An amazing week in Lima

So the traveling has begun and it is great to be back out there. I just got back to Buenos Aires from an amazing and relaxing week in the crazy city of Lima Peru. The plan was to go there find Jaron, a friend of mine from LC, and then head off and see other things. But in the end the week flew by and I did not leave the big city for even a moment. Being in Lima was totally crazy because it is the polar opposite of Paraguay. The city of Lima has a population of 7 million people and the country of Paraguay only has 6 million so I was a little overwhelmed at first. I also stayed in a really ritzy part of Lima called Miraflores which was full of American fast food restaurants and had an overall western feel. It was really crazy at first but a really nice break from heat and differences in Paraguay.
I spent most of my week doing nothing at all which was really nice. I ended up meeting up with Jaron which lead to a lot of hours just sitting and catching up and also finding a coffee shop with Scrabble which occupied the majority of our time. I was also able to meet up with a couple of other connections which lead to a lot of time just relaxing wathcing pirated movies, wandering the streets and talking about life and other things. It was the perfect way to spend a week. I did get an opportunity to see some of the sites such as the historic downtown with beautiful old churches, the cool hip neighborhood of Barranco, the art museum and the beautiful beach front cliffs of Miraflores. A lot of people have bad things to say about Lima but I loved it. It is a big city but full of parks, friendly cab drivers and a lot of cool history. Lima reminded me more than anything of how much I love and crave the comforts of home. I found myself with amazing people with whom I felt totally comfortable and it was such a nice feeling.
While discussing home I have big news... I got a job in Portland so I know where I am going to be for at least the next year. I am going to be working with an organization called Adelante Mujeres which works with women Latina immigrants on econoic empowerment and education. I am really excited about the opportunity to work with a small nonprofit in Portland and to use my spanish. So for those of you in Portland I will be back around the 20th of January. For those of you in MN I am going to be back there from the 7th until about the 20th so please be around because I would love to catch up and for those of you in other places come to one of those places so I can see you!!!!
Right now I am awaiting the arrival of the whole Brown clan. They are all somewhere in the air en route to Buenos Aires. We are going to spend a week in Patagonia seeing the sites and then a couple weeks cheering on Zac in an international soccer tournament here in Buenos Aires. It is going to be a wonderful couple of weeks. Happy holidays to everyone and I hope to hear from you soon.

So in general I have been bad about writing about my experiences here in Paraguay. I find when you live in a place and the majority of your actives are day to day and relatively boring it is hard to write in the blog so I decided that I am going to do a recap through my top moments. Hopefully it will give you an insight as to what it is to live in this hot hot hot country. There is not real order to these they are just things that popped into my head when I was looking back over my experince.

1. When I was returning back from Villa Ygatimi I watched the sun set over the fields with my boss Hugo and it was amazing. The sun was huge and it was one of the most dramatic sunsets I have ever seen. Also it reminds me of spending time with my boss, he is amazing. We could spend hours talking about everyone from same-sex marriage to Sex and City. He also has the lowest voice I have ever heard in my whole life, remind me and I can do an impression for you.

2. Going dancing in Villa Ygatimi. I already talked about this in the entry on the Red Cross but it was simply amazing. To get inside a culture like that and to just dance the night away with my new best friends that I had just met that day.

3. Having lunch spaghetti lunch with Alicia's whole extended family. As with many south American countries family is the cornerstone to life here in Paraguay. Alicia is a friend from Minnesota whose family lives in Asuncion so I have spent a lot of time with them. This day in particular was amazing because I got to just spend the whole afternoon relaxing with her family and talking about this and that and everything else. The people in Paraguay are amazingly friendly and have kept me happy when the 100 degree heat tries to bring me down.

4. Traveling with the Swedish journalist to help them write a story about charcoal on the Brazilian Border in Villa Ygatimi. The production of Charcoal which goes hand in hand with deforestation is a huge deal here in Paraguay. The price of agricultural crops is dropping and there is a great market for charcoal in Brazil so a lot of producers are focusing their energy on charcoal production. In order to make charcoal you need to chop down trees and then burn them in these special ovens for about 8 days. We visited two types of production facilities. The first was an industrial complex where they had 20 ovens and it was run by a Brazilian company. People would simply come and work for the company. As you can imagine the conditions are really bad and they get paid minimally for the work they are doing, but it is the only way they have to make money so they do it. After this we went to a local producer's home that produces charcoal. They simply have one oven back out in their fields and they started to do it because the dad got sick and they needed the extra money to pay medical bills. We spent almost the whole morning just sitting around their house talking and taking pictures and seeing what they life is like. It is amazing how hard people are willing to fight even when everything in the world is against them. Overall this was amazing an experience because it was totally different and also opened my eyes to a very real and important issue here in Paraguay.

5. Spending a weekend with Stephi in Reserva Mbaracayu- this is the second largest nature reserve in Paraguay and it is located right outside of Villa Ygatimi. We decided to head out there for the weekend and it was great. We stayed in a guest house made for a king and got to explore the beautiful untouched wilderness. I thought that Ygatimi.

6. Working the Front Desk at the first annual Conference on self-sustaining agricultural schools. The Fundacion put on an international conference and I got to run around working out the details for the whole week, but I also got to meet amazing people. This includes Anthony from Kenya who works with bees and is really passionate about economic development, Warren from Utah who is teaching his students about the non-profit world and how they can make a difference. Mary from Chile who runs a holistic school for children outside of Santiago and oh so many more. It was great to be able to spend a week talking to people who stimulate me so much academically and who have done such amazing things in their lives. It was a great way to end my time here in Paraguay and be able to start dreaming about the future and all the differences that I can make all over the world, really exciting.

