I had such a great time in Cochabamba but before we had gotten there, the trip to get to this small town was a journey on its own. Our easy 20 hour travel day consisted of us coming to PIT (Pittsburgh International Airport) which would take us to IAD (Dulles International Airport) which would take us to Bogota, Colombia, then Santa Cruz and from Santa Cruz to Cochabamba. That did not go as planned. Those 20 hours turned into 48. We made it from Pittsburgh to Washington D.C. with ease, but after that, that’s when things went south. We ended with a 3 hour delay due to severe air traffic over Florida which is where we were flying by. With that being said, we still boarded the plane 30 minutes past our departure time and were stuck on the tarmac for a total of five hours!! That was without the additional five hour flight to Bogota, Colombia. That led to us having to spend an entire day there once we had landed. Everyone in our group was extremely excited to just go to Bolivia, but also Colombia all in the span of a week. Once we landed at the Bogota airport, we exchanged money, got into our hotel and went on a tour of the beautiful city of Bogota. It was the perfect spring weather for us to go on a mini tour of the city where we saw an alpaca and beautiful Spanish architecture that clearly is still prominent today. We all got a couple souvenirs (and of course Colombian snacks) and prepared ourselves for the remaining journey to Cochabamba.
Our flight landed in Cochabamba at 7am Monday morning and we started the day immediately. We had breakfast at a cafe near our airport where I was amazed by the ENORMOUS food portions. All I hear from people outside of the United States is that we have ridiculously big serving sizes, clearly they haven’t been to Bolivia. On our first day of Cochabamba, we went into CEOLI which was the non-profit organization we were working with on this particular trip and we were able to see all of the kiddos!! And the amazing staff that help run this place. I truly fell in love with everyone who works there. They really show their love and appreciation for each of the participants of the program and how they value so much trying to teach them how to be prepared for the real world. It was important for me to see these interactions and see how this non-profit organization is working on being successful in preparing a lot of the participants for the future by providing more children/adults with helpful skills that are needed in day-to-day tasks.
The second day we were there, we went to CEOLI once again where we were able to discuss our deliverables with Ronald (director of CEOLI) which was a hard task for me, personally. As one of the couple people in our group that spoke Spanish fluently, being able to translate what Ronald was saying in Spanish and interpreting in English to everyone in the group was a difficult task, but it was done well! It reminded me of the discussion we had about different conflict management teams. During this entire trip I think we were in the first quadrant classified as the “ideal team.” We knew language was going to be an obstacle and preparing to have one or two translators we knew that we had to have questions already preparing and different forms of getting our point across, hence, paper copies of all of our deliverables in a Spanish version. We gave him paper copies of our deliverable ideas which made it easy for him to adjust to his standards, and made it also easy for us to actually take what he told us to adjust to exactly what he wanted. Overall, a successful day for our deliverables. We ended our day with some amazing Bolivian coffee at a local cafe and heard several great speeches of Cochabambino students who are young entrepreneurs trying to launch a successful business. In Bolivian culture, it is not common to have a credit card so the presenters are trying to create an app which lets businesses use their platforms for customers to have cashback. It is a great method of innovation on Cochabambinos’ part.
On Wednesday, we had the amazing opportunity to paint CEOLI’s kitchen which was being renovated after it had not had a new paint job for a while. I was so excited to participate in an activity where I was able to actually see the change in front of my eyes and directly contribute to the organization. It definitely taught me so much about myself and how I love being able to participate in activities that I can see actual change in. It definitely made me think back to the reading that talked about the difference between Service Learning and Community Service and how this painting was not community service in everyone’s eyes, it was us embracing the help that they needed and trying our best to have conversations with everyone within the organization ensure we are fully embracing everything that is happening around us. After painting the kitchen in CEOLI we went to a beautiful home where we learned traditional Bolivian folklore dances and traditional food as well. Again, huge portions!! But truly delicious.
On Thursday, we did another day where we finished out our deliverables and unexpectedly had to present our ideas the same day. This was surprising, but we were fine. Because Ronald marked the paper and talked to him on Tuesday, it was easy for us to make changes and print all of our ideas for him to look over once again and add any finishing touches if he deemed necessary. And our presentation was a success! We had a couple of small adjustments in terms of writing that we had translated over, but everyone else was smooth sailing. Presenting our deliverables and having this one-on-one presentation with Ronald and the staff definitely met my expectations when it came to international expectations. To our initial meeting with him in-country seeing what he wanted of course, but getting over the language barrier and seeing the differences within cultures was something that I definitely saw coming and being able to have that experience also ensured that I would want to do this as a professional career for myself further in the future. After presenting our deliverables we had the opportunity to go to one of the biggest markets in Cochabamba named “La Cancha” where there were several differences between what we in the United States classify as a market. We all got matching alpaca sweaters and other great souvenirs for everyone back in the states.
Friday was unfortunately our last full day in Cochabamba, and we had a dance party at CEOLI accompanied by salteñas (a Cochabamba classic). After our amazing dance party, we had to say our goodbyes at CEOLI and had a 45 minute trip up to see El Cristo de la Concordia which is a similar statue in Brazil, but bigger. Our way up we were met with the beautiful mountains overlooking the entire city of Cochabamba. Once we finished seeing the statue we decided to go to a local private university to have sit-down conversations with students who are learning English. For this English 101 class, several students knew a big amount of English which made me excited for them as English is such an important language for people to learn. My group and I had a great time talking to them in English and getting to know them and the Bolivian culture with a similarity we all shared which was our ages and the English language. I learned how important it truly is to have extensive knowledge of not just one language but several in order to have more opportunities presented to one.
I think overall all of the expectations I had when it came to international interactions were very realistic on my end. I knew being in a different country where there are so many culture differences, there would be a bit of struggle trying to adjust to the culture no matter whether or not I spoke the language. There were various instances where I had no idea what they were trying to articulate and I had to ask for a more in- depth explanation or find similarities into the Spanish that I learned and try to understand it on my own terms. Not to mention the culture is so drastically different from the one my own parents taught me and the culture I grew up in living in the United States. I tried my best to adapt to their culture and understand the history behind a lot of the religion and rituals that are done in the country.
Overall, I had a great experience in Bolivia and in Colombia. I learned a lot about myself and the distinct culture of the countries that I visited in such a short period of time and I am glad that I was able to do this program with such amazing classmates and Steph which made the experience so much better.