Spring Break

For my Spring Break I traveled with the rest of the baseball team down into Texas and Oklahoma to play games. I had never been in either Texas or Oklahoma and was pretty anxious to see what they were like. I thought Oklahoma was pretty neat with them having alot of flat farmground. There were also stretches which were kind of like the Badlands in the Dakotas which were pretty cool to see. The amount the landscape changed in just a short amount of time was pretty impressive to me. On the other hand Texas was a little bit of a dissapointment for me. I have heard all these people from Texas say how great it is and how it's the best thing there is. I know I only saw the northern and central part of Texas but it still was not that great of a place to live. I did get to go on the Riverwalk in San Antonio which was pretty cool and also got to see the Alamo. The weather was also nice for a few days before becoming rainy and cooler for the rest of the week. It was nice to get to see somewhere different and play baseball but I still would rather be at home then at Texas.

African Aid

I think that it is good that we are trying to help the countries in Africa by giving them aid. However we obviously need to make some changes and try to have a little more success with how we do it. First off whenever we give aid we need to make sure that the aid is getting to the people and is not being taken by the government. One way to fix this might be by giving aid only to international organizations instead of the government. They are there and are able to see what needs to be done better. Another key for giving aid is that we need to make sure that we are not hurting the businesses that are in the country by giving away free food whenever there is some available. More of a focus should be on having African companies do the rebuilding instead of having international companies coming in and doing the work. If the aid that we are giving goes to different projects that will help the country provide services for its people there might be more success with helping Africa. I guess overall the main focus for people giving aid should be trying to build up the infrastructure in the country and having them be able to support themselves.

HDI Rankings

The HDI rankings look at several different factors when determining the rankings. It looks at Life expectancy, adult literacy, the enrollment rate of primary and secondary education and the GDP per capita. Looking at the rankings of HDI you are able to pick up on some trends geographically. The most developed countries are mainly in the Western Hemisphere with the continents of Europe and the Americas. There are some exceptions to this however. Some Asian countries such as Japan, Kuwait, Australia and Qatar are exceptions however and are ranked pretty high. The medium developed countries tend to be from all over the world. Many Northern African countries along with out some countries in the Middle East are part of this ranking. However there are also countries in Asia, Southern Africa and in the Americas that are part of this grouping. The lowest grouping is made up completely of South African countries. This region just has not been developed and has not had enough stability or resources to be developed. Because of disease and lack of farmable land people have not been able to worry about developing the country because they are more worried about trying to survive. If Sub-Saharan Africa can get its education better and have people become more knowledgable they might be able to start building up their countries.

Amazing Photos

This photo is of a waterfall in the Glacier National Park. I like it because it is so amazing how the landscape has changed over the years and how beautiful of places that we have in our country. The picture is just pretty amazing to me, since I am not used to being around mountains and large forests of pine trees. Having the picture being taken from above is just a beautiful shot.

Cuban question

I do not think that the embargo should be lifted on Cuba. With all the uncertainty in Cuba right now we do not need to give them any money by trading with them. Some might argue that if we allowed tourism people in Cuba would see how good a life Americans have, and would want that in their country. However they already do have a pretty good idea of what our life is like and know how bad they have it there. There is a reason that many people each day try fleeing Cuba to get to the United States. Also if we have tourist over in Cuba, we have to worry about making sure that they are protected from the Cuba government over there. Also if the government collapses there will be strife in the country for a while and we do not want to get our troops involved in there also. The way I see it there is no reason for us to lift the ban right now. There is a chance that the government might collapse soon anyway and there is no great benefit for us to lift the embargo now.

Latin America News Article

An article that I found with Latin America talks about the steps that one country is taking to try breaking down on the amount of drugs that is transported through the country. The newstory (http://xrl.us/beh7hh) talks about how Guatemala has had around 50 people trained by the U.S. to do drugs raids. According to the article Guatemala has struggled with controlling the drug trafficking that goes on in the country and has not been able to do much to stop what goes on. While I'm sure that it will take more then this to make much of an impact, it is good to know that they country is working on solving some of its problems and is looking for help on the outside also.