By Amanda S., a guest blogger studying Spanish and volunteering in Bolivia

There are a lot of gringos in Sucre, relative to most parts of Bolivia. I’ve talked to several people, and their story always goes something like, “Yeah, I worked for the Peace Corps in a village outside of Sucre a few years ago, and I liked it here so much that I stayed." There’s one guy from Louisiana that came here with the Peace Corps in the 60’s, and he still visits ever summer- he’s good friends with my host family.

Anyway, I’m telling ya’ll that because I’m feeling pretty homesick right now. I don’t think culture shock is very aptly named; people are people, and the differences in culture aren’t that important, I don’t think. It’s more “Oh-crap-I-don’t-speak-Spanish-so-I-can’t-talk-to-anyone-and-I’m-not-familiar-with-this-city-and-I-want-to-call-home-but-my-cellphone-doesn’t-work" shock. It’s pretty lonely, I guess. I’m fine as long as I keep busy, but it’s hard to keep busy when I’m so unfamiliar with Sucre and don’t have anyone to go out and explore with. Traveling is easier with two people, I bet.

But hey, I’ve got seven weeks left. I’m hoping, though, that by the time those seven weeks are up, I’ll be sad to leave. I mean, everybody else I’ve met loves it here.

On a happier note, it was Steve’s (the guy from Louisiana’s) 70^th (or maybe 80^th, I don’t remember) birthday yesterday, and my host family hosted his party. It started at 10 and went until 5 in the morning. I spent the five hours before that helping prepare the food- toothpicking hundreds of cheese cubes and ham cubes and salami cubes and olives and pickles.  There was a live Bolivian band, a very impressive bar, and lots and lots of dancing for seven hours straight.

I’ll admit that I definitely prefer Bolivian parties to US ones. Everybody, from my 11-year-old host sister to my 80-year-old abuela just danced and danced and danced the entire time- there was no awkward standing around. I can picture very few of the adults I know dancing so enthusiastically. It was fun dancing, too; there’s a traditional dance from Sucre where both of the dancing partners use a napkin like a scarf and everybody else claps. I don’t know the name for it, so I’ve dubbed it the Napkin Dance.  There was also something like a follow-the-leader-conga-line that everybody got in on, and a couple guys got me to dance with them: my host cousin, and one of the “I came with the Peace Corps and stayed” guys.

See all of Amanda's blogs

Discover Bolivia study abroad

Learn about being a volunteer or intern abroad

By Amanda S., a guest blogger studying Spanish and volunteering in Bolivia

And here I am again! Not much new going on, but more to tell you that I didn't in the first post.

There's a surprising amount to say about the food, actually, so I'll just stick with lunch right now. It's the biggest meal of the day; for other meals we eat barely anything. So it's huge. The first course is always soup. It's made of broth, and it's always got a huge chunk of meat and big piece of potatoes or two in broth, along with spices and some kind of starch like rice or beans. It's a big bowl of soup; my first day, I thought that was all there would be.

The second course is usually a starch, like rice, pasta, potatoes, corn, or a combination of any of those, with a meat dish, like steak and poached eggs, or pork, or meat-filled omelets…  Eggs are lunch food.

And then fruit and/or ice cream for dessert. The ice cream is called "helado de soya", or "sualla", pronounced soy-ya.  I thought maybe that it was soy ice cream, but they insisted that it had milk in it… so I don't know if sualla is soy or not. They did say it was some kind of grain, and it tasted a little like pepto bismol..

In other words, lunch mostly consists of several different kinds of meats and grains, with nothing to drink. I don't think my family drinks much water. Only coffee and tea. It sounds like I'm exaggerating, but if I understood them right, that's what they told me.

School's going well. My teacher's named Yerko, and two of the other students in my class live in the same house-courtyard-thing as me, with one of the other family units of the extended family. So we do homework together (we get assigned a lot of homework). Today we learned the past imperfect tense, which I learned in high school and remember more or less, but the review definitely helps. What I really need is a review of the irregular verbs in simple preterite.

And a Fluffy update: I spent a while scratching Fluffy's head while I was on Skype with my parents. Now whenever I'm outside he comes to sit by me and when I'm in my room with door open he sits a few feet in front of it and watches me. My family gets a kick out of that.

I started this post before lunch and finished after, so I have an update on food: Today the soup was "sopa con arroz y papas fritas". That's right: rice and french fry soup. It's apparently a favorite- my eleven-year-old host sister was super excited about it.  And the second course was some kind of fish in broth with rice. The fish still had bones in it- they were constantly warning me to "Ten cuidado"- Be careful. I guess they don't want their gringa choking on those invisible, sharp, little fish bones!

See all of Amanda's blogs

Discover Bolivia study abroad

Learn about being a volunteer or intern abroad

By Amanda S., a guest blogger studying Spanish and volunteering in Bolivia

I'm Amanda; I'm a pre-med student from Texas visiting Sucre, Bolivia for two months. I'll be taking Spanish classes for three weeks and then volunteering at Hospital Psicipedigohico. That's a mouthful, but it just means that it's a hospital for disabled children.

Here I am! I found out at lunch today that my family has internet in one of their rooms with an Ethernet cable I can use.  That's good- I don't have to lug my computer all the way to the Spanish School to use theirs. It wouldn't be that much of pain, but the school closes after morning classes for lunch, so I'd have to walk there again after lunch to use my computer.

