Babies, beasts, blunders, and beauty.

On the home again

2011-12-21T01:35:00.000-08:00

Hello! The past two months have flown by with record speeds that I can only account for by saying my brain must be slowing down. I swear, this old age is catching up to me. Anyway, Nic and I, after finding a suitable apartment, spent three weeks in the states enjoying friends, family, and of course fine foods! We ate so much that Nic gained a chunk of his weight back, and I haven't had any totally off the wall cravings since returning. Before our vacation to America: Nothing sounded better than beef jerky dipped in canned nacho cheese. After our vacation to America: Sure, peas sound awesome. Thank goodness for good nutrition!
After returning from America, Nic and I spent a few days putting together things for our house. As it turns out, even though we had been waiting for three weeks, the electricity still had not been turned on. This wasn't too big of a deal, but we live in a second story apartment, and whenever there was no power, even the moon couldn't light those dark walls. Our volunteer support guy told us that Senelec was out of power boxes, but within a few days and many phone calls later we were able to get the electricity turned on. Quickly, however, we discovered a major sanitation issue existing under our own feet.
The apartment reeked to high hell, and we couldn't figure out why, so I took to exploring the water routes in this apartment. It appears that all of the waste water drains to one main drain in our bathroom under the showering space, and this water includes our very own raw sewage, which has been building up right in our shower drain. Talk about disgusting. Nic called our landlord who sent us a plumber, who said that apparently a release pipe failed to be installed. Huh. We have the seeming convenience of more-modern-than-not plumbing, without the complete infrastructure to support it, which means a gross smelling apartment. It isn't too big of a deal, because if we pour enough water down the drain everything flushes out of the apartment, but I was pretty surprised to discover the cesspool growing under my own shower shoes.
After settling into our house, I left for Eye Clinic in Bakel, a two-week eye clinic ran by two eye doctors imported from America, two sons, a sterile nurse, a Senegalese doctor/tech, and hordes of Peace Corps volunteers. In short, this was a medical mission to provide people with glasses, information about the condition of their eyes, cataract surgery, and a handful of other eye related plastic surgeries. The experience was fantastic. I arrived for week two and asked to be in the operating room, which meant I got to give people shots of steroids in the eye socket. In addition, I have seen more eyes operated on than I ever thought I would ever see. The clinic was pretty chaotic at times, and we had to call in back up to prevent a riot from happening, as the doctors were unable to see everyone that wanted to be seen. Imagine: Doing your thing in the operating room, cleaning eyes and passing supplies, and then leaving the room and almost walking into a giant man in uniform with a huge rifle in your face. Oops! Keeping the peace is terrifying.
The desperation of some of the patients combined with the knowledge holes in the hospital demonstrated to me how great the need for better medical training is. The doctors were attempting to train the Senegalese tech in a technique of cataract surgery, but it was clear that the tech will need much more training and follow up than what could be provided in two weeks. Unfortunately, our capacity to provide such intense, highly specific, and technical training is severely limited. We need more professionals on our side that are capable of doing this training. Eye doctors, come to Senegal please, and teach our doctors!
Also, we need some dentists to come out too. Dental mission anyone? My heart breaks at the number of rotten teeth I see even in the youngest of kids. And sugar consumption is through the roof! I used to think I had a sweet tooth until I came to Senegal. The amount of sugar that goes into everything is unbelievable! A single tiny teapot will have 15 sugar cubes! We need someone to fill teeth, do cleanings, pull rotten ones, and give out lots and lots of tooth brushes- AND teach people why they are important. I'll tell you what- you come down and pull the bad teeth, and I'll teach folks why brushing your teeth is important. Deal?
So now I am back in Tamba, home sweet home, and have started to follow up with my work leads. Or I guess they are following up on me. I was literally chased down the road by an English teacher yesterday, who turned out to be a cool guy that wants me to work with his English clubs once school starts for the spring semester in early January. Senegalese poetry slam, anyone? I also went to la Lumier, an NGO that works with disadvantaged populations, but much to my dismay the people I was supposed to meet with were not there. One of them should be returning today or tomorrow, so I will be checking back. I have also been working on registration forms for the Marathon for Girls' Education in Tamba, and once our final route and dates are set, I will be going to schools in the area and advertising. We want runners and we want as many students as possible running to support the education of girls in their area! In addition, there is a nurse that works with Talibe that is interested in working with a Peace Corps volunteer. I plan on following up with her this week. I was given her contact information by a fellow PCV, and I am incredibly grateful. This nurse seems to do exactly the type of health outreach that I am interested in. Things are coming together slowly slowly. Nic and I really are back at the integration phase of our service. Today's big victory was being recognized and called on by name by one of my neighbors.
Oh yeah! And we adopted a kitten from the trash! It's not uncommon for unwanted animals to be dropped in trash areas and dumps, unfortunately, This means that PCVs can often find friends among the garbage. This is the 3rd trash kitten I've heard of adopted by PCVs just in the past few months. They make great pets, once they figure out that you aren't going to hit them with rocks. Her name is Poullundu, a mixture between poubelle (trash can in French) and ullundu (cat in Pulaar). She is tiny, cute, and black and white. When we found her she was filthy, oily, dirty, and exhausted. After shampooing, feeding, toweling off, and several days of TLC, she is a happy energetic kitten. She has also taken to Nic very well. This morning I woke up to find the kitten literally asleep on his head. Aww.
That's all for now. Hope everyone is well!

The big move!

2011-10-15T08:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we finally did it. We made the big move from the north to our new home in Tambacounda!!! I'm so happy words cannot even begin to explain it. Yesterday we were really worn out because we were in a car for 11ish hours, but today has been wonderful. We woke up this morning and went to the main road for an awesome egg sandwich from a guy named Osman. After this, we came back and spent some time pulling all of the thorns out of our bike tires. Oh, thorns...souvenirs from the north. After this, we went on a wild goose chase for new inner tubes, but all of the stores nearby are sold out. Luckily, the guard here at the Tamba house is an awesome guy who is going to pick us up some new inner tubes from a bike place far away from here, and we will be in business. The main parts of the town are totally bike-able, including an awesome burger place that has been written up in the Lonely Planet, a fantastic warthog restaurant that we ate at today and enjoyed thoroughly, and a giant market with the biggest cucumbers and watermelons I've seen since being in Arkansas. Life is so good! Fruits and vegetables are cheaper here, too. In Ourosogie for a small cucumber I would pay 500-600 cfa...here, a large cucumber is only 200 cfa. WOW! Thank you, moderately warm climate, for making vegetable production so much easier for all of the farmers in the area.
In addition, we met with our local volunteer support person, who is an awesome guy that spent some time in the United States and as a consequence has a very American sense of humor, which I can appreciate in a Peace Corps staff member. He took us to some of our potential work sites, including an NGO that works with runaways and Koranic students, the health post, and the Yaajeende office (where Nic will primarily be working if things line up). I am going to go on Monday to the NGO that works with runaways and Koranic students and speak with them specifically about their needs and potential projects. The volunteer support guy told me that he will give them a call and let them know that there is a Peace Corps volunteer that wishes to work for their organization. I am so excited. The work available to me in this region is plentiful and seems to be rewarding stuff. There is also an orphanage here I could potentially work at, and maybe two but the volunteers in the area are unsure about one of them. I am going to go myself and check out the situation. One of the benefits of being relocated is that I can pretty much choose my own work, but this comes with the difficulty of having to find my own counterparts and make my own work connections. I am optimistic, though. It's a good opportunity to test my language!
We are going to be in the regional house for at least one more week while we are waiting for our house to be ready for us to move in, so we will have the internet for a while. Be in touch!

A book worth reading?

2011-10-09T02:52:00.000-07:00

If anyone is interested in reading about malaria in the United States, this book seems like an interesting read Here it is!: . I've also done a *minimal* amount of research on Malaria in the States today, and apparently 1,200 cases have been diagnosed, mainly imported cases, but there are a handful of non-imported cases that were the result of an second-hand imported case...i.e. thanks to those jerk-face mosquitoes, malaria was spread from someone who had been traveling to someone who had not been traveling.

Huh.

Thoughts on malaria in the United States? I know it used to be an issue a long while ago in the good ol' US of A, and there are some online articles that suggest we may be poised for a resurgence of malaria due to malaria being spread from imported cases as well as the increased resistance that mosquitoes have to insecticides, as well as increased resistance of malaria to malaria treatments.

Transition Phase, part I

2011-10-06T01:37:00.000-07:00

Hello! Counsins, I greet you. Nic and I are currently in the Ndioum house waiting to hear about our new house in Tamba proper. We went by Agnam and picked up all of our stuff, and it was really bittersweet. It feels great to know that the troubles we had in our site are behind us, and that we have been given an opportunity to essentially start over but with better language skills. I can't help but really hate the feeling of not belonging anywhere in particular for the time being. We spent a week in Ourosogie and I have no idea how long we will be here floating with all of our stuff packed, but I hope it's not too long because I want to get going with work pt. II for real this time. Tamba is decently far away from here, and it's hard to have any influence or say over what's going on down there and we haven't a clue at this point where we will fit into the work plans of the region. It's totally possible that we might not fit into the work plans of the region at all, especially if Nic gets a job with Yaajeende and I end up getting placed directly into an NGO, a possibility, although I feel like it is more likely that I will be doing HIV/AIDS work with local schools (thanks, Future Builders, for preparing me for this...I feel fully confident in my ability to do HIV/AIDS outreach and comfortable with my knowledge- my only stumbling block with respect to HIV/AIDS outreach is language). But who am I kidding?

I live in an "inchallah" world. Inchallah roughly means "if God wills it." It's typically thrown in at the end of any discussion of any sort of plans, as explanation for changes in plans or a reason for the unpredictable nature of life. Also, people say it whenever you make a plan with them and they do not really want to do it, but that's another story. The will of God here is deeply ingrained in everyday life, and one of the cultural issues we talked about during training when we first arrived was how to work within a context where we are at the same time expected to induce behavior change in our local friends and neighbors while they themselves believe that their lives are dictated by the will of God alone. If a child is sick, it's the will of God. If a meeting falls through, it's the will of God. In a way, it makes a lot of sense. Plans are constantly changing; I have never had so many plans fall through in my life as I have had here. Life is constantly changing. Death and illness are unpredictable. Usually the rainy season is reliable, but this year the shortage of rain fall has endangered the crops of people that do not live on the river. Entire stores and markets vanish from one day to the next as merchants travel to the next village, hoping to make a few extra cfa. It's difficult to rely on anything except for the cycles of the moon. There are days when I want to talk to the ICP at the health post and I arrive only to discover it's on strike. Sometimes I want to go to the market to buy canned foods only to discover that the canned food seller has decided to travel on. The lady that sold tuna sandwiches vanished one day. The power is constantly off and on, with little regularity. The family that I lived with put all of their buckets outside every time it rained out of hopes to collect as much water as they could, uncertain of when the next rain storm will come and provide some relief for our sandy dry town. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Sandstorms? Kittens? New babies? A car?

All of this to say that all of our potential plans are going to happen, inchallah. We may move soon. We may move later. We may get the jobs we want. We may get jobs we had no idea even existed.
"Inchallah" actually quite a useful phrase. Instead of having to skirt around my plans if they aren't certain (and they never are these days), I can just state what I wish to be the truth and follow it with inchallah.

Please review the following examples:

The American Way: Well, I think that there might be a possibility that I could come back to the states and possibly enroll in school to study something medically related.

The Senegalese Way: I am going back to the states to be a doctor, inchallah.

The American Way: If I can get together the money, I might go on Amazon and try to find a camera to buy if there are any good deals.

The Senegalese Way: I'm buying a camera, inchallah.

I feel like once my service is over I can see myself using inchallah until my brain figures out that I'm no longer in an area where people get what I am saying. It feels good to state what you wish the truth to be as truth even if you aren't certain about it.

On a positive note, I saw this totally amazing and crazy looking bird the day before yesterday.

WOAH!

It's called a hoopoe. Thanks, wikipedia, for the awesome photo. They're totally interesting and make crazy sounds and hang out by the Ndioum house. Kingfishers are in the same family group and they are the state national bird of Israel. Who knew?

Site Change!

2011-09-30T04:44:00.000-07:00

Nic and I have received some crazy news! Crazy bad and crazy good. First off, my camera was stolen, and may or may not come back. Myself, Nic, one of our friends, and his counterpart have been on the hunt for this and other items that have been stolen from the same place. We are trying to following the proper protocol, but in the meantime I am fresh out of photos. AND this means I lost all of the awesome photos of things being constructed! At first I was really bummed out about this, and I'm still bummed because I don't really have any money and likely will not be able to replace the camera if it doesn't come back. However, I'm feeling a little more at ease about it and have accepted that we were warned about petty thievery, and although it really sucks that it's happened to me twice (ipod four months ago, camera a few days ago), all I can do is try to protect my things better in the future. This particular situation is more difficult because the maid has been taking things, meaning that the normal modes of protection (keeping things in your front pockets, zip your purse or don't carry one, etc) simply do not apply, as this crafty maid stole not only my camera, but also my camera cord, from our bedroom while Nic and I were not in our room. Yikes!

The whole thing has left me feeling a little strange about my role in Senegal. I think it happens from time to time that teenagers (and the maid is a teenage dude) like to rebel, and sometimes they rebel in a way that helps them feel like they have "gotten back at the man," aka their boss or a faceless corporation. Some Arkansans steal from Wal-Mart. Some steal from Dillard's. Some rip off pens and notebooks from the office they are stuck working at, or sneak food to their friends out of the drive through windows at the McDonald's when the manager has scheduled them for crappy hours. It's a way to show the man that they've got some control. The man has money/stuff/whatever, and the man is oppressive, and they can at least feel like they're getting theirs.

In this situation, us Peace Corps volunteers are "the man." We are perceived as rich "haves," and stealing our stuff while cleaning our house isn't hurting us because "we've got plenty." But we aren't a corporation. We're real people with real issues, real needs, and sometimes come from real poverty in America, too. I guess what I'm trying to say is I get the attitude. I just don't agree with it, and I REALLY don't like the thought that I am "the man," but in a way I am- I've got a computer, the government pays my meager but none the less consistent salary, and if I have an emergency I can go to the hospital or the offices in Dakar and not have to think twice about it. Does that make it ok to steal my stuff? Well, no, but do I acknowledge that I may have some social privilege? Yes. How does this make me feel about my role in society as it stands? A little odd. I'm here to help, after all, and not oppress anyone.

Ok, so speaking of emergencies (don't worry, I'm happy and healthy!), Nic and I's site was closed yesterday due to some ongoing problems with water access, housing, and unrealistic expectations. As it turns out Peace Corps volunteers cannot build water towers. We are going to be moving to a new site here in a few weeks- on the other side of the country. We are going to be getting a new house, new P.O. box, and be lined up with new NGOs and counterparts. We will still be in a Pulaar and French speaking area. I will keep everyone updated on the timeline and details. As it stands, Monday or Tuesday, maybe even Wednesday, we will be moving all of our stuff out of Agnam and be placed in one of the regional houses until our real new house is lined up.

And then we're heading South.

Actually, I couldn't be happier about it. It's the break Nic and I have been waiting for. I'm not the type to whine about issues at our site on a public blog, but things have been going wrong for a while, and I am so happy that Peace Corps is taking these issues seriously and is taking the proper course of action. Anybody interested in the details can call me. I am in the end really happy with the solution that Peace Corps has provided for our issues at site. Even with the stolen camera and temporary life in the regional house, I feel very lucky.

Trainings, continued

2011-09-28T05:28:00.001-07:00

Alright! Here are some more of the things we did during our two trainings with the Yaajeende program.

We helped construct a permanent "rocket stove" setup in a small concrete room used as a kitchen by the village chief's family. The stove setup has several features that make it a better alternative to the standard mud stove and open fire kitchen setup. The form of the cooking space itself helps pull smoke out of the room (respiratory illness is a big issue for women that cook regularly over open fires, as is common here), thus encouraging good lung health and smoke-free eyes. It's also good for babies and children, as the hot parts of the stove and the fire are off of the ground, which means that babies and children can't walk into them, knock the pot over, or step onto hot coals (ouch!). It conserves wood by insulating the fire area and concentrating the heat, a big money saver in a location where many families have to buy their wood from markets for daily cooking. And then there is my favorite element: It's a back saver! You can cook standing upright instead of bending over a hot pot and fire.

Here's my interpretation:

The brown lines up there are steel rebar. To cook, one slides wood under the rebar. The cooking pot rests on top of the rebar. The smoke release hole is about a 6 inch by 6 inch square directly behind the fire. This also helps create air circulation. The rest of the wall of the construction rises above the height of the pot, thus creating insulation between the pot and the walls. In addition, the reddish-brown areas are filled with sand then sealed with concrete for further insulation. The grey slats up there are bricks that the pot rests on that further insulate the fire. There was an expert construction guy there that was doing the technical construction, our job was mainly to transport materials to and from the site (bricks, buckets of sand, metal parts, etc) and to follow along and learn how to do this on our own. The stove itself is a concrete and brick permanent installation that will require much less maintenance than a typical mud stove. I tried to find some pictures on the internet of something similar, but instead I found this:

Can't win 'em all, I guess.

