Hey world, it's been a while. That last post was a doozy, I thought I should wait until I could write a happier one to update here.

Life has been great here. Aside from the occasional stress of teaching, which now at the end of the second trimester of the second year has started to take its annual toll on me. This year, however, it's mingling with sadness in bittersweet knowledge that I'm approaching the last leg of this journey.

I have a lot to look forward to in my future and I'm allowing my excitement for the next few months to remain at the foreground, saving the sadness that I've been dreaming of for the day I sit at the airport and let go of the right to call this island home.

My friend from Assomada just made it out to visit for a weekend and I passed one of the most incredible weekends in recent memory with dear friends. I'll admit it was not a typical Cape Verdean weekend, but served as a welcome reprieve from some of the inherent struggles of routine.

After an afternoon of drinks and catching up, the girls split up from the guys, and when we met on a cobblestone path parallel to the ocean the boys were waiting with flowers, chocolates and wine. I know we're Peace Corps volunteers, and these aren't details that are given much thought in our day to day, but this set the stage for an amazing night and the unexpectedness of this attention made it more potent. We ran along the beach for an hour drinking wine and splashing in the warm foam that lapped up with the waves. I fell in love with my friends and life all over again.

After a wonderful dinner I snuck away from my friends, drawn to the beach by a bonfire surrounded by fishermen. I plopped down in the cold sand and passed an hour talking about living on the beach, befriending a small boy and tackling him in the sand when he would joke with me. I helped to keep the embers smouldering, and ignored the quizzical looks the men gave me, sitting in the soft screen of heat from the fire with a constant smile tattooed on my face.

I've found in the past that sometimes I've felt bad here, when I go out with American friends and spend my time doing something "touristy." But this night I realized that I can allow myself time sometimes, in the light of stars with people I love and who understand how sometimes the days here can be more weighty than they seem. We pull each other up, sometimes before realizing that our friends or ourselves need help. I guess I needed it.

First of all, happy belated holidays to friends and family in the States that I wasn't able to speak with in the prior weeks. My computer had an unfortunate accident and is currently undergoing surgery in the States. I'm hoping to be sent something shiny and new, fingers crossed.

The subject matter of this post isn't particularly uplifting and for that I apologize. But I promised people at home that I would update fairly routinely, and this has comprised a large part of my life for the past week e tal.

Let me start by saying that I had a great Christmas, albeit unplanned, home alone in my community. The sandstorms from the Sahara rendered a visit from my friend from Sao Nicolau in the north impossible, and our planned reunion didn't pan out. It was stressful at first, but I ended up having a very unique, very touching holiday at home with my neighbors, including Christmas Eve mass, witness to a quirky Secret Santa exchange (I was too late to participate unfortunately) and some great food with new friends in more distant zones. People here really took care of me, and as cliche as it sounds (I find it's unavoidable in this situation) I was deeply immersed in celebrations that honored what Christmas is truly supposed to signify.

My friend Chris from the States came here for New Year, as well as many people I hadn't yet met from other islands who are from the newer group to come to Peace Corps Cape Verde. It was a fun whirlwind of craziness wherein we tried to tap into everything Fogo has to offer, drinking wine the whole way through and (at least for myself) ending in a two-day sporadic nap session. It was amazing to have Chris out here, and hopefully he writes a blurb to put in here to elaborate on the trip (you're stuck doing it now sucker).

But the point of writing this is that my last weekend was spent going to two different visitas in As-Hortas, a zone south of me where many of my best students live. A visita is a week-long gathering for people mourning a death, and it culminates in a sete (translated simply as "seven," which is a week to the day after the death in this case) when people go to mass and then lunch with everyone in mourning.

There was a lot of stress involved in getting the full story, including a few terrible hours when I was under the impression that one of my best former students from a family that has been near and dear to volunteers in Ponta Verde for generations had been involved and had died. My heart was literally aching at the thought of reaching home and trudging up the hill to partake in the grief that my friends must be experiencing.

Once I reached Ponta Verde I was a mess. I couldn't even go to the visita that day, and made the long walk to As-Hortas two days later after class. The first house I went to was the home of a 16-year-old girl named Kely who had been in the backseat. Her neck snapped as the car hit the bottom of the ribeira and my only comfort when I greeted her mother, bed-ridden with grief and asking for her own death, was that she didn't feel any pain. Her aunt, the mother of another of my students, sadly told me that this girl had never even been to a festa. She was an intelligent, beautiful girl who spent her time studying and helping her family, and she never left home. Her father had given her money for new shoes that night so that she would feel presentable, and convinced her to go with her uncle.

