and then i like to fall down

Tue, 13 May 2008 20:59:24 GMT

normally i'm very busy and i don't do things like sit in front of the internet for hours just trying to find something to do. right now, that is exactly what i've been doing for the past week.

i have started just looking at menus of vegan restaurants online for fun. i have become obsessed with not just wedding planning, but reading cheesy wedding planning websites, i just discovered the nest which is a cheesy newlywed website. i check wonkette all the time. i play spider solitaire until i can't handle it anymore. i'm a workaholic who can't handle it when there just isn't any work to do.

i'm basically done for the semester. this weekend is going to be the typical arizona weekend of going to the pool, multiple bbqs, and probably hiking. james' brother comes into town on sunday and we get to hang out with him until i head back to va on wednesday. i'm also moving out of my house this weekend temporarily into james' house then when we get back out here, we'll be moving into our new apartment.

we are going to be living for free on campus in an amazing two bedroom apartment because james is going to be a hall director. we are not going to have to deal with james' roommates and their inability to function as adults anymore. no one is going to throw recycling into our trash and vice versa. no one is going to leave the lights on for no reason or spill chicken juice all over our refrigerator. i'm so excited.

i have applied for a new job for next year, but i kind of feel like i won't get it. who knows though. I'm supposed to hear from them in the next couple of days.

i've been thinking a lot lately about what i've done since i graduated from college since my brother just graduated. when i graduated, everything seemed so final. i felt like i was going to africa forever, and it really was just for seven months. everything i've done since then has been a one year endeavor, and doing a second year of grad school will be kind of crazy. but then i'll be off again. now moving to africa doesn't feel like a big deal at all, i've done it before and i want to do it again. i don't feel like my life is over, i feel like it's just starting. and that's kind of a good feeling.

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 19:20:27 GMT

this is how ridiculous the university of arizona is

"Campus Wide Volunteer Project for local community groups. For individuals who need to perform community service hours for their student organizations, building volunteer hours for resume building, performing community hours for conduct purposes."

this is their description of big volunteer day for the year. there is no mention of people maybe wanting to volunteer to, i don't know, do something good for the community or help other people, now is there??

this is place is ridiculous, some kids here are so privileged that they never saw a poor or homeless person in their southern california dreamworld before they came to college, like actually. now they can't handle the meth heads and general lawlessness of tucson. i guess that's why they all drop out.

i'm glad to say that almost everyone i know here doesn't fit into that stereotype, but walking around campus can get tough. it just makes me realize that as many complaints i had about w&m, i could not have handled undergrad at anywhere less positive, hardworking, and involved. seriously. i thought i was coming out of my tj smart people bubble when i went there for college, but believe you me, that was nothing compared with this.

oh well i can't complain, my classes are interesting and my job is crazy. and i'm going to school for free. so that's all that matters, right?

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 04:28:28 GMT

i live in tucson now. it's in the desert. but the pretty desert where there are lots of cacti and mountains and rock formations. not in the city so much but all around it. it is a neat place to live but really really hot all the time. i'm getting used to the heat but sometimes it's not fun, like riding your bike and getting sweaty sweaty sweaty.

i went to mexico this weekend with some friends. james stayed here so it was a little bit of a girly getaway. we swam in the gulf of california at night when it wasn't too hot and found sand dollars with our toes and drank margaritas and had handstand contests and ate tuna fruit (prickly pear) and cataloged library books during the day.

i am starting working at the somali bantu association where i'm going to be doing esl and other stuff. they are very disorganized but that's okay right. it's my job to help them fix that stuff. everyone who works there seems cool. a lot of handshaking. i can't wait to meet the somali bantu ladies since just the dudes hang around the office.

i live in a big old house with five other girls. we take turns cooking dinner and we like to share and have a chore schedule. mostly i live at james' house and sleep on a king size bed in the laundry room.

and this is my life here. it's wonderful. i am excited to get to know people better and make more friends but i already feel like there isn't enough time. mais, c'est la vie, n'est pas?

in virginia

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 01:50:18 GMT

i am now officially done with youthbuild. except that i have to call tiffany tomorrow at 6 am to wake her up so she actually makes it to summer school. so basically i'm really not done with youthbuild at all. at least i am dealing with it from my parents' air conditioned home.

this week i am stripping wallpaper, painting, and working on redoing cabinets. in between i watch tv and movies off of the on demand and listen to the old school hip hop music station on the tv. related to both, i watched do the right thing yesterday which i shockingly had never gotten around to seeing before. anyway it was amazing and i think i may watch it again tomorrow.

being in va is weird because i have lots and lots of friends here that i haven't made time to see in a while so having 2 weeks left at home is starting to feel like not very much time at all. but it's nice anyway. steff and nilly are coming into town this weekend so i think friday night we'll have a big soiree. then nouveau riche saturday which still kind of freaks me out that gavin is mister superstar dj now. a long way from when i gave him fifty bucks to dj my birthday party and the cops came halfway through and i assured them everyone was of age, ha, but they just gave us a warning.

