Em.'s In & Outs

Here is a current snapshot of my research ideas =) Comments are welcome!

Transition Towns (TT) have been identified as a key player in Strengthening the Movement for the 2010 Summit on a People-Centered Economy. TT seek to put forwards solutions for community adaptation to climate change and peak oil, and as such embody a practical response to the following question that emerged as a priority for SE research for our times: “what explicit strategies are being used for the social/solidarity economy to play a role in sustainable development and the “green” or conservation economy in the face of climate change and how can this be strengthened?” (Downing, 2009). While it is clear that the interface between the sustainability and social economy (SE) movements is linked in theory, with the literature on de-growth, re-localization and ecological economics, and in practice through the work of the Canadian Centre for Community Renewal (CCCR), there has been very little applied research on the topic in Canada (McPherson and Fontan, pers. comm., 30/03/10; Tremblay, pers.comm., 16/02/10). Transition Towns are creating a groundswell momentum for applied sustainability in Canada, and now is a real opportunity to research resilience indicators as put forwards by TT (Colussi, pers.comm., 01/04/10) and to share those with other non-profit organizations seeking to increase resilience. This study will provide insight towards other needed research outputs such as a scan of community responses to climate change and peak oil in Canada with a comparative rural/urban and TT/non-TT lens (Côté, pers.comm., 09/03/10), in order to help the Canadian non-profit community understand how TT build systems of communications, social learning and advocacy that best stimulate success and policy insight (Downing, pers.comm., 15/02/10). As a result, the research question addressed is: how does the TT movement in Canada mainstream and evaluate resilience into its community visioning and planning activities, and what are the implications for SE organizations?

This study abides by principles of action research with the researcher taking an active role in the beginning process to establish an Energy Action Descent Plan (EADP), as discussed in preliminary community research design conversations. It adopts an original triangulated mixed methods basket. Data collection will happen over the May-December 2010 time period, and will consist of in-depth case studies of Transition Guelph and Eden Mills Going Carbon Neutral, which will include participant observation, a series of community meetings for visioning and backcasting following the TT model, and a digital storytelling workshop on resilience. This will be supplemented by a questionnaire on best practices and indicators circulated to TT groups in Canada. This will be based on a literature review of sustainability planning.

It is expected that this research, of whose results will be shared widely and which has small/rural as well as Canadian national implications, will provide a backbone sample of resilience indicators for increased sustainability. The action research methodology will act as a catalyst for the establishment of the first Canadian EADP, while allowing for reflection on the processes for setting resilience indicators, and for important evaluation questions to emerge. The digital stories will constitute a creative asset for Canadian communities to foster dialog on resilience.

ACCESS Community Capital Fund

Development Manager

The ACCESS Community Capital Fund (ACCESS) assists small and emerging businesses gain access to financing when it is not available through conventional sources. ACCESS is a Canadian registered charity that operates a community loan fund through the provision of loan guarantees. The fund was created by investments from socially minded individuals, organizations and businesses. ACCESS has developed strong community partnerships and is seeking to expand its mandate across the greater Toronto area. For additional information please visit us at www.accessccf.com

Position:

Reporting to the volunteer Board of Directors of ACCESS, the Development Manager is responsible for expanding the geographic scope of ACCESS and the volume of community-based lending through the development of chapters in Toronto. The position will work closely with the key stakeholders of ACCESS, including community organizations and related agencies, fund investors and the committed team of ACCESS volunteers. Actively involved in all aspects of the daily operations of ACCESS, the Development Manager will be integral to delivering upon ACCESS’ key strategic goals in the area of microfinance.

Key Responsibilities and Accountabilities:

• To identify, develop and establish new chapters of ACCESS that are focused on providing microloans to promising entrepreneurs in their local communities. The position will guide the chapter in implementing community-based lending in accordance with ACCESS’ loan review criteria and other practices.

• To manage the key operational aspects of the community loan fund and to champion its key strategic initiatives.

• To promote the sustainability of the community loan fund through the increased provision of microloans, strengthening ACCESS’ investor base, and engaging in fundraising activities, as well as other charitable activities targeted at new and existing individual and institutional donors.

• To support the Board’s outreach program for identifying, developing and nurturing key partnerships with community organizations and other potential partners, including those focused on business mentoring and other related services.

• To assist in coordinating ACCESS’ dedicated volunteer base to staff its loan review committees, as well as promote their engagement in community partnership and other activities related to social finance.