After searching a while, I finally found this version of what we built, which seems to be much shorter and lacking the food preparation space, but it helps give a better idea of what I am talking about (from http://aeglenn.blogspot.com):

It's still not exactly the same thing, but much closer than a baseball player cut out. We also learned how to construct a food storage and dish drying area that is kid proof, bird proof, and animal proof. Oftentimes animals will see metal bowls, assume there is food in them, and head for them right away to eat all of their contents. This means that animals contaminate the bowls (and their contents, if there is food in them) with all kinds of germs, dirt, manure, etc. This area is off of the ground and screened in, and there are two doors in front of it that you can lift to access the dishes and food inside. Usually, dishes are dried outdoors, and prepared food bowls are often hanging out outside while people wait to eat. Sheep, goats, cows, chickens, and sometimes birds just can't seem to resist them. We helped a team of people construct a fairly sizable one of these at the village chief's house as well. No pictures of this...couldn't find anything like it on google images or in blogs.

After we finished this training, we had a day break in Ourosogie and then attended the food security training at the Hotel Oasis here in Ourosogie. The focus of the training was essentially on understanding and introducing the concept of food security, how does the government function and what role does that have in food security, what the cornerstones of food security are, how to identify the key players in food security programs, and the identification and resolution of food security related issues, including the identification of concrete trainings, methods, techniques, and actions that could be utilized within the community of des Agnams (the C.R. of our site, Agnam Thiodaye). The information itself was typical of any food security discussion- what roles do citizens have in protecting their own food supply? What can be done to improve production? Access to potable water, etc? I was particularly proud of the concrete solutions identified during the sessions, including the use of compost in food production, instructing people on how to make dirty water potable, and increasing access to markets through microfinancing organizations and community discussion. All around great solutions. The yaajeende folks that will be implementing these solutions are stationed in their villages (one specifically being Agnam Thiodaye) for five years, meaning that at least some of these solutions are guaranteed to be brought into the community. The food security training lasted three days (Nic and I missed the first day). It was conducted entirely in French, which was great for technical vocabulary, and I feel confident that the yaajeende folk have been trained properly for the actions they are going to be taking in their communities related to food security.

Alright, I think that effectively sums up our past week. Take care all!

Trainings upon Trainings

2011-09-27T14:38:00.000-07:00

Hey all! The past couple of days Nic and I have been traveling around and getting trained. We are tre bien forme, as they say, and I thought I'd share some of our knowledge. Unfortunately, my camera seems to have vanished, so I've done my best to illustrate with Microsoft paint. Let's see how it worked out, shall we?

First, we went on a camping trip with Yaajeende in a village about 30k away from Agnam. The first day was pretty chill, as the actual trainers arrived late, but we did construct something known as a tippy tap, a hygienic water-saving hand washing alternative to the running water/sink combo, something I only see in larger cities or super nice restaurants. We built it outside of the bathroom at the health post (we were camping out in the grassy area by the health post). How it works is that you take a 5 liter bidon, make a small nail hole in the upper part, and tie it to a tight string attached to a large stick that sits at an angle when undisturbed. When you step on the stick, it pulls the rope tight, tilts the bidon, and lets out a nice trickle of water. No contamination is even possible as your hands never touch the handwashing device itself. Here's my interpretation:

(of course, that should say diameter up there)

And here's a much smaller but probably better interpretation that I found on google images... actually, not that much better, because they forgot the soap on a rope!

The next day we started the discussion and construction of a simple hand-dug water filtration system to help prevent the contamination of the soil. We built it at the village chief's house. An issue in our region is that people will often dump oily, greasy, bloody, and otherwise filthy water just into the streets, where kids play in it, horses drink it, and it seeps into the soil. In addition, many people have shower drains that drain directly into the street, and all of the dirty soapy oily shower water puddles in the sandy roads. By digging a filtration pit and directing waste water into the filtration pit, you a) prevent standing water in the street which in turn prevents mosquito breeding and the diseases that come with it and b) protect the soil and potentially wells/ groundwater from oily icky contamination.

Basically, you dig a large pit to the size of your liking, put large rocks on the bottom of it, and layer smaller and smaller rocks until you are layering with pebbles. Then, you attach pipes to your shower drain/waste water drain to guide the water to your filtration system. Then, you bury the pipes and protect them with a concrete encasing at the entrance of the shower/wastewater drain. Next, you build a strong wood thatching to cover the pit. Place a tarp over the entire wood thatching, then cover the whole pit, complete with tarp and wood thatching, with a few inches of dirt until it is level with the surrounding ground. I know the question you might ask: Won't the wood degrade and people will fall into the pit?! We asked our trainers about this, and they said that actually it holds pretty well but it does need to be rebuilt every 12 months.

Here's my interpretation:

And here's the proper, slightly more legit version, thanks again to google:

The concrete for the project was carried the way kings used to be carried in the olden days. A sack of concrete was put over two logs, and and four people carried the concrete by each standing upright while holding one of the four "corners" of the logs. Before my camera vanished I had this awesome video of Nic and 3 of our fellow trainees carrying the concrete and making this awesome grunting sing-song (nevermind the fact that Nic was wearing a Bob Marley turban- yes, those exist here, and yes, you actually see people with them, particularly shepherds for whatever reason), but you'll just have to settle for this:

Let's not forget about the olden days:

(That Egyptian king = concrete. Those guys carrying him = Nic et al)

We also learned how to make a permanent smoke-cutting health-enhancing stove, but, unfortunately, I am tired and will just have to spend some time writing about it tommorow or the next day. It feels really good to have contributed to concrete, practical solutions in the village of our camp site. Have a great evening, all!

I stole your weave...

2011-09-17T08:03:00.001-07:00

Hello all! I apologize for not blogging the past few months. I have been spending a lot of time putting together private emails and writing personal letters, and have neglected the public forum. Shame on me! Anyway, I am back with a newfound urge to blog.

Things have been very very crazy up north! Nic and I have begun working with the Yaajeende program, a program in a handful of regions in Senegal, sponsored by the US government, and with a focus on Pulaar speakers in Senegal (and Pulaar is of course our specialty!). The program has several pillars which align perfectly with our work in the Peace Corps, specifically, animal husbandry, infant and maternal health, and agriculture. The animal husbandry portion of the program is very much needed in this region, and the program itself is based on the Heifer model (see www.heifer.org for more information). In fact, USAID and Heifer are working together on this particular project. Owning animals, especially large ones like cows and lots of them, is a huge status symbol. Animals = $$$$. People often just let them roam around the area, and these large herds of sheep, goats, and cows, sometimes unattended, eat gardens, destroy grain crops, and annihilate low to the ground or young trees. One of the benefits of the Heifer model is that the donation of an animal includes education- what are sustainable ways to manage your animals? How can what is typically considered to be an animal waste be used to improve one's way of living? How can you transform something that is detrimental to the already-eroded soil and degraded environment into something that improves soil quality? The work isn't easy, but the transformation is possible. Teaching people how to properly manage those herds of cows, goats, and sheep is a necessary step in the right direction towards a healthier, greener (literally
- it's all sand out here) landscape. It doesn't matter how many gardens are planted if every fence is trampled and every little sprout eaten by a hungry herd of zebus. Education is key!

(Exhibit A: Adorable but deadly baby zebu cow. This little creature will soon grow into a crop killer worse than any cloud of locusts!)

We've also had some great, as well as difficult, interactions in our home and with our host family and friends. One of my earliest memories of arriving in site was one day when I was playing with my host sister and her friend, who is around 4 years old (parents in general aren't fully aware of their children's ages, nor their own. Oftentimes you will get an estimate of the age of a child when you ask the child or the parent, and sometimes they will give you different answers. This can be tricky!). The small children in the area have oftentimes never seen a white person before, and have no shame about pulling my hair, tugging my skin, sticking their faces on my chest and inhaling- imagine how a small child treats a new stuffed animal- and that day was no exception. The girl was pulling my hair, brushing it around with her fingers, picking it with a stick, and yelling something at me. "Mes maa yodaani! Mes maa yodaani!"

After a few seconds of processing, I realized she was yelling: "Your weave is ugly! Your weave is ugly!" (Mes being the word typically used for fake hair, wigs, or weaves). Not only did this little girl think my hair was fake, she thought it was ugly!

(Exhibit B: How small Senegalese girls perceive my appearance. Actually, my hair has been falling out recently. Really need to keep on the vitamins. )

Fast forward a few months. It's boiling hot outside and water for luxurious hair washing is hard to come by where we are, so I decide to cut off my ponytail. I have used hair in gardens and in potted plants before, so as gross as it may sound, I decided to put my ponytail in our back window to eventually put in a garden. Not too much later, I noticed it was gone from the window. I had assumed Nic had thrown it out, a very reasonable thing to do to with a dusty old ponytail. I went outside to watch the sky- it looked like a sandstorm was coming- and was approached by one of the neighborhood girls that hangs out at our house. She starts talking about my weave. She pulls at my hair, and I tell her, no, no, that's my hair, that's not a weave! And then she explains that she stole my weave. "What?" "I stole your weave! Your weave!" She makes a ponytails with her hands, and it clicks. She stole my ponytail from the window! ...and now I am so sure it is being woven into the hair of small girls all over the neighborhood...

Either way around, I have been weighing lots of babies lately! One of the best parts of it is seeing mothers giggle when their babies are being weighed, but one of the scariest parts is weighing babies that are severely underweight and feeling helpless to do anything about it. One of the babies that I weighed was 2.9 kilos, or a little over 6 pounds, and several months old. TOO. SMALL. It's heartbreaking. But the doctor, the midwives, and the pharmacist that are around do a great job of providing individual consultations for each mother and baby, and exclusive breastfeeding are mentioned for the first 6 months without even a deep breath being taken. Mothers want healthy babies, and the health staff that I work with wants healthy patients, so it works out.

I also got to experience the crazyness that is a healthpost childbirth. I was with two midwives in Agnam Goly, a neighboring village that is about 3 k, or a 45 minute walk if you're in a fancy skirt. Which I was. Anyway, after a day of evaluating the post, watching the flow of people, and finally sitting down to some tea, the midwives pulled me into the back room to watch them deliver a tiny baby girl (3 kilos, newborn and bigger than the baby I weighed at the health center. :( ). It was in some ways a great experience. I was proud of the new mother, the baby seemed healthy, and things went as well as they could. I was shocked, however, by the lack of supplies. This health post was cleaner and nicer than home delivery, but there was only one clamp for the umbilical cord, dirty old foam mattresses with no sheets or pillows for the new mother to rest on, and when a hole was broken in one of the midwife's gloves, she just tied the hole with a piece from an old pair of gloves. Supplies are very limited, the rooms are dusty and dingy, and pieces of surgical equipment that we just use once and throw away in the states are boiled or bleached and used again and again and again. I feel that these midwives are competent and did a good job with the supplies that they have. I also feel that the system is broken if well-trained health care workers have to provide care with substandard, broken, dirty, or nonexistent supplies. The people that I know are well aware of the shortcomings of the system as well. They tell me that they need new this, new that, and show off the various countries that have donated medicines or supplies (this antibiotic is from France! Germany! Belgium!), and at the same time acknowledge that there simply isn't enough money in the local system to replace what gets old and to buy what needs buying. I don't think throwing more money into the system from outside will help it, but I'm not sure what will either.

Oh yeah! And there was a wedding at the village chief's house! Good times. I will post pictures on my Facebook for interested folks.

Have a great one, everybody!

Long lost update

2011-06-26T05:37:00.000-07:00

Hello! Nic and I have been installed in our permanent site of Agnam Thiodaye and life is good! We just got our own house a few days ago (unfortunately, they did not have a house for us when we arrived,so we were living at the health post with my counterpart). It was definitely interesting seeing people come and go at the health post, and it's interesting how different the concepts of privacy and medicine are. People would just show up at all hours of the day and night and ask for the doctor, and would sit and wait for him, even if he wasn't even in town. Either way around, our new house is nice, has two rooms and a small porch area. We've started to lay the foundations for our work and have been working on our language.
Nic and I just finished our language seminar in Kassak Nord, a beautiful green area on the opposite side of the country from where we live, the dry and brown Agnam Thiodaye which desperately needs a water tower. We spent the week in class learning all sorts of new vocabulary, and correcting the vocabulary that we thought we did know. There are many words here which sound very very close to each other but have different meanings that it's been pretty difficult adapting my ear to, but it's coming. For example: daanaade is to sleep, but dannaade is to travel. Luubde is to smell bad, but lubde is to lend. To the untrained ear (i.e. mine), they sound identical. The doubling of vowels doesn't change the sound, it just means you say the sound a little bit longer. One word that really caught me up was hebde, which means (drum roll please) to get.
Now, imagine this: a young foreigner comes into your town, school, and health post and proclaims proudly that she wants to help the people in your community get malaria. Wait, what? Oh, that's right... hAbde is to prevent! I told my entire town, with full confidence, that I will help them get malaria. I imagine by now they've set up the road block and are all on the look out for the foreigner who is going to come in and cut holes in their mosquito nets and leave vats of open water sitting around, not to mention hiding all of the malaria medication and burn down all the NEEM trees. Oi, vey. The pitfalls of language learning!
Right now we are in San Louis enjoying a luxurious day off after spending a very long time in our village. In Agnam, I've started attending elementary school for the purpose of learning French and mastering the French number system (one year of French was NOT enough, but I've got plenty of time to study and Nic is very helpful and patient with me). It's been an awesome time because the school was not assigned a volunteer, so there wasn't any pressure to work, and now every elementary school kid in town knows who I am. I will walk down the road and there is a chorus of Aisata Kane! Aisata Kane! (my new name). Because the school was so generous with their time and welcomed me to their school, I talked to the director and set it up so that when the fall comes I will be finding a work partner and working at the school. I wrote up an action plan and talked it over with the director, who was very receptive to gardening, murals, and clubs, and whenever we get back to site on Monday I will be going to talk to him again to finalize some details. I explained that right now I need to really focus on language learning (I think that part was probably obvious once he heard my French and Pulaar) but that when school starts if the staff is willing to work with me I'd be very willing to help start student groups, clubs, and teach about moringa, gardening, and sanitation. I'm so excited. My job is becoming more clear to me and I am more pumped every day about spending time at the health post and working with the elementary school. In my eyes, preventative health is very important for children as they are a very vulnerable group. A sick child cannot force a parent to take them to the doctor, but a healthy child can take the initiative to wash his/her hands, eat well, and avoid unhealthy habits. Nic and I have also talked over the possibility of doing health and environment themed radio programs on the local station, a prospect I am particularly excited about. I talked to the director at the school about having a student club (like a radio club) that would work together to write skits that could be recorded and played over the local station. Volunteers have done this in the past and apparently they have been very successful. Just have to wait until October and see if there is a group of students and a supportive teacher that are willing to work with me on this project.
In the meantime, our in-service training is coming up, which means that I get to spend sometime learning additional technical skills that are particularly relevant to my site and the needs of my site. It's been difficult adjusting as it's currently the hot season and we spend an insane amount of time sweating like crazy. I drink at least 5 liters of water most days and still sometimes go to bed feeling dehydrated. This, however, hasn't kept Nic and I from evaluating our surroundings and finding out our community's needs. We still have lots to learn, don't get me wrong, but I at least think we've got something to get the ball rolling.
Our 4th of July celebration is coming up and it is taking place in a very beautiful part of the country. Rumor has it that it is a land of waterfalls and forests, which sounds like a paradise as a citizen of the land of thorns and scorpions. Speaking of scorpions, I had one run up my dress and sting my three times. The stupid thing was maybe 4 inches long, sandy colored, and had big claws, and those stings hurt like H*ll, but the best part was that I panicked, my host family panicked, and I got to experience a bit of the Senegalese health care system. They took me to the health post where my counterpart (the head doctor at the health post) wanted to inject me with Novocaine in the right breast! Of course, I didn't let him (that sounded worse than dealing with the stings), but until that moment I hadn't realized how easy it was to get access to any sort of drug that I might want. At pharmacies you literally just go to the pharmacist and tell him or her what you want and most of the time you just get it. Regulations are lax at best. I don't have any inclination to hang out at the pharmacy, but it's a very different approach from the American-style have-to-sign-for-and-show-id-for-decongestant pharmacist. Our health post is actually in pretty good shape, and people definitely come to the health post with problems. One thing that observing the health post has made me realize is that a basic first aid class would go a very long way in my community. Yes, people do come to the health post for very valid reasons, but sometimes people come with simple cuts and burns that they could take care of themselves at home if somebody showed them how to do it. Infection prevention could also go a long way here, and teaching people methods of sterilizing and cleaning cloth used to cover wounds and proper care of minor injuries could go miles, and potentially relax the work load on the employees at the health post. I am going to be working on my vocabulary for the next few months and talk to some folks about the prospect of teaching a basic first aid class, and perhaps I can pull in some of the health workers in my community to really make sure I am teaching things clearly and properly. The future is formulating.
Being a health volunteer is going to be rewarding in a way that being an English teacher in Kyrgyzstan was not going to be for me. Being a teacher can be very rewarding, but I find this job a much better suit for me in terms of both personal interest and meaningfulness. Certain people are better suited for certain jobs, and this one is a perfect match for me. One of the best mornings I've had in a while was when I woke up early and headed to the health post- rumor had it vaccinations were that day, so I went to check it out. It turns out that while they were not doing vaccinations, they were doing deworming and providing vitamin supplements to the community. The staff broke up into several groups and each of these groups went into the village and provided children within a certain age range with a liquid vitamin A drop (vit. A deficiency is a big problem here) and a dewormer. I went with two staff members into the community and went to about 30 houses and gave supplements to over 100 kids, and it felt wonderful. I got to meet families that I hadn't met before, and it felt good to meet people and show that I was there to help and provide assistance. The staff I went with let me administer the drops which I really appreciated, and I got a much better perspective of the malnutrition issues that exist in my community. At the elementary school, I see mainly healthy kids whose parents have the resources to send their children to school. Sure, there are exceptions, and there are definitely malnourished kids in the schools too. However, the children that need the most outreach are the ones that are the hardest to find: they don't go to school, that stay at home, that are too sick to be in public, etc. At times I question what, if anything, I can do to serve these communities as I am not a doctor, but, when I am feeling good, I can remind myself that simply inspiring a parent to take their sick child to the health post or cook healthier meals with higher nutrient content, or even teaching someone how to make oral re-hydration fluid, can make a world of difference to one person. It's a small step but hopefully a step in the right direction. It's been said about peace corps volunteers that the biggest impact they may have in their community may be the most subtle one, and I can definitely believe that. I have no idea what an impact I will really have in the long run, if I have one at all, but we'll see, we'll see. In the end, in some ways these projects are not my projects, but instead the community's projects, and I am merely the liaison. We will see what the future holds.