i like knowing people here but there's no way i would ever want to live here for an extended period of time. the suburbs suck out my soul slowly but surely.

back to reality

Tue, 29 May 2007 01:37:25 GMT

three day weekends are such a tease. they seem like they will go on forever, then you get thrown back into the reality of work and life and blah. i had a good one though. i spent this weekend in virginia with my parents, brother, james, and james' parents. it was a little nerve wrecking for me with the whole will they get along thing. since both sets of my grandparents were close with one another, that's something that i want for my parents and james' parents. beyond the uber cordiality they did seem to enjoy each others' company so that was nice.

i only have 4 more weeks of work left. then i'm moving out of my apartment and philly. i'll be in virginia for about a month minus a trip to maine before i head out to ohio for a couple of weeks. then in august we are driving out to arizona. i'm still trying to figure out how i'm going to fit everything in the neon, definitely a difficult task. i'm kind of floating through all of this, it's hard to believe for me that this is my actual life as exciting as it is. i am really moving to arizona in a few months.

i don't want to go back to work at all. i am so sick of it and my job which at this point i feel like a monkey could do. the only good thing is that moira and i have decided basically that we should go to the garden whenever we don't have any work to do. so that's nice. um and that's it.

a year ago

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 01:25:12 GMT

a year ago today i was sitting by the pool at a hotel in yaounde, cameroun trying to figure out what i was going to do with my life. a year ago people hung on every word i wrote about my exotic adventures in foreign lands fearing for my life as i narrowly escaped certain death at the hands of rebel forces. or something like that, but much tamer.

it's weird how now i can read the journals of my friends who are continuing their service in the peace corps from both the jaded point of view of someone who has lived en brousse and the point of view of the jealous, awestruck american. i am happy for them as they make those small victories and live life in the slow lane, but at the same time it reminds me that i am painfully alone, that even my peace corps friends who understand much more of who i am, still weren't there with me every morning as i swept my yard. they can live like i lived, and they enjoy doing it, but they still don't know what i personally went through living in chad. we all went through it, but it was different for each of us. same with the evacuation. we each handled it differently. it scares me that i'm nowhere near over it. i don't know that i'll ever really be over it. people don't get that. you live abroad and you come back. you get used to both. they don't get that i had a giant part of who i am ripped out.

i think about life a lot in terms of mental maps. i have a mental map of northern virginia and dc, of williamsburg, of new york, of islesboro, of philly. my mental map of krim-krim is smaller than those maps because krim-krim is smaller, but it's so much more detailed because there are people on it. there are my bread guys and the children who call me nassara and the children who sing me the chicken dance song and the drunk man who thinks i'm rude and the crazy lady who picks lint off of james' shirt and it goes on. and all these people i can see and so many more, and i know right now what they are doing and where they are because things hardly ever change. and my mental map is what makes it so hard for me to be here and not there because i know what would happen if i put myself on that map, bonne arrivee after bonne arrivee. and i can't help but seeing myself on that map over and over. and not just for the triumphant return, i replay the mundane walk to school or the market even more. i just don't know how to really deal with the concept that there is some place that i want to be so much, but i can't just go there and even if i did, things would be so different now that i could never stay.

i know how little people want to hear about all of this. even taking the time to mention that we've reached the one year anniversary of my evacuation is treated as overkill. people who want to care still don't know how to. i've gotten good at not talking about chad very much but i still think about it all the time. it is getting better in that i know i will be okay to do the peace corps again after grad school. and i keep busy but it does still hurt. i don't know, it's hard. i wish i could afford to just pay the two thousand dollars and jump on a plane over there to get some closure. i'm saving and hoping and we'll see what happens.

nooorth carolina, throw your hands up

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 15:29:56 GMT

as much as rocky mount can be stifling (big box stores and southern accents everywhere), it's rather nice this time of year. it's been beautiful out everyday this week and while james has been at work, i've spent my days reading under shady trees, watching my so-called life dvds, and gorging myself on tofutti cuties and potato chips. and at night we fall asleep with the window open and spring peepers chirping outside. i love living in the city, but the magic of nature just isn't visible there like it is here. i bike past abandoned houses not blooming lilacs on my way to work. if you didn't have to drive everywhere, i'd be a country girl for life. i guess the solution is to live in a country town where everywhere i need to go is in biking distance.

school is about to get really busy after spring break though. i'll be ready for it, but it's crazy how close we are getting to the end of the year. hence, all this stuff popping up. the final career challenge is next friday, then we have national youth service day and tons of working in the garden time. i'm also excited because we'll be taking mentors and mentees to the cherry blossom festival (which i'm sure doesn't compare to dc's cherry blossoms) and the philadelphia book festival. if students actually come to this stuff, it'll be a lot of fun!