The accident happened on the way back. I hate to admit it, but I automatically assumed the driver was drunk, which makes it easy to place blame (even from me, a distant witness with no right to place blame on anyone). It was New Year at 6am and they were coming back from a festa, and drinking while driving is widely accepted here. But that wasn't even the case. The driver was a young man from a respectable family who never drank. When he was rounding a ribeira, the back door, which evidently hadn't been shut properly, swung open and a woman in the backseat flew out of the car. Instinctively, he looked behind him, and turned the wheel too hard to the left while doing so, and the car flew straight off the road into a ribeira. Everyone but the two survived, and after the first visita I went to the second to get the full story.

The second visita ended up being much harder than the first. The woman who died was 33, and I'd never met her, but she was the mother of one of my 7th graders. I walked up the steps and saw Katia on a bench, glassy-eyed but otherwise expressionless, staring off at nothing in front of her. The heels of her glossy black shoes stopped clicking rhythmically against the bench when she saw me, and I realized that she didn't want me (as a teacher or as a foreigner, I'm not sure) to see her reaction to what had happened. I respected her anxiety and expressed my condolences but moved inside quickly to give her space, but my eyes were already overflowing by the time I turned away from her.

The women at this visita were wailing, customary for Cape Verdean visitas, but this was the first time I'd experienced it in close proximity. I spoke with the cousin of the deceased and discovered that Katia's father had died years ago, he'd hung himself. Her siblings still had fathers but Katia was left with nothing after this. The most upsetting thing out of all of this was the graphic nature of describing everything. I'd casually asked what had happened, to be sure to have the story straight, and the woman told me that Luisa had been in the backseat, and was alive when help came. They loaded her into the backseat of a car, superficially in good shape aside from a scratch on the head and arm, but halfway to the hospital she began gushing blood from her mouth, nose and ears. They tried to stop the bleeding and went through two towels, but she was dead by the time she reached the hospital. I couldn't think anything other than please, God, please don't let Katia have heard this about her mother. But the openness of the culture and the rapidity with which the news was circulating was too apparent for me to hope that that could be true.

Luisa worked for a family up the street who live in America, and they've offered to adopt Katia and bring her to the States. While trying to avoid involving myself in a very intimately personal matter, I expressed to her aunt that I thought this was an amazing opportunity and offered to come to the house once a week to tutor Katia in English to ease the transition. I haven't heard much more about it, but I'm hoping that she takes the chance she has in front of her, as difficult as it will be to leave the few things that she has left of her life.

I went back for the sete the following Saturday and spent a few hours at each house. This time I started at Katia's house, where I felt my support was more important (whatever that means). She seemed to be doing better, and most of the community was there to show support. I stayed through lunch, but the ambiance was strange, and I felt like I was at a normal community gathering, so after two hours I decided to show face at the second house farther down the street.

This time it was the second visita that tore me up. I drank a beer with the men to calm my nerves a bit and then headed up to the second floor. I sat in the mother's bedroom with a small handful of other women from the community trying to show support for the girl's mother, still in bed and in a state of bewildered half-sleep. I was joking with the other women, and even got the mother to laugh a few times, and then the wailing started in the other room. It was a family member, a big woman with an equally big voice that echoed throughout the concrete rooms. I looked at the floor and cried with the women. In a second's time we went from joking about men and the differences between parties in Cape Verde and America to reabsorbing the reality that brought us all together to begin with. I think Kely's mother had run out of tears, and would only occasionally click with her tongue her reaction to the reminder that her daughter was gone. I left with a driver friend of mine and her mother asked me to come back some time soon and pass a day with her, to which I quickly and happily agreed.

I'm not even sure what the point of writing this is. I haven't had a computer (read: internet, tv shows, general distractions) in a matter of weeks now, and this on top of the new level of isolation from lack of contact with the rest of the world led me to a strange, Vonnegut-esque realization that we are, as a whole, completely absurd creatures. We find comfort in distracting things that don't mean anything, and really what we're choosing to distract ourselves from is meaning. I didn't have 30 Rock to turn to, or have an opportunity to watch zombies take over the world before bedtime (which is my favorite pastime), but I felt myself burst at the seams and survive. I reached my threshold of what I'm able to handle, and then surpassed it, and came out realizing as always that I'm still better off than so many others. I exhausted myself giving every part of myself that I could to strangers who couldn't help but put their full weight on me, and I'm not used to that so it was a strain, but what did I lose? What changed for me? Nothing.

