To Cuzco

Day 3, to Cuzco

I have not had much sleep – my roommate M___  is sick with some stomach bug, and has been up and down all night. I grab a bite to eat at the hotel breakfast buffet – fresh fruit, rolls, juice.  The coffee is terrible.  They have ham and cheese, some sort of cereals, but I pass on those.  Our group meets downstairs, and we drive to the airport. 

Through domestic security, then downstairs to wait.  This is the waiting spot for the planes where you get in a little bus and they drive you to the plane, and you walk up the stairs to board.  We have an hour-plus wait, so we watch people.  But first we look for my sick roommate.  No one has seen her since we went through security.  We check all the bathrooms, wander around a little upstairs, then more downstairs.  I find her in the front row of the waiting place, doubled over in the seat and resting.  She is not visible from anywhere in the room.  We are all happy to see her – she has not been lost, she knew where she was.

There are Earthquake security zone signs on the giant supports in the airport waiting room – will one hit while we are here?

They announce our flight, we line up, walk outside, and the smell hits us – the worst sort of death smell you can image.  Obviously there are many dead and rotting animals close by.  We all start to gag it is so overwhelming.  I feel really sorry for M__.  Short drive to the plane, more horrendous odor, then we are boarded, and don’t wait long to take off (thank goodness).  The flight is not bad, except for the landing.  Cuzco is in a small valley, so we have to drop down in a tight turn to land on the one runway.  I keep telling myself the pilot is experienced, he has done this before.  We make it.

Out into the sunshine, thin air, hawkers, vendors, ads for Coca Cola and Internet.  The bus arrives and we drive into town to our hotel.  We check in, meet with the group, then  Arturo our guide leads us to Jack’s, where we have to wait outside – it is packed.  Food was worth the wait – sandwiches, burgers, fries, beer.  Afterwards we wander around town for 4 hours, shopping, taking pictures, trying to cope with the altitude. Back to the hotel for dinner and an early evening.

Day 2, Lima

Day 2, in Lima
We are here on an “extra” day, and there is a sight-seeing tour in the afternoon. In the morning a group meeting, then a little walking around the area on our own. I go with some folks to the nearby mall. It’s very upscale, with views of the Pacific Ocean, although this morning it’s hard to see as it is very foggy. The cold Humboldt Current sweeps up the west coast of South America, and when the warm air hits it – fog. We wander through a small park, and buy water at a small store. Then back to the hotel. We go out again, back to the mall, for lunch. There is a typical food court there, but open air, overlooking the ocean. The fog has burned off, and what a view. I eat a sandwich with Asado de Res. It’s good.
Back to the hotel – its time for the city tour. There are not many really old buildings in Lima, because of the earthquakes, especially the one in 1746, which leveled everything that was here. It was a long time before it was rebuilt. Originally the Inca and rich Spaniards live further upriver from the coast, and farmed this land. Because the city is a desert, they used the water from the 3 rivers to irrigate their fields. Over time the city moved towards the coast.
The architecture of many buildings is Moorish/European, and its especially noticeable in the monastery. Of course I couldn’t take pictures there…. We did a lot of walking around town, and then headed back to the hotel, cleaned up, and walked to dinner. I had scallops, salad and a potato dish. The scallops were delicious, the salad great, and the potato pasta ok. Being on the coast Lima is famous for ceviche and other seafood. I didn’t eat any ceviche, but it looked yummy. Walk back to the hotel and crash. We fly out early in the am.

