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!