We're Back from Sucre and Busy Uploading Everything About Sucre Onto the Site For You!    Does our E-zine look strange in your email? Read it online here. Bella News editor Alison Donald traveled to England this month, but continues to work from all the way across the world to bring you a great new edition of our free monthly newsletter. Meanwhile, we traveled to Bolivia’s beautiful capital city – Sucre – and had a blast! More on that below. I’d also like to introduce you to U.S. Journalist David Boldt, who has agreed to write for Bella News periodically with his take on different aspects of life in Bolivia. David, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and numerous other awards, now lives in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. He has what I can only describe as an “irreverent” sense of humor, and I hope you’ll enjoy his articles as he shares his perspectives on Bolivia, in this and future issues. Read about David Boldt here. This and more, in our August E-zine!
August Editorial: Is it hard to live in Bolivia? People always ask me if I have found it hard to live in Bolivia given that I am from a "developed" country and spent all my adult life in big cities. As I have also been questioned about whether there are pizza restaurants in Bolivia (eh?), it is clear that a lot of people believe Bolivia to be a rural backwater . . . Read more… August Travel Feature: Bella and Kricket Take Sucre  We took advantage of our 2-week winter school break to travel to Bolivia’s spectacular capital city where we spent part of July gathering all the information we could to build a brand new section about Sucre on the site. We took nearly 3000 photos plus visited over a dozen restaurants, numerous hotels, and more than 20 attractions! It’s going to take us some time to upload all the information, so we invite you to take a sneak peek at what’s coming up in the video above. Feel free to embed it on your own blog, like it on Facebook, tweet it, email it or share it around. It’s all for you! Enjoy!
Readers: what are some of your favorite tourist attractions in Bolivia? Share your Bolivia travel story here. August Interview: Volunteering in Bolivia with Up Close Bolivia The following is an interview with Rachel Howard, aged 25 and from the UK and Noah Thompson, aged 20, from Australia. Rachel and Noah have both been volunteers at Valley of the Moon Children’s Centre, La Paz, Bolivia, arranged through Up Close Bolivia. Read more…
August Restaurant Review: Doppio Café Though it has only been open a few months, Doppio Café has become a firm favourite with well-coiffed Cruceños. Dress code: designer sunglasses and laptops . . . Read more…
A month or so ago I went to a “Feria” (in this context a fayre, or show) of produce from the valleys to the west of Santa Cruz. A lot of the exhibits were very similar (honeys, liquors etc.) but there was a lady in a centre stall doing a roaring trade. She was selling.…Read more…
August Forum Feature: Winter Fashions in Tropical Santa Cruz!  One annoying aspect of the few really cold days we’ve had in the last two “winters” is that, by being truly unpleasant, they have curtailed enjoyment of what normally is a brief, rather pleasant change of climate that allows the women of Santa Cruz to be body conscious in whole new ways.... August Bolivia Travel Safety Tip! Bolivia is known as a country where tourism involves a lot of outdoor activities in high mountains and valleys. Read these Bolivia travel safety tips for hikers!
August Upcoming Events, Holidays and Festivities! August is one of the most festive months in Bolivia! August 6 Bolivia gained its freedom from Spain after several centuries of occupation and celebrated by signing the Declaration of Independence on August 6th, 1825. Read more…
August Special Kids Feature: Our Bolivia Forum Just for Kids! Did you know that a great many kids and teens visit BoliviaBella each month from over 100 countries in the world? Our Bolivia for Kids section features a forum just for kids, teens, teachers and parents where they can feel safe entering their questions about Bolivia. You can also help answer them. Enter our kids forum…
August Bolivia Trivia: How many languages are spoken in Bolivia? With 36 known native cultures and thousands of people from dozens of immigrant cultures living in Bolivia, how many languages are spoken in Bolivia? It’s hard to know how many are spoken here, but Bolivia is one of the only a handful of countries in the world to boast over three official languages. Find out how many official languages Bolivia has.
August Expat Meet: Sign up to get invited!  Through our BoliviaBella Expat Services division, we offer many services that are helpful to incoming expats in Santa Cruz. One of these is a monthly Expat Meet which we organize in Santa Cruz so you can meet other foreigners (from many countries) or make new friends. This is an especially great opportunity if you’ve just moved to Bolivia and don’t yet know many people. It’s family friendly, fun and we visit a different place each month. If you’d like to be included on our secure mailing list, click here and sign up to receive invitations. Readers: I’d like to remind you that you can also visit my other website www.GoSouthExpat.com. It’s an online forum community exclusively for expatriates in South America. Be sure to enter our Reading Rooms where you’ll find hundreds of articles on making the best of your life overseas. August “Ask Bella” One of our new Bella News E-zine features is our “Ask Bella” section. We get a lot of email and questions in our forums – more than we can handle sometimes - and we can’t answer them all personally. So we’re now giving you the opportunity to ask your questions on this special page. We’ll feature the response to one Reader question in each of our monthly newsletters. Have you got a nagging question about Bolivia that you just can’t find the answer to? Click here to Ask Bella! Bella Answers our July Featured Question There is one question in our forums that has been nagging me for a long time, mostly because I haven’t been able to find the answer to it! Quite some time back, a reader wrote to ask, “Why is the airport in Trinidad, Beni called the Jorge Henrich airport?” Good question! So I set out to find out more about who Lieutenant Jorge Henrich Arauz is – and got. . . nowhere! No one I’ve contacted has been able to answer this question. He can’t be such a mystery, can he? I mean, after all, Bolivia named a whole entire airport after him. . .Does anyone out there know??? August “Ask Chef Noly”: Wacataya Wednesdays! Chef Noly visits BoliviaBella and posts Bolivian recipes and interesting articles about Bolivian culture each month on Wacataya Wednesdays. August is the month in which Santa Cruz celebrates its customs and traditions. One of the most unusual foods eaten in the department of Santa Cruz is TATÚ. Find out what tatú is!
August Featured Food Discussion Día de la Amistad (Friendship Day) is celebrated each year on July 23rd in Bolivia. One website visitor wrote in to ask “What is served on Dia de la Amistad?” Many Bolivian holidays are celebrated with a specific type of food that is traditional or customary just for that specific date, so it’s a good question. What do you eat on Friendship Day?
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We had a lot of new BELLA NEWS subscribers this month - welcome to the BoliviaBella online community. For those of you who don't yet know, "Bella" is actually an American living in Bolivia. She works as a professional translator and interpreter and also spends countless hours designing this site just for you! Find out
who is Bella really??As you can see, we've been very busy working super hard to grow and improve BoliviaBella.com and make it the number one English site on Bolivia. Parts of the site are also being translated into Spanish due to the large number of visitors we have from Spanish-speaking countries. We're always looking to improve - this site is FOR YOU so be sure to let us know what you want to see included on BoliviaBella.com - we're not on our way to NUMERO UNO for nothing - we're working very hard to get there!! Please direct your comments to webmaster "Bella". Tell Bella what you want!
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