Czech-ing In

So, I'm not sure if any of this will turn out the way I wanted since I can't understand any of the directions or labels because it's all in Czech, but...
Greetings from Central Europe! Hope everyone is having a great internship/vacation.

Things are certainly interesting here as last night I watched the EuroCup final with about 2,500 other people in a beer garden. Now I know what you are all thinking, Colby's just there to drink himself stupid and explore the region. And although those are two major goals of mine, I'm also in for a bit of work as I found out today.
I was told that work was 9-5 so I showed up at the "office" (really a basement in an apartment building) at around 8:45. Well I rang the bell and loitered outside on the sidewalk, catching sideways glances from Czechs that lived in the building, for over half an hour until my boss (Ivan) made his way downstairs to the office from his 4th floor flat and let me in.

Ok, no problem. I sit down with Ivan and talk briefly. He hands me two 20 page single-spaced papers on the Romani and Initiatives, both of which wer written in excruciatingly poor english. After digging through them for over 2 hours I go back to Ivan and discuss the intiative that he emailed a link to me about.
So I ask "What next?" to which he replies "You can get started." At this point I'm a bit confused since all I have been provided with is an excel spreadsheet with a proposed budget for an education de-segregation project.
"You mean, fill out the proposal forms?" I inquire to which Ivan cheerfully responds "Yes, yes" never breaking his smile.
I told him ok and plunked myself down to write a grant, which I have never 'officially' done before.
Oh, and this just isn't any grant, oh no, of course it has to be for the Soro's Foundation's Open Society Initiative.
So I started scanning through the twenty plus pages of forms of which I needed to fill out including organizational structure, financial history, past projects completed etc...
Mind you this is in my 3rd hour of work.
I brought this to the attention of Ivan and he told me to only fill out what I could.
Lonnnngggg story short, by the end of the day I hadn't even begun the 30 page project description and barely made a dent in the 20 page Organization's History form.
But once this beast is out of the way at least I can move on to News Analysis, which will hopefully be a task I can actually perform well.

Na Shledanou,
Colby
P.S. I'll post pictures when I figure out the Czech word for up-load, it's definitely not the words that mean "navigate away from this page"

The Warm Heart Way - Arrival in Phrao, Thailand

I was picked up by the Warm Heart crew Thursday night in Chiang Mai, and by the time we got to Aomodoi it was pretty late. I met my new roomie, Andrea, who is a fellow IRPSer that had been abroad all year. She's fantastic, and I'm looking forward to getting to know her over the summer. The class of '09 is lucky to have her. I also finally met up with Huyen and Areeluck who had gotten in a few days ahead of me.

The work day started out with a morning meeting, a trip to the office (in the back of two pickup trucks) and another group meeting. From there we split off, and I joined a group of engineers without borders to visit the land that is going to be transformed into a small school community. They had been sold on the idea that I was a hydrogeologist (not remotely true, as I immediately pointed out). So I had to convince them that I could be useful to the water project without an advanced knowledge of groundwater.... After a leisurely lunch break and our first visit to the town of Phrao, we spent the afternoon surveying the land and taking gps points. Good times. :-)

The evening was low key, and I joined the engineers for dinner at the resort. The food here in Thailand is great. Spicy, all stir fried, and probably going to make me gain weight.

Saturday was technically a day off, but we went to visit one of the district officials to learn about organic farming. The guys worked hard, mixing rice hay, rice husks, urea, buffalo poo and water to make fertilizer, while the girls sat in the shade and took entertaining pictures.


After lunch we all crammed into one pickup truck to visit the Bua Tong Waterfall. The waterfall was cool - the water is high in calcium and secretes limestone over everything, meaning that the waterfall was all smooth and incorporated all the rocks and logs and what not into it. It also meant that the rocks weren't slippery and we could walk up and down the waterfall.

From there we went to a Thai barbecue at another official's house. The house itself was amazing, and the food was even better! We helped out with cooking and then sat around drinking beer and whiskey and eating until we couldn't possibly fit anymore food into our stomachs.

All in all a great 2 days to start out. Everyone in the program is great and we're having a great time.


I'll be blogging here if you want to read more, and will try to occasionally add updates here.

Exotic Beach Locations

So it turns out the La Jolla is a pretty nice place. I had been wondering a bit about this over the year, as I watched scads of tourists seemingly enjoying themselves as I blearily drove back and forth from campus. Given my current lack of responsibilities, I took it upon myself to emerge from my apartment on foot to take in my environs.

