Come Fly With Me

“Come fly with me, we’ll float down to Peru. In llama-land there’s a one-man band and he’ll toot his flute for you. Come on fly with me, we’ll float down in the blue.”

• ·         “Well, Bolivia is close enough,” I thought as I listened to my vocal coach, Frank Sinatra, sing these words over my kids as they worked on an art project today. It was fun to play some of my music for them, now that we have a speaker in the classroom for when we practice the group dance that I have been teaching them since Wednesday.

   July 23

  Go hard or go home. That’s what I’m telling myself as I look at the stains on my sweater after an hour of rolling around and getting pummeled by young’uns. It’s so much fun getting to be a complete goofball around them. I think one of my roles in life is to show kids that growing up doesn’t mean you have to lose your inner kid. I wish it was this easy to make friends with other 19 year-olds. I even got to hold and play with a baby the other day. So cute. It’s also nice to let my affectionate side out. Haha I’ve given so many pecks on the cheek to the little ones. Vanesa kissed me back after I kissed her! It was such a precious moment.

  So today I got spat on again, this time by my namesake, Jonathan (pronounced Joe-nah-tahn in Spanish), although this time it was slightly my fault. But yesterday I was rocketship blasting a tiny one named Daniela and she just spat on me point blank, out of nowhere. It reminded me of earlier this summer when the youngest daughter of my campus pastor and I were staring each other down from inches apart, and she decided that my face would be a good place to land a sneeze. Long showers are coming.

  In the morning the kids made cards for El Día de la Amistad, the Bolivian version of Valentines’ day (which I like much better, since it hasn’t been distorted like ours has to connote only romantic relationships). In the afternoon the kids worked on homework, then played concentration (making pairs between the names of fruits in Spanish and those names in English!) and bingo. The older kids had a celebration for the holiday, with a dance party and everything.

  I found out today that I get to choreograph a dance for the kids that they’ll perform next week! I think I’m going to use “La Calle” by Juan Luis Guerra. I also get to teach an English class next Thursday! I’m so excited.

  
  

  July 24

   I woke up at 7:20 in order to get a headstart on the day. Figured I’d fry me up an egg and eat as I got ready. Now, this summer at CEJUPA is my first time using a manual gas stove, but over the past few weeks I’ve gotten the hang of it pretty well. But today my suburban upbringing let me down. Turned the nozzle to open up the gas like we always do, then I struck a match and held it close to the burner, at which point it usually catches and voila. But the first match didn’t catch. Neither did the second. So I figured, maybe I need to open the gas a little bit more and turn up the nozzles on the burners a bit more. Apparently that is a no-no, because upon striking the third match (I wasn’t even holding it anywhere near the burners) a whoosh of flame erupted from the match and the burners. The front layer of my hair was singed. Burnt hair is absolutely the worst smell in the world. Thank God there wasn’t any severe pain or damage, though.

  Our shower broke last week, so today Oscar and I heated up a pot of water and used it to shower. We’ve earned so many man points here.

  So today we began learning the dance. It wasn’t too bad! The kids’ attention span was short, as to be expected, but when it was there, they did pretty well. ‘m including the cabbage patch, the shopping cart, the basic salsa step, the stir-the-stew, and a soul train line. I ended up using a song by what was my favorite band for many years, Salvador, as it lends itself to both latin dancing and hip-hop dancing.

   July 25

  We got through the soul train today with the morning group, and past the soul train all the way to the box step with the afternoon group! It’s crazy how much better behaved the afternoon group is than the morning group. Granted, the morning group is larger, and today they were riled up due to playing for a good 20 min before Meri was able to get to class and give them something to do. But still. If there’s one thing I’m learning here, it’s patience, with both groups of kids.

  I started studying 2 Corinthians today, and I hope the end of the first chapter (verses 19-22, Holman Christian Standard) encourages you and amazes you as it did me:

  "For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us… did not become "Yes and no"; on the contrary, a final "Yes" has come in Him. For every one of God’s promises is "Yes" in Him. Therefore, the "Amen" is spoken through Him by us for God’s glory… He has also sealed us and given us the Spirit as a down payment in our hearts."

