Bursting the Bubble in Bolivia
Anna reminisces about days spent chatting with watchmakers and scooting round fuel blockades on her year abroad.
Geographically challenging and visually stunning, Bolivia’s de facto capital, La Paz, is not a run-of-the-mill kind of place. And so, as I prepared to fly more than 6,000 miles over the Atlantic Ocean to settle in a city sitting over 6,000m above sea level, about to spend the next year of my life in a country vastly different from my own, I knew I was not in for a run-of-the-mill kind of year.
Over 12 months later, I find myself back in Cambridge as a fourth-year MML student, anxiously preparing myself for another academic year. I hope to embark on my final year with a changed perspective, a new attitude and a relaxed mentality, all learnt from spending valuable time outside of ‘the bubble’.
La Paz has been a kind home to me this last year; a complex site of rewarding relationships, breathtaking landscapes and unlimited discovery. However, the cityspaces can be tricky to traverse. There’s the urban mess of people, the vehicular jostling of traffic, and the inherent sense that each passer-by has somewhere to be, something to do, or somebody to meet. The task of becoming familiar with such a place seemed arduous, unapproachable, and, quite frankly, hard work.
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