Carnaval is this weekend

In case you heard about the small earthquake that happened in Cochabamba last night, be assured that it wasn´t near us. (And nobody was hurt anyway). We live in the city of Cochabamba, which is the capital of the department of Cochabamba. The earthquake was in a rural region of the department.

This weekend is the big carnaval in Oruro, the biggest in Bolivia. Our housemates are all going to it. Hotel prices in Oruro are usually very cheap, but skyrocket during carnaval, and so our housemates are going to stay up all night at the party in the street, rather than getting a place to stay. I don´t think I´m up for that, so we are going to the tiny colonial village of Totora. It´s supposed to be very beautiful, and they are having a fiesta this weekend too. A small fiesta should be much more our style. Totora is a 3 1/2 hour bus ride from here, and we´ll probably stay for a few days since I have Monday and Tuesday off work for carnaval. Then the following weekend will be carnaval here in Cochabamba, so we´ll watch all the dancing and drumming and festivities, just a couple of blocks from our house.

Last night was Día de los Comadres, which is a day when the women of Cochabamba go out together and celebrate. All the women who work with me, and the students in our program, went out to an all you can eat restaurant (dodging water balloons as we walked to it). This restaurant was a meat-lover´s paradise. Waiters were constantly coming by with huge skewers of meat. I don´t know what most of it was, but I did hear that one skewer impaled a row of chicken hearts. Luckily, they had some good vegetarian options, too. The guys stayed home and played poker. But ... Gary´s college friends won´t believe this ... Gary insisted on staying in our room because he had a lot of HOMEWORK! He is making tons of progress in his Spanish classes.

I´ve joined a yoga class, which feels wonderful and is also good for my vocabularly. The instructor uses some sanskrit names for the poses, but she pronounces them differently than English-speaking instructors do. So I´m learning Spanish sanskrit as well! And I´ve been reading the local newspaper at least a few times a week, now that we´ve settled down. A few headlines to give you a flavor:

Bush Authorizes Increased Spying on the American People (Why don´t our newspapers explain it so clearly?!)

Local Shoemaker Fights Against Invasion of Chinese-Made Shoes (Most of the shoes sold in Chile and in Bolivia are cheap plastic shoes made in China. Some of them even have soles made of PVC, the white stuff that plumbing pipes are made of. Gone are my hopes of finding markets of beautifully homemade shoes, like you can buy in Mexico. Who knows if you can still buy them in Mexico.)

We are still in the rainy season, which should last another month or so. But now the sun is shining and it will probably get up to the 80s this afternoon.