This year's winter Peace Corps Response project was, again, a success. Bulgaria and the Peace Corps seem to bring the best out of me. They are like the perfect ingredients for the perfect meal, and I'm like Julia Child, throwing food around everywhere and creating magnificence! And it is such a delicious experience!

It wasn't easythis year. My first month, I was drunk and deathly sick. The secondmonth, I was just drunk (these are the consequences of integration –and I'm good at it!). =) During the last 6 weeks, I worked 12 to 14hours per day, 6 days per week! It was so intense, and I was soexhausted! There were many hurdles, but in the end I feel that myaccomplishments were very satisfying. The following are results thiswinter's 3.5 month term in the Peace Corps Response program:

Delivered nine dynamic and engaging presentations on the topic of plastic pollution to over 300 people, including 270 students at six different schools, and 40 adults, including teachers, youth workers, and members of different organizations. Six of these presentations were in Bulgarian, while the other three were in English.Collected more than 1000 plastic bottle caps, bamboo skewers, and wine corks from four local businesses and used them to create two small trash cans designed to fit the most common size of plastic bags used by local markets and shops. The purpose was to demonstrate that waste can be used as a resource. These products were used in the plastic presentations as a model for the workshop that followed.

Organized collaboration between the host organization, the Youth Center of the Varna Municipality, and a US-based non-profit, Trash for Peace, to train 90 students and 25 teachers and youth workers through 5 workshops focused on how to make a recycle bin from waste materials. The workshops were activities that required innovation and creativity in order to construct something useful from materials that were perceived as useless.Trained host counterpart on basic video editing with two different programs so that he has the capacity to make instructional videos. The usefulness of such videos was demonstrated by creating a do-it-yourself video that instructs to how make a small trash bin from waste products, as well as a video outline of the plastic presentations and workshops.Recruited and coordinated a team of 10 volunteers to translate, format, and explain 88 recipes for producing alternative, non-toxic cleaning chemicals and cosmetics at home. The idea was to produce a book that presents a very simple to follow, easy to understand collection of do-it-yourself projects for the purpose of protecting your health, your family, and your environment. The book was published in the ISBN system and 500 copies were printed. Delivered two presentations on the topic of toxics in the home to 50 people. One presentation was to a large group of parents at a local kindergarten, the other was to members of the host organization. Both presentations were in Bulgarian and encompassed the dangers of cleaning chemicals in the home, as well as cosmetics. The book of 88 recipes, as mentioned above, was presented, for free, to all those in attendance. The second presentation was on the level of a training in order for the hosting organization to continue presenting on this topic, and distributing copies of the book that was created.Accepted an ongoing position with the host organization as a Member of the Board, and Webmaster of the English half of the website. My biggest hurdle this year came fromthe 10-person, volunteer team I assembled to create a book ofalternative products. Everyone did their part, except one guy – theone responsible for producing the final product. I gave himeveryone's hard work, and he gave me a promise it would be done. Andat the final moment, when I couldn't wait for the books any longer,he gave me excuses! Excuses as to why it wasn't ready. He never ownedhis failure, he just lied and lied. It was awful. He single-handedlyruined everyone else's work. Well, almost.

Iliyan always has a backup plan.Unfortunately, his backup plan was expensive – and the hostorganization bared the burden of the cost, for the failure of onefailure. I wanted to tell that guy exactly how horrible he was... butcultural practices, and perhaps a bit of common sense, directed meaway from expressing myself. Instead, we just tucked away the lessonwe had learned and moved on. Very frustrating.

The books were finished in time for twopresentations, and while I had wanted to give a lot more – Itrained the folks in the office to be able to present and distributethese books without me. That's probably better in the long runanyway, but not nearly as fun for me!

Overall, it was a very difficult winter– crazy cold, lots of work, lots of hard work, a lack ofgood/healthy food, and something else I wasn't expecting: I missPortland. I think I'm starting to feel established there, and I thinkI kind of like it. It will be truly great to be back amongst family,friends, and colleagues. That's not to say I'll never leave again. Ireally want to go somewhere warm next winter! However, as the PeaceCorps prepares to leave Bulgaria for good in 2013, next winter willbe my last chance to be a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bulgaria. Andthat's something heavy on my mind. We'll see. I have some time todecide.

One of my last moments in Varna wasspent with a dear friend, Darina. We have a special relationship andI feel very close to her. I knew she would have a hard time with mydeparture as she'd been telling me so for the last month. I kept themoment lighthearted and showed her a funny website with a collectionof short clips of pets doing goofy things. We laughed a lot, as wedo, but as the time passed, she saddened and was on the brink oftears. I gave her a giant hug and told her to watch those stupidanimals and think of me. With that, I left, saying that I'll returnagain – and I will.

My short trip to Palestine was heart wrenching and overwhelming. The nausea I experienced through utter disgust was worse than any food poisoning episode in all of my world travels. Israel is a terrible, horrible, awful place. I went to visit my good friend Trevor, who has been working in Ramallah for over a year. Our first night was an ex-pat house party in the center of town. It was a good time, with lots of idealistic, passionate, and good people from all over. I was quite surprised to see how many expats working on development there were in Ramallah. But as each day brought new insights, I quickly learned that this is a place in desperate need of help.

My mind-blowing, eye-opening adventure began with a trip to Bil'in to watch the weekly Friday protest for peace. Unfortunately, our speed in the morning was not conducive to attending regularly scheduled events. We arrived just after it ended. We took the opportunity to have a peaceful look at the barbed wire which protects the settlement wall from the barbaric indigenous people.

Every Friday, for years, Palestinians gather in Bil'in and have a peaceful march to the new edge their property, where they make noise until Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers fire tear gas into the crowd to break it up. These peoples' land was stolen from them by Israeli Settlers, who erected a wall to keep them out, and protect it constantly with IDF soldiers. The people of Bel'in are simple farmers, and lost a lot of their farm land with the development of the settlement. It's easy to understand their discontentment and even their meager attempts at retaliation. But in the end, the settlement is huge, the wall is concrete, and the sharp barbed wire holds signs that say trespassers are endangering their lives. The rocks thrown in frustration and retaliation to the tear gas are hardly effective against high-tech body armor, and a thick concrete wall - and they certainly don't warrant the gun fire that occasionally follows. Recently, a young boy was shot in the chest and killed for throwing rocks at soldiers. It's a messed up situation.

Not much grows in these rocky fields; mostly patches of grass, but there are some olive trees and a few grapes. For all the Bible-talk of this being fertile land, I'm pretty unimpressed with its agricultural growing potential, and generally astounded that people are fighting over the land in the first place. Maybe it's because I come from the Willamette Valley, or maybe I just can't understand the magnitude of the conflict here. Over the years, 600,000 Palestinian olive trees have been cut down by Israelis for "security reasons" or random vandalizing by Israeli Settlers. It's quite clear that their motivation is to destroy the land in hopes that it will then be undesirable to the Palestinians. I'm not good at understanding social injustices like these, but I understand perfectly well the environmental impacts of intentional desertification of the land. What a stupid tactic! I just can't get over this method of displacing people for eventual land acquirements...

That evening we went into Jerusalem and walked around the old town until we came upon the Wailing Wall.

It was a giant stone wall that was supposed to be the only remaining piece of something from someone important. Religious significance is really lost on me. Anyway, it was a Friday night, the night Jewish people party and welcome in their holy day, Saturday. Outside, there were large groups - dancing and singing - it looked like a really fun time! I wished I knew what they were singing! Trevor and I found an indoor-room that attached to the wall and went in. As we entered, the fun and dance and song gave way to intense prayer. I've never seen anything like it. Shoulder to should guys in funny hats and hair were chanting as loud as they could.

Eyes closed with intense looks on their faces, their bodies would sway and rock back and forth with passion. I was awestruck! I felt like I was floating through a room filled with things that my mind just couldn't possibly comprehend! Trevor turned back to me and said, "Wow, dude! Shit just got real!" Haha! That brought me back to having control of my feet and we walked through the masses to observe for a few moments before deciding we probably weren't allowed in there.

On Saturday, we took a road trip to Hebron to watch the weekly intimidation march of the Settlers. These settlements are large communities whose locations are a blatant violation of international law. A new one pops up every now and again as Israelis find new Zionists who want to live on the frontier. In fact, their locations are very strategically planned out. As you monitor their coming into existence, you can see, quite clearly, there's an end game. Right now, that game is breaking up the West Bank into sections, which restrict indigenous movement as roads "have to" be built and protected. Ultimately, I believe that Israel would like to see the Palestinian population living on reservations of sorts, isolated and out of the way. Ah, that brought things close to home. Just because my country was founded that way, doesn't make it right.

In Hebron, a group of Settlers and Birthright tourists march through the old town, literally surrounded by a human shield of IDF soldiers - guns at the ready.

Said guns, btw, and other military supplies are given to Israel as aid every year by the USA to the tune of 3 billion USD! Birthright tourists are people who are given a free trip to Israel for being Jewish.

The hope is that they will be recruited to the Israeli cause, and maybe even to living in a settlement.

During the tour, Palestinians are forbidden to pass through their own streets as tour guides spout biased historical stories that justify their fanaticism.

It's true that the Jewish people have been severely oppressed at several points throughout history. Trevor brought up a good point that a Jewish state has every right to exist, but it should exist in Germany - where they were most recently victimized, displaced, and exterminated. But I'm missing the logic that affords them an excuse to kill and steal from the Palestinians who were just trying to live their lives in peace? Being oppressed doesn't justify oppressing someone else.

With the situation as it is, the Palestinian people are remarkably tolerant. I spoke with a number of them who speak of the situation matter-of-factly. They don't talk about hate or wanting to kill - they just want to live their lives. One young Palestinian man, 20, was clubbed upside his head when he was a boy for walking down the road. He had to have stitches in his eye. More recently for him, he was trying to cross town to get to his university for an exam. He was detained by the IDF for three hours and missed his test despite his pleas. I saw kids being detained by these soldiers - for no good reason at all. Just to inconvenience them and make life hard on them so they'll leave the city. These people are harassed daily, but it's the Settlers who are the real dicks.

International observers often have to help Palestinian children walk to and from school because Settlers will throw rocks at them. "They're crazy fuckers," said Trevor, as he once again brought me back from emotional overload. Sadly, I'm sure these stories are endless - this is just what I've encountered and it was disgusting.

Perhaps even more disgusting than the queasiness I got from being on the other end of so many guns, was the extreme candor with which the Settlers and Birthrighters approached the situation. "Take lots of pictures" they would taunt - completely oblivious to the fact that we were looking at them like savage beasts in the wild.

A few of them continued to try to engage us with crude arrogance in a display of power over another group of human beings. It made my blood boil. I understand an appreciation for history, and I appreciate efforts made at maintaining a culture, but I can not see how demeaning a group of people can ever do anyone any good.

The taxi driver that took me back to the airport early Monday morning was a friend of a friend. He was a really good guy that tried really, really hard to have a conversation with me with his limited English. In order to not have problems at the IDF checkpoints, he instructed me that I flagged him down on the street at 3am and that I had been staying in Jerusalem at the Avrahim Hostel. Those are easy hoops to jump through. Along the way, we talked a bit about travel and he said he's not allowed to have a passport. Traveling is my biggest passion - one that I wish everyone could experience, but these are the rules for Palestinians. =(

The first checkpoint was met with only mild hurdles. The second was a breeze. At the third one I got grilled by an IDF soldier. How long have you been here? Where EXACTLY did you go? Where did you stay? It's really nerve-wracking having some young punk with an American-made M16 give me the 3rd degree. I hated it! When we got the approval to pass, I complained to Basim, the driver, that even though there were no more checkpoints before the airport, I still had to go through all the security in the airport! His response was, "I live here. This is my life." I don't think I've ever been a more insensitive jerk. My heart sank. Israel is a terrible, horrible, awful place.

During one of my final days at work in Portland this winter, a customer came in with some light bulbs, some batteries, and a camera. Often times people don't understand what kind of waste goes to the hazardous waste disposal facility. Actually, I think this is a reflection of how little people understand of waste in general. Anyway, just so every knows, cameras are not hazardous. This particular camera caught my eye. It looked new, I recognized the model, and it was really nice. I told her she could simply throw it away with the rest of her solid waste at home, but asked if it was still under warranty. I continued, by asking what was wrong with it, maybe it could be repaired? She said it started out being a great camera, but just stopped working one day. She said she didn't want to bother with repairing it because it's already been replaced. Fine. One of my favorite coworkers, Craig Lyons, the Salvage King, had found an old camera a week prior, and used some compressed air to blow dust out of its gears to get it working again. I thought I'd try the same. I told this responsible, yet slightly ignorant citizen, that I would relieve her of her burden of waste.

When I had a free moment, I flipped on the power switch, thumped it, blew on it, and then set it down cause it wasn't working. I went home thinking it was no big deal. I wasn't able to turn on a broken camera that someone was throwing away. Stranger things have happened. But, like many things, it wouldn't get out of my head. I was reminded of something a really weird guy told me one time, "The average person is pretty dumb, and half the population is worse off than that." It occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to notice if I fixed the camera unless it was getting power to turn on. So, when I returned to work, I dug the charger out of the trash, pulled the battery out of the camera, charged it up, returned it, and flipped the power switch to on so that I could begin "fixing" it. Well, the camera came to life and worked as it was designed to before any of my pokes and prods began. The only thing I could find "wrong with it" was that the battery was dead. Is that a good enough reason to throw it away? I think most people would say no. But obviously that lady didn't want it anymore - so it was just garbage to her. One person's garbage is another person's treasure. True, but it's how we manage this garbage and treasure that define our problem with waste.

To draw a contrast between societies, in very general terms, if a Bulgarian person saw someone throwing away a camera that worked just fine, they'd likely be thinking, "What an idiot. I could sell that to a guy I know!" But at the same time, if a Portlandian person saw someone throwing away a plastic bottle, they'd likely be thinking, "OMG! You're gonna kill a bird! Let's recycle that or make something useful from it!" One is not better than the other. The point is, the concept of waste. The problem is not that this camera lady is dumb. The problem is that there is a meme in our society that is responsible for very easy outlets for things we no longer want. But that outlet is not environmentally, socially, nor economically responsible. Waste is not just something that you don't want anymore. If something still has a use to someone, it's a resource.

To prove this point, I used my new position with Trash for Peace to create something wonderful from trash! Trash for Peace is an education based non-profit that collaborates with school groups to build recycle bins from “trash” to illustrate how creativity and innovation can solve the problem of waste. It's a great fit for Portland, but I struggled to make it fit in Bulgaria.

In fact, Bulgaria still does not have an infrastructure for recycling so making recycling bins didn't seem like a worthwhile endeavor. They have containers for collecting recyclable materials, they have recycling centers that process those materials; but they do not have a collection strategy, nor, most importantly, a mentality for recycling.

Many people in Bulgaria will tell you that recycling is a Gypsy job. What they mean is that the Roma dig through municipal dumpsters and collect things they perceive as having value, ie - paper, metal, etc. Really, though, this is just an excuse so that they don't have to think about recycling anything, including items of lesser monetary value, like plastic and glass.

An example of the trash collection strategy.

Actually, many things are recycled in this way, but the waste management system as a whole leaves so much to be desired. The government is haphazardly trying to develop the existing system, but the giant disconnect between people and government is usually an impenetrable barrier. In the many small towns and villages of Bulgaria, waste collection does not happen on a regular basis and often runs out of funding. This is not perceived as such a big problem because, inevitably, someone will throw away their embers/ashes from their stove which catches all the garbage in the dumpster on fire. Waste incineration, albeit unintentional, is one of the main ways waste is managed here. An example of the disconnect between government and people can be seen below in a picture by Greg Kelly (Peace Corps Volunteer, 2005-2007), where the municipality of Sliven tried to implement a cheaper and more durable plastic garbage dumpster. It was a valiant effort, but obviously there was a misunderstanding. A big one. A misunderstanding that carried over to the introduction of a recycling program.

As I understand it, certain parts of Bulgaria initiated a municipal recycling program in 2005. The idea was to introduce waste separation in order to wrap people's heads around the idea of recycling. The municipalities put out some recycling containers into the streets, with no educational or marketing campaigns whatsoever. It's fairly easy to read the side of the container, though, to know what's supposed to go inside. Unfortunately, they didn't do anything else. It was explained to me that the plan was to have these containers in place for three years so people would be familiar with them, at which time they would be in a position to introduce some kind of collection infrastructure.

So, for three years people watched the municipal garbage man mix all of their separated recycling materials with their trash and haul it all to the landfill together. Okay, so it didn't take three years for people to give up on the idea because there was obviously no point in them separating things if it was all going to be mixed together anyway. It didn't take too long at all before these recycling containers became just containers.

This container is for plastic and metal but as you can see it's just filled with garbage.This container is for paper and cardboard, but again, it just holds garbage.With the pollution awareness campaign I ran last winter, I decided that I would encourage proper disposal and draw attention to the concept of waste as a resource. Instead of constructing a recycling bin out of plastic water bottles, I built a garbage can out of the lids from plastic water bottles. These lids are 100% unrecyclable in the USA, not because of the type of plastic, but because of their size. Where recycling fails, I will succeed in showing that they can still be used as a resource and not have to be waste!

I spent three weeks collecting materials for this project. While in the restaurants and bars that I frequent, The Motor Bar, The Sea Wolf, and the Three Lions Pub, I explained what I wanted to do and asked if they would help me collect these materials instead of throwing them away. It was a great way for extra flirting time with the waitresses! After a week or so, I noticed that people at my gym, Fitness Classic, drank a lot of bottled water so I asked if they would collect for me, too. They ended up being the largest contributor, by far. Below is a series of self-explanatory pictures that illustrate the construction proceduresThree weeks worth of collecting waste from local restaurants and my gym.This is not necessarily a safe technique I would promote.By the way, that printer in the background is from 1996, and still working. Thanks, Hewlett Packard.Built to hold the most common size of plastic bags handed out in the local stores.100% of the materials I used to create this fully functional, super attractive garbage can, came from stuff that would otherwise have been considered waste. Everyday these things are thrown away, all across the world, but I've used them to create something aesthetically amazing and extremely useful! And it wasn't difficult. All it takes is wrapping one's head around the concept of waste as a resource and incorporating it into your way. And maybe a little tickling of your creativity to get it going again. In this case, an old plastic bottle cap is not so different than a fine digital camera with an uncharged battery. A mentality of waste is a waste of mentality!

I have 4 or 5 presentations in schools scheduled in the coming weeks. I will take my beautiful garbage can with me to show an example of my extreme innovation skills and push my agenda for treating waste like a resource. Hopefully I will inspire some kids to be more creative themselves.

Although I've spent a significant amount of time in Bulgaria, there are still so many things that are foreign to me. The recent weather has been just that. I've experienced cold before, but this is ridiculous! I walked to work the other day when it was 5 degrees Fahrenheit, and that was without wind! The internet told me that wind brought the temperature down to -20, and it seemed to always be windy while I was outside! So, so cold! To point out a silver lining, though, a week before the big cold hit, there was a terrible rain storm! When I left the bar, my stubbornness prohibited me from taking a taxi home. I hate taxis with a passion! Anyway, I walked home and got soaked to the bone. In fact, because of the fear of air flow here, and lack of heat, my jacket and shoes were wet for a full week! But my heavy wool pea coat was made in America by union workers and it kept me warm despite the wetness!

The cold has been quite unpleasant, but this weather has not been without beauty. Last week, I was looking out the window from the bar and it seemed to be snowing, but the snow was not all falling, and it wasn't white. I had to ask. Iliyan told me that was the humidity in the air, freezing to form tiny ice crystals which reflected the light from street lights like millions of tiny prisms floating in the air. It was incredible! I was in total awe - until I had to go home... It was a windless night, and the twinkling in all directions made me feel like a fairy prince in a magical land, but by the time I got home, my scarf had frozen solid from the moisture in my breath!

That was a first. Snow is not foreign to me, though. I grew up playing in the white stuff, and I love it! But somehow, the snow this year in Bulgaria is different from what I know. I'm familiar with different sized flakes, but in one way or another, they always just look like shaved ice to me. Until recently. It was the final predicted day of super cold, before next week's regular cold begins, and my jacket was collecting a lot of snow flakes on my way home from work at 2am. They caught my eye in a moment because they looked like the paper snowflake cut-outs that I used to make in school for Christmas cards and such. They were clean and perfect and amazing! Just like the paper ones I used to make! Impossibly beautiful with their exquisite symmetry and infinite uniqueness! And they were everywhere I looked! Billions and billions of them, falling from the sky individually, not tangled with others, not forming shaved ice, just perfect snow! But it was cold so I went inside.

Beyond the weather, there are still other things foreign to me, like the language. Even though I speak as good as a local (a local 4 year old), language mistakes are inevitable. Usually, the magnitude of those mistakes is controllable. Usually. I was walking home from the bar with Adele, the French gal that is volunteering in our office. She was telling me that she may have to go home for some time. I thought I heard the reason as being that her grandmother had a concert. Cool! How many grannie bands do you know?! When I got excited she stopped me and tried to explain further. It took us a few minutes, but I finally got it - her grandmother doesn't have a concert, she has a cancer... Man, did I feel like a jerk. So, I blamed my mistake on her accent.

Another incident happened when I thought I must be misunderstanding, but understood perfectly. Among the group that I hang out with is an Orthodox priest. I've seen him at several functions - he once tried to bless me with some holy water flung from some herbs on Nikolov Den (the fish holiday). Every time I see this guy, he's wearing his full uniform, as if he had come directly from church. So, we were all at a bar, celebrating a birthday, and someone made the joke that I needed a Bulgarian woman. I get this one a lot, and I like hearing it - you never know what someone might end up offering. So, I agreed to the accusation of needing a Bulgarian woman and the priest says, "Or you could just get a magazine." Haha! I laughed so hard because it was so inappropriate that I thought I must have misunderstood, which made it even funnier to me. Later, Iliyan explained that I had understood correctly, and it was funny because it was a joke. (?)

The jokes I hear quite frequently are funny because my sense of humor is so flexible. I mean, I love bad jokes, but some jokes really push the limits. Here are two that I've heard in the last couple days that are absolutely not worth repeating:

The Flash was cruising along and came upon Spider Man.

"Hey, let's go get some girls!"

"No. I have to make this web..."

The Flash continues on to Batman.

"Hey, let's go get some girls!"

"No, I just saved the world and I'm tired."

The Flash continues on and on; Superman, Aquaman, Hulk, Ironman, everyone! Finally, he sees a really pretty girl on the top of a building making some really sexy movements. So, he goes really fast, cause he's the Flash, and fucks her quickly, cause he's the Flash, and then leaves!

"Invisible Man, did you feel something?" She asks.

"You have to ask my ass."

A horny samurai girl walked into a bar and went around until she found the guy with the biggest package. She pulled him into the bathroom and took off his pants to give him a blowjob, but his package was too big for her little mouth. She pulled out her sword and cocked it back.

"No! No!" He screamed!

"There is no no!" She yelled, as she swiped her sword to cut her mouth so it would open further!

Anyway, something that is not foreign to me is fun! Despite the cold, the snow, the wetness, the bad jokes and misunderstandings, I'm still having an awesome adventure!

Oh man, this is late in coming! So sorry! Basically, I've been between deathly illness and having the time of my life. That's a very broad spectrum that doesn't allow for much time to write about my emotions, which is a big deal because everyone knows how much I love to write about my emotions. Well, now I have freshly clipped fingernails, and I'm ready to tell you what I think.

I spent Christmas in Kaspichan with Iliyan's family. It was so great to see everyone again. They're a big happy group that argue a lot and have sincere interest in whatever I'm trying to say. It's a great thing to be listened to. It's also a great thing to talk - and I'm good at it! In between my explanations of Obama's low approval ratings and questions about the effect of the crisis in Greece on Bulgaria, they took lots of liberties to ask me questions. In different settings, I kept getting asked why I was still single. I told them it was because half the women in Portland aren't interested in men, and it really limits my ability to meet anyone compatible. I'm really holding out for a woman that's looking for a man. This man:

They thought that was so hilarious and wanted to hear me say it again and again. I mean, I'm glad they found my misfortune entertaining, but I felt like I had to validate myself somehow. I explained that I had gotten four phone numbers in the last week from interested European women - and then, with muffled laughter, they wanted to know how many numbers I got in Portland... Hhhh...

As per Christmas Traditions in Kaspichan, there was a lot of work to get done. They had decided to kill two pigs this year! Just like the last two pig slaughters I attended, they dressed me up in thick, old clothes and took turns telling me that I have to kill the pig this year, but when the time came, they just told me to stand out of the way and take pictures. I have a bunch of photos, though, from the two other pig slaughters and I wasn't in the mood to photograph the same thing. I mean, it's disturbing, and it really isn't that much different each time. So I stood around in the cold and watched, until finally someone handed me a knife and said, "Get to work!" Woo hoo!

It was fun learning how to butcher a pig and being told that I did it perfectly! Ha! I could see the mistakes I was making, but they were all very encouraging and supportive the whole time. Plus I felt useful. I love feeling useful!

The main event for the Christmas holiday is, in fact, Christmas Eve. After the pig's been mostly processed, everyone gathers around the table for a feast. A giant feast! We ate and drank till it hurt! It was glorious! Then it was time for Santa to visit. Iliyan played the role of "Grandfather Christmas" this year and handed out presents to everyone. He was so drunk, though, that he was being ridiculous and everyone was laughing hysterically! I swore his mom was gonna have a heart attack!

His beard kept falling down, he was speaking with a crazy accent (Grandfather Christmas is from the Netherlands), and he was saying a bunch of wild things that had the adults failing to contain their laughter, and the one little girl confused between excitement and terror! It was really funny! Maybe I don't understand kids enough, but I couldn't believe that the child was so intimidated by him. She couldn't let go of her grandmother's hand! I guess he's about 5 times her size, and drunk, but Iliyan was in the room just 5 minutes earlier! I guess with a costume, and stage performance like this, none of us really knew what was going on. Finally, although he wanted to continue talking and soliciting songs from the kids, the old folks kicked him out and said all the other children were waiting for him. It was a pretty spectacular moment.

I was home for a few days after Christmas, before I was to head off to the UK for NYE. My apartment is a bit of a conundrum. It's brand new, made of all the finest plastic from China, yet there seem to be so many issues! For example, every time someone uses the elevator, the entire building loses electricity. I've kinda dealt with that, but on one specific night, the power would go out every 10 minutes or so. I was trying to download The Daily Show so it was really inconvenient. Finally, some guy came knocking on my door to tell me the power was going out. Thanks. I asked him why, in a new building, are there so many problems with the electricity? He explained to me that too many people are using electricity so I should turn some things off... I asked the same questions again and his response then was that the building was not permitted for inhabitants yet so the only electricity coming to the building was meant for the completion of construction. Great. I'm squatting. I asked when the building would be finished and he said, "Next year." Ah, Bulgaria.

With that, I packed my bags and headed to London! NYE was simply amazing! I met Tim Wade, my partner from Supercross08, and his wife, cousin, and sister in-law in London. We rented a giant mini-van that had nothing mini about it and road tripped our brains out to an unknown town in Northern England. The next day, we headed for good old Edinburgh - home of Hogmanay, an old Scottish word symbolizing the Viking gifts of fire, drinking, and explosions! This year, Hogmanay was only 3 days of events and celebrations, which were kicked off by a torch light procession that began in Parliament Square and wound through the old cute streets of Edinburgh to a place called Calton Hill. It was incredible to be in a march of torches, and looking out over the dark city seeing torches for miles! Very cool! To end of the procession, on Calton Hill, there was a giant firework show set to music and then a giant bonfire! It was sooo cool! And I was all kinds of giddy!

After some rest, it was time for the main event! New Year's Eve! My favorite holiday in the world! Oh man, I dyed my manly mustache blue and added white hash marks to symbolize the Scottish flag. People loved it!!! Some gals pulled on it a couple times, which didn't make me too happy, but they needed to see if it was real. We started out at our favorite little pub and then hit the streets.

Tim had his flask of fancy pants Scottish whiskey, but I'm not so excited about whiskey so I made myself a super dirty gin martini - the kind that really gets ya dancing! It got really warm in my jacket so it didn't taste very good at all by the time we made it down to the street party, but it sure did make me dance!I danced my brains out! Pretty much all night - and I'm pretty sure I was amazing - I'm a great dancer! When it came time for the 10-count, I realized the effect of my dirty gin... I missed the first seven numbers, but managed to get in on the last three! And then there were fireworks! Huge, awesome, sky-covering fireworks! It was absolutely incredible! Five minutes after they stopped, the skies opened up and unleashed the most intense rain and wind ever! At this point, though, I couldn't really see so it didn't bother me, but everyone else wanted to go back to the pub. Tim put on his mad Scottish accent during our walk back (he was helping me walk) and mocked the weather, tempting a "real" storm! I could not stop laughing. My gut hurt more than ever before - I think my abs are getting really strong or something.

On the first day of 2012, we took the traditional hike up to King Arthur's Seat. It was dry, but no less windy - and very cold! Stayed long enough for a picture and then called it a day.It was a super, super great NYE! Everything was perfect! Took a long road trip back to London via small country roads and then went out for Mexican! Mmmm! Here are more Hogmanay photos if you're dying to see!

Got back to Varna to witness one of the most interesting holidays in Bulgaria: Jordonov Den - where young men prove their bravery by racing for a wooden cross that's been blessed by a priest and hurled into the water. It was a pretty big competition in Varna - and a pretty neat show! And it was sooo cold!

After the ceremony, a lot of people from the crowd collect water from the sea, or washed themselves with it. It's probably symbolic of something. Anyway, I finally did my first piece of real work! Delivered a ton of kids books to a children's hospital! So, see, I am doing some really helpful things over here!

My reception in the Peace Corps office when I arrived in Bulgaria was a giant ego boost! My former language trainer tried to subtly ask me if I was on steroids, while the Peace Corps doctor pretty much accused me of being on them, and gave me a health schpiel about how they're destroying my kidneys and liver! One of the Americans on staff just said I look the same except I'm much bigger, like I'd spent a lot of time at the gym. I'm sure there's a cultural diplomacy difference to be addressed with all that, but I'd rather address the fact that no one said anything about my awesome mustache! Well, until I got to Varna, where everyone asks me if I'm from Texas.

In Varna, I had to wait a few days for my counterpart, Iliyan, to return from a summit in Brussels on transparency in eurofunds for Bulgaria. I asked him what I should do until he gets back and he told me to exercise! =) I arrived to beautiful weather and made use of it by reacquainting myself to my old home.

Guy taking a break from the day with 1.5 liters of wine and the company of Old St. Nick, the giver of fish!Gal filling up her old water bottle with some stank mineral water that tastes like rotten eggs.

My apartment is amazing compared to last year. It's brand new and no one has ever lived there before. I really like the cleanliness, but the construction methods leave a bit to be desired. While everything is new, most of it is cheap Chinese crap. I broke the toilet seat on my first sit, and I burned out the light bulb in my entry-way before the end of the second day. Nevertheless, it's quiet, clean, safe, and pretty much perfect.

