Potosi/Sucre

My latest excursion! Kind of like two sides of the same coin - both are full of history, but with different lasting effects. I only had about a day and a half in each city, which was kind of disappointing, but here's what happened.

Potosi - the highest city in the world! (I don't know by what measures this is true, but someone made some system and Potosi came out on top. It's like 14,000 feet high, so, you know, that's a lot.) This city has a lot of history - it was at one point the 2nd largest city in the world (1600s), and, at that time, it supplied Europe with pretty much all of its wealth in terms of silver from its mines (something like 16,000,000 kilos of pure silver came from this city over the course of 50-100 years). This is probably the most heartbreakingly beautiful city I have ever had the chance to see or hear about. It is rich with beautiful architecture, but riddled with economic strife - Europe and the U.S. squeezed its silver and tin mines for all they were worth, leaving nothing to the people who live there now. I got the chance to visit the mines, which are still active, actually - but that story is a little long for this post.

Another thing I did while I was there was visit a school created for the children of the miners (who might not be able to send their children to school otherwise). little. children. are. so. ADORABLE! It was a lot of fun getting to hang out with them, and I hope that if I have some time free later in the semester I can go back and visit the school.

Sucre - like Potosi, this city is rich with architecture from the 16-1700s. Unlike Potosi, this city is rich in money. It attracts a lot of European tourists due to its clean-cut beauty and museums, and is also sometimes called the "intellectual center" of Bolivia, since it has the oldest university in Bolivia (and the supreme court). We got to visit an indigenous music group there called Los Masis - they tour around the world playing their music, and have also founded a school for children to teach indigenous music. I didn't really get the opportunity to do much else there besides visit some museums, due to lack of time.

It would have been nice to spend more time in each of these cities to learn some more about them, but I guess the program wants us to do concrete schoolwork too? I dunno.