A Journey in Itself

While you all are exploring exotic and foreign lands, I was left to partake in my own journey here in Tempe. That was the hair-growing journey, as partnered with Heidi's hair-growing journey. It's basically what it sounds like; we ventured out together to grow our hair as long as we possibly could.

I could estimate that I started growing my hair out in January of 2008, and it is now May of 2009. Since then, it doesn't seem like I've made much progress. My hair barely touched my shoulders, because I had kept getting it trimmed so it wouldn't turn into a mullet while I was growing out the shortest layers.

But, you see, my hair is so darn thick that even at this length (which I consider pretty long), it took at least 20 minutes to dry with my hair dryer. Frustrated by the amount of time I seemed to be wasting and slow-growing efforts, I decided that it was time for this hair-growing journey to end.

Today, I had the scissors and razor taken to my locks, and what resulted was a similar style I have sported before. Except this time, it is "Anne Hathaway" brown (as Alexa likes to call it).

Today: new shoes, new hair, new look for DC. I leave on Sunday, and I'm so stoked! But I feel so underprepared, I feel like there's not enough time left for me here in Tempe. I guess there's not much I can do now, except make sure that my fishes are properly cared for.

If there's one thing I've learned from this journey, it is that I'm never going to try and grow my hair out again.

One thing every person needs to do at least once in a lifetime: birthday suit bungee!

You know how there are certain moments that you can clearly identify as life-changing? Not life-changing in that ambiguous happy-fuzzy-rosy I-feel-so-alive way but that distinct, transformative, I-will-never-be-the-same way? Well I had one of those moments this past Sunday. In a complete reversal of everything I've ever done or dreamed of doing, I got up the nerve to go bungee jumping... naked.

It all started when two friends-of-friends who were visiting from Masaka, Kathleen and Michelle, decided to go bungee jumping into the Nile. This had definitely been on my to-do list, but as of late my rapidly depleting stores of money made the $65 price tag seem decidedly out of my reach. So I spent my Saturday watching DVDs on my laptop and eating ice cream. But then Kathleen and Michelle returned, visibly glowing and bubbling over with the remnants of the experience, and said: "Yeah we got there to check in and they asked us how we would like to pay: cash, credit, or the free option?" So what is this free option? You guessed it: you go nude, you go free. Michelle had taken them up on the offer, and judging by her complete and total state of satisfaction, I thought to myself "I can do that too." Save $65 by putting on my birthday suit? That's not really comparable to being a stripper, is it?

So the next morning my roommate Kate and I saw Kathleen and Michelle off and pondered the prospect of actually going through with this. We stumbled upon the phone number for Adrift and called, making a tentative reservation for 5 pm. Now Kate and I were accountability partners in this whole gig: it takes two people for them to open up the tower and we had made the reservation together and we were going, so neither one of us could back out now. That being said, we spent the afternoon chugging down Nile Specials (one of the local beers that's brewed just a hop, skip, and a jump away) because we figured that it's all fine-and-dandy to say you're going to bungee jump naked, but -- more for the naked part than the bungee jumping part -- it probably takes a litre of Niles to actually do it.

But at around 6:30 pm just as the sun was beginning to fall, we did it. Kate and I hiked up the tower, met the gorgeous Australian man and his Ugandan sidekick with whom we were entrusting our very lives, and after watching a few other brave souls take the plunge (clothed), we stepped right up, took a deep breath, and stripped. This is where the Big Life Change began.

The change was almost instantaneous: it was like for as long as I could remember I had this tumor of fear lodged in my stomach that would flare up and cripple me every time I thought about doing something "risky," like quitting my crappy job or standing up to my parents or calling a guy back, and the moment I stripped down in front of that sexy Australian bungee guy the tumor unlodged itself from my gut. Then, when I hopped over to the edge of the tower (they tie you in at your ankles... haha no harness or anything just your feet!), stood tall and proud in front of a crowd of squealing Ugandans and hollering muzungus, and 3...2...1... lept into the open sky with the Nile river waiting 44 metres below to break my fall, that knot of fear that had bound me all my life dissipated into nothing more than an unwelcome memory. As the air whooshed in my ears and the world enveloped my eyes, I was free. And when I reached the water and dunked into the Nile for just long enough to realize that I'd made it, I was flooded with ectasy.

The waves of joy and power and energy and liberation surged through my body as I bounced up and down above the water like a floppy fish. There was no was my smile could contain my joy nor could my body contain my energy -- I was seeping out the edges of my skin and into this beautiful world. The landscape spun around me as I tumbled through it freely, absorbing a stunning kaleidoscope of silver water, green mountains, and barely-broken sunset. Mind you I'm upside down this whole time, so the sights were so alien and disorienting and beautiful -- especially the sweeping upside-down sunset!

