¡Feliz Navidad!

¡Feliz Navidad a todos!  Merry Christmas, everyone!

As could be expected, Christmas in Bolivia was an adventure.  It had lots of great moments - a beautiful mass with the kids at the orphanage, a lovely dinner with the other volunteers in my program, sunny summer weather, the chance to participate in new Christmas traditions.  It was sad being away from my family and so many things I take for granted in the holiday season: snow, hearing Christmas songs 24-7, the TV marathon of "A Christmas Story," candy canes and candy-cane flavored everything, "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on VHS...  But I'm glad I got to experience a South American Christmas at least once, and who better to spend it with than the lovable girls I work with?

To give you a sense of it, here are a few of the moments and images that stuck out:

The Music

Our band for Christmas mass

Overall, I didn't hear that much Christmas music in Bolivia.  There are plenty of Spanish Christmas carols, but with the radio stations continuing to play the same music as the rest of the year and most shopping taking place in markets instead of malls, you definitely don't get as flooded with Christmas tunes here as you do in the U.S.

On Christmas Eve, though, the girls spent the day blasting a CD of "villancicos," and we got to hear their favorites over and over.  One of them, about the bells of Bethlehem ringing, was pretty catchy (at least the first ten times).  You can listen to it here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DyRFHeNMoXA

I don't have a picture of the Nativity fish, but here's a shot of
the girls dancing in the little pagent they had before dinner.

Their other favorite song was about the nativity fish.  Yep, the fish.  The lyrics of the chorus are "Look how the fish drink in the water.  Look how they drink at seeing God born.  They drink and they drink, and then they drink some more - the fish in the river at seeing God born."  When I picture all the animals that might have been there at Bethlehem - you know, in the desert - I never really imagined fish...but apprently someone did.  There's also a whole verse about Mary combing her hair.  The version of this song that the girls liked best was an intense rock one, which I couldn't find, but if you want to hear another rendition, here it is: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L6_nZapQyps

The suit must get awfully
warm down here

And, yes - they do listen to "Feliz Navidad" here.  It's quite popular - both the bilingual version we know and love in the US, as well as a version totally in Spanish. 

The Weather 

It's summer here and, although it rains a lot, the 24th and 25th were beautiful, sunny days, with highs in the 80s.  I didn't need a sweater to go outside (unthinkable for a Minnesotan), and we even took a trip to the park on Christmas afternoon!

The Food

Why, Bolivia?

The most popular Christmas food in Bolivia isn't even Bolivian - it's panettone, a big, round bread with candied fruit which was created in Italy and now is popular in many different countries.  I remember seeing it for sale in Pensacola, but with nowhere near the intensity that it's sold here.  About a month ago, panettones sprung up all over the city: whole booths in markets got rid of their usual products and replaced them with panettones, grocery stores started stocking panettones in every possible inch of shelf space, people set up tables of panettones along busy roads.  I'd estimate there were an average of 5.6 pannetones sold for every one person who lives in Cochabamba.  Finally, I got curious and bought a chocolate one.  It was terrible.  Dry bread that was a little bitter and not at all chocolatey.  I also tried a sample of a traditional one, to see if it was any better.  It wasn't.  Stale, tasteless bread with sickly sweet candied fruit.  I don't get it.

Can you see the foot?  So gross

As far as Christmas meals go, there isn't really one typical dish.  Some families have turkey, some have roasted pork, some have mixed meat stews.  On Christmas Eve at the orphanage, we had cream of chicken foot soup for lunch (yes - with whole chicken feet in it).  For dinner, we had chicken, rice, a potato, a sweet potato, and a little salad.  To me, it seemed pretty similar to what we normally eat (except for the sweet potato - that was a delicious new addition!), but the girls loved it.  For a snack/dessert, we toasted with Sprite mixed with fruit juice and got one lady finger cookie each.  

On Christmas night, my roommates and I hosted a dinner for the four volunteers in our program: one German, one British, one Irish, and one American.  We ended up making lasagna, German red cabbage, green beans, and chocolate cheesecake - kind of eclectic, but really good!

Sponsored Christmas Presents

A Canadian church group knitted these cute hats

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, lots of different organizations came to give the girls presents.  Two were religious organizations dropping off clothes the girls really needed and appreciated.  Never before have I heard kids cheer when they were told someone had given them new socks and underwear for Christmas, but these girls did.  