7. Counting down the hours with Marcos at Cacupe!!! Every year on the 8th of December Catholics from all over Paraguay come to the town of Cacupe to celebrate a saint and this year I went and worked the Cruz Roja to see the event. I spent the night sitting around with a bunch of Paraguayans and Keith talking about everything and anything and helping people with their exhaustion and blisters. One time there was a woman who felt really weak and couldn't walk to the tent so we went and got here on a stretcher and brought her back. The crowds were totally intense, imagine Grand ole Days times three. So on the way to get her I had to grab onto someone's shirt in order to not loose them and then on the way back they put me in front so I dropped my shoulder and literally had to push people out of the way and people were blowing whistles and the whole deal. It was a really unique experience. Overall it was just amazing the lengths that people went through to participate in this event. People slept on the concrete and cried during the masses, religion is a really powerful thing that I am not sure i will ever understand.

This is just a snapshot of the things that I had the opportunity to do while living in the Heart of South America. This country has taught me how there are a lot of amazing things to see and do even in a place that is pretty boring at first. So now I am heading out of the oven and back to the traveling thing for a while!!!!

Living in Villa Ygatimi

So I spent 10 days living out in the campo and now I am going to be living there part of the time in Ygatimi and part of the time here in Asuncion. It was amazing to get out of the city world for a while but I found that the campo life is just a little too tranquilo for me. They do nothing out there and we are talking nothing. When it is really hot outside they dont work because it is too hot and when it is raining they dont work because it is raining and all the streets are destroyed. So while I was out there I did a lot reading and nothing in general. One day I was sitting around the office reading my book and Patricio (he is the groundskeepers and was like my father) came inside so I asked him if there was anything I could do to help out. He said very excitedly, yes Ven Ali Ven so I followed him outside where we decided to sit on the porch and drink terrere for the rest of the morning, a pretty nice life but in general a little too mellow for me.

I have taught a couple of my classes which is nice but hard. It is hard because I don't speak Guarani, which means that I am trying to teach these campesinos about business in their second language which they don't really understand. I would give my class and try to ask for participation and they would stare at me with a blank gaze. I realized how hard teaching in general is and on top of that trying to teach a very unfamiliar topic in a second language.

In the end I decided that I was not going to be able to and did not want to live in Ygatimi for my whole time here. It was a great opportunity to see what real Paraguay is all about but as all of you know I am very social person who feeds off the energy of the people around her and that was not happening. When groups of people would get together they would speak to each other in Guarani even if everyone knew Spanish, a little frustrating and limited the types of relationships that I could develop with people. So I decided I would go back and forth a couple of times but that my main base is in Asunción. But if anyone ever gets the chance to live in the rural part of any country I highly recommend it, it is something that cannot be described with words...

My Weekend with the Cruz Roja Paraguaya (Red Cross Paraguay)

My weekend with the Cruz Roja Parguay (The Red Cross Paraguay).

My first weekend in Villa was way more action packed than I ever could have imagined it and it also opened my eyes to a lot of things and allowed me to experience things I could never have imagined. The region of Paraguay that I am living in has been stricked by a six month long drought and recently horrible wild fires that destroyed forests, the crops and homes of many people who were already fighting to get by. Therefore the Red Cross Paraguaya working with the European Comission and the Spanish Red Cross established a program to distribute food, medical supplies and conduct trainings on firts aid and fire prevention. I came right in the middle of the first food distribution in the region which was awesome. I spent two full days riding around either smashed into the front of a truck with at least two other people, in the back of Land Rover Ambulance or in some other truck driving around awful dirt roads in 100 plus degree heat giving out food to campesino and indigenous families around Villa. It was a great way to be able to see different areas around the region and do my little part to help people, I also got a really cool t-shirt and hat (talk about unique souveniers). We gave out over 50 kilos of food (I have no idea how many pounds that is but I know that it is a lot because I had to carry the bags around). These bags had the essentials of pasta, rice, beans, flour, sugar, salt and a Paraguayan necessity Yerba for Terrere. Yeah that is right they gave people over 2 kilos of Yerba to make sure that all Paraguayans can keep up their crazy habit of dirinking Terrere (cold Mate) all day long. We also gave them kits with different hygenic products such as soap, detergent, tooth paste and toothbrushes which I think is really cool. Through this experience I also got to learn a little bit more about Paraguayans and meet some cool people. Overall the communities we went to were very accepting and gracious they would always offer a chair some terrere and a smile to crazy sweaty white girl. There were also children everywhere, this country really needs to do something about birth control. I met one woman who had 16 children under the age of 17!!!!! This is something that I will never be able to understand. I have trouble imagining having one child let alone 16. I was talking with another volunteer about how they have a full soccer team, with subs, a medic and some fans. Another interesting element was how the people signed for their food. The Red Cross being a large organization there was obviously a lot of paper work that went along with simply helping people. A lot of people in the campo are illiterate and therefore do not sign for things but use their finger print. They have it on their national ID card and everything. Not knowing how to sign your own name is something totally outside my realm of thinking, it have been doing in my notebooks and credit card slips since I can remember. So yeah it was interesting to meet the people in the communities we visited but also amazing to work with the other volunteer who were all Paraguayans.

