While spending a semester studying abroad in Ecuador, Bwogger in exile, Sara Vogel, fell into an internship with the press office in Ciudad Eloy Alfaro, where the country's brightest and finest (we hope!) are hard at work forming the Republic of the Equator all over again, and for the 21st time. Her dispatch:

I just got a text message from Luis Hernández, a bald ex-colonel in the Ecuadorian military and one of the 130 people charged with writing the country's new constitution. It reads:

"Hola, como estas? Soy Luis Hernandez. Cuando conversamos sobre la democracia y la libertad de expresión en USA?"
(for the Spanish-challenged: "Hey, how are you? It's Luis Hernandez. When are we going to talk about democracy and freedom of expression in the US?")

I didn't expect text messages stalking after I interviewed Sr. Hernández as an intern for the Ecuadorian Constitutional Assembly's press office. But I also never thought SIT Study Abroad would be able to deliver a job like this for the three-week long final independent study project all SIT students must diligently complete. Maybe it was less the program that set me down in this over-air conditioned office, and more the networks of friendship and patronage that grease the wheels of Ecuadorian politics generally: SIT's directors knew a woman who knew a guy who knew a guy.

This past weekend was the New York Comic Convention, a massive gathering of everything comic books. New Bwog correspondent and former Marvel Comics intern Shaina Rubin writes a dispatch about meeting the writers behind the heroes. (She's even illustrated the scene with her very own comic.)

On first entering the New York Comic Convention, known colloquially as "Comic Con," video games and movie trailers dominated the scene. But, comics remained the focus of the attendees, who surveyed Iron Man trailers boosting interest in the Iron Man comics, huge posters of DC Comics leading people to Superman and Batman.

Most people crowded the panels discussing shows or comics, wanting to see and hear their real-life heroes. Though it wasn't the most popular, the Mighty Marvel Kids panel showed an inside peak at the world of the cartoonist-behind-the-comics. Having worked at Marvel Comics as an editorial intern, I'd enjoyed the comics, but I'd only met a few of the writers.

Over the holiday bwog freelancer Kate Linthicum headed north with four friends and a loose agenda: rollick through Buffalo, Toronto and Montreal, make some art, and do it all for cheap.

On Monday we packed ourselves into a borrowed van and fled the city.

Goodbye thesis, goodbye job, goodbye anxieties about post-graduation life.

In Poughkeepsie we stopped at a friend's house and jumped on his trampoline just to prove to ourselves that we were being spontaneous. Then we rambled west under the bright white sun.

Eight hours later, we arrived at our destination. We were greeted with a feast of corned beef, cabbage and shamrock-shaped sugar cookies.

Mine eyes, I am now happy to report, have seen the glory of St. Patrick's Day in Buffalo.

Blue and White Managing Editor Katie Reedy spent her winter break in Guatemala with a nascent NGO called DreamWeavers. Here, her dispatches from Nebaj, Guatemala City, and San Pedro. (Ed. note: All images from Google, since there are no camera cords in San Pedro.)

Nine days ago, we ended up in Nebaj.

Up blind curves with no guard rails, swerving to avoid the 'chicken buses,' the 1970's-era American school buses festooned with colorful paint and religious slogans that are used for common transportation in Guatemala, our van climbed higher into the altiplano. Windows open, bachata and salsa blasting, duffle bags rolling around on the roof, the van ascended the mountains at an alarming speed, stopping only to let girls vomit and shit in the woods to rid themselves of the queso they ate on the streets of San Pedro the night before.

Nebaj, one of most remote villages in Guatemala, is so high up that there are clouds in the streets. The people rarely speak Spanish (Mayan Ixil and Quiche, instead), old ex-guerrilla guides sadly point out hills where their fellows fought and hid during the decades-long civil war, and maintaining standards of sanitation is a distant priority after hauling enough wood for fires and reaping maize from steep mountainsides. The whole place was dark and corroded, faces more taut than in the warm lake towns-- probably due to the fact that more than 100,000 people in the area were killed in a genocide that ended just 13 years ago. The plan was to arrive in Nebaj, stay at a Peace Corps-built hostel, hike for two days to visit even more remote settlements in the mountains, and then book it back to the warm recesses of San Pedro La Laguna, our home base.

Our optimistic 24-girl group set off up the trail mountain. We had come to Guatemala for various reasons-- some for the volunteer work, some to document local cooperatives and fair trade movements, some for vacation-- but all under the auspices of DreamWeavers, an NGO put together by Kai Zhang, BC '09. We had bonded after a week of hanging out with schoolchildren and exploring Lake Atitlan, and it was time to test our bonds by hiking the Cuchumatanes.