Friday

2011-03-11T10:33:00.000-08:00

Hello all! Today is Friday, a holy day, and our Peace Corps trainers are looking their best in their traditional clothing. Today we (the trainees) had our cultural fair and it was amazing. We were introduced to everything from proper eating and drinking etiquette to how to clean yourself without toilet paper *ahem*. The trainees were first split into six groups, and we rotated through six different stations. Each station had a theme and the trainees were guided through that theme by current volunteers and natives of Senegal. My favorite stations were the ones about Senegalese food and unique Senegalese cultural items, because at these stations I got to taste, touch, smell, try, and drink a variety of new things. I chewed a cola nut (origionally found in coca cola!) and used a tooth stick. I drank baobab juice and ate baobab fruit, as well as drank ginger juice, Touba cafe, and a traditional tea. One of the great things about this cultural fair is that I can try things in a safe environment where I can communiate effectively if any problems were to arise. If I have a bad reaction to something new, I can communicate immediately in English that I am having a negative reaction that needs addressing. If I have a bad reaction to a food or drink within the context of my future host family, I unfortunately do not have the language skills yet to effectively communicate anything other than I feel sick and need to call the Peace Corps doctor. Don't get me wrong- this is sufficient in most situations and being with a host family is 99% positive, but Culture fair was definitely a perfect opportunity to try and learn plenty of new things.

The trainees will probably learn what language they are learning and what their language group is either tomorrow or the next day. I'm pumped about this. I don't think there are any "bad" languages to learn. They all seem really cool and beautiful and the ability to speak any of them opens up doors to entirely new aspects of Senegalese culture. The groups are pretty small,
3-4 maximum, and should in theory accommodate a variety of learning styles. I will have plenty of opportunities after class to practice new things learned with my host family, in the market, with my neighbors, with children, etc etc. This time around, I feel much more confident. During PST in Kyrgyzstan I felt very insecure about my ability to learn a third language and my progress as a volunteer trainee. Now, I feel much more relaxed about language learning and am more willing to let it come to me informally. It is not a waste of time to sit under a tree and drink tea and chew sticks and listen to the radio- in fact, this will be how the best language learning will happen.

Everyone has started taking their malaria medications, myself included. While in the United States I dreaded the possibility of taking malaria meds and all of their wild sounding side effects, but now that I am in Senegal and see just how many mosquitoes their are around here, I am relieved to have the malaria meds. I couldn't wait to start taking them. I do not want to get
malaria under any circumstances and plan to be a very faithful malaria medication taker. One great thing that I did not realize while I was in the states is that if I have any bad side effects with a malaria medication that I am on, the Peace Corps medical officers can switch me to a different medicine. Before I was in country, I was afraid that I would be stuck with side effects if I had them. Now I am aware that I have options, and a few of them. Peace Corps medical has our backs.

Well, that's all for now. Still no pictures. I will get around to taking them, I promise, but now isn't the right time. In the meantime, happy reading!

In SENEGAL!

2011-03-10T10:38:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, and welcome to this Senegalese life. I'm your host, Ivy Glass, and today we will be bringing you stories from men and women born in all corners of the United States, and brought here, to Senegal, to live and work in a culture new to them.

One of these stories is mine.

So I've been in Senegal for almost 30 hours now, and it has been wonderful. The flight felt very long, but I got to watch Over the Hedge in French, and finally got to see The King's Speech, which was awesome. The plane was huge- at least 74 rows, and I'm not sure how many more. We flew in to very early morning, and immediately after getting off of the plane, we got on a bus to Thies, where we are training. The bus ride was beautiful and the sun was coming up as we traveled to our training center. The longer we were riding, the more the surrounding areas woke up- we saw people traveling with cart and horse/donkey, chickens pecking around, herds of goats and sheep, people at market, and cars full of baguettes parked on the side of the road. Yep, cars. We arrived exhausted from the trip but the general feel was excitement and satisfaction.

The training center is a small enclosed area with several dorms and offices where volunteers have showers, rooms, beds, and wireless internet (but having the time to use it, and whether or not it is working on your computer, is a different story), so I will have internet at least for the next two or three days. We are only at the center until we get our host families, which will happen soon. The area is generally sandy, with banana, mango, and yet-to-be-identified trees growing everywhere. Pink and purple flowers surround the area and top the clay-colored walls that enclose the center. Nic and I are staying in a room with two beds with wax fabric sheets and mosquito nets. Our walls our yellow, During the day it is quite warm, but at night it cools off, and it's the type of cool where you sleep perfectly with just a sheet. I brought a pillow but don't need it at the training center. I'm sure it will come in handy sooner or later.

The food here at the center is awesome. For breakfast we have baguettes with chocomousse, peanut butter, butter, and jam. Every morning there are just giant bowls of baguette and you spread your spread of choice. Typically breakfast comes with tea or nescafe. I've been going for the nescafe. The tea is a basic black, Nic's drink of choice. Lunch has been a big bowl of rice with some form of meat and sauce. Today it was chicken with a brown onion sauce. Simple yet delicious. 4-5 people sitting on the ground gather around one bowl of food, which is maybe a foot and a half/two feet across, and eat from it at the same time using a spoon- or your hands, if you want, but so far all of us are using spoons. Dinner yesterday was pasta; no idea what it will be tonight. I'm excited though.

There's running water and electricity at the center, which is pretty posh compared to what our sites will be like. Nic and I in theory will be near another married couple, as PC Senegal has discovered in the past that married couples do better placed near each other as there are so few of us in the country, and it is better for us emotionally if we have others near us we can relate to. The Heifer International headquarters for Senegal is located here in Thies, but unfortunately I am not sure we will be living in this area after Peace Corps Training, but we'll see. I am sure that Nic and I will have a good permanent site.

Yesterday afternoon, after our sessions, we had a big dancing circle and we were taught a few Senegalese dances. There were drummers pounding various beats, some were slow and predictable, others fast and fun. Some neighborhood folk and kids came and joined in and showed of their skills. The Senegalese are great drummers and dancers so far! I can't wait to meet my host family and see if they are musically inclined. Speaking of drummers, the sound of a drum indicates lunch and dinner, so when we hear the drum around 12:30 and 7:30, we all come running, as by those times we are hungry and actually have been hungry for a while. Though the baguettes and coffee are great, they sure don't stay with you.

My general impression of the country is very very positive. The Peace Corps staff is friendly and helpful, and I feel very comfortable experimenting with my very very very limited Wolof and somewhat limited French. They are receptive and happy-seeming. Wonderful folk. The country is beautiful and sandy. Lots of tropical looking plants, like bananas, and there are tons of birds. They made so much sound this morning that neither Nic nor I heard the alarm clock go off- just the birds. Tonight I will be sleeping with my alarm clock under my pillow.

We've been issued our cell phones, so family folk and friends, here in a few days I will be sending you my cell phone number.

Alright, that's all for now. I'm still not sure how often I will be able to update this, but nonetheless, tune in occasionally for more stories from This Senegalese life.

Maybe some pics, too.

As the world turns!

2011-02-02T12:23:00.001-08:00

Hello! In just a few days, Nic and I will be flying out of MA and back to AR, where we will have about a month to prepare for our journey to Senegal. This includes visiting our local friends, doing some packing, doing some work, and hopefully plenty of down time. Peace Corps Training was intense last time around, and I am looking forward to the intensity of PST in Senegal, and am really looking forward to the climate! Right now in MA it's in the 20s and there is a snowstorm and several feet of snow on the ground. Rumor has it after some time in Senegal the 60 degree evenings will feel cool. Can't wait!

My packing list is minimalistic. Instead of focusing on business clothes or reading material, I've shifted the focus towards bare minimums plus materials for hobbies. Bringing lots of nice clothes won't help the adjustment period, but having my sketchpad and journals definitely will. I made the mistake last time of not bringing drawing pens and not having a sketchpad and not bringing a single square of watercolor paper... what a fool was I! Not this time around.

My time on the farm is running low, and I'm feeling pretty good about it. I'm finishing up projects and feel ready to move onto the next phase of my life. It's been an adventure these past few months, and I've learned all kinds of trivia to boot.

2010-11-27T07:33:00.000-08:00

One of the best surprises this Thanksgiving was the birth of four adorable teeny tiny little guinea pigs! I took some video of them today so here it is for everyone to enjoy. They are so cute...and they squeak when they walk.They also will all pile under their mother so you can't see them.

Great, aren't they?

2010-10-08T05:59:00.000-07:00

Tell me, folks, why can't a real person answer a customer service call just once? I hate talking to robots. And pressing buttons for them. I want to hear a real human voice. Is this too much to ask? If you want to give people jobs, fire the automated answering systems and set me up with a real person. Good customer service isn't "Press 1 for more options." Good customer service is a working relationship between customer and business person. It's a pat on the back, a genuine "how are you," and a laugh between the customer and salesperson.

and now I'm even older!

2010-09-25T06:07:00.001-07:00

I'm now located in Maassachusetts, where I will probably be through early February. And, in early to mid March (the date is not finalized yet, though it will be around March 9th), I will be leaving for a super epic and exciting Peace Corps assignment in... SENEGAL! This is a bit of a dream come true, actually. I will be in a French speaking country and will be taking intensive French classes upon arrival (i.e. I will finally be able to speak to the French side of Nic's family once I come home), and will be a health educator, which is a fantastic job. Throughout various times in my life I've contemplated a wide variety of jobs, ranging from teacher to pharmacist, and the only real interest that has survived over my years of conscious existence has been in medicine/nutrition. This PC assignment really gives me the chance to put my baseline interest to the test- can I make a living from what has been a hobby and interest for years? I surely hope the answer is yes. But, I've got two years to discover and explore this career choice, and I'm looking forward to every day of it. Plus, Nic will be studying a native language, and I eventually will to, but French first, and that's cool. I will eventually be married to a tri or quad lingual dude. That's exciting. I love the ability of humans to continue learning and growing over the course of their lives.

Speaking of learning and growing, I'm back to being an education volunteer here at Overlook Farm, which basically means that I teach groups of children and adults (but usually middle school aged children) about hunger, poverty, community building, and farm-livin' (the element that tends to excite people the most). It's my job to inspire people to take some sort of action towards ending global hunger, either in their backyard or in any number of countries. It's a good job and I generally love it. It's an excellent transition to the Peace Corps, which is where, hopefully, I will be able to take the knowledge I have gained from Heifer International and apply it on a global scale. A portion of what HI teaches about is nutrition and health, and I can take that information and apply it directly to my future work with the PC.

In addition, NPR has some amazing free albums on it's website. I highly recommend checking out NPR's First Listen segment. http://www.npr.org/music/

Also, there's this great website out there that hosts MRIs of fruits and vegetables. They're beautiful, and everyone should look at them. http://insideinsides.blogspot.com

I've also been doing a bit of reading. As should be expected, here are the 38 second book reviews.

Get Me Out: A history of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank by Randi Hunter Epstein. This non-fiction book addresses the history of childbirth, and is a well-written and fascinating work that traces the taboos and trends of child birthing over hundreds of years. The author is well educated and it shows in a good way. Featuring everything from a short history of forceps to previews of the masturbatorium in sperm banks, Get Me Out both entertains and educates. It's shocking and amazing how childbirth, a very natural process upon first glance, has over the years been "adjusted" according to the scientific understanding of the time. I highly recommend this text.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip Dick. The film Blade Runner was based on this novel, a classic work of science fiction that calls into question what it means to be a human and why it matters anyway. In a world that creates androids and then fears them, and where people long for the company of the animals they once destroyed, a reader like me can't sleep because she's wrapped up in the text. Called brilliant for a reason.

Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation by Elissa Stein and Susan Kim. I severely disliked this unnecessarily sassy text that felt more like a trendy coffee table book than a real cultural history. This is probably because it is a trendy coffee table book and not a real cultural history. The only positive/interesting thing about this book was the catalog of historical kotex ads. Which are worth a look, mind you, but I won't be buying this one.

The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum. Three cheers for Deborah Blum! This gruesome yet educational work (unintentionally?) challenges our acceptance of weirdo chemicals in our everyday products by showing how they have been used in the past in facial creams and alcohols, and how we've consequentially suffered. A fantastic amalgamation of chemistry, murder mystery, and underpaid employees' horror stories, The Poisoner's Handbook is a great reference book and a great story. What stood out the most in my mind is a tale of radium, which is structurally similar to calcium and absorbed thus by bones in the human body. So-called Radium Girls, watchmakers who absorbed a crazy amount of the stuff while painting watch faces, had so much radium in their bones and bodies that they exhaled radon. What! Did I mention this entire text is nonfiction? Rarely am I so downright entertained by historical text.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards. Tracing the lives of twins separated at birth by father applying a sick idea of "protection," The Memory Keeper's Daughter utilizes themes of family, fear, and the past to push forward an interesting and relevant story. It demonstrates the ability of secrets and skeletons in closets to weigh down and potentially wreck some lives, while potentially making others better. This read held my attention and I got through it pretty quickly. Not too sad, not too suspenseful, but not quite lighthearted either.

Alright! Have a good day, all!

Waiting but with the dominos lined up

2010-08-12T11:52:00.000-07:00

I finally got medical clearance again just the other day, which means that Nic and I are on the right path towards our next Peace Corps assignment. At this point, we've done all the paperwork, jumped through all of the hoops, and are waiting on an official invite. That should be coming around October or November. In the meantime, I've been working with a computer program on some simple French (les enfants courent), and waiting for Heifer. If I were waiting completely idle with absolutely no idea what I was going to be doing in the future, I might go completely crazy. However, as it stands, I've got the dominoes lined up for a decent next year or so. From late August-mid January, I will be working with Heifer international. From January-March, I'll be, if things go as planned, studying French and packing my bags. And finally, sometime in March, I'll be getting on a plane for Peace Corps adventure number 2. One day at a time, though.

In the meantime, I've been doing a lot of reading, which means time for more 38 second book reviews!

De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage. Not quite as good as Cockroach, an instant favorite of mine. A somewhat biographical and ranting work of fiction based on life in war-torn Beirut, the work tugs at heartstrings and keeps your attention. A fairly quick read. Get it from your local library.

Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. This genius collection of 100 anecdotes range from sad to silly to sadistic. I laughed, I languished, I loved it. Because of the wide variety of topics addressed in this text the concise nature of each piece, everyone can find an anecdote to enjoy and remember. Each anecdote straddles the line between an epic short story and a long-lost poem. I have a copy I can lend you.

Sophie's World by Jostien Gaardner. This highly successful novel is more a history of philosophy than it is anything else. If I had never studied philosophy, I might have found this text more interesting. I often found the descriptions of each philosopher's work to be over-simplified, and were written in a way that was sometimes patronizing. I do plan to hang onto this text as a reference book in the event that I am ever without the internet and wish to quickly review a philosopher's point of view. However, I will neither be rereading this book in it's entirety, nor will I be recommending it to those that have studied philosophy in an academic setting. It should be kept in mind will reading Sophie's World that it is a work of fiction, and, albeit educational, readers should research more about the philosophers addressed in the text before reaching a conclusion about his or her works.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. A brilliant, non-fiction account of cultural misunderstandings between the Hmong living in America and the American medical system. Provides great insight into various perspectives on welfare, medicine, spirituality, and family. This text reads like two parallel stories, and without a doubt sucks the reader into the lives of both the doctors and Hmong family members involved. I found myself desperately trying to relate and have sympathy for all party members involved. Read it, and find yourself questioning what culture is.

America and the Pill by Elaine Tyler May. Another non-fiction account addressing the history of the birth control pill in the United States. This text challenges the notion that the birth control pill fueled the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and pushes for an understanding of the various controversies surrounding the pill, including its tests outside of the United States and the pill's potential role in eugenics. Interesting stuff.

That's it for now. See ya'll around!

Baby, you can walk, you can talk, just like me...