• To provide assistance and support in relation to the ACCESS Board of Directors and its related committees, as well as reporting as required to external stakeholders.

Qualifications and Attributes
Required:

• University graduate;
• 3 years business development experience (or equivalent) or 6 years senior business experience which included responsibility for building and maintaining customer relationships;
• Experience in evaluating credit applications or alternatively in financial analysis;
• Experience either as a volunteer chair, board member or staff in a not-for-profit organization working for at-risk communities;
• Excellent oral and written English communication skills and interpersonal skills

Preferably:
• Demonstrable experience in fundraising and event planning;
• Multiple languages.

Location: Toronto

Compensation:

Contract position with compensation commensurate with experience and comparable with the compensation offered in a non-profit organization.


We recognize the value of diversity in our communities and interested candidates should send a letter of interest, their resumes and three references by email in Word or pdf format to: hiring@accessccf.com.

We thank you for your interest in ACCESS. Only those applicants being considered will be contacted. Interviews will commence on January 11 and we will accept applications until the position is filled. Please distribute this posting to eligible candidates in your network.

A repost from some research one of my students did on whistleblowing, mindblowing!

"The following is a list of the presented statistics on whistleblowers in the U.S.:

100% were fired - most were unable to find new jobs

17% lost their homes

54% were harassed by peers at work

15% were subsequently divorced

80% suffered physical deterioration

90% reported emotional stress, depression and anxiety

10% attempted suicide

Source:

http://media.www.brockpress.com/media/storage/paper384/news/2004/03/30/Business/Famous.Cases.Of.WhistleBlowing-645453.shtml

Now, take these stats for what they are, but it is interesting that standing up against a higher authority on your own will likely bring a very uncomfortable and/or painful situation as a result of the higher authority trying to cover up mistakes or to silence the whistleblower. There is a good example of whistleblowers in the documentary "The Corporation" where two reporters are pressured to falsify information on a news story. The reporters refused to mislead the public by falsifying information and claimed their whistleblower status. However, the reporters' whistleblower status was overthrown by the courts as a result of the courts determining that falsifying information was not in fact against the law and subsequently fired the two reporters.

The Corporation Video Clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw"

Some notes on the debate... Right at the heart of my (current!) research topic =)

Eizabeth May (pro)
CC first threat and then water crisis.
Canada was a lead of the Our Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security, one of the first conferences
Consequences of CC could be second only to global nuclear meldown.
Margaret Thatcher : “thread to our world comes from tyrants and their tanks, it can be more insidious.. the danger of CC is unseen but still blablah we need to change” (15 years ago)
Sea levels raised 80% faster than the 3rd IPCC report predicted..

George Mombiot (pro)
“how lucky do you feel?” is what the “con” guys are talking about..
Commission by Nicholas Stern got other results regarding costs. Mitigation = 1% of GDP; Adaptation = costs with living with that levels of CC : 5% of GDP at the very best, or up to 20% of GDP in the worst case scenario.
Adaptation. Yes we can adapt to some of it for a few years in the developed world. But different in poor world. Adaptation technologies : drip irrigation, new crop varieties, etc. but doesn’t work so smoothly in practice. He worked many years in the Horn of Africa, and saw some of the new climate-induced droughts (that used to come every 30-40 years and now every 2-3 years).
Why should $ for tackling CC could come out of military budgets, etc.. we should invest in both CC and foreign aid.
Question of Copenhagen : do we continue as we are now, or do we pick up our responsibility and recognize the scale of that crisis? How lucky do you feel? (Copenhagen as unique moment in history).
Lord Nigel Lawson (con)
Critique of global
Founder of Global Warming Policy Foundation
Thinks if some policy issues would be implemented, it would be highly damaging. A survey of mainstream climate scientists, asking what the most pressing issue facing humanity, and 8% identified CC as such.
IPCC : likely cost of CC = $. Using a small groups of scientists in the UK for their sources on climate, apparently many incompetents there. Apparently no real warming this year.
In the most gloomiest economic times, apparently the incomes of developing world would be 8.5 times what it is now, compared to 9.5 times.
Carbon-energy : the cheapest energy source. Maybe shift in developed world. But in developing world, he says the fastest rate of economic growth is what they need, to address poverty, and that’ll need the cheapest sources of energy.
China and India not willing to not use carbon, France also urged Europe to do the same.

