Just got back from a two day hike with Hugh's Ecología Tropical students up (and down) Uchumachi, our local big mountain. I still need to shower and tend to my cuts, but wanted to get a photo up. There are few more coming in due time . . .

We're back online on the lower campus, and I have some great photos from a student retreat Sister Jean facilitated Monday, but it will take a bit before they're up. In the mean time, I'm posting irresistible dog faces on both this and my photo blog. This guy cracks me up whenever I see him on the path between the campuses here in Carmen Pampa. Those are his real ears -- no trick photography this.

No, these are not grubs. (But just out of idle curiosity, would you have believed me?) They're called 'oca' and Hugh brought the tasty little veggies home from the students' organic garden. He roasted them in oil and served them alongside some delicious frijoles, arroz, palta, queso, tomates, y jugo de coco. ¡Que sabroso!

This fellow, on the other hand, is proudly a member of the insect kingdom. (Or is it phylum?) I took his picture on the inside of my bedroom window (screens? who needs screens?) a few weeks ago. Called el cocalero, he's just a little bigger than your average grasshopper, and hides from his predators in the coca fields -- where naturally he blends in beautifully.(As always, you can click on any picture to see it in all its full low-resolution grandeur. E-mail me for the 3MB or 4MB original file -- gotta love 8 megapixels!)

Sometimes my inner grammar dork comes out. Like today. We were on fire with Subject Verb Object.

My mom credits my love of linguistics and structure to the fact that she was pregnant with me when she finished her master's in English. I credit her -- who else grew up with an innate distaste for it's mistaken for its and vice versa?

Anyhoo, we didn't get to the fun Sentence Snake exercise, but that's what tomorrow is for. (Feel free to note the irony of my dangling a preposition after lambasting the innocents who don't know a possessive neutral pronoun from a subject-verb contraction.)

PS: Thanks for Maria and Diana for correcting my slip-ups. Turns out my English is starting to become as bad as my Spanish. Sigh.

Holy Week has ended with the kind of gentle rains that make resurrection seem a perfectly likely miracle. Check out my all-photos, all-the-time blog Casi Bastante for the beginning of a photo essay from Semana Santa, plus the few shots I got before my camera batteries died at what Adrian is calling 'the top of the world.'

Just got back to Carmen Pampa last night in time for the second half of Holy Thursday mass. Our internet connection is down, so I'm cyber-squatting in Hugh's office arriba. (The fiber optic cable bringing the satellite internet to the lower campus snapped, so it will be awhile before I'm online at home again.)


The trip to Chile was really remarkable (and not only in stunning contrast to my life in Carmen Pampa) -- here are a few photos to serve as placeholders until I can get some more online. Our hosts were beyond-gracious, the wine was only outdone by the seafood, and the scenery is very different than Bolivia -- equally beautiful, I'd say.


Forgive me for being behind in e-mail correspondence -- and even more so for not catching up for at least a week or two. I hope you all have a very blessed Semana Santa.

¡Hasta pronto!

One of the many benefits of having a visitor is getting to be in pictures, instead of always taking them. And one of the benefits of my trusty Canon XT is that everybody takes good photos with it -- Adrian took over 100 at the coffee plant yesterday. I think that qualifies him for shutterbug status, as a matter of fact.
Here are a few from my classroom today. Disfrutalos!

My friend Adrian is visiting from Boston this week. (Next week we visit a friend of his in Santiago Chile -- it's harvest season and we're heading for the wine country!) We've already had plenty of adventures, including [A] a hike up into the "jungly bits" where he slipped and gashed his thumb open (passing out briefly, but coming to for the 45 minute hike down to Dr. Moises for 2 stitches) and [B] some celebrations of the fact that Weston Jesuit offered me a President's Scholarship (80% tuition and a housing stipend -- wahoo!)
Anywhere, here we are overlooking the Uchimachi valley. Forgive our goofy expressions -- the light was seriously bright. But don't you love his borrowed hat?