Well, Because of access to the internet being either nonexistent or very expensive, I decided not not blog during my trip to Sierra Leone from June 16th to July 10th. While much happened, I figured I would write some reflective experiences that I had later and include them on this blog.

June 14-16, 2008

London, England

Before flying out to Sierra Leone, all the students and one of the program directors were to meet in London-Heathrow Airport on the 16th to make sure we were all there. It was advised that we all arrive in London on the 15th so that there were no flight problems that would keep us from making the BMI flight to Sierra Leone. Almost all of the students took advantage of this by arriving a few days before the 16th and enjoying London before the alterity of Sierra Leone.

I arrived on the 14th in the early afternoon. I flew in alone because I splurged with flying on British Airways non-stop. British Airways has always treated me well in the past, so I decided to continue that tradition. It was my first time staying in London, so I did not know what to expect for their hostels, restaurants, pubs, or hospitality. I was pleasantly surprised.

The hostel I stayed at was decent in its accommodation. It was part of Holland Park, so access to the hostel was limited at night after the park closed. The one gate left open for guests was heavily stocked with male homosexual predators, and it as very intimidating. When I brought up the subject with taxi drivers, employees of the hostel, or pub-goers in the area, all of the people (save one pub-goer) danced around the subject and seemed to create this illusion that everything was on the “up-and-up.” After much prodding by yours truly, they would admit that people were often assaulted in the park by them, but that those people needed to look less like targets…not what I call handling the problem! I do not recommend staying at the YHA London Holland Park hostel for this reason. If having those men a constant presence does not intimidate you, the rest of the my stay at YHA Holland Park was enjoyable (except when someone was sleeping in my bed the first night when I got home and maneuvered past the gang of men!)

Some of the sights that I saw during my short stay was the Tower of London (from the outside), the oldest urinal in London (culled from an old tube station and installed in a pub I no longer know the name of), the Imperial War Museum (saddest place I have ever been), Soho (best pints of Strongbow cider I had while in London…and I had quite a few ;-),  Paddington Station (super cool!…until we had waited long enough for our friends to show up, then it was starting to get tiring), and Finsbury Park (a super diverse neighborhood that had great Armenian take-away and corner pub antics).

Most of the students hooked up at some point during our stay in London.  This was wonderful because it gave us all a chance to get to know one another before becoming reliant upon each other in the bush. We all had classes with one another during spring quarter, but there was little bonding. Many friendships were formed during this weekend, and many first impressions were dashed. Those who were unable to make it became sorely missed and were brought into the fold as soon as we were all together. Upon later communal reflections, we all were very glad to have that first weekend.

There was one student in particular who concerned us the most. She was due to arrive on the 14th but no one had seen any sign of her and the hotel she was to stay in had not seen her either. Upon reaching the airport, we got news that increased the adventure: the program director had missed his connecting flight in the Midwest which meant we were going to be flying into Sierra Leone by ourselves. When the student who we were concerned about showed up and said she had slept in the airport, we were sympathetic but relieved to see her. But as time got closer to leaving, one student–who we had seen the night before–was MIA and our plane flew out in one hour. We combed the airport with the help of the airport staff and got in touch with her a half hour before take-off…phew! We were now ready to fly on BMI to Sierra Leone as a unified group…all except our fearless leader.

and $1700-something later for round trip airfare, I’ll be wandering around Heathrow for nine-ish hours before boarding Virgin Atlantic Airlines, then landing on a humid, hot tarmac at Dubai International Airport (DXB). While billions are being spent expanding the airport, a project is underway to build the world’s largest one just 40 kilometers away. Al Maktoum International Airport, which “will have the capacity to cater to 120 million passengers annually and handle 12 million tonnes of cargo at its 16 air cargo terminals,” will be appropriately be located in a futuristic urban development named Dubai World Central. There’s a handy 3D tour on their website.

Luckily, with the generous help from Claudia Gorbman, Rob Crawford, Anthony D’Costa (now at CBS in Denmark), and Joakim Nilsson (Pierce College in Puyallup), I wont have to take out a student loan of any kind. The scholarship application was tedious and a bit bureaucratic, but so worth it.  Thank you all!