i'm still not sure of my summer plans, i'm waiting to figure out how much i would get paid if i stayed at youthbuild, but in august we'll be driving across the country to arizona! yay for that, and grad school! so i'm going to be studying language, reading, and culture which is great but i'm having trouble trying to narrow down exactly what i want to focus on with that.

did i mention it was nice outside? i'm in love with spring.

current love affairs

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 01:56:30 GMT

-this yummy chick pea, vegetables, and pasta with a creamy COCONUT CURRY sauce that i made. and did i mention there are peanuts involved.
-another chick pea curry thing that was more on the lines of chole with spinach. the most authentic tasting indian food that i have ever been able to prepare.
-the cute skirt i'm sewing.
-heroes.
-that single stream recycling is coming to west philadelphia including the recyling of plastic and cardboard so we don't have to hoard it to take to the recycling center anymore.
-playing text twist old skool style.
-deciding to take yoga.
-weather getting warmer this week.

i wanted to say something nice about youthbuild, but after friday's job shadowing day fiasco, i'm praying something will happen at school tomorrow that will renew my faith in my work life.

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 01:46:11 GMT

i don't post on here very much because i don't ever have much to say. one of my friends just moved to new york and is starting a new job and has a fancy new apartment and i'm really jealous of how excited she is about her life right now. i like my job most of the time. well i like the students at least, a lot of parts of my job i do not like at all. actually working in my position has kind of led me to realize i may do better just being teacher (um why i am not applying for a grad school program that involves getting certified then??) because working at nonprofits means you have to spend so much of your time dealing with the desires of your funders rather than the needs of the people you serve. i don't know, i hope in the dream organization i will one day run, i can do things my way but at the same time, that's probably a pretty unrealistic thought.

now what i really need to do is figure out a way to meet friends as a broke 24 year old who doesn't like going out and drinking. i shouldn't complain since it's not like i don't know anyone, i have a few groups of friends here in philly, but my social life is pretty blah since i can't afford to do anything social. i spend what little money i do have after paying my rent on visiting james which is worth it obviously, but yeah, that's americorps. it's funny because almost even more than when i was in the peace corps i notice all the time how people take things for granted. and i feel kind of icky remembering that i also used to do that.

so i am waiting to hear from grad schools now. i don't know what's going to happen but our top choice is the university of arizona. i'm getting excited about it, imagining driving across the country and settling in a place totally foreign from here with a wonderful man (james declared he was a man today for some reason or another that i think had to do with a plastic pirate ship.) and the mountains. anyway tucson seems like a good place to spend a couple years, then we want to go back to the peace corps and whatnot. so i'm much more excited about the future than the present. there are only 4 months left till he finishes teaching and we can be together, yay.

my life

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 02:41:22 GMT

is my job most of the time. yesterday i got to go on my first tour of an abandoned, fire damaged house. it was supposed to be a potential site for mlk day of service, but there is way too much work to be done in a day. so imagine me walking through a not so nice area (which i do all the time so i'm just providing background here) to this house where we had to pry the plywood covering off the door and bring in flashlights and i really wished i had my hard hat. but they were nice people (it's a transitional home for 3 families) so i'm hoping our construction students can work on it.

today i entertained business executives all day in between the interviews they did with our students. actually it was a really cool thing, and everyone got super hype about it. i'm feeling pretty positive about youthbuild especially students this week. last week they were awful and disrespectful, but they are slowly redeeming themselves in my eyes. so i had to stay after to tutor then i went straight to our community gardening class and i just got home. as i said work is my life most of the time.

i'm maybe volunteering teaching esl now too. i don't have time for it, but i feel like it will be a good experience and fun so i'm going to try to work it in anyway. i guess maybe i should spend more of my spare time having a social life, the problem is i can't afford to have one. that's always the problem. so i hang out on the weekends and a little during the week and i'm cool with that.

at home, i do crosswords!

it's christmas eve

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 20:23:06 GMT

i'm in virginia. it's warm outside, i just raked leaves and now i'm tired. i'm feeling kind of sad, mostly because james is really sick in ohio, so much so that he can't really talk to me on the phone beyond moaning so i haven't had a conversation with him in a day and a half. i hate not being there when he's so sick and i worry about him, also i hate not talking to him because it means i'm full of things i want to tell him but can't, so then i get grumpy. i guess it's good practice for if he goes some place far away over the summer and i can't talk to him. not that i see him now so much, but we talk on the phone way too much.

i'm doing grad school applications. i'm kind of nervous about that but it's okay. i decided today that i'd rather just move to maine and live with my grandmother, but i don't know, i guess that's not really the best idea, it just seems nice. apparently they need someone to be in charge of recreation programs for the island so that would be a good job. and i could take care of her. and james could teach at the school there. but i haven't told him this idea since he's sick.

