Before and after

Much has changed in the last many months. Wylie has cut his hair after becoming a vampire. He has also become a ghost, a popsicle, a funanzza, and some bling-bling.

(Double click on photo for full effect)

Some heartfelt concluding remarks life, liberty and the pursuit of Patrick

This is not the end, but simply the beginning of our year reunited in the great state of Arizona. This will be the First Annual Born To Be Alive FUNANZZA*, in which we reflect upon how our lives apart have brought us closer together.

*Funanzza is in the process of being confirmed as a real live word by Urban Dictionary.

**Erica is the inventor of funanzza, but everyone can enjoy it unless Erica personally bans you.

***Ineligible people include: Evan Bejar and Jan Brewer. They can attend a booonanzza instead 2together.

Here are some small ways in which our journeys have enriched our friendship:

1. Brynna met a French-woman who enlightened her on proper crepe-making technique, thereby allowing us to have a crepe party and give birth to the funanzza.

2. Erica met a fan of the long lost television program ALIAS and became addicted. Addiction is spreading and could contribute to an epidemic of funanzza.

3. Wylie ate blood. He's now a vampire. We don't know where he is. Probably infecting Deborah with vampire venom.

4. Heidi came back as a born-again missionary for Obama. He is the messiah and will cure the world of all its ills, even if he wasn't born in America.

5. Patrick followed us around the globe. We deciphered his message to us and discovered that he was on a mission to stalk Brynna. He was jammin' a German high school party, skiing on a glacier in the Alps, and rendezvous-in' in multiple locations.

In conclusion, we all had excellent adventures that somehow brought us back to each other, because we all live in Tempe (at least for a while).

THE END.

...Or is it?

What a lovely day in a lovely city

So yesterday I got to take the day off of work because we're getting a new staffer who is shadowing the staffer that will be leaving, so we don't have enough computers for all of us. So I thought I'd blog about my day outside of the office.

This is inside the Library of Congress, just across the street from my office building. If you are ever in DC, you must go here. There are more beautiful intricacies that cannot be described or photographed.

This is outside the Supreme Court building, right next to the Library of Congress. They are out of session, and their exhibit is gone, so I didn't spend very long in here.

The Capitol. I got to stand on top of that thing. :)

I named this guy Frank, after the movie Donnie Darko, and Frank lives in the National Sculpture Garden, where I spent about an hour reading my book.

After I ate lunch in the Natural History Museum, I headed home and took a long nap. I conclude that this day was a great day.

Today was also a great day, though, because I got to see Al Franken get sworn in as Senator. My fellow interns and I got to go an hour early to ensure that we had seats for the event. And we were front row. At first, morning business was going on, and there only about 5 senators max on the floor at a time. Then it began to draw closer to swearing in time, and more and more senators began to enter the floor. Then Senator Amy Klobuchar spoke for about 10 minutes to welcome her new colleague. She mentioned how Al had said that the third year of his campaign would be the best, and that got some laughs out of the packed gallery. Then Joe Biden entered the floor to take over as President of the Senate and partake in the ceremony. He had that big grin on his face like he always does. As soon as Al Franken was sworn in, the entire room erupted into applause, and everyone gave a standing ovation. Al Franken's wife could be seen in the front row of one of the gallery sections, and she's such a tiny little lady, but you could immediately tell how happy she was that this day had finally come. Again, it was a great day.

Oh, and one more thing...

My dear British friend Laura offered this poem to me on my last day in Uganda. A friend had shared it with her, and now I want to share it with you with the hope that you can find solace in it as I have.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-Mary Oliver

America and other really strange things.

So I've tried multiple times upon returning to the States to write a conclusion post for my Uganda trip (how trite it seems to even call it a trip, but oh well), to bring some closure to myself and to you guys who were Born To Be Alive, to tie things up in a nice little bow and say goodbye. But as you can see by a lack-of-post I have failed miserably.

First I tried writing something reflective. That lasted all of five minutes before I realized that, yet again, I couldn't even coherently reflect in my own head, let alone in writing.

Then I tried writing a "what I will miss about Uganda" post like Brynna wrote about the Czech Republic. But that too proved wayyyy too complicated to sort out.

Then I tried recounting my first 48 hours worth of American meals. This seemed promising because the euphoria I felt about eating was the one emotion I could put my finger on and identify. But then writing this kitschy food porn also felt weird and frankly kind of detestable when it struck me that the variety and quality of foods I indulged in during those first days back was greater than what most Ugandans will taste in their entire lives.

Then I gave up on writing anything altogether.

