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  • Kickin it in Peru
    Finally the day arrived that we drove to Ciudad de Dios to meet the community we would be working alongside for 8 weeks. It was exciting, ...
  • Rio de Janeiro
    Our South America trip was everything I wanted it to be. Our group had an unbelievable time exploring 3 different countries over 9 days, sta...

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Published on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 Leave your thoughts »

Sunday, November 20

Today was, for the lack of a better word, cool. Mostly because we all went hang gliding! Ryan talked me into it because I was really scared about how dangerous it is and knowing that people have died (as if people haven't also died from driving cars or walking along the street). Malia was skeptical also so I thought it would just be Karen and Ryan partaking, but Malia changed her mind and I didn't want to be the only one not participating... and I'm really glad I wasn't.

To ensure safety they only let pilots fo 4 flights per day (smart), and by the time we got to the spot of departure most were already booked, or had already completed their 4 flights. So our guide went to look for pilots while we sat on the grass enjoying the weather and watching people land from hang/para gliding. Finally our guide found 4 pilots, himself included, and we filled out some paperwork before being split up. Karen, Malia, and Ryan went up the mountain together while I was stuck waiting for my pilot, aka our guide, who was still talking to other customers. By the time we started up the mountain I was sure everyone had already left and I was getting really nervous. The second we parked I ran up the steps to the takeoff platform just in time to see Ryan before he took off para gliding. Holy crap! Para gliding and hang gliding takeoffs are terrifying looking! Moreso hang gliding but para gliding isn't that much fun either I imagine. For para gliding you're basically sitting on your instructor and you take off by letting the wind pick up your sail. It was super windy today so takeoffs looked slightly violent. For my takeoff I was about to pee myself. I had to run off of a wooden platform right over the edge of the cliff. My pilot prepped me on how to run and how to hold onto his suit (he holds onto the glider), and after waiting for the wind to be just right, I was running and up in the air before I could figure out what happened. Being in the air was awesome compared to the takeoff! Flying tha thigh was such a rush and deifnitely the coolest thing (and most daring thing) I've done to date. The entire flight lasted about 10 minutes and we landed on the beach right where Ryan, Karen, and Malia were waiting. I'm really glad that Ryan convinced me to step out of my comfort zone and experience something as crazy as hang gliding over Rio de Janeiro.



The rest of the day we spent at a local soccer game between Botafogo (we cheered for them) and Internacional. Unfortunately Internacional won, 2-1, but the match was a ton of fun. The fans were crazy with their cheering and chanting.. very intense. For dinner we went to a Brazilian steakhouse finally! We all agreed we should have eaten there every single night. I have never eaten so much meat before in my life, and I'm not sure how Ryan walked home after eating the amount he did. This was our last day in Rio and I feel like we did every little thing we could have with the time we gave ourselves. Rio is an incredible city and I think we experienced the best of it.

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Rio de Janeiro

Published on Tuesday, January 3, 2012 1 comment »

Our South America trip was everything I wanted it to be. Our group had an unbelievable time exploring 3 different countries over 9 days, starting with the beautiful Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Friday, November 18

We left DC and SF on Thursday, met up for our connecting flight in Dallas, and continued on together, arriving in Brazil Friday morning. Once we landed we took a taxi straight to our hostel (Hostel Harmonia) right off of Ipanema Beach. This was my first experience staying in a hostel, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Not that I expected it to be a negative experience, but Hostel Harmonia was clean, cozy, and had extremely friendly staff. We wasted no time after arriving and booked a favela tour for the afternoon. I had no clue what a favela was and on the way there Ryan asked me if I knew where we were going. I told him I thought we were seeing a school and he laughed and said "No, we're going to the slums of Rio." Favelas are shacks alongside mountainsides where poor people live (shanty towns).


Our tour guide explained to us that there is a constant tension between people in the favelas and people in the city because favela residents don't pay taxes, there is no police presence in them, and they are run by drug lords. The head drug lord was actually caught two weekends prior to our visit so the police had started occupying the favela we toured.

