Pictures, Pictures

I couldn't get the kodak gallery stuff to cooperate, so if you want to check out some pictures from my first week, take a look at my Flickr page:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/amyspix/sets/72157600498533112/

This link will take you directly to the Bolivia 2007 set. I haven't gotten a chance to put captions on everything, but will try to do so during the week.

I think the pictures next week will be more interesting. This first week, I didn't do a whole lot. At least not a whole lot that was worth taking pictures of!

pictures tomorrow

Okay, so the connection at the internet cafe is worse than at work, so I have been sitting here for about an hour just trying to upload pictures: I give up. I´ll do it tomorrow.

Caught in the San Juan Crossfire

If I didn´t know that this weekend marked the Fiesta de San Juan, I would have thought that La Paz was under attack. I learned at a dinner party on Friday night that the celebratin used to be marked by huge bonfires in the streets, but luckily, some sort of Smokey-the-Bear typed movement to ban bonfires got pretty active. So now the preferred method of celebrating is by shooting off massive amounts of fireworks (probably of the variety found at South of the Border, but definietly not of the variety found in suburban northern VA!) all over the city until late into the night. What this results in is lots of explosion-type sounds filling the air, along with the scent of gunpowdery-smoke. You can see why it would have been a little scary if I hadn´t known about San Juan. Even so, every so often something would explode so close by, I had these images of having a bottle rocket come right through my bedroom window. It´s not the same as being bombed, obviously, but still, when you are curled up in bed trying to stay warm and sleep, the last thing you want is a firework projectiling through your window.

Though it´s kind of cool looking out my window at the outlying areas of La Paz and up into El Atlto and just seeing random fireworks go off all over the place.

Other than that, I went to a really fun dinner party on Friday night, and then I went to the National Art Museum yesterday. The art museum took about 45 minutes to get through. But they had some cool stuff and they allowed picture taking, so some of the pictures I´m posting are of some of my favs in the gallery. So it has been a pretty productive weekend for me, despite the fact that I didn´t get out of bed until about 1pm both yesterday and today.

Anyway, I´m in an internet cafe today trying to upload pictures. I think the internet connection here is even slower than the one in my office, which is kind of a bummer. Plus the keyboard sucks and it´s laid out spanish-style, so lots of the characters are in places I´m not used to.

So check out my pictures, link to the right - password is my last name. Hope everyone had a great weekend.

Oh, and lastly, I was feeling super-snarky about the sale of hotdogs at the Ketal the other day when I posted, but yesterday I stopped there to pick up some stuff, and everywhere I looked, folks were buyin´up those dogs. That´s the last time (well, maybe) that I´ll be snarky about something like that.

How to survive the longest night of the year, Bolivian Style

What do people in developing countries with predominantly indigenous populations do to get through the winter (here) solstice? The shortest day of the year? Sometimes referred to (though I think they are off by a few degrees) as the coldest night of the year?

They barbeque.

Um, duh?

At least that’s what the local supermarket thinks. Consider the flyer that got placed in my grocery bag this week:

KETAL TIENE LOS MEJORES PRODUCTOS
PARA LA NOCHE MAS FRIO DEL AÑO.

So, Ketal, the supermarket, claims to have the best products for the coldest night of the year.

What are these great products that I must have to get me through the frozen night, you might ask? Well, let me tell you what items Ketal has on sale. For very special sale prices, you can buy the following items:

Combo 1 Extra: with 24 hot dog buns, 24 extra large hot dogs, ketchup, mayonnaise, napkins, and two 2L bottles of Coca Cola. (Combos 2-5 seem to contain similar items, except for 4, which throws in sauerkraut for the dogs)

Chorizo (spicy or mild) by the kilo.

Red wine

Singani, which is a grape based liquor that you generally mix with Sprite, so of course, the Pack Casa Real includes a bottle of Singani, a 2L bottle of Sprite, and a glass.

Oh, and you can also buy Marshmallows. And of course, charcoal.

Man, if only Ketal would consider having this sale in another week and a half and I would be set to celebrate the Fourth of July here.

Long distance dating has never been so entertaining...