  - TJ Stokes

My New Favorite Place on Earth

July 20

 Today we are visiting Copacabana, Bolivia. I may have found the place where I want to spend my life.

Ever since my parents took me to the mountains of the northern tip of California when I was three or four years old, where I first saw snow, further embedded by the three years of living in the Santa Fe Hills of San Marcos, California (where I rode my bike down the hill to school without pedaling more than once or twice), I have always loved hilly terrain. That’s part of the reason why I’ve always loved Uva in hilly Charlottesville, Virginia, and Washington & Lee University in Lexington, VA, and almost went to either one. I’ll never forget the feeling of surprise and letdown when I tried riding my bike in flat Hampton, VA for the first time in 2003. My thoughts: “Why is this whole place so flat? You mean I have to pedal all the time?”

        I also love the water, never having lived more than an hour away from the ocean. So as we were on our way here, the pure, sparkling waters of this enormous lake and the untouched, sprawling hills drew me in. To give you an idea of how big Lake Titicaca is: the ride from El Alto to Copacabana takes about 3 hours. One can see the lake for at least 2 hours of the ride. Also, at one point they ship people, cars, and buses across the lake on boats because going around takes too long. I can definitely see myself living far enough outside of the town to have a dream house on the side of one of these greenish-yellow hills, with ten other hills and the highest navegable lake in the world as our backyard. Yet close enough to the town to where I can buy food and other nice things. Just give me a kayak, a small motorboat, a fishing pole, and a hot water heater, and I’m good to go.

        I made sure to dip my hand in the water as we took the boat across the lake between segments of the boat ride, so that I could say that I’ve touched Lake Titicaca. I also saw llamas right before we boarded.

        I’ve seen more American products (Pringles, Gatorade, Doritos, etc.) here in Copacabana than anywhere else I’ve been over the past two weeks, including the capital city of La Paz (granted, I didn’t explore the capital too extensively). There are also a lot of tourists here, both from other Latin American countries and from around the world. It’s a nice burst of diversity. I’m even starting to see the differences between the various ethnicities of the “plurinacional” Bolivia; from Aymara to sun-baked brown skin to the lighter tones and even those that I wouldn’t have looked twice at if I had seen them in East Asia.

This town reminds me of Santo Domingo, especially the area surrounding the really nice hotel that I and my youth group stayed at while we were there. The restaurant that we ate lunch at today (Oscar and Michael tried fresh trout straight out of the lake, I went American and got a hamburger) and most of the hotels closest to the beach are quite remiscent of the Dominican Republic’s capital, for me at least.

The cathedral in the main plaza is unreal. The three crosses outside, the elegant architecture, the carvings on the entrance doors, the figurines on the side of the interior, the myriad of golden designs at the altar, the white-bearded priest giving the address, the holy feeling of being there, all were worth the cost of the trip by themselves alone. Photographs weren’t allowed, but I think Michael got one or two :p. We met Michael last night when we crashed at Samuel’s house after getting to the bus station and finding the last bus to Copacabana for the day full to the brim. I love how God will sometimes say no to what we ask for (in this case, that we would catch the evening bus), knowing that taking the morning bus the next day would allow me to see the countryside in its full splendor. Anyway, Michael is an AISEC exchange student from Colombia. So now we’ve got the US, Mexico, and Colombia represented in our band of adventurers.

Right now I’m at the top of El Calvario. We took maybe 30 minutes’ worth of walking up large stone steps to get to the Mirador Sagrado Corazón de Jesús (a lookout over the lake) first, and now we’re at an even higher summit. There were 11 crosses along the path, each with a different refrain with respect to Jesus’ death.

On the way down, Oscar and I finally tried Inca Kola, both of us having wanted to try it for quite a while. It wasn’t that great, actually.

Oscar and I walked along the beach for a while. The water is pretty turbulent today, which is why almost no one was out on the water.

