Journey to South America

In three days I will be embarking upon the biggest adventure of my life! I will be joining a research team in Costa Rica, where I will spend two weeks learning about sustainable coffee farming. Before that, I will also be visiting Argentina and Paraguay (where a great friend of mine lives). Three Latin American countries in four weeks!

How did I ever get to do this? I am still in shock. In less than 72 hours I will be on a different continent and it hasn't hit me yet.

This might have something to do with me never doing anything like this before in my life... I have no idea what it will be like so I have nothing to really think about. I'm just going to go and let it all wash over me.

My room looks like an explosion... of stuff. Among the various items strewn about the floor are socks, insect repellent, papers, soap bars, shirts, an umbrella, and a box of tampons (I'm sure you really wanted to know that). As you can tell, I'm totally ready to go.

The truth is, though, that I am in wonder of the trip I am about to go on. I am beyond excited! I am... in shocked awe? If that makes sense.
I'm interested to see how I will be able to pull this off. I'm dying to see these countries. I can't wait to meet the people living there... to walk down their streets, to look at what they have in their stores, to see what they eat, to hear them talk, to find out what plants are growing there. EVERYTHING. It's not everyday you get a chance to leave your life and experience that of others on another hemisphere. I feel immeasurably lucky.

Today I was at a grocery store running some errands, and I happened to walk down an aisle labeled "diet products" and "nutrition". Every shelf was lined with pretty shiny packages full to the brim... energy bars, protein powder, diet pills, herbal supplements, on and on and on. Colors and logos and sleekness as far as the eye can see. It made me think about how... this is something quintessentially American. So many choices. So much abundance. So much to buy! And this stuff wasn't even really food. "Supplements", as the wrapper says. I don't know for certain since I am not there yet... but I imagine I will not see such giant supermarkets in South and Central America. I imagine that if a Costa Rican were to walk down the same aisle, she would be completely blown away and baffled. Yet we walk down that aisle as though it is perfectly normal and reasonable.

After I came home from the store, I sat on a big poofy couch watching a giant HDTV and eating organic sorbet. Now I am typing on my own personal laptop using wireless internet and listening to digital music. Yeah... I feel like a jerk already.

I wonder what the coffee farms will be like. I wonder how hard the farmers work. I wonder if the farmers have any idea where their coffee ends up. I wonder what they would say if they walked into a Starbucks and saw the cozy armchairs, poppy muffins behind the glass case, towering stacks of paper cups (complete with disposable lids and those brown cardboard clutch thingies), and a Frappuccino swirling with milk and topped with cream. The coffee farm is what he sees everyday, and the Starbucks is foreign territory... while the very opposite is true for me. For all of us American, actually.

I'm glad I'm going.

I will try to post updates as my trip progresses... hopefully photos and videos will eventually be coming also. I don't want to be the only one learning! Yes, using cutting-edge internet blogging and digital photo/video technology to capture an experience that will be utterly organic and human is rather... ironic. Ha! Well, here we go.

<Thursday, August 16, 2007>