I'll get my computer back in a month, eventually have a long day teaching and come home and curl up to whatever show I've bummed from the last computer I've scavenged. I'll choose to stay at home one hot Saturday and read all day and eat macaroni and cheese until I have to nap it off. I'm American, and you can take the girl out of the States, etc. But this week, perhaps more than another span of time in the recent past, put into stark, uncomfortable perspective the things that I have in my life, and the things that matter, and the things that I was desperately hoping do mean something, or could, but ultimately don't and never will.

Life is hard. We have a funny tendency, dangerously coupled with an uncanny ability, to trick ourselves into thinking that we'll be the exception to the rule in the blink of an eye we call our life, without stopping to think that there are no rules. So if there's any point to writing this it's to ask anyone who reads this, just once, and not out of a sense of entitlement or thinking that I've suddenly learned something unlearnable (on the contrary I feel stupid for systematically falling into this trap), to shut the computer or turn off the tv at the onset of the next urge to watch a show or surf Facebook and do something you've never done, or talk to someone you've never talked to. Or just go sit in the grass and do nothing.

I don't know. I plan on spending minimal time in my house this trimester, and getting to know every square inch of this island before I leave in the coming months. My reality will never be as hard is it is for the majority of people here. So I'll continue to give what I can, and hopefully ease the burdens of those who need help, but I'll always be going back to better. Go play in the sun and leave your iPad at home. I'll join you in September. Much love to you all.

xoxoxox

Rakel

My green tea bag just told me that "The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself."

This life really is just an epic expanse of a rollercoaster.

Fuckin Mark Twain.

.......

I've known Rachel Day since June of 2006. We were roommates during our life shaking study abroad trip around Ireland. 6 weeks, 2 weeks in 3 different cities. Every time we'd get our roommate assignments Rachel and I were together. Oddly enough, we weren't very close then. Not for any particular reason, but we were both different people then. I think one thing we did have in common was we didn't necessarily go to Ireland to find ourselves, and yet the most unexpected can change you forever. I always know when a relationship is extra special to me because I can't remember the moment I fall in love. I have no clue when it clicked that we were going to be friends forever. But I'm sure as hell glad it did. For the remainder of college we only grew closer, and I can now proudly say that Rachel Day is one of my closest friends, more than a sister... someone I don't know how not to love.

In all honestly when Rachel first told me she was applying to Peace Corps I was extremely excited but also very nervous. I know she's a strong woman and was at a point in her life she needed a challenge. Although I couldn't bring myself to not be a skeptic and to jump to conclusions about how she'll manage where ever she ends up. Well, I do still worry for her the way I do any close friend, but I can now honestly say that she has surpassed any expectations and I could not be more proud. I don't want to say she's a new woman because we all always saw it in her, but I can say that she has grown so much and truly conquered the unfathomable challenges that come with that journey.

Now enough about how amazing Rachel is...

Fogo, Cape Verde... quite the little volcano she's got. I'm not going to go into too much Travel Magazine detail, but here's my top ten thoughts that spring to mind when thinking about the trip:

1. Absolutely beautiful black sand beaches, some that stretch as far as you can see and others are small private coves

2. We hiked the volcano, which I'll admit was extremely challenging for me (i need to get my booty to the gym), but it was completely worth the aches and pains going up (and coming down). The views were spectacular and the company was even better. I loved sharing that experience with 3 incredible ladies, oh and our lovely guide

3. Donkeys make noises they don't teach you in preschool

4. Thanksgiving should be a global holiday. Not because I'm a proud American and think everyone should celebrate our holiday, but because the idea of cooking a lot of food and sharing it with others translates well

5. Bucket showers aren't as bad as you might think

6. Wine is yummy even on a volcano

7. The playful innocents of a kid and the undeniable wisdom of the elderly is universal

8. African beer is really not that tasty

9. Everyone's African doppleganger lives in Fogo

10. Have your adventures while they're there to be had, but never forget you can always go home.

When I got back to the states I spent about a day in Boston. First time in Boston and I must admit it really made me miss the east coast. I think Beantown would be too cold for me but I kept wondering if I should give NYC another chance. Anyway... more importantly, I thought a lot about the Fogo trip while wandering the streets. The first bit of American news I heard was that people were literally being shot, pepper sprayed and trampled to death while shopping on Black Friday. I feel like if I go into my detailed opinion of these events this note will be way too long... so I'll just leave you with that tidbit of information and you can discuss among yourselves.

Fogo is not that different from anywhere else. I feel like some would be insulted by this comment but the truth is every place has its pros and cons. It's just a matter of finding a balance where ever you may end up, whether you're there for a week or a lifetime. People surprise me how different and yet similar they can be. I think that's what allows me to have faith in humanity... to not completely give up on anyone or anything.