So today we took a taxi from Sam’s to the bus station, took the bus from El Alto to Copacabana, took a short boat ride across the lake, had lunch, had an Inca Kola, had dinner, and paid for a motel room, all for about 100 bolivianos (about $15). Now that’s a deal that I can live with.

July 21

       

        Oh my goodness. That bed was so comfortable. We went to bed at around 8:30 last night, since there’s not much to do/see after the sun sets. I woke up at around 7:30 this morning and attended church at the Cathedral at 8. It was really special. I understood some to most of the songs, most of the homily, and a little bit of the rest (blessings, recitations, short addresses) The worship was both aesthetically really good and theologically powerful. It was one guy with a guitar and an awesome voice. The songs were simple enough for me to catch on without having the words on a screen, which is not something I can say about many worship services that I’ve been to in the US :p. Of course, there’s a place for both the simple and the complex worship song, but I was glad that it worked out the way it did today. I truly felt that I was able to fellowship, be convicted by the Spirit and the preaching of the Word, and praise God corporately, which is the point of a church service, whether Protestant or Catholic. Of course, there were a few aspects of the service that I disagreed with, but as a whole I felt much at home. They even had announcements and a “greet your neighbor” time, which reminded me of and made me miss my home church in New Haven. I liked how they used an Old Testament account, a gospel account, and a passage from the epistles to work towards the doctrine of the message. I watched as everyone took communion and then (as best as I could tell) got sprinkled by holy water at the end of the service. Truly an experience.

        Now that I’ve attended one North American and one South American Catholic mass, I’m interested in learning more about the similarities and differences between the two, as well as more about Catholicism itself. The service got me thinking about how to minister, witness to, and shepherd a church and greater area made up of those who are well-acquainted with this tradition, whether or not that means that they are redeemed disciples of Jesus (just as many in the US claim Protestantism without actually knowing and following God). It’ll surely be a very different approach to sharing the truth than that which we employed earlier this summer in East Asia, where the vast majority have never heard the good news.

        We went paddleboating after mass! So much fun to be out on the water.

        Maybe 15 minutes into the ride back, an Aymaran couple got off in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere (At first I didn’t see any type of abode, despite being able to see for miles, but later I saw some crop plots, sheep, donkeys, and houses). I really want to get to know these people. So in addition to Greek and Hebrew, this summer I’ve added Mandarin and Aymara to the list of languages that I want to learn. I can’t wait to get started.

- TJ Stokes

Feliz Cumple, La Paz :)

July 15

Successfully washed my clothes by hand for the first time in my life yesterday. Now today (at around 5 pm) they’re fairly dry from hanging. I feel like a real rugged man now.

I felt significant again today. In the morning Ariel (the little boy with the heavy accent who has taken to me, and I to him) and I worked on adding, subtracting, and comparing numbers (greater than, less than, etc.). Subtracting ended up being much harder for him than adding, which I guess makes sense as I try to remember back to my elementary school days. We worked through those struggles fairly easily, but then when we finished he wanted to play chess. The struggle was real. I think I explained at least 20 times that pawns can only move forward, except in the case of taking the opponent’s piece diagonally. Granted, chess is a fairly complicated game, but I just can’t bring myself to let him learn the game wrong. If he had said, “Let’s play make believe with these chess pieces on this chess board!” then I would have had no problem. But even though I corrected him a thousand times, he always took it well and never got angry. It was really impressive. My philosophy is that one should never go easy on anyone in any game. Life isn’t going to go easy on them! Plus, the feeling of finally beating someone of your own merit after losing so many times (having to learn and get better each time knowing that they’re not going to cut you any slack), is one of the most deeply satisfying feelings ever. How dare I rob anyone of that?

In the afternoon I worked with Eddy Luis, who really struggled with the same worksheet that Ariel did. He almost never spoke, and when he did it was a barely audible whisper. I wasn’t sure if he just had never learned how to do this, and thus was despondent due to feeling incompetent, or if he was just having a really bad day. I felt my impatience waning at several points, but God reminded me that I had deliberately ignored His instructions a billion times more than Ariel or Eddy had ignored mine, and that helped a ton. He slowly started to get it, and by the end when it was snacktime, it took significant coaxing to tear hiim away from the math worksheet! 