i'm excited to see some people while i'm home. emily and i cooked dinner last night and watched akeelah and the bee so that was cool. mostly i'm happily apathetic. i'm taking the GREs so i guess i'm studying. i don't really want to go back to real life in philly and work. it's funny how the bubble of nova really does exist, i feel so much like i'm escaping reality when i'm here. i wonder what it would be like if this were my reality. i went to tysons the other day with my mom to get my christmas present, a business suit, something i've never had before and find kind of ridiculous but i guess i need. anyway it's weird buying new clothes, especially clothes i could never afford on my own. i feel very guily about it. one thing i hate about america is the mall because there are way too many choices. i hate choices because i just don't care. it's kind of like being vegan, i will just take whatever is available. when there is so much available i don't know what to do.

james and i saw blood diamond when i was in rocky mount last week. i guess it was good with the message and all, it's hard for me to judge since i don't exactly need convincing to not buy diamonds. situationally it was pretty accurate (especially with the conditions of child soldier stuff.) culturally it was pretty weird (i've never seen so much hugging or public displays of emotion from a west african man in my life.) but i guess it gets people thinking. i am happy with my inherited engagement ring, i have to get it reset or whatever, but it makes me happy.

so i'll stop rambling. have a peaceful happy christmas and new years.

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 00:12:29 GMT

oh NOW i'm worried about the situation in eastern chad.

"I saw a similar landscape to what I saw in 2004 in Darfur," [Mia] Farrow said. "Wounded civilians; some of them have been burned in their huts, others with gunshots. In the hospital, there were three men who had had their eyes gouged out, something that I had never seen in my life before."

ohmigosh, it was similar really??? maybe because you were about 100 km from the border, and it's the same conflict. and it's the same region made up of people from mostly the same ethnic groups and refugees from darfur. i'm really really sad about what's happening in the eastern part of chad right now. i'm not really surprised at all though. i'm only a little surprised that muslims would fight other muslims like that in a place where conflict has historically been muslim vs. christian. it's sad, i almost feel like what's going on is an appeal to be paid attention to when the world's eyes have been so keenly focused on darfur just as the darfur rebellion originally resulted from the lack of involvement/care/anything of the khartoum government in the region. and the sad thing is that violence is the only thing that works to make people on the global scale aware of the conditions that people in chad and the sudan and other sahelian areas live in their whole lives. even a friend of mine who lived in malawi which is one of the poorest countries in the world can't imagine how little access to resources exists in these areas.

anyway i'm saddened and disgusted that it takes people these kind of events to suddenly even try to locate the country i love so dearly on the map. and even more sad that i can't feel empathy and compassion for people in other parts of the world who are suffering quietly because it is so difficult to access that kind of information.

um sorry to rant. fyi if you didn't know, these events don't effect my friends and family in chad because they are very far physically and ethnically removed from the situation. it is possible though that if this becomes a national issue and raises muslim/christian tensions, their safety could also be in jeopardy. life is okay, james has heard from the american school there and i think we may be moving to n'djamena next year!

Sat, 14 Oct 2006 15:01:19 GMT

a habit i developed in africa is eating something all the time until i ran out i.e. when people sent me food, i would eat it for the next week or so and not save it because i found attempting to save foods psychologically trying. usually when i finished with whatever american treat and reverted back to SWORDS (my favorite nigerian fruit flavored hard candy), i was just as happy with that. anyway i was just thinking i do the same thing now (as i polished off the 5th clif bar in 4 days). i won't buy clif bars for a few weeks i'm sure. anyway no matter wear i live i have the same i'm poor, i eat everything i can outlook on life. maybe because i'm poorer here anyway than i was in africa.

speaking of my favorite continent, i've been looking for jobs for next year over there. james wants to teach at an american school, and he thinks i can do the same (i'm barely qualified...i'm not certified, i will kind of have the 2 years teaching experience they want if you count what i do as teaching, but at least i've lived overseas before). i'd rather get an NGO job though, i just don't know about that either because what i've seen so far i'm even less qualified to do. i may just have to do the looking once i'm already there but that of course makes me nervous. i'd actually just rather teach non-american people, but that kind of job is impossible to get from here without actually having to pay money to do it. so looking at the american schools that are hiring at least as of now, i'd say that kinshasa's my first choice. it would be pretty funny to move there actually since, you the DRC is way less safe than chad.

my current employ is okay. i get frustrated a lot by the way our school works, what it values, etc, but i am in love with my students and it's worth it because of that. my biggest complaint is i wish i taught more. i couldn't have really expected to be teaching more, i just miss it. i miss having my class be my own class and the way that it flows when it's just me and my students. i guess i'm a horrible sharer. i mean i love moira and teaching with her, i just get stressed out by trying to create a good balance there. we're taking a class from the horticultural society about how to teach gardening in school. it's fun and we got to take home plants which was good times.

one thing i like about philadelphia is how small it is. barely a day goes by that i don't run into someone i know, and i don't know that many people. so that's nice. but it's way not perfect and i miss a lot of things especially james. so yeah.

