Photos from La Paz

The time flies by

A couple more weeks have somehow seemed to fly by and we are now close to approaching the one month benchmark, which is hard to believe. I guess the phase is going to fly by, just as fast as the Canadian Phase did for all of us. Before you know it we’ll all be celebrating Xmas...

In the last couple weeks I was fortunate to have had a lovely visitor come by for a few days. That visitor was no other than Ali, my sister, who is presenting living with her partner in Cochabamba for the next few months. She came to stay with us for a few days and we had a great time together with Jaime. We did a little bit of shopping and sight-seeing here in La Paz and then got in a good night of dancing, which felt ever so good, as it has been awhile since I have been out dancing.And we all know how I love to dance!

We also had a movie night, as I managed to buy speakers for my laptop. So we bought a couple movies, snacks and pushed the two single beds together in my room for the three of to enjoy a fun relaxed movie night.

Apart from that not much else is going on here, continuing to get my bearings here in La Paz and do a bit more exploring on my own. One difficult part is that a lot of people have fallen sick in the last while, with all sorts of stomach problems, including myself! But luckily nothing so far has been beyond what a few pills, water and rest wont cure!

La Paz

After a busy final weeks in Camrose and a tiring couple days of travel, with an extended layover in Toronto, we are now in full swing into the second phase of the program here in La Paz, Bolivia! So far, so good! In fact its been going very well! the group is doing awesome, they all seem more connected and supportive of each other. I am sure the role reversal where the Canadian participants are now more dependent on their Bolivian counterparts has played a part in this important change.

We spent the first 3 nights adjusting to La Paz, as a team, in a small little hostel downtown. Most of the team were pretty exhausted from the long journey to get here, however, most were not showing much signs of altitude sickness, expect of course, moi! I had a killer headache, which felt like a horrible hangover, luckily Jaime took me to the pharmacy and got me some pills that increased the flow of oxygen to my brain and that helped 100%. Other than that most of us have been experiencing short of breath moments, as we climbed the 2 or 3 flights of stairs to our rooms from the dinning room. La Paz is the highest capital in the world, so you get tired a lot quicker than back home and often find yourself huffing and puffing after climbing some of streets, or hills, here in La Paz.

After a couple days at the hostel downtown the participants moved into their Bolivian families and Jaime (my counterpart) and I moved into our posh little bed & breakfast in a very nice part of city- San Miguel. I told Jaime it’s like a dream and I don’t think I will want to leave where the program is over in December. The place where we live is gorgeous, I have a cute little room with a fireplace and Jaime has a beautiful room with an amazing view of the city. If it’s not obvious -I am loving it! We really got a great place to live, its located in a real trendy part of town with lots of cafes, stores, restaurants, etc. Kinda reminds me of the nicer trendy areas of Cape Town. All in all it’s a huge leap from my last two years in Africa! Not that I didn’t enjoy those experiences, however, this definitely takes the cake for comfort!

Yesterday we finished a marathon week- community orientation week- where we talked about new committees for the participants, their new work placements, and got to do a little sightseeing and touring of some of their new work placements here in La Paz. Monday the participants will start their new work placements, so we are hoping that will go smoothly as we have fallen behind in our administration & reporting duties.

Today is Sunday, so we’re gonna take the day off and our plans are to check out a well known vegetarian restaurant downtown and then maybe check out a film at the International Film festival going on this week here in La Paz! Jaime’s not much of a vegetarian cuisine kind of guy, however, he didn’t want to go out dancing last night and said he’s make up for it by going for a vegetarian lunch- as he knows I would love to do that! What a great counterpart, eh? How lucky am I?

Lake Louise