Hola Amigos,
Life is good and my trip is half over. How that happened i´m not yet sure. Tomorow I take off for a week in Argentina and then look forward to coming back and backpacking around Bolivia.

Some notes on life:
E. Coli: I had it, it´s not fun, but it´s gone now, and I can eat again. Hoorah.

Chirimoyas: Imagine a fruit with the skin of an avocado (crossed with an artichoke), grows on a tree, and has the fleshy interior of a creamy sour apple. It´s seeds are like swollen watermelon seeds, and here, the fruit is often used for ice creams and juices. Good stuff. Also, fruit-wise, here I can eat an abundance of figs, mangos, papayas, and coconut, all for almost as cheap as bananas (which come in myriad sizes and degrees of sweetness).

Koreans in Bolivia: In the states I´m often mistaken for being Chinese or Japanese, but here in Bolivia, everyone immediately knows I´m Korean. It´s rumored there are generations old families of Koreans who migrated to Bolivia, and in Santa Cruz there is an entire Koreatown. Here in Cochabamba, I´ve seen a few, and there is one Korean restaurant to note; my house mom Lucy adds that she has a Korean chiropractor who goes by the name ¨Diego Chang.¨ (I supressed laughter) I often ask taxi drivers about this, whose answers have ranged that the Koreans come because it´s temperate, or it´s cheap to live here, or that Bolivians also eat persimmons, or because there is a booming textile industry here.

Spanish: language skills are improving rapidly.

Other last week miscellany: ate lots of cheesy bread, held some baby chickens, walked through corn fields, visited the Bolivian countryside, bought fresh doughnuts on the roadside, watched an orphan meet his parents for the first time, had a dinner party that lasted all night, a breakfast party that lasted all day, swung in a hammock, watched a Bolivian comedian (Cholo Juanito), recognized Orion on the opposite side of the sky, celebrated La Dia Los Dios (Kids´day), woke up to a rainstorm, saw a scorpion in my shower, swam, got a tan while wearing SPF 50, drank fresh lemonade, and watched an Andean sunrise. I had flan, hopped a bus whose direction I had no idea, bartered for tapestries, and read: At the Same Time (essays and speeches by Susan Sontag), The Devil in the White City (by Eric Larson), 5 Quarters of the Orange (by Joanne Harris), 2 NY Times Magazines, 1 issue of Harpers, and listened to lots of Cat Power. Life´s alright. (A billion thanks to mom, dad, Saha, Amit, Ariel, Ian, Nick, CP, Charlene, and everyone else for letters, books, and packages).

N.B. (news from back home edition)
1. Jen Bekman writes about the upcoming 20×200! Awesome affordable art from emerging artists. Sign up on the mailing list and read more about the project.

2. My photos are on the new CD jacket and insert by saxophonist and friend Brian Sacawa.

3. Made a cameo in Italian Glamour along with Dens, Dianne, Kevin, Courtney, Chrissy, and some other kids. There is a half-page about me in Italian, and a picture posing at some West Village photo opening with a cocktail and my cell phone (and I have absolutely no idea what it says). Translators, please?

4. Modern Letter Project: Moving along well, and letters are flying back and forth across the globe. A million thanks to Corie, who is holding down the fort while I negotiate with at times, dial-up speed and sporadic internet. Looking forward to working on this a ton when I get back to the States. Read Corie´s update and thoughts on the project.

Published Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 9:33 am. Filed under Bolivia, Books, Elsewhere, Links, Modern Letter Project. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.