Geographically challenging and visually stunning, Bolivia’s de facto capital, La Paz, is not a run-of-the-mill kind of place. And so, as I prepared to fly more than 6,000 miles over the Atlantic Ocean to settle in a city sitting over 6,000m above sea level, about to spend the next year of my life in a country vastly different from my own, I knew I was not in for a run-of-the-mill kind of year.

Over 12 months later, I find myself back in Cambridge as a fourth-year MML student, anxiously preparing myself for another academic year. I hope to embark on my final year with a changed perspective, a new attitude and a relaxed mentality, all learnt from spending valuable time outside of ‘the bubble’.  

La Paz has been a kind home to me this last year; a complex site of rewarding relationships, breathtaking landscapes and unlimited discovery. However, the cityspaces can be tricky to traverse. There’s the urban mess of people, the vehicular jostling of traffic, and the inherent sense that each passer-by has somewhere to be, something to do, or somebody to meet.  The task of becoming familiar with such a place seemed arduous, unapproachable, and, quite frankly, hard work.

Yet, with hard work comes rewarding outcomes, and I had just the manner of work to help me on my way. Working as a journalist, I was enabled – even forced – to discover the city in ways I hadn’t previously imagined. In the name of ‘hard work’, I became acquainted with a host of interesting characters, accumulated a catalogue of intriguing stories, and participated in countless new and stimulating experiences. In short, my day-to-day life saw me embark on adventures I had never previously dreamed of while I slogged through revision notes in Cambridge libraries mere months before.

From a schoolboy living in a sleepy town perched on the Bolivian-Peruvian border, I gained insight into life in a transitory no man’s land on the cusp of two nations. I conversed with a watchmaker whose watches tell time in an anticlockwise direction, rebelliously reclaiming Bolivia’s colonial past. I entered into the depths of a Bolivian mine, learning the emotional, personal stories of those who work within them. I spoke to the head of the Bolivian branch of UN Women, addressing the problems facing women in Bolivia today. I sampled arguably the best espresso ever to pass my lips, surrounded by coffee plants in a subtropical, high altitude rainforest. I loved it all.

My daily work was scarcely repetitive, and always mind-openingly interesting, yet it certainly tested comfort zones. Most articles being interview-based, I would often phone potential interviewees to arrange a meeting – a daunting prospect for someone as poor at telephone communication as I. Often surprised by the small time frames within which interview subjects would propose to meet, made long-term planning difficult and redundant. Planning of any sort, in fact, took a back seat as I learnt to exercise my spontaneity and take chances which paid off. Well, most of the time.

The inconveniences of quotidian Bolivian life eventually ceased to irritate me so. Be it the careless hopping out of passengers from the minibuses which serve as the city’s main form of public transport, or the endless striding up, then slipping down hills in a city as undulating as Cambridge is flat. In Cambridge, becoming stuck behind a particularly slow cyclist can irreparably dampen my day. Yet, in Bolivia, I managed to organise myself around the protest-fuelled blockades often plaguing the city streets, without too much complaint.

I was so eager to discover my new home that I took the time to lift my head, and look around. I found that new mirador, later to become my favourite spot in the city, perching amid leafy boughs and watching the sprawling La Paz cityscape unfurl below my swinging legs. I made the effort to build friendships with people I hardly knew, so that mere acquaintances soon became fast friends. I chose to write articles that saw me travel long distances to investigate a story that may not have been there, in trips that were to be remembered as some of my most treasured, and most liberating experiences.

The plan is to bring a new-found attitude back to Cambridge, to put my newly-learnt perspective into practice, and to learn to enjoy life here as much as I enjoyed life in Bolivia. But now, as I glance over my online timetable for the term that is to come, I feel a slight panic as the next eight weeks of my life are meticulously laid out before me. The prospect of high-pressured, highly challenging work is once more becoming a reality, and I will myself not to forget. Cast the mind back, glance over photos, flick through magazines, listen to that certain song or think about that one place, and I am reminded of the world which exists outside ‘the bubble’.

No more coca leaves in my tea, no more cable car to get from A to B, and no more mountainous backdrop to accompany my day but, after all, an essay is just an essay, a supervision is just a supervision, and the Cambridge ‘bubble’, like so many, is not so difficult to burst.