I'd personally like to thank Rachel for hosting Meghan, Lolly and I, and for trusting us to appreciate her current way of life. I couldn't be more proud of her, both watching her leading a class and go about her Cape Verdean life.

"Not all who wander are aimless, especially those who seek truth beyond tradition, beyond definition, beyond the image."

This is a quick interjection meant for all of the volunteers I know, as well as those I don't. I came across this poem recently and it articulates points that I or friends have made in recent conversation. I was touched by its relevance, and just want to post it in hopes that it may touch a chord with someone else when they need it.

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

... though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.

-Mary Oliver

During my first trimester of my first year in Fogo, a friend of mine listened patiently to my frustrations regarding disciplinary problems in my classroom, and said to me, “I wouldn’t wish a first year of teaching on my worst enemy.” I shrugged the comment off at the time, thinking that my second year surely couldn’t be too different from the first. And now here I am, and for the millionth time during my service I find myself thinking “ok, I was wrong.”

The difference is astounding. One year ago I was grasping at straws trying to find anything at all that I could do to keep things in order. I didn’t have teaching resources, my Kriolu wasn’t strong, and I didn’t understand the learning styles of Cape Verdean children. The blank stares I encountered were disheartening, as was the amount of time it took me to figure out how to make my students grasp even the simplest concept.

I’m not quite a month in to my second year in school now, but I’ve taken every painful lesson from last year and combined them into some hybrid version of success. I love joking with my students, but understand now the fine line between light-hearted lessons and getting kids so excited that they become uncontrollable. Everyone participates, like it or not. I have the “teacher face” down, and can stop kids from talking without saying a word. That might be my favorite. I leave my personal emotions at the door when I walk into the classroom. My first real effective day last year came after a breakup, but in retrospect I think the only reason the students behaved that day was fear. Effective, but not my style.

Last year my favorite thing to say to people was that my kids are the best and worst parts of my service. I think once the year goes on that may be the case once again, but I have a handle on it now. A friend in the States, a very successful and wonderful teacher, told me someone said to him once, “I tried teaching. I get it, but it’s not for me.” For me, it’s become something that I think I’ll need to do for the rest of my life…maybe just not professionally.

For anyone who wants to try, I highly recommend teaching ESL. Before joining Peace Corps I taught in Arlington for a year, only once a week, to an amazing and diverse group of people. I taught people of all ages, from nearly every continent. I still remember their faces, and their kind words, and I have a beautiful card from them hanging on my wall. To date, aside from Peace Corps, it remains the most meaningful thing I’ve ever done.

So I get it. Teaching every day from the crack of dawn to two may not be for me, but it’s stuck with me. I saved some of my favorite parts from a project that I did last year with my eighth graders. Some of the papers made me want to quit, but some of the students took the opportunity to convey their emotions and thoughts in such a poetic way; I was insurmountably proud of them. Some were just hilarious. These were some of my favorites:

I like my father. She is the best father.

The holiday that I liked is the holiday of Christmas. Because I was together with my friends, brothers, my family, girlfriend, and my mother, and my father. The party was more pleasant with music in house of my aunt. I danced very with my girlfriend.

At first day that I went to school in Ponta Verde, I finded many friends.

We spent time there and spent one midnight happy.

I like policemen. I like to go to the beach. I don’t want to be rich. I want to have a family with a woman that I love. I like my English teacher.

I’m 12 years old. My homework is about a party in Santo Antonio. It is very short but is very interesting.

During summer vacation, the weather gets hot, and since I live close to the beach I go there almost every day to swim. Even when the vacation is about to end, I still be happy because when I return to school I will be in a different grade and that will be a new experience.

A month after my grandfather died I had many sad. I liked him, he gave me a lot stories. He was seventy years old.

Last year I went to the island Brava over my island vacation. I was walking around the city. The city was full of flowers by the side and seemed to be the paradise. Out windows at night we were looking at the sky. Took many photographs.

(Anyone interested in ESL in the Northern Virginia area should look into REEP: The Arlington Education and Employment Program. Please feel free to email me with any questions, and check out their website at http://www.apsva.us/Page/2019.)

Disclaimer: this is a ridiculously long post.

When I first joined Peace Corps I had this big idea that I would spend my full two years here. I thought it would be better to use my vacation days within country. I came here partially to isolate myself from Western thought and also to get to know a country other than my own in a personal way, so it made sense to stay. But living on an island can drive a person to near-insanity at times, and I thought it best for my mental health and the physical safety of my students to get away for a while. My friend Toby was planning to go home to York for a few weeks over his birthday and invited me along. At first I declined, offering every type of reason except a good one. I needed a break, I was just too stubborn to admit it. But when he found a buy-one-get-one-free ticket to Germany I had to jump on board.

