Transitions have been occupying my mind lately. In Art and in Life. I tend to like transitions. Moving has always felt more like a big adventure rather than a burden, an opportunity to reinvent and redefine oneself. On the other hand, I sometimes have trouble letting go. Relationships are important to me and I tend to fight for them even when it might be prudent to move on.  I am not currently moving my physical house, but shifting my life around a bit to accommodate a bigger Art Life.

Transitions in Life and in Art require a view of the bigger picture. I have had the experience, when a decision has been made to move a long distance, of the place I am leaving shrinking. It feels like I am suddenly looking at life in this old place through the wrong end of a telescope, a feeling of floating above, observing and understanding. This sort of view is required for successful transitions in artwork as well.

I recently completed a mosaiced plate, persnickety stuff, small objects placed with tweezers. After grouting, when I pulled back and looked I did not like the transition between the black, sparkly grout and the slick, black surrounding edge of plate. So I experimented with different ways to soften or sharpen this edge. I finally inserted a fringe of tiny silver pebbles that defined the edge nicely, then went back in with a circle of tiny, black seed beads around the silver to tie the areas back together just a touch. Managing transitions requires flexibility and can be a touchy thing. 
 

A drawing of the model anticipating doing some wire work.

Working with black ink and white out in a sketchbook I share with my artist/friend Keiko.

Name that body part. These are gestural, wire-sculpture/drawings.

And a wire torso.

I am enjoying working with wire. Though, this week I accidentally left most of my tools at home so I worked in a scale that would accommodate my fingers. Trying to let the wire and the drawn lines inform each other.

A nice accumulation of bits at Rhodes.

PS I am aware of the censure of one of my photos. I could fix it, but am leaving as a symbol of something (god knows what)

I love it when materials and projects are versatile enough to conform to individual variations of style. Susan took a geometric, linear approach to the work. Beverly’s approach was flowing and organic. Margaret took advantage of a circular motif that she repeated in various ways. Janet’s work was especially whimsical and Laurie’s piece felt classic, strong and calm. And everyone was successful and very last mosaic turned out beautifully! It is exciting to watch students rub the messy grout all over the piece then see the magic happen as they sponge it off! I am inspired by their success and can not wait to teach again.

Beverly playing with materials and working out her design.

 Laurie transferring tiles to her mosaic.

Janet applying grout.

Margaret making magic.

Susan's piece in process.

Janet and Laurie with finished mosaics.

Susan doing a final touch up. This piece will be available at the Brookes Museum art auction in a few months!

Beverly's piece. The right side is grouted the left is not. Under the blue tape is a round mirror.

Proud Margaret with her finished mosaic.

I am thinking about doing a mosaic with Barbie hair.

There is a Bolivia artist named Andres Bedoya who has made art with actual living hair. He gathered a bunch of Cholitas (native indigenous women from Bolivia) with very long, thick, dark, wavy hair. He built a platform and laid the women out on these sort of shelves, so the hair hung down and photographed them.

http://ohnosir.blogspot.com/2010/08/ultra-madre.html (you gotta cut and paste, blog won't let me link tonight)

So could I do a shallow Americanized version of this?

Maybe I can I make pictures with the hair? It comes in every conceivable color.

Right now on my art table there is a Barbie head with black hair surrounded by plastic cookies in a little blue Chinese bowl. Mmmm? Or Hmmm?

Basically a mosaic needs a base and a repeated something - traditionally tile – sometimes held together by mortar or grout. It is pretty easy to think about using objects rather than tile. Plastic toys are an updated option I often employ. I usually use wood or Hardibacker board as a base but have also used burnt logs or plates. But could I make a mosaic without a base? Or could just a base be a mosaic under any circumstances? How about just a base and grout? Maybe I could make a mosaic with things on a base, grout it, then remove the things. A mosaic of empty holes?

There are plenty of mosaics that aren’t grouted like these stones wedged together in a pretty pattern that folks have been walking on for eons in Istanbul.

In this piece I used a base (a plate), grout (sparkles added) and toys (lumped and overlapping one another in a non-traditional way).

This Plate o Cookies mosaic is “grouted” using glue and seed beads - be sure to note the eye-spy aspect of other small purple objects among the beads.

Here is another mosaic on a plate (non-traditional base), using black toys (non-traditional somethings), grouted with googly eyes.