Most of the visitors, however, were businesses using it as a publicity opportunity.  I had mixed feelings about it.  On the one hand, I'm glad so many people were thinking about the girls, and it is nice that they got presents that they wouldn't have otherwise, and if the business took a few pictures, that doesn't seem to hurt anyone.  On the other hand, some companies seemed to be much more generous, and much less selfishly motivated, than others.  

Even Pepe the dog loved it!

Windsor tea company, for example, was awesome.  They brought hot chocolate for all the girls to drink, and a really nice (and not even a little creepy) clown came did a genuinely funny and enjoyable show for the girls.  They danced, sang, played games, and laughed for at least an hour and a half.  At the end, women dressed as elves passed out bags filled with candy and nice presents (Angry Birds Monopoly, giant pens, or dolls, depending on the girls' ages).  

One of the local colleges was also great - they put on a long show for the kids from four of the Amanecer orphanages.  A host and Mrs. Claus sang and led games, and Santa made an appearance at the end.  (Although, one of the 14-year-old girls, miffed, complained to one of the orphanage workers after, "That wasn't the real Santa!  That was the guy who was playing music at the beginning.  You told me the real Santa would be there!")  At the end, they handed out board games and Frozen Barbies.  

Also, the bank gave some of the girls these
creepy dolls with red light-up ears

A few other companies made brief appearances, passing out toys, giving long speeches about themselves, and taking lots of pictures to put up on their websites.  By far the worst was a local bank.  They showed up with almost a full camera crew - two people with cameras and one with a microphone, to record every moment of their good deed.  They hung up a huge banner advertising their high savings account interest rates, and proceeded to give several long speeches in front of it.  One man lectured about the importance of saving, as his son did with his allowance (not particularly applicable or sensitive advice to girls without families or money).  Then, they started passing out the cheapest, most miserly presents of any group yet: plastic dolls and kitchen sets already breaking in their wrappers.  What was worse was that they ran out of the presents they were planning to hand out and ending up scrambling and giving 17-year-old girls crappy plastic cars.  They told one of them she could give it to a brother, and she burst into tears - this being the first Christmas she wouldn't be able to see her brother.  Of all of the groups, they were by far the most showy and by far the least concerned about the girls (not even having bothered to count their presents beforehand).  

I don't mean to complain about the donations in general - of course, it's a nice thing for people and companies to do in general.  It's just that, by the end, I couldn't help wishing that someone would give the girls something out of genuine love.

Christmas Eve Mass

The girls' side 

After dinner, the Amanecer priest gave a beautiful Christmas vigil mass for the kids at Madre and a nearby boys' home.  The girls were all wearing their nicest clothes - poofy dresses for the little girls, nice blouses for the teenagers.  The boys were wearing what seemed to be presents they'd gotten that day - clean new black sneakers and brightly colored, never-been-washed Angry Bird shirts.

We sang Christmas carols, lit the Advent wreath and a new white candle, got sprinkled with holy water with a fake flower and a plastic pitcher, and blessed the baby Jesus statue before putting him in the manger scene under the tree.  The boys had brought their baby Jesus statue to get it blessed, too - apparently, lots of people here bring their baby Jesuses to Christmas mass to get them blessed before putting them in their home nativity scenes.

The boys' side 

Being able to celebrate the birth of Jesus with all those kids was so nice.  It was so cozy, intimate, and beautiful, from the streamers the girls had hung to the ceiling to the pan flute music to the many many hugs exchanged during the Sign of Peace.

¡Feliz Día de Dar Gracias!

Happy belated Thanksgiving, everyone!

This year, I was especially grateful for my time in Bolivia - and for the opportunity to celebrate Thanksgiving, despite being far from home.  Many Bolivians have heard of the holiday because of American TV and movies, but there were plenty of people (from the girls at the orphanage to one of my friends in college) who had no idea what it was.  However, because it is one of my favorite holidays, I was determined to find a way to celebrate it here.  It was definitely a challenge, but very much worth it!

Hunting down the food was the hardest part.  Although most Thanksgiving dishes are made of pretty basic staples (like potatoes) that are easy enough to track down here, a few things were really hard to find.  Some (like pumpkin) aren't common; others (like cranberries) just aren't in season, since it's getting into the hottest part of summer now.  (Especially coming from Minnesota, it felt so strange to be roasting a turkey while wearing a tank top.)