Once the bounces gradually became less and less high, out rowed the two guys who would raft me back to land. As they reached out to me with a paddle and cradled my naked body into the raft, little did they know that they were the first individuals on this earth to touch the new, fearless me. It was so adorable when they asked if it was "very much fun," to which I gave a resounding yes. Then one of them told me assuredly, as if to squash whatever anxiety a white woman might be experiencing when rowing naked in a raft with two strange Ugandan men, "We are all born naked easily."

We are all born naked easily. So what happens from that point forward, when trust and freedom become replaced by apprehension and shame? We spend an indefinite number of years losing sight of our innate perfection, learning to look-both-ways and be-a-good-girl/boy, walling ourselves off from our true nature and the true nature of our life on this planet: love. We are all born naked easily. And when I -- surprisingly easily -- reclaimed my nakedness, it was like something new was born inside of me. Something that, I hope, will guide me to a life of more joy and adventure and discovery and growth. The truth of the shift materialized when I stepped back on solid ground, my heart pumping hot blood and adrenalin: I knew that never again could fear limit what I might dare to attempt. That's a line from the Lady of the Bracelet definition that I'd always struggled to imagine for myself, but that very line is what spoke to me as I floated back towards the tower to retrieve my clothes.

Coming down from the tower, Kate and I gasped and giggled and stumbled around with big gestures and big remarks -- "Can you believe we just did that?!?!" "Ohmygod that was the greatest thing ever!" -- all because, in that moment, we were truly soaring on top of the world. When we reached the bar to order a pair of Nile Specials, never had the brand slogan seemed so fitting:

You've earned it.

Dear Prague, I'm really going to miss you.

Hey everyone! I just realized today that I only have one week left in the incredible city of Prauge (although I will be in Europe another two weeks traveling to Italy with my mom and to Spain to see Ian and my friend Angelina). I have horribly mixed up feelings about leaving Prague after living here for four months and it becoming my home. On the one hand, I really do miss my family and friends in the USA and I can't wait to see them again. On the other hand, I don't want to leave this beautiful city. Prague is such a complex city with so many dimensions that it is hard to grasp all of it at once. I think even after a lifetime of living here, people still haven't discovered everything. Prague reveals itself to you slowly. The longer you are here, the deeper connection you gain with the city, the people, the language and everything else you can imagine. For lack of a better way to express my feelings about the transition back to the USA, I'm resorting to the Heidi inspired list.

Things I am going to miss about Prague
Saying "Dobry den" at least ten time a day
Coming home every day and being greeted at the door with a cheerful "Ahoj!"
Smezeny Syr sandwiches
Beer for about $1 a half liter
Walking home late at night through deserted streets and feeling completely safe
Discovering new places and paths through the city
My favorite run that takes me from my house through the suburbs, to the Czech Television Station, through a park to the top of a hill that overlooks the whole city, down the hill on a staircase that passes through an old neighborhood, passing by a beer garden where people are playing volleyball, to the river, along the river, across a bridge to Petrin Hill. (and then taking the metro home because I ran too far to go back)

Things I am NOT going to miss about Prague
Smelly men in confined public transportaion

Part 1: Top 11, 12, and 13 Signs That You've Assimilated to Uganda; Part 2: Why I Can't Write a "Real" Blog Post

11. Your ATM card gets declined at Barclays. Yep, I got declined by a bank in Uganda... it doesn't get any more humiliating than that. Haha OOPS.
12. You see that ants have raided your box of cereal, and you don't even blink. Instead, you consider it a positive thing that you are probably consuming enough ants on a daily basis to count them as a significant source of protein. Ants as a health food? You betcha.
13. Your brain stem has finally, once-and-for-all detached from your cerebrum. This is made evident when you wake up to find that you have left a pot of water boiling on the gas stove ALL NIGHT and that both the gas and the water have run out. OOPS AGAIN. As my roommate Kate pointed out, we are very lucky that my lack of brain activity didn't cost us our lives via gas poisoning or fire!

So this weekend when I was up in Gulu in northern Uganda (more on that later! and more on all the other random trips I've taken and haven't even mentioned...), I was up late talking with Kate about the usual potpurri of topics, most of them revolving around that wild-and-crazy, impossible-to-understand knot of contradictions and complications we call "development." In the middle of the conversation, in which I was finally able to release many of the loopy, tangled bits and pieces of thoughts and feelings that have been bouncing around in my mind like Mexican jumping beans, I realized that the reason why I haven't been able to write a real blog post, one that delves below the surface and addresses some of those tricky, sticky questions about international affairs and development, is because I can't. Seriously.

It's one thing to have a totally unstructured and laughter-filled conversation with someone who has been living through the same experience as you and facing the same toxic mix of confusion and bewilderment, but a whooooooole other challenge to write down and express what is brewing inside you to an ambiguous audience of people who aren't here living and breathing it with you. After four months of getting really comfortable with living and working in Uganda -- and having a wonderful time doing it! -- it is still way easier for me to tell fragmented little stories or list out some of the superficial, humorous bits about life than to put into words what Uganda has really taught me. Hell, most of the time I don't even KNOW what Uganda has really taught me!