Bjorn Lomborg(con)
Time Magazing in top 100 intellectual and influence
Copenhagen Consensus Centre
Rhetoric : creating dichotomies saying if CC is the worst thing ever or you’re an enemy of mankind. This approach fundamentally unsound. Poor way to help world and GW.
Costs of changing and keeping to 2degrees cent. : 43 trillion dollars of costs for benefit of 3 trillion dollars.. because the response is too costly. (I wonder if Costa Rica’s approach is costly?)
We need to make solar panels so cheap that everybody including Chinese and Indian can buy them – we need R&D
We shouldn’t focus all the other problems in this world and throw them out the window, we also need policy.
I agree with Elizabeth, we need to change policies : we didn’t deliver with Rio or Kyoto, and so he thinks Copenhagen will be confettis and champagne and nothing more. We need to start being smart.
We have many problems to fix and we need to fix global warming smartly – to do good. It’s not the only challenge we need to fix in this century.

Rebuttals
Lord Chose-bine-trou
Stern review apparently criticized by a lot of people (mostly economists at Harvard and Yale..) saying that the Stern figures are absurd/rubbish.
2 things you should do about Stern review : 1) he was a government employee; 2) didn’t peer-review it;
Elizabeth May
Scientists don’t like focus on year-on-year because we’re dealing with very larger systems (cuz land mass warming at different rates than the oceans, for example).
Acidifying of oceans and threatening lives there – something the “cons” ignore in their books
Scientist at NASA communicating at scientist at East Anglia : discrepancy in data. NASA 2005 warmest year, 2007 same as 1998. (creepy, looking at emails between people, but people have different data sets)
387 ppm now. Never since industrial revolution has it been over 250 ppm.
Georgie
Stern Review was the greatest review of reviews, it’s a meta/uber review of peer-reviewed talks. It is the most scholarly thorough review of it.
Nigel said there has been no warming this century! (WTF?)
Bjorn Lomborg
Stern review almost universally discredited by economists. It’s not a mainstream review apparently. Stern was apparently asked to come up with the most extreme figures possible.
Damages can range from -1% - 5%, with average of 2%, but apparently Stern said 30%.
You can’t just pick up one economist (Stern) that has very high numbers, and say 1000s of climate economists agree, because apparently it’s not right.
Nigel
Idea of insurance. How do you address : are we insuring ourselves for the house burning down, e.g. the worst case scenario.
Elizabeth
Cost trade-offs in what Elizabeth proposes. Finite global economy. Charges that too aggressive action on CC would take us away from other issues in developing world?
E : $3t went to bailing out big companies. Nobody said “we have competing values, we don’t know what is the best action?”
People in developing world are very concerned with climate crisis. President of Lesotho said last night that climate crisis making HIV/AIDS worse of in my country every day!!!! And so the other guy’s idea that the focus should be on HIV and poverty alleviation is flawed.
George
I don’t know anybody in CC activism that isn’t concerned with poverty, malnutrition, etc. they ARE because of CC, these problems are exacerbated.
Droughts force people out of the land, they have to leave to find work elsewhere, prostitution, and bring back HIV/AIDS back to village (according to someone from OXFAM)
If oil peaks – all costs go through the roofs some more…
Nigel
Do you feel secondary effects of defossilization of economy? Could be valuable
N: big oil discoveries recently, also tech for extracting gas.
Look at China : it’s not gonna sign to turn to renewable energy. We need to look at different approach. China is dominant in Sub-Saharan Africa and is buying up Nigerian and Angola and Ghanaian oil – they intend to use it.
(China will double their emissions by 2030! What’s the tipping point when you get worried about ppm?)
Bjorn Lomborg
Yes we’re gonna see dramatic increases in CO2, China promised in fancy game of Copenhagen, they’ (carbon intensity : carbon/$produced, reduce 40-45% by 2020). So China will improve carbon ratio without doing all that much because they’re switching to a more service-intensive economy : so China said they were doing something awesome by doing nothing at all.. =/
We need better technology – it’s hard to ask anyone including ourselves to cut our emissions.
