A pretty tame weekend for us after a very busy week!
Friday was our usual mixture of Spanish classes in the morning, swimming for me in the afternoon while Pete started to prep for giving English classes next week. I only had three kids for swimming, which was the smallest group yet, and let me spend a lot of time with one kid who needed some help with his backstroke. Every day for the last ten minutes, the kids are allowed to just play in the water (“bano libre” – free swim!), during which now some of the older kids constantly want to race against me. Now, for my beloved friends and family who know me well, it is NOT in my nature to lose on purpose…I had to show these kids my moves! I won two races easily, and had a very close match in my third race. I’m giving them incentive to work harder and beat me – that’s a legitimate teaching technique, no??
The class was smaller on Friday partially because two of the kids I regularly help have “graduated” to join the groups in the deep end. While I barely had anything to do with that, it still made me feel a little proud!
We went out for dinner that night with friends from school and joined them for a few drinks afterwards, but bailed as they headed out to hit the “happy hour” circuit among the gringo restaurants.
Slept for about 10 hours that night, and then had a 3 hour mid-morning nap on Saturday after volunteering some more time at the swimming pool that morning (every two weeks, the club meets to do time trials of all the participants – allowing them to track progress). Late in the week I hadn’t been able to shake the feeling of always being completely exhausted and lethargic. Then I realized the likely cause – with no red meat in our diets, I am missing out on a required dose of iron!
Over lunch in the hostel yesterday, I was discussing this with another girl in the hostel and she suggested one place in Sucre that she knows which served good steak. Well, as soon as the words came out of her mouth, Pete and I had made our plans for dinner that night!
After yet another quick siesta in the afternoon and before dinner, we ventured over to one of the most highly regarded local museums. The ASUR museum houses displays of the textile industry (very important in the Bolivian culture). Small indigenous villages throughout Bolivia are characterized by the dress code they follow as well as the type of weavings that they produce. Was extremely interesting to see, and I will try to upload some pictures later.
And then – onto DINNER! I was never more excited for food then I was last night! And the restaurant didn’t disappoint. Pete had potatoes stuffed with goat cheese and cavier as a starter, and we both had filet mignon for dinner - Pete’s in a red wine sauce with mushrooms and mine with a roquefort cheese sauce. I could have cried I was so happy, it tasted so good! All of that, with a couple of drinks, for about $25 CDN. Oh…you can bet we are doing that again! On the way home, we also stopped at a “farmacia” and picked up some multi-vitamins. Hopefully this will help boost my energy levels this week.
However, this upcoming week should prove to be a little slower for me. There is no swimming at all, the pool is hosting the Bolivian national championships next weekend so is closed all week to prep. I’ll probably spend my spare time helping Pete, who has decided to host games with prizes to help the kids learn English (i.e. bingo)! Otherwise, I will also start planning out our next route. With only four weeks left in Sucre, we need to start thinking about where we are going to go next!
Dirty Spanish!
In our Spanish classes lately, we spend a good half of the class just conversing with our teacher, which has been very helpful for us. We talk about everything from what other countries we have visited to the work that we do at Nanta every day.
On Friday we were talking about Canada and Bolivia – comparing what we liked and disliked about each. We were explaining to her how we think the chocolate from Sucre is so good and unlike anything we have ever had before. Pete started to say how he thinks it might be because there are no preservatives in the chocolates here. Not knowing the Spanish word for “preservatives”, he just guessed by saying “preservativos” – this technique of just adding an “o” to the end of the English word does works sometimes!
Well, it didn’t work this time. The correct Spanish word is “conservatives”. “Preservativos” are condoms. Our teacher’s face went slightly red… =)
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