This vacation started out unintentionally. I had planned an art camp for my students with two other volunteers to take place during the summer. Sadly, I was shipped to Dakar during the exact week that art camp was taking place for a few medical consultations and had to miss it. But this journey extended my vacation to a full month traveling outside of Cape Verde, and it was pretty amazing. Since I don’t speak French or Wolof, while I was in Dakar I had to wait for volunteers to come to the medical hut when they had time and tag along with them. So some days were spent restlessly pacing around, hoping for someone to show up (but enjoying turkey and French bread and varieties of cheese, all of which I’ve been denied for such a long time now). But there were a few days I was able to go explore.

I made fast friends with a few of the volunteers, one of whom was beginning his third year and moving from a rural site to Dakar. He had never been to Ngor Island, which is a small island used for its beaches just off the coast of the beach near the Peace Corps medical hut. We were able to go there one day, crammed onto a boat with a hundred other people for a smooth ten minute ride. I was happy to just walk around and stretch my legs a little bit. We circled the island, and I was able to try touba, a spicy coffee that tastes like it has ginger in it, before we sat down for a drink before heading back.

Another day we went to the port with the intention of getting details on tickets to Goree island, a former slave island. But we were sidetracked. We saw a long, narrow sea wall jutting out into the ocean in a winding S-curve and were too curious to leave it be. It’s used these days for fishermen, and it was used back in the day for coastal defense. Parts of it were difficult to traverse. Rock had been eroded over time, and parts of it were washed away completely. Other sections were coated in slippery algae, and there was one part that had an ancient cannon blocking the way. But it was amazing, and spontaneous, which made my day.

After Dakar, I had one day in Praia before Toby and I went to Sal for our flight to Germany. I hadn’t been certain how long I’d be held in Dakar, and it was a relief to touch ground back in Cape Verde in time to go on the trip we’d been planning. Two days later we arrived in Stuttgart to start the three weeks we’d stay in Europe.

We stayed two nights in Stuttgart, accommodating our excitement to try every type of food and drink every type of beer that we could get our hands on. We made it to a museum and I felt months of stress begin to chip away. The second morning there we woke up, packed our bags, and took a long walk to the place we’d begin hitchhiking. Along the way we found that there was one thing we’d both missed terribly but never really noticed: grass. Seriously, all I wanted to do was sit in the grass and roll around in flowers. It was probably an odd sight to people walking by, but we had to give in a few times.

After Stuttgart we went to Karlsruhe, which was interesting because there's a theory that this is the city whose layout Washington DC is based on. Capitol Hill is the equivalent of the Town Hall of Karlsruhe: an epicenter with ring streets expanding outward from it. So that was strangely familiar. But we were struck upon arrival by an increasing number of people in costume. We passed pirates, barmaids, peasant boys, all mixed in with people just going about their evening. We had no idea what was going on until we reached the main park, which was hosting a giant medieval festival. Getting rides to our destination proved to be a long process that day (we got numerous rides along the way, some incredible people, including a family who rearranged their car and children to make room for us) and we didn’t have much time once we got there. So the next day we were off.

The next stop was Saarbrucken. We stayed there one night and spent a full day exploring, but the highlight was dinner. I’d been set on sushi from the beginning, and I found a great restaurant in the city. Spicy tuna rolls and five little bottles of warm sake later I was the happiest girl in the world. But again, we had a target in mind and had to be on our way. At this point we were on the border of France and planned to make it to Metz.

This was the best hitch of the trip. We met a fantastic couple who went out of their way to befriend us. They took us to our destination, and then we all went to the extension of the Pompidou center that had just been completed.

We had some drinks after in the shadow of a beautiful cathedral, and exchanged contact information before begrudgingly saying our goodbyes. It was one of the more staggering experiences of my life to date. Metz, as though it knew it was following a star performance, didn’t disappoint in the slightest. Everything came together, stars aligned, and the meaning of life was clear. I can’t say why, really. It was just one of those places that meant something to me immediately. We had some wine-induced conversations (debates? Fights? Who’s to say) about modern art, explored parks, and let ourselves get lost in the newness of it all.

After Metz, we made our way to Reims. My favorite part of Reims was the process of getting to Reims. It was far more difficult to get rides in France than it was in Germany, and we’d been on the side of a road for three hours before getting a ride to a gas station a few exits up. This was good timing as we were able to eat and shield ourselves from the rain that had been showing signs of opening up on us for an hour or so. As we were waiting at this gas station, a Mack truck whistled to a stop in front of us. A young guy leaned out the door of the driver’s side and said this was a bad place to wait, but he could take us a few exits up.

