some pics

Just a quick note to say a) we are alive and well, and b) we probably wont be back to La Paz for two weeks so no need to worry. Also, here are some pictures of when I dressed up as a cholita (although next saturday I am going to wear it again to a fiesta with the cholita shoes and the cholita hat!). One of the pictures I have a kitten on my lap.

@*!?&?!!!&/"@**!

It snowed wednesday. Enough said.







Ok, I'll say more. It snowed and it was cold and wet while it was hot in Quebec and Georgia. On other days, life in Tiwanaku isn't too bad. It's fine, just the same old. We started excavating so there is more action. The food is still delicious. And the weather, when it doesn't freaking snow, is hot during the day and freezes at night. Usual again. Wes and I had to stay for 10 days in Tiwanaku and I was pretty ready to go back home to La Paz. Although I don't want to sound too whiny, I like Tiwanaku. I just also like showering in warm environments, wearing nice clothes, and having access to the internet. Not that I had any comments to read on my blog, *hint hint*.

Oh, visa-wise, everything should be fine this week. Technically, last time I went to immigration I gave them a new letter and they approved it and said our visas would be ready on June 17th. We'll just see if it's ready in time. Actually, we will most likely give them a few days extra just to play on the safe side.

As for funny stories, I guess we have two, although they are not quite hilarious... Yesterday Wes, Giles, Randi and I went to the house of one of our worker during lunch break because she wanted to show us the different artifacts she's found around Tiwanaku through the years. She had actually pretty neat stuff. Anyways, funny part of the story is when we left her house, as she closed the door she realised she had left her keys on the table inside, and she lives alone and that's her only set of keys. So she asked Wes to jump over a wall into a vacant lot, then climb up the wall to her house, slide on the roof and drop into her patio where the keys were. It was so high that Giles had to go in too to help him up. Also, once Wes was on the roof she was yelling at him to say "Chocolate" which is the name of her dog so the dog wouldn't attack poor Wes... It was a funny sight to see, Wes already scared he was going to just go through the flimsy plastic roof she had, trying to sweet talk Chocolate in spanish and then just slide out of view. He did save the day.

The same day, I found the old clothing bag of a friend that wont be coming to Bolivia for a while, and she had donated the content of the bag to me. In it was everything you need to dress like a cholita (see pictures in last post) except for the hat. I decided to try the things on while I was still working at the lab. I am the sort of grand supervisor of the lab so I have to walk outside a lot to go talk with our workers (people that wash artifacts and number them). So I decided to just go out of the lab casually, as if I'm not suddenly dressed as a cholita. Needless to say, the workers thought that was one of the most hilarious thing they had seen. I kept the outfit on for a while, creating lots of look of surprise. Wes didn't seem really enthusiastic about the outfit... But I did have to pose for a number of pictures. As soon as someone gives me one I'll post it. No, I have no shame.

I believe that's it for now. We're good, healthy, happy, a bit cold but that's to be expected.

Dancing and running in circles

The last few weeks have been way more busy then the first few weeks. The visa stuff were still taking a lot of our time, plus I got put in charge of organizing all that was needed for the coming project of my supervisor (of which me and Wes are a part of) so there was lots of running around, and calling around. However, we did manage to have fun too!

One of the most fun I've had in Bolivia was at the Gran Poder, a giant parade of somewhere between 40 000 and 60 000 people all dancing in different traditional costumes and followed by marching bands. I was told to go early to get seats, so at 10:30am we were there and ready! That was a bit early, but we did score the best seats where the parade turns to a side street so they would march/dance straight toward us and then turn right in front of us. No side views. It was really impressive. Here's a few pictures:
These women are dressed pretty much like any Aymara woman is dressed everyday, but a bit more fancy and, obviously, all with the same color outfit. I think there was a thousand of them, that's what made this so impressive.
Here's one of the marching band, with a scantily dressed dancer. That's one thing about Bolivia, they are so demure and Christian (Gran Poder is a celebration of the Great Power of Jesus) yet when festivities start they have the skimpiest outfits, especially for young girls...
Now that's another interesting outfit, with black men masks with great beards and pipes, dressed in some sort of tin can outfit...
Here's a condor and a bunch of little devils with big eyeballs.
Those are men in a contraption made to look like they are riding bulls - which technically they are because some, like in this photo, were actually real bull skins.