The most precious can of pumpkin ever

I think I went food shopping seven times in four days, in everywhere from open air markets to the biggest and fanciest grocery store in the city.  Eventually, I found everything except cranberries (although it turns out plums are a pretty close substitute).  My favorite moment was when my roommate Ina spotted the last remaining can of pumpkin pie mix high on a shelf, right in front of a group of people milling around looking for something - hopefully not the same thing as us.  Ina lept into action, jumped in front of the group, and snatched the can off the shelf as fast as I've ever seen anyone shop for anything.  Thank you, Ina!

My friend's mom took it out of the baking
pan to serve it - that's how tough it was.

Another challenge was the altitude.  Cochabamba is located about 8,000 feet higher than anywhere I've ever been before, which affects cooking and baking in weird and sometimes unpredicatable ways.  The turkey, for example, didn't take any longer than usual.  The pumpkin pie filling, on the other hand, took almost two hours to set, which meant the crust was in the oven so long that it had the texture of a piece of sheet rock.

Because the mini fridge and oven in my apartment are too small to hold a turkey - let alone a turkey and sides - I had to find somewhere else to cook.  Luckily, I have a friend whose family hosts American study abroad students and is used to foreigners wanting to do weird things like that, and they let me invade their kitchen for the day.  This had the added bonus of letting me get Bolivians' impressions of Thanksgiving food, which were...

1. They LOVED the gravy.  The turkey definitely turned out dry, but everyone loved the gravy so much, they didn't notice.  They kept commenting on how smooth and tasty the meat was when, secretly, it wasn't - it was just the sauce.

2. They thought stuffing made out of bread was the strangest thing.  Apparently, many Bolivians will stuff turkeys with fruits and vegetables for Christmas, but it's nothing like American stuffing.  They also did not understand why I was cooking it outside of the bird.  They liked it, though.

3. They definitely didn't like the "cranberry" plum sauce, though.  Bolivians generally like things either super bland (see: millions of boiled potatoes) or super sweet (the cakes are too sweet for me to eat, and that's hard to do).  Tart and sour are not popular flavors.

So much better than a saltless, pepperless
boiled potato - thanks, Mom!

4. They did, however, like the potatoes I made, despite the fact that they had flavor.  Every potato I've had here has been either boiled or fried with little to nothing in the way of seasonings.  For Thanksgiving, though, I made my mom's baked mashed potato recipe, which includes garlic, green onions, and sour cream - which everyone else seemed impressed by.  I'm hoping to start a flavoring potatoes trend.

5. Everyone was really impressed that I made cornbread (baking's not common here), but they were worried that eating it warm was unhealthy.  I tried to convince them that it's best right out of the oven, but I don't think they believed me.

6. They did not understand that the point of Thanksgiving is eating as much as you possibly can.  Everyone took dainty (healthy) portions of everything and then maybe chose to get seconds of one thing they especially liked.  Then they stopped eating.  It was probably for the best - not being bloated was nice - but it was strange.  I cooked the same amount of food I've made for similar amounts of people the past two years, but there were at least three times as many leftovers this time.

The final spread of everything.  Yay Thanksgiving!

Chile - Part Three

Some more highlights from Santiago...

Cementerio General

Santiago has one of the biggest cemetaries in Latin America, with about 2 million people burried in it.   It's still an active cemetary - at the entrance, in fact, there's a scrolling screen listing the times and locations of the dozen of burrials that happen there every day (a lot like the arrivals and depatures screen at an airport).  At the same time, though, people treat the cemetary like a combination of a park and a history museum.  Tours pass through and stop to comment on the presidents burried in it, vendors sell snacks inside, and families stroll along the pathways.  Here some of the things that I thought were the most interesting...

 

This looks like an apartment building, but is actually a multi-level structure housing hundreds of burial slots.  In this cemetary, like in much of Latin America, the most economical way for families to pay for funerals is to buy one of these spaces.  They're a little longer than a coffin, so when the first person dies, they get burried in a coffin and put inside the spot.  After a few years, when their body has decomposed, they pull the coffin out, put the bones in a smaller box, and put the box in the back of the slot - leaving room for the next coffin.

Here's another set of rows of this type of grave.

And here's a close-up of what the individual spaces look like.  They have the names of the people burried in there, and many also have carved stone vases or shelves to hold flowers or other things the people burried in there would like.  There are toys on children's graves, for example, and one widow visits her husband's grave every week with a can of beer to leave for him.