Police force outside of favela

It was crazy to walk through it because it's so different from my life and where I come from. The favela was a huge maze of makeshift houses with narrow passageways in between. It was incredibly unsanitary and up until a couple of weeks ago, extremely dangerous. Even though I was skeptical of the tour at first, I'm glad we went because favelas are a huge part of the Rio population and people tend to turn a blind eye to them when it is something that should not be ignored and a problem that is always going to be there until someone can come up with a housing solution for the poor. The rest of our first full day in Rio was spent walking along Ipanema beach and enjoying the scenary.

Saturday, November 19



We woke up fairly early and walked quite a ways to some Botanical Gardens on Saturday. They were peaceful and beautiful even if we only stayed briefly. Even though it was raining that morning, we booked the huge 5-hour tour of Rio anyways because we didn't want to gamble on the weather the rest of our time in Rio. There were about 13 people or so on our tour total for the afternoon. The tour really didn't hold back because the first stop was Christ the Redeemer! We drove (a little crazy) up the mountain to get to it, and then took an elevator, and escalator the remainder of the way. Just as we got up to the top the fog started rolling in, so we took a few quick shots of us in front of the statue and then everything went completely white. It was unfortunate because we only had 30 minutes up there and for 20 of them everyting was covered in fog. Luckily, 5 minutes before we had to go back down to meet our guide, the fog lifted and we were able to get a few more pictures of all of us in front of Christ. The view from up there was amazing, when the fog was clear. It goes without saying that this Wonder of the World is a must see if you visit Rio. The view alone is enough to amaze you. Add a towering statue that protects the city and it's well worth your time.


The next stop on our tour was the town of Saint Theresa. I suck at paying attention so I do not remember the significance of the town besides its use of trolley cars, and we honestly didn't stay there very long before moving to the next site, a gigantic modern church, Catedral Metropolitana. The outside was not attractive at all in my opinion, kind of a huge brown cone with the top cut off, but the inside was beautiful. Stain glass panels covered the walls and the pews were set up in a circular fashion surrounding an altar with a hanging Crucifix.

I have seen a lot of beautiful churches (even just on this trip) and Catedral Metropolitana was unlike anything I've ever seen. After the church we drove to Escadaria Selaron, a staircase designed by artist Jorge Selarón.


He found a set of stairs in 1990 that were run down, dirty, and decided to take tiles that he had collected from around the world and decorate the space. We found San Francisco tiles, Peru tiles, a Qatar tile, and an Ohio tile. The last stop on our trip was Sugar Loaf Mountain. A suspended car took us up one mountain and then another one took us all the way up to the summit of Sugar Loaf. From the top we could see everything in Rio -- Christ the Redeemer, Ipanema Beach, Copacabana Beach, and the entire city. Just like Christ the Redeemer, the view was breath taking... and there was more room to walk around than atop Christ's mountain. We enjoyed some delicious cheese bread balls at the top before heading back down.


Our tour didn't end until 5:00 so by the time we got back to Harmonia we decided to take a nap before dinner we were so tired. Our dinner consisted of crappy "hamburgers" that I'm convinced were secretly meatloaf, but afterwards we took the advice of the staff and went to see samba! BEST. DECISION. EVER. We took a long taxi ride to the middle of nowhere, which made us a little nervous, and ended up at this building that was just a huge room with all of the lights on. There was a live band playing but mostly people sitting or standing around eating and drinking. No one was dancing and it was kind of strange at first because it obviously was not like any club in the U.S. THEN the dancers came out and started performing. Holy crap those girls were wearing next to nothing! I saw so many butts and partial boobs it was unbelievable. I have never seen samba before and their legs were moving so fast. The entire experience was fantastic, between the dancers, and the live music, and the audience participating, and the four of us did not return to our hostel until very late (or early depending on how you look at it). Probably the most packed day we had during our trip I would say. But the best part of Rio is coming up!

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Next Adventure!

Published on Wednesday, November 9, 2011 Leave your thoughts »

I am psyched! In 1 week I will be heading to South America with Ryan Knowles, Karen Cyb, and Malia Wycoff for 9 days. We are flying to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil first, then moving onto Montevideo, Uruguay for a short stay, then ending our trip in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The idea to travel there started because Ryan's cousin is currently studying abroad in Buenos Aires. He loves to take advantage of people he knows living in crazy locations and uses it as an excuse to travel (and it's a great excuse)! Our Buenos Aires trip quickly turned into a "more than one country" trip to try and see as much as possible.

I cannot wait to write about what we do and the incredible things we will inevitably see along the way.

