I left the field for good yesterday morning, and as exciting as it was to be headed back to the world of internet and showers, I'm going to miss some things about Ccasapata. Watching the sun rise every morning over the hills towards Paucara and listening to the obnoxious raucous of the local music have their charm.



In trying to figure out what I'm taking away from the experience, this article that Daria sent me a little while ago comes to mind. The article is by some dude named Ivan Illich and about how unproductive and even imperialist-minded it is for Americans, particularly college students with little expertise, to travel to Latin American in an attempt to 'help.' While I certainly don't see myself as here in Peru to try and 'fix things' I do think I've realized the importance of this work being done by Peruvians. A lot of the time I felt unable to help or participate because I don't understand a word of Quechua, or because I have absolutely zero experience growing potatoes. Yes, there are plenty of people in the U.S. with tons of experience with potatoes, but even they have no experience with the particularities of the environment here in Chopcca. Dissemination of new technologies to communities is really important, but even that process needs to involve the farmers, and I think needs to be done by people who are from the region.

That is certainly not to say that I think people from the U.S. have no role in the process of sustainable agriculture, poverty and malnutrition reduction, and adapting to climate change. Rather, we have an enormous role given how influential American policies and the American lifestyle are around the world economically and environmentally. I think it is much more daunting a task to try to address these things in the U.S., but I think ultimately that is a more productive route. And I think collaboration around the world is also really important.

But I think the things that I will really remember from this experience are more along the lines of how artificial my life is in some ways - on a day to day basis how little I really know about every convenience or process that is at work to result in the efficiency and comfort of my daily activities.

Last week I spent 5 days in the city of Huancayo, which feels like a different world. Between stuffing my face with chocolate cake and empanadas and pollo a la brasa, I went out to a disco with my co-worker, spent a day at a regional gastronomic festival, climbed the nearby mountain Huaytapallana, planted olluca and mashua in a community field outside the city, and somehow ended up on a date with a pro soccer player.

The whole trip really made me realize how different each part of Peru is. I met a group of guys from Lima on my tour up Huaytapallana. They had no idea that there was such a thing as purple corn - a crop that is very common around Huancayo. Compared to them, I know way more about life in the rural highlands. This also made me realize what a small subset of Americans I really know. My knowledge of agricultural towns in the U.S. stops at what I learned in the Jane Smiley book A Thousand Acres.

Near the top of Huataypallana

Lechon, relaxing in style at the gastronomic festival as they wait to be eaten

8 Agosto
    I’ve never before experienced so many emotions related to showering, but here I feel really anxious about how cold it is going to be, and also really excited because I am always so, so dirty and being clean sounds heavenly. I took one shower in the actual shower here, and have never been so cold in my life. Since then I’ve resorted to boiling a pot of water, and then dumping it into one of the plastic containers we have for doing laundry. I mix it with some cold tap water, and it is just large enough that I can put both my feet in, but not sit down. But it’s warm, and that is more wonderful than words can describe. By the time I’m done, the water is the tannish orange color of the dust that covers every surface in this world, but I feel reborn.
    I’m also learning a ton about what it’s actually like to work in communities. It’s frustrating! The community is incredibly closed. In some ways, the Peruvians who work with Yanapai are just as much outsiders as I am. They don’t have the same traditions or even language as the people here, and they definitely aren’t accepted as anything other than ‘them.’ The people here haven’t had a lot of education, especially the women, so trying to lecture to them really doesn’t work. They aren’t shy about talking over you or blatantly not paying attention. They also often learn the practices that Yanapai wants them to implement, but they don’t do them. It’s unclear exactly why, but they just have all these traditions that are really strong. And I just can’t relate to that.