In which three young gentlemen--NYU correspondent W.M. Akers and temporary Brits John Klopfer and Brendan Ballou--offer their tales of Thanksgiving out of sorts.

Isolation within the 116th St. gates may be hard to take, but think of the NYU students. Not all are able to leave the city during Thanksgiving and Winter break, and although we have our ways of dealing, social barriers are less effective when winter combines with skyscrapers to allow us only a few minutes of sun a day. Your correspondent is safe in Tennessee, writing in sight of a full cooked turkey and two pies, but while I've been listening to family bicker about gravy, a few close friends are braving the holiday away from their home's tryptophantastic bosom.

Several friends' families took the break as an excuse for a city vacation, and came up for a week of sightseeing and restaurant dining. One friend, a sophomore who lives in Green Point, hosted her mother for a lot of "walking around and cooking. We saw a movie, and tonight we went to see Rockefeller Center because [Mom] really wanted to, but when we got there there wasn't really anything exciting to do. We were going to go to the parade but found out you have to get a ticket in advance." For Thanksgiving lunch her roommate made "some weird Japanese fish dish" and then slurped a bottle and a half of wine. Bungled maintenance on the floor above led to the collapse of their bathroom ceiling, but they had a nice night anyway.

To pass holidays away from home seems unfortunate, but that's just turkey-lobby propaganda talking: it does have fringe benefits. A friend who couldn't get away from the cash register at the SoHo Apple store made two and a half times salary, and those I know who imported family got to enjoy several days of comped fine-dining. None of them will have to negotiate airports and subways on Sunday; none of them had to make small talk with forgettable cousins or high-school chums. To those not consoled by cash or food, I recommend Whole Foods stuffing and a fifth of Wild Turkey. A holiday could be worse.

We brought you dispatches from Mongolia and Bolivia -- now it's back to South America, where a Bwog friend in Chile has some unvarnished tales of her time abroad.

I'm sitting in the bar I go to every Friday, sipping extremely cheap wine and chatting with a friend and some new acquaintances. The bar is called The Library, and its walls are covered in a mural of a bookcase, posters of Alf and a giant portrait of Violeta Parra. The music alternates between Spice Girls, Andean folk music and reggaeton, which, combined with the jar of wine I've just managed, is making me feel a little schizophrenic. Or maybe it's that my friend keeps changing languages on me - he's learning English translation and keeps prodding me with phrases. I'm going to the toilet! he screams over the music, and leaves me with his buddies who I am meeting for the first time.

So, um, why La Serena? is the first thing they ask me. During the first few months I would have told them that I chose to study here because of the beaches, the relative lack of foreign students, the small class sizes in the university, or the tranquil ambiance that hovers over the budding summer destination five hours north of Santiago. But now, after three months of getting to know this town, I tell them I have no fucking clue. This tends to produce a better reaction from my new acquaintances because disliking La Serena is something they can understand. For the majority of students in this town, Chile is the buttcrack of the world, of which La Serena is a concentrated representation.

In the vein of our dispatch from Mongolia, Bwog friend Ernest Herrera, CC '09, tells us what's going on down south.

Since no one ever assumes I'm a 'gringo,' I can't always tell when my cover is blown in this country. However, I know better than to think I can completely 'fit in' when a rabbi in La Paz tries to convince me of my Jewish heritage as I don my Bolivian fedora, or when I — more through fatigue than misunderstanding the language — ask the money-changer how much a shoe-shine costs. But after a few months in South America, at least I'm comfortable enough to slip up with Spanish phrases in paragraphs I'm trying to write in English.

[At right: The scarred face of Cerro Rico, or 'The Mountain that eats men.' A mining mountain whose resources funded Spain's 17^th and 18^th century wars in Europe, and whose tin kept food fresh for Allies in World War I.]

Thanks to a crazy suggestion from our study abroad dean to travel sooner than later, I am spending this semester studying in Bolivia with the School for International Training (SIT). The group consists of twenty-six American university students, with interests ranging from theater to economic theory, based in Cochabamba, the just-right-porridge city in a country with regionalistic politics and extreme climates. We attend lectures from university professors, academics, and political and social leaders regarding 'culture and development' — a mix of history, politics, and anthropology. We also travel and have 'class' in the form of visits to places like the 'Birthplace of the Sun,' where the 2700 year-old Tiwanaku empire held its seat on an island in Lake Titicaca, and Cerro Rico, a mountain in Potosí that has claimed the lives of nearly eight million miners over the centuries that its silver and mineral ore have been exploited.

