Observations from the First Full Day

Today was a bit of an orientation day and some basic shopping for food etc that we need to survive. First thing in the morning, we went to El Jordan which is actually a couple of blocks away from where we are staying, and had an orientation meeting and a tour of the school. They actually have a fairly large building, but most of it is still quite empty. The computers were a little better than I had expected so I don't think cleaning them up will be as bad as I expected.

After our meeting, Ken came by and we all went over to his house to meet the boys and have some lunch. Time isn't really important here, so by the time the food was ready, it was 2:30. We were all really hungry by then and luckily, the food was pretty good. The meal consisted of a mixture of ground meat, rice, potatoes, and some other vegetable type plants. This was served with a side of fried plantains (really starchy bananas) and topped with a fried egg. Don't know why, but they love to put a fried egg on top of pretty much anything. Either way, we were all hungry and it was all pretty good.

We then went to get some fruit. Since we have figured out that meal times may vary, we decided it would be best to get some fruit to take with us for such a situation. We purchased a bag of peaches, bag of plums, 2 pineapples, and a bag of a strange fruit with a hard shell. Each bag was about 1 kilogram each and the whole batch cost us about 8 dollars. I will put a picture of the strange fruit when I get a chance to take some. It has a sort of white almost fuzzy looking flesh on it around a very large pit. Tastes like a peppery banana but quite juicy and shaped like a small plum. The fruit stand was fun and there are lots of other kinds to try. I know we also paid a "gringo" price but it was all still a lot cheaper than at home.

From there, Ken took us out to a "hotel" as he called it, but to me it was more of a ranch with two cabins on it where he is hoping to take us this weekend to avoid the full on carnival treatment. The weekend of Carnival turns into one giant water balloon and paint balloon fight in Santa Cruz where people will drive around heaving balloons at anyone they feel like. He said with kids, it is best to leave town for the weekend, so that is the plan. The ranch had a small lake and lots of nicely cared for gardens. They also had two small pigs that followed us around everywhere and a howler monkey which liked the kids but did not like the adults very much.

One interesting thing about Bolivia that is very different from Canada is what I like to call the "Tableau of Smells". The tableau is not necessarily a bad thing. As you drive or walk, every hundred yards or so, you experience a totally different smell. Sometimes its flowers from the plants or tiny stores nearby, and sometimes its sewage. On the drive to the ranch, we experienced the sweet smell of sugar cane fields, the vegetable oil plant and some of the fragrant trees. We also experienced the smell of rotting fruit discarded from the fruit stands, manure from the farms we passed, and my personal favorite, which was some kind of unidentified stench from some factory we passed.

Overall, the day was good and we have learned a fair bit about the day to day things that need to be done or not done here. Tomorrow, I will explain about the driving habits, and also about the little garbage can next to the toilet.

Here is a link to some pictures of our trip and first day.