"we didn't need to skip the rolls"

anyone who knows me at all, knows that i am obsessed with gilmore girls. i have seen every episode multiple times and can quote any of them at the drop of a hat. between gilmore girls and friends, pretty much anything that happens in life can relate back to either of those shows. during this year's thanksgiving saga i couldn't help but think about the episode in season 3 where rory and lorelei have to attend 4 thanksgiving dinners. although they were trying to attend 4 in one day, and i was able to spread my four thanksgiving dinners out over 2 weeks. however, now that they are all over, it is funny to think about how different each one was, and how easily i can relate them to each thanksgiving in the show :)

the first thanksgiving was actually more like a harvest party, and reminded me of the korean thansgiving in the show (although, thankfully, there was no tofurkey), super early and not traditional. the food was not your tradititional turkey and mashed potatoes, but rather delicious sweet potato curry soup, applesauce, stuffing, pumpkin cake, and incredible wassail. although, the food was not completely traditional it was still a time of wonderful fellowship with friends and a time to share with others doing ministry here in la paz/el alto.

the second thanksgiving was by far my favorite. it reminded me of the thanksgiving at luke's...all of your traditional food and people you love. this thanksgiving was hosted by a family from school who has blessed our staff in numerous ways. during dinner we took turns sharing what we were thankful for, and a major theme of thanksgiving was how thankful we all are for each other. if we couldn't share thanksgiving with our families, second best was sharing it with these people who we work with everyday and who share our calling to minister to children and families in la paz. we all know how hard it is to live overseas, but it is made a thousand times easier when you are able to share the experience with brothers and sisters in christ. after dinner, we cuddled up in front of the tv for a charlie brown thanksgiving, followed by dessert and games around the fire.

the third thanksgiving was perhaps the hardest for me. it occurred after school on the actual thanksgiving day. i woke up that morning thinking that this was the last time i could go and teach on thanksgiving day. for the past three years we have had school on thanksgiving and it has gotten harder each year. thankfully, our director has promised we will be on the beach next thanksgiving, not at school! the morning was wonderful as my students and i listened to christmas music and completed several different thanksgiving projects, as well as began decorating our room for christmas. the afternoon became a little more stressful as we had plans for all 55 first through fourth graders and i ended up taking charge of it all. after school, all i wanted to do was go home, enjoy some time with my roommates, perhaps watch a christmas movie, and sleep. i had been up until 1am the night before and had had a stressful week. but instead, i had to face the entire staff for a pseudo-thanksgiving dinner in our school cafeteria. i say pseudo because one could hardly call eating off metal cafeteria trays, on plastic chairs at plastic tables in a school cafeteria a real thanksgiving. the stress of the week, the sheer exhaustion, and the homesickness i have been holding at bay for three years all caught up with me that afternoon, and i broke down. i had no more strength left to pretend everything was okay. i was thankful, though, for roommates who understood and we were able to eat together, cry together, laugh together, and pray together. i felt like sookie whose thanksgiving was ruined because jackson decided to fry the turkey (the fried turkey was actually the best part of this thanksgiving!) and she just sat at the table crying. while she drowns her sorrows in alcohol, my roommates and i took a different tactic and sat down that night to watch high school musical 2, the cheesiest movie known to man and guaranteed to make you laugh.

the final thanksgiving occurred last night, and once again, can hardly be called a thanksgiving. lorelei and rory's last thanksgiving is at her parents' house and highlights all the dysfunctionality that is her family (i know that is not word, but it sounds good!). our last thanksgiving also opened our eyes to a completely dysfunctional family. we had been invited by the father of one my students to his apartment for a real american thanksgiving. and while the food was delicious, it was hard to swallow as i watched this man interact with his daughter. there was no respect in that house, and this 57 year old man admitted he knew everything was doing wrong in raising his 7 year old daugther, but showed no evidence of wanting to change. he has lived a crazy life, and while is full of entertaining stories, i left brokenhearted realizing that while this man has all the money he could ever need, his life lacks love and happiness. and i wanted to cry thinking about this little girl, who while curled up on my lap, was talked about by her father and his friends as if she was an object with no feelings. i left that dinner empty and sad, feeling an even bigger burden for students and their families.

