Outside My Southern Comfort Zone: Spechen sie Deutsch?

Me and my German House Mates

On Tuesday I moved into the volunteer house. I am currently living with 10 German volunteers. I am not use to living with other people. I have been living alone for quite a while now but now I have 10 roommates. It will take some getting used to but I am confident. They all seem like pretty cool people. I hardly understand what they are saying most of the time since they speak mainly in German. You can imagine what it might be like to be the only person who doesn’t speak German. Every so often they remember that I don’t speak German and translate it into either Spanish or English for me. Our first night together we fixed spaghetti and all had dinner together. It was a lot of fun even though I didn’t understand everything that was being said. Including the American volunteers, there are 19 volunteers total. Eleven of us total in my house and the rest in Lugar Niñas Obrajes (about a 10 minute walk).

My bedroom

I think it has finally hit me that I am going to be living here for a year now. I believe at first it felt more like a vacation but it is starting to settle in now. I’m beginning to learn my way around the city. I just have to start connecting the puzzle pieces together. La Paz is a very different city but it is very beautiful. I was hoping to come home for Christmas but I don’t think that I am going to be able to. We have a trip planned with all the volunteers that will be about the same time. We are supposed to go to the capital city Sucre and to Potosi (an old silver mining city). So it looks like I will not be home until next July.

Wednesday all the other volunteers had to go with the lawyer to start their paperwork for their visas. Since I am almost done I had the opportunity to sleep in. Good thing, because I ended up getting a pretty bad migraine in the morning and decided to lie back down until it went away. I woke up in time to meet the other volunteers near Plaza Murillo in a café that Foundation Arco Iris runs. The food was tasty. In Bolivia people tend to eat a full meal for lunch instead of dinner. It started with salad, then soup, then the main course followed by desert. For desert we all had Lime flavored mousse. Kid you not it looked just like that Gack stuff that was popular when I was little. It was a weird green color and the consistency was odd. I managed to eat it all but it was no easy task.

Friday me and the guys went down to the local soccer court and played a game against some of the locals. It was a lot of fun. We played for a bottle of Coca-cola. Of course we lost but we had them going there for a while. We tired out pretty quick because it was hard to breathe with the air being thin and what-not. We are going to meet up with them again and try to win one. Eventually I want to get up a game of basketball ball with some locals that play down the street. They seem pretty good even though they are a bit shorter… That night we all had dinner with Padre Jose the founder of Arco Iris. It was a lot of fun. My table had me laughing so hard that I was crying.

Due to the altitude a handful of the volunteers have high blood pressure. I am one of them…… It was 140/90. Yea but it is getting lower. Body kinda has to adjust to having different atmospheric pressures and what not. But don’t worry about me everything is ok, it’s normal, don’t panic. I hope everyone back at home is doing well. I don’t have internet at the house so I may not be able to update my blog too often. But we are working on getting internet so we will see how things go.

Again here are a few pictures for your enjoyment: CIAO!