Real Bolivians (they´re just like me)

Mood: Anything that doesn´t remind me how Sam and Ben schooled me last night.

Wanted: Una Cholita Profesional
Requiremets:

• Andean Woman
• Little or no education
• Must looked aged and ragged
• May be anywhere between 30-80
• Missing teeth prefered
• Must wear clothing:A bowler hat, poofy skirt, various european/indigenous clothing (warning, you may look round)
• Must be willing to sit on the sidewalk and sell candy/food/trinkets/clothing for 12 hours a day with little pay.
• Must speak both spanish and one indigenous dialect
• Must have a young child

Blog: Yesterday Sam´s man bag got slit, and he lost about 20 bs., it was funny to me. We also ate at this awesome restaurant called Dumbo, an upscale Bolivian restaurant with delicious food, delicious cake, and really good ice cream. It was the first restaurant i´ve gone to where the ice cream was ¨safe¨ (not contaminated with Bolivian water). That made me very happy, and I ordered some ice cream (which was delicious). I want to go back and get one of their ice cream dishes (which are a meal in and of themselves).

Last night I got schooled by Sam and his younger brother Ben. I got worked pretty bad, and nothing was sacred (especially my fingers, and my love life). I got Sam sometimes, and Ben is just too weird to make fun of. Of course, the final score was like 500 to 3 (in their favor).

Then I was put through the pain of playing the stupidest card game ever, Mao. ¡Oh no! I said something bad about the game, so penalize me. Why can´t you just tell people the rules? Its retarded. Everytime I´m forced to play there is some new rule I´ve been following, but who knows... Of course the worst part is when the first game ends and the winner gets to make up a rule without telling anyone, its absolutlely horrid. Then when I make up a rule, its against the rules, even though I won. ¿Whats up with that? So what if I want to make everyone say that I´m the best, I think its fine, but there is some stupid rule that Mao is the best, and your not allowed to say Mao, so penalize me twice. Mao Mao Mao Mao Mao. Then I make up a rule where everyone has to say that I´m the second best right below ¨Our Great Leader¨(because you can´t say Mao), and then I get penalized for being self-centered. Oh the irritatingness of it all. Thats how dumb this game is, I´m making up words to tell how mad I am. To retaliate I started trying to penalize Sam for stupid things, that made him mad, which made me happy. Stupid, Stupid game (that´s right the second stupid is capitalized).

On a much happier note, and my title, I met some Bolivian college students today. They were sweet. Fortunately for me, they were both English students, and wanted to practice English. Our conversation carried in part English and part Spanish, and I gotta talk about contractions (which I use) and slang (which I use a lot). It was awesome, Sam knew more Spanish, but its ok. The moral of this story is that Bolivians are real people (like me), and not the weird people that you read in tourist books. Of course, I was able to talk to them about American culture, which helped me analyze my own culture. Sam and I gave them our e-mail addresses, after we talked to them for an hour. One´s name is Ricahrd, who wants to be a lawyer, and the other´s name is Juan (who wants to be a linguist).

Oh yes, and the best graffiti so far is a stencil of George Bush with the word tonto (idiot) underneath. It was awesome.