In actively striving to make the most out of my time here, I decided to host some guests for my first Friday night. I love being a guest, and I love hanging out with people, but it's another matter entirely to host guests in Bulgaria. Here, the host has the responsibility of making sure that there's enough food and drink for everyone, that everyone's glass is always full, that the temperature is just right, that everyone's having a good time, etc. It's more along the lines of being a server at a restaurant than simply hanging out with your good friends. But it's still a very good time - especially with such great people!My first day in the office was more of a reunion than a productive day of work. Iliyan called me around 10am and said, "Are you coming to the office?" =) We "caught up" for the first hour or so and then opened a bottle of a whiskey. We talked and joked a bit more and then migrated towards our computers.In attempting to be consistent with Bulgarian traditions, I brought a box of liquor-filled chocolates with me to work. Typically, when someone gets something new, or has a birthday or whatever, they "treat" their colleagues or friends with some kind of chocolate. So, I walked around all day saying a rough equivalent to congratulations on your Andrew, and handed out treats!

My first day of work just happened to be International Volunteer Day, and their just happened to be a big party after work. Iliyan and I headed there with one of his friends. I had no idea what to expect; all I knew was there would be food and drink. For the first hour, the entire hour, two announcers took turns announcing peoples names to come forward and receive a gift package. I tried to keep clapping, but when volunteers went forward two, and three, times, I was done. When the food and the drinking commenced, I found myself extremely uncomfortable.The girl to guy ratio was about 3:1, all the food and drink was free, and there was a DJ playing rock music that slowly changed into pop as the night progressed. This is pretty much a recipe for a great time! The problem: everyone was 15 or 16 years old... And that's just the beginning of my discomfort. They started playing games.One game involved some gal running around the room with a pen writing letters on everyone's hands. Then an MC would try to line up their hands so a word was spelled. All the words were somehow related to sex. Rough sex, hard sex, strong sex, etc. And they thought it was so funny! They were really having a good time. I got out of it with my good ole faithful standby excuse: I'm allergic. I can practically get out of anything with that. And no one ever questions it! Thank you, ignorance!After a while, though, I started dancing and having a blast - even when a drunk Portuguese guy tried to steal my dancing partner.This first week has been super great! This is going to be the best winter ever!

For the better part of my thinking years, I have been philosophically opposed to bogus, manipulative, and superficial organizations like Locks of Love. Why should we teach our diseased youth that they are anything but beautiful as they are? Why should we validate society's grotesque portrayal of beauty by propagating an insidious desire for long, luxurious hair? Well, it turns out that someone close to me started wearing a wig recently and its effects were profound.

When I was four years old, I pointed at a man next to me in the grocery store and said, "Mom, he's bald." You know, in case she didn't notice. I've always been a great observer, and I've always enjoyed sharing my observations with folks who may not be as gifted. Later in life, I learned that the balding phenomenon didn't just randomly happen at the store. It's just another part of life, as natural as a long haired hippie, or lopping off a finger in a terrible gardening accident. Unfortunately, while being a hippie might get you high, and losing a digit might get you some time off from work, losing your hair just gets you pity, if any attention at all. I'm not saying that the aura of every bald guy is desolate, it's just that this particular situation sure seems like a giant source of insecurity. And if there's anything I learned in grad school, it's that insecurity is not known for the number of smiles it generates. So, my friend sported a fancy new wig that brought about a little bit of comfort. And we all know what comfort does; it makes us smile!

I decided to embrace this new perspective, and diversify my eternally continuing efforts to infect the world with smiles. What I mean, of course, is that I embarked on a path to rocker hair. Not just to have it, but to rock it! And then donate it. I wasn't too excited at first, though, as everyone knows, I'm typically a clean cut guy.

But after a year of glorious growth, I look good. I mean, really good! Like, I can't get over how good looking I am! My shiny, flowing, golden locks are magnificent! I mean, the longer they get, the better I look! Last month, I specifically remembering thinking, "Gee wiz, I don't think I'm gonna be able to look any better than this." But then, this month, I look way better! I can barely wait to see myself next month! Some unhappy little kid is surely gonna get their frown turned upside down!

So far, this has been a really easy project. All I have to do is not get a haircut, and not stand close to burning things. Since it's not too much of a burden to occupy my head with Locks of Love, I decided I could probably handle another project and occupy my face with another cause called Movember! This one is in honor of a family member who kicked cancer's ass!

Movember is a campaign to raise funds and awareness of cancers that affect men. It involves growing a very manly mustache during the month of November. As a participant in this movement, my mustache is a fantastic icebreaker to recruit supporters who will either follow this link to donate: My hair is truly amazing. or will learn something new from my giant man-brain. Or both.

Men's health is awesome, in case you didn't know, and it's also something that is not readily prominent in society. Everyone knows about breast cancer! Breasts are also awesome, and although they are prominently displayed all over the place, they have also had an amazing marketing campaign for cancer awareness. But did you know that 1 in 2 men will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime? For women, it's 1 in 3. In fact, the average life expectancy of a man is five years less than a woman. Did you also know that testicular cancer is the most common cancer in American males between the ages of 15 and 34! I'm still in that age range! This one is a big deal: A third of the 571,950 cancer deaths expected to occur this year, will be related to obesity, physical inactivity, poor nutrition and thus could be prevented!

So, here's the thing: Be healthy! Exercise! Eat good food! Find a smile and pass it along! These are really easy things that seem to be eclipsed by laziness and delicious chemicals. But we have to not look directly at the laziness or the chemicals, or we'll lose sight of something super important - our health! It's a great time, right now, to organize your New Year's Resolution, and I would love for everyone to commit to being awesome and healthy. I know it can be intimidating, but if that bald guy can walk around grocery stores with kids pointing at him all the time, surely you can muster up the courage to work out and eat right! Or donate to a great cause: Movember!

Peace Corps Response provides opportunities for returned Peace Corps Volunteers to undertake short-term, high impact assignments in various programs around the world.

I came back to Bulgaria to volunteer at a regional library; to design a long-term program that enhanced library involvement in sustainable community dynamics, focusing on environmentally friendly practices for libraries and beyond.

Getting Ready to Leave the USA!

Back in Bulgaria!

My Site: Silistra!

My Host: Silistra Regional Library!

Library Christmast Party!

Christmas in Bulgaria!

Drinking in Bulgaria!

Anti-Disposable Plastic Campaign!

Getting Married on Wine Day!

My Projects!

Essay Contest!

Fun Stories from Bulgaria!

My final day finally came. Saying goodbye in Bulgaria is not something that I'm used to and I'm pretty ignorant of the cultural courtesies. I hate knowing that I'm ignorant in a particular situation, it's so much more uncomfortable and nowhere near bliss. And I love bliss!

I went to work early thinking I would simply invite people for a drink after work to say goodbye. Well, I learned that they were closing the library early on my last day so everyone could go out to lunch! I couldn't believe they were actually closing the library to say goodbye! I had no idea that I had made such an impact on these people! And it felt so, so special! Come lunch, everyone congregated near the exit and I was on cloud 9! I was lost in thought, trying to think of things to say and how to express my deep gratitude! All the different connections I had made with people, the moments we'd shared, the friendships we'd found; it was all so great – and so unfortunate to be ending. I hate saying goodbye. I told my counterpart that I couldn't believe that they were closing the library and she said, “We always close the library and go to lunch on International Women's Day.”

Crap.

Well, I certainly let my ego run away with itself on that one... Once I realized the focus was not on me, but on all the women of the library, I relaxed a bit, even despite the embarrassment. We went to lunch and made toasts to women and celebrated their existence. Women, after all, are pretty neat! But then, they shocked me and made a big speech about how much they enjoyed me! I tried to reciprocate but I was lost for words. Even though there was the buildup earlier in the day and the misunderstanding, I was still surprised at how much they did for me. “Don't you remember your arrival?” my counterpart asked. She was right. They did a ton of wonderful things for me even before they knew me! It has all been so very flattering, and I wish I was able to express exactly how much I appreciate them. This really has been a wonderful experience!

None of the following were eventful enough to fill and entire post, but they're definitely worth sharring. So enjoy some bits and pieces of these short 3.5 months.I keep hearing that the economic crisis didn't hit Bulgaria as hard as the rest of the world because its society hasn't switched to a credit based society like in the States. Then I heard another explanation that was pretty interesting. "Bulgaria's economy has been in a crisis for 20 years. If that's all we know, why should this new crisis affect us any differently?" It was another sobering reminder of how good we have things in the states - even with an economic crisis.I got a big piece of redemption over dinner with my former colleagues in Varna. It was like old times, meeting up and cooking a big feast; eating and drinking the night away. I learned that my former counterpart has been working with several other organizations on a really, really big project and he said he owed it all to me! He was referring to an older project that he didn't want to do because he was ashamed of his English. I spent weeks trying to manipulate him into going - saying at the very least, it was a free vacation! He ended up going and presenting very well - so well that they're still working together!Was working out with a guy who used to break peoples legs for defaulting on mafia loans. He was telling me that there were some gypsy guys in the gym and that they were less than people. "They look like people, but they're not." I said, "Man, that's a lot of hate..." and let it be for the moment. Later in the workout, I couldn't get passed my 5th rep on one exercise and said that's all I've got, and he told me I was being too negative.I was collecting recipes from the landlord's wife. Her daughter was translating everything for me. One of the ingredients was aspirin. She stopped translating for a second, looked up and asked, "Do you have aspirin in the US?" Don't know which is funnier - her question or that aspirin is an ingredient!

On the topic of food, my landlord told me, "It's one thing to have sex with a man, and it's another thing to use a vibrator." He continued by encouraging me to make all my own food for at least a year so I could know the difference.There are two large windows that get opened in the library every day for ventilation. It makes me crazy because I'm here for energy efficiency and environmental education - focusing primarily on how to heat the building. When I asked why they were opened daily, I was told that it was for ventilation. Okay, I understand this, but offered that during the winter I think it would be adequate to only leave them open once a week. The response: "No. Some of the people that come here don't bathe enough."A young girl waited for me outside the library one night because she wanted to practice her English. This is not so common because there aren't so many people that speak English here. Immediately after introductions, I asked her if she was a high school student or a university student. She said she's taken university classes but hasn't finished. I asked why not, and she started to cry!When I see this sculpture, it's strikingly obvious to me that it's a communist cow. However, The reoccurring answer I got when I asked Bulgarians what it was: "It's art. No one knows what it's supposed to be." According to the artist, it's the lunar landing module.

Over a dinner conversation we were dicussing different funny idioms. I was explaining "spits or swallows" and the gal there said, "It depends if I'm hungry." The conversation went on to discuss chemicals in the water making male frogs feminine and that must be why there are so many gay people now: it's something in the water. Somehow, the conversation shifted to NASA. I was asked if I knew that NASA spent more than one billion USD for the development of a space pen that could write in zero gravity? I didn't. My friend then went on to say that after the Cold War, the USA asked the Russians how they solved the zero gravity pen problem and they said, "We use the pencil."I spent my last evening in Silistra, drinking with my landlord, Данчо Манчо – no other place I'd rather be. And as always, it was a ton of fun. As much as I try to describe how great my time is with the Peace Corps and in Bulgaria, I can never quite express exactly how I feel, or exactly how wonderful it's been. It makes me think of a phrase Данчо taught me that has become something of call for fun: Пиенето чисто, Мацито голо. Literally, it means, clean drinks and naked ladies. The deeper meaning is: if you want to know the alcohol you're drinking, don't mix it with anything; and if you want to know your lady, you can't know her until she's naked. I find it awfully fitting for my Peace Corps experience in Bulgaria – you can't really know it unless you've been here and done it. While I can't bring home an adequate description of what these last few months have meant to me, I can bring home this glorious smile!

Well, I entered an Peace Corps Bulgaria essay contest because it's been a while since I've written anything on this level and it sounded like fun! It's a bit on the depressing side as the theme was barriers to impact - as in, why isn't Bulgaria developing from all the financial support it's receiving? In fact, it is developing, as I've seen from my return here, but it still has some significant hurdles to overcome. To my Bulgarian readers: Please realize this not how I feel about Bulgaria; it is instead, how I feel about development in Bulgaria. It might seem a bit negative, but any Bulgarian that knows me, knows I love it here and wouldn't trade it for anything!

Intro to the Bulg

I love Bulgaria, but when I walk along most of the sidewalks here, I have to constantly pay attention to where I step. If I’m not careful, I end up with a shoe full of mud or a twisted ankle. I have to play the same game on roads where sidewalks don’t exist. Judging from new construction, I surmise that these decrepit roads and sidewalks were not originally built this way. I’m hoping the same is true for the gray and crumbly block apartments that I see in various states of disrepair. It’s a difficult image to analyze. How did it come to be like this? Are their concrete and asphalt that different from ours? Most likely not. So, where is the maintenance? Where is the effort? Where is the care?

After copping out by saying, “This is Bulgaria,” most Bulgarians elaborate to say that there is no money for these things. I disagree. I’ve seen scores of useless hotels built in order to launder money. I’ve seen the seven malls of Varna that appeared out of nowhere in just a couple years, with five more on the way, as money laundering schemes develop. I’ve seen police cars ranging from 35-year-old Ladas to brand new BMWs and Corvettes - in the same city! I definitely think there is money for things gray and crumbly, it’s just spent on other priorities. What impact barrier is it that upholds these priorities and inhibits the development of simple infrastructure? What kind of spending responsibility exists in this culture that dooms it to its developing status?

How can a guy or gal, laying brick or herding kids through school, making 15 bucks a day, afford the latest and greatest, fancy-pants new cell phone? It strikes me as odd that a cell phone would get priority over safe and healthy cooking supplies, leaky faucets, or drafty windows and doors. Technology and toys are fun, but responsibility does more for a person than entertainment.

The desire to be like the West is strong, yet the West’s struggle to be what it is today is overlooked. I don’t hear people saying that they need to work really hard to achieve goals. I don’t see people organizing themselves to work together as a team for the benefit of a large group, much less the country. Instead, I see people in cut-throat competitions for grants. I see people keeping progress in secrecy for fear of losing the next round of funding to their neighbor. I see blatant abuses of aid, inefficiencies, and waste. I see Bulgaria wanting to go to the moon, but I don’t see them building any rockets.

My Peace Corps service taught me to appreciate the limitless possibilities in the USA. I felt sorry for Bulgarians graduating from high school and college with the promise of very little potential for a prosperous life. How did the Western world develop to offer these opportunities? Why is there such a difference?

Time and again, I hear Bulgarians talk about their relatives in the USA who have found a good life. I’ve heard countless young people talk about going somewhere else in Europe or to the USA to find a job, because no possibilities exist in Bulgaria. I can’t seem to convey that tough times have existed everywhere, even in the USA. I try to explain that when opportunities are not immediately available, success comes from creating a new opportunity. If there are no jobs in Bulgaria, why not create something? If the desire is for work, why take a risk and travel so far when taking a risk at home can be equally beneficial, and you have support of home? I think this is a significant difference between the developed and developing worlds. Is there a way to inspire them to be on a better path? It’s not that the entrepreneurial spirit doesn’t exist here, but it’s difficult to foster it when the common solution is to long for opportunities in foreign lands. Why can’t people in developing countries simply work hard to escape their rut rather than working hard to escape their country? Is this more than a matter of working hard?

The common explanations for developmentally challenged societies are: lack of education, lack of equity, lack of equality, lack of access, and abundance of corruption - all entwined within a puzzle whose culturally different pieces just don’t fit with the surrounding pieces. Unfortunately, there are more, less prevalent, barriers that impact development, which are equally as damning.

Barrier: Misperception of Development Needs

My first trip on a bus in Bulgaria painted a very clear picture of why development was needed here. The driver was smoking with one hand and swerving to miss potholes with the other. I saw gravity defying shacks made of earth and wood where people lived. I saw people driving donkey carts that blocked traffic for old diesel cars belching smoke into the air. I saw old factories, long since abandoned, with their windows broken out and equipment rusting away. Strangely, their appearance wasn’t too dissimilar from the appearance of the dirty, half-bleached colors I saw on storefront signs in the small villages through which we passed. I made a lot of quick observations and used my superior logic to arrive at quick conclusions.

After mastering the language, I was able to probe further into Bulgaria’s problems. Talking with people at length gave great insight into other problems beyond infrastructural decay and neglect. It seemed to me that there was a mentality here that was simply not conducive to modern ways. Obviously the country and its people were still struggling to be free from the firm grip of communism.

At this point, I was my own biggest barrier to any kind of meaningful impact. I made many superficial observations and jumped to a lot of conclusions. These are not skills listed on my resume, but I’m pretty good at them, nonetheless. One of the biggest mistakes Volunteers make is being motivated to save the world without realizing how significant cultural differences can be. After a year or so - and some significant deeper understanding - I re-evaluated things, asking more questions rather than dolling out answers.

Generally speaking, in the West, we take for granted what we have, and we assume everyone else wants to be like us. We claim that we are civilized and developed, but these words are our own. We look at the developing and undeveloped worlds and conclude that they need help. We perceive that they want to be developed. How else can they rise from the depths of their destitution to become more like us? We forget, though, it's not the poor man that defines poverty - it's us. Who are we to make such judgments?

We think we're very comfortable in our lives, and we are a giving people so logically we want to share the way of our comfort with others. We never stop to ask ourselves if other people are already comfortable in their own way. We can also tend to be a bit exploitative and think that if more people share the same comforts that we enjoy, it validates our way and makes it less likely to change.

With our advanced marketing and agendas, we created a feeling of wanting. Tried and tested, they claim success again and again. The Coca Cola company spends exorbitant amounts of money and effort on international advertising, ensuring that every last human knows what they're missing. MTV dominates moral influence on young people across the globe. Even in the world of aid, organizations give with a price tag of their agenda.

Mormons run around the world offering free English lessons to heathens - so long as the content of those lessons is based around the Book of Mormon. Just as I, in my environmental education post, taught English to my community - so long as the topic revolved around ecological issues in Bulgaria. Why? Because that’s what we perceive them to need, and fulfilling that need makes us rich and righteous. But do our efforts really do any good for these people? Are their lives better after we’ve encountered them or have we just given them a taste of something exotic - something they can’t hope to taste again after we’ve gone? We think we know what these developing people need, and we think what we’re doing is clear, but ‘help’ is an ambiguous word that is not easily translated.

Barrier: Misunderstanding of Offered Aid

As soon as I arrived to my first post, my host wanted me to apply for a $25,000 grant to remodel a museum, which had just been remodeled the previous year. Thinking I was missing something, due to a language barrier, I went for it. While it was pending, my host asked what other kinds of grants we could get. I asked what kinds of projects would they like to implement and they said it didn’t matter, just get them money. “You’re a Volunteer, you have to get us money.” I explained that I was more of a community resource, here to assist with development projects, not simply to generate revenue. “No. You have to get us money.”

Volunteers are looked at in many different ways by hosting organizations, from money makers to desk trophies. As I complained about my situation, I heard other Volunteers talking about having absolutely nothing to do. Their host organizations just wanted the social prestige that came with having an American working for them. One Volunteer arrived at post to find the host already had all their needs and wants completely satisfied. Other Volunteers realize there was work to do, but couldn’t figure out how to help. In fact, they were not really given opportunities to help. One situation included a Volunteer arriving to a post a week before the host organization dissolved!

A friend of mine arrived at site to work for the local municipality. Their main goal for him was to find a solution to their landfill issue. The Volunteer thought that teaching about recycling and establishing a small scale recycling program in the town was probably the best place to start. Then they dragged him to the landfill, which was about a kilometer upstream from the center of town, on the river, literally. They finally realized that landfills shouldn’t be placed on the river, upstream from where you live. Not only did they want this Volunteer to remediate the area of its thousands upon thousands of tons of solid waste, they also wanted an entirely new municipal waste disposal policy.

One of the worst positions a Volunteer can be in, is one where the host organization looks upon the Volunteer as someone who will do all the work for them. This type of misunderstanding contaminates the world of aid across the globe. It’s a misunderstanding in which the receiver of aid believes the aid will solve their problems. They miss the point that the aid is a support structure so that they can fix their own problems - and this is a huge mistake.

When the West enters a developing country, with goals of providing aid, the ‘giving’ aspect is understood, but that which is being given gets lost in translation. If the organization is progressive enough to want the aid as help instead of as a title, they often expect that aid to be everything they’ve ever needed. This creates a crippling dependency; a situation that is not sustainable, nor helpful. Knowing this, Volunteers are taught extensively about the priority of sustainability when they enter the country. Unfortunately, despite an attempt at preparation, there are still other factors that impede useful impact.

Barrier: Apathy

There was a small green space near where I lived in Varna that I passed every day on my way to and from work. I was very pleased one day to see it getting a complete makeover into a nice park. I was then very frustrated to see that within three weeks of its completion, it was totally destroyed. The 5-gallon sized trash cans were burnt and/or smashed in. The brick tiles, which made nice paths through the park, had been pulled up and smashed. Benches were scarred with graffiti. I was so disgusted with the thought of vandals destroying a community place for no good reason. I assumed it must have been the drunk teens I saw from time to time who had nothing better to do. And then some further observation disgusted me even more. Walking by, I noticed a child, maybe three or four, pull up one of the remaining bricks from the pathway and hold it over her head, while she looked at her mom for either approval or discipline. Mom gave, what I interpreted as a blank stare, as if to say, “So?” So, the child slammed it down on another brick, shattering it to pieces. Punishment from mom? Nope. She took another drag from her cigarette and turned back to her friend to continue their important conversation.

Much of the developing world can see Western life on TV and in pictures. The grass is pretty green, and it creates a wanting of what they see. If they get something nice, but not as nice as they see, they don’t respect it. Maybe these people had seen better parks, and since this one wasn’t as good, why treat it like it was?

It’s so disheartening to present a way that leads to prosperity only to have it met with disinterest. I presented many paths toward Western-style success that were received with comments ranging from, “No, that will never work” to “No, that’s too hard.” They don’t recognize that the West struggled and worked diligently to achieve its success. They often miss that the West is still struggling, too. They instead want the West’s successes without going through their own struggle. They seek shortcuts and handouts that they think will elevate them, but they’re wrong - and when they learn they’re wrong, they give up.

When shortcuts are sought and preferred to real, hard work, you end up where you began. One day, during training, we asked the mayor of our village why there were so many stray dogs. It was something we weren’t used to. The following day, we heard gun shots and yelping during our language lessons. How much easier is it to exterminate the “stray dog problem” than it would be to teach the community what it means to be a responsible pet owner? Did killing the strays help the situation? No. In a few months, there were again strays roaming the streets. The root of the problem wasn’t addressed because a simple solution was considered good enough. But that’s just not good enough.

Conclusion

In generalizing these points, I have omitted the part of the population that earnestly wants change, and honestly works hard. These people are not barriers to impact, they are the ones making progress. Progress and development are absolutely possible, but there will always be barriers. Philanthropy is a great thing, but it has to be met with a need from those who are needing, not a perceived need from those who are giving. Cultural barriers will always taint understanding and clarity. Mitigating these barriers requires awareness, thoroughness, and ambition from all parties involved. Asking for help to get down a path is perfectly fine, but asking for someone to carry you down the path will only ensure that you’ll be lost once you get to where you’re going. There may be many bumps in the road, but it’s important to be happy with each step you take and to respect that you’re on a road in the first place - gray and crumbly as it may be.

Although this is an essay about barriers, I feel it would be incomplete without at least a mention of overcoming these barriers. Overcoming barriers is achieved by minimizing perceptions, maximizing understanding, and inspiring ambition. Make thorough observations, make sure what is given is understood, and lead by example through hard work. Giving won’t work without inspiring. It’s unreasonable to expect to inspire an entire country, but you can inspire a few people who will, in turn, inspire a few more, and so on and so forth. I changed lives and I blew minds in the Peace Corps, but my most significant impacts never made it into my DOS, and there was no dollar value that could be attached to them.

In my “English” classes, where I secretly taught about ecology, I included an assignment for writing a letter to a government official about an ecological issue. One gal’s takeaway from all this was not the English, nor the ecology - it was the democracy. She thanked me profusely, saying she had no idea she had a voice, and subsequently started her own group to be vocal about issues that mattered to them.

Additionally, my counterpart received an invitation to represent Bulgaria in a European conference on sustainability. He didn’t hesitate to refuse because it meant that he had to present in English. I fought him, tooth and nail, arguing that at the very least, this was a free vacation! It took me weeks to manipulate him into going, and he ended up presenting with great success. In fact, he’s since been invited back every year, and is currently partnering with them on a very prestigious, Europe-wide environmental education project. It took him more than four years to finally thank me for pushing him, but it was totally worth the wait to realize the impact I had made.

If development is to be essential, impact is how it must happen. Why is it so important to develop? Because as a species we have an innate obligation to be our best. The best is who survives, and we, with a caring and giving nature, want everyone to survive. Development is a measurement of our best, and impact is a measurement of our nurture. What can we do to contribute as an individual, a team, a society, a species? How can we be better than we were in order to ensure our continued survival? Grow and inspire. Cultural differences will continue to lead to miscommunications, but it doesn’t mean we give up. It’s important to watch our steps along the way, but if we can pave over the holes of corruption and level the cracks of cultural differences with access to education, equity, and equality, then perhaps shoes full of mud and twisted ankles can be things of the past as we raise our heads and look ahead to the future.

I came to Bulgaria to volunteer at a regional library; to design a long-term program that enhanced library involvement in sustainable community dynamics, focusing on environmentally friendly practices for libraries and beyond. As clear as that sounds, I still had a bit of difficulty understand exactly what their expectations were.

One day, I was horsing around on the internet and I got caught watching The Story of Bottled Water. My counterpart told me that if I wanted, I could make a presentation to the library staff about my work back home, or my environmental expertise. “We are librarians,” she said, “we like to learn new things.” With that, a bunch of pieces of my puzzled endeavors starting fitting together, one after another.

I decided that I would combine the message against the ludicrous idea of bottled water with the noble movement against disposable plastic bags in order to create a full on campaign against plastic pollution. I utilized stuff from presentations back home and things I'd learned in my hippie days. I chose two of my favorite internet videos and painstakingly began translating their text in order to embed Bulgarian subtitles. When I was nearly complete, I wrote to the producers and asked their permission to use their videos for my project. They were both supportive of what I was doing, but one of them said, by the way, we already have Bulgarian subtitles for the video! Wish I had asked earlier...

As the presentation developed, I started seeing how much the community needed to be aware of these ideas. Water from the tap is fine to drink here, but everyone is afraid of it. Plastic bags are liberally given out at every store – even when you insist on not wanting any. So, it made tons of sense to form a campaign against these products, the biggest contributors to plastic pollution in the world's oceans.

My first presentation was to the library staff. They heard me loud and clear, but I wasn't impressed until I realized the impact I had made. I was told they felt guilty for buying bottled water and taking plastic bags from the store instead of using cotton ones that they had at home. I wasn't shooting for a guilt trip, but I certainly appreciated the motivation to be environmentally responsible. The director liked my presentation so much that she organized a 2nd grade class to come view it.

Their teacher asked if I could try to be engaging somehow. Ha! She's obviously never heard of my legend. She also asked if the kids could do some kind of arts and crafts with plastic bags. I told her absolutely not, and reiterated my message of NOT using plastic bags or water bottles!

I prepped and prepped for the presentation, as it was to be in Bulgarian and had to be on the level of 2nd graders this time – not my librarian colleagues with their mandatory master's degrees.Despite my best efforts, as the kids sat down, they started pulling out plastic bags from their backpacks as their teacher had instructed. There were literally hundreds of them. And I was sooo pissed off!I tried not to let it get to me as I got into presentation mode. And then I began. It was awesome! I held their attention for an hour and a half!A big group of 7 and 8 year olds – listening to me – for 1.5 hours!!!They loved it, and so did I!I was so happy with myself that I asked my counterpart to find me more kids. I ended up giving several more presentations in the library and even making guest appearances in some schools! It was a lot of fun and I really think I inspired some people!

Below is what I've submitted for my accomplishments during my service this time around:

Established an outline for environmental programs to be hosted by the library, including topics on climate change, alternative energy, environmental stewardship, pollution and recycling, and leading by example with green practices. Communicated with national and international NGOs who offered to be guest lecturers at the library to present on these topics to the community.Created a PowerPoint presentation about the environmental burdens of plastic pollution and importance of alternatives to disposable plastic bags and water bottles. He presented it to six different groups, reaching 150 people, ranging from second grade classes to adults. Speaking to his mastery of integration, three of the presentations were in Bulgarian, and three were in English. The presentation contained photos and facts that inspired discussion and learning. It also contained two short internet films that required team-building collaboration with library colleagues to translate. With permission from the films' producers, the films were uploaded to the library's website. His superior teamwork abilities were again demonstrated by creating an informational brochure, with colleagues, which contained the most important takeaway messages from the presentation. He then instructed his Bulgarian counterpart on how to give the presentation so as to continue the message of environmental stewardship and responsible practices.Procured a donation of water filters from BRITA, which are to be used as demonstrations in future presentations and as rewards for volunteers who help with the library's environmental actions.Developed a plan to increase the energy efficiency of the library by utilizing alternative energies, improving insulation, installing proper ventilation, altering work practices, and implementing a recycling program.Collaborated with the Head of the Energy Efficiency Department in the Silistra Municipality to solidify plans and details for installing solar panels on the library to produce energy and generate revenue for the use of an eco-heat pump. Also worked together to determine the most energy efficient way of delivering that heat to the various rooms of the library.Applied for award recognition from the European Union in an energy efficiency competition for accomplishments and future plans of the library.Organized participation by 50 students from three local schools in an international essay contest, and proctored the competition for four different groups.Demonstrated cultural delicacy, supreme diplomacy, and an affinity for diversity by actively participating in 12 official and unofficial, local and national cultural events.

Well, I guess I got married over the weekend. The much anticipated holiday, Trifon Zarezan, was celebrated (for the second time) on Valentine's Day, and there was a whole lot of celebrating going on! Trifon Zarezan is a holiday on February 14th that celebrates wine and love, and love of wine. I was lucky enough to see two different versions of the traditions this year!

On Sunday, I joined a pensioner's club in the next village over, Айдемир, for their celebration. It was super traditional, with the old cultural outfits and everything! They started the festivities by cutting a grape vine in someone's garden and pouring wine and holy water over the cut. They said a few words and we all migrated inside to start the party. We were given food and lots of homemade wine, while a group of grandmothers sang traditional songs and danced traditional dances.I have a friend visiting and all the grandmothers adored her. They dressed her up and sang to her, much to her embarrassment! It was great!Then they wanted to dress me up in the traditional garb... No extra clothes for me, though, so the one guy there stripped down and let me borrow his clothes for a song. Ha!

They had me dress up and do a little dance - and then they told me that Alena and I were married. Ha!

They made, what I assume, were some traditional blessings for us and then wished us back next year with a baby! Then they entrusted us to be the judges of the homemade wine contest! Mmmm!

