of us and no one was moving because the river (normally crossable) was flooded and there was no longer any road. I think I was still a little too tired to let that sink in and I clamboured back onto the bus, wandering when a new road would be ready for us to cross. It took 6 hours... and when we finally approached the river my heart did a few backflips and sank. It was a dark, muddy, rushing river. "We are going to die," I thought (not completely serious... just a little) and more rain started to fall.

The first section of river was crossed slowly and at one point the bus leaned frighteningly to the side (releasing many tense gasps from us passengers within), but we made it safely and clapped heartedly for our talented bus driver. Then, we were delayed again on a good-sized mass of land in the middle of the river. I got out again (almost missed getting back on the bus...oops) and watched as other buses tried to make the crossing. There were some wobbly crossings and I wondered how on earth the baggages stored under the bus weren't getting wet (perhaps they did) as the water was waist-high (I know this because a few people stripped off their pants and waded across with their backpacks). There was also another truck that got stuck on the other side and wobbled and teetered and slid and made me very frightened for the people sitting in the back. They managed to get out fine. Then it was my buss' turn... I most certainly have much respect for our bus driver. We made it over and out without incident! I definitely gave thanks to God for that safe crossing.

The rest of the trip was made without anything much more exciting and I managed to make it to my hostel in Sucre with the help of a kind Bolivian gentleman. My hostel was really amazing! I met so many people from all over the world (although mainly from Ireland)... Ireland, Holland, Brazil, Argentina, Belgium, England, Chile. I had a lot of fun wandering the city and talking with people and hearing stories of travels and going to super cool museums. I didn't actually end up doing too much while there. Lots of relaxing. It was a really good time and made me feel more confident: that I could plan and take a trip like this all on my own!

Anyways... I'm going to end this post and start another one so it doesn't seem like you're reading one enormous long post, just two fair-lengthed ones.