Advent, Mum's Impending Arrival, Copenhagen, Christmas, & Winter Break

"Look for me with the sun-bright sparrow
I will come on the breath of the wind"

The Decemberists - Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)

December is nearly upon us & I celebrated the first day of Advent today. My Mum flies in on Thursday & Saturday starts the Copenhagen conference on climate change. One of my friends and I created a list of things I should take Mum to see & do while she is here. The list looks something like this: Taipei 101, the Taipei Zoo (who doesn't want to see a couple of gift pandas), Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall and Liberty Square, Maokong for the tea houses & tea farms, Shilin Night Market to experience the largest & most famous night market in Taipei, and Huashan Culture Park! I'm really quite excited about her arrival & really hope that we'll have good weather during the week she is here!

So I'm flying to Corpus on Dec. 30/31st. I arrive in Cali on the 30th and arrive in Corpus on the morning of the 31st. I'll be in Corpus for 72 hours and then I fly out to South America. Mum & I are leaving on Jan 3rd for Guayaquil, Ecuador & then flying the next day to Cuenca, Ecuador. I submitted an abstract of a paper (I'm in the process of writing it) to an international conference on environmental, cultural, economic, and social sustainability & was told on Monday that it was accepted! I'm presenting in Cuenca, Ecuador on poverty reduction & achieving the Millennium Development Goals in Asia Pacific through the use of microfinance! I've studied microfinancing since I was in high school, but the thought of presenting an idea I've had to a room full of scholars & writing a paper to submit to an international journal is rather daunting!

Nothing says "die hard" quite like immediately flying to the Andes (Cuenca is 2500m above sea level) after living for 4 months in Asia & not taking a few weeks to overcome the jet lag! Still...2010 is starting off rather legendary! I'll be in/around Corpus from Jan. 9th - Feb. 18th...it's going to awesome, I'm going to use a fork every day!

"So surround yourself with good people"

Lost in the Trees - Fireplaces