An even slower life

Our life has slowed down so much, it almost seems to have stopped at times. Just a bit of an update: We've been in Spanish language study and living with a host family in Santa Cruz for a month now, and have one week left of this. Our days are pretty much spent in the building you see above. This is the MCC "unit house," which has a few guest rooms, a kitchen in which we make our noon meals most days (and bake snacks for staff refreshments and cook for weekly potluck), two libraries, and is generally the hub of social activity here at MCC. We're lucky enough to have a room with a desk to study and a bed to nap on (even more importantly, of course, it's a cave from which to escape the masses). The house also has a place to hang bunches of green bananas to ripen, cut from trees in MCCers' yards...nothing like guilt-free bananas ;)

This room here -- the "airport library" -- has perhaps been the most important fixture of my (Liz) life here so far. I've been burning my way through several novels each week (in English, unfortunately). So far one can be fairly selective, but I may have to resort to spy and/or "inspirational" romance novels before our time is up.

And on the right, you can see our mailbox...our empty mailbox. We've received mail only once (those much-anticipated Economists are threadbare by now). It's said that mail to Bolivia has often been unreliable, but the current political conflict -- namely blockades between here and La Paz -- has made this worse as well.

I won't presume to update you on the conflict, but if you're interested, one resource is The Democracy Center. The most we experience of it is limited travel outside of the city, sleeping to the sound of firecrackers (and roosters), less fresh produce in the market and at higher prices, limited cooking gas for our host family, a fair amount of anxiety in local people we're getting to know, and no Low German primer that's supposed to come to us by mail. So while we're sometimes amused by how slow our life is, we are so very grateful for how full of peace it also is.