Too much to tell (Vol. 1)

Whew, I have alot to write about... I haven't updated in a while because I've been traveling all around for the past month. But I am back in California now and have time to fill you in on my final days in Bolivia.
I'm bad at goodbyes, so it was hard to have to go to the orphanage, and the kid's gym specifically to do just that. I knew it would be harder at the orphanage though, and I was tempted to just not go at all, simply disappear. I knew I would end up regretting it though, so I forced myself to go. I took along my camera as well so I could snap some final photos.
The girls were excited to see me, I helped them with homework and then told them I had brought my camera. As I expected the usual frenzy took place with everyone wanting to take a picture. I let them play with it for while I sat with the other girls and watched telenovelas. After the shows were over though the little ladies wanted to take photos with me, so here are some of the results:






I couldn't say goodbye... so I determined that I would come back, if only for a day to say goodbye to the girls. I was planning a trip to Peru, Bolivia and Argentina with my friends Alex and Marissa, so a stop in Oruro wouldn't take us off course too bad. I'll tell you about that trip and my final day at the orphanage in my next post.

My last day at the kid's gym was easier... but only because I wimped out and didn't tell the kids I was leaving. I suck, I know. I did tell the coach, so I'm betting she told them. I brought my camera and was able to get a few shots before the kids tackled me and took it over. I have hundreds of blurred shots and closeups of eyeballs now. But there were a few salvageable shots. Most of the boys wanted pictures of themselves doing acrobatic moves on the rings. I was able to settle them down for two group shots though.





After saying my goodbyes, my abuela, my cousin Adrian and I went to the bus station. Our flight was early in the morning leaving from Cochabamba, 4 hours away. We took the overnight bus with arrived at 2am. But the airport does not open til 5am. The bus lets you stay on until 5 though, sleeping in the back as it is parked. It was rough for me... I got an hour of sleep. We were the first ones to arrive at the airport though, but we then had a 4 hour wait. They don't make it easy to travel out of Bolivia... there are so few flying options. But anyway, we made it into Buenos Aires, Argentina. The bulk of the family now lives in Buenos Aires, and we stayed with my Uncle Hector.
The next day it was my abuela's birthday, so of course we had a big party. My Uncle bbq'd tons of steak, brought out the beer and put on the music. Alex and I wanted my family to taste a bit of Mexican cuisine, because none of them ever had tried it. We searched all day to find a Mexican grocer but to no avail. We had to settle for a small international section in a supermarket called Jumbo that had a tiny selection of Mexican food in between the German and Japanese section. There were some cans of beans, some tortillas, dipping sauce... not much, but we bought what we could and and bought the ingredients for mojitos (my idea:) The food turned out great, and the mojitos were a hit, even with my abuela, who soon got up and started to dance:


Even I got in on the action...


So I finally got the tattoo I've been talking so much about throughout this blog. I woke up one day in Buenos Aires and didn't want to wait anymore. I looked up a tattoo parlor and went! Remember the Bolivian Devil mask painting I saw on the side of a building? Well I printed it out and took it in for the tattoo artist to look at. The mural isn't there anymore by the way, they painted over it a week after I took the pic. Anyway, it took three and a half painful hours, but I got it done! It felt as if someone were using a serrated knife to cut into my skin the whole time, but I didn't cry... as much as my cousin Adrian and friend Alex wanted me to, as they stood nearby waiting with cameras. Here is the pic that inspired the tattoo:

The reason I like it so much is that it plays a big part in all of the festivals in Oruro, and this mask in particular originated in Oruro. Different cities in Bolivia have different masks, and this one is specific to Oruro. I found a cool website that shows you many of the other masks, scroll down to the bottom to see the devil mask: http://www.musef.org.bo/mascaras/02.html

But here is me getting the tattoo, and the final result:




I will tell all about my trip to Peru next time.

So this weekend was one big party. As I've mentioned, they like to party here, and this weekend was no exception. Festivities began on Friday and didn't stop til' Monday morning. Each day was a different reason to celebrate... Saturday was the "day of the Market" and parades and flowers lined every street. Live bands were set up around every corner too. I'm not sure what the other days were. But they have a day for everything here! Anyway, I took lots of pics as usual.






This is a panorama shot, click it to enlarge it:


My abuela doesn't like all the festivals, she says they are excuses to drink. And she's right! Everyday there are plenty of drunk people stumbling around, or dancing around, or more often fighting. Her store ran out of beer, every place did. I liked seeing women in their 60s and 70s downing bottle after bottle and dancing in the streets. Alot of people just end up passing out on the streets, like this guy:

I couldn't help but take the pic! He was laying in front of the place I make calls from... he was asking for it!