Throughout my time in Paraguay I have not had the best luck finding cool Paraguayans who I can actually relate to and simply shoot the shit with and I finally found it in this group of volunteers. We would work hard all day and then at night just sit around and chat about things, drink beers have Asasdos (in my first week here I ate a sheep, pig and cow that were killed that day but I haven´t yet seen an animal killed but it will come soon I am sure). Within hours we were joking around like old friends and they really loved the American girl with a funny accent (but anyone who has ever heard a Paraguayan accent knows that they have no ground to stand on). Saturday night we even decided to go dancing. Yeah that is right there is a ¨dance club¨ here in Villa. It was an outdoor lot that was much too big for the amount of people that were there but it was a very interesting cultural experience. We walked in and there was a line of couples dancing in a very 1950s kind of way and then along the sides there were a bunch of men just watching. I came in with my crazy new friends and we had a blast dacing like fools. We were no questions asked the entertainment of the night but it was probably the most fun I have ever had a dance club. Throughout the night I saw what seemed to be a five year old child drinking beer next to a seventy-five year old, it was a cultural experience to say the least. It was great to have people to enjoy this amazing place with. Their project is going to bring them back here almost every weekend which will be nice and hopefully lead to more adventures.

My work with the Red Cross got me thinking about Humanitarian Aid especially in comparsion to the work that I am doing with Economic Development and micro-loans. The first day it was really hard for me to accept the idea that we were just going to give these people a bunch of food because I knew that when the food ran out they would be in the same place that they were. But my biggest problem is that I am not sure what can be done. The micro-loans that the Fundación Paraguaya gives out requires a base of capital (not much but something) and a lot of these people do not have that base. We need to try and find a way to help people get from receiving food from the Red Cross to a place where they can start to work with loans and create a way to make a living. Anyone have any ideas because as of now I´ve got nothing. I also had a really great conversation with one of the employees of the Red Cross about what other work they are doing to help with actual development and they are doing some cool things. They have different projects throughout the country making factories to allow rural farmers to process their goods and sell a finished product rather than raw materials and also all the food in the kits that we gave out came from within the region in order to support local farmers. Overall I support the work that they are doing but I would rather work in the economic development realm than humanitarian aid because I think that it allows people to help themselves rather than fall into a dependence on aid from outside.

My introdcution to Villa Ygatimi

So I am actually back in Asuncion for the weekend but I made the journey out to Villa Ygatimi and met a lot of people and saw a lot of things. I am heading back out on Monday for good but I thought I would use this opportunity to give you a taste of where I am going to be. Getting there was a little more complicated than anyone could have planned. The last 50 km of the journey is down a dirt road and it was raining really hard so the dirt road was a like an ice skating rink. We watched oil trucks slide backwards down a hill and countless other cars slip and slide around. Then about 10 km before arriving we spun out and got full on stuck in the mud. So we spent over an hour trying to get the truck out of the mud and finally with a little pushing we were free to continue on. Once arriving I moved my stuff into the room that I have at the Fundacion Moseis Bertoni where I will be living. I have a nice little house with a kitchen a full bathroom and anything else I would really need. It is a much nicer place than I was expecting which is exciting. Then we went to get some food and drove through the town. It is very small but there are a couple stores, a couple of restaurants and a school. It is very small but seems nice. There are two really funny things that I have already learned about it. #1 there is no cell phone reception for at least 30 km and most people have cell phones and there is even a cell phone store. I asked a couple of my co-workers about it and they use them as watches and alarm clocks, I just think they could buy watches or alarm clocks but hey it is Paraguay and I have learned to stop questioning things. #2 Everything shut down with the rain. Everyone just sits on their porch and watches people walk by (but there are many people walking so they just watch the street). The school was even shut down because of the rain. Imagine if that was the case in Portland, we would never learn anything.

Later than afternoon we went out and met the comites that I will be working with. There are five in the area around Villa, three of men and two of women. They all seemed like wonderful people and I am really excited to get to know them better. Also Hugo (my supervisor) told me that everyone spoke Guarani but I didnt really believe it but in the end it was the case. I am going to have to learn Guarani which is exciting. Overall I really excited about being able to live there but it is going to be a change in life style for sure. There is really nothing to do and the world stops at about 7 pm. So i am going to be reading a lot of books and a friend of mine in Asuncion loaned me her guitar and I am going to learn. As most of you know I am a busy person so this will be the ultimate deprogramming and I think that will be really good for me. If anyone wants to give me a call there is a land line in my office (the only type of technology for 40 km) and the number is 59548210556. You should all get Skype and call me. So yeah that is the first update and I will let you know what is going on when I have a chance but please send emails so that i know what you are all up to.

