La fin de la semana

First, a shout out to Evan. I was walking around today (shocker), and I saw this little Lebanese restaurant. So I took the photo of "comida arabe." It's funny, but I didn't see any Arabic script... just Hebrew. There are a lot of Israeli tourists in Bolivia, I guess? Anyway, I thought it was fun.

Second, I meant to post yesterday, but the day got away from me. I agreed to go shopping on Saturday morning with my host mom's sister, Mariela, and (silly me) I thought this would take no more than 4 hours. We were gone for 10. And the whole family came. And it didn't happen in the morning at all.

On the bright side, I got to see the extensive open-air market(s) of La Paz. Mariela still lives with her dad (as do another sister and brother), so he drove us to the top of the markets, and we walked down (over the course 6 hours). There aren't many traffic laws here, so the car rides were a little harrowing... baby sitting on grandpa's lap while he's driving, plus there were 8 of us in the 2-door Volkswagon. That kind of stuff kind of freaks me out.

We went back to Abuelo's house in San Pedro (a neigborhood just north of Sopocachi) after shopping, and I got to watch a bit of Anastasia in Spanish while I wondered what was going on. Then we ate lunch. We had eaten little snacks along the way (like bubble-gum flavored yogurt and "las ricas tripitas"), but since Bolivians consider almuerzo to be the big meal of the day and don't typically eat dinner at all, this was lunch. Steak (I think), and potatoes, ocas, and coca-cola. Yum! Much better than tripe.

So after all that, I had to get out of the house by myself today. I felt out of control yesterday, even though everyone was super nice and I was happy that I got to go to the market with Bolivianos. Also on my walk today, I got up the courage to talk to some vendors. I asked permission to take the photo to the right (and paid 5 Bs) of a stand in El Mercado de Brujas. I uploaded it a little bigger so that you could see the dried llama fetuses and other curiosities better. Not much more to report. Tomorrow I start a rotation in Servicio de Adolescentes.

For those of you interested, I uploaded two more short videos of La Paz showing the arts and crafts area on Sagarnaga and more traffic.