strange day

Today I visited the “cancha.” It’s a huge market on the south side of town that people either love or they think is extremely dangerous…I can definitely see how you could get pickpocketed if you weren’t careful, but during the day it doesn’t seem so dangerous. They do however, have every thing you could ever want there…furniture, toys, shoes, fruit, instruments, you name it! Nothing there is really of the best quality, but the fruit and veggies.  

Bethany and I have managed to find an amazing coffee shop in town though that we try to visit as much as possible. You can buy an espresso for less than a $1 and the pastries are amazing. We also have found a vegetarian buffet restaurant and a couple other good places to eat, which is nice.

Today I realized that the lady who I’m renting from might be a little off her rocker. I invited her in this afternoon, mainly to have a chance to tell her I would be leaving in one week and she stayed for 90 minutes telling Bethany and I all about her life and it’s various and sundry disasters. Within an hour we were hearing all about: her son’s psychosomatic conditions (actually, it’s celiac’s disease—which apparently she doesn’t believe is real); the story of how her husband was robbed and murdered--forcing her to have to work for the first time in her life; how her brother suffered brain damage after a car accident and is now paralyzed; the mysterious cancer that her son was diagnosed with and then disappeared (this actually sounds like a miracle to me, but apparently this was not her vantage point); and how someone tried to rob her in the street from a moving car, dragging her alongside it….generally, how Bolivia and Cochabamba have changed and how her life has gone down the shitter…and that’s why she has to rent this apartment to foreigners.  Then she invited Bethany and I to dinner. When we said we already had food and had to work, she invited us 3 more times. I think she’s lonely…but I’m even more relieved now that I’m leaving.