One-time B&W writer Natasha Chichilnisky-Heal, rather than starting junior year, lit out for Mongolia. They have investment banks there too!

There's a common saying in Mongolia: "margash, margash..." Translation: "tomorrow, tomorrow." Perhaps what amounts to an expression of Mongolian time-dilation explains why I've decided to delay my return to Columbia for a year. After all, the yak just don't roam quite as freely in Manhattan as they do on the steppe, and I don't think I do either. [At right: River in Baltsengel soum, Arkhangai aimag, Mongolia.]

I came here in June of 2007 with a plan to intern at the first Mongolian investment bank, Mongolia International Capital Corporation, for three months before returning to my junior year at Columbia College. I'd picked my classes, settled my living situation, met a boy, and generally gotten myself pumped for 2007-2008. This year, I thought, would be different. I would dig into my studies, go to my classes, build my resume, and generally be impressive as all hell. Mongolia was supposed to be a an interesting stop along the way from spring to fall, a break from the never-ending pressures of New York and an escape from the US in general.
I arrived at Chinggis Khan International Airport in Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian capital, at 2:00am after a seven-hour delay in Beijing. My new boss, a Swiss Columbia graduate named Emanuel Steiner, and two of my new Mongolian coworkers (Bayasgalan and Batbayar) picked me up and drove me to my new apartment. I had been warned that it was very "Mongol," but at the time I'd had no idea how to interpret that modifier. There were no lights. The furniture was monolithic and made of polished wood. I later discovered that all the wiring systems came together under the drainpipe of my kitchen sink, where they daily invited electrical fires. My wall was covered with paintings of the moon rising over silvery lakes and stunted Mongolian horses loping across the empty plains. I almost cried myself to sleep, with no money, phone, or clear expectations.

This month, Bwog staffer Armin Rosen finds himself in Bangalore, which is not as unlike Manhattan as you might think.

Up until this weekend, my lone experience with south Asia's IT boomtown was crossing the street between its central bus and train stations. Simple enough in theory—but, owing to the city's notorious Friday-night traffic and fenced median strips, terrifying in practice. After hopping a couple of barriers and reaching the other side of the median, I found myself stranded with a small group of prospective street-crossers. And although my only words of Kannada are illa (no), and bedda (fuck off), I didn't need the lingo: their faces communicated "what the fuck?" as well as speech.

Bangalore is one "what the fuck?" after another. Most of them have to do with the fact that, like India itself, Bangalore is both thriving and struggling horribly. The doctor in charge of the NGO where I'm interning lamented that the city's pollution and uncontrollable growth rate have turned his once-pleasant hometown into a gridlocked basket case—but he added that it has everything you'd expect to find in the nicest parts of most western cities.

The great Bangalorean paradox of simultaneous prosperity and ruin is on display on Commercial Street, one of the city's major shopping arteries. On the prosperity front, the street's upscale Indian-style clothing stores attract tourists, expats and upwardly-mobile middle-class Indians. On the ruin front, Commercial Street feels like a place subverted by its own incredible success, and subsequently has almost no character of its own. Bangalore boasts none of India's architectural wonders (with the possible exception of the spectacular Karnataka state assembly building--although it does have IT, out-of-control growth, consumer decadence, and general aesthetic blight. Jam-packed Commercial Street has elements of all four, although, I did find a pretty delicious "New York Style" chicken dog. While not exactly a dead ringer for Grey's, the presence of spicy, Indian-style ketchup atop classic American street food gave me heart.

In which Bwog staffer Hillary B. unearths a trove of desperate preteen pleas.

The other day, one of my fellow interns at the marketing/publicity firm where I work turned to me and asked, "Do you know what happened to all the Good Charlotte fan mail?" That band once had been among our clients, and we've been receiving their mail for over a year.

"I don't know... I think Autumn threw it all out," I said. This was true — a few weeks ago, we had cleaned out the mailroom and the entire bag of fan mail had been unceremoniously dumped in the trash. What I didn't tell my colleague was that I had later smuggled the bag into my backpack and brought it home with me.

As much fun as I had tampering with the mail — hey, it's not like that's a felony or anything, right? Right? — I'd have to say that on the whole, this was a learning experience for me. I now consider myself an expert on Good Charlotte fan mail composition. Read on to find out how you, too, can write a letter that'll bring Benji and Joel Madden to their knees.

