Mi hermana tiene cuatro gatos y un perro

Bienvenido a Bolivia!

So, now that I have been here for four days, how does it feel?

Javier Suarez: So, what, you know like five words in Spanish?
Katey Miller: Maybe ten.

Forgiving the sappy/girly/corny movie reference (although I am not avergonzado to admit that I own 'Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights' - who doesn't love Diego Luna?), that pretty much sums it up. Before I left the States, I had to decide whether or not to give myself a crash course in basic Spanish, or to wait until I arrived and throw myself into it. I chose the latter.

As anyone who has traveled to a non-English speaking country will tell you, nothing can prepare you to be surrounded by an entire nation of people speaking a foreign tongue: "What are they saying? What am I saying? Man, I feel stupid right now." Even once you begin to build your own vocabulary, you need to find a way to remember new words without forgetting the ones you already know; and then you have to learn to spell those words...and then how to pronounce them properly. Nobody wants to be known as la gringa, after all.

However, my situation is unique. Having been hired by a small, private bilingual school, I arrived in Bolivia with an instant network of native speakers to help me on my way. How proud my father must have been to get an e-mail on my third day on Bolivia in which I declared I could now say my first "complicated" Spanish sentence: "Mi hermana tiene cuatro gatos y un perro" = my sister has four cats and a dog. Well on my way to fluent, no?

When I arrived in Cochabamba, my host, along with her 8-year-old hija and 20-year-old sobrino, collected me at the airport and took me straight to their home in the city. The house is large and teeming with life: eight people are currently living in the two buildings (which sit side-by-side), including myself, la madre y el padre, la abuela y el abuelo, dos hijos, un hija y un sobrino/primo. Add in five small dogs and a myriad visitors coming and going all day long, and you begin to understand mi casa nueva. 

The Bolivian lifestyle isn't far off from what I expected. As with many Latin American countries (and perhaps you could say Spanish and Portugese speaking countries; Brazilians, for example, speak primarily Portugese, not Spanish), life revolves around a handful of issues: family, religion, food and politics. To a large degree, I am still rather ignorant of the Bolivian religious and political ideals; additionally, these affairs are more personal and varied than their companions on the list (much like they are in the U.S. and elsewhere). So, I shall focus this post on the F's: family and food.

As I hope you have noticed, family is muy importante in Bolivian culture. The more traditional, one might say antiquated, family structure (i.e. grandparents and cousins in the house as well as the parents and children) is neither common nor uncommon in modern Bolivian society; however, it is probably more customary to find here than back in America. The cousin (el primo), who has recently moved from La Paz to Cochabamba for university, explained to how tight-knit Bolivian families are. When a new baby is born into a family, for example, "Nothing will ever be the same. You must accept someone new into the family, and that changes everything." He says this having experienced life with a 15-year-old hermana  and, more recently and unexpectedly, a 5-year-old hermana. He told me that many young people continue to live at home with their parents (or other family members such as aunts, uncles and grandparents) much longer than Americans do. It is unorthodox for a Bolivian to live on what we called a "college campus", and most university students live at home and commute to school.

And when you're living in a Bolivian household, you will also be experiencing MUCHO traditional Bolivian food. Every day and every meal I am introduced to something different, from new foods to new dishes to new customs.

The most "exotic" dish I have become privy to would (hands down) be charque kan. For those of you unfamiliar with this particular dish, let me paint you a picture: a traditional indigenous recipe of dried llama meat, served with beans, potatoes and boiled eggs, with cheese on top (everything here has cheese on top).

Better yet, let me show you a picture, albeit one more appetizing than the plate I was handed: charque kan.

A Bolivian may tell you that this dried, shredded llama meat is akin to jerky, but this is unlike anything you will find at a highway truckstop in the States. There is nothing off-putting about the flavor of the meat, but it was much too dry for my personal taste. Despite getting myself over the mutilation of the poor, innocent llama, I couldn't get beyond the dry, salty nature of the charque kan.

Cousin: Te gusta?
Me: No. Lo siento...no. No. 

Excuse me while I wash down my llama with a giant glass of mocochinchi, a cider-like drink made from dehydrated peaches - also foreign to my gringa palate.

And so it goes, when you're living or traveling abroad and want to experience the local culture. But don't worry; for dinner we'll have chicken, rice and salad - go grab a Coke from the fridge, if you'd like one.

Alas: another day, another llama. At least I think that's how the saying goes...