2 Agosto
    Sometimes it feels like even the llamas and sheep and cows that I pass are staring at me. I haven’t seen a white person since I arrived over 2 weeks ago, and the people here don’t seem to know how to respond to me. The men often want to ask about farming or ranching in the U.S., which I unfortunately don’t know very much about. They are also interested in politics, but don’t seem to know much about U.S. policies except that they don’t like them. The women often make jokes about how I’m going to burn up in the sun, and how I probably have to do so much more work here than in my life in the U.S. I guess in a lot of ways they’re right - I don’t do nearly as much mundane housework back in Minnesota. I’m beginning to learn why appliances were invented. I find myself spending maybe 30% of my time here doing laundry, cooking, washing dishes, etc. In a way, since I don’t have a lot of other things to do, it is nice to spend my time doing all these things for my livelihood. I’m also more and more aware of how little I actually know how to do in my life. Here the people fix their own electricity, cope with dirty or sometimes no water, build their own houses, butcher their own meat, grow their own food, make many of their own clothes, change their own gas. There are so many people with so many skills in my life. With out all of them and their work, I wouldn’t know the first thing about the conveniences that make my life possible.
    The women also frequently ask me if I’m used to life here by now. I don’t really know what to say to that. I am used to it in that I’ve got a routine, I know my way around, I know how to use the stove and toilet in the house and I know where to buy eggs and cheese. But I could never really get used to life here. It’s too different. I think it’s actually really important for me to remember who I am and what I like to do. Just because I’m in Peru doesn’t change who I am and what I enjoy. Sure I have to be flexible about some things (no matter how badly I want it, there will never be a hot shower), but it would just be confusing to try and pretend like I fit in here. Yesterday I went for a run to Sotopampa, a nearby town just down the dirt road. The road workers suddenly decided that since I wasn’t wearing field clothes it was okay to whistle and cat call. Everyone I passed looked at me like running for exercise was the strangest thing they had ever seen in their lives. But fuck it, I like to run and I’m getting tired of everyone looking at me like I’m an alien. Even if I am the first person they’ve ever seen from the U.S., they’ve now seen me for 2 and a half weeks so get over it already.

3 Agosto
A list of skills I’m acquiring that will be most likely be useless in the developed world:
    How to make a toilet flush when the water has stopped running
    How to rapidly peel potatoes (for every meal)
    How to water the (dirt) floor
    How to effectively hand wash everything I own
    How to say “no” in Quechua
    How to comfortably sit 5 across in a normal sized car
    How to tell whether my Soles notes are counterfeit
    How to butcher a lamb
    How to prepare the organs of said lamb
    How to butcher a guinea pig
    How to remove the husks of quinoa
    How to coat the outside of pots with oil before cooking over an open fire
    How to cure alpaca meat
    How to select a good pig for purchase, based on the color of its teeth and whether or not it has bacteria in its throat
    How to adorn a cow for the festival of Santiago
    How to make adobe bricks for housing construction
    How to prepare a pachamanca (oven dug in the ground and lined with stones that cook the food)
    How to not eat the skins of any fruits or vegetables
   

23 July
    Today I accompanied Annali to a nearby town to instruct a group of women in proper nutrition for their babies. The meeting was supposed to start at 11am, but only three of the women showed up on time. An hour and a half later everyone was finally ready to go, but the man who was leading the session - a doctor paid by the government - did not seem to garner much respect from the women. He eventually managed to explain there there were three groups the women needed to focus on: protein, carbohydrates (for strength and weight) and vitamins. The problem is that the women don’t know what any of those things are, nor that feeding them more protein and vitamins would help them. Many of the women themselves are malnourished, and seem unable to think about anything except the immediate present. Often they feed themselves first, and refuse to take their children to the clinic to be checked for parasites (which cause severe malnutrition). Apparently the nurses at the clinics often get extremely frustrated with the mothers and express their frustration in less productive ways. I, too, don’t think I could patiently work with this group of people without expressing some frustration in an unproductive manner.
    About half of the women at the meeting seemed to be a good few years younger than me. It’s so weird to see them with babies strapped to their backs, knitting or nursing. They almost look like kids themselves, but they know another whole side to being a woman that I can’t even imagine.