July 16

Today was La Paz’s (the whole department, not just the city) birthday, so it was a day of no work and many festivities. Samuel, one of the AISEC friends who picked me up at the airport, came over at around 11 and took us to where the main party was in El Alto. We walked for at least a mile, if not two, and passed by at least 20 different marching bands complete with dancers (usually either completely male or completely female) with traditional garb (the women’s dress was super fancy and expensive). People would just pee all over the sidewalk, it was kinda gross.

Later we went to Samuel’s house and watched Thor (which was really good) and Gulliver’s Travels, in Spanish of course.

July 17

A thousand more piggy back rides and rocketship blastoffs today. Taught a couple of kids how to play checkers.

It’s interesting that although Bolivia does have regular bottles for beverages, also popular are packets or plastic bags for juice or yogurt, especially among kids.

After classes were over, I helped cut carrots and potatoes for a special dinner with two local friends, and then we went to play Wally, or indoor volleyball where you can use any part of your body to get the ball over the net, as well as the side walls (but not the ceiling or the back wall). It was so much fun!! At one point Victor, the director, kicked the ball and it went through an opening that led to the second floor. I was dying. We played for a good hour and a half or two hours.

July 18

Wow, one month to go. So much has happened in these past 11 days, yet they’ve passed so quickly.

Just washed dishes with Oscar. We definitely need to start rinsing or at least doing some type of pre-wash before we put dishes in the dirty dish tub so that it doesn’t take dynamite to get the residue off later. It was fun though. I put my library on random and ended up listening to two songs that I’d never listened to all the way through before- Running From the Devil by the Ohio Players and Love Is Right On by the Emotions

I usually help with the medium-age group for the first half of each shift (morning and afternoon), and then the tiny tots for the second half. In the morning class of the tiny tots we have a Fernando and a Fernanda, which caused me quite a bit of confusion before I realized what was going on.

Tonight we kick off weekend 2 by heading to the place I have most wanted to visit since I learned where I would be doing this internship: Lake Titicaca, the largest freshwater lake in South America and the highest navegable lake in the world. It’s super cool to be so close to so many places that I learned about in my Ancient Civilizations of the Andes class first semester.

Well, my last post was of the photos that accompany the blog if you missed it. I would love to hear from you on what you’ve been up to, so shoot me an email!

-TJ

Nuestra Senora de La Paz!

It's been a while since I last posted but I finally found some time this weekend to sit down and recap my adventure to one of the craziest cites I've ever been to. I went to meet with two people/organizations that work with artisan goods as it is one of the ideas I have for replacing the soap factory at Warmi. I also went for a Model UN conference, something I used to do in high school but have not done at the collegiate level—nor in a foreign language!

Two Mondays ago I went to the bus terminal in Cochabamba and took the overnight bus with the president of AIESEC Bolivia, Quitnen Van Duin. It was fun talking to him about AIESEC, Bolivia, life, and Holland (where he is originally from). I was also glad it was dark out so I couldn't actually see the roads we were driving on—which are notoriously dangerous but for $7 I wasn't going to complain. The only thing that did bother me was the fact that my "reclining bed-chair" reverted to its upright position every ten minutes so by the time we arrived around 7am I hadn't gotten much sleep.

The lack of sleep plus the altitude—the elevation of La Paz is 12,000ft whereas Cochabamba is only 8,400ft—made for an interesting walk across the city to a well-known café. There I met up with Daniela Viscarra, a social business consultant who works with the design and product development of artisan and textile products. She is also a senior designer at the foundation she helped found, Fundacion Jalsuri (Qechua for "spring") after a very successful Aid to Artisans (ATA) project that sold and exported more than $500,000 of traditional goods. She was also a consultant on an ATA project inAfghanistan. We talked with her for several hours over breakfast about her work, AIESEC, development, and the artisan industry in Bolivia—conversations that would continue for the next two days.

