Okay, so I did end up swimming in the Amazon..

And it was awesome. Today, right after breakfast, we took a short boat ride down-river to a small village. The story behind this village is interesting – for the government to fund and build a school, there must be 20 children in a village. At the surrounding villages, it took over an hour for the children to travel to the nearest school. So, 20 years ago, a group of people decided to start a village and create their own school there. There were much more than 20 children when we were there, and they were all ecstatic to see us. Around here, visits are always a surprise, so they had no idea that we were coming. They were very shy at first, but at the end they were all waving goodbye to us. They loved my camera, and when I took pictures of them they loved to see the image on the screen. Unfortunately, my camera has decided to..not work, so I’m hoping it’s a temporary thing. I’ll put up the pictures I have from the village as soon as I get it to work again.

The day was hotter than any other days yet, and I got a little bit of a sunburn on my back. After the village, we came back and had lunch, then some of us took advantage of the hammocks and the medicinal garden. A group of us decided to brave the parasites and swim in the Amazon. The yells of “piraña” from the people who worked here wasn’t really comforting, but the water turned out to be very refreshing.

After that, we all rinsed off in more purified water, then met in the medicinal garden for a demonstration of how ayahuasca is made. Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic iquid mixture of several types of plants; specifically, psychiotria viridis (Chacruna), Diplopterys cabrerana (Chaliponga), and Psychotria carthagenensis (Amyruca). The shaman here also added a specific type of tobacco leaf that grows in the garden. The result is a potion that used for traditional religious ceremonies, causing hallucinations that usually are of snakes (no idea why). The shaman didn’t actually make it, as it takes a total of 12 hours for it to cook. It was interesting to see how it was made, though.

Tomorrow, we’re leaving this camp and going to the less rugged camp (there’s air conditioning in the rooms..can’t wait). I think we’re going to a rum factory and maybe a monkey refuge, so I hope my camera figures itself out before then.

The rainforest and Iquitos

No longer the progblague..

Because I’m no longer in Prague! I’m recently embarked to a different continent, this time South America. I’m on my third day studying abroad on the Amazon river in Peru, just down river from Iquitos. We’re actually, to be specific, staying at a camp along the river Napo which is a branch off the Amazon. But the rainforest is the same – hot, humid, and loud.

The first couple days here were a little bit of a blur of traveling by foot, boat, and airplane. It was incredibly nice to step off a plane into 80 degree weather after the blizzard that is the east coast right now. I originally flew into Lima, and spent the night there without having time to wander around the city. Early the next morning, we boarded a small plane to Iquitos, which is considered the gateway to the Amazon. The poverty there makes the poverty in the US look like nothing, but the people are very friendly and happy.

We stopped at a market there and walked around for a while. There was anything you could think of there, from bushmaster heads in jars to parts of a leopard that I never thought would be useful. Turtles split open, and random kidneys from unnamed animals. I can definitely say I smelled some smells I’ve never experienced before.

After the market, we boarded a boat and rode half an hour up the Amazon to the first lodge where we will be staying at the end of the week. It’s a much more plush lodge (it has a pool!), so that’ll be nice after a week of living outside. We ate a great lunch there and lounged around on hammocks for a while before we left for the two-hour boat ride up the Amazon to the camp where we have been staying. The rest of the day was spent relaxing and getting our things together.

Yesterday was another relaxing day. The highlight of the day was the night boat ride on some of the surrounding tributaries. The stars were incredible, I felt like I could see every star. The Milky Way was beautiful stretching across the sky. We were hoping to see some interesting animals that only come out at night, but we didn’t see anything crazy. A little pinkish snake that “yawned” at us, a sleeping beauty hummingbird, a lot of bats, and a huge spider. After we came back, we all sat around the common area and told stories.