Sunday was the craziest of all the days. Besides all of the parading, they had set up carnival type games all along one street. After finding out I'm a terrible shot when it comes to shooting down cans, I played it up on the foosball tables, and also bought some raffle tickets. But this wasn't your regular raffle; instead of giving away junk prizes like toasters and what-not, they were giving away something far more tempting: puppies! The ticket salesmen held up dozens of tiny puppies, dressed in little outfits, and sold tickets for 2 pesos each (25 cents). I knew it wasn't a good idea to try and win a puppy... but I couldn't help myself. I bought ten tickets and gave half to my cousin. When it came time to announce the winning numbers, my cousin ended up winning a baby chicken and a puppy. He chose a husky, which go for 6-700 dollars in the U.S., we won it for $2.50. We gave away the baby chick, I figured my abuela might eventually try and cook it.
So we surprised my abuela with the pup, who promptly peed and poo'd everywhere in her house. We don't have a name for it yet, I suggested naming it "163" after the number that won it ;)



I take off from Bolivia this Saturday, and begin my backpacking adventures through Argentina, Bolivia and Peru the week after. I want to see Machu Picchu, Iguazu falls, Lake Titicaca and of course, lounge on the beach in Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata. But we'll see how many of these places I actually make it to... I might just get lazy and not want to leave the beach...

Tattoo-less Chris

Last weekend I hit up La Paz again. My whole reason for going wasn’t to experience the sites or culture, but to finally get the tattoo I’ve been wanting fooorever now. There is a good tattoo artist there so I made a trip of it (peckatattoo.com). I brought along my cousin Adrian and my abuela too. Bring along my abuela probably wasn’t the best idea… she didn’t seem to get that my cousin and I were heading to Bolivia purely to get tattoos. Instead my abuela would wake up at 5am and want to go sight-seeing… no matter if it was still dark out or not. This was made harder by the fact that Adrian and I enjoyed drinks from room service and watching TV til late at night.
Anyway, turns out that the Friday we went was another Bolivian holiday (there is one every week!), so the tattoo place was closed. Then the Saturday we went, we realized that the place is only open Monday thru Friday… so no tattoos. Instead, we indulged abuela and went to see the sights… all of which were closed. We ended up heading an hour outside of La Paz to visit Tiwanaku, which was an important spiritual centre for the Incan people. I read a bit about it before going to La Paz, and was pretty excited to go. Um, unfortunately, the place was a bit of a let-down. They haven’t finished excavating the site. There really wasn’t much to see. Though my abuela made it more entertaining by trying to get me into the site for a discount. They charge more for foreigners to enter, a lot more, so my abuela tried to say that we were all from Oruro and were Bolivian citizens. The fact that I tower above my abuela and cousin, and that I don’t have a Bolivian ID or speak fluent Spanish made the story a bit hard to believe, and I had to end up paying 8 times what they paid. Anyways, here a few pics I took of the few things that were there to take pics of.



My stay in Bolivia is quickly coming to and end, and when my time is up here I’ll be heading to Germany for Christmas. But I’ve decided that I’ll be staying there longer than originally intended. I realized that what better place to continue my globe trotting than in the center of Europe. It will also give me a chance to spend some time with my folks and also pursue some goals I have in mind. So if anyone wants to visit Europe, you have a friend in Germany!

People like to celebrate here… a lot. There are always small parades going down random streets on random days, it is a normal thing here. But this last Saturday was an especially big celebration, called the Universities Festival – which is exactly what it sounds like, all the Universities in Oruro come together to put on a big festival for the town, and everyone comes out to watch, dance and drink… but especially more of the latter. Even though Oruro is a small town, there are A LOT of universities here, and they all came out to parade on the streets. Their costumes are colorful, flamboyant, and in many cases – heavy! Some of the male costumes weigh anywhere from 50 to 70 pounds, which they dance in during the sweltering heat, often uphill, for hours. Which is why almost all the male dancers have teams of people running drinks to them during the march, and why all of them have big wads of coca leaves on one side of their mouths. It wasn’t uncommon to see a few of the dancers looking pretty rundown and trailing behind the others, and I even saw some cases where some of the men had passed out and had to be carried off. Anyway, the parade went on all day, from morning til’ 4am, and all day there were onlookers getting their drink on. My family warned me there would be a lot of drunk people out that night, and they were right! There was a lot of stumbling, women crying, and in the afternoon the next day – a good deal of passed-out people sleeping in the streets.
I took tons of pictures of the parades all day, so check them out:










My abuela was insistent that I get "cholitas," so I obliged. Cholitas are what they call the girls here who wear more traditional clothing (large colorful skirts and a brimmed top hat). Of course the outfits are alot more colorful during festival time.