The whole thing was very interesting, but it was all symbolic. It was a group of retired folks trying to keep their culture and traditions alive. Unfortunately, the only young people around to witness it were Alena and myself.That's probably why we got so much attention. I guess if you counted age in terms of spirit rather than in years, this group would have rivaled me for being young! It was a lot fun, and I loved it all, but the next day we got a chance to see the real deal!The next day, Данчо Манчо took us to the same village, where we met up with a group of working men. They made up something of a vineyard cooperative and took us out into their fields. We cut vines off of the plants and made crowns and necklaces, and then poured out some wine to wish for a fruitful coming season.The day was cold and windy, and we stood in the middle of a vineyard that stretched on as far as we could see. Our shoes were caked with mud and everyone's nose was dripping - but it didn't matter because today was the day to celebrate their profession! How many people celebrate their profession?! They were super serious about the whole thing; I mean, it is their livelihood and all, but it was their pride that was inspiring. There were two profound speeches before any of the cutting even began that seemed to create a very solemn moment. That, however, was followed by smiles and activity to make sure everyone had a grape vine crown.When we got back to the processing facility, we gathered in a basement where there were tables set up among old, 300-liter wine barrels! It was a very, very cool atmosphere! I'm really starting to develop an appreciation of wine. Not only the drinking of it, I mean, I'm enjoying it in completely different ways. The old latin saying, "in vino veritas," only told half of the story - so here's an Andrewism that I hold true for telling the rest: In wine there is joy!A couple of big oak barrels were labeled 'Merlot 1991' but as I understood it, they were all empty because of the fall of communism. It sounded odd at first, and the connection was not immediately transparent... but someone did tell me that back in communist times, when everyone was equal, there were a lot more people who worked in grape fields and made wine. They explained that the problem now, is that with capitalism, there has been an element of competition injected into the society which makes folks want "keep up with the Ivanovs." The result is that many people abandoned the low-profit (albeit high-happiness) trade of wine making to pursue other things. This would certainly explain a dying tradition, and it better explains the efforts of the pensioner's club to keep those traditions alive. How effective they will be, though, remains to be seen. Maybe what they need is some young folks to get interested in these traditions, to get married and start families, and to pass on the tradition as well as they pass on a bottle of wine!

Coming from Portland, where the Ban the Bag campaign is in full swing, and having studied other ban-the-bag types of actions, it's weird for me to come to Bulgaria where this perspective simply doesn't exist. In many places, the countryside is completely littered with plastic bags, plastic water bottles, cigarette butts, and various other garbages. People throw away plastic products as carelessly as they buy and use them.

It reminds me of a conversation I had on my first trip through Bulgaria with my favorite colleague. He told me that older Bulgarians (over 40) who still have a bit of communist mentality are so dependent upon the government that they believe there's no environmental problem unless the government says there is. And even then, the government would take care of it, not the people. I see various examples of this mentality in different ways, but the following have been sadly amusing.

I don't usually bring my canvas bags to the store when I'm only going to buy an item or two so when the cashier tries putting my snickers bar or roll of toilet paper into a bag I say something to the affect of "I don't need/want one." The reactions have been astounding!

"Well, here's one just to have one."

"You have to have one."

"It doesn't matter, here's one anyway."

One day, I had forgotten my canvas bags. I took one bag from the store, filled it with some bread, yogurt, and meat, and went to the checkout. The gal pulled out another bag and said, "You can't do it like that, your bread will get dirty." I told her it was okay, and that I only wanted one bag. So, she wrapped the bread with a different bag and put it inside the first bag and said with a smile, "There ya go. Only one."

The following picture was taken at a beautiful reservoir near Krichim, where I lived for three months during my training.When I see how readily people take plastic bags from the market, how often I see them blowing in the wind, and how little people care, it makes images like the one above understandable, but certainly not justifiable. Communism may have filtered out wonderful things like personal responsibility, and Captain Planet, but by heck, communism is a thing of the past, and I'm gonna try to help a bit with the future!Since I knew where I'd be serving, I brought two canvas shopping bags with me to Bulgaria, and of course my super reusable, steel water bottle! This was mostly to appease my own personal constitution, but I'm finding that being under a microscope as an exotic guy in a foreign land, I'm having an unexpected impact on the folks around me. So I decided to roll with it!

I pulled information from my favorite organizations from back home like the Surfrider Foundation, Heal the Bay, Oregon Ban the Bag, Take Back the Tap, and the Story of Stuff to create a rough presentation for my colleagues. I told them about the evils of disposable plastic products and showed them mind blowing pictures. I quoted numbers, cited myself, and assured them all that I was very smart. It was a moving presentation and it actually inspired a discussion. I was surprised and very pleased. It looks like my remaining time will be spent helping to develop this idea into something the library can use in their effort to go green!I'm getting an excited and very interested response from my colleagues, which is great, but there's a lot more people in this town and breaking their old ways will be a very difficult thing to do! I'm going to try hard to find a source of reusable bags and water bottles for this community, but I don't know how realistic that will be yet. Sure, I'll take your suggestions, if you have any.

We celebrated at the end of the day because aside from being Andrew's Presentation Day, it was also Wine Day! Well, I guess Wine Day's actual date is still debatable. I'm told it's either February 1st or February 14th, depending on which calendar you use. I think this is just an excuse to celebrate a great holiday twice. Fine by me!

I was in Paris to celebrate 2010 and welcome 2011; my favorite holiday in the world: New Year's Eve! Not all went as I had envisioned nor as I planned, in fact, I was a bit disappointed with the city of Paris for its pathetic stance on a major holiday. There was no countdown, nor fireworks. The city said the economic crisis had impacted its budget so much that the NYE celebration had to go - but somehow they managed to find funds to increase police presence on the streets from 6,000 last year to 54,000 this year. Fireworks are bad for the environment, anyway. I guess I shouldn't complain about being in the middle of a million happy people at the Eiffel Tower. It was a pretty amazing feeling.I ended up having a fantastic time and making some wonderful new friends! Found a fellow UPeace alumnus through a friend and stayed/celebrated with her and her friends - and it was a great, great time! The best part was introducing international travel to a very close friend back home. NYE in Paris is not a bad first trip outside the USA!I wish I could have stayed longer with my friend, but I have accomplishments to make in Bulgaria, where the holiday season continues! I returned in time for one of my favorite Bulgarian holidays, Йорданов Ден. This is the day, when all across Bulgaria, there is a religious procession to a lake, river, or sea; a priest hurls a wooden cross into the water, and the men of the village/town race to be the first to get it. Then they dance in the water. Participating in this event is supposed to bring good health throughout the year. If you've ever heard my 'frostbitten penis' story - this is the holiday that's responsible.This event is a bit different in different cities, and afterward, the rest of the day is spent celebrating everyone having a name derived from Йордан. As luck would have it, my landlord (and colleague) has this name, though I like to call him Данчо Манчо!On a "Name Day" the person sharing the name of the particular saint is obliged to treat his/her friends. It's an interesting thing, and we have nothing like it in the states. It went something like this: a bunch of us went to Данчо Манчо's office and wished him life and health and many more years, while he treated us to snacks and drinks.He's one of my favorite people here, and we had a really great time! In fact, my one-hour lunch break turned into a three-hour party!By the time I got back to work, I was kinda drunk. My colleagues told me I could go home, but for no good reason I insisted on staying until the end of the day. My paranoid mind told me that if I let the alcohol affect my work, it would be a sign of alcoholism. Of course I'm nowhere near to being an alcoholic, but the event inspired some deeper thought into drinking in this country.

Upon arrival in Bulgaria, the Peace Corps made an attempt at introducing Volunteers to the Bulgarian perspective of drinking. It was more in the form of a safety and security presentation, which we all took to mean: Don't drink your brains out and do stupid things. From my stories and observations, one could generally conclude that Bulgarians drink a lot. From the average American perspective, it might sound like these people are alcoholics. While they do drink a lot, there are no more alcoholics here than there are back home, and I think it has to do with a difference in psyche.

Reasons for drinking are different, drinking culture is different, and judgment of drinking is different. Of course there are similarities, some stronger than others, some are exactly the same, but the overall perspective of drinking is simply different. Even though I'm quite unique back home, I still have an American psyche, and it's tough for me to understand the subtleties and complexities of these differences, much less try to explain them. But as you know me, you know I like trying.In many conversations I've had about Europeans and their wine and drinking, it's often the conclusion that they're more mature than we Americans. I don't think this conclusion is entirely accurate. Generally speaking, while I think there is a difference in maturity, I think the main difference is in psyche. Alcohol is not looked upon as a dangerous tool that often inspires a good time; from what I can gather, it's more perceived as a supplement to health and good times.

As the cold/flu season hatches, I'm hearing a lot about home remedies. I keep hearing the same stories, as repeating them seems to make them more true. One in particular is about a gal who was sick for days, and her antibiotics weren't working. Instead of fussing around with silly pharmaceutical medicines, she took some rakia, a dollop of honey, mixed them together, and gulped it down! The next morning she was fine! I can see my sister, the pharmacist, rolling her eyes at this, and I must admit, I do too, but the fact remains - no matter how much it may have been exaggerated, there seems to be some legitimacy to it. If nothing else, it's a perceived legitimacy and an expecting mind that brings a person to feel healthier after a bit of booze.

Ракия (Rakia, the homemade brandy) seems to be a cure-all for every kind of ailment. Headache? Indigestion? Drink some rakia. Temperature? Drink some rakia with honey. Bad back? How about a rakia sponge-bath? At one gathering, a colleague of mine was feeding a cat that bit her finger and made her bleed. Open wound? Stick it in a glass of rakia! At one of the other library Christmas parties, before we started drinking, I was sitting next to a gal I really enjoy and she turned to me and said, "For those who have died," and poured a bit of rakia out onto the floor. In the library! Ha!

I have yet to hear an adult Bulgarian talk about getting drunk, not even in jokes, yet I'm invited for a drink nearly every day. In Bulgaria, there isn't a goal of getting drunk. Back home, if you drink more than someone else thinks is reasonable, people say you're an alcoholic. Here, people don't really judge you in that way. I'm not saying there aren't alcoholics here - there are - but it's different. It might be too much for me to depict the differences without examples.

One weekend, during my first Peace Corps adventure, I went to a human trafficking conference with a group of 20 high school and university kids between the ages of 15 and 20. The teacher facilitated all kinds of ice-breaker games with sexual innuendos during the day and organized a party with beer and whiskey for her daughter's 17th birthday on one of the nights (legal drinking age is 18)! All that would be considered way inappropriate back home - but none of those kids acted inappropriately on our weekend getaway. It simply wasn't an issue. No one abused it, and no one got out of control. Was it because they'd grown up with it? Was it because their society doesn't over-react to every little thing? Or was it just another cultural difference?

Alcohol doesn't negatively impact productivity, from what I've seen. In fact, I've seen plenty of examples of how it improves productivity in the long run, as it brings people together and puts everyone on the same festive page. It may be read wrong from an American psyche, but one lady put it best, "In the summer, we work. In the winter, we drink." I think the translation is not literal. "Drinking" in English, is consuming alcoholic beverages. Although I know there's much more to it that I simply don't fully understand and can't possibly describe, near as I can tell, "drinking" in Bulgarian, is consuming alcoholic beverages with friends.

Some colleagues organized a hike to a lodge of sorts, one Saturday. The building in the forest was something of a retreat for politicians during communist days. Now it's a forest lodge with a scout camp nearby.It was a short hike through the snow, and I got a nice chance to talk with people I don't usually see at the library. I kept saying how awesome I thought this was that they planned a weekend event with their colleagues. My impressions confused them until I explained that my colleagues back home didn't really do anything together after working hours. I guess that confused them even more. "We're all friends," they told me, "Of course we do things together outside of work." They couldn't understand being a part of a team, and not being friends. Frankly, I can't either.It didn't take long for someone to break out the rakia on our hike. This was special winter rakia - mixed with sugar, lemon juice, and red pepper and heated! Pretty interesting hiking beverage! Ha! Once we got to the lodge, we continued with the rakia, and added wine and snacks! The "snacks" were different salads and pickled vegetables that go really well with rakia. We ate and drank for a few hours and then called it a day and headed back to the bus stop. Pretty great little winter outing. Pretty great little team!

Who knows how much I really understand about drinking in Bulgaria. Sure, I have my keen observations and impressive reasoning skills, but it's possible that they're a bit skewed by my American psyche, wondrous as it may be. Drinking is a significant component of integration, which is one of my top priorities as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Even though I'm drinking more than I would have back home, it's not same kind of drinking, and I've always been able to heed the Peace Corps' disclaimer of not drinking my brains out and doing stupid things. All I can say with absolute certainty is that the world of drinking here is not the same as it is back home. If you're curious to know more, I invite you to come experience it with me! Next month is my other favorite Bulgarian holiday: Трифон Зарезан (A festival of wine)!

I spent the Christmas weekend with my former counterpart's family. It was an absolutely traditional Bulgarian Christmas! We slaughtered a pig, then feasted until we passed out! For three days!!! This is such a strong piece of the Bulgarian culture, many Bulgarians have tried to take it with them as they immigrate to the USA. I kept hearing stories of Bulgarians who got arrested or deported for slaughtering pigs in their new suburban American neighborhoods. One stuck with me. A friend of a friend bought a pig to raise for the year with the intention of having a Christmas feast. No one else in the neighborhood had a pig and the kids loved it! They named it John and played with it all year long. John the Pig was a big hit, but that Christmas morning, kids woke up to John squealing his brains out! They all came running to see what was wrong – and they found Mr. Bulgarian preparing his Christmas feast.The neighbors were so upset, they called the police, and Mr. Bulgarian ended up getting deported! This is a perfect example of a cultural misunderstanding. But since I understand cultural misunderstandings, I enjoyed every bit of the holiday!

I was super impressed at how efficiently the pig came apart - and how quickly everyone worked together. They used every last piece of that pig! It was a lot of hard work but all the helping hands made it go by very fast. The positive attitudes were great, too! They were obviously all very prepared and aware of what needed to be done. And everyone did it. It was a very beautiful team effort.Family dynamics, however, are like nothing I've ever seen. It may be true that I've not been exposed to enough to form even a general opinion, but I like forming general opinions anyway. My former counterpart's family are great people! They love having me over – and I love coming over – it's always a very pleasant overall experience. However, there are some moments when I'm extremely uncomfortable. They fight with each other a lot! I can't keep up with the language when they're cursing and speaking in village dialect, but I certainly understand the yelling and the hand gestures flying through the air! I usually try not to get in the middle of anything when one of these outbursts erupts. Especially since everyone's working on the pig – they all have a knife in one hand.One example is with the grandfather who is 88 years old and can't really take care of himself. He usually sits in the corner and watches things – speaking very rarely. If he moves, it's to go to the bathroom, which is an outhouse in the back yard. He moves like a three-toed sloth so the whole trip takes him about 15 to 20 minutes. The family helps him onto his walker, and into his chair, but they seem to curse him during the entire event. If he makes a mistake or moves too slowly, they yell at him. It's the saddest thing you've ever seen. He had his finger in a sling, but took it off to eat dinner. His finger is obviously broken and swollen and I asked what happened. “He's old.” the family casually informed me. On the 24th he ate with us in the big dining room, but for Christmas dinner he sat down below. I thought I heard that it was because he drank too much the night before and it was difficult for the family to get him back to his corner – but when I asked, they told me he didn't want to eat with everyone else. Maybe they were talking about my drinking?

On the other hand – the family goes out of their way to take care of him. Clipping his fingernails, catering to his dietary needs, waiting on him for other needs. It's so odd to see the change from contempt to coddling happen so quickly. And it was true for all of them. There's a very clear and strong sense of family, and it's respected at the same time it's abused! It feels like any one of them would take a bullet for another – yet they despise each other at certain times. It pulls me back to the comment I made in front of a group of kids about how I celebrate Christmas back home. I said we eat dinner with our families – and I thought that sounded super lame because they do that here all the time. But as I look at it now, I can say that my celebration of Christmas is a lot less lame because none of us really have temporary fits of hatred towards each other - and that's really special.Overall, the holiday weekend was full of really, really good food, good fun, and good people. I couldn't have asked for a more enjoyable time. I waddled away with a full belly, a smile, some new recipes to try, and a big bag of food and booze to last me to the end of the year!

Monday night was the company Christmas party! It included folks from the municipality, various museums in town, a children's center, and of course, our library. The venue was a luxurious 5-star hotel, where we each had to pay about 5 USD for a full meal and drinks! Not bad! I had trouble holding in my laughter when I saw that everyone brought their own rakia and wine - their own private stashes from home batches. Little water bottles filled with rakia, stuffed in purses, and two-liter soda bottles filled with wine and kept under the table. It was a funny sight. After having tried the homemade stuff, though, I would have been doing the same thing! The homemade stuff is sooo good!

Homemade alcohol is the standard throughout the country. Most prominently, people grow grapes to make wine, and then with the leftover materials, they add sugar and water for further fermentation, until they're ready to distill it. The result is some kind of a brandy that is sometimes magnificent! Grapes are most popular, followed by plums, but my region is famous for it's apricot brandy. And I've had some that is just amazing! It's hit and miss, though. I think the old men who usually make the stuff, have one of two goals: either make it delicious, or make it strong. These are the two types that seem to be most common. The strong rakia leaves you aching in the morning, and the delicious rakia is dangerous for your walk home that night. =)

One of the rakias I tried Monday night was fantastic! I quickly asked what it was made from, but because I was already slightly intoxicated, I goofed with the language again. Instead of asking if it was from raspberries like I thought it was, I asked if it was from olives (the two words are so close: маслини/малини), which is a disgusting thought! Opa! Oh well, they all got a good laugh, and the night went on.

People were having such a great time at the party! The director of the archeological museum was by far the best dancer - but I don't think I could give him the title of happiest because there was another guy that was smiling so big, I swear he couldn't see out of his own eyes!I danced all night, and I was a pretty big hit! Probably because I'm such a good dancer. The wanting eyes of women twice my age were a far cry from the wanting eyes of guys back in Portland that I'm used to. Still an odd combination of awkwardness and flattery. Still don't quite know how to handle that kind of attention, but it eventually yielded to the men of the group telling me I need to find a young Bulgarian girl to keep me in Bulgaria. =)They're a great group and I'm happy to be with them while I can. It's such a privilege to work with talented and motivated people! Incidentally, to work at the library, it's obligatory to have a master's degree so these people are quite competent.

Today, the last working day of the year, we closed early to have another Christmas party. This time it was only with the library staff. This kind of event really keeps the crew in good spirits. It revitalizes camaraderie and makes working with your fellow colleagues much more pleasant - it's something I really envy.This is the director telling us how great of a job everyone has done over the year - and wishing everyone fruitful success in the new year! Her speech was followed by the deputy mayor - the one I whacked with a stick last week - saying much of the same.Drinks and snacks were enjoyed by all for a couple hours, good luck cards (like fortune cookies) were read by all and it was a genuine good time.

At the end, the director gave everyone a pen with the library name and logo printed on it as a Christmas gift. I felt like such a goon after having blogged about how much Bulgarian pens suck! These are nice pens, though! The irony is extreme - I hope she wasn't offended by my post!

Merry Winter Solstice to all, and to all a good night.

So I've been to the library for a week or two, and I think I've seen it all. In Peace Corps' arms, thinkin' I'll go far. Back home my type is rare. I dig ethnicky jazz and pop songs playing on a 2-bit radio. Now I know what it is to be cold, living next to the slums with so much soul!

Before I began working, I had a day of introduction. We walked into the library on December 9th, with its 25-foot high ceilings, and it was freezing! My counterpart apologized to me and told me that they'll start heating the place in January, but until then, wear a jacket. For the first week, every time I saw a thermometer outside it read -1, 0, or +1.

On my first work day at the Partenii Pavlovich Library, I attended an 8am meeting with all the staff. There are 24 employees here, but 8 of them were on vacation. My counterpart is just under the director as she manages all the departments of the library. At the meeting, I was asked to speak a little bit about myself after I was introduced as speaking phenomenal Bulgarian and an excellent resource for the library staff who want to practice their English (there have been two so far).

I started my normal goofball introduction in Bulgarian, saying that I am Andrew the Beautiful, eternal bachelor! It comes from a traditional Bulgarian song and usually people laugh their heads off when I say it. But this time it only cracked a few smiles and I felt like a jerk. My saving grace happened a moment later, after my spiel, when one lady asked me to sing the whole song at the library Christmas party!At the end of the day, I walked out of the library with my counterpart and the director to see the whole center lit up with Christmas lights! I said, "Look how beautiful it is!" and before they could respond, I continued, "Hey, I'm over here!" They got a great kick out of that! We walked 20 meters and my counterpart said, "Can you see how beautiful it is?" I responded with, "Yes. I have a mirror." Ha! Oh man! They kept calling me a sweetheart. I think they don't have a word for cornball, but I love that they appreciate my sense of humor!

My counterpart has been insanely helpful in making sure I'm comfortable in the community. She goes so far out of her way to make sure I'm happy that I feel bad not being able to reciprocate, although I'm trying the best I can. She told me, unofficially, that we're going to start working 7-hour days because it's too cold to be here for 8 hours. =) I was complaining about how cold my apartment was and so the director said she'd lend me one of her blankets! Super nice! She even tried to hail a cab for me so I wouldn't have to walk all the way home under the burden of a 3-pound blanket! I took the opportunity to tell her to relax because I'm a strong man!

Half way through my first week, there was some kind of children's event in our big hall. They came for a presentation about Christmas, more or less. But since I'm such a hot item, the gal running the show asked me if I would be part of the introduction and say a few words. No problem I thought. Well, actually, there's a very big problem. Once in a while, I encounter a Bulgarian that I simply can not understand. It's not a matter of them speaking too quickly or not slow enough. I simply can't understand them. Either how they speak, or the words they choose to use. Nothing works. Unfortunately, I couldn't understand a word she was saying. But I feel bad about it so I always say that I do understand and hope my genius level I.Q. will figure it out before it's too late. Well, that didn't happen this time. All of a sudden, I was standing in front of about 30 kids, and welcoming them to a presentation that I didn't understand. I was supposed to talk about myself and my counterpart was nearby to say, "tell them how you celebrate Christmas." Alright! A starting point! I said, "We celebrate Christmas by eating dinner with our families." That's it. Crap. When I realized how lame that sounded I tried to recover but just dug myself a deeper hole. Humor didn't save me this time.

Later, I was invited to a Christmas recital in the same hall and as i entered there was one gal singing as people took their seats. She had the most beautiful voice! As she started another song her voice cracked, and she paused before trying again. It cracked again and she stepped off stage to ask her teacher who was playing the piano if she could step down. Then she walked to her seat with tears streaming down her cheeks. =) The recital officially opened up with what seemed to be a 4 year old and a 6 year old singing their heads off! They were really belting it out and it was sooo cute!

Our library hosts so many events and I seem to be paraded around to them all as if I had a hand in them. Really, I think they want to show me off. I enjoy being a novelty, to a point. I get invited to this or that and then show up to loads of curiosity, which I also enjoy, but then I'm asked to say a few words. It's a reasonable request - I just seem to get stage fright every time! They ask me to say something at the last minute and I usually don't know what's going on. The shock of the moment usually leads to me speaking crap Bulgarian and not saying anything at all aside from, "Uhhhh". I lose all my vocabulary and then I get more nervous and I spiral out of control!

I was invited to another event. I thought, as I always do, that I would be going to watch something. It was a typical traditional Bulgarian event that I've never seen before. Kids decorate sticks so that they may hit each other on the back on New Year's. I guess the belief is that it brings them good health. I don't see the connection, but I don't think anyone would be too surprised to learn that I don't understand everything. So I arrive to this event, expecting to see kids running around and hitting each other with sticks. I prepared myself for a good beating cause I'm the novelty foreigner and I'm sure the kids would want me to have good health in the new year. Turns out, they were just decorating at this event and I was invited to decorate a stick, too. Looking around, the whole scene reminded me of Charlie Brown's Christmas!

Of course, these kids weren't decorating Christmas trees, but Christmas whipping sticks! They have a Bulgarian name, but I don't think it translates.Anyway, I was having all kinds of fun tying different random things to my stick in "decoration" when all of a sudden, the organizer gal asks me to say a few words in Bulgarian and thrusts a microphone in my face!Well, because of my previous failings I have worked out an outline of a few things to talk about when someone says, "here, talk about yourself." I gave my spiel and I could hear people talking about how well I speak Bulgarian. I felt damn good about myself! And on top of the giddiness from the Charlie Brown Christmas Stick Whacking, I was on Cloud 9! Then, all of a sudden, there was a reporter from one of the national news agencies with a microphone in my face, asking me questions about this particular holiday. Between the chaos of the screaming kids, the overly-loud kids music in the background, and having to listen to more than just, "talk about yourself", I was stumped! "Do you celebrate New Year's like this or similarly where you're from?" she asks. "Uhhhh", I respond, "Well, we celebrate, but we don't use sticks, we use beer and champaign." In hindsight, that probably wasn't the ideal answer at a children's event. But it's sorta true. What kind of kid activities are there at New Year's in the U.S.? Fireworks? Anyway, the interview went on and I continued to fail to impress. When it was over, I sat down, almost exhausted, and explained to my counterpart that I like talking to people, but it's hard for me when I can't prepare. She stopped me to introduce me to so and so, from the regional news for another interview. And unfortunately, this was another lady that for the life of me, I could just not understand. I tried to salvage my dignity when she pointed to my stick and either asked me, "How beautiful is that?!" or "How beautiful are you going to make that?" and I interrupted to say - "I'm always beautiful!" Haha! Ya know, if no one else is making you laugh, sometimes you just gotta make yourself laugh!

Near the end, the deputy mayor presented me with an award and I whacked her with my stick and told her happy new year. And finally, we danced.As I left the crowded hall, I asked a guy to get out of my way. He turned around, stuck out his hand to shake, and said to me, "You are cool!" Awesome!

It's really cold here! And Bulgarian pens suck. They never work. How can that be? Okay, they work for a short sentence or two - maybe one long sentence, but then they crap out. If you let them sit for 15 minutes you can get another sentence out of them.

I woke up to about 3 inches of snow this morning and a long trek to work. Five miles. Uphill both ways. =) On my walk I noticed some things. There was no less traffic today than there was yesterday. No one was using chains, nor did I hear studs the day before on the hard pavement. There are very few SUVS and 4-wheel drives. Wanna know how many accidents I saw? None. Take note, Portland, people drive like idiots here, too, but they manage to do so without wrecking.

I arrived to my new town in the afternoon, to sunshine and smiles! It was probably about 70 degrees. The next morning, it was snowing, and my colleagues told me to expect about a meter of snow at the peak of winter! Eek!I live in a cold, barely occupied, communist-built, concrete structure. The tall one on the far right. It has 12 stories and 4 elevators, but only one that works. I live on the edge of the city, overlooking the center. My "block" is right next to a "slum" of sorts. It's basically where the minority groups live. The two other Volunteers in town said they were warned to never go there, especially after dark! I think that's more indicative of a lack of social awareness than anything else. I don't find it too scary. On the other side of my block is a Kaufland, which I guess, is Germany's version of Walmart. It has everything I could possibly need - and I find it amusing that it opened 4 months ago in, what a statistician would call, a dying town. Silistra's population peaked (around 70,000) around the time communism fell. Now, it's about 20,000. People between the ages of 18 and 35 usually go to a bigger city or somewhere else in Europe to look for jobs. This trend is becoming more and more common in smaller sized cities. It's an odd feeling to be walking around the city around dinner time and count how many apartments have lights on. I'd hazard a guess at around 10-15%. But I'm not supposed to be outside after dark so shh.

I have mixed feelings about my apartment. It's a one-bedroom apartment and the rent is roughly $100 a month. I think that's overpriced, especially considering selection potential. In fact, I met a guy whose girlfriend is trying to rent her three-bedroom apartment, which is much closer to the center, for two-thirds that price. Oh well. Its concrete floors are covered with random bits and pieces of scrap carpet, linoleum, and newspaper. None of it is cut to fit the rooms well, but I suppose it's more comfortable than the concrete.My "bedroom" came with two pullout couches for beds, two heaters, a table, and a chair. The landlord told me not to use the big heater because it's expensive, but assured me that it worked. Later, when I was freezing, I decided to plug it in anyway (electricity is cheaper at night) only to find that the power cord had been severed and there's no extra outlet for it anyway.

I pulled out one of the couches to make my bed and found hairs, stains, and food on the mattress. Gross. I put that one away and pulled out the other to find less of the same, but still the same, nonetheless. After the second night of extreme discomfort, I sprung for a mattress. I bought a big sheet of super firm foam for about $50. It's the exact same thing I bought back home and used for the bed I made last year except back home it cost $300! I had to move the two couches around a bit so my new mattress would fit; and once I moved them into appropriate lighting, I could see dust clouds rising off of them with the slightest touch.My kitchen came complete with a tiny oven and a moldy, sticky refrigerator that I can't stop from freezing my milk, yogurt, steak, and eggs! I have a small table with two chairs and a rack on which to set some cooking supplies. It feels like my kitchen has everything but the kitchen sink. In fact, my kitchen doesn't have a sink. But there's a closet between the kitchen and the bathroom with a sink in it - so I can wash my dishes in the closet. =) Also in the closet is a washing machine. The landlord says it works, but I've looked everywhere and can't find an outlet in the closet.My bathroom is pretty standard. There's a sink, a toilet, and a shower. I kinda like it. I was really glad to find out that the toilet seat doesn't get wet when I take a shower! The one drawback is the really old water heater. It didn't work the first day, and so I had to take a cold shower on a cold morning. But it's worked since! Fingers crossed!

Overall, the apartment is gross. Really gross. But, my landlord is super, super nice. He assures me, almost daily, that if I ever have a problem, he'll figure it out. He has supplied me with a dust sucker (vacuum), a rock-hard mop, a wet rag, and lots of really warm smiles! I really like him and his family. They've already had me over four times for food and drinks, and I haven't even been here a full week! After I've had some time to clean, everything will be great!Again on the positive side of things, this is the view from my apartment - on the 8th floor. And, I have internet - faster than any internet I've ever had in the states! The town is pretty neat. It's in the far northeast corner of Bulgaria, bordered by the Danube river and Romania.It has the world's oldest Mosque (built over 500 years ago), a super cute center, and it looks to me so far, like it has a very active sense of community.There's an interesting mix of Romanian and Bulgarian architecture, with bits of Roman ruins strewn around here and there. The population is pretty diverse, too, being Bulgarian, Turkish, Roma, Romanian, and me!Trying to continue my enjoyment of fitness, I found a gym in my town! It's in the basement of a community center built ages ago. It's dirty and there are pictures of hot chicks taken from magazines and taped to the the walls. The equipment is greasy and squeaky, there is rust on my hands after I touch anything, and pop music blares from a tiny radio in the corner. It's perfect! I made a friend the first day I went, too. He's huge, but struck me as kind and gentle so I think I'll probably enjoy his friendship.This is more or less the "entrance" - as you no doubt can tell.

I'm finding the people to be similar to how I found them the last time I was in Bulgaria, which really reinforces how good of an observer I really am. Pretty much all of the older people I've been meeting with here are sweet, kind, endearing, and fun. It's kind of confusing to hear that their life expectancy is so low - 69 for men, and 76 for women. I haven't broken into the younger crowd yet, but looking on from the outside, I can see they're full of life.

