Settling In

Since my last entry I have been spending a lot of time in Carmen Pampa, settling in and starting to define my work with the university. I will be teaching one English class and working as a tutor as well. Additionally my roommate Sam and I will manage the new language lab on campus. It has about 30 computers and is used primarily by Eco-Tourism students. Eco-Tourism is the academic field that requires the most English from its graduates; unfortunately at this point many UAC-CP grads have very marginal English skills. Sam and I have been instructed to give special focus to students in this “carerra”or educational path.

In my last entry I included a picture of our main street, I thought some of you might be interested to learn more about what my new home looks like. I took a few pictures of the campus and the town. One of the defining characteristics of my school is that it geographically decentralized. The following picture illustrates this. On the right is Campus Leahy where I will be teaching, and on the far left is Campus Manning where I live and where most of the town is located. In between the two are a few homes and university run coffee processing facility.

Traveling between the two campuses isn’t exactly easy. There is a university owned bus that makes three trips a day, one in the morning, one at lunch and one in the evening. If you can’t take the bus waking is your only other option. Going up the mountain takes about 30 min while coming down take about 15. The route is interesting, most of it takes place on winding roads where “falling off a cliff” is a real possibility not just a figure of speech.

There are some shortcuts however, this one runs through a coffee grove.




The town itself is small and disorganized, the mountainous terrain makes the latter especially prevalent. Here is a picture of some of the typical buildings in Carmen Pampa. Some are homes and some are agricultural facilities. Also here is a picture of part of the campus, there is a lot of construction going on.

Last of all is the cancha where there are a lot of fútsal games. fútsal is 5 v. 5 soccer played on a hard court. It’s very popular here. The game is much faster than soccer and much harder for me to pick up. The students seem happy enough to let me play though. Sometimes I even talk them into playing basketball. They know the rules but don’t have a concept of the fundamentals at all. Trying to explain the idea of setting a pick has been too advanced for my Spanish.

Take care and thanks for you interest in my experience.

-andy

Very busy

I got here about a week ago and I have been too busy to post anything, but I swear I'll update this weekly at the very least. I tagged along on a four day road trip to Copacabana on Lake Titicaca via La Paz. It was a lot of fun and a pretty gentle way to acclimate myself to the country. We spent the first and third nights in La Paz where everyhting is so cheep that even getting ripped off feels like stealing. For example, my hostle cost 45 B's for a single room, at 7 B's to a dollar thats about $6.

La Paz is a very large city high in the Andes mountains (13,000 ft) The population is mostly indigeneous and despite its poverty it is a safe and beautiful place. La paz is flanked to the northeast by El Alto, a "suberb" of about 500,000 where the poorest of the poor live. El Alto is less safe, but politically charged, it is a hotbed of support for Evo Morales, the first indigeneous president of Bolivia. Below is a picture of my roommate Sam and I in a La Paz market. While we were there we saw Llama fetuses for sale, they bring good luck!

There is less to say about lake Titicaca, it's a common tourist destinatiuon for a good reason - it's avbsolutely georgeous. Below are 4 pics from there. The two women are called "Cholitas"they are sort of old fashoned indigeneous housewives. Sometimes they are witchlike mystics who claim to read the future in coca leaves, other times they are just poor farmers. Always they are interesting to me.

I have been back in Carmen Pampa for a few days, and I'm really happy with it. The volunteer houve is VERY comfortable, and all the people are friendly. My favorite part is that in any direction I look there is scenery beautiful enough to make the cover of National Geographic. It's hard to do justice with photos, but here is one of the town's main street (the university is on the left).
Last is a picture of me and my friend Kaamilah (American) and I at a fiesta that was going on when we first arrived. We are both holding coca leaves, which are an indigeneous traditon (and the primary ingrident in cocaine) the leaves are a mild stimulant and are very helpful for altitude sickness.

Anyways thanks to everyone who came to my goodbye party. I'd love to hear from all of you, but I can't promise to reply.

-andy