Bolivia!
This picture shows my wife next to the board where she posted reminders for her activity last weekend. She did not see what I thought was remarkable about it.
Alice is going to go to Bolivia for 7 weeks to study Spanish at a program the Maryknolls run in Cochabamba. From the reading I could do, it seems that the Andes are the place to go if you want to learn to speak what is perceived as unaccented Spanish (apparently it’s the Omaha of the Spanish-speaking world). I wish it were a safer place, but it’s hard to think of where she should go on those criteria. I’ve done enough similar things on every criterion that I have no leg to stand on in arguing that she ought not to go. She’s studied and used Spanish off and on in various jobs, including when she was a prison doctor and a few trips with a group from our parish in Illinois to El Salvador. She thinks this will push her over the top to fluency, and I’m sure that that’s true, both because she is able to use Spanish at the clinic where she’s volunteering now and because I believe that much of that last step to fluency involves believing you can do it. Still, going to places where taking typhoid vaccine is part of your trip preparations seems a bit dicey.