Saturday, December 22, 2007

Settling In

I´m more or less moved into my new house in rural Paraguay and the days are starting to get some sort of rhythm after my first week in my site. In addition to the standard, I don´t know what to do and am supposed to integrate into this community walking around and talking to people, I actually got to do some pretty productive things for my first week. I spent all day Tuesday in San Jose (where I´m currently using the Internet) in the DEAG office (the governmental agricultural extension agency). There are 4 technicians there who could be a great help to me and are already working with an agricultural committee in my community to plant green manures to improve soil health. It was good for me to hear the tecnicians giving advice in Guarani and interesting to see who came to the office (not many people) and why. On Wednesday I dove right in and did some mango grafting with my host dad, Ramon. He had the root stock ready to be grafted and knows how to graft. I was glad that I could at least add something to the process by insisting that we clean every knife and implement and resanitize between plants. He understood why we would want to do that but had never sterilized before when he did grafting. I hope that we have a higher success rate than he usually has to reinforce the lesson. I´ve also gotten to meet some really friendly neighbors and go to a meeting of the agricultural committee where I was actually able to offer resources that they wanted and were excited about (access to green manure seeds in the Peace Corps Office).

So, yeah I´ve been busy but had plenty of time to be ¨tranquilopa¨as well. With Christmas and new year coming up it´s hard to talk too much work with people and I´m excited to see how the holidays go down in rural Paraguay!

It looks like I´ll be able to have pretty regualar access to the internet here and should be able to keep my blog up! However, still waiting on the phone and probably won´t get it until February when I head into Asuncion- more on that when I actually pick it up.

Enjoy the holidays and snow!

Sunday, December 9, 2007

To the Trenches and Back

5 days to swear in and counting!

I bet you thought that almost three months when I left the US I was going to be a Peace Corps Volunteer, well, that´s not exactly the case. I have spent all of my time in Paraguay up to this point as a Peace Corps Trainee attending classes and being evaluated against prestablished competencies. On Friday, December 14, I have been recommended by the training facility to be sworn in as an actual Peace Corps Volunteer and begin my two years of sevice. After a day in Asuncion to gear up I´ll head to my site and try and stay there for the next couple of months minus runs to the pueblo 4 km away.

Speaking of my site, I spent 5 days visiting to get a feel for what it´s like and be better able to plan for specific projects that I may be doing there. I visited every one of the 51 occupied houses in my site during that time and got to know a couple of girls about my age who aren´t married and don´t have kids!!! Overall the visit went really well and I am really excited to get back there. Some of the projects that people expressed interest in were home made pesticides, home gardens, nitrogen fixing green manures, nutrition information and cooking classes, and planting trees for living fence posts. One man in my site has a bee hive but no smoker so I hope to help him actually manage his hive. The family that I will be living with is great and they have plenty of extra space so I won´t feel like I´m imposing. They even have an electric oven so I will be able to bake!!! I will have to do a lot of explaining what Peace Corps is since I am the first volunteer in my site but I am excited to get to explain that to people.

I´m going to miss my host family here close to Asuncion but they said I can visit them when I go into Asuncion and plan to at some points.

When I actually swear in I will change from a PCT to PCV on my address and will use mailbox number 116 (see address changes on the sidebar). I will also have a phone and people can use Skype to call me for cheap or send me text messages on the internet for free, I´ll include the site when I send out my number via e-mail next week. If I forget to include you and you want my phone number, just e-mail me.

Soooooooo close!

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Serafini

Home sweet home for the next two years will be in the district of Caaguazu. My nearest significant cities are San Jose de los Arroyos and Valenzuela. Serafini is an agricultural community of about 50 houses or 250 people with a lot of sugar cane planted for sale. The majority of the community is subsistance farmers with mandioc (casava), peanuts, and corn planted as the main consumption crops. Soil conservation and planting home gardens are the main resons they asked for a volunteer and there is interest in reforestation, as well.

