My fork in the road

Sagrado

2010-01-20T19:13:00.000-08:00

Hello! I'm here in Puerto Rico, San Juan, Santurce, Universidad del Sagrado Corazon. I'm not sure if I'll be blogging during the semester. I wanted to email a few pictures to my family but it wouldn't work, so this is my alternative.

Tonight's my third night here. My roommate is awesome. We went to Old San Juan and tried to take pictures, as seen above.... or below. They keep these dorm rooms freezing, it's like Minnesota in here all the time. I am wearing my yoga pants, a t-shirt, a sweatshirt, a sweater, and huge socks under a blanket and still feel cold. We went to bed kinda early but then the air conditioner turned off and there were girls screaming in the hallways and running up and down stairs. After like and hour of being lazy we finally got out of bed and discovered the power was out. We went to the lobby on our floor where all the girls were flipping out. I just smiled a lot cause I was too tired to pay attention and decipher their words. And I couldn't see anything because I had already taken my contacts out. The power's back on yayyy. Anyway- I start class at 8am tomorrow. Hopefully I can fall asleep with all these muchachas que estan gritando :) Oh and to summarize, I like it here thus far!

just cause

2009-09-27T12:07:00.000-07:00

Laura's Graduation, Synergia Ranch, Bantu, Lucinda Williams concert

2009-06-08T12:54:00.000-07:00

After a swift and bittersweet departure from Puerto Rico, I returned home to MN for my sister Laura's graduation from Saint Mary's University in Winona, where I used to go. I was really excited for her, and it was fun to visit the campus and see a few people I hadn't seen since leaving. The day after her graduation I flew to Synergia Ranch in New Mexico. The ranch is lovely and the landscapes of New Mexico are breathtaking, with mountains in all directions. The mountains here are the biggest I've seen and I stare at them a lot. The weather here has been really lovely, although when I first arrived I had trouble dealing with the crispy dryness of the air. Mostly it's been nice and blustery. The other night I watched one of the most dynamic sunsets I think I'll ever see. I actually had set out to see if the dead chicken I put in the desert had been taken by coyotes and was pleasantly surprised by the sunset. The wind was nearly knocking me over, zipping through the desert plants and streaming through my hair. The sunlight was piercing through little holes in the clouds, shining onto other clouds and the desert. The sky was golden, deep orange, and a goregeous blue, glowing over the mountains. Anyway! It's really beautiful here, and I love it.

I got to explore downtown Santa Fe which is heaven for a developing artist. There are galleries all over with AMAZING art. There are leather stores and shops with names like "Indian Trading Company", "Cowboy Bill something", "something Corral". There are Native Americans selling things in the plaza, like lovely turquoise jewelry, copper guitar picks, and tin matchbox holders. I can't wait to explore there more. I wouldn't mind living there actually.

A woman I met here named Nikki asked me to help her at one of her jobs. She's a hospitality provider for Fan Man Productions, which means she sets up dressing rooms, buys things, and does whatever.. for artists and musicians who have concerts around Santa Fe. the concert I helped her with was Lucinda Williams, The Flatlanders, and .... Ryan something. It was cool because my dad has always loved Lucinda Williams. Plus my friend Molly and I happen to adore this song named Julia by the Flatlanders. So Nikki and I had to run around all day getting things on the dressing room lists and the bus lists for the artists. It's pretty funny what they request, for example Lucinda Williams wanted 6 protein bars, no Clif bars "no exceptions!!". So we spent the day cleaning the dressing rooms, making them look cozy, and stocking them with all the stuff they had requested. It was really sweet to be behind the scenes. I called my dad during the concert and he got to listen to Lucinda for awhile. He wanted me to get her autograph ofcourse, and said "If you meet her, tell her 'Long may you sing'" I watched the whole show from backstage and met her afterwards. She was nice, and I told her what my dad said. She wrote him a little note, which was sweet of her. I also met some guys from the Flatlanders. One of them gave Nikki an autograph that said "Nikki, where's the whores and blow?" Apparently he has a different idea of what a hospitality provider should be providing hahaha. How strange it would be to be a star.