My colleagues seem to be fantastic people. My counterpart took me around town and gave me a tour, along with the director of the library. On the tour, we stopped for lunch at their favorite place. As we sat down, I put my bag on the ground and the director began with her disapproval. She told me I can't put my bag on the ground because I'll end up with NO money! I told her to relax – I've got a fish scale in my wallet! But she wasn't having it. She insisted I set it on the chair next to me. And so I did. It feels so great to have people looking out for me. I'll write more about them when I know them better.This really made me laugh! Don't know if you can see it, but the salt choice on the left (in green) is labeled "Light" and it advertises that its contents have 51% less salt! Click on the picture to make it bigger. The salt on the right is produced by a company called "Mercury Foods"! Haha!Make sure and bring your cup of corn the next time you sit down to read about my project here at the library. Comes in three different sizes with your choice of oil, salt, soy sauce, seasoning salt, curry, red pepper, hot sauce, Mexican spices, mayonnaise, caramel, and/or honey! Mmm!

It was a long, long trip to Bulgaria and when I arrived, there was no one there to meet me. I looked all around, walked here and there, but there was no one waiting for me! I decided to sit down and dink around on the internet for a while before I decided to panic. I looked up occasionally and scanned the people who were meeting fresh arrivals. Finally, I saw my ride. A guy holding the Peace Corps logo and a gal I recognized as one of the program staff. I welcomed them to the airport and told them I had been waiting an hour. They in turn said they had also been waiting an hour. Ha! My ass!

They roughly explained how things would go over my 4 days of orientation and then dropped me off at my hotel. It was 14:30 and I was exhausted! But I had to stay up till the end of the day to beat the jet lag. I started unpacking my bags a bit so I could get cleaned up when all of a sudden I got hit with an unexpected emotion that begged the question: What the hell am I doing??? Haha! I left a job and a home to go gallivanting around again! Well, that emotion died when I remembered that I love to gallivant, and that was that.

I decided to kill time by walking around to familiarize myself with the area and maybe see if I could get a SIM card for my phone. Plus, I was starving. As you can see, going for a walk on the side streets is literally a walk on the street as drivers use the sidewalks for parking.

I used this first meal to christen my new diet with a doner kebab! Oh man! And right across the street from the kebab shop was a phone shop! I chatted my brains out at each store and the people responded with a very genuine curiosity. It was a neat feeling. In fact, my language is really coming back fast! I was a bit worried at first, but I've had some really nice conversations with some really nice people so far! Obviously, I've forgotten some things, but they'll come back.Things Bulgarian started standing out on my walk. Even with my olfactory fatigue, I could smell the distinct smell of Bulgaria. And it all came rushing back. I heard car alarms, barking dogs, the landlady yelling, people having sex. I saw crumbling sidewalks and buildings, litter, potholes, puddles of who knows what – and in the mix of all this life and chaos, though it may seem contradictory, there's an obvious simplicity to the lifestyle here. Although the cars speed by, these peoples' hurry isn't to keep up with the Joneses. I find that they live to meet their needs today rather than focus on making sure their needs are met tomorrow. Which way is better? Is one actually better? Ensuring that you have stability and security in the future is a good thing – but there is a price that is paid for it. For me, that price comes in the form of worrying, working too hard, and stress. If one were to choose to focus on meeting the needs of today, the insurance of meeting tomorrow's needs may not be there, but the worrying and stress would be drastically reduced as well. I wonder how to quantify that to see if it's worth it? I'm not saying they neglect the future, they simply don't seem to be constantly preoccupied with it. While I may be generalizing a bit, it's also possible that my observation isn't exact in its accuracy... but that's not likely.This picture made me laugh. I wanted to capture the environmental efforts of Sofia and this guy came up and took a box from the bin. In fact, reuse is better than recycling so bravo, Bulgarian!

I met with a Peace Corps doctor for my medical orientation. The acting doctor was a visiting doctor from Peace Corps Kazakhstan. He had a 30-year career as a doctor in the Soviet Union Army and he's spending his retirement as a doctor in the United States Peace Corps! I love the contrast! As you can imagine, he was a pretty interesting guy. Stone cold serious, but yielding to emotion for a smile now and again. He'd be fun to get to know, but he's leaving in a few days.

On Monday, I went to lunch with a lady from the office and she took me to a nearby restaurant. It was Nikolov den (Nick/Nicole's Day), a holiday on which you are supposed to eat fish so I ordered the fish soup. She told me that if I find a fish scale in my soup, I have to take it out and put it in my wallet. And I should leave it there for one year until next year's holiday. Does this contradict my observations about living for today? No. Anyway, I thought I had dodged a bullet by not finding one, but the next day she brought in some scales and let me choose one. She insisted that I put it in my wallet and stressed that if I didn't, I would have NO MONEY for the whole year! At least I can be sure that no one will want to take my wallet now.

Today I swore in and am officially a Peace Corps Response Volunteer! Woo! Tomorrow, I will get a ride to my new town of Silistra. It should be a 6-hour drive if all goes well. I really lucked out in getting a ride - when I was a volunteer the first time around, we all had to get to our sites on our own. Silistra would be a long trek using trains and buses, not to mention a super hassle with all my luggage. Anyway, I'll have a story and a picture from there in a while.

Here I go again! On my own! I've tried for a year and a half to “settle down” after returning to the USA from graduate school and it's all been a colossal failure! Sure, I've had some fun here and there, but on the whole, I'm not satisfied with how things are going. I've given up on forcing myself into something I'm obviously not ready for and have taken back the reigns of my life! Now I'm ready for a ride! Yeee haaawww!

On Saturday, December 4th, I'll be departing for Bulgaria for another stint with the United States Peace Corps! Words to remember: When you find something you love, stick with it! This time around, I'll be serving for only 3.5 months in a program called Peace Corps Response, which was set up to allow former Volunteers to serve again to implement a meaningful project in a brief period of time. It's kind of a nice, new benefit that the Peace Corps offers instead of only having the one option of a 27-month commitment. I applied specifically for Bulgaria because, let's face it, I love it! However, I suppose I could have picked a different country, had my language skills and experience all aligned appropriately. Maybe next time.

The assignment for which I applied had a description that is slightly different than the job description I have most recently received. I'm not too surprised, already knowing Bulgaria, the Peace Corps, and that flexibility is a huge part of being able to succeed. In fact, I expect that I won't know exactly what I will be doing until I get to my new post and assess their needs and what is actually accomplishable. I'll be working for the regional library in Silistra, which is in the northeast of the country – near Varna, where I served previously. Near as I can tell, I'll be doing something along the lines of energy efficiency consulting and teaching how to live sustainably. Sounds perfect!

I was originally supposed to leave on November 15th, but due to delays at the Bulgarian embassy in processing my visa, my departure has been postponed a few times. It's been frustrating to organize everything involved with putting my life on hold and then changing it again and again. But in any case, the time has come, and I'm ready to go! It's gonna be a fun opportunity, a resume builder, a chance to exercise some old skills, and when it's all over, I get to return to my job at Metro!

I've got a roughly 21-hour trip, with two transfers, before I get to Bulgaria. Then, I believe that I'll be in the capital city, Sofia, for a four-day orientation followed by a long train/bus ride to my new town! Woo woo!!! I'll try to be consistent in posting news about my new adventure!

Alright! I’ve been home for a year now! Is it still everything I had hoped it would be? Well, not exactly. I should have been prepared for that, though, as I’ve already learned the lesson in life of not having flexible expectations. Sure enough, forgetting lessons of the past dooms a person to repeat them. So here I am – learning again!

As a result of some unfortunate travel difficulties on my last great adventure, I became disillusioned with the developing world. A few frustrating and reoccurring situations set me up for an intense yearning to go home. I grew tired of people telling me that a draft could make me sick, ruin my joints, and even cause cancer. I became aggravated at hearing people complain about their situations, only to forfeit any possible effort toward betterment – even before an attempt. And sadly, I ended up intolerant over what I considered a general disregard for environment and community.

I was homesick in a bad way, and really focused on such negative aspects of the societies in which I found myself. Of course hindsight gives me a better perspective and I can now see that I was my own biggest problem. The negative opinions I had formed were due to my homesickness and lost sight of overall understanding, regardless of how accurate my opinions might have been in their specific instances.

I came home to clean air, food and water that didn’t make me sick, paved roads, organization, logic, and ambition. It was the reward I’d been seeking, but it was only superficial and didn’t last. I was so certain that coming home would bring me happiness, yet after the “honeymoon phase” it managed to remain elusive. I was dumbfounded. It was the single greatest thing I learned during my Peace Corps service: how to be happy – and somehow, it was gone.

I walked the path I thought I ought to follow: get a job, work hard, go out, have fun – but I found myself unfulfilled, and as a result, unhappy. I didn’t understand, and my misunderstanding was directly related to my expectations.

I expected that I would have tons of friends in Portland. In fact, my old friends have all moved on with their lives and are mostly not around. Most of my friends live in other cities and other countries, far away. I expected real and significant bonds with my coworkers. In fact, I don’t fit in at work. I feel tolerated by my coworkers more than I feel respected or liked. I think that’s mostly due to differences in ages, places in life – and that most everyone is overqualified for our job and upset that they’re not achieving their potential. I get the feeling that they’re miserable and my positive nature comes off as abrasive. Nevertheless, when I hear things like, “Andrew, I don’t want to hang out with you after work because I see you enough at work” my feelings are a little hurt.

Since I wasn’t finding joy at work, I put a lot of energy into my life after work. I went out with one or two friends a lot, I dated aggressively, and I found some fun volunteer activities that resembled a work experience with nice people. Well, going out a lot left me run down; all the dating left me disappointed; and the volunteer work was always short lived. In short, my hole was not being filled. I embraced exercise and began running and set a goal to gain weight, which required lots of lifting! And I loved it! There aren’t too many things that can make a person feel so good! My body developed and it was awesome! Unfortunately, being really, really, really good looking isn’t everything. I started toying with some job applications to further my career as I’ve written about in the past, but again, disappointment. I guess with this amount of unemployed people in Portland, the candidate pool is incredibly qualified! Not that I’m not, but in fact, I’m not… I mean, I have all kinds of education and I’m pretty to boot, but I haven’t really worked with conservation or natural resources in the capacity of the jobs for which I’m seeking. My real experience is in other areas. Through some random brainstorming, I came up with a better plan.

I’m going to look for jobs outside the environmental field for a while. I won’t neglect environmental jobs by any means, but I will open myself up to possibilities that I have ignored in the past. I’ll open myself up to the world and I’m excited to see what kind of new experiences I will find!

I realize that I opened this story with a bit about how wonderful it was to be back in the states. It turns out that I haven’t been cured of this travel bug just yet. Recently, I had an experience that brought all the happiness and positivity I sought back to me! My friends from Costa Rica, Oscar and Veronica, got married in Spain and asked me to be their photographer! I took some time off work and unexpectedly rediscovered what I had already learned in the Peace Corps. Surrounding one’s self with good people – people who genuinely care for you and enjoy you; and who are sincere themselves is exactly my recipe for happiness! Some folks might say I’m wrong, and that “you have to be happy with yourself first” blah, blah, blah. Okay, there’s some merit to that, but I already love myself! I’m awesome! I slipped in recognizing who these crucial people are, but my reminder from the love in Spain was solid and profound. The expectation to recognize these people in our lives and appreciate them is not an unreasonable thing - it just takes a little awareness. Like all species on the planet, I just need the right conditions in order to thrive! I now remember what those conditions are; and since it’s now in print – I won’t forget again!

I've been enjoying my job since I got home. It was a bit of a blow to my ego to go back to the same job I had before I built myself stronger with the Peace Corps, world travel, and a master's degree... but it's a rough job market right now, and I was happy to accept the first thing available. But since July, I've been able to explore this position with new perspectives than I previously had. I work in the same position, but at a different facility, and here, I am afforded much more responsibility and opportunity for growth. I really lucked out - one, to have a job; and two, I am doing really great work to ensure responsible environmental practices! This job is becoming less like a stepping stone and more like a sling shot as I become more ingrained in what I'm doing.

I recently had what I considered a grand opportunity to listen in on a conference call at work. The conference was organized and facilitated by Oregon State's Sustainability Coordinator within the Department of Administrative Services. The purpose was to gather Oregon's state agency sustainability coordinators and staff to talk about their implementation of Green Teams in an effort to become more sustainable.

I was extremely excited to participate in such an event because these are the types of jobs I want to end up doing; and to be able to hear what these people are doing in these positions was sure to be exciting and inspirational! I couldn't wait to get insight into what I should prepare for!

There were 20 to 30 people in attendance and 20 to 30 people on the phone (including myself). The first speaker was from the Department of Administrative Services Executive Building. Kinda the same as the facilitator, but still great!

After introductions, the first speaker led with her most proud Green Team project: a green Thanksgiving potluck, which promoted waste reduction. Promoting waste reduction during an event that traditionalizes heavy consuming seemed quite odd. But, perhaps there was something I wasn't seeing. Something that would illuminate great possibilities that I had never before considered! Nope. She explained that the theme was a BYOD (Bring Your Own Dishes) potluck, and that was pretty much the extent of the projects her Green Team initiated... There were details of assembling a mess kit, and even selling mess kits as a fundraiser - but that seemed to defeat the purpose of bringing your own dishes...

The second speaker was from the Department of Justice! Surely she would have something groundbreaking to present! She began by telling about how she had assembled a team of attorneys to ensure that their department would be the greenest in Oregon! Great! So what did her green attorneys come up with? Well, concepts like recycling and reduction, of course! She said they put recycling containers in offices that had none, and programmed their copiers to print double sided! Look out, Planet! You're about to be saved! Okay, that was a bit sarcastic. She did continue to say that they also created a sustainability webpage on their intranet! Woo woo!

The third speaker was from the Portland State Office Building. This was, by far, the most thorough presentation. He told stories of how his Green Team had four successful projects! 1) After hours, they did a sweep of the building to turn off lights that people had forgotten. 2) They initiated a "Take The Stairs" campaign. 3) They began a composting service in the cafeteria. 4) They ran floor by floor competition to see who could save the most energy! Wow!

The final speaker was from the Oregon State Library. He spoke disheveledly about his projects, but clearly mentioned that one of them was asking management for a refrigerator that was Energy Star compliant to be put on a floor that had no refrigerator to begin with. Not sure how that actually reduces energy consumption. He went on to add that his Green Team sends email reminders to educate the staff about the importance of recycling. The most effective thing that I thought he presented was a project about early morning audits to see who wasn't turning off lights and equipment the night before. Repeat offenders had their budgets penalized!

Maybe I'm just an idealist, recent grad school graduate, but I couldn't believe what I had heard from whom I considered sustainability leaders! Their focus was on green issues, which is roughly a third of what 'sustainability' encapsulates, and their green efforts were virtually worthless! Are you kidding me?! Recycling and reduction?! Turning off lights that people forgot to turn off?!?! These are concepts that were common knowledge in the 1980s, more than 20 years ago!!! Why are 'green leaders' able to tout that they're jumping on the 1980s bandwagon??? I mean, this is the Oregon government! If they wanted to make real environmental impacts, they could pass laws that limit driving, increase fuel efficiency, prohibit sales/use of toxic garden chemicals, establish high end mandatory recycling standards, etc. The possibilities are so great - and these folks were focused on such small potatoes. I am in utter disbelief that the projects mentioned were new projects! These people really had no clue. It was so preposterous that it felt like a political science major was trying to teach chemistry.

It's crucial that the sustainability movement be comprised of efforts from public, private, and nonprofit sectors - and if this is all government has to offer for effort, maybe we should continue investing in oceanfront property in Arizona.

I've heard politicians and CEOs talk about sustainability, and I'm usually pretty unimpressed at the fact that none of them seem to know what they're talking about. They simply throw around a few key words and hope people give them "green points" of approval. This is unacceptable!

I would hate for the term 'sustainability' to become the new 'recycling'. Do you even know how things are recycled? We hear every day that it is such a good thing, but do we hear about all the noxious chemicals that are released from the processes? Are you aware of how much energy is consumed through current recycling technology? The concept of recycling has become a 'feel good' project. Something everyone can do to participate in saving the world. Something so trivial that even if everyone did it, it still wouldn't matter! Environmental issues are far more complex than recycling can handle, yet we're taught that if we all recycle, we'll all be saved. Poppycock! This new eco-term, sustainability, is a term that I haven't heard anyone use correctly in a while, and it's being thrown around like everyone understands it. The danger with this is that the people who don't understand it will convince other people who don't understand it to think that they understand it. Confusing? Just ask yourself how well you understand recycling! The world needs effective action, not catchphrases or feel-good propaganda. I can certainly see the importance of streamlining green practices, but when sustainability is the focus, socio-political and economic aspects are equally as important as green! This is the key mistake I see people making: Spending $3,000 on a solar power system that charges two 50-pound lead-acid batteries, which provide energy to run 4 100-Watt bulbs is a stupid idea, for example. Yes, solar power is great; but this is not a responsible use of its potential.

After I expressed my disappointment to a coworker, he said, "You know, the only thing to come out of meetings is plans for the next meeting." How unfortunately true that was today...

I am still aiming to acquire a position as a sustainability coordinator, but I'll be damned if all I do is implement paper recycling projects! Mike Tidwell wrote an interesting article, To Save the Planet, Stop Going Green, that emphasizes society's dwelling on meaningless, feel good efforts to save the world. It may be that peoples' hearts are in the right place - we just need their efforts to be practically aligned with what really has potential for effectiveness! Perhaps instead of me being slingshot into a new position, I need to be slingshotting new positions into something useful!

Oh man! Clean air! Clean water! Uncrumbly buildings! Holeless roads! Speeding tickets! And preservative-filled foods!!! Mmmm, chemicals! For those of you who think I've overstated the significance of these luxuries - you have no idea how most of the rest of the world lives!

Some of the highlights I've experienced over the last couple weeks: cheddar cheese, bacon, more than one flavor of wine, 24-hour stores, cheap crap that I probably don't need, organization, friendliness, logic, friends, and family! I can't tell you how amazing these things are! You can't appreciate these things without having lived without them! Or maybe you can, but I couldn't. And now that I'm back, I can't stress enough how amazing it is here!

Okay, there's an economic crisis... Okay, there's super high unemployment rates... But people in this country are still so much better off than most people in the rest of the world. In this case, "better off" means a healthier life and a society with far more opportunity - even despite the hardships people are experiencing and hearing about in the news.

I've seen people work their asses off, breaking their backs day in and day out for less than minimum wage. Their standard of life is much lower than for anything that we would settle, yet they maintain a happiness the likes of which is nearly unseen here in the US. These occurrences were real, but didn't happen as often as one might like to think. In fact, most people had nothing, did nothing, and complained about not having anything. Their stories are far more complex than I'm illustrating, of course. But it's hard to feel pity for someone that won't work in order to benefit themselves.

My explanation is that they don't work hard to benefit themselves because they can't. Not that they're not physically or mentally capable, they are; they simply don't have the opportunity. And that is what makes the USA so amazing: Opportunity! A hardworking person can create any kind of opportunity for themselves here: jobs, internships, fellowships, companies, relationships, anything! It just takes dedication and discipline! There are minimal governmental and sometimes societal hang-ups, but in the end, if you have a dream - you are allowed to chase it, and if you do, there is a reasonable chance that you will achieve it!

It's something completely overlooked by most of my friends who like I, took everything for granted.

Now, I know what you're thinking, "Andrew, I've been to Paris. I've been to Rome. I've been to London. I've been to . And I love those places! Okay, fine, that's great. They all have wonderful things about them! But try being away from what you think is "normal" for four years! There is no place like the United States of America!

How's that for a "reverse culture shock"? Complete joy in just being a part of here! It's the same feeling I had when I first traveled: The shock and amazement of something new! Now I'm experiencing the shock and amazement of something I never quite recognized!

I'm now living in Portland, Oregon, in the "Nob Hill" part of town - the trendy and happening place that is always filled with something to do. I have a beautiful two-bedroom apartment in the middle of everything that is less than five miles away from where I work! I've been able to reintegrate with my friends and family easily enough, as well as with work and some local community events! Summer was a perfect time to come home, though I suspect there will be community activities and friends and family all year long! One of the best things I've got going, outside of friends and family, is a running club with Nike at the Niketown in downtown Portland. We run every Monday and Wednesday and I'm meeting all kinds of wonderful people! Below are just a couple pictures of home as I know it. I suppose I could post more later. If you want.

FriendsWork

Star Trek in the Park

After the Peace Corps and Supercross08, I moved to Costa Rica where I had been accepted to graduate education at the United Nations University for Peace. It's a small school, only 165 students, but very diverse: students came from 60 different countries! There are 10 different masters degree programs, but the one in which I was enrolled was: Natural Resources and Peace.

Here are my stories from my year in Costa Rica:

First Impressions

My 30th Birthday!

The University & My First Break

Costa Rican Life

Forestry & Panama

Saving Turtles

Get Me Out Of This Country!

President Obama!

Crazy Costa Rica

Goodbye DIPS. Hello Costa Rica!

Vagina Monologues

Final Paper

The End!

I also have some amazing pictures of my time in grad school, located here

I'm writing this blog with great enthusiasm, for it represents a closing on this chapter of my life. My time at the United Nations University for Peace in Costa Rica is finally at an end! To celebrate this momentous occasion, I left the country with a gargantuan smile on my face!

I don't think there's been much secret in my writing nor my stories that I was not overly impressed with Costa Rica. In fact, I wasn't impressed at all. Some would even say that I downright didn't like it (I would be one of those who made such a claim). I do feel some kind of obligation to disclaim that I arrived to Costa Rica already bitter. I was bitter about two major issues: spending one more year in another developing country, and being away from my friends and family for one more year. With that perspective, I openly admit that it would have been pretty hard for anyone to walk away from this experience saying, "Gee wiz, Costa Rica and UPeace are great!" This may explain my cynicism and negative outlook on a lot of my writings.

It wasn't all bad, though. I met some amazing people from everywhere in the world. I encountered moments of intense mental stimulation and new ideas, something for which graduate school is renowned. I saw some interesting things and places and had some very entertaining adventures. Probably the most significant thing was finally getting the chance to date my dream girl.I met Becca in a hostel in 2002 in Switzerland, and I had a crush on her immediately. She was the first girl with whom I had ever made a first move. She "tripped" as I tried to kiss her on a star-lit walk through a Swiss mountain village so I decided to try again. She tripped again, of course, before I realized she wasn't tripping... Oh well. Got her email in the morning and then left town. We stayed in e-contact for a while, during which time I found out she had had a boyfriend while we were in Switzerland.

In the summer of 2004 she sent me an email saying she was coming to Seattle to for a job training and invited me to dinner with her (she thought I lived in Seattle). I said I lived in Portland, but I would be happy to make the drive (3 hours) to have dinner with her. Fully expecting that she still had a boyfriend, I didn't make a move. I also didn't make a move because I was shy as hell. We had such an amazing time together that at the end of the night, she invited me to stay. I told her I couldn't because I had to work in the morning. She asked if she could give me a kiss goodnight and I thought it was the most amazing thing in the world! Her version of this story was that I didn't kiss her back... But she was only the second girl I'd ever kissed; I didn't know what the hell I was doing.

After driving home for 30 minutes I realized how much of a dumbass I was, and called her to tell her I would ditch work the following day and come back up. It never happened, but she invited me to Arizona where she was to work for the season. I found out that she didn't have a boyfriend when we were in Seattle so I got my act together and met her in Phoenix just before Christmas, 2004. I went down there with such high expectations and it ended up being the most awkward, uncomfortable, embarrassing experience in the world. I flirted my brains out with her and she wasn't the least bit receptive. Turns out, she got back together with her boyfriend over Thanksgiving and forgot to inform me.

Bummed, I put her out of my head until fall of 2006. She sent me an email saying she was single and had just got a new job and wanted to come see me in Bulgaria during my Peace Corps service for Christmas and New Years. I was stoked out of my mind! I started building up expectations again and getting incredibly excited! A week before she was going to buy her ticket, she got fired and couldn't afford the trip. Denied!

Almost another year went by before I heard from her again. I had just finished my Peace Corps service and was zigzagging north through Eastern Europe to Moscow. In the fall of 2007, she said she needed a European vacation to sort some things out, and asked if she could meet me somewhere. I told her, "Sure, meet me in Lithuania." completely expecting to be blown off. To my surprise and delight, she sold her jeep and bought a ticket to Latvia. Close enough. Five years of sporadic emails, missed chances, and unfortunate circumstances had passed before I finally told her I'd had a crush on her since we first met. We traveled together for only three weeks, but our time together was super intense and we clicked hard!During our time together in Eastern Europe, she reciprocated my feelings and gave me grand hope for a future together, but as she had a boyfriend at this time, she ended up breaking my heart and going back to him.

I moved on, but somehow we ended up at the same university, even in the same program! It took quite a bit of effort on her part, but at long last she convinced me, and at the end of 2008 we began a relationship. We had some amazing times together - times that will forever put a smile on my face when I think of them. Tragically, our eternal curse of bad timing seems to have shown its ugly, yet consistent, face once again and our relationship ended along with our time in Costa Rica. Nevertheless, she's a super special gal, and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to be with her while I was with her.The academic part of my year in Costa Rica peaked just as it was ending. My favorite scholarly moment occurred during my last class when learned that the current-ish health craze to remove trans-fats (hydrogenated oils) from the market is, in fact, destroying the rain forest! Ha! I even laughed out loud in class at that one. Turns out, the foods we love so much that used to contain trans-fats require some kind of delicious alternative. That alternative is palm oil. All of a sudden there was a giant demand in the market for palm oil to which suppliers responded in force! Oil palm plantations are dominating land where rain forest once thrived. This is mostly so in Indonesia - but apparently it's happening to a lesser extent (though still significant) in Costa Rica as well.

Directly following my time in Costa Rica was a one week fellowship for which I had managed to qualify. The Sustainable Energy Fellowship taught a group of 40 university students the ins and outs of sustainable energy. We learned about wind and solar power, nuclear power, fuel cells, batteries, carbon emissions and their politics, and we had a great time learning about all of them! I finally shed my hippie views of nuclear power equaling the stupidest idea ever, and instead adopted the idea of energy resource diversity in terms of feasibility. I made some great contacts, and again met people from all over the country, studying a variety of different disciplines. This project started out being a free ticket home from Costa Rica, but I ended up benefiting much more from it than simply a free ticket. I hope to use this knowledge in some of my future endeavors.

While at the University of Michigan for this fellowship, I got a job offer back home! Hot damn! So in addition to coming home to friends and family, I also get to come home to a job! I'm accepting a position with Oregon Metro doing hazardous waste disposal. This is the same job I had before I left for the Peace Corps, four years ago, but I'll be at a different facility, a slower facility. This means there will be some extra time to implement some creative projects that I hope will utilize my overseas experiences to benefit my community and my new coworkers!

I'm in a good place, emotionally, physically, and mentally, to start my life over in the Pacific Northwest. Not that I necessarily need to "start over", but I've finally got a chance to plant some roots and bring a bit of stability to my life. I'm excited at the prospect of this new adventure called normalcy, and I can't wait for all the pieces to fall into place!

My picture site will be fully updated very soon. Check it out to have your mind blown with my mind-blowing photography skills. I think my subsequent posts will be on the order of my adjustment to living in the USA and reverse culture shock after being away for four years. Thanks for reading. Stay tuned!

Other than my internship proposal that was due in February and several internship write-ups that are supposed to be due whenever I find an internship - this is the last piece of writing for my graduate coursework in Costa Rica at the University for Peace! It was for a three-week class called Natural Resource Management Field Trip - the idea being that we studied natural resource management in various locations around southern Costa Rica. Many of my references in this paper are you-had-to-be-there type references, and not too many folks outside the class would fully understand the context. This is the last UPeace paper I will post, but there will be one more about Costa Rica in a week or two.

I'm off to the University of Michigan for the Sustainable Energy Fellowship, and then back home to try and start a normal life!

Responsibility and Sustainability

Just sit right back and you'll read a tale, a tale of a fateful trip; that started from a tropical forest, aboard a tiny bus. Jan was a mighty forestry man, Guntra brave and sure. 12 students began another class, on a nine day tour, a nine day tour. The weather at times was rough, rivers and hills slowed down our bus. If not for the knowledge of the fearless professors, the course would be lost, the course would be lost. The bus stopped here and there within this uncharted jungle, and we studied from dawn till dusk, here on the Osa Peninsula!

I began this adventure looking through the lenses of a couple different perspectives. I wanted to tie-up my year's experiences and use the sometimes ambiguous concept of sustainability along with a simple concept that I have come to embrace more and more - responsibility - in order to frame my observations. Within this context, I analyzed different forms of tourism, agriculture, and forestry to determine if the management of these industries, within the Osa Peninsula and Southern Costa Rica, is sustainable and responsible.

Tourism

I have spent a cumulative of nearly two years being a tourist. Of course, my ego would sooner tell you that I was a "Traveler" and not a "Tourist", but the fact remains: I have visited 52 countries and have seen many different spins on the tourism industry.

My general opinion on the tourism industry is that it destroys a community's culture. I use Prague, Czech Republic as the perfect example: the entire old town is filled with tiny shops selling the exact same souvenirs. There is no difference between any individual shop, and the most common "authentic" Czech souvenir is a plastic piece of crap that was made in China anyway. Gone are the shoe repair shops, bakeries, or whatever used to exist in the old town only 20 years ago; replaced with skill-less occupations at the mercy of foreign interest. Okay, this is a major European city, but I've seen the same thing in remote, undeveloped areas as well. Local peoples get so attracted by the thought of making a buck off a foreigner that they neglect or altogether stop whatever it was they were doing with their lives in order to cater to the whims of tourists. Our first stop, at Longo Mai, seemed to support my negative perception of tourism.

Here was a tiny village of Salvadorian refugees who appeared to have embraced something so far from anything they have ever known. What’s their motivation? Someone from a western perspective might say that they are simply developing themselves by learning new skills that allow them to be successful at a particular trade, tourism, thereby providing an adequate livelihood for their community members. Although honorable, I think this is too idealistic of a perspective. I believe the translation I received was something more to the effect of: “the people of Longo Mai are just trying to live”. That is, just trying to make their way in their world today. Surely there must be a different way for them to "live" that wouldn't be so destructive to their culture.

In contrast to my views that the community depends on tourism, we learned that many of the villagers worked for "The Company" in nearby fields. "The Company" in this case was a pineapple production company. On the other hand, an example that supports my views was seen as closely as my host family. We learned that they had directly benefited from tourism – and this was not a rare story for the village. The mother had 15 children and two of her daughters were married to Austrians that had passed through their town. They now live in Austria and send back money from time to time. Their husbands made it possible for the construction of the guest rooms in which I stayed. This family now has income potential that only depends on tourist numbers.

In the Longo Mai community, we learned that there are 40 families that host around 200 to 250 tourists per year as home stays. From the appearance of the town, I can't imagine its population being larger than those 40 families, which really illuminates the impact of 250 tourists per year in their little community. The question I have is, are these folks being responsible with the resources available to them? Is there management of their resources sustainable? My answer to both questions is no.