On the subject of drinking, teenagers here have found a low-cost way of getting drunk: rubbing alcohol. Yup, my abuela sells small bottles of rubbing alcohol in her store, and they’re most often bought up several bottles at a time by teenagers who don’t appear to have any large gashes on their bodies in need of disinfecting. They buy them with soda and drink up. Also popular amongst the teens here: bandaids on noses. At first I thought it was to protect their noses from the sun, or maybe to help heal a sunburn, but no. Boys wear bandaids on their noses here to get girls. It’s a fashion thing and girls seem to go for it. Maybe I’ve gotten too old, but this is one fad I just don’t understand.

Like I was saying in the beginning, people like to celebrate here, even at work. My cousin Adrian works at a furniture store, and invited me to come by after work on Friday. What I found when I arrived was a case of beer and a fire-pit being started up inside of the store. The last Friday of the month, stores here burn-up good luck charms in a fire and fill up their stores with smoke. It is supposed to bring good fortune and profit to your business in the next month. Oh, and of course lots of drinking is a part of the ceremony as well ;) 12 large bottles of beer were split between four of us, and after “cheers-ing” we would pour beer on the floor and drink up. I was doing fine, until I found out that we had to repeat the whole ceremony again in their other store, and another case of beer was brought out. I quit after the first store though, like a good boy… and also because I couldn’t handle all that beer!




Here is a cool mural I found painted above a garage door. I would pass it a lot in a taxi as I go to help out in the kid’s gym, and finally I set out on foot to find it. After getting lost for a while I finally found it, and was able to get a good pic of it by having my cousin sit on my shoulders with the camera. It is a painting of the devil; this is what the devil is depicted as in Oruro. And the train underneath it symbolizes how Oruro was the first in the country with a train. …Wouldn’t this make a cool tattoo?? Yes it would… on my arm.

Attack of the Little Ladies

So I had to end up buying a new digital camera, because I left my other camera’s charger in Buenos Aires. But that’s ok, because now I can bring you an update!

I finally have some photos of the orphanage I work in. I'm going to run you through a typical day there for me. I was reluctant to bring out my camera, as I was expecting most of the girls to duck and cover at the sight of a camera lens pointing at them. But quite the opposite happened, and I ended up being completely mobbed with young girls wanting to take a photo (now I know how Justin Timberlake feels). They were pretty excited to handle the camera be in front of it, I eventually had to put it away when fighting started so we could get back to our game of ‘Tijeritas’ (kind of like ‘duck duck goose’). So here is a bunch of photos of the little ladies:
This is what the place looks like on the outside, it is known as “Logar Penny” around here.
I go into their study area and help with homework… as much as I can at least. Today someone asked for help with Chemistry, but I’m afraid they’re seven years too late for that (and even then I wouldn’t have been much assistance… sorry Mr. Sparks). The picture is blurry because I couldn’t get a clear shot with all the girls jumping in front of the camera; you can see a bunch of hands poking up from the bottom.

After homework time, which is very strictly run by the director of the place, the girls line up for their afternoon snack. They get a piece of bread with some jam and an orange. I haven't stayed for dinner so I'm not sure what the menu is then.

They come back inside for their favorite time of the day: telenovela time! The girls love everything on Nickelodeon too, I sat and watched Aladdin 2 with them yesterday, and then a teenage telenovela after during which all the girls sighed over all the boys in the show... 'sighed' isn't the right word, 'screamed' is more accurate. They are at that boy crazy age I guess!


And here are photos of the girls themselves during play time. Oh, and me :)





I have tons more photos of the little ladies, they all loved being in front of that camera!

I should probably mention that I joined the Bolivian police force. Well no, but I did try on the uniform. My cousin Adrian stopped by after work and let me try on the uniform. We took photos, of course.



I look pretty tough right?

