hey all
still here,
i ran out of sleeping pills and laid around half awake all last night, listening to the activity. (two people were sick and one couldn't sleep and so was wandering the halls). i don't want to ask for more, sleeping pills suck. my stress reactions are all totally flipped around, usually i undereat and oversleep when i'm stressed, but so far i have been overeating and undersleeping with this one. all the eating makes me feel kind of bloated, and my belly sticks out. another trainee commented that i would look cute pregnant because i always have this little potbelly or something.
this morning i had my language assessment, and i think i did pretty well, i talked a lot. i think i remembered all my pronouns (it's an oral only test), so now i can relax and maybe have some whiskey tonight for new years eve. we leave teh 2nd for our site visit for 3 days, to see our site and move in a little and everything. i'm kind of afraid to go sleep alone in a roundavel in the mountains. i know nothing will happen and i need to get over it, but i'm still pretty apprehensive. another volunteer's site is like 30 mins away or something, and she offered to stay the night with me, and i may take her up on it. i need to talk to the country director about it and stuff.
we're having a talent show tonight for new years. my talent is nija-ism and banditry. meaning i'm invisible and a silent killer/stealer. i'm still trying to decide if i want to be a bandit, a ninja, or a spelunker when i grow up... right now i'm leaning towards spelunking because it's the most fun to say. bandits are cool though because they can wear bandannas, but ninjas get to wear black pajamas and jump around, so really i'm stumped. i guess i still have a couple years before i have to decide what to do with my life.
oh, and it's awesome, the trading cards have made their way into teh vernacular of the group, they say stuff like, oh that'll up/down your attack/defense points! or hey add that to your stats! etc. it's lucky for my co-trainees that i rock so hard and made these keepsakes for them.
crappy out of time
i am so glad to get the emails from everyone, they mean a lot to me, and are really helping,
so thank you!
love love love and what>? muffins! (i ate one today and it was monate) (= tasty)
Monday, December 31, 2007
Friday, December 28, 2007
Scorpions, Christmas, and Rapists... Oh My!
So, this past week has had a higher number of firsts than usual for me.
I got bedbugs, which SUCKS. I had like 20 bites across the back of my calf, and another 10 or so on my foot, and bedbug bites start small, then swell up like little tumors, then turn weird and purple, and itch like hell the whole week or so they last. I DOOMed the hell out of my bed and blankets and sheets etc. and killed the motherfudgers.
Then when I was at language lessons I was standing on the stoop to my teachers house, and the thatch roof overhangs a bit, and I bumped my head against it a couple times for no particular reason, then stepped off the stoop and felt something fall into my boot (the boot goes about 1/2way up my calf) and I thought it was thatch so I reach and and holyshitmotherfuckerbitchasshoebag my finger hurt!!! so I took off my shoe and a scorpion fell out! it hurt SO BAD> the tip of my finger was stabbing, and there were shooting pains going down the rest of my hand. it got better like half an hour later after I took advil. but the rest of the day the whole finger felt like pins and needles when I touched it. (I was poking my finger a lot and giggling about the funny feeling). This happened Christmas eve. We played a game called smackDOWN in Sesotho class, which was meant to be a friendly competition with the trainees from the next village but quickly devolved into all the language trainers screaming and arguing and yelling smackDOWN! smackDOWN! over and over in a hilarious basotho accent. we trainees had no fun whatsoever though. it was so stressful and stupid. so afterwards we had breakfast for brunch, I made banana pancakes, mad made AWESOME cinnamon rolls and we also had this potato onion egg cheese bake thing and hung out and had a great time.
Then it was Christmas! I made “peach cobbler” a.k.a. peach goo, that looked funny, especially after i dropped it, but my ninja skills (i've been honing them) allowed me to catch the pot right before it hit the ground. but teh sideways flight caused all the topping to get mixed into teh runny (no cornstarch) peaches. but it still tasted good. everyone made amazing food and we all got together in one of the classrooms of the primary school and ate and drank and it was so much fun. and my presents I made for everyone were a HUGE hit. I made these “peace corps trading cards” one for each person, with a cartoon of them on the front, and something I associate with them in the background, and I gave everyone an element (earth air fire water) that made up the border of the pic. Then on the back they had “stats” there were attack and defense stats, and also stats appropriate to the person and different on each card like “inappropriate question asking ability” or “bullshit production” “underwearlessness” etc. etc. The whole group loves them and wants copies of everyone elses and stuff. I’m really glad, because I had these visions in my head of everyone being like “…so… what do I do with this?” but that didn’t happen. I also got a lot of semi-surprised "so you're like, a real artist... i always thought you just doodled" which i'm not sure what that means, because i do just doodle. i don't "do art" or whatever...
oh and I have a Christmas story: so a week or so ago when I was hanging out with village friends and the song white Christmas came on the radio (they are super into Christmas carols here. ugh.) the two girls giggled and looked at me funny, so I was like “hay you whats yer prob,” and they were like, “well, that song… about white people” and giggled again, and then I was confused. then lightbulb, they thought white Christmas meant white people Christmas. because Here Christmas comes in the summer. there is no snow. so I had to explain about winter time and wishing for snow. I’m not sure they fully believed me, about the song or about the fact that in America Christmas is in wintertime, like they didn't understand how teh same day, at the same time, it's summer here and winter there. I was not in the mood to try to explain these concepts, so i left them in their ignorance (woo! i'm a born teacher.)
So then Christmas night I went to sleep all snug in my bedat around 10 pm (which is super late and crazy here, for me at least). a while later, I was woken up by a bang, and I looked up and my window was open, and I was all groggy and like “wha? must be the wind” so I got up to close it. (the window was held shut only by a crappy little bent nail that you rotated, so I wasn’t surprised it opened on its own) and then I went back to bed. (p.s. here in Lesotho, the nighttime is DARK. like solid pitch black no light whatsoever) and as I was turning over onto my side, a hand came out of nowhere and pinned my wrist down, and I screamed. Then the hands closed over my throat and cut off my scream and choked me, and I tried to push him away, but I don’t know how hard, because I couldn’t breathe for so long, and I don’t even know if my vision was going black because it was all the same black if I closed my eyes or opened them. and I know the man’s face was inches from mine, I could feel his breath, but I couldn’t see him, just solid blackness. and I couldn’t thrash, my neck was so well pinned down, so I punched him in the side of the head over and over, finally I got both feet together with my knees and hips bent and pushed him off me with both feet. and I tried to scream and only a rattle came out. and I kicked him again and got a breath and screamed. but the noise that came out of me was not a sound i've ever heard, or could really describe. it was, I don’t know, this hoarse pterodactyl howl, this unreal noise. He got freaked out ( don’t think he was expecting me to fight so much) and opened the door and ran out and I kept howling as I locked the door and checked the window and found my flashlight so I could see, and got a big chopping knife and sat on the bed attempting to do deep breaths. after some time, I have no idea if it was 30 seconds or 10 minutes, a knock came at my door and I just howled again. then a minute or so later another knock came and it was my ‘M’e and my brother, I just screamed, and then I opened the door for them and I lost my deep breathing and hyperventilated a little, trying to mime what happened because neither of them speak any English. and they kept saying (in Sesotho) there is no man here, we don’t see a man. your window is closed a man could not have gotten in. And I couldn’t handle trying to reason with them or convince them, I just kept repeating my broken ass Sesotho version of what happened. Then my ‘me brought in a blanket and slept on my floor for the rest of the night (this all happened around midnight). But every time she heard me sniffle, she yelled at me to go to sleep. All I wanted was to turn on my flashlight and make the darkness stop, and to cry and cry. I couldn’t sleep. I laid in bed clutching my flashlight and trying desperately to see through the darkness, and trying to cry silently until it got light at about 4am and I finally fell asleep. She got up and left at about 5. I got up, drank a nalgene full of water, then puked it all up. Then I sat and waited for someone to come find me, and tried to keep deep breaths, so I wouldn’t fall out of control. Thank god Madeline thought we had language at 8:30 so she came to get me for class, and I told her what happened and she ran to the language trainers house. The trainer had “heard about it” I guess. My ‘me had gone over there that morning and told her I had a nightmare. then the chain of whatever was set into play, and the country director (big head boss of Lesotho peace corps) came and got me and took me to the capital to stay in the volunteer transit house. I got to take Madeline with me for moral support.
I’ve been staying in the T-house since. I got my voice back by the end of teh next day, and could eat again (at first it hurt my throat to swallow food.) I can’t sleep, I can’t lay down in a dark room. disembodied hands keep coming out to strangle me, and the crazy hoarse howling noise I made keeps echoing in my mind. They gave me unidentified pills to help me sleep, but I still can’t get it out of my head when I’m awake. They’ve filed reports with the chief of the village, the police, the pc director for central/south Africa, pc headquarters in wash. dc, and aren’t using that village anymore for training. There’s no way to catch him, I couldn’t see anything, except when he was silhouetted in the doorway running away I saw his head was shaved. which doesn’t help at all really, because 80% of basotho men keeps their heads shaved. I don’t really know what to do with all of this. my co trainees have been very supportive, but they kind of look at me like they aren't sure what to do around me or say to me. On teh morning after christmas when i was being taken to the capital they found out and some cried i guess and it was a big thing, and i've gotten a few cards and notes of encouratement, etc. but I keep thinking about what if I ran away back home to portland. I’ve been wondering why I’m here since I got here. Before I left, I had a few excuses for when other people asked why I was doing peace corps, but really I never had a good reason for myself. I just did it. I don’t want to leave yet, because that would be giving up. I want to be stronger than that. I haven’t even seen my actual site yet (which will have burglar bars on the windows and door). I want to see what it’s really like living in Lesotho, not just during training. At least for now I have 3 floor to ceiling bookcases full of SO MANY BOOKS, it’s super awesome, and there’s an incredible movie library at the t-house (transit house), too. I’ve been averaging about 3 movies a day, because I can’t sleep, but I’m too tired to concentrate on reading anything except old celeb gossip magazines from august that other volunteers have gotten in the mail. There’s a big ‘end of community based training’ feast tomorrow. they’re going to slaughter a cow and have traditional dancing and everything, and I’d like to see it in theory, but I can’t bear to go back. Every man with a shaved head will freak me out, and also the whole village has heard my story so they’ll all be staring at me (even more than usual). and I don’t think I would be able to go through it and not cry. So I’m going to sit around the t-house and wait for all the other trainees to come back to maseru (the capital, where I am) in the afternoon, and have them tell me about it.
If I want to talk to a therapist or anything, I have to do it by phone with some random person in Washington d.c. which I really don’t want to do. I hate talking on the phone forever, and I don’t like therapists as a rule, anyway. But I’m not sure how to deal with this, or how to make the repeating flashbacks of the night stop. Just time I guess.
Once more, and forever more, i love you all so so much, and miss you now more than ever.
I got bedbugs, which SUCKS. I had like 20 bites across the back of my calf, and another 10 or so on my foot, and bedbug bites start small, then swell up like little tumors, then turn weird and purple, and itch like hell the whole week or so they last. I DOOMed the hell out of my bed and blankets and sheets etc. and killed the motherfudgers.