A couple of Sunday mornings ago I received an email from American University in Dubai (AUD) Admissions Director telling me I earned a William Jefferson Clinton Scholarship, covering tuition and room costs for the fall 2008 semester (approx $10,000). The email heading read “Spam” at the beginning of the title, but I think that was because the message came from the UAE (United Arab Emirates). Good thing my firewall let it through! I wasn’t supposed to know the results until mid-July… I suppose the scholarship committee became agitated. More than anything the news was a sigh of relief. I was mentally prepared to take out a $10,000 loan to cover the costs, and to scrounge up the $3-4,000 or so personal costs to cover flights and four months of living. Gosh, how else was I going to pay for indoor ski-lift tickets, desert sand-boarding, dhow rides along Dubai Creek? I hope to meet the ruler of Dubai, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum. Supposedly, the city is so crime-free that he drives and walks around without any guards or surveillance, and is quite approachable. Maybe he’ll give me a ride in one of his many silver-plated Audis.

Here is a short bit about the city - a nice read.

The final few days in Moscow were a bit of a blur! Thursday afternoon we visited the ‘Russia Today’ TV studios. It’s on a government site that also houses several newspapers as well as an Arabic station. We met with the RT Editor in Chief, Margarita Simonyan,  for a very interesting conversation about media in Russia. Chris Demaske asked her about the high incidence of murder among journalists and we had a very in-depth conversation about it – this turned out to be quite prophetic within a few short minutes.  

After saying our goodbyes and continuing on our tour, it was about ten minutes later, as we entered the RT newsroom, that we noticed there was something going on. Our guide spoke with a co-worker and informed us the murderer of Anna Politkovskaya had just been apprehended.  

Considering that journalist/activist Anna Politkovskaya had been murdered a year and a half before, and we had been speaking about her just moments before, it was quite a coincidence. The week before our arrival there were two journalists murdered, in supposedly unrelated attacks though they worked at the same television station. I should also mention that one of our stories in the Journalist magazine covered the risks journalists make for their profession in Russia, this moment in the news room really drove the point home for me.  

 Friday, we managed to get the final magazine edits completed in the morning and then had the afternoon to sight-see around the pedestrian only Old Arbat street. The street is lined with portrait artists who are surprisingly good - some working in the classical style and others doing caricatures. Lots of super-expensive souvenirs but we didn’t purchase any since the following day we were scheduled to visit a free-trade market.  

Friday night we joined up with five MSU students who had arranged a private banya experience for us: steam room with plunge tub, large felt hats to protect your hair, bath sheets to lounge around in and birch branches for walloping your fellow steamers with.  Our banya, named October, also had karaoke, a pool table and full menu. It was a great chill room, all wood walls, floors and ceilings with a huge wooden table and pots and pots of herbal tea with honey and vodka and beer on hand.                                        

Interesting point: a Kremlin can be any group of buildings housing government offices and the like. So, while there is the most recognized Kremlin complex in Red Square, there are also others scattered around. On Saturday we visited the Kremlin in Izmailovo which houses one of the most important buildings we visited…the Vodka Museum! All praise Dmitri Mendeleev! Not only did he give us Vodka but also the periodic table of elements. Later, while changing subway trains I was joking with Helena, my guide about the light fixtures in the station looking like molecular structures. She told me that the station was named after, you gussed it - Mendeleev – aha! 

The subway system (known as the Metro) puts any of our city public transportation systems to shame. They are super cheap, a little over a dollar, and very efficient. The older stations are opulent, I’m talking chandeliers, stained glass and statues, and there is zero graffiti. It was not always spacious or comfortable but it worked very well on a massive scale.  

Saturday night, our final evening in Moscow, the students and staff all put together a good-bye party and dinner for us at one of the student’s apartment. It was a nice way to say good-bye and enjoy blinis, the small pancakes, and pelmeni which is like a tortellini dish topped with sour cream and dill. Lots of good laughs, drinks and exchanges of addresses…the pregnant lady (me) sat on the couch with my feet propped up praying that my swelling ankles would subside – they didn’t.  

