{"id":17784,"date":"2025-07-24T00:14:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T15:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gorom.org\/2025\/07\/24\/finally-landed-in-bolivia\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T00:18:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T15:18:10","slug":"finally-landed-in-bolivia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gorom.org\/en\/2025\/07\/24\/finally-landed-in-bolivia\/","title":{"rendered":"Finally landed in Bolivia!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I arrived in La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, on a fairly hard flight that left Lima at 1:00 am and arrived early in the morning at 4:00 am.<\/p>\n\n

Even though it was early in the morning, my host family picked me up at the airport and warmly welcomed me \ud83e\udd79.<\/p>\n\n

We will take a good rest on this day, and the next day we will attend a ceremony for the high school daughter of the host family who is taking care of us.<\/p>\n\n

TOMA DE NOMBRE<\/h2>\n
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I had the opportunity to participate in the “PROMO 2025 TOMA DE NOMBRE” ceremony of my host family’s high school daughter.<\/p>\n\n

In Bolivian high schools, the academic year in which students graduate is called “promo” (PROMO).<\/p>\n\n

And a special ceremony held before graduation is the “Toma de Nombre”. This is an event where everyone celebrates together by choosing a name that is unique to their generation.<\/p>\n\n

This year’s PROMO 2025 is a little more special.<\/p>\n\n

This year is the 200th anniversary of Bolivia’s independence (Bicentenario), so many schools have chosen the name “Promo Bicentenario” \u2728(see the bottom of the picture).<\/p>\n

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Unlike the solemn atmosphere of ceremonies held in Japan, the students, teachers, and parents all had a great time.<\/p>\n

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The photo above shows a host family giving a speech.<\/p>\n\n

Although we had only just met, I felt very proud that someone I knew had been chosen to give a speech!<\/p>\n\n

Whenever a badge celebrating graduation was given to each graduate, the hall was filled with applause and cheers. It was a very interesting ceremony that I have never seen in Japan, where teachers also received badges and students from other schools came to celebrate with bouquets of flowers. \u263a\ufe0f<\/p>\n\n

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Japanese Souvenirs<\/h2>\n\n

In the evening, we gave our host families the Japanese souvenirs we had brought!<\/p>\n\n

They didn’t seem to have anything that we didn’t have in Bolivia, and I was very happy that they were so pleased with it. \u263a\ufe0f<\/p>\n\n

We made sushi together using the Poppin’ Cookin’ snacks that I gave them \ud83c\udf63.<\/p>\n

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He was happy that Poppin’ Cookin’ was popular on TikTok to make other food with sweets in Bolivia, and he was happy because he wanted to make it. \u263a\ufe0f<\/p>\n

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Valley of the Moon (Valle de la Luna)<\/h2>\n
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On this day, I went to my host mother’s mother’s house to help her decorate for an event in the city where she lives. I went with my host mother, her daughter, and her daughter’s friend.<\/p>\n\n

On the way there, we went to a place called the Valley of the Moon (Valle de la Luna). As the name suggests, the terrain was so spectacular that you would think you were on a different planet (the moon is a satellite, lol). It was truly a spectacular view, with terrain as far as the eye could see.<\/p>\n

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Here’s a picture I took with everyone \ud83d\udcf8.<\/p>\n

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They are really kind, warm, funny and my favorite host family. \u263a\ufe0f\u2764\ufe0f<\/p>\n\n

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When I arrived at my mom’s house, I was greeted by 5 dogs. They are all very cute and full of energy\ud83d\ude0d.<\/p>\n

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Making the decorations was harder than I expected, but it was a good time for everyone to work together.<\/p>\n

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The night of the day we returned, we all had a karaoke contest!<\/p>\n\n

They also like to listen to Japanese songs, so we sang some Ghibli songs together \ud83c\udfa4\ud83c\udfb6.<\/p>\n\n

It is nice to know that there are people who like Japanese things even in remote places. \u263a\ufe0f<\/p>\n

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I arrived in La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, on a fairly hard flight that left Lima at 1:00 am and arrived early in the morning at 4:00 am. Even though it was early in the morning, my host family picked me up at the airport and warmly welcomed me \ud83e\udd79. We will take a good rest on this day, and the next day we will attend a ceremony for the high school daughter of the host family who is taking care of us. TOMA DE NOMBRE I had the opportunity to participate in the “PROMO 2025 TOMA DE NOMBRE” ceremony of my host family’s high school daughter. In Bolivian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17703,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,148,53,120],"tags":[149,150,151],"class_list":["post-17784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tomomi-latam-trip-2025-2","category-tomomi-latam-trip-2025-en","category-news-en","category-grow-en","tag-tomomi-en","tag-2025-en","tag-bolivia-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gorom.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gorom.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gorom.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gorom.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gorom.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17784"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gorom.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17798,"href":"https:\/\/gorom.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17784\/revisions\/17798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gorom.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gorom.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gorom.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gorom.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}