Then when I was at language lessons I was standing on the stoop to my teachers house, and the thatch roof overhangs a bit, and I bumped my head against it a couple times for no particular reason, then stepped off the stoop and felt something fall into my boot (the boot goes about 1/2way up my calf) and I thought it was thatch so I reach and and holyshitmotherfuckerbitchasshoebag my finger hurt!!! so I took off my shoe and a scorpion fell out! it hurt SO BAD> the tip of my finger was stabbing, and there were shooting pains going down the rest of my hand. it got better like half an hour later after I took advil. but the rest of the day the whole finger felt like pins and needles when I touched it. (I was poking my finger a lot and giggling about the funny feeling). This happened Christmas eve. We played a game called smackDOWN in Sesotho class, which was meant to be a friendly competition with the trainees from the next village but quickly devolved into all the language trainers screaming and arguing and yelling smackDOWN! smackDOWN! over and over in a hilarious basotho accent. we trainees had no fun whatsoever though. it was so stressful and stupid. so afterwards we had breakfast for brunch, I made banana pancakes, mad made AWESOME cinnamon rolls and we also had this potato onion egg cheese bake thing and hung out and had a great time.
Then it was Christmas! I made “peach cobbler” a.k.a. peach goo, that looked funny, especially after i dropped it, but my ninja skills (i've been honing them) allowed me to catch the pot right before it hit the ground. but teh sideways flight caused all the topping to get mixed into teh runny (no cornstarch) peaches. but it still tasted good. everyone made amazing food and we all got together in one of the classrooms of the primary school and ate and drank and it was so much fun. and my presents I made for everyone were a HUGE hit. I made these “peace corps trading cards” one for each person, with a cartoon of them on the front, and something I associate with them in the background, and I gave everyone an element (earth air fire water) that made up the border of the pic. Then on the back they had “stats” there were attack and defense stats, and also stats appropriate to the person and different on each card like “inappropriate question asking ability” or “bullshit production” “underwearlessness” etc. etc. The whole group loves them and wants copies of everyone elses and stuff. I’m really glad, because I had these visions in my head of everyone being like “…so… what do I do with this?” but that didn’t happen. I also got a lot of semi-surprised "so you're like, a real artist... i always thought you just doodled" which i'm not sure what that means, because i do just doodle. i don't "do art" or whatever...
oh and I have a Christmas story: so a week or so ago when I was hanging out with village friends and the song white Christmas came on the radio (they are super into Christmas carols here. ugh.) the two girls giggled and looked at me funny, so I was like “hay you whats yer prob,” and they were like, “well, that song… about white people” and giggled again, and then I was confused. then lightbulb, they thought white Christmas meant white people Christmas. because Here Christmas comes in the summer. there is no snow. so I had to explain about winter time and wishing for snow. I’m not sure they fully believed me, about the song or about the fact that in America Christmas is in wintertime, like they didn't understand how teh same day, at the same time, it's summer here and winter there. I was not in the mood to try to explain these concepts, so i left them in their ignorance (woo! i'm a born teacher.)
So then Christmas night I went to sleep all snug in my bedat around 10 pm (which is super late and crazy here, for me at least). a while later, I was woken up by a bang, and I looked up and my window was open, and I was all groggy and like “wha? must be the wind” so I got up to close it. (the window was held shut only by a crappy little bent nail that you rotated, so I wasn’t surprised it opened on its own) and then I went back to bed. (p.s. here in Lesotho, the nighttime is DARK. like solid pitch black no light whatsoever) and as I was turning over onto my side, a hand came out of nowhere and pinned my wrist down, and I screamed. Then the hands closed over my throat and cut off my scream and choked me, and I tried to push him away, but I don’t know how hard, because I couldn’t breathe for so long, and I don’t even know if my vision was going black because it was all the same black if I closed my eyes or opened them. and I know the man’s face was inches from mine, I could feel his breath, but I couldn’t see him, just solid blackness. and I couldn’t thrash, my neck was so well pinned down, so I punched him in the side of the head over and over, finally I got both feet together with my knees and hips bent and pushed him off me with both feet. and I tried to scream and only a rattle came out. and I kicked him again and got a breath and screamed. but the noise that came out of me was not a sound i've ever heard, or could really describe. it was, I don’t know, this hoarse pterodactyl howl, this unreal noise. He got freaked out ( don’t think he was expecting me to fight so much) and opened the door and ran out and I kept howling as I locked the door and checked the window and found my flashlight so I could see, and got a big chopping knife and sat on the bed attempting to do deep breaths. after some time, I have no idea if it was 30 seconds or 10 minutes, a knock came at my door and I just howled again. then a minute or so later another knock came and it was my ‘M’e and my brother, I just screamed, and then I opened the door for them and I lost my deep breathing and hyperventilated a little, trying to mime what happened because neither of them speak any English. and they kept saying (in Sesotho) there is no man here, we don’t see a man. your window is closed a man could not have gotten in. And I couldn’t handle trying to reason with them or convince them, I just kept repeating my broken ass Sesotho version of what happened. Then my ‘me brought in a blanket and slept on my floor for the rest of the night (this all happened around midnight). But every time she heard me sniffle, she yelled at me to go to sleep. All I wanted was to turn on my flashlight and make the darkness stop, and to cry and cry. I couldn’t sleep. I laid in bed clutching my flashlight and trying desperately to see through the darkness, and trying to cry silently until it got light at about 4am and I finally fell asleep. She got up and left at about 5. I got up, drank a nalgene full of water, then puked it all up. Then I sat and waited for someone to come find me, and tried to keep deep breaths, so I wouldn’t fall out of control. Thank god Madeline thought we had language at 8:30 so she came to get me for class, and I told her what happened and she ran to the language trainers house. The trainer had “heard about it” I guess. My ‘me had gone over there that morning and told her I had a nightmare. then the chain of whatever was set into play, and the country director (big head boss of Lesotho peace corps) came and got me and took me to the capital to stay in the volunteer transit house. I got to take Madeline with me for moral support.
I’ve been staying in the T-house since. I got my voice back by the end of teh next day, and could eat again (at first it hurt my throat to swallow food.) I can’t sleep, I can’t lay down in a dark room. disembodied hands keep coming out to strangle me, and the crazy hoarse howling noise I made keeps echoing in my mind. They gave me unidentified pills to help me sleep, but I still can’t get it out of my head when I’m awake. They’ve filed reports with the chief of the village, the police, the pc director for central/south Africa, pc headquarters in wash. dc, and aren’t using that village anymore for training. There’s no way to catch him, I couldn’t see anything, except when he was silhouetted in the doorway running away I saw his head was shaved. which doesn’t help at all really, because 80% of basotho men keeps their heads shaved. I don’t really know what to do with all of this. my co trainees have been very supportive, but they kind of look at me like they aren't sure what to do around me or say to me. On teh morning after christmas when i was being taken to the capital they found out and some cried i guess and it was a big thing, and i've gotten a few cards and notes of encouratement, etc. but I keep thinking about what if I ran away back home to portland. I’ve been wondering why I’m here since I got here. Before I left, I had a few excuses for when other people asked why I was doing peace corps, but really I never had a good reason for myself. I just did it. I don’t want to leave yet, because that would be giving up. I want to be stronger than that. I haven’t even seen my actual site yet (which will have burglar bars on the windows and door). I want to see what it’s really like living in Lesotho, not just during training. At least for now I have 3 floor to ceiling bookcases full of SO MANY BOOKS, it’s super awesome, and there’s an incredible movie library at the t-house (transit house), too. I’ve been averaging about 3 movies a day, because I can’t sleep, but I’m too tired to concentrate on reading anything except old celeb gossip magazines from august that other volunteers have gotten in the mail. There’s a big ‘end of community based training’ feast tomorrow. they’re going to slaughter a cow and have traditional dancing and everything, and I’d like to see it in theory, but I can’t bear to go back. Every man with a shaved head will freak me out, and also the whole village has heard my story so they’ll all be staring at me (even more than usual). and I don’t think I would be able to go through it and not cry. So I’m going to sit around the t-house and wait for all the other trainees to come back to maseru (the capital, where I am) in the afternoon, and have them tell me about it.
If I want to talk to a therapist or anything, I have to do it by phone with some random person in Washington d.c. which I really don’t want to do. I hate talking on the phone forever, and I don’t like therapists as a rule, anyway. But I’m not sure how to deal with this, or how to make the repeating flashbacks of the night stop. Just time I guess.
Once more, and forever more, i love you all so so much, and miss you now more than ever.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
I'm the most grown up mature well worded lady you've ever done met
Yeah! Wooo! Almost christmas!! And I just ate a ham and cheese sandwich and it was super fantastic. (notice the lack of cursing in that sentence. See me grow, change, become a better, less offensive person) AND it’s almost Christmas and I have the best presents evar that I made for all my co trainees but I can’t discuss them here because my blog is read by the wrong people. Also, Ben Klein’s mom, if you’re reading this, whut up. I hear you’re major cool.
So a couple weeks ago we lekhooa (white people) got to present a concert! Where we sing! And yes, it was as horrible as it sounds, especially because EVERYONE here from the age of 3 sings amazing and can harmonize perfectly. So we get up there in front of this audience of all my students and neighbors and family and everyone from the next 3 villages around and sang. We did some awesome sesotho songs, and some American ones. THE BEST was the umbrella song. Everybody in Lesotho loves it almost as much as I do. It’s like I’m home here, among my peers and fellow rihanna lovers. Anyway, anticipating the awful awful embarrassment of this occasion, Madeline and I had a little wine before hand. Possibly a lot of wine. It made me not care so much. OH also I should mention here that music concerts here are not like they are or may be in the states. Here it’s like a battle or something, people can pay any amount of money and call out any one or group of people to sing any song, or a song of their choosing. And you have to top that bid to get out of it. And I got called out to stand in front of the group and sing and dance, and another time when the students were singing I got called out to go up with them. I blushed a lot, and most of you know how truly bad my singing voice is, so that certainly didn’t help. But I got to call out a few of my extra cocky students to go sing. Unfortunately they don’t care because they’re all pop stars. Oh well.
And last week, we got to go hike a mountain, and then afterwards swim in the stream swimmin’ hole that you could slide down the rocks into a pool and it was a perfect day. Then we went and had a huge feast and danced around in circles to the Lesotho music (that i swear is all voiced by ja rule's cousin or something) with all of our language trainers. Then today we hiked a smaller mountain with no stream, but a lot of history. It’s where king moshoeshoe I (pronounced mah-shway-shway) freed his people from the boers and Lesotho came into existence. And I made a thousand pounds of fudge last night for another trainee’s birthday today. Last week I also made bread for the first time with mad and it came out great. I’m going to be sally homemaker by the time I return to the states. I’ve gotten really into indulging myself culinarily. I’ve become the pancake whisperer, last time I made peanut butter banana pancakes and they rocked. I like pancakes because I can make a bunch for dinner, and save some batter to have more for breakfast. And I often eat waay too much fudge in a sitting and get a tummy ache. And i made tortillas for breakfast burritos, and they turned out really well.
