12.10.07

Check-in

Just want to check in, complain a little and them I’m out.

I’m going on my sixth week in my program, almost half way though. Classes are winding down and there is a ton of pressure to figure out what we are doing for our ISPs. ISP is our month long independent study project we start the 10th(ish) of November. I don’t really know what I want to do, but I have a sweet idea, I just don’t know if it’s possible. The Aymara (which are an indigenous group) are big observers of nature and can observe well enough to know what is going to happen and plan their crops etc around what they observe. I think that’s pretty interesting because we have really screwed up the environment by not basically asking it what it wants and taking from it but giving nothing back. Hundreds of years ago there weren’t huge environmental problems and maybe one reason is because the people were more in-tuned to nature, listening and observing it? I’m not sure if there is enough on this topic to study for a month or an actual community that I could go live at that is well educated in observing nature, but we shall see.

Frustration: my power chord for my computer. I’ve had it worked on, bought parts and about $35 USD later it just started smoking and burning inside tonight. Yeah…I miss my dad on days like these.

We’ve been in Cochabamba for 4 weeks and we have traveled for two. Traveling was really wearing on us. The group got a lot closer because we spent so much time together, but by the end of the second week we had spent too much time together in my opinion. It was really nice to come back to Cochabamba and have some time to myself, even though we had four papers due when we got back….

We got back on a Friday and when I got home no one was here except my sister-in-law who lives in an apartment next door. She greeted me and rambled off something in Spanish about me not being able to sleep in my room. I figured there was a leak because it was a rainy day and my bedroom ceiling has a little to be desired. I didn’t feel well either so I didn’t think much of it and I went to my sister’s room to sleep. I woke up a few hours later and my mom and dad were home and I realized after venturing into my room, there was no leak, I had a new closet!! It’s pretty sweet, they built a floor to ceiling closet for me in a corner (I kind of wouldn’t mind one at my real home) but I guess my two weeks of being gone wasn’t long enough for them to build a closet, oh Bolivian time. So I slept in my sister’s room for 4 nights, which was fun but we have very different schedules at time. But now the closet is finally done, I’ve rearranged my room to be slightly more comfortable and all my stuff has been shoved into the closet so it looks like my room is clean. Funny thing is there are four drawers in the closet and the bottom one doesn’t open because the hinge for the closet door sticks out just a millimeter too much and the draw hits it when it’s trying to open. Go figure.

This Sunday we are starting our village stay for four days. They kind of freaked us out again warning us of all the things that could happen, fleas…lice…etc. fun stuff. I feel a little prepared, it should be like my home stay in Nicaragua when we stayed in El Chague and built a school. I really can’t imagine worse and I have a feeling it won’t be. Except there is a language thing, my family there might not speak a lot of Spanish, they may speak Quechua, actually they probably will speak Quechua. We’ll see how that goes.

I’m really really getting comfortable with my family in Cochabamba. My sister is super great, except she’s slightly given up helping with my power chord, since it’s been such a process, but other than that I can’t wait to come home every night and wander around my room in the constant search for wireless. And when the search fails, as it sometimes does, I watch a movie, Music and Lyrics has been a favorite so far. I wake up very often with “I thought I’d never fall in love again, but then POP goes my heart!” singing in my head.

That’s about it, sorry I’m not too exciting and don’t fall off of buses more than once. My elbow is healing however.

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