Long Overdue...and the family grows

In a stroke of fate that is let's say not surprising Caitlin was gifted a kitten by our ever friendly and muppet voiced landlord, Doña Sofia. Being a Canfield, she was unable to reject the offer. We now have in our room with a view an adorable and incredibly spunky baby boy by the name of Salvador. Or Sal, if you please. Or Simba. He's cute and acts pretty much like you'd expect a month old kitten to behave. Plays like hell. Sleeps. Repeat.
He may look cute but there is deep imbedded lion blood in this creature. He's an athletic freak (moreso by the day) eats more than Caitlin and I combined and is hardly bigger than my hand. His high pitched and somewhat demanding meow is unendingly adorable except when it happens in a pleading attempt at play at 4 in the morning. Otherwise, good stuff.
If you squint you can see the Fair Maiden seated in the corner of the store in Copacabana. It doesn't give you much perspective as to how tiny the place is, but four people in the store and you can tell what everyone else had for lunch. There's Lonely Planets, music, random books in at least 9 languages, compasses, ponchos, backpacks and much more. I don't really know what to say after that.
The "Pay Coo Coo" or Miss Primitiva Quispe Quispe and Caitlin. Primi is first cousins with Yoda.

Internet

So,
The internets aren't working so hot right now. I've got a glut of other pictures I'd like to put up, but for whatever reason it ain't happening today. Instead I'll tell write a little on the racism that plagues Copa.

This town is a very closed off and strange place, where anything less than 5 generations here makes you a foreigner. So under these pretenses the locals stir up a large pot of xenophobia and racism they hurl towards anyone not specifically from Copa. That includes all other Bolivians as well.

They make up vicious rumors and sexually laced stories about the expat population, painting them as lurid drug addicts who do nothing but indulge in indecency. Which couldn't be further from the truth. Most of the foreigners who stay here for an extended period are friendly, helpful and goofy, three words I would never use to describe the local Aymara.

Recently, there was a march, after two local boys were caught stealing license plates, blaming and protesting foreign businesses for the teenaged troublemakers. People streamed the streets chanting ¨Death to Foreigners¨all in response to their own problems. Drunkenesss, alcoholism and abuse are massive problems amongst locals here yet they point the fingers squarely on the dreaded Argentines minding their own business.

Just the other day Caitilin and I repeatedly (twice) went to one woman's stand trying to buy some rice for dinner. She refused to acknowledge us, turned her back and then finally, after we persisted, said the rice was not for sale. We mentioned that she owned and store and it seemed inherently counterintuitive not to want to sell your wares, but alas. Scorn and hatred like this are far too common here. It's discouraging in so far as Caitlin and I were both very excited to involve ourselves heavily in the community, learn aymara, teach, work at the hospital, but with such an icy reception there is no desire to give back.

It does not taint our time here, however. The people who are kind and exceptionally kind and we have a great job and house to bide the time. The surroundings are certainly condusive to creativity and bettering our spanish is a joy. Not to mention the trips and visitors we have to look forward to in the coming months. If anything the divide just furthers the juicy intrigue that lays low over this town like one of the few clouds that hover over the lake.

We have a house

This is the view from the window of our new house! From our bedroom no less. Caitlin and I, after much heartache and deepset racism, found a place to live. It's about a ten minute walk out of town. We pay 40 dollars a month (shared) and live with an Argentine expat named Luciano (Lucho). He's incredibly kind and friendly and has pretty sweet dreads. After loads of people showing us houses with no electricity, no bathroom, broken floors (which they expected us to pay to get fixed!) we stumbled across Lucho's place. Apart from not having a fridge it's a dream come true. If we ever live anywhere with a view like this again, well then we will be doing something right. Not to mention the sunsets....
The living room. Complete with sparse hippie decor and cement floors. But we just made a two day trip to La Paz (running up the massive hillsides) and bought everything we could possibly want to turn the house into our home. With apologies to Luther Vandross. We are done sleeping on the matress made of dried reeds (which the local woman refused to show caitlin unless she promised she was buying the matress and paid first...I promise to post about the out of control xenophobia and racism asap.
Another shot of the view. There's a garden, it's massive, and a three legged dog named Rengo (Limp) just to make Caitlin feel completely at ease. We really couldn't have been luckier. Actually when we first got to town, some three months ago, we went for a walk and fantasized about this exact house, saying if we could choose any place in town that would be where we want to live. Low and behold, 90 days later and we're cooking stir fry in the kitchen.
The spartan exterior. All building is done here in either adobe or cement. Just pray there are no big earthquakes.
The other day we went to Primi, our co-employee's house in Yampupata (a small small town further down the lake about an hour away from Copa) for a campo cookout. This picture show's the group. On the left is Dave, owner and founder of The Spitting LLama, next to him is Primi in her finest hat. Romy is standing above Primi's son Brandon. Innocencia, Primi's mother, is glaring angrily at the camera and Caitlin is looking marvelous on the far right.