Leaving Sucre
Finally I´m leaving Sucre, after being here for about 3 weeks (2 weeks before going to Samaipata, and another week after). Life is so easy here and I´m sad to leave.. as usual..
Well, Sucre is the Capital of Bolivia (not La Paz, as the people here will tell you!) and it´s known as the City of White, because all the buildings and colonial structures here are painted in white. It´s also an university town, and widely regarded as the most beautiful city in Bolivia. Before I came here, I had expected the city to be strikingly beautiful after hearing so much about it.. but it is more beautiful in a pleasant kind of way.. like nice-looking colonial buildings, many wonderful tree lined plazas filled with pedestrians, couples and shoe shine boys, friendly and relaxed people, and niceish climate (though it´s winter now, and every morning my teachers complain about the cold! :)
My life here was very simple and very studious. For the first two weeks I had 2 hours of Spanish in the morning and another two in the afternoon, followed by "Intercambio", ie. conversation exchange, with the school´s Spanish students who are learning English.. and then before going to bed I had to do some homework for the next day. So my original plan of relaxing here and catching up with my emails and blogs didn´t quite eventuate.
The school I´m studying at is called "Fox Academy" (http://www.foxacademysucre.com/index.shtml)
They are a non-profit school that started out teaching English to the poorer members of the community and gradually added Spanish teaching to the program in order to subsdise the cost of the English teaching program. It's a pretty good school and the teachers are very relaxed and friendly. On every friday the teachers cook a lunch for all of us, and sometimes on the weekends they take us on excursions to nearby attractions. I got to go to the "Siete Cascades", ie. 7 waterfalls. The landscape was very rocky and reminded me a bit of Central Australia. We had to climb over many rocks to get to the waterfalls.
Another good thing about Sucre is the wonderful juices and fruit salads we get at the nearby market. They had the most number of variety of fruits I´ve seen in South America, and the juices and salads are so delicious.
I lived in a little cuby hole on the roof while I was here. The place is called "Villa de la Plata", and was a lovely and cozy place which feels more homely than a typical hostel. It was a cuby hole because the roof was also the ceiling, and it was slanted in like a 30% angle, and every so often I would bump my head on it. Luckily I´m not tall :) The view outside my door was amazing though.. you can see the town centre filled with white buildings, as well as the surrounding mountains. It was especially nice during the morning and the sunset...
On my last day there I got to visit the Textile Museum and was quite impressed with the beautiful traditional weavings from nearby villages. That sent me on a mini shopping spree and I bought many little textile nic nacs to remember this place...
posted by Susan @ 5:30 PM
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