After breakfast, Quinten had his AIESEC business to attend to and Daniela and I went off to explore the city a little. We first went to the touristic area to look at some of the artisan stores. She explained to me the difference between machine made products and hand made products, how one could tell the difference, and how sad she was to see the dominance of modern day cheap knock-offs of traditional designs and products. It was interesting to see how animated the ladies selling the goods would become the moment they discovered that Daniela actually knew what she was talking about when it came to their traditional goods—both of us looked pretty foreign on the outside although she is fully Bolivian. She also explained to me how the traditional Cholita dress was originally from Philippines via Spain, something I could never have guess before but struck me as interesting: what today is considered very "traditional" of rural ladies is in fact a product of globalization, albeit a few hundred years ago.

We also passed by the Calle de las Brujas (Street of the Witches) where they sell all kinds of "magical" charms and potions for all kinds of reasons. What threw me off the most were the dried alpaca fetuses. Daniela and I had a hard time rationalizing between what is traditional culture—and therefore should be respected—and what—although it may be traditional—is a lack of respect for mother nature and animal rights.

The bowl, seen from a little higher up

After the interesting yet unsettling witch street, we ate lunch in a very rustic restaurant which was located in a colonial Spanish building. These buildings are spotted throughout the city and their signature characteristic is the inner courtyard that they have and the balconies that surround it. The whole city is a rather interesting mix of colonization and modernity—at times a very stark contrast as right next to one of these traditional and protected architectural gems you can find a skyscraper. Not much city planning went into the construction of modern La Paz—at least on the surface to tourist eyes.

What is most striking about the city, however, is how it really is built inside of a hole, as the Bolivians say. La Paz is located in a little round valley up in the mountains and as such, every street either goes up or goes down. If I could go back in time I would love to meet the guy that arrived there in the mountains and said, "well, this seems like a good place to build a city!" Additionally—and this the founders could not have anticipated but its still their fault—because La Paz is essentially build in a valley, like Cochabamba, the air pollution is extremely strong. Many of the cars and busses and decades old and the only thing that doesn't stop the air from being intolerably polluted are the cross-winds that clean out the valley.

All the interns dressed up in traditional Bolivian costumes the week before

After lunch, Daniela took me to visit the Museum for Ethnography and Folklore to learn a little more aboutBolivia's traditional roots. I finally understood the roots of Qechua and Aymara, two of the most commonly spoken traditional languages, and the pre-columbian past of Bolivia in an exhibit designed by one of her co-workers. We also passed through the masks exhibit, which are mainly used during the Carniavales celebrations in Oruro. The interns actually had to dress up in many of the traditional costumes that were on display in the museum the week before in our "trainee shower." After the masks I got to see the feather-art exhibit, which was quite impressive—I just wish I had taken my camera with me! After passing through the traditional textile exhibit (some of which were several hundred years old) I saw the location where one of Daniela's stores used to be in the museum before the government shut it down.

The reasons why it was shut down is in part due to Daniela's philosophy on the textile market. She has realized that it is impossible for Bolivians to compete with Chinese and even Peruvian prices for cheaply made goods. As such she always insists that the best market to compete in is high-quality goods that tourists and expats will buy not only because they want to support the preservation of traditional Bolivian culture and provide a fair wage to the producers so they can have an adequate standard of living, but also because the goods are nice in and of themselves. The nominally (as most Bolivians refer to it) socialist government, however, considered her domestically sold products "elitist" and forced her to shut down. Daniela, in her frustration, wondered if the government therefore preferred that the producers were paid next to nothing in order to sell the goods at a lower price. I guess we'll never know.

Daniela told me how her domestic stores also suffered from the owners believing they could run the store without her intervention. For example, one of her museum shops in a famous resort in Copacabana (on the shore of lake Titikaka) was taken over by the owners who rented the store out to her and for the last two years has been empty because they don't know how to run it properly.

The next day Daniel showed me her collection of textiles as well as reports from past projects. We also talked about her Ford Fellowship at Columbia University last summer and her visit to Yale. One of the directors at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, where I hope to study international relations, was actually interested in turning her work into a Capstone project for Global Affairs seniors and I hope I can somehow help to make that happen! After lunch we went to visit some of her stores in hotels in the southern part of the city and then she dropped me off near a mini-bus stop (which don't actually exist but it was a corner where many of them frequently pass by) and sent me on my way to El Alto.