Ohhh BANTU. There was a singing and dancing African workshop here. I can't tell you people how awesome that was for me. I've wanted to go to Africa for a long time, so to be around peopel from Africa and their culture was such a privelage. I took some dance classes which I adored. I had a lot of fun with a girl here named Jennie, wandering around at night at Bantu. We also spent some time with an awesome girl named Nicole who is from a Pueblo here in New Mexico who had spent some time on the Hericlitus, the ship that's related to all these projects. I bought a drum from a man named Akeem, except somehow I payed $60 more than Jennie for mine. I didn't know I was supposed to barter! Having Bantu here was so incredible, despite the somewhat INTENSE constant drumming. However, there is currently a silent retreat here, which is nice. The people in this retreat also have some excercise to concentrate on their walking, so there's often a silent crowd of people walking very slowly across the ranch. It's funny for me when I go to their kitchen to grab the compost. I have a desire, a really mature one, to run around and sing in between them.

All in all I'm having a good ol' time here, learning an infinite amount about myself and enjoying the pretty terrain. I want to blog again soon with pictures of the chickens, garden, orchard, and ranch stuff.

Mani with Schnoogledoogle

Laura and her roommate Janelle

Grandparents Marianne and Jim

Mark Nelson, Biosphere 2 participent. I took this through my binoculars as an experiment because my zoom is not good at allllll.

Ortiz mountains

The Tower, where I sleep

The hill I still need to climb!

Cholla cactus

ooOOOooo

Lucinda signing away

Molly this is for you!!
Performance of an African drum class

The last chunk of Las Casas and Puerto Rico, Jonny visits the land of the Coqui

2009-06-08T10:14:00.000-07:00

READ THIS POST BACKWARDS CAUSE I MESSED IT UP! :)
Puerto Ricans singing and dancing in the airport! What a lovely way to say goodbye to the wonderful island.

While walking around Old San Juan we came across this charming man, singing lovesongs and playing guitar while this couple danced on the hotel balcony. It was sooo romantic and classically Old San Juan. I put 5 bucks in his case which was not actually a wise choice considering the amount of money I had, but so worth it.

This is how we felt about eachother by the time our last night arrived! Just kiddingggggg Jonny. We were waiting at Bahia San Juan for Alexis and got yelled at for sitting on a railing.

Statue in the plaza

Reinactors meeting with some man of importance...?

Randomly there was some reinactment of something. While my brother and I walked around town we had to make our way through a parade of ... this.

I thought my picture of him was awesome so I made him take the same of me, although wouldn't you say his picture taking wasn't as good? :)

Jonny walking in Old San Juan

I asked some couple to take our picture and Jonny was thoroughly embarassed. "Evaaaa....."

Spanish fort

Jonny in Old San Juan, where they were filming a Johnny Depp movie.

View from an old Spanish fort!

Night at Las Casas

Above the homestead

JPD, the leader of the pack

Back at the homestead, mmmmm the forest!