I took a picture of this grave in particular for my Croatian grandma - there are a surprising number of Croatians living (and burried) in Chile!

There are also a lot of Italians.  This is a 15-story mausoleam built just for the Italians living in Santiago.  It's designed to look like a shopping mall - complete with a functioning elevator - because the Italians were the ones who brought that type of building to Chile (and, apparently, that was the collective achievement that they are most proud of).

This is the grave of "Carmencita," who many believe to have been a young girl who was tragically killed but who was, according to cemetary records, actually a middle aged woman who died of natural illness.  She is one of Chile's many "animitas" - people who some consider saints, but who aren't recognized by the Catholic church.  There are similar graves and shrines all over the country of hundreds of different animitas, where people bring flowers and pray for different things.  If the animita grants their request, the people buy plaques that say "Gracias por el favor concibido" ("Thanks for the favor granted") and leave them on the grave or shrine.

There are a couple of other animitas in the cemetary.  High school and college students are particularly found of asking for help on their exams from a president who did a lot of educational reform.  They used to scratch their requests into the stone, until the family put up a sign asking them to stop; now, they slide their requests on paper under the entrance to his mausoleum.  There lots of other shrines of animitas throughout the country - there are so many along a main highway, in fact, that the government is having trouble moving forward with a project to expand it.  No Chilean workers are willing to move the shrines for the contruction for fear of being cursed.  

Rich Chilean families have a long history of trying to out-do each other with their elaborate, expensive mausoleums.  Here is a super modern one from a Middle Eastern family.

 

This is one designed to look like an Aztec temple.

Here we've got a vaguely Indian-inspired palace.

And this one is faux-Egyptian.

Saint George's 

While I was in Santiago, I got to visit and stay with my friends who are teaching English with ChACE (the Chilean off-shoot of the Notre Dame ACE program that I just graduated from).  Most of them teach at Saint George's College, a gigantic K-12 school with more students than my college.  While I was there, they had a huge fundrasier on campus, so I got the chance to get a tour and meet some of their students.  Here are a few pictures...

This is the entrance...

..and here's the map of the school right inside the entrance.  That's how big it is - it needs a map. 

The fundraiser was a big deal, as well.  There were thousands of people there, buying homemade jelwery donated by artsy families, eating hotdogs and sandwiches from vendors, listening to the live band, and going on rides like this little ferris wheel.  

Reunions!

As fun as it was seeing all of those amazing sites in Santiago, my favorite part of the trip was catching up with some amazing people.  

Here's a bunch of people from my ACE year getting pizza.

Here are representatives from three different Gulf Coast ACE communities posing in the ChACE apartment in front of the Chilean flag.  I had my first-ever Thanksgiving away from home in Pensacola with Johann (right) and visited John (middle) in Mobile, Alabama all the time during ACE.  It was so cool and fun (and random) to be able to see them again...in South America!

Even more randomly, I realized right before I left that two of the girls I studied abroad with in the Dominican Republic are currently in Santiago, Chile, teaching English with another program - and I got to see them for the first time in over three years!  We met up for ice cream and reminiscing about our crazy adventures in Santiago, Dominican Republic, and it was just wonderful.

Chile - Part Two

Here are pictures from some of the other cool sites in Santiago...

La Vega

This is a huge, beautiful, amazing market in the center of Santiago.  It's filled with hundreds of stalls, most selling fruits and vegetables both familiar (like strawberries and apples) and unique to South America (like purple corn and chirimoya).  There were also tiny little restaurants, stalls filled with sacks of different grains, and fridges filled with meat (like the whole pig heads above!).  I got to go with one of my friends from study abroad, which was awesome - we got to catch up, and she was a great tour guide!  She's teaching English in Chile now, and was able to give me the names of all of the unusual fruits and vegetables that we saw.

This, for example, is me holding a pepino, my favorite Chilean fruit.  It tasted like a cross between a melon and a papaya - an amazing combination!

This is Kelsey eating a tuna (in Spanish; I guess they're called prickly pears in English).  It's a fruit that grows on cactuses, with spines on the outside and juicy, sweet flesh that tastes kind of like a sweet, mushy cucumber with lots of seeds.

