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...