if only, if only the woodpecker sighs, the bark on the trees was as soft as the skies
the wolf waits below, hungry and lonley, and cries to the moon, if only, if only

I feel like I haven't written anything (worth reading) in this in a loooong time. Partly I was traveling in Peru and it was difficult/I had way better things to do. But also a lot of it is that I've been feeling really at home here in Colombia recently, and so I forget that I'm still traveling.

Two weeks ago I went to Pance, which is a town on the outskirts of Cali which a river clean enough to swim in. There are like 4 or 5 rivers in Cali but all of the other ones are too polluted to enjoy. From Pance you can access a national park with beautiful jungle and mountains. And the best part is that it costs only about $5 to get there and back, which is CLUTCH because I'm pretty much broke at this point.

I went with two Colombian friends, one of whom, Sebastian, used to work in the national park and so he knew all the guards and all the trails. We met up with Sebastian, the skinniest person I've ever seen, eating a bag of chips he had stolen on his way over, in a mall in southern Cali. From there we took the most crowded bus I've ever ridden on. I literally did not have to hold on as we swerved through the mountains because there were people holding me up on all sides. And, there were two seriously grumpy old women sitting in the front row of seats yelling at everyone to pack in a little tighter so that we could fit more people on the bus. I figured that because they were being so obviously rude, I was justified in unsubtley giving them some glares.

Once we got there we walked for a bit up to the beautiful river where we found a private waterfall and had lunch. I'm not even going to try to describe how beautiful the jungle is, because I won't even come close, but it is incredible to be in a place where everything is so alive. We swam in the river, climbed up the water falls, slid down on the rocks which formed natural water slides, incredible.

Then we decided to hike a bit more, but rather than pay the entrance fee to the park, Sebastian knew how to sneak in, so we did a little jungle trail blazing and bypassed the entrance. However, while we were hacking through the vines, without even knowing about my phobia, Sebastian goes 'oh, seriously, be very careful when you move the foliage. there are a lot of TREE SNAKES here and they are very poisonous' (!!!!). So obviously I couldn't really enjoy the offtrailing because I was freaking out a lot inside, but luckily we did not see any snakes. Just the most beautiful, huge blue butterflies, plus like 20 other kinds of butterflies, and some incredible birds whose name I can't remember but they are about as colorful and awesome looking as parrots. (Btw there are also parrots here. It's really crazy how many awesome animals there are here that people in the U.S. only read about.)

It's 1:30am and I am at gate b2 in the Quito airport. My flight back to bogota is in 4 and a half hours. I'm debating whether or not to try and sleep. Airports are really kind of creepy when you're the only one in them, and at the moment I am definitely the only one around. I've already done a lot of exploring, and there doesn't seem to be any food to 'borrow' but I did find some lovely red roses upstairs (random) which I've given a new home! Peru was incredible, but for now, I'm going to inflate my neck pillow (SO handy, I know) for a few Zzzzzs.

So when I said we were resting last night I apparently meant I was waiting until happy hour to drink a lot of Cusqueno beers and then spend hours dancing with a few people we met to a pretty good cover band. So this morning when we woke up to go mountain biking I had a pretty sweet hangover, but I got over it pretty fast since the Andes are BEAUTIFUL. I had one of those moments where you kind of mentally stop and  just try to take it all in and realize that you are actually where you are doing what you're doing. We biked first to some ruins where the Incas built these farming terraces in natural hole-shaped places in the earth, so the terraces are in circles descending down into the hole. Each level of circle-terrace is about 10 degrees hotter as you go down, so that they could acclimate plants from the jungles in Northern Peru to be grown in the colder highland regions. Brilliant Incas!

We also visited a salt mines, that are actually Pre-Inca, and have this really cool system of controlling the salty water to flow into these pools where the salt crystalizes and then is collected. It was a good reminder of how much work goes in to everything we have. Even table salt that I dont even think about using requires all of this pretty strenuous labor. I know, blah blah, Ive gone to Peru and had a revelation about economic exploitation, but I actually have. Its one thing to hear and know about, but its been such a different experience for me to actually see it. Ive been feeling really spoiled lately and I think Ive decided that Im no longer ok with just appreciating my priviledge and being grateful for it, I think that is not enough.

Anna and I are in Cusco! So far almost we have had a lot of classic tourist moments, but were having a really good time despite it. First, I dont have a lot of clothes in South America, so I had to wash all my underwear when I first got to Annas house in Lima. I put my 4 pairs (the only other pairs I brought besides the ones I was wearing) in the dryer. When I came back from them an hour later, they had vanished. My current theory is that the dryer must have eaten them, but that left me with zero pairs of clean underwear for the next week.

