¨If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But, if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.¨ Aboriginal Activists
I am on the trip I came to Furman for, the fall Latin America study abroad. It is a four class, four country sequence. Environmental Science in Mexico, Latin American politics in Guatemala, Latin American philosophy in Nicaragua, and Latin American history focused on comparative revolutionary movements in El Salvador, why El Salvador failed and Nicaragua succeeded.
To all the people thinking I am doing no school work, let me assure you, I am literally working twice as hard as a college student. I literally took double the hours of a regular student and was in class until 7 pm on Fridays. Now, I have class and quizzes along with meetings and lectures. The crucial difference being I get to learn about a subject and then go see it in person. For example, we took a quiz on our flight to Mexico City and thanks to Dr. Thompson we were all able to identify urban sprawl and ribbon development.
Yesterday we learned about the different types of air pollution and waste management. We then took two field trips that day to visit a community dealing directly with these issues. They are fighting the government trying to install a landfill in their community. They are resisting open sewage in their water while practicing cutting edge technology, such as dry toilets and the first biofilter toilet in Latin America in the community school.
We started in Mexico City and now are in Cuernavaca. Our hotel was a block from the zocolo. Mexico´s independence day was the 16th so we were able to enjoy the celebration for a week. I got sick the morning I left and was literally told they could only do one test because I was flying to Mexico in three hours. So, I sat the second day out, sick a mile and a half up and the third most polluted city in the world. The thousands of people celebrating and the protests helped cheer me up.
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p.s. I had to come up with my 6th grade screen name to leave this post...don't judge me.
After repeatly being told my quotes were depressing I have revised them and thought you might enjoy them:
Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Douglas Adams
And on the slightly more intellectual note:
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it, […] it is spoken and rumored by many, [or because]it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders, [or even in] traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
Siddhartha Gautama
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