a great christmas
family, too much time playing pokemon while eating muffins, watching stepbrothers, driving, laughing as a family together, holiday hellos from friends, and a new pile of books to read.

The Elephant Vanishes by Murakami
The Hungry Tide by Ghosh
Biography of a Germ by Karlen
Symbiotic Planet by Margulis
Cosmicomics by Calvino
Art Forms from Nature by Haekel

i also spent xmas eve looking up internships, like a freak
The Center for Health, Environment, and Justice
Environmental Law Institute
WE ACT
Ceres
Beyond Pesticides
Cary Institute REU

who knows? ill be doing apps for these in the meantime.

a merry holidays to all. this is quite nice.

how different am i?
i dont know. tell me.
there's this overwhelming inner sense of capability and hope.
i actually listen to and trust myself in what i say and think.
challenges excite me.
overall, i feel a lack of the kind of fear to act that would have gripped me before brazil.
even my host mother thought i was quite different from the period she finally met me to my final days there.
brazil taught me that faith that the world works out is crucial.
nobody is the center of it, and everything works out, somehow.
which ive been trying to apply. to live in the moment. to stop trying to plan and control anything.
which leads to happiness and defeats, for sure.
i want motion. speed. change. nothing fixed. up in the air. friction.
fears are just barriers set up for us to push them down.
somebody can show us the way, but its our job to plow through them.
in a way im grateful to SIT for being so disorganized.
it made us do everything ourselves.
initiative.
and its helped me to find the independence i wanted. the strength i knew was in there.
for the first time in so long i feel i can do anything.
not everything. just, anything.
there's this wonderful little quote at the end of Italo Calvinho's Baron in the Trees:
"only by being so frankly himself as he was till his death could he give something to all"
its something i quarrel with on my return home.
ive always found myself, on return from such things as this, coming back refreshed, renewed.
and then slowly, it slips away as i find myself slipping to be the way people imagined i was.
i vowed after the last time to not let that happen.
and stubbornly, am sticking to myself, now actually having a sense of who/what that means and is.
how do you stay to yourself while still reaching out to the people you care about?
and what if that is too late?
i made wonderful friends in brazil. really wonderful. who i know i will keep in touch with,
and we will always share the connection of the giant rite of passage that was the semester.
but whats the worth if you end up losing the same connections with others?
or really, how do you reconcile the two worlds?

merry christmas and happy holidays.

back in america. ate a cheesesteak the other night with hibby and keej. learned that everybody is also obsessed with mgmt and kids here. awesome. theres no acai, acerola, goiaba, etc here. depressed. its also very cold. it was 95 every day in belem. needless to say i now have a cold. been reading the invisible pyramid. if i could find my old copy of the phantom tollbooth i would read that too. next is the bookseller of kabul. i have a pile next to the massage chair. theres also a spot for my tea cup. been working out too. no ju jitsu, not enough time. leave jan 4th for ecosystem ecology. will bum around vassar and nyc until bard starts. need to buy a jump rope. going to get my hair trimmed today. i can drive. go grocery shopping. i hope this post is a good example of the state of my mind right now. talk about liminality.

thursday im heading up to bard with larkin's parents and will hang there for the night. it will be really good to see people.

its very weird to be home. both happy to be back, but also miserable not to still be there. but then again, it was mostly the people there who made it what it was. to be back in amazonia right now on my own would be a completely different experience.

last day in Belem. but first, listen to this, and tell me it isnt the most beautiful thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qPvJ8FAEg4

im going to miss it here. despite times where ive hated it and been frustrated. deep down, i love it all. i want to come back here with you, whoever is reading. show you why buying a cup of acerola juice can make my day. to buy fresh coconut water. pass by salgado stands. do the gringo run across the street. get frustrated with the brazil whistle. today i got some avacate juice. great. last night was wonderful. getting fresh juice makes it even better. today maura was asking me if i feel like a different person than the one who arrived in Amazonia. she thinks so. i agree. com certeza. im about to go out with her and diego to buy last minute presents. dont talk to me about packing my suitcase tonight. i dont want to think about it. i dont know how successful it will be. ive bought too much. comprei de mais...

when will my next time to speak portuguese actually be? today is so bittersweet on so many levels. so many good things coming to an end. unless i can find a way to make them live on back home. i have a thing of guarana powder im excited about. dammit. im not ready to be home. i am, but im just not ready to leave. or, i just wish we had another free day here. theres too much to do. i might never see my host family ever again, more likely than not. i only have a few more hours with them, you know? damn you simon and garfunkel, and the random guy on youtube who sings it in the way i imagine it being sung. i will lay me down.

