Bolivian Adventure: Introduction and Arrival

Obviously a “Bolivian Adventure” doesn't quite fit with the URL for this blog, and since I'm here doing a project with Engineers without Borders, the title of my blog doesn't make too much sense either, but I hadn't anticipated documenting any future travels beyond my two quarters studying abroad, so bear with me! (Also, if you want to reflect back/compare to past trips, particuarly Ecuador, you can do so easily!)

The premise of this trip is implementing a water distribution system in a small, rural community called Piriquina. They have a water system at the moment but it's old and needs to be fixed in many places. Our UW chapter of EWB has worked in this region of Bolivia for 6 years doing water projects and roofs and stoves projects (shameless plug: http://students.washington.edu/ewbuw/ ). I've been involved with our chapter since I started at UW and I've donated the majority of my free time, as well as some time which should have been spent on things like school, to this project for the last 6 months or so. My fantastic team, who will be important characters in this story so I'll introduce them, are: Carley, fearless leader, Master's in Public Health student, and team mom who worries about health even more than me; Matias, other fearless leader and Brazilian/Urugyaan/French Spanish speaker (aka invaluable team member since he can actually communicate); Nate, fellow classmate and enormously entertaining storyteller; and Garry, Carley's husband and resident professional mentor who is the whitest person on our team despite being from South Africa (also, he has a fantastic accent). Other important people are Donee, who is the most knowledgeable person about Bolivian projects since she's worked here with EWB from the beginning (EVErYONE asks abouut her when you meet them and say you're with Ingenieros Sin Fronteras); Nate, (too be refered to as Nate2, not to be confused with my teammate Nate) her husband; and the 2011 Roofs and Stoves project team (Johnny, Craig, Kasia, and Lisa).

So far this trip has been kind of crazy. I stayed up all night packing and between Emily, Peyton, Mikk and Jenn was distracted, got everything assembled, and made it to the airport. Before I had even gotten there, though, I got a call from Nate, one of my teammates, who was already at the airport and couldn't check in for his flight because apparently American Airlines actually requires you to show all of your international travel documentation for your final destination. In this case, that meant that to check in to a flight to Dallas (in country), to catch a connection to Miami (in country) to fly to Bolivia, we had to show them all required paperwork for getting a Bolivian Visa. According to the embassy website, you need $135 USD, a yellow fever vaccination card, a visa application form, a letter of invitation or a destination address, and two passport photos with some explicit rules about how large your face can be compared to the rest of the photo. Now our Engineers Without Borders chapter has sent people to Bolivia for 6 years and NO ONE has EVER needed to show the yellow fever vaccination card or the passport photos to get into the country, including a few people who went earlier this summer. Of course, American requires you to have all of this. Nate, unfortunately, didn't get the passport photos because that was an extra errand he ran out of time for, and the rude lady at the ticket counter was not helpful or willing to ignore this dumb rule (Lady: “Would you like me to read you the list of fines I could incur if I let you on this plane?” Nate's sarcasm, which luckily he withheld” “Why yes! That's exactly what would help me right now!”). I got there and we waited in the long line together to talk to a different person, and therefore missed our 7am flight. The nice lady who helped me ut me on the 9am flight, but the third lady who helped Nate still made him go get passport photos at the Walgreens in Seatac. $50 for a cab fee later, Nate got put on some flight to the Bay Area, and then he was supposed to meet me in Miami. (Perhaps you can tell the story doesn't go quite as planned?) Meanwhile, I get to Dallas and Miami without a problem, other than having to completely repack my carry on bag at Security since it was packed rather densely with every electronic item I had with me. There was no Nate to meet me in Miami, though, because the Bay Area was, of course, cloudy, so his flight was delayed and he would have missed the flight out of Miami. Instead, I found out later (the story does work out in the end!), Nate got rerouted through Peru, where he had to pay a $140 visa fee just for passing through the airport. It was a rather expensive day for him.
I made it to La Paz, Bolivia, without incident, and I literally slept for the entire plane ride on all three flights, including the takeoff from Seattle. In La Paz, I paid my $135 visa and gave them my visa form, and did NOT show my photos, vaccination card, or destination address. Garry, another team member who had arrived a few hours before, met me at the gate, which was fantastic, and we bought $45 plane tickets to go to Cochabamba on the 7am AeroSur flight (I love South American prices!). We had a nice breakfast and then went to investigate our flight. Unfortunately, we had incorrectly calculated the time difference, so we had already missed our flight... After some choice words by Garry, we went back to AeroSur and paid a small fee to change our flight to the next available option, which was 8:30pm. We then set up camp and I passed out for about 4 hours, which was wonderful. We just relaxed on our Thermarests for a while and attemped to contact Carley, who was already in Cochabamba. We found out from her that we could buy Nate's plane ticket as long as he checked in with his passport upon arrivial, so we went to do that, but by this time, there were only first class seats, so we payed $90 for him to have snacks and legroom for a 90 minute flight. We definitely all noticed the elevation (about 13,600 feet), which made climbing one flight of stairs difficult. None of us were happy about being short of breath after going up 20 stairs, especially because the bathroom was TWO floors down and we each drank at least 3 liters of water...
We got to our gate really early to make sure we did not miss our plane, and this time managed to fly with no problems, which was refreshing. We all had all our luggage at the other end, and the hotel had sent a cab to pick us up so there was a nice driver waiting with a sign for us. Driving through the city was remarkably like Ecuador, so I guess many places in South America are similar (gated houses/buildings/yards, graffiti, crazy driving), but it felt (and still does feel) great to be back..
We met Carley, Donee, and Nate2, who had already been in Bolivia for a month doing research, at the hotel, and had a nice dinner and Jugo con Leche (juice with milk), which is more or less a light milkshake, for about 50 Bs (Bolivianos), which is just over 7 dollars. You can even have meals which are in the 15-20Bs range :)