At the swimming hole, having the time of my life before the chaos. Sleeping in the Puerto Rican rainforest is not bad though. There are no large predators and nothing really dangerous. I even got bored and made a couple videos. I made a bed of palms and luckily had my towel for a blanket. It was incredibly magical actually. The coquis were singing their usual lullaby and the fireflies zooming all around.. owls rustling in the trees. I would certainly recommend sleeping on the forest floor, but maybe on the conditions that everyone knows where you are and you have adequate supplies :) It turns out the people back at Las Casas were VERY worried and looked for me for a looong time in the night and early morning. I thought I heard a "whoop" (the noise that carries well in the forest) at one point but decided it was my imagination. I had been whooping a lot because there was no way for me to contact anyone to tell them I was ok. It was really incredible to think how isolated I felt. My imagination started getting pretty creative. I also thought a lot about how incapable humans are at surviving out "in the wild". I'm definetly a domesticated animal with little knowledge of how to live in the natural world. Anyway, when I miraculously found my way back in the morning, there looked to be a meeting going on. Since I was unsure how worried the people at Las Casas might have been, I didn't want to interrupt the meeting in case the visitors were trying to buy wood. But I realized how wrong I was when I stuck my head through the door and waved and I was greeted by a worry-stiken 3t who introduced me to my search and rescue team. I can't explain how AWFUL and silly I felt. So anwyay...there were pictures of me all over the table that they were going to post everywhere and a description of everything I was wearign including all the rings on my fingers, in case they were to find my body. It was a really weird feeling to see all that. I apoligized a million times but really they were just happy I was ok. They had thought I went to a public swimming hole called Charco Azul, and had imagined that I was abducted or murdered. My poor brother Jonny was minutes away from calling my parents to tell them they thought I had been murdered or abducted. He had just arrived in Puerto Rico and didn't really know the people at all! I felt awful for him, especially because he had been out the night before looking for his injured or dead sister. Norman told me that Jonny kept wanting to look further for me, and that even though Norman knew I wouldn't have gone there, he tried to humor him. What can you say to a person who is looking for their lost and possibly abducted sibling? If they had known I was on the property, they wouldn't have gotten so scared. So now I am an example of what NOT to do when hiking in the forest. Never be over-confident and under-prepared!!! KIDS!! IT'S NOT SMART!!!!! If that does happen to you, make a bed and stay put. That's the best thing you can do. :)

The day I decided to go to the swimming hole by myself. Little did I know.... I would get lost on the way back and spend the night alone in teh rainforest!

Jonny doing his first welding type thing!

Cutting chicken wire for Norman's Plumeria sun nursery

Waiting for Norman in Rio Piedras. After awhile I had to go into the bank to get him directions. The bank staff got Norman on speakerphone but I had to translate. It took forever and Norman's phone battery was dying and he had to keep calling back. He got lost a bunch but the bank staff cheered when Norman was on the right street. They all went outside and yelled "NORMAN!!!!!"

Sunburned sleepyhead!

Arriving back to Fajardo

Vieques

Kim and Mark, our travel buddies

Leaving Vieques :(

The annual Easter figurines from Grandma H! Jonny brought them from home and I planned to take a picture of them everywhere, but kinda forgot about it after awhile.

We let Mark and Kim crash on our floor

Our room has a great view of the mountains and sea. We had our own porch :)

We decided sleeping in a guest house the second night would be better. It was cold during the night on that beach!

Breakfast. ( Lollipop)

What a place to wake up huh!

Jonny sleeping on the beach along the Caribbean in the morning

Hanging out our first night in Vieques with our new friends Kim and Mark. During the night I woke up to see a beautiful white horse staring at me. We stared at eachother for a few minutes, and then it galloped into the forest. I hadn't realized there were wild horses on the island!

The moon was insanely goregeous but my camera didn't undestand.

Our bikes kept breaking. But Jonny is a bike dude in training and fixed them every time! Lucky for us too, because people kept stopping on the road telling us to be careful because "things happen in Vieques".

While hiking in Arecibo with Alexis and his friends, we visited this old couple he had met years before. They told us the story of how they were robbed months ago. The robbers had put a gun to the head of the man and taken him away with them. Luckily the car died and the robbers discussed what to do with the man. They decided to let him go, and here he is, telling his story (to which I nodded a lot, but found his Spanish hard to understand, like many Puerto Rican's)

ferry with our buddies

forest before I knew I was kinds lost

lost in the forest, waiting for morning I realized I had my camera. It was quite a comfort actually. I watched videos of my family and even made a video of me singing an N*Sync song that a I quickly deleted :/ . I got a little bored.

ing

A glimpse

2009-04-22T12:16:00.000-07:00

Cooling off in Arecibo.

A dangerously hallucinogenic flower! Pretty enticing huh?