From my western educated perspective, these people's greatest resource is their culture; a culture that is at risk. The influence of foreign ideas and expectations corrodes whatever belief system and traditions they have held for years. I'm not saying new ideas should be shunned, but they should come from within the community as a natural development process. The tourism industry that they have incorporated into their village is not sustainable because it is so dependent on the tourism market. They're trying to grow, but as they do so, they will lose the original appeal that attracted tourists to their quaint village in the first place. Perhaps it's simply the tragedy of the noble savage, but I feel these people are being irresponsible with their most valuable resource by pursuing and implementing an unsustainable livelihood.

Agriculture

Our second destination, Tesoro Verde, had a very fortunate surprise in the form of an insightful local activist, Pedro. For me, Pedro’s stories perfectly illustrated a connection between tourism and agriculture, and indeed, even forest management.

Pedro said that before tourism arrived to Drake Bay in 1983, only a year after he himself had arrived, the local people had survived on subsistence hunting and farming, but now tourism is dominating as the main industry. Pedro had 25 years of experience in Tesoro Verde working within the tourism industry, and he had some very interesting things to say about it. I'll start with his comment about how a lack of tourism in recent years is "forcing" people to adopt agricultural livelihoods. Is there no other production in Costa Rica than that of food production? Pedro's use of the word 'forcing' made me think that no one wanted an agricultural livelihood, but that everyone could fall back on it as a last resort or in case of an emergency. This reluctance towards agriculture left me with the impression that these people also had a lack of respect for it. When respect is lacking, often responsibility is also lacking.

As Pedro continued, utilizing all his favorite English curse words, he told us about a grave problem in his life: a bureaucratic conflict between MINAET and IDA. He said that he "owned" a significant portion of land, but added that his ownership and stewardship of that land was at risk due to this conflict. He said that MINAET was telling him that he can't plant anything on his land so as to conserve the forest that exists there, but IDA told him that he had to plant something, or utilize the land agriculturally, or else he would lose the land forever! It was a complex and extremely confusing contradiction of Costa Rican governance that had left this poor soul in an unwinnable battle against stress. His conclusion was that if his primary income, tourism, should decline any more than it already has, that his only option would be to cut down two of his hectares of forest in order to implement something agricultural. This is Pedro's last resort. He almost sounded threatening as he told us this fact - that he would cut down the trees to spite the government and the wavering tourism industry. This strikes me as being extremely irresponsible with one's natural resources as well as falling way short of any kind of sustainability goals. Although, for the moment, this is only his attitude, it is a very real and likely possibility.

Another significant look at agriculture in the south of Costa Rica was at the oil palm plantation and processing facility of En Su Punto. The sustainability of this operation was a bit questionable. On the one hand, the Coop had survived devastating price drops in the market in the past. On the other hand, they are supporting a monoculture mentality, and with all their eggs in one basket, if upon the next price drop, the price stays down, then the entire community will lose.

The Greasy Palms, Friends of the Earth, article showed us that although business in the oil palm sector is an incredible booming market, along with the profits it creates, it also creates extreme deforestation. Brendan tried to address this unfortunate situation with the En Su Punto representative, but his response was that "one tree is just as good as any other" and since there were lots of oil palm trees planted on their 12,000 hectares, this means there is a lot of "forest" that wouldn't otherwise be there, as before there were only non-tree agricultural crops such as corn, rice and beans. This is definitely a point, though I'm not sure it's a good one. The sustainability of their land use practices is not questionable. In fact, the representative told us that scientific calculations suggested they could expect a yield of 25 tons of product per hectare per year. Through the manipulation of land, their actual yield was 35 tons of product per hectare per year. He disclosed this point as a positive thing, but I immediately saw it as a red flag.

I later asked him about the inputs required to keep the "fertile" soil more productive than is scientifically expected. His response was that this last year, each plant received one kilogram of fertilizer in two applications, each six months apart. I asked how that compared to last year, and 10 years ago. He said that each year, the amount of fertilizer changes and that they have scientists who do soil testing to determine how much fertilizer to apply every six months. I asked him to clarify how it "changed" - whether the amounts of fertilizer increased each year or whether the amounts were randomly fluctuating. He said, "It changes." Remembering his unrelenting positivity about the coop and palm oil, along with his insistence that a monoculture palm oil plantation is the best thing for the community and the environment, I used my superior judgment skills to determine that the inconsistent fertilizer inputs needed to maintain a consistent yield is most likely an indicator that this scenario is not a sustainable situation.

From these examples it would seem that agriculture is inherently pitted against forest conservation. It's easy to understand that people's livelihoods take priority over preserving the rain forest. How can you tell a starving family not to cut down trees in order to plant crops for their own subsistence? You can't. But you can provide reasonable amounts of land for both! Using some kind of superior land management practices with equitable distribution and a commitment to responsible land use, I believe that forests can be preserved for their own benefit and the benefit of eco-tourism, while communities can meet their needs through traditional, or even modern, agricultural practices.

Forestry

As I stated in my presentation, the anthropocentric concept of forestry for timber production was not a theme we visited on our trip. However, forestry, in terms of conservation, was a large part of the communities and industries we observed.

The idea of forestry conservation has great implications on the responsibility and sustainability of the forest. The concept generates many positive thoughts as far as the future of these forests goes, as well as the potential that lies beyond the sector of forestry. A healthy and responsibly managed forest system is the foundation for the massive eco-tourism industry in Costa Rica, which is one of its main industries. It would make sense then, if its management was a high priority. Unfortunately, from my perception, that's not what we encountered.

My most profound perception of forestry issues came to me when Marzia, from Neotropica, led us on a hike into Corcovado. The hike was wonderful and beautiful. Any nature lover would have been impressed at the species diversity we encountered and the apparent health of the forest. But when we returned from our hike to the MINAET park ranger station for a debriefing, we got a completely different picture of the park. It was a societal/bureaucratic picture that was the complete opposite of the natural beauty we experienced.

We were all appalled to hear that the problems of illegal hunting and illegal logging were actually significant problems. The hunting seemed to be minimally for food, and mostly for sport and spite. I say spite because of the stories the rangers told of finding dead animals with notes attached to their bodies insulting MINAET.

They gave a quote that only 10% of the perpetrators were local, but they were all from Costa Rica. It was a disgusting insight into three things: a lack of respect for governmental regulations that exist to protect nature; a lack of governmental capacity for controlling this situation; and blatant irresponsibility towards one's country and its natural resources, which destroys any chances of sustainability when talking about forestry conservation.

There were only seven guys that monitor and control this park. They spoke of armed conflicts and shoot-outs with illegal hunters, but my better judgment says that for the wages they earn, they probably more often lay low when they encounter perpetrators, if they even encounter them at all. They also spoke of drug runners from Colombia and Panama increasing the danger of the job, but also increasing the hopes of a "find" after one drug runner has made a drop and before the next one comes in for the "pick up". They told a story of 300 kilograms of cocaine being found on the beach, waiting for pickup. Finds like that create a much better retirement plan than whatever MINAET is offering.

In another park, La Amistad, there are only 13 park rangers who have the task of monitoring and protecting an area that is 4% of Costa Rica's total land area! How can only 13 people be given this responsibility? How can success be expected in this situation? It's simply impossible. Governmental priorities are elsewhere.

As far as forestry conservation goes, I find nearly complete disregard on the part of the government, which I interpret as being insanely irresponsible. I also find that sustainability is possible if enforcement and respect of regulations could ever be achieved. But as they are not, sustainability is currently a failure.

This dire conclusion shows signs of light, though. In the community of Coopa Buena, where Brendan's project, the Finca Project, exists, hope is being created one tree at a time. I spoke with 20 community members and gathered a perspective of positivity. Brendan's NGO is playing a crucial role in reforestation and education in a small community, which is something this country desperately needs.

The community perspective that I gathered from 20 people, showed that people have a genuine concern over deforestation and pollution of the forest. They were extremely grateful for a project in their community that aimed at reforesting the land while educating people as to why that particular goal is important and why the forest should be respected.

If we've seen that some people don't care about nature, and some people do, where do we go and what do we do? My guess is that majority of people don't care one way or another about the health of the forest as long as they have a home and a couple meals a day, but the question remains: What can be done to increase responsibility and sustainability?

The Judkins Recommendation

What could possibly tie tourism, agriculture, and forestry all together while bringing sustainability and responsibility to the forefront of each of their management priorities? I would like to propose an idea that may not seem consistent with the ideals of the University for Peace. I would like to propose the reinstatement of the Costa Rican military.

From my perspective, two of Costa Rica's largest problems are its apathetic population and its corrupt and lethargic government. The combination of these two components produces results like those discussed with MINAET in Corcovado: regulations not being respected which led to wildlife and forest destruction. This is one example. How can both of these contributing factors be mitigated? Easy, a new military! However, the definition of military is slightly altered in my proposal.

When I say military, I really mean, “some form of a forceful hand of the government focused as much on civil service as on the defense of the country's resources”. I’m suggesting the reinstatement of the military, as my assumptions tell me that the once-existing military infrastructure would make an ideal means for the formation of this non-military, civil service division of the government. Imagine the possibilities that could come from an obligatory country service program. For example, when youth graduate high school, before they move on to a university program or a job, they would be required to serve one year in the New Costa Rican Non-Conventional Military for Civil Service Projects (NCRNCMCSP), or maybe it could be called Tico Corps. Young adults would learn skills while simultaneously providing essential services to ailing communities. Proper modern roads could be constructed in addition to other forms of basic infrastructure to support the country's development and allow for the tourism industry to blossom while being kept under control for sustainability. Agricultural lands could be properly monitored for erosion control, integrated species/crop diversity, pesticide reductions through invasive/problem species control and elimination. Illegal forest dumpsites could be cleaned; even a branch of a more conventional militaristic civil service could have the numbers, resources, and potential to bring real defense to national parks and protected forests, including the animals at risk of illegal hunting, as well as the trees at risk of illegal logging.

Not only would a civil service program provide a force to protect forests and deter drug running; to provide labor for agricultural efficiency and sustainability; to assist in one of Costa Rica's biggest industries, tourism, with basic infrastructure and guest services; it would also provide Costa Rica's youth with invaluable life skills, as well as insights and perspectives on the value of their land and the risks that threaten it. Personal development of the youth participants would be ensured through the vast diversity of possible niches that a program like this would incorporate.

The problem still remaining, a corrupt government, could be mitigated through the creation of many high level positions within the NCRNCMCSP program that would provide oversight, checks and balances, and an encouragement of transparency by having more eyes seeing government actions and more voices impacting responsible governance. It is precisely the reduction in corruption that would be necessary to finance such a program in the first place. It would be nice if the amount of money being skimmed off the top at all different levels would be able to fund such a massive program, but there is the possibility of increased taxation to fill in the gaps.

Conclusion

Osa: The final frontier. This was the voyage of our Natural Resource Management Field Trip. Our nine day mission was to explore a strange new peninsula; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no UPeace student had gone before.

We had a very unique opportunity to see firsthand the problems, challenges and successes of local peoples, as well as governmental employees in different degrees of tourism, agriculture, and forestry. Although there were some success stories, like that of the Finca Project and its community, I feel Costa Rica has a long way to go in bringing responsibility and sustainability to the forefront of management practices.

I also feel that the best way to go about accomplishing this would be a civil service obligation to conquer the population's "Pura Vida" apathy problem by getting everyone involved in meaningful, productive projects for the betterment of the country and each community within. I realize how unrealistic any kind of implementation of the NCRNCMCSP as described by the Judkins Recommendation may be, as it is quite extreme, but I do feel it is within the realms of possibility that a less extreme, similar program that focused on getting citizens engaged in the development of themselves and their communities is the answer to some of Costa Rica's woes. Equitable, individual responsibility will inevitably produce sustainability in the sectors of tourism, agriculture, forestry and beyond.

Some gals on campus organized a Vagina Monologues event and it pretty much blew my mind!

Normally, when women gather to talk about how great they are, I roll my eyes just as I would any other kind of ego-stroking activity. What generally makes women's empowerment events such a turn-off to me is that they nearly always include man-bashing. From my perspective, this is dumb, but I happen to be a man and my women friends tell me that that makes me biased.

In my past experiences, femi-nazi, man-hating women are unpleasant to be around so I generally make every effort to avoid any kind of event that facilitates greater emotion against men. I prefer that a woman would hate me because of something I do, rather than hate me for being something I cannot change.

That said, when I got dragged to the V-Day presentation, and roped into helping out with it, I was extremely skeptical about how it would all go down. I sat and listened to story after story and was nothing short of blown away! This wasn't just another man-bashing seminar - this was an "I'm proud of myself" demonstration! It was amazing! They touched on topics that don't really get touched - they moved us all with their passion and performance - they convinced a skeptic of the value of the Vagina Monologues.

This event served to responsibly empower women to be proud of themselves and their vaginas, without demonizing men. It was a chance for them to celebrate their previously unmentionable underparts on a platform that allowed them safety to be proud of being a woman, while educating the audience about them and about their value. Beyond simply being moving, as a man, I found each performance to be incredibly insightful into the different aspects of a woman's life and perspective on life, that each of these women seemed to share. I learned things about women, and their vaginas, that I never would have discovered otherwise and I am so incredibly grateful to know these ladies!

I was truly moved by my friends' presentations. I think it was extra special for me, though, because I know all of them and I could see how they identified with their characters. They were all soooo great! I could go on and on, but still wouldn't do justice to their accomplishments.

Below are some low quality video files of some of the presentations. I regret that I could not post all of them due to file size and youtube limitations. Get your volume control ready - you'll need to turn it up because the sound is so poor - but hang in their, because the performances are so rich!

The gals ran this show as a fundraiser, as is typical for the Vagina Monologues. Every Vagina Monologue presentation contributes 10% of its earnings to a spotlight cause. This year, the spotlight is on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where rape and violence against women is being used as an instrument of war. The other 90% gets donated to an organization of the performers' choosing. They chose the Women's Freedom Organization in Iraq. In total, they raised over 600 USD! Nice work, ladies!!! I'm so proud of all of you!

Starting this academic year, with the Canadian/American Thanksgiving celebration, students from different continents have organized a night of celebration to share their culture with the group. It's been amazing so far. Asian Night was a couple months ago and we learned so many different things about the different parts of Asia. There's been ongoing talk of African Night since October, but still no celebration. Last week, we had European Night and it blew me away! They required that all the attending students dress up as if for cocktails. It was the first chance I've had to look good down here. Well, I always look good, I just don't plan it like I did this night.They opened the European culture presentation with a play that they'd written based upon stereotypes of Europeans according to the other students. They gathered this information on large pieces of paper taped to a wall, on which other students were allowed to write their stereotypes over a couple weeks. My contribution was, "Europeans love to propagate stereoptypes." The play was offensive, extremely well done, and hilarious! They had us all laughing our heads off!

After the play we enjoyed some musical performances, european food, and then we danced - euro club style. I danced the Macarena to every single song. What a night!

In sadder news, the Department of International Peace Studies (DIPS) finished their program this week. This means that between 20 and 30 of our Asian kids are leaving us. We had a party on campus to say goodbye to them and I was filled with emotion. In fact, in the days prior to their final day, I had a nightmare of having to say goodbye to all my new friends and knowing I would not see most of them ever again. I cursed myself for not having enrolled in a two year program so I could spend extra time with everyone. And then I woke up, glad that I would finish school soon, but still sad that I will miss my dear friends. A couple of them, I've come to really respect and enjoy, and their departure really disturbs me. A giant regret I have, is that I didn't get close to many others. The University for Peace is pretty small. Only 160 students can say they'll be UPeace alumni this year, but even so, I can't hang out with and get to know all 160 students, though I regret not having tried a bit harder.

Becca finally managed to get her act together to lead me and some other university friends to climb the tallest mountain in Costa Rica: Chirripo, 3820 meters (in feet = tall!). It took us three buses, a nasty taxi ride, and 10 hours just to get to the base of the mountain. At the ranger station, where we were to register to climb, we learned that they close the mountain one weekend a year for a running race, and this happened to be that particular weekend... Wonderful. We arrived on a Thursday, wanting to climb on Friday, summit on Saturday, and return to town on Sunday. The race was only Saturday, but they would not allow us to pass. They said the soonest we could ascend was on Sunday. So we decided to wait. Half of our group went to the beach, and half stayed in the mountain town to enjoy the hot springs. I stayed in the mountains, of course. It was an amazing time, indeed, the first time I´ve actually enjoyed Costa Rica. I´ve enjoyed my friends, and on occasion the university, but I have not yet enjoyed the country. It was a pretty good feeling and I hope it will stick around for a while.The ascent up the mountain was mind blowing for an environmental nut like myself. We started out in the typical "jungle" habitat that I'm used to at lower elevations and climbed into a cloud forest. The flora and fauna were all completely different in a matter of kilometers.The cloud forest finally yielded to elevation as we entered the sub-alpine habitat. Amazing! This was perhaps my favorite ecosystem, as the species that survive, do so in extreme conditions and are so unique as compared to everything else I've seen in the rest of the country. A forest fire had raged through this part of the mountain 10 or so years before, but due to the slow ecological activity at this altitude, it looked as if it had occurred only one or two years prior. Finally, 9 hours and 14.5 km into our hike, we arrived to the lodge, at 11,132 feet. This is 1,132 feet more than all my doctors say I'm allowed to go on account of my bum lung. We checked into the lodge and popped the corks on our bottles of rum - we spent the rest of the day in celebration.

It was cold at the lodge, damn cold, but the warmth of the camaraderie that existed between hikers and climbers kept us comfortable and happy (I guess the rum may have played a bit of that role, too). We tried to go to bed early cause it had been a long day, but pulling myself away from the heavenly display of a starry night sky was too much to ask. I gandered for a while and froze my little ass off. Went to bed only to wake up at 3am in order to be on the trail at 3:30. Accomplished, albeit painfully.We got lost once on the trail - or rather, off the trail - as it was dark and I had left my navigational star map at home... An excruciating 2 hours went by before we summited, in which I stopped frequently and had some kind of persistent lightheadedness. Becca waited with me and kept asking me if I was going to die because of my lung or if I should go back. Then she went on to tell me she wasn't going to carry my body down the mountain. So of course I pushed on.Standing at the top of the mountain, 12,533 feet above the transvestite prostitute infested beach towns of Costa Rica, we watched the sun rise - slowly and majestically above the occasional smaller mountain tops, poking through the clouds. It was an amazing, amazing thing. Shaking and shivering, we watched in awe as the valleys all around us lit up. We had packed along a stove and some coffee, but no one's hands had the dexterity to function as the wind took most of our heat away from us.After some nice relaxing time near the summit, we spent the rest of the day descending, again, marveling at the extreme changes in ecosystems determined by elevation.Climbing the highest mountain in Costa Rica (and I think second highest in Central America) was a much needed break from classes. We began another class, the best class in the world, Ecological Bases for Sustainable Land Use - at long last, a science class! And then we took another break to the northwestern region of Costa Rica for some more hiking in one of Costa Rica's little explored national parks.Rincon de la Vieja (The Old Lady's Corner) scored another point for Costa Rica. I guess it only took me 6 months to figure out that the country is nice in the mountains, but shit at the beaches.Our weekend excursion in the north yielded the most beautiful waterfall I've ever seen; a super sore knee from lots of hiking; bugs that left us itchy, bleeding, and drained; encounters with 3 species of monkeys, including one that threw its feces at us; and some extremely relaxing geothermal heated hot springs that put a soothing close on our weekend.

Getting a master's degree is great!

I just finished a class called Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Sustainable Development. It really should have just been called Organic Agriculture, as we didn't really touch on anything else. It was two intense weeks of hippie ego-stroking. The final assignment was to use our readings to create a two-page editorial. I went against the grain on this one to balance the bias of the class. If anyone's interested in reading the articles I cited, I still have them in pdf format.

Dear So and So,

I grew up, studied, and worked in and around Portland, but now I'm living in Costa Rica to attend graduate school at the United Nations Mandated University for Peace. From the name of the university, you can accurately assume that the student body is somewhat of an alternative crowd. I'm writing to address an issue that I'm currently studying at UPeace; an issue that I first felt in the unique ambiance of Portland: organic food, and the public's misconceptions of poison.

The recently popular push for organic agriculture has many motivations: avoidance of chemicals in our food, getting back to nature, reducing our impact on the environment, fairness in costs and wages for farmers, and social responsibility. The thing is, some people want more than that, and their voices are loud and influential. According to IFOAM’s Principles of Organic Agriculture (IFOAM, 2008), organic agriculture is being pushed as a lifestyle rather than a practice, a moral value rather than a system, and even as a religion rather than a method.

In fact, organic agriculture is a subset, or a type of agriculture. It is a "new" way to raise crops with particular standards that happen to be stricter, environmentally speaking, than that of techniques seen in conventional agriculture. This particular methodology requires science as a tool to validate its significance. I could tell you that the sky is green, but observation contradicts that statement. The same is true here: I could tell you that crops grown without the use of pesticides are healthier, but testing is required to verify that claim. The scientific processes of observation, testing, analyzing, and reproduction are crucial to the success and the best methodology for this type of agriculture. So what does Science say about pesticides and health?

Anyone from the state of California can tell you, just about everything on the market today can give you cancer. From where did this paranoid misconception of chemicals come? The truth is, everything is made from chemicals, even you. Chemicals are the building blocks of everything you can see and touch. When Organic Preachers talk about “chemical-free food,” they really mean man-made, synthetic, or artificial chemicals. Organic Believers have manipulated the usage of the word 'chemical' as they have done with the word 'organic', which simply means a compound that has a carbon base to its molecular structure. Organic Believers have convinced many people that chemicals in our food is a bad thing - that chemicals are poison and that if you eat them you won't be healthy.

As the father of toxicology, Paracelsus, pointed out nearly 500 years ago, “Everything is poisonous yet nothing is poisonous. The dose alone makes the poison.” (Guggenheim, 1993). Even our most precious resource, water, is a poison. If you drink too much water, it is toxic to your body and you will die. Have you ever tried to cultivate fruits and veggies without water? If you're a fan of 'crunchy', you’ll probably love it! The chemicals used in conventional agriculture are designed to be toxic to pests, not to humans. Standards set by the USDA, and the FDA regulate limits so that the amount of artificial chemicals in our food never becomes harmful. The unfortunate thing is that the Organic Believers have made you afraid of these chemicals anyway.

In my class of future world leaders (how we should think of graduate students), we spent an hour one day bantering about the toxicity of butane in french fries and concluding that we didn’t want butane anywhere near our food! The conversation originated from a passage in The Omnivore's Dilemma, in which Michael Pollan wrote:

"Then there are 'anti-foaming agents' like dimethylpolysiloxene, added to the cooking oil to keep the starches from binding to air molecules, so as to produce foam during the fry... According to the Handbook of Food Additives, dimethylpolysiloxene is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector; it's also flammable."

He adds the word 'flammable' here to drive home his poison implication, but any cooking oil and most edible foods will burn! Does that make them toxic? Pollan goes on to say,

"Perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to 'help preserve freshness.' According to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e., lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food."

Lighter fluid in our food sounds horrible, but it’s not! The amount permissible is so small that it's not poisonous for human consumption. Pollan connects TBHQ to butane (a very inaccurate connection, chemically speaking) in an attempt to relate to the Organic Worrier that something toxic is going into our food. Why would McDonalds put something toxic in their food? A sick joke? No. It’s there to ‘help preserve freshness’ as is stated. All food decomposes; the purpose of adding something to subdue infectious bacteria is a health and safety supplement. The problem with Pollan’s argument is that butane is not very toxic at all. According to OSHA and the Center for Disease Control, butane is not reactive, unstable, or significantly toxic (NIOSH, 2005) (OSHA, 2004). The most likely way it could harm you is by displacing all the air in your lungs and asphyxiating you. People dying from butane are huffing it, not eating it.

If you don't make a habit or hobby out of huffing chemicals, why then should you worry about butane in your food? Because Organic Believers tell you to. What kind of implications does that have on society? Consumption habits are altered, production methods change to adapt, some businesses fail and others spring up to accommodate the new trend. While Pollan uses fear to sell a book, he convinces Orangic Believers that butane is bad. If many Organic Believers are loud enough they could have the power to get McDonalds to stop using TBHQ. The result is a less safe McNugget. Is this really the sustainability we're looking for?

The organic community’s propagation of fear is eerily reminiscent of something most Organic Believers fought so tenaciously against in recent history: the Bush administration. The Bush administration was accused, and quite rightly so, of fear mongering in an effort to generate support for a ludicrous war. How are Organic Believers' efforts so different in fear mongering for chemical-free food? Their conspiracy theories use the same methods to manipulate people into making ill-informed decisions. In the end, we're losing sight of what's right.

Science is reliable and trustworthy. It can show us what is healthy, and what is not. It can inform us of the best actions to take, and most definitely has a place in organic agriculture. Some may claim that science is inconclusive on the topic of chemical-free foods. That's ok! It just means that further research is warranted and that no conclusions should go unquestioned. Policy makers, businessmen, Organic Believers, pseudo-intellectuals, and even reputable universities need to avoid using manipulated science to support their agendas, as was seen in the Badgley/Avery debacle of 2007 (Avery, 2007).

Consumers need to be aware of the assumptions, speculations, and misconceptions that are prevalent in today's market so that educated and responsible decisions can be made. Knowledge and responsibility are the only things that will ensure sustainability, the future of all kinds of agricultural production, and our health.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it,

Andrew Judkins

Bibliography

Avery, A. (2007). ‘Organic Abundance’ report: fatally flawed. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 22(4), 321–329.

Guggenheim, K. (1993). Paracelsus and the Science of Nutrition in the Renaissance. The Journal of Nutrition, 1193. Retrieved February 11, 2009, from http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/reprint/123/7/1189.pdf.

IFOAM. (2008). Principles of Organic Agriculture. 1-3.

NIOSH. (2005). NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards: n-Butane, Retrieved February 11, 2009, from http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0068.html.

OSHA. (2004). Safety and Health Topics: Butane, Retrieved February 11, 2009, from http://www.osha.gov/dts/chemicalsampling/data/CH_222200.html.

Pollan, M. (2006). The Omnivore’s Dilemma. New York: Penguin Press.

I needed a trip to the beach after my cold trip to NYC for New Years Eve. I saw snow so of course, a day in the sun and surf was required for my Costa Rican adjustment process. Plus, there's no running water in my apartment... For the last week, the water is shut off from around noon or 13:00 until near 22:00 and later! Every day! It's ridiculous! Word on the street is, that this is typical "summer time" shenanigans, which usually occurs in march and april. The local folk keep referring to this as summer time, as the days are hotter and nights are colder than in the wet season (June to October), but I'm seeing trees shed their leaves and people wearing jackets. That means winter, not summer. Silly Costa Ricans.To start this story off, I thought I'd inform you that I saved up some money and bought myself a pair of flip-flops. I think the last time I owned a pair of flip-flops, I was 12 years old, but these things were calling my name! I bought them on a weekend trip to the beach, Jaco, one of Costa Rica's main tourist destinations. It's the dirtiest, sketchiest, scariest tourist town I've ever been to. In fact, while searching for a cheap hotel room at 12:30 AM, we must have passed 20 transvestite prostitutes! We probably saw 100 throughout the whole weekend - The only thing missing was the flier that advertised, "Transvestite Convention! This Weekend Only - Put on your lipstick and short skirts, guys, it's time to have fun!" Lola was everywhere!

Back to the silly Costa Ricans... My students began their English classes again and boy, were they excited to see me! I usually spend the first few minutes of class on an introduction - "How was your weekend?", "What's new?", that sort of thing. This time, they told me about a local doctor that had committed suicide. It's super shocking that that would happen in a town of this size. They expressed anger at the doctor, saying that his son turns five in only a few days, and asking how he could be so selfish. I thought it was an interesting lesson so I probed a bit. I asked them why they thought he would kill himself, but they were completely baffled. "He had everything," one gal said, "a job, a family, money. He even bought his father a car last year! Probably he was gay."

What?!?

She continued, "Well, why else would he kill himself? He had everything to make himself happy and, you know, if he had mental problems, [like being gay] that's probably why he killed himself." I was lost. I've never been stunned by the likes of this kind of logic before. Close - but not the same. And then the story got deeper. "There was another doctor in the next town who killed himself on the same day and they worked at the same hospital so probably they were lovers." Her claim was verified by the nods of the two other students in class.

"But why?" I persisted, "Why would it mean he's gay if he killed himself? What's the logic?" My disbelief and confusion was met with shrugs and confusion as to why I was so confused. I thought it would be a good time to point out that in many other countries (the developed world) homosexuality isn't looked down upon by all of society and in some cases it's even widely accepted. In other countries (developing countries run by religion) it's a crime to be gay - a crime punishable by jail time or even death! I asked where Costa Rica fit in on that spectrum.

"It's accepted here. Guys are always patting each other on the ass in sports and stuff and making jokes so probably I think it's fine to be gay here. But in Mexico you will get killed if you're gay!"

Oh stereotypes, how you entertain me.

Class went on and one student sneezed. I said, "Bless you" and then explained why we say that in America. The blog inspiring response that followed was, "In Costa Rica, if you sneeze, it means that your wife is cheating on you."

As Costa Rica stimulates the 'I-can't-believe-this' part of my brain, the University for Peace (UPeace) is doing it's damnedest to stimulate the 'this-is-ridiculous' part.

A buddy and I are trying to stage a coup at UPeace to get the university to do something about its lacking amenities. It does some things better than any other university could do: assembling a diverse student body and facilitating discussions and culture exchanges with varying perspectives on current world issues. Unfortunately, it falls way short in important standards to which a university should hold itself. I was briefly in communication with the vice-rector of UPeace to solve some very serious student safety issues, but he stopped responding to my emails and requests for followup meetings in November. Perhaps it's his computer. The campus internet rarely works, and it's affecting classes when we're analyzing things online or referencing something. Researching anything often proves quite difficult when there are no resources with which to work.At the end of the day, I can only really say that I really like my new flip-flops. They're made of leather, which comes from one of my favorite meals, and they make me feel like I'm on vacation. With that in mind, it really can be a happy day in Costa Rica at the University for Peace!

Sorry for the break in my storyline. My computer crashed, several times, and I lost all my class notes for all my classes... Bummer. So the first semester is now complete and boy, am I grateful. It's been filled with hard work, trying to stay awake, drama, worry, stress, homesickness, and I guess learning or whatever.

I had to say goodbye to some of my great new friends as their term here is finished. I look forward to completing the second and final semester with the remaining students on campus, including new students, and I'm excited for new possibilities.

This program at UPeace is not exactly what I thought it would be. I feel like I felt in third grade when I came home from school and my mom asked me, "What did you learn today?" I would reply, "Nothing" not knowing that I had actually learned something. I feel like I'm not making any significant gains in knowledge or skills as my time in Costa Rica progresses, but perhaps it's just as it was then and I simply don't recognize it. Perhaps it's just that I don't see, on a daily basis, that I am in fact making gains. I hope that's the case. I hope that my daily exposure to mind challenging conversations is actually building my capacity for greatness. Or perhaps I'm just having fun hanging out with hippies. Unfortunately, only time will tell.

I was quite happy to put my first semester of grad school to rest. One down, one to go. I'm starting to aggressively apply for jobs back home and I'm hoping to land something soon. Even if it should happen before my time here is finished. I've been away from the working world for far too long and I miss it almost as much as I miss my friends and family. It's time. I'm ready.

