Each year during spring break I find myself in the airport waiting to get on one of many flights to Bolivia, my motherland.
Every spring break since the 7th grade my parents have taken advantage of the week off to visit my cousins, aunts, uncles and family friends. When we arrive we stay where my parents grew up, in the campos near Tarata, a small town in the Cochabamba city area.
With an obvious different environment and ambience from Virginia, one can typically see hills, fields of fruits, street dogs, local buses called trufis and animals like donkeys tied down to a post. In the house I live in, the land is shared with my relatives, around the houses there is an area where my grandma tends animals and plants.
On a typical day I enjoy some Lemon Beebrush tea, called cedron tea, with salad, eggs and bread, clean clothes by hand, take care of younger cousins, tend to the animals, enjoy tuna known as Eastern Prickly Pear depending on the season and go to the market to buy items like vegetables and detergent.
Depending on the day we’ll take my grandma to the Cochabamba market, where she sells her animals, fruit or maize.
My favorite part would have to be going to the plaza at night with my father. At night, the delicious street food can be smelled through Tarata from salchipapas to anticuchos to mocochinchi from older women and families selling.
Going to Bolivia constantly every spring break is always a new experience and a time I take to reflect on my life as a whole when I am close with my family.