There is a super guapo or hardworking family that is my contact and has said that I can live with them for the first couple of months in site, if I want. This family is one the few with a home garden and also has an orchard with native Paraguayan fruit trees!

My site has electricity (only one of the 41 people in my group doesn´t) but no running water. My town is only about 5 km from paved road and I should be able to get into Asuncion in about 2 and a half hours! So I will be pretty hooked up while still living the ¨campo¨life.

I´ll get to actually visit my site next week and meet my contact that is from the hardworking family. Then I´ll be back in my training community for two more weeks before swearing in on December 15 and heading out to my site a few days after as a volunteer. More information when I actually visit my site.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Paraguayan History and My Future

Saturday, Nov 10 Carlos de la Sobera gave a guest lecture to all of the current Paraguay Peace Corps Trainees. Carlos is a teacher at the American School in Asuncion and general history buff who lived in the US for 16 years and could, accordingly, lecture in perfect English.

Carlos gave an empassioned, wonderfully informed lecture on Paraguayan history that really helped me put some of Paraguayan culture into context. THe most shockingly vivid part of his lecture dealt with the Triple Alliance War of 1865 to 1870. Many of you reading know of my general disinterest in history, especially war history, and Sr. de la Sobera was able to convey info about this time period and its lasting effects to me in a way that captured my attention and I will always remember. THe Triple Alliance War was an invasion of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay into Paraguay that was provoked by Brazil invading Uruguay for no politically viable reason and PY sticking up for UY. Unfortunatley, UY had a coup that put an anti-PYan into office and left PY allyless. What started as a drastically unfair war turned into genocide in Paraguay with Paraguay loosing 75% of its population in 5 years. From a pre-war population of 400,000 men and 400,000 women in 1862 Paraguay was so devistated that in 1972 (two years after the war ended) there were only 155,000 women and 20,000 men ( yes twenty thousand). Of these men 5,000 were 0-9, 5,000 were 10-14, and 10,000 were 65 or older. These are the people who carried the burdon of repopulating a country. Paraguay was not able to acheive equal gender populations again until 2002. Before the Triple Alliance War Paraguay was experiencing political stability and unity unknown in other South American countries and that unity was followed by absolute destruction; a fact that (combined with many years of dictatorship only ending in 1989) has affected people´s willingness to form groups and left people generally distrustful in many situations in PY.

But on a more personal note, I just got back from 5 days in the campo visiting another volunteer with half of the agroforestry group. I bought a hammock from my campo host mother who makes them, got to visit a wetland and island in the middle with tons of birds, snails, howler monkeys, and parrots, and ate honey directly out of the hive!

On Wednesday I get the big excitement of learning where my site is going to be!!!! Or as my very philosophical technical trainer likes to say, I will have earned a site. More on that once I learn more. Now I´m off to prepare a talk about tree resources Paraguayans have in their yards for tomorrow. The catch, it´s in Guarani!!!

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Ka´a: the life-blood of Paraguay

Also known as yerba or Ilix paraguayensis, ka´a is consumed regularly across the Southern Cone. While the whole region drinks yerba mate, a hot tea made of yerba leaves, drinking terere is unique to Paraguay.

Drinking terere or yerba mate requires a whole ¨team¨ of equipment. Guampas are the traditional cups used to serve yerba and are still often made of cow horns. You use a filtering metal straw called a bombilla to drink (something that I haven´t mastered with the boiling hot yerba mate without burning my tongue). Also necessary is a thermous or thermo. It is necessary to have seperate ones for mate and terere (I´m not sure why) and the terere ones are often pimped out with leather.

If you ask a Paraguayan about the advantages of ka´a you´ll get a laundry list of responses (of varying accuracy) including that it´s a diruetic, reduces obesity, decreases cholesterol, increses muscular endurance, is non-addictive, and includes Iron, Magnesium, Potassium, Calcium, Sodium, and Phosphorous. Luckily I like terere because it is a huge part of the culture here!