My winter break was great! I got to visit my good Peace Corps friend, Alex, in New York for New Years! It was sooo cold! It was my first time to New York and I loved it! I sure hope it won't be my last!I'm back in class again and the particular class I'm taking, Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector, is a major challenge to my abilities. It's nothing like anything I've ever studied. This is the "elective term" at UPeace so I thought I'd take something to broaden my horizons. Man, is it demanding! I have to write a 20 to 30 page business plan for a social enterprise from my creative mind in less than 3 weeks time! As you can imagine, I have no idea how I'll pull that off. It's no surprise that I probably won't post that one on this site. Regardless, I think it will hold promise and potential for my upcoming thesis and supplementary material.

Classes were cut short for the Obama inauguration speech the other day. UPeace has students from something like 60 countries, and they all paused their educational progress to take a gander at the current happenings of the United States. It was quite impressive. We gathered in the cafeteria to watch a projected presentation of the speech in real time... Well, with only a 15 second difference between the video and audio, until the internet cut out and we only got patches of the speech. I felt like a kid sitting around a radio broadcast 100 years ago - only a radio broadcast wouldn't have been interrupted by Costa Rican/UPeace shortcomings, I imagine.

In any case, this is really an inspiring global event. And it truly is a global event. To have representatives from 60-ish countries on the edge of their seats, clapping to great statements, is really significant in that it shows that the world is behind the new United States presidential administration. It's quite touching and it made me feel proud.

I know that a larger-than-I-care-to-admit part of my family is not excited about President Obama, but the fact is, that the rest of the world is excited. I don't think Americans recognize that we hold such a leadership position in the world, and as such, we should fulfill the part of a good leader. However, I'm waiting to be impressed by his actions and not by his reputation, but in the meantime, it should be recognized that the world really is watching. Hell, we skipped classes to watch! And large part of our discussion the following day was directly pertaining to his speech and what he stands for. It's an interesting time in history that I hope you all can appreciate.

As far as my love for Costa Rica goes, it is still non-existent and I can't wait to come home.

The school has done a fine job in scaring me with punishments over plagiarism. In fact, for fear of being caught plagiarizing my self, I'm posting my essays as "rough drafts" from now on, to which I welcome your critiquing on my amazing grammar skills and word choices!

Save the Water

Andrew Judkins – NRP

Foundations in Peace and Conflict Studies

Key Challenges to Peace

September 14, 2008

A flood of tensions and tempers has been flowing over the last few years on the Columbia Plateau of Washington State. Stakeholders in the conflict over water usage and management are at odds over legal water rights and morale water dilemmas. The Columbia Basin Project redistributed the waters of the Columbia River to be used for irrigation over thousands of miles of main canals, laterals, drains and wasteways. There is now an increasing human population, with increased water demands, which is not soaking up enough justification for water usage when contrasted with decimated salmon populations.

The Columbia Basin Project, usually mentioned synonymously with the capstone components of Grand Coulee Dam and Roosevelt Lake, actually consists of several dams, reservoirs, and canals. A total of 331 miles of main canals carry water siphoned off the Columbia River, stored in reservoirs, pumped and diverted onward via 1,339 miles of lateral canals; this massive diversion sprinkles the high desert with enough water to create an agricultural empire based in central and eastern Washington State. Currently just over 670,000 acres of land receive irrigation waters from the Columbia Basin Project, with nearly 1,100,000 acres classified as irrigable within its boundaries (Bloodworth & White, 2008).

The typical Pacific Northwest climate contains a 3-month summer drought, which puts a great strain on the water needs of Northwest farmers. The farmers end up wanting more water than their water rights entitle them. Their demand for water puts a heavy burden on the water flow of the river. Less water in the river means an altered hydrology, which impacts the river ecology. It’s the river ecology that the anadramous salmon depend on to complete their life cycle and fulfill their niche in the greater ecological perspective.

Peak flow of the upper Columbia River usually occurs in mid-June, and water releases are made from dams in July and August to ensure adequate water in the lower Columbia River to enhance fish migration (United States Bureau of Reclamation, n.d.). However, these are the dry months that the farmers need increased water loads for irrigation. This is a region accustomed to 6 to 10 inches of annual rainfall, and it is receiving 40 to 50 inches of excess irrigation water (Bloodworth & White, 2008). This competition has the agriculture industry and farmers pitted against local tribes, fishermen and the fishing industry, as well as environmentalists.

The key challenges to peace in this water fight are pretty cut and dry. On one hand, there is a $3.1 billion a year agricultural economy that depends on irrigation water to flow from the Columbia River (The Columbia Basin Bulletin, 2008). On the other hand, there are environmentalists who keep emphasizing the need for increased protection of 26 species of salmon and steelhead that are already listed on the Endangered Species Act (Doussard, 2007).

Which is the more important natural resource? Is it the water that is responsible for an agricultural economy, hydroelectric power, and a watering source for countless species?

Or is it the salmon, which support centuries old cultures and traditions, provide a fundamental nutrient source for riparian areas, as well as sustains industry in the forms sport and commercial fishing in addition to being a crucial element of the river ecosystem? Asking the question, salmon or water, is a very extreme course of action and will not lead to a solution over this clash of ideologies.

It is evident that this issue is an environmental security issue. Increased fresh water scarcity is an obvious problem that Rolain Borel (2008) classifies as an invisible disaster. It produces conditions for human vulnerability as is clearly seen here as a major challenge to peace.

What if a better attempt was made to think outside the box was employed to end this water dilemma? Can we use Capra’s (1982) Turning Point to solve the scarcity of water issue? In his theory we can see that everything is interconnected and that a simple solution most likely doesn’t exist based on this complexity. He also states that all problems are fragments of one single crisis: a crisis of perception. Is it possible that a balance could exist between commercial fishermen and salmon supporters? Is it possible that we’re just looking at this conflict from a flawed perspective? Perhaps the mechanical thinking that leads us to this conflict with two opposing sides is extremely inadequate. Perhaps this shortcoming could be remedied with a bit of organic thinking. Considering all points of interconnectedness should influence possibilities that work toward breaking down the dams of challenge on the river of peace.

Delving further into these challenges to peace leads us to Quantum Theory and Quantum Peace. The interconnectedness of the world implies that although there is conflict over water between two opposing sides, it’s the relationships involved that can also make peace. The key challenges of this issue, when approached from a holistic point of view, seem solvable (Fontan, 2008). One example in action of this is recent Washington State legislation aimed at satisfying these quarrelling parties. The city of Kennewick received more than $1 million this year to explore ways to capture water during the winter and store it in an underground aquifer, then reuse the water during the summer months. At least one-third of any stored water would be used to support stream flows for fish migration and spawning (The Columbia Basin Bulletin, 2008).

Beyond the concept of Quantum Theory is Systems theory, which shows us that based on the principle of interdependence each system depends on the other for life (Fontan, 2008). This is a core challenge in achieving peace from this conflict. The river is clearly the base on which the conflict floats. The salmon supporters’ argument is based on the river. The farmers’ argument is based on the river. But how do they depend on each other? Both contribute to local economies – There is the sport and commercial fishing industry as well as the agricultural industry. One surviving without the other will not stabilize the economy. In fact, it would destabilize it. Combined, in this sense, it is crucial that they both continue and prosper in order for economic security.

If both points of view are valid, and satisfying both sides of the conflict would lead to a benefited human population as well as a happy population of salmon, why can’t we seem to find a solution? Perhaps we’re focusing too much on the demands of each particular party without focusing on a means that would allow both parties to flourish. What methods, then, should be employed to work towards a satisfactory goal in which farmers and salmon supports can both feel secure in having accomplished some kind of victory? Not a victory over the other side, but a victory that solves the conflict and allows each side to be independently pleased with a solution.

Using C.R. Mitchell’s model (2008) for types of solutions to conflicts, we can begin to analyze possible options to conclude this conflict that has continued to flow. Solutions of Separation are ineffective. Separating the two quarrelling sides doesn’t satisfy either of them. There may be slightly more water allocated for farmers by telling the salmon supporters to go jump in a lake. And it’s conceivable that there may be additional salmon in the river by telling farmers to go fly a kite. But isolating these two sides of the conflict isn’t a reasonable solution for the river communities.

Solutions of Compensation could be a possibility. If both conflicting parties were to make concessions and still meet their bottom lines, potential peace could flow instead of conflict. But how could this be achieved? Are these stakeholders capable of extending an olive branch in order to secure a solution? Can farmers increase the efficiency with which they reclaim and use the water in order to consume less of it? What exactly is the minimum amount of water needed in the Columbia River to ensure a healthy salmon migration? The possibility of a solution under the realms of compensation seems unlikely when the terms of the solution are reasonably and economically unavailable and immeasurable with today’s technology.

Solutions of Division offer another possible way out. Can a compromise be reached between farmers and salmon supporters? Is there a way to divide time and usage of the Columbia River? Alternating years, perhaps – One year the farmers get the water they need and a generation of salmon suffers. Though, it’s difficult to predict the impact that would have on the entire salmon population. The next year, salmon would prosper while farmers lose crops to the summer drought. This loss could potentially be governmentally subsidized, or even subsidized by taxes to the fishing industry. Some may consider this solution as a way out of tensions and tempers, but the solution does not really generate a real solid foundation towards a future peace.

Solutions of Distribution/Disbursement are not quite applicable in this situation as it deals more with the breakdown of power in a political conflict. Neither party in the river/salmon conflict has or should have more power than the other.

Solutions of Creation offer an interesting school of opportunities to resolve conflicts. Can water from the Pacific Ocean be desalinized and used for irrigation? Can farmers select less water dependent crops – after all, irrigating the desert doesn’t seem like the wisest use of resources. Asking more in depth questions as to the source of the conflict, asking why each party wants something, could potentially illuminate a solution that satisfies the needs of both parties. Perhaps there are common goals that can be reached.

The absolute bottom line is that the Columbia River has been over manipulated by human hands to perpetuate our own development. This manipulation has meant progress in terms of the economy and human societal development. Unfortunately, it has also meant disaster in terms of salmon species and riparian area ecology. Undoing what has already been done is not a reasonable thing. It would mean the sacrifice of a booming economy and the way of life for nearly everyone in the Pacific Northwest. It’s simply not an option. Can the impact that has already been made, be further modified and manipulated towards conditions that appear a bit more natural? Is it possible, through human ingenuity and resolve, to engineer a system that has the capacity to satisfy the water needs of the agricultural industry and still meet the water needs of salmon? A positive answer to that question will directly lead to a positive solution to this conflict. Better water management is key to providing this answer.

The comprehensive irrigation district management draft plan for the South Naches district, being developed with farmers and agencies by the Bellevue office of Jones & Stokes, proposes a variety of significant changes to the way the district manages water to minimize the adverse impacts on salmon. This includes improving a 90-year-old structure that diverts water from the river, installing a pressurized irrigation distribution system in some places, removing a dysfunctional fish screen, and developing alternatives to using herbicides to manage aquatic weeds that choke the system in the summer months (Earle, 2005).

For the majority of the region, however, this conflict remains as stagnant as the water behind all the many dams of the Columbia River. Communities and stakeholders continue to wait for an all-encompassing solution to get things flowing on the river of peace.

Bibliography

Bloodworth, G. & White, J. (2008). The Columbia Basin Project: Seventy-Five Years Later. White Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, 70, 98-105.

Borel, Rolain (2008, September 02). Environmental Security. Presented at University for Peace.

Doussard, Robin. (2007 August 1). The Fight for Water. Oregon Business Magazine

Earle, Christopher. (2005). Farmers, government team up to save fish. Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, Retrieved on September 11, 2008, from http://www.djc.com/news/en/11170266.html.

Fontan, Victoria. (2008 August 29). Quantum Peace. Presented at University for Peace.

Fritjof, Capra. (1982). The Turning Point. New York: Bantam Books.

Mitchell, C.R. (2008, September 11). From Violence to Positive Peace. Presented at University for Peace.

The Columbia Basin Bulletin. (2008). Landmark Agreement Could Open Up New Water Rights For E. Washington Irrigators. The Columbia Basin Bulletin, Retrieved on September 11, 2008, from http://www.cbbulletin.com/288968.aspx.

United States Bureau of Reclamation. (n.d.). Columbia Basin Project Washington. United States Bureau of Reclamation, Retrieved on September 11, 2008, from http://www.usbr.gov/dataweb/html/columbia.html.

My birthday celebration started out with a super sweet email from the gals I worked with in Bulgaria. They created a Happy Birthday message for me that stole my heart! They're such sweethearts!It really made me miss Bulgaria and all the people I know there. Then I got selfish and started whining about not being with my friends and family for my 30th birthday. I started being a bit depressed that I'd be with a bunch of strangers to welcome in my 30s. But I was able to use my positivitiy skills to change my attitude! I tricked myself into believing that there's nothing like celebrating your special day with a bunch of people you just met! Actually, the folks with whom I'm studying down here have really impressed me. They're a good group with lots to offer. And they're super smart! And they come from everywhere! There are 161 students from 42 different countries! And they managed to make me smile for the entire day!

At the moment, a friend is staying with me until she can find her own place. I met Becca six years ago in Switzerland. We've stayed in touch since then and have now ended up at the same grad school! She took note of me wearing my new white t-shirt, which was a gift, and devised a diabolical plan!

In the mornings, before school starts, the students hang out at this outdoor, covered cafeteria. We were sitting around chatting and Becca came up to me with a handful of pens. I asked what they were for and she told me that I'd find out. Then she took my chair away from me, stood on it, and announced to everyone that it was my 30th birthday and that I'll be carrying these damn pens around all day so that people could come up to me and write happy birthday on my new white t-shirt.

Well, it didn't take long at all for me to be surrounded by a bunch of kids writing all over me. In no time, I was covered in all kinds of colors and languages. It was a pretty cool feeling. That Becca... She's made it onto my sweetheart list, too.So the day went by, and people signed all over me. I heard a lot of, "No way, you're not 30! Wow!” which made me feel nice, I guess. It wasn't about the age, I figure, they were just telling me that I'm still pretty. I explained that it was my superior genetics that allow me to look so beautiful. Of course, at the time that explanation sounded more like, "Thanks!” You know... on account of language barriers and whatnot.

That night, some of the folks in my program let me come over to their house and make them margaritas from scratch. We spent the night singing, dancing, watching Obama's acceptance speech, and other things I apparently don't remember. It was just like a 30th birthday should be!If anyone is dying to send me a birthday card, postcard, or a big ole salami, here is my mailing address:

Andrew Judkins

Department of Academic Administration

University for Peace

P.O. Box 138-6100

San José, Costa Rica

Central America

If you're sending something my way - Thanks! Just don't use courier companies such as DHL or FEDEX! The package will incur extra taxes and fees...

Well, here is a copy of my first grad school assignment. It was a conflict mapping assignment and I chose a conflict close to home. I've decided to post my essays here in addition to my better stories because I know you're dying to read anything I write. I'll specify in the title with "UPeace" when I do this so you don't get stuck reading my homework if you're not into higher thinking. I won't feel bad if you skip these blogs.

Save the Salmon

Andrew Judkins – NRP

Foundations in Peace and Conflict Studies

Conflict Mapping

September 3, 2008

The declining salmon population has spawned a conflict between sport fishermen and sea lions in the rivers and on the west coast of the United States. For this essay, we’ll look at the conflict happening at the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River.

Salmon swim from the ocean, upstream towards their place of birth to procreate. It is estimated that the numbers of these anadromous fish were around 16 million before 1550. (General Accounting Office Washington DC, 2002) Not all salmon made the complete journey to their place of origin. Predators feast upon them as their numbers were many, and their health benefits were great.

Unfortunately, around the turn of the 20th century, the salmon run began to dwindle. First, commercial operations over fished the salmon population (Oregon Public Broadcasting, n.d.) and later hydroelectric dams were built. (Northwest Power and Conservation Council, n.d.) At Bonneville Dam there is a fish ladder that is designed to help salmon pass by jumping from pool to pool. However, as the fish ladder is obviously smaller than the Columbia River, there is a bottlenecking of sorts in the salmon traffic. This results in large numbers of salmon waiting at the base of dam for a chance to continue upstream. (O’Connor, 2008)

Their brief sedentary period provides prime fishing opportunities for local sport fishermen, or anglers, who immensely enjoy fishing. All were happy until recent years when about 100 sea lions decided to leave their natural habitat and make the 150-mile journey from the ocean to the dam for an all-you-can-eat salmon buffet. (Espenson, 2003)

Fishermen are under strict limitations as to how many salmon they can take per day and per season, but the sea lions are obviously not bound by any of man’s laws. Each adult California sea lion typically eats 5 to 7 salmon a day. (Stiffler, 2008) But it’s their methods, not necessarily the quantity that escalates the conflict. The easiest fish for a sea lion to catch is one that’s already been caught.

Sea lions lay in wait while they watch the anglers go after their prize. Once a salmon is hooked, the anglers make obvious motions in order to secure the success of landing that fish. This alerts the sea lion that their next meal is ready. Before the fisherman is able to reel in the salmon, the sea lion manages to locate it on the end of the line, and steal it. All that’s left is the fishermen’s fury.

The conflict between fishermen and sea lions is the result of underlying causes, which are yet to be resolved. Breaking down this conflict according to the CR SIPABIO model of analysis (Abdalla, 2002) identifies the factors at play in order to get a better idea of how to proceed toward a resolution.

The dam at Bonneville, on the Columbia River, is a very specific ecosystem that has been altered for the benefit of human societal development. A hydroelectric dam, an unnatural construct, has been placed on the migration route of salmon. It is like a barrier to the fish that is only conquered by the salmon that are able to figure out the man-made fish ladder.

Salmon use their sense of smell to navigate the geography of Columbia River in order to locate their particular birthing location, or contributing stream from which they came. (Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, n.d.) Fishermen use their knowledge of the river and area to find the spots that offer the best chance at landing a salmon. Sea lions left their saltwater habitat and made a tremendous journey to a new location to partake in a salmon feast. These aspects of the geographical factor contribute to the equivalent of “the right place at the right time” for a conflict.

On a cultural level, sport fishing in the Columbia River and its tributaries has been popular since the era of the first Euro-American settlement of the Northwest. (Northwest Power and Conservation Council, n.d.) Sport fishermen in the United States take this tradition very seriously, spending 44.5 billion dollars a year for fishing trips, equipment, licenses, stamps, tags, land leasing and ownership, membership dues and contributions, and magazines. (Dean, 2007)

We can also identify class as a contextual factor when considering the laws involved. Fishermen are stereotypically working class men who use the weekend to relax by going fishing. The law that affects them in this case is the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, which states that these particular species of sea lion (California and Steller) are protected under the law. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 1972) This means that fishermen are legally without options in what they see as an unfair competition for fish. When portrayed in the media, the blue-collar working class stands together and supports one another in the mentality that this is an unfair law – and being an unfair law, shouldn’t necessarily be followed. This can be seen in television interviews of local fishermen, grinning ear to ear in satisfaction at the idea that someone had recently illegally shot and killed six sea lions near the dam. (Gregoriancant, 2008)

The historical significance of salmon in this region is huge. These fish are worshiped by the indigenous tribes who have relied on salmon runs for centuries. Sport fishermen have also enjoyed the thrill of the catch for many years. In 1877, a U.S. Army lieutenant wrote about fishing for trout: “Caught 400 (cutthroat) trout, weighing two to five pounds apiece. As fast as we dropped in a hook baited with a grasshopper, we would catch a big trout. In fact, the greatest part of the work was catching the grasshopper.” (Northwest Power and Conservation Council, n.d.)

When identifying the relationship factors in this equation, we can see a bit more clearly the complexity of the event. Bonds identify the connection between sea lions and salmon. That is there is a predator prey relationship. The connection between fishermen and salmon could also be a predator prey relationship; except that anglers don’t rely on salmon for sustenance, as do the sea lions.

The conflict arises from the connection between fishermen and sea lions. This is a competition relationship that is illustrated by a breakdown of the power involved. Fishermen obviously have power over sea lions. We can see this easily by the sea lion shootings. However, sea lions have power in an indirect sense, as they are protected by the power of law. The patters that develop to escalate the conflict are that fishermen are shooting sea lions. This may stop an individual sea lion, but it doesn’t solve the conflict.

Taking a closer look still, we can see that the real source of this conflict is a depleted supply of salmon. The last 25 years of monitoring shows salmon numbers down 96% from what they once were. (General Accounting Office Washington DC, 2002) The competition between fishermen and sea lion isn’t decimating the salmon population. But had the salmon population not declined with such intensity, perhaps the issues in this conflict would not be so relevant. These issues are, of course, 1) sea lions eating salmon off the end of the anglers’ fishing lines, and 2) anglers retaliating by shooting and killing sea lions.

The primary parties involved are the fishermen, the sea lions, and the salmon. The fishermen have a direct connection to the conflict in that they are losing out on something they want – the salmon. The sea lions are directly connected to the conflict, as they are stealing fish from the fishermen. Secondary parties are the families of the fishermen who wait for their beloved ones to return home, happy, with dinner. Conservationists are also considered a secondary party that endeavors for sea lion preservation by means of trapping and relocating. Commercial fishing operations and hydroelectric companies can be considered as tertiary parties because over fishing as well as natural habitat blockading are major contributors to the salmon population decline.

The conflict that comes about through the combination of these parties and each of their roles is one that creates tremendous negative feelings in the attitudes of the fishermen. The success that comes with landing a tasty salmon is just as delicious as the fish. If they are prevented from even remotely achieving this euphoria, ill tempers develop and their subsequent reactions ensue. In this conflict, some fishermen are behaving in a way that escalates the situation and brings in third parties. The third party in this case is law enforcement who upholds the law protecting sea lions. However if you look at this from the perspective of the sea lions, you see that they are simply trying to eat. Their feeling of hunger is more than adequately satisfied by the theft of salmon on a fishing line. But their behavior is having grave consequences. They’re being killed as they fill their bellies.

There are intervening actions taking place to reduce tensions between fishermen and sea lions. Law enforcement is responsible for making sure fishermen keep their cool and don’t kill any sea lions. Though, should they falter, law enforcement has the task of preparing the fishermen for judicial punishment. Conservationists play a role to aid in calming this dilemma. They have taken on the responsibility of setting traps in the Columbia River near the Bonneville Dam. The traps lure in sea lions and hold them until they can be relocated to zoos or sea parks. (San Antonio Express News, 2008)

There are also interventions happening to increase salmon populations. Fish farms are repopulating salmon numbers by breeding salmon in fisheries.

These interventions pretty much outline the current outcome of the conflict between fishermen and sea lions. Fishermen are breaking the law. Sea lions are being killed. Conservationists are trapping and relocating sea lions. And fisheries are breeding and repopulating salmon.

Do any of these interventions or outcomes resolve the issues? No. That is an easy statement to make because the issues of the conflict are still currently very apparent.

In May of this year, six sea lions were killed and presumed shot. This killing was thought not to be merely competition-based in that a fisherman was tired of these sea lions stealing his fish. These particular sea lions had all already been caught in traps set by conservationists. They were immobile and incapacitated. It was assumed that while they pondered the confines of their entrapment, unaware that they would soon be relocated, they were killed in a hate-based reaction. In fact, a few days later they were discovered to have died of heat exhaustion.

Assumptions were quick to fly because it was entirely possible that those sea lions were shot by an angry angler as has happened before. How then, should this conflict best be resolved? Should the Marine Mammal Protection Act be rewritten or amended so that this small minority of sea lions is eliminated from the equation? It could be an easy fix, but this action seems quite inhumane. However, authorities in Washington and Oregon have recently been granted federal authorization to capture or kill as many as 85 sea lions a year for five years at the base of the dam. (Associated Press, 2008)

Is it possible to improve conservationist efforts to trap and relocate the troublesome individual sea lions that unknowingly escalate fishermen’s tempers? Can they be dissuaded from swimming up the Columbia River in the first place? Methods designed to answer these questions are being researched and implemented. The problem is, they’re not having a desired affect with respect to the magnitude and urgency needed to resolve the issues.

None of these potential interventions can be considered a viable solution to the conflict. The source of the conflict that needs to be resolved is the dwindling salmon populations.

Why are salmon disappearing? It’s easy to say that commercial fisheries are over fishing the oceans and that’s what is causing only few salmon to remain. I could also make a case that hydroelectric dams impede salmon runs to a degree that it is significantly reducing their population. Fisheries are hard at work turning out great numbers of farmed salmon to be introduced into the river and ocean ecosystems. Is this a solution? No. This is a temporary Cartesian remedy. (Fontan 2008) Yes, it does increase the number of salmon, but these farmed salmon have been produced without the fundamental ecological concept of natural selection. (Darwin, 1859) This error introduces inferior individuals. These farmed salmon pass on their inferior genetics to wild salmon, further corrupting the natural salmon population. We need further analysis using ecological, organic, and system thinking to identify a holistic approach at determining a real solution.

The answer is in every aspect of the human impact not only on the salmon species, but on the ecosystems in which they live as well. In order to resolve this conflict we must fully analyze the processes of our lives that have any kind of connection to their existence. Understanding an ecological perspective, using Systems Theory (Fontan 2008), of the continuation of salmon existence allows us to model our lives in a way that preserves our own future. Preserving salmon equally as a resource and as an essential part of the environment will ensure enough dinner for fishermen and sea lions for many years to come. Or, as George W. Bush so eloquently put it in his 2000 campaign, “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.”

Bibliography

Amr Abdalla, et al. (2002). Say Peace: Conflict Resolution Training Manual for Muslim Communities. Virginia, USA: The Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences.

Associated Press. (2008). Trapped Sea Lions Shot on Columbia River, Retrieved on September 2, 2008, from http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/05/05/sea.lions.salmon.ap/index.html.

Bush, George W. (2000). Bushisms Audio Gallery, Retrieved on September 2, 2008, from http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushism-fish.htm.

Darwin, Charles. (1859). On the Origin of Species, Retrieved September 2, 2008, from http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-origin-of-species.

Dean, Jeff. (2007). Economic Impact Of Sportfishing. Retrieved September 2, 2008, from http://ezinearticles.com/?Economic-Impact-Of-Sportfishing&id=835942.

Espenson, Barry. (2003). Columbia Basin Bulletin: More Sea Lions at Bonneville Dam Enjoying Salmon Cuisine, Retrieved September 2, 2008, from http://www.bluefish.org/sealion4.htm.

Fontan, Victoria. (2008 August 29). Quantum Peace: Exploring a New Paradigm for Peace-Building. University for Peace.

General Accounting Office Washington DC. (2002). Columbia River Basin Salmon and Steelhead: Federal Agencies' Recovery Responsibilities, Expenditures and Actions, Retrieved September 2, 2008, from http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA405755.

Gregoriancant. (2008). Associated Content: Killing Sea Lions in the Columbia River to Save Salmon: Humane Society Vs. Fishermen, Retrieved on September 2, 2008, from http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/754297/killing_sea_lions_in_the_columbia_river.html.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (1972). The Marine Mammal Protection Act, Retrieved on September 2, 2008, from http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/laws/mmpa.pdf

Northwest Power and Conservation Council. (n.d.). Sport Fishing, Retrieved September 2, 2008, from http://www.nwcouncil.org/history/SportFishing.asp.

O’Connor, Anahad. (2008). The New York Times: Trapped Sea Lions Shot Dead in Oregon, Retrieved September 2, 2008, from http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/trapped-sea-lions-shot-dead-in-oregon/.

Oregon Public Broadcasting. (n.d.). History of Fishing in Oregon, Retrieved September 2, 2008, from http://www.opb.org/programs/oregonstory/fishing/timeline.html.

San Antonio Express News. (2008). SeaWorld Welcomes Salmon-Fat Sea Lions, Retrieved September 2, 2008, from http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/MYSA050608_SeaLionRescue_EN_3c997f0_html8647.html.

Stiffler, Lisa. (2008). Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Culling Sea Lions to Save Local Salmon, Retrieved on September 2, 2008, from http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/environment/archives/134557.asp.

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. (n.d.). Salmon and Steelhead Life Cycle and Habitat Information, Retrieved on September 2, 2008, from http://wdfw.wa.gov/hab/spawningbed_protection/life_cycle.htm.

My few weeks home were AMAZING! It felt like the best vacation, ever! I tried my best to see everyone - and had loads of fun doing so! Sorry to those I wasn't able to visit. While home, I kinda found that I'd much rather be there than anywhere else. I've been away from home for three years - traveling, volunteering, learning. I've seen a lot, done a lot, and I've grown a lot. I've been to a lot of places, and realized my favorite of them all is home. And so with great reluctance, I boarded a plane to Vegas. And then another to Phoenix, where I slept in the airport for 11 hours before boarding my final flight to San Jose, Costa Rica for a year's worth of graduate school at the University for Peace. The things I'll put myself through to save a buck.

My first impressions of Costa Rica weren't so great. There was litter everywhere. Everywhere! I've come to determine that this is a good indicator of the type of mentality of the locals. Usually people who care about their community have a nice community. Another observation was that the air smelled like fried chicken. This, however, is a good indicator that the food should taste nice.

Of course, this was only the capital, San Jose. Usually the biggest cities don't entirely represent the rest of the population of the country. I couchsurfed my first night and was awake enough to have a mild conversation. I learned that the government owns/runs the cell phone and electrical industry. This creates problems, as demand is not met. I think this is due to infrastructure, but could also be due to a lazy government. And monopolies run rampant, such as insurance, and a bunch of others I can't remember on account of fatigue.

Found my new stomping grounds for the next year and sat and had a chat with my new landlord, Ed. He spoke pretty poorly of the local folks here. Oblivious, clueless, corrupt, thieves, and 'on the moon' were some of the personality descriptions he used. He instructed me not to drink the water and not to buy meat from the local grocer. He also said that if I go outside, I'll get mugged. Ed is a good old boy from San Diego and I figure he's probably been in Costa Rica for too long. So, I drank the water before going out for a walk to find the local grocer to buy some sausage. Cause that's how I roll.

I find the locals to not really be too friendly. That said, they're not unfriendly, either. Most of the smiles I hand out are returned, but none have been first offered to me. I've only been here a week though - I expect this observation to change a lot. I'm living in a bustling town of between 20,000 and 30,000 inhabitants called Ciudad Colon. A lot less litter on the streets here! Phew! The fried chicken smell is also gone. Now it just smells like a developing country. That is, the air is filled with the sounds and smells of low-level construction, unmuffled 2-cycle engines, and 30 to 40-year old diesel trucks. I have a small studio apartment in a 10-apartment complex that's filled with other expats, 90% from the U.S., and I'm the only student. Kinda gives a representation of how many foreigners there are in this country. My apartment is at N 9º 54.643' and W 84º 14.536' and sitting around 2800 ft above sea level. I probably won't stay in this apartment for more than my first month, as the guy in the apartment next to me snores from the moment he falls asleep to the moment he wakes up. The sound goes right though the wall. And the guy above me goes through coughing fits from 4am to 6am, every morning. I have some earplugs, which stop the sound of the snoring, but not of the coughing. Good news is, there are other options in this tiny town.The center of Ciudad Colon is constantly filled with people going to and fro. The town was built on a highway, so there is a healthy amount of traffic at all times throughout the day. It doesn't take much to escape the center, though. Rolling green hills are found close by, and in every direction. They are covered with lush vegetation consisting of flora and fauna that I've never seen before. It's a pretty place, but obvious things about it will end up getting to me: irresponsible development leading to leftover debris scattered about and intense erosion, foreigners owning half the country creating a separation as blatant as haves and have nots, as well as low/non-existing standards for environmental regulations as seen by the pollution coming from cars and trucks. Oh the developing world.

