¡Feliz Día de Independencia!

Hello! Today is Bolivia's independence day, so much of the city is quiet. The Prado, though, is full of marching bands, street vendors, and men in uniform. Today's parades (desfiles en español) are mostly the different branches of the military. To be honest, it's a little intimidating walking around as a tourist with the entire army walking around as well. It's all been great so far though!

Here's a picture of the military marching to the parade:

Updates on the rest of day three:

CEA

Yesterday, after my morning coffee, I met up with everyone so we could all go to the demonstration center to do some work. Half of us worked on creating watering devices for the fruit trees (apple, peach, and grape) out of empty plastic bottles (they're really cool in theory, but pretty difficult to make with the limited resources available at the CEA). The idea is to create a device that will let water into the soil directly onto the plants' roots, one drop at a time. If done correctly, a 2-liter bottle can last up to a week. About half of our bottles seemed to be working, but the rest drained within minutes. Oh well; it's all a learning process. (This is a link to a similar irrigation system: http://www.providentliving.org.nz/bottle-drip-irrigation/)

The other half of the group worked on moving rocks to create a biological pool which sanitizes liquid waste from a farmer's home. We all took a much-needed break to have lunch in the shade - it was REALLY sunny! Someone brought us fried chicken, which came with french fries and rice (of course there were two starches - this is Bolivia, after all). Then, it was back to work. I got to hang out for a bit with David, a Mano a Mano volunteer from Illinois who's been here for about 5 weeks, and his friend Ivan, who is super funny! I felt like we were best friends after a three-minute conversation. He and I are going to help each other with speaking English and Spanish, respectively.

The work we did after lunch involved uprooting some vegetables (we're pretty sure they were turnips, but it was never 100% clear) that had rotted, putting in compost as fertilizer, watering the vegetable garden, planting onions, and putting straw around the vegetables so that the water didn't evaporate right away. We all definitely needed a shower after that! Blanca and Ben came to pick us up, and we all drove back to the city to rest for a bit. 

This is what we all wore on our heads:

(Sorry I have no pictures of my own - everything was super dirty so I didn't want to risk breaking my phone!)

Graciela

After a quick shower and nap, Joyce, Alexa, and I decided to wander around for a bit before we met the Oxford students for dinner. 

This is bread made of quinoa from a health food store across the street from their hotel - really delicious! Rolls shaped like this are called pancitos, and usually eaten for breakfast. 

This is the church at the old plaza in the center of the city:

Parades were everywhere last night! They caused a lot of traffic jams, but were cool for us to see!

Here comes one across the intersection of the two main streets in Cochabamba:

On our way back to meet the others, we found a cute little pottery shop and went in to look around. The owner's name is Graciela, and we talked for a while about our trip, Minnesota, and her products. I ended up buying a keychain, and she told us to come back anytime we needed anything! I'll definitely be visiting her again. 

Cafe Paris

For dinner, we and the Oxford students went to a really cute little cafe which served crepes. 

My dinner from last night:

(Don't worry, mom, that's just grape juice.)

We all chatted for a really long time, and then everyone went home to sleep, since we had an early morning today!

Water Projects 

We had all planned to meet at 8:30 this morning so that we could drive out to a rural community to see one of the water reservoirs Mano a Mano has built. The Oxford group had some trouble checking out of their hotel, though, so we actually left around 9:15. We had a great time waiting around, though, because we made some friends!

This guy came and sat right by Alexa!

This one smelled really bad, but had the sweetest face!

Eventually, we made it out of Cochabamba to the Ucuchi reservoir.

The landscape was a bit different, and it was much cooler, because we were up pretty high in the mountains:

Here's the reservoir (about 2,000 cubic meters when it's full):

This is an abandoned house we found near the community. It's really neat!

After seeing the Ucuchi reservoir, we went to see the Sancayani reservoir about 45 minutes away. The drive was a little terrifying, because it was all narrow mountain roads with super sharp turns, but Ben handled it like a pro and we arrived with no problems at all!

We even stopped on the way to see some lambs that were hanging out near the road:

This is the Sallamani Grande reservoir (the Sancayani project is made up of this and Sallamani Chico, which is higher in the mountains):

We found many more sheep by the reservoir: 

These community members were doing their laundry in the reservoir! They only spoke Quechua, so I couldn't understand anything, but seemed super friendly:

We came back to the city to eat lunch, and the Oxford group is currently moving into the CEA for the next two weeks. I'm going to miss them a lot, but they're coming into the city for the weekend! Hopefully we can do a lot of fun stuff, especially since I'll be all alone once Joyce and Alexa leave on Friday. 

And, I leave you with this: since I am so directionally challenged, my lock screen is now a map of Cochabamba. It's been quite helpful.