Help for friends in the Peace Corps in Albania

Hi All,

My friends from church in Colorado, Will and Wendi Bevins, are Peace Corps volunteers in Albania and could really use your donation of a few dollars (goal: raising US$975) in setting up a youth camp for children from difficult backgrounds.  You can see pictures of their work here and here.   They could really use your help, as they explain:

“If you are one of the many kind people who offered to send supplies or money for a project when we first set out on our Peace Corps adventure, this is the way you can help!! The Peace Corps has set up a website for the friends and family of volunteers to donate to our projects. The donations are tax-deductible and all donations go to support the camp that we are helping lead. There’s no overhead because all the staff at this camp are volunteers, including the Albanians who help. This camp is a great chance for kids to learn, play, and do things they don’t normally have a chance to do. For example, in Albania, girls and boys rarely play together. This camp will include both genders equally. It will mix traditional lesson topics (like geography and history) with interactive games and trips so that the kids retain more and have fun in the process. This kind of learning is just now entering Albanian education and this camp may be the first time the kids see that learning can be fun (instead of having a teacher read a book out loud to them for hours on end). Also, we’ll cover topics the children rarely or never hear about, like physical fitness and environmental stewardship. Wendi has already done a few yoga lessons and Will plans to do some self-reflection and journaling activities. If you have any questions about the camp or want more info, please do not hesitate to contact us! Just go to the website below to donate, and any donation would be appreciated by us and especially by the staff and kids at ASTA. 
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=304-013“

Shout out to Sneha

Today’s blog post is a shout out to my friend Sneha.  We used to work together at Sun Microsystems when I was at the Colorado campus and she was at the Silicon Valley campus.  Anyways, we hung onto each other’s e-mail addresses after our internships at Sun were over and met up when I first moved to DC in August and she had just finished her Masters at George Mason U in Virginia.  Shortly thereafter she moved to NYC to work on some computer-related thing.  So that was kind of a bummer to me, with her being my only friend when I moved to DC.  Fast forward several months to this past May.  I found a screaming deal on plane tickets to Paraguay from NYC, so I took the bus up from DC, and stayed with my best buddy, Krishna.  I met up with Sneha for lunch one day at Columbia University where she works.  Turns out she is actually a GIS analyst that works in poverty mapping in the developing world at the famous Earth Institute at Columbia University!  Wow!  So that just goes to show how rewarding it is when you meet someone neat, even briefly, and keep in touch down the line.

 

Yummy Cuban lunch near Columbia U!

Dinner with a friend

My Chilean friend Isidora (Isi) is super cool.  I promised her a week ago I would write a blog post about her since she met me at the airport the night I arrived in Chile.  Last week I had forgotten to take a picture with my sleepiness from the flight and all, so now that I have a picture of us I can blog about it!

Isi and I met last semester in DC when we were both living at the International Student House (a real international student house, unlike the one that I was in here).  She interned at the OAS, so naturally we got along really well.  Long story short, she said we would definitely have to hang out when I came to Chile.  And here we are! 

Mike tying to steal a Chilean. Notice his excitedness in the midst of an everyday occurrence for the locals of Chile.

Her family is super nice – they picked me up at the airport, had me over for dinner, and guided me to better housing (yeah!).  At my new place I’m only a bus ride away, which is really nice.  Isi’s Mom in particular is super simpatica and said I need to come over for dinner a minimum of once per week!  Heck yes!  Tonight I opted to hang with Chileans instead of my normal group of American classmates.  Although I really enjoy their company I feel like we need to invite Chileans into our group, or else I’ll have to make efforts to get to know more locals on my own.  Otherwise my spoken Spanish won’t continue to solidify and I think I would miss out culturally.

So yeah for Isi and Chileanness!