El Alto is a former suburb of La Paz located at the rim of the bowl that contains the city. It got to big over the years that it eventually became its own city—although markedly poorer and a lot less safe thanLa Paz. I was there to meet with another group that helps artisans called ASARBOLSEM. I spent a good hour talking to the son of the founder about their business model and the help they could potentially provide Warmi should we decide that we would like to go into textiles or handicrafts. They essentially help with product development and market access, and after a 2 year cycle hope that the producers are self-sufficient at the end of it. I also got to meet the founder, a former government minister and highly respected woman in the artisan world in Bolivia, Antonia Rodriguez.

The next day was the Model UN conference. It started off pretty bad since all I brought was a cheap button-down and khakis. I was kindly asked to find more formal clothes for the next day. I managed to survive the first day, although not without some hiccups. When being asked questions on my position, the law-students in my forum had no mercy and asked me things that I had a small chance answering even if I was a native Spanish speaker. I struggled a lot the second day as well when after hearing the position of another delegate (and understanding very little of it) the moderator (who really did not like me very much) asked me to please make a commentary. I stood up, shaking, and spewed a few lines of complete garbage that made really no sense and would have been a better use of everyone's time if I had not said anything at all. As awkward and silly as I felt, I knew that was exactly why I had come and what AIESEC strives to do: help you get out of your comfort zone. And boy, was I uncomfortable! Debating Bolivian politics, in Spanish, with Bolivians—who study law! It was a match made in out-of-my-comfort-zone-heaven.

The National Forum

By the third and final day I had made two significant contributions, as unrecognized as they may have went. The first was when we debated solutions to the issue of community justice. The forum split into two working groups, and during one of the open sessions I did not immediately get up and join my group. In stead, I sat and listened a little to what the other group, who had gathered right in front of my seat, where saying and they began trying to convince me to join their resolution. I began suggesting that our resolutions weren't all that different just as the other group that I had previously been working with nervously came running over to ask me what I was doing there. I told them we'd be best off putting our resolutions together and all of a sudden a dialogue began between the groups about how best to do it. Although really I didn't do much, I still feel my laziness about getting up may have just been the spark necessary to end an unnecessary debate between two groups that were more or less in agreement.

The second contribution was regarding a scholarship for elementary through high school students that we were debating as part of our discussion on the first three Millennium Development Goals. When looking for improvements, the delegates were arguing about the best time during the year to give out the scholarship when I suggested breaking it up and giving out parts of it every few months. Everyone turned to me and acted as if it was the smartest thing they'd ever heard (well, it certainly was the smartest thing I'd said all weekend). I felt very proud of my albeit small contributions given the difficulties I had with the language barrier.

"CAPTURED THIEVES WILL BE BURNED"

Awesome way to end the week in La Paz!

Finally on Sunday I went to visit lake Titikaka, the highest lake in the world, with the cousin of the friend I went to the conference with. The cousin actually is a rising sophomore (just like me!) at Columbia. It was an incredible drive out there as I got to see a lot of the countryside around La Paz. One of the most striking things I saw were the human sized puppets hanged by their neck from random edifices. They were indicators that in those areas community justice was practiced, a topic we debated in the Model UN conference!

When we finally got the lake it was incredible to see how blue it was. We had an amazing lunch of fish that came from the lake and then even went on a private boat ride on the lake. It is definitely a place I'd love to retire in.













- Attila

Poland - the weeks that followed

A lot has happened since my last post. In fact, as of last night, I am safe and sound back in the US. In an effort to break up information about the trip, though, this will be more about the weeks in the middle of my time in Poznan.

The trip overall consisted of a fairly regular skeleton of a schedule. Work in primary schools Monday through Friday, travel on the weekends. But looking back closer at each week and day, it was anything but routine. Every single day was a new adventure, with something different to discover and to learn about Poland, or even to learn about the US.

