Eclipse, Bolivian media, United World Colleges, piss, etc.

Last night we watched a full luner eclipse! We watched it from our balcony, with our house mates. Did you see it elsewhere in the world? It was amazing here.

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We´ve been in the Bolivian media a bit! While attending an art exhibition, we were photographed for the society page of one of the local newspapers, and it came out in print and on the internet:

http://www.lostiempos.com/click/click150208/invitados1.php

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Also, I´ve been helping out with the Bolivian selection committee for the United World Colleges. I attended one of the United World Colleges, an international high school, in New Mexico from 1989 to 1992. My friends Bertha and Harald and Christian, mentioned in my January postings about Harald´s run and Isla del Sol, attended the UWC with me. Since we´ve been in Bolivia, I´ve met a number of UWC graduates in La Paz and in Cochabamba. My new friend Andrea attended the UWC in Canada. She is originally from Cochabamba, and is going to college here now. José Luis, also from Cochabamba, went to the UWC in Hong Kong, and Simón, from Quebec but living in Cochabamba, went to the UWC in Canada.

We are all part of the selection process for the four scholarships that will be given to Bolivian students to attend UWCs in Norway, Wales, Costa Rica and Italy next year. This evening we are having an informational meeting about the application process, and in the past few weeks we´ve been promoting scholarships and inviting Bolivian students to attend. Andrea and I visited several high schools, and we appeared (live and in Spanish - yikes!) on a Bolivian TV talk show last week. I am enjoying being involved with the UWC movement again. In case anyone is interested, the UWC website is http://www.uwc.org/, and the site for the school I attended in New Mexico is http://www.uwc-usa.org/.

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At the art exhibit mentioned earlier, I saw a woman wearing a T-shirt that said "Fergus Falls Basketball." I started a conversation with the woman and told her that I enjoyed seeing her T-shirt because Fergus Falls is a town in northern Minnesota, near where I grew up. She quickly told me that the shirt was a gift from someone who must have been there. Then I felt bad because I realized that she was making that up because she probably didn´t want to tell me that she got the shirt in the used American clothing section of the local market. Bolivia is trying to outlaw the sale of used foreign clothes, which undercuts the work of skilled Bolivian tailors, but for now we see used American clothes everywhere and on everyone, some with unexpected slogans. "This is what a pro-choice American looks like."

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One of the many nice things about living in South America is that, at least in the countries we have visited so far, men don´t tend to make cat calls at women on the street. Unlike in many countries, the U.S. included sometimes, women can walk down the street in Bolivia without getting any unwanted attention or harassment from men.

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All of our house mates speak British English, and I´m continually amazed at how many ways Kristina, in particular, can use the word piss!

To be pissed is to be drunk or angry
It´s pissing down means it´s raining
A piece of piss is what you call something very easy
Pissing oneself laughing refers to laughing a lot
piss poor and piss ugly are obvious
To take the piss out of someone is to make fun of someone, and is interchangeable with ripping the piss out of someone
Pissing it up against the wall is spending all of your money
pissing against the wind is making a futile effort
and in Australia, let´s smash piss means let´s drink beer.

Gary went to get a couple of medical tests here recently and I interpreted for the technician who, when talking about urinating, used the Spanish phrase "hacer pis" (to take a piss).

Our English as well as our Spanish is getting more colorful!