And here is a piece in progress.

It is not grouted yet. I don’t think I will use traditional grout or if I do I might add pigment to make it a bright color or sparkles. I have tried tiny shells but it they make it too busy. I have some clear seed beads and some silver seed beads to try as well. It is still a mosaic if I choose not to grout it? Lots to think about.

http://blog.art21.org/2010/12/17/gastro-vision-the-best-in-food-art-2010/

Merry Christmas everyone!

 
Some of my work in the studio


We arrived in Bolivia only about 3 hours late as something fell off the airplane in Miami and we had to go back to the gate to fix it. La Paz is very beautiful and wild. Mountains, native women dressed in beautiful scarves and bowler hats, narrow roads, crazy drivers, guys peeing on the side of the road. The altitude has only caused small headaches so far. We walked around town and visited galleries and ate fresh, cinnamon ice cream. Keiko and Suzy’s home is lovely. To get there we drove south of La Paz and turned off onto a cobblestone road, drove among the cerros (hills) into what looks like a slowly melting landscape. The rocks are beige and pink striped and very lunar. We turned left, drove along a traditional wall of mud brick topped with grass sticking out sideways. The house and studio, built of warmly stained wood, are on the left. One day 15 year old Matisse took us on a climbing tour of the neighborhood. We found a board that we used to walk across a crevice that Rosy and I were too chicken to jump and climbed up through a short cave into a little striated alcove. We saw the houses in the cozy valley below all bleached by the setting sun.

Keiko and Suzy's house

We went to party at Sergio and Trish’s, up hill from Keiko and Suzy’s. It was a celebration of longest day of the year. Before the party, we ran around town to buy marshmellows and hotdogs, beer and estrellitas (sparklers). The hotdogs came in a kit, a big yellow plastic bag labeled “Ganesha” with Indian images all over it. It contained a cardboard Indian temple to assemble, a cd with directions and a little metal Genesha character with a tiny metal ax, all aimed at “wishing.” We took the whole next morning to assemble it. Quite a master piece, though the turrets would not stand up straight.

Rosy with finished Ganesha temple

Keiko and Rosy and I went to the Common Market, vendors squished onto sidewalks and down alley-like ways. Tables and tables of sunglasses, a pile of silk neckties, bags of colorful snacks, Coke, Fanta, tubes of Pringles, tissues, batteries. We bought Rosy a pair of bright green gloves as it grew late and colder. We sat on a long, narrow, white bench and drank api, a warm, cream and purple striped, fermented corn drink and ate a puffed pastry. The old woman/proprietor lectured us on how good api is for your health.

Today was a slower day after many full ones. We went to the military airport to pick up Matisse after a short trip with some school friends to a tropical area called Rurrenbaque. The airports, both public and military, are located on the Antiplano, in the city of El Alto, the highest residential area. It sits on the edge of the bowl shape indentation that is La Paz. We traveled at sunset and it was very beautiful to watch the lights come on in the crowded city and twinkle up into the crevices of the mountain. On the way back from the airport Rosy and I had a contest: who could count the most Cholitas on their side of the car. She won with 34. Cholitas are the native women (the men are Cholitos) who still dress in the beautiful, old fashion way, with layers of colorful skirts, bright knitted leggings, multiple raps all topped off with a too small bowler hat. I learned to love and respect Bolivia’s native population. They are often the workers and are the backbone of the country. The women seem especially diverse and capable. I saw Cholitas cooking, cleaning, raising other people’s children, sweeping the streets at 4 am, running businesses, spinning yarn, producing incredible handicrafts. We even saw Cholita Luchadoras – professional wrestlers with long braids. These women in native dress gave the city of La Paz a special flavor. Different regions of the country had slight variations in dress that we learned to identify: a black, bowler hat vs. a white wicker hat with flowers, layered skirts above or below the knee. These women especially fascinated Rosy and we brought home three beautiful Cholita lace shawls in orange, purple and olive.

A Cholita in La Paz

The Witches Market is tall stalls in a part of town with winding, hilly streets. They are filled with local medicinal plants and other folk remedies, good luck charms and odd skins and dried animals, including every size you can imagine of llama fetuses. These are burned and the ashes are buried under new construction. Suzy says this is a must, otherwise workers will not come to work on your project.

