what we came home with

despite me not really wanting a kitten, chris and i came home with one yesterday afternoon. project pet had no cats over 12 weeks at this petsmart. and i was taken with this tortoise-shelled one.



we renamed her moki (from fraggle rock). and pretty much all she's done is hide under the couch and meow (a lot).



in other news, i finally got up the nerve (or got fed up enough) to cut my hair off again. it's not been short since before we lived in columbia. i am pretty pleased with it.

i'm so lame

i've totally pulled a queen d and not posted in, like, forever. i hope this isn't going to set the tone for the next few months but i have the feeling that it will be pretty lame on this blog for a while.

to give a quick update:

i took a break from working last weekend and went to charleston to meet theresa and zoltan, who were in hilton head on vacation. theresa blogged about it here. we had a great time seeing them, as always. good folks.

work work work this week.

good-bye party for g last night. he leaves for seminary on wednesday. not an overly sappy party, but the sentiment was definitely there that he will be missed.

today, chris and i are heading out to cut my hair and get a cat. in both cases, i don't know what we'll come back with.

it's a major award!

first day of program? check!

back when i was in college in ny i worked for a settlement house called grand street. one summer i was a counselor with a summer camp and i remember my first day with the kids as one of the most chaotic days of my life. i went home after that first day, layed on my bed and staired at the wall for close to an hour, too exhausted to sleep and too jittery to think.

this is how i thought it'd feel after our first day of program yesterday. but much to my delight it was nothing like that first day at grand street's summer camp. my staff was amazing! they kept the kids having fun and under control. the kids had a great time and even did their homework voluntarily. now i know not all days will be like this, but this is a great start!

now, if we could just get our technology up and running! that's where the bottleneck is.

beauty academy of kabul

my new-ish friend, angela, sent an email this week inviting some of the ladies out to see this movie at the nick. i put it in my head that i wanted to see it ever since i heard a report about it on NPR. plus, it's the night before the big day, as i just stated, so i thought it'd do me some good to get out.

this was a really interesting movie, especially as someone who has aspirations of moving and working abroad. i'd definitely recommend it. the typically-opinionated american chauvenism is well-stated and should remind us all that our ways and views are not always the ways and views of others, nor are they always the best. however, the documentary is also a reminder that even the smallest things that people do to help others can create real and lasting change. both should be lessons for us all.

program starts tomorrow

i've been fairly vacant from my blog lately because i've been just been working pretty much all the time. and the few precious minutes a day that i'm not working i've wanted nothing to do with a computer. plus, there's really not too much to talk about other than the hum-drum of work. it's been fairly boring. well, not boring to me, but the retelling would be boring.

but at 2:35 PM tomorrow our club's doors open and we'll have about 100 11-14 year olds wanting to be "entertained" for the after-school hours. i think we're ready. as ready as we can be. so here's to a few weeks more of chaos!

happy holidays

i got a card through interoffice mail today at work. it was a christmas card. strange.

or maybe i just needed a little holiday cheer.

or something

my brother (well actually his company) won some award from mac. that's about all i can say about it because it's all over my head, and when i looked for a link to provide on this post (and to illucidate his dumb sister) my brother had so many hits i just didn't feel like sorting through them all.

but let's just say that last night it was announced that he won an award from apple for the best workflow design in a certain catergory. perhaps he can give more info on a comment??

erica and fuzzy wedding pictures

can be found here. you might want to read chris's blurb about his thoughts and events on the wedding. he pretty much said it all.

thanks, new job for the fun outing!

from the city that gives you the the gamecocks and cocky, meet the blowfish. this is blowie. (i wouldn't make this stuff up!)

the WEDDING

we're in chicago for erica and fuzzy's wedding. they got hitched yesterday without a hitch. erica was beautiful. fuzzy was dapper. and despite the record heat both inside the loft and outside on the street, all went well and a good time was had.

we'll post pictures when we return and i'm sure fuzzy will post some too soon. check out his flickr pictures of the rehearsal and dinner at their place.

amsterdam heeft 't

for those of you who didn't know. we got a bonus country into our trip abroad last month. we got about 5 whole hours in amsterdam during the bright and early time of 5:30 AM to 10:30 AM. once we figured out how to buy a train ticket and got on the right train going in the right direction, it turned out to be a really good time to see the city because it was "rush hour" and we could see how folks commute--via bike! it was so quiet and peaceful. dads and kids and stylish young women in cowboy boots rode through the city on bikes with little baskets on the front. plus i got a cappuccino and it was really good.

all in all we only spent about an hour walking around. but i'm glad to have seen it. here are just a few of our pictures.

blast from the past

i went to charleston yesterday to see my high school friend, flo. we hadn't seen or spoken to each other in probably over 8 years. but we reconnected again and had a great time catching up on our lives. i won't say it was like old times again because, well simply put, the old times were a little crazy. but i will say it was like no time had passed. it's amazing how we've missed so much of each other's lives yet i still get the feeling that she's an instrumental part of my life.