Comité de Mujeres, so cool

So I am still in Asunción because in Latin America things never really happen when they are supposed to or when people tell you they will. But it looks like I will finally be moving out to Villa Ygatimy next week but who knows. As of now I have been in the office creating a lesson plan and visiting Comité de Mujeres meetings. I am going to tell you all a little about them because I think it is one of the coolest things that this organization does.
These comittees are groups of 15 to 25 women who are receiving a loan from the Fundación as a group rather than as individuals. They receive the loan as a group and they need to make all of the payments as a group. Therefore if one woman gets sick for a week the other women have to/ get to support her by helping her make her payment. They receive three or four month micro-loans and have to pay a their dues every 8 days. This a way to make sure that all the women are going to be able to pay the loans and also helps the women in that they will start to learn about investment and credit. Along with receiving loans the women go through a training about fiscal responsibility, the details of running a business and setting goals for the future. In the past week I have been able to visit a couple of these training sessions and they were amazing. There is also a savings element. Each time they make a payment they have to put a percentage into a savings account.
Both the meetings where held in front of one of the women´s house underneath a tree and we were all drinking Terere (this is a cold version of Mate that people drink here constantly. We are talking on the bus, on the street and even in the gym it is another element of Paraguay that is a mystery to me). I was sitting there immersed in these women´s lives and talking about how to maintain a budget (something I need to learn more about than they do probably). The women were very interested in the trainning and joking around and giving each other crap about going to the hair styler too much. It was great to get out of the office and experience real people. A lot of my time thus far in Paraguay has been spent in a office and you forget about how that really does effect real people and their lives. These Comités are amazing because they bring together many different elements of development and allows for the better of quality of life, my ultimate goal. It empowers these women to have their own business, work directly with loans and other financial institutions but it also creates a support network. They instantly have 14 women who are going to support them through the good times and the bad. The Fundación is currently working on using this Comité as the base for youth projects. One is teaching the children of the Mujeres how to play musical instruments and the other is teaching them how to start saving now at a very young age. It is a way to further establish the sense of community that goes hand in hand with the loans they are receiving. Overall these comités are very interesting and uses a combination of the different elements of development.
One of my new plans for the future is try and spread this idea through the United States. There are some big changes that would have to be made but I think that the basic idea can go work in both places. So if you know of any micro-finance organizations in the Portland area you should let me know.

A little about the Fundacion Paraguaya

So while living here in Asuncion, Paraguay I am working with the Fundacion Paraguaya which is a local non-profit that works on three main things: urban and rural micro-finance, a self-sustaining agricultural school and a junior achivement program. Overall this organization works to help people become entrepenuers in different phases of their lives. The organization does a lot of amazing things. It is a little different, more business like and capitalist, than the work I was expecting to do during this time of my life but overall it is great and I am going to learn a lot. I will explain a little bit about each of the different programs to give you a sense of what I am working on. Also their website is Fundacionparaguaya.org.py and you can get the information is english or spanish if you want more information.
First the AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. This is a pretty amazing program. It is a full functioning boarding school about an hour outside of Asuncion but the really interesting part is that the students dont need to pay to attend but they sell the agriculture and other products they create at the school to fund it. It is a business as well as a school and the students play a key role. The school sells all different kinds of fruits and vegetables as well as grains, dairy products and meat. During their third year students have the opportunity to take on a leadership role and actually create a business plan to sell their corn or mandioca or cows. I really like this type of education because it is teaching them skills they wlll need and be able to use in their real life. There is a large percentage of Paraguayans working in agriculture so being able to teach them to do so in a profitable way is much more beneficial than making them memorize the Presidents of the US. The school is also certified by the country of Paraguay so they are receiving the same basic education as everyone else but also learning about agriculture and entrepeneurship. The Fundacion is really proud of this model and they are trying to share it with other organizations and countries throughout the world so if you or you know would be interested in this type of school you should let me know and I can get you in touch with the right people.

JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT. I am not very familiar with this element of the organization. But it is a curriculum that is taught in schools throughout Asuncion that focuses on entrepeneurship and business skills.


Finally the largest program is MICRO-FINANCE and this is where I am working. They have 18 regional offices across the country and they give out tons of lones to all different types of business in urban and rural areas. One way to check out what they are doing is through another website called Kiva. They have a website of Kiva.org where you can actually give loans to micro-finance clients throughout the world. It is really cool and I think that everyone should check it out. You agree to a certain amount of money and you can choose the clients that you want to support. It is a great way to be involved with international development even if you cant leave the country. So yeah check out this website. Also a lot of the loans given out to Comites intsead of individuals. This increases their returns because if you are not able to pay your cuota you are letting a whole group of people down rather than just yourself. They have recently establish a program called Comites de Mujeres. This is when they bring a group of at 15 women together and give them a loan. It is a cool program becasue they have also used it to establish community and now they are creating musical groups and giving classes on health to the children of the women in these comites. I like that they are not simply giving out loans but they are trying to better the life of the people receiving loans through the establishment of social networks and teaching classes. Overall it is a really cool program and I am excited to keep learning more and more about it. So that is the basic explanation of the Fundacion. I really like and I have learned so much in the last couple of weeks and I know that I will just be learning more and more as time goes on.

Where I am headed

So I thought I would give you guys all a little bit of a visual as to where I am headed in the next couple of weeks. This is the region of Canindeyu and it is the Eastern part of Paraguay on the border with Brazil, see the bigger map of Paraguay. I am going to be living in the town of Ygatymi, which you can see on this map to the left. I really have no idea of what to expect from this experience other than the fact that most people dont speak english and most don't even speak Spanish. But everyone speaks Guarani a local indigenous language. The good news is that I have electricity and running water (I wasnt so sure about this) but very little internet contact or connections to the outside world. I am really excited about the work that I am going to be doing there, especially since now I have been working in an office from 830-5 and doing mostly data entry. I am learning some good things about financial reports and things like Cash Flow charts, but it will be good to get out. Once out there I am going to be working with the rural loan program which works directly with the Inter-American Development Bank. The Fundacion Paraguaya gives loans to comittees of farmers out there and I am going to be teaching them business and administrative skills. I have spent the last week working on the ciriculum and I am pretty excited about it. It is really basic but the idea of making a small difference is something that should be really good. It will be good for me to be out there in real Paraguay and struggle through living in a place where I dont speak the language and dont know anyone. It is something that I have never done before. Oh well that is really all from here. I hope that you enjoy this little preview as to what I think I will be doing and I look forward to updating you from out there and taking lots of pictures and the whole deal. Wish me luck....