my life/a blur same thing

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 23:20:54 GMT

last night i went to training for my second job (teaching entrepreneurship at an afterschool program.) i still don't know when my actual hours are going to be for it, but it should be a fun job that i actually get paid well to do. also i made a friend at the training, this girl who was in the peace corps in gabon. it's not often that you meet people who are is into central africa as you are so yeah, i hope we get to be friends for real.

today i substituted 3 periods of math, we multipled 2 and 3 digit numbers. most of the students kicked ass (which they should because they are going to be graduating high school this year). it was fun times even though math is not so much my thing. then we were supposed to take our americorps class out to do a service project at this super awesome garden/public art place, but we couldn't go because of the weather. instead we had them watch a movie called blue vinyl about the environmental hazards of PVC production. it actually ended up being kind of boring and not the best choice so we had lots of whining. i wanted to show an inconvenient truth instead but it's not out on video yet so yeah. oh and i got my timbs (leather unfortunately, i had no choice because that's what's required on the construction site).

on the subway, my backpack was so full i ended up smacking this girl in the face with it. so then i started talking to her and her friends who when i was telling them about our program they were like, 'we should just drop out of girls high and go to youthbuild.' so then i had to explain why that wasn't a good idea. anyway they were nice girls.

i was supposed to have an interview to volunteer at an after-school program for african kids, but when i showed up there, they were so short staffed and things we so crazy that i just ended up helping students with their homework the whole time. most of the students there are liberians and there's some sierra leoneans too, not any french speakers that i met but i think there are some in the adult program. the man who runs the adult program was so nice, i wish i had more time so i could come help out with that too. but the kids were just out of control, i feel like they all forgot everything that they should know about respect or something. afterwards, we were talking about how they need to get some male staff which is definitely true in terms of actually getting these kids to behave. still it was fun and they need a LOT of help so i'm gonna try and go at least once a week.

um so i haven't really had time to be upset that my grandma is going to die in the next couple of weeks. she's been so miserable the last few years that i really think that this is for the best. anyway i'm going home tomorrow so i'll see her, get to go to jamie's post-wedding reception, and hang out with james.

i'm reading mountains beyond mountains right now and it makes me happy (it's about paul farmer, a doctor who works in haiti). so i'm gonna do that and try and unwind.

checking it out

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 00:35:38 GMT

i had a great weekend in north carolina. we went and saw a neil diamond impersonator and the presidents of the usa for free in raleigh. that was funny. mostly we sat around and hung out and ate and played cranium. on the way, we got to see thom and the newly married(!) alison and robert. come december, i'll be the only unmarried married member of ABX. my friends getting married makes me happy. i am not of the whole wait until you're 30 school of thought anymore. i like monogamy and when you know it, then just do it, i think.

this boy i did not know who was in the peace corps in chad from 2003-2005 drowned this weekend. i am pretty upset about it, but mostly i really feel for my friends who were close to him and his family. it's hard to believe how much awfulness the pc chad family has faced this year, but that's life i guess. i was also really disturbed by news of massacred elephants in southern chad. the pictures were so sickening. all this stuff is making me question not believing in evil. well not matt's death because that was an accident, but why would anyone just want to kill hundreds of elephants? it's disgusting.

anyway school's started and aside from being super busy, it's going well. i'm teaching my first class thursday which'll be fun. apparently i've been appointed computer person in addition to my other jobs. random but whatever, i guess i'm a computer superstar.

i'm on an emotional seesaw right now, but that's cool i guess. and i think i'm getting a cold. biking home in the rain today probably didn't help on that front. now i feel dizzy. i think i'll eat some ramen.

the only thing i miss about college: the activities fair

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 23:55:50 GMT

work is good. mental toughness can be, well, tough. i am looking forward to the end so that i can breathe and the students can breathe. it'll be nice knowing who is in the program and starting school. we've already booked a few service projects for the first couple of weeks, it actually seems like that part of my job is going to be pretty painless because we have some good connections now. after the first trimester, basically we will be designing and constructing/planting our garden. my boss wants there to be murals and mosaics involved in this project too so i'm even more excited. i love murals! and i've wanted to do mosaics forEVer! i'm mostly excited to get to know the students better because i already love them...

i have a few friends, not that many. having a social support network is hard in real life. i don't know, i don't like that about america. i have been hanging out more with the people i work with, some with my roommates, and with erin's friends. james and i have been talking about going back to chad/africa next year. we need to put more planning into it so we'll see. i have a feeling i'll either end up in north carolina or africa next year, both of which are cool with me in different ways.

i'm going to north carolina this weekend!! i'm very excited. i miss james, i haven't seen him in 6 weeks, that's too long. i have a feeling we'll just sit around doing nothing and it will be perfect. his brother wants to go to the beach sunday though so maybe we'll do that which would be nice too because i haven't been to the beach much this summer. mostly i'm just itching, itching, itching to spend some time with my boyfriend. so getting through this week is kind of tough.