Space satellite used by NASA to attempt contact with ALIENS! Featured in the movie Contact with Jodie Foster.

lindsay posing before eating edible flowers. they taste like the clovers in MN I used to eat as a kid. Sour!

graveyard in old san juan

jonny's first time at the ocean :) same place I first touched the sea in San Juan!

Eckerd College, Taino center, long jungle hikes, and teenage ducks.

2009-04-01T09:24:00.000-07:00

Hmmm so there was a lovely college group here from Eckerd College which was fun. We did a bunch of road work type things with them. We went to the beach as well on their last day. Norman, Bridget, and I went to the Taino Center in Ponce to learn about the Taino Indians that lived in Puerto Rico. It was really cool to see the incredibly old artifacts that they created and used soo long ago. We got a tour by a woman who "really works at another museum so she didn't know much" but she did a fairly good job reading off her notecards. She showed us the grounds called "Batey" that they used for playing ball games. They were surrounded with rocks and a few of them had carvings of faces on them. This site was uncovered when the nearby Portuguese river flooded over and washed away the land. Inside the museum there was a skeleton of a Taino ... royal type person. It was really strange to stare at a human skeleton knowing that's just what I will look like one day. In addition, it's incredible to think of the person's life who lived in this place I am now touring. Maybe one day there will be a museum for my time, with my remains on display?

A couple days ago 3t, Andres, Bridget, and I went on a long hike through the untraveled"part of the Las Casas property. It was AWESOME but I often felt that I didn't have enough time to really LOOK because 3t and Andres like to hike 34 miles an hour apparently :) I wanna go back. There was a waterfall next to a rock formation where you could jump off. I was so certain I could do it and bounded up there with confidence but it actually took me like an hour to finally jump off. It was really interesting actually because my body became rigid with fear and no matter what I told myself I couldn't get rid of the physical fear. My mind and body battled for quite some time. Anyway the experience of the jump was good. After I jumped I felt uncomfortable during the first feelings of free-fall. I was relaxed when I slipped into the water. Well- sorta slipped. I did a bit of a body-slap I think. The hike was really wonderful and made me more confident that I could complete my goal of walking from Las Casas to the Caribbean shore. I'm not sure how far it is but I'd really like to do it.

My ducks are awkward and teenaged. They are harder to snuggle and hungrier than you'd imagine. I want to send baby ducks to my nephew who's 4th birthday is TODAY and I miss him. My brother Jonny comes next Saturday and we will explore the island. YAY to the beauty and excitment of living on this planet.

Welcome to the Jungle!

2009-03-09T11:02:00.000-07:00

Liberation study

2009-03-04T14:34:00.000-08:00

Today is my cute mom's birthday and a rainy day. I get to walk around in the clouds and it's quite amazing. I got a migraine type thing in the morning. I tried to help with debarking the logs for the Liberation study but that's pretty much the loudest activity you could do when you have a migraine. To de-bark a tree, you have to hammer all over it to loosen the bark from the trunk. I had to go lie down.. but then it started pouring and my ducks are too little to be out in cold pouring rain. I went and got them and put them in their box but they were doing their "WHERE ARE YOU" cheeping which feels like knives in your ears when you have a migraine. I put my "noise-canceling" headphones (LIES) and hoped they'd fall asleep but they were wide awake. After the rain lightened up a bit I put them outside but they still wanted to know where I was and flipped out until I came outside and brought them to the pond, their favorite place. I closed all the windows in the bunkhouse hoping it would get dark and quiet but there's windows on the roof that do a FABULOUS job of letting light in. The rain on the roof sounded like a crowd of 545743056734067403 babies clapping. I didn't get much rest. Ahh well! I watched the ducks play for awhile and enjoyed it a lot. Noodle makes me laugh. The way he has to run to keep up with Beanie and JPD is hilarious. He's always tripping. He'll run a bunch and then plop down and breath really heavily. Sometimes I carry him so he doesn't get so tired but he's always like "HEY where are you guysss" to his sibs.
Anyway... I love my ducks. Today 3t put up some pictures of the Liberation study and I thought I would put some of the ones I'm in up here. I don't ever talk about the actual work I'm doing- so here's a couple pics. And a side note, I'm starting to learn the trees here and I'm really excited about it. Oh and I will explain the Liberation study quickly. Las Casas de la Selva is a forestry project. The main mission of the project is to study how to utilize the forest without destroying it. The Liberation study involves picking out good trees for harvesting later and "liberating" them, which means cutting down trees near to it that will inhibit their growth. This sounds lame but when we cut down the first tree my eyes welled up with tears. It was just difficult for me because my passion and care for the planet is really quite new and I wasn't to the place yet where I understood that ..... well that it's not all about CONSERVATION.