So, I admit, one of the more difficult things about leaving DC behind actually had to do with a guy. His name is Dave. He's awesome. He's everything great. He's absolutely fabulous. (And I know I'm totally embarassing him here, but he'll get over it. ;-) )I'll make it up to him somehow. Anyway, we've been spending a lot of time together over the past few months, so I knew that this trip was going to be difficult for both of us.

Luckily, Dave is a total tech-geek. I mean, the guy owns a Roomba, fer cryin' out loud. He has a ROBOT that vacuums his home!!! So before I left, I was sure to outfit myself with the latest in high tech communications devices. Now, if you have known me forever, you are probably realizing what this guy has done to me because I have never EVER been at the curve, much less ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting new technology into my life. I really did resist getting a cell phone for as long as possible. And I only just bought my first computer a little over a year ago.

So here I found myself, packing for Bolivia, with my laptop, my headset, and my webcam. Dave and I did some troubleshooting back in DC to make sure we could get everthing working, and maybe a day or two into my trip, we had already had a fairly good quality video-phone call (free of charge. Thanks, Skype!). This was actually something of a miracle because the internet is only moderately predictible most of the time.

Yesterday Dave and I had planned to talk towards the end of the day, but I was worried because all afternoon my internet connection in the office kept on going down, which did not bode well for a smooth phone call. I had thought once or twice about emailing him to say, hey, maybe we should try this another day when it's looking like a better connection, but then I realized that that day of a better connection may never come, so I decided that we should just go for it.

The first call was okay, but not great. We had audio and we had video. The video was a little shakey, but more of a problem was the incredible lag time we had.

Dave: Okay, I'm going to count to three and then you say four and we'll see how long the lag is, ready? One, two, three....

(crickets chirping...)

Amy: Four

Oh dear...Dave pointed out that at one point the lag time was approximately 30 seconds. But it made things entertaining, even if we couldn't have any sort of a real conversation. We just spent a lot of time laughing at each other, and starting to talk, and then stopping because, due to the lag, we kept interrupting each other. And then we'd just laugh again. It wasn't productive , but it was damn funny.

All of a sudden those terrible words come across my instant messenger screen...

Dave Copeland says: you froze
Dave Copeland says: no audio
Dave Copeland says: d'oh
Dave Copeland says: connection lost immediately
Dave Copeland says: no audio :*

We still have video so we can see what's going on. Dave is typing all of this for my benefit, but that sad part is, while he can't hear me, I can hear him perfectly fine. I try to tell him that. He laughs at how I just look like I'm yelling at the camera.

Amy Maura Pearson says: I'm saying I CAN HEAR YOU!!!
Dave Copeland says: hahahahah
Amy Maura Pearson says: Now I feel like a deaf person!
Dave Copeland says: I think the video is actually more fun than the audio :)
Dave Copeland says: the lag in response
Dave Copeland says: always funny for some reason
Amy Maura Pearson says: but I'm not talented enough to type and watch the video at the same time.

Remember that all of this is going on while we are both on video, but only Dave can be heard. I feel like I must look like an old soundless movie, like I should be holding up cards that say what I'm saying in between scenes.

Amy Maura Pearson says: okay - well, shoudl we quit this nonsense and try again tomorrow
Dave Copeland says: yeah, def
Amy Maura Pearson says: This is my worst nightmare
Amy Maura Pearson says: not being heard.
Amy Maura Pearson says: :
Dave Copeland says: hahahah
Dave Copeland says: I hate to click that big red hang-up button
Amy Maura Pearson says: you hang up first
Amy Maura Pearson says: hahah
Dave Copeland says: we're like in high school
Dave Copeland says: "ok on three we both hang up same time"
Dave Copeland says: hahahah
Amy Maura Pearson says: Okay - hanging up. Bye. :*
Dave Copeland says: bye!

This looks like it was a very short conversation, but it really wasn't. We spent most of the time laughing at each other and laughing at this really unfortunate state of affairs in which we have outfitted ourselves with the highest of high tech (okay, well, maybe not the highest) equipment in the hopes that it would seem like we were still right there in the same city. But, while I would much rather be able to video chat with my honey any time I want to and see his picture and hear his voice clearly, it's still pretty freaking funny to see the slow motion video, with the lagging audio (when you have audio) trying to catch up with the movement of our mouths, or just typing while we make faces at each other on the video screen. It's not ideal in terms of communication, but it will make the month go by faster. Besides, yesterday I got a local SIM card for my cell phone so I can use it here. Who knows what other high tech trouble I can get myself into while I'm here? >:-)

Warning: Vegetables May Be Hazardous to Your Health

So here is the three step process to preparing vegetables in a developing country:

1. “Wash” them, or more accurately, remove the visible dirt from them by rinsing them in water.