Now it's been almost a month back. It's my night off from camp (where I'm a counselor this summer) and I'm in Denver with a belly smiling from my first drive through Taco Bell since last year. My friends went to bed and so should I, but I can't fall asleep and now I'm up late with my own flashes of recollection about Uganda. So I thought what the hell, I'll post on the blog.

It's hard to say I've even had time to be back in America, because I'm not in the "real world" -- I'm at camp, where I'm arguably just as cut off from the "real world" as I was in Uganda (only I get "time off" to venture into civilization for one day and one night each week). Time off is so weird because it's like being thrown into an urban world that is so familiar and so distant all at the same time. I drive on highways and shop at grocery stores and go to movies and eat at restaurants and drink at water fountains and poop in public toilets and lounge at bookstores and talk in English and it's all so very odd in the most unexplainable way. Every day since I've been back I can never quite shake the feeling that I'm living in a dream, or that Uganda was all a dream... basically it's like I can't comprehend that life in Uganda and life in America are both happening at this very moment on the same planet, like I can't make these two realities compatible in my mind, like I can't juxtapose them alongside one another, like I can't seem to reconcile the me in Uganda with the me in America. I'm sorry that none of this makes any sense. Well, I'm not sorry. But I acknowledge that it doesn't make any sense, and that's okay, and I hope you too can realize that that's okay.

You see, I can't really tell you what I learned in Uganda other than that life is cloudy and complicated and ambiguous and murky and that sometimes you just can't make sense of it. And sometimes you shouldn't try to make sense of it because the more you try to force life into a straight line the further away you bring it from the truth. I've learned that more often than not the most honest answer to a question is "I don't know" and that that's okay. I've become so much more comfortable with the "not knowing" that is so prevalent in our lives and so much more wary of people who claim to "know the facts." I almost feel silly going back to school to learn about the world because you can only learn about the world by learning in the world, not in a lecture hall at an American university. This is no offense to the professors that get paid to teach us about the world, but let me explain:

Last week I led a "Uganda discussion" with a group of 13-16 year olds and I felt so incredibly awkward with the entire set-up. It was like I was supposed to be their window into what Uganda is like... and the truth was I could never be that window, no one could ever be that window, because to know a place you have to experience it for yourself at an intimate level. You have to walk the streets, befriend the people, learn the language, get lost, get drunk, get smacked in the face by your own poorly-formed preconceptions of "how things are in ____," and finally get filled up with the unquantifiable, inexplicable sense of understanding that comes with calling a place your "home," if only for a short while. That's what you have to do.

Unfortunately this truth doesn't resonate all that well with upper-middle-class American teenagers whose schools have probably pounded into them that every question has an answer and every answer can be obtained via asking a responsible adult like a teacher or, say, a camp counselor, so I had to piece together answers that were prefaced with "Well, I don't know, but..."

I guess I would've been best off writing a post that went something like this:

Hmm, Uganda. I don't know, but it was wonderful.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 passes the House

Wow I'm on a blogging role!

So yesterday, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 219-212. Surprisingly, 8 Republicans voted yes (I wasn't really expecting any...) and 44 Dems voted no. One of these Dems was Harry Mitchell. I believe many reasons culminated to the final decision, but his statement can be read here.

But man, I hated yesterday. As soon as we took the phones off of forward at 9:00 AM, the phones started ringing off the hook. That means people in Arizona were calling at 6:00 in the morning. I'd consider myself a morning person, but calling my congressman to try and convince him to vote a certain way on important legislation is not the first thing to pop into my head when I wake up.

And Jesus Christ, I'm willing to say that at least 96% of the 5 million people that called in yesterday were crazy. I basically had to listen to this all day:

- Global warming is a hoax/isn't real/hasn't been proven.

- This bill will raise my taxes! By $1,500 per family!

- Has the Congressman read the entire bill that is over 1,000 pages long?

- Cap and tax! Cap and tax! Cap and tax!

- If the Congressman doesn't vote this way, I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that he isn't reelected in 2010! We will remember his vote in 2010! (I swear this line was in some script that was circulated, I kept hearing this)

And a few gems that some bitter people wanted to share with me:

- I hope you find a better job

- I hope you and everyone else in your office are out of jobs soon

- I hope you get paid well for this

The phones were literally ringing nonstop. And I have learned a very important lesson. Phone banking your congressperson only helps if you want that particular congressperson's office to not get anything done that day. Several of the staff members were very excited that I had learned this lesson, since they remembered me phone banking with the YDs last semester. I promised that the ASU YDs would never phone bank the Congressman's office again, and they were very happy to hear this.

Well, at least there's health care to look forward to.

Another thing...

I just really feel like blogging to day, but I had something else on my mind...

Well, look at who's destroying the sanctity of marriage now.