This gives me such a huge respect for authors and journalists whose job it is to travel to a foreign place, absorb all they can about a given topic there, and then barf it back up in the form of a book or blog post or article or news story. There are obviously people who are brilliant at taking something as full-out INSANE as development (or any one of the smaller sub-issues therewithin) and processing it into a form that the average American reader can understand and appreciate. Unfortunately, as you've probably noticed by now, I am not one of them. So here's hoping that with time I'll be able to sharpen up my conclusions about what works in development and what doesn't (in case you were wondering, as of yet I've got a much firmer grasp on what doesn't) and be able to share it with you via the written word. I'm nowhere close to being at that point, but when I get there, you'll be the first to know :)

Erica Goes To Washington

So I don't know if I've officially announced this, but I'm officially going to Washington D.C. this summer! So I'll actually be able to blog from a foreign location (I guess you can consider congressmen a strange species to observe). I'll be interning with Harry Mitchell's office, where I'm not exactly sure what my duties are yet, but I imagine I'll be doing lots of normal intern drudge work, most likely with constituency mail, and probably getting sad about Harry's need to satisfy certain parts of his constituency (Scottsdale). I think the drudge work will be fun though, and I'm sure there will be many great opportunities that arise.

I'm going to be traveling with the Capital Scholars program with the Political Science Department, and we'll be staying in George Washington University dorms. Todd and Scott Tippit are also doing the program, so I already know some faces. Devin says he'll be in D.C. as well for his Truman scholarship, and many others have told me they'll be spending their summer there, too. So the party's gonna be in DC! You better come visit me, it's what all the cool kids are doing (I know Brynna already is! And therefore she is a cool kid).

I feel bad, I haven't really posted in a long while. But nothing interesting has really gone on. My life has been: school, YDs, and a little bit of socializing. That's about it. I'm looking forward to shaking it up in a couple of weeks (oh my gosh it's May 1, when did that happen?!).

From your guys' posts it sounds like you're all doing very well for yourselves! I'm so happy that you all have had the opportunity to have these great experiences.

Now I should get back to the paper that I am supposed to be writing...

Selfishly awaiting the return of Brynna, Heidi, and Wylie,

Erica

Top 10 Signs That You've [Finally!] Assimilated to Uganda

So I could update you on what on earth I've been up to since I last posted over a month ago, but I have zero idea where to begin! Sorry if you were hoping for something substantive, but my brain is waaaay too scrambled. But one running thread that has characterized the past few weeks is the steadiness and comfort that goes along with feeling more and more "at home" here in Uganda (not that this is my home... no one freak out that I'm staying here for good!). So, in case you were planning on dropping everything and spending an extended period of time in good ol' Uganda, here are the top ten signals that you've been here long enough to make the "tourist" status on your visa seem so misrepresentative of your real life...

1. Your English skills have noticably declined. Well, I take that back. Your American English skills have noticably declined, but your Ugandan English skills have sharpened remarkably. This becomes apparent when you catch yourself saying "You first come," "Sorry please," and "Good day please" (if only I could type that with the accent!!) but you can't remember common American words and phrases to save your life. I wish you could understand how difficult it is for me to write a coherent blog post, because my vocabulary has plummetted by at least 40%. I use a dramatically lower number and variety of words over the course of the day, which actually has made me realize how few words you need to really get by.

2. You get unduly exited by a hot shower. And by unduly excited, I mean over-the-moon, orgasmically ecstatic. This past weekend a series of random circumstances led me to spending the night in the beautiful, luxurious home of a couple working for the U.S. Foreign Service, and this meant having access to a hot, steamy shower that put me in a good mood for at least the next 48 hours. I swear I thanked the couple Sarah and Dan at least fifty times and offered to buy them a goat for their generosity or something absurd like that.

3. You have a mile-long stretch of children that, rather than yelling out "mzungu!! mzungu!! mzungu how are you? mzungu byeee!" when they see you, yell out your Ugandan name and call you over to them in Lusoga. This is my favorite thing, because it makes me feel like I'm part of a community rather than just a mere outsider. Of course no matter how long you live here you'll always be a mzungu, but to the people of Budondo I at least have a name of my own. And as small as that seems, it makes me oh-so-happy.

4. You have developed a wide array of creative excuses for NOT giving out your phone number to random Ugandan men who ask for your number before asking your name. The most ingenious and multi-purpose of these I have courtesy of my friend Kate: "Sorry, this is a work phone that belongs to my work and I can only use it for work." Direct, polite, and gets the point across!

5. You have on at least one occasion slipped up on your evasion tactics and given your number to at least one strange man who has then called you multiple times a day for over a month even though you never once pick up. I do not understand the mindless persistence.

6. You haven't shaved your legs for four months. For real. But don't take this one as a general rule -- it's probably just me and my lack of motivation to do anything unnecessarily extravagant with regards to my appearance.

