August 12, 2008

It seems I’ve been a bad blogger for the past little while… so I’ll try to review everything that’s happened since my last entry and update this thing more regularly in the coming weeks and months! Where to even begin?

Our students have been very busy wrapping up their first packed semester. Their hard work and dedication continues to inspire me and I am very excited to continue working with them in our second semester. I’ll be teaching aqueous geochemistry, a course I taught last year in El Salvador so I’m a little less nervous than I was at the onset of our first semester here in Bolivia! This semester we’ll be The Jawa: Trying to start my motorcycle... don’t worry, I do have a helmet.welcoming two Canadians to Bolivia: Jordi Helsen who has been teaching in El Salvador and will enlighten us about groundwater contamination and Dr. David Rudolph from the University of Waterloo who will lead our course in field methods.

Outside of the office, I’ve been busying myself learning Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance… practicing on the motorcycle I bought a few months ago. It’s a 1968 Jawa, built in Czechoslovakia (when there was a Czechoslovakia) and it’s still running well. Of course, “running well” for a forty year old bike involves a fair bit of work so I’ve had plenty of opportunity to learn about motorcycle maintenance and loads of frustrations that call upon Zen.

I’ve also spent quite a bit of time in the past few months with Brad and Jules, two volunteers from Queen’s University who dedicated their summer to helping a local NGO right here in Sucre. My love of Bolivia was kindled in 2003 when I arrived here as a volunteer with the Queen’s Project on International Development (QPID; http://engsoc.queensu.ca/qpid/), just like Brad and Jules. Their visitToad in the hole: Brad, a volunteer from Queen’s University, lobbing a disc at the “sapo”. was capped off with a visit to the town of Yotala, just outside of Sucre, with their host family and me. I think the highlight of the visit was a rousing game of “sapo” (toad) which involves tossing discs at a small metal toad in hopes of landing one right in the toad’s mouth. I don’t think we were too successful at sapo, but we had fun trying. I know Brad and Jules will be missed by their host family, their colleagues and me and I wish them luck with whatever comes next.

In national news, Bolivia held a recall referendum on Sunday and Evo Morales managed to hang on to his presidency with 62.4% support (though five of nine Bolivian departments opposed him). We’ll see where this clearly divided country heads in the coming months. As for local news, professors at the USFX are well into the third week of their strike (fortunately, this is not affecting our project activities). They’re seeking a wage increase to keep up with rampant inflation.