My arrival to La Paz, Bolivia

So I have finally arrived in La Paz and things are looking beautiful. The landscape is amazing but the altitude is kind of hard to get used to. I took the medication prescribed at the right time, however nausea and headaches are kind of unavoidable. In addition to that, your feet tingle when asleep and to the point where you are extremely uncomfortable but all you can do is suck it up! I absolutely love my homestay, the lady who owns the place is very warm and welcoming (also not here the majority of the time, which is awesome for what its worth). The condo is on the 13th floor and overlooks the plaza and a good portion of the entire city. There are mountains in the distance and they have snow remaining from the prior winter, so its an amazing white backdrop for photos. As for the slums, they are right behind skyscrapers of the area and at night the area just looks like a huge Christmas tree with lots of lights. Its pretty but a very sad juxtaposition. If you are in the middle of the plaza, it makes you forget that there might be poverty outside of it.

Today, since I am trying to recover from a cold (yes, still), I watched Slumdog Millionaire with the girl who takes the role of a nanny. She cooks and cleans for us, her name is Sonia. She´s a really sweet girl and I know this because she started to blush during the romantic scenes in the film, so adorable! The challenge, however, was trying to explain India in Spanish. Not only was the film in Spanish, but some of things were still in Hindi. First, I had to understand what was being said in Hindi (which I needed to refresh even though I had seen the movie) but explaining India was difficult since Bolivia is somewhat different, especially to a girl who has not stepped outside of South America and only knows her indigenious languages along with Spanish. She does not know English. It was interesting, however, how similar La Paz is to Mumbai. Sonia was pretty amazed herself by the slums and the poverty associated with it in India. Also with the corruption among the police force in both countries. I guess, developing countries are more similar than I thought.