oh, and i look a little strung out in this photo because i was trying to explain to an 8 year old how to work the camera so he could take our picture. not a bad shot, though, given it was taken by a child whose hands were almost too small to hold the camera.

day 3-ish on the new job

folkses been asking how works going. so i thought i'd let you all know that...well...it's going. and going. and going. i gave my resignation and 2 weeks notice at the old place and they agreed to "release" me before those 2 weeks so long as i completed a few tasks. of course those tasks are time consuming and i'm freaked out about how to get it all done. but in any event, i've been working the 2 jobs this week and probably will again next week and i'm kind of running around trying to do all things for all people. but rest assured that soon, very soon, my friends, i will be down to one job. and that one job, as far as i can see, is absolutely fabulous. i love it already and am so happy to have made this choice.

africa story 2 - greetings

one of the things that i really liked about tanzania was the formal greetings that they all had with each other and the level of respect that seems to still be there between elders and people of...well...high respect. i sound like an old rambling grumpy when i say this. "kids have no respect these days." but that's not really what i mean. in east africa (and, again, in many other parts of the world too) there is a protocall for greeting certain people. and it's just really cool to see this play out in society.

on our first day in east africa, while we were touring the "suburbs" of dar es salaam ("dar") with our friend jackie, we would pass by kids and they would genuflect just a little and say "chicamo." and we were supposed to respond "madahaba." it's a greeting that one gives to their elders or anyone of respect. it was just so cool to have someone sort of show that respect so openly and to greet people they didn't know in such an open manner. additionally, when we were staying with a family in mwanza, there was a 100 year old grandfather who resided in the house. he spoke no english at all (in fact he really didn't speak that much in general) and i spoke very little swahili. but i knew that every time i walked into the house i could say "chicamo" to him and he would say "madahaba." it felt good that eventhough we really couldn't communicate, i could still show that respect to him for being my elder and i could humble myself that way.

the above picture was taken during said tour of dar. it is of a classroom of preschool/day care students. when we walked in jackie explained who we were and asked the teacher if we could visit for a minute. when we walked in the room the children immediately stood up and said in unison "good morning, uncle" (to chris), awaited a response, sat down, stood back up again and said to me "good morning, auntie.' it was nearly one of the most adorable things i've ever seen.

clear as mud

i guess i can make it public now that the bosses have been told and the job's been verbally accepted. as of monday (or 2 weeks from monday) i'll have a new job. i think i'll unofficially start monday but i told my current employer i'd give them 2 weeks if they needed it. so technically i'll be doing both for 2 weeks.

this new job is a big deal for me, a huge step up in responsibility. i'll be the director of an afterschool program and will be responsible for all the components of the program which will see over 100 students 5 days a week. plus i'll coordinate some other pieces of the grant, like an adult literacy component and some other "stuff." you know how that goes.

moms's be bloggin'

chris's mom that is.

welcome!

first things first

so in typical me-fashion, i'll start with the crapper.



this is a picture chris didn't post on his picture stream of photos because he felt it was crude to have a toilet in your album. but i think it's interesting. so here it is, a typical african low toilet. not unlike toilets in many other countries. even if you've never seen or used one of these, you can probably figure out how one would use such a thing. this particular home had no running water so the yellow bucket was filled with water. you took the blue cup, filled it with water from the bucket and then slushed it into the toilet. amazingly, it worked! and guess what? very little water waste, unlike our american toilets!

it was surprisingly not hard and not gross (unless, of course, you're riding in a train and there is simply a hole in the ground leading to the train tracks and feces and such spread all over the compartment because of the rocking of the train.). for the most part these "swahili toilets" were the kinds that were in people's homes and in public places. however, wherever westerners frequented (i.e. missionary homes, fancier restaurants, hotels) they had our "normal" high toilets.

time for a change

i'm not very good with big changes. so i've only changed my blog's cloths a little bit. i think i like the subtle difference though.

and, no offense to fuzzy but i took him off as contributor for now. i wanted my profile picture back. i think it's cute. we can add you again, buddy, the next time around.

i've also added our pictures from africa in the toolbar to the right. most of you have probably already seen these on chris's blog (if not, check out his post). if you've seen them then you'll know that these are not all of them. to see all 375+ photos and to get the complete, personal story, you'll have to contact me to schedule a visit.

vacation #2

i just got back last night from a second, shorter vacation. my brother and his family were in the outer banks of nc for a week and invited me to come up for a few days since it was so close to columbia (or so i thought!). once i realized i'd be half way home, i decided to drive another 5 hours to visit my mom and step-dad in nj. another quick visit there with an appearance by my sister, but it was worth it.

i'm home now and have no other vacations planned...well at least not until the wedding of the year which is in less than 3 weeks! the bonus, though, is i still have 1 more week until i have to go back to work! woohoo! so i'll be home this week catching up on all the things that i neglected for the past 4 weeks. this'll make me want to go back to work come next monday.