part of me wishes i could have just stopped after thanksgiving #2, the incredible one. however, i know everything has a purpose and i experienced those last two, less than satisfactory thanksgivings, for a reason. i was able to learn more about myself and my students. i was able to really and truly appreciate my family and close friends. and the lord worked through each thanksgiving to challenge me and grow me and for that i am truly thankful.

a room with a view

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas...

actually, not really. in fact, most days here lately have been clear, bright and blue without a cloud in the sky. i have spent recesses working on the tan on my arms, or more accurately, trying not to get burnt. as we head into summer, i never cease to be amazed at how hard it is to make it feel like christmas without gray skies, snow, and frosty, cold mornings. yet for half of the world, christmas is a summer holiday. it might be ethnocentric and culturally insensitive to say so, but this just does not work for me. therefore, because the weather is not cooperative i begin celebrating a little early. now in the states it is absolutely unacceptable to begin christmas decorations and music until after thanksgiving. one holiday at a time is my rule. but because it is not fall, pumpkins are next to impossible to find, and i have to go to school and teach on thanksgiving day, i have made an exception to that rule the last few years. the christmas music has already been broken out and the decorations will begin to appear slowly...although i will do my major decorating the day after thanksgiving in order to keep a semblance of tradition. on sunday my lovely roommates and i shared our many christmas traditions over dinner. i was reminded how fortunate i was to have grown up in a home full of beautiful customs and traditions surrounding christmas and i hope to continue many of those with my own family someday. my roommates and i decided we would try to bring as many of the traditions as we could to our own little home in bolivia. that is especially important for me since i will not be coming home for christmas this year (i always have to skip the song, i'll be home for christmas, as it starts to depress me). i try not to think about how most likely i will be on a bus on christmas day traveling for 8 or so hours....of course, i will be going from iguazu falls to buenos aires..... :)

quantum of solace...entertaining, yet inaccurate

Tonight I ventured out with my roomies for dinner and a movie. After a delicious dinner at one of our favorite "gringo" places, we headed up the prado for a movie. Tonight's movie of choice: James Bond, Quantum of Solace. Now I like James Bond movies and have seen quite a few, if not all of them. However, I must say this was perhaps the most entertaining. And not because it included fight scenes on foot, in cars, in boats, and in airplanes. And not because I find Daniel Craig to be an amazing James Bond (he is fine, just nothing really special). No, this particular movie was thoroughly entertaining because it was supposed to be set in my own dearly beloved Bolivia. And because some of you may see the movie and think "Oh I have a friend who lives there." I would like to set a few things straight:

1. None of the movie was actually filmed in Bolivia. It was all filmed in Chile.

2. La Paz is in the Andes Mountains and is located at 12,000ft. Anywhere you go in La Paz you can see huge mountains...none of which were ever seen in the movie. There are also no flat streets in La Paz. In fact, every time they were supposed to be driving around the city the entire audience in the theater burst into laughter as it was so obviously not La Paz.

3. La Paz is in the mountains and therefore it is cold. Every scene in Bolivia was set to look like your stereotypical Latin American town. People outside in skimpy clothes, men not wearing shirts. You would NEVER see that here. People are incredibly modest and dress in darker, warmer clothes.

4. Even the indigenous people shown in the city (not necessarily the ones shown in the campo looking for water) were more of a caricature of the true Aymaran people. It was like someone had briefly described to the movie makers what a cholita looked like and they did their best to recreate it without ever having seen a true cholita woman.

5. Perhaps my favorite inaccuracy was the many shots of nicely paved highways through the desert. Yeah, there is not a single road in the entire country of Bolivia that looks like that. It is amazing when you travel in South America and you drive into Chile and Peru and are all of a sudden on a real highway, because honestly, there is not a single paved highway in Bolivia. If you are driving in the desert, you are driving over the sand, perhaps following the tracks of another car that went before you. Trust me, I've done it!

6. Another entertaining part was when the Bolivian police pull Bond over after the party. The entire audience once again erupted into laughter at the very comical, yet fairly accurate depiction of Bolivian police. They actually do dress like that!