im going to go home, set up my hammock, pretend i am back on the boat trip aka the greatest week ever and read the phantom tollbooth. its moments like that from the trip i will miss so much. so much has happened in the past 4 months its insane to think about it. there is so much. and all of it has been helpful. wonderful. beautiful. empowering. and the harder its been, the more rewarding its been in the long run. because i overcame all of my obstacles and bumps in the road on my own. i have found my independence and inner strength to accomplish what i need to. and although its mildly dormant within me, i can feel the presence of somebody who knows they can handle whatever life throws at them. because thats what i did. and stepped up to the task.

im going to learn how to play the portuguese cover of bridge over troubled water on guitar, ive decided. i like my voice in portuguese better. i dont think nancy scheper-hughes was right. i dont think its about a desperate search to find meaning somewhere outside of your normal life. the contrast is part of the process and the beauty. i thought i would find everything i wanted, that comfort of a different culture that perhaps would get me better, here in brazil. i found something in brazil. but very diffierent. because what i found wasnt a feeling on finally belonging at all. but realizing the steps within myself. realizing what culture even really is. realizing that everything ive been looking for is right back home, but its also here, and its also everywhere else in the world i havent been. its no one place thats right for me or anyone. its about putting all those little pieces together and seeing what you can make out of it.

man. crazy stuff. i wish i didnt bring all these books to brazil. no point

Does this have to be the price of modernity: water pollution, community needs, and organizational support in Sao Luis

“…even if our hopes are misplaced, however, and the specific disease control and health outcomes we seek are not achieved, fundamental requirements of the ecosystem approach for open and democratic communication, tolerance, negotiation, and ecological awareness will surely have made the effort worthwhile” –David Walter-Toews (2001, 21)

besides the shoddy powerpoint i just whipped together for tomorrow afternoon, i am officially done with ISP.

which is nice. im mildly content with that i ended up writing, which is more than most of the group is expressing. or at least, those who actually turned it in today...

this means my friday night, saturday, sunday, and monday are my last free days here. when the hell did that happen? sunday theres some last minute shopping to be done. but...gah.

will be in the philly airport in a week. how weird. wrestling tournament? philadelphia? west chester? fennarios? cheessteak? hot wings? some element of patience? people who say excuse me instead of "pstttt"?

no but i really will miss brazil. i miss it already, with the knowledge that i really dont have much free time left and most of what is left is ISP or group sitio time. but also, thinking back, there is so much i have seen and done in the past 3 months. its almost mind boggling. ive lived in5 major amazonian cities. traveled all over. the boat trip seems like months ago, but it wasnt at all. even the time in sao luis seems so far away. i ate a turtle! that was so long ago. and what i have are the greatest little fragments of memories.

on another note, i am officially in 2 of my classes. below are the course descriptions for them

Anth 322 Cultural Technologies of Memory
This course is organized around several practices and technologies that produce collective and personal memory. The class will explore a distinction commonly made between 'memory' and 'history', asking on what basis this distinction is made and how it maps on to our ideas about foreign places and people. The techniques and technologies of public memory we will examine may include ancient "memory palaces," historical writing, oral narrative, ritual, myth, monuments, museums and archives. We will also explore how radio and photography are used to produce national and familial representations of the past. The focus in each section will be on how the particular medium of remembering shapes the content of what is remembered. We will address who has access to memory practices, stressing the link between the production of particular memories and their political uses. The class will give students a theoretical base to write a final research paper that situates a contemporary memory practice in its specific cultural and historical context: the recent proliferation of family genealogies, Holocaust testimonies and/or museums, the truth commissions, local histories are among a few possible examples.

Hist 164 Hooke's Micrographia
A monument of natural philosophy and scientific illustration, Robert Hooke's Micrographia (1665) was the first laboratory manual in microscopy. A great experimentalist, Hooke developed his research as a Fellow of the newly founded Royal Society of London. Hooke and his colleagues intended the work to be a manifesto of experimental method and faith in progress. They also hoped Hooke's observations would lend credence to atomism, a notorious ancient philosophy that was being rehabilitated in the seventeenth century. The work's descriptive and experimental language suggests objectivity, as does the author's recourse to geometric principles. Yet Hooke's treatise is also permeated with a theological agenda. We will read the Micrographia, examining its philosophical antecedents and experimental foundations. We will also investigate Hooke's life and work, his association with the Royal Society and contemporary savants, as well as the links between science and society during the Scientific Revolution.

right now im just waiting on GIS, Ecology&Evolution, and Nonfiction writing. Considering auditing a class on...something.
today i ate country fried steak in brazil with my host family. ..