Thanksgiving Day in the US

I went to a rural development conference today at a fancy hotel/conference center in Quillacollo, a town just outside Cochabamba. At first I was a little bitter and sickened by the expensive private vehicles with one passenger each pulling into the conference center, and the obvious luxury of the hotel. But once I got to the room our conference was in, I found a room full of indigenous farming folk, speaking Quechua and chewing coca. It smelled like sweat, BO and coca breath. These are my kind of people.
A lot of the conference was in Quechua, which I do not understand, yet. But I felt lucky to be there, definitely the only English speaker and only foreigner. The other attendees were all local government and community leaders, peppered with other NGO workers. I hopefully will get to go to another one of these after working in the field and learning some Quechua.
Lunch was awesome. I was a little timid about loading my plate, but afterward I noticed that everyone piled their plates until they formed a half-sphere mound of food. The salads were left mysteriously untouched. Not a salad eating group. I don't suppose laboring farmers anywhere eat much salad.
While I was at the conference, I had to figure out how to get my official criminal record faxed from the US to the Bolivian Archbishop's office to keep the ball rolling with my visa situation. My parents helped out with the faxing, but then I had to get it translated to English and notarized so the Bolivian government would accept it. For this reason I had to leave early and go to the Archbishop's office. When I got there, the secretary said that I must have very bad luck, because she left the keys to the fax office in her other pants. I asked if there was any other way into the office and she said there were keys in the Archbishop's personal office and the window was open. So I climbed out the window of another office, walked along the edge of the roof as it bent and creaked under my weight and climbed in the Archbishop's window. The keys were there, but there were none that opened the office. Translation will happen tomorrow. Hopefully.

I am now on the patio of Café Yerba Buena, where I will be working tomorrow night. I took this picture before anyone got here, but now the tables are pretty full of German volunteers, English teachers and Bolivian craft vendors. Spanish hip hop is playing.
It's way past bed time. I'll probably pay for a cab at this point.