Divorced

After two weeks of language school the powers that be decided that I was not learning as fast as my classmate so they divorced us. I can't say that I'm sad, in fact I can say that I am happy. My only negative feelings about the situation was that we were even paired together in the first place. They told us from the beginning that they chose partners based on age and similar spanish background. Well, come to find out, Tommy has lived in Bolivia for four months now and had studied spanish a little before that. How they decided that we were on the same level I'll never know. The linguistics director was actually kind of harsh when she told me that I was going to be by myself for the rest of the week so that made me feel bad about myself. Thanks to a pep talk from my grammer professor, I was okay. She said that I am doing very well since I started from nothing and that I should have never been partnered with Tommy to begin with. Next week is a complete rotations of schedules and teachers and I'll probably end up with a new partner so I'll have more info on Monday.

The dry spell is over! I decided that I had gained enough red blood cells to try my hand at a bit of alcohol last night. Yesturday was Saint Bridget's feast day, one of the patron saints of Ireland. After mass the Irish priests (five), Kristen, Rick, and myself went out for a celebratory drink. I had what amounted to about a pint and a half of a Bolivian beer that looked and tasted like Bud Light. It started to get dark so I headed home and told my host mom that I didn't need any supper maybe just a little salad and some fruit.

Sometimes the salads that she fixes me are a delicious blend of tomato and cucumber but other times, like last night, it is a less than delicious blend of radish and cabbage, with some carrots and onion thrown in. I hope that Uncle Chris is reading this because I hate radishes and I hate them because of him. At the tender age of five or six my beloved uncle took me into the garden and told me to bite into a radish and said that it would taste like an apple. Well that was the end of that and now I am served radish salad almost every day. "These are healthy" is the mantra that I repeat to myself until the last bite is finished. They are healthy right??

This weekend a small group of us might venture out of Cochabamba into one of the neighboring downs. I'm anxious to get out of the city and see the campos and a more rural Bolivia.