Llama fetuses in the Witches Market of La Paz

Bewitching Suzy

 We took what Keiko called the Obligatory Trip for Gringos to Lake Titicaca. What a gorgeous place! The water is an incredibly deep blue and, according to legend, this is where the sun was born as well as the first Incan emperor. The area is known for its trucha (trout) and we ate a wonderful meal at a little restaurant on the lake. We also ate a rich, yellowy meat and vegetable soup sprinkled with greens. We rode a rickety ferry, van, passengers and all, driven by a boy of about 10, across a straight, then had a bit of car trouble so rode it right back

Rosy on a reed boat at Lake Titicaca

Liam, Mary Jo and Rosy on the ferry at Lake Titicaca 

 
Images while Traveling through the Mountians toward Cochabamba:


-Man pedaling a bike on the side of the road, shovel sticking out sideways

-Scrub-brush fields within a round of maroon hills

-Rosy looking at the landscape through her kaleidoscope

-A town with stout building, light terra cotta in color with occasional turquoise

-Stopping for a toll, two small children, wedged between the car and the tollbooth, hands begging

-Chullpas in the hills, ancient, beehive-shaped burial chambers that all face east

-A piece of wall, painted red, yellow and green standing in a field

-A tire fence

-An old adobe church with a thick bell tower and wall and a wooden slat gate

-A Cholita leading sheep along a trickling river

-Reaching 4496 meters

-"Shampoo Samay" - strange graffiti at the highest altitude

View of a village market day from the road

Traveling with the gang

We play cards with 6 year old Liam. It is a good way to learn and communicate with our limited language skills. Our favorite game is Go Fish – in Lake Titicaca.

Keiko has great music on his ipod that we listen to while driving. 9 year old, Sean, is learning English through Rock and Roll. He knows all the artists and many of the lyrics.


We spent one day and night in Cochabamba with Suzy’s parents on our way to Santa Cruz. Suzy’s brother, Jorge, a musician, invited me to hear him jam at a bar. Jorge plays jazz saxophone. He was going to get his fill of playing more ‘classical’ (Frank Sinatra) and ‘national’ (Bolivian traditional) music. There was also a piano (upright with innards exposed), a trumpet (Arturo, student of Jorge’s) and a drum. I hung out and drank beer with Ruth, who wanted to learn English with her 9 year old grandson, but knew none yet. Ruth wore a black sweater over her shoulders with a fake fur collar and a large diamond and band on her left hand and told the encroaching men she was waiting for her boyfriend just to keep them at bay. Ruth was my adopted guardian and interpreter, though she translated the Spanish I did not understand into more Spanish. She and Carmen, the stout, aproned proprietress with a gold covered tooth, and I were the only women of about 30 patrons. Eventually Ricardo joined us, gray hair, silver, silk shirt opened down the front, revealing a gold chain. He attempted to get me drunk by repeatedly switching my glass of cinnamon flavored water with my beer.  “Mono” (monkey) was a very wiry, older guy with watery eyes who claimed to have worked at the American Embassy in ’89, but who knew no English. He and Ricardo kept up an endless flow of flattery. Ruth protected my alcohol intake, lead me to el bano and watched the door. Ruth and I danced together for a couple of songs to thrill the crowds. But at the end she turned me over to Ricardo for a painfully long slow dance. Mono danced with a couple of other guys to a Hava Nagela-like song. He had on a bright red shirt, tucked into beige pants - with the fly wide open.


We are on to Santa Cruz for Keiko’s opening on July 3. We had shipped some work ahead and other pieces are wrapped in plastic and strapped to the top of the van or wedged in between the seats. There are two artists doing residencies at the gallery, Gandalf, an American born in Germany and Ishmael from Lima, Peru. They gave an interesting talk in the outdoor courtyard of the gallery, with slide presentations. It was a challenge to my Spanish, but by looking at the work I was able to make up what I could not understand.

Keiko’s show went very well. We spent a day unpacking, fussing over and hanging the work. The Kiosko gallery has low ceilings, very white walls and a cement floor. I took photos at the opening, several of a woman who wore a red and orange shirt that nearly camouflaged her into one of the paintings. Afterward a large group went out to eat at an Italian restaurant. Best pickled eggplant I’ve ever eaten.