One of my hesitations in embarking on this grad school adventure is that I want a job. After my German Hippie Fiasco of 07, I decided that I want to pursue a path that leads to professional, positive, and effective societal development. Surrounding myself with uneducated hippies who try to teach the world about bongo drums, indigo children, and the benefits of marijuana probably isn't going to get me to where I want to be.

As I introduced myself to my new neighbor, Zach, I struck up a conversation with his guests. One guy, I think it was Zach's brother, was talking about cancer. Interesting.

"Your brain, like, sends signals and shit down to your body. If something happens in your past that's huge, your brain keeps sending these signals and that's how you get cancer and shit."

Hmmm... Not so interesting. But... Mildly entertaining in a bizarre, humorous sort of way so I gave him my attention.

"It's like, you know how when someone always thinks they're sick, and then their brain makes them sick? Same thing with cancer. Like when old, depressed people die and their healthy spouses die immediately after; like a year or two later. That's how that happens. It's your brain, man."

Hhhhh.... I'm hoping my fellow students have a bit more to offer on an intellectual level. Or really on any level - I'll not be too picky for fear of my brain starting to send signals and shit down to my body.

I've got high hopes for my time here. I'm trying to keep up on my running, but the terrain is intense! So many hills! And my one good lung hasn't adapted to the conditions yet. Including the weather - it's so humid here! And being that this is the rainy season, there is a two-hour deluge, complete with intense thunder and lightning, every afternoon. But every morning I wake up to beautiful blue skies and sunshine!

School starts in a week. I haven't met any other students yet - but I got here early so I could find a place to live. I'm only a year away from a masters degree! I'm also only a year away from my next vacation home! Woo hoo! I hope it's longer than three weeks this time!

Couchsurfing in Mongolia proved to be quite difficult. There aren't a whole lot of participants in this area so I gambled and sent requests out to people with no references or information or anything!

My first hosts lived in a nicer house than I'll ever own, but I didn't stay with them long after they put me to work as a consultant for their blossoming tourism business. They did, however, put me in touch with my next host who wasn't even a Couchsufing participant until he met me.

Begzsuren, or Begs for short, is a software engineer working at the Ulaanbaatar Public Library. We chatted for a bit and after having cleared his decision with his wife, Mungunsoyombo, he agreed to take me in for a couple nights.

Begs, 32, and his wife, 31, have a gorgeous family consisting of one son named Tuguldur, 9, and three daughters, Manujin (her name means "our daughter"), 6, Gaadmaa (her name means "clever or smiley woman"), 3, and Mungulun, 1. The youngest child's name translates to something of an implication. It implies that she will bring the family money. And consistent with Mongolian law, that's just what another child does.

In Mongolia, at the moment, the government is giving aid to families with children under 16 and also inspiring population growth in a country the size of Alaska, but with a population of less than three million. Each month, the government gives approximately $3 per child, and each quarter, they give approximately $25 per child. This means that Begs' family of six pulls in around $550 in a year from the government for having four kids. This is a huge help considering that the average salary here is about $1500. Financial bonuses from the government are not so unheard of here.

Just before my arrival, a riot broke out over election fraud and caused a 4-day state of emergency. The "winning" party's headquarters were burned, 5 people were killed, and more than 200 were injured. Mongolia has a history similar to that of Bulgaria, occupation (instead of Turkish, it was Manchurian - Chinese), communism (good old Russia, spreading the love), and a young government still trying to figure out what democracy is. Corruption seems to fill the description of democracy at the moment. The recent discoveries of large deposits of copper, gold, and coal bring hopes of some wealth potential for the country, but the fear of loss due to politicians makes the community uneasy. The political game here makes me laugh as it's described to me. What's the difference between the parties? Begs explained that democratic party is offering every citizen approximately $1000 if elected, and the socialist party is offering $1500. The socialist party won.

This situation frustrates me, as I've spent so much time and effort working and volunteering in the development field for the last few years. These types of politics completely unravel the types of things I, and other development folks do. I'm still stuck on the opinion that a mentality change is the first step, and best way to initiate positive community development. Get people to see the future a bit and teach them to take some responsibility for their impact on society. But motivation for progress goes out the window faster than a cigarette butt in these ex-communist societies where corrupt politicians seem to be re-elected time and again.

As frustrating as it is for me, it seems like it's barely background noise to the people I'm staying with. This beautiful family of six lives in a small home on a hillside, on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar. Their home was built by Begs and his brother a couple summers ago and is in the area of about 200 square feet, though there are plans for a small expansion later this summer. Their yard is too rocky to grow anything other than grass, but that suits Begs' cows just fine. Intermitently thoughout the yard are old tires in which Begs collects soil until there's enough to grow some vegetables. Their home has electricity, but no running water or any plumbing of any kind. Bent particle-boards line the ceiling and wooden planks make up the floor. There are two beds that the entire family of six shares, one double and one twin. It may sound like a tough way to live to the western ear, but these people find happiness very easily.My Mongolian hosts welcomed me with smiles and curiosity. The kids giggled and laughed when I made eye contact with them and they could barely stand it when I tried to tell them hello in their own language. The entire truth be told, though, the youngest daughter cried when I entered their home. I scared her. I don't think the kids have ever seen a foreigner before. Begs told me that when someone arrives and brings rain with them, they're good luck! I told him I must be super lucky then, because I could see a storm moving in from the mountains. About an hour later I saw a lightning bolt strike something across the valley and ignite a fire that burned for a good long while. Shortly after that we lost electricity and spent the night playing traditional Mongolian games by candlelight.On the long winter nights, Begs explained, they entertain themselves with simple and complex games designed to pass the time and develop the mind. There were several puzzles of rings and rods that you had to unlock and lock and such - but to tell the truth, I was too tired to understand them. However, before those were introduced, he showed me some games that utilize a bone found in the knee of the hind legs of sheep. My two favorite games were called, "Flicking Bones" and "Bone Guessing"! I played with the kids, but lost pretty much every time. It was lots of fun, and the kids loved me! I like to think that was because of my winning smile and heartwarming laugh... But it may have had something to do with the fact that I brought them some candy.For the last few months, I've been lugging around a big pack of my favorite kind of licorice in hope of meeting someone that would appreciate it more than I! With the smiles I was seeing, I considered my hope easily accomplished! Begs taught his family the English words, "Thank you!" as he's the only English speaker, and they took turns trying to pronounce it for me. That was good for a laugh for everyone. A while later, we all washed our feet before crawling into bed. They laid some blankets on the floor for me, and then marveled in disbelief that I insisted on using my sleeping bag. They laughed at me, as they'd never seen anyone sleep in one before and were certain I would freeze to death at night! I didn't. And I was up around 5 AM to help go get drinking water. About a kilometer away is the nearest source of water for them so every now and again they have to make trips with a 50 gallon barrel to resupply.Parting for my day in the city I asked how to say, "Have a nice day!" Begs told me that that phrase doesn't exist in Mongolian so I repeated what he says on his way out to work, "Obey your mother!"

As I look back and try to find the words to conclude my part of the Supercross08 project, I sit here speechless and dumbfounded at how to put my thoughts and memories in print. How can I sum up such a moving project? How can I close such a significant chapter of my life? How can I document how much this entire journey has meant to me? These questions leave me with a blank mind. I can't possibly put the experiences I've had into words. But like everything in my life that's brought me to this point - by heck, I'll try!

I'll start with the numbers because they're my favorite part. At the end of 201 days, my daily expenses average was $26.89! This number, in USD, includes every meal, snack, hostel, hotel, toilet, language lesson, admission, fee, visa, bribe, bus/train ticket, taxi, and four flights (Morocco to Tunisia, Tunisia to Egypt, Ukraine to Finland, and Latvia to Russia) since the start of our project! It doesn't include the flight to Europe at the beginning and the flight home at the end because I pulled a trick with those tickets. The average includes every last dime I spent on the project, because I record my expenses like a crazy man. Had the value of the dollar been a bit more stable, I really believe I could have managed the $25 per day average I was shooting for.

Supercross08 included 11 official projects in seven different countries, but it hardly stops there. I traveled through 17 countries on this trip and in each country, and in each situation, I sought an opportunity for culture exchange through dialogue. The Supercross08 mission and ideals have always been in the back of my head and seemed to come out continuously like an ever-flowing river with every person I met.

It wasn't all hippie happiness and idealism, though. To use my honesty skills completely, I had quite a few rough times on the road. Random encounters with drunk bums and other burdens on society would initiate unfortunate episodes of negative thought in my head. Bureaucratic red tape, cultural norms that were so different from my own, illogical and destructive community behavior, gender differences and religious dependence, being charged twice or more the local price because I'm white, and other encounters with discrimination took a great toll on my psyche. Regretfully, I lost my internal cool a couple times and developed a couple temporary prejudiced opinions about the people around me.

It may have seemed like a holiday vacation at times to many of the people following my adventures, but it's not the easiest thing in the world to do the things I've done. I've missed my friends and family something awful and I wasn't always able to maintain my natural positive energy as much as I would have liked. At my lowest point, I almost got myself into a fight with at least three big Mongolian guys over a "cultural misunderstanding."

By no means did the tough times sour the entirety of my trip, though. My overall experience was hugely positive and enlightening. I made so many personal gains, it will be tough to find anything else in my life that will allow me to grow so much in such a short amount of time. If I had the opportunity to change anything about these last months, it would be to have created a possibility for Tim to remain on the project with me and see it out. We worked extremely well together and offered a synergy that the people with whom we met won't soon forget.

Quite early on, I recognized how powerful of a project Tim and I had undertaken. And we accomplished our mission with greatness! Tim and I each contributed such different skills that we created a team capable of intense, in-depth bridge building between cultures often at odds. Tim is a master at engaging an audience and maintaining their attention. And beyond that, he brought the ability to control a discussion to such a degree it was like watching someone squeeze the last little drop out of a lemon, extracting every last bit of information there was to offer. I complimented his skills with my own charm. I over calculated and over thought the tiniest of details in my attempt to make sure everything was perfect. Researching, developing, outlining, formatting, organizing and implementing occupied my mind, for long hours at a time, with each individual event. But it wasn't all about project development and implementation. On a very practical and real level, Tim and I did amazing things.

I touched people like I never thought I was capable of doing. I was moved by people, who I never expected to be moved by. I met people that impressed me so incredibly much, I feel like writing about it takes away from it's significance. My respect for youth organizations and their participants grew exponentially after encountering such brilliant and refreshing minds! The potential I saw was more than anything I could have ever expected! It was inspiring! It showed a true hope for humanity. So often we hear about conflict and war, fear and unknown. It makes us feel like the world is spinning out of control, falling down a bottomless pit of despair. Of course, it's not a bottomless pit if "The End of The World" has anything to say about it. I think that's a very real message portrayed in our world society. But after my experiences with such dynamic people, I find grand relief in the thought of the next generation taking the reigns.

There is still good in this world - I can feel it! I'm not ignorant to the fact that there is also extreme conflict and problems the likes of which are beyond help through simple dialogue. But I'm a subscriber to the ideal that if everyone opened their minds a bit and tried to respect other people simply because they're human, then the misunderstandings that lead to fear and the dark side of the force would be greatly reduced. Perhaps even to an insignificant level.

We can all start with something simple: A common thought we may have about a person from another culture is that something about them or something they do is 'weird' or 'strange'. We can't separate people in terms of 'weird' and 'normal'. We must change these words in our vocabularies and internal dialogues to 'different' AND we must have the capacity to understand that 'different' is not a separatory label. It's OK that not everyone on the planet is just like us. Joe isn't weird because he eats with sticks instead of a fork - he's different, and that's fine. Sally isn't strange because she covers her head when she goes outside - she's different, and she's not hurting anyone. Sam isn't stupid because he doesn't study world politics or geography - he has different priorities, and that's his choice. But at the end of the day, we all have to live on the same planet, together.

A simple opening of the mind to be aware of other peoples' rights to make choices for themselves; an attempt at noticing the common ground we all share; an effort to respect someone different even though we may not understand them. These are the first steps towards building a sustainable and peaceful future in our world - and we all have a place at the helm, together.

Peace, love, and happiness! Thank you for reading! The End!

This may be the end of my postable Supercross08 stories, but more adventures are to come. I'm going to continue to use this blog while I'm in grad school. I'll be in Costa Rica for one year at the United Nations Mandated University for Peace studying Natural Resources and Peace! But of course, outside of study time I'll be exploring Costa Rica and neighboring countries. I'm sure something will happen that's worth a story or two. I'm flying down on the 8th of August - so check back sometime when you're bored and maybe there'll be something to read!

For a final project, to complete the Supercross08 journey, I was to meet with The Lotus Children's Centre to learn about their organization. However, the directions I was given to meet with them, took me to an abandoned building, decorated with a 'Lotus Children's Centre' sign.

I got off the bus and it was pouring rain! It wasn't so cold and the directions I had said the building was close. So I just went for it - there wasn't really any shelter anywhere anyway. I ended up soaking wet by the time I found the abandoned "Lotus Center". I found a way around the locked gates to the property but had no luck banging on the doors of the building. OK, it was obvious that it was abandoned, but by heck, someone was expecting me - I had good email contact with them. Surely there would be someone there! Not soon after I started pounding on one of the doors, an old man emerged halfway from his yurt, behind the school, and yelled something at me. I walked over to him and asked him if he knew were Ben Rodgers was, but he didn't understand anything. I told him I was looking for 'Lotus' and pointed to the building. He motioned to me, "No." His growling dogs were getting closer so I thought I'd make a strategic exit. I left, frustrated, while his dogs followed me to the gate, barking their mad heads off! I asked a few more people in the community about 'Lotus', pointing to the building and got the same response every time, 'No. No one home.'Dripping and pissed, I made my way back to the bus stop. However, all was not lost! My host, Begzsuren, happens to be working at the Ulaanbaatar Public Library on a major project at the moment.

Begs, head of the department for information processing as well as library automation and computerization, is working on a project for the library to make it the first of it's kind in all of Mongolia. The project is to open the public library to the public! Sounds simple. Traditionally, the way the library worked was you walked up to the counter and asked the librarian for a particular book. The librarian disappeared and, if you were lucky, they returned with that book for you to check out. Not anymore.

What Begs is creating, is a more Western style library with loads of books on shelves for the public to peruse through and check out if they like. The Ulaanbaatar Public Library's slogan is "Knowledge Bank" and beyond cataloging some 80,000 books to be shelved and accessible to the public by September 1st, Begs is also trying to create an atmosphere of interest in libraries."Can you imagine," he inquired, "if a radio interviewer asked, 'Where do you read books?' Maybe no citizen answers, 'In the library.' I want to change this." And so it was that we had a brainstorming session to create public participation in the local library.

Begs has been to quite a few countries on library training programs, including the United States, where he learned different methods and designs of public libraries. He's carefully calculated what his library is capable of. Already he has designated two large rooms to be reading rooms, one separated room to be a children's reading room, and another smaller room for family reading. But still, that doesn't necessarily mean that people will come to the library.He mentioned one technique that he picked up from an American library in which each month had a theme to it. In this technique, he could, for example, promote reading about the air quality in Mongolia. Not too bad of an idea, but there's not much incentive. I suggested an addition to his idea that mimicked my Environmental Discussion Group from Bulgaria. I suggested that he promote reading topics about air quality in Mongolia and then at the end of the month, invite some kind of professional to lead a discussion or make a presentation on the topic. Perhaps the governmental official in charge of the department of air quality or the environment would enjoy a chance to meet people and share some issues he finds important.

I also pitched the idea of having a weekly poetry reading, where different folks from the community could come, once a week, and read aloud the poems they've written. It would be a way to get the community more involved with the library. It would also inspire more citizens to become active members of their community. Begs liked the idea, but there are space issues. Unfortunately, they're not space issues that the likes of Captain Kirk can solve. Begs is more thinking that there isn't enough room for something like that. I tried to imply that a well designed schedule of the smaller rooms should rectify the concern over space - kids and family rooms during the afternoon, and one room set aside for an hour a week for poems! We'll see. With their September 1st opening date, and 80,000 books to categorize, events are likely to come a bit later.The last blockbuster I had to offer was to create a comfortable reading environment for potential readers. I remembered the concept from back home that Barnes and Noble uses in cahoots with Starbucks to get folks to come in and read. I explained that maybe a cafe, offering tea, coffee, water, or juice, would be an ideal environment to invite folks from the community to come in and read!

Begs remembered that he had seen a cafeteria in the U.S. and pondered the thought a while. I think he liked the idea, but again, there's lots of work to do at the moment. And that's the thing about development - it goes in steps. Just like the traditional Mongolian games he's been teaching me, Begs has the first few steps of the opening of this library well planned out and mastered!

There are three people I've met in my life that truly inspire me to be better than I think I can be, and Begs is one of these people. I know he'll succeed, because that's what he does. If not on the first time, he'll learn from each step and eventually conquer the mountain of development.

One of the problems Tim and I encountered when searching for partner organizations, is that nothing seemed to exist in Russia. Perhaps this was due to the control and power that the Russian government enjoys over it's people? We figured that allowing a non-governmental organization probably wasn't in the cards for this country. But since Russia was on our route, and we wanted to incorporate it into our project, we were struck with a problem - How do we remain consistent to our project goals and gain insights into Russians' perspective on the world?

My whole Russian Visa Fiasco started in April when I first applied for a visa at the Russian Embassy in Moldova. Failure sent me to Ukraine, Finland, and finally to Estonia where I was able to acquire a visa! However, success didn't feel as it should have being that my 30 day visa had turned into 9 days, and my seven city itinerary had turned into two.

Despite my disappointment in the length of the Russian leg of my trip, I could not stop smiling while going through the airport song-and-dance to get to my first Siberian city, Novosibirsk.

I got to the airport in Riga, Latvia four hours early expecting problems. Just as my brilliant mind had prepared me, so I received my problems. I wasn't in the computer for the flight. I complained that I had done everything online and that there were no paper tickets, it was all electrical. I even showed her all the numbers I had written down from the confirmation email I received. "Those are billing numbers, not flight reservation numbers," she politely informed me. I had to hold in my thought of, 'Well, what the hell do you think I paid for?' Soon enough, however, she managed to locate someone on the phone who could verify that indeed I did pay for a ticket. Thanks! I arrived to Moscow at 10 pm and had four hours to find my connecting flight. Turns out, I needed all four hours.

Sitting in the Sheremetyevo airport, I stared at the flight information screen, dumbfounded at not being able to find my connection. After some time, I managed to find an information booth that still had a worker inside. She informed me that I was at the wrong terminal and that I'd have to take a bus to number 2. OK. Standing at the bus stop, I couldn't help but notice that no buses were coming. Hmmm. In super rough Russian I asked a gal standing near me if she new when the bus came. "Very rarely." she responded. Super. I went back inside and located a different information booth and asked again about my connecting flight. Banking on good old Russian inconsistency, I was rewarded with shuttle transfer information! In less than an hour, I was at terminal 2, standing in another security line.

I had forgotten to pour out my water when I got up to the x-ray machine and figured that security would simply confiscate it when I got there. Nope. My one liter water bottle was 2/3 full and the lady behind the x-ray let it slide! She said something to me, but upon seeing my patented smile-of-confusion that I gave her, she just turned to her colleague, shrugged and laughed. So I continued on to the gate.

I stood in a small room with a bunch of other people waiting for the shuttle to take us to the plane. I could see three no-smoking signs from where I stood. I could also see six people huddled around a trash can just beneath one of the signs - all of them smoking. The ticket guy walked through and said what I thought to be, "Hey, dumbasses, can't you see the signs? They say 'No Smoking!'" But perhaps he said something more to the affect of, "Hello." because the six smokers just looked up at him and then continued smoking.

After my lengthy night flight and quite a few time zones later, I found myself in Novosibirsk - the capital of Siberia and the center of Russia! I chose Novosibirsk as one of my two Russian cities because it's the hub for science in Russia. I had big dreams of setting up a discussion group with some science students or scientists to talk about the history of Russia's contributions to science. My host's brother was a PhD in physics. Her other brother, and her father were PhDs in Chemistry. My host was a fantastic gal that studied marketing, and she showed me a very unique side of Russia.

First on our agenda was a cat show. Not super scientific, but interesting in a certain light. Judges from all over Russia and one from Germany scored the cats of wacky cat-owners. I've never seen so much stress in a room over whether or not you could shake the brains out of a cat and have it not hiss or swipe at you. Pet-people are strange. Next up, was a cosmetics show.Just as bizarre as the cat show, the cosmetics show was something I've never experienced. I was one of only three guys in the crowd, which to me was cool but seeing their faces I could tell they didn't share my opinion. The show was marketed as an instructional deal that my host's friend scored tickets to. But it ended up being a big sales pitch with mild entertainment and lunch. At least the lunch was nice.

I spent my last remaining time in Novosibirsk with my host and her friends at the city's 115th birthday celebration! It was a wild event! Streets were closed down and stages were erected all over the center. On the stages were different kinds of performances - youth dance teams that competed against each other, orchestras and opera singers, as well as some pop stars singing their silly pop music! It was a high energy day that not even the rain could spoil. The dance team competitions were my favorite. Different styles of Russian dance, traditional and modern, done with such enthusiasm and grace! I could have watched them forever!

My host took me to the train station for my departure from Novosibirsk. I took a leg of the Trans Siberian Railway that lasted 32.5 hours! Upon finding my place on the train, I discovered that two people were sitting in it. This was because their beds were above mine and mine was the communal area. So I got to share!

I really didn't know how anything worked, but before long the people near my place were all engaged in conversation with me. No one, of course, spoke English. We relied on my Bulgarian skills, which were taxed to the max! I felt like I was speaking like a beginner all over again - But I guess that's because I was. I was a beginning Russian speaker!We managed to chat about all kinds of things - what I was doing there, politics, food, jokes, vodka, etc. The food thing was fun - All through Russia I was asked about cheeseburgers in America. "Is that why all Americans are fat?" and "Do you normally eat cheeseburgers for breakfast?" were common questions I received. I guess they're as blind as my question of, "Will someone please drink vodka with me?" I didn't get one single chance to try Russian vodka with Russians. I couldn't even find anyone that drank it. Sure there were stories... But no one wanted to drink with me. As the 32.5 hours of time progressed, I became "Andrewsha" to my new friends. The 'sha' ending on the name is a cute way of talking to your friends.

I arrived in Irkutsk late at night and had problems finding my host, but eventually I managed. My time in Irkutsk was largely not worth writing about, except for another festival that I happened upon. I'm lucky that way.

The Boyatski Festival celebrated the Asian tribes/people of Russia. They did all kinds of performances and blew my mind with what they could get their bodies to do! My favorite was the three person jump-rope! Dang!Finally, my visa was set to expire so I jumped on another train bound for Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. It lasted 34 hours, but my time was easily spent conversing with a young couple on their honeymoon. He was from Australia and she was from Ireland. They'd been living in England and were taking a few months to travel to Australia. We shared travel stories and laughs - and finally, a bottle of vodka!

I had come to Russia with only a few days to find a project. I had hoped for a discussion group about science as a means to enter the mentality here and gain a new perspective. As I sat on the train with my new friends, telling them all about my Russian experience, I realized that my visa issues, festivals, shows, hosts, and adventures spoke loads about Russia itself. I smiled at the thought of being able to learn so much from a country in such a little amount of time. And with that I mentally prepared myself for my final destination - Mongolia!

A Mongolian police officer joined us in our cabin for the border crossing. He had been a participant in the Boyatski Festival in Irkutsk. As we crossed, Mongolian customs officials boarded the train, collected our passports, opened our bags, and searched the cabin. Our new buddy, grabbed our half-finished bottle of vodka from under some blankets where we hid it. I thought he was going to rat us out! I was pissed! But before I knew it, he was bribing the head customs officer with our vodka! He poured a big glass for him and the officer sat down with us. Hell if I was gonna let him drink all our vodka so I grabbed the mug and took some down between his sips! Ha! It was the wildest thing, ever! And our cabin mate did the same thing with the next official that came in, too!

Our vodka disappeared quickly, but I didn't complain because how often do you get a chance to drink with border officials?! We figure our buddy was bribing the officials because he was transporting weapons from the festival and didn't want to have to explain them. It worked. If you can't drink vodka with Russians, by heck, you certainly can with Mongolian border officials! Mongolia ought to be an interesting place.

You've probably been asking this whole time, how does that Andrew kid keep finding those wonderful hosts he writes about? And if you haven't been asking, well then, you should be!

I've been participating in a project at http://www.couchsurfing.com/ that puts travelers in touch with one another. It's based on facilitating culture exchanges between travelers who want more than the typical tourist activities from their travels.

It works like this: If you're a traveler (a person who loves to travel), but you're not currently traveling - you offer up your couch for fellow travelers. This gives them a place to stay while you both engage in cross cultural exchanges. But it's not just for lodging. Some people are uncomfortable with letting strangers stay at their homes, so they simply meet them for coffee or a drink, or show them around their city. The main idea, though, is to facilitate culture exchange through dialogue - just like our Supercross08 project!If you're a traveler on the road, you can search a database of fellow travelers and find someone who is willing to host you!The entire project is free on both sides, guest and host, but gifts are common and very polite. This can range from a trinket from your home town, to a bottle of wine, or even cooking a meal! Of course, none of this is necessary, but being that I'm super nice, I always try to find some way to give something of myself to my host.

You may now be asking, is that Andrew kid crazy? He's been staying with complete strangers this whole time! Ok, so it's true I've been staying at the homes of complete strangers, but it's not so crazy! It just takes a bit of openness and flexibility because each situation is completely different!

I've stayed in amazingly clean and new apartments, and I've stayed in apartments where everything inside has been salvaged from city dumpsters. I've used showers more high tech than I've ever seen, and I've had to take a bucket bath, or go without. I've slept on the floor in a hallway, and I've slept in super comfortable beds in separate rooms. I've had to share a bed with a drunk, snoring, puking guy, and I've gotten to share a bed with a beautiful woman. I've been handed keys to the flat and been told 'see ya', and I've been locked in (and out) of flats for hours at a time. I've also been accompanied, non-stop, by my host so there's no need for a key! I've had to walk miles following poor directions to find my host's home, and I've been picked up at the airport and greeted with a hug. I've stayed with hosts as old as 60, and as young as 18. I've stayed with a host for as long as two weeks, and I've stayed with a host for as little as three hours.

I've been surfing couches since before our project began, and on this trip, I haven't had to pay for a hotel or hostel since early March! I've stayed with students, doctors, nurses, journalists, writers, translators, bankers, managers, engineers, artists, psychologists, teachers, factory workers, sailors, computer programers, Peace Corps Volunteers, program coordinators, cashiers, retired folks, unemployed people, sales people, gay people, transsexual people, straight people, buddhists, and just about every type of person you could think of! I've cooked meals for my hosts, and I've received meals from my hosts. I've had conversations that challenge my mind, and I've had conversations that challenge my patience. I've been entertained by wild stories and crazy people, and I've been bored with people that I fail to click with. I've made friends for a weekend, and I've made friends for life. I've shared laughs, ideas, inspiration, motivation, stories, recipes, and my super cool jacket with various hosts along the way! Every experience is totally different, and it's an adventure each time!

Here is a typical account of couchsurfing (And when I say 'typical' I mean totally unique!):

My host met me at the bus station and we went back to her apartment to drop off my stuff. We talked about university coursework and the differences between universities in Europe and the United States. Then we went off to meet her friends. It started raining so we just hung out in their apartment, cooked dinner and drank wine! They didn't have a corkscrew so they used a screw and a pair of pliars to get the cork out of the wine bottle! Clever girls! Two nights later and one country to the south, I surfed the couch of the stage manager at The New Riga Theater, the largest theater in all of Latvia. I met my host at a landmark that we had talked about through emails. She took me to her flat and I dropped off my stuff and then we headed to the theater. It was the last performance of the season, Revizor (The Inspector General). She got me a free ticket in the second row and printed out summaries of the three acts in English. The opening scene went like this: The curtains were drawn and there were three roosters on the stage. Everything was silent. Suddenly, one cock mounted another and there was lots of unpleasant squawking! Everyone laughed! Then the actors came onto the stage, which was set up like an old Russian soup kitchen. They all did different things, working or eating, each making different noises that came together and made music! Music by kitchen utensils! I was taken, and it was intense! Then they started speaking Latvian and I had to consult my notes to figure out what was going on. Three hours later, the show finished and I became a new fan of theater performances! Since my host is connected, I got to spend the rest of the night at the after party with all the actors and managers and technicians! It was super cool! The very next night I was in a different city, a different country even, ice skating my brains out with my host and earning a quarter sized blister on the arch of my foot! Two days later, I used my sore foot to climb to the roof of a 15 story communist style apartment block that was never finished, to have donuts and tea for breakfast!Of course, it's not all smiles, laughs, and free dinners. I've been stranded by someone telling me that it was ok to come to their town, but they didn't show up to meet me, and wouldn't answer my calls. I didn't have a backup plan prepared so I was pretty much stuck. And then there was the time that a drunk guy crawled into bed with me, puked and started snoring. Cigarette smoke always kills me so I usually try to avoid smokers... but it doesn't always happen. There are also those random, nasty dogs that hump my leg...

What Couchsurfing is, though, is fantastic - every time! No matter the level of happiness I achieve as an outcome from my experiences with Couchsurfing, each experience is enlightening. And that is what the project is designed for. As with Supercross08, the ideals are based on cultural understanding through direct contact and exchange. In fact, Couchsurfing has helped a great deal with our Supercross08 project. Tim and I have organized entire discussion groups through Couchsurfing contacts! But beyond that, the project lets us facilitate our goals on an individual, and daily, basis rather than in large organized, but infrequent groups. It's a powerful tool that gives impressive insight into whichever cultures of the world you happen to find yourself in. And it allows for great opportunity to share yourself and your own culture with the world!

I have experienced the kindness of strangers, and it's a wonderful thing! And to complete the exchange, I try to give as much kindness of myself, in the role of a stranger, as I possibly can! As a final thought, I'll share a song that's been stuck in my head for a few days, "Oooh baby, baby, it's a wild world! But I can get by just upon a smile!" That's how my version of the song goes, anyway. =)

If I've captured your curiosity, sign up for, and support, this culture exchange project at http://www.couchsurfing.com/! If you're curious about my experiences with Couchsurfing, take a look at my profile and see where I've been, who've I've surfed with, and what they've said about me - just click here!

A lot happened for me in Ukraine, unfortunately, nothing ended up being a Supercross08 project.

So instead of writing about my lack of cultural exchange activities, I will present photodocumentation of a beautiful and exciting place!

I stayed with a guy named Robert Jackson. I met Robert in the Peace Corps in Bulgaria - we were from different groups, but lived in the same city. Robert teaches photography in Kiev and has a few development projects going on.This is a picture of the Arsenal factory in Kiev - one of the last strongholds of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Every weekend in Kiev, the town closes this main strip of the center, near Maidan, to traffic and opens it to pedestrians!