Sunday morning came a little early: with four hours of sleep and cantaloupe for feet I met up with the rest the group in the lobby and we hopped in our light and siren equipped transportation and made the airport in nothing flat.  A mere 22 hours later, and home sweet home… kind of. Really it was the trashed remains of finals week that greeted me. But then, hey, it’s only a few months until summer break…right? There will be plenty of time to tidy up then…

The magazine is getting closer to completion! It’s been a crazy day as the title of this post suggests.  The students here at Moscow State University are great and all have a good attitude so that helps. I’ve proofed so many pages that I’m losing track of what I’ve just read! 

Chris Demaske, the professor leading the group, has been good about keeping everything rolling so that we can take a bit of time off toward the end of the week. The fact that the layout person, Galaya, wants to leave early tomorrow has been a definite motivating factor! Even working on the computers is a bit of a challenge since the office windows look the same but, guess what, they’re all written in Russian. You have to ‘clear your mind’ and trust your muscle memory to select the right option. For the real important commands I’ve written the Russian down so that I know which option to select. It makes for a bit of stop and go writing.  

Sight-seeing has slowed down as we’ve gotten more focused on being sure the magazine is wrapped up before Galaya leaves for home. I visited the Kremlin on Tuesday, braving freezing rain and wind to see the cathedrals. They were worth it, very beautiful. The Archangel Cathedral is really impressive with its fresco-style exterior.  

You are supposed to purchase tickets to go inside but, like a typical American student, Ira, our student-guide, covertly opened the door so we could all peer inside at the opulent religious splendor…that is until a disgruntled babushka shooed us away like truant little children.

Arrived in Moscow safely to a welcoming blanket of snow on Sunday morning. Our transportation to the hotel consisted of two emergency vehicles with lights and sirens that worked their way through the traffic by using both to get the other speeding cars to pull out of our way. I felt completely like a VIP!

We met with the MSU students yesterday and began ironing out the stories that we’ll be working on. I’ll be co-writing one on the Northwest Passage and seafloor rights with a fellow MSU student. We’ll both be presenting views from our persepctive countries. It should be very interesting.

Thank you to everyone in GH that responded to my survey and especially the comments that were attached. Unfortunatley, the other surveys we were expecting back from other sources were quite light so we’ll be using quotations only. I’ll be contacting you to make sure you’re fine with us using your quote in the publication.

I have to get back to writing but will add more soon!

     I leave for Moscow this coming Saturday ~ just five days, 1 paper and 1 final exam away. The journalism students at Moscow State University have developed a pretty good framework for our project. We’ll be creating a 10 - 12 page news magazine that will focus on “Choice”. The idea is to reflect both cultures by presenting side-by-side stories; each written from a student each from MSU and UWT.  The areas we’ll focus on will cover politics, media, psychology, and A&E, among other sections. I really like the concept.

     The past week has been trying to get people on the phone to get interviews completed before we leave, a bit of a challenge over finals week but I did manage a couple. We’re trying to keep the content as close to our schools as we can so that the stories are relevant, that’s the tough part. Fingers crossed profs and students will be just hanging by the phone or lounging around campus waiting to be interviewed over the next few days …

Not the band, the end of my odyssey in Bogota, Colombia.  This is going to be my final blog on that wonderful place unless and until I get to return there.  Something that I fully intend to do, by the way.

In the course of this chronicle I may have given the impression that I am a cad and that Bogotanas are easy.  Allow me to assure you that while I may indeed be a lout, I am a firm subscriber to the concept of female empowerment and equality and that Bogotanas are NOT easy.  They are funny, smart, beautiful, vibrant, and very principled.  This is why I find them so attractive…it takes no effort to spear a fish in a barrel, it takes real effort to get within touching distance of a deer if I am not stretching the metaphor.