Keiko's show at Kiosko

Patron camouflaged in one of Keiko's paintings

 In Santa Cruz we saw Keiko’s parents, Georgia and Lucho. Lucho, is an architect. He designed several buildings around Santa Cruz and he designed a block of homes, one of which he and Georgia own and where they graciously allowed us to stay. Their home is lovely, open and airy and filled with art, including a sort of a retrospect of Keiko’s work thru the years. There is a pool in the backyard surrounded by potted palms and an overhanging roof making a cozy porch in the back yard. The entire back of the house is glass looking out to the yard.

Georgia and Lucho's pool

Los Tucanes

We are having a hoping time in the Chapare – a semi-jungle-like place. It is lush and green and warm. Rosy found a tree growing star fruits and there are huge banana trees, shedding majestic leaves and coconut palms. We went into the little town in the evening. It was just one dirt road with rows of buildings on either side. Decorations were strung across the road, colored paper stars. We bought sandals for Sean and Liam. As we looked in the little stores we could hear guitar music and song from a small, casual group at restaurant down the street. We also bought a green beach ball. This little ball offered us loads of entertainment over the next few days. We played volleyball on a grass court. I liked how the lines were marked, with a strip of unmowed grass. We also played keep-it-up in the pool. I think our record of hits without losing it was 48.

The Ball

After Suzy’s family arrived, we went to visit a really interesting monkey refuge at Macha Parque in Gobierno Municipal de Villa Tunari. The monkeys are aggressive and will take anything you have in your pockets. This also made me afraid to take my camera, which, really, I regretted later. The monkeys were incredibly cute, one sat on Rosy’s shoulder and another tried to climb down my shirt. We talked with a North American named Jasper who was volunteering there. He knew almost no Spanish, and was paying only $150 for 15 days food and lodging at the refuge. He had interesting tales to tell about working with the monkeys, how he had been bitten several times while trying to be accepted by the wildest group. Rosy was very interested in doing this someday when she is older. Jasper advised us to try to do it some other month than July as they tended to have plenty of volunteers then and needed them other times of the year. Sounded like a perfect set up for an adventurous homeschooler. Unfortunately it started to rain while we were there, which makes the trails very slick, so they kicked us out before Rosy had had her fill.

Rosy in the Chapare

Our next adventure was to a place called “The Jungle.” This place was pretty much outside my comfort zone but was crazy entertainment. It is a park, out in all the green, with monkeys and birds flitting around, where someone has built a whole load of rickety towers out of worn wood and bent nails. Basically, you climb up the towers, a guide straps you into a wooden swing and you swing out over the jungle. The farther you go back into the park the higher the swings get. The highest one looked about 2 or 3 stories. Keiko and Uncle Joe braved that one. Most of the cousins got through the second highest.

In "The Jungle"

Back to Cochabamba

We returned to Suzy’s parents, Jorge and Nancy’s, for a few days in Cochabamba. They live in a wonderful, opulent house with big rooms and a sunroom on the back with a hammock and a table always piled high with fresh oranges from their orchards. Huge palm trees surround the house.

Palms outside Nancy and Jorge's

Suzy’s brother, Jorge lives and writes music out back. Suzy’s brother Joe and his family live around the corner in another incredible house that they designed and built and that is full of Maru’s lovely tile work.  Suzy’s family owns and operates the beautiful Aranjuez Hotel in Cochabamba. They served wonderful ginger cookies from Maru’s recipe:

Maria Eugenia’s Ginger Cookies:

2 ¼ c Flour (whole wheat)
½ c Brown Sugar
½ c Butter (soft)
½ c Dark Molasses
1 Egg
1 ½ t Cinnamon
1 t Cloves
1 ½ t Baking Powder
1 t Ginger
½ t Nutmeg
½ t Salt