Today was my kind of day..full of hiking and being up in the trees. We left at 8 AM after a breakfast of eggs, potatoes, and fruit (we eat lots of fruit here). We hiked for about 45 minutes to the canopy walkway, where we walked for a long time through the trees. The highest point was 135 feet, and you could see very far along the tops of the trees. We saw lizards, iguanas, monkeys, and lots of mosquitoes. So glad I brought 100% DEET.

Afterwards, we hiked to a different lodge where we had a lunch of roasted chicken, rice, beans, and fresh watermelon. We then hiked back to our lodge and took a short break for showers. There’s no hot water here (there’s no electricity either..only when they turn on the generators at night) and the water is filtered right from the river, but after a long day of hiking in rainforest humidity, I’d probably be fine with ignoring the parasites and jumping in the river.

We are having lectures, though, believe it or not..today we dyed tshirts using plants from the medicinal garden here. Our professor, Dr. Jim Duke, spoke for a bit about how the dyes were used in western culture. For example, the plant that we used for our red dye is what is used to color Cheetos.

We’re all sitting around right now waiting for dinner and fighting for electrical outlets. I think we’re going for another night boat ride tomorrow, and piranha fishing is tomorrow. They say one person can only fish for piranhas ten times..then you run out of fingers.

Finally home

Well, I’m finally home safe. I won’t go into the details of everything that went wrong with the flights home, but it just took a really long time. Our flight got canceled on the day we were supposed to leave, so we ended up staying an extra day in the Czech Republic. It was kinda boring, though – we were staying at a hotel right near the airport so we weren’t nearby the city or anything.

I’m spending the next couple days trying to overcome my jet lag and get things done before Amelia gets here August 10th, and I move into my new apartment August 22nd. Me and Mackenzie are headed to Delaware this weekend for the Shedaker reunion. It feels weird to be driving after a month of walking on cobblestones!

Last day

Well, I’m headed back to the States tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM, so I’m staying home tonight and relaxing/testing the physical limits of my suitcase.

Yesterday was a lot of fun..we hung our exhibition during class and celebrated the end of our class with some champagne. I thought everyone had great, inspired photos for the exhibition. Photos later from it.

After the exhibition, I had dinner at my favorite pasta place in Malastranska, then headed to the reading at the Ypsilon Theatre. I really enjoyed it – it was my first reading I had been to, and I had a lot of fun. Robin Hemley and Stan read. I highly recommend Robin’s book Do Over..he read from part of it, and it seemed really funny. I haven’t read it yet, but I still recommend it. Robin is a very naturally funny guy. I met him at the dinner with the Pakistani ambassador.

After the reading, a few friends and I took the tram and funicular up to the observatory. It was so awesome! I saw a globular cluster, the ring nebula, Jupiter and it’s four moons, and two twin stars. We were lucky with clear skies and great weather, which also allowed us to walk back to the dorm when we were done.

Well, the next time I post I’ll be back home! I’m really excited to be back, but I know I’m going to miss Prague. I loved losing the status of tourist and becoming an actual inhabitant of the city. I’m sure I’ll be back sometime, but I’ll miss running to meet my 22 tram, the great food and wine, and the friendly people. Until we meet again, Praha…

Quick post

I just realized I had meant to add this picture to my trip post, but that it wouldn’t have much effect now. This is a crude map of where we traveled last weekend on the trip to Moravia:

As you can see, it was really close to the Austrian border, which was really cool.

Nothing exciting

Not much went on today. For class, we traveled via metro and bus out to my instructor’s house on the outskirts of Prague. To me, Prague is an interesting city because it completely skips suburbs and goes straight to rural. You can drive for 20 minutes and leave the city and be surrounded by poppy and sunflower fields. It’s very strange to see from an airplane: checkered fields and a few roads, and then suddenly a giant river with a city around it. Anyway, we went to his house and selected our final photos for the exhibition. I was kind of surprised at the ones he picked out for me, but whatever. All mine ended up being plants because those were the only pictures I really took since I was here for such little time compared to everyone else.

