Living Abroad Is Mostly Just Livin´

Lately I´ve been pondering this business of living abroad. I think people (myself included) expect daily revelations and jarring cultural encounters at every turn, but I´ve come to realize that my life here is generally more routine and "normal" than it was before I came. Obviously certain things are a little harder and I learn new things every day. After a while though, things like buying groceries in the open-air markets, boarding minibuses as they slow to a crawl, and organizing customer receipts to the liking of the government just sort of become routine. I guess in a way it´s satisfying to see the things that initially inspired excitement fade into background noise. That was part of the goal of living abroad for me, to become comfortable living in a different culture.

That said there are some differences of life here that are hard to overlook. For one, emotional peaks and valleys are higher and lower respectively than they normally are in the US. The simplest things, such as a successful bartering session, making a kid laugh on the bus, or exchanging phone numbers with a new friend make me not only happy, but ecstatic. In the evenings after days with these simple successes I walk home with a literal skip in my step. On the other end of the spectrum an unpleasant encounter with a customer or not being able to find a product I want have a disproportionate impact on worsening my day. Granted, I have yet to feel very lonely or homesick but these small things can really put me in a funk. It still surprises me that not being to find real soy sauce can have an effect on my mood but I think since most things are just a little harder than to what I´m accustomed, triumphs and defeats create a correspondingly strengthened response.

One other difference which is difficult to ignore and I hope always will be is the striking disparity between rich and poor. As in any city, here I walk past extreme wealth and poverty every day but I think a few factors in La Paz make these small interactions unique. Maybe because in many ways La Paz is a big city in miniature, socioeconomic differences are visibly noticeable on every level. With the social make-up of La Paz pretty easy to see on both macro and micro levels, I notice the differences that much more. Standing on El Prado, the main artery of central La Paz, demonstrates the macro view in which looking south you can see the shift from poor to wealthy in the types of buildings and quality of landscaping. On a smaller scale I can dodge a shiny black Lexus to land on the sidewalk in front of an old woman begging for change. I don´t know if at a certain point brushing off kids selling gum settles into the same routine as the traffic and bartering over rice prices, but I´m hoping these issues maintain the foreground they deserve.

How To Survive Carnaval

In all of my travels only 2 or 3 things have really lived up to their hype. Don´t get me wrong, I´m not a jaded traveler, resistant to admitting when something really blows me away. It´s just that oftentimes Incan ruins or ziplines or whatever are breath-taking, but not "literally the most amazing thing I´ve ever seen." Before you write me off as a pessimist, let me get to the point. This weekend I went to Carnival in Oruro which everyone assured me was one of those "once-in-a-lifetime" experiences and much to my pleasant surprise, it turned out to be just that.

Friday night my friends Hortencia (French) and Oscar (Bolivian) headed out to Oruro for Carnival. Oruro´s a city of more than 400,000 which has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site based almost solely on its world famous Carnival celebration. Carnival is a pretty big deal throughout Bolivia and when I left on Friday La Paz was already exploding in firecrackers, water balloons, and aerosol cans filled with foam. La Paz on Friday gave me a small taste of Carnival in Oruro, but didn´t prepare me for the extravegance in the other city.

We arrived around 2 am on Friday night and the streets and plazas were full of people. The huge parade didn´t start until Saturday morning but people were out all night partying with friends and reserving prime seats for the next day. We headed to Oscar´s cousin´s house to grab a few hours of sleep and were back a block off the main plaza the next morning around 9:30. Walking to the parade was a hazard in itself because a big part of the celebration is a country-wide water fight. Walking through town you can´t trust anyone not to soak you. Old women tossed balloons at me a few times and we had to be especially cautious passing under balconies and walking too close to taxis.

The parade itself was almost beyond description. Groups and bands from around Bolivia and dancers from around the world danced a 12 km. long route from Saturday to Sunday morning. Women danced in high heels and many dancers were dressed in heavy costumes covered in hair, sequins, and feathers. Where we were toward the end of the route dancers were usually tired but found the energy to perform enthusiastically for us. I talked with a couple of dancers at the end who told me they were able to stay energetic because the dances were in celebration of their devotion to God. Their religious fervor was more than impressive and was maybe only surpassed by the frenzied partying on the sidelines.


The party reached something of a peak in the early hours of Sunday and a French friend Solen and I danced to the marching bands between dance acts. We sort of hammed it up for the crowd and got a modest applause (and a water balloon or two). I had so much fun spending the day (we stayed almost 36 hours) with friends and ran into several people I know from La Paz. Because everyone spends the whole day I also got to know my neighbors on the bleachers pretty well and an older woman next to whom I was sitting insisted I visit her in Cochabamba. I´m not sure if I´ll need to spend 36 hours in this festival in the future, but I guess that means I left satisfied in my newest "once-in-a-lifetime."