7. You have a questionable "tan" that may or may not be a combination of dirt and sunburn. My money's on may.

8. You have a network of free-avocado-hook-ups that shower you with dozens of avocadoes at every chance they get. This isn't exactly a problem, but it can become one when the two dozen avocadoes you have in your kitchen decide to go rotten before you get a chance to eat them...

9. You litter. So much for responsible environmental behavior...

10. You have come to view toilet paper as a luxury item.

Kale bannange nmaze okuwandika. Ngenda okuwumula kati. Sula bulungi ate weekend enungi! Bye!!

Coming to Cambodia

(My CIEE program will be in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for the next 5 weeks. Just got here. I'll be taking the Khmer language, a Poli Sci course about Cambodia post-Khmer Rouge, and a History course. Here's what's up!)

Day by day

The light in Phnom Penh has a distinctly yellow quality to it, and though it might be a little cooler here than in Ho Chi Minh City, it feels like I’m simmering a bit more in Cambodia! For better or for worse, the afternoon rains also last a lot longer here, so it’s been much cooler in the evenings once I sit through the downpours. I was kind of surprised, coming from Phoenix, that life slows down as it does when it rains in places like this. I had always thought that people just trudged through it, but I guess it’s kind of hard to do that when the streets flood halfway up to your knees. Now that it’s the rainy season, I finally understand why there aren’t many pedestrians in Sai Gon and Phnom Penh!

Places

Phnom Penh was once considered the most beautiful city in Southeast Asia in the 1960s, and it shows. There’s distinctive Khmer architectural flourishes almost everywhere you look, which is refreshing after the seeing so many utilitarian buildings in Sai Gon. The city still has the narrow shop-below/house-above style buildings you see everywhere, but the sidewalks are a bit wider and there are trees everywhere. I live near the awesome looking Independence Monument, and from there you can follow a series of parks through the city to the waterfront and to the cultural sites like the Independence Palace and the Parade grounds. At night, the walkers and people playing sports animate the whole park into one circuit. It has such amazing energy that's provided by people inside it, and not the giant billboards and traffic that ring Sai Gon’s Park 23-4. (not my pictures here, for the record-- nice shot though!)

Wealth
Some of the people on the program say that the people in Phnom Penh seem less materialistic than those in Sai Gon— a little more dressed down, from students to street vendors— though we get the sense that that’s not exactly the case. On the one hand, Cambodia is a whole is poorer and more rural than Vietnam. Phnom Penh, which is much, much smaller than Sai Gon or even Hue, has poverty and deteriorated neighborhoods that are much closer to the surface. Still, even when I was exploring the other day, I kept seeing Lexuses parked in these same neighborhoods! We had always heard jokes from the Cambodian students about how there are more Lexuses in Cambodia (population 14m) than in Vietnam (pop. 85m), and it’s sadly true. You see the SUV’s driving through Phnom Penh every minute with “LEXUS” emblazoned across the side very conspicuously. The most powerful also have no license plates, which, true or not, makes them appear above the law. Apparently you often see no-plate Lexuses and Range Rovers parked outside Phnom Penh’s boutique stores on Saturdays as generals and police chiefs take their mistresses out to shop!

In a way, I think I’m just a little uncomfortable being in political capitals in Southeast Asia. The corruption and opulence that lingers behind closed doors just seems to leak out into the streets, and it’s especially revolting considering the poverty elsewhere. In Sai Gon, the modal share of cars was only about 2% and they weren’t as nice, so I don’t think it bothered me as much. Moreover, I think that Sai Gon’s ostentatious wealth was powered by tourists and foreign business interests; here, most foreigners are ex-pats in NGOs or with the U.N., so the wealth seems more likely to be coming from the government alone— kind of a sad thought.

The upside is that I’m more encouraged than ever to travel off the beaten path to the rural areas of Cambodia, especially now that I have my S.E.A. legs a bit (hardy harr harr). Don’t worry ma, I’ll take my malaria pills and lots of pictures!

The ants go marching one-hundred by one-hundred...

So, Wednesdays at work are "office days," meaning there is no clinic and therefore I cannot go pack pills in the pharmacy when I get bored of staring at the ceiling waiting to meet with my supervisor. And if you were wondering what one does at an office on "office day" when one doesn't actually have any office work, I am here to answer that question:

Obviously, you drink a cup of tea and then watch as thousands of ants appear from nowhere to attack your cup of tea.

Ants are very mesmerizing creatures, especially when you start looking around your tiny little office to see where on earth the thousands of ants crawling all over the place have come from.

Then you see this on the wall:

And if you keep following the windy train of ants up towards the ceiling,

you see this:

(That is the little open corner above the door, by the way.)

And then you begin to realize how extraordinary it is that these ants have been following eachother on a very very long and treacherous office journey (probably the equivalent of several miles if you were the size of an ant) to reach this apparent oasis of sugary goodness...They proceed to battle eachother across the wobbly confusing mess of a crumpled napkin and ascend the steep vertical incline of my teacup...