I really have done a lot more than sit and sleep on airplanes, but I've been bad about keeping up with what we've been up to, so there will be more; I'm just not sure when!

I left for Greece just over a year ago and I definitely have the the travel bug again.

Let's go.

Traveling!

On Tuesday morning we left for our end of the program adventure. We've been to multiple really cool historic sites and I'm currently in Athens, staying at a hotel which charges 5 euros ($7 ish) for 90 minutes of internet. SO I went and found an internet cafe which is cheaper, but since I'm still paying, I'm not going to take the time to write a whole entry at the moment. However, there will be new entries and pictures up eventually. Tomorrow we're going to the island of Evia, which is where my professor was born. It is supposed to be GORGEOUS and I'm really excited! I double I'll have internet there though so you'll hear from me in a few days :)

Love Alex

The End of Classes, the Start of Greek Vacationing!

On Monday, I had my last Greek class. We listened to Greek music and Fay brought us a delicious apple pie and we all sat at the cafe. I wish class was always like that :)

After, we cleaned our rooms and got back our security deposits. Greece doesn't seem to big on donating things; there are no Goodwills as far as I can tell, so we filled up all three dumpsters.

Then, I went into town for my last afternoon in Ioannnina with three other girls. I had a fabulous salad and then we studied at a cafe next to the water and had chocolate milkshake-like drinks, which definitely helped the learning.




We went back to school and crammed in a few minutes of studying and then took our Greek-Albanian final exam. I also submitted my paper so I am DONE with classes!

For dinner, everyone in our group went out to dinner with out teachers and program administrators at one the restaurants we had been to a few weeks before. It was delicious, as always, and it was fun to have everyone together one last time. After, we enjoyed the town at night; we went on a neat spinning ride by the lake and all hung out, with our professors, until extremely late. I got one of hour sleep and then got up so we could depart at the ungodly hour of 7 am. Luckily I A) had no trouble waking up and B) had already packed. The same could not be said for two of the boys in my group; me and several other girls literally shouted, jumped on their beds and fought over blankets in order to get them to wake up, and then they still had to finish packing haha. We made it with all our stuff to the bus, though. The departure was extremely rushed since everyone was still half asleep and in a hurry, so I feel like we didn't really comprehend the fact that we were leaving; it just happened.






5.5 hours of napping later, we made it to Olympia, the site of the original Olympic Games. The site is actually gigantic; there's a lot more there than just a field for foot races; Olympia is actually a sanctuary and while there are no actual buildings today, there are a zillion pillars and wall/building remnants. We had a tour guide who was extremely smart, although since I was exhausted, not everything she said stuck. She did tell us that the idea of the "Olympic flame" which is never extinguished originated purely as a practical matter; priests kept a fire going all the time because it would be too much work to have lit it every day.