Doing some road work so the jeep and trailer could pass without falling down the mountain. This is the road we used to take the wood from the Liberation plot back to the homestead for de-barking.

Loading up the trailer!

Bulging muscles at work.

Almost ready to tie up the load.

pics by 3t Vakil!

Oh and plus I bought 3 ducklings.

2009-02-24T14:02:00.000-08:00

Jemima Puddleduck (JPD), Bean Sprout (Beanie), and Noodle. They follow me in a line from biggest to smallest. They never let me sleep but I can't be mad at them!

Carnival!

2009-02-24T06:30:00.000-08:00

Lookie here!: more from Las Casas de la Selva

2009-02-19T07:56:00.000-08:00

Taken from the porch at the abandoned house that I want to buy or-my mom can buy. The view is ridiculous. While I was there a man came to talk to me. He said he grew up there and now lives down the road a bit. He moved to Connecticut for like 20 years and has been back in PR for 6 months now. I told him he was lucky for growing up with such a breath-taking view! He agreed.
Second picture is the view from the cell phone spot! Taken by Alei- an excellent photographer.
Sunset from the top of the watertower, 5 mins walk from the homestead
Walking down the road I found a fantastic view but really my camera doesn't do it justice.
Bridget on top of the watertower
UPR students looking at a lizard that Norman is showing them
Bad picture from a bamboo palace near a restaurant we went to one night. It's one of the most magical places I've ever been.

Beach on Patillas days before there was a sewage leak and it was closed down. Thankfully Norman and I went before-hand!

UPR students doing a lizard study in one of our Liberation plots before we did the felling
Alei is a fabulous dancer, no?

Beautyyyy

2009-02-03T12:59:00.000-08:00

I don't really feel like writing because there's so much to write. Uploading this stuff takes forever on this computer so I'll just give quick captions and write a real entry later. I have a looooot to write and it seems to be a daunting task. But everything is absolutely LOVELY and I am so grateful to be here in this spectacular place!

The moment I first touched the ocean! It was in San Juan after dropping off Sujata and Kevin, two awesome volunteers, at the airport.

Right outside the homestead

Alei, an awesome volunteer sitting in fallen blossoms of a Palmarosa tree. This was at a party in the foothills of El Yunque. Their house was awesomeee and had a fantastic yard with a river in the back.

My first day in Puerto Rico we climbed a mountain that was Alei's newly purchased property. Fantastic views. That's Bridget, who's been here for 3 months already and will be here for three more!

I love lizardssss. If you zoom in on his face it's awesome. He looks like a dinosaur.

Norman, Kevin, and Bridget on the beach in San Juan. They swam in their undies!

2008-12-06T14:54:00.000-08:00

I am so glad to be doing this! The mysterious little "encouragements" continue and, although I am a bit nervous, I feel more than ever that this is right. My loan-payback is proving to be much less problematic than I thought it would be. I booked my flight a bit ago and gave myself 5 days for traveling after I leave Patillas. It's not as long as I'd like, but I don't mind. I can return some other time when I have more money.

My budget for traveling will probably be $400. I've found cheap hotels and guesthouses, found fares for ferry rides to Culebra and Vieques, bike rental, and snorkeling gear for Culebra. I really have no way of knowing how things will actually play out, and I like it that way. Although I want to make sure I'm not being too romantic and unrealistic, so it's good to have a rough plan like I do.