Only to inevitably fall into a deep well of misery and meet their unfortunate demise:

(Poor fallen soldiers. Never had a chance.)

All this makes me wonder how ants have survived as a species for, umm, forever because this behavior strikes me as incredibly stupid. They expend a whole lot of time and energy to reach this sugar hotspot, and then they keep on going until they die. Hedonism is obviously not working out too hot for them. I hope they were at least really really happy and blissful before they drowned.

If only we had the power to hear the thoughts of ants. That would be so cool, like being able to watch a live-action version of the movie "ANTZ" unfold before your eyes.

What I'm doing here; also, Cambodian history

I don’t think I ever really answered that question in the blog! I decided to come to Vietnam (and Cambodia for 5 weeks) because I knew little of the country except for America's involvement here (and I have a fairly limited understanding of that as well). I also wanted to see another side of Asia, as I had already studied Japan and its language. Also, it's just a thrill to live in a dense city for once! In Ho Chi Minh City (aka Sai Gon), I’m taking a sociology class (Contemporary Vietnamese Society), the equivalent of two semesters of Beginning Vietnamese Language, the History of Indochina, and a political science course called “Nation Building After the Khmer Rouge.” History is the one I wanted to talk about in detail here.

Our professor’s name is Michael Vickery, a septuagenarian scholar on Cambodia. From what I know of his background, he’s an American who’s been living in Southeast Asia for at least several decades. On day one, my first thought was “where did they dig this guy up?”: Vickery looks as if he hiked for 2 weeks through the jungle to get to class. Vickery is bald, white haired, and his skin is splotched all over with different skin tones-- you can tell he's been around alot! To every class he wears what I can only describe as a Chinese-style shirt (think this link without a collar; not the one pictured here) along with tan cargo pants and boots. White hair sprouts up through the neck of his shirt and out his ears. He's still got a pretty incredible memory of historical events, though he does make some slips. Probably his best line was while he was discussing a Cham artifact in one of his slides. Vickery said "this piece was found 10 years ago," only to be corrected by our program coordinator who was also present: "you mean 1978."

Still, Michael Vickery is a well-known expert on the history of Cambodia— he’s shown us photos he took in the 1960s of temples when they were still overgrown with jungle. His scholarship on recent Cambodia history is far more controversial: he considers the Khmer Rouge’s genocide to have been far less a product of a radical conception of Marxism and more peasant revolution. He also contests the official casualty count of the Khmer Rouge genocide, placing it at almost half of what other academics consider it to be. Strange when I sometimes think Vickery looks like he's been tortured by several governments! Be sure to check out the reader reviews for his book Cambodia 1975-1983 on Amazon.com.

Vickery is currently advising the defense counsel to the Khmer Rouge leaders and jailers on tribunal right now. I've been told that he once had Duch (the jailer) as a student!

Our class is currently on hiatus while Vickery is in Cambodia for a month, but when the study abroad group I'm part of moves there for rest of the semester, we’ll resume the course and begin learning about the the 1940s onward— and we’ll also get to visit the site where the tribunals are being held! Still, I don’t know if we’ll get to actually see anything transpire. Should be interesting, so I'll report more then.

As for the class itself, just briefly, it's fascinating when we review parts of history Vickery is clearly well versed in, such as the historiography dealing with 7th and 8th century Cambodia, but the classes on 19th and 20th Century have been a drag, even though I was fascinated by those parts of Vietnam: A History (Amazon needs to pay me for all these links!). Most of our readings are from Vickery himself-- as he tells us, everything else that has been written about SE Asia up to the 15th Century or so is wrong! It's great seeing him rip to shreds the other theories about the region, though his tremendous confidence in his own conclusions worries me; less so when he's talking about the ancient Cham empire, but much more when he has talked about the Khmer Rouge!

You can take the girl out of Kansas, but you can't take Kansas out of the only bar in town that carries March Madness AND lets me hog the TV for hours

***DISCLAIMER*** This post may have zero relevance to your life and may stimulate little-to-no interest in anyone not familiar with the absolute and perpetual glory that is Jayhawk basketball. Continue reading at your own risk.

So once upon a time (i.e. last Friday), it struck me that never since I've been a conscious, thinking human being have I ever missed my beloved Kansas Jayhawks play in the NCAA tournament. I have seriously spent a good portion of every Spring Break I've ever had curled up on my couch watching and analyzing every game with every team, deconstructing how we the Jayhawks could positively crush them (even on occasions after we the Jayhawks had, in fact, already been crushed). March Madness is that special time of year where one can leave the Real World behind and, between the actual games and the seemingly ceaseless bracket analysis and commentary on ESPN, actually live 24-7 in College Basketball World. And when you're a Kansas Jayhawk, there's no better place to live than College Basketball World.