After we’d been in the cab of the truck for a good fifteen minutes or so, he said he was making a drop at a farm but after that he was heading to Reims, if we wanted to go on this drop with him and then continue on our journey. He was personable and fun, and of course we agreed. We sped along increasingly narrow back roads and came to a tiny town in the middle of acres of farmland, and as he was helping a local farmer unload the freight, we climbed all over the truck and explored the town.

Afterward, we continued on to Reims. Along the way, our new friend started pulling medieval weapons out of various hiding places in the cab (completely innocently, just a quirky guy) to highlight stories he told us about strange things that had happened to him over his years of driving. This popped into my head a little bit later when we were stranded in a ghost town, our friend having reached his 15 hour maximum on driving for the day, and we realized the three of us would be sharing the cab for the night. He was a friendly guy, with a sweet disposition, and he ended up giving us all of the food that he had in his refrigerator (and also gave me a small sheep figurine to remember him by) and we continued on the next day. Definitely a night to remember.

We reached our destination early the next morning. Reims is the capital of the champagne valley in France, and we drank accordingly. The day was spent wandering around. The only big thing here was the Notre-Dame cathedral, the site where the kings of France were once crowned. It had a lot of character, but there had been massive damage done to it in 2010 with the outbreak of a fire, and the dynamic inside has changed with the addition of modern stained glass which now includes pieces from the 13th to 20th century. The variety of style was unlike anything I’d seen in stained glass. The only thing I can say about that night is better summed up through photos:

After Reims, having woken up with severe champagne headaches, we decided to take a train into Paris. We spent three days there, and it was wonderful. We went to the Musee D’Orsay which quickly made my list of top three museums I’ve ever been to. I finally climbed the Eiffel tower, had Mexican food for the first time in forever, my first Cosmopolitan in over a year, walked along the Seine and crossed a few things off our lists. We stayed in a hotel in Montmartre, on the top floor, and the first night I hopped over the guardrail to sit on the narrow rooftop ledge to watch the light show.

I could dedicate a whole post to Paris, but I’ll keep it short and sweet. On the third evening, we made our way to the bus station to catch the overnight bus to London. It was an awful ride and I highly recommend avoiding this situation at all costs. Progress was delayed numerous times and it made sleeping impossible. But we did finally reach London and made our way to Toby’s friend’s apartment. We lazed around (oh my God couches! Couches are so good) and made dinner with his friends that night, but we’d been hearing sirens go by and realized that the riots had broken out in Ealing, which is where we were. We didn’t see anything, but the stories on the news were heartbreaking, and in the middle of the night we could hear helicopters circling around us and turned on the news to hear that residences in the area were being broken in to. When Toby’s friends walked home after dinner, they passed burning cars and found that the apartment building across theirs was on fire.

It was tragic to see what people were capable of, but I have to say it was heartening the following day to step outside and see so many people walking with

brooms and dustpans to clean up the mess that looters had made the night before.

After London we spent a day at Cambridge, where Toby showed me all of his University haunts. Cambridge is beautiful, and it was a really touching way to spend the day. It made me miss JMU, and we sat under a tree eating sandwiches and trading stories about college days. That night we took a train to York, to his family’s house, where we spent the following five days or so. If I could sum this up I would say the following: sleeping in, mashed potatoes, afternoon gin, the family farm, wine, steaks, sausages, fish and chips, haircuts, movie theaters!, mango juice, stained glass, art, Les Mis, bars, bacon, moors, highland cows, washing machines omg, chicken brick, more bacon, asparagus and tea. If I say much more than that we’ll be here for days. Amazing. That is all.

The last stop was Edinburg. Toby’s brother lives there and we made it during the Fringe, which is the annual theater festival that triples Edinburg’s already massive population every year. It was so much fun, and once again it was the type of place that contained too much in too short of time to be able to do it justice here. One thing worth mentioning is that we went to see a show called Showstoppers at the Fringe, which is an improvised musical. The audience would provide examples of Broadway musicals, or specific songs, and also suggest a setting, and the actors would improvise an entire musical incorporating everything on the compiled list. The first night was so hilarious that we went the following night, and it was equally mind blowing.

After this trip we flew back to Stuttgart for a night before coming back to Cape Verde. We’d planned to come back through Boavista to see some friends and settle back into life in-country before going back to our sites. It was a good way to end, and I was able to cross another island off the list.