I got my first package! Thank you momma! It is just taking a long time because of Christmasi think, and the pension system ties up like 80% of the mail system here. But nobody but me is wearing my jacket and vest! And also I would like to congratulate my parents on being the awesomest married couple for 30 years now. Love you guys! Oh, and next package you send, can you throw in my jansport backpack? It’s in the box on my bookshelf in the closet I think.
Chicken thing update: I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re dinosaurs. I gave them corn the other day. I like them as long as they don’t come too close to me. I’m still afraid they’ll peck my face off. They are like chickens, but have longer legs and necks. And their only feathers are on their wings. They make meep meep noises. when they run past teh doorway to my roundavel i feel like i'm in prehistoric times with dinosaur herds milling about.
Things I now know, but did not before:
1. speed bumps here are called "humped zebra crossings", there are not specified areas for mutant zebras to cross the road.
2. when using my pee bucket multiple times at night, I need to wipe the rim, because condensation is not a myth.
3. if you stand in a doorway for too long, you will have a heavy flow.
4. if a woman walks through a herd of animals, she will become infertile.
5. vanilla banana oatmeal is very tasty
6. in sesotho, “banana” means little girls, and no I do not put them in my pancakes.
7. my 'me can open 40s of beer with her teeth. (they're denchers)
8. a good side effect of everyone thinking my freckles are a rash is that i haven't had a single marriage proposal yet, whereas all the other girls in my group have had several.
9. leatherman knives are sharp, and stabbing your hand with one hurts, and bleeds a LOT.
10. jamie lynn spears is preggers. OMG.
11. here you don't get pregnant, you fall pregnant. it's like a disease.
12. i have a recipe for muffins, i want to make them.
13. ke situlo, u 'na lula (that one's for diana. you know what it means. phonetically: kay see-too-lo, oo nnah doo-lah)
Hope everyone has good holidays!
So a couple weeks ago we lekhooa (white people) got to present a concert! Where we sing! And yes, it was as horrible as it sounds, especially because EVERYONE here from the age of 3 sings amazing and can harmonize perfectly. So we get up there in front of this audience of all my students and neighbors and family and everyone from the next 3 villages around and sang. We did some awesome sesotho songs, and some American ones. THE BEST was the umbrella song. Everybody in Lesotho loves it almost as much as I do. It’s like I’m home here, among my peers and fellow rihanna lovers. Anyway, anticipating the awful awful embarrassment of this occasion, Madeline and I had a little wine before hand. Possibly a lot of wine. It made me not care so much. OH also I should mention here that music concerts here are not like they are or may be in the states. Here it’s like a battle or something, people can pay any amount of money and call out any one or group of people to sing any song, or a song of their choosing. And you have to top that bid to get out of it. And I got called out to stand in front of the group and sing and dance, and another time when the students were singing I got called out to go up with them. I blushed a lot, and most of you know how truly bad my singing voice is, so that certainly didn’t help. But I got to call out a few of my extra cocky students to go sing. Unfortunately they don’t care because they’re all pop stars. Oh well.
And last week, we got to go hike a mountain, and then afterwards swim in the stream swimmin’ hole that you could slide down the rocks into a pool and it was a perfect day. Then we went and had a huge feast and danced around in circles to the Lesotho music (that i swear is all voiced by ja rule's cousin or something) with all of our language trainers. Then today we hiked a smaller mountain with no stream, but a lot of history. It’s where king moshoeshoe I (pronounced mah-shway-shway) freed his people from the boers and Lesotho came into existence. And I made a thousand pounds of fudge last night for another trainee’s birthday today. Last week I also made bread for the first time with mad and it came out great. I’m going to be sally homemaker by the time I return to the states. I’ve gotten really into indulging myself culinarily. I’ve become the pancake whisperer, last time I made peanut butter banana pancakes and they rocked. I like pancakes because I can make a bunch for dinner, and save some batter to have more for breakfast. And I often eat waay too much fudge in a sitting and get a tummy ache. And i made tortillas for breakfast burritos, and they turned out really well.
I got my first package! Thank you momma! It is just taking a long time because of Christmasi think, and the pension system ties up like 80% of the mail system here. But nobody but me is wearing my jacket and vest! And also I would like to congratulate my parents on being the awesomest married couple for 30 years now. Love you guys! Oh, and next package you send, can you throw in my jansport backpack? It’s in the box on my bookshelf in the closet I think.
Chicken thing update: I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re dinosaurs. I gave them corn the other day. I like them as long as they don’t come too close to me. I’m still afraid they’ll peck my face off. They are like chickens, but have longer legs and necks. And their only feathers are on their wings. They make meep meep noises. when they run past teh doorway to my roundavel i feel like i'm in prehistoric times with dinosaur herds milling about.
Things I now know, but did not before:
1. speed bumps here are called "humped zebra crossings", there are not specified areas for mutant zebras to cross the road.
2. when using my pee bucket multiple times at night, I need to wipe the rim, because condensation is not a myth.
3. if you stand in a doorway for too long, you will have a heavy flow.
4. if a woman walks through a herd of animals, she will become infertile.
5. vanilla banana oatmeal is very tasty
6. in sesotho, “banana” means little girls, and no I do not put them in my pancakes.
7. my 'me can open 40s of beer with her teeth. (they're denchers)
8. a good side effect of everyone thinking my freckles are a rash is that i haven't had a single marriage proposal yet, whereas all the other girls in my group have had several.
9. leatherman knives are sharp, and stabbing your hand with one hurts, and bleeds a LOT.
10. jamie lynn spears is preggers. OMG.
11. here you don't get pregnant, you fall pregnant. it's like a disease.
12. i have a recipe for muffins, i want to make them.
13. ke situlo, u 'na lula (that one's for diana. you know what it means. phonetically: kay see-too-lo, oo nnah doo-lah)
Hope everyone has good holidays!
Friday, December 14, 2007
I am attempting to use less offensive potty mouthage in this post
Hey lovelies! I’m back in action!! I just found out where I’m going to live for two years today!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHH! I’m in Thaba-Tseka (if you want to check a map). It’s waay in the mountains, and takes forever to get to, and has the best view! I will be very high up, in a roundavel (traditional round house with a thatch roof) that seems pretty big, and the inside is painted blue! Woo! And I get electricity! So I won’t go blind from reading by candlelight. I am living on a family compound, and another volunteer is a 5 min walk from me, and one of my favorite volunteers (Victoria, has been mentioned here a couple times) is like a 15 min taxi ride away, and another awesome volunteer Lindsey is like 30 mins away., so even though I’m far far away in the beautiful mountains which I will climb, I will have friends around and not be a lonely mountain woman. I’m super psyched.
I’ve been cooking for myself and everything the past couple weeks, and it’s much nicer, my ‘me stays out of my face mostly, and we get a long. She’s kind of a drunk though. She stumbles home all wasted pretty often, and her drunk old people friends visit a lot. They’re really funny. She ululates all the time, and does a funny old person dance. I still get all lonely sitting around my roundavel at night, but I need to get used to it. I think a lot of what I’m missing doesn’t really exist any more, and I need to move on a little I guess. I have a lot of fun hanging out with mad (a.k.a. lebohang, new nickname lebu) who’s my neighbor and we commiserate. Oh, and my ‘me calls me tah-bey for short now. I like it. I like my sesotho name, it’s nice
We finished practice teaching today. It was fine. I had 56 kids in my form B class (like 9ht grade) they were ages 13ish to 23ish in one class. Luckily I’m good at making kids think I’m cool, so they liked me and I got them all excited about learning to round to a specified number of significant figures. And my form E (12th grade) had 11 kids, 3 of which had chem. Before, the others hadn’t so I had 3 know it all jerkfaces, and 8 nice kids. It was hard to juggle them, because the three knew everything about metals and shit, and the others didn’t know what an electron was. It was ok. All form E passed my exam. For form B I literally had the range. There were 3 100%, and one 0%, a few 8%s… etc. here passing is at 40%, and less than half usually pass. It was really nice to get to practice teach and see how I need to be different for Lesotho schools. For one, I have to speak like a slow-motion retarded british person. They don’t understand the American accent with all of our “r’s” and such. Also a lot don’t really know much English, period. So I have to write down almost all I say, and speak VERY SLOW> it’s cool though.
Sucks though, today my friend mad’s foot got ran over by a car!! She’s at the hospital now, they called and said she’s ok, they don’t think any bones are broken. Now I’m super paranoid and jumpy when walking around because drivers here are CRAZY.
. if you send me any sort of package, please lie on the customs form! list boring things! it really makes a difference for getting the package or not. And i am slowly gettign stuff in the mail to you guys letters are boring to write so i've been drawing comic strips of my life. i expect them to be proudly displayed on refrigerators all over the US.
i'm one of the only trainees to not receive a single piece of mail yet, i think the customs people are living vicariously through me or something. oh and there was a request for a day in the life of rebecca. i will attempt to write it here...
6:15ish am: wake up, then i heat some water for bucket baths, then i bucket bathe, and wash my hair, then i wash socks and undies from yesterday in my soapy bath water (it's what you do here, apparently). then i make breakfast, usually a pb and j, or toast, or oatmeal and some fruit. the peaches here are tasty. i've been making pancakes a lot, i make them for dinner and save some batter for breakfast. then i sweep my roundavel, tidy up, look over my lesson plan, dump my old water, boil my drinkng water for the day, get creeped out by the pseudo chickens my 'me bought that sometimes wander in my house. ( i keep thinking of that scene in jurassic park 2 or 3 wehre the guy is eaten by little dinosaurs the size of chickens). then i go to mad's house, then we walk to the bus stop and get teh bus to school.
then i teach/ observe from 8-12:30, with a tea break from 10:15-10:30. (my biscuit intake has skyrocketed!) then we go home for lunch. i've been eating a shoot ton of pasta here. sometimes i powernap. or read. i just finished Blind Assassin from Margaret Atwood and her writing is freaking incredible!! i reccommend it to all my blag audience.
then i go to sesotho lessons from 2:30-4:30/5 then i wander around, or talk to the willagers. or hang with mad. or hide in my roundavel because i want some personal time (which is unheard of here. you must be sick or something to want to stay home by yourself.) also i write my lesson plans during this time. then i make dinner and dishes and eating things from like 6:30-7:30. then i hang . then i do excersizes and stretches from like 730 or 8 for 30-45 mins. then i go to bed and lay around for a while until i fall asleep around 9:30 (i think. my broken alarm clock makes 8 and 9 look the same. same with 5 and 6, which sucks for waking up knowledge).
and that's my day! gotta scooooot
love love love and muffins! (and also maybe a juicebox for liz)
I’ve been cooking for myself and everything the past couple weeks, and it’s much nicer, my ‘me stays out of my face mostly, and we get a long. She’s kind of a drunk though. She stumbles home all wasted pretty often, and her drunk old people friends visit a lot. They’re really funny. She ululates all the time, and does a funny old person dance. I still get all lonely sitting around my roundavel at night, but I need to get used to it. I think a lot of what I’m missing doesn’t really exist any more, and I need to move on a little I guess. I have a lot of fun hanging out with mad (a.k.a. lebohang, new nickname lebu) who’s my neighbor and we commiserate. Oh, and my ‘me calls me tah-bey for short now. I like it. I like my sesotho name, it’s nice
We finished practice teaching today. It was fine. I had 56 kids in my form B class (like 9ht grade) they were ages 13ish to 23ish in one class. Luckily I’m good at making kids think I’m cool, so they liked me and I got them all excited about learning to round to a specified number of significant figures. And my form E (12th grade) had 11 kids, 3 of which had chem. Before, the others hadn’t so I had 3 know it all jerkfaces, and 8 nice kids. It was hard to juggle them, because the three knew everything about metals and shit, and the others didn’t know what an electron was. It was ok. All form E passed my exam. For form B I literally had the range. There were 3 100%, and one 0%, a few 8%s… etc. here passing is at 40%, and less than half usually pass. It was really nice to get to practice teach and see how I need to be different for Lesotho schools. For one, I have to speak like a slow-motion retarded british person. They don’t understand the American accent with all of our “r’s” and such. Also a lot don’t really know much English, period. So I have to write down almost all I say, and speak VERY SLOW> it’s cool though.