Now, there are a lot of things I'm willing to give up to be in Uganda (stable electricity, flushing toilets, and Ben & Jerry's to name a few), but March Madness is not one of them. I spent all day Friday (well, I did some real work, I guess) trying to come up with ingenious ways to force the internet to conjure up a live video stream, or at least a live audio stream, of the tournament, but to no avail. Then I began the agonizing process of trying to let myself down easy and eliminate any faint hopes I had of getting to experience even the tiniest taste of March Madness this year.

Just when I had finally arrived at a little spot of zen and acceptance that my life would indeed go on if I were to miss KU playing -- and that my heart would even continue beating if we lost to the NDSU Bison as with the Bucknell Bison -- my friend David called me and said, "Why don't you try to go find some mzungu place with satellite TV and see if anywhere is broadcasting the tournament? Chances are slim, but it's at least worth a shot if you really want to see the game..." And that's when it struck me that I really did want to see the game. Some little parts of me, most especially the parts of me that pump crimson and blue through my veins, just don't let go of wild hopefulness that easy. So I hopped on my bike and sped off to this one bar at a place called Safari Inn where my friend Sacha and I had watched a really dreadful Nigerian movie on DStv a few weeks back and I walked up to the bar and said "Can we check if there is American basketball on the TV?" and then they scanned through all the channels and found ESPN but it was poker and I was like "NOOOOOO..." but they told me to come back later. Boo.

Nearly defeated, I headed over to Flavours (a.k.a. magic coffee shop with wi-fi and the best brownies on the planet) to sulk and eat a giant plate of pasta. But while I was there, trying fruitlessly to get MMOD (mmod.ncaa.com) to load on my sad little computer, I decided to take a stab at it and see if there was a DStv schedule posted online. To my ultimate shock, coming up on ESPN in 15 minutes was the FIRST ROUND OF THE 2009 NCAA TOURNAMENT!!!! I nearly flipped out and promptly hopped back on my bike and sped back across town to Safari Inn, where the staff turned on ESPN for me and miraculously there appeared the image of CBS's March Madness coverage. I cannot even explain the ecstasy that overwhelmed me in that moment. I jumped up and down squealing and gave the bartender a HUGE hug and spent the next 5 hours (yep, 5 hours...) in complete awe at the complete serendipity of this situation. Despite the minor frustration of having to watch more of Oklahoma State vs. Tennessee than Kansas vs. NDSU (apparently defending national champions are NOT worthy of equal coverage... hmmpf), I was in pure bliss. Sometimes life just surprises you in the best way possible, like when you sit back and realize that you are sitting in a random bar in the middle of Uganda watching the Kansas Jayhawks playing live half a world away while a bunch of Ugandans are behind you drinking merrilly to the sounds of Michael Jackson and Madonna circa like 1985.

I am still in awe of this whole thing. In a land where I can hardly get my e-mail to load most days, I can watch Jayhawk basketball live on CBS being simulcast on ESPN International on some TV in some bar. It's beyond wonderful. This is thereby one of the rare occasions when I can honestly say with no hesitation: praise be to globalization.

So every time a KU game is on between now and April 6, I know where I'll be! How about you? For all you Sun Devils out there, I propose you hop on the KU bandwagon for no other reason than that we're in U of A's bracket and if we end up crossing paths you can be sure we'll avenge our regular season loss and demolish them on your behalf. Just a suggestion.

PATRICK LIVES!!!

Just when you think you are so far away from Patrick, you go to a German birthday party and hear the techno-remix of Born To Be Alive.

Please please read my desperate call to action! We need your help!

I'm serious, help us out here...

http://thehopejournal.blogspot.com/2009/03/open-letter.html

Job Opening: Umbrella Repairman

One person needed to save abandoned umbrellas from public trashcans. After bringing the umbrellas back to life, they can be re-sold for a profit to others tourists who just threw their umbrella away.

I took a little journey into Vienna this weekend and would say that water would be the best word to describe the city. First off, it rained everyday. The rainstorm resulted in massive umbrella graveyards in garbage cans throughout the city. I captured as many of these sad little umbrella graveyards as I could. You could make enough money as an umbrella repairman to rent an apartment in the same castle that the president of Austria lives in (because in Austria they trust the public enough to let them live in the same building as the president).

Fun Fact about Vienna: Tap water comes straight from the Alps! MMMMMM

Writing poems is a great procrastination strategy, no matter what continent you're on!

I am feeling particularly poetic at the moment (maybe because I'd rather write poetry than rewrite my entire grant proposal), so here are some impromptu poems for your reading pleasure. They have sadly not been written on Fatburger napkins, but I think you'll be able to manage.

Ode to Fene

I used to think that there was only such a thing as fruit-flavored Starburst, not Starburst-flavored fruit.
That was until I met fene, the most magical fruit on the planet.
Tasting fene for the first time was like experiencing Plato's allegory of the cave, but with my tongue.
The first magical thing about fene is that it tastes like Starburst.
It doesn't taste like any particular flavor of Starburst, but more like what the ultimate flavor of Starburst would taste like.
The second magical thing about fene is that it looks really cool on the outside.
It is bright green and bumpy and looks like aliens brought it from outer space.
The third magical thing about fene is that it looks really cool on the inside.
It is bright yellow and looks like some strange flowy sea creature.
The fourth magical thing about fene is that it is really giant.
It is fun to watch boda-boda guys with mass amounts of fene strapped to their bikes.
In conclusion, fene is the best thing ever to happen to the genre of fruit.
I am very perplexed as to why we don't eat fene in America.