This picture is after a full day of people walking through town with their beers and vodkas listening to different street music, and a couple live concerts!

I got to see the campaign for the mayoral elections of Kiev and compare them to our own election processes. There were 76 candidates but the incumbent mayor managed to maintain his seat.

All over the city, the candidates put up booths like these and hired people to hand out propaganda. One popular trick empolyed by these candidates was to find a "friend" with the same name as an opposing candidate and pay them to run in the race! Clever!

Ukrainian fashion reminded me of a magical place called Bulgaria.

Hooray for Eastern Europe!

We spent five hours at a junk market searching for random camera things and just taking in the experience.

It was interesting to see what kinds of things would sell in Ukraine.

Robert took me to a village 70 kilometers outside of Kiev. We spent the day there hanging out with Robert's photography friend, Igor.

We hiked through the countryside to a resevoir and tried to get the perfect picture of the oncoming storm that almost took us over!

Spent a day checking out the Lavra - a religious site with lots of caves and orthodox churches and such.

Also checked out the war museum, topped with a monument of a towering metal woman holding a shield bearing the Soviet symbol of a hammer and sickle.

Here's a picture of a bit of discord in a place of unity!That was Ukraine according to me. There's more, of course. But if you want to know about it, you'll just have to go there and see it yourself.

More to come about my unending adventure called, "Trying to get into Russia!"

I started applying for a Russian visa in Moldova, about a month ago. It required that I get an invitation from a Russian travel agency so I found one online willing to sell me one. They faxed me the invitation and I headed down to the embassy with high hopes!

I met with a big, unsmiling Russian man who spoke bits and pieces of English.

"This is not acceptable", he informed me. "We need the original invitation. Not a facsimile."

I explained that I don't have a mailing address and this was all I had access to. "Isn't there anything you can do?" I implied.

"No. This is our law."

Well son of a gun. A Russian telling me bribes are out of the question. Crap.

So I headed on to my next stop - Ukraine. The Russian embassy in Ukraine accepted my faxed copy of an invitation, but would only give me a 14 day visa. This, too, was not acceptable as I had calculated that I'd need the 30 day visa in order to see everything I wanted to see. The travel agency I bought the invitation from told me that the embassy in Finland was fax friendly and issued 30 day visas! Such inconsistency! Go Russia!

I traveled to Helsinki hoping to finish this hassle and a half that it's been trying to get a Russian visa worked out! Very frustrating, having to have to travel so far out of my way... but... Hot damn! Finland is cool! I haven´t breathed air this clean since the Great Portuguese Deluge of 08, when Tim and I witnessed the cleaning of the air by torrential rain falls as we tried to sleep under the clouds! It´s an amazing thing to have clear skies, clean streets, green all around, and air that is truly refreshing! And I´m staying in a capital city! It reminds me of a magical land called America. Or at least my part of America - the good old Pacific Northwest! The bad rap America gets for leading the world in pollution is overshadowing the fact that America is leading most of the world in environmental regulations.

On my way down to the embassy to get my visa for Russia, a bird shit on me. I thought to myself, 'Some cultures believe this to be a sign of good luck!' After four frustrating hours inside the embassy, I reminded myself, 'Some cultures also believe that eating the brains of your dead relatives gives you their wisdom...' I'm gonna make an effort to stick closer to my own culture from now on. And that means bird poop is bad - just like my luck.

I handed over my application documents (plural) and passport to the smiling lady at the Russian embassy.

"Oh," she said upon seeing my nationality. "You will have to wait two weeks to get your visa."

Two weeks!?!?

"Isn't there some kind of express service or something? I mean, there has to be another way! Isn't there anything we can do that's a little faster," I pleaded.

I'm running out of time and I don't have two weeks to wait!

"It's not a question about money," she answered without feeling. "It's the policy for all American citizens."

Nooowww I get it. Thanks Mr. Bush. Your failures continue to make my life abroad an interesting challenge.

Frown.

"Go sit down over there, this is going to take a while," she said. Yeah, two freakin weeks!

I sat and waited for her to process my papers and return with a bill for a visa. Some crazy old coot sat down next to me, as he and I were the only Americans in the joint.

"Yeah, I left the U.S. back in '55 when the politics started getting bad. Lived in Sweden til eight years ago. Been livin' in St. Petersburg ever since. I think Americans are the most brainwashed people I ever met. You ever heard of that aspartame? You know, aspartame? It's got that formaldehyde in it. It's in everything, too! What do you think they put it in food for?" Slight pause - finally. "I'll tell ya." Thanks. "It's for population control. It causes 92 symptoms and one of them is brain tumors!" What an introduction! And it continued! "You know that Jacque Cousteau fella? He said that we ought to be killing 360,000 people a day to keep the earth healthy, or clean, or green, or whatever. I'm not an expert."

"Hi. I'm Andrew." My introduction was quite a bit shorter than his, as I was pretty much speechless.

"Nice ta meet ya." He continued as I tried to figure out if anyone was paying attention around us. "Ya know, this world is run by three different groups of about 12 people and I can name 'em all. One of 'em is in Europe and the other two are in America. They control economies with their wealth!"

"Is that so?" I asked. "Then why is America's economy in the dumps right now?"

"You think they care about you?" he countered. "They don't care about you. These are 200 foot yacht people. Not 100 foot yacht people."

With a smile on my face at this situation, I said, "Well don't you think that if they had the chance, they'd like to be 300 foot yacht people?"

"I see your point," he said quietly. "But it's actually the credit industry that controls the world."

He got cut off by the mean lady who told me I would have to wait two weeks as she called him up to collect his papers. I was next.

She handed everything back to me and said, "You will have to go back to your country of origin to apply for a visa."

What?!?!?! Insane!!! I asked her if there was any reason why.

"Oh, sure. Lots of reasons!" she said with a strange exclamation.

"Well can I know them?" I asked, completely dumbfounded at this situation.

"I'm sorry. I can't discuss it with you."

Hhhhh...... This is all that damned bird's fault.

I priced out a ticket back home and figured it would be cheaper to just head south to Estonia to try for a visa there. 'How Many Russian Embassies Can Andrew Find?' will be the title of my book.

I walked up to the window, now forcing a smile as natural ones have all been spent, and handed the lady my documents that I had downloaded from their website. She threw them away and handed me a couple different ones that weren't available online. I filled them out and returned them. She stamped some things and cut some others and then told me to go stand over there. I said, "OK", which in Russian translates to 'Yes ma'am!'

After only a couple hours, she returned with a bill! Woo hoo! I had to pay some guy some money and they took my passport away! That may sound like a bad combination of events, but to me, it was the pure feeling of relief! No more Russian embassies! So now I wait. 15 days. They'll let me enter Russia on June 25, but I have to leave by July 5. My 30 day Russian trip is now nine. It's a pretty big country to cross in only nine days so I've decided not to sleep while I'm there.

Although I still don't have a visa in hand (or a passport for that matter), I'm still considering myself successful! After only four embassies and five or six weeks of trying! Not bad! And I've been witness to some amazing things along the way - as I've surely written about. Though some things I haven't written about. My time in Finland, for example. In this case, I'm gonna let the pictures do the typing.

Plenty more of these pictures, with a slight description if you click here!

Now then, be happy for me! I'm going to Russia!

My time in Moldova was extremely enlightening. Moldova is a complex mix of cultures, people, and politics, struggling for their own identity. Before World War Two, this region was called, “Romania”… or at least, the Moldavian province of Romania. But then the Soviets moved in and claimed it as their own. The Moldavian province of Romania became a ‘proud’ part of the Soviet Union! At least until communism proved itself by falling apart. In 1989 Moldova became its own independent state and denied Romania’s offer to return to its territory.

Since then, Moldova has been dealing with some kind of identity issue. A quick example of this is the language: Russian or Romanian? Most people speak both. But depending on who you talk to, and their background, social class, city, family name, etc, it may be inappropriate to speak one or the other. Romanian is the official language of Moldova, but it’s called Moldovan. It’s as much Romanian in Moldova as it is English in Louisiana. I’m not picking on Louisiana – I’m simply saying that because of an accent, and an identity issue, it’s called Moldovan.

An interesting identity phenomenon in Moldova is a small piece of land called Transnistria. Transnistria is an ‘independent’ country between Moldova and Ukraine. It has its own police, military, currency, and politicians. The only thing it doesn’t have is respect! Transnistria isn’t recognized as a country by any other nation on the planet. It’s officially part of Moldova, but the people there claim that they’re part of the USSR. Not positive, but I assume they have modern things such as newspapers to inform them that the USSR doesn’t exist anymore. But I’ve been wrong before.

In Belti, Moldova, the non-Soviet part of the former Soviet state, I carried on the Supercross08 flame like a communist stamping documents and denying requests!

I managed to find one Jennifer Nelson, a current Peace Corps Volunteer, who ironically, is from Vancouver, WA! Through her, I met up with a youth group called Council for Unity. It’s a mixture of high school kids, nearly 60 strong. Though, on the particular day of my visit, only a handful showed up. A handful of enthused and smiling students were plenty for a nice discussion!

The Council for Unity is a few years old and works on many different projects within the community. Its members are all volunteers who donate their time to participate in several project areas: mass media, sport, and culture. Under these three departments have come many successful projects, including: a big brother/big sister program with the local orphanage, summer sports camps, running a school newspaper, debate competitions between students and teachers, community cleanups, as well as anti-smoking and HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns! We had a chat about being a volunteer in the community and what motivated them to become active.It reminded me of the meeting Tim and I had in Cairo with Resala when we talked about Islam with a bunch of community volunteers at an orphanage. But unlike that meeting, none of these kids cited religion as being a factor for motivating them to be active.

My first question was simple: Why did you decide to join the Council for Unity? The first gal I asked, said that she joined the council for social reasons. She explained that she has lots of fun volunteering and gets an opportunity to meet new friends who share a similar interest. It’s a refreshing perspective on youth entertainment and very far from the norm of video games and time spent in front of the TV. The second guy in the circle we sat in said that he joined the council because he wanted to be a part of the change happening in his community. Or more specifically, he wanted to help influence that change. I love being active and I love it even more when I meet people who share the same passion for being active in their community! The rest of the responses were more or less the same as these two, or slight variations of them. We then focused on the specifics of the change they wanted in society.

Like other countries in this region, Moldova has its share of corruption and mafia. This corruption/development-anchor exists at many levels here. Even for high school students. Paying for grades, as they told me, is a common practice among their peers. It’s something students do to be able to compete for a place in a university. Their grades are on a 1 to 10 scale, and they said that if you’re good in history and get a 10, but bad in chemistry and get a 7, then you can’t get into college to study history. So a simple solution is to pay the teacher to give you a better grade in chemistry. After all, when is a historian likely to use chemistry? An interesting argument, I mused, realizing that I said the same thing when I was in high school, only I reversed the chemistry and history in my perspective. I explained to them that in hindsight, it wasn’t history that the history teachers were trying to teach me. They were trying to teach me how to learn so that when I finally made it to a university or life, I’d be ready to study and learn whatever came my way.

We talked about ways to have a positive affect on this particular aspect of corruption and discussed the possibility of the Council for Unity uniting students to boycott this ‘paying for grades’ practice. They key, they decided, was to get people to be responsible, to take responsibility for their actions. And the best way to do that was to increase participation in the community.

If you sit on the sidelines or manipulate the system for your advantage, you don’t have a personal connection with the way things happen in your community. But if you’re active in your community and participate in local events and clubs, then your connection to how society functions is increased and responsibility seems to fall into place as an obligatory part of the equation.The Council for Unity was created by youth leaders and is maintained by them as well. They’re fulfilling their duty with impressive efficiency, as their community participants are ever increasing and the change in their community becomes more evident with each project they complete. They’re responsible for the future of the community, and it’s a responsibility that they’ve proven they can handle.

After four hours of fun train ride, I ended up at the wrong station in a town called Iasi (pronounced: yash). I had to walk to the next one and when I found it, it was also the wrong one. I got yelled at for walking over a red carpet in the station that had been rolled out, but apparently not for me. After giving my best lost-looks, I finally found where I needed to be to cross the border into Moldova.

I flirted my way through the Romanian customs line and got onto a small slow train that shuttles people across the border. On the train, there were a bunch of old babas smuggling not cigarettes, but colorful bathroom towels and baby toys into Moldova. I found it very funny, and later saw a large collection of these towels for sale at a local market. The Moldova border guard didn't know what to do with my passport. She kept holding it up to the light to see if it was real. She finally let me through, but customs didn't know what to do with me either. The guy sat me down and had me fill out some documents and told me to list all the currency and financial assets I had. I listed some Euro that I now keep as backup. He looked at the form, looked at me, and said, "Present".

I'm terrified of being asked for bribes, and my normal paranoia about spending money influenced me to hear, "Present?" I was slightly panicked, as there was no one else around, and if some customs guard wanted to take advantage of me, what rights did I have?

I looked at him like, 'Are you kidding me?' and waited for his response. It happened as "Present!" with the stress on the first syllable, as in 'show me'! haha!

It was raining and I was in a tiny, tiny border town, but I managed to find an ATM for some local currency. I conquered the bus system (stood around till someone offered to help me) and then took a bus to Balti. At the final stop the bus driver turned to me and said the name of the town. I got off and got my stuff out of the back, proud that I had finally made it here! I looked up at the driver who looked at me as if to say - 'Now what are you gonna do, kid?' so I smiled and showed him the address of my next host.

There were some university students standing near and offered to help with their English skills. I told them where I wanted to go and the driver motioned for me to get back in his little mini-bus. The two students came along and translated a conversation. The driver was hugely excited to be driving around an American! I don't think he'd ever met one before. He said something and I asked for a translation. The university student said, "He wants to know if you have any chewing gum." I felt like I was back in WW2 or something! It was hilarious!Welcome to Moldova!

Leaving Bulgaria was a hard thing for me to do. I've become quite attached to the lifestyle and of course, to the people with whom I've bonded. Reflecting on my departure I found a feeling almost identical to the one I have when I leave the states. I'm leaving my comfort zone. No longer secure. No longer absolutely safe. No longer in the company of my wonderful friends. Good news is, in most cases, friends are easy to come by when you're on the road!

I arrived in Bucharest, Romania to a rainy Monday morning. It was cold, I was hungry, I was tired, and my bank card wouldn't work in any of the four ATMs I tried. It's not the best combination of circumstances to be in. I went into a bank thinking that perhaps they could find a solution for me, being that banking is their business and all. "Nothing's wrong with our machine! Go try another ATM!", was the defensive response I got to my plea for help. "Gee wiz! Another ATM? Why, I've only thought of that four times already. Thanks for the advice, Mr. Banker! I'll be on my way now!" On my way to find someone else, that is!

I found a police officer that spoke great English and I asked him for some help. I decided that getting to my host was the best option. From there I could email my bank and complain properly. But I had to get there, and I had no money. I showed the cop the address I had to get to and asked if it was walkable.

"Oh no!", he said, "You'll need to take the subway or a bus."

"But I don't have any money." I explained.

"Well, you'll have to pay for the subway. But... You don't always have to pay for the bus." I laughed cause I knew where this was going. He continued, "You only need a ticket if the ticket control people come by and check to see if you have a ticket."

"What if they 'catch me' with out a ticket?", I inquired. He shrugged as if to say that I was on my own at that point. Great.

Basically, the lessons of the morning were: banks never make mistakes, except when they do, and although police men are employed to enforce the law, they don't always know it.

Luckily, I'm more prepared than a boyscout. I had some Euro on me, and used it to buy some local currency. Enough to get me some food and a bus ticket!

I wandered the city for several hours trying to figure out the buses, the street signs, and how to avoid the damned stray dogs that kept trying to bite me. After some rough sketches, an equation or two, and some great mime, I was able to conquer the bus system. I couldn't find the street sign I needed to save my life. Finally, about the 40th person I asked was nice old man who told me, "It's over there." Things were coming together, however, I still could not pass a stray dog that wouldn't bark at me, though there were a few that didn't try to bite me!

It's a good thing to travel. Your eyes are opened to so many wondrous places, people, cultures, and landscapes! Not only do you get constant adventure and excitement, but you really get a sense of deep appreciation for the comforts of life back home. Try to learn that in your fancy pants colleges!

I found myself in Focsani (pronounced: fok-shan), Romania (pronounced: romania) staying at the home of a couple Peace Corps Volunteers. They were good guys and I enjoyed hearing their PC experiences. They let me tag along to the birthday partry of one of their students. She was turning 19, so we bought her an appropriate gift: two bottles of wine and some Simpsons candy.

I kind of expected the night to go over like a typical Bulgarian party - or similarly anyway, being that they're neighbors and all. But just like the languages, the parties are completely different! Oana's mom cooked up a huge feed for all to enjoy. There were all kinds of foods that I've never tried before. Ok, so I've had eggplant before, but eggplant here is translated to 'blue tomato' and I've never had it in the form that I had it here! Mmmm! =) We ate and drank as the night progressed and then the music began!

We all headed outside to where they were barbequing up some chicken and sausages. Next to the cement barbeque was a picnic table filled with musical friends. They played guitars, bongos, a harmonica, moracas, and one of those tiny simble-shaker deals! The one guy sang all night long - different traditional folk songs, while everyone danced and laughed! It was a rockin' good time!After Oana blew out her birthday candles, her boyfriend grabbed her with the help of 3 other big guys. They proceeded to toss her into the air, 19 times, while everyone else cheered! Haha! She was a bit shaken up, but this is tradition, dammit!

I spent most of the night talking with her classmates/friends who were content to ask me all kinds of questions regarding the differences between Romania, Bulgaria, and the U.S. It was a similar conversation to ones I'd had in Bulgaria, but these kids seemed to have more optimism and faith in their country to develop properly. Granted, they'd be the first to admit there's corruption and other problems, but I was impressed that they were able to overlook those hurdles and expect more from their country!It was a far better time than I had expected to have in Romania as I'm traveling much too quickly to really see anything at the moment. The party lasted till morning and I finally got to bed at 4 AM. Just in time to wake up at 7:30 AM in order to catch my 8:30 train to Moldova!

I had the wonderful opportunity to help install a solar electrical system and celebrate Easter, Orthodox style!

We spent a full day installing solar panels, which will be used to collect light energy from the sun and convert it through a very fascinating process to produce electrical energy!As far as alternative energy goes, solar energy is my favorite! I dig the scientific process of a light ray knocking off an electron from a silicone molecule, time and again, to produce a flow of electrons - which is electricity! It's fantastic! It's simple! And it's technology that's 50 years old or older! Unfortunately, this alternative energy is also the most polluting. That sounds shocking, but the truth is that the processes needed produce the silicone, solar cells is dependant on many toxic chemicals. Bummer! But in the end, you have a product that is inert to the environment and will produce "clean" electrical energy for many years!

In Bulgaria, electricity costs around 6.4 cents per kilowatt hour (according to today's exchange rates). However, European law dictates (in Bulgaria) that if you hook up solar panels from your home and introduce the electricity produced back into the grid, the electric company is bound by law to buy the electricity from you at 69.6 cents per kWh! It's a fantastic deal for the homeowner! Word on the street is that this is done to stimulate alternative energy production in Bulgaria. I personally feel that the law will change once the government finds out about it.I was a little bit bummed that the energy harnessed from this process was simply going to be sold back into the system rather than used at the home which holds them up. But realistically, I can see the economic incentive in what this project is about. Plus, when I rationalize that every kWh produced by these solar cells is one less kWh needed from hydroelectric or nuclear energy production, well, I feel mighty fine about the idea.

The idea of this project, which was written by PECSD, is to educate a small community that has never seen solar panels about different kinds of energy sources. In addition to that, the project is a test to see if a small, poor community can find it financially feasible to purchase and operate this kind of system. (The difference being that this is traditionally a system that one would find in the states, or Germany, where people have money and motivation to invest in such things.)

For a full day, we were installing these eight photovoltaic modules, and then the rest of the weekend was allowed to happen!In case you were wondering, the Orthodox Easter is celebrated near a month after the Catholic Easter. I, being without religion, don't really care about the significance of this. I was simply excited to partake in some kind of local, traditional festivities!

The celebration started with the whole family gathering around the table. Each of us selected a hardboiled egg that had been painted that morning. We then smashed our eggs together with the people sitting at the table to see who had the strongest egg. Iliyan kept saying it was a contest for the kids, but I could see that he dearly wanted to have the strongest egg. There's no prize, but glory, and he was going for it! Unfortunately, he lost to a six-year-old girl named Blagovesta. Better luck next year, Iliyan! Next came the food!We started with what appeared at the time to be an unending salad. Granddad was on one end of the table complaining that he can't eat salad on account of not having any teeth. The rest of the family yelled at him to just eat and pointed out that he does have teeth. Bulgarian family dynamics are quite different than in the states. Kids live at home until they're married. And sometimes, they still live at home even after they're married. The bonds between siblings and parents are much stronger than what I've observed in the states, but at the same time, it could appear to an outsider (me) that there's a complete lack of respect for one another. The situation can look like it changes on a dime, but in fact there is a deep respect for family members here. Any one of the kids would jump to be first to donate a liver to the drunken uncle - if only it were possible.

After the salad came a huge selection of meats to go along with the wine, which I forgot to mention that we were already drinking even before the salads came. The main course was a sort of rabbit stew that was amazing! I gorged myself properly but eventually found my limit. I finally stopped eating to the sound of, "Hey, why aren't you eating anymore? You're too skinny."

We passed the rest of the time laughing and joking and eating desert! Easter desert is a sweet bread called, 'Kozunak' and it's quite nice. We also spent a bunch of time talking about American politics. Of course, their news covers our elections, so they know exactly what's going on. The issue is, they don't understand any of it. I have to say, I'm in a bit of the same boat. I keep getting the question: "So who's gonna be the next president? The black man, or the white woman?" I've started telling people McCain. They love talking about American politics with an American, but alas it was time for me to go. My train was waiting for me at the station so I had to hit the road. I received some very pleasant goodbyes, and a bag of food that will probably last me a week! Iliyan's father walked me out to the street and with a tear in his eye, told me that I was his boy. It took me completely by surprise, as he's not the emotional type. Not even after all that wine. I gave him a hug and promised to return. And I will.

I left their home and headed for the train station, still drunk. Over the three day weekend, I had eaten more than I had in the full previous week! I forced food down, beyond what I thought was my limit. The food was absolutely delicious and my glass of wine was never less than half full!

My time in Bulgaria has been GREAT! It's like I never left! I love being here, and I love what I do when I am here! I got to help with the paper recycling campaign. I got to help with the biodiesel project that I started. I got to clean the beach. I got to install super solar cells! And I got to translate a whole bunch of documents and emails! I bonded with people who I see more as my family than as friends! Man, and I even got an amazing Easter dinner! It's hard to leave a place, and a feeling like this. But knowing that I'll be back someday makes it a bit easier to pack my bag. Plus I'm running out of time, and I already ran out of money... =)

Amongst Bulgaria's problems is a complete lack of governmental leadership. The government that currently exists is so corrupt that the EU has stopped most development funding. Many people here have a lack of faith in anything positive to come from either the EU or the Bulgarian government. I understand - it's tough to have faith when you live in the poorest EU country and see your politicians driving nicer cars than politicians from other EU countries. It's an odd situation in Bulgaria - communism hasn't yet been weeded out of politics, neither has corruption nor mafia influence - even after 19 years of "democracy"! The 45 years of communism that this country endured has really taken a toll on the mentality of its people. Bulgarians have been conditioned to leave the power in the hands of the government. Unfortunately, the government's hands are too tied up with mafia influence, communist bureaucracy, and outright corruption that there just isn't room on the agenda for any kind of progress for the country. That doesn't bode well for an elected official who actually wants to influence positive change! Lucky for Bulgarian politicians, that's not what they're interested in. Perhaps that's why anyone who plays a significant role in the advancement of Bulgaria is smart enough to not run for office!

For our Earth Day celebration, Supercross08 worked with Yo Ho Hostel to organize the best beach clean up that Varna, Bulgaria has ever seen! The just-hearted folks that run Yo Ho Hostel are constantly involving themselves in environmental projects! They even have plans to clean the beach again after the tourist season - no Earth Day necessary! Together, we set out to inspire people to take responsibility for their community!

We started off the day at 10 AM with about 25 people. Most of them came from the group of girls I wrote about in the previous posting. 25 isn't a lot. But as the day went on, we were joined by the Bulgarian Scouts, passers by, EVS (European Voluntary Services) and Peace Corps Volunteers, as well as other late risers! It was an extremely successful action! For nearly six hours we filled bag after bag after bag, until the beach was clean! Garbage bags were provided by a local trash company called Adian, and the Bulgarian Scouts brought along some gloves for people to use! The Bulgarian Scouts are like the Boy Scouts of America, but they include girls! Take note, BSA, tolerance, respect, and integration are fine values to instill upon youth in addition to tying knots!

We cleaned about a mile of coastline that hasn't yet been "purchased" by someone to open a club or a bar. Of course, the majority of the waste we collected was leftover from the nearby, already existing bars and clubs. For me, this is a sign of irresponsibility on the part of tourists, clients, bar/club owners, and particularly the local government for failing to enforce regulations.The "undeveloped" beach (the part without bars or clubs) has a nice pedestrian walkway. Pedestrians, often unwillingly, share it with cars as it runs the length of the beach. It's located about 40 or 50 meters from the water - the only thing separating the two, is sand. While collecting pollution from near the walkway, I continued to encounter construction debris. This was because of two things: 1) the walkway is being widened and 2) new bars/clubs are being developed. I asked one of the guys from Yo Ho Hostel whether we should be cleaning up their garbage, as they were still about, or should we leave it for them to throw away when they finish. His response was, "It doesn't matter who you ask or whose responsibility it is, everyone will tell you that it's someone else's job to clean this." Later in the day, I roped myself into a conversation with Kiril Yordanov, the mayor of Varna who has to have all his decisions approved by the Bulgarian mafia, though rumor has it he's allowed to take potti breaks and order from a menu on his own accord. I asked him about this destructive phenomenon. He competently answered, "Responsibility? What's that?"

It's a bit frustrating that most of the stuff we were finding came from existing, nearby establishments who are unwilling and uninterested in helping maintain the natural health of the environment. One would think that upon bestowing the perspective that it's more appealing for clientele to come to a nice place rather than one with litter all about, it would be enough to influence an owner to be responsible for the area around their establishment. Well, One is wrong! It's just a little glimpse at the bigger picture of how Bulgaria deals with environmental issues. It screams of careless, unsustainable practices as it yields a quick profit in the short term for a select few people who are "connected", and loads of problems for the rest of the community in the long term.

If I hadn't spent the day with optimistic, willing-to-help, responsible people, even I would lose hope for Bulgaria! Fortunately, these promising agents of change are the youth of this country. Meaning, they're tomorrow's leaders. And fine leaders they'll prove to be, too! They have the morale character that allows for the benefit of the many, and they have the aptitude needed to be able to influence others to do good! They are the solution to Bulgarias problems! Just so long as they stay out of Bulgarian politics!As we spent the day saving the world, it was fun and entertaining to receive the reactions of people walking by. The looks on their faces ranged from 'What are you doing?' or 'Why bother?' to 'Gee wiz, you guys are great!' and 'Can I help?' It was the positive reactions that I found inspiring and hopeful. This community is well ready for positive change. They just lack adequate political leadership to guide them.

At the end of the day, we celebrated with a concert! One of the owners of Yo Ho Hostel is the lead singer of a band called "Pizza" and they played a rockin' show that night! Ending a positive day with positive energy is my idea of success!

Do you remember the holiday I kept going on and on about? Well here are a couple videos so you can feel like you too were there!

This is the "baba kick off" to the celebration that is lazarov den!

Young girls go from door to door singing and dancing for the community. They receive gifts of eggs, sweets, and money!

Nearly a year ago, Tim and I were in a village called Asparuhavo for a week-long summer camp. (Click here to read about that wonderful experience.) Today's post, is an update on that story!

The letters that the children wrote to the Ministry of Culture and Education, which were written in an attempt to save the village's only school, were answered via a nationally televised press conference! I was sooo excited at news of this event! Go Democracy! Our Asparuhavo group got to meet with the minister and state their case as to why this 150 year old school should be saved. In fact, it's one of the oldest Bulgarian schools in existence due to the "destructive tendencies" of the Ottoman Empire. The minister listened to their plight and agreed that something should be done, but stated that unfortunately, the preservation of the school didn't lay within his jurisdiction. He instructed that they needed to convince the mayor of Asparuhovo to hear their cause. Their request to the mayor to save the school went unanswered for quite some time because of the normal speed of political happenings and an extra hurdle, local elections.

Almost our entire group traveled back to Asparuhavo, in part, to celebrate Lazarov Den but also to give a presentation to the community on the value of Asparuhavo's continued existence. This holiday consists of young women dressing up in traditional clothing and going from house to house to sing ancient songs. The owners of the houses would come out and give the girls money or sweets. It was fun to watch. But before those celebrations were to begin, presentations were to be made.

The whole thing started with a group of the young girls, all dressed up for success! They did a little song and dance and everyone entered the culture center for the presentation. A few key folks said some words of thanks and then a group of old grandmothers sang a few traditional songs. Finally, our group got the chance to present the significance of this particular village to the community.After the presentation, the girls asked the mayor if he had been able to come up with an idea for procuring funds for the school's continued existence. His response was translated to me by four or five kids at the same time. I think he said something to the affect of there not needing to be any more discussion on the matter and that he would not close the school. His response was met with laughter, and at the time I wasn't sure if the laughs were at his expense, or the student's question. It was later explained to me that through the actions of these children, the mayor had decided to not close the school! However, this turned out to be a typical, misleading politician's response, as he failed to mention that he would in fact discontinue public funding for the school. The trick being that he won't technically close the school, but after teachers' salaries are cut from the payroll it will be they who will close the school. He later took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. "I am innocent of this school's blood," he said. "It is your responsibility!" All the people answered, "Let it's blood be on us and on our children!"

Is there any better way to secure a future for your community than by taking away the tool with which to educate your youth? I think it was the Romans who said, "Let us destroy our schools so that the next generation will be adequately prepared to take over the leadership of our magnificent society. Without knowledge, our youth will be able to care for our aging population. Without education, we will continue to be a prosperous people."Closing the day, we all went back to the place where we had classes a year prior to hang out and reminisce. They made final plans for the next summer camp, which is to happen this summer, and they did 'the horo' and sang! It was a great day! I was stoked to see the group again! And I was excited to receive their excitement at seeing me! I wish more could be done to preserve this historic and much needed school but at the end of the day, there just isn't enough money. Of course, I believe that if Bulgaria was more responsible with how money was dealt with, then issues like the death of villages in a this country wouldn't exist. Can anything be done? Well, some British investors are increasingly playing a role in stabilizing village populations. Why, there are already plans to turn this particular school into a hotel!

Corruption has the ability to rain down upon us all and inconvenience our comfortable lives. But just when you think you're gonna catch a cold, the dry towel of foreign investment comes along to save the day. The only thing left to wonder is, did all that dirty and foreign money wash away the culture and traditions or just buff out a few tarnished spots?