Sucks though, today my friend mad’s foot got ran over by a car!! She’s at the hospital now, they called and said she’s ok, they don’t think any bones are broken. Now I’m super paranoid and jumpy when walking around because drivers here are CRAZY.
. if you send me any sort of package, please lie on the customs form! list boring things! it really makes a difference for getting the package or not. And i am slowly gettign stuff in the mail to you guys letters are boring to write so i've been drawing comic strips of my life. i expect them to be proudly displayed on refrigerators all over the US.
i'm one of the only trainees to not receive a single piece of mail yet, i think the customs people are living vicariously through me or something. oh and there was a request for a day in the life of rebecca. i will attempt to write it here...
6:15ish am: wake up, then i heat some water for bucket baths, then i bucket bathe, and wash my hair, then i wash socks and undies from yesterday in my soapy bath water (it's what you do here, apparently). then i make breakfast, usually a pb and j, or toast, or oatmeal and some fruit. the peaches here are tasty. i've been making pancakes a lot, i make them for dinner and save some batter for breakfast. then i sweep my roundavel, tidy up, look over my lesson plan, dump my old water, boil my drinkng water for the day, get creeped out by the pseudo chickens my 'me bought that sometimes wander in my house. ( i keep thinking of that scene in jurassic park 2 or 3 wehre the guy is eaten by little dinosaurs the size of chickens). then i go to mad's house, then we walk to the bus stop and get teh bus to school.
then i teach/ observe from 8-12:30, with a tea break from 10:15-10:30. (my biscuit intake has skyrocketed!) then we go home for lunch. i've been eating a shoot ton of pasta here. sometimes i powernap. or read. i just finished Blind Assassin from Margaret Atwood and her writing is freaking incredible!! i reccommend it to all my blag audience.
then i go to sesotho lessons from 2:30-4:30/5 then i wander around, or talk to the willagers. or hang with mad. or hide in my roundavel because i want some personal time (which is unheard of here. you must be sick or something to want to stay home by yourself.) also i write my lesson plans during this time. then i make dinner and dishes and eating things from like 6:30-7:30. then i hang . then i do excersizes and stretches from like 730 or 8 for 30-45 mins. then i go to bed and lay around for a while until i fall asleep around 9:30 (i think. my broken alarm clock makes 8 and 9 look the same. same with 5 and 6, which sucks for waking up knowledge).
and that's my day! gotta scooooot
love love love and muffins! (and also maybe a juicebox for liz)
Saturday, December 1, 2007
I apologize for bad language featured in this blog and other emails.
First post-living in a village blog! I now live in a one room roundavel in ha Mofoka. Here instead of multi-room houses, families have 2-4 one room houses. I live with a curmudgeony old lady named ‘Me Malineo Mosoue. She is nice and means well, but she is still a curmudgeon. She doesn’t speak a word of English, so we have a lot of misunderstandings and arguments about everything from my curtains (open or close) to the arrangement of my stuff in my house, to my clothes, to when I leave for school, etc. All the other volunteers (as far as I can tell) have siblings at least who can help translate. Not me though! I guess my stories of current happenings with the ‘me (‘me means mother) are fun for my co-volunteers to hear about. My new name is Nthabeleng (en-tah-bee-leng), which means something along the lines of “happy”, which (this comment is for portlanders only) reminds me of Happy, that dour grumpy woman who works at the slev on 28th and steele.
It has been very rainy here, and when it rains, it really RAINS. With earth shaking heart stopping thunder, and lightning that seems like fireworks outside my window. And rain dumping buckets and buckets until I feel like I’m going to float away…
ok, so i'm feeling much more normal now, but to be truthful about me, i'm going to transcribe some of my journalyness i wrote yesterday. Since i'm on the other side of the world and am communicating through this weird third party (my blag), i'm going to be more honest about what's going on inmy head.
so it's really really lonely here a lot. i'm so isolated, i can't speak to my 'me at all, all the people in the village are pretty cool, but still only want to talk to me because i'm white, and because they want my earrings or my shoes or for me to take them back to america with me. the language barrier is really tough. and having small children follow me and giggle everywhere i go. My friend Madeline (a PCV who live next to me) had some nightmares, and woke up the other morning expecting to be comforted by familiarity, but instead had to realize "holy shit, i'm living in a hut in africa"... which pretty much sums up my nights and mornings too. it's a lot to get used to.
Regina Spektor came on my ipod the other day, and i almost wept, it reminded me so much of portland, of driving around in the rain, of riding my bike through oaks bottom on my way to work, of rain on the willamette. No matter all the hot sunny summers, portland will always be rainy in my mind, i think. anyway it got me to thinking of things i miss, here are some:
the feeling of holding someone's hand in mine, of swinging our linked hands back and forth while we walk, of kisses on the forehead, i miss pie societies, back when they were at tessa's house on 51st. I miss sitting around tessa's basement all day long watching bad tv shows, steadily working our way through bottles of wine, i miss trivia at the gladstone with unmitigated disaster, i miss pool at the pub at teh end of the universe, shuffleboard at the yukon, talking to dan, listening to dan, laying on the grass in sellwood park all day, getting sunburnt. i miss lazy sundays on the couch with jen, of going out to breakfast with my housies (lots and bri), rock climbing, kickball, joe, riding around in cait's car blasting cheesy music, barbeques, staying up drinking until 6 or 7 am joking around with diana mark and dan, sitting on the porch at the hedge house, drunken nights in bill and abe's (now just abe's) basement, fireworks, OMSI, the chemlab office/social room, Reed college and all the awesome dorks that gravitate there, and i miss my gigantic bed with all the down comforters. Mostly i miss my best friends, whom i can say or do anything around. My co-volunteers here are totally awesome but it isn't the same. Hopefully i'll feel better when i'm settled in my own place, not living with a crazy old lady and having all my clothes in a suitcase.
Also, i miss flushing toilets that don't have their own fly population.
I really don't mind teh no plumbing/electricity thing, except teh pit latrines are stinky and fly-ey. I actually used the fly population as an analogy for the electron cloud in metal atoms when teaching. yeah science!
The taxi music here totally rocks. there are two types: one is really cheesy house music, which i LOVE. and the other is Lesotho's own brand of music, which involves a button accordion, a casio keyboard, and some guy with a gruff voice yelling in sesotho. i don't know how the button accordian came to be so popular here, but man is it. also sometimes there are synthesized animal and or baby noises. i don't like those so much. THey blast the music SO LOUD here though.
i start practice teaching on monday. ack! i'm teaching form b maths and form e chemistry ( form a= 8th grade, and so on to e=12th) my form b class has about 50 kids i think, and form e is 11. that's how the schools are here, there is a tiny fraction of each grade that progresses on to the next one.
THe food here is SO BLAND> breakfast is lesheleshele, which is sorgum porridge, apparetnly it's like cream of wheat. i'm not a huge fan. then all other meals are papa (maize meal, a.k.a styrofoam, and moroho, which is shredded greens, mostly cabbage, cooked in a pound of oil) everything here has a pound of oil and a pound of salt. today we get to shop so from now on we cook for ourselves. i can't wait!! the food wasn't too bad this past week, just i like deciding what i eat. also i like deciding what i wear, where i go, etc. everybody here is all up in my business! if there is one tiny spot on my skirt i can't wear it to class (these are peace corps culture/policy/health/sesotho classes. not formal.) so i've become paranoid about getting dirty or my 'me will yell at me.
oh! the names,. it's cool. there are no words to refer to other people impersonally, like "guy" or "lady". all young males are abuti (brother) all young females are ausi (sister) older men are ntate (father) and older women are 'me (mother). i like it. also everyone really does act like family. it's taken Madeline a week to figure out who's in her family and not, because all the brothers sisters cousins, distant relatives, neighbors, etc. all act like they are one family and take care of each other.
we made friends with 4 girls, they're all like 18 or 19, (but are in forms A and B...) and they are so funny. they didn't think there were mountains or trees in america, and if there were, they must be some alien species. also they think hiv/aids is only in lesotho and s. africa, and the rest of the world ignores it and doesn't care because it's not affected. they still don't believe us that it's in america. and it's treated likea n inevitable thing here. one girl said she tested negative, but by the next time she'll prob be + because it's just this inevitable thing that happens and you can't do anything about it. crap times up
this blog was looong!
p.s. love the emails, you are all bad friends it's true. and please send me christmas cards! oh! and someone in portland, can you send me cajun spice and sweet hungarian paprika from limbo!
love you all!!
It has been very rainy here, and when it rains, it really RAINS. With earth shaking heart stopping thunder, and lightning that seems like fireworks outside my window. And rain dumping buckets and buckets until I feel like I’m going to float away…
ok, so i'm feeling much more normal now, but to be truthful about me, i'm going to transcribe some of my journalyness i wrote yesterday. Since i'm on the other side of the world and am communicating through this weird third party (my blag), i'm going to be more honest about what's going on inmy head.
so it's really really lonely here a lot. i'm so isolated, i can't speak to my 'me at all, all the people in the village are pretty cool, but still only want to talk to me because i'm white, and because they want my earrings or my shoes or for me to take them back to america with me. the language barrier is really tough. and having small children follow me and giggle everywhere i go. My friend Madeline (a PCV who live next to me) had some nightmares, and woke up the other morning expecting to be comforted by familiarity, but instead had to realize "holy shit, i'm living in a hut in africa"... which pretty much sums up my nights and mornings too. it's a lot to get used to.