So a lot happened and changed over the course of this month abroad. I have tentative plans for post-PC life, which I’ll elaborate on as soon as things are set in motion, and I also feel completely regenerated for my second year here. I didn’t realize when I was making the plans, but leaving for a while helped me twofold: I was able to step away from the stresses of my life as a teacher and evaluate and redevelop my plan for the coming year, and I was also able to see for the first time how much living in Cape Verde has changed me. I kind of feel as though I’m starting over again, but this time with a good grasp on the language and classroom techniques. It was at once the perfect celebration to the end of my first year of teaching, and an energy boost for the second. We’ll see what the coming year brings.

This is a little bit overdue, but I wanted to try out a guest spot on the blog. My mom came out here for a good two weeks (e tal) in June/July and I asked her to write a little bit about her experience. It was her first trip abroad (Africa, of all places) and she was amazing. I'll let her do the talking:

I had a great 2 weeks in Fogo. The highlight of the trip, of course was seeing Rachel again! We did so much in two week! The flight over was easy, as we did not leave Boston until 1 AM. I woke up at dawn and it was unreal, being over the ocean. When I looked out my side of the plane the sky was dark. On the other side, the sun was coming up. The first two days I really needed to read and nap while she finished up with school. Walking around the "neighborhood" and meeting the local people. I know I had a bit of difficulty with the language, but I tried!

Rachel took me to a "dance" at a local persons house. We ate very well, and I was fortunate enough to have several people there visiting from Boston, so they of course spoke English. Afterwards, all the guys went into a room and waited for the women to come in to dance. It was very unique! All I can say is their "social life" is very different than ours!

We also went to a benefit dinner at a local restaurant to raise money for art supplies for the school children. The food and drink kept flowing, great music played by a local musician and several people who sat down to play with him. It was a good turn out, and I think all the people who helped put this on were pleased. I met a really nice young man from Germany, who I talked to for awhile.

Transportation was very unusual. They had regular taxis, but the way to really travel is in a Hiaces, which is like a passenger van. They cram so many people in one its unreal. One trip we took, they actually picked up someone with a live chicken, not even in a cage or a box. The driver opened up the back door and put the chicken in and packed boxes and bags around it to keep it in one place! We also would make several stops along the way if someone wanted to stop at a "store" to pick up some cakes or bread. Of course everyone had to wait in the hot Hiaces. No one seemed to mind. I was fortunate enough to only experience this once, the trip we took (on my way to the airport naturally) when we had to drive around the city looking for people who needed rides. It was getting close to the time I needed to be at the airport, so we got out and got a cab.

I enjoyed Mosteiros very much. We stayed 3 days with Josh, another volunteer. He lives more in a city atmosphere, and I enjoyed sitting on his balcony watching the people come and go. We went to a festival there, where Rachel and I participated in the Pilan, which is crushing corn into flour. It is quite strenuous! My arms got a work out. While you are doing this, the people are standing around you and chanting songs about you. The next night we went to the festival, and ate food made from the corn flour. It was very good. After everyone ate, we went to the streets to wait for the parade. Here, people dressed from head to toe in corn stalks and masks, and ran through the streets while musicians played and chanted. Younger kids, also disguised, ran about with long sticks chasing the other people. This went on for quite awhile. I was told this dates back from the slave days. When a slave had a complaint against his master, he would disguise himself from head to toe and go on his Masters porch and state his complaint. The master would not know which slave it was, so he could not be punished.

We spent one day taking a hike. We took a cab up to the top of the "mountain" and slowly walked down. The banana trees were huge! It was so lush and green at the top. It was really something, to be walking down a road, turn a corner, and there is a store where you can get a beer. We made several "stops" on our walks. We also found a few houses where the people have monkeys as guard dogs. They are chained to a tree and have a very nice tree house.

Rachel took me to meet a local artist, Tony, and his wife. They were very nice. I loved his art work! He used odds and ends he found on the island and made art out of it. He had these gorgeous picture frames he made out of PVC pipes, wrapped in banana leaves and shellacked. His wife, whose name escapes me, makes beautiful jewelry. Their home was very simple, very comfortable, and they both had a happiness about them that is not seen here (USA) very often.

Cha was really unique. The bed and breakfast we stayed at for two nights was a real treat. It is at the base of the volcano. The food (once again!) was incredible! And the wine! There is a lovely courtyard right outside your room that have these statues and wall hangings that are carved out of lava rock. The next morning we took a long hike around the volcano. The rock formations were incredible! And in all that black and rock and barren looking land, was the vineyard, lush plants full of grapes! Not to mention the apples and pomegranates! The volcano itself is a sight to see. It is huge! I doubt I could have climbed it, and I KNOW I would not have been able to run down it. It was a sight! We walked most of the day, it was like being on another planet. We stopped at the "store " there and bought some wine. The men of the "village" who were finished with their days work, came in to play music. We sat and listened and it was really good. The owner played the violin, and you could tell they all enjoyed this time together. After this, we went back to the bed and breakfast, ate supper and had the most delicious chocolate mousse! That night, we climb the steps to the roof to look at the stars. With no outdoor lights, and being in the middle of the ocean, it was an incredible sight!