We´ve been really lucky with the weather here so far. We had a bit of a hot spell last week where you couldn´t do anything without sweating and it was hard to sleep but since Friday it has been cool enough at night to need a blanket and during the day we are mostly in the shade at class so no problems there.

Next week we´re all off for Long Field Practice when our agroforestry group will split into two groups to visit actual Peace Corps Volunteers. Three other volunteers, a language teacher, and I will be going about an hour and a half south of where we now are for our visit. We will all be staying with different host families and then doing everything from teaching about cooking with soy and still having Guarani class to touring a wetland that they are trying to develop into an ecotourism site. It sounds like it will be crazily busy but it´s the closest we´ll get to being volunteers before we swear in in December so I´m really excited.

The following Monday is a milestone in that we will receive our site assignments. Once this happens I should be able to have a much better idea of what my life will be like for the next two years while still having no idea what-so-ever.

I´m half way done with training already and excited and nervous that I can see the end of the training wheels period approaching.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Chickens

Ryguasu, Gallinas, or Chickens are everywhere in Paraguay. Luckily, with the recent time change (spring forward here) the roosters don´t crow as terribly early as they did before the time change, but I´m starting to tune them out anyway.

Things I have seen chickens fed in Paraguay:
any leftover food (inc eggs and chicken bones)
styrafoam
partially burned diapers

Favorite preparation of the egg: breaded, deep-fried hard-boiled egg

The number of eggs produced by my host family´s chickens is a real source of pride and I help count them every day to practice my Guarani.

That´s what´s on my mind right now! That and the fact that I just made the month mark since I left home!!

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Back From the Campo

Some observations about Paraguay
  • flourescent lights are mounted vertically on tree trunks all over
  • the best way to get toads out of your house is to sweep them out
  • some days when you come home from three hours of Guarani class there might be a quartered cow hanging from the patio rafters
  • later that night your host father will likely be eating the charred head of said cow with the farm hands
  • it is a good idea to pick the bones out of the sawgrass lawn before playing barefoot soccer on it
  • any animal can be accetably carried in a bag on any bus. My experiences so far have included puppies, baby parrots, and chickens
  • the word ¨puppy¨when pronounced by Paraguayans usually sounds like ¨poopy¨

So far Paraguay has been REALLY amazing and I feel like I am adjusting pretty well considering my limited language skills and the amount of cultural adjustment necessary. I am still getting along really well with my host family, which makes things much easier.

From Saturday to today I was visiting a real live Peace Corps volunteer, Treana. She is serving up in San Pedro as an agroforestry volunteer and it was a really good time in training to get a first glimpse of the ¨campo¨or countryside. Her site is a 6 hr bus ride (without wet dirt roads or bus breakdowns, both of which I experienced today) away from Asuncion followed by about an hour bike or horse drawn cart ride. The countryside got some much needed rain while I was there which delayed my departure and made me a good luck symbol to the community I was visiting. That´s the main news for now!

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Paraguaype (living without prepositions)

If I had the words to describe what it is like to be in the heart of South America right now this is where I would put them ... but I don´t. I am having an absolutely amazing time here in Paraguay and cannot imagine how things could be going more smoothly. My host family is AMAZING and my sisters Cecilia, 13 and Diana, 11 are the best language turors I could hope for. My Spanish is pretty bad but it doesn´t seem to put people off too much, especially when I open with a Guarani greeting.

My house and room are insanely nice. I have my own bathroom with a heated shower and there is electricity. The cooking is still mostly done over an open fire but the family has a gas stove. My host father is a farmer who also owns a recreation center with a tennis court, soccer fields, and two drained pools. My mom and older sister run a dispenseria out of the first floor of the house that sells fruit, dry food, clothes, stationery, etc.

Training is really interactive and intensive. Every morning we have Guarani language training from 7:45 to about 11:30 and afternoons are a mix of mostly technical information with safety, health, and culture.