22 July
    Today I got to see a guinea pig slaughter. For weddings, the family of the groom has to give a bunch of cuy to the family of the bride. When we arrived, we walked up the the river where about 50 family members were bent over the water scraping hair off of the dead cuy. Next the digestive tract is removed, and so you can see a whole bunch of stomachs and intestines, with formed turds, floating around in the water. The eyes are scraped out, the mouth cut open, a bunch of other gross details. Then the whole pig is thoroughly rinsed and they’re all piled up like pink bean bags. At the end all the pigs are counted, but it is a game to have hidden some. The man counting the cuy shouts out how many are missing and everyone has to find the remaining ones. They are hidden under people’s jackets, in boots, under rocks, literally everywhere. I should also mention that all the while that animals are being cut up and innards removed, several family members are walking around distributing handfuls of sweet popped corn and sips of soda into the sticky hands. Once all the guinea pigs are rounded up, they’re carried up to the family farm to be boiled for a few minutes. Then the remaining organs are separated from the body (not thrown away, mind you), the ribs are broken off, and the feet ripped off. Now they’re ready to be made into the matrimonial stew.
    So I watched all of this, feeling a mix of both complete disgust and fascination, and the fascination completely won out. I just kept thinking that never in my wildest dreams could I have invented a scene of guinea pig preparation like this. How can I possibly still be on earth. The family was incredibly welcoming, and we hung out on the farm all afternoon and had lunch with them - no meat this time, it was the carbohydrate trifecta of pasta, potatoes and rice that seem to be all I get to eat these days. I guess that’s how iron and zinc deficiencies occur…
    While we were eating and chatting one of the men asked where I was from and when I said the United States (los Estados Unidos) he replied, los Estados Judidos. I was caught off guard so I didn’t get a chance to stand up for myself at all. I just said, Si, yo se. As much as I hate that he generalized all the people of the U.S. with the actions of the few powerful, I don’t disagree with him (not that he even knew what he was talking about). I hate the way the U.S. does things. And even more, I hate that anyone would think that I agree with my country’s foreign policy.

July 21
    I got to go to a Chopcca wedding! The precession filed down from the hills into the town, settling out front of the legal building (there was another wedding taking place, so they had to wait a bit). All the women were decked out in their finest skirts and cape things, with as many bright colors as exists and can simultaneously be displayed. The groom however was wearing jeans and a leather jacket that said CAT on the back. He could have been working at a garage. Harp and violin music was played, food was eaten, and all the while a pickup football game was happening just being the wedding party. The ball would frequently roll into the middle of the festivities, and would be returned as if it was no biggie. No football game should be halted for a wedding.  Then it was time for the wedding, and usually only the couple and their parents go into the little room to actually sign the legal documents. Somehow, Edgar and I got to go in also, which was really kind of awkward. The whole time the couple looked totally stoic and I’d even go so far as to say terrified. I don’t know how old the guy was, but the girl was 17, and they already had a baby so that might explain it. No one else seemed to think the lack of joy was unusual though. Everyone here gets married around 17-20. People keep asking me if I’m a senorita or a senora, and when I tell them I’m a senorita, they tell me that I really have to get on finding a husband. Nope.

20 July
    The family invited us into their tiny kitchen house. It was about 1m x 4m, made of mud bricks and a tin roof, and we crammed all 8 us in there. Guinea pigs ran freely about the floor, making the high-pitched squeaking noise I remember hearing from my childhood pets. There was a fire in the corner that filled the room with smoke. The mother of the family, only 26 years old though I can't remember her name, offered us soup, boiled potatoes, and chuno. Chuno is a way of preserving potatoes, that allows them to be eaten for up to 10 years! The potatoes are first soaked in water and then dried out in the sun, and the total process takes about 20 days.
    We had gotten up early to visit and collect data from the families who have volunteered to work with Yanapai. This particular family was the first of the day. We weighed small sacks of potatoes as well as guinea pigs. We will return in a month or so to compare the weights. The heavier the better, because the longer the potatoes maintain their water weight, the longer they can be stored and eaten. The same with the guinea pigs - the longer they maintain body weight without water, the more nutrition they can provide for the family. The storage time of these foods is especially important, since this region is very dry, and so food can only be grown during the rainy months between September and April. Climate change has further reduced the rainy season, causing severe drought and food shortages. Data from 20 different species of potatoes and 4 different species of guinea pigs will be compared, to determine the best species given the water shortages. Of course, the study will not suggest that only the one, best species be cultivated - many potato species will be grown in the same field at the same time, as per traditional practices. This helps to minimize pests and nutrient depletion of the soil.
    It’s going to be hard to go back to school after living like this. Adjusting after last summer was hard, and my life last summer resembled my life in the U.S. much more than my life right now does. In a way, I think it’s impossible to see the luxuries of the Western world in the same way once you really make yourself see the rest of the world. Something I’ve been noticing recently is how little I actually do for myself. If there wasn’t running water, if there wasn’t trash pickup, if there weren’t grocery stores that supplied me with food and department stores that supplied me with clothes, I would be so, so lost. I almost feel like a useless human being in that I don’t even know how to take care of myself in the most basic ways. I guess that’s what society gives us; it saves us time so that we can focus on all the other things that we focus on. And I guess that’s good? That has allowed modern medicine, and mapping the human genome, and combustion engines and the internet. But what about all the people in our easy society who don’t contribute to any of the things that improve the world. (Or maybe change the world is a better word.) I don’t mean the people in our society whose lives aren’t easy. I mean the people who trade stocks, or sell houses and cars, or make high fructose corn syrup. How do they find any meaning in their lives?
   