Here's where I hope to go

-Stay a night at the island of Culebra and swim at night in the Biolumescent Bays, SNORKEL( a cool word) in the day. Apparently Culebra has the best snorkeling locations in Puerto Rico. Flamenco Beach in Culebra is a half moon shape surrounded by mountains.
-Stay a few days at the larger island, Vieques. In order to get to the cheap guesthouse I will have to bike across the island with all my stuff. How light can you travel for three months? I will find out.
-See the largest rainforest in PR, El Yunque
-Stay a couple days in San Juan and Old San Juan

Luckily, those places are all on the East side of the island. I will have to visit the other parts of the island when I have more money. I'll miss out on the underground cave system and Arecibo, but I can cope.

Old San Juan

El Yunque National Rainforest

Biolumesence, Culebra Island

Vieques Island

Flamenco Beach, Culebra Island

MMMk to do list

-make resume
-send e-mail to 3t
-clean room
-start thinking of things I need
-find that Eco-store that had the crankable flashlights and buy some for Las Casas de la Selva

It begins!

2008-12-02T22:26:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning I received an e-mail from 3t of Las Casas de la Selva saying I was able to volunteer. I am so surprised at how easily this is playing out. I've also been noticing what seems like tiny encouragements from the world. Just small things that seem to magically pop up and suggest that I am doing the right thing by taking this plunge. And I'm not a person who believes in destiny or signs really. Of course I can regard them as coincidences, or just say that I notice them only because of my current state, but it's mysterious and I am listening to them.

This whole thing really feels right, but I will confide that I am uneasy at the idea of leaving on a plane by myself, with strangers waiting to receive me on the other side, at a foreign place, where I will remain for 3 months. Leaving "my comfort zone" is just what I want to do, but I can't predict how easily I will handle it. My spirit has always felt more wild than I let myself be. Maybe everyone is this way, but I have felt desire for so much more than I've ever allowed myself do, probably due to fear. Fear of success, fear of growing as a person, fear of my own potential. Failure or mediocrity has always been the more comfortable place for me. It's about time I let that go. Comfort isn't too functional.

Once I finally get a hold of Michelle, the student loan person that is apparently against being at her desk, I can find out about deferring my loans!

Human Potential clip from Waking Life:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA-PajFU0ts

YouTube - Pocahontas - Just Around The River Bend

2008-11-30T15:32:00.000-08:00

YouTube - Pocahontas - Just Around The River Bend

Pochahantes chose the lively stream and so will I!

2008-11-30T12:10:00.000-08:00

In nearly every conversation I express my desire to live with passion and pursue anything I want to accomplish instead of limiting myself. I think about it all the time- write about it all the time- express it as often as it comes up. But what have I done? Nothing. I probably tell myself that it can't happen until later, when I'm done with school. But why do I even have to wait that long? I have great admiration for people that get ideas and spontaneously live them out, yet I feel unworthy of doing the same. Granted they probably have more money than me.... But I've come to an exciting point where I realize I CAN pursue anything, and I feel that I have to do something that intimidates me in order to conquer my feelings of inadequacy and gain a sense of direction and self. Not only that, but this trip feels like a symbolic "choosing of the road less traveled" and living how I really desire instead of living some dry, robotic life set up for me by some invisible hand.

Alright so what should I do? Well I have a myriad of interests, and I have settled on a vague topic for my field of study in college: Environmental Studies. Obviously the topic of "Green-living", conservation, Global Warming, organic---- it's plastered everywhere. But what can a person actually do to sufficiently heal the planet besides buying "Green" products that probably have been advertised inaccurately. Well after being quite inspired to get involved with our planet's salvation from these:

-reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
-learning from a friend who belongs to the Dakota and Three- Affiliated Tribe
-researching the Native American ideas
-reading the speech by Chief Seattle http://www.barefootsworld.net/seattle.html
-being involved in an Eco-Rep group at school
-and generally being introduced to and learning about global warming with the rest of the world