2010-07-17T07:57:00.000-07:00

Hello! Sorry it's been so long since blogging. This time, I have little excuse. I have had the internet for about two weeks, but just haven't had a mind clear enough to really sit down and blog. Nic and I are once again in a state of transition; a series of events in Kyrgyzstan led to Nic and I taking interrupted service, which means that because of circumstances beyond our control (i.e., a politically unstable situation) that we would not be continuing our service in the Kyrgyz Republic. Now, don't get me wrong; Nic and I are still doing the Peace Corps. We are enrolled to leave again in March. But we will not be doing in it in the Kyrgyz Republic. It's funny how being married brings out a protective behavior in me that I may not necessarily exhibit when I am fending for myself exclusively. Nic and I were not necessarily in a dangerous part of Kyrgyzstan, and I came to the realization last night that if I were single, I would have been more inclined to stay in country. But now I've got not only a husband, but two sides of the family to be concerned about. I don't, under any circumstances, want to put my husband into any unnecessary danger or excessive discomfort. As a single person, I was more likely to push myself; as a married person, too much is at risk. Anyway, truth be told, being in a state of transition again is tiresome, and thoughts considered while in an unexpected and uncomfortable state of transition are best for private journals, not public forums.
So here's the deal with us. Nic and I were not really able to do our jobs and were rapidly losing face with our community. Every meeting, event, and club that we planned was canceled because we were constantly in a state of standfast or consolidation, which meant that, for our own safety, we were being contained in one way or another, be it in our village, in our home, or in a consolidation center. After much discussion with one particular staff member that we got along with fairly well, we decided that the best decision would be to put our name in the hat for a country better suited for us. After all, as returned Peace Corps volunteers, we would have more say in where we were going and in what skills we wanted to put to use. We have been back in the US for twoish weeks, and have been busy turning in paperwork and applying for things. Nic and I have a position waiting for us in March with the Peace Corps. We will, if everything works out, be going to a French-speaking African country. We cannot be officially invited until we are finished with medical clearance, which, as you Peace Corps folks know, can take forever. I have faith that this assignment will work out.
In the meantime, Nic and I applied for volunteer positions with Heifer International's Overlook Farm in Rutland, MA. Although I was expecting to receive the position of Farmer Chef, the position was already filled. Nic and I will both be education volunteers in the fall. I'm looking forward to this already, and have located some jeans to patch (any nice or new clothes will be promptly eaten by goats). I've also been trying to think of ways to get away with not checking any bags. Airline baggage prices are friggen insane. But winter boots are heavy, and probably not the best things to carry with you in your carry one.
All in all, things are looking positive. I miss my host family from Kyrgyzstan, but look forward to a bright future. I've started Rosetta Stone again, and maybe will be able to actually get a grip on French before I leave. Fingers crossed!

Blogless

2010-06-24T09:14:00.000-07:00

Well, folks, it's been an incredibly long time since I've had access to the internet, and even longer since I've had the time to sit down and blog. Sorry about this. The time is now!

As many of you know, the southern part of Kyrgyzstan is unstable and violent. I am, luckily enough, living in the northernmost part of the country in the Talas region, a dry, rocky, hilly area filled with friendly people and herds of animals. The drive from my old home to my new home was incredible. We drove through clouds and valleys. We passed by yurts and drove through herds of cows, sheep, and goats. The driver made no efforts to slow down; he simply honked until the herd moved out of the way. The long, hilly drive took a bit over six hours. We made a few stops to get a tire repaired, and eventually made it home in pitch black. Nic and I are living in two rooms; we have a sitting room and a bed room. The sitting room is connected to the eating area. From the eating area shoots of the family bedroom and a kitchen. There is a hallway that leads from the kitchen to our banya, and to the outdoors. You know, I feel dull talking about this stuff. I know it isn't as exciting as discussions about the violence and instability in this country. But let me put it this way: I'm a stubborn soul that is forcing herself to see positive and to focus on the positive elements of my life here in Kyrgyzstan. Thankfully, I am in a peaceful region of the country. Anyway, Nic and I have four host siblings, three sisters and a little brother. The youngest is our brother, 9, and the oldest is my host sister who is 21. She has worked with volunteers before, and can speak English. My counterpart is a tiny Elvish woman who speaks English pretty well, but she has recently had a baby, and does not have too much time for me just yet. I'm waiting and working to maintain my patience. Nic and I have tried to organize English clubs and meetings, but the unrest in the country has caused some interruptions. Peace Corps is working hard to keep us safe, but this means sometimes that we cannot complete the work we were sent here to do. Once again, I'm waiting. The Peace Corps is an incredible test of patience.
Our village is a former German village, my school is a former German school, and my home is a German style home. I've actually gotten to use my German here in country, which is surprising. At each major corner in the house, there are large black pillars that are heating stoves. This is a trademark of German-built homes in my area. Most older people speak some German (with an adorable accent mind you). Our family has two milk cows that they milk daily, and in the morning they sell milk. We get tons of fresh milk and cream daily. We also have two calves that I've fallen in love with, but one is quite shy, and doesn't like attention from people. Our family also has some cows "in savings," aka, in the mountain. They are saving up livestock to later use to purchase my youngest host brother a car when he is old enough. The current exchange rate is 6 cows equals 1 car. Nic is working with my host sister to help build a chicken coop, and we might eventually get chickens. We'll see.
The best news so far is that the volunteers are out of the south, safe, and sound. Staying positive. I mailed my mom a letter with our new address in it. Please get it from her. I am a dummy and didn't bring the piece of paper with our zipcode written on it....maybe soon .Keep in touch, ya'll.

Bizzare Baazar

2010-05-02T03:13:00.000-07:00

Hey folks! I just got done doing some shopping at the Kant Baazar and man, it felt strange. I did shopping in Taiwan too, but for whatever reason shoppng here feels a bit more stressful than it should feel. I shopped more effeciently with less language when I was there...I am not sure what the difference is, really. Oh well. In a few months once I have more language things will be much easier. Either way around, I am coming home with exactly what I need: A pencil (I'm still kicking myself for accidently leaving my bag-o-pens and pencils at home), a huge sheet of stiff paper (which will be cut into notecards), some round knitting needles (interesting: I could not find a single vendor that sold straight knitting needles) and pants to replace the ones I tore yesterday. I'm a happy camper. I've been working on Nic's scarf, but needed some needles to switch the scarf over to, as I am currently knitting on some needles that I borrowed from my host sister.
The baazar is basically rows of vendors with all sorts of items available...you can find almost anything, pants, shampoo, fish, statuettes, candy, laid out for you on a table or hung on a rack. It's fun to look, and fun to wander, but complicated to buy, for now. Last time I came here, I had to buy a pound or two pounds of the food items that I bought because I only knew how to ask for a kilo or a half kilo of something... which meant coming home with a half kilo of cookies, a half kilo of almonds, a kilo of apples etc... I'm still eating some of them. I have since learned how to purchase smaller amounts of things.
Nic and I went with our trainee group to a beautiful mountain resort yesterday, and took a few pictures, which eventually will be uploaded. I never know exactly when I'll have internet, so I am never prepared for this. The resort was rolling hills and peaks dotted with waterfalls, statues, and cows. It was beautiful, the weather was pretty good(we did get rained on a little bit), and it felt great to get some exercize.
A few days ago the trainee group living in my city (there are four of us) went to a concert at the local school, which consisted of many grade levels performing songs and dances in Russian. We also watched a play. There was a group of 8th/9th? grade girls that danced to a Michael Jackson mash up and they were incredible dancers. I was very shocked and pleased with their black hats, black vests, white button ups, and mad skills. My Kyrgyz teacher's host-sister sang several songs. She's an adorable talented little girl. She hand wrote us invitations to the concert in shiny pink ink. Here, huge white bows are very trendy. Many of the girls at the concert were wearing bows that were as big as their heads! Imagine: tiny pigtails, tiny girls, big haloes of white silk, satin, and lace. Now imagine them singing in Russian.
The only thing that is missing from my life is salt water taffy. Things are going better every day, and I am more excited about my work every day. Today I finished working on my activity cards for the class I am teaching on Tuesday. I will be teaching 5th graders the concepts of some, few, couple, and many combined with the phrase "There are." I will also be teaching basic food vocabulary (apples, bananas, noodles, eggs, etc). If things go well, by the end of the class, the students will be able to say: "There are not any apples in the refrigerator, but there are some noodles in the refrigerator" (and things of that general nature).
That's all for now. Take care, ya'll!

Keepin on

2010-04-21T04:10:00.000-07:00

Hey folks! We are now a few weeks into training. I have my site placement interview tomorrow, and in a few weeks Nic and I find out where our permanent site will be. I'm getting more adjusted to life in my host family, which is definitely a good thing. I have been a bit sick lately, but have had some antibiotics and now am feeling much better. As a consequence of being sick, I was served hot milk based meals which were simple but delicious. I'm getting mad hankerings for coffee, so whenever I get the chance to go to a store, I might actually pick up some coffee. At lunch, the volunteers rotate visiting one another's host families for meals, and we have gotten to taste a variety of foods and seen a variety of homes because of this. On the walk to a fellow volunteer's home, there are geese that will hiss at you. It's kind of funny.
All in all, things are well, although my language is not progressing as quickly as I wish it were. I have been relaxing the past few days which both helps and hinders m language skills. It helps because I am more comfortable and relaxed when I go the class the next day, but hinders because I spend more time reading/writing in English.
The mountains that surround my village are stunning. Every day when I can wake up and actually see them, I am amazed at how beautiful they are.
Yesterday, I had my first active practicum. I got to teach a grand total of five students. We as volunteers were told what to teach, but had some flexibility in presentation and formatting of information. I look forward to next week, as hopefully I will have a full classroom. I will be team teaching animals and the present progressive tense with a Kyrgyz volunteer and a Peace Corps trainee. Should be great. The actual in-classroom time that volunteers get to have during training is in my view extremely helpful. It seems like we will in theory be teaching an English lesson every week with variable topics and in variable situations, i.e., with or without a trainee partner, in large/small classes, etc. I can't wait to get my own classroom and meet my own counterpart.
That's it for now. Maybe one day I will get some photos for ya'll. I just never know when I will actually have the internet...I mailed a few letters today, so watch your mailboxes if you have given me your address.

Life in the Kyrgyz Republic!

2010-04-09T03:11:00.000-07:00

Hey folks! Internet access for me is highly irregular, so I haven't been able to update this thing since I've been here. Long story short, things are great! I have an awesome host family; five host siblings, a host mom, and a host dad. Today they were planting potatoes and flowers in the front and backyard gardens. I have a great dog named Fox that protects me when I have to go to the outhouse. It's the cutest thing...he walks with you to the outhouse, stands guard in front of the door while you are, ya'know, busy, then walks you back to the house. I live on a small plot of land, maybe an acre, and do have an actual shower sometimes. My language learning is going slow, but it is nonetheless going. I have six more weeks to get to a good grip on the language, and then we'll have an exam. Here, we eat alot of lamb. Tons and tons of lamb. Most families have their own chickens (we do...I get fresh eggs every day), many have their own cows, and even more have their own herds of sheep and goats. All of the meat that we get is fresh, grass-fed, and pretty good. The meals do tend to a be a bit fatty, which has been a bit hard on my stomach, but I feel like I've adjusted pretty well. I got sick once, once, and only once. I've been pretty careful with water filtering, which I think has made quite a bit of a difference.
The mountains surrounding the Kyrgyz Republic are incredibly beautiful. Stunning. Like a photoshopped postcard. Except even better. And REAL. Huge peaks of white shattering the skyline, enormous towers of green protecting protrusions of grey and blue...I have never seen anything like it.
My favorite thing about my time here so far has been the presence of animals. Donkeys (and fuzzy ones to boot), cows, cats, dogs, sheep, goats...roaming in a beautiful and wonderful way. Practically maintained, albeit they are a bit dirty, and utilized fully (i.e, milk and manure do not go to waste). The entire village that I live in reminds me in some ways of a giant Heifer project come to life. Zero grazing pens, no-electricity milk and cream separators, and hand-sheared sheep.
Anyway...I'm going to get gone for now, but please feel free to drop me an email and I will reply whenever I have internet access again. Take care, everybody!

Staging

2010-03-25T19:47:00.000-07:00

Hello! Nic and I have successfully made it to staging. I accidentally brought along Amber's [Noah's girlfriend's] hair barrette instead of giving it back to her, so I am going to take some pictures of it in historical Kyrgyz places. We have our first full day of orientation tomorrow. I've already met a few of the people that are going to be volunteers alongside Nic and I, and they made good first impressions. Overall, I'm pretty excited about this great adventure.

Yesterday, I had a great time at Vino's chilling with the people I won't be seeing for a while. There are some folks I am really going to miss. Thank you to everyone that was able to come, and thank you to everyone that didn't but sent blessings anyhow. Basically, thanks to everyone that has been so supportive to Nic and I during our efforts to get into the PC.

I am not sure how often I will be able to update this, but definitely often enough for it to be worth checking, I hope.

Beatbox girl

2010-03-18T13:53:00.001-07:00

If you haven't seen this amazing video of Beatbox girl, a brunette beat madhouse with a ponytail, then please watch it hear via Scienceblogs. It's amazing, I promise. BEATBOX GIRL!

38 second book reviews and update

2010-03-16T11:56:00.000-07:00

I love being unemployed, because it means I have plenty of time to read. Although I will not be unemployed here in a few days, I still anticipate having plenty of time to read before I get myself socially established in the Kyrgyz Republic. Either way around, I recently finished two great books.

Cockroach by Rawi Hage. Frantic, driven, schizophrenic, sexy, and dirty. A cockroach that thinks he's a man, or a man that thinks he's a cockroach, takes on the crusty upperclass of a sick Candadian city. This brilliant work of truths-nested-in-fiction wrestles with concepts of greed, poverty, naivety, and filth within the context of the almost subhuman lower classes of the insane. Or, as it may be, the only real ones out there. Anyway, you should read it.

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Relin. This non-fiction work tells the larger than life story of a taller than average dude who works to free impoverished children of their chains via education. Mortenson works in Afganistan and Pakistan to build balanced, well-rounded secular schools that educate both genders. I found the work inspiring and hopeful. What a hero!

Just a note: Mortenson's organization, the Central Asia Institute, recently received a $100,000 donation from Barack Obama. The source of the money? Obama's Nobel Prize cash, which he is donating in it's entirety to a slew of very very worthy organizations. Obama and Mortenson have won my heart.

Ok, and for the actual update. Nic and I are leaving in 9 days, and I am going through various stages of happy, excited, mellow, frantic, sad, worried, energetic, enthusiastic, etc, etc, you get the point. I'm running in circles and running in a straight line at the same time. I am busy packing, reading, and really, just tying to stay healthy and keep my bearings while I wait. My little brother got married, and it was a beautiful fairly religious ceremony in a methodist church. Him and his wife have side by side computers and play WOW together. Does it get much cuter than that?

Kyrgyz Eatin'

2010-03-06T21:11:00.001-08:00

I've been in Malvern today and am about to go to bed, but had a few minutes before bed to answer a question that has been making me curious for quite some time: What do they eat in the Kyrgyz Republic?!

Well, here's the answer: Most dishes are meat based, and the primary meats consumed in the country are (drum roll please) horse and mutton. Typically they are served with mare-milk products, such as butter and soured creams. Horsemeat sausage and boiled meat/noodle dishes are regarded as common national dishes and favorites. Sometimes meats will be stir fried with onions, garlic, carrots, and a locally-grown rice. Steamed dumplings and a fried dumpling similar to samosas are also common. Foods tend to be spicy, oniony, garlicy, and vinegary. The Kyrgyz Republic is a tea culture. People drink mare's milk and camel's milk, too. The bread is either flatbread or a type of Russian-style bread.

I'm actually pretty excited to try all of this stuff. After arrival, my stomach's going to be on a roller coaster ride, I'm afriad.

Livin' in the future

2010-02-23T13:05:00.000-08:00

I am officially on Peace Corps, round 2! I recieved an email today with information about final travel arrangements, and have contacted SATO travel to make our reservations. From New York, Nic and I will be traveling to Istanbul, and then from Istanbul to Bishkek, where we will remain for training (approx. 3 months). We will be leaving either March 25th or 26th (more than likely the 25th, but we will find out here in the next few days), and will be back in 2012, if the world doesn't end. I feel like this time is the "for real" time and am, in truth, letting myself get excited at this point. I quit my job (last day = March 4th), and am going to start doing more exercise, sleeping more, and eating better to ensure that I'm healthy, fit, and mentally prepared for the crazy adventure I have in front of me. My priorities are shifting now that I know for 99% certain that I am leaving at the end of next month. I am going to really focus on learning the bare-bones of Kyrgyz (or as much as one can learn in one month), hone in on a few high-quality grammar books and teaching aides, and develop the upper body strength I need to feel confident about my posture and endurance while lugging 2 fifty pound bags across all of the Kyrgyz Republic. Potentially while on horse.
But for now: A nap.

