WHAT I´M DOING

I am rock climbing tomorrow for a couple days. I´ll go to Jatun Machay with 3 guys from Colorado who are very strong climbers. I´ll pretend. Very interesting rock spire garden kind of place. There are pictures of it on the picasa site in the Peru 06 album. Very stark landscape.

Friday I have been invited to teach some watershed science in a rural school about 5km outside Huaraz in a pueblito called Marian. That should prove interesting.

This is kind of what I expected, and I suppose I´m a bit proud of myself for predicting it: some people, when I mention watershed science, I want to talk to teachers, I want to encourage stewardship of the watershed, etc are going to throw up walls, say imposible, no se puede, and so on. Others will invite me into their classroom the next day. And so it is. I talked to the principal of the math and science high school here yesterday, and he said "very difficult, my teachers come from Lima and go home in the same day." While that hard to believe (although all the locals I told that believe it), if true is quite amazing--that would be 14 hours on a bus in a day, 6 hours of teaching. I suppose they must sleep on the hellride buses. The buses do have very reclinable seats.

There is a lot going on down here as far as projects and development. I suppose one could get into this development work and really dedicate yourself to it if you were good at grantwriting and so on.

My new goal, which I think is the most sustainable idea, is to encourage the students here to form environmental clubs that try to do some activism. That would be VERY COOL. I hope I´ll be able to post more on that some other time.

Also, I want to go to Chavin, the site of Huari ruins. Huari was an incredible culture before the Incas that united people from the forest, mountains, and the coast with religious trickery. Check it out on wikipedia or something. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huari

I also really want to climb a mountain and ski down. This might not happen.

I will go stay at a refuge higher up in the mountains sooner or later as well.