A Whirlwind!

I cannot believe I have only been in Bolivia for a week. It feels like so long ago that I was hustling through and napping in airports in North and South America on my way down here, yet I’ve only been here 6 days! Because school started on Wednesday, we only had one day to really prep and get ready for our students. Some of the other teachers did my bulletin boards (every teacher’s most-hated task) and my room was ready to go for me, which was a blessing.

Another great thing they’ve done since we arrived is make sure that we had a dinner meal, so we’ve either been to people’s houses for dinner or have had a prepared meal every night this week and it will continue into next week. Talk about God’s covenant family!

I posted pictures of my apartment and the grounds on Facebook, but let me just tell you how happily surprised I was when I saw my new place! It’s far nicer than I thought it would be – cockroaches and all! (So far, the count is only at 2.) There’s so much storage that the piddly amount of clothes I bought look sad in my big closet. I love being able to have my windows and doors open and have the delicious, Bolivian air streaming into my place. Well, mostly delicious air. They burn trash around here a lot and I swear it smells like marijuana.

Here are some things that are causing me the most culture shock over the past couple days:

·         The constant barking of dogs. And it’s not like I can call the cops to tell them to go to the dog’s house and get it to shut up cause they’re all street dogs without owners.

·         The driving! I can’t believe I ever complained about Minnesota drivers. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to when people move from lane to lane and which lane they turn from. So glad I won’t be driving here – I’ll leave that to my school van and taxi drivers.

·         Although it’s super sunny and warm during the day (probably about 75-80 degrees this week), I forget that we’re technically in “winter” so when it gets pitch black at 6:30pm, I get cornfused.

·         People staring at us. Just blatantly staring. I’m so used to Norwegian Minnesota where no one makes eye contact.

·         I’m already so used to hearing Spanish wherever I go that I almost don’t recognize when I hear someone speaking English.