Mardi Gras

2010-02-18T14:27:00.000-08:00

Nic and I returned last night from our adventure at Mardi Gras. The holiday of Carnivale has long been one that I've thought about, imagined, and even dreamed about. I've had dreams that I was traveling to New Orleans by bus for the purpose of preserving giant ant statues that had been built all over the city; I've had nightmares about bodies escaping from their above-ground tombs and floating at my feet. And what can I say? The drive to the city of New Orleans was creepy as can be. Our drive was lined with swamps. Trees covered in moss growing from capsized boats and flooded homes, long abandoned, decorated the skylines. Big black birds perching against a background of grays glared at us as we sped by. It was a trip!
Nic and I were in New Orleans for Monday and Fat Tuesday. The first day we accidentally stumbled upon a parade, where we collected beads that were tossed at us. I got pegged in the head by a bag of red and silver beads. The parade was zodiac themed, with huge floats of all of the zodiac signs plus a couple of pagan gods. These detailed floats looked like hours upon hours of work had been poured into them, not to mention hundreds upon hundreds of dollars. They were gorgeous, grotesque, colorful and surreal animals, gods, goddesses, and figurines that towered over our heads.
On Fat Tuesday, we awoke early to discover that even as early as 8:30 A.M., people in the hostel were buying vodka shots and mixed drinks to go with their breakfasts. People streamed into the streets fully decked out in incredible costumes. It was like halloween plus voodoo plus tribal drunken hullabaloo. My favorite was a Gumby costume. I talked to the guy about the costume, and he had been working on it for four months. The costume was made of a soft, pliable painted foam that was not only huggable and flexible, but maintained flare legs and raised facial features even when Gumby posed in grotesque, frightening, or adorable poses. Entire families dressed up, and people, regardless of age or gender, acted extreme together. The cutest family that I saw was all four seasons plus Ewok. That is, Father Winter (husband, decked out in white robes and snowflakes), Autumn (wife, autumn leaves), Summer (Grandma, huge colorful flower hat and skirt), Spring (baby girl, daisies, too impatient to wear the hat), and a tiny baby Ewok in the stroller (fuzzy, small, lovable). I saw two parades. One was the Zulu parade, featuring large, clown-like African American figurines that smoked cigars and drank Crown Royal, and the other was a random trucker parade. Literally, decorated trailers attached to 18-wheelers were driven around and people screamed, yelled, and caught fun exciting toys, jewelry, and (!) underwear. The Zulu parade was gorgeous and fun.
The Zulu parade was hosted by a group known as the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club, which is a Carnival Krewe that was founded in the early 1900s. The origins are in the working-class African American group known as The Tramps. The group is the largest African American group that puts on parades, and it prides itself in benevolent aide and social assistance. The group takes care of it's members in various ways, ranging from financial aide to sick care, and pulls its resources from dues paid by members of the Zulu Krewe. The group known as the Zulus decided to satirize the stereotyping of blacks by mocking the caucausian Rex parade and caucausian minstrel show makeup (i.e. blackface, tribal associations) that dominated the 1910s and 1920s.The Zulu floats featured African Americans in exaggerated blackface, clownwear, grass-skirts, and donning spears and stuffed tigers, alongside steppers, hip-hop dancers, and brass-instrument bands.I'd never seen anything like it. These folks were incredible at putting on shows. Here is a brief but informative article about the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club. BTW, Nic and I got a coconut.
In spite of the three amazing parades, the highlight of the Mardi Gras experience was, by far, the costumes. There was Bert (From Sesame Street), Beaker (from the Muppet Show), a Storm Trouper, Candy Hearts (Lick Me and Eat Me), a season family, Boxed Wine, Beetlejuice, Gene Simmons, Grim Fandango...etc etc etc. I was fully amazed at the creativity of all of these folks. Here are some photos. Me and two childhood superheroes.

Well, that's it for now. Have a great day, everyone!

Jackson

2010-02-14T21:06:00.000-08:00

Got to Jackson! Nic and I are on our first leg of the journey to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Jackson is disappointing. I was hoping for something new and neat in this city, but the stores, restaurants, and even TV channels are the same as in Arkansas. It's extremely disorienting to drive for five hours and then eat at the exact same restaurant that is five minutes away from my house in Little Rock. The homogenization of the American business-scape is terrifying and boring at the same time. It's terrifying because large chains are wiping out small gems of businesses. It's boring because I like being able to go to any city, small or large, and find a variety of restaurants, businesses, specialties, and cultures. Instead, I am met with the exact same IHOPs, Waffle Houses, McDonald's, Burger Kings, and Starbucks(es). What's the point in traveling if these chains are replacing local culture? Local culture is, in my book, the only thing that makes traveling worthwhile, refreshing, and energizing. New Orleans should be great. Though I am expecting to see some chains, the Muffalatta was invented in New Orleans, and you just can't experience local culture in any better way than via regional foods.

2010-02-13T22:32:00.000-08:00

Last night I went with Noah and Amber to see the famous Goodtar Jones. Goodtar was amazing, as usual. Goodtar is the Jack Johnson of the post-modern folk scene (or is he? he sure does sound like him in that one song). Donning mortor board and 4 guitars, Goodtar sang about everything in my life, and his too. I rode back with Noah and Amber but we didn't get back until 5:00 A.M. It was my job to keep Noah awake enough for driving home, and I can't remember the last time I had such tired discussions. They ranged from video game stories, to 90s emo music, to fast food. One great thing about Noah and Amber is that I feel like I can fully be myself around them. I wish that I were capable of being fully myself in most social situations. It feels so good.
I've been writing short stories that are roughly based on a combination of reality and weird dreams that I've had. I promise they're written better than this blog. I tend to go on "creativity kicks" where I'll get an urge to create, create, create...and then it fizzles. And then I'm back to my normal smiley self that focuses her energy on breakfast and a full night's sleep. I am not sure what to do with them, really. I want to give them to others to read, but I'm afraid they might figure out that the story is loosely based on something they might have been involved in, or that it is almost entirely a dream I told them about. I have written poems and short stories for years, but have never been confident about them, except for when I was 17, and put all of my energy into slam poetry. Why did I stop?!
Tomorrow is my second attempt at having a cooking class at Our House. I have recruited one volunteer and a friend of mine from UALR has recruited an additional two. This week should be great; because tomorrow is valentine's day, Nic and I are cooking deserts with the kids. Deserts are always a smash hit.

Snowstorm in Arkansas

2010-02-08T18:32:00.000-08:00

Today I woke up to a ground covered in snow. I had work at 6:00 A.M., and the living room next to my bedroom looked so bright I thought I had overslept. It felt almost miraculous, until I called my manager and found out I had to be at work anyway. I was only there for a few hours, but we were very very slow when I was there. I got sent home, and the store ended up being shut down so that Nic could stay home as well. It was a great day. Nic, Tristan, Veronique, and I all chased around the dogs, who were confused as all get-out about why the snowballs dissapeared when they hit the ground. We have two dogs, one big fluffy dog that loves the snow, and one tiny skinny dog who is a nervous wreck, but imitates the big dog. They both ate a significant amount of snow.
I finished knitting my first scarf, made of wool from Cora (the name of the sheep). I bought this wool at the Sheep and Wool festival in New York. I can understand now the addicting properties of knitting. I like having something to do with my hands, and it feels like you are always working on a project in a good way. I wore my new scarf today during Nic, Tristian, and I's epic walk to waffle house, where we ran into the guy that got my dad into some trouble not too long ago. The scarf is a bit short, as I typically like longer scarves, but it very thick and warm. I feel proud. I am going to get some more yarn and move onto project number 2. Which I haven't decided on yet.
All in all, today was a beautiful day, although the snow is turning into slush and ice. I'm about to enjoy a cup of tea with Malvern honey. This day is only getting better.

Call for Supplies and Funding

2010-02-06T10:24:00.000-08:00

I am spearheading, alongside my husband and Mindy of the Our House shelter, a new cooking and nutrition program for the month of February and March. Here is my call for supplies and assistance. Help us out!

I am currently seeking assistance with a new program at the Our House shelter geared at children and youth ages 7 to 19 years old. The program, entitled “You can cook too!” is a weekly nutrition and wellness program targeting at-risk children and youth. The program is a two hour volunteer-led program with three main components. First, youth at the Our House shelter will learn basic nutrition and meal-balancing. Second, each recipe will be discussed within the context of its origin, nutritional value, and cultural significance. Third, the at-risk youth at Our House will have an opportunity to learn a new skill (cooking), as well as enjoy a delicious meal that they created themselves.

A minimal amount of supplies and funding are required for this program. We are asking for small donations of either supplies, cash, or grocery store gift cards to help support these weekly programs. All donations are tax deductible and a tax receipt for all donations, supplies and cash alike, will be provided upon request. Thank you for your consideration, and I hope that you choose to support this new Our House program. Every donation, small and large, will help contribute to the nutritional well-being and skill level of at-risk youth in Little Rock.

Needed Supplies for the “You can cook too!” Program:

Cleaning supplies and kitchen necessities:
Rubber gloves (20 pair)
Ziplock bags (Gallon sized)
Clean coffee cans with lids
Paper towels

Fresh Food/Perishables (Needed Weekly):
Eggs
Milk (Powdered, condensed, and fresh)
Cream (Fresh)
Butter
Basic Vegetables (carrot, potato, yam, onion, cabbage, greens, tomatoes)

Non-Perishables (Needed Weekly):
Flour
Corn Meal
Sugar
Baking Powder
Yeast
Salt
Rock Salt
Pepper
Italian Spices
Garlic Powder
Oil
Vinegar
Cocoa Powder

Specialty Foods (Needed for last week of February's Black History Month lesson)
Cassava
Plantain
Corn Meal
Vanilla Extract

2010-01-30T10:34:00.001-08:00

As of today, I have been married one year. I feel great!

Chimps make movie!

2010-01-25T08:19:00.001-08:00

The first ever all chimp made movie will be on television soon. YOu can check out a one minute clip of it here on this website. Chimp movie!!

Haiti

2010-01-19T20:41:00.000-08:00

I am so incredibly depressed and sad over the earthquake in Haiti. The death, pain, and agony the country is enduring is so painful; I could not even begin to imagine what it feels like to have lost a family member to this horrible disaster. If someone without a religion can pray, then I am doing it. This event makes me feel guilty for I am able to blog and sleep comfortably tonight while others are dying under rubble, and I can do nothing about it. I feel quite powerless; I wish I had the qualifications [and the money] to get on a jet plane and start assisting people. Every major event that results in a dire need for medical attention is inspirational in a sick way; I need to learn how to provide emergency medical care and I need to learn how to get to where it is needed most. I feel like I was born to serve this world, and when I am stuck in a position of helplessness (i.e., I feel unable to help), it sends me into a combination of sadness and intensely motivated. Give me a few years, world. After the Peace Corps, after several years of full time volunteering, and after a few more years of school...I will put on the shoes that I've been waiting for for some time now. And these shoes won't come from TJMaxx.

Bad news!

2010-01-13T21:53:00.000-08:00

Really bad news! First, Miep Gies, one of my all time heroes, passed away. She was the beautiful woman who protected Jews and saved Anne Frank's diary during WWII.

Today, I come home from work to discover that Jay Reatard (a mere 29 years old!) has died. This amazing punk-rocker-Goner (if you will) made me cry with his high energy redemption of his songs prior to the Pixies show I attended not too long ago.

R.I.P., loves of mine.

He was supposed to play this show...oh, what a creepy poster.
Beautiful, beautiful.

2010-01-06T22:15:00.000-08:00

Well, folks, they wanna feed me cornbread and molasses...but I've got my pride.

On that note, Nic and I have watched part of the Bob Dylan documentary, No Direction Home, and I've got to admit it: Bob Dylan was an adorable young adult. I can't say that for most musicians. Typically I find the music incredibly attractive, but neither the nose nor the haircut. Dylan had it going on.

work and more 38 second book reviews

2010-01-03T10:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was another day at work, and I am definitely getting the hang of all there is to do around that joint. My workplace actually has some good defining principals and hires good people in general, so if you ever want any good coffee, I can hook you up with where to go (so that'll be either Heifer International or Java Roasting Cafe). The beans are roasted right in Hot Springs, which is awesome, and the owners are great people.

But here's the thing with blogging: by sheer virtue of rattling on about my day or whats on my mind, I break all of those internet rules designed to protect your identity. Eugh. But I've got to blog, yo. Once one has gotten into the habit of blogging, one can't stop. This is the public version of the mind's cathedral (see prior blogz) and I find it valuable to keep it up.

But now, the long awaited book reviews.

Onion John by Joseph Krumgold. Too much baseball. I couldn't get past the first twenty five pages, but it's supposed to be great. Try it, you might have better luck than me.

What The Songs Look Like by Various Artists. I spent hours with my headphones on looking at this beautiful beautiful book. It's the perfect combination of two of my favorite things- the Talking Heads and artists from the 80s.

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. Another supposedly great classic I had a hard time with. One formulaic story element, cliche, and debunked stereotype after another. Valuable perhaps at another point in anthropological history, but not today.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. This incredible text is, no joke, every single book I've ever read smashed into one. If you can think of a subject, it's probably mentioned or directly addressed. I highly recommend this eccentric ride through a strange soul's life. P.S. this soul would have been strange even if he wasn't middlesexxed.

Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. This nonfiction book about Dr. Paul Farmer is a combination of inspirational, beautiful, and frustrating. Although Paul Farmer is doing great things in the world, I feel that him and I would have severe personality conflicts (38 second mark over). This dude talks junk about foreigners in English right in front of them, then goes on crusades to help them. He seeks wealth and health for the impoverished, but insists that his lowest paid workers should work overtime without compensation. Farmer does great work, Kidder presents interesting read, and although I am inspired by and proud of Farmer, I am glad I don't have to work with him. Ophelia Dahl plays an interesting role in Farmer's life. This text also provides a great insight into the functioning of the World Health Organization. It's seriously just a personality thing with Farmer. Don't let my knitpicky things keep you from reading this book.

Alright, it's lunchtime. Huzzah!

Back in Little Rock

2010-01-02T08:35:00.000-08:00

Well, folks, I've been back home now for some time and things are business as usual. I had a good Christmas in Malvern as well as up here in LR. I got a job at a coffee shop fairly quickly, and am getting part time hours. It's not bad, and the coffee shop is closed on Sundays, so I've always got a day off. Generally, I want to actually get to the Kyrgyz Republic and get out of this damn waiting period in my life. One major problem with not being in school or working at a rewarding job (thanks Heifer and AmeriCorps) is that I feel like I'm rotting a bit. Sure, I've gotten some reading done, but I read anyway. I had a dream last night that left me with the distinct feeling that I need to get back in school ASAP, be it as a teacher or as a student. I need the routine of education. Education is such a great routine. One is constantly filling one's brain, reviving neural connections or creating new ones, and finds oneself frequently challenged. My daily routine now is hardly challenging, and it can be quite boring. And for me, being bored is not the best of ways to be. Why, boredom for me is about as bad as stress- it can lead to depression, stomach problems, and back pain. Especially when trapped at work, when all there is to do at work for the purpose of relieving boredom is wiping down tables for the Nth time.
Ok ok, in spite of that, things aren't that bad. I had my first Russian lesson, but the guy that volunteered to provide Nic and I with lessons ignored me for two hours and gave Nic a lesson. The kid that was supposed to teach us turned out to be extremely sexist and a bit materialistic. Needless to say, I may not have a second one, and will more than likely just stick to the stuff provided to us by the Peace corps. While I do have an interest in learning Russian, I do NOT have an interest in being blatantly ignored for two hours in a coffee shop. I know I am not chopped liver, and refuse to be treated as such.
I got a new cook book as a Christmas gift that I completely love. I have cooked a few recipes from it and they were awesome. My hands still smell like German meatballs, which consisted of very small amounts of very strongly smelling things as well as a combination of three different animals. These meatballs were the tur-duck-hen of meatball world. They were a combination of cow, bison, and anchovies. Although the texture of the meatballs was very soft and light, they had a very strong and indistinct taste. Just a few days ago Nic and I made pierogis from scratch, which, as it turns out, is extremely time consuming. Pierogis are basically a polish dumpling that is boiled or fried, and stuffed with beef, cheese, or potatoes, then served with sauerkraut or cottage cheese. First, I made the dough, rolled it out, cut it into little rings, then made the stuffing, let it chill, stuffed and sealed each pierogi...it took a few hours to make them from start to finish. I have a newfound respect for Polish grandmothers everywhere, as well as a greater understanding for the appeal of pierogi making machines.
New Years was pretty chill. I went to a party very briefly, but the party struck me as bad news. It was a bunch of really young kids basically screaming "arrest me arrest me!" I understand the urge to have a good time, but geez, man, there were some blatant illegalities that people were bringing a tremendous amount of attention to. It was not a boat I wanted to sink with. Folks, if you're going to party, at least put minimal effort into protecting yourself and your peers. So Nic and I went home and chilled with Nic's family, which was pretty good.

Sometimes I feel like I must be getting old over here. Or at least am really getting grown up.

And that's alright.

Living Gifts, etc

2009-12-14T06:59:00.001-08:00

Hey Folks (yes, Ya'll have been upgraded to the status of a proper noun), this past weekend at the farm was the Celebration of Living Gifts. Formerly, Overlook did an annual Living Nativity; The Celebration of Living Gifts is the replacement for this living nativity, and shall become an annual event. Basically, I stood outside in the cold or inside of a barn and watched little kids marvel at farm animals. There was this tiny star-shaped child, 2 verging on 3 years old, who had her mind blown by everything. She was perplexed by the piglet (whose face was bigger than her whole body), bewildered by the buffalo (whose foot was bigger than her whole body), and astonished by the alpaca (who was terrified of this little girl). This marathon watching of little kid's reactions to creatures ended with me spending the last twenty minutes or so playing with the director's daughter.

There's snow on the ground here. We had a bit of a snow storm a few days ago that put maybe a foot of snow on the ground. It's rained some, snowed some more, and frozen a few times since then. Nic says walking on it is like walking on a giant creme brulee- I feel like it's like stabbing a Hobo Joe's with a fork, and you are the fork. What does this tell you about our backgrounds?

