Oh my....

Well....wow, what a day out in the country. We visited the town of Tarata (after a harrowing bus ride) and enjoyed a wonderful concert in a beautiful church, and if I could think of how to spell everything right now I´d give you all the right names and everything...but I can´t. So I will later. We even had our first third world bathroom experience. Dr. Veltze said she was so proud of us, because we handled it gracefully, and didn´t complain - I mean, you gotta do what you gotta do. The town had bathrooms, but no water. We aren´t clear on what the situation was, but something wasn´t working properly so there was no running water - therefore no flushing. I´ll let you imagine the rest...THEN we went to a special lunch, which had been prepared for us and all of the musicians that were visiting Tarata. But, when you´ve been told nonstop "Don´t drink the water...don´t eat vegetables that haven´t been peeled...only eat in resaturants...don´t eat this, don´t eat that.." - eating some "native dish" out of a pot, way out in the country was rather disconcerting. I gotta tell you in all honesty, some of us were a little freaked out, I´ll be the first to say myself included. BUT we tried to the food, and it was very good. I had a kind of stew that was like one half creamed corn (well, that´s what I thought it was, but Dr. Veltze told us it was wheat...but I feel better thinking creamed corn) and the other part of it was potatoes and chicken in this lightly spicy red sauce - but both things were ladled into the same bowl. It was a very pretty dish. Oh, I had a fried banana too, I´d never had one of those.
So, after an adventurous morning, we are off on yet another excursion - time to get in some shoppin!

Talk to you later!
Nicki