Hello families and friends!
As I write this, soft rain peppers the rooftop of our bougainvillea-adorned housing nestled in the back corner of our program house here in Aiquile. We’ve been lucky thus far that, for the most part, we have left the heavy rain behind in Peru and our group has been able to enjoy the warmer climate and sunnier weather of this part of the highlands of Bolivia.
Our group left La Paz having really enjoyed it but also feeling relatively exhausted. Knowing this, our I-team planned a few days of rest for us in Cochabamba, staying at the beautiful and tranquil grounds of one of our Dragons community members, Henry, about forty minutes from the Cochabamba city center. There, we enjoyed some of the most delicious meals of the semester so far, prepared lovingly by Olga and Elly; celebrated Lauren’s birthday with lots of ice cream; said goodbye to Gabriela to the sounds of Bad Bunny (or “Bugs Bunny” as Jose likes to say); and began training for the trail running race that we’ll be participating in after our Toro Toro trek!
For some context, Jose is an avid long-distance trail runner and shared with us that there’s a trail running race happening in Toro Toro the day after we finish our trek there. Almost everyone in the group, whoever wants to, will be participating and racing mostly in the 10k category, through what Rishi considers one of the most beautiful landscapes in Bolivia. We’re very excited, and various students have been training and going on runs in the gentle countryside while we’re here in Aiquile.
While in the outskirts of Cochabamba, we also took some time to journal and reflect on our progress and process so far this semester, enjoyed participating in Luci’s passion class – watching the film ‘También la lluvia’ and having a discussion on Bolivian politics & legacies of colonization & our own roles, and discussing what it means to live well through a story about a Mexican fisherman led by Gabriela as her passion class. There was also plenty of downtime – the students completed a 1,000 piece puzzle, played the guitar, and we all played a live version of Among Us, complete with ghostly howling and scary sock-matching in the dark.
Now that we are here in Aiquile, we’ve settled into a rhythm. Students are all staying with homestay families and meet at the program house every morning for stretch circle and check-in at 8 am, then begin their language classes at 9 am (Spanish for everyone but Luci, who’s taking Quechua). Students return home for lunch with their families after 12 pm then go to their ISPs in the afternoon. This time, Larkin and Natalie are taking ancestral cooking, Zia and Sam are taking charango-playing again, Katya and Talia are learning how to make art out of recycled materials, Lauren is building her own charango, Jakob and Luci are learning about permaculture, and Ava, Tucker and Isaac are learning the entire process of making ceramics.
We’ve also loved getting into a very Bolivia-specific sport, which is Wally – a version of volleyball played inside a small room where we can play off the walls. Our homestay families and siblings have also joined us for these games and we’re having a blast playing many evenings after dinner. A few knees and fingernails have been sacrificed to the hits and bumps of this epic sport.
This week, we also celebrated Jakob’s birthday, complete with a lemon pie and some beautiful flowers. In addition, students have also begun planning X-phase and as an I-team, we are excited to see what they will decide. Please enjoy some of the photos we’re sharing here!
Until next time,
Soumya, Jose, and Rishi