Anyway, in a few days I will be back home. Nic is at the dentist getting his first real cavity filled (I'm so proud of him!), and later on we are going to go christmas shopping. And then we pack. I'm going to cry, I think. I've come to depend on these animals for comfort and entertainment, and I've come to love the people here. This place is a place worth missing. I'm a bit tired of being uprooted, though; I'm ready for the two year stint in the Kyrgyz Republic. That's just enough time to get comfortable and stay comfortable. Three to four months is the time it takes me to get truly, really comfortable in a new place. I look forward to having a job and living a life that extends way beyond those three to four months of adjustment time.

2009-12-08T08:01:00.001-08:00

David Byrne and a brass band doing Social Studies . Practically perfect in every way.

2009-12-07T14:34:00.001-08:00

Interesting enough concept: the ability of humans to hack their own brains

Even more interesting: the new technology based meaning of the word "hack"

Oh, how language evolves. To hack one's brains back in the day surely meant to chop them apart; put an axe to a man's head and have a field day (oo, another phrase with an interesting evolution).

To hack one's brains now is to control your own thoughts and, primarily, sleep patterns, or induce vivid hallucinations at will. WHAAT!

Da Pixies, etc!

2009-11-28T13:49:00.001-08:00

Hey folks! I got back from Boston last night around 12:30 A.M. and Boston was great. I checked out the Boston commons and several old cemeteries. There were tons of chubby squirrels in Boston Commons that were used to being fed by people, I think. I saw one and approached it with intentions of taking a picture, and the little creature came right up to me and swiped around like he was waiting for me to drop whatever precious morsel I had. I didn't have anything to feed it, but man was it cute. I ate a bison burger which actually really upset my stomach. It was from a fast food health food joint, which sounds like a bad idea anyway, but in practice it's even worse than one might believe. Their menu had things like "unfries" and hamburger wraps. Hyper processed health food isn't any healthier than hyper processed versions of anything else. Either way around, I enjoyed the buzz of the city quite a bit. I went into a Macy's to piss on the corporate machine (a.k.a. use their facilities) and was met with crowds of screaming girls. Low and behold, the musician AHMID was there and signing autographs. He was signing photos, shirts, and people's faces. Some girls were standing outside and having pictures of their faces taken, with signatures on them. Last night was also the opening night of the Nutcracker at the Boston Opera House, so the whole block was decked out. Macy's (I guess??) had conducted some christmas event that was fun to encounter. A crowd of people had gathered to eat popcorn and sausage and watch the stage. People were singing and their was a countdown of sorts to the blowing up of a Christmas cannon, which shot red and gold glitter all over the streets. Of course, I walked up two seconds too late to be a part of the crowd, but I was on the outskirts. Perhaps an outsider might have mistaken me for a crowd member that had decided to turn around before the crowd parted and created sidewalk traffic. Anyway, the theater was cool and the crowd was great. There was a definite Jay Reatard and a definite Pixies crowd; there were cute punkers, working stiffs, and students of all shapes, sizes, types, and genders. My favorite audience member was this adorable Asian lady in her early to mid fifties. She was thin, tiny waisted, and about 5'2 tops. She had a bold haircut cut right at her chin, and her hair was still dark rich black. She was wearing a tight black dress that buttoned down and big jewelry. AND she was totally rocking out the whole time! Adorable! There wasn't too much dancing from the audience at first, but by the end of the show it didn't matter. Jay Reatard played a mixture of his old singles and things I had never heard that sounded like his old singles. It was extremely fun to see, and I was so happy that I actually cried during the first few songs. I had forgotten how emotional it is to see live versions of things that one has immersed oneself in during times of emotional fragility. The Pixies played the entire Doolittle album plus random B-sides and a few smash hits. The guy sitting next to me tried to start a conversation about Fight Club, and how awesome Fight Club is, and how he hopes that they play that song from Fight Club. He was a bit stiff, but fun to talk to. He complained about having to pay $39.00 a month for his health insurance.

The Pixies had their stage set up with four glowing orbs that changed colors to match the video they were playing in the background. They had goofy/artistic/interesting videos to match all of their songs except for the encores (there were two!). My favorites were for Crackity Jones, Into the White (ok, technically part of the encore), and Bleed. Crackity Jones, if I remember correctly, featured Hispanic looking clay puppets that danced along to the music. Into the White actually didn't feature a video but was instead an eerie combination of smoke machines and bright white lights. Bleed was incredibly simple; the video was cartoon blood dripping down in beat with the music, and the four glowing orbs were red and moved up in down in sync with the bloody cartoon. It was so simple but perfect. Silver featured a black and white view of the desert (or I suppose a silver view of the desert), Tame featured a bunch of legs, La La Love You featured cartoon hearts running around chasing each other, than catching on fire. Some of the songs just featured long mugshots of the Pixies looking at the camera laughing, smiling, and nodding their head to the music. Kim Deal was the only person that spoke the entire time, but she was witty and silly. The Pixies had all gained some weight and were a bit round. There was this funny guy behind me that kept yelling things like "KIM DEAL IS MY SUGAR MOMMY! I LOVE YOU KIM DEAL!!! PIX-YIES!" He also yelled, not sung, but yelled most of the song lyrics.

But yeah. It was a lot of fun. Thanks, Nic, for the awesome Christmas present, and thanks, Ashley, for letting me borrow your car to get there. But did I mention that I got ripped off on parking? I got to Boston early in the day and ended up having to pay 28 bucks for parking. Oi vey! Next time, it's the train for me.

Today!

2009-11-27T07:53:00.000-08:00

Hello Folks! Today is going to be quite an exciting day. After the great Thanksgiving yesterday (where I ate delicious foods ranging from Black Russian cake to rabbit), I went and chilled around a small fire with Nic and a few volunteers, then went to bed early-ish and woke up this morning for the following excitement: The Pixies concert is today!

And so I shall be going to Boston and checking out the city and then going to the Wang theater where I shall listen happily. I'm excited!

38 second book reviews

2009-11-23T14:28:00.001-08:00

Well, folks, though this farm livin' occupies alot of time, I, fortunately, have been able to spent tons of time reading books that I've been meaning to read for some time. Here are my reviews and recommendations, each meant to occupy a mere 38 seconds of your time (or less).

House of Leaves:
Mark Danielewski's, Ivy Renfro's, or Johnny Truant's. Crazy blind guy writes book about movie that doesn't exist with gorgeous mental visuals. Buy a used copy and write in it. Or draw in the blank spots.

Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man by Fannie Flag: Little girl moves to city of weird-os, works in a diner with the eccentric fam. Taxidermy in Mississippi, homosexuality, and high school popularity. I loved it, and you will too.

Fried Green Tomatoes by Fannie Flag: Lots of stuff going on during the Great Depression, today, and all of the times in between. Non-traditional family in Alabama cooks fried food and feeds government food to railroad-centered shantytowns of sorts. Old women, fat women, angry women. Read it.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen: Polish kid joins the circus. Three people dead before the book even really starts. Super entertaining. Rent it from the library, but don't buy it.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien: Well, what do you know, it really is a love story! I was a trainwreck after reading this. Borrow it from an English major, as any studious one is bound to have at least ten copies.

The Best American Short Stories 2005 by Lots of People: Eh. A lot of crap with some gems. Inspiring in the sense that it makes you believe that you, too, can write. A lot of rabbits. Steal it blatantly. Would anyone stop you?

I love being out of college because it means that I have time to read things that aren't school related. It feels GREAT.

In the process (reviews coming soon!): Middlesex, The Good Earth, Onion John, What The Songs Look Like

Also, WATCH THIS VIDEO : Please?

The Pixies

2009-11-21T13:28:00.000-08:00

Well, folks, I sure do have some exciting news! As an early Christmas present, my (wonderful) husband agreed to buy me a ticket to THE PIXIES AND JAY REATARD concert! The concert is this Friday, and oh man oh man am I excited. One, I am not the type of person to go to expensive concerts... but if I were to go to just a handful of expensive concerts, this would be one of my top choices. It's in Boston, which is a gorgeous city full of history that I can spend hours wandering around. I am going to this concert alone, which is, in some ways, a really interesting mental kickback to those (not-so-long-ago) single days of concert hopping. Without thinking or regard to the bands that were at a show, I would walk/drive/bike to the nearest house show/pizza place show alone with full intentions in meeting some generous stranger, sharing a cigarette with him/her, and dancing the night away, beer in one hand and water bottle in the other. I feel comfortable going alone and standing up front and banging my head because of those times when bands would play in my house, when I was a teenage metal head, when I was a grungy oily 18 year old runaway whom, as it turns out, boys had crushes on (it took me years to figure out that people may have liked me in high school after all- hindsight). I've listened to the Pixies since I was afraid of people and have continued to listen to the Pixies since I started loving people. And the best part is: I know I'm neither special nor alone in this respect. Tons of people love the Pixies. And hopefully they're the type of people that won't mind a single smiling goofy stranger in their midst. And why, might you ask, would I be so excited about this Jay Reatard bit?
The Pixies have been there through angst and the realization that there isn't that much to be angry about after all. Jay Reatard came into my life just as I was realizing that I wasn't too old to be pissed off about things, big and little alike. I can dance in my room and I can be an adult, too.
Long story short: I'm excited and I hope everything works out as smooth as silk. Or at least close. I'm picking up the ticket at the box office the day of the concert.

How to better relate to 14 year old boys that may or may not be in your tour group?

2009-11-14T12:36:00.000-08:00

So, in which countries does Call of Duty take place? Are any of those countries represented in the global village?*

* = Actual conversation

2009-11-14T06:38:00.000-08:00

Say, aren't slightly angry and annoyed posts always a bit funnier than run-of-the-mill here are the basics about my day posts?

I sure hope so.

This morning for chores I fed two pigs, or tried to. One of the pigs is in a barn so of course that pig was there. The other pig, Petunia, has figured out how to get out of her pin in Appalachia and then walks over to the compost piles, and, quite literally, pigs out. And we have huge compost piles- taller than me, wider than a car. 10-12 feet tall, 30ish feet long, and 20ish feet wide. Hog heaven.

Here's why I care: When I went to feed Petunia this morning, her pen was empty. Of course, I dumped her food in the bowl then immediately went over to the compost pile to find Petunia, who was, get this, asleep in a huge pile of onions. This pig was asleep in a huge pile of food. And it took me 20 minutes to convince her to leave her oniony heaven and get back home. This pig is already too fat to breed!

That's like me breaking out of my home, sneaking into a cheesecake factory, and falling asleep in a huge vat of cheesecake filling. Or asleep in a bowl of wet cereal. Or asleep in a vat of melted chocolate. It's just gross.

Lord, pigs are nasty sometimes.

2009-11-06T06:11:00.000-08:00

I know it seems like I've been talking about nothing but peace corps lately, but really, other stuff has been going on. We had a great Halloween party here at the farm, and at some point in time I actually do plan on posting pictures. We mostly dressed up as animals here from the farm, or as personifications of animals. I was a goat.

Well, that was a quick diversion, now back to the peace corps thought!

As a direct consequence of the gear shifting resulting from my reassignment as an English teacher, I need to start re-gathering goods and supplies that I will need while overseas. The most important things: Professional looking cold weather gear and CLASSROOM SUPPLIES! I will more than likely be sorting out what I have and what I need here on this blog.

Which means that I will be spending the next couple of months hunting down the perfect english grammar book, the perfect russian-kyrgyz-etc dictionaries, and classroom sets of various books, short stories, and dictionaries for the purpose of assigning homework, having an english language book club, and stocking a small library to refer to as I tutor, teach, and get taught. Now, most of these things I will more than likely just carry with me, but some things, like the sets of books (omfg, I will finally get my chance to teach about the Diary of Anne Frank, lord knows I've read it enough times). I will be teaching a wide range of ages, but I would prefer to stick to young adult literature or even children's literature just because I know I learned German better via children's lit and young adult's literature.... but we'll see how the collecting goes. Luckily, many paperback classics and children's books are available and thrift stores and yard sales for extremely low prices, and I won't have to feel guilty about leaving them in the Kyrgyz Republic because I know 1)that they will probably get used and 2) that they weren't a huge financial investment. If all else fails, I can always order ten copies of a good man is hard to find from Dover....

Oh well. Any suggestions for teaching guides, materials, textbooks, or books that I could obtain multiple copies of for the purpose of teaching with?

Thanks folks!

Ivy R.

Update!

2009-11-03T14:03:00.000-08:00

Nic and I accepted our positions in the Kyrgyz Republic! We will be teaching English in the secondary education setting, and there is also the possibility of us teaching at a university. Nic O and Ivy R, university profs? Not too early to dream after all! We've got to do some funny stuff that we didn't have to do in Benin, like bring copies of our diplomas, transcripts, and awards to satisfy those that will wonder about our credentials. We will also have to dress professionally every day. Like, suits and long skirts professional. Also, it is expected that married women wear scarves in some parts of the country. I look forward to enjoying this new culture. Oh wow oh wow. I'm pretty pumped.

Also, the volunteers here at the farm threw me a surprise dinner party which was great. I got a tractor cake (oh how I wish I had photos of it!) and we had a great pasta dinner with two different sauces, both vegetarian and both delicious. Thanks, Overlook, for the great dinner.

Long story short: Things are good. We'll be heading back to Arkansas December 17th for good. We will be leaving for the Kyrgyz Republic in March.

Birthday and Peace Corps

2009-11-02T14:52:00.000-08:00

Today I turned 24. It feels pretty great! Nic took me out to a restaurant in Spencer, MA and it was pretty good. I also sort of got a birthday present from the Peace Corps- Nic and I have been assigned to the Kyrgyz Republic and will be leaving in March. Initially, Nic and I were to be going to Benin, but now we've been reassigned to a completely different region of the earth. We will both be English teachers, but opportunities will be given for us both to branch out. Here are the pro's of this new assignment:
1) An incredible level of comfort. We will more than likely have electricity and water, and there are less problems with theft in the Kyrgyz Republic than in Benin. It's more like we have "real" jobs in another country and less like we are doing the stereotypical hippies in t-shirts Peace Corps act. In addition, HIV will not be a major focal point of my time spent there. This is a great source of comfort to some of those very near to me. We're going to have furniture and an electric heater, supplied to us by the Peace Corps.
2) We're going to be learning Russian. RUSSIAN.
3) We'll both be teaching English. Teaching English in the Peace Corps in a country like the Kyrgyz republic was actually what I expected from the Peace Corps when I first decided that the Peace Corps was my post-college plan. I wanted to go to an Eastern European country where I could utilize/experience my history degree and my German studies degree. Though this is not an Eastern European country, the country was formerly occupied by the Soviet Union and is largely Russian with a German minority. The country is gaining independence and the Peace Corps volunteers in this region have the chance to engage in the historical (and largely peaceful) transition from an occupied country to a strong independent nation. It's a fantastic capstone to my college education.
4) It's the Kyrgyz Republic! Every time I talk to someone about it, I'll be able to contribute to their knowledge of geography.
5) The country is gorgeous. It's largely mountainous, and waking up to mountain peaks and blue valleys is amazing. I've only experienced it fully in Taiwan, but it's completely refreshing. Even if classes don't go well, the mountain is unmoved and the waterfalls continue to flow- it's soothing and provides a sense of unity with the earth.
6) We have the possibility of being placed in either a rural area where we would be building yurts and riding horses or an urban area where we will be riding bikes and living in a family compound. Both rock.
7) Religion has no major play in the function of the society or the government. During the occupation of the Soviet Union, state Atheism was pushed. Currently, varieties of Islam are growing in the state, but in general, one is not likely to be judged by their faith and one can politely reject attendance of a religious ceremony if one is truly uncomfortable without loosing their social status (but, to be honest, I will likely attend a variety of religious ceremonies. I love religious exploration, though I am myself without a particular religion).
8) I love to try new foods and liquors, and man oh man, the food is mainly cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and other root vegetables combined with a variety of tomatoes and meats. It sounds rich and delicious. Plus, the country, like Poland or Russia, is "toasting" centered. I am going to get to try all sorts of traditional drinks. Oi, vey, but my liver!

But, in spite of my excitement, there are just a few downsides.
1) I would like to go to medical school. My initial placement provided a very direct foot in the door for medical school. I will have to work much harder to involve myself in the medical community in this region. We'll have to see how this works out.
2) Nic and I have the same job, which could be a potential source of conflict. I doubt it will be, but it's still a concern.
3) The packing list for this country is the exact opposite of Benin. Nic and I bought all sorts of clothing articles expecting to be in a warm tropical climate. Now, we're going to be in an icy snowy mountain range. They recommend bringing several pairs of heavy boots for hiking in the snow, warm turtle neck sweaters, a cold-weather sleeping bag, a laptop, dvd players...things that are a) snowproof and b) technologically advanced! For Benin, we bought solar chargers, crank radios, and linen clothing to keep cool, as well as sandals to wear year around. Oh man. It's so incredible how different the lists are.
4) We have to quit Heifer early. This sucks, long story short.

In general, I'm excited and energized, though on some level I feel like Benin was a better suit for us. It's going to be a great thing in the long run. But in the meantime, Nic and I have alot of empty time to fill. Anybody have a job they could offer Nic or I that begins in late December and ends in March? How about a paid internship? I've got loans, ya'll...

Also: We haven't accepted the position yet, but expect to either tomorrow or the day after. And once this happens, I will breathe out and jump up and down and scream and be so totally happy. In the meantime, I'm remaining rational and weighing things.

