Life Update

I have become significantly more high-maintenance in the past couple of months.  For one thing, I finally got the fire-shower repaired (after a mere seven months of very fast, cold showers or washing my hair in the sink).  I no longer have a thin film of dust on me at all times, which is an exciting development.  The other major change is that I now sleep in a bed.  I abruptly terminated my years-old practice of sleeping on the floor after I found a massive spider on my pillow, leading to my relocation to the guest room.  It’s pretty comfortable, so I’ve stayed.

I started tutoring some former students of mine a few days a week, which has had the added bonus of learning a few Korean customs.  My favorite one thus far is that it’s traditional to bring toilet paper to someone’s house the first time you visit (I will admit to googling it afterwards just to make sure it wasn’t a practical joke).  I’ve also learned that whenever I have trouble getting my point across in English, I now switch instinctively to Spanish, which is profoundly unhelpful in this specific circumstance.

I’m still making cupcakes and selling them; because I don’t pour fruit juice into them, they’re much better than traditional Bolivian cakes (not arrogance, just a fact:  no one likes soggy cupcakes).  Figuring out high-altitude recipes has been mostly fun, and I also have two frosting guns now.

Made these yesterday for a lady who wanted pastels for her birthday.

The biggest change is that I resigned from my job a few weeks ago.  I’m not a huge fan of burning bridges, so I won’t go into the details, but there were some things going on that I felt were unethical to the point that I could not continue working there.  The good/bad news is that I still hear from my students all the time; it’s been three weeks, and there hasn’t been a day yet that I wasn’t visited at my house, run after in the street, called, texted, emailed, asked to edit a paper, or had photoshopped images sent to me by my former students.

My favorite of the aforementioned photoshopped images, sent with a near-complete transcription of the song “When I See You Again” - the blob on the left is the school’s logo; the blob on the right is my face.

As my way of saying goodbye to Carachipampa, here is one of my favorite memories from my time there:

The Parade

Towards the end of last school year, our school was invited to participate in a parade and ceremony in Quillacollo (during school hours, of course), so we loaded the entirety of the high school onto buses and headed off.  We got to the city center, where we quickly organized the students into rows, just in time to join the band that was passing by.  Off we went, marching along, until one of the other teachers suddenly realized that this parade was, in fact, going in the opposite direction of the main plaza.  Yes, we had joined the wrong parade.  Why there were two different parades happening in a tiny town at 8:30 on a Monday morning is beyond me.

We quickly reoriented ourselves, heading back in the correct direction, at which point one of the 7th graders grabbed my arm.  “My feet are bleeding, Miss,” she whispered urgently.  Fantastic.  We swapped shoes; I was wearing black socks, so I just carried on in those.  I’m fairly impressed that I didn’t get any foot parasites.

By the time we had gotten to the plaza, everyone was in an absolutely abysmal mood.  Wandering the city streets being nearly run over and honked at will do that to a group of teenagers.  There was a long, boring ceremony that did little to improve morale, and then we were finally released.

We herded students back to the buses, and I got back onto my original bus with my clipboard and did a very fast roll call before we started off back to school.  Three minutes later, the usual quiet chatter was pierced by Pau’s plaintive voice:  “Miss D?”  “Yes, Pau?” I replied.  He stuttered for a moment, then choked out, “Uh, there’s a dog on the bus.”

Now at this point, silence fell over the bus, and I fought the urge to laugh.  “Why is there a dog on the bus?”  Pau’s now-tiny voice replied, “Um, he looked lonely.”  This pronouncement was too much for the 8th grade girls, who burst into giggles.  I sighed, then turned to the bus driver, “Hey, would you mind pulling over for just a second?”  He obliged as I instructed Pau to get the dog to the front of the bus.  What I wasn’t expecting, however, was for the dog to be absolutely enormous.  Pau guided this monstrous creature to the front as we pulled over, then the driver opened the door and the dog calmly got off the bus.

It was only after I’d chastised Pau that I realized how the event must have looked to the people on the street as a school bus stopped to let off a single, very independent dog.

We were in the wrong parade in this picture.