350 degrees for 8 minutes

Cousins Sean, Matisse, Liam, Camila and Margarita at the pool at Hotel Aranjuez

Pizza night with Jorge

So far we have been under the generous tutelage of my friend Keiko and his family and he and Suzy's wonderful extended family. We have stayed in many beautiful homes and eaten many wonderful meals: paella, trout prepared in every way, native potato dishes, pork, chicken, fried potatoes, saltenias and even hamburguesas. We have traveled through mountains and jungle. For the next leg, beginning tomorrow, Rosy and I will dive into the deep water on a trip by ourselves. We are traveling to the Salar de Uyuni (really, google it, it is an incredible place) which is the biggest salt flat in the world and the place that Rosy is looking forward to the most. Today Suzy, her mother, Nancy, and I shopped the open-air markets of Cochabamba for extra warm clothes as the Salar is very cold at night. I purchased a wonderful alpaca poncho and a $7 pair of red high tops. This trip will involve a bus ride on a big double decker through the mountains and a train from Oruro. Then we will search for a tour company for the Salar. Finally, we will catch a train back to La Paz. In the mean time Keiko will drive his family back to La Paz from Cochabama and will meet us there on Tuesday. Then I think we must finish up our shopping in the wonderful markets of La Paz. I am hoping and praying for a little more studio time to do a bit more painting. I have about 5 pieces started there now and next Friday we will venture back home.

Keiko and Matisse woke in the wee hours to deliver us to the bus station for 7am.

We crouched by a wall to wait for the bus. Rosy dosed with her head on a bag. I had a brief conversation with Cholita who crouched next to us. She was round and jolly and had fancy gold encased teeth and was heading to La Paz.

Heading off to meet adventure

In Oruro train tickets were sold out for Uyuni so we walked thru the market and had Saltenas for lunch. We found the witch’s market then returned to the bus terminal and bought bus tickets on the Azul Line. We looked in our Lonely Planet book and found an interesting museum, checked our bags at the bus station and took a taxi to tour a church and an old mine shaft. There were all kinds of crazy things in the underground tunnel:  rusted office equipment, rock samples, mining tools, “El Tio” statues (this is an effigy of the devil, who watches over the miners) complete with red lighting and offerings of Huari beer.

El Tio, guardian of the mines

Outside was an odd combination of a cross on a hill with a cement slide below. We decided to try it but neither Rosy nor I had the technique right and we both slid out of control and bruised our tail bones (mine worse). I am regretting this with an 8 hour bus ride ahead.

The dreaded slide

The 8 hour over night bus to Uyuni was surreal. We were closed in with curtains so could see very little and the road was incredibly bumpy. I can’t believe the bus did not just shake to pieces. In fact, a brother and sister from Canada that we met went on an early bus that broke an axle, so ended up on ours. This was actually a great help as they had thought ahead better than I and had a hotel scoped out for arrival at 5 am. So we went to Hotel Avenida, too. In the morning we checked out 5 or 6 tour companies and settled on a 3 day tour of the Salar where Rosy will finally get to stay at her salt hotel. We would leave in the morning, giving us plenty of time to explore the town and buy extra gloves as night is cold, cold, cold!

We waited for our 4WD Jeep at the tour line at 10am. Maarten and Yonika, from Holland, sat on the curb, Maarten playing guitar and Yonika singing sweetly. Our other travel mates, Craig and Paul, were Australian. Our driver was Mario. He spoke no English. Mario loaded the gear on top of the Jeep, wrapped a tarp around everything and held it all in place with ropes. Equipment included a portable cook-top and a large canister of fuel. Boxes of food and our small, but stuffed backpacks were loaded in back. A couple dozen eggs rode up front next to the driver. Rosy and I settled into the backseat, where we were the only ones short enough to be able to move our knees. We picked up Leah, our cook, on the way.

Our first stop, not far out of town, was the Train Graveyard, where what seemed liked miles of rusted train cars sat, slowly being buried in sand. Rosy loved this place. We climbed and explored and took photos until Mario climbed up on top of the Jeep and whistled for our return.

Rosy at the Train Graveyard

Next was the little town of Colchani, where the salt from the flats is processed. This place was swarming with tourists and had shops and market stalls. All the buildings and little “Museos” were made from blocks of salt, including tables, chairs, etc. Rosy bought a tiny llama made of salt complete with bright tufts of wool in its ears. The salt flats are said to contain as much as 10 billion tons of salt and it is replenished in the rainy season as it is dissolved from the surrounding mountains and drains to this low spot.

Items made from salt in Colchani

The Salar is amazing, salty emptiness.

Rosy in the Salar de Uyuni

Unique photo opportunity

About three hours into our journey, we came upon tragedy. Another jeep, filled with tourists had flipped and instantly killed two French women and the driver. Two others were in critical condition. Help was hours away. I heard later that another passenger died. Rosy seemed fairly oblivious to this scene, but the sadness and seriousness of it worried and stuck with me.

