This essay is published in partnership with CEA (Cultural Experiences Abroad). If you’re looking to have your own experience, check out their recommended programs.

1. Florence architecture , Photo: Rosino

2. Reading on fountain steps, Photo: Alaskan Dude

3. Italian sliced deli meat platter with olives, Photo: Alaskan Dude

4. Homes with flowers by the Arno River, Photo: Pasujoba

5. Street performer, Photo: McPig

6. View from outside the city, Photo: McPig

7. Aerial view, Photo: Carlo Alcos

8. Evening cafe snack, Photo: McPig

9. Street side cafe, Photo: McPig

10. Rubbing the stomach of Little Bacchus is said to bring good luck, Photo: Alaskan Dude

11. Funky shoes for sale, Photo: Alaskan Dude

12. Deli offerings, Photo: Alaskan Dude

13. Live music in the square, Photo: Rosino

14. One of many, many statues in Florence. Photo: Carlo Alcos

15. Eating gelato with both hands, Photo: Alaskan Dude

16. Italian cafe snack, Photo: McPig

17. The city by night, Photo: McPig

18. Street art in Florence, Photo: smokeonit

19. Shops at Ponte Vecchio, Photo: Gimli_36

20. Florence at sunset, Photo: Chi King

Community Connection

Planning on studying abroad in Florence? Check out Matador’s Green Guide to Florence and the Italy Focus Page.

This essay is published in partnership with CEA Global Education. If you’re looking to have your own experience, check out their recommended programs.

1. Dancing at the weekly San Telmo Fair (Feria de San Pedro Telmo). Photo: Leigh Shulman.

2. Inside Club Museo in Buenos Aires. Photo: YoTuT.

3. Enjoying the glowing BsAs sunset. Photo: Ju Fumero.

4. Back stage at Buenos Aires Fashion Week. Photo: moatman.

5. The Floralis Generica sculpture, located in the United Nations park, opens up during the day and closes at night. Photo: Sebastián Dario.

6. The Floralis Generica beginning to open after the sun has risen. Photo: Matthew Hutchinson.

7. Artwork on the outside walls of one of Buenos Aires most popular restaurants, Tegui. Photo: Kate Sedgwick.

8. People gazing out into the river on a sunny day. Photo: Mauricio Macri.

9. One of the many public buses in Buenos Aires. Photo: Kate Sedgwick.

10. Downtown Buenos Aires. Photo: Ricardo Carreon.

11. Puerto Madero shines bright even after the sun goes down. Photo: Javi Valdes.

12. Boats light up along Puerto Madero at night. Photo: Tiago “Cata” Luiz.

13. In honor of Flag Day, La Casa Rosada is festively lit a bright magenta. Photo: Kate Sedgwick.

14. Tango dancing is one of the great passions of Buenos Aires. Photo: Kate Sedgwick.

15. Patrons drop by a local pizzeria for dinner. Photo: Kate Sedgwick.

16. A view of the city, shot from Costanera Sur Natural Reserve (RECS) in Buenos Aires. Photo: Luis Argerich.

17. Musicians playing at the San Telmo Fair. Photo: Leigh Shulman.

Community Connection

Share with us your memories or experiences of Buenos Aires!

To learn more about life, study and travel in Buenos Aires and Argentina, check out Matador’s Argentina Focus Page.

1. The journey begins in Cairo, a massive city that is filled with dust and surrounded by sand.

2.Just outside of the city, a caravan of drivers waits to take us further afield.

3.Our road.

4.A desert landscape that is, while beautiful, very lonely.

5.Rock formations of the Western Desert, outside of Bahariya oasis.

6.Smaller formations in the White Desert–this one, from a distance, looks a bit like a duck.

7.The Desert Date Palm.

8.Sand, light, and wind is nature’s way of making beautiful what otherwise seems like a dead landscape.

9.The last thing I thought I’d find in the desert: a lake.

10.Our driver takes a break to sit and watch the sun fall.

11.We follow his cue.

12.Night comes, and so do the critters.

Community Connection

Applications are only open for a few more weeks for the Fall 2010 Glimpse Correspondents Program! Have you applied yet?

1.A Kashmiri woman collects lilies to use as animal fodder.

2. Houseboat on Nageen Lake.

3.An old woman takes a rest from guiding her boat with the wooden pole.

4.View of Sonamarg village.

5.Laundry drying over Dal Lake.

6.A Gujjar shepherdess guides her herd through Srinigar’s streets.

7.Typical Gujjar summer homes in Kashmir’s high pastures.

8.A nomadic family camping while making their way south for winter.

9.This Kashmiri man uses red henna to hide the gray in his beard.

10.A merchant boat makes its way across the lake.

1. Pine forest in the Pueblos Mancomunados.

2.View of the pueblo of Llano Grande.

3.Giant magueys, pines and oaks.

4.Colors.

5.Cactus flower.

