Our new blog

This is our first, official blog post...ever.  Lisa and I are new to the world of blogging but decided to create this one as a way to stay in touch and keep friends and family updated while we are living abroad during the 2012 calendar year while I carry out my dissertation research.  We hope to use the blog to share about our experiences, give updates, and post pictures.  I also hope to blog some about my project and what I'm finding (or not finding) in the archives.

The three of us are flying on January 16 from RDU, here in North Carolina, to Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia.  We will be in Bolivia for about three months, until mid-April.  We'll spend the rest of our time in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro and the western state of Mato Grosso.

I chose the name of the blog, Terra Desconhecida, because of my dissertation project.  It translates roughly from Portuguese to "The Unknown Land."  Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon, a famous Brazilian military engineer who surveyed and mapped much of western Brazil in the early 1900s, described the Pantanal as "unknown land" when he surveyed it between 1900 and 1906.  One of the goals of my project is to examine the ways that a variety of historical actors created knowledge about this vast wetland over the course of the 20th century.  I hope to show how the Pantanal went from terra desconhecida to its present designation as one of the most important and ecologically diverse wetlands in the world.

We hope you enjoy the blog.  We'll make sure to post lots of fun pictures of our adventures!  Hopefully this recent photo of Eli (6.5 mo.) will entice you to check back often :)