Regina Spektor came on my ipod the other day, and i almost wept, it reminded me so much of portland, of driving around in the rain, of riding my bike through oaks bottom on my way to work, of rain on the willamette. No matter all the hot sunny summers, portland will always be rainy in my mind, i think. anyway it got me to thinking of things i miss, here are some:
the feeling of holding someone's hand in mine, of swinging our linked hands back and forth while we walk, of kisses on the forehead, i miss pie societies, back when they were at tessa's house on 51st. I miss sitting around tessa's basement all day long watching bad tv shows, steadily working our way through bottles of wine, i miss trivia at the gladstone with unmitigated disaster, i miss pool at the pub at teh end of the universe, shuffleboard at the yukon, talking to dan, listening to dan, laying on the grass in sellwood park all day, getting sunburnt. i miss lazy sundays on the couch with jen, of going out to breakfast with my housies (lots and bri), rock climbing, kickball, joe, riding around in cait's car blasting cheesy music, barbeques, staying up drinking until 6 or 7 am joking around with diana mark and dan, sitting on the porch at the hedge house, drunken nights in bill and abe's (now just abe's) basement, fireworks, OMSI, the chemlab office/social room, Reed college and all the awesome dorks that gravitate there, and i miss my gigantic bed with all the down comforters. Mostly i miss my best friends, whom i can say or do anything around. My co-volunteers here are totally awesome but it isn't the same. Hopefully i'll feel better when i'm settled in my own place, not living with a crazy old lady and having all my clothes in a suitcase.
Also, i miss flushing toilets that don't have their own fly population.
I really don't mind teh no plumbing/electricity thing, except teh pit latrines are stinky and fly-ey. I actually used the fly population as an analogy for the electron cloud in metal atoms when teaching. yeah science!
The taxi music here totally rocks. there are two types: one is really cheesy house music, which i LOVE. and the other is Lesotho's own brand of music, which involves a button accordion, a casio keyboard, and some guy with a gruff voice yelling in sesotho. i don't know how the button accordian came to be so popular here, but man is it. also sometimes there are synthesized animal and or baby noises. i don't like those so much. THey blast the music SO LOUD here though.
i start practice teaching on monday. ack! i'm teaching form b maths and form e chemistry ( form a= 8th grade, and so on to e=12th) my form b class has about 50 kids i think, and form e is 11. that's how the schools are here, there is a tiny fraction of each grade that progresses on to the next one.
THe food here is SO BLAND> breakfast is lesheleshele, which is sorgum porridge, apparetnly it's like cream of wheat. i'm not a huge fan. then all other meals are papa (maize meal, a.k.a styrofoam, and moroho, which is shredded greens, mostly cabbage, cooked in a pound of oil) everything here has a pound of oil and a pound of salt. today we get to shop so from now on we cook for ourselves. i can't wait!! the food wasn't too bad this past week, just i like deciding what i eat. also i like deciding what i wear, where i go, etc. everybody here is all up in my business! if there is one tiny spot on my skirt i can't wear it to class (these are peace corps culture/policy/health/sesotho classes. not formal.) so i've become paranoid about getting dirty or my 'me will yell at me.
oh! the names,. it's cool. there are no words to refer to other people impersonally, like "guy" or "lady". all young males are abuti (brother) all young females are ausi (sister) older men are ntate (father) and older women are 'me (mother). i like it. also everyone really does act like family. it's taken Madeline a week to figure out who's in her family and not, because all the brothers sisters cousins, distant relatives, neighbors, etc. all act like they are one family and take care of each other.
we made friends with 4 girls, they're all like 18 or 19, (but are in forms A and B...) and they are so funny. they didn't think there were mountains or trees in america, and if there were, they must be some alien species. also they think hiv/aids is only in lesotho and s. africa, and the rest of the world ignores it and doesn't care because it's not affected. they still don't believe us that it's in america. and it's treated likea n inevitable thing here. one girl said she tested negative, but by the next time she'll prob be + because it's just this inevitable thing that happens and you can't do anything about it. crap times up
this blog was looong!
p.s. love the emails, you are all bad friends it's true. and please send me christmas cards! oh! and someone in portland, can you send me cajun spice and sweet hungarian paprika from limbo!
love you all!!
Saturday, November 24, 2007
darn! i wish i was your wooman!
We leave today for homestay! So this may be my last post for a month or so, I’m not sure about internet access in the villages. I’m so excited to go out and live in the actual Lesotho instead of this compoundy thing we’ve been confined to. I’m also really nervous, though. I hope my sesotho skillz will be enough.
So, true to form, I managed to totally and completely embarrass myself in front of the ambassador at thanksgiving. I may have made some off-color (vulgar?) remarks without realizing he was directly on the other side of this semi-tall lamp. Hopefully he will just forget that anything was ever said… other than that, thanksgiving rocked. There were 6 turkeys and tons of other food and before dinner we played red rover and freeze tag (because we’re all mentally 6 years old) then ate bunches and I forgot my bathing suit because I suck balls so I didn’t get to swim. Everyone there was really nice, and there were a handful of the cutest kids I’ve ever seen. Then after we got back to the compound we had a dance party, and played invisible double dutch, and acted like retards.
Oh! And I forgot to mention, during my volunteer visit, when we went to see the high school, the kids were asking my volunteer about my “rash” (freckles). And then they kept asking me to put my jacket on because they didn’t want to look at my rash. Motherfuckers. I hope that all my students don’t freak out about it. One of the girls had some freckles on her nose though, and I was like, no these spots are from the sun, they’re just like yours! And she covers her face real fast and is like gasp-NO!.
SO, Christmas is kind of coming up, and it takes 4-6 weeks to get a box here, and if I was someone who loved me, I would use what is called the “international flat rate box” it can be as heavy as you want, I think the regular size is 37$ or something. That’s mostly directed towards my momma for future package dealings.
Anyway, for Christmas I want my mommy to put $65 in my checking so I can buy a cell phone. Other than that I only want little things that may or may not fit in a flat envelope such as: an SD memory card for my camera (apparently mine wandered away, I have no memory card, I must’ve taken in out a long time ago for unknown reasons), fishies, starburst, peach-green tea, powdered ranch sauce mix, nerds, something else exciting… MOSTLY though I really really really really really want pictures, drawings, poems, short stories, letters, comics, notes of love and missage, from you guys. If you send me a Christmas letter I will love you forevers. Once I get my roundavel (round- hovel!) I will need to decorate it. I
In sesotho, “rata” means to like, “ruta” means to teach, and “rota” means to pee. I am having trouble with saying I pee whiskey! Or I’m going to pee science! Or I teach candy! And so on.
p.s. Diana I love your stories. I almost peed my pants in the middle of the internet café. Whoah, the computer automatically put an accent on the e in café. Nice.
So, true to form, I managed to totally and completely embarrass myself in front of the ambassador at thanksgiving. I may have made some off-color (vulgar?) remarks without realizing he was directly on the other side of this semi-tall lamp. Hopefully he will just forget that anything was ever said… other than that, thanksgiving rocked. There were 6 turkeys and tons of other food and before dinner we played red rover and freeze tag (because we’re all mentally 6 years old) then ate bunches and I forgot my bathing suit because I suck balls so I didn’t get to swim. Everyone there was really nice, and there were a handful of the cutest kids I’ve ever seen. Then after we got back to the compound we had a dance party, and played invisible double dutch, and acted like retards.
Oh! And I forgot to mention, during my volunteer visit, when we went to see the high school, the kids were asking my volunteer about my “rash” (freckles). And then they kept asking me to put my jacket on because they didn’t want to look at my rash. Motherfuckers. I hope that all my students don’t freak out about it. One of the girls had some freckles on her nose though, and I was like, no these spots are from the sun, they’re just like yours! And she covers her face real fast and is like gasp-NO!.
SO, Christmas is kind of coming up, and it takes 4-6 weeks to get a box here, and if I was someone who loved me, I would use what is called the “international flat rate box” it can be as heavy as you want, I think the regular size is 37$ or something. That’s mostly directed towards my momma for future package dealings.
Anyway, for Christmas I want my mommy to put $65 in my checking so I can buy a cell phone. Other than that I only want little things that may or may not fit in a flat envelope such as: an SD memory card for my camera (apparently mine wandered away, I have no memory card, I must’ve taken in out a long time ago for unknown reasons), fishies, starburst, peach-green tea, powdered ranch sauce mix, nerds, something else exciting… MOSTLY though I really really really really really want pictures, drawings, poems, short stories, letters, comics, notes of love and missage, from you guys. If you send me a Christmas letter I will love you forevers. Once I get my roundavel (round- hovel!) I will need to decorate it. I
In sesotho, “rata” means to like, “ruta” means to teach, and “rota” means to pee. I am having trouble with saying I pee whiskey! Or I’m going to pee science! Or I teach candy! And so on.
p.s. Diana I love your stories. I almost peed my pants in the middle of the internet café. Whoah, the computer automatically put an accent on the e in café. Nice.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Stuff things in a turkey's butt.
Happy Thanksgiving!
I miss all of you soooo much. I hope you all don’t miss me tooo much and cry into your turkey. I finally went to the dentist this morning. I have been having a lot of trouble eating and drinking because my tooth was so painful. Apparently the crown I got right before leaving Cali was too big in one spot, and was putting a lot of pressure on the tooth above it, making it hurty. So the dentist drilled off a bunch of my crown, and my tooth feels all rough and rounded off and weird. He said it will take a few days for my ouchy tooth to relax and stop hurting, and gave me a prescription for “brufen” which apparently is ibuprofen. Woopie. Hopefully I will be able to eat lots of food for thanksgiving though! I’ll load up on brufen before I go.
So I got to go visit a current PCV at her site for a few days, and it was awesome! She is in Quthing in the South of the country up in the mountains. They were these rolling green mountains with farm plots cut out of the sides of the mountains. Terracing I think it’s called. I got to experience Lesotho transport. This consists of busses (like school busses) which I did not take, Sprinters (22 passenger mini buses), Combis (15 passenger vans) and 4 plus 1s (sedan taxis). So on one of my sprinters, there were 36 people we counted. This is normal apparently, I had a fat lady from across the aisle leaning on me, I don’t know where that half of her ass was, and another guy’s butt in my face, and he kept dancing to the music (which I’ll tell you about later) and shaking his butt in my face. And in Lesotho they think that open windows on cars are the way you get tb and common colds, so they keep them closed. Ick. Then we had a combi (15 passenger) with 21 people on it at one point. It was barely moving, I thought the engine would die. We got around ok though.
Anyway the site, so amazing! And her little roundavel was very cute. She had no electricity or running water, but that wasn’t a big deal at all. We cooked dinner on the propane stove, read books, talked, and she had a nice double bed so I didn’t have to sleep on the floor, which was very clean anyway so I wouldn’t have minded. I think I want to be placed in the mountains. We went on a hike, straight up a mountain and it was beautiful, but the air up here is so thin, my lungs felt like they were dying.
Oh! Revelation! Very few people in Lesotho die each year as a result of AIDS. However, thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people die from things like a broken heart, a headache, the common cold, a broken finger, etc. it’s way taboo to die of aids.
So it’s been asked, where I am living. It’s this compound walled with a few rooms with 3 sets of bunk beds each, a living room with a couple couches, and another building with our classroom and eating hall area. There are 23 trainees and ‘me mamothe, who is our main lady that are living there, and others who come each day. It feels like what camp would be like, we are all in bunks and have no personal space AT ALL and spend every second of every day together. Luckily I love all my co-trainees and don’t mind too much being with them. In the evenings we play campy games like charades and question games and other stuff. It’s fun, but is a bit much sometimes, so I retreat into my noise-cancelling headphones and my book.
