A few things learned while traveling

I act like a Japanese tourist. Poor daughter. She has to put up with me. Today she told me I was acting like a Japanese tourist. Why? Because I was stopping every two feet to take a photo of a door, or a building or a colorful person. Just like a Japanese tourist she said. Actually, it sort of infuriated me because I´m in a new country and I´m just getting my camera legs on. It´s a BIG deal for me to be photographing these doors and these buildings at all. Long ago I used to be a photographer. In fact I have a degree in it. But it´s been absolutely years since I´ve been actively photographing. So for assignment Bolivia, I made myself buy a new camera and get into the digital world properly and so I must photograph, photograph, photograph. Yes, doors, buildings and colorful people. Just like a Japanese tourist. My daughter apologized to me.

My Spanish Sucks. My daughter has a good command of the langauge and I have been relying on her as my interpreter. I have become mute when someone asks me a question. I can´t even get out the word QUE? I just turn to my interpreter and she talks for me. My daughter has told me however I am doing fine. That listening is good. But listening and not comprehending much and not talking really sucks. I feel really really crippled. I´m thinking this next week I might stay around Cochabamba and enroll in a langauge school and try to learn some more. My few hours tutoring on Lopez helped, but seems to have been erased on a 17 hour plane ride.

I am not being safe. I just about waved my wallet and said take it while in the cab and stopped at a light, until I was yelled at by my daughter. MOM! I was just putting in 50 Bolivinos in my wallet, no big deal...I did not realize that someone might swarm past the open window and grab it, apparently a common practice here in the streets of Cochabamba. I am so much more the wiser now. Thank you Alia.