.....I was quite certain that this is what I want to devote my short life to. I hope there's millions of people out there who feel the same way. If you sit and think about it, it's the most important movement in the history of the world. If our human species doesn't become active in saving the planet, it doesn't simply affect people with cancer, babies who may be aborted, or kids with ADD. No, it affects EVERY movement that desires to help people. Not only that, but it affects all other species whom so innocently have been hurt by our confused motivations for successful "progress", a progress that has successfully torn apart the planet. Now that I have been learning about the mistakes humans have made in their blind obsession with an idea called "progress", I wonder what has to be done, and what I can really do. Buying a "green" yoga mat, turning lights off, and biking everywhere does not feel very effective. There has to be a fundamental change in the American way (as America is the highest contributor to Global Warming). So. I've got a bit of money that I have been saving to go back to college. My plan is to use that money to volunteer abroad, and then return to work for the summer and go back a semester later than planned. There's a bit of complication, like the fact that my previous college loans are gonna be due for payback pretty soon. But I am so very willing to figure out all the complications in order to do this.

Ok so I've always wanted to go to Africa, but the flight is too expensive for my budget ($2000) and will have to wait until the Peace Corps, should they accept me.

RESEARCH

I got books.
-"Volunteering Around the Globe" by Suzanne Stone,
-"Volunteer Vacations" by Bill McMillon etc,
-"Green Travel" by Fodor's
-and like 7 other books on traveling alone and 700 hundred things to do before you die type books.
It was really exciting and inspiring to look through the books and see what's out there, but eventually I turned to the good old internet because it's faster and more efficient.

I first tried googling "volunteer abroad" and checked out various volunteering programs and was initially disturbed by the prices of volunteering!

Some examples:

Cross-Cultural Soluntions' programs are all roughly $6800/ month
International Volunteer HQ- roughly $800/ month

Eventually I went directly to the "fees" pages and ruled it out without even recording it's information. Most programs are well over a thousand for even a two-week excursion. Plus, all of the warn "flight not included, visa not included....." and I thought maybe I needed to approach my search differently. I went on NWA's site and started searching flights. I thought I could find the cheapest flight, and THEN find a volunteer site in the country to see if there was anything remotely affordable.

Flights price examples from MSP:
Panama, Panama- $764-847
Rio de Janiero- $1050
Bogoto- $864
Nassau, the Bahamas- $484-488
Lima, Peru- &858
Ixtapa-$620
San Juan, Puerto Rico- $365

Nassau and San Juan were the cheapest flights I found. I chose San Juan because Puerto Rico is US territory and I wouldn't need a VISA or passport. That's pretty nice considering all of this will happen very soon. The problem with searching for Puerto Rican volunteering sites is that if you search "volunteer abroad" Puerto Rico isn't a site on most program's list considering it's kind of with the US. Well I tried what seemed like hundreds of different wording in a google search- and found only one option, which is thankfully a really good one.

Las Casas de la Selva
In Patillas, Puerto Rico, there is a place called Las Casas de la Selva where they are a part of Eye On The Rainforest and they allow volunteers to come and help them for 1-3 months. From what I've seen, volunteers do a lot of manual labor that goes towards research for organic farming, sustainable living, and conservation. It seems like they are an innovative and loving community. It says they have a meditation thursdays and tuesdays which is cool since I like meditation and yoga, but feel kind of awkward doing it at home .http://www.eyeontherainforest.org/volunteeropps.php

So I sent 3t and Andres, the main contacts for Las Casas De Le Selva, e-mails and am eagerly waiting their reply. It seems to be a wonderful fit, and even if it isn't I am thrilled to be trying something. But I guess if this doesn't work, I'll just go as planned to UW- Stevens Point in January. The orientation is December 5th... so hopefully I get a reply from Las Casas De Le Selva soon. I can't wait. I've never seen the ocean, never seen mountains, never been abroad, never traveled alone. I JUST CAN'T WAIT!