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That time I got sick

Published on Wednesday, July 6, 2011 Leave your thoughts »

Or rather, the times I got sick. I told you never to eat egg salad sandwiches in Peru and I meant it. There was a small local restaurant called Otre Cosa near our house that had awesome cushions to sit on and an attached store with postcards and random Peruvian trinkets. A group of us went there one afternoon close to the end of our trip and I ordered egg salad because that is (was now) my favorite kind of sandwich. It came out looking all delicious on its grainy wheat bread and tasted just as it looked.

Fast forward to the following day when that sandwich decided to wreak havoc on my body. Long story short, I did not go into Ciudad de Dios for a few days. Instead I laid in my bed at the house while Robby brought me tea and crackers every few hours. We would have conversed more but seeing as how he only spoke Spanish and I only spoke English, communication was limited and probably ridiculous sounding when attempted. I did manage to get out of bed one of those days to go down the street and get chicken soup that Robby said would make me feel better. There were parts of chicken in that soup that I don't ever care to know where they came from. After a few days I went back to Ciudad to finish up my plaza mural and the town sign, but the very next day I was sick again. I stayed in bed and drank Cipro and some powder mixed with water that tastes like the ocean (DISGUSTING!).

I practically missed the entire last week of work in Ciudad, which was a bummer. All of my journal entires for those days sound something like this: "I hate being sick. I can't eat anything but I'm really hungry.... I can't sleep because it hurts too much."

Man, I was really whiny.

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Fourth of July

Published on Sunday, June 12, 2011 Leave your thoughts »

July 4th finally came, and even though Peruvians weren't celebrating it, we certainly were! We got off of work, so instead of laying around the house all day we went to Chan Chan, capital of the Chimu empire. It was incredible! Walking around listening to a guide tell us about this culture was worth seeing/hearing. Some awesome pictures from our tour...











That night we had a cookout at Nourish International's Hospedaje. Professor Billman grilled hamburgers and we had guacamole, fresh vegetables, and french fries (I ate a TON of french fries while in Peru). It was all delicious, and afterwards we all went down to the beach and lit fireworks. They were mildly successful... as successful as on can imagine Peruvian fireworks are. The archaeology students had a bonfire going so we joined them in making smores and hanging out. We played a huge game of capture the flag... and if you've never played capture the flag on a wide, open beach, it's hard! It comes down to who is the fastest because there isn't anything you can hide behind. Not to mention running on sand slows you down quite a bit. Still, we had a good time and a fun day of honoring our country's independence.

 **Thinking back, I feel like we should have at least sang the national anthem or something...

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Vacation in Peru!

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A few weeks before we said goodbye to Peru, our group got the chance to visit Cajamarca. The 8 hour bus ride there was terrifying because most of it consisted of winding through mountainsides on a double decker bus that was extremely top heavy. We made it safely though, and the hotel, San Vicente, was amazing. We stayed in a glorified tree house carved in the side of a hill overlooking the city.





View from our hotel


The first full day we were in Cajamarca, Magdalena, Justine, Ellie, and I didn't waste any time.. we went straight to the hot springs. It wasn't too expensive, and we were given a room with what was basically a huge bath. So we pretty much just took a bath together in our swim suits for 30 minutes in water that is apparently really great for your skin. After that experience, we went shopping around the town. Cajamarca is fairly large with many little shops to explore and alleys with craft stalls set up. I managed to pick up gifts for friends and family that day.


Hot springs!

I made an interesting note in my journal about our trip that the constellations looked enormous from our hotel. Staying in Huanchaco, we hadn't been able to see stars because of light pollution, but in Cajamarca the sky was beautiful and clear. If you're in Peru, definitely take a trip to this gorgeous city.



Our room (we had to use large, heavy blankets because the temperature dropped at night.. unlike in Huanchaco where it was warm all day/night)


Or bus ride back after 3 days in Cajamarca was brutal because sickness decided to set in. Good thing we went on the trip when we did.

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Digging

Published on Sunday, May 15, 2011 Leave your thoughts »

Some pictures from the digging we spent 8 weeks doing


Carrying pipe to be laid at the next point in the line


Supporting the pipe with rocks underneath and backfilling overtop


Locals using tools to extract a large rock from the water line path

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