Next, was our stop at Incahusi Island, a raised, crescent-shaped area on the Salar that is covered with tall cacti. We ate lunch here. Leah cooked on the gas stove and served with a table cloth and china plates at an outdoor picnic table. Much of the talk at this stop and later was about the wreck, all the tourists trying to process the fact that it could have been any of us on that jeep. Rosy, who is ten, was the only person I saw on the whole tour who was under twenty years old.

Rosy and friend on Incahusi Island

Our next stop was a cave with strange, web-like rock formations and another cave that was an ancient burial site. We watched the sun set here, while Mario fiddled under the hood of the jeep.

Strange cave formations

Our tour group: Paul, Craig, Mary Jo, Yonika, Maarten and Rosy

 Our last stop for the day was at the Salt Hotel. This pleased Rosy to no end, as it was her ultimate goal to stay here. It was a round building - made of salt blocks - with salt tables in the central area and rooms with salt beds all around. Rosy and I found a tiny, little cave-like area with one salt bed that we shared. The moon was full and shone dully through part of the roof. Until bedtime we sat talking with our travel-mates and other tourists from Germany and Israel. Rosy taught our group how to make origami frogs and we had a contest to see who could jump theirs into the sugar bowl. In the dark, cold, night, from I-don’t-know-where a group of children showed up to sing, play traditional instruments and dance. A young girl and boy around age six laughed and giggled and got many of the tourists dancing.

Paul dancing with the kids at the Salt Hotel

Mario woke us incredibly early the next morning, so we could get a head start. The dark, purple sky at 5 in the morning, sparkling with stars, was like an upturned bowl, echoing the little courtyard outside the door, a low curved wall made of salt. The cold was biting.There were no lights in the hotel at this hour. I found our flashlight and Rosy and I took our little pile of things outside to the jeep. Likely, that is where Rosy lost her braided flower necklace.

We saw so much beauty that day that I was overwhelmed. We traveled out of the Salar and into the surrounding ring of mountains and volcanoes.  We saw the Arbol de Piedre, Tree Rock, that was featured in the July 2008 issue of National Geographic. In fact, we visited most of the places sited in that issue. We ended the day at Laguna Colorada, a colored lake at 4278m that was home to a flock of flamingos. The flamingos were skittish, but made a wonderful cooing noise that you could hear from quite a distance. Our tourist group all slept together in a small cold room, with cement beds piled high with blankets. This was our coldest night. Mario and Leah graced us with hot water bottles for our feet.

Rosy at Arbol de Piedre

We woke very early again the next morning. And broke down three times before the sun came up. Mario worked on the engine, but we ended up with a late start. We talked him into taking another, shorter route back that day as Craig and Paul and Rosy and I had a bus to catch to La Paz that evening. The most magical part was this third day. We started at a place with geysers shooting hundreds of feet into the air, where we warmed our hands. There were bubbling mud pots and cracked earth. From there we visited a hot springs and warmed the rest of ourselves while Leah prepared lunch. We visited a place called Cuidad de Piedre, Rock City, which was a bunch of rock formations that looked like a huge, old castle. We saw llamas, wild and tame and visited a tiny town that proudly displayed the torn off tail of an airplane.

Warming our hands in a geyser

We arrived back in Uyuni to bad news. There was a political roadblock between Uyuni and Oruro and our bus could not get through. Our Australian friends from the tour were desperate to get back to La Paz to meet a pre-booked flight to a tour of the jungle. They hired a jeep to drive another route and we tagged along. This was an extra treat as we drove across the Salar in the dark, a circle of light around our jeep, for two hours while we listened to Damien Rice sing chanting love songs from Paul’s ipod. We took a ten hour route back to La Paz that avoided the roadblock, but not the bumps. We arrived at the airport at 8 in the morning and took a taxi to a plaza across town, where Keiko picked us up. 

Truimphant return

The last two days in La Paz were a whirlwind of work in the studio, painting, and power shopping for all the necessary gifts. We played “Go Fish in Lake Titicaca” with Sean, Liam and Matisse, put on loads of temporary tattoos as a last-night activity, ate Bolivian gyros and packed.

I hated leaving and felt like I could use another whole month. Rosy was missing home. We said good-bye to Keiko very early in the morning at the airport. I wept for leaving. Sitting on the plane ready to leave, Rosy and I watched the full moon dip behind the mountains around La Paz, all pink and purple.

A good-bye view of Keiko's neighborhood