My Spring Break travels this year took me across the Midwest. They began Saturday, March 7th, at the Lincoln airport, where my 2:40pm flight was delayed until about 5:40pm. This also happened to be the exact time at which my connecting flight in Chicago was departing. So after my late arrival in Chicago I sat in the airport until about 11:40pm, when I finally caught a Standby flight to South Bend, IN. However, my bag ended up in Grand Rapids, MI, and I did not see it again until Wednesday, March 11th.




I finally arrived at my home in Stevensville, MI at about 3:40 AM (that' with the time change). I spent the night there and then took off again the next day for Upland, IN.

The drive from Stevensville, MI to Upland, IN is about 3 hours through mostly rural country towns. It had been raining a lot that week so there was a lot of flooding in the fields along the highway. I arrived safe at in Upland at Taylor University (the picture shows Taylor's library and Bell Tower) where I was able to spend sometime visiting my boyfriend of 5 years, Peter. (He's the guy in the profile picture :-) with me). We had lots of fun together going out for dinner, playing cards, and watching a movie. I also got to listen to his Chorale practice and hear his worship band play at a Veteran's Hospital in Marrion, IN.

Tuesday of Spring break, I headed home and spent the remainder of the time visiting my family and friends. It was nice to see my parents and my brothers. My whole family does Tae Kwon Doe, so I got to watch my brother P.J. (who is testing for black blet this summer), and practice with my brother Jacob and my parents. The picture below is of the studio where we take lessons, but none of us are in this picture. One Thursday I got to spend time with my friend Laura, who is getting married the summer of 2010. I'm her maid of honor, so we went over lots of wedding plans and had a great time. Laura lives in Baroda, MI (check the of Southwest Michigan above) and we went to high school together.

Friday, I had breakfast in St. Joseph, MI with my friend Alison, who I've known since middle school. It was nice to catch up and we enjoyed homemade bagels at the cute Broad St. Cafe, which had been the original firehouse in St. Joseph. This is not us in the picture, but you have see the old firepole and the largewindow used to be the garage door for the firehouse.



Saturday I went to a ladies tea at The Chapel with my mom, Laura and her mom, and my boyfriend's mom, Mrs. O'Neill. Then, that evening, my friend Sydney, who I've also known since middleschool went with my family and I to Kalamazoo, MI to see Brian Regan, a clean and hilarious comedian. (Here's a link to his site: http://www.brianregan.com/) This is a picture of the inside of the State Theater in Kalamazoo where we were at.



Sunday, I went to church, packed up, and had one last amazing homecooked meal with my family. We had homemade mashed potatoes, prime rib roast, and fresh green beans. It was delicious! Then I went back to South Bend, and had smooth travels all the way back to Lincoln, and then Seward. It was really nice to be home and have a break; I didn't want it to end. Summer isn't too far away, so I guess I can finish out the semester.

Sub-Saharan Africa - What next?

After reading the Aid Versus Investment, The Used Clothing Trade, and the Economic Development Bulletin I have noticed several trends. First, donations become back market items. Second, since 1960 the United States and other governments have been pouring money into Africa and there has been hardly an improvement, but many problems that have gotten worse. Finally, the problem lies with a lack of responsibility: the responsibility of governments giving aid to monitor how it is being used, and a responsibility of African governments receiving the aid to use it appropriately.

In my opinion the aid money that governments pour into African countries would be best spent on anti-corruption programs, and on creating more stable governments. Like the Economic Development Bulletin article stated, the current situation is simply, "the blind leading the clueless." The aid given to coutnries needs to be monitored, otherwise the coutnries may as well not have given the aid in the first place. If there has been no improvement in the past 40 years of giving aid, and the leaders simply continue to pocket the money, then why would countries who desire to help the people of Africa, not closely monitor or instruct governments there on how best to use the aid that is given them? It just does not make sense, because you would only be supporting the corrupt leaders.

In fact, if there are corrupt leaders, why are we handing them aid anyways? Shouldn't the goal be to help African nations by helping them to establish a solid, healthy government. There is already much civil war going on in many of the coutnries, so I don't know how exactly this would work best, or how it would look, but I think that in some cases we should use the aid money to establish a new government. I feel like a random selection of 10 average African peoples from the country could form a better parliamentary government, that would actually use aid money to address peoples needs, than having politicians or war lords leading these countries.

Either way, something needs to change, and I do not think that it is wise to continue giving aid to Africa and not monitoring how they use it or helping them make wise decisions with it.

Human Development Index (HDI)

Variables in Calculating HDI
When calculating HDI the Human Development Report Office examines four things:
1. They look at the life expectancy from birth rate, or how many years a child expected to live as is estimated at the time of their birth.
2. The literacy rate for all people above age 15 is looked at.
3. The percentage of the population that has combined attendance to primary and secondary schools in the country.
4. The piece of data that is considered is the country's GDP per capita in U.S. dollars.