I have to catch a bus back to Posta Gaona, the suburb that I live in, but I should be online about weekly during training when I come into Guarambare (where I am now). Wednesday and Friday afternoons around 4 to 6 central seem like they will be the most likely times to catch me (though with daylight savings that all changes).

Thanks to everyone who made me the confident, collected person that I am today because I know that I couldn´t be devoting myself to my studies as much as I am if I didn´t have a solid support base.

Monday, September 17, 2007

A hop across the pond


Helsinki, Finland

OK, so now that I am at home in Wisconsin with regular internet connection I have completely slacked on updating my blog. I blame it on the fact that I'm only back in WI for 13 days before skipping town again and I have other things to be doing.

Anyway, for an update: I went to Helsinki a little over a week ago and had a great time not only in the city but on the boat ride to/from Stockholm-Helsinki. The Viking Line is a cruise line that does that trip every night for dirt cheap. I met some great Finns on the way to Helsinki that showed me around the city. I also had tips from my Swedish teacher who has lived in Helsinki before (and who just moved back there the same day I flew out of Stockholm, sometimes timing is just off). From the Art Deco architecture to the saunas (yes, I did go to a REAL Finnish sauna outside of Helsinki) Helsinki was wonderful.

Now I have been state-side for almost a week and am trying to figure which 80 pounds of my excessive amounts of stuff I want to bring with me to Paraguay. So far my only real issue is how much the cds I'm bringing weigh. I have decided to bring cds, a battery powered walkman, rechargeable batteries, and a solar batter charger for my music needs (so anyone who wants to send me cds while I'm down south is certainly welcome to!)

In any event, on Friday night I will be doing my last big night out on the town so I hope to see any- and every-one there!

Friday, August 31, 2007

København

A Design Exhibition in Downtown Copenhagen

The possibility to visit a different country over the weekend and mental images of H. C. Anderson loudly singing the praises of Copenhagen led me to Denmark last weekend. Much to my delight, Copenhagen was, in fact, wonderful. I stayed in a huge (20 floor), ultra-mod hostel complete with light-colored hard-wood floors, round chairs, and avocado accents.

Much of what I did in Copenhagen was very touristy but the city is well set-up to accommodate finding and seeing the highlights so I had time to get off the strictly tourist path, too. I spent my first afternoon at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, an art museum based around the personal collection of the founder of Carlsberg Breweries. The collection includes wonderful examples of classic Egyptian, Roman, and Greek art as well as many paintings from Denmark's Golden Age.

Other highlights of my few days in Denmark included the mandatory pilgrimage to see The Little Mermaid (which is always crazily crowded but really accessible), a visit to the Museum of Danish Resistance (which documents Danish response to Nazi invasion), and a stroll down the brightly colored, cafe-lined canal Nyhavn. Luckily (because I still have money left) I walked down Strøget, Europe's largest pedestrian shopping street, on Sunday so everything was closed; I have never seen such amazing furniture and clothing design in my life and that was only the window displays.

Nyhavn

Here she is!


I was fortunate enough to actually meet some Danes while in Denmark and enjoyed the open pub style and cheap beer in Denmark (though it is a little unsettling to see 15 yr olds legally drinking beside you and I will never be able to feel legitimate walking down the street holding a beer, even if it is legal!)

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Settling In

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures! I have updated my Flickr account and things are pretty well organized (click on the link on the side to go to check it out.) I will continue to update the captions and titles of the pictures and try to place many of them on the map!

I have been in Göteborg since Saturday and things are going really well. It is quite nice to actually be in the same city for a bit. Tomorrow and Friday will be my last days in th field and then I will do data analysis for the rest of the time that I work with Frank.


I spent my first day in the office today and have the beautiful office pictured above all to myself! I'm in the Zoology building at Göteborg University and at coffee breaks and lunch I got to meet some of the other students and professors who have offices in the building.

I was in a hostel in Göteborg for a few nights and got to meet some really cool people. On Sunday I took a ferry out into the archipelago near Göteborg and spent an afternoon hanging out on an island that is a nature reserve.