Oh, and to everyone writing me emails, I know I haven’t been responding, I only have time to read and then blog, and so let everyone know what’s up.. one day I’ll put aside more time to send you personal notes because I’ve been thinking about all of you a lot, and wondering how life’s going without me and stuff. So, no I am not ignoring you.
And my co-trainees I guess are reading this blog, too. Why? I don’t know. Maybe if they forget what they did today? To see if I gossip about them? Or I am just so magnetic, and my story writing style is irresistible they must live through me.
The school system here is pretty much atrocious. All of the principals are corrupt and steal money, the teachers are beat down and don’t come to class a lot, and the students are left with exams written for british students, subject matter that doesn’t pertain to them, an outdated colonial school system set up that is centered around English, rather than sesotho. One school i went to had 15 computers donated, but the school doesn't have electricity, so is unable to use the computers. and they won't give them up because people here are very possesive of free stuff/supplies etc. the principal had just embezzled 35,000 rand, the classrooms all had broken windows, students were pulled out of the middle of their end of year exams to have their heads shaved and so didn't have enough time to finish, ugh. (all students here must keep their heads shaved. if not they get beaten or expelled) oh yeah, and students are all afraid to ask or answer questions because they get beaten if they're wrong, or ask sometihng the teacher doesnt know. they get beaten for everything pretty much, and are only taught to memorize and regurgitate. lame.
i'm going to the ambassadors' for t-day, i'm really really really happy to hopefully get an americanish meal. with turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy. and cheese.
oh crap out of time
eat stuff for me!
I miss all of you soooo much. I hope you all don’t miss me tooo much and cry into your turkey. I finally went to the dentist this morning. I have been having a lot of trouble eating and drinking because my tooth was so painful. Apparently the crown I got right before leaving Cali was too big in one spot, and was putting a lot of pressure on the tooth above it, making it hurty. So the dentist drilled off a bunch of my crown, and my tooth feels all rough and rounded off and weird. He said it will take a few days for my ouchy tooth to relax and stop hurting, and gave me a prescription for “brufen” which apparently is ibuprofen. Woopie. Hopefully I will be able to eat lots of food for thanksgiving though! I’ll load up on brufen before I go.
So I got to go visit a current PCV at her site for a few days, and it was awesome! She is in Quthing in the South of the country up in the mountains. They were these rolling green mountains with farm plots cut out of the sides of the mountains. Terracing I think it’s called. I got to experience Lesotho transport. This consists of busses (like school busses) which I did not take, Sprinters (22 passenger mini buses), Combis (15 passenger vans) and 4 plus 1s (sedan taxis). So on one of my sprinters, there were 36 people we counted. This is normal apparently, I had a fat lady from across the aisle leaning on me, I don’t know where that half of her ass was, and another guy’s butt in my face, and he kept dancing to the music (which I’ll tell you about later) and shaking his butt in my face. And in Lesotho they think that open windows on cars are the way you get tb and common colds, so they keep them closed. Ick. Then we had a combi (15 passenger) with 21 people on it at one point. It was barely moving, I thought the engine would die. We got around ok though.
Anyway the site, so amazing! And her little roundavel was very cute. She had no electricity or running water, but that wasn’t a big deal at all. We cooked dinner on the propane stove, read books, talked, and she had a nice double bed so I didn’t have to sleep on the floor, which was very clean anyway so I wouldn’t have minded. I think I want to be placed in the mountains. We went on a hike, straight up a mountain and it was beautiful, but the air up here is so thin, my lungs felt like they were dying.
Oh! Revelation! Very few people in Lesotho die each year as a result of AIDS. However, thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people die from things like a broken heart, a headache, the common cold, a broken finger, etc. it’s way taboo to die of aids.
So it’s been asked, where I am living. It’s this compound walled with a few rooms with 3 sets of bunk beds each, a living room with a couple couches, and another building with our classroom and eating hall area. There are 23 trainees and ‘me mamothe, who is our main lady that are living there, and others who come each day. It feels like what camp would be like, we are all in bunks and have no personal space AT ALL and spend every second of every day together. Luckily I love all my co-trainees and don’t mind too much being with them. In the evenings we play campy games like charades and question games and other stuff. It’s fun, but is a bit much sometimes, so I retreat into my noise-cancelling headphones and my book.
Oh, and to everyone writing me emails, I know I haven’t been responding, I only have time to read and then blog, and so let everyone know what’s up.. one day I’ll put aside more time to send you personal notes because I’ve been thinking about all of you a lot, and wondering how life’s going without me and stuff. So, no I am not ignoring you.
And my co-trainees I guess are reading this blog, too. Why? I don’t know. Maybe if they forget what they did today? To see if I gossip about them? Or I am just so magnetic, and my story writing style is irresistible they must live through me.
The school system here is pretty much atrocious. All of the principals are corrupt and steal money, the teachers are beat down and don’t come to class a lot, and the students are left with exams written for british students, subject matter that doesn’t pertain to them, an outdated colonial school system set up that is centered around English, rather than sesotho. One school i went to had 15 computers donated, but the school doesn't have electricity, so is unable to use the computers. and they won't give them up because people here are very possesive of free stuff/supplies etc. the principal had just embezzled 35,000 rand, the classrooms all had broken windows, students were pulled out of the middle of their end of year exams to have their heads shaved and so didn't have enough time to finish, ugh. (all students here must keep their heads shaved. if not they get beaten or expelled) oh yeah, and students are all afraid to ask or answer questions because they get beaten if they're wrong, or ask sometihng the teacher doesnt know. they get beaten for everything pretty much, and are only taught to memorize and regurgitate. lame.
i'm going to the ambassadors' for t-day, i'm really really really happy to hopefully get an americanish meal. with turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy. and cheese.
oh crap out of time
eat stuff for me!
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Best Blog in the HIstory of EVAR
Guess who’s faaamous?!!!....... (me). We went to lunch at the US ambassador’s house, and his daughter informed me that her mother follows my blog!! So, officially I would like to make a shout-out to ambassador’s wife! Hey! I’m going to use your pool on thanksgiving! I’m really excited to go swimming.
Tomorrow I get to venture out into the great land of Lesotho. We are going in pairs to visit different current peace corps volunteers. I’ll be excited to practice my sesotho! And also to see what it’s like actually being out and about in this country!
The other day we visited some schools, (one secondary, one primary and one preschool) and we got to talk to all the kids. The high schoolers all wanted my jewelry, and the primary were awesome to talk to. I got to practice my halting sesotho with them, and have them giggle at me whether or not what I was saying was making sense. Then, coolest thing evar, all the preschoolers lined up and sang for us and it was total muffin. The people here sing all the time, they just bust out into these incredible harmonies and stuff all the time. We get to sing both ours and lesotho’s national anthem every morning before class (just like elementary school!), and then for breaks we sing while dancing in circles around the classroom. I like the dancing. (surprise!) and it’s great learning all these songs, even though as you guys know, I have the most off key voice. I try to sing quietly.
I have all sorts of internet while I’m in the capital, and all of the camptowns (capitals of the districts, comparable to states in the US) have internet except 3. so I have a 70% chance of having regular access to internet at my site. Eventually I will get a phone, so I can text friends in-country, and also receive calls from you guys. The phones are 450 rand (divide that by 6.5 to get US dollars) and I have like 100 rand. So I can’t get a phone for a while.
In the evenings I study sesotho (a little) and hang out with co-trainees. We play games and stuff. It’s great being with them, because before I left nobody really understood why I wanted to do this. It went from outright telling me I’m crazy, to being supporting but still not really understanding why. But now all these amazing people, they went through the same thing, and they (obviously) wanted to do this too. So it’s a nice support group sort of thing. Also, apparently one of my favorite trainees (victoriaaa) sent this link to her mom. So hello victoria’s mom!
it's funny, i'm getting used to being stared at, but now whenever i see another white person, i totally stare. they're funny looking! they totally stand out! I'm such a dork. i should just stare at myself or something.
today our main trainer lady was gone because she was going to a funeral. also my language trainer, and one other have their head shaved, and she told me it's because her mom died last month. The women shave their heads to mourn family member deaths. One in four people here has aids. when i'm walking through town, i just count off, and think about how every fourth person will die relatively soon. Much sooner than they should, and much sooner than they would if they had access to healthcare and knowledge about how to manage the disease. It's really depressing.
anyway, on that note... i'm running out of internet time./
ok i can cheer you guys up. if you're wondering where i get my humor, my mother emailed me saying "becky eats poop"
love you all, thank you so much for the emails, keep em coming!
Tomorrow I get to venture out into the great land of Lesotho. We are going in pairs to visit different current peace corps volunteers. I’ll be excited to practice my sesotho! And also to see what it’s like actually being out and about in this country!
The other day we visited some schools, (one secondary, one primary and one preschool) and we got to talk to all the kids. The high schoolers all wanted my jewelry, and the primary were awesome to talk to. I got to practice my halting sesotho with them, and have them giggle at me whether or not what I was saying was making sense. Then, coolest thing evar, all the preschoolers lined up and sang for us and it was total muffin. The people here sing all the time, they just bust out into these incredible harmonies and stuff all the time. We get to sing both ours and lesotho’s national anthem every morning before class (just like elementary school!), and then for breaks we sing while dancing in circles around the classroom. I like the dancing. (surprise!) and it’s great learning all these songs, even though as you guys know, I have the most off key voice. I try to sing quietly.
I have all sorts of internet while I’m in the capital, and all of the camptowns (capitals of the districts, comparable to states in the US) have internet except 3. so I have a 70% chance of having regular access to internet at my site. Eventually I will get a phone, so I can text friends in-country, and also receive calls from you guys. The phones are 450 rand (divide that by 6.5 to get US dollars) and I have like 100 rand. So I can’t get a phone for a while.
In the evenings I study sesotho (a little) and hang out with co-trainees. We play games and stuff. It’s great being with them, because before I left nobody really understood why I wanted to do this. It went from outright telling me I’m crazy, to being supporting but still not really understanding why. But now all these amazing people, they went through the same thing, and they (obviously) wanted to do this too. So it’s a nice support group sort of thing. Also, apparently one of my favorite trainees (victoriaaa) sent this link to her mom. So hello victoria’s mom!
it's funny, i'm getting used to being stared at, but now whenever i see another white person, i totally stare. they're funny looking! they totally stand out! I'm such a dork. i should just stare at myself or something.
today our main trainer lady was gone because she was going to a funeral. also my language trainer, and one other have their head shaved, and she told me it's because her mom died last month. The women shave their heads to mourn family member deaths. One in four people here has aids. when i'm walking through town, i just count off, and think about how every fourth person will die relatively soon. Much sooner than they should, and much sooner than they would if they had access to healthcare and knowledge about how to manage the disease. It's really depressing.
anyway, on that note... i'm running out of internet time./
ok i can cheer you guys up. if you're wondering where i get my humor, my mother emailed me saying "becky eats poop"
love you all, thank you so much for the emails, keep em coming!