6.Backpacker in bushes.

7.On the bus to Cuajimoloyas.

8.Always follow the authoritative Zapotec man.

9.Soaring pines

10.Bromeliad in bloom.

The Islamic Kazakh community has a higher birthrate than its Mongolian neighbors, as well as one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country. In 2008, Bayan Ulgii’s maternal mortality rate was 76.7 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared to the national average of 49 per 100,000 live births. And while infant mortality hovers near the national average, Mongolia as a whole has the 67th worst infant mortality rate in the world, according to the CIA’s 2009 estimate.

On a recent visit to Ulgii, I tried to learn more about the beginnings of life and premature death there.

In the central hospital’s maternity ward, I saw Soviet made equipment, decades old, waiting to be replaced. The hospital- the main source of intensive health care for the roughly 100,000 people in the province- generally sees a handful of births a day. The ward has only a few doctors and a handful of nurses on staff.

Although none of the women I talked to at the hospital complained about the care they received, I heard rumors from a number of people around town that the doctors of Bayan Ulgii do not always act professionally. Some blamed the low government salary doctors receive (currently the national doctors’ union, alongside the teachers’ and railroad workers’ unions, are in negotiations with the government and threatening to strike if their salaries aren’t doubled). Some said that the doctors may be drunk on the job; others told me that bribes, including gifts of vodka, were necessary to secure the best care.

The bribes aren’t necessarily solicited. “To be more safe, they will give money, then the doctor will check carefully,” one nurse’s husband (the couple themselves the parents of a healthy infant) told me.

Such rumors are unsubstantiated. The director of one INGO’s regional health project said, “It’s difficult, we can’t catch them. I haven’t seen them taking money, so I can’t say that they are. But I can say they are, because people are saying it.”

Bayan Ulgii’s head pediatrician, Khuatkhan, says that the hospital didn’t have all the essential resources it needed until October of 2009, when an $11,000 World Vision grant allowed them to purchase new equipment. The hospital’s facilities remain less than desirable.

“The children that died this year”- 19 in January and February alone- “had treatable conditions, if the hospital had sufficient funds, equipment, and medicine,” he says.

Medical facilities aside, the families of Bayan Ulgii face another obstacle to fighting infant and maternal mortality: poverty. Forty percent of the population is very poor, according to Khuatkhan. Severe malnutrition is common among the children treated in Bayan Ulgii’s hospital, as is anemia, which afflicts forty percent of mothers in the province.

Three months old, the boy has gained just 300 grams- less than a pound- since his birth. A health baby gains about 900 grams a month. He lives with his parents, both unemployed, in a one room mud plaster house. They own just five goats, and since the government suspended a program which provided families with a small monthly payment for each child a few months ago, survival has been a struggle. Local doctors who normally make house calls refuse to give the baby check-ups at home, saying it is too cold there; while it continues to snow sporadically, the family has run out of heating fuel.

Maternal and infant mortality rates have dropped significantly in Bayan Ulgii during the last decade, as they have globally, although progress is not a given: more of Bayan Ulgii’s mothers died during childbirth in 2009 than in 2008. Neither Bayan Ulgii’s hospital nor its economy seem likely to improve significantly in the near future. In the meantime, its people will carry on as they always have. Says the regional INGO health director, “I would say that Bayan Ulgii is very hardworking. That is the only reason they’re surviving.”

The days are short, the nights long. The river freezes and the land turns monochrome, rust brown and gray on the steppes and frozen blues in the mountains.

The view from our apartment is an expressionist palette of muted colors and uncertain shapes through the quarter inch of ice frozen on the inside of the window. We put on six and seven layers of clothes before venturing outside. Mongolia is winter’s domain, and the season does not relinquish its grasp easily.

Certainly not this year, when months of deep snow and arctic temperatures wreaked havoc on the country’s nomadic herders and their livestock; a tenth of the nation’s animals have died since January. Now, in the third week of April, winter has broken, but not disappeared.

The river, still flanked by ice, is rushing with melt water. A few brave trees have begun to unfurl tight buds of future leaves, and the temperature has recently peaked above freezing on consecutive days.

I welcome the new season for the sake of the struggling herders I met with in February and March and to escape the constant inquiry of “are you cold?” from Mongolian acquaintances not yet convinced that an American should be able to survive their fearsome winters, but I am always disappointed when the snow begins to release the mountains ringing Hovd and winter makes its quiet exit.

I’ll admit to thriving perversely from challenges. And the Mongolian spring is not much better a friend than winter. Winter is a harsh regime that makes you forget that the other seasons come and go, but spring here is a gritty mess of false-promise mornings and blinding sandstorm afternoons, blackouts, and little of the flowery April optimism inherent in more temperate regions.