Do you really want to address HIV/AIDS by cutting emissions (doing very little at very high cost, so that’s it’s slightly less bad in 100years) or do you want to hand out condoms? What do we want to focus on?
Elizabeth
Also calling for technology.
Price of carbon – technological revolution to have better cars (will also be best for reducing SMOG and better health)
Pay-back time of a lot of good efficient green tech have negative costs! We waste more energy than we use in Canada!!!! If we improve energy productivity in the same way that we improved labour productivity. (yes!)
Look at tech, societal breakthrough, etc. but look at tracks to
Stone age didn’t end cuz we ran out of stones, it ended because we found something better!
George
What if there’s a global food deficit cuz of an increase of 3 degrees? OUCH! The world can get into structural famine.
Yes we need to deal with hunger and poverty, but let’s not create these false choices. We need to do both. Unless we deal with CC, we can’t deal with other issues.
Africa : 2 degrees of warming catastrophic. And we’re responsible for that warming! And Af picks up the bill, it’s a much severe bill, not paid in $ but paid in human lives. And those lives aren’t calculated in cost-benefit analysis (no moral backing whatsoever). Human lives must come first.
(modeling $ costs of loss lives and ecosystems. Moral claims made by “pro” people, how do you guys relate?)
Bjorn Lomborg
Is the right way to save species is to do CC mitigation? Or is it to make those countries rich so they will preserve those forests? (cuz developing cut down forest cuz no other choice, and developed c reforest)
CC mitigation is very incremential. What about having people living better lives?
Lord
Great killer is poverty. Aid can do a little bit, the thing that really gets people out of poverty is economic development. This is how we did it, this is how China is doing it.
George
(what would the cost be that if China didn’t eliminate a lot of poverty burning nasty coal?)
Don’t want to see a pay-off between access to energy and access to food!
False choice : poverty/people rot VS fossil fuel/CC
But you can do poverty alleviation without to build coal power stations and extract more fossil fuels, which all threaten many more lives than that we’re trying to protect!
The “con” side says that everything is ultimately flexible (I guess soft sustainability, or how economists think).
You can’t tell ecosystems to behave themselves!
If we shed out trillions of $, let’s spend those $ on green energy.
Elizabeth
The problem with this debate is that we haven’t looked at the context.
Impacts of GW have huge impacts. Depends on when we stabilize and at what point we stabilize. A huge supporter of adaptation/mitigation. a big part of this is poverty alleviation; decentralized energy supplies, more solar, etc. could all be part of this strategy, also is protecting the world’s forest.
Biggest contribution of developing world to CC: (mostly illegal) logging of Amazonian forest
We need to address loss of permafrost..
Stephen Lewis : “On top of everything, Africans are likely to experience more poverty, famine, droughts, conflicts over water. And climate crisis is a nightmare for Africa.”
George
When working with OXFAM in E-Af. Drought in Kenya. Only option was to raid neighboring tribes to steal resources from them. CC is a major program here, if we don’t address CC, we better pack out and leave.
OXFAM, Action and Christian aid are lobbying for CC to be on the agenda in Copenhagen. OXFAM: “CC is mankind defining crisis”.
Bjorn
A lot of studies saying this is the only and defining crisis.
Al Gore “how do you want to be remembered by your kids?” (relating to CC as a defining moment)
Spending trillions of $ and making no difference, or spending a lot less and making lots of + changes
Elizabeth
Science compelled even Mulroney and Thatcher..
Millions of environmental refugees.
CC a profound security threat.
When you’re in a crowded theatre and the floor is warming up and there’s smoke and someone says “stay in your seats ladies and gents” – but you have to still see the exit sign..
Lord
Real problem would be addressed with better water management, capture water when it comes.. strategies that address the “real” problems.
Don’t practice marginal exacerbation.
Believe in reason (ahah theory class! A rational planner, did he ever read Davidoff or Friedmann?)
Okay Elizabeth totally wins as always =)