As to Bogota itself…this city is a model that America would do well to learn from.  The concepts of Community, of Interdependence, of Solidarity…these  are lost here in America, and they need to be relearned.  When Bogota was being choked by traffic, they didn’t build new elevated highways, they forced the bus companies to merge into a RTS (rapid transit system); Anatanas Mockus ran for election on  a platform of RAISING taxes in order to fix the city…and won.  That is not going to happen in America, unfortunately, where we have the economic elite telling us that everything is going to be JUST FINE if we continue to outsource our infrastructure and lower taxes and the vast majority of the populace nodding our heads like dumb little sheep and saying ‘Yeah, that sounds logical!”

I am going to recommend this seminar to George Mobus over at UW Tacoma because this is right up his street.  I think that if I had another 3 weeks (3 months would be better) to study this in depth, we could find a way to apply the lessons learned to American cities.  A change starts with one…and if we sit idly by and do nothing, all our tomorrows will vanish in the ashes of our stupidity.  Bogotanos know this now, and many of them are working to change it, they just needed someone to point them in the right direction, and Mockus and Penalosa led the way.

I think I will upload my Powerpoint Presentation here on the Blog and let you see it yourself…it wasn’t the best presentation of that day, but if I had everyone elses, combined with the ones that the various speakers gave us, it would be the nucleus of a pretty damn good program on sustainability and economic growth.  Gotta go see Prof Mobus soon, so it’s breakfast time while I reminisce on my new favorite city…Zagreb, Croatia has been slipped to number 2.

Okay, first let´s play catch-up, shall we?  Friday night was interesting, to say the least…went to a club that was right down the street and I´m not 100% sure, but it had all the signs of being a house of ill repute.  You walk into a club and there are 5 women to every one man, you are not in your run of the mill establishment.

Saturday I worked on my project, then accidentally wrecked my USB flash drive ( I hope Radio Shack can fix it ) thus losing most of my project AND my photo record of this trip.  Having already crossed South America off my list of continents, missing my Leppurd Wumman fiercely, and being bummed about the USB drive the Dr. decided to stay home that night while everyone (aside from the usual exceptions) went out to a Salsa club with Claudia and her people.

I hear the first place was both pricey and not especially friendly, so they went to a different club that was more like someone´s house with a bar upstairs.  Apparently a good time was had by all.  I didn´t get to sleep easily, and I awoke early to once again begin work on the project.

That afternoon (Sunday) I took a cab to where I thought there would be a flea market (I was off by a few blocks) but it turned out to be a standard mall.  I went in, looked around, discovered that I hated it as much as I hate American malls, so I left and decided to walk to the hotel since it was only 32 blocks and the weather was great.  Along the way I passed a casino and decided to pop in…turned out to be the best idea I have had on this trip.

The casino itself was lame, mostly video machines although they had a really interesting miniature race track (4 inch tall horses, if you can believe that), so I played for a bit, then left.  As I left, I passed another place called the Bogota Poker Room and thought I would mention it to Sean, whom I recalled mentioning he played the game.  That night he and I decided to visit the BPR only I couldn´t remember where it was, and the cab driver had no idea what I was talking about.  So he took us to a casino near the Hard Rock Cafe.

We went there, played for a bit, then I noticed 3 Colombinas playing video slots…after watching them for a few minutes, I convinced Sean to back me up as I approached them.  Keep in mind, I speak almost no Spanish….well, maybe they were amused, or maybe we were that interesting, but they agreed to go have a drink with us, but they wanted to go to the Bogota Beer Company (a local franchise) rather than the Hard Rock Cafe which was around the corner.  We talked, flirted, and drank for quite awhile…in fact, we closed that joint.   Then the girls decided we should go to a different place, somewhere deep in the barrio that tourists rarely, if ever, get to see.

What, did you think we wouldn´t go?!  How can you pass up an offer like that?