Paraguay is a mystery

So I have been in Paraguay for almost three weeks now and havent writen anything but there is a lot to say so I am going to split it up by category. First I will try and describe this country a little bit. It is very different from the places that I have been thus far and I am learning a lot of new things. It is the second poorest country in South America (Bolivia is the first) but I live in suburbia with shopping mall and McDonalds that delivers (I have made a vow to never eat delivered McDonalds let alone in a third world country). The fact that I live in this neighborhood makes my life really easy. I dont feel unsafe and I have cable TV and the whole deal. But it is interesting because you will see mercedes driving down the street along side a horse drawn cart with a loud speaker trying to sell fruits. There is a huge income gap in Paraguay, you are either really rich and visit the beauty salon multiple times a week or you have close to nothing and have to buy a moto in order to run a mototaxi service or basically any other trade that will bring in a couple of bucks.
It is also interesting because as soon as you head out of the city things chance drastically. Last weekend a couple of friends and I went to visit a Ybycui National Park. On our way there we saw lots of farmers just sitting outside of the house drinking Terere (like mate but with cold water because it is so hot here). We also saw a cow being butchered and our cab (a pickup truck that we had to ride in the back of) was carrying a gun in his pants just in case. Overall anything outside of Asuncion is the Campo where there is very little technology or influence from the outside world. It is pretty interesting. Paraguay is different from all the other Latin American countries that I have been in and I look forward to be here for longer and experiencing more things.

Una Semana super bacan po!

After about six weeks of traveling it was amazing to return to a place that feels like home. I was in Valparaiso for about a week living with my old host family and just taking in as much of the city as I could. I knew that I loved it when I am studying there but this trip simply reaffirmed my love.
I spent a lot of time showing Maggie all the places that I loved through the cerros and streets of Valparaiso. This town is amazing and full of wondeful, creative and unique people. There is no need for a guide book, you can spend days just wandering around the city and each view is breathtaking. I also had number of marathon lunches were I discussed every element of life from my travels to legality of homosexual marriage with my familiy and their friends. It was amazing to be able to have deep conversations, because we had already had all of the shallow ones. We also took advantage of the night life and I ran into old friends and just had a wonderful time living the Chilean life again, even if it was for a short time.
Maggie and I also took a day trip to sand dunes right outside of Viña. This was a great day. I had never been to them before and it was a different world. You go from a pretty busy city full of buildings and dogs to what looks like the Sahara. We watched the sunset over the oceand it was simply amazing.
This week was a great way to end my traveling experience and start to get into the living in South America mentality. From Valparaiso I hopped a plane to Asuncion, Paraguay where I am going to be working for the next three months.

Heading down to Chile

Greetings from Valparaiso!!! So I have officially made it back to my old stomping grounds and it is wonderful. I have been here for a couple of days seeing old friends and favorite places. I forget how amazing this city really is. The trip here was by no means short or easy but it brought me to some wonderful places.
Before leaving La Paz I decided to ride a mountain bike down the the most dangerous road in the world. You take off from La Cumbre which rests at 4600 m up in the mountains ride all the way down to 1200m, that is a lot of meters in only about 4 and half hours. For those of you who know me well, you know that I dont mountain bike and I havent really riden a bike in years, so this was an experience. Like the rest of this trip, there has been a lot of personal growth. There were only four of us in the group and it was wonderful. We started on a concrete road and then got onto the actual death road which was just beautiful. There are no longer any that use the road, they opened a new and better one six months ago, but it was still scary. There were hair-pin turns with cliffs that were at least 500m high. We also stopped a number of times to see busses that had fallen off the side of the ride or memorials for bikers drivers. Overall it was a wonderful experience to push myself physicall and also to see the transition in landscape. We started up in the mountains and ended in the jungle, totally wild.
From La Paz I headed to Lake Titicaca for the third time. This time I visited the town of Puno which is on the Peruvian side. From there I went and saw the Floating Islands. They were very touristy but amazing. The indegenous people created these islands to try and maintain their culture and fight outside influence (kind of ironic that now it is a tourist trap in a lot of ways). There are full towns with supermarkets, public phones and schools floating on the lake and it is all made from natural materials. I am always amazed by the innovation that has been present throughout the years way before the introduction of modern technology. From Puno I headed to find Maggie and Brenda in Arequipa.
I was in Arequipa, Peru for almost a week but in the end did not see much of the city. We spent most of our time just hanging out around Brenda´s house with her wonderful family and friends. This was a good break because at this point I had been traveling for about six weeks and I was exhausted. It was really nice to be able to spend time with a family and friends, it was a lot more like real life.
From Arequipa Maggie and I took a side trip to the town of Chivay in beautiful Colca Canyon. On my trip I have seen a lot of amazing things but this may have been the most beautiful place that I visited. We stayed in a hostal owned by one of Brenda´s family friends and had a great time relaxing there and playing with their two children. The first night we were there we soaked in the towns hot springs under the full moon. It was amazing because we showed up as all the tourists were leaving and had the whole place to ourselves. The next morning we woke up at 4 in the morning to go and see condors. We had to ride 2 hours standing on a really full bus with blasting music but once we finally got there it was amazing. We were there before all the tourists and it was so tranquil. After about an hour we saw some birds deep down in the canyon and we got all excited that we saw the Andean Condor because a lot of people travel to this site and dont even see one bird. But then about an hour later the real show began. The birds that were down in the canyon came up and put on an amazing arial show. They would fly back and forth about 20m above our head. The condor is a sacred bird in the Inca culture and in the wolrd of Andrew Merrell which I did not really understand until this morning and now I am totally in love. They are huge but graceful and beautiful animals. While in the canyon we also did a day tour of the region with Miguel, the owner of the hostal, and saw a bunch of amazing things. It is wonderful to know someone where you are traveling and you can just chat with them about the culture, history and people of a region rather than having to pay a lot of money to go on a tacky tour. From Colca we went back and had a crazy last night in Arequipa and then started to head south.
To get from Arequipa to Valparaiso it is about 35 hours on a bus so we broke it up a little bit but overall we were on a bus for a long time. Although this may seem horrible we had a good time, met some cool people and watched a lot of bad dubbed movies. But it was all worth it because I as back home in the city of cerros and bad spanish.