Professional Development

Day 1, we fly to Lima
I am riding to Houston with 3 women whom I don’t know very well. Over the course of the 3 hour car ride that changes, as we talk about whatever comes to mind – teaching, husbands/men, traveling – but not necessarily in that order. More of the group meets us at the airport, we eat some lunch, wait some more, and finally board the plane.
We are scheduled to depart at 3:55. We take off at 5:10. Apparently there is trouble with passengers. Two men sit in business class but they have economy tickets. They refuse to move, so they and then their luggage are removed from the plane. Then there is a woman and her 12ish year old son who want to sit in the emergency exit row because there is more leg room. He is too young to sit there, their tickets sit them elsewhere, and finally after they are threatened with removal they go back to their original seats. And we take off.
After 6+ uneventful hours of flying, in which I can’t see anything out the window because I am in the middle (albeit on the aisle), we land in Lima, Peru. The bus meets us, it’s hot and humid – like Houston – outside, and we drive 40 minutes to Miraflores, one of the rich areas. Our hotel is not a rich one, but it has a bathroom with a toilet (you still have to put the paper in the trashcan) and Internet. We sleep.

Costs of Globalization

Rainy Weather

Visiting Seattle during the winter is not for the outdoorsy. We have been here a couple days and have had rain, brief sunshine, and snow.
Today we're in Bremerton running errands. We went from snow in Seabeck on the Hood Canal to rain on the Puget Sound side of the Kitsap peninsula.
Such a short distance yet way different weather due to the water and topography.

Greener on the Other Side

ArcGIS online

View Larger Map
We begin studying Latin America next week, and our first lesson has students analyzing the relationship between population density and terrain/landforms. I thought I'd try out ArcGIS online. I attended a training session about it at NCGE in Savannah this past September. Turns out it will work well, and I can even embed the map in my website. How cool is that!

Fear and Sanity in DC

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear
Jon and Stephen - "I'm More American Than You"
www.comedycentral.com
Rally to Restore Sainty and/or Fear The Daily Show The Colbert Report

I have never been around so many people in my life. CBS estimates the crowd at 215,000. Sounds about right to me.
We saw LOTS of signs, but didn't carry any ourselves - we took a cat on the plane, instead. Really. Kelli carried a Siamese kitten from Austin to DC for the Austin Siamese Rescue folks, and we turned it over to her new owner in DC. Fortunately she was very well behaved.
Then Euni's carry-on bag got taken by mistake (but we found it). Karma works.
Saturday was such a beautiful day - perfect weather, great company. My favorite part of the rally (except for Cat Stevens/Yousef Islam and Jon's closing remarks) was the song in the clip above. We all sang along with the chorus, and other than 4Troops singing the National Anthem, and the O Jays, and everything else, it was my favorite part.
The only downer (except for the part where it took 45 minutes to go 1 block as we were leaving the Mall) was the plane ride home. 1 hour into the flight they decided we should turn around and go back to Dulles. I had been feeling a weird vibrating through the floor, and they announced that it wasn't supposed to be there, and we were heading back. So they got us a new plane and pilots from Rochester, and made it to Austin at 3 pm instead of 11 am. But we made it.
And it was fun.
Signs and pictures:

Been There, Seen That

via New York Times:

It has huge reserves of coal and natural gas, a fast-growing economy and a property market so sizzling hot that virtually every house put up for sale here is immediately snapped up.

There is just one thing largely missing in the city’s extravagant new central district: people.

Ordos proper has 1.5 million residents. But the tomorrowland version of Ordos — built from scratch on a huge plot of empty land 15 miles south of the old city — is all but deserted.

I was there in June - the new city was eerily quiet, but our guide was bubbling with praise for the buildings.
Lots of cranes and new buildings, but no traffic and few people.

Glad I'm Not in China Today!

NASA Image of the Day

In early October 2010, a high-pressure weather system settled in over eastern China, and air pollution began to accumulate locally for nearly a week. By October 9 and 10, China’s National Environmental Monitoring Center declared air quality “poor” to “hazardous” around Beijing and 11 eastern provinces. Citizens were advised to take measures to protect themselves, and visibility was reduced to 100 meters (330 feet) in some areas.

It sounds like it was even worse than when I was there, which I can't imagine. It was incredibly bad in June - all along the eastern part of China the smog was so thick all of my photos look like they were taken in the rain. This is supposed to be even worse.