7 Quick Takes

1.  I'm at the beach again.  I think this is the 5th time I've been at the beach this summer, albeit 2 of those times were only for a few hours each.  No tropical storms crashing the party as of yet.

2.  I'm going to Botswana in less than a month! 

3. It's kind of hard to pack for 2+ years when I really don't know what to expect there.  I'm stocking up on a few things I'm not sure I'll have access to there like quality shoes, and hoping I can find whatever else I need there.

4.  Mom and I have worked on sorting every cluttered room in the house.  None of them are completely junk free yet, but the crypt is 3/4 organized, the furnished part of the basement is about 2/3 organized, the garage is organized except for 2 shelves, and we cleared 2 desks in the office.  There is still a lot of junk to deal with, but we've made a LOT of progress!

5. I bought myself a netbook and am attempting to adjust to a smaller keyboard.  Here's to travel-sized electronics :)

6.  I think I'm also going to break down and get a kindle too.

7.  I'm in this country until 9/11/2012, so please give me a call/e-mail if you want to hang out before then!!

It’s 6:15 and I’m not at the beach.  I’m sitting in my apartment for almost the last night, surrounded by piles of boxes and things that should be in boxes.  I’m coming off the high of a church retreat and the low of the reality that I’m leaving so many people I love, again.  When I look at my life, I don’t feel like I’ve actually moved that much.  Not counting the bagillion places I lived within Blacksburg, I’ve lived in 3 places during my almost 29 years.  It feels like I’ve said so many more goodbyes though.  At the end of every summer in high school, I had to say goodbye to the summer interns and face the reality that the summer couldn’t last forever.  I changed schools and said goodbye to friends multiple times.  I graduated, from 3 schools now, and each time left a group of friends to scatter to the wind.  I’ve been on multiple short and long trips ending with goodbyes and the reality that that I knew I’d never see all of those people again all in the same place.  It’s not that anyone died, but there was a change.  The group dynamic is greater than the sum of the people.

I knew coming to Atlanta that this was most likely only for two years.  I wasn’t sure how attached I’d get, and I was planning on doing the Peace Corps from the beginning.  I’m not doubting my Peace Corps decision (at least not yet), but I do want to take about 75 people with me, from school and church.  I’m actually not that much a fan of the city of Atlanta itself, but I’d live here permanently in a heartbeat if I knew I’d have this community of friends.

I can come back after Peace Corps.  I’d like to.  I hope to.  But not everyone will be here.  The dynamic will undoubtedly be different.  The babies will be in preschool.  More of my friends will have phDs and will probably be working somewhere else in the country.  I’ll be different, after 2 years in Africa.

And none of that is bad.  It’s just different, and it’s change.  And I kind of hate change, even though I grudgingly admit that without it I wouldn’t be here, and none of the amazing things I’d experienced in my life would have happened without it.  But right now I just want to grab hold of my life and cling to it for a minute, and I feel like time is rushing on instead.

It’s my decision to leave.  I could stay and try to find a job here.   I think in the long run I’d be upset with myself for not doing Peace Corps, because at the same time I am excited about that.   And I’m thankful I made the leap to move here from Blacksburg and go to grad school, even though I was unsure at the time that it was the right decision.

The Pollyanna in me knows that missing people is an indication of how blessed I am, that I have people to miss, good times to remember, and new opportunities to look forward to.  But every time something changes, I always go through a hard transition where I’m sad that I can’t be with everyone I love at the same time.  That sounds like a lot to ask, except that I feel like that desire is so wired in me that it’s not really my fault.  I think a part of me periodically longs for heaven, where I will not be missing anyone.

Somehow I’ve gotten through graduation and the Last Call Retreat without crying on anyone.  I think that’s because it hadn’t hit me at graduation that we were done, and the tropical storm on the retreat sort of distracted me.   But if you are reading this, Atlanta people, know that you mean the world to me, and it’s really, really hard for me to leave.  Please keep in touch!

T

I'm thankful for:

Time
Sleep
Brownies
20 pages of my thesis is written!
Beautiful weather
Extended family

7 Quick Takes

1.  I really stink at time management.  Just saying.

2. I realized the other day that I read a lot of mommy blogs.  I'm not sure this is normal for a non-parent.

3. I really like having a dog around the house. Jana is fostering a sweet Great Pyrenees named Magic.

4. I'm a super light sleeper.  I kicked Magic out of my room the other night because she kept waking me up and licking herself.

5.  My great aunt Mrs. Henderson died yesterday, at the age of 101.  She was a sweet loving person and is in a much better place now.  I'll be going to her funeral this weekend and seeing a lot of extended family.

6.  I attempted an online workout routine and am super sore. 

7. Atlanta seems to think its spring already judging by the weather.  I'm not complaining.

Starting an old idea

In 2009 one of my new year's resolutions was to write about (at least) 3 things that I'm thankful for each week.  I think I want to do that again this year.  So with a little bit of catching up, here are some things I'm thankful for.