My first mistake was to think that a walk downtown would be an appropriate way to "break in the sandals" or rather "break in my feet for the sandals." It all started out pleasantly enough, the stroll down the bikepath, wandering by the swim meet at the local high school. Unfortunately, somewhere about mid-downtown I realized that while my feet may one day be strengthed by the experience, they were currently in rather excruciating pain, thanks to a mile and a half of rubbing the sandals had incurred on my pearly unbesocked feet. Fortunately, there is a Vons supermarket right downtown, so I jumped in an bought some anti-rubbing band aid type things.

An interesting side note. I was recently called out for calling the supermarket "the supermarket." Apparently some folks just call it the market. I think this is ambiguous. If we really need to shorten, I say we call it the "sup'ket". Actually this side note was not interesting. Continuing.

So the anti-rubbing band aid things lasted approximately one city block. I mean, what the heck is that? I know they don't want them to permanently bond to your skin, but please. If anyone has had success with these things, let me know.

Well anyway, there was nothing for it but to take off my sandals and go barefoot back to the house at that point. As I scurried across the smoking hot pavement, I thought back to walking with my brother in Conway, Massachusetts one summer long ago. I distinctly remember him encouraging the toughening up of one's feet by walking about barefoot. As I stepped off the burning street and onto a small sharp pebble on the sidewalk, I quietly cursed him. But I was just jealous.

So all of this led me back home, where I found myself pretty much crippled and spent the next two days walking around on one foot and taking a lot of asprin. So the moral of the story is that while La Jolla may be familiar, and may be beautiful, it is also extremely dangerous and it is a good thing I spent the last nine months in front of a computer regressing Mexican educational indicators and calculating GDP's. I am in no way rationalizing. No sir.

Oh, and I also took that photo from the beach near my house. Must be what all the tourist hubbub is about.

Holed up in Hong Kong

Right, so I wasn’t let in to Shenzhen, China, where I had planned to be interning by now, on the night I landed in Hong Kong. That was a week ago… I’ve been stuck here in HK ever since!

It started with the border patrol struggling to match my face to my passport photo. Now, I don’t pretend to stand before you today the same strapping lad of 17 who posed for that photo, but come on! Quite the cruel reversal on the West’s patented “All Asian people look the same”, don’t you think?

Before I knew it I was sat down in a room answering questions. Since it was late on a Monday night, the border cops on duty didn’t speak very good English, especially the one in charge, who couldn’t have been any older than me. He seemed extremely nervous, and so we spent most of the time waiting around for the phone to ring with instructions from someone higher up. To pass the time they began searching through my luggage, examining the inside of each one of my shoes. Then the phone would ring, and the head dude would answer it. It was all very confusing.

In the end, the head guy handed my passport back to me -- a big blue “CANCELED” stamped across my beloved multiple entry visa -- and told me I had to return to Hong Kong. I was flabbergasted! Wasn’t my visa valid? Did I really appear that suspicious? Had I flirted with the female border cops for nothing?

Ultimately, I feel the reason I wasn’t let through that night was language difficulties. I just wasn’t able to communicate my purpose for entering in China clearly enough: I’m a student, I explained, but I’m not going to China to study, etc. They decided to hit the panic button and not let me in, simple as that. Probably has something to do with heightened security in preparation for the Olympics. 糟糕! If only my Chinese were better!

The past week has been spent trying everything under the sun to “smuggle (my) ass into China”, as Terry Omata, Managing Director of Trade Passages (and IRPS ’04 alum!) so delicately puts it. I’ve been in close communication with Terry and his wife Jiaying, my intended bosses this summer, every step of the way. Also, a number of you guys -- but ESPECIALLY Lihua and Samson -- have offered to help in various ways, and I thank you for this very much!

Things are looking up. My next plan is to… well… why don’t I tell you about that once I finally get in to China (if I ever do!). Thanks again for everyone's support! Good luck to others on their way to 中国!

Going our seperate ways

Having survived our first year at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California in San Diego, class of 2009 students enjoy a brief respite before the fall quarter commences and we return to our books and laptops. Many of us are traveling well beyond San Diego county, but all of us will undoubtedly have stories to share of our summer activities. This space is dedicated to classmates sharing their experiences.