I got to La Paz, Bolivia after an all-nighter from Miami at 5 in the morning. It only took a few minutes to get through customs, which surprised me (they didn't even look at my yellow fever vaccination records, which I was slightly disappointed at. I mean, the shot cost money, and it hurt, and they didn't even care? Sad.) La Paz is at an altitude of over 13,000 feet, and I get altitude sick in Colorado at 8,000. So after about 30 minutes in La Paz my hands turned blue and my stomach flipped over- I almost threw up when I stood up to board the plane. Fun stuff. From La Paz I flew to Santa Cruz, which had an entirely empty airport, so I spent that four-hour layover sleeping off the leftover altitude sickness. And from there it was a 30 minute flight to Sucre.

There were children at the airport who ran alongside the runway when the plane landed and were begging for money at baggage claim. Sucre's bigger than I expected; the airport's on the outskirts, and the buildings start out really dilapidated but get much more well-kept as you get closer to the center of the city, where my host family and school are. The center of the city's beautiful, with flower gardens and white colonial buildings with red roofs. The buildings are all squished together like in San Francisco, but it's a lot less city-like, somehow. People are all over the sidewalks and streets, and the cars don't follow any traffic rules that I can tell, but go pretty slowly. There are vendors in the streets selling fruits and juices and empanadas and saltenas; I haven't tried either yet but I'll let you know how it goes when I do (and no, I haven't drank the street vendor juice for fear of traveler's diarrhea, although the other student who's with my family has, and he seems fine).

My host family lives in one big compound that has one door to the street. There's a courtyard that works kind of like the living room, and each bedroom, kitchen (there are two) and bathroom walk out into the courtyard. The grandmother, two sisters, their families, and maybe some cousins all live in the compound together… I'm not really sure how the family dynamic works. I guess I'll figure that out in the next two months. I know more Spanish, I think, than they know English, so communicating is an interesting game. There's another student who also lives in the compound, but our host families are different members of the big family, I guess… I eat in the kitchen with the grandmother, one of the sisters, and the cousins (I think), and he eats in the other kitchen with the other sister and her son. I wasn't clear on that this morning and went two the wrong kitchen… the abuela had to come find me. I can't understaand her very well, but it was along the lines of, "I couldn't find you! Did you hear me looking for you? You eat with me in my kitchen, not here… come with me!" And now it seems to be a joke among everybody that I went to the wrong kitchen. But everyone's very friendly and patient with me needing them to repeat every single thing they ask me.

Ah. There's also a dog named Fluffy. He's a German Shepherd- Labrador mix, I think. Not very fluffy, but he lets me scratch his head.

See all of Amanda's blogs

Discover Bolivia study abroad

Learn about being a volunteer or intern abroad

AmeriSpan's volunteer placements range from Social Work to Education to Environmental Studies, and we are always working to find programs best suited for each student.  Bolivia has an endless array of natural sights, wildlife, and activities to explore in between classes and volunteer sessions.  Another volunteer discovered a place where some of Sucre's most exotic wildlife lived – the Parque Machia.

Machia National Park was developed on 36 hectares donated by the Bolivian government and is now a protected area where the animals are cared for and protected by staff and volunteers from all over the world. This protected forest is found near the town of Villa Tunari, 4 hours from Cochabamba on the road to Santa Cruz. Another park where volunteers work is located in  the  Department  of  Santa  Cruz  de  la  Sierra,  province of  Guarayos (about 4 hours from Santa Cruz).

Volunteers can assist this organization to work with the animals and the natural environment. Some types of animals that typically are on-site include: pumas, parrots, monkeys, crocodiles and anacondas. Volunteers feed, care for and protect the animals before returning them to their natural environment. If not possible to return them to the wild, the park provides a better home for them than in the city. Volunteers are also needed to care for lakes, streams, rivers and forest. Other duties include: trail maintenance, cage construction and cleaning, volunteer lodging construction, announcement postings on trails and other tasks as needed.

A recent volunteer in Bolivia said, "The best was feeling at home in a really beautiful city that was so different from home, and how much my Spanish improved." Take a look at this video of one volunteer's experiences in Parque Machia:

See Volunteer Placements in Bolivia

See Spanish School in Sucre, Bolivia

See AmeriSpan Guest Blogger Alison B.'s posts

My name is Mikel and I am a 21 year old girl who has been doing volunteer work for the past year through Amerispan and I am continuing on my second year with them. One of the many programs I have done through them is the one located in Peten Guatemala. It was possibly one of the funnest experiences I have had through Amerispan (its very hard to pick, they were all amazing). You get to work one on one with the animals, alongside a very very very friendly and intelligent staff who know a lot about wildlife and are eager to share as much of the experiece with the volunteers, of working with wild animals, as is safe and possible. 

I have traveled to Costa Rica, Guatemala, Peru and I am currently in the jungles of Bolivia working with an indigenous community, and I did all countries through Amerispan. I am even continuing on with them to Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Ecuador. The only reason I chose Amerispan (or really the only way my parents would let me do any of this) is because of how safe Amerispan is. All the placements I have gone to I have felt super safe and well taken care of. I always am able to contact them with any questions or concerns and they make sure I feel as comfortable as possible wherever I am. All my sleepìng arrangements have been top notch, the food included in their package is always well supplied and tasty. They make sure you can learn new experiences without feeling scared or alone. It is an amazing experience and something I will never be able to fully explain with words. I have learnt more doing this volunteer work with Amerispan than i believe I ever learnt in the past 21 years. Its a wonderful and beautiful thing to travel and Amerispan makes sure you enjoy it to the fullest and in the safest of ways. 

I would encourage you to make the choice of working through Amerispan, I highly doubt you will be unsatisfied.

Feliz Viaje,

Mikel

Click for more information on AmeriSpan’s volunteer placements.