What a short week!

Hello again!

I´ve finally got a couple hours to sit down and get stuff done on the computer. It´s amazing how you can escape a lot by going to South America, but you can´t escape the internet :-)

First, before I forget, pictures will be on their way. I took my camera around town today with one of my school friends, so I got a few pictures, but of course I forgot my cord for downloading the pictures from the camera to the computer. Hopefully I´ll get to that tomorrow.

So Wednesday night´s party was pretty good. I´m amazed at how "tranquilo" Sucre is. Even their parties are fairly quiet. There were a few fireworks and lots of food, and a whole lot of drinking, but there wasn´t much craziness. Normally, they also have big bonfires, in which they burn notes about things they didn´t like in the previous year, but the city government outlawed them this year. That may be good, since they were bad enough before that with all the smoke (Sucre is surrounded by hills, so the smoke stays in town), you couldn´t see more than a few feet in front of you.

The only problem with the party was the food. People were making what they call hot dogs (they´re a little more sausage-like than American hot dogs), and kept pushing them on us. I finally caved and had one from a really sweet lady I was chatting with on the street, and then regretted it the next day (yesterday). I was not horribly sick like when I got food poisoning in South Africa, but it wasn´t great. I ended up having to leave class a little early, and I missed a class trip to a museum. I slept for five hours, woke up in the afternoon and took it easy, then slept another seven hours last night. My host family has been going out of their way to feed me good things for a bad stomach, like light soups and such. I feel better today.

My Spanish is progressing, especially since we have only four hours of classes a day, instead of the eight-hour marathon on my first day. That wiped me out, but four hours is just enough to really learn something, but not become exhausted. We´re actually learning grammar that I had already learned in my Marshall classes, but my vocabulary recall is extremely slow, so being able to focus on that and not having to concentrate on new grammar is a good thing. I still feel like an idiot most of the time, though, but if I can try to remember how I was when I got here and compare that to how I am in a couple weeks, I may feel a little better about it all.

I´m heading to the Tarabuco artesan market on Sunday, which is in a town a ways out of Sucre. It´s supposed to be a bit touristy anymore, but it will still be fun. There´s a lot of nice woven stuff around here, so I may check out getting a sweater or a blanket or something. And it will be nice to see a little more of the countryside. I´ll do some studying tomorrow, and maybe visit a museum. It should be a nice, relaxing weekend.

I have to admit to being a little homesick. The effort of using Spanish all the time can be a little exhausting, so sometimes I daydream about the easiness of being at home. Plus, I miss my family and friends. But this is a great adventure, and Jeff will be here a week from today. I haven´t seen him since mid-May, so I´m really looking forward to that! Today was his last day at work, so I´ve been thinking of him a lot.

I hope you all are well! Be good, don´t do anything I wouldn´t do, and remember to watch out for bad hot dogs.

-K