You know you're in Bolivia when...

While waiting for our train with Jen and Andrew, we composed a few lines of "You know you're in Bolivia when..."

- you order a litre of beer and a ten-year-old serves it to you, popping the top like he does it every day.
- at your local store, you are given a few pieces of candy in lieu of change.
- restaurants run out of food by 1 p.m.
- stores close from noon until 2, or later.
- when you run out of gas for your kitchen stove, you have to listen for a truck with guys banging on gas tanks, which could take several days while your meal gets cold.
- you stay in a hotel room in the winter at 16,000 feet altitude, and there is no heat.
- a bill worth $1.13 is too large to spend.
- your main goal when you go to the market is to hoard as much change as you can.
- you are pickpocketed and your biggest disappointement is that you lost all the change you had been hoarding.
- you can get a three-course meal for $1.50.
- the same CD is playing on any bus.
- to get some local news on any given day, you can go to the plaza to see who is protesting.
- people in the plaza pay money to receive flyers and pamphlets from activists who are tabling.
- people have read their constitution.
- when you take a collective taxi, you ride with 11 other people in a Toyota hatchback for four hours before reaching your destination.
- you have to look both ways before crossing the sidewald because you might be hit by a motorcycle.
- cars have the right of way over pedestrians, but are more curteous to dogs, and stop lights are optional.
- when a motorist almost hits a pedestrian, the motorist yells at the pedestrian.
- for two weeks a year, it's completely acceptable to throw water balloons at any woman on the street, and even to dump buckets of water on her.
- fresh vegetables are much cheaper to buy than processed food.
- you can buy more than 200 varieties of potatoes, and they're best at your local market!
- you make the shower hotter by decreasing the water flow.
- you are glad to see a squat toilet.
- you can buy fresh squeezed orange juice on the street for 25 cents.