Then, Anna and I got on our coach (the nicest coach I have EVER seen, hands down) for the 20 hour bus ride to Cusco. It had these huge comfy seats like in first class on airplanes, and they gave you the softest blankets ever, and we got to watch movies for hours and hours. Unfortunately, we both got sick from the food, and have spent a good part of the last 48 hours on the toilet.

We made it to Cusco, which is BEAUTIFUL and surrounded steep and jagged mountains of the Andes. It is really touristy though, in a kind of confusing way. One American I talked to earlier today said he felt like the whole country was kind of like a jungle themed Disneyland, and in some ways it definitely feels like that. Everything is for tourists, and so it feels incredibly disconnected from what Peru is like for Peruvians. But at the same time, tourism is such a part of Peru that tourism has in some ways become what Peru is. I dunno, its weird, but I cant really judge since Ive only been here for 2 days now. However, neither Anna nor I will be taking many pictures, since both of our cameras have broken since we arrived.

A lot of things have gone well though. I ate cow heart yesterday - grilled on a stick with potato - which was not nearly as nasty as it sounds. I really couldnt tell it was heart since it was sliced up, and it was a little chewy but pretty tasty. Today we tried Alpaca - also grilled on a stick - and it was also really good!

Last night the hostel were in had karaoke, so after a couple Piscos Anna and I did a pretty fantastic rendition of Californication. Tonight were resting ourselves for a biking tour of some more ruines tomorrow.

Finally have internet at home again, and I got to borrow a friends computer all of yesterday, so I got to watch Modern Family episodes all day. I have never appreciated technology as much as I did at 10am yesterday morning, sitting in bed with fresh orange/passion fruit juice. The fresh juices here are AMAZING, probably mostly because the fruit is so delicious, and I never realized how easy it is to make. You just throw it in a blender, then strain it, all of which takes a couple of minutes. Like guavas, you don’t even have to peel, you just cut the ends off.

The FIFA World Cup U20 is happening in Colombia right now, so on Friday I went to a game in the newly renovated stadium here in Cali. We paid about US $20, and got to see a double header of New Zealand vs. Portugal and France vs. Mali. My friend Alex (a German girl I work with) and I were struggling with how we should decorate ourselves in this situation – how do you pick a country? Do you paint one country’s flag on one cheek and another on the other cheek? That’s a little confusing, maybe we should wear a neutral color like white and pretend it’s for the teams...The Colombians did not struggle with this though – about 90% of the stadium was full of people wearing the yellow Colombian jersey, their faces painted in the yellow, blue, red of the Colombian flag, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that Colombia was not playing in either of the matches.

They don’t sell any alcohol at football games, because apparently it is too dangerous. The fans are so passionate that deaths are not uncommon at matches, so it’s best not to encourage the passion with beverage. You also can’t bring any food in, and all they sell are hot dogs, chorizo, potato chips, this-roasted-pig stuffed-with-rice dish, and soda, and you can’t even leave to eat and come back in. Unfortunate. However, quite fortunate: ALL THE TEAMS stay in the nicest hotel in Cali, the Intercontinental, which is located 5 MINUTES FROM MY HOUSE!!!! Obviously I will be spending a lot of time hanging around there the next two weeks….

Reader warning: this post is really just me just rambling to myself, maybe even verging on a philosophical rant, but it’s a ramble I’ve been thinking about for a while now so I needed to get it out of my head.

I think the biggest difference between this summer and last summer is that last summer I learned how beautiful life can be, and this summer I’m learning how ugly life can be. I don’t at all mean that life in Colombia is ugly, I’m just getting a different experience (I was on a train visiting beautiful cities last summer; this summer I’m working 9 hour days at a poverty-reduction agricultural research institute).

Last summer I learned a lot about enjoying life and appreciating everything I have, and I thought a lot about what I was doing with my life and what I wanted to be doing with my life and why I was doing any of it at all – the typical I’m-a-college-student-backpacking-through-Europe revelations, blah blah blah. And all of that changed me (I think for the better) because it forced me to question myself, and I kind of came to the conclusion that all of the stuff we do is a little bit pointless, but we take it SO seriously. Having just done all of the college application madness a year before, I think that was still pretty influential in my thinking. A lot of times I think we lose sight of the fact that we should be taking advantage of the moment rather than pursuing all of these lofty goals that we may or may not accomplish. People always say it’s nice to take time to stop and smell the flowers, but nobody ever actually does. I think people are actually criticized for taking time to stop and smell the flowers. People who take a year off before going to college, or take time off in college, or decide they’d rather study art than biology, or rather work in a lovely coffee shop than do research for a professor, etc. There’s a lot of pressure to ‘be the best you can be’ all the time. I still think all of that pressure is ridiculous and pointless, and a problem with our society. But I also realize now that my point of view is much more first-world than I thought before. Not that I was ever unaware I was from a first-world country. I just didn’t realize that my views about life were so affected by it.