I’ll admit too, that spring leads to summer, and Mongolian summers are a glorious explosion of rambling adventures, long carefree evenings, and 10 p.m. sunsets. It’s a transient state, though, and the truth is that winter is the essence of Mongolia. It is somehow more still, more silent, and yet more dynamic than any other time of year. And while summer is great fun, the depths of winter here are truly phenomenal.

In spite of my fondness for epic winters, there isn’t much to gain from mourning their end. Trying to keep up with the times, I took a walk with my dog and my camera a few days ago. I was not the only person with the same idea, and it was obvious from the number of people in the streets and the energy that filled that air that I am in the minority in wishing that it would just go ahead and stay cold right up through June.

Children raced through the dirt lanes between their yards. Mothers carried their infants out into the fresh air. A few wheeling kites waited for their mates to return from migration and anticipated the summer picnics they’ll bother like seagulls at a busy beach front.

Winter may be my leaving me and Mongolia, but I suppose I can get through the next few months with bare arms and watermelon lunch breaks. After all, I know it will be back some day.

1. A water village outside of Kota Kinabalu.

2. Sunday market, Kota Kinabalu.

3.Green pit viper, Bako National Park.

4.Filipino fish market, Kota Kinabalu.

5.Proboscis Monkey jumping from tree to tree, Bako National Park.

6.Dragon screen, Kuching.

7.Mangroves, Bako National Park.

8.Kuching Violinist.

9.Orangutan and monkey, Poring Hot Springs.

10.View from Sapi Island.

11.Shop, Kota Kinabalu.

12.Pitcher plant, Bako National Park.

13.Soccer on the beach, Bako National Park.

The Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca, Mexico, is home to a matriarchal society in which the youngest son in the family is raised to be gay. From a young age this child is dressed up as a woman and treated as such; isthmeñan society embraces this role and encourages it. This is a long-standing Zapotec tradition extending back before the arrival of the Spaniards.

The sons are called muxhes and have historically been treated not as homosexuals, but rather as a third sex. They take up the roles as women in the matriarchy, and they carry the additional obligation of taking care of their mothers in old age.

Nowadays, muxhes are one of those anomalies that both defines a culture and blatantly contradicts it. This was evident during last month’s festivities, as the organization Vinnii Gaxheé (“different people” in Zapotec) held parades and velas (a type of all night party unique to the isthmus region) to celebrate the tenth anniversary of its founding.

During the organization’s gay pride parade, muxhes threw condoms from floats and served beer out of liter bottles to old women, young gay men and lesbians, straight couples, and families. The feeling was one of fiesta, and the Oaxacan community—conservative, Catholic, and traditional—rallied around it without seeming to blink an eye at the drag queens in elaborate isthmeñan dress laughing and holding hands aboard the floats.

Likewise, the atmosphere at the vela held the Friday following the parade was one of jubilance and abandon. Lorena Herrera, Mexico’s Pamela Anderson, graced the screaming, sweating, drunken croad with her presence and crowned Kathy the 1st the new muxhe queen.

There were parades featuring mock soldiers and the virgin Mary, traditional isthmeñan dances, telenovela stars, crates of Coronas piled in heaps on tables, and drag queens getting down to cumbia. Despite a small electrical fire which shut off the lights on half of the outdoor space, the party kept raging, isthmeñan style. And it seems Vinnii Gaxheé only gets stronger as the years go by.

1. Muxhe in traditional Ishtmeñan dress, striking a pose somewhere between folkloric and seductive.

2. Getting ready to board the float. Lots of drama and anticipation in the air.

3. The queen, Kathy Primera, poised for a trip through the main streets of Oaxaca.

4.A brief moment of repose amidst all the trappings of traditional Mexican fiestas–flags, flowers, firecrackers popping and hissing above the crowds.

5.The muxhes make their way to the Zócalo, maintaining an air of grande dame grace.

6.Queen Kathy Primera takes on an otherworldly power, silhouetted against a Oaxacan evening sky.

7.Muxhes dance salsa and cumbia at the vela, which rages deep into the night.

8.Partygoers dressed to the nines emulate the glamor of queen Kathy Primera.

9.Muxhes exert a captivating juxtaposition of the powerful and the fragile.

10.The younger generation of drag queens, in tight dresses and mini skirts, gets a lot of attention on the dance floor.

11.The night wears on as the crowd goes through cartons and cartons of Corona, glass jugs of mezcal, and plates of isthmeñan tapas.

12.Following her coronation, Kathy Primera is escorted onto the dance floor by stoic, gallant young men in traditional Zapotec dress.

13.Queen Kathy Primera poses with Lorena Herrera amidst the ecstatic, frenzied whistling and shouting of the crowd.

Community Connection

Interested in Mexico? Check out Teresa Ponikvar’s story of coming home to Oaxaca by the numbers and Dani Redd’s close encounters of the guru kind. For practical Mexico advice, take a look at ten nightlife spots in Mexico City and Matador Abroad editor and Oaxaca expat Sarah Menkedick’s foodie primer for Mexico.