Boliva has stolen my heart!!

Pictures for the Next Three Blogs Coming Soon.. I Hope!

Wednesday we said another good-bye to our friend Peter. For his celebration we rented out an Art Center called the mARTadero. This place used to be a matadero, or a slaughterhouse, and is now being converted into the art center. They had a few exhibits up and we got to use their cozy cafe for eating the famous "Interminable" pizza which is about the size of me!!! We had a bunch of friends and staff from the Projects Abroad office and had a great time dancing and eating reguardless of the fact that we were walking where cows had been killed :)

Then I took two of my kids from work to the pool on Thursday!!! It was an amazing success. It turns out our center shares a wall with a swimming club and they let me rent the pool for an hour... and no one else is there. That means no distractions for the kids, lots of space and the water is even a decent temperature! One of my girls was a little apprehensive, but the other was almost swimming on her own with a floating noodle. She is normally in a wheel chair, but in the water she had the freedom to kick around, reach and pull, and explore the new sensation of the pool!! It was lovely.

I have become pretty good friends with one of the physiotherapist at my work named Elva. She has been so nice to me and now is going extremely above and beyond to get me involved in the physio community as well as the university. First, she took me to talk with some of her old professors about sitting in on some physio classes in the coming weeks. When I was introduced to her favorite teacher, the first thing she asked me was "why are you not coming to my classes?" She is an amazing lady, very passionate and she pretty much wants me to stop working at the center and come to all of her classes and workshops for the next two weeks. So speaking of workshops, while we were there, the professor mentioned that Friday and Saturday is an international workshop on spinal column physiotherapy and she invited us to come!!! So after some deliberation with work, we both got the day off on Friday and paid the rediculously cheap price of $20 for two days of speakers from all over South America, snacks, materials, and a certificate of completion at the end! I couldn´t believe it.
So the last two days I have met about every professor in the University´s PT department, heard speakers from Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, and Bolivia, made a bunch of new friends (cause I was the only person in the room with blue eyes and that automatically makes you popular!!), and learned a ton! I actually understood most of the speeches, even though they were in spanish, and I took tons of notes to review later :) I have also been invited to another week long workshop (but I really have to work) and to visit the pool and burn unit at the hospital. And in two weeks I will be sitting in on the "care and prevention" class! It was incredible.

After our lectures on Friday, I took Elva to my yoga class... something she has never done before. It was awesome and so peaceful because it was dark outside and we had a small class. We spent a half hour meditating in the end and Elva just loved it! Afterwards, we were invited to stay in the garden and star gaze with some people who come every Friday night! They had some pretty neat telescopes and explained EVERYTHING to us. We got to see two shooting stars, star cluster, many of the zodiac constillations, and Saturn!!! It was unreal!!! The yoga instructor even brought us all coffee and we had a great time chatting, gazing, and hanging out under the stars. We also got invited to come back every Friday night and next week one of the guys, who plays the trumpet, is playing a jazz concert down town. So of course we were invited to this too! Have I mentioned how nice everyone is in Cochabamba. And then to top it all off, a friend invited us to dinner and one of the astronomer guys overheard my conversation and said "oh, I´ll drive you there because I live right next to the restaurant". It was so nice!!

And, because Bolivia just loves to celebrate everything, we saw traditional dancing in the plazas, offerings being burned in the businesses, and everyone going out to eat and dance because it was the first Friday of the month!! Pay day I think :) But apparently every month they celebrate the first Friday. What an amazing and wonderful place. Bolivia really has stolen my heart. I can´t wait to come back again!!

Tomorrow is a trip to the near by national park for some early morning hiking :)