When I got back, I took a nap in anticipation for pulling an all-nighter. I had plans to meet with friends to do some night shooting and light painting, and then some sunrise shooting. I left with a couple of friends to do the light painting, though, and we stopped to grab a bite to eat really quickly at 9 PM and ended up enjoying our food and sharing a bottle of wine until 1:00 AM! So we decided to skip the photography session and go back to sleep. I’d like to be able to spend tomorrow, one of my last days here, conscious and un-caffeinated.

So that was my day..not too eventful. We ended up not going to the observatory because the cloud cover was too thick, but I think we might go on Thursday after class. Can’t wait!

Note to self:

Never forget your transportation pass while riding the tram in Prague. I thought I could – I had never heard of anyone getting caught. Well, I had given mine to someone to hold it in their purse the other night, and I didn’t get it back until today..after I got a 700 CZK ($35) fine. Oh well.

I had kind of a chill day today, recovering from an exhausting weekend. I met a friend for lunch at a place called Paneria, which is a little like the American version of Panera Bread except with more paninis and baguettes. I missed the broccoli and cheddar soup. Then, I walked around in Malastranska taking some photos for a bit, but didn’t really end up with anything I was crazy about. It was around 1:00 PM, so the light was a little harsh for what I was looking for.

I came home with my tail between my legs after I got my ticket, and looked through photos and helped a friend edit his photos.

Here are some from the first week we were here that I never got around to posting:

Mackenzie and her owl..they were letting people hold them at the Prague Castle.

Me and my falcon!

Lake/Landscape

As promised..

I have a big, fat, giant post to make up for my lack of posts this weekend. I’ve been really busy lately with class, assignment planning, eating amazing food, and editing photos. So far, I’ve taken 961 photos – that’s a lot of editing. Luckily, the sun rises at 5:30 AM every day and it doesn’t get completely dark until 11:00, so I have many hours of the day to work with.

I had a really great time this weekend. The advanced photo class (my class) and the beginner photo class combined, along with our teacher Jan and our other teacher Miro. We drove 2.5 hours to Brno, where we walked to to an artist’s house. There, we were joined by another young photographer. They both showed us their work and answered any questions that we had.

From there, we continued to Lednice. Lednice is a beautiful town just north of the border of Austria and the Czech Republic. It has two beautiful castles, a minaret, and a very natural lake area with bike paths and giant trees. We got there around 7 PM, and listened to two artists lecture about their work. I was very impressed with the first artist, Jindřich Štreit. He’s had over 800 exhibitions, 23 books published, and countless catalogs. He’s one of the Czech Republic’s leading documentary photographers, and his work is truly amazing. As he told us, he didn’t even own a digital camera until a few years ago when he visited Brazil. You can see some of his work here.

The next day, we all had breakfast together and then parted ways to go to the castles or just wander around and take pictures. The first place I went was the greenhouse at the palace. It was so beautiful; I got a lot of really great shots here. The early afternoon light was a bit harsh, but filtered through the glass of the greenhouse, it made for some really great shots. It made me wish I had a macro lens, especially for the orchids.

I can’t decide if I like the black and white versions, or the color versions of some photos. Feel free to leave input.

After the greenhouse, we wandered around the lake and visited the minaret. I actually didn’t take any pictures of it because there were tons of tourists there. I got a lot of really great pictures at and around the lake, which you can see in this post.

After that, we had lunch and then visited a wine cellar next to our hotel. I bought two bottles of white from a vineyard owner himself. I don’t usually like white wine, but we had been eating this with lunch and I really, really liked it. I think that vineyard owner must have sold 20 bottles of his wine that day.

After we bought all our wine, we went back to our bus and wandered the countryside and stopped in different scenic places to take photos. The vineyards everywhere were gorgeous, and the views were unlike anything I had ever seen. Pictures don’t do it justice at all. You can see the gallery for those photos here.

After that, we headed back home.