First Impressions

The flight to Bolivia was uneventful, full of other program participants. We landed in the world's highest public airport in El Alto. The airport itself was one huge room, sectioned off into a nice little gift shop, an immigration line, 4 immigration booths, and one baggage claim belt. It also smelled like vomit. When a guy in fatigues checked my documents, he muttered "Una Rusa con documentos americanos, interesante..." (A russian with american documents, interesting) and handed them back to me. It never fails to confuse people.
We finally gathered everyone from the flight that was in the program, and were ushered into taxis. It was 7am in the morning and the fog was thick. Unfortunately, it made it difficult to see the rest of La Paz from el alto until we were halfway down the mountain. The road was just like you would imagine, we careened down the mountain in circles, making those aware of the consecutive loops terribly nauseous. The air was practically opaque, and I couldn't really decide whether it was the fog or pollution, or a thick mixture of both. The smell flip flopped back and forth between vomit, exhaust from the trucks, or burned trash, although eventually it all got mixed together that I couldn;t tell one from the other. Despite all this and the lack of sidewalks on the mountain road, there was an abundance of joggers (both male and female), all Bolivians, running both up and down the mountain. Some of these joggers were running up the mountain at an elevation at 4,000m. Incredible. I wonder why Bolivians don't run marathons more frequently. As the taxi made its way down the mountain, the brown shacks of El Alto turned into the city of La Paz itself. Whereas most of the European cities are gray and clean, La Paz is colorful and dirty. Old buses and trucks rumbled on and many yellow-colored walls were adorned with graffiti and iron bars. Luxurious inns are nestled between unpainted make-shift food stands and tall buildings, though far from soviet-style, display a similar stoicism in the exterior. In contrast, the people are beautiful. I think in Europe, our eyes are first drawn to the architectural sites, whereas here, there is nothing to distract you from people-watching. There is a huge contrast between traditional and modern. Cholitas (indigenous women who live in the city) still wear traditional dresses with bowler hats, while chatting with their younger relatives who wear jeans, converses, and brand-name t-shirts. People are the same everywhere, no matter how different they may look or how different their living conditions might be. As we drove through La Paz in the morning, people woved in and out of traffic, made small talk with other vendors around them, rushed to work, and couples flirted with each other. Noticing such similar things taking place everywhere makes the place a little less foreign, when you realize that in the end, we're all human. I think I'm going to like this city.