This summer I’m realizing two things: first, that work is a huge part of life – having an actual job is soooo many hours of your life, and it’s usually not that fun even if you’re doing something you really care about (kind of a depressing realization), and second, that my laissez-faire attitude about the importance of working hard is from a societally-privileged point of view. There’s probably an actual term for it, but by societally-privileged point of view I mean that I know how to get what I want in society. I know what I’m supposed to say when and to whom, what kinds of things are expected and rewarded, etc., and because of that I feel like I could get a job pretty easily, anywhere. Maybe that is naively optimistic of me, but thus far (and I know that is only 20 years) I have never had trouble finding work or opportunities. Not because I’m a really good talker or really well qualified, but just because I know how to play the game because I was raised in it.

So last summer when I developed all of my ideas about how seriously things should be taken, there was no necessity factored in. Because, (and I could be wrong) I feel like I have a lot of security. If I needed a job, I’m pretty sure I could get one, so I’m free to do less long-term planning. I’m also pretty sure that I could make a lot of money. Not that I want to, but I know how I could if I did want to. And that’s not something that a lot of people could say; that’s a particular kind of privilege.

I finally caved and got haircut and pedicure on Monday. I haven't had a haircut since late March I think, so it was time, and I've gotten several comments on my gorgeous feet so peer pressure won. Luckily since this is Colombia and everyone gets their hair and nails done all the time, it's very inexpensive and there were 4 salons to choose from within a 2 block radius of my house. Not too shabby considering I have to walk like half a mile to get to the grocery store.


I walk around barefoot a lot (obviously) so I have callouses on my feet, and the floors in my house are reeeeally dirty (I wash my feet several times a day at home but it doesn't seem to do any good) so there was quite a lot of dirt ground into the bottoms and stuck under the nails. And the woman was clearly a little bit horrified, but she got working, quite aggressively I might add. She had this metal tool that she used to scrape a lot of dead skin or cuticle or something away from around my toe nails, and she really just went for it with the digging. She also rubbed a lot of dead skin off the bottoms of my feet, so they are now smooth and soft!

Only yesterday, I tried to play football with the same guys I usually play with, and it was SO PAINFUL. All the dead, hard, nasty skin on the bottoms of my feet was apparently serving a very important purpose of protecting my feet, because after yesterday I have two enormous blisters. Apparently I need to pick either 'Colombian feminine' with nice feet, or 'strange football-playing American' with nasty feet.

Such a good weekend. I still don't have internet in my house, hence the lack of posts, but it means I have lots of time to do other things. On Friday night I taught some Colombians flip cup, but they wanted to play with full cups, and I haven't been drinking that much the last few months, so I could only play a few rounds...We went out to a club we went to last weekend, and one of the really nice things about clubs here is that they place a variety of music. Doing the same dance move over and over for hours gets a little boring, so lots of clubs here switch between electronica, salsa, merengue, hip hop, etc, and it's a lot more interesting. It's also really hot and humid here, so you get really sweaty really quickly dancing. I also tried Viche for the first time, which is possible the most disgusting alcoholic beverage I've ever tasted. It tastes like sweet pee (not that I've ever tried pee) with the burn of alcohol (but it's not warm like I would imagine drinking pee is).

I also bought tickets to the FIFA U20 World Cup, which is in Colombia this year! Saturday night was Colombia's first game, which we watched in a Cuban restaurant. They destroyed France. I also ran up/climbed the Tres Cruces again, the hill that tons of people climb on the weekends, and went to the zoo, high. SUCH a fantastic decision - I've never enjoyed animals so much as I did yesterday. We spent several hours watching the monkeys fight with each other, and the fish swim around and around, and tons of butterflies land on us in the butterfly house.

I do work a lot here though, even though I never post about it. I finally started working on the project I came here to work on last week, which was really exciting. It took that long to finally get everyone in the same meeting to present about the project...everything here is really inefficient. It's a project with CIAT and Apoyo de las Poblaciones Rurales de Ascendencia Africana de América Latina, a non-profit which somehow gets abbreviated to ACUA. I'm working with several community organizations that produce either medicinal herbs or beauty products/essential oils from plants they grow. We're helping them develop their products and find more profitable markets, and also investigating the medicinal plants, which is the part of the project that I find the most interesting.

A lot of the commercial drugs in use now are just concentrated doses of active compounds found in plants, or synthetic versions of compounds found in plants. Investigating traditional medical practices can offer leads as to what plants we should be analyzing chemically for medicinal properties. Additionally, a good portion of the developing world doesn't have access to medical systems other than their traditional, plant-based system, and so research of the plants they are using could be helpful in making the ethnobotany (impressive big word?) more effective. Anyway, it's really interesting, and I'm honestly starting not to mind the 5:30am wake-ups as much.