Oops

Placing your iPod in your bra so you can continue listening to it while you jolt to the bathroom to have diarrhea may seem like a good idea, but it really isn't.
Why, you ask?
Because your iPod will slip out of your shirt, down between your legs, and into the diarrhea-filled toilet.
Then, without thinking, you will instantly reach into the toilet to retrieve your poor little iPod.
Then you will be left with a wet, defiled iPod and wet, defiled hands, and you will have nothing left to do except laugh really really hard at yourself.
Then you will be stuck in the middle of Uganda without an iPod, pondering how you will ever fall asleep at night because you can no longer listen to Enya and This American Life until you pass out.
At least this is my current predicament.
Oops.

Second Chance Haiku #1

Salvador is strange.
Find Second Chance on You Tube.
You will understand.

#2
Andre is evil.
So is Walter, he should die.
So what happens next?




Okay I really need to stop this poetry business, I actually have work to do.

Where I am

Instead of writing a blog post this week, I thought I'd make a map (using Google Maps) to give people a sense of where I am in HCMC and where I go throughout the city. Click on the icons, lines, or boxes to see descriptions. To use a better interface and see a full list of the places I marked, follow this link.


It's also worth zooming out all the way to get a sense of perspective and to see two of the placemarks that are further out.


View Larger Map

I'm kinda famous

http://spa.asu.edu/pdffiles/urbanite/VOL1_ISS2.pdf

Check it yo.

Not “weird,” but “different”: Part II

I had some new thoughts on adapting to a different culture.

I was with my friends Dave and Lauren in Ho Chi Minh City’s Chinatown on Friday, seeing some of the mosques and Chinese pagodas in the area and just generally enjoying the city life. At this point, we’ve learned some basic Vietnamese and are starting to try out some of the local behavior.

Photos— As we’ve learned from our Vietnamese program coordinator Ky, it’s not actually rude here to take pictures of people without asking (Vietnam seems to be, comparatively, a very casual country). Dave is a great photographer and is taking full use of this freedom to take some great shots of people. On the one hand, I understand that he’s not out of line from their standpoint to be snapping away, but I have a hard time breaking with what I feel is acceptable by American standards. I think this is part of a larger problem I’ll have with “doing as the Romans do.”
(Right: One of Dave's photos of a woman on a boat at the floating market in Chau Doc in the Mekong River Delta.)

Litter— Ho Chi Minh City has tremendous amounts of litter in the streets, to the point where it detracts from what would be otherwise beautiful places. I’m fairly repulsed by the normalcy of littering here, even though along major roadways there’s usually a road crew cleaning up. I’ve heard, however, that some Confucian traditions may be playing into how the Vietnamese regard public space. Apparently, in China the concept of public space has arisen only in recent decades, so I’m told [I really need work on finding better citations!]. As a consequence, the public spaces outside homes are treated like something of a no-man’s-land, with less public regard for keeping the streets clean. I’m still stuck, however, on the fact that dirty streets lead to public health issues and less community pride from my American perspective.

Diet — I had thought that I’d be able to just accept eating meat while in Vietnam, but in the last week it’s become more and more difficult to continue doing so because of my reservations about the use of animal products. It doesn’t help that my diet is now more out of my hands as my homestay gets underway! I think I may attempt to go vegetarian by the end of the week, and it may be somewhat feasible with egg and cheese dishes and fresh fruit always close at hand. However, I've had something of a mental block doing so: after so long being a vegan, I see all animal products as being morally equivalent. So, if I'm eating cheese, I feel like there's not really a jump to eating meat as well!
(Right: Fish farm in the Mekong River. We're in sort of a floating structure in the middle of the river.)

All told, I was hoping that while studying abroad I’d be able to adapt to this new culture, but I’m surprised to find myself resisting like this. Our sociology classwork has been helping me with this dilemma tremendously, however. One concept that helps is that of participant observation, which entails “subjecting yourself, your own body, and your own personality, and your own social situation, to the set of contingencies that play upon a set of individuals, so that you can physically and ecologically penetrate their circle of response to their social situation, or their work situation, or their ethnic situation.” So now, instead of feeling like some kind of ethnocentrist for sticking to my cultural norms, now I just feel like a poor sociologist!

Born, born, born, born to be aliiiive

Hello again my faraway friends!!! Here are some random photos, including some I would like to dedicate to the Born To Be Alive crew, because I loved Brynna's dedications and I will therefore piggyback off her brilliant idea. Leave it to Brynna to come up with the most brilliant ideas!





Fulfilling my ambassadorial duties as a proud Obamamaniac.