Well, genius that I am, I flirt the heaviest with the girl who speaks the least amount of English (trust me…you would have also.) and she was digging me…but she wasn´t digging the Salsa music at the club, and I confused the message.  When they played some Reggaeton though, I think it was Reggaeton…it was a hard-driving Latin rap that was SMOKING.  Kinda like the girl I was dancing with, as a matter of fact…so, as the night grew on, we leave and go around the corner to this little bodega and get breakfast, some kind of Colombian dish served in leaves, and all went well.  She gave me her number, and told me to call her in the morning.

Which brings me to yesterday…Sean and I go out with our respective dates from the night before, but he, lacking the responsibilities that I have, is going to stay another week…and I have to go tomorrow.  My girl was understandably not happy, but what can we do aside from try and enjoy what little time we have?  We got home early and I emailed her some pictures that I had taken last night at dinner along with a nice email in Español courtesy of Google translator.  I´ll miss her…I know it sounds stupid, but it´s true. 

Today was the presentations, and for the most part they went well.  Two were especially painful: one to watch, the other to sit through.  Mine was a bit slow getting started since I was using an unfamiliar Apple machine, but once it got rolling, it went well.  I suppose I should have concluded with Godsmack´s ¨Realign¨instead of Van Halen´s ¨Right Now¨but everyone seemed to enjoy the presentation.

If I hadn´t lost all of my photos, I would have used all 3 songs, but things being what they were, I did what I could. 

What went well about the whole affair, was that I managed to cover most of the topics the seminar was designed to address without being saying what everyone else had already covered.  I used several sources to point out various aspects of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and gave examples of how they are lived here in Bogota and in Colombia in general.

The weakness, as stated earlier, was the loss of 4 minutes of slides (at 16 seconds for a picture and 30 seconds for text slide, that´s a bit of work) due to mechanical failure.  Of course, a couple of people suggested I allow more like 46-55 seconds for slides because apparently they read slower than I do.  If I had to do it again, I think I could fix it up right proper.

I am going to miss Bogota…but if there is another exploration seminar next year, I am applying.

This is a day late, and I have good reasons, I assure you.  No, seriously, would this face lie?

Okay, so we started out with a brief lecture here in the hotel, then we got on our bikes and rode out to the wetlands that they have converted into a lake where we were met by yet another of Bogota´s incredibly beautiful and highly educated women (I think maybe the plane crashed and this is heaven.  I like that idea enourmously, therefore I will continue to believe it to be fact.) who gave us a brief lecture on the wetlands and confirmed my theory of wetlands restoration as a possible future of the lake.

The ride out there, however, was the big thing of the day…riding a bicycle in Bogota takes a degree of skill, daring, and reflexes that most people who are from America are lacking.  I got a bike that wouldn´t shift into high gears, so I had to pedal like a madman just to keep moving, although when I hit inclines, I was golden.  Also, the seat of my bicycle wasn´t all that comfortable, so when we had the option to either ride back, or take the bus, I opted for the bus.  This allowed me to get back in time to enjoy the salad that I had purchased for the bike ride, but hadn´t taken with me (it wasn´t good…the lettuce was particularly flavorful, but it was unfortunately a rather bad flavor) and do a little light reading.

After that, I went out to photo some more of the horse statues that adorn Bogota, much like the pig statues in Seattle, only cool.  It was on my way back that I met a rather lovely Colombian woman and struck up a conversion, which is going to come in handy since this week Bogota is beginning a violence against women awareness campaign, so I look forward to hearing her views on the subject if we get together as planned.

Last night we went out as a group and it was quite interesting, I assure you.  I won´t go into all the details here (that´s available on a need-to-know basis) but I haven´t had a night like that in YEARS.  It was so amazingly cool…I hope to come back to Bogota next year.

My powerpoint presentation on human rights and education in Bogota is coming nicely, I just need some files sent by my Leppurd Wumman to get it finalized.  I got a lot of the information that I was missing today during a lecture on…wait for it…the history of education in Bogota since the 1970s.  Pretty swish, I know…Also, tomorrow we will be meeting with our Bogotan counterparts from a local university, so that should be pretty righteous also. 

Thursday is here again, and you know what that means:  the party cycle is starting again.  I have to pop out and just see what I can see, same as always.