Criss-Cross-Cultural

So I know I´m not doing very well in the blogging and the updating...but I have a new resolution to improve on this. In addition to blogging on my life here, I´m also working on a new project called "Bolivia Weekly," bringing Bolivian news to an English-speaking audience. At this website you can catch up on all the goings on in Bolivia and listen to our weekly podcast. Sreally cool, you should check it out.

OK, on to my multi/inter/poly-cultural life. Last Saturday night/Sunday morning I had opportunities to enjoy several cultural mash-ups. The first, at a little bar I´ve visited a few times with my friends Hortencia and Oscar, was a party bringing together traditional Aymará spirituality and collegiate themed parties. Saturday was either the 3rd or 13th anniversary of the bar depending on whom you ask (not a momentous occasion in either case) but the resulting celebration was more reminiscent of a centennial or at least sesquicentennial bash. This tiny bar is pretty popular with local Paceños but the anniversary celebration seemed drastically out of proportion compared to its normally tranquil atmosphere. The main event of the evening was a parade featuring a sapo, the Aymará spirit which protects the bar and brings good luck for the year. According to Oscar, the owner of the bar was walking through the witches´ market one day when the sapo whispered to her, "Hey, buy me, I´ll bring you good luck." 3 or 13 years later to the day (Saturday night) the sapo was paraded around the block accompanied by a 15 piece band and a crowd of over 50 patrons. We marched around the neighborhood for about an hour with people occasionally running back to the bar for refreshments which were equal parts consumed and poored on the sapo. This was a big party and I´m dreading that I may not be in Bolivia in 2 or 12 years for a more momentous occasion.

The following morning I went to a going-away lunch of sorts for some friends from Peru and France. The girlfriend of François, the French friend, was visiting and brought along some traditional French ingredients. Max, a Peruvian cyclist and chef, prepared the rest of the meal for the group of 10 Bolivians, German-Bolivians, Peruvians, French, and Americans. The result was incredible. After a night of excessive partying in the name of the Aymará spirit, nothing quite healed my headache like a bit of foie gras (I know, unethical) scraped over bread from a Bolivian market followed by stuffed peppers prepared from a recipe by Max´s Peruvian mother and potatos au gratin all accompanied by good French and ok Bolivian wine. The gastronomic diversity was only surpassed by the varied experiences of the friends at the table and I think for one of the first times here I felt truly at home.

Copacabana Ain´t No Dakota

Today I got back from a two-day trip to Copacabana, a small town on Lake Titikaka. This week was the Fiesta de la Virgen (The Festival of the Virgin) celebrating the appearance of the Virgin Mary to an Incan man centuries ago. I´d heard from several friends that the party is quite a spectacle. Bands battle for attention in the too-small and echoing plaza while cholitas in their finest skirts and men from the area dance in an unending parade through the town. For three days the most devoted revelers drink and dance in the plaza with no pause. I didn´t belive the "no pause" part of the description, but quickly learned that "no pause" hardly does justice to the intensity of the event.

(Un)fortunately I stayed in a hotel right on the main plaza where my friend Claudia lives. The music literally did not abate from 8 am in the morning to the same hour two days later. Torrential rain had little impact despite the electrical current coursing through the plaza and if anything people welcomed the cooler air. I couldn´t believe how hard people were partying, but I guess it´s pretty typical of Bolivian festivals.

In addition to the dancing Claudia had planned several activities that should have made me feel as though I were right back in South Dakota. About the first, a trail ride, I was dubious to say the least. I´ve seen horses in South America and considering the general health of rental horses around the world, I came with low expectations. Despite Claudia´s assurances that she´d reserved good horses (and to her credit she hadn´t seen them beforehand), the ponies that showed up were the most skeletal, droopy-eared, close-to-death animals I´ve maybe ever seen. After much strained explanation with the horses´ owner we opted to rent some kayaks on the lake instead. I was relieved with the much more humane option.

Afterward we headed to what would either be a rodeo, a running of the bulls, or a bullfight (depending on whom we asked). I was excited to see this Bolivian rodeo and was somewhat disappointed by the results. Although I definitely respect anyone willing to provoke a bull eye-to-eye, these bulls were almost the size of roping steers and the bull fighters (as it ended up it was a bullfight of sorts) spent most of their time chasing rather than running from the bulls. It was interesting to a point (and there was a 12-year-old participating, which was impressive) but ultimately paled in comparison to full-grown bulls and professional cowboys.

Apparently I missed the day of the festival where a statue of the Virgin was paraded around town but many people assured me that religious fervor was behind the debauchery. In a few weeks I´m planning on attending Carnival in Oruro, a festival of gigantic proportions where every year a few people literally die from partying too hard. We´ll see if I can spot the religion there too.