This is physalis.  They are tiny little fruits that come in husks, like a tomatillo, and look like little gold tomatoes.  The taste is kind of weird - it's like eating cherry tomatoes, if they were actually fruits.  A little sour, a little sweet, a little bitter.  I couldn't quite decide whether I liked them or not.

This is lúcuma, probably my least favorite fruit of them all.  It is kind of like an avocado, if avocados were tasteless fruits.  After you peel it, you find a super dry, greenish, chalky edible part surrounding a big pit.  It's the only one of the bunch I wouldn't recommend.

Cerro Santa Lucia

Right in the middle of downtown Santiago, there is a hill with a recreation of an old Spanish fort, surrounded by paths and gardens and plants.  I'd heard of it, but had no real interesting in going - I'd already climbed the Cerro San Cristobal, which is a lot taller, and didn't think this would be that different.

Then, one day, I happened to walk by it...and was totally enchanted.  It looks like something out of a fairy tale - maybe like Sleeping Beauty's overgrown castle if it had roses instead of thorn bushes.  I started exploring the garden at the bottom, thinking I'd just check it out quickly, but ended up climbing all the way up and around it.  It was crowded, but also quiet, with none of the noise from the city, and you felt like you were getting lost in a castle garden.  It ended up being one of my favorite things in the city.  Here are some pictures:

The steep path up to the look out at the top.

The view from the look out to a garden below.

The view from the look out to the city.

All of the paths and sides of the hill were covered with neat-looking cactuses, trees, and flowers.

Some of the flowers were even growing up the side of the building.

This was closed, but there's also a tiny little chapel.

Chile - Part One

Hello, everyone, and greetings from Santiago de Chile!  In order to get a new, necessary visa for staying in Bolivia, I had to leave the country and apply for it somewhere else (fingers crossed that it is ready this afternoon!).  It's kind of a pain, but it also gave me a good excuse to visit some friends in Santiago, which has been awesome! Here are some pictures from the first half of the trip....

Cerro San Cristobal

These are pictures from a huge hill in Santiago, topped with a big statue of Mary, a little church, and lots of beautiful flowers.  It's a little like the Cristo in Cochabamba, but with a smaller statue and more of a garden...

...and a view of a much bigger city.  I remember being at the top of the Cristo in Cochabamba and thinking it seemed huge - but that was nothing compared to Santiago!  While I was walking up the path to the Virgen, I kept looking out at the view and being amazed how huge the city was - going on at least three times farther than Cochabamba.  Then I got to the top, where the path circled around, and realized I'd only been seeing one little sliver of Santiago.  The city goes on forever in 360 degrees, right up to the Andes mountains.

This is the inside of the little chapel near the Mary.  It was really pretty.  It was built in the 1930s but seems even older, with gray stone and pretty murals of scenes from Mary's life.

Outside, there was a wall filled with plaques, all saying things like "Thank you Mary, for the miracle that you gave me," or "Thank you, Mary, for saving the life of our daughter."

This is mote con huesilla, a traditional Chilean summer drink sold in all of the snack stands at the top and bottom of the hill.  It's like the sweetest sweet tea ever, poured over fresh, squishy wheat and peaches.  Not something I'd drink every day (I think I got a sugar coma from it), but worth trying and very refreshing after a long, hot hike!

Museo de Arte Precolombiano

The next day, I took a trip to the Museum of Pre-Columbian art.  It was small, but really cool - filled with sculptures, pottery, and clothes from all over Central and South America from thousands of years.  This is me trying to take a selfie with this guy quickly (the guard was giving me a weird look).

These are wooden sculptures from Easter Island, that used to go on top of people's graves.  The people who carved them believed that, when they died, warriors and chiefs would go to roam the volcanoes in the West; everyone else would go across the sea to "eat bitter potatoes for eternity."

 

This is the way the Incans kept records, with elaborate systems of knots in ropes.  No one has quite deciphered it, but it seems like they used them to keep track of things like censuses and taxes - knots in different places meant different numbers of different things. 

American Brands

Chile is a huge, international city, filled with banks, shops, and restaurants from all over the world.  I've been trying to mostly do and see the things that actually are unique to Santiago...but, it's also the first time in 2 months (and the last time for the next 7 months) that I have seen anything American besides the one Burger King in Cochabamba.  So, I may or may not have gone to Pizza Hut with John my second night...

...and I definitely got Taco Bell for lunch my first day!  My one true love, reunited after far too long apart!  Soooooo good!