ETD: June 1

Well, this is my "pre-post" to check out the blog situation. Here's the deal. I'm going to Bolivia for a while with several goals:

1. Learn Spanish. I'll spend about 10 days at the Instituto Exclusivo in La Paz starting June 2. Five hours a day, six days a week of immersion courses plus touring the city should get my language skills up and running--the idea is to be near conversational after a couple weeks. Ready, go! Listos? Vamos!



2. Do research. Through MTU's International Sustainable Development Engineering Research Experiences program (ISDEREP), I'll be working with some other students, several Bolivian communities, and the non-government organization ACDI/VOCA on participatory research for water and sanitation. The plan right now is that I'll develop a decision tool or expansion path for the communities and the NGO to use when selecting sanitation technologies. Basically how to choose the most appropriate technology by matching up community and technology characteristics. We'll be working in rural communities in the "Yungas" or the transition land between the Andes mountains and the Amazon river basin. This is a 25-day chunk of the trip.



3. Get out of Houghton. As much as I like it here, I'll be glad for an extended break. From Andes to Amazon I think 7 weeks in South America will be an awesome but welcome change. I'm looking forward to a week completely on my own in the world's highest 1-million person city, a couple days in the jungle, and meeting up with my cousin for a week at the end.

All in all, I will leave Houghton June 1 and return July 23. I hope for each day in Bolivia to do some picture-taking, then choose a photo of the day and write a little blurb about it in both English and Spanish. Maybe it will help people to "travel" along with me, or maybe it will just help my Spanish. Who knows. Thoughts and comments are welcome. Here is a sight of what I'm leaving behind for the next couple months!