We then walked over to the archeological museum, which had some beautiful sculptures, some of which were surprisingly intact (several heads still had noses!) Picture uploading is taking forever, but I might add some photos later, and I'll put them all on Picasa. We had lunch at a nearby restaurant and then drove (aka slept) to Sparta. Our hotel is extremely fancy, which is a nice change after our last hotel and the whole bed bug calamity. We had a four course dinner and used every piece of silverware provided to us. First, we had spaghetti. I thought that was the meal, so I ate a large plate and then half of Kelsey's. Then, they brought out bowls of tomatoes and onions. Then, we had an entree of beeftecki, I think, which is chunks of meat on a skewer with some veggies, and a side of potatoes. For dessert, we had divine chocolate mousse. That was several hours ago and I am still very, very full. In order to help digestion along, we took a walk around town. The area we are in has lots of clothing and shoe stores and cafes. It feels different than Ioannina or Thessaloniki, but still Greek.

"I feel like a windshield"

Today, I worked on my paper. When that got boring, I worked on my study guide. In the evening, Katlynn and I went on a run. After, we did abs on the track. There was actually a cloud of small flies around us specifically. My clothing now has several black smears on it and my skin had many more. It was very uncomfortable. At 8, we had a review session for the test. Then, I worked on my paper. It is now finished, although I plan on proofreading it tomorrow when my brain is not fried.

I have yet to start packing and it is currently 1 am on Sunday night and we leave Tuesday morning at 7am and I still have a final. In preparation for leaving, I haven't bought any food in about two weeks. This means I am down to one yogurt, two pumpkin seeds and a teaspoon of walnuts. Literally. I also had three almonds this morning, but I ate them. I feel like my food cabinet is a physical representation of my bank account haha. Fortunately for my stomach, at least, I take several oranges a day from the cafeteria and Tina has a veritable grocery store in her room, so I've still had some snacks.

Boring, I know. Trust me haha

Working on my paper

Today was pretty sweet. I woke up, skyped with Emily, worked on my paper, went to my LAST Greek/Albanian class, ate lunch, worked on my paper, went on a short jog, ate dinner, and then worked on my paper. I'm writing this as a break from writing my paper before I go back to... working on my paper. Hopefully I will finish up with the 10 pages tonight, and tomorrow I will wake up and write my 12-point study guide for Greek/Albanian history (and then memorize it all). I suppose I should qualify the statement "working on my paper." That can be defined as reading probably 15 30-page articles relating to Albanian immigration and the Greek economy, taking notes, and then writing.

Less than 48 hours until I am done with school!

Silver and Wine

Welll today we went on probably the oddest field trip. First we drove to a winery about an hour away, where the extremely nice owner gave us a tour of the wine-making process. We saw some cool bottling machines, many gigantic vats of wine, and a cellar where the wine sits in barrels for one to two years, I think, and then bottles for 6 months more. The winery itself was also in a beautiful location, so the upstairs showroom had a fabulous view. We didn't get to sample any wine, most people were disappointing about, but oh well.









Then, we drove back toward town and went to a silver shop. It was literally the basement of a family's house, but they had a variety of silver trimming and shaping machines and many products from which we collectively bought a substantial number of items. We weren't there too long since it was tiny, but it was also interesting.



After, we headed into town for lunch. We ate at a restaurant by the lake, which was very pretty. First we had good bread, Greek salad and feta, and then we had a goofy looking entree: a small scoop of rice, some thick french fries, a lemon slice, and little meat roll, which were chicken wrapped in bacon. It was the BEST FOOD I have had in Greece! Everything was enjoyable, but the meat was absolutely phenomenal. I'm definitely going back again to eat it before we leave on Tuesday. And, since my group is full of weirdly picky eaters, a lot of people had some leftovers so I got more than my share :)

The rest of my day was spent doing research and writing my paper. I went on a run in the evening after I got bored and at the track there was a dad with his two little sons riding bikes around the track while he ran with them. I've seen lots of kids here before, and I though I would comment on how much I enjoy the fact that the University track is definitely a community space. I think most of the people who use it actually aren't students.

This is probably the last semi-interesting blog post for a few days... Bring on the studying!

Love Alex