Last weekend my Abuela and I went to Cochabamba. It is one of the biggest cities in Bolivia, and also where Bolivians come to vacation. But unfortunately, I forgot to bring the photos of the trip with me to the internet café… so that will have to wait til next time. But I can tell you about the adventure we had as we were leaving the house to catch the bus there.
My Abuela is good at a lot of things – haggling for one. In fact every time I go somewhere with her she always tries to bargain, and she usually gets her way. If she doesn’t, she waves her hand at the salesman and says something under her breath, at which point I apologize to the person in broken Spanish. My Abuela is also good at getting me to eat much more than I really want to. If she sees my empty plate, she asks “Mas? Quieres mas? Estas flackito!” If my plate is not empty, she pleads “un poco mas, solo un poco por favor!” I often sneak my leftovers to my cousin Adrian… I dunno how such a skinny guy can consume so much.
Anyway, one thing my Abuela is not so good with is keys… they seem to go missing a lot when she handles them. It doesn’t help that every door in the house has a different set of keys to open them. As we walked out the door with our luggage that day, it suddenly occurred to my Abuela that she forgot the keys to the door we just exited from… and all the other doors had been barricaded from the inside. Luckily our neighbors offered to help, by pushing their 6 year old son through a small kitchen window with bars on it. I didn’t think he’d fit, but with some “help” i.e. shoving, he made it through and landed on top of the stove. He let us in and then the search began. My Abuela has a drawer dedicated to keys, many of which she doesn’t even know what they belong to, but the drawer’s existence didn’t surprise me since she’s kept every free toy that I ever got from a box of cereal or a Kinder Egg since I was just a wee boy. Anyway, after a box full of keys we finally found them. We locked up, again, and were about to take off when my Abuela realized she had misplaced the keys we had just used. Another search ensued and they were discovered in one of her many bags. We were finally ready to leave and as I followed her out the front gate I found the keys sitting on the ground in the middle of the alley way … at this point I took the keys and put them into my pocket for safe keeping… which I almost lost once we got off the bus and they fell out of my pocket into my seat. Runs in the family I guess. I love my abuela!

I'll try to get to the internet again soon to bring another update! Nos vemos!

The new and improved pierced Chris

Sorry I haven’t updated recently! It feels like I haven’t had any free time to get to the internet café. But here I am, and I got some stories.
I've been keeping up my work with the kids in the Cultural center and in the orphanage, and I have some pictures now. The kids were interested in my camera and wanted to take all the photos they could, but they kept touching the lens as they did so, and so most of the photos are pretty smeared. But you still get the jist of what I do in the class... which is lift kid after kid up so they can reach the rings or high bar (my arms are getting pretty ripped!). Yesterday I had the classes to myself again... controlling a group of kids in a gymnasium is hard enough, but the language barrier makes it even more tough! I ended up repeating "basta!" and "no mas pelear!" alot, without much luck.




In the second gym class of the day, it is mostly older kids, who in the free time they have at the gym, practice breakdancing and crazy kinds of flips. I made them a CD of American hiphop, and they really liked the hardcore stuff (A Bay Bay, Throw Some D's). Its a pretty nice program that allows them to work on their technique, and it keeps them off the streets and out of trouble. So I mostly stay out of their way and let them do their thing (I can't do any of the stuff they do!), and work with the younger ones and the girls in the class, doing everything from handstands to 3/4 giants on the high bar (I've gotten pretty good). But as I mentioned before, I spend most of the day lifting kids!

Unfortunately I ended up forgetting my camera charger in Buenos Aires, so my camera is now dead and I don't have any photos of the orphanage :( But I've been enjoying working there. The girls there like to ask me to say their names in English. After homework time is over, I watch a telenovela with them. It looks like they're pretty strict there, but not as bad as when my grandmother was there. She told me horror stories of how they would not give kids food if they went outside (they weren't allowed to go outdoors!), or whip young kids if they peed in their beds. Her brother went without bread for 15 days for losing a button on his sweater, so my grandmother and her sisters would hide leftover crumbs under their arms to give him secretly. My grandmother gets pretty misty talking about the place, and after hearing her stories I understand why.

Anyways, after I get done with the kids, I walk for about an hour until I get the main plaza of Oruro, where my cousin Adrian works nearby. We then go and hit up the gym together... thats right, more gym time! I'm usually exhausted after a day of chasing after kids, but I have to work off my grandmother's food - she pretty much fries everything. For breakfast this morning I had 3 pieces of fried fish, fried chicken, and fried potatoes. I know she'd fry water if she could. And after I'm full, she insists I eat "mas, un poco mas" ...Yesterday I did something bad, I slipped a piece of chicken to the dogs so that I could stop eating. I know I know I'm a horrible person, but I'm a horrible buff person, hehe ;)

