¡Feliz Diesiocho desde Perú!

I am currently sitting in a local coffee shop in Lima, Peru.  Yesterday we flew here just as a precaution to what is happening in Bolivia and its current tiff with the U.S.    There was a march of 8,000 people with the intent of burning the American embassy, but it police controlled the situation and it was unsuccessful.  There were also a couple protests that attacked local media buildings in La Paz.  For the most part these attacks are isolated to the locations of the building, on the day of these marches I went out to lunch and didn't even realize they were going on a few blocks away (well aside from the booms, but those sound everyday). Yet since things are a tad unstable it was decided that the Americans from the office should watch things unfold in Bolivia from the outside.

For now we are planing on returning to La Paz on Saturday. Hopefully things will have calmed down.  As for long-term, the country will continue to face challenges (including the passage of the new constitution) that are quite unpredictable and might mean another trip to a calmer neighbor.  I am fine, safe and learning a lot. Lima is way nicer than I had thought, very clean, lots of western and Chilean things and pretty much nothing like La Paz.