Friday, 30 March 2012

Que Vive el Camba

The other day it hit me how little time I have left here, as of Sunday I will have been in Bolivia 7 months and will only have 3 left. There are still so many things that I want to do here but time is quickly running out :( It just looks like I am going to start getting my butt in gear and checking things off my Bolivian to-do list. These last 2 weeks have been jammed packed with school/homework and preperation for "El Dia Del Padre"(Bolivian Fathers Day on March 19th), 2 of my fellow exchange friends' Birthdays, hanging out with friends (both Bolivian and exchange), spending time with the family and living life to the fullest.

El Dia Del Padre is the Bolivian version of Fathers Day, it is celebrated on March 19th and at school there was a huge dinner/show thing for all the parents. It was a long and tedious process trying to get everything organized, it involved alot of staying after school but our grad class pulled it off and the night went smoothly. A bunch of us Grigota Exchange students all got together to organize some surprises for Charlotte and Mathilde who both turned 19 last week. We all met up and made them giant cards with tons of pictures and surprised them on their birthdays. Mathilde had a quiet get together with the exchangers at her house and Charlotte had a party where her family surprised her with a limo for all of us to driving about in, it was great and hilarious! One thing that I love about Bolivian birthdays is that it is tradition to shove the persons face in the cake when they blow out the candles, its messy but hilarious!

As of the 21st of March, it officially changed to fall here, I can totally feel the change in the temperature, it is no longer deathly hot, just oven hot now but it gets cooler at night, im a huge fan of that! One thing is that the leaves on the trees have not started to go into any type of dormant state...strange. I think that the best part of fall though is all the fruits that are in season! right now there is an abundance of \Avocado, pears, pomegranate, grapes, chirymoia (a vanillaish tasting fruit that is green and bumpy with individual pods that have a pit in each one) and as always papaya. So far I am loving fall, it is super sunny but it can get cool, like the other day, it was about 25 degrees and everyone (including me) was in jeans and sweaters and gloves and pretty much just freezing cold...nice to see that im getting used to the Bolivian heat, probs gonna die when I get to the Ottawa cold though.

On thursday I had a very exciting moment, it actually isnt that exciting but for me it was a HUGE deal! So the summer before last, I spent the entire time on crutches because I tore pretty much all the ligaments in my knee and shattered the shock absorber playing soccer. It has been 1 year and 9 months since my accident and a year and 4 months since my surgery but Thursday was my first time playing soccer again! It took me a long time to get to that point, but being able to play again was totally worth every bit of agonizing physio. The best part was that I didnt even play goal like I usually do, I was on defense and didnt get a sub the entire game, I feel like that is saying something too because we were playing against the university! It was 11 on 11 on a field not 5 on 5 in a gym like it usually is here, the experience was very different because of the way everyone plays but it was still one of the best feelings ever to be back on the field!

Im hoping time slows down for these next three months, as much as I want to see my family and friends back home, im not quite ready to say goodbye to them here, I always thought about coming to Bolivia for my exchange and how hard it would be, but I never thought about the leaving part.

No comments:

Post a Comment