Thursday, November 15, 2007
i miss you and want to know how you are
send me emails, you assholes! let me know how you're doing and stuff! if you have my blog address, i want to know how you are. this isn't a one way thing, you know.
also real letters would be much appreciated. i want mail to open! send me stuff! i finally bought some stamps, but i don't have envelopes, so some of you may get some mail in a month or so.
i have nothing new, except to say that i think it's awesome how much beyonce is on the radio here. and also i like how a few of my co-trainees join me in song whenever i burst out with a cheesy pop number.
sala hantle bo-ntate le bo-me! (stay well, guys and girls) (literally fathers and mothers)
ausi rebecca
also real letters would be much appreciated. i want mail to open! send me stuff! i finally bought some stamps, but i don't have envelopes, so some of you may get some mail in a month or so.
i have nothing new, except to say that i think it's awesome how much beyonce is on the radio here. and also i like how a few of my co-trainees join me in song whenever i burst out with a cheesy pop number.
sala hantle bo-ntate le bo-me! (stay well, guys and girls) (literally fathers and mothers)
ausi rebecca
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
mountains, and poop
Hey!
Still alive! And causing trouble, apparently. Luckily they like people who laugh a lot and are gregarious here. I’m not used to being in class all day, so I get all antsy and act like a hyper distracted second grader sometimes. The bo’me all know my name though, and correct my sesotho, which is good. I’m in the advanced speed language group, and we go really fast. It’s crazy, there is so much to learn, and no time to study because they keep us busy from 7am to 8 or 9 pm. Anyway I have 30 minutes to rush-blag. So here is an update:
Anyway, the language here, I told some people before that it’s not a click language, but it is! There are a few clicks. One, the “tl” is a lateral lisp side of the cheeks exhale sort of click, and that’s in a lot of words. Also the ‘q” is a tongue on the roof of the mouth behind your front teeth sort of click. This sound is associated with water, because it’s the noise a stone makes when dropped in water. How cool is that!?! Quthing, one of the districts has a lot of rivers and is “click-uting” I want to live there so I can click.
Also, the people here dress to the nines, everyday. They are so swanky!! I am wearing all my nice semi-business casual wear, and I am way underdressed everyday. People all have these great outfits, and perfect hair and everything. It’s very important to look clean and professional here, even in the very rural areas. Apparently we get to learn how to iron our clothes without electricity… woo.
It was great, the other day during cultural training or whatever, ‘me (which means mother, which here is used for any woman that is married or over 25) ‘me mamothe, our director was talking, then she grabbed her boobs and announced “these mountains… they are nothing!!” and then was shaking them around and saying, we can keep our money in here, take them out, bring them around, basotho men do not care! Well about 10% care so keep a shirt on, but mostly they are nothing!! Then she grabs her thighs and is like “but these.. oooohhhhh!!!! Oooo yeah! They are sexy! That’s why you do not wear tight pants or short skirt, you are just showing men your goods, inviting them to have sex with you”. Then she went on for a while about it. It was great. also she was telling men not to wear short shorts because they don't want their animals to fall out.
Then today Dr. J (our medical main man) was talking about knowing if you have dysentery vs. regualar diarrhea, and he said, “you all know the smell of your own poop. So if you have diarrhea, smell your poop. If it is different, you can say ‘this shit is baad!’” so, in the future I may inform you all that my shit has gone bad, and then you can all feel sorry for me and hope that it’s giardia and not amoebic dysentery.
I am also apparently wowing my co-trainees with my random science knowledge. Thank you, OMSI!
time up!!
byeeeeeeee
Still alive! And causing trouble, apparently. Luckily they like people who laugh a lot and are gregarious here. I’m not used to being in class all day, so I get all antsy and act like a hyper distracted second grader sometimes. The bo’me all know my name though, and correct my sesotho, which is good. I’m in the advanced speed language group, and we go really fast. It’s crazy, there is so much to learn, and no time to study because they keep us busy from 7am to 8 or 9 pm. Anyway I have 30 minutes to rush-blag. So here is an update:
Anyway, the language here, I told some people before that it’s not a click language, but it is! There are a few clicks. One, the “tl” is a lateral lisp side of the cheeks exhale sort of click, and that’s in a lot of words. Also the ‘q” is a tongue on the roof of the mouth behind your front teeth sort of click. This sound is associated with water, because it’s the noise a stone makes when dropped in water. How cool is that!?! Quthing, one of the districts has a lot of rivers and is “click-uting” I want to live there so I can click.
Also, the people here dress to the nines, everyday. They are so swanky!! I am wearing all my nice semi-business casual wear, and I am way underdressed everyday. People all have these great outfits, and perfect hair and everything. It’s very important to look clean and professional here, even in the very rural areas. Apparently we get to learn how to iron our clothes without electricity… woo.
It was great, the other day during cultural training or whatever, ‘me (which means mother, which here is used for any woman that is married or over 25) ‘me mamothe, our director was talking, then she grabbed her boobs and announced “these mountains… they are nothing!!” and then was shaking them around and saying, we can keep our money in here, take them out, bring them around, basotho men do not care! Well about 10% care so keep a shirt on, but mostly they are nothing!! Then she grabs her thighs and is like “but these.. oooohhhhh!!!! Oooo yeah! They are sexy! That’s why you do not wear tight pants or short skirt, you are just showing men your goods, inviting them to have sex with you”. Then she went on for a while about it. It was great. also she was telling men not to wear short shorts because they don't want their animals to fall out.
Then today Dr. J (our medical main man) was talking about knowing if you have dysentery vs. regualar diarrhea, and he said, “you all know the smell of your own poop. So if you have diarrhea, smell your poop. If it is different, you can say ‘this shit is baad!’” so, in the future I may inform you all that my shit has gone bad, and then you can all feel sorry for me and hope that it’s giardia and not amoebic dysentery.
I am also apparently wowing my co-trainees with my random science knowledge. Thank you, OMSI!
time up!!
byeeeeeeee
Saturday, November 10, 2007
first africa blog dedicated to victoria!
i'm alive!
i'm in maseru, the capital. we got in yesterday, it's sooo beautiful here! and today i learned a little sesotho. it's all hot and sunny and i turned into a lobster because i'm dumb and don't use sunscreen... my co-peace corps people are all really awesome. the bo-me (women) that are our language teachers are totally great, too. it's disconcerting being a spectacle every time i leave the training center, though. it's like i got two heads or i pooed myself or something, everybody stares and yells random things i don't understand. i'm in training until january 10, and i won't know where my site will be until week 6 or 7 of training. I think i'll do really well here, though. it'll require a lot of patience and flexibility and whatnot, but i usually get excited by most anything, and there is so much here to be excited about... I love all the new experiences and sights and smells and such. the food isn't too new, but it's alright. kinda bland. i'm making friends with victoria, the cooking lady. today we talked about TLC (the r&b group, not the treatment). the internet is SO SLOW we have all sorts of plans. sunday is dance party, thursday is talent show day, oh crap gotta gooooo
love you all forever!
p.s. VICTORI-UH.
i'm in maseru, the capital. we got in yesterday, it's sooo beautiful here! and today i learned a little sesotho. it's all hot and sunny and i turned into a lobster because i'm dumb and don't use sunscreen... my co-peace corps people are all really awesome. the bo-me (women) that are our language teachers are totally great, too. it's disconcerting being a spectacle every time i leave the training center, though. it's like i got two heads or i pooed myself or something, everybody stares and yells random things i don't understand. i'm in training until january 10, and i won't know where my site will be until week 6 or 7 of training. I think i'll do really well here, though. it'll require a lot of patience and flexibility and whatnot, but i usually get excited by most anything, and there is so much here to be excited about... I love all the new experiences and sights and smells and such. the food isn't too new, but it's alright. kinda bland. i'm making friends with victoria, the cooking lady. today we talked about TLC (the r&b group, not the treatment). the internet is SO SLOW we have all sorts of plans. sunday is dance party, thursday is talent show day, oh crap gotta gooooo
love you all forever!
p.s. VICTORI-UH.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
So Long! Farewell!
[Children:]
There's a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall
And the bells in the steeple too
And up in the nursery an absurd little bird
Is popping out to say "cuckoo"
[Marta, Gretl, Brigitta:]
Cuckoo, cuckoo
[Children: Marta, Gretl, Brigitta: ]
Regretfully they tell us Cuckoo, cuckoo
But firmly they compel us Cuckoo, cuckoo
To say goodbye . . .
[Marta, Gretl, Brigitta:]
Cuckoo!
[Children:]
. . . to you
[Children:]
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good night
[Marta:]
I hate to go and leave this pretty sight
[Children:]
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu
[Friedrich:]
Adieu, adieu, to yieu and yieu and yieu
[Children:]
So long, farewell, au revoir, auf wiedersehen
[Liesl:]
I'd like to stay and taste my first champagne
[Children:]
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye
[Kurt:]
I leave and heave a sigh and say goodbye -- Goodbye!
[Brigitta:]
I'm glad to go, I cannot tell a lie
[Louisa:]
I flit, I float, I fleetly flee, I fly
[Gretl:]
The sun has gone to bed and so must I
[Children:]
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
[Guests:]
Goodbye!
There's a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall
And the bells in the steeple too
And up in the nursery an absurd little bird
Is popping out to say "cuckoo"
[Marta, Gretl, Brigitta:]
Cuckoo, cuckoo
[Children: Marta, Gretl, Brigitta: ]
Regretfully they tell us Cuckoo, cuckoo
But firmly they compel us Cuckoo, cuckoo
To say goodbye . . .
[Marta, Gretl, Brigitta:]
Cuckoo!
[Children:]
. . . to you
[Children:]
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good night
[Marta:]
I hate to go and leave this pretty sight
[Children:]
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu
[Friedrich:]
Adieu, adieu, to yieu and yieu and yieu
[Children:]
So long, farewell, au revoir, auf wiedersehen
[Liesl:]
I'd like to stay and taste my first champagne
[Children:]
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye
[Kurt:]
I leave and heave a sigh and say goodbye -- Goodbye!
[Brigitta:]
I'm glad to go, I cannot tell a lie
[Louisa:]
I flit, I float, I fleetly flee, I fly
[Gretl:]
The sun has gone to bed and so must I
[Children:]
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
[Guests:]
Goodbye!
Saturday, October 27, 2007
10 things that quicken the heart
i found this blog: http://snoreandguzzle.com/?page_id=11 This person is compiling a list of 1,000 things that quicken the heart, made up of small lists sent in. What are these lists? you ask. here's what the site sez:
"A common japanese tradition...As a form of meditation, or therapy, it is common to prepare a “list of 10 things that quicken the heart.” The list is supposed to describe the small things in life that make one happy, and which makes existence slightly more tolerable." i loved reading it, and have made my own list (yes, of 11 things. so what)...
11. glitter
10. going out to breakfast with friends, slightly hungover, and ordering eggs benedict and rc cola
9. walking through mud barefoot and having it squish between my toes, (alternately: making flubber or oobleck at work and letting it squish between my fingers)
8. falling over in the shallows at the beach
7. a nice glass of whiskey, with ice
6. a nice pint of microbrew, on tap
5. joking around with 2nd graders
4. dancing to cheesy pop music
3. anime
2. kisses on the cheek
1.long hugs, where i can nuzzle the base of their neck
at least that's what i have now. i keep thinking of other things, oh well. if anyone does read this blog, you should make a list, and send it to me so i can anally compare it to mine
"A common japanese tradition...As a form of meditation, or therapy, it is common to prepare a “list of 10 things that quicken the heart.” The list is supposed to describe the small things in life that make one happy, and which makes existence slightly more tolerable." i loved reading it, and have made my own list (yes, of 11 things. so what)...