i spend more time than ever doing crosswords. i'm still no thom silverstein but it occupies me. i don't really watch tv or anything, so it's like my tv. and that's it.

life, specifically mine

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 01:35:29 GMT

so it's saturday night and i'm sitting in my room, taking a break from finally rereading tess of the d'urbervilles. yeah i am a dork but yes i could be doing saturday night activities. erin and her friends are going out to a nice wine bar or something, but i'm poor, and i can't so much afford to do that. like sometimes people say they are poor, but i am actually, and that's cool because i made the decision to be poor when i took my job, but i guess i didn't realize how much it would affect my social relationships. the average upenn student isn't going to get how little money i actually have, and that there are a lot of things i can't do because i really just can't afford them.

i've been thinking a lot recently, today especially, about how hard it will be to make new friends this year. i love my neighborhood. today i went to the park to buy some peaches at the farmers market, look around at the flea market, and read. i talked a bit with a very nice senegalese man selling jewelry, hadjajas, and calabashes among other things and separately with this annoying activist type white dude talking about african solidarity (in an effort to be friendly, i told him i was in the peace corps. so then he tells me his organization doesn't support the peace corps. i explained my personal opinions on the pros and cons of the pc, but got increasingly more and more upset by this guy who is giving out flyers, attending lectures, and telling me that somehow what i have chose to do with my life/the relationships i've made with actual real live african people don't fit into his concept of solidarity.) mostly though, i just sat, read, and people watched. it was weird because i saw a lot of people who i thought seemed "cool" enough, but then it's like, how would i meet these people anyway? also i'm having a harder and harder time getting along with most people who are my age and supposedly the same as me. actually some of the people i relate to the least are the ones who are socially conscious because i feel like this is fake in many many ways. so yeah, making friends seems close to impossible. i have the people i work with, erin's friends, a few other w&m people, and my roommates, but i just feel more and more different from these people. i guess with people i've been friends with for a long time i can handle these differences, but it's harder for me with new people. and you know, the reason i think it is so hard is not because are different, but because other people expect that we will be the same. when people talk about their experiences and opinions as if they apply to everyone around them, that is the most alienating thing i know.

so other than the fact that i'm probably going to be a giant recluse when i'm not working (okay i'm going to be working constantly, i shouldn't deemphasize that), i'm doing okay. i like my job, i'm going to like it even more when school starts and i'm actually working. we may end up starting a community garden over the course of the year which i'm pretty excited about since urban green space is incredibly important to me. i am going to be babysitting for two families in center city, one has twin 7 month olds and the other has a 6 and 9 year old. today i rode my bike around a lot for the first time here which was nice. i think i'm probably going to start riding to work just as soon as i can figure out if i can keep it inside. i made a ton of chili last night which i'll probably be eating for the next week. it's a good thing i like chili.

i miss chad. i miss james. but i know that i'm in the right place right now and i hope i can overcome the boundaries i feel closing in on me. trying to be a person for the first time in a while is hard, but i guess i'm getting used to it. at least a little bit.

i got my stuff back from chad today

Thu, 03 Aug 2006 22:42:41 GMT

if you're interested, this is something i wrote in the middle of march after an attempted coup (before being evacuated), i think it kind of sums up who i feel about the whole situation even though i had no idea that we would be evacuated a month later.

Last night, after preparing a Mexican feast (guacamole mixed with mashed up beans and tortillas). I turned on “Focus on Africa” as I do every night at 6. Of course, every night, the top story isn’t an attempted coup in the country where I live. Bring cell phone to Kizitot to charge since had actually turned on the generator for the first time in a month or so (it stayed on about 10 minutes before dying again), I asked him if he’d heard the news. He hadn’t but a group of neighborhood men who had just come over for the evening’s causerie had. Finally, they could confirm that I wasn’t hallucinating, that as our lives went on without change, someone out there was trying to take us over. Not that I (or anyone else) didn’t know the country is unstable, but the rebel situation hadn’t made the news in a few months, and then all of the sudden, “attempted coup d’état.” And as much as there aren’t many people who are fans of President Deby (well there’s my host father who has explained to me repeatedly that he can have any job he wants because he belongs to the “partie de pouvoir.” I never ask him what he’s going to do when that party isn’t in power anymore), no one wants a coup.

“If there’s a coup, we well suffer,” says the surveillant of the lycée where I teach, one of the men who have gathered in our yard. I want to remind him that earlier today he and the other teachers explained to me that they were suffering in a conversation about hunger. But I know the answer so I don’t ask. There is suffering, and there is suffering. Hunger, thirst, disease come and go, but war is another thing. And I can’t possibly understand this like they do. I’ve never been hungry or thirsty. I’ve never been slapped in the face by death. And I’m constantly judging Chadians for being aggressive, petty, and corrupt, but maybe I would be that way too if it was all I knew, if it were necessary for my survival.

