A timeline so far of my experience applying to the Peace Corps: Feb. 18–turned in the application, including references (I’m not even going to guess when I started on it.  It was a year-long process of considering and getting myself organized and gathering information and becoming sure and committed, and then waiting until every detail [...]

I have been considering the Peace Corps for about six or seven years.  Now, the journey begins with my turned-in application.  Here’s why, and how, and what-for, an excerpt from one of my essays: “Once I had a cultural anthropology professor who had written her dissertation about women in a very small village in southern [...]

(Written the Tuesday before Thanksgiving 2010) This morning, someone I’ve never met cut smoothly into my father’s chest with a scalpel. He gently (I imagine gently, I hope gently), wrenched my father’s ribs open just enough to reach his topmost artery, the one curled right over his pumping bleeding heart. When I imagine it, I [...]

Hello, virtual world.  I have been on the internet before! In 2009, I spent a semester studying abroad in Cape Town, South Africa. Then I spent the summer backpacking in Europe, at hostels in Greece, Turkey, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, The Netherlands, and England. I kept a blog the whole time, called [...]