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.

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!)

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.

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.

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!