Day 4 - I'm Home

Day 4

I’m Home

I am sitting in my room at the New Tribes Mission House, enjoying the breeze and listening to the sounds of the city; honking horns, police whistle, cars accelerating.  And I hear a parrot from somewhere around here.  The dog at the compound, Watcher, occasionally barks if someone comes too close to the gate, but he is really a sweetheart.  They just don’t know that.  It is around 70 to 75 degrees and there is a nice breeze blowing.

It is Saturday morning.  I am going to tell you about yesterday and later I will tell you about today.

Debbie and her kids, Shekinah and Joash, met me at the airport.  Because the flight was coming through La Paz, they were expecting me at 10:30.  Luckily Debbie was following my progress and saw I came an hour earlier.  Really two hours late, but … go read yesterday’s blog.

I was so tired, but so excited to be home.  I am staying across the street from one of my favorite little plazas in Santa Cruz, at the New Tribes Mission House.  It is a place that reminds me of the mission homes from the 80s.  I guess some things don’t really change.  There are trees blooming all over town.  Right now they are the hot pink ones.  I think those are the tajibos trees (pronounced ta- he- bows). 

I was tired and debated what to do.  Part of me wanted to take a nice long nap, only I was afraid if I napped I would sleep until evening, so I decided on a different plan.  That started with a nice hot shower.  Then I walked to the plaza.  First I wanted to get a new phone.  My phone is good and takes awesome pictures, but I can’t get it unlocked and get service for it until sometime in August.  If I want to talk or text friends here, I need a cheap phone.  By the way, everyone here uses WhatsApp.  It is there preferred method of texting.  I am keeping all my old apps, but for a while that is the one I will most have access to during the day.  Add it and keep in touch.

I got a nice little phone, with a lot of texting time for $70.  I might be told by someone that I spent too much, but I was mostly seeing phones for $250 or more.

I had a good lunch of empanadas at a restaurant overlooking the Plaza.  Empanadas are like a turnover, but filled with savory ingredients.  In this case, chicken.  Often in Bolivia the fillings are more like a stew filling.  At least that is my interpretation.  They are usually very juicy, but not greasy.  I am thinking these were baked.  I had three of them for lunch and three for dinner.  Most places serve the sodas cold, but not with ice.  If they have ice, it is like this restaurant, that has a separate bowl with ice that you can fill your glass with.  Different, but it works.  The doors of the restaurant were open so I could enjoy the breeze.  It is winter here and many people are wearing sweaters of jackets.  But it is only about 75 degrees.  Life is good!

While back at the mission house, I talked to Richard, the man in charge, about my laptop.  It has the three-pronged plug.  If I use it as is, I will destroy my laptop and blow out the lights at the mission house too.  So I went searching for a converter.  I saw no shops that looked like they could help me, so I strolled through Siete Calles market in hopes of finding one.  I found a stall that sold phones and accessories, that looked promising.  A girl working there referred me to a man.  I showed him a picture of my plug and he said he could find what I was looking for.  He vanished.  The girl said he’d be back.  Five minutes later he came back with a converter.  Since I am writing you from my laptop, you can see it works.  Now I can write while here in Bolivia.

I went back to the plaza later in the day to get WhatsApp installed on my phone, had a fresh squeezed orange juice that was amazingly refreshing, and waited for a friend to meet me.  Ximena is a real estate agent and is looking for apartments for me.  She had one to show me yesterday afternoon.  It is a beautiful $600 a month apartment on the 7^th floor of a building across the street from another one of my favorite little plazas with beautiful toborochis and tajibos.  The apartment is furnished, and includes cable and Wi-Fi.  It is very modern and clean, includes cleaning and laundry service for a cheap price.  There is a convenience store on the first floor that is open till 10:00, a pool, and the roof has a 360-degree view of the city.  The roof would be a nice place to write in the mornings. 

The drawbacks are that it is on the opposite side of the main plaza than I want to be.  It might add 10 minutes to my commute to the school. It only has one bedroom, but the couch is a convertible to a bed if need be.  There is only a stove top, but not an oven, so I can’t make a quiche (I make a good quiche). 

I like it but will wait till I see the other.

Ximena dropped me off at the plaza to finish getting WhatsApp installed, and I took a taxi back to my plaza.  There is an old store on that plaza that was one of the first air-conditioned grocery stores that I remember in Santa Cruz.  It has been enlarged since the 80s and has so much more.  It is kinda like a large dollar store, or a small Wal-Mart.  I mostly wanted to see what’s available. 

But by the time I got back to the mission house I was exhausted.  It was only 7:00, but I was asleep in minutes.

So Saturday morning I woke up about 4:00, then 5:00, and finally around 6:00.  I sat outside under a tree writing what happened on Friday, while making plans for the day and Monday.

At 12:30 Sandra and Andrea picked me up for lunch.  They gave me several choices.  The first was Mexican food.  I have never had Mexican food here, so I had to say yes to that.  It tasted more Mexican than Tex-Mex, but definitely delicious.  What is even better about the place, is that it is just 3 blocks from an apartment I am considering renting.  The choice for that apartment just went much higher among my choices.  I felt like I was in Bolivia!  How do I describe it?  Well, it is on a side street, so I never would have found it otherwise.  It wasn’t fancy, so I might have ignored it.  It was cheap – around $7 for a plate of food.  Everything about the setting made me think of Bolivia.  The utensils wrapped in paper napkins.  Paper napkins on the table.  Sodas served without ice.  It felt like I was home. I had enchiladas Mexicanas with a side of one taco Gringo.  So the enchiladas were with a stewed chicken, more what you’d expect in Bolivia than in Texas, which means the meat is darker.  It was topped with cheese, but not soaked in cheese like we do in Texas.  The beans were not refried and the rice was not what you’d expect in a Mexican restaurant, but they had the feel of a good homemade meal in Bolivia.  The pico de gallo was as good, if not better than any you’d get in Texas.  It was a good meal – you can see from the picture.

It was also great to catch up with good friends.  Sandra was my student back in the 80s.  She is now an adult with two sons.  I will be teaching her older son in the fall semester (actually it will be the summer/spring semester, since we have opposite seasons).  Andrea, her younger sister, was in kinder or first grade when I last taught here, so she was never my student.  Andrea just told me she accepted a job teaching for the next two years in Dubai.  Both of them are excellent English teachers.  They have developed their own system that works.  I don’t know what they do, because it is secret.  Parents who want their kids to go to the English speaking schools get them to teach their kids. 

They just invited me on a road trip.  So let’s see what happens over the next few days.

After lunch I was planning on going apartment hunting again, but that was postponed until Monday.  I took a short nap until Mom texted me.  So I then I went for a walk around the neighborhood looking for a good picture of a pink tree.  It is a beautiful neighborhood with beautiful homes, beautiful apartment buildings, and lots of nice restaurants.  I honestly wouldn’t mind getting stuck here.  And I found my tree.  It is called tajibos, which I mentioned above.  When standing under one, I thought I smelled cotton candy.  I picked up a blossom and yes, it smells like cotton candy.  There were parakeets in the tree eating the blossoms.  The scientific name is tabebuia morea for my science friends.

So this blog is ending as I get ready to go visit some friends at their church.  Tonight is youth group.  Tomorrow’s post will be about church.

Isaiah 40:8 – The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the Word of the Lord stands forever.