Ribbon Creek Falls

So the Peruvian adventure is over and I am now fully absorbed back in to my busy routine here in calgary. It's sad because I had a once in a life time experience but the busier you get in to your regular routine the more you start forgetting about the trip. Mind you I do have the occasional flash back of the amazon. But it is definitely nice to be back in calgary doing other things that I love to do, such as training and hiking. I'm not sure if i mentioned this but Ben and I signed up the the Alberta Challenge Olympic triathlon and Ben has assumed the role of training coach. He is totally awesome, has made us a day by day schedule and posted it on the fridge. He super encouraging which is amazing except at the end of a 6 mile run when I feel like I can't take another step and there he is bouncing along beside me yelling encouragements. It is at that point that I tend to yell shut up! I just need to finish this darn thing in peace! But it feels great to be back on a training program again and I love training alongside ben! it makes it so much easier because if i dont feel like going he pushes me and if he doesn't feel like going I push him.
Other than training, life has not slowed down for a minute since I got back, between working full time, training, completing my papers and catching up with friends and family it has been slightly exhuasting... Mind you somehow ben and I found time to go for a 10 km over night hike last weekend. It was friday and ben was off early so we did our usual friday training (which is a mini-triathlon), then packed up and headed to the mountains. The intention was to climb Mt. Bogart a mountain that has a 12 km hike in before you even start climbing, but that plan failed when we got to the back country camp ground and realized that the path up to the mountain was closed because there was a moose carcass and bears up there. Oh well, we still had a great night. Had a "gourmet" meal with some wine and hung out by the fire and had a peaceful sleep with the sound of the rain on the tent. We woke up the next morning to blue skies, hiked out with the intentions of finding another mountain to climb, but our energy levels were low and Ben had a random allergic reaction and his eye was swelling so we decided to pack it in and head home. We planned on having a relaxing night, but of course with us that never happens because we get to bored. So what started as a walk to get some tea turned in to another 10 km walk up to 16th ave by sait (we live on 18th ave in the south) for all you can eat sushi. We had full intentions of taking the train home, only to realize that neither of us had any change and proceeded to walk all the way home. We walked nearly 30 kms that day, ten of which I had 30 pounds on my back and 50 pounds on ben's. But it was nice to have some time together, I vowed not to even think about my course work and succeeded, I was way to tired to even crack a book open. All in all it was a great weekend. This weekend unfortuneately won't be as exciting since my paper is due on tuesday and I didn't even think about it last week I have alot of work to get done. But I figure one weekend of fun, the next for work and so on until July 15th when all my papers are handed in and ALL my weekends can be for the champs.

Adjusting back to my daily routine

So the initial shock of being home has started to wear off as I have settled back in to my daily routine. The first week I was home I only had one shift at work and Ben was only working half days so we had lots of time to catch up and hang out, which was really awesome. He had me in the gym the day after I got home trying to get back the muscle I had lost from the dysentery as well as the diet of rice and plantains. It was incredibly hard the first couple days but it didn`t take long to get back on track. Last week it was also my Dad`s birthday and we had a surprise party for him on Friday. On Saturday was my birthday, and Ben and I were planning on hitting up the mountains to camp and go scrambling but the nice weather didn`t hold up and we wound up with snow on Friday and Saturday. So instead we went to the dinosaur museum in Drumheller and enjoyed a birthday lunch out followed by dinner at my mom`s house. The weather started warming up on Sunday but by then I had been home for a week and it was back to the grind of work, training and trying to write my 3 essays about my trip (all of which are 16 pages). I say training because Ben and I signed up for an Olympic distance triathlon in Camrose at the end of the month (1.5 km swim, 43km bike and 10km run). It felt good to be exercising again and we finally got our road bikes at December and decided that they needed to see some action! So Ben wrote us up a training schedule that will hopefully get us to complete the triathlon in under 4 hours! So, anyways, this week has been incredibly busy with working full time, training after work for at least an hour and than trying to get some research in before I pass out! But I don`t mind, it keeps me out of trouble hey. But the weather has finally turned nice out and is supposed to stay for the weekend but unfortunately i`ll be cooped up inside trying to write one of the three papers for Monday. The adventures of Ben and Jen will have to wait until next weekend, once one paper is handed in. Hopefully this time the nice weather sticks.

Reflecting on the Trip during my long plane ride home

Well the sun is setting on my adventure in Peru and although I am ready to come home, I have had an experience of a lifetime. I have met 18 incredible individuals who have taught me so much and challenged me every day. I have seen the sun rise and the sun set on the Amazon. I have learned rudimentary Spanish. I have seen flocks of Macaws fly above me and monkeys high up in the canopy. I survived being evacuated from a boat after getting dysentery. Although there were moments that we wanted to jump off the boat and boycott the professors for giving us to much work, it only made the trip that much more of an amazing experience. The three courses I took were definitely challenging, each professor shaking the foundations of our beliefs; challenging us to look for alternatives and solutions to the current human predicaments of huge global inequality and environmental degradation. What was frustrating is that the more you learned about it, and saw the reality of both of them for yourself in the Amazon the more everything ended up being more complicated. We had a final presentation at the end of the course to do that tied everything we learned together and the solution that my group came up with was to eliminate conservation, definitely a radical presentation since one of our courses was on conservation. We thought that the very existence of a term such as conservation makes the alternative of extraction acceptable. That the existence of areas of conservation justifies the over-exploitation of the environment everywhere else. We have all driven to Banff and along the way you see the areas of clear cutting and the concrete plant just outside the gates. Well, it was definitely an ambitious presentation but in the end we did quite well. At the end of the trip they had a reception for us, and they had the “alternative nobel peace prize” for the best presentation of the trip and our group won!
I don’t think I can full appreciate what I have learned and seen over the last month. It will take some time to sink in. The time in Iquitos from the last time I wrote is a blurr. Between getting the presentation ready, finishing up my daily assignments. But we did find time to go out two times, once for my roommates birthday and the other for the last night of being all together. That was a really fun night. We were having out classes in a bar during the day, and they had arranged with the bar owner to decorate the bar for us, they gave us a special of 2 for 1 drinks and they brought in a salsa dance teacher. It was really fun. The group of individuals that went on this trip got along so well. With 18 students you expect there to be clicks and arguments, but there wasn’t any of that. We are already talking about a reunion next summer house boating with everyone... seems fitting considering we’ve already lived on a boat together !