SEEDS, etc

2009-10-28T13:40:00.000-07:00

Well, folks, I better warn you up front- no photos today! We here at the farm just finished with our multi-day SEEDS program, an educational day program where large numbers of students (100+) experience as many elements of the farm as they possibly can! They eat a meal in the global village, learn about rotational grazing, milk goats, play children's games from other countries, romp through the garden, eat some delicious organic veggies...you name it, we've tried to figure out a way to get kids to experience it. Though it was incredibly busy and a bit stressful, in general, it was a lot of fun. It was a nice change of pace from our normal programming, but also a bit more chaotic than our normal programming simply because of the sheer numbers of people involved.

I am currently eating a delicious leek soup composed of excess leek pie filling (left over from a delicious leek pie experiment), some extra milk, potatoes, and a couple of spices. Tonight, I plan on undertaking a second leek pie experiment; this time, I plan on adding some salted meat (probably cubed bacon) as per a request by a fellow volunteer, and tossing in a potato or two. Also a possibility: the addition of parsley or black pepper. I dunno. I'm excited about it, though. We've got tons of organic leek from right here at the farm.

On that note, it's freezing up here. I've finally ordered my winter boots, hopefully they will come in soon and fit well. Shower time!

Turkey killin' time

2009-10-22T15:09:00.000-07:00

Today I was feeling much better and decided to go to work. All in all, it went fairly well. We had the Seeds program today and I was conducting some simple games in the Education barn. The exciting/interesting part of the day was the turkey processing which myself and several other volunteers undertook. We were given a quick lesson on how to take a turkey from livin' to eaten', and then were left alone to get to it. I didn't have the courage the slit a turkey's neck myself, but I did do everything else, from degutting to gland removing to feather yanking. Two things about the entire affair were quite shocking; one, the incredible temperature of the turkey's core...it was hot, uncomfortably hot, and two, the deep rich red shade of the animal's blood. I mean wow. It's so red and real that it's surreal, so intense and in your face that it's like a cartoon. It was a very trippy experience, especially while half loopy with infection and half dizzy from a full day's work. I'm learning so much here.

Fun with a sugar pumpkin

2009-10-20T17:20:00.000-07:00

Many hours later I am still feeling congested and worn out. I guess this means plenty of time to blog. I read a huge chunk of house of leaves today, about 130 more pages, and man, that book is getting intense. The literal confusion within the book itself, induced by ridiculous footnotes, bizzare formatting, and a lack of an identifiable author, dramatically contributes to the terror of the house present in the novel.
Last fall and winter, when I was studying abroad in Graz, Austria, I discovered the magic of cooking with pumpkins. In Graz, pumpkins are a great fall staple, and a wide variety of edible gourds are sold in grocery stores all over the place (by contrast, generally only sugar pumpkins are sold in AR as edible pumpkins, and the rest are sold as decorative). I learned to cook a wide variety of pumpkins that I had never even seen in the United States in an assortment of ways, ranging from simple stir frying, to mashing, to delicious hearty sweet and savory pumpkin soups. I still, however, encounter difficulties cooking with this unfamiliar ingredient, as my only prior knowledge of pumpkin cooking was making pumpkin pie from a can. However! Last week I baked a sweet pumpkin bread (but I didn't bake it long enough, it was doughy in the middle and has condensed down to thick pumpkin pudding of sorts), and I had about three cups of leftover pumpkin puree that was about the consistency of applesauce.

And I was hungry.

So, after a little time researching uses for pumpkin puree and pilfering through my kitchen, I concocted this great pumpkin sauce. It's based on a recipe that called for several ingredients that I simply didn't have on hand, so I did some improvising, and it turned out so well that I want to post it here so the world can enjoy it. It's a pumpkin cream sauce that should be served over pasta.

Directions: Boil a sugar pumpkin in as little water as possible. The pumpkin should be peeled and cut into small triangles, then water should be boiled and poured over it. Once the pumpkin is soft, blend the water and the pumpkin together to make a nice soft applesaucy puree. Should definitely not use water any higher than the pumpkin, which should be as low as possible in the pot. Measure out about three cups of it for this pasta sauce. Take the rest and eat it, or boil it with maple syrup, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and about three apples to make a wicked good apple butter.

Pour that pumpkin into a pot, put it on the stove, then turn the stove on to medium low. Keep that stuff warm! Add black pepper, salt, cloves, and sage to taste. Also add one bullion cube. I used veggie bullion, enough to make six ounces. Worked out perfectly. In the meantime, dice three cloves of garlic and one medium sized onion. Sautee the suckers in some olive oil, butter, or your oil of choice. Once they are nice and soft, put them into the pumpkin mixture. Stir it all pretty well, and keep stirring. Once you are comfortable with the consistency of this sauce, turn the stove off, and add about half a cup of heavy cream. Stir well, and serve immediately over nice warm delicious pasta. Shave some white cheddar or other mild-ish cheese over the top of the pumpkin sauce.

Better than from a box, I swear!

Alright, back to reading.

2009-10-20T05:22:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm sick. For the first time here in MA. I was scheduled to have a group today, but I will not be with them. I feel terrible! One sure sign of illness for me is the sudden ability to really feel gravity. My arms are heavy; my muscles like butter, unable to drag my body from place to place. My spine, pulled into a solid arch, can no longer win the epic battle with the spin of the earth for the right to hold up my bowling ball skull. My throat is full of pain, my face is full of snot, and my stomach is full of nothing (soon to be full of hot tea). Lordy lordy. Today, I spend the day wrapped in blankets, reading horror novels, and writing in my journal. Tomorrow, I will hopefully have regained enough strength to hold my head up, flail my arms wildly, and guffaw at the scum that thought it could take me over.

Wool festival and SNOW!!!!

2009-10-18T13:31:00.001-07:00

Hey ya'll! Last night I returned from a busy and exciting day at the RHINEBECK SHEEP AND WOOL FESTIVAL IN NEW YORK! I learned/saw so many awesome things. This, of course, will be explained in photo. In addition, it's snowing like mad here in Rutland! It's cozy and nice. All of the animals are huddled together with the exception of two goats, Ren and Stimpy, who have taken advantage of the lack of peeps policing the farm and were eating carrots from the Peru gardens in the snow.
There were tons of tiny felt animals that people had made from wool and then sold as either toys or sculptures. They were adorable, but quite a bit more expensive than I could afford. I would love to one day be able to make these, or at least be able to afford purchasing them as gifts. These things leaned towards the toy side.

Yarn galore! There was so much beautiful hand spun yarn, sold in big hanks, balls, or skeins, in a wide variety of color. I bought myself one hank of chunky colorful yarn to make a big scarf for the winter.

A fine example of the many variations in yarn available.

An overview of one of the many many buildings that were filled with yarn, wool, spindles, etc etc etc.

Since I am not a highly educated knitter, I attended this festival primarily for the sheep, which I ended up learning a lot about. The entire experience encouraged creativity on so many different levels, as wool is extremely diverse and useful. I shouldn't take for granted the raw wool that I have available to me right here on the farm. I would eventually like to learn to clean and spin (using a drop spindle) raw dirty wool so that it can become something practical and beautiful, like a sweater or socks.

OH MY GOD! There were so many cute animals, like this tiny square bear-esque sheep.

And this very sly sheep.
There was a 1-classroom school building that was on the fairgrounds that was built in the late 1800s. We were allowed to enter the school and check out all of the old decorations and flags. Notice the old halloween decoration!

Here I am knitting on the world's longest scarf project. I knitted a total of 4 stitches, hardly a contribution, but one none the less. The world's longest scarf project was sponsored by the Keep the Fleece program, which is attempting to raise 250,000 dollars for the Heifer project.

Here is their information card sitting on top of several sections of the world's longest scarf.

Here are some more felt animals.

This was an amazing hat made out of felt. This same booth at the festival had all kinds of gorgeous creative hand-felted hats. I would have worn most of them. I wish I would have had the money to purchase this gorgeous crazy head decoration.

Bear sheep!

This woman made this huge distracting hat herself out of, guess what, wool!

There was a featured artist on at the festival who made tons of punny sheep paintings, like this one. Also included in her works: Sheep in the box, Silence of the lambs.

Baby alpacas! They made the same nervous sounds as adult alpacas, except they sound tiny and cute, which is the opposite of what these animals are trying to be when they are nervous. Poor alpacas.

And, the icing on our cake, overlook farm's own miniature goat, escaping the herd, to much on carrots. Have a good one, ya'll!

2009-10-17T02:40:00.000-07:00

Hehehe....also kind of sad... Neighbors thought dead man was Halloween display!!!

2009-10-16T14:13:00.000-07:00

Finally had some time to update the photos! Here is Jen in the Guatemala house roasting coffee as part of the Harvest Festival. The Harvest Festival was a huge success; in the end we had over 700 people come.

Here is a kid checking out the Ghana site, which is Nic's adopted site.
This is my adopted site, Appalachia. It represents Kentucky.
Here are the raised bed gardens at my site.
And the pumpkin seeds roasting over a fire, cooked by myself and the awesome girl scouts!
This ugly deformed carrot came from the Appalachian garden. It grew as a result of overcrowding. It's a bit hard to tell in the photo, but it's actually three carrots that grew twisted together.
This is Emily at our Poland site donning Polish attire. The site represents the Carpathian mountain region of Poland.
Emily cooked us quesadillas one night, and when she cut open the bell peppers, discovered these smiley faces inside of the peppers. Too adorable not to share. Of course, the peppers were grown here at Overlook- I knew we had happy vegetables!
This is my favorite New England weed, the Touch-Me-Not. When you touch the seed pods, they explode.
This is a very curious goat!
Alright, that's it! Hope ya'll enjoyed these photos!

2009-10-16T06:56:00.000-07:00

Well, folks, the snow stuck, and this morning there is a soft dusting of white all over the farm. It's gorgeous and unbelievable! Like I am in Europe again, except I understand people when they speak. I have a long back-log of photos to update and things to talk about. First, things here at the farm have been extremely busy! We had our Harvest Festival, which went fantastic. I roasted pumpkin seeds over a fire with some cool and enthusiastic girl scouts. I had great feedback and talked with people about Heifer's work in the 1st world. Some people come to the farm thinking that Heifer only works in 3rd world countries- we don't, we actually work anywhere there is poverty and hunger. This is something I really like about Heifer. We are also having our Harvest Time program right now, which is a five day program for adults. They come in and learn about all types of cool stuff- chicken raising, cheese making, organic gardening- and are provided with amazing organic meals from the farm. Us volunteers have been eating the leftovers and it's been awesome. Pasture raised chicken and Overlook pork! We've also had tons of groups come through, which is what has been keeping me so very busy these past two-ish weeks. When I have a group that isn't so interested in Heifer, or is not receptive to Heifer's mission, it makes it very very hard to feel like I am doing something that is worthwhile. That's been getting to me a bit, but even in the groups that are not so receptive, there is usually one or two people that are interested, intrigued, and spurred to take action if you will. These one or two people make my job worth it, and I feel good knowing that at the end of their time here at Overlook they are thinking a bit deeper about the complicated issue of poverty and the even more complicated issue of hunger.
Update on the knitting: I have successfully knitted a small rectangle. This stuff is hard!
But! To the photos.

Here at the farm we practice intensive rotational grazing. For an example of how intensive this is, check out these before and after photos of an area grazed by goats and chickens (who prefer to scratch around on shorter grass).

These are both before.

Another before. Look at these buggers go!

Some afters.
Another after. Look at those chickens go to work! This place is currently totally barren, thanks to those amazing goats and chickens and their ability to eat everything. They really keep the farm free of weeds!

I spend alot of time cooking over here to pass the time and relax. Here are some blueberry muffins that I'm really proud of.

There is a small sculpture park in the nearby city of Worcester. It's a toaster van! Is that cool or what?
Speaking of Worcester, I am going to be going there in a few minutes to get some groceries and check out the library, soI do not have time to upload photos of the Harvest Festival. But I did take them, and as soon as I have some extra time I will get back online and upload them for ya'll to check out. Take care everyone!

2009-10-15T18:59:00.001-07:00

Well folks, it's snowing. It's also October. It's pretty cool, actually. But I'm not feeling so hot tonight. And it feels nice to admit that on the internet. Hey internet, things are a bit stressful! In addition: I'm learning to knit and continuing to read House of Leaves.

2009-09-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

Hey ya'll! My computer ended up getting completely destroyed by this virus, so I have lost everything...all of my files, music, photos..long story short, I haven't used my computer in a few days because everything is erased..it really sucks! I have taken a few pictures to put up here, but I've been so nervous about putting them back on my computer...oi, vey. I think I got the virus from the network here, but I am not sure...either way around, sorry for the lack of posts.

This weekend is the long-awaited Harvest festival. To prepare, I have been working on my garden hella alot in the Appalachia site along side fellow volunteers Jason, Maggie, and Nic, who have been extremely helpful. The garden and site look great, and I will post pictures up here in a few days when it is all decked out in Harvest festival apparel. My garden looks wonderful, and the entire site is pretty clean. I will be doing pumpkin seed roasting in Appalachia and eventually Fufu making in the Ghana site.

Nic and I have really come to love it here. The fall is gorgeous, and I have been pressing the prettiest maple leaves that I have found to mail out to a couple of friends and family members. I have never seen such a slow, gorgeous transition from green to red.

Nic and I have contacted Peace Corps and his medical deferment has been lifted; we have decided that we would like to stay here during the spring season while we wait to be placed. I am interested in a Farmer Chef position. As a Farmer Chef, I would be a part time chef and a part time farmer/gardener. I will learn about organic cooking, canning, and various methods of food prep, and also learn about large-scale gardening. The prospect of staying through the spring is extremely exciting. I can't wait until things are a bit more concrete.

Quote for the day about Heifer: "Only poor people work here," from a student that apparently wasn't getting the Heifer message. This statement is completely false- people from all types of incomes, backgrounds, and places work at Heifer. Oh well. Can't win em all.

2009-09-22T07:12:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I have updated due to massive computer problems. I've been very frustrated the past few days because I have not been able to listen to any of my music. I grow afraid for our future historians. On my little laptop, I have seven plus years worth of papers, articles, photographs, essays, poems, and journal entries. I have been saving digital copies of my own writing that it is meaningful, ranging from intros to short stories and slam poems. My writing in paper-bound journals has slowed significantly in the past few years, and when my SLR was stolen, my photography switched to fully digital. Now, I find myself on the brink of losing all of this if I don't figure something out. I initially rid the computer of this virus that it's caught, but it has seeded itself in my laptop and is reproducing like dwarf rabbits in the spring. I can't open the computer in safe mode, and have a hard time opening exe files, can't get to the command prompt, or use the task manager. Oi, vey.
It has inspired me to do several things: write in my paper journal FIRST. Sure, it takes longer to write everything out by hand, but it will take a fire to destroy my reflections (not a computer program). I bought a new SLR and I plan to take more film photos. Film photography is quickly growing outdated, but bitmaps and gifs have already grown outdated, and I don't imagine jpegs are much further behind. Also, I have a new-found since of understanding for record collectors. Most of my life i have tried to minimize my personal possessions, but now I wish I had made an exception for records. Even when a record is scratched or bent it will at least still try to play. Records maintain a sense of weight, presence, and permanence that CDs and MP3s simply do not. All it takes is one malicious jerk to destroy my entire (digital) music collection, or one accidental fingernail scratch to ruin my favorite CD.
In short, eugh. I need to become myself at 15 again, i.e., an eccentric Luddite who left a paper trail for herself to follow back home in the event that a bit of malicious behavior threw her off course. 20th century, here I come.

2009-09-16T06:55:00.001-07:00

This link is from the At War blog at the New York Times news website. Although the article itself is pretty brief, just knowing that these small comfort items are available in surreal form to soldiers in Afghanistan brightens my day a little bit. Check it out. On that note, I recently finished The Things They Carried, and it was incredible. I really appreciated the writing style. I also enjoyed the way each of the stories wound circles around each other, and that any kernel of truth, if there even was one, was morphed into another kernel of untruth by the next segment of the text. Fantastic quick and emotional read. I've also started Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver, who wrote The Poisonwood Bible.

Boston

2009-09-12T10:02:00.001-07:00

Well, ya'll, it's blog update time again, and this time I am backtracking to that time that several volunteers went to Boston together. And I think I shall tell the story in photos.

To get to Boston, we went with the train. Here is Sam waxing at the train station.

This is the first picture I took when we got off of the train. My favorite thing about Boston is how it is an incredible combination of super old and crazy new architecture.

This red brick building was sandwiched between two snazzy new skyscrapers. It had an intense feel to it, like it was the lone building that had a landlord who wouldn't sell out, or the only place in the middle of downtown that was legally acquired through squatting. Check out the faces that appear wheat pasted across the top of the brick before the rows of windows.

Arthur is hiding in this picture.

This is an awesome dragon sculpture that was build into a set of stairs.

Everyone had this gleeful beer hunting look at the brewery that we went to visit, the Harpoon brewery.

See?

There were quite a few giant lobsters outside of restaurants in Boston.

All of this beer at the Harpoon brewery was being wasted. This was all trash. WHAT-A-WASTE.

This was a quote from a memorial sidewalk that I really enjoyed.

This building was epic. Look at how tiny the people are and how huge the building is. The memorial sidewalk was surrounding this area.

Another example of the many fine lobster statues in front of the many restaurants in Boston.

In short, the trip was fantastic. Boston is a great city.

