Okay, here we are.  We got up at 3:30 a.m. (at the MTC) on Friday, March 15th to get ready for an 8:15 flight out of Salt Lake City.  By the time we got to Cochabamba on Saturday, March 16th, we had been traveling about 39 hours and by the time we got to bed that night, we had been up 42 hours with hardly any sleep (maybe 2 hours on the night flight from Miami to La Paz.)  Thank goodness that trip is OVER and I don't have to think about it again for 18 months!

Here are a couple of shots from the plane on the last stage of our journey (from Santa Cruz, Bolivia - which is lower and - at this time of year - hotter than here - to Cochabamba).  You can see, I hope, how rugged the Andes are, and they are 12,000 feet and higher - but it's literally "high and dry".  This is the rainy season and look how brown the hills are.  The fourth picture is our best shot of the city as we came in for a landing.

We were thrilled to learn that Cochabamba has its own Christus like the one that is so famous in Rio de Janeiro.  We've been told this one is even bigger.  This is just a shot I took from the car as we were driving through Cochabamba to the temple.  Sorry it's so blurry.  One of our first P-day trips will be to taxi and/or climb up there and get some really good shots.

The airport is on the south side of Cochabamba; the temple is on the north, up in the foothills.  The area is called "Queru Queru Alto" (because there is a Queru Queru that is further down in the city.)  The temple grounds cover six acres.  We live in a 3-story (4, if you count the basement) building called in Spanish el hospedaje (literally, "the lodging".)  It is very large.  About 1/3 of the 2nd and 3rd floors are apartments for us temple missionaries.  The other 2/3 of all three floors are lodgings for the people who come here to the temple from all over Bolivia and parts of Peru, Argentina and Chile. I think someone here told me they can sleep 200+ people in those lodgings.  They also have BIG shower/bathrooms and a huge kitchen/dining room with two large cooking areas.  It is actually closer and cheaper for the people in southeastern Peru, northeastern Chile, and northwestern Argentina to travel here to this temple than to any temple in their own countries, although each country has at least one of its own and sometimes more. It appears Bolivia is the least expensive country in South America for travel costs, food, etc.

Anyway, we missionaries have our own big laundry room (on our floor) - 4 washers and 4 dryers - and each couple has a nice 1-bedroom apartment (8 to a floor).  Ours is on the north side of the building (#307) and we have a gorgeous view out our living room and bedroom windows because we are looking straight up the hill at the temple.  Here are some pictures I took Saturday afternoon and evening from our living room window.  Unfortunately, I can't open the windows wide enough to get any bigger shot.

The temple grounds are on a hill, as I think I said. This view above is from the third floor of the hospedaje and I think you can see that the temple is quite a bit higher than we are.  Can you see the flights of steps leading up to it?  When we leave the hospedaje to go up to the temple, we come out some beautiful big double doors on the basement level and there are 7 short flights of stairs to climb to the front door of the temple itself.  This afternoon I went down and took some pictures from that vantage point, which is more of a "straight-on" view.  The first one is from the basement level, right outside the double doors.  You can see how much higher the temple is - and I realize you can't see much of it - but I wanted to get the Bolivian flag flying by the hospedaje.

I went up the first two short flights of stairs and took the next two pictures.  The second one is to give you a wider-angle view of the temple grounds, which are absolutely beautiful.  Keeping up the grounds (with all the trees and flowers AND those in the median in the street beside the temple, which the Church also maintains) gives several church members full-time employment. In fact, it's probably one of the better jobs around here.

 

The only problem is that you can hardly see the Angel Moroni from this far away, but oh well . . . we can't have everything (at least not while I'm taking the pictures.) 

Now that we've had a couple nights' sleep, we are feeling slightly (but only slightly) less overwhelmed.  It simply takes time to get used to such big changes in one's life, and of course I want to be fully adjusted and competent immediately.  By the time I post next week, I hope my nerves (and my stomach) will have settled down and we'll both be almost back to normal.  In the meantime, this beautiful view does much to comfort and strengthen us.