Step 1: Be a 15-Year-Old Girl

The vast majority of Good Charlotte fans are young ladies just shy of the tween years. Out of 30some letters, a grand total of one was written by a boy — and nobody admitted to being older than a sophomore in high school. Then again, there are exceptions to this rule, as proven by this amazing letter from Katie in Ohio:

"Dear Good Charlotte, I Love You Joel Madden! You are the only one I think is Hot! Will you marry me? I like SpongeBob. How old are you? I am 9 years old. You are my favorite rock band. Your Girlfriend, Katie. P.S. Write me back BABY!"

Not again! Here comes the third of five installments of Bwog correspondent Addison Anderson's travels to the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York. In this segment: poignancy, "cooking with gas," the earth's most important room, plate tectonics, and a healthily collaborative working environment!

As we head to the Core Lab, Brusa picks up two bits of Open House balloons off the grass and puts them in his pocket, as there are so few trashcans around. Then he tells me how Lamont became Lamont Doherty. Henry Doherty (1870-1939), a self-taught engineer, made his fortune with Cities Services (now Citgo), figuring out how to get gas into people's homes and persuade people to use it, rather than coal, for cooking. "Now you're cooking with gas!" was originally a factual and congratulatory slogan for having brought Cities Services gas-cooking into one's home, before it came to mean "Now you're doing something notably well!" in popular speech.

In 1969, the foundation Doherty set up gave $7 million to Lamont to help pay for a portion of the top scientists' salaries. Before then, every scientist had to raise whatever was needed for their research, their salaries, and their research staff on their own. As Brusa puts it, "This isn't some bucolic think tank, and it's never been like that. Every scientist had to raise all their money, but by 1969 it was getting to be a problem. The Doherty donation spins off enough money to pay for one or two months of scientists' salaries." The pressure to make up the remainder pushes researchers: "It's enormously competitive...And there's no resting."

Hear ye, hear ye. The second of five installments of Bwog correspondent Addison Anderson's travels to the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York has arrived. In this segment: Doc Ewing, explosions in New Jersey, a trap door in Schermerhorn, space constraints, seafaring, more explosions, general disarray, a very famous kitchen, and bees!

Doc Ewing, who passed away in 1974, is still the guiding spirit of Lamont. His portrait or photo hangs on at least one wall in nearly every building. What stands out more prominently, however, is Ewing's relentless drive to conduct research with all available resources. It's his all-for-the-science work ethic that explains why such an aged encampment continues to pump out so much groundbreaking research.

During the Depression, working without government sponsorship, Ewing designed and built new equipment out of spare parts and household items -- fruit salad cans, coffee cans, really a lot of cans — in an attempt to use sound to study buried rock strata, usually by means of measuring sound waves from explosions. In 1936, after blowing up lots of ground in New Jersey, he used a these methods and a $2000 grant from the Geological Society of America to study an even less esteemed part of the earth's surface: the ocean floor. The first expeditions at sea yielded few breakthroughs, but Ewing's research into how sound travels underwater soon caught the Navy's eye. He consequently worked on sound equipment for ships and submarines until the end of World War II.

A heckuva lot more after the jump.

Welcome to the first installment in our five-part series on Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, that mystifying, Columbia-owned haven of higher learning in Palisades, New York, that no one really knows anything about - until now! Bwog correspondent Addison Anderson takes us through the history, the mystery, and the all-around good time that is waiting for you just a short bus ride upstate. Featuring: forests, the Rockefellers, bad architecture, beer, CU250, Nestle Chocolate, Robert Moses, College Walk, "I Like Ike", and the origin story of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory!

Across the street from Radio Perfecto on Amsterdam Avenue, a sign on Columbia's northeastern wall marks the starting point of a trip few undergraduates ever take to a place they know little about. Before seeing it, I had imagined that the Lamont- Doherty Earth Observatory, with its presumed tall observation tower and/or laser cannon, would make a good headquarters for a super-villain in a Varsity Show. Friends had similar impressions: "I always thought it was like, a giant dome." "It's probably really high tech, lots of steel and glass."

As it turns out, this is not the case. Hoping to find out for real what this mythical place was all about, I join dozens of researchers, grad students and professors one rainy Friday morning on the 8 AM chartered tourbus to Lamont. While the Lamonters, as they call themselves, sip their coffee and devour their Times, the bus rumbles over the George Washington Bridge and up to the Palisades along a two-lane highway, finally arriving at Lamont's 150-acre campus on a bluff above the Hudson River.

Continue reading after the jump...