2009-09-11T05:51:00.000-07:00

Today the weather was supposed to be a washout. Today, the weather IS a washout! It's freezing, grey, and rainy. What a trip. We are doing our colonias meal today. Colonias is my favorite site and I really look forward to the meal, although the weather is most definitely not ideal in any way. Also, some coals got on my boots during a fire and burned a few holes in my waterproof boots. They are currently patched with duct tape, but now I do not have a single pair of waterproof shoes. I am going to start wearing bags around my feet.

It is our last day of training today. Yay!

Great days

2009-09-09T13:57:00.000-07:00

Hey ya'll! The past few days have been GREAT but busy. I am going to write a few scattered thoughts here and bring them all together over the next few days. I have a lot of things to talk about which I'm pretty excited about. Here they go:

1) We had a huge potluck dinner where everyone made a ton of great food. Later, we had a crepe night. I am going to post pics of the potluck, and ramble excitedly about the crepes. Unfortunately, I did not photograph the crepe event.

2) We have a new calf that was born just sometime monday night. It is a shaggy red little bull that has long back legs, way too long for the cow itself. It's a gorgeous calf.

3) A group of several volunteers went to Boston and explored a bit of the beer culture. Pics of this!

4) We've continued training. I gave my first tour yesterday as part of training with a fellow volunteer. I think it went pretty well, but I am a bit worried that I talked too much. A huge part of the tour is listening; I need to work on listening and asking better open ended questions. I'll get it!

5) And, the most exciting of all, we've moved the goats in to an amazing place on the farm where they are basically eating out all of the brush. It sounds boring, but these goats eat so much brush that they are completely exhausted at night. And the brush gets eaten like crazy mad. They are going to be there for several days, and I am going to post before and after pics once they are done in the area. But here are some other pics in the meantime.

This is an adorable fellow volunteer shredding the carrots for what turned out to be fantastic vegan carrot muffins, baked especially for the communal dinner by a veg volunteer with good tastes. I had them for breakfast the next day and they were still good then.

I made a potato bake for the communal dinner and this was the before picture. Notice the purple potatoes from the ranch!

Sam and Nic teamed up to make fantastic quiches.

This is the girl that made the vegan muffins. Look at all those muffins! She filled that tray plus an industrial sized tray.

This is a cute frog on the farm that I took a picture of. The frog was about the size of a quarter. This picture is for my grandma!

Alright, the next post is going to be all pics from Boston. BUT! This is a cupcake with an armadillo on it that I found in Boston for my mom.

Global Village and Training

2009-09-04T09:20:00.000-07:00

Hello all! The past few days have been incredibly busy and interesting. First, Nic and I did our overnight experience in the Global Village. I stayed in Tibet and Nic stayed in Peru. Instead of being assigned/given our food and trading amongst each other to eat, like the Global Village experience in Perryville, we are given money and then go to market to buy products. As migratory people, of course, us Tibetans did not get too much to eat. Basically, we had some black beans and less than a handful of rice. Our dinner consisted of bean water, basically. It was incredibly bland. I ended up spending the whole night just with those of us that ended in Tibet. We set up two fires and spent several hours storytelling, listening, and talking. Everyone crashed out around midnight, but during the middle of the night, our big fire went out. I was freezing, so instead of just sleeping outside (where I had started) I ended up sleeping inside the yurt. I was the lone in-yurt sleeper, but it was pretty alright. The moon was full, the sky clear (I saw two shooting stars), and the grass was tall, wet, and soft. I awoke to rooster's crowing. In a funny twist of some kind of fate, Nic and I were both pregnant. My baby's name was Monteque. I don't know the details of Nic's GV experience, so I can't write about it here, but he had a great time. Overall, I think my GV experience was interesting.

We have also started haying here at the farm. The farm makes all of its own hay. They cut it, let it dry for several days, then all of us volunteers go out for the baling and stacking. I am not sure how many bales we did yesterday, but around 180 was the estimate we were given. It's amazing how heavy bales of hay get when you are constantly lifting, moving, throwing, and pushing them for an extended period of time. After the process of baling and "barning," I was so insanely itchy and sneezey. It was the first time in my life I think I actually had real hay fever.

I have also learned quite a bit about the livestock here and the farm itself. I asked Stephen's question about where our camel is from, and as it turns out, Abu is from a petting zoo. He simply got too big for the zoo that he came from so he came here. There used to be a camel, Jasmine, that was actually the offspring of the Perryville camels, but it has passed away. Now, we only have the petting zoo camel Abu.

In addition, I have learned that Overlook itself is a public water system. They are registered with the state and everything. All of our water comes from our own wells, and it is not chlorinated and does not contain any chemicals. It is pure clean natural water that is minimally processed. It tastes delicious, and really different from Arkansas water. I feel lucky. The farm is completely independent in terms of it's meat production, water, eggs, vegetables, and has its own sewer system. The place also has some composting toilets.

Nic and I went to trivia night at the local tavern and had a blast. Our boss loves trivia, and so we are all getting pumped and going out to represent the trivia team/s. Hard questions, though. I think Nathan and Noah would be amazing at this particular type of trivia because the clues are songs, and usually the name of the song/band name/lyrics will help you figure out the answer to the trivia question. If one is a music buff, one can get most of the trivia questions correct or close.

So here are some pictures!

There was a pretty awful ice storm here a while back so there is damage all over the farm from the storm. This is a picture of some of the damage, but I think it looks pretty cool.

Here's a photo of a gorgeous stranger sitting on the wooden back porch of my house. The house I live in is pretty awesome.

This is the inside of the animal barn. It's harvesting time, and the gardeners have been busy harvesting garlic and onions. Here are some of the garlic cloves hanging in the barn to dry. The smell is intense. The heads of garlic are huge and the garlic itself is a beautiful pearly yellow-white. Everything that the farm grows is completely organic.

2009-09-01T19:13:00.000-07:00

Oops! Earlier today, I updated without including some very important and exciting events that occurred on the farm. First off, today we ran the goats- which basically meant that we all lined up in a column and ran and screamed so that the goats ran within the confines of the human column we created. It was pretty exciting. A few goats got out of the column and led the rest of the goats off track, but we got them all in the pen eventually. The second event was the inter-personal chicken catching contest, where I decided that it was my goal to catch one of these friggen chickens that constantly roam free around the Global Village even though they aren't supposed to. I went out during a break time and chased them around, but every time I got close to one, I got these gruesome images of myself being attacked by the entire mob of chickens. Thanks alot, Legend of Zelda. I'll never catch a chicken at this rate. I need a counselor!

Training

2009-09-01T09:50:00.000-07:00

Hey ya'll! All of the new volunteers arrived and we have finally begun training, which feels great. Nic and I have done every chore, which ranges from cute things like giving the guinea pigs new water to intimidating things like throwing bales of hay to ugly muddy water buffaloes. I've been getting pretty familiar with the Global Village and the farm itself. We've continued to get some produce from the Heifer gardens, which rocks, and yesterday I made pizza dough with Heifer eggs. Before that, I baked a chocolate cake with Heifer milk. The point of this is that we are provided with fresh raw milk from goats and cows and fresh eggs as long as they are available. This is a great benefit that myself and several others are very excited about.

There are a great number of volunteers here that enjoy cooking and do-it-yourself type stuff, and the group of volunteers as a whole seems to get along really well. We've organized one communal meal a week, potluck style, and Thursday nights are trivia nights. Boy, how I wish Noah R. was here. That guy is a trivia master. Our team would win every single time. Either way around, I feel great about everyone here and feel privileged to be on the ranch right now.

One of my fellow volunteers has a friend that left for Benin in July, and she was apparently called at the last minute and frantically dragged into the program. I wonder if she replaced one of us?

In the meantime, here are some new photos from the farm.

There are two miniature goats that run wild on the farm and have taught all of the other small goats how to escape from the barn. Here is one of the two escape artists and a trainee. One of the barns is in the background.

This is a photo of our local beer. As it turns out, beer is extremely fricken expensive. Even though we can buy beer on Sundays, it isn't exactly worth the prices. Beer is much more reasonably priced back home. Either way around, this stuff is pretty good.

The farm dog, Pudge, in some fields behind the garden.

This is a fellow volunteer walking our prized camel, Abu. You just get out a leash and walk him like you would a dog. Another fellow volunteer predicts fistfights for the privilege of walking the Camel. Funny thought.

Fellow volunteer Sam took these two pictures of the stone walls that are in the woods behind the farm.

Big Creatures

2009-08-28T12:31:00.000-07:00

Today I worked quite a bit in the garden. We've got all kinds of great fruits, vegetables, and berries. We have apple trees, raspberry bushes, leeks, purple bell peppers, many varieties of bulbous blistering red and purple heirloom tomatoes, eggplants... together, Nic and I picked about 8 pints of raspberries and a peck of green beans, yellow beans, and purple beans. Most of the meals in the cafeteria are made with ingredients directly from the farm, including meat, eggs, milk, and produce.

I also rode on the back of a tractor. But that's not the point of this post. The point is that I found a huge caterpillar outside of our house. We have this same variety in Arkansas, but they are much smaller. Check it out!

Here it is with my hand for scale...

And here it is on its own. It trashed around a bit, nibbled on my fingers, and attached itself to my bedsheets. I think it was really afraid I was going to eat it. Sorry, bug. Didn't mean to scare you.

Settling in

2009-08-27T10:01:00.000-07:00

Nic and I are currently on day 2 of our work at Overlook Farm. Yesterday, we learned the animals at the farm, did some feeding chores, and learned how to milk the goats! On our first day, we were already milking. It felt great! At the end of the day some of the girls that live in our house took us around Rutland and to a grocery store. A cool girl that works here named Farmer Jo dropped off a bag of produce which contained a zucchini about a foot and a half long. I think I will try to cook it soon. Here's the food situation: Breakfast we are on our own for, but typically the cafeteria overcooks for lunch and dinner, so we get the leftovers from the cooking. It's awesome stuff. Last night, I had grilled cheese, vegetable stew, and kale + mashed potatoes. Sometimes there are communal dinners, sometimes not.
Today Nic and I worked in the global village kitchen. The global village here is quite a bit different, with regions such as Colonias (small Mexican colonies in Texas) and Poland represented. After we got done in the global village kitchen, we went to work in the huge garden, where we met the awesome gardener and spent some time working with her. The gardener loves to make food from scratch, which is great- she is a bread baker and was a vegan as well, so she knows alot about substitutions in baking, which I always had trouble with as a vegetarian that preferred not to cook with milk. The more people we meet the more excited I get. I also got my name tag today.
The work is a good, exhausting, dirty type of work. We don't get our staff shirts until Monday, but I can handle that- in the meantime, my clothes are browner than they were before. Nic ended up taking a short nap during lunch, and I know for sure I am going to sleep well tonight.
And we did finally get our writing addresses, so if you want to write to either Nic or I, drop me an email/facebook message and I will send you our address. Here are some of the pictures I promised last post!

This is our house, Camel Lot, and the big rock that is in front of it.

This is the big red chicken house. Notice all the different varieties of chickens there are in this field. There is also a winter-chicken named Snowball that is covered in fuzz, even his feet. It's pretty cute.

The beautiful ferns that surround the farm and fill up the woods.

This is from the inside of a hut made of vines that is located in the Global Village.

And here is a picture from the outside of the same hut.
Well, that's it for now. Take care all!

Arriving at Heifer, etc

2009-08-26T12:12:00.000-07:00

Hello all! Nic and I have arrived safely, albeit late, in Massachusetts at Overlook farm! It is gorgeous here. We arrived extra late, at 2:00 AM, and didn't get to take a tour or anything until this morning. We slept pretty late, and then several people that lived in the house met us and took us around. We are staying in a place called Camelot/Camel Lot, haha, because there is a lot in the back with a camel in it. A guy named Al picked us up and told us all about the farm, etc. I have only been here twelve hours and I already smell like a farm girl. It's pretty amazing how quick you pick up the smell of animal. The focus really is on farming and agriculture, and it is radically different from Perryville. They do not eat the rabbit, but they do have the kids move the animals from pen to pen, feed the goats/chickens, do milking, take care of rabbits, etc. They do not have a week long global village event, but instead, a two day global village with a wide variety of houses. Here are some pictures of my husband petting animals.
Pig

Goat

Red Calf

Iamou the Inbred Baby Bull. Iamou= I am my own uncle.
Well, we have our first round of chores in about fifteen minutes so I do not have time to upload any more pictures. I took quite a few and will be putting them on this blog periodically. It's so gorgeous up here. There are ferns everywhere, tons of very friendly animals that are used to the attention of people, and great folks. Our home is beautiful and wood on the outside, I will put a picture of it later. We are actually the first of the fall volunteers to arrive, but we will be starting work anyway. I am happy and excited right now!

Habits that used to be worthwhile

2009-08-06T12:37:00.001-07:00

I find myself quite often coming to the realization that I am, in fact, grown up, and that time, in fact, is going faster and that, in fact, my metabolism is slowing, and that, in fact, the future that I had been planning for is here, and it isn’t exactly what I thought it would be. I spent many years planning for the so-called future without really realizing that the future would instead be a culmination of many presents, and that if I spent all of my free time planning, instead of developing some skill or talent, I would learn only to plan. And what I have I discovered? I’m good at planning. And that there isn’t any thing wrong with being idle.

Every once in a while it will hit me that I’ve become a full fledged creature of the habits I had, and not the habits I intended to have. I haven’t quite gotten in to the habit of finishing things, and the habit of being relaxed I’ve avoided entirely. What an interesting thing to realize. I hereby plan to spend less time planning, and more time chilling. It’s all too easy to get caught up in organizing abstract things. I need to waste more time, or learn to waste time in a way that contributes to my value/worth/interest as a human being. I’m getting there.

In the meantime, I was sitting a table of people during my last couple of days at Future Builders and a discussion of clothing/style came to be. Many of the people liked the 80s, liked the 50s and 70s, and hated the 1990s. Grunge. Tommy Hilfiger. Plaid. Flat tennis shoes, Swatch watches, Nirvana t-shirts, off-brand cigarettes. Diablo, Warhammer, Magic the Gathering, and anime. Delia*s. AIR shop. And the consensus? Everyone in that room with the exception of myself and one other person hated the 90s. My initial response was to hide my Flik-Flak watch.

I had a Pop-sickle t-shirt, a yellow web belt, and lime green Tommy shoes back in the day. I had red pleather pants and white leopard print jeans. I wasn’t stylish, but I wasn’t too out of touch, either. I enjoyed 90s style, and still do, but it’s toned down. I’ve become practical. I’ve grown up. I've started wearing dresses.

Update

2009-07-20T15:14:00.000-07:00

Today I had work at a Boys and Girls club close to Nic and I's old house. We did a group presentation and it lasted about an hour. Fairly typical. It went pretty well. Future Builders is ordering some more tests so that we will be able to resume testing soon.
Nic and I also confirmed that we will be going to work at Heifer Ranch in the fall! We will be in Rutland, MA, working as educators. We will also be getting up early in the morning to milk cows and feed chickens. In addition, we will have to invest in some water/snow proof workboots upon arrival... =) We will be there from August 25th until December 17th.
Yay!

Good and bad things

2009-07-19T15:51:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately, Nic and I were deferred from the Peace Corps for three months because Nic was recently injured. This means that we will not be going to Benin, and because there are not very many departures in the winter, we will likely not be going to any country with the Peace Corps until the spring. Initially, I suffered a lot of grieving and heartache. I was not at all happy about the fact that I would be idling. I am not the type of person that handles the waiting game very well; I like to have my future events relatively structured and planned. I like knowing that I will have a job in two months, etc. However, Nic and I decided that we should open our ears and eyes to jobs that we can dedicate ourselves to for several months.
In the meantime, I am working for Future Builders, Inc, a non-profit organization that does HIV/AIDS outreach. The group functions largely on grants, and actually, our focus groups right now for HIV/AIDS testing/counseling is the homeless and youth. As a huge perk, we Future Builder volunteers were trained by the Health Department to be certified HIV testers/counselors. We're certified, and have little certificates that we can show off in the event that we would need to, or someone doubts our words. Right now, though, these certificates are at Future Builders. One of the best things about the job is getting to talk to people; people have some incredible, smart, cool, quirky, painful, sad, and angering stories to tell about their lives. It is amazing how strong some people are.
And, after Future Builders, Nic and I would like to go to Heifer Ranch. We have applied for Education positions and right now are going through the formalities. We are waiting on some forms that we have to fax back in so that we can get a background check, and then there is some stuff we have to sign, and, finally, we need to buy plane tickets. I get paid on Thursday/Friday, and, if ticket prices stay close to the same to what they are, that check should cover my ticket and at least part of Nic's. We'll see. I hate worrying about money, but I spend a lot of time doing it. It seems hopeful and exciting. I am not going to get too excited just yet about the Heifer job, because I fell in love with Benin and then was not able to go. I am going to wait until I've got the confirmation in writing and on the phone that we're good to go, and until we have the plane tickets in our hands and our bags packed, before I truly get excited.
But believe me, when I get excited about this, I plan on jumping for joy. I am going to learn so much.
And! We will be there during harvest season!

Hello World!

2009-06-27T19:30:00.000-07:00

Hi! My name is Ivy and I will be leaving for staging on July 22nd. After staging, I will be spending a few months in training, where I will hopefully get a good grip on French. After training, I will be sent off to Benin to be a Community Health Advisor, with a focus on infant/maternal health and HIV/AIDS. I will also be hopefully working with women's organizations and girl's clubs...Can't wait.

I am also very excited to meet my fellow volunteers!