Now I am at Elin's (Frank's daughter) apartment for a few days. She had an open room before a new roommate moves in on Saturday and I have really enjoyed going for walks with her and her boyfriend Jonas as well as sharing music and partaking of her wonderful cooking!

This weekend I am planning to go to Copenhagen to look around. It's only 3-4 hours on the train and who could resist a city that needs not one, but two "Wonderful"s to describe it!

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Above Reindeer: Where a Search for Snow Led Me



I am back in Göteborg and settled into the hostel that I will stay in for the better part of the next two weeks. The hostel is in a part of the city near tons of cafes, the university, and a great park that includes the Natural History Museum. Since this is a big city there are more young travelers here than at the other hostels I've stayed in for work so there is more going on but things are still clean and quite quiet.

I really enjoyed hiking up north and was glad that I chose to go to Norway since there was a race with over 1000 people on the section of the trail that I planned to walk. When I found that out I modified my route to include more time higher up in the mountains away from the main Kungsleden where the race was going on. I spent four days almost completely alone up in the mountains and was actually able to be a little bit introspective and start mentally processing some of the things that are happening and about to happen in my life. At one point I realized that I might not touch snow again for two years and took an extra hour to hike up into the mountains where some snow remained. As I neared the ridge top with snow I noticed that a group of about 10 reindeer were below me walking on the trail I had been following. All of the reindeer in Sweden are semi-domesticated and herded by the area's indigenous people, the Saami, so they were not particularly bothered by me and I got to watch them walk past minding their own business and feeding. I also saw lemings, visited a Saami offering place, and got a lot of reading done (including Douglas Copeland's latest Jpod which is, unsurprisingly, amazingly insightful).

The last full day I was supposed to be in the mountains it was raining in the morning and I decided to go down to Jokkmokk to see that center of the Saami economy and learn more about the culture at a museum that I had heard was quite good. I got to see a little of the town and talked with some Saami about their lifestyle and the challenges of reindeer husbandry, including difficulties maintaining their pastures when the snow melts earlier in the spring. It was another good side trip and kept me from receding to far into my own thoughts!

The train ride back down south was quite long today but I found an open sleeper cabin after Stockholm and got at least a little rest. Pictures to follow once I get my laptop and there is wireless here so I will be able to be in pretty regular contact via e-mail, Skype/phone, and blogging.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Detour to Norway



Somehow after 24 hours on the train I convinced myself to spend another two hours and see Norway before heading back to Abisko to hike ... and I am SO glad that I did!! I am in Narvik, Norway now (and will be for about another hour) and have really enjoyed seeing the snow capped mountains and fjords here. The Swedish mountains that I passed through and will be hiking in starting this afternoon were beautiful, but the Norwegian ones are more majestic.

The 26 hour train ride up here went fine. I met some really nice people right away in Gothenburg (a Swedish mother and daughter and a Danish guy) and talked with them for much of that first night, until they got off.

The vegetation up here isn't as dramaticly stunted as I would have guessed (I'll upload pictures later) and it's almost 80 degrees here in Narvik today! So much for the drastic northern trip!

Last night when I showed up without a reservation they apologized for not having any hostel beds left but gave me a hotel room for the same price! It was wonerful to have my own bathroom and not sleep in a bunkbed! Breakfast was also included in the price so I am carbo-loaded for backpacking after sandwiches and eggs for breakfast.

Another highlight was talking to an old Norwegian guy sitting down by the harbor. I could actually understand most of his Norwegian and my Swedish was passable enough that we could actually converse! Good thing I spent time in Alaska so I could talk a little about salmon!

Off to catch the train back to Abisko National Park. Later!

Friday, August 10, 2007

Back to Civilization for a Limited Time Only

I am now in Gothenburg/Göteborg and enjoying having a room to myself, a washing machine, and wireless Internet at Frank's house. After spending four weeks on the road in hostels even someone else's house I've only been to once feels a lot more like home.

