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.

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!

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.