In looking over my last post Potosi and Sucre seem like a long time ago. I just arrived back to my Cochabamba home after spending the past five days living with a family in the campo. While I was there time seemed to move very slowly, but now that I am back in Cochabamba I am sorry I did not have more time in the campo. I guess like so much else in life I will define the experience as bittersweet.
My Quechua host family in the campo consisted of Julia the mother, her husband, a one year old Wendi who was always referred to as Beba, David (22), Adan (9), Adalid (6), and finally, Daybi a four year old bo
y (the one holding the puppy) who was my best bud and guide through the campo. Daybi pretty much never stopped chattering to me from the moment I arrived, asking me; quieres jugar… quieres ir a rio… que estas haciendo… while I could understand these questions most of his chatter was nearly impossible for me to understand. Communication issues aside Daybi showed me the ropes in how to peal a boiled potato or roasted haba, how to move a herd of sheep through a river by hissing and throwing rocks at them, and most importantly the best way to startle someone in a sneak attack.
I spent a lot of time kicking a soccer ball around with Adan and Adalid as well, but neither of them seemed to be as fascinated with me as Daybi. I went to school with Adan on Monday. When I walked in the door I found another student in SIT, Libbi, sitting at a table making paper balloons with a group of kids. She was relieved when I walked in the door because the teacher of the class had not shown up and she was left in charge. Together we thought of a few good games to play (thanks grab) but with large communication gaps in both Spanish and quechua we would present an activity only to have seventeen 9 year old students stare blankly back at us. In the end we resorted to more paper balloons and duck duck goose.
I did not retur
n to school with Adan on Tuesday. Instead I joined Julia and Daybi as they herded their 25 sheep up to a mountain pasture which was the highlight of my time in the campo. I also spent a lot of time weeding my families’ seemingly endless onion fields, feeding cows and chickens, and eating more potatoes then I thought I would eat in a lifetime. I counted one day and between breakfast, lunch,
a second lunch, and dinner I ate 24 potatoes, granted they were not the size of your average Untied States baked potato, still a lot. Other food of the campo consisted of rice, noodles, onions, and fried eggs. Every time we would sit on little stools in the kitchen to eat I would cringe as Julia put spoonful after spoonful of potatoes and noodles on my plate. I was literally handed mounds of food. I always enjoyed what I was eating; it was the quantity that got me. Every time I finished a meal I felt quite accomplished.
While my host mother spoke pretty good Spanish (Quechua being the primary language) it was hard for us to find things to talk about because of the immense divide in our cultures. One example… Julia introduced me to one of her neighbors as the girl from Argantina. I corrected her and told her that I was from the United States and she said, yes I know, Argentina. Others from my group had the same thing occur. I feel like there is a lot more I want to say about the past five days but I am still trying to process it all and don’t know how to put it all into words. It was an incredible experience.
s an amazingly different feel then the Andean cities I have visited thus far. Being in the low lands the climate is more tropical... in other words very very hot which kept me dripping and sticky throughout the week. In the city you do not see the indigenous women in their bowler hats and polleras like you do in every other city I have visited in the 
f Guarayos. It was an hour or so bouncy bus ride and in the end we had to wade through a river before we reached the community, Curucuru. Curucuru was an amazing little village of 35 or so families that makes a living harvesting wood. For about an hour we listened to various members of the community explain how their village is run along with their plans to bring electricity into their village as well as portable water and more in the near future. In the end we asked them if they had any questions for us. Their first question was about what was going on in 
seemed to work because after that point the bus had no trouble plowing through the sand. On Friday the meeting we had with an organization was canceled so the day was free to explore the city. I spent the day wandering around, sketching a bit in the plaza, and visiting a few museums including a really cool modern art museum. 
