First day, First Impressions

We left Baltimore on a Wednesday at about 3:00 PM and arrived in La Paz at 5:00 AM the next morning. It couldn't have gone more smoothly. The kids slept almost the whole time on both legs of the flight. I opted to watch a movie I had already seen and didn't get to bed until around 2:30 so I was a little tired when we landed. We were met at the airport by several people who helped us get through customs quickly and easily. We jumped into a shuttle from the Embassy that even had seat belts. I didn't know what a luxury that was down here at the time. I got a little taste of how they drive down here, but it was quite early so not too many were out. The airport is pretty much at the highest part of the city. This is also the poorest area. So things were looking pretty third world on the drive to our house. It did start to improve by the time we were in our neighborhood though.

We took a tour of our house. It looked pretty much like the pictures we had gotten, but the layout was a little different than I had imagined. We were happy to see we had 4 bedrooms since we couldn't tell by the pictures if there were 3 or 4. So come on down everyone. We've got room. Anyway, its pretty and we were happy with it. It was cold though and we were all beat so we climbed into our warm beds...or couch (for Liv) and slept the morning away.

That afternoon we headed out on a little walk around our neighborhood. The air was thin and we were doing a lot of huffing and puffing...(which has improved a little, but not much.) Right at the end of our block is a colorful playground. We stopped there and played for a bit.

Mostly we just checked out the neighborhood & took in all of the beautiful mountains that surround us.

I was amused by the broken bottles that are cemented into the tops of peoples gates around their houses...its pretty smart really, I'd feel safe.

This picture below is just a block up from our house. I love these mountains right at the end of our street!

Here is pretty much the view from our bedroom window. Its gorgeous! It always makes me happy.