Living My Life To The Tune of Toto

Hey All,

So first off, I know this post is long overdue. Over the past couple months my life has been a fire storm of events, emotional ups and downs, and other such things. So with all that said, how about I give you and update as to what I have been up to.

First and foremost, the biggest part of my life has involved going to Africa twice this summer. The first time I went was for a scholarship program. A group of 6 students and two professors traveled to Tanzania (Specifically the island of Zanzibar) to film a documentary on an NGO (Non-Government-Organization) doing unique works to charity. Now you are probably asking: "Hey Nonberg, where are the sweet pictures of the pirate flag?) Well, to that I would say, it was impossible to take pictures with the pirate flag considering the airline lost my suitcase with the flag in it. I did not get the flag back until the airport. At that time my camera was out of batteries. I could write volumes on what happened in Africa, but hopefully I'll be able to share my documentary with all of you when its done in the next month or so.
My second trip to Africa was for a family vacation. For my parent's 60th birthday, they decided to give each other the gift of a safari (their life's dream forever.) I saw some animals I never thought I would ever get to see in person. If you guys are interested in seeing some of the pictures I took check out this link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/nonbergsinkenya2010
So that's my life in a nutshell over the past couple of months. Right now I am currently starting my second year at school and am now the new assistant coach here on the team. I can't wait to see everyone in a couple of weeks.

I'll Leave You With this

that's mt Kilmanjaro in the background. I'll be summiting that in January.

I'm in Bolivia!

Hey you all so I finally made it down to Bolivia. I guess I really never explained why I made the trip down to South America and some of you probably didn’t even know I was down here to begin with. Well I was offered a job to work for an alumn managing some stores he owns in Bolivia. I figured this was a once in a lifetime opportunity so I accepted. The job in itself is only ok. I work in a bookstore here in La Paz. We have a decent selection of used books that we sell at reasonable prices and we also sell different camping and hiking supplies like backpacks, tents, sleeping bags, pretty much anything you would need to travel or hike. To be honest it almost feels like I’m hustling out on the streets since I’m constantly bargaining for prices with our distributors and trying to get people to buy from us. Our sales have also dropped in the last few months since other stores that sell the same stuff have opened up. La Paz is also not the most attractive city, so I was amazed to see that the majority of our clients are tourist. From far away the city looks really cool since it’s surrounded by mountains, but once you get close it’s pretty dirty and poorly developed. Other parts of Bolivia are supposed to be really pretty so I may travel out some once I get my first paycheck.

I’m staying in an apartment that my boss has rented out for us and has subsidized part of the cost. My roommate is a Carleton grad from ‘09 who works with me and has been in South America for a while. He is pretty familiar with the city and the store so he has pretty much been showing me around until I get the hang of everything. We also went out with a group of his friends last weekend and I proceeded to get really drunk. To make a long story short altitude makes you get drunk faster and I blacked out got lost in La Paz, lost my phone, that I had just bought a few days ago, and got home at nine in the morning to find out that my boss had spent most of the morning trying to find me to help him get stuff from the market, so much for first impressions.

I plan on staying here in South America for a few months unless I get offered another job but I’m not holding my breath on that. I’ll most likely end up returning in May and start applying for grad schools and looking for jobs. This means I’ll miss the alumni meet, which kinda blows, but I might pass by Carleton in the spring. Also what is the deal with the Brocation? I really don’t mind if you guys plan it while I’m out here but lets get the ball rolling. Alright well I hope all is well in the states have fun at the alumni meet and will keep everyone posted on my trip.

Segway chief hoist with his own Segway

If you missed it, here's the tragic, but not really ironic story, and one of the many takes on the whole event. I thought there must be some sort of literary term for this kind of thing, but the closest I could come up with was the he was hoist with his own petard. But replace petard with some equally French word meaning complicated, expensive contraption that is really no better than the alternatives. But you can get around faster than walking without all the costs of driving a car! . . . Bicy-what-do-you-call-'em-now?

Anyway, I really just wanted to use this as an opportunity to post on my favorite world-revolutionary product that wasn't. And to post a bunch of pictures of people looking ridiculous on Segways:

Senior Year WTF?

This is senior year? Really? I've actually been here for 3 years? This is what goes through my mind every morning. Then, I think: "What do I have to do today? Hmmm I have work, then one class, and then like 5 meetings. Oh, and I should work on one of my compses, maybe. Or drink. Hmmmmm."

So, what's new about this year? First, I'm living in basement Memorial, otherwise known as The Pit, and it's amazing. Our common room isn't quite as large as the Stadium common room (it's hard to tell), we only have a half kitchen, but my room is gargantuan, nearly as large as the triple I lived in last year. We threw our first party last night, a triple-kegger (yes that's right) and it was a major success. I did realize that the Stadium carpeting made throwing parties sooo much easier, but we had a mopping party today and our room is as clean as ever. We also live down the hall from a pool table and a foosball table.

Secondly, comps. So I'm double compsing this term and next term, meaning that I only have 2 classes and subsequently, no class on Friday. This is awesome in terms of scheduling, but I have not been doing enough to prep for my Russian test in 3 weeks (case in point: this post).

Third: I've joined the equestrian team! Which means that I have an hour-long horseback riding lesson every week and I'll probably do a show sometime. I am very likely the only male on the team, but there might be another one. I decided to join the equestrian team because I felt like a bad Kansan because I'm not very experienced with horses and because I would like to live in southern Siberia next year, where horseback riding is a very useful skill. Maybe not so much jumping, but still.

Fourth, the FLOOD! So it started raining sometime Tuesday night and continued raining moderately hard until Thursday night. On Thursday, the fields surrounding West had already flooded and the Lakes had risen substantially. By Friday, the river had grown beyond its banks and inundated the entire town. Stadium and West were islands in a very large lake. The football field/track are destroyed. Allen house (and those other ones next to it) had to be evacuated. Froggy's was damaged heavily and the fire department was flooded. This is the worst non-tornado natural disaster I've ever been in.

So yeah, that's a glimpse of what I've been up to. Life is busy, but I've done that intentionally because I want to get everything out of this year that I can.