Two months of magical discomfort

I have gotten past the whole I-don´t-understand-what-is-going-on/have-no-idea-what-to-do part of being in a country where I don´t understand the language, but that doesn´t mean I enjoy it. At the same time, I can´t imagine going to a foreign country to learn the language and not living with a family (except in the very beginning, as I didn´t really enjoy that first week with a family in Guatemala). Not only does living with a family force me to listen to people speaking in Spanish, but I have seen things I never - and even the most outgoing backpacker - would see. Yesterday was a national holiday for a Catholic holiday, Corpus Christi. First I went with my host sisters to the market because they wanted to buy some pirate DVDs. They had pretty much every TV series you´d actually want to watch on DVD for 10 bolivianos - about $1.25 each. Plus tons of movies. Then we took a trufi...a minvan with about 4 rows, that costs $.15, to their aunt´s house outside of the city. And while I´ve been thinking that once again the culture of Bolivia isn´t that different from home (last night my sisters and I used the internet, watched The Holiday and the season finale of Gilmore Girls), visiting this house was more of a different experience. We got off on the highway from Cochabamba and walked about 7 minutes up a dirt road, and it definitely felt worlds away from a city. There were lots of overgrown bushes and weeds and about 5 dogs, chicken´s running around and stealing meat from bowls of soap left on the floor, and some goats in the back. One of the cousins had a bow with a big chicken foot in it, and she was taking the foot, sucking off toes and then spitting out some kind of bone---or was it the toenail? I am a pretty open eater but I´m not sure if I could have eaten my soap if it had had a chicken foot in it. somehow the first is entirely different than the leg, which I happily eat. Maybe its because of the skin...There were also peanuts, oranges and grapes, but I was scared to eat the grapes because they´d been washed in an outdoor faucet and I didn´t trust the water. The family said they eat fruit on Corpus Christi (something to do with the body of Jesus) because fruit is clean, but a teacher at the school had not heard that.

At one point, they might have been talking about me and the fact that I didn´t understand (although I did understand "its probably better") but they might have been talking about my sisters not understanding Quechua, a native language their cousins and aunts speak. Yes, I understand so little that I´m not even sure if people were talking in Spanish or Quechua. This is going to be an uphill battle...

I didn´t even go in the house, because we ate on a patio and I´m not sure there was much inside. I tried chicha, this fermented maize drink that is popular in Cochabamba - some is alcoholic, some not. Then after eating, people started to work in the garden - we´re talking hoes, machetes...and that was when the standing around commenced. I would have happily taken a broom and swept, but there didn´t seem to be any more and no one asked me, and I didn´t feel like challenging myself by asking in Spanish, although it wouldn´t have been that hard. Granted, if I was with a friend´s family that I had just met and they all spoke English, and they all started doing farm work it would be awkward too, but it was just more so because I was in Bolivia and can´t communicate well, etc. There´s nothing I can do in the moments when I´m with a lot of people, I can concentrate as hard as possible and still wouldn´t understand, so I don´t mind it that much (its just not worth being too sensitive about it)...but there´s a reason I had so much fun last week when I was traveling, beyond the people I met.

Speaking of meeting people, I had emailed the Israeli guys I stayed in the hostel with onSunday night, and didn´t hear back from them - I also left them a note with my phone number. So I figured they just didn´t like me. But then on Wednesday I ran into them on the street (the downtown, touristed part of Cochabamba isnt that big). One of the emails had bounced back and apparently the other guy´s email wasn´t working at all. We arranged to meet for dinner at this fancy restaurant they´d found. But when I got home I didn´t have a chance to tell my mom I was going to meet them for dinner, and she was already making a plate for me. So I ate a dinner at about 6. It was ok since they didn´t want to go to the restaurant until 9:45. It is one of the fanciest places in town - waiters who pull your chair out for you, wearing bowties etc. And a steak plus 2 side dishes costs...$4. The guys were very cute about it, saying they´d never been to a place that fancy and they wished they had their cameras, more for pictures of the waiters than anything else! And they were so happy with the food as well, smiling broadly. It was quite endearing. I would have been happier with more unusual Bolivian food, but it was a nice night and since I didnt have school the next day I didn´t mind being awake past my bedtime! They´ve moved on to Santa Cruz, the biggest city in Bolivia (were you thinking it was La Paz?) but maybe they´ll come back through Cochabamba.

On Wednesday there was a little party at school during the break, and I had my first salteña and really liked it- They are sort of a big empeñada filled with meat, a quail´s egg (which I had for the first time in Lima with Fernando at a chinese restaurant), olive, maybe potatoes and raisons, and some juice (not fruit juice, like the broth from a beef stew). It was a little bit sweet and I loved it. Apparently they only eat them in the morning but I would be happy eating them at any time of day!

I love the family here - they really want me to feel comfortable, take food when I want it, etc, and I take my book and go to the living room to read unlike in Guatemala or Ecuador (and read for about 5 minutes before I turn on the TV - they have cable too!). Having two daughters my age who are willing to talk to me, unlike the family in Ecuador, helps. But I´m not that happy with the school. I just had a sort of miserable week of classes although it might not be the teachers´s (I had 2) faults as much as mine for not having studied enough what I´ve already learned. But there´s also about 2 other students here and no afternoon activities...so I´m not going to take classes here next week. I´ve emailed some private tutors since I´m not missing any social experience by not being at the school, and am going to try a teacher at the German-Bolivian cultural center on Tuesday. There´s a school that is more "conventional" with more students, but its a 15 minute trufi ride outside of town and that´s annoying. What I really need to do is memorize the rules so that I can apply them. I am staying with the family for the week though, and because of them don´t want to leave for Sucre, another town in Bolivia that is supposed to be really nice and has some schools. We´ll see.

Tomorrow I´m going with the family to a city 4 hours away that has a market. One daughter has an outdoors store and wants to buy some backpacks imported from Chile that don´t reach Cochabamba. We leave at 5 am...yikes!