its been a great two weeks in uruguay and argentina, times filled with great beaches, dinner parties, lots of wine and more than a few really great times. Actually, this vacation thus far has far exceded my expectations, being that Ive consistently felt like ive been having a worthwhile time, even if i was just taking a nap on the front porch of our beach house, or sitting in a park watching the trees and clouds slowly move with the wind.

And tomorrow(!) i start hopefully the best part of my trip where i go up to beautiful tucumán and cafayate with gina to (of course!) have wonderful time for the new years. Im still not totally sure what were going to be up to when we´re cruzing around, but im pretty sure we´ll at least be going for swims in waterfalls, seeing some sweet desert rock formations and maybe even ride some horses. Oh yeah, i rode horses for the first time in Uruguay. On the beach. I was galloping up and over sand dunes with a pack of 6 other people; it was amazing.

Other highlights include the break-dance show i saw last night with my peace corps buddies and a few new friends from the hostel. It was a really cool time, despite the fact that the club was like an oven and i was basically soaked by the end of the night. As a side note, there are a ton of people from the bay area in BA, an almost funny ammount actually. I think out of a group of l0 that were with us last night, there were 5 people from CA, four of them from the greater san francisco area. Strange.

Another highlight was for sure the tango/dinner show which highlighted two dancers, and a couple singers. They were seriously talented, the man especially. I was totally blown away by the footwork, twirling and spinning, diping and kicking. Also, on the random note there was a family sitting at the table over that was from monterey, CA. I didnt know any of them, but still it was kinda odd. Also, as a slightly funny side note, my buddy dave and i decided to eat left over food after the show that people had left on their tables. Basically it was a cheese and meat plate and were were shoveling the cheese wedges into our mouthes while looking out for the waiters. This was a really nice place too, with people in suits and things, meanwhile me and dave are chowing down on people´s leavings. Classic.

More to come later.

presently typing away from the second floor of a hostel in the palermo neighborhood of buenos aires (BA) that has great stained glass windows and nice, "real" matresses, not a little foam pad that you have to suppliment by spreading magazines out underneath for a little extra cushioning. This is my first of 5 days in BA and ive got a pretty big schedule to get on, including the recoleta cemetary and adjoining artesinal fair today, a slew of museums and tango show tomorrow, and then maybe ill rent a bike and hit up most of the major parks to take some of the photos i keep saying that Ill take and then never do.

Im pretty excited about the cemetary today, to be quite honest. I found a map to all the graves in one of the side rooms in the hostel and the place is huge! Ive always been kinda curious about what would drive people to built a huge monument to store the body of a deceased family member. Must there at least be a little motivation on the part of the living to show off to the curious people, like myself who pass through, that their family was powerful, or that their family had money, or their family was well respected. Granted, it is also a tribute to the deceased, which has its place. But when that tribute (to use some examples ive seen in Paraguay) is a little house literaly covered in smooth shiny tile while the family has a dirt floor and crumbling walls, i have to question the rationality of it all. Well, regardless of the rationality of the place, im off to see it right now!

Ill add more later! Chau till then!

ok. ok. Things are moving along over here in Paraguay, and I dont mean the cows that have worn a trail in front of my house trying to eat my plants through the fence. What I mean is that Im going on vacation! Essentially leaving paraguay untill the begining of january for a much needed mental break from the rigors of bike riding and hydration rituals. Ill be going to uruguay and staying in a little beach town (the ocean!!) for a week, then to Buenos Aires for another week through christmas, and then off to the next exciting segment of my trip in northern argentina. As i pass the days flying kites and eating cheap, delicious food, the moment may arrive when I find myself sitting at an internet café. At that point, i will update this page so as to not forget later what had been going on around me. Till then! Chau!

so the last post i didnt quite finish my ideas about the problem of understanding the needs of the people who will eventually use a design. Ive since finished going through all the surveys from the ninth graders, and ive realized that they are quite aware of the things that they want, perhaps more than I gave them credit for. One question the gave me some great responses was one that I never would have asked had i not been observing their habbit throughout the year.

Each day at recess, most of the older kids leave campus to a small chapel across from the school. They usually sit over there and just talk with each other on these two old benches and drink terere. But their responses to why they value the space were great. Some of the highlights were that they 1. Appreciated the silence away from the school, 2. They felt like they were closer to nature, 3. They really liked the benches 4. It was a space separated from what goes on at the school that they could essentially claim as their own.

In comparision to other slightly more generic questions, this one gave me the information I wanted. Why was that? I believe it was because the kids didnt have to make any abstract connection to a place they could not readily conceptualize. They saw the place, they understood their rational for going there, and they wrote their responses. Simple.

Then going to the question which asked the kids to identify their ideal colegio (whose responses were almost not worth using) where the students had to draw only on their preconceived notions, students named teetertoters and slides as desired items. I asked them later about this, and they all laughed and said that this is completly not related to what they kids actually want.

Thinkings about it though, when you have no way to base your ideas on anything else then what you know (which is one elementary school) im not totally surprised at the non-sensical responses.

As a closing to this segment of the design story, i will be hosting the first of my design workshops this sunday with the profesors that will be teaching at the school. We will be setting their educational goals and how they relate with the design of the school grounds. Ill be setting up the building footprints so they can conceptualize the space, and also having them fill out a survey to identify their goals for the students and the teaching space. It will work out i hope.

