A Year In Bolivia: Days 107-114

Before my flight to Santa Cruz last Wednesday morning, the ladies in the salon made sure I had my nails cleaned and painted all nicely for my trip. Over my weeklong "vacation" to Santa Cruz, I enjoyed a big Thanksgiving meal with the other exchange students. Normally, Thanksgiving is not celebrated here in Bolivia. Only people who have some kind of link to Thanksgiving actually do something for it. Therefore, I spent my first night at the exchange director's house and I helped her prepare the salad, mashed potatoes, turkey, stuffing, and veggies. She has a Thanksgiving meal every year for the exchange students and each person has to bring something. Some of the things that were brought included crepes, a Canadian potato/corn dish, pies, Danish cookies, and tons of other yummy foods!

After the meal, I left with the exchange student that is staying with José Pablo's parents (José is the exchange student with my parents in the USA right now) so I could meet them and spend the next few days with them. They were working on Friday, so a few of the other exchange students and I went to 'Catching Fire' in the movie theater and hung out to watch more movies and get ice cream afterwards. On Saturday, José's parents took their exchange daughter and I to Buena Vista (a little town a few hours drive away from Santa Cruz) for a night. We went to a family friend's birthday, enjoyed a nice day at the pool in the hot weather, and I got to try several new fruits and fruit juices which were especially refreshing in the afternoon heat! Some of the fruits I got to try included the ocoro (a spiky yellow fruit with big seeds and a tangy taste), acerolas (a kind of cherry, this juice was my favorite and one of the family friends I had met gave me some homemade acerola jam to take back to Sucre!), and the caju (a fruit with reddish skin and a orange/yellow colored inside, the juice was good but it made your throat feel a little dry).

We got back to their house in Santa Cruz pretty late on Sunday night so I didn't do much else other than helping José's mom clean and put away the fruit they had brought back from Buena Vista. Meghan (that's their exchange daughter) left for the Bolivia tour, that the majority of the exchange students are going on here in December, before I even woke up Monday morning. (Adrianna, me, and 6 students in Santa Cruz will be going on our two week tour of Bolivia in January.) Then I had a nice lunch with Vivi and Alfredo (José's parents) before being given a bag filled with acerola jam, acerola berries that we had picked, a caju fruit, and some ocoros and being taken to the airport for my flight back to Sucre.

I was a little scared to return to Sucre because I had enjoyed Santa Cruz and being with Vivi, Alfredo, and the other exchange students so much, but once I got home, mamá gave me a letter from home that had arrived while I was gone, Nico had decorated the house with Christmas decorations and there were Christmas lights throughout the Plaza (this made me sooo happy! I love the Christmas season!), I met my 13 year old cousin, Luciana, from Cochabamba who will be staying with us all summer, and Nico gave me a mango that he had brought back from his trip to Santa Cruz and had been saving just for me. (:

This week, on Tuesday, I went to one of my classmates' birthday parties where we had lunch and watched movies all afternoon, I picked up my tae bo classes again, and I watched a drama movie with Luciana. It's nice to have someone living here for awhile who will actually watch drama movies with me! Then on Wednesday, I went to the dinosaur park/museum with Nico and Luciana. It wasn't the most exciting but I still enjoyed it and I liked being able to get out of the house for awhile!

In Santa Cruz, it was in the 90s and it was so hot being outside even for a few minutes. Here in Sucre, it's still pretty warm, 70s and 80s, but it's not so hot that I don't enjoy going out for afternoon walks or sitting on the terraza to enjoy the day. However, I REALLY miss my lovely Nebraska snow and biting cold! It's weird to be getting into the Christmas season with the weather warming up instead of cooling down!

One of the tables during our huge Thanksgiving feast!

My "chocolate chip cookies" that I had made for the Thanksgiving meal... I guess they turned out alright because I didn't have any leftover and everyone said they liked them!