I tell the men if there’s a coup that I might have to leave. That, they don’t understand: “Il faut rester ici.” The impersonal structure of that comment makes me realize that they aren’t just talking about me. We all must stay here. This will pass like it all passes. They joke that we will have to go fight, me too, they’ll give me a gun and I’ll go to the border to keep the rebels out. And if Chadians laugh at me now, I can’t imagine how much they’ll laugh at me dressed up in camouflage, toting an AK47.

This morning, I do what I do every Thursday morning. I sweep my yard. I turn on the radio, a rarity in the morning, itching for more news. The government has shut down cell phone service in N’Djamena (and the whole country is the rumor later at school.) Our cell phone tower hasn’t worked for approaching two months. N’Djamena loses service for two days, and its world news. If I had service, I’d call up the BBC: “Our top bulletin, the Kumeur antenna has been broken for six weeks. Becca Silverstein, her friends and family, and whole lot of Chadians would really appreciate it if Celtel got their asses down here to fix it. Thank you.” So, all I can do is wait. The situation doesn’t seem that serious. Hopefully, they’ll turn the network back on because I was planning to go to Kélo to call home this weekend. I’m sure my parents are more worried about this than I am.

Here, life just goes on. Kids still show up to school to learn and at my house to ask for candy. This afternoon, we’ll play soccer. There was a much larger crowd than normal outside the Mayor’s office today. I thought maybe there was an important communiqué from the government. But no, just the normal prosecution of a sorcerer. Nobody’s glued to 24 hour a day CNN, nobody’s stocking up on toilet paper and bottled water. They couldn’t if they wanted to, and what good would it do? So, I’ll just go to the market because I have to eat. I may not be hungry, but I sure feel like I am.

Wed, 26 Jul 2006 01:21:43 GMT

i got a free bed off craig's list! it was kind of an ordeal actually because apparently there are like fifty million people a day trying to get free beds but i won this one because i was prudent enough to put my phone number in my email. and it's pretty nice actually, clean not disgusting.

yay me! yay girl who didn't need the bed! yay internet!

stuffz

Mon, 17 Jul 2006 02:34:59 GMT

so i found a place to live in philly, i'll be living with these two nice girls, who have both done americorps and are into service and bookstores and cooking and other things i like. i'm also living a block away from clark park (which is really cute and has a farmers market twice a week!) and a fun neighborhoody coffee shop. i'll only be about 5 blocks from erin's apartment. and i found a place where i can do ESL tutoring (that services a pretty african population) that is connected with a catholic church in the neighborhood so i am probably going to try going to church there too.

right now i'm in fayetteville at steff & clarke's house. we've had a fun weekend, we got to go to raleigh and see eddie and have free drinks, and i'm now well versed in the goings on at fort bragg. i've never quite understood how the army works so it's enlightening. we got to see james in rocky mount on friday and we will again tomorrow, so that makes me enormously happy.

i'm excited to spend the next two weeks getting ready to move and wrapping up things in nova. i need to go craigslist hunting for free furniture (or if you have any i could have, that'd be nice) and i want to paint some stuff i already have. it's hard to believe that i'll actually be working again soon since it's been about a year since i've worked a 40 plus hour week, wow i know that's crazy.

hmm and that's it. my life is the most tame and least crazy thing i know, but i like it a lot. yep.

i haven't been very livejournaly lately

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 01:48:37 GMT

but right now i'm bored so yeah, i can't think of anything better to do.

i think i'm fatter than i have ever been before. no i'm not actually fat, but i was really skinny when i got back from africa - like clothes don't fit skinny. now i keep eating chips and it's disgusting. so i'm going to start actually getting exercise so i will be normal again. my tummy sticks out over my pants and i don't like it.

i got letters from my family in krim-krim the other day. they made me sad but happy at the same time. it's a huge deal because there is no post office there or anything so they had to go way out of their way to mail them to me. they hate the peace corps for kicking me out and miss me more than i am capable of missing them in my need to be a productive member of society. it's so weird to read them saying they cried and stuff (which may not actually be true) because that's so not okay in chadian society. so i hope they are exaggerating, but anyway we are family and it's really hard to lose your family no matter where you live.

i went to ohio for a week, it was really fun, but now of course it sucks having to leave james for the millionth time. he may be teaching in arizona so it looks like we'll have to wait another year for real together all the time life. in ohio i went to lakes and parks and learned what geocaching is and watched too much tv and ate a lot of mexican food and snuggled. and i guess i missed a little bit of rain here.

i remembered how much i like some music yesterday on the greyhound trip home. i thought i didn't like music anymore really but i guess i was wrong. i still need to find somewhere to live in philly. i need to call some peoples tomorrow about that. it's hard because i can't go look at places until after i go to the beach with my family next week.

um i'm really poor and i need to save money so i can buy a plane ticket to africa. yeah i don't even know what i'm going to do, hopefully i can make some money on the side tutoring. and i am excited to start my job too, i'm getting so bored of not working.

at least there's always things to clean. i am totally serious that i am excited for having children and staying home with them and cleaning and playing and such.

yeah!