2. Boil, fry or steam the life out of them


3. Continue to boil, fry or steam the life out of them for at least ten more minutes.

Then, your veggies are ready to be eaten in such a way that most likely will not cause harm to your person. The disclaimer here is most likely, because, to be honest, I’m sure there’s a more exact process out there, like how when I was in Guatemala, the general standard was that you should boil your water for no less than 20 minutes. By then it tasted so god awful due to smoke from the fire that was boiling it, you didn’t want to drink it anyway. But you knew, more or less, that it wouldn’t cause you to get sick.

There were similar rules to follow for fruits and veggies. I believe the common mantra was to never eat anything that wasn’t baked, boiled, or peeled. It definitely cuts back on your selection.

So I just got done steaming the shit out of some spinach, and now it’s cooking for about 45 minutes at 350, along with the other companion ingredients in a lasagna. That probably sounds pretty impressive. You should have seen what I was going to cook for dinner. It involved ingredients in the following picture.

But what I ended up eating (because the lasagna would be done too late to eat tonight for me) involved ingredients in the following picture.

Yes, I wimped out. See, the altitude plus the fact that I think I am fighting a bit of a cold have combined to sap all of the energy out of me. The idea of having to think about what to do with all of those ingredients plus prepare it all in such a way that it wouldn’t kill me, well, it was just too much for tonight. I’ll try to tackle it tomorrow night when I have more energy. But for now, I will wait for the lasagna to be finished, and I will look forward to eating it some other time this week. Maybe tomorrow while I’m boiling ingredients for my next Bolivian culinary adventure.

Off the beaten path tourism, maybe?

So, my good friend Sarah sent me a link to this short film she saw this week. If anyone is in the DC area on Saturday, it's playing at the AFI theater in Silver Spring on Saturday morning at 10:30am. It looks fantastic. The film is described in the following way:

Bolivian indigenous peasants, la cholitas wear traditional layered skirts when slamming each other in the ring. The luchas' strength inside the ring and out is remarkable.

I mean, come on, how could you NOT want to see that???

I've suggested to my colleague, Elizabeth (who will be joining me in Bolivia for my last two weeks there) that we should go check it out. The event takes place in El Alto (a suburb of La Paz) every Sunday night. She seemed interested, but then reminded me that El Alto is ranked amongst the most dangerous cities in the world. So this may not happen. But we'll see.

Today is my last day in the office and I fly on Sunday, so more from the southern hemisphere to come soon!

Heading south again

Looks like I'm heading back to Bolivia. I'm not really too thrilled about going for a variety of reasons, but I'm going to make the most of it. I'll be there for a month again, and this time it will be winter there, which will mean a pretty significant break from the DC Summer. I think the temperatures in La Paz during June and July reach a high of about 60 degrees and a low of about 30. I'll be pulling out my warm sweaters again, and supporting the local economy by stocking up on alpaca products. :-)

So along with work, which I'm *technically* being sent to do, I have my eye on a few potential weekend trips.

The first one is to the Salar de Uyuni which is in the south of Bolivia. It's the world's largest salt flats, which sounds a little weird, but check out some of the pictures and you might understand why I'm intrigued: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salar_De_Uyuni . It just looks very cool and other worldly. Certainly a unique experience.

The second one is to head to Peru and visit Machu Picchu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machu_Picchu . I was told during my last trip that it's fairly easy to get to by bus, actually. We'll see. But who knows when I will be that close again so I might as well give it a shot.

And I will be working up a storm when I'm not being touristy too. :-) We've had some major staff changes in our project so we are headed into a bit of a transitionary time. It could be good, it could be bad. You'll have to stay tuned to find out.

I leave on June 17 and will return home on July 15.

And just as a reminder, to see the photo albums in the link on the right, the password is my last name. :-)