A little alone time

I want to start out by apologizing. I friend of mine brought to my attention that there has been a large number of grammatical and spelling mistakes in my blog, I am sorry about that but you need to understand my dependence on spell check and the fact that my gramar is bad. I hope that you all can get past it and enjoy the content.
So after only a couple of weeks Umeir the photographer I was traveling with had to head back to the states so my time with the Democracy Center was over, but it was an amazing experience. I realized I had about 10 days before I was meeting up with a friend in Peru so I decided to head down south to the towns of Potosi and Sucre. I have never traveled alone before so this was a good experience for me. I took an overnight bus to Potosi, which the locals claim to be the highest city in the world at 4,070 m (a lot of feet). This town is famous for its mines.Hundreds of years ago it was one of the most important cities in the world, comparable to NYC and Paris. This is strange to think about because now it is simply a city of a little over 100,000 people. The first day there I just relaxed and met some amazing people from Germany and Israel. I am glad that I met some people because most of you know that I am not an alone kind of person, I like people and talking a lot. The second day I took a tour of an active mine. This was really important to me because mining is one of the most important elements of Bolivia culture and history. In this town alone there are 15,000 miners and thousands of others who work in processing plans and tourism whose job is directly related to the mines. This could lead to serious problems because experts claim that the mine has about 5-10 more years before it becomes unsafe (or even more unsafe, because lord knows it is not that safe right now.)The tour was enlightening and uncomfortable. We actually went through the mines and crawled through tiny tunnels in the horrible heat and filled our lungs with dust and chemicals. The job that these men do is unbelievable. I had trouble breathing just being in and walking through the mines let alone doing the hard labor that they do all day everyday. Overall it was a great experience and I got to hold active explosives and watch them explode, pretty cool.
From there I headed to the colonial town of Sucre. This was a cool experience because this town is totally different from most of the others. It was nice, white and clean and people drove SUVs. It was also interesting because this is where the other half of the capital sits. The first week I was here I went to the protest about the Sede no se Mueve (the people of the La Paz want to keep the capital). This town was covered in signs saying La Sede Si se Mueve. There was also a hunger strike to move the capital. Overall it was really interesting to see the other side of the debate. Although interesting I was not sad to leave Sucre back to the land of La Paz. I am going to be here for a couple of days and then I head to Peru to find a certain tall read head named Maggie and we are heading down to Chile, I am overly excited about it. Although it makes me sad that my time traveling is coming to a close I am really excited about the work that I am going to be doing in Paraguay in just 2 and half short weeks. I hope that everyones summer is finishing up nicely and you are all in my thoughts.

Even more cultural immersion

So if staying with a familiy on Isla del Sol was not enough we made the trek to Cochabamba and the fun just kept going. In Cochabamba we met the amazing staff of the Democracy Center. On our second night there we were treated to something very special, we got to participate in a Coia (I am not sure how to spell it). This is an offering made to the Pachamama (or mother earth) where you burn things and chew coca and we played traditional music. It was a really wonderful way to spend a night and a time to reflect. The next day we decided to go and visit a local town called Tarata because we were waiting on more host stays. This is a small colonial town with not much to do so we spent the majority of the day just wandering around. In this wandering we met a couple of women and they invited us to a party they were having. This was one of the silliest experiences that I have had in South America thus far. We went to the party and we were offered food and drink about every five minutes. I spent the majority of the time talking to these two old men and it was wonderful. I drank my first Chica (the drink this region is famous for) which was colored like a Bolivian Flag, it was pretty wonderful. Another one of those experiences that I will not forget any time soon. From there we were set up with another host stay not far from the city of Cochabamba. We stayed with an artist who is living in a comune and trying to live outside of the imperialist system. I had a really amazing conversation with her about education and literacy and I realized that there are a lot of people in the world who do not agree with the accepted development policy. It was a really hard conversation to have but it was really good at the same time.
From here we went directly to our last host stay which was in the Chapare region of Bolivia which is where the majority of the Coca is grown and which is deep in the jugle. We stayed with this young couple and their amazing children. The couple were 23 and 25 and had children who were 4 and 5 years old, kind of shocking. They own a bunch of land so during our stay we went up to their Coca field and helped them weed it and also down to the river to fish with nets. It was a great day spent learning a lot. The man is also the local "dirigenete" which is like a mayor. He is amazing and holds monthly meetings in order to properly understand the needs of his constituents, what if politicians did that in the US what a different country it might be. Overall it was another great experience. This was the end of my work with the Democracy Center which is too bad because it was really amazing. Now I fing myself in the small mining town of Potosi and I am starting some solo traveling which should be good but is a little scary because everyone knows how much I depend on the people in my life. But again this trip is all about learning and experiencing things. Would love to hear from you!!!!

