packed like sardines

i would like to dedicate the beginning of this blog update to the ridiculousness that is the transportation system here in santa cruz, bolivia. and may i just say, that i’d hate to see what the rest of bolivia is like, with their notoriously terrible roads, after seeing how bad santa cruz’s are, santa cruz being the posh, rich city in bolivia.

so first of all, there’s the fact that i’ve mentioned before that the concept of a stop sign only barely exists here. i think i’ve seen three the whole time i’ve been in bolivia, and those were all in places you can do i u-turn on the highway… so one may ask, how does one know who has the right of way in a four way intersection? good question, one that Ii myself asked for quite some time until one of my housemates provided me with the answer she had read in lonely planet. the way it works is that as a car nears an intersection, they simply honk their horn, and the first person to honk their horn has the right of way. simple enough right… well, this crazy system often causes mass amounts of confusion and near crashes along with an amazing amount of sound pollution from the never ending source of honks coming from everywhere in the city. even now, typing up this blog from the comfort of our house, with all the doors and windows closed, i can hear honks coming from every which way.

next, there’s the bus (or as they call them, micro) system. mind you, I spent a fair amount of each day on these micros. but anyway, the system is quite similar to that in chile, with the small difference that the busses are smaller and the rates are cheaper. the crazy thing about them is how many people the drivers like to squeeze into these busses that have no more that 15 actual seats. just this evening for example, ana and I were coming back from getting coffee around 6:00 and we ended up being the last people to comfortably fit onto the already full #65 micro that would take us back to our house. well, comfortably fitting isn’t how the micros function, so after we get on, a bunch more people end up cramming on as the driver urges people to keep moving backwards into some imaginary free space in the back where you can cram endless amounts of people, until the micro has given an all new meaning to the saying “packed like sardines”. we counted around 40 people crammed onto this little bus on the trip home. in situations like that, the notion of personal space completely disappears as the bus turns into a huge mass of bodies, all constantly bumping into each other in their attempts to keep standing over the bumps and turn.

and the insanity goes on and on. I could write pages and pages about the road conditions and crazy ways of driving, but I won’t bore you any more for one day.

in other news from down south, two new volunteers have arrived in the volunteer house. their names are shawn and megan and they both are from the northeast and go to Princeton. megan is actually only here for two days today before she heads up north to work with an orchestra in a little town, but shawn will be here the rest of the time I’m here. I haven’t really gotten a chance to talk to him yet, as he got in really late last night, but it’s nice to have new people in the house.
as for the orphanage, things are going great. this week I’ve started working on making flashcard/picture communication systems for some of the nonverbal children. I got together with one of the tías to come up with a list of needed pictogramas and now I’ve been working in any free time I have on the internet (which is difficult to come by b/c I have to go to a café with wifi to get wireless) to find pictures and format the cards. searching for pictures has proved to be really frustrating and tiring, but it’d be so great to make some really nice cards for them and have something to leave behind when I go.

so that’s life as of now. today’s friday so that means the weekend’s ahead. I think we may take a short bus ride south (or actually maybe it’s east… idk…) on sunday to a town called catoca where there’s supposed to be a lot of good authentic bolivian food and a good artesenía (pretty much an open air souvenir shop), so that should be really fun. I haven’t gotten to see any other town but santa cruz, so it’ll be great to get another taste of bolivia.

well, keep the updates coming and I’ll do the same. I love you and miss you all lots!