Before anything else, work in schools comes first. What an amazingly rewarding experience. Every single school I taught in, the teachers and students were so welcoming and so excited to have us visiting them. A typical class would probably be about 45 minutes, taught to a class anywhere from 6 to 13 years old (Polish kindergarten finishes around age 6, and primary school goes through about 13, after which students move on to gymnasium/junior high, and then on to high school). Learning to interact with the students was a continuous process - I learned more every single day about fun and better ways to engage them, to learn from them, and to help them learn from me. Not a single week went by that I didn't tweak my plans a little bit to make my lessons more and more exciting for the kids, and fun for us to experience together. A normal class could have been anywhere from 10 to almost 30 kids, who spoke a range of almost no English to pretty proficient English. With the youngest kids, who have only been learning English for a couple of years so far, the teachers did lots of translating for me. Either way, I found that a great way to get the kids to open up to me and ask questions was to have them teach me some Polish! My Polish pronunciation isn't the greatest (some of their sounds don't exist in English) but sometimes that made it even better for the kids to laugh at me and with me, and really open up to see me as a friend. (For a little bit of fun, try this Polish tongue twister, like one of the ones my kids taught me! -- Spod czeskich strzech szło Czechów trzech. -- just ask Google translate to read it out loud! The 'sh' and 'ch' sounds are so difficult!)

I think the most interesting things in class, though, were seeing not only what the kids already knew about the US, but also what they wanted to know about the US. It was honestly just as exciting for me to learn from them as it was for them to learn about the US from me. And some of the questions are priceless! I got an enormous variety of inquiries, ranging from normal things like 'What kind of food do you eat?' and 'What is the weather like?' to much more imaginative things like 'Do you have green french fries?' and 'How old were you when Apollo 17 launched?'. Beyond that, there were tons that related to their knowledge of US media and films, which is a large part of what they know - things like 'Do you know Batman?' and 'Where does Eminem live?'. I never failed to find the most creative and curious kids, and to be impressed and amused by the things they wanted to know.

Outside of school, my time was spent in two big ways. The first was exploring Poznan with the rest of the interns. Poznan is full of beautiful charming places to visit, gorgeous churches, and endless numbers of cute streets with shops and fountains and beautiful squares. After school each day, we'd meet up to explore another new place, see Poznan, and trade stories with each other about our lives at home. I think I've learned even more about Azerbaijan and the Philippines than I have about Poland! It was so interesting getting to talk with the other interns, find the similarities and the differences between our lives at home, and start wanting to come visit each other at home! Such an amazing experience getting to sit in a beautiful open air cafe in the middle of the old square of Poznan and enjoy the summer weather with new international friends.

The other huge portion of my time was spent with my host family. With the exception of one week, I lived with a family of four in a small but beautiful flat right near the city, and they really became my second family. My host parents, Johanna and Piotr, really began to treat me like part of the family, and were more welcoming than I could have ever hoped for. We'd have dinner together as a family of five, hear about how each other's days went, and talk about Polish traditions or American traditions or any number of things. And then after dinner I'd usually end up spending a few hours just talking with my host parents, about the kids or their jobs or the way Poland used to be, or anything at all. They're such wonderful people, and such great parents to their kids, both of whom are brilliant and are going to do huge things some day. Michal, at 10, speaks fantastic English, and he and I became great friends over the course of my time there. Maciek, at 5, speaks almost no English, but when he runs up and hugs me after I come home from work, words really aren't necessary! They're the most amazing kids, and the most welcoming family in the world.

Porto Alegre: It's All in the Name

I’ve always firmly believed that cities have vibes. Like, vibes. You know? Sometimes it’s obvious, as with Houston’s muggy white-collar hum or Austin’s “let me make you a mix CD” aura. Sometimes, it’s subtler than that: Madrid calls for quiet strolls through parks, Miami’s sensual spice makes you want to work up a dance-floor sweat, and the streets of Amiens smell like old books and black coffee. Usually I feel a city’s vibe almost immediately, but that was not the case when my plane touched down in Porto Alegre almost three weeks ago.

