Okay

Alright my bad about not posting for like the past three or four weeks. My downfall started because I was on a trip to Concepcion, a small village a few hours outside of Santa Cruz. Rotary paid for the entire trip to the Orchid Festival. Which was awesome and nice of them. The trip was great and I definitely didn't realize how much I miss being able to go on nature walks whenever I wanted. It was a trip that included the other exchange students in the cities of Oruro and  Sucre as well, They aren't as lucky as us in Santa Cruz because there's so few of them. On the flip side to that they're lucky because they don't have the same amount of opportunity to speak English as we do. It was a great bonding experience between the lot of us; It was even Brett's 19th birthday and we all stayed up till midnight to celebrate playing cards and such. Even though it was an orchid festival, there really wasn't that many orchids out there. At one point we ended up in a small village town outside of Concepcion and we got to dance with and play games with the locals. The trip has been a high light for sure and I can't wait for the tour of Bolivia trip and the Macchu Piccu trip in March.

The next Sunday I couldn't write the blog because I stayed the night at a friend's house. She lives close to the airport so we all stayed there for Marie's last night and went to the airport in the morning. Marie was from France and she was really funny and nice. She was having problems with her family here and Rotary wasn't really too helpful. I don't know the full story but she ended up going home. It was pretty sad. It was also a bummer that later that day was the goodbye party for Gina. She left on that Tuesday so Monday we went to Hard Rock Cafe. Exchange life is a lot of goodbyes and "hasta luego."

It's kind of crazy that it's already November. Yesterday was Halloween and we dressed up to go out to the plaza. I didn't really think about a costume too hard and ended up just drawing cat whiskers and a nose and went out like that. The plaza was absolutely packed. It was full of families and everyone was dressed up. The most common costume was that almost every girl over the age of 17 had like their faces painted half as a skull of Day of the Dead. It was a fun Halloween.

I feel more accustomed to everything here. I know how to get around most of the city now since I am pretty much running out of money and I have to take the buses everywhere. The buses are crazy and everytime I get on one it's a dance with death. The streets are crazy and the bus drivers are the craziest of them all. I love them because it's only one Boliviano (15 cents) to ride one. Nothing is really that weird to me anymore and I really feel like a member of this city now.

Love you all,

Josh