But... since Frank is taking next week to plan classes for the upcoming semester I am taking off again. I am leaving tomorrow on an overnight train to Abisko National Park and am really excited to backpack along a section of the Kungsleden (King's Trail) that starts there. The trail is well marked, well used, and even has cabins along it that you can pay to stay and cook in! I'm bringing my tent and plan to camp, but Sweden's rain may get the best of me a night or two! Frank's oldest daughter, Elin, has been up to that area several times (including just a few weeks ago) and helped me plan my route and what to pack. I will be up in the mountains, so bears aren't a problem, making packing a bit easier.

I promise some more insightful, less here-is-where-I-am posts when I get back to Gothenburg and have a place to stay for more than 2 nights and that has Internet. Ok, I don't promise, but I will try.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Pictures!?!?



OK, I've uploaded some stuff onto Flickr under the user name kaitlinschott. I think the following link will let you look at them.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10636715@N03/

Other than that, last weekend was great. I was on Öland and rented a bike to check out the southern part of the island. The southern most tip (starting just south of the hostel I stayed at) is a nature reserve for all of the birds that hang out on Öland. I took my time biking around there until I got to the southern tip where I got to watch researchers band geese and swans and saw about a hundred swans swimming in the Baltic Sea.

On Sunday I went to Eketorp, a restored Viking fort. As soon as I walked in I donned Viking clothing and got to do things like bake flat bread over an open fire, make a ceramic pot (which of course I already broke), and hear stories about the old Norse gods (in Swedish, some of which I actually understood!)

Monday, August 6, 2007

7 min left of free internet

Ok, the hostel I was at for the past 5 days didn't have internet but I am at a library now on Öland with free access. So, Öland rocks. Yesterday I went to an old viking fort where I got to dress up in clothes from 800 AD and make bread and hear viking sagas. AWESOME!!! Pictures when I can get my own computer online. I spent Saturday biking around a nature reserve and saw about 100 swans chilling in the Baltic Sea, weird! Other news, I was able to book a train reservation up to northern Sweden (Abisko nat'l park specifically) and will be above the arctic circle in less than a week. Work is going well and I am trying to figure out where I will be staying when we aren't on the road anymore in about 2 weeks. Thinking about crashing with Frank's daughter Elin who is doing a PhD at Göteborg University, we'll see. Gotta go, all is well here other than extremely limited Internet access!!! Miss you all, keep the e-mails coming!

Saturday, July 28, 2007

My Coordinates



I am kind of "borrowing" the wireless at a resort that I'm not actually staying at, but they have a public library here so I don't feel so bad! Right now I am on Visingsö, an island in the middle of Lake Vätten, a huge lake in the middle of southern Sweden. It is a popular tourist destination but big enough to easily get away from other people. Today I rented a bike and saw the ruins of Sweden's first royal palace; beautiful flax and barley fields; a wetland nature reserve; and oak forests planted 200 years ago for the Swedish navy that are now ready to be made in to wooden boats!

Tomorrow I will head back to Frank's cabin on the east coast and spend the night before heading out for the week. Next week we are planning to finish a site we started last week, do another site on the east coast and go out to one of the large islands just off the east coast, Öland (or island country), for another site and to spend the weekend. The southern portion of Öland is a UESCO world heritage site and I hope to see viking ruins and farms that have been worked since the middle ages!

Here is the link to Frank's homepage with a downloadable pdf newsletter (nyhetsbrev) that Frank puts out about his oak project: http://www.zoologi.gu.se/kontakta_oss/forskare_larare/gotmark_frank/#Biologisk%20m%C3%A5ngfald
There is a map on page two of the newsletters that will give you a better idea of the geographical range of the project. We are only going to be able to survey 12 of the sites (since it takes us two days for each site) but the one's we won't visit are in the clusters in the east and west so I will still get to see about the same geographical range of sites. For those of you following along

Week 1: July 16, 17 - Site #4, Sandvidksås
July 18 - Site #6, Strakaskogen
July 19, 20 - Site #14, Aspenäs