We watched these from 10:30am to 2pm and then were completely exhausted by the sun. I got the worst farmer's tan on my arms. The parade continued until 10pm that night so I know we missed a lot of the fun costumes. Oh well, we'll try again next year!

Like I mentioned in the previous post, we had friends over for a few days and so our days became filled with running errands for the visa in the morning then showing La Paz in the afternoon. It was great fun though, I do like showing off La Paz. I'm glad to report that Drew and Erin liked La Paz even though they are usually more of the outdoors type because La Paz is so unique. It's a huge city with all the amenities of big cities, but the people living in it and what they sell and do is still really foreign to our eyes.

Then on friday we had to go set up house in Tiwanaku. We realised that being in Tiwanaku with no project work to occupy us can be quite boring though... Thankfully, Drew and Erin came for 2 days so we passed the time showing them around the site and museums. Good refresher course for us anyway. Since then more people showed up for the project but Wes and I had to come back to La Paz to pick up the last of our certificate needed to get a visa. They told us to come monday at 3pm and when we showed up, obviously, it wasn't ready. They told us to come back again tuesday afternoon. We got there around 3:30 aaaannnddd.... it wasn't ready. BUT, the guy we now know there told us it would be ready in about an hour. Surprisingly, it actually was ready when we came back and at 4:50pm we proceeded to rush down to immigration to finally apply for the visa. Once there, the guy who had given us information before left with Wes' application and disappeared for about 10 minutes. When he came back, he told us that the chief of the foreigners' section said that the letter we had from the Bolivian Institute here (a letter this one guy had approved of a month ago) would not work. We needed a different letter AND the signature of the vice-minister of culture as opposed to a signature of the head of archaeology. We were so shocked and disappointed, but I decided this made no sense at all and we needed to plea our case. We asked for an appointment with the chief of foreigners' section, and surprisingly we got to meet her after a wait of about 15 minutes. By that time it's 5:45pm and the place closes at 6pm. We met with her and she was really really nice and accepted to take our visa application in and start the process on the condition that we bring her a different letter within the next 2 weeks. Which is why I'm still in La Paz this morning while Wes went to work in Tiwanaku really early. I will go ask for a new letter and then go back to Tiwanaku. If all goes well, we should be back to La Paz (and to internet access) on sunday, and pick up the letter on monday.

And that is our exhausting but fun life in La Paz.

Sorry!

The last week or so we have been rather busy and didn't write anything... We had company, friends of my friends Ben and Casey, who are on a trip around the world. Yeah, their life sucks ;) Then we moved friday to Tiwanaku where there is no internet. Wes and I are in La Paz today for visa purposes, again. We were told to pick up something yesterday, and it wasn't ready (surprise, surprise), so we have to get it right about now! Hopefully that will be the end of the visa problems... I told Wes we need to write something more substantial tonight, but I figured I'd post this first in case we never write anything else. Today is Wes' birthday so we are going back to the Argentinian restaurant.

In the meantime, I am leaving the link to Drew and Erin's blog about their stay in Bolivia where you can see pictures of us and know we are alive! http://drewanderin.blogspot.com/2008/06/bolivia.html

Pale Blue Dot

Wes Says:

Happy Mother's Day. Wikipedia claims that this Carl Sagan made his famous "Pale Blue Dot" speech in a commencement address on this day in 1996. I can't actually find that verified anywhere else, but I'll run with it and pretend its an anniversary. Just to confuse the issue more, the picture that I put up isn't even the picture he was talking about; Sagan was discussing a picture of Earth from the Voyager 1 probe, from 4 billion miles away. The picture below is from the Mars Global Surveyor satellite and was taken in 2003, after Sagan had already died. I think its a bit more evocative. Enjoy, and don't forget the one mother we all share. Oh god, I'm a tool for saying that.

Winter is coming... again...

Hey folks!

Let me start by wishing all our friends and families that are mothers a Happy Mother's Day!!!