11. glitter
10. going out to breakfast with friends, slightly hungover, and ordering eggs benedict and rc cola
9. walking through mud barefoot and having it squish between my toes, (alternately: making flubber or oobleck at work and letting it squish between my fingers)
8. falling over in the shallows at the beach
7. a nice glass of whiskey, with ice
6. a nice pint of microbrew, on tap
5. joking around with 2nd graders
4. dancing to cheesy pop music
3. anime
2. kisses on the cheek
1.long hugs, where i can nuzzle the base of their neck
at least that's what i have now. i keep thinking of other things, oh well. if anyone does read this blog, you should make a list, and send it to me so i can anally compare it to mine
Thursday, October 18, 2007
A Hairy Adventure (Hah!)
no, i am not yet in Lesotho. I have completed the first and most difficult step though, which is leaving portland. now i am just mostly bored and waiting to leave already!
i'm posting because i have a funny story and nobody to tell it to... today i got a crappy haircut. (whoo! hah! man, that is funny. but wait, there's more!) it definitely is not bad compared to past do's i've endured. I somehow attract the crazy incompetent hairstylists. once in high school my hair was cut about 3 inches shorter than i asked because the lady "didn't do short hair" and kept messing up and trying to fix it. how a hair cutter can manage to charge $50 and not know how to cut short hair, i'm not sure. Another time i had this nutcase whose version of "chunky layers a la meg ryan" meant "leave 9 small random chunks of hair 1 inch longer than the rest while cackling and proclaiming 'meg ryan eat your heart out!' ".
anyway, today i may have accidentally encouraged it. So i got 3 fillings in 3 separate quadrants of my mouth, which meant 3 novacaine shots. my face was a total retard. Rather than slur, i decided to over-enunciate, and i ended up sounding just like jimmy from south park (the guy with crutch-braces, timmy's nemesis). I got a total kick out of this, and laughed muchly at myself, drooling with each laugh as i drove away.
So anyway, i went straight to "Athleticuts" after the dentist. I don't know how i could have expected a decent haircut from a place with astroturf, stadium style seating, and a one-hole put put golf course in the waiting area, and jr. high-style lockers between each cutting station, with the stylists wearing jerseys. Man, it was cheese and half; i couldn't resist! maybe i have self-destructive urges sometimes... As i explained to the lady what i wanted, i realized i was still speaking retard. both the stylist and the receptionist were so understanding and overly helpful and pitying that i didn't have the heart to tell them i wasn't actually verbally (and therefore mentally?) challenged. And this hairstylist admits right off how nervous she was because i wanted a "real" haircut, not just a trim. since i have sort of learned from my past, i sort of walked her through my hairdo, in a silly voice. (and yes, i may have emphasized my speech a little more than necessary, but i was having fun).
About halfway through the cut, my speech was clearing up, and then i got another round of funny looks, these more suspicious than "awww poor you"... so i admitted the fillings in my recent past. i was sad to end the game. this lady was pretty funny, though. when she got really nervous about a particular cutting action, she would switch into a horrible british accent, and call me things like "me love". it was so hard not to giggle and mess her up even more! and after i admitted my full mental capacity, the receptionist kept trying to convince me to shave my head and that no, really, it will look good! hah hah, sneaky receptionist, i will not fall for your revenge schemes, for i am too smart and in complete control of my faculties (if not the left side of my tongue and lower lip) for you to fool me!
anyway, here i am with a marginal do. maybe i'll try cleaning it up once the mirror returns to my bathroom (it has gone on a sudden adventure to places unknown and now i have this stained, gluey wall to look at).
the end. (!)
i'm posting because i have a funny story and nobody to tell it to... today i got a crappy haircut. (whoo! hah! man, that is funny. but wait, there's more!) it definitely is not bad compared to past do's i've endured. I somehow attract the crazy incompetent hairstylists. once in high school my hair was cut about 3 inches shorter than i asked because the lady "didn't do short hair" and kept messing up and trying to fix it. how a hair cutter can manage to charge $50 and not know how to cut short hair, i'm not sure. Another time i had this nutcase whose version of "chunky layers a la meg ryan" meant "leave 9 small random chunks of hair 1 inch longer than the rest while cackling and proclaiming 'meg ryan eat your heart out!' ".
anyway, today i may have accidentally encouraged it. So i got 3 fillings in 3 separate quadrants of my mouth, which meant 3 novacaine shots. my face was a total retard. Rather than slur, i decided to over-enunciate, and i ended up sounding just like jimmy from south park (the guy with crutch-braces, timmy's nemesis). I got a total kick out of this, and laughed muchly at myself, drooling with each laugh as i drove away.
So anyway, i went straight to "Athleticuts" after the dentist. I don't know how i could have expected a decent haircut from a place with astroturf, stadium style seating, and a one-hole put put golf course in the waiting area, and jr. high-style lockers between each cutting station, with the stylists wearing jerseys. Man, it was cheese and half; i couldn't resist! maybe i have self-destructive urges sometimes... As i explained to the lady what i wanted, i realized i was still speaking retard. both the stylist and the receptionist were so understanding and overly helpful and pitying that i didn't have the heart to tell them i wasn't actually verbally (and therefore mentally?) challenged. And this hairstylist admits right off how nervous she was because i wanted a "real" haircut, not just a trim. since i have sort of learned from my past, i sort of walked her through my hairdo, in a silly voice. (and yes, i may have emphasized my speech a little more than necessary, but i was having fun).
About halfway through the cut, my speech was clearing up, and then i got another round of funny looks, these more suspicious than "awww poor you"... so i admitted the fillings in my recent past. i was sad to end the game. this lady was pretty funny, though. when she got really nervous about a particular cutting action, she would switch into a horrible british accent, and call me things like "me love". it was so hard not to giggle and mess her up even more! and after i admitted my full mental capacity, the receptionist kept trying to convince me to shave my head and that no, really, it will look good! hah hah, sneaky receptionist, i will not fall for your revenge schemes, for i am too smart and in complete control of my faculties (if not the left side of my tongue and lower lip) for you to fool me!
anyway, here i am with a marginal do. maybe i'll try cleaning it up once the mirror returns to my bathroom (it has gone on a sudden adventure to places unknown and now i have this stained, gluey wall to look at).
the end. (!)
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Freak OUT
So, I'm freakin out.
I leave portland in a week and a half. This is my home! I can't leave! stupid. I'm going through this thing where I keep getting all frustrated when friends are too tired, or forget, or busy to hang out... i know i can't expect them to drop everything and hang out with me, but I know after drive away Oct. 3, I'll never see 90% of them again, which is really sad, because the friends i have up here have become my family. They're the people i live with, and have thanksgiving and new year's with... but the difference is friends are a lot easier to lose track of than family. This whole life i have will be gone when i come back, if i do come back to portland. It's really scary, and depressing.
and people keep calling me noble and brave shit like that, which makes me uncomfortable, because i'm not. If i really wanted to help people or save the world or whatever, i wouldn't do it by joining the peace corps. I mean, i do want to help people, but i have no illusions about being successful. I don't know how i'll even be able to teach, because not only will i have to teach in another language, i have to teach science in another language. Science already has so much specific vocab as to shut a lot of people out, and make it scary to learn, and i know that vocab. I won't even know what i'm talking about over there. and as for the brave thing.... I don't feel brave, i feel more like crazy and i don't know. something else. stupid?
I leave portland in a week and a half. This is my home! I can't leave! stupid. I'm going through this thing where I keep getting all frustrated when friends are too tired, or forget, or busy to hang out... i know i can't expect them to drop everything and hang out with me, but I know after drive away Oct. 3, I'll never see 90% of them again, which is really sad, because the friends i have up here have become my family. They're the people i live with, and have thanksgiving and new year's with... but the difference is friends are a lot easier to lose track of than family. This whole life i have will be gone when i come back, if i do come back to portland. It's really scary, and depressing.
and people keep calling me noble and brave shit like that, which makes me uncomfortable, because i'm not. If i really wanted to help people or save the world or whatever, i wouldn't do it by joining the peace corps. I mean, i do want to help people, but i have no illusions about being successful. I don't know how i'll even be able to teach, because not only will i have to teach in another language, i have to teach science in another language. Science already has so much specific vocab as to shut a lot of people out, and make it scary to learn, and i know that vocab. I won't even know what i'm talking about over there. and as for the brave thing.... I don't feel brave, i feel more like crazy and i don't know. something else. stupid?
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Blagga Whut?!
In honor of the awesomeness of xkcd.com, i am henceforth calling this my blag.
T- 7 weeks and counting until i travel to somewhere for a couple days, and then to lesotho, africa... yeah, i had to wikipedia it, too. One site called it "the switzerland of africa", which i find awesomely silly. I'm going to live in a place where it snows! and yes, i of all people manage to do this by going to africa. that will be crazy though... snow. and i will get my very own hovel! i really want to get a chicken. i will be afraid of it, because birds freak me out, but i really like chickens, in a stand back no-touchy sort of way. so this chicken will help me get over my fear of birds plucking out my eyeballs and it will also give me fresh eggs! maybe i will name it "destiny" or "mutual understanding" or something.
fun fact #1: lesotho has both one of the highest aids rates, and one of the highest literacy rates out of any country in africa. although it is roughly the size of vermont, so maybe that is influencing these statistics...
fun fact#2: lesotho is like a little island in the middle of south africa, it's completely surrounded. it's like they seceded from the union and shit. in fact, they did.
fun fact #3: lesotho has the "highest low point" out of any country in the world. the lowest point is like 4500ft above sea level. There don't seem to be many trees there, judging from pictures, which is weird.
T- 7 weeks and counting until i travel to somewhere for a couple days, and then to lesotho, africa... yeah, i had to wikipedia it, too. One site called it "the switzerland of africa", which i find awesomely silly. I'm going to live in a place where it snows! and yes, i of all people manage to do this by going to africa. that will be crazy though... snow. and i will get my very own hovel! i really want to get a chicken. i will be afraid of it, because birds freak me out, but i really like chickens, in a stand back no-touchy sort of way. so this chicken will help me get over my fear of birds plucking out my eyeballs and it will also give me fresh eggs! maybe i will name it "destiny" or "mutual understanding" or something.
fun fact #1: lesotho has both one of the highest aids rates, and one of the highest literacy rates out of any country in africa. although it is roughly the size of vermont, so maybe that is influencing these statistics...
fun fact#2: lesotho is like a little island in the middle of south africa, it's completely surrounded. it's like they seceded from the union and shit. in fact, they did.
fun fact #3: lesotho has the "highest low point" out of any country in the world. the lowest point is like 4500ft above sea level. There don't seem to be many trees there, judging from pictures, which is weird.
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