For Erica, the cutest little puppy I found in this village but couldn't pet because I hadn't finished my rabies shots yet. I saw him and after going awww I thought "PULL OVER! THERE'S PUPPIES IN THE TRUNK!!!!" Then I thought, I really wish I could magically transport Erica here to adopt him and give him lots of love so he will not be a wild rabid beast when he grows up





For Wylie: The Gandhi memorial at the source of the Nile where some of Gandhi's ashes were released. I only show you this so you can feel guilty about the violence you are inflicting upon those pigs whose blood you are drinking... Haha TOTALLY KIDDING!





For Brynna: COW TONGUE YUMMMMMY. This is what people really enjoy, i.e. reason number one why my host family thinks I'm really really weird for not eating their numerous meat things. And why I really really wish sometimes that we could walk down the street to get a Cheesy Gordita Crunch, or at least a plain old burrito.





Matooke!!!!! (the raw version that is) This is where I get at least 80% of my calories from.



More to come.
Also update: WE PLANTED OUR FIRST TREES YESTERDAY!!! Most exciting day of my life EVER. Probably even more exciting for Patrick and the women though -- they were soooo happy it made me want to cry tears of joy but instead I just danced a lot and hugged them a lot.
Bye! Much love to y'all!

I have bartending experience now!

So this Thursday I got to pour wine and sodas for rich Democrats at a County Party fundraiser.  Stan Williams was supposed to do it, but he mixed up the dates and realized he had to go to NY for the YDA Convention.  So he called me up, and I decided to give it a shot.  Wine was definitely the crowd favorite.  This one old lady came up to me about four times throughout the night, the second or third time she asked me, "Do you do anything crass like counting?"  I told her no, but obviously that's a lie from what I'm writing here.  The last time she came up, she admitted she was only a little tipsy.  I poured her another glass, and she wobbled away.  

I also poured Harry Mitchell a diet coke!  I was out of ice when he came up, and he came back later to get a refill of coke, and then told me he knew where to get more ice and took the ice bucket and filled it up for me.  I thought that was so nice of him!  I was gonna give Terry Goddard a beer too, but this guy came out of nowhere behind me and already popped the top off a bottle before Terry could even ask for it.  I was thinking, dude, that's my job.  

People seemed to like me, I'm like BFFs with Ann Wallack now, the chair of the County Party.  I think it's partly to do with my name, but whatever.  Ann says she's gonna throw a party for young people, which would be pretty cool.  She also has a son, who I'm pretty sure swiped a beer while I wasn't looking, but that's not important.  But seriously, I was wearing a sticker with my name on it, and this couple comes up, and as I'm pouring them glasses of wine, I hear the lady whisper (but not really, because I could hear it) to her husband, "Look at her name..."  I was like, really?  At least talk about it when you walk away, not right in front of me.  

This issue is becoming more prominent as I am getting more involved here.  I don't want to use my name to get me places, I want to get there myself.  I really hope people never assume that of me.  I'm doing this work on my own, and I want to be recognized for it.  It really makes me question people's sincerity.  I always find myself doubting people's intentions, assuming alternative motives.  Maybe I shouldn't assume either, maybe I'm over reacting.  Maybe people actually find me interesting and want to get to know me and not just because I'm related to someone important.  But I'll guess I'll never know for certain.  I just have to keep working hard for what I believe in, and hopefully people will understand what I am in this for.  If they don't, then they obviously don't know me at all.

Also, Ann Wallack gave me $60 for helping out.  That's like more than $20 an hour!  I need to find more gigs like this.  

Hmm, other things going on:

I don't know if you guys have IHOPs where you are, but it's free pancake day on Tuesday (ironically, the day of Obama's State of the Union address).  

We're having an encore presentation of Street Fight for the WHAM this Wednesday.  We've decided to make the last WHAM of every month a movie night since there's not a lot going on right now.

YDAZ Convention this weekend.  It's at ASU, and hopefully will be better than last year.  At the exec meeting last week I met a guy from the West Campus named Alaska!  (well, his real name is Austin, but nobody calls him that).  I thought that was cool.  

I fell off my bike a couple weeks ago, and my knee is still kind of bruised.  That's my excuse for not doing physical therapy yet, but I've been doing yoga!

I'm probably going to dye my hair red, it's getting so long!  I'll let you know if I do this.

I think that's about it for now, oh I got Skype!  I have no idea how to use it, so someone should teach me.  And if it's possible to three/four-way call, we should do that.

I miss you all!  Much love from the stupid state of Arizona!

Erica

Jesus is my homeboy for real

Jesus. God. Good.
That's really what it all comes down to here, and I must say that my prayers really do get answered. For example, last week the power went out on Sunday, but it came back on just in time for us to catch the new episode of Second Chance, and then it went out again until Thursday and returned just in time for the NEXT episode of Second Chance! Coincidence? I think not. Definitely the good work of Jesus.
This is Gloria by the way -- she is so precious, and says hello.