Learning Spanish Ain´t for the Faint of Heart

SUCRE - So there I was Thursday, sitting across from my Spanish instructor Esthella, confidently responding to every question. My pronunciation still needs a lot of work, but I´d been making remarkable progress. Everything was peachy during our regular four-hour session until... she brought out the irregular verbs! It was as if someone brought out a mallet and decided to play Beethoven´s Fifth Symphony on my head! I immediately accused the diablo of creating these irregular verbs to ruin my waking hours, but Esthella pointed out that if I thought this was bad, just wait until we wandered into different tenses! One mate and saltena later, I recovered, but it was quite a sobering experience. There is still much work to be done!

On Wednesday, nearly the entire city was shut down in protest of the central government. Only a few days after the violence erupted during the independence festivities here, Sucre residents decided to protest by closing their offices, restaurants, markets, Internet cafes and just about everything else. (Luckily, Meghan and I had been tipped off about the protest on Tuesday and were able to make a last-minute trip to the market for food.) It seems President Evo Morales had long ago promised Sucre new ambulances and folks are still waiting. Let´s just say the fleet Meghan and I´ve seen could use an upgrade! Sucre is a fascinating city. It is probably the most affluent in Bolivia and definitely home to the most capitalists in this left-leaning land. Yet, it lacks some of the bare essentials. One prime example, this city of 250,000 has only one working fire truck! Policemen on the streets double as firefighters, but they have little or no training on fighting fires. If a Sucre resident has a house fire, they don´t call 911 -- they knock on their neighbor´s door. And if you live out in the country, forget it.