It appears that we may all have come to then end of our blogpost relationship with Joel from Afar. Tonight is our last night in Sao Paulo and tomorrow we head out to a retreat for three days where we wil relax do evaluations and say our goodbyes to the group. I will contiune to Argintina to see Nida! and than head home to Saratoga to graduate, time flies. In any case check back a couple times more for some final pictures and videos that I want to post once i get back to the US and possibly some info from Argentina.

The last few days here have been busy with writing papers, finishing case studies and trying to do as much in teh city as possible. A couple nights ago I discovered that I am a line dance champion well at a Samba bar which specialized in line dancing I excelled like no other. It is a bummer that line danceing went out with the 1750s or was is the 1760s? Either way I really missed that boat on that one, but it can never hurt to know ones strenghts I suppose. Other than line dancing I have been running, ad realized that I missed te Sao Paulo marathon which was today if only I would have known I would have loved to run that o well.

Academically I am officially done with my college carer which feels good. IHP was an excellent way to finish my education allowing me to take what I have learned over the past three years and add in a whole new outlook on much of the information. I feel that it is imposible to sum up even small amounts of all the informaton I have aquired during this experience, but in time I am confident that I will be able to answer the dreaded question "so what was your favorite country." Other than that this trip has really helped to make me muh more aware of the health desparities across countries and withing classes in cities all around the world. Everywhere we went although there re completly different backgrounds the problems are all the same. The people with money get better health care than those who have no money. I guess that would be one of the major themes of this entire program, although we really did not address how to correct this problem but I suppose being aware of the issues is the first step.

So incase I dont get to put another post before I get back home thanks for following along, I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed living it (if that is possible). Cant wait to talk to many of you soon!

joel