Cultural Immersion Part I

So after I did the tourist thing for a couple of weeks I started doing some work for an organization in Cochabamba Bolivia called the Democracy Center. The "work" that I did was travel around with a photographer and conduct interviews regarding the Constitutional Assembly for a magazine that they are writing. Overall this was an amazing experience and got me to a lot of places that I never would have been able to go and meet people some amazing people. The first place that we went was Lake Titicaca. Of course I arrived to the small town of Copacabana on their independence day and the day Peruvians celebrate the town saint so it was total madness. One thing that I have learned about South American festivals is that they seem to center around the selling of everyday things like CDs and jeans, it was really wild. Towards sunset we walked up this huge hill to a cemetary where the real celebrating was occuring. There were hundreds of people burning candles and performing rituals for the saint of Copacabana. It was really amazing to be a part of that and it was totally sensor overload. There was music, colors, smells and every other emotion that you could think of. The next day we went to Isla del Sol to find Don Ernesto and hopefully stay with his family.
This was an exprience that pushed my comfort level a lot. We were told to go to this island and ask for a guy who hosted a friend of the Center four years ago. So we hoped a little boat to his community and then walked around for a while and finally ran into him. Instantly he was receptive and so welcoming. They invited us into their home and we just started talking. We talked about everything from Aymara spirtual beliefs to Bolivian governtment to cultural tourism. It was really cool to be able to sit down and talk to someone with such different beliefs and life experiences. Another really important element of this trip was that the majority of the people in the town did not speak Spanish but only Aymara. I have never traveled to a place where I did not speak the language so this was a really cool experience. I spent most of an afternoon playing cards and wandering around the beach with a ten year old girl that spoke very limited spanish so we conversed purely through looks and pointing. It was an experience that I needed to have and I think will be really good for me in the end. We were only able to stay with them for a little over a day but I learned more than I have in weeks it was amazing. Little did I know that it was just the beginning of my cultural immersion.

To Peru and back

After Lake Titicaca I headed over to Peru with the amazing Cuykendall sister and my time there was full of ups and downs. It started on a relatively bad note. We tried to buy a bus ticket from Copacabana Bolivia directly to Cuzco Peru, but when we showed up in the morning there was no bus. The woman at the agency claimed that it was full from La Paz and therefore did not come, simply not true. In the end we made our way to Cuzco because of kind hearted Peruvians which was amazing. But it was the first real scam that I have run into so it hit me kind of hard. Situations like that make me think why people want to treat eachother badly. I understand the annoyance that can come with tourism but we are just trying to better understand their culture and see their natural beauties. But in the end I got over and loved the town of Cuzco. The spanish influence can be seen everywhere. It is full of old churches and a lot of colonial architecture. We also stayed at an amazing hostal called Marlins Travels, stay there if you find yourself in Cuzco in the near future. We decided to sign up for a 5 day trek that ended at Machu Picchu. We headed out on the first day and it was totally amazing. It was physically difficult but in a really good way. Then about half and hour before lunch I got this really strange pain in my back, it hurt whenever I inhaled or exhaled. It was really weird because I had been doing harder higher climbing the last couple of weeks. In the end I decided to head back to Cuzco instead of continuing with the trek. It was one of the hardest decisions I have made in a long time but if I had stayed I think I would have been miserable. Then my cab driver back to Cuzo spent the four hour car ride trying to convince me to go out with him and friends, ahhh sleezy men really bother me sometimes. Back in Cuzco I met a bunch of wonderful Spaniards and spent a lot of time with them. I also went on a day long trip through the sacred valley. It was really beautiful and I learned a lot about the Inca culture. They were really smart and creative people that built amazing structures high in the mountains. Also throughout that day I was adopted by a family from Lima and it was really fun, I might go and visit them at the end of the month. Finally I went up to Aguas Calientes to meet up with my hiking group and to see Machu Picchu. Of course there were complications meeting up with them because I was told the wrong hostal ect. ect. The bottom line is that nothing is easy in South America but it always seems to work out. The day that I spent at Machu Picchu made up for any inconvience or back pain that I may have experienced. It was recently named of the seven wonders of the world and I can see why. It is hard to express its beauty but it is this huge complex of amazing ruins on the top of a mountain in the middle of the jungle. That is really all I can say. We spent the day wandering around and thanks to Lauren taking in every inch of its beauty. I am going to try and get pictures up as soon as I am in a place with a little bit faster internet. So that was my experience in Peru in a nutshell. Now I am back in Bolivia for a couple of weeks starting my work for the Democracy Center and then we will see where the wind takes me. Miss you all more than you know and hope that everyone´s summer is wrapping up nicely.