On this cloudy gray sunday morning, I figured I should write a blog because it's been a while and the last one was a quick one... But I still kinda feel like we have nothing to say. But we probably do. So I'll start on rambling about anything that comes to my mind and that might spark some interesting anecdotes.

Well first, on the subject of this blog, for the last 3 or 4 days there has been a complete sudden change in the weather and yeah, that means that winter is coming. Obviously, just coming from Montreal's winter, I'm not so thrilled about it. You know that winter is coming because it's cloudier, it never gets as warm in the afternoon even when there is sun, and at night there has been some pretty strong storm (scary for a chicken like me) with heavy rain and super strong winds. The thing with living on the 16th floor of a building in a city shaped like a bowl is that there is no other building to shield your apartment from the wind. You can hear it howl, which then sparks catastrophic scenarios in my head where the windows explode and we are being sucked out of the apartment like in a plane. Because I'm insane and am also afraid of heights so I combine the two together. I'm learning to deal, especially given that it hasn't happened yet so I realise it might not be as common as I thought...

The rest of our days have been occupied by all sorts of bureaucratic steps, related to us trying to get a visa to stay, trying to get internet, etc. For the internet, in the last post I said that they would come by to install it within 15 days. Well in an unexpected turn of events, they showed up after only 4 days!!! And it works! I mentioned too how maddening the visa stuff was, but I really want to share the experience with you guys so I'll give you a step by step description of the day we went to Interpol and the police...

We had already gone to both places to ask for instructions, i.e. what do we need to get the piece of papers we need. Interpol were really nice. The police station was just a little more confusing... It is built like most Andean structures: you get in through the main door and you're faced with an outside parking lot/patio. It's really confusing. You expect a roof, with desks and people behind the desk to help you with stuff. After standing there for about 30 seconds all confused we started looking around and noticed stairs on the right side, with a thing that said INFORMATION at the top of them. That directed us to one flight of stairs up to a posted list of everything we need for our 2 documents. It's a loooooong list.

So we show up again at least ready for the interpol form and it took about an hour and a half total to get our prints and ask us questions about our parents, where we live, etc. By the end of it it was 11:30 and I was famished so we decided to have quick lunch close by then go up to the police station because we realised there was a lot of stuff we didn't understand from their spanish instructions. The lunch place we went to only opened at noon, so we bummed around a bit. Then around 1pm we were out and ready to go to the police, but I suddenly got suspicious... "Do you think they close the police station for lunch here? It can't be, I mean, they're the police and crime happens at lunch too..." Ah, the innocence... Of course the police station closes for lunch! From noon to 2pm!!! So we went to an internet place and waited. At exactly 2pm we are at the 2nd floor where we need to be and there's a line up of people waiting for it to open. We asked our questions (one of them being do we need witnesses to which the guy said no but since the secretary at the Archaeology Institute swears we do need them) and then left. But we knew one of the thing we needed was a letter from a lawyer and during all our waiting time we had noticed how there was tons of lawyer offices right next to the police. We went in to see one and got our letters (2 each) really quickly for about 3.50$ each letter. That's cheaper than I thought for hiring a lawyer! Then the lawyer swears that with this letter and our passport photocopies, we can apply for one of the two things we need from the police for our visa... So we decide to go back again... Oh my...