On the other hand, they did get a few things right on the money. The comment towards the end about coca and communism is pretty much true. And all the talk about the U.S. helping stage a coup, hit a little too close to home, as a couple months ago the American ambassador was kicked out of Bolivia, as well as the DEA and other US organizations because the president has accused them of helping to stage an attempted coup in the Eastern part of the country.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I loved the fact that I am so at home in this country that even I can identify all the discrepancies. And since it was subtitled in Spanish and they don't bother to subtitle the parts when they are actually speaking Spanish, it gave me a chance to practice my Spanish listening skills!

this is for you, kristen!

So I promised Kristen to post videos from the costume party. I have done so, with the understanding that they cannot be used for blackmail :)
After being inspired by the movie 13 Going on 30, my roommates and I decided to learn the dance to Thriller and perform it at our costume party:



My camera cut out so here is part 2....watch closely at the end and you will see me totally smash into the wall :)




There were other entertaining videos, but I don't have the performer's permission to post those, so I will have to try to find a more private way of sharing those with Kristen! All in all, it was quite the entertaining night...although Kristen, you are probably the only person to find these videos as entertaining as I do :)

thoughts from a mini-bus

two posts in two days. crazy, i know. yet yesterday was full of "bolivia moments" which are always cause for reflection. last night i was riding a mini-bus (basically a 15 passenger van transformed into public transportation) and during the ride up (literally up, about 1000 ft up!) to the city, i was struck by two strange thoughts. one was a thought that randomly strikes me at different times in bolivia, but it never ceases to seem strange to me. i live in the andes mountains. that might not seem strange to you, but for me it's one thing to say i live in bolivia, but quite another to say i live in the andes mountains, the large south american mountain chain that i learned about growing up in school. it also struck me how strange it was that i was riding the bus with two cholitas, aymaran women, and that these women were in their traditional dress, bowler hats and all. and this is completely normal here. these women dress everyday in their full skirts, shawls, and bowler hats and usually i don't even think twice about seeing them. but sometimes it still strikes me how odd it is to see women in traditional dress straight out of the 1500s.

later in the bus ride, my roommate and i struck up a conversation with 3 shoeshiners that were sitting near us. they were younger boys, and they got quite a kick out of talking to two gringitas. they told us about their school, and what subjects they liked or disliked. they showed us braceletes they had made to sell (and we each bought one). they also tried to teach us aymaran words, but it pretty much sounded like they were just making words up, and judging by the laughter of the lady next to me, i am pretty sure that was the case. these boys have extremely hard lives, but they were still able to laugh and joke with us and each other. when we asked where they were going, they answered that they were going to San Fransisco (the big church/plaza in the city) to their houses. however, after having read When Invisible Children Sing, a book about the street children of bolivia (an incredible read...there are two copies at my house if you want to borrow it) i couldn't help but wonder if these boys were really going to San Fransisco to hang out and play soccer with other shoeshiners and street children while sniffing glue soaked strings trying to block out the misery that is their lives. at first, i was shocked by this horrible thought and the fact i doubted that they were truly going to their houses. however, i also realized that this was reality for many kids and very likely for these boys as well. in bolivia, i am faced with reality everyday, much more so than in the states. and while sometimes my life strikes me as surreal, such as the sudden realization that i live in the andes, often i am more surprised at how very real my life is. and while this reality can be painful, i feel blessed to be able to experience it in a way many cannot.

shopping- bolivia style

this morning began with breakfast at my favorite cafe in the world, blueberries. my roommates and i treated ourselves to panqueques con frutas and specialty teas. it was lovely. we then headed up the prado to do some shopping- bolivia style. shopping in bolivia involves digging through piles and racks of some of the ugliest clothes you've ever seen, hoping to find a treasure. it's always fun when you come across a shirt that you or friend owned in the 7th grade. because of the mountains of polyester and bright colors and florals, it makes finding cute clothes all the more satisfying. today's shopping trip was another success. i bought 3 shirts for $1 each and my most expensive purchase was a pair of dress pants for $10. we also had lots of laughs as we put together our 80's costumes for next week's costume party! we are definitely ready to rock the side ponytails and leggings! we finished our shopping trip with a little rest and snack at one of my other absolute favorite restaurants, angelo colonial, in which every inch of the wall and ceiling are covered in different victorian antiques. and now off to enjoy some thai food, perhaps sporting one of those new shirts! :)