Ahhh hace frio aqui en Bolivia

So I knew that it was going to be winter coming down here but oh man this is a little over the top. I have been wearing my down jacket and hat almost everyday, but is okay because I have been seeing amazing things. My first couple of days in Bolivia were really about the people and these last couple of days are about the natural beauty. First we headed down from La Paz to the south Bolivia and the Salt Flats around Uyunni. Getting down there was a little complicated and included getting up at 630 am to sit in line for a train ticket and arriving in a city without a hostal at 230 am. But we finally got there. While in Uyunni we experienced Bolivias chaos and innefficiency to its greatest but then we finally left the city and headed out on a three day 4wd adventure. It was amazingly beautiful. The Salar de Uyunni is the largest salt flat in the world and it is about 1200 square km. I could not get my head around it. It looked like the ocean, lake Superior and and a frozen MN lake all at the same time but was really a large flat expanse of salt. We spent our first day just driving across it. Over the next couple of days we drove through alpine valleys reaching an altitude of 5000 meters (a ton of feet), seeing flamingoes, swimming in natural hot springs and just taking the immensity. I have never seen such beautiful montains and colors, a place everyone should try and see. Because it was a three day trip we spent the nights in very small indigenous community in hostals with no heat and it was about 15 degrees F (really, really cold). This experience opened my eyes to the beauty that this country has. Middway through the third day we left Lindsay at the Chilean border which was sad and then headed back to Uyunni.
From Uyunni we spent a day or two relaxing in La Paz and then headed up to Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca. We drove in as the sun was setting and it was amazing. On the way there we stopped in this small town and I asked the woman next to me if we were there. She giggled and said no we are going to get off the bus and take a ferry while the bus takes a differenty ferry across (pretty funny to watch your tour bus float across Lake Titicaca), Bolivia never ceases to amaze me. Today we spent the day on Isla del Sol which was stunning. We took a boat to the far end and the spent the day hiking across the very hilly island (my lungs are getting sick of this hiking up hills at altitude thing). It was another but very different example of the beauty that is Bolivia. From miles of salt to miles of lake, what an amazing experience.
I also have very exciting news about my time down here. For the month of August I am going to be working for an organization called the Democracy Center and helping them write an article for their annual magazine. The article is going to try and show the true spirit of Bolivians. So I get to travel around with a photographer and interview people and live in rural communities, how cool. I think it is going to be one of the most difficult but rewarding experiences of my life, we will have to wait and see. Then I will be heading down to Chile to see the folks down there and then to Paraguay for an internship with an organization that works on Micro-Finance. Life seems to be coming together.
I love and miss you all and tomorrow off to Peru to see Machu Picchu in all its glory.

Wow Boliva

So I have only been here for 3 days but it seems like so much longer because it has been amazing. When I first arrived there was a brief luggage scare but it got here so no worries. Soon after my arrival in La Paz I met up with some friends from Lewis and Clark, Dana and Lindsay and we are going to travel for a while. The city of La Paz is really high, really chaotic but also really amazing. Today I had one of those days that makes a trip and it was only my third day here. There was a city wide protest/gathering to keep the capital in La Paz. As of right now the judicial branch of the government is another city Sucre and they are proposing to move the rest of the government there. The people of La Paz don´t want this for economic and political reasons but they also have strong attachment to being the capital, understandably. We woke up this moring and didn´t know what to expect. We left the hostal and the streets were totally empty, no taxis or buses and all the stores are closed. This is crazy because those are the things that have defined La Paz for me over the last couple of days. Feeling a little like we were in the twilight zone, we went down to the main drag and there were people everywhere. They were marching from the center of La Paz up to the town of El Alto. We didn´t really know what we were getting ourselves into but it was amazing. La Paz is at an elevation of around 11,500 feet and El Alto is at 13,000. This is a really big climb to be doing my third day at elevation... The hike up was amazing. We walked with 2 million other people and the majority were so supportive. They would ask us to come and march with them and thanked us for supporting their cause. It was amazing the amount of nationalism all around us. Everyone was carrying a flag from Bolivia, La Paz or both. It was also amazing because everyone was out. We were hiking along side old women in traditional dress (one of the reasons that I had to keep pushing myself), buisnessmen, children and everything in between. After a lot of rests and a couple times I wanted to turn back we reached the city of El Alto were there was a huge rally. We couldn´t actually get into the stadium but we just hung for a while. There were thousands of people around us chanting and talking and then all of a sudden the Bolivian national anthem came on and the whole crowd went silent and took off their hats and sang along. I actually teared up it was such a powerful moment. Overall this experience was the experience of a lifetime. I was a part of the largest civil gathering in Bolivia´s history. It also reminded me of how much I love the passion that is always brewing in Latin America. People are not afraid to get out on the streets and fight for what they want.
So that was my experience in La Paz and it was great. I also have some big news about the future of my South American adventure. I got offered an internship in Paraguay doing work with Micro Finance which is really exciting. I think I may also be going to Peru to work on Human rights for a while, everything is coming together and I am so excited.
Tomorrow we head off for the Salt Flats in southern Bolivia. I will keep you all updated and I would love to hear from you.

Let the adventure begin

Hello Everyone,
So right now I am actually in Ely MN visiting friends at my old camp Widjiwagan but I leave for the deep south in about 50 hours!!! As some of you know I started planning my trip to South America in March when I was offered a job at an NGO in Bolivia. Everything changed last week when I got an email from the NGO informing me that they were going through a very difficult time and because of a lack of funds and internal problems would no longer be able to host me for an internship. This was very difficult news to receive less than a week before I head out but with the support of my friends and family I am once again really excited to head out. As of right now I am going to go down there and travel for a little while and try to work the connections that I have in order to find more internships or volunteer work. This is going to be a lot more of an adventure than I thought. As of right now I am going to be in La Paz for about a week traveling and then we will see. As most of you know I am kind of a planner so this is going to force me to grow in a lot of ways which is scary and exciting at the same time. I will update this blog to let you know where I am, where I plan on going and the adventures that I have...