Porto Alegre is Brazil’s tenth most populous metropolitan area, and it’s the capital of Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul. Its location far down in the Southern Hemisphere (next to the beautiful Guaíba River) makes it the perfect destination for those of us seeking to escape the Texas summer heat. I was delighted to find two charming members of the local LC waiting for me at the airport--just as advertised, but better. Both of them helped me with my luggage and patiently conversed with me as my sleep-deprived brain struggled to form grammatically correct sentences in Portuguese. The car ride to my host’s apartment was a feast for the eyes, zooming through various neighborhoods of Porto Alegre in a matter of minutes.

I could describe this Brazilian city as “strangely familiar.” While it physically resembles my hometown of Maracaibo in Venezuela, the weather and the hills make it feel more like New Haven in the late fall. To give credit where credit is due, much of the familiarity I feel here is due to the amount of quality people that have come to serve as my gateway to the city. Upon dropping me off, the local AIESECers introduced me to my host João, a 22-year-old humanities student at the local private university. João has proven to be the epitome of warm, welcoming and chill—a.k.a. everything I need to hit it off with anyone.  His apartment, though lacking a heating system to combat the winters below the Tropic of Capricorn, provides a cozy, small and relaxed environment where loud music and pizza are welcome at all hours of the day.

Anyway, even though I was exhausted from 17 hours of travel, I accepted João’s invitation to go to his university with him. And what a wonderful first night it proved to be! I got to meet João’s colleagues from the Literature and Linguistics department, and I even got to sit in on one of his classes and have some really interesting conversations with João’s professor. Didn’t see that one coming. It also turns out I have more in common with his friends than I foresaw. The fact that João’s friends speak no English for the most part hasn’t stopped us from bonding; over the past three weeks, I’ve returned to their department’s equivalent of a common room at least every other weekday just to hang out, listen to music, chat, and play lots of pool. João and his friends taught me the ins and outs of Porto Alegre, such as the best parks, the fastest bus routes for me to take to work, the best times to visit certain museums, and the quickest shortcut to take if a protest blocks a popular street.

Unfortunately for me, no amount of description or unnecessarily Instagrammed photos could fully convey the human aspects of the city. Here, the more familiar facets of Brazilian culture—itself a mixture of European, African and indigenous traditions—overlap with the strong influence of the South American pampas. This places gaúchos (as the residents of Rio Grande do Sul are known) in an interesting cultural position, with Porto Alegre breaking away from stereotypical images of Brazil. For example, chimarrão, the Brazilian equivalent of yerba mate, is unique to the gaúchos. This beverage is prepared by pouring hot water into a special container (called the cuia) with the tightly packed mate herb. The beverage is then sipped out of a steel straw called the bomba. On the streets and in cafés you will find teenagers and adults alike with a cuia in one hand and a hot water thermos in another. Some parks even have dispensers that provide free ground mate leaves for people to pack into their cuias on the go. Chimarrão is not only a ubiquitous drink, but also a social one, passed around and shared with friends when in a group.

Gaúchos are ultimately very proud to be gaúchos. They’re proud of their traditional southern dances, their bitterly cold winters, their distinctive accent, and their chimarrão. Their overall satisfaction with their city shows. This place managed to make a complete stranger feel at home pretty quickly. Of course, it took getting lost a few times, but the moments that have characterized my weeks here so far speak for themselves: playing ping-pong with my coworkers during our lunch break, grabbing drinks at the local bar with João’s friends after class, walking around the downtown area with my AIESEC buddy, grocery shopping with João, people-watching on the bus to and from work, walking past angry graffiti that covers more and more wall space with every protest…. I have yet to feel extremely out of place here in Porto Alegre, and that’s more than I can say for a lot of places.

Maybe by mid-August I will have figured out a good way to describe Porto Alegre’s vibe. All I know is that something here is worth a second winter. For right now, I’ll settle for taking sneaky pictures of the streets on my way to the grocery store and being overly poetic about how beautiful this city’s skyline is. And if you think that’s cliché, wait until you hear my description of the sunset over Lake Guaíba. ■

--Jesús