it's february already?

Things have been busy for me lately. Alvaro's mom and sister came to visit a few weeks, and then we had a big quarter century birthday to celebrate on Friday. We invited a few friends over for a beach costume party, but all in all Alvi and I were the only ones who dressed for beach weather. We had a good time with some friends here at the apartment, and we went out later, which was all a lot of fun.


In Quito with Alvaro's mom and little sister, Maia


Happy 25th birthday, Alvi!

Since then, I've been trying to catch up/keep up with my school work, which has been a lot more intense this semester. The good thing is that the material has been overlapping a bit in my class- my "Latin America in the Int'l Economy" class, my "Geopolitics" class, and my "Development Theories" class both seem to include lots of economic history and discussions of development strategies/economic theories. While unfortunately none of the readings overlap (bummer!), the readings and classes do reinforce each other. My "Latin American Thought" class has turned into a full on philosophy class, and I've been working ridiculously hard to understand what's going on. The interesting debate currently is whether or not a Latin American philosophy exists, or whether it's just an imitation of European philosophy, especially because few people identify with "native" practices (the example given was that a Mayan temple doesn't produce the same religious or culutral identification for most Mexicans that a Japanese temple might for a Japanese person where the ancient culture has been incorporated into modern life), meaning that there isn't anything "uniquely" Latin American that contemporary philosophers can use to create original philosophy. I don't necesarily agree with (or understand the intricacies of) the entire debate, but it is interesting.

The good news is that next week is my mid-semester week of vacations. While I'll need to dedicate a significant portion of the week to writing two midterm essays and defining my thesis to present at the end of the month, it'll be nice not to have to worry about keeping up with classwork and rather just focus on catching up.

Hugs to all back home...