El Cumbre de ALBA and Hugo Chavez

This past weekend was rather exciting for us!! Presidents from different Latin American countries came to have the annual Cumbre de ALBA, Alianza Bolivariana para los pueblos de Nuestra America, here in Cochabamba. It was basically a socialist gathering with a lot of blah blah and not a lot of doing anything, but I do have to admit it was rather interesting :) The main topic on the agenda was about developing a common monetary unit for all of Latin America, similar to the euro, in order to unite the Latin American economies and hopefully stabilize them. This is very unlikely to happen.....hence all the blah blah.

I'm going to have to brag for big about a little incident that occured saturday afternoon.

All of the Presidents that were here stayed at el Hotel Cochabamba, which is about five blocks down from my house, so Alanna and I made our way down to do a little President stalking. Hugo Chavez comes out, makes his way to his car, decides to have a little convo with a random lady in the crowd and then when he's about to get into his car he turns to me and says, "Where are you from?". I froze. So he repeats, "You, white woman, where are you from?". Needless to say I was in a bit of shock and also scared to say I was from the U.S. for fear of being tackled by Evo and Chavez supporters. After being yelled at by my friends to answer the man I said I was from the United States and he said, "Viva Los Estados Unidos!" (Hahaha, joke right??) Well thats what I thought so I didn't really respond and then he said, "you are my sister" and yet again I did not respond (you would think I had turned into a mummy). After that he got into his car and made his way down to the stadium to later call Americans gorillas because we are not able to think (really bad comparison). So it was more of a one sided conversation but in spite of that I was pretty excited about talking to one of the most famous anti-American, socialist presidents of our time. It definitely added to my experience in Bolivia and I owe it all to my pasty white skin and incredibly blonde hair :D