Week 1:
Silly games with friends
A new year
Cleaning and organizing

Week 2:
Patrick and Joanna
Seeing Jessie, Freddie, and Donovan
The Cellar

Week 3:
A cool class
water treatment
rain

Week 4:
Seeing Kate!
Mom home safely
An awesome women's retreat
Health insurance
Magic our sweet foster dog
African food!

Week 5 (current week):
Good conversations with Jana
A cool thesis topic
Adele
Katherine
Things circulating on facebook

Kumasi Part 1: Revisiting Ghana

(May 27, 2011)

After spending the night in Takoradi, we caught an early bus (like 5am-ish) to Kumasi.  Once we were in the city we got off the bus into… chaos.

                           This is actually downtown Accra near the main market, but same idea.


 It’s hard to describe the bustling energy of urban Africa.  Take an urban city in the US like Washington DC, with its traffic and buildings and industy, without a lot of the pavement and street signs, with 50x more people walking- in the street, between cars, next to the streets, add animals- goats, chickens, sometimes sheep and the stray cat or dog, add a lot more exhaust, the smell of animals, sometimes the waft of sewage depending on how close you are to the gigantic drains all over Ghana, and add the noise- beyond the normal engines and conversations- people hawking goods, offering you taxis and buses, selling animals, constant honking from cars, and the bustle of hundreds of people talking in one area. 

                             I took this in traffic in Kumasi- I don't remember why the people on horseback.

  It affects all of your senses at once except taste, unless you choose to partake in some of the goods being offered.  Then you may get rice, beans, stew, cookies that are more like biscuits, various meat on a stick, pastries, etc.  All that I tried were good, and miraculously, almost all seemed to agree with my system.*

After disembarking into the semi-chaos, we needed to find a place to stay for the 2 days we planned on being in Kumasi.  Diana’s methodology of figuring out taxi fares is to ask several people, not necessarily the drivers, what the fare is to various places, to figure out what we should be charged.  In the process of doing this one guy was almost dragging us into (stopped) traffic to get us a taxi.  He wasn’t the driver, but he was going to find us a taxi and expected us to be tipped for it.  So he told us a fare, and we said that’s way too high.  Then a driver said, no, this, and it was half as much.  So we agreed and started to get into the taxi and the first guy is demanding a tip- we apparently picked the taxi he wanted us to, except for half the fare.  And Diana is trying to explain that we don’t owe him anything, he was trying to gyp us, and as we wait to merge into traffic he’s standing next to the taxi yelling at us that we are bad people because we didn’t tip him.  I was really frustrated, and thinking, I want to yell back at you that you are a bad person.  But I didn’t, because that really wouldn’t have helped anything.  And not all taxi drivers are bad at all- we befriended several in various cities throughout Ghana.

Next edition:  Manhiya  Palace, the Kumasi Market, and bedbugs

* Without going into more detail than you probably want, all of us interns got upset stomachs every now and then, but nothing really bad.  My worst experience was a ‘dodgey tummy’ in the words of Angelina who is from the UK, for about 5 days, and then it cleared up.  I never identified anything that made my stomach upset, and considering that when I went to Jamaica for a week in 2001 I wound in the hospital for a couple of hours because I couldn’t keep water down, I consider Ghana a success for my GI system.

7 Quick Takes

1.  My Christmas/winter break was pretty awesome.  I got to see a lot of people, play with a big goofy black lab, and help my mom start cleaning out our basement.  You might not think that last item is awesome, but trust me, it is.

2. I took a condensed class (read, 2 credits in 1 weeks, class 8:30am-5:30pm) last week and it was really interesting.  Also informtion overload, but still really cool- Environmental Microbiology: Control of Food and Waterborne Diseases.  Now I just need to finish the assignments for the class.

3. My mom is currently in Israel and my cousin is in Antarctica!  I am by far not the only globe trotter in my family.

4. I have this little thing called a thesis to write this semester.  It's more than a little intimidating.  I'm sure I'll blog about it more, because so far I have been very creative in finding ways to avoid working on it.

5.  I'm still applying for the Peace Corps.  I'm currently in the land of a thousand doctor's appointments, to be followed with probably more doctor's appointments, and then hopefully a placement.  So far I've been nominated for a health position- no shock there :)

6. I have recently read several books, and one of my goals is to blog about reading more.  But for now, titles will suffice:  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Ghost Map (for my class, but I already owned it), and 'We Swam the Grand Canyon: A cheap vacation that got a little out of hand'.
Currently reading: King Leopold's Ghost, The Last Taboo: Opening the Door on the Global Sanitation  Crisis, and Generations.  A lot of my Christmas loot was also books, so there's a lovely pile in the non-yet-started category too.

7. My new years resolution is 'To not let the perfect get in the way of the good'.  So, to not let my human imperfections stop me from trying things and doing them imperfectly.  This is for scheduling, dieting, writing, reading, and all other goals that I make and will probably screw up at some point.  Reading 300/365 days of the year is much better than 0/365 days, even though its not a perfect 365/365.  So we'll see how things go :)