So I had to pay a visit to the Bolivian immigration office last week. And they were less than eager to help me out. Last month President Evo Morales decided that Americans entering the country are to be treated much like Bolivians are when visiting the U.S. Among the new requirements:
. fill out the visa form with personal data and a color photo
. current passport, not expiring for at least six months
. police report
. proof of hotel reservation for the whole stay or
. a notarized letter of invitation by a Bolivian citizen who takes responsibility for the visitor
. immigration can interview this citizen before approving the visa
. round trip ticket
. yellow fever vaccination certificate
. proof of economic solvency (bank accounts or work letter, who knows)
. $134
Morales calls this a "matter of reciprocity." At first, this policy change seemed pretty fair to me. But I wonder how many Bolivian-Americans this will effect, who I bet are swallowed into the "tourist" category, or how this will effect money generated from actual tourists each year (which is about 40 million bucks a year). These changes take place in December, luckily around the same time I take off. But as I was saying, getting my visa extended now was hard enough. I sat around waiting in the immigration office as non-Americans were promptly taken care of. Then when they finally did see me they did everything but give me a cavity search. They also made sure to repeatedly tell me that I was not to work at all while in the country. I got a stamp in my passport and will have to go back to the office in another 30 days to repeat the whole process. So if any of you were planning on visiting, you had better do so before December! Oh and if you don't know about Morales - he's not America's favorite leader, let's leave it at that. He's buds with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez too.

Oh I almost forgot to mention that I got my ears pierced. They're mini plugs, nice and simple... like me I suppose. I randomly went to a tattoo parlor with my cousin Adrian and we ended up getting piercings. He got his right eyebrow pierced. We both suffered problems for about a week... such as forgetting about our piercings when we would take our shirts off, or finding comfortable positions to sleep in. But we're both good now.
We originally went to the tattoo parlor for tattoos, but we didn't really know what we wanted. We both wanted some kind of dragon on our back, but I've since found something else I want first: The Incan "Chakana" I've seen it around town a few times, and I like it because its also a symbol of my Incan heritage. It is pretty rich in meaning, its an integral part of Incan architecture and still worn as a talisman today. You can read more about it here: http://trailingincas.info/chakana.php ...My mother will be so proud ;)

I have alot more to write about, stuff I've noticed around here, but I'll save it for next time. Nos Vemos!

Kids are Exhausting!

Alright so I finished my first week of volunteer stuff and the Children's Cultural Center and the local Orphanage. Man am I exhausted. Kids have aloooot of energy, who knew?

In the Cultural Center I have been helping with the gym class. But on Wednesday and Thursday the teacher didn't come and I had to control the class myself. Now, a big group of 9 year olds is hard enough to control, but then you add in the language barrier... and well, its hell. I spend most of the class lifting the kids up, and flipping them around the gymnastics high bar, which is a work out for me as well. Especially when the kid is a bit on the chunky side! The second gym class is for older kids, and there really isn't anything for me to do in that class. Most of the older boys can handle the rings or high bar better than I ever will.

I also started working in the orphanage my grandmother was raised in. She came with me my first day. We were waiting in the foyer for the director and then started hearing screaming. The front doors opened and three grown women were having to drag a young girl into the place. She was bleeding profusously from the mouth and nose and screaming the whole time. She was saying she didn't want to go anywhere and was crying that she had no mom or dad. All the while I was standing a few feet from her having no idea what to do. The women managed to pick her up and drag her inside. So it was pretty nervous to begin with and this certainly didn't help. My grandmother said the place had changed alot, she told me horror stories about it when she was there.

The girls there seemed curious about me and engaged me in conversation whenever I was around. When homework time started, I had a chance to take a look at the math they were doing and realized I don't remember any of that stuff! Algebra was yeeeaaars ago for me. Damnit. But then I found a girl working on her English homework and I sat and helped her out. Whew. Some of the girls then took me to a folklore music festival in which they were performing in their local school. It was a competition of sorts between the different grade levels, and each grade had a musical and dance performance. It was usually about 20 or so students playing the zampoña (pan flute), and one or two on the guitar and drums. There was also a traditional costume competition. I wish I had brought my camera. It was a cool experience... I want to learn to play the zampoña now.

Whining moment: so I brought the 3rd through 5th seasons of 24 on DVD with me, and I've just finished watching all of them :( I looked forward to watching the adventures of Jack Bauer every night before I went to bed, and now its all over.... OVER! So if you know of another addicting show I can get on DVD let me know (no I've seen Heroes so don't suggest it!)