Also, Ive read most of the letters from spreckles school (!) and will try to respond to those as soon as possible. I really enjoyed reading them, and should give responses that are equally enjoyable. Till later then!

Well what to say... its been more than a year that ive been in this country and im finding myself reflecting more and more about what im doing here and why exactly I should push myself to do the best work that I can. I still wonder sometimes: am I really what a peace corps volunteer should be? How would my work be different if I had a different temperment or work ethic? Am what Im doing really making a difference to the people with whom i work (or at least try to work)? I am, it seems, full of questions about myself. Im not really doing any self doubting about my place in paraguay, but i see more and more how my work can have the potential to really influence people of groups of people.

One project thats been weighing on me a bit has been the colegio design project. All the planning, the struggling to explain my reasoning and rational for why i want to run the project like so, and the seeming inability of various people to take an active interest in the project even when it will directly influence their quality of life and the standards existing within the community.

At this point, Ive finished doing the student surveys about their preferences for the colegio and the school grounds. Im still not even sure that ive really collected acurate data. When I ask the students about their responses to certain questions, for example, to describe their ideal colegio, they end up drawing the only colegio that they can conceptualize: Swing sets, a few separated buildings, a few flowers and a futbol pitch. This was slightly irritating. And in addition I had to pretty much explain each question verbally in guarani, as even the ninth graders cannot read spanish correctly, much less understand what the words actually mean. This is ok, and the data is still telling, but its utility for my project is very much in question.

I also had asked them to draw their ideal space to learn the subjects of the colegio. Many drew futbol pitches again, and they even rationaled that this was in fact was a learning space.

I had to consider myself and my biasas for a bit in this case. If someone told me this normally, of course I would normally assume that they didnt understand the question or else they were just trying to screw with me. Yet all the kids who drew non sensical things such as learning spaces (like water and grass) or a volleyball court, when questioned about their rational for drawing or writing these things, claimed most adamantly that all these things were in fact their ideal learninig spaces.

What does this say? It says that either the kids cannot even begin to wrap their heads around the idea of a space not already in existence (very posible) and therefore just drew what they liked. Or else they were completly serious, and i should take them serious as well. How can i see through their points of view? What information can I glean from the non sensical responses? When I looked at a drawing of an ideal learning space that only includes a bookcase full of books and a piece of chalk, and asked the kid "is this all you want to draw? A bookcase for your ideal learning space?" I should try to see it from their perspective as they answer "yes!".

When i imagine this drawing, i would include the things that I focus on: the space, where the students sit, and how the building interacts with the exterior space. Each person sees something different. Each thing is then filtered through their biases and socialy norms/taboos. What results is that someone may see the floor and how exacting it has been fitted together. more to come in a sec

so ive been thinking about what ill be taking away with me when I complete my spendid time here in paraguay. I know it´s still a ways off, but with things starting to feel more settled in site ive begun to wonder a bit about how my life here will transfer to over there. I do know in paraguay that Ive become a more health conscious, both in terms of my own personal well-being and that of other people. I mean its hard no to want to brush and floss everyday when you see people with cavities on the fronts of their teeth and little kids with just black mush in their mouthes. I dont really understand the teeth problem here actually, seeing as these people have been given many dental hyegine presentations and get tooth brushes free through the school. As I see it, the problem really comes down to lifestyle choices, and the fact that a thought process such as "Should i really give my three year old soda every day, and then suckers or hard candy on the side?" does not really exist. So anyway, im now bushing my teeth regularly. Great.

But what else? So i´m getting better at learning new languages. This is a good thing, especially if id like to work in california where i believe the minority population has been the majority for a good while now. Granted, the design buisness usually follows the money trail, but that doesnt mean there´s now work to be had serving multiple populations. I really feel like now more than ever that the way to being the most succesful a person can be is to learn new languages. I mean, here its essential and not really an option. But it makes me see how much one might miss out on back home in the states without that knowlege. On the flip side, my english is degrading. Typically, i forget the correct wors in english and have to supliment it with a spanish or guarani word. I spend 30 seconds today tring to remember the word for remolacha (beets) in the supermarket.

I also feel like this specific type of work has made me more acountable to myself and to my goals and rationalizations about the future. To be sure, I see many paraguayans wasting their time away being drunk, taking no interest in their education, or just assuming that whatever will happen is just going to happen. Its almost a fatalistic aditude, but they are so tranquilo about the buisness that I often forget that things could be better. I do sometimes sit at my house doing nothing and don´t feel guilty about it. Ive learned to relax. yes. But at the same time, ive realized very clearly that if i dont gett off my ass and put myself out there and push people to change or to listen or to think nothing is going to happen. Im not going to learn anything, and they arnt going to get anything out of the deal either. There´s no one looking over my shoulder here telling me what to do, or if im doing my job right, or even to give me an idea of what i should do. Its all on in my head, and all on my shoulders. This is not to say that i feel stressed all the time, certainly not. But i will for sure that away from this experience the keen understanding of how one gets something done: you go make it happen.

ADDED NEW PHOTOS! So ive put up some photos of my house, images of a pig slaughtering i attended and some shots of a tree plating project i recently completed at one of the local escuela basicas. Just follow the link on the right to flickR. Im presently hanging out in asuncion and enjoying the pleasures of a relativly cool afternoon. Received one shirt and landscape architecture magazines in the mail, which was pretty sweet. Enjoy the photos!