While these numbers do provide measurable data that can be examined from one country to the next, they do leave out the qualitative things of life, such as the gender equality or human rights, in each country which do also play a role in the real HDI.

Geographic Patterns of HDI
The countries in the high Human Development Index range include the MDCs, or the most developed countries. These countries are primarily in the Northern Hemisphere, specifically in North and Middle America and Europe.
In the middle are the medium Human Development Index countries which include the counties of Asia, Northern Africa, South America, and the Middle East.
Finally, the trend for countries with the lowest Human Development Index, is that they are primarily all within Sub-Saharan Africa.

Sub-Saharan Africa and HDI
Almost every country in Sub-Saharan Africa is on the Low Human Development Index list. I think that this rating comes from the fact that the life expectancy for many of these countries such as Sierra Leon, Central African Republic, and Ethiopia are all under 50 years of age. Barely half of the population is literate and less than half of the population goes to school. I think that as we discussed in class, Sub-Saharan Africa has very little room for an industry of any kind. They cannot afford to farm or have a textile industry, so there are no jobs there. Without the schooling and literacy skills, Sub-Saharan Africans have little prospect of finding jobs related to the growing technological industry, so there is very little income available for them to use. Since Sub-Saharan Africa has such a low GDP per capita, they cannot afford substantial health care and therefore do not have a high life expectancy. There is no way for them to break the loop of lack of education, lack of jobs, lack of money, lack of health care, placing them in a perpetual state with a low Human Development Index. This problem is a sad reality, and I do not really know what could be done to help them out of this state. I think that it is important to help people, if we have the resources to do so, but the aid from the U.S. also inhibits the industries available to Sub-Saharan Africans. I think that we can only do our best, pray a lot, and just trust God to work his will in their lives through us.

Diwali - Hindu Festival of Lights

http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/Shared/StaticFiles/Photography/Images/POD/w/women-candles-mcnally-692015-lw.jpg

This picture was taken in Jaipur, India at the Hindu festival of lights. The Indian name for it is Diwali, and this picture is taken at the ancient palace in Jaipur. The festival celebrates good overcoming evil and knowledge over ignorance.

I chose this picture because I like the photography elements of it. There is an aesthetic appeal in the soft orange candle-light glow against the ornately adorned Indian palace. I also liked the color contrast between the warm pink and orange tones of both the women and the palace, compared with the cool blues of the early night sky and the palace floor.

I do not know if the clothes the women are wearing are particularly formal just for the festival, or if that is something that they would usually wear, but I think they are beautiful just the same.
I do wonder who else would be present at the palace for such an event as this. I wonder where the other guests were, or why there are only these tow women on what seems to be the roof-top of the palace.

Thoughts on Cuba's Travel Ban

Although the travel ban has existed for the last 46 years, and it has been difficult for the people of Cuba to make a living without the booming tourism industry, I do not feel that the travel ban should be lifted yet. The goal of the travel ban was to injure the country economically, so as not to financially support the communist government. I think that to give in now and to lift the ban, would only make things worse. It would begin to finance the government, and the suffering of the Cuban people would have been in vain, because it would only strengthen the government that is currently in place. I think that the travel ban should remain so long as the country is run by a communist government. I think that Christians in this day and age need to look past the monetary gains that could come from lifting the travel ban and remember the values that it had in the first place.

Similarly I think that companies who outsource labor to China, because it saves them money should also consider how it is financing their communist government. I think that Americans were all for the travel ban on Cuba, because it is so close to the United States, that they also felt it was a protection measure to keep their government weak. I think that when it comes to China, people are not as worried, because they are farther away.

However, if the travel ban is on Cuba because the United States is opposed to communist rule, as it should be, then why would we hold a double standard when it comes to China. Being from a Christian community here at Concordia, I think it is important that we encourage fellow believers in this country to be Christians first and Americans second, and to put away our greed to save as much money as possible, and consider how the world could improve if we held the same standards with all communist countries.

Current Event in Latin America

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1714490,00.html

This is article, "Is Mexico's Drug War Escalating?" discusses the recent developments in the drug war which is rampant throughout Mexico and much of Latin America. The focus in this article is about the recent bombings in Mexico that have injured pedestrians. They are currently unaware of who is behind the bombings, but it is suspected to be a new weapon used by the drug lords in this war, which is escalating between organized crime and the government.

World Mapper

This cartogram represents the Girls Who are Not in Primary School across the world. I selected this one, because my major is elementary education and I was interested to see what education opportunities were available to students across the globe. This map indicated that in North and South America and Western Europe girls have almost equal opportunities to attend primary school. However, in the Middle East, Middle and Northern Africa, and in parts of Eastern Europe, girls do not have the opportunity to attend primary school. This indicates a large cultural split in the world and a difference in gender roles between these two groups of continents. One sees that at least at the primary school age, it is important for both boys and girls to learn academic subjects, where as the other must feel that academic learning is not necessary for girls at all.