Fri, 26 May 2006 04:49:25 GMT

so i am moving to philadelphia at the end of july. my job starts august first. i'm going to be a community projects leader at youthbuild philadelphia charter school which means i'm going to be working with 18-21 year olds who are working to get their GEDs teaching a service learning class and leading service projects. also tutoring and mentoring and committees and afterschool activities and other fun stuff. i'm really excited. i need to find somewhere to live on my measly americorps earnings, i have a possible roommate though which is exciting.

my road trip and time with james was a lot of fun and silly and i got to see a lot of people i really missed. i like being in love minus the impossibilities of location. we know how to do long distance already from chad, but that doesn't make it any more desirable. so i'm trying to help him find teaching jobs near me, but that seems pretty unlikely due to the state of pennsylvania's excessive love of background checks.

right now, i'm going to start volunteering doing ESL tutoring for refugees, work around the house for money, and look for paid tutoring/babysitting jobs. i have a lot of trips to take in the next two months though so it's gonna be a tight squeeze. whatever, i'm poor and i will deal with that. i'm glad to have a good part of notorious around to hang out with but it's weird that though i know so many people in nova/dc, i totally avoid the great majority of them.

overall i'm remarkably well-adjusted for a displaced person, i think. and i'm going hiking this weekend!

Mon, 08 May 2006 21:11:09 GMT

so i am not really any closer to having my life figured out, but i'm now leaning in the direction of philadelphia. it isn't here, it isn't new york, it's stil a city, it's not far away, it's fun. okay i've only been there like twice, but i like it okay. and there seem to be a lot of jobs that really appeal to me there so that's the main reason. and i love erin.

so later this week, i'm going on a bit of an excursion. first to ohio...jefferson and kent...probably the most exciting places in the world, or so i've heard. so that's thursday to monday. then monday i'm going to new york (city). i'm staying there till thursday when i will go to philly, probably stopping to see cami in jersey on the way. then saturday i will come home. i'm excited. i get to see a lot of people i haven't seen in too long (months) and some i haven't seen in a time that feels a lot longer than it should (2 weeks). maybe after this trip, i will be better capable of focusing on things. well i'm hoping i can get some interviews for when i'm in philly, and if i could get a job soon that starts later, like august, i would be totally content with that.

but then i realized that many jobs i've seen start like august 1st (americorps stuff especially) and it would suck because i had this plan to turn going to jamie howe's wedding into a weeklong vacation and see steve and stuff because i've never been to california before, but i realized that is impossible if i will have just started working then. oh well what can you do.

it's crazy how quickly i've turned into this totally american girl. i called james "dude" on the phone today and he laughed at me for saying dude. also for saying "qualms." and my dad told me this story last night about one time when i was 19 months old, i was trying to get out of my car seat and i said "i need assistance." and now i just say dude.

so new life plan that will probably change tomorrow

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:08:40 GMT

i'm thinking this summer will be spent not working or working temporarily some place just to make a bit of money. hopefully driving across the country with brian and james. going to weddings. then if i could find a job that starts in the fall, i would even be willing to teach, that would be perfect.

then next year, i want to start grad school to get a masters in...social work! i'm really excited by this/don't know why i never thought about it before. i would probably do a concentration in youth things. then i will maybe be more qualified for some sort of job.

being a social worker always reminds me of the 'hey officer krupke' song from west side story. i also like this plan because it involves not working yet. but i don't know, we'll see maybe i need to work. plus, it doesn't involve figuring out where i'm going to live the next year. but i'm still leaning in the direction of atlanta. we'll see.

so yeah

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 08:54:34 GMT

tonight i fly to zurich. tomorrow i fly to dulles. i don't want to come home, but i don't want to stay here (in cameroon) either. my choices are less than stellar so i'm going to just do the american thing i guess and find a job. i hope i can find a job. i would like a job that involves working with refugees (preferably african, preferably children). if you know of such a job, hit me up. i don't care about location. well i do but i'm still trying to decide where i want to live. i'm going to save my money so i can go see my friends and family in chad.

anyway i don't know about america. i feel really detached from my life here right now because i've been in this stupid bubble of the nicest hotel in yaounde for the past week. i hate this kind of thing. i miss my house and my latrine and my ganoun and mostly my chadian family. i think america won't seem that weird now that we've been eating 5 salads at every meal. in krim-krim, i ate one meal a day and some snacks. but i'm sick of this and tired and whatever. and i have the comfort of knowing that becky is in maryland, catherine's moving to dc, and james is going hiking but he'll be home in 2 weeks.

i'll see you maybe. i don't even know when i'll be ready, it's gonna take some getting used to.

also i was never in any danger so please don't tell me you are happy that i am home safely. if you would like to learn more about the political situation in chad, ask me. shit you read in the newspaper doesn't give the full picture.