Amigos y chiquititos:
In the friend department, I think I have incredible luck. I don't think I had mentioned it yet, but I made my first friend from Cochabamba before I even arrived to Cocha. Her name is Paola, and she is amazing! She is an architect/pilates teacher here. We started hanging out immediately and have been somewhat inseparable ever since my second week here, since I was sick the first couple of weeks.. She is so down to earth and easy to talk to, which is something I really needed when I got here. She however, is fully bilingual. Although we speak alot in Spanish, I love the fact that I can speak in English with her because there are just so many things that I haven't learned how to express yet in Spanish. It was really lonely at first before I started hanging out with her more. I could tell that alot of the people that I hung out with were nice, but I only understood about 10% about what was said when they were chatting, telling jokes/stories etc. So I would pretty much just sit at the table while we were all eating and try really hard to concentrate at first, but then after a while, it would be pretty easy to tire out and tune everyone out. I was starting to feel so alone in my own head, especially when I became sick and was pretty much out of commission stuck in my room for almost a week!
We have so much fun here. I have met some people that have a climbing wall that they built themselves in their house. It's awesome. It's this tiny room with all walls and the ceiling covered with climbing rocks, so you can literally "climb" upside down. We climb tuesdays and thursdays. The same people also have a paragliding company, so I think I'm going to go paragliding pretty soon with the girl, Natalia, which only costs $25.00! The other day we went to the lake to go tubing behind this guy's jetski, although we actually couldn't get it started after all =). Most of what we do, though, is pretty normal. Watch movies, go out to eat etc. However, the other night, I found myself in this hilarious situation. My friend Mau asked me to come over to his friends house to "preparty" before going to Mandarina, the local club. I got picked up in an old beetle-bug (which along with 1979 land cruisers are the most common cars here)and when I arrived, I found myself sitting around a table in this house that probably costs more than any house I've ever been in with a bunch of drunk cantadors (singers) crooning traditional Bolivian songs, reciting poetry, (crying), and telling really perverted one liner jokes in between each performance. I was pretty sure that at any minute a spanish version of Al Pacino was going to come walking out smoking a cigar or something slightly more risque. I felt like the biggest blonde gringo ever, so obviously my first response was to start drinking very quickly. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), the only thing they had was whiskey. Needless to say I drank more than I probably should have and hours later was of course way more comfortable laughing my head off as one of the cantadors was (barely) standing up (swaying), crying and yelling "Mierda! Mierda! Mierda! (Shit! Shit! Shit!)," of course speaking about Bolivian futbol and his ex-wife. At least I think that's what he was talking about. That night I decided that I might never come back to the states ;).... One of the videos at the bottom is an extremely brief and understated version of what I experienced that night, but I couldn't film obviously since the cryer didn't like it.
Anyway, these are just a couple pics of my friends over here. My best friend Pao, is in the of this pic, taken in the club called Mandarina! Apparently it's one of the only clubs that people go to. Have already been 3 times in two weeks. She is an architect and is designing the bar that is being built right next door, conveniently called Mandarina Bar. I'm not actually sure who the other girl is....
This is a pic of my other good friend, Mau. He's the one in the right in the pic (my left). Yes, I'm aware that my two closest friends here are named Mau and Pao. So adorable =). He used to play tennis and soccer for University of Illinois and has been living in the states for 8 years, just got back one week ago, lucky for me =)
Two of my closest friends here --Cate and Kenny. They are the one of the cutest couples that I have ever met. They have been going out for almost 6 years and still act like they have only been dating for a month or two -- still all googly over each other. Soooooo cute =)
Work:
Work really is never boring in a sense. It's really not very hard to wake up at 6 every morning when I love the people I work with so much. Pretty much 80% of each day of it is spent laughing or being laughed at. I have the most amazing team, who only speaks spanish, but I have really connected with them. I told you a little about them already. Gimenita (the doctor) and I have decided that we are the "hermanitas de un otro madre," the slightly less rhymey version of the english saying, "Brothers from another mother." She's hilarious. Most of our conversations are spent making jokes, or making fun of each other, but we are also able to communicate about things that matter. I have become very close with her, as well as the other parts of my team. However, I have noticed that alot of the laughing that we do is at my expense, at the way I pronounce words, or my terrible grammar, or how I am the most "olvididisa" (forgetful) person that they have ever met.