19 July
    After 19 hours of traveling, Edgar and I pulled up to a house made of mud bricks with a tin roof. We’re in Ccasapata, Peru, several hours drive from the closest store, let alone the closest internet cafe. The house is indistinguishable from any of the other houses on the dirt street, including a tin door that is only about 4 feet tall. Inside, there is a storage room and an open area with a little garden, a clothes line, a sink, and a small building with a toilet. A ladder leads up to a wooden ledge that is build over the storage room looking out onto the open area. The ledge has three tin doors, each about 4 feet tall and 1.5 feet wide, that open into the bedrooms. When I arrived the water was off, which meant no toilet or sink or showers (though the showers are freezing cold when they do work). As I put my suitcase into my room, a scuttling noise in the corner alerted me to my roommate - a large, light brown rat descending from the ceiling (which is actually just a plastic covering under the tin roofing). I have named him Mateo, after a friend I met in Cusco.
    Well, I thought, this is my chance to put my money where my mouth is. Most people interested in development, including myself, preach the importance of immersing yourself in the community in order to make a project effective. Many philanthropy groups throw money from afar at buildings that will never be used, or at systems that the local culture rejects. Here in Cchopca, several different NGOs and development organizations have built guinea pig (cuy) pens and left, without taking the time to monitor the effects of the project, or even to understand whether the pens were needed in the first place. (After being here only one day, it seems to me that better irrigation would be far more useful.) But Yanapai actually stays here, working with the community. Edgar has worked here for 20 years and knows most of the townspeople, as well as all of the local officials. This was one of the reasons I wanted to work with this organization. So when the meals of bread and jam get old, and the dirt floors turn everything I own a rusty color of brown, I need to remember that there are strings and strings of dried mushrooms hanging in the kitchen. How cool is that?!

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.

Yesterday I had a really interesting conversation with a Colombian friend about the difference between collectively oriented cultures and individualistic cultures. I know there is an academic term for this idea, which I learned at some point, but I don't remember it off the top of my head and can't be bothered to search for it.

When I'm in the U.S., the idea that people should always put themselves first is never problematic for me. It seems pretty obvious that it's best to make decisions for yourself, not based on other people's needs or wishes for you. And I think even for an American I'm pretty individualistic. I had a conversation with Daria once about how I don't like doing things based on other people's needs or wishes because it makes me feel vulnerable.

But being here in Colombia, where there is a much stronger collective spirit, makes that statement sound SO selfish to me. People here do so much for each other all the time. I can't imagine how much time they must spend thinking about other people, but it makes the amount of time I spend thinking about myself seem really gross. People in my lab are always bringing me, and everyone else, presents. Nothing big, but every few days I'll walk in and there will be a little chocolate on my desk, and Christian or Juan Migel will say, "para ti." Just because. I never do things like that for other people. Not because I don't want to, but just because I don't usually think of it.

The conversation I had about this yesterday was with a friend who is an undergrad student here in Colombia, in his 5th and final year of study. Here, everyone does 4 years of classes and then they do a thesis, or research project, for their final year. Kind of like comps but bigger. So there are a lot of 5th year undergrads at CIAT doing their research. They receive a small amount of pay while they're working, but are definitely still on the student budget. Anyway, my friend Juan pays for his brother's internet, and for the oldest of his nephews to go to school. His brother is 10 years older and has three kids. Juan doesn't even seem resentful of it though, it's like he's really happy to support people he cares about. I asked him why he does it, and all he said was "no se...soy generoso?"


This is one of those realizations that I couldn't have come to if I wasn't in Colombia. There are a lot of things that seem so normal I don't even question them until I see a different way, and then it's like, "oh duh, that makes way more sense."

Also, I went to the cake place again. SO GOOOOD.