Schmorgusboard #1

By my books, random is good. Enjoy!

This is the "coat of arms" of Bolivia. The nine stars represent the nine provinces... And my personal favorite? The fact that it doesn't just say BOLIVIA - it says "BOLIVIA." (the period is priceless).

This here is a button shop. A shop full of buttons. There are big buttons, small buttons, colorful buttons, round buttons, square buttons, hippo buttons, clown buttons - pretty much any type of button you can think of. Thanks to this discovery, I have now added "learn to sew" on my List of things to eventually do.

This is the view of La Paz as seen from El Alto, and more specifically, the entrance of the Feria del 16 de Julio, which I visited with Clodimir 10 days ago. The market takes place every Thursday and Sunday, and stretches farther than you can possibly imagine! (One friend walked straight for an hour and didn't see the edge of the market, so he turned back for fear of getting lost). You can find pretty much anything here (cars, engine parts, tires, shoes, clothes, good-quality $1 DVDs, pets, yadda yadda yadda), and at incredible prices. Yes, most of it is either second hand stolen, but that's definitely beside the point.

Here is my cousin Daniela at her machine, at the Bingo place. The atmosphere is a little heavy, but not as yucky as casinos, and playing Bingo once in a while is actually fun (no worries, not a chance in hell I'd get addicted). My cousin goes probably once a week on average, loads up the card (you don't play with change - THAT would be illegal! haha) with Bs.20 and plays until she has either lost everything (the whole $2.50) or has made over Bs.10, in which case she cashes in the Bs.10 and goes back to play the original Bs.20 again.