Week 2: July 22 - Site #20, Fårbo
July 24, 25 - Site #11 Saftsäter
July 26, 27 - Site #17 Ulvsdal

And now I am here in Visingsö which is in the middle of the lake that sites 6 and 7 are right next to! Our plan for next week is to finish sampling at site #20, and visit sites 23 and 25.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Första veckan (The first week)

Internet access in rural Sweden is virtually impossible if you work during the day! It is kind of like Wisconsin in that the libraries have access and they are only open limited hours. So, I am going to give a quick update but won't be able to do that very often.

Sweden is going wonderfully. The plant life is very similar but different enough to be interesting and we have been working in some wonderful oak forests.

Frank Götemark, the professor I am working with, has been immensely helpful and welcoming. I am staying at his cottage now on the east coast of Sweden for the weekend with Frank, his wife and eldest daughter, Elin. We all get along very well and today I went kayaking in the archipelago east of Sweden with Elin. We got to see some lovely seabirds and hang out on beautiful rocky islands.

I am still planning a trip up to northern Sweden in mid-August and Elin has been there several times and will help me plan the trip (her insights about staying on the mountains to avoid the mosquitos and biting flies have already been valuable!)

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Sverige!

I am writing this from an appropriately well-lit and electronically wired Scandinavian apartment. I made it to Stockholm three hours late due to a lightening storm in Newark that held up all outgoing flights. Even with the delay (or maybe more apparently so because of the delay) SAS was amazing and made me remember that it can be enjoyable to fly. I cleared the passport check and customs, bought a bus ticket, and made my way to downtown Stockholm all by myself! Luckily, Caroline was waiting for me at the bus stop and we got lunch before heading back to her apartment. My wonderful hostess is off at work right now so I don't have to feel bad about sitting on the computer, immersing myself in Swedish culture by eating knäckerbröd & watching Swedish tv, and catching up on some sleep. I am excited to get into the city again tomorrow and have a look around. No pictures yet but I'll upload some as I take them.

Friday, June 29, 2007

PARAGUAY!


Yes, I finally know where I will be for the next 2+ years, and I will be in Paraguay. I just accepted a Peace Corps position working in agroforestry extension. I will be leaving for staging in the US on the 25th of September and arriving in Paraguay on the 28th! I am very excited and think that this assignment will be a great fit for me.

I will be learning both Spanish and the indigenous language Guarani though I will likely use Guarani more. I won't learn exactly where in Paraguay I will be located until I have been in Paraguay for a month or two but I will likely be in a village of 20-80 homes that may or may not have electricity but will most likely not have running water. The first three months that I am in Paraguay will be language, health, cultural, and technical training. All of the other volunteers arriving in Paraguay at the same time as I do will go through this training together in Guarambare (about an hour outside the capital city Asuncion). During my training and the first two months after I will be living with a host family and can choose to remain with a host family for the remainder of my time (something encouraged for volunteers in general and females in particular.)

My project will involve integrating trees into the agricultural landscape. For example, using trees as windbreaks, nitrogen sources, erosion control, or fruit production. I will likely be involved in nursery work, too.

I hope to do a ton of traveling around South America so let me know if you plan/want/hope to visit the continent sometime from April 2008-September 2009 or after I'm done in December 2009 (when I will be available to travel.) I'm already scheming on a Machu Pichu trip with my roommates Nicole, Jess, and Johanna in the end of 2008's summer.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Toucans and Lizards and Monkeys, oh my!


On to the more positive part of my trip...

I went to Belize as part of a Madison Area Technical College service learning trip. The focus for my group was environmental and ecological work. To this end, we took two, three-day trips up to Belize's newest National Park, the Elijio Ponti National Park. There the members of our group worked with brilliant scientists from across Belize to catalog the diversity within the park. It was an amazing and humbling learning experience. The first week we walked the path to the beautiful Sakt'aj (white falls) waterfall and were rewarded with a lunch-time swim in the pools at the fall's base. The following week we did the biodiversity assessment along the trail to a huge cave with ancient Mayan pottery in many spots and beautiful formations.