Hey guys,

I attended the 2009 Toronto Microfinance Conference last week-end. It was really neat - I had been to a couple planning meeting, and it was a huge success; 300 people came! That shows great interest in microfinance, woot!

Three highlights from speakers:
- Had heard someone from CARE once talk about how they're experimenting with "micropharmacies" in Kenya; that's giving financing for people to start medical and phara outlets where there is little access. Very cool - someone from Gems of Hope went as far as saying that health is the "future of microfinance"...
- on the same line of thought, OpportunityInternational has launched this project called MicroSchools, that's providing financing for people to start private schools in areas that are not served by the public system. It's creating employment for excess teachers and also providing safer access, esp for girls for whom it's not always possible to walk to the next village to go to school.
- the big theme of the closing session was "partnership" - with a $2.25 billion gap between supply and demand for microfinance services, there's a big big scaling up debate going on with institutions talking amongst each other about how they can fund each other's borrowers and so on.. fascinating!

I've been doing the back channel on Twitter so check it out for more info (username : onomatopee)

Also, Opportunity International has a youth committee that hopes to stir things up for youth with an interest in microfinance. I'm thinking of staying in the loop. Email amadonia@opportunityinternational.ca if you'd like to be a part of it too =)

Cheers,
Ém

Tabor

That was our longest ride so far and we somehow (after a day off, that's usual) managed to leave quite late, and then rolling out of Prague took a while... And the 130km ended up being super (I mean, super) hilly! I almost collapsed from being over tired after getting lost about 4 times despite our countless attempts to ask for directions on a winding bike route. At 5pm we were still only 30km from Prague. Anyways, epic day, I thought I wouldn't make it, but we rolled into the coolest accom ever just as it was getting dark. We stayed at CESTA, a mill bought up by artists running residency programs for people all over the world. Paintings everywhere, and we got a yummy meal over a chat on the gypsy and skin heads situation in the Cz Rep!

Tabor II

We had a chat with our hosts in the morning about arts and funding and social entreprises and I wish I remembered more of it - oh well, it was really interesting to listen to those guys' perspective on the world. cesta.cz for more details. Our riding day was about 35km, and I was riding with Shani and Jo. Shani's knee started hurting so she stayed back to wait for our support vehicle. At that point things were going well, we sort-a missed a turn though and a few miles later asked for directions and were given a map, which was awesome! But then... We somehow compared that map with the maps we found in the villages, misread a towns' name, ended up on a dirt road and then in a random village looking for our host's address (in the wrong village..!) and a quite large communication barrier. After about 2hours of trying to get back on track we finally talked to Phil on the phone and were like.. 8km away. It was really cool to get to the hosts though, they're a British couple that purchased these barns in Tabor and are striving for a sustainable lifestyle -- they have solar showers and composting toilets! They were super welcoming (we had a hog roast!! very tasty!) and we had really awesome conversations about civil society. A day to be remembered!

Cesky Budovice

That day we took the bike path because the highway was not too great when we saw it. It was the rainiest day of the trip so far - it poured on us all day. We had a good stroll however across a number of villages and then rolled into CB, a larger town with not sooo much to do. This was actually ideal - - we were staying in a school gym (it was Saturday) and so everybody was just chilling and relaxing, and then Gala lead an activity on why we were here, and we got to share with others in the group, it was fantastic. After some yummy stir fry dinner, we had a quick chat on microcredit, which was also good (but it was getting late). Overall a good, long day of physical and mental work and great conversations cumulnating on some serious joy of feeling connected to everybody on the trip.

Cesky Krumlov

I along with a few of us had our second interview with Boudless, our documentary crew. That was meant to clarify and expand on our answers on "being an agent of social change". We all sat in a coffee shop for a while, did the interviews, then Erin had an epic flat (the tube came out of the tire and was rolled around her cassette!). With her, Jenika, Jake and Robbie, we took the bike route to CK, a town which is entirely a UNESCO World Heritage site (screams UNESCO dance!!). Our ride was super mountainous but stunning, and rolling into the town was a magical moment - it's all 15th century buildings preserved, and the town is built around a river that turns and turns, and there's a beautiful castle, and lots of great spots to eat amazing Czech dumplings! We had a great evening walking around and letting our eyes being marvelled at all the beauty.

Linz

Bye bye Czech Republic, hello Austria! My legs were very tired this morning and it took a long time to warm up, especially as we were biking along a circling uphill for most of the morning! Just after the Austrian border, things started getting muuucccch better as we started having downhills, the most memorable being the 10km descent from the mountain range into the Danube valley. We went faster than cars, it was nuts =) Some people's computer said 60km/hr! It is here that we finally encountered the beautiful river that will be our companion until the end of Romania. We had a grreeeeeat ice cream and then found a place where I had sushi, which I was craving since the day we left Toronto! It was magical. We stayed at this soccer/multisports stadium and had a really great game of bump -- haven't played basketball in so long, it was great! I then got started on reading Everything is Illuminated and consequently parcelled the silence with giggles. Great day!

St-Poelten

Funny how things are relative. Today was the longest day of the ride so far (145km) and it felt like a piece of cake. Mind you, we were cycling in the Danube valley and so it was very flat. And also very beautiful -- lots of mountainous, foresty scenary along sparking water, very enjoyable! We had a 2hr stop under a tree and I had a really cool conversation with Mark about "project managing our lives", it was super good. Then we rolled.. Then : Ice coffee (a theme of this trip!) And then we met up with Yashar's pod and sped up the last 25km to roll in a field near a hockey arena where we were staying (having showers there was awesome, it was so cold in there!).