We get to the 2nd floor, say what we want, show our stuff. The guy says we still need our Interpol certificate (which we will only have 13 days later) but we show the receipts we got from Interpol so he tells us that will do but we need to go up one flight of stairs and have it authorized or something like that. Bear in mind all this is in spanish and we understand some but not all. We go up one flight of stairs and obviously there is about 10 doors and the guy never said where we needed to go. By some incredible luck, just walking around and looking at titles on doors we found the right one straight away. The nice lady there tells us what she really needs is a photocopy of our Interpol receipt. So we go down 3 flights of stairs, cross the street, photocopy it, go back up 3 flights of stairs, and get here to certify our photocopy of receipt. We can now go back down one flight of stairs, wait back in line to talk to the first guy who gives information. We give him our stuff and they start painting our fingers black again for more fingerprints! And they only have an ink-filled rag to help you clean up afterwards. We think we are done then the guy looks at our stuff again and says "this is for local and not international? Then you have to go at the desk at the back of the room". Now the "room" is a corridor with one desk next to the other, no way to form a line up. "The desk at the end" are multiple desks and we don't know which one we need. We just go "in line" at one, hoping it's the right one. It's really long because the one guy works at 2 of the desks (I guess lunch time wasn't long enough, someone still didn't show up). Because it's long I send Wes to ask some other guy where we should go and the old man says we need to go back to the front of the corridor. So we do. And it was wrong. We really needed to be at the desk where we were waiting and now lost our spot. We wait some more until we get to give our stuff. Now, we were told that was the easiest paper to get, and the fastest - one guy even said it's 5 days for Canadians. We were there May 1st and the guy tells us that 1) we need to go back there to give him the Interpol paper on May 13th when we'll receive it, and 2) it will be ready May 26th. MAY 26TH!!! Oh, and by the way, my visa to stay here expired today (May 11th). And I can't get another one, I need the one we are working on right now. Now, I'm not doing anything illegal, the guys at immigration told me once I show up with all my things I will only pay a fee per day I didn't have a visa - and it's a rather small fee. Also, that was the easy piece of paper to get at the police, we still have to get the complicated one where we need to provide a copy of our landlord's passport (?!), the Interpol thing obviously, and all sorts of fun little details... I promise I wont write you a detailed account of how it happened, that would be way too long.

ok, fun tidbits now! The day we took possession of our apartment we were crossing the park in front of our building and noticed a lot of people and some really weird all wood bicycles. I noticed a lot of the people around them looked like the rich gortex-wearing tourist we see and/or the Discovery Channel crew that worked with us last year. Then I noticed it: a yellow signed that said "U-Turn" with a yellow and red flag on it... It was The Amazing Race!!!!! (It's a fun reality show, google it if you don't know what it is) I was sooooooo excited! I was torn between staying there until contestants showed up or going into our apartment. Given Wes' lack of enthusiasm I decided to go back home. But hey, next Amazing Race they will be showing our building and our park!

ok, not so fun tidbit but not too bad, last monday at noon all our electric appliances stopped working. We went to the administration of the building and found out that the last renter didn't pay her electricity bill for the last 3 months so they cut us (Electropaz, not the administration). I am so happy to have the administration to help us with all sorts of things here (although we do pay them a monthly fee). The lady called our landlord and she figured out from old records how much was due and he went and paid it. Just to make this more stressful and annoying that's the day the internet people called to say they'd show up the next day. I was so afraid we'd still be out of electricity so that they wouldn't be able to install the modem! But the administration lady swore to me that they usually put it back the same day at 7pm if it gets paid. Because I didn't want to be flicking the light switches on and off every two minutes to check if electricity was back, we decided to go see Iron Man. It rocked. And when we came back, electricity was back too. And I'm out.

just a quickie

Hey friends!

Sorry we haven't written in so long, but we have now moved into our apartment but we don't have internet there yet... We have signed a contract with a company (turns out it's more difficult than we thought, they have to see if there are "lines" available in our area, and one company anyway didn't have any lines for us, but we found one that had). We signed saturday so they should come install it within the next 15 days(!!!!).

Other than that, we have been busy with getting our visas too stay here. Turns out we can't do it the easy way that immigration suggested at first, so we have to do it the complicated way. And no joke, it's complicated. We had our finger prints taken twice the same day, we had to find a lawyer to write us official letters, we have to present about 20 photocopies of our passport to basically anyone who talks to us. We now have to go get a physical at a specific hospital, and wait, wait and WAIT for some of our things to be processed so we can bring them to continue on with the visa processes... It's annoying but we are keeping our spirits high.

We are still very happy with the apartment, it's very sunny and thus warm! The weather here has been great. We have been buying tons of DVDs for 1$ each - we don't have a tv so movies are our best friends.

Oh, and some of you might have heard about the protests and mayhem happening in Santa Cruz yesterday? Well no worries, we barely knew anything happened. There was just a little bit more cops around and more firecracker' noises. But that's it. The trouble was in Santa Cruz.

That's it for now, we still have tons of errands to run! We do check the internet about once a day so feel free to email and/or comment!