The tree diversity was as overwhelming as I would have imagined from lectures on the neo-tropics but I managed to learn a few species and got to see and hear some amazing birds! Though I have little photographic proof, I did get to see all three toucans that reside in Belize (the collared aracari, keel-billed toucan, and emerald toucanet), a number of birds that are closely related to the quetzal (the slaty-tailed, black-headed, and violaceous trogons), red-legged honey creepers, a Montezuma's Oropendola and many species of hummingbirds. On our last day on the mainland we took a tour of the largely unexcavated El Pilar ancient Mayan ruins. While one of the area's most respected herbalists showed us around we had the good fortune to see a troop of about 8 howler monkeys passing directly overhead!

The destruction resulting from "slash-and-burn" agricultural clearing was largely evident around the park though much of the park itself was secondary forest growing where mere decades before there had been agricultural fields (and the land had doubtlessly been cleared for agriculture many times by ancient Mayan civilizations.)

We lucked out and had most of our rainfall at night while we were in the park and even then there wasn't much rainfall during our trip. This meant that mosquitoes were also sparse! I didn't use my mosquito net once during my trip and even the ticks that were out weren't nearly as bad as those in northern Wisconsin!

Monday, June 18, 2007

Obstacles

Well, I am now back from Belize but I had a series of unfortunate events (all of which were resolved) leading up to my actually arriving in Belize.

I ran into a passport fiasco that involved frantic calls to Sweden and the US passport appointment hot line in the middle of the night, calls to the Swedish Consulate General in New York every week day between 2 and 3 PM EST and a last-second trip to Chicago to get a brand new passport.


I was fortunate to have a new passport in time to board my originally scheduled flight relay to Belize City. However, instead of arriving in Belize City on June 1 (the day I departed Madison) Mom and I didn't get into Belize until June 3. I had the distinct privilege of getting to spend two nights in beautiful Miami, Florida. The second day we were stuck in Miami they were able to tell us there was no hope of getting to Belize early enough in the day that we were able to do something other than sit in the airport and hotel. My mom being a great trip planner coordinated the rental of a minivan and an afternoon excursion to Coopertown Air Boat Rides where the above picture was taken before heading out into the everglades to check out the gators in a more natural setting.

Of course, we did end up making it into Belize (and OUT of Miami) and I had an amazing time down in Central America.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Post-graduation Update

Hey all. Since I just graduated and don't leave for Belize for another week I'm taking some time to set up this blog. I plan to use this to keep people in the loop whenever I'm abroad and have internet access. Please post questions or comments if you think other people that know me might want to read them (or my response.)

I want to thank everyone who helped me celebrate my graduation. I went all out and walked for the UW ceremony in the Kohl Center on May 20 and now I'm done!

I am fortunate enough to get to go on some amazing trips this summer starting things off in Belize from June 2 to June 17. Mom and I will be going to Belize as members of a service learning trip through Madison Area Technical College and will be doing rapid ecological assessments in the tropical forests down there with a chance to visit the Mayan ruins and coral reef.

My other big trip this summer will be working in Sweden. I will be collecting oak regeneration data at 25 sites across southern Sweden and be based in Gothenburg/Göteborg (http://sweden.europe-cities.com/images/sweden_map.jpg) for weekends. I just bought my ticket and will fly into Stockholm on July 12 and back out on September 10. One of the reasons that I am so interested in Scandinavia is their social systems and they already appear to be working in my favor as I will have a number of days off and hope to get a chance to travel across Scandinavia in addition to getting to know Göteborg.

As things stand, I plan to begin my service as a Peace Corps volunteer at the end of September. I have been recommended for a forestry position in Latin America and should hear what country I'll be in and learn more about what I'll be doing in about a month.

Ok, next time I post there should actually be something interesting to share, not just catch-up!