Vienna

This morning it was 28degrees at 7:30 am. Soooo it was even hard to be in the sun making sandwiches at that time! Jo and I jumped into the river to refresh ourselves in the morning, and then a bunch of us took off for Vienna. The B1 highway was really hilly and it was a hotttt day. We thought we were smart taking a break around 1pm to let the heat pass us, but we were wrong : it kept on getting hotter and hotter. The break was a great opportunity for sharing thoughts around the following question : "what goes through your mind when you're climbing a hill?" (answer : snap! poopy pants!) and also politics and election campaign thoughts from mark, super interesting as always. So it was a really though ride, and it took us a while to find our accom spot in Vienna. When we got there (it's a building owned by a church that Daniel, this cool CouchSurfer, had found for us), everyone was napping. We weren't so lucky and did ice cream instead. It was Maryam (our documentary crew producer)'s birthday and so the dinner was well enhanced by some champagne and great dancing on Ghetto Superstard and such hits. We were all pretty drunk (I was speaking Chinese, that's a great sign) when we hit the public transportation to go downtown. 1.5hr later, we find the place the Lonely Planet suggested, it was boring, we find a club, I was exhausted so we had burgers and took a cab back. It was still a great night of bonding over ethylic alchool.

Vienna II

Our day off in Vienna was well packed with external and media activities Daniel arranged for us. We made it to the center of town to meet with radio and television delegates who interviewed us and took a bunch of shots and footage (it was crazy seeing it online afterwards!). Then we made our way to the UN complex where we were given a tour of the buildings and then a lecture on the more political (and popular) aspects of the UN, that is, the General Assembly and the Security Council, which was interesting except that I slept through most of it -- I'm more interested in development. Oh well. It was really neat being in some meeting rooms and being explained how the official UN languages and translation worked. We had a few hours in the afternoon which were mostly dedicated to go to a bike shop to take care of our multiple squeaky noises and cracks and deficient pieces. Still found the time for a delicious ice coffee and a nice tour of downtown (really amazing city architecture!!) before having a yummy meal in a nice restaurant with Daniel, some local politicians from the Green Party and a few more media representatives. After dinner, Eileen snuck into the theater in from of the place and a few of us had the utmost privilege of attending the last couple songs by this really entertaining African band. Zoumba, ba ba ba ba zomba, ba ba ba ba zomba yo yo yo ba ba ba zoumba! (New theme song of the trip!) It was super genious.. But not quite as impressive as the EPIC rainstorm that followed our getting back to our accommodation (worth mentioning that our group didn't have the keys so we had to wait under the rain!). It reminded me of monsoon : chairs flying in the street, horizontal rain, trees falling, it was nuts. I'm glad we weren't riding through that!

Velky Biel

Today we were going to Bratislava, which I was absolutely looking forwards to! We left as a double-date pod with a chaperon, and had a mellow start, followed by two complicated, long-to-fix flats and complemented by a ride leader meeting on a 2km long bridge. I also met some French couples traveling on tandems, it was fun! The ride was otherwise pretty straightforward, we ended up catching just a little glimpse of Bratislava, which I was a bit disappointed about because I got such great vibes from the cycle into. Those concerns were soon to be dispersed when we met with some friends of our hosts (my friend Zuzana's family friends) who rode with us to Velky Biel, the village we were staying at. Their welcome was just so astounding : they made a huge banner welcoming us, there were balloons, it's just.. impossible to describe! We had a wonderfully yummy home cooked meal and Ivar and Katarina were just totally in for a good time : we had some dancing, some swimming in a crystal clear lake near their house, then we ever had a "second dinner" consisting of amazing Slovak sausages. The entire evening was a charm, it was so nice to be with such a great family too =) Amazing amazzzzinnnnggg

Gyor

Off to Hungary already.. Incredible. So we left Slovakia (some of us, myself included, pretty sad to be leaving!) and head into Hungary. Today was a though day for me, had some interpersonal mishaps but they all got sorted out thankfully. We met with the Unitarian church in Gyor, which was really specila : cool to meet young members of the congregation too! We sung our national anthems, so funny

MORE TO COME, GOTTA GO, STILL 50KM TO RIDE!