My dead hero is the German botanist aristocrat meterologist Alexander Von Humboldt. He died in 1859 and I read his journal in 2008. Among the things in his journal is an account of his travels around the Carribbean, into Venezuela, and to the top of present-day Pico Humboldt in the Cordillera de Los Andes (which overlooks Mérida, Venezuela) to measure the air pressure and wind speed. (He also would have gone to Brazil but there was a warrant out for his arrest there because of the closed door policy at [...]

I had my last first day of school today (of course that’s making the presumption that I won’t someday go to grad school or pick up any vocational degrees, but still.) I met some of the new students at VENUSA and they seem like a pretty good crew. I am sure I will meet a lot more tonight at “Nuevos Encuentros” and afterwards when we make it to whatever bar we end up going to. My schedule this semester looks decent, I’m taking Cross-Cultural Communications, Spanish 1004, and am attending [...]