One Week To Go

Sucre, Bolivia –

As each day passes August 2nd looms bigger and bigger in my head. I feel as if I have yet to see much of Bolivia but at the same time think I’ve experienced more of the country and its culture by not moving around than most other travelers who pass through on the whirlwind tour. With that August 2nd visa date approaching I think I’ve entered my final week in Sucre before heading out to…well, I’m not sure where to yet. I haven’t thought too much on where I’ll go.

One week left of white washed buildings and red tile roofs

I do have a desire to get out of the cities. I’ve been in Sucre since May 13th and think I have a good sense of city life here. I can’t think of what I would get out of visiting Cochabamba, La Paz or Santa Cruz for any extended period of time. I have no interest in Museums, parks, plazas or monuments and in Sucre I’ve been able to get out of the backpackers circuit and develop friendships with the people that live here. I won’t be able to achieve quite the same thing in another city in such a short period of time so I’m thinking I’ll ditch the guide book and just hop on a bus. I’ll talk to some locals along the way about where is good to go and move with the flow for my last month here.

To make my traveling life easier come August a friend in the tourism industry told me today that the blockades along the Peruvian border have opened up. This allows me to stick to my original travel plan of crossing the border near Lake Titicaca and traveling north instead of taking a flight from La Paz to Cuzco. If I stay in Bolivia for as long as I intend then this would mean I would most likely be spending my birthday on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca…if I stick to my current plan which, most likely, I won’t.

With no need to book a flight or no real need to do much of anything else I find that I have few things to really accomplish during my final week here. A fair amount of my time has been spent recently with Emily (See ‘A Narration of the Last 24 Hours’ for more details). There was a two week period when she went incommunicado on me so I starting seeing someone else but that’s a whole other story in and of itself. I try to tell her I’m leaving in a week and she tries to tell me that she no longer wants to see me but those threats seem to be filled with about as much truth as a politicians promises during election season.

My main activity this past weekend, other than going out at night and staying up until 4:00 or 5:00 am, has been working on my application to teach English in South Korea. I’ve now actually started the process instead of just thinking about it and yesterday was filled with me running around town looking for a decent internet connection as well as printing off and filling out forms to start collecting the necessary documentation for a work visa. There are still too many unknowns in this plan to talk about it any further (including whether or not I’ll actually get a job) so I’ll just stop here.

As far as Spanish goes…

It progresses slowly at this point. I’ve started reading a book, ‘El Principito’ and hope to finish it before I leave. The book is on-par with a third grade reading level and kids in the park seem to get a good laugh out of watching a grown man reading a book beneath their level but that’s where my Spanish stands at this point so I just go with it.

I’ll wrap it up here and just say that for those of you who read this and are growing tired of hum-drum posts about the mediocrity of me living in a Bolivian city then you should get something a bit more exciting coming your way soon. There have been some great stories to tell here about Sucre but while writing this blog I try to walk a fine line of telling you what I’ve been doing without divulging certain information that’s better left off of the internet.