¿Varon o Mujeres?

June 2, 2010 - At Stephanie’s request I am writing a blog post. Today provided many experiences to remember. We found that after two days of acclimatizing we have much more energy to move about as we please. (Yesterday we sat around in the operating room for four hours because we didn’t have the strength to stand for more than a few minutes at a time; not exactly the impression I wanted to give the first day on the job. After surgery we went home and slept the rest of the afternoon. The people say that it is normal, whether that is true or whether they want to make us feel better I am not sure). We attended the Deseret International Clinic inauguration that Dr. Joel Moya Saldias has set up to provide free surgeries for the poor. As part of the program the newscasters first interviewed Dr. Moya and the Lion’s Club ex-President then they turned to Stephanie and I and asked us to share a few words for the occasion. I didn’t really know what to say, but hopefully I didn’t sound two much like a clueless norteamericano. Although Stephanie has dedicated herself to learning Spanish her vocabulary is limited, so she just smiled and held her two-liter water bottle in her arms as if it were a newborn baby. Who knows, maybe we’ll be famous here in La Paz because we were on the news. Afterwards they gave us a Bolivian specialty called salteñas, a mixture of vegetables and meat wrapped in an enclosed crust about the size of a large taco. Apparently they also have a lot of juice inside because we got it all over ourselves. Stephanie had a plate full of salteña juice and slowly dumped it all over my coat and pants without either of us realizing it; needless to say it was quite a spectacle. Luckily, after we had eaten and made fools of ourselves, they told us to slurp the juice as we eat so it doesn’t drip on our clothes. Later we went down town with Sandra to buy a cell phone. Stephanie had to go to the bathroom while I was talking the sales agent so she went alone. I forgot to tell her what varon and mujer meant. She had a fifty percent chance of choosing the right bathroom. As luck would have it, she chose to enter the bathroom that said varon, which means male. It makes for a good story typical to adapting to a new culture.