I'm talking to you, John Ensign and Mark Sanford [among others].

I mean seriously. You're Republicans that run on the idea of "traditional family values." In your platform, it says that you recognize the importance of having a mother and a father in the home that are married. I guess it doesn't say anything about being faithful to said mother.

You go along with the conception that marriage is so sacred, that allowing people of the same sex who love each other to get married is a gross idea that would significantly demean what marriage is all about. Because marriage is about being able to procreate and raise your family with both a mother and a father, the mother being a woman and the father being a man. If it were any other way, well, that's just weird, unacceptable, and/or disgusting.

But when you cheat [get caught cheating] on your wife, it's you who's destroying the sanctity of marriage. Isn't the point of marriage to devote yourself to one person for the rest of your life? To instill your trust in each other? To love each other? If everyone who's married just goes sleeping around, what does it really mean to be married? And is marriage really that sacred that you think it's okay to throw your vows to be faithful to each other out the window? To completely destroy any trust that you shared?

And why is it always men that are cheating on women? Is it really so hard for men to be monogamous? I really don't understand what's so difficult about it. Sure, you can look and lust after other people if you're in a relationship, I really don't have a problem with that. Just go back home and make love to your spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend/whatever. If anyone could enlighten me to this strange disparity, or any stories of prominent women [getting caught] cheating on their man, that would be great.

And I know Democrats aren't immune to giving in to their extramarital desires. Duh. But that's not my problem. The cheating Democrats aren't the hypocrites here.

Also, to these women that are sticking by their lying, cheating husbands: why!? He obviously doesn't respect you, so why respect his political career? And this is to the women of any Party affiliation.

I just don't get it, any of it, and the world frustrates me.

OMG

So this is kind of like my first big political celebrity encounter here in DC.

Yesterday, I was just sitting at my desk in the office on the fourth floor of the Longworth House Office Building. I was in the back at the desk with the backup phone. We have it set up so one intern sits at the front desk with our staff assistant and two sit at desks in the back with the other staff members. I was at the desk with the back up phone so if the person up front is already on the phone, then it's my job to answer it if it rings twice.

It was the middle of the afternoon, and I heard the phone ring twice. So I picked it up expecting it to be another constituent that was so keen to convince me that global warming is a myth and that Harry Mitchell should not vote for the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 or they would be after him come 2010. I answered with the typical, perky greeting: "Congressman Mitchell's office, how may I help you?"

And in response, I heard, "Hello, this is Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's chief of staff."

Several things went through my mind at that second. At first I was shocked, that I was actually speaking to Rahm Emanuel. And then I had second thoughts, like this couldn't possibly be Rahm Emanuel, this jerk must be pulling a prank on me.

I think he noticed my astonishment, and just wanted me to give a message to Congressman Mitchell to call him back. At this moment I decided that Rahm was not an impersonator, and so I wrote down the number and said goodbye. I think he was checking up on moderate Democrats to make sure that they would be voting for the big legislation that's coming through Congress right now.

Thus concludes my 10-second encounter with Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's chief of staff. And no he did not curse at me.

DC is the city for me

I've decided I belong here. Everyone here is intelligent (for the most part), everyone cares about and understands politics (for the most part), everyone runs, and I love public transit!

Even though I'm sitting at a desk most of the day looking at a computer screen, I'm really enjoying my work. Of course I'm doing all the cool "interny" things like answering phones, sorting mail, and data entry, but that's what I signed up for, so I'm doing the best I can do. Working 9-6 M-F is certainly a new experience though. It makes the days fly by like crazy (it's June 15th now? Wait what?).

Cool things I did last weekend: Softball game - Capital Scholars vs. ASU Alumni team (I hope when I graduate I can find a cool alumni sports league to join). And I scored a run! Went to a gay dance club because it was pride week last week. Went to Ben's Chili Bowl after getting distracted by a random protest about the Iranian elections that passed by my dorm.

Sorry for the short and belated entry, but I'm exhausted. I'll try to write more later and more often.

It's been one week since [I came to DC]

Wow it's already been a week since I first got to DC. Here's a [not so] abbreviated entry of what I've been up to:

Sunday 5/24 - Arrived in DC. Flight was nice, slept most of the way and read Angels and Demons the rest of the way. Still not done with it yet, I'm hoping I can find a cool park to sit down and finish it in. There were other Capital Scholars on my flight, so we split a couple of cabs to get to George Washington University where we would be staying for the next 8 weeks. Things about the dorm that I'm excited about: 2 bathrooms, full size refrigerator, spacious, 3rd floor, not smelly. All my roommates are cool, even if 2 of them are Republicans. Joaquin says I gotta try and turn them.