Honestly though, since there are not very many patients right this second as a result of holidays and fiestas (something that happens about 8 times as often than in the US), many of our days are spent walking to the market, drinking tea and eating fried doughy things with cheese inside, helping the street vendor cook fried doughy things with cheese inside, playing basketball, cooking in the disgusting kitchen inside the center of health, and forcing me to eat viscera and other strange things like animal hearts and chicken feet. Obviously they think it's hilarious. One day I knew I realized just how different this place is when Gladis and Heloina came back after walking around the town getting surveys and mentioned the eggs that they "found" in the street. Apparently they were the property of a wild chicken. Without a second thought, Gladis and Eloina had decided to put them in a plastic bag to take them home and cook them. We had to spin them around the table and shake them next to our ears, because we were worried that there might be little chicks inside of them.
To the left are pictures of us playing basketball, a picture of me on the verge of tears eating a chicken foot, the team outside of our morning corn drink and fried dough stop, Don File and Gladis outside of our clinic, and me hanging out with the vacas behind the office.
Our patients are also just completely different from anything I've ever seen. I thought I had seen and smelled it all at Grady hospital in Atlanta. Not true. As sweet as they are, the 230 pound cholitas that work outside and havent' taken a shower in at least a week and a half are something else. Alot of our patients also issues that many people don't have. Nerve palsies, blindness, complete deafness and other things are way more common than they are there. Actually I had a blind patient the other day that tried to sit on me. I guess I was sitting in the chair that he usually sits in. So when Gimena led him in, he took the seat that he usually does. When I saw his butt looming in my face, I tried to jump out of the seat, but I was stuck. Gimena noticed it at the last minute and pulled him up. He didn't get it though, and tried to sit on me again. I was able to escape in time before he sat in my lap and quietly took a seat across from him. For people from Emory, though, you should know that noone that I've seen here soaks up the sweat from underneat their breasts with bread. They don't use anything, actually, which makes putting the EKG stickers on really pleasant ;). They really are the sweetest patients though, who despite the ridiculously poor state that they live in, living off dollars a month and sometimes paying for doctors appointments and other services with homemade cheese, seem very happy. I've really never met anyone like these people before.
Struggles: Express yourself!
I would say that that just about sums up my biggest struggle over the last couple of weeks. I had no idea just how important it is to be able to do just that. Every day, most of us speak to a number of people (I only know a few schizoid Unabomber types ;) and we are spoken back to. We don't even give it a second thought most of the time. Potentially you can speak to anything; people talk to themselves all the time, people talk to their dogs, some people talk to imaginary people (which was actually starting to sound kind of nice). The point is, communication is one of the most common yet important parts of our daily lives. Here, I communicate as well, but when I first arrived, I did so more on the level of a third grader. Remember being in third grade when you thought your jokes were funny (Like knock knock who's there banana, banana who one that goes on and on until it turns into an orange and you say... "orange you glad I didn't say banana)? Yeah, those weren't really funny. We hadn't really gotten down sarcasm, or irony, abstract thinking or any of the other things that really put an "edge" on effective communication. For the first couple of weeks, this was the hardest part of living here. It really gets lonely not to be able to joke around with people or knowing that they are joking and having no idea what they are saying. I would say that the first two weeks here as a result of that were a bit depressing, despite loving Cochabamba and Bolivia and knowing that this is where I'm supposed to be. Thanks goodness that I've found my comfort zone with friends that I can really connect with. And.... now I'm back to where I'm started.
I know I've left a ton of stuff out, but the truth is I shouldn't have waited two weeks to write this blog. I promise I'll do better. It's a lot easier to write and post pictures when i'm stuck in my bed sick with no other choice.
P.S. The title was written when I thought that I had a moto to ride, but it turns out that the moto that I was planning on using to join a motorcycle gang only turns on about 20% of the time. Right now I'm looking for a bigger, better one =)
Since its pretty hard to post lots of pictures on this, I've included links to my facebook albums that allow everyone on facebook to see. I haven't figured out yet how to post albums besides facebook, but I'm working on it!
I think if you just click on the links below you should be able to see lots of pics!