Monday 5/25 - Had the day off from activities because it was Memorial Day. My roommate Yazmin and I woke up early to go to Arlington Cemetery to see Obama speak. We got seated around 8:45 and then had to wait until 10:30 before the activities began. It was well worth the wait, and I'm glad I actually did something to celebrate Memorial Day instead of just laying out by the pool and eating hotdogs.

Tuesday 5/26 - We toured the CIA. The tour included the hallway to our conference/holding room and the CIA museum, which was actually really cool. It was funny because we had to be escorted to go to the bathroom (right across the hall) or the gift shop (conveniently located even closer). It was interesting to find out what the CIA actually does, and we got to talk to some ASU alumni about their current jobs with the CIA. Later that night, I went on a run with Todd and we ended up at the mall, and ran around the Lincoln Memorial up to the Washington Monument and back. Everything looks incredible illuminated at night, it's a totally different experience. The scenery here has inspired me to attempt to pick up running again (I'm starting a DC running club, and I brought my knee brace!).

Wednesday 5/27 - We toured the Department of State and the Department of Treasury, which was pretty cool. Except they didn't let us break for lunch. I'm convinced I'm somewhat hypoglycemic, and as soon as I walked into the Treasury I'm pretty sure the lights in there triggered a migraine since I hadn't eaten anything. So I had to sleep that of later that afternoon.

Thursday 5/28 - We went to the National Defense University to play a strategic game. It's silly to think about these people that just sit around and create "games" and play "games" all day. But the gist of it is that we were divided into 2 teams, USA and Mexico, and we were given a situation that we had to deal with. The situation was the growing violence of the drug cartels (which we managed to talk about at every tour, except the Treasury) and we had to come together and resolve the problem. Long story short, things got a little heated because of some instigating by the facilitator on team Mexico, but it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot.

Friday 5/29 - We went to Arlington, Maryland (pronounced Mary-land by our colonial tour guide) and got to meet with the Speaker of the House of Delegates of the Maryland legislature. They definitely have their priorities straight there, they managed to balance their budget and totally fund their public education system and have money set aside in a rainy day fund and haven't raised tuition in 4 years. Democrats do have quite an advantage though, out of 141 seats over 100 are Democrats. I had clam chowder by the bay and our waiter gave all the people who had never had oysters before oyster shooters (that included me). They were small plastic shot glasses filled with cocktail sauce and an oyster. This was probably one of the grossest experiences of my life, because I took all the cocktail sauce, and the oyster just slid down my throat, and the sauce was spicy and not tasty at all. But now I can say that I've tried oyster, but probably never again.

Saturday 5/30 - Went to go find my work, which is really close to a metro stop (I love the public transit here!) and my dorm is really close to a stop as well. Then we all were invited to the Alumni Association's softball game held at a park by the FDR Memorial. Free food and free entertainment is always good. I'm trying to learn how to network, I don't think I'm very good at it yet. Hopefully that will improve. They gave us all these cool Capital Scholars business cards, but I haven't given any out yet. But the FDR Memorial is my favorite memorial so far. It has all these impressive waterfalls, a statue of FDR and his dog, and all these FDR quotes everywhere. It's very modern, and it was very neat to walk through it all, because after every turn you expect it to be over, but there's something even better around the corner.

Sunday 5/31 - Some of us went to the National Zoo, saw a giant panda, some elephants, a hip-hop-opotomus, gorillas, other zoo animals. I've decided zoos are kind of depressing and not really that interesting, but it was something free to do. After the zoo we were really hungry, so we found the cheapest meal we could find, which was this weird place called California Tortilla which is totally Tex-Mex but a very weird place. Their soda machine said "A bad bub puts soda in his water cup," and had other strange stuff like that.

Monday 6/1 - Started work today! I was freaking out about being late because one of the trains on the metro had a mechanical failure at my stop, but the issue was soon resolved and I took a really really crowded train to my stop. It reminded me of being in Rome, except I wasn't as worried I'd be groped or have my purse stolen. Actually, lots of things about DC remind me of being in Rome, but maybe that's because they copied the Roman and Greek architecture here. Anyways work was fun, I got to watch the news and write a news brief for the previous day, then I was given a huge data entry assignment, then we stuffed envelopes. The day went by really quickly, which means that this week is going to be over before I know it, which means this summer will be over even sooner.

More work tomorrow. Every time I look at the clock I can't believe how late it is (it's 9:30 right now, but it feels so much earlier than that. I guess I still haven't acclimated to the time change).

The only thing that would make this absolutely perfect would be if I was getting paid. I'm still going to make a trip to H&M anyways.

Good night!

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.