From here we traveled to Tortuga, which is another B&B on the ocean. The owners are Italian, and once again the food was incredible. We pretty much lazed around, played cards, read, and took naps in the hammock. My journey was slowly coming to an end.

We got back to Rachel's house for a few more days. Near Rachel's school is a store, where a women named Bete works. She is extremely pleasant. We walked over there one day so I could say goodbye. She has a big heart, a very kind soul. I am happy I met her.

I am so happy Rachel showed me her life there. I learned a lot, mostly how spoiled we are here, with running clean water, showers (hot), electricity that stays on when you need it, washing machines! I know I only washed a few things with the scrub brush and wash board, but it was a chore!

I ate octopus and eel, woke up every morning to roosters and donkeys! Picked fresh mangos off the tree. And the cashews! I did not know they had fruit AND they are toxic raw!

Thank you for sharing your world with me! It was a trip I will never forget!

I've had some times in the past few months when I've needed to slow myself down and remind myself that everything is ok. It is, when I think about it, but between work and the complexities of maintaining a social life in a foreign country, as well as the normal ebb, flow and occasional white water rapids in life, sometimes I begin to think it's not. When I need a quick fix I listen to music, and I wanted to share some, the words of which you may not be able to understand, but I think the appreciation of this artist comes from a place beyond language.

Sara Tavares is my favorite "Cape Verdean" musician. I use quotations marks because she's actually second-generation Portuguese. She's of Cape Verdean descent, but she was born and raised in Portugal. Her parents abandoned her at a young age to seek better lives for themselves and she was taken in by a family in Portugal. I've heard rumors around Fogo that she didn't speak Kriolu as a child, but wanted to relate to the culture that she never knew and learned the language to incorporate into her music.

She's a little example of the spirit's ability to persevere through hardship. Enjoy:

Today as I was on my way to class I realized I had forgotten to take a photo of a document that I had to send to the Peace Corps office. I snapped a photo, clicked the memory card directly into my computer to save a few precious seconds, and set out to the school. It was more of an afterthought than anything.

I’ve been home alone for the past week; just me and my thoughts. I only have so many hours of HBO specials on my computer and eventually, I knew one night I’d be left alone to deal with myself. That night turned out to be tonight. I came to my room and searched through my computer folders and realized that I have nothing left to enfold myself in. Half a day! I don’t know how Thorough did it, just him and that silly lake.

I climbed into bed and realized that my memory card was still in my computer. It actually scared me to look at it! My own life, the past three years of it, stored on this little piece of technology. I guess it’s just one of those days when it seems to taunt me instead of serve of remembrance of happy memories. “Look what you used to have, sucka!”

Regardless, I just spent the last half hour sitting in an apartment enjoying second Christmas, watching the Superbowl with friends, lounging in the Caribbean, going on snowy photo shoots in DC alleyways, playing fancy flipcup games on my old balcony and dressing up. I enjoyed traditions, vacations and time with friends all over again. I saw people change. I watched people I love grow up, and make choices, and move on with their lives. I saw a friend I met at a beer pong table in college grow into himself, find his sexuality and embrace his strength. I watched friends fall in love, and others get married. Some people, after a while, weren’t in the photos anymore, and sometimes new people appeared.

Sometimes it’s hard here when I realize that so many of the good things that I had won’t be the same again. I never thought at the time, “this is the last time.” I guess I had convinced myself that when I went back home parts of my life wouldn’t have changed. But I took myself out of the pictures and life carried on.

A friend of mine gave me advice that I thought would be easy to follow but has proved, somehow, to be anything but. He told me that I’m here, I’ve left things behind and I need to live here. I need to be in the moments as they come, and stop thinking about what’s behind and ahead of me. So I smiled at the three years of photos and the memories, and the wonderful things that I was able to experience, and I put them away to take a look at what I have today. This is a taste of the latest stop along the road: the memories shared with all of the other people who left their photographs behind.

Cultural sensitivity. Such a peaceful concept that makes perfect sense and is, in theory, always available at the forefront of a foreigner’s mind. Don’t shake hands with your left hand. Don’t take mangos from another person’s mango tree. It’s respect at a deeper form: taking the time to get to know cultural norms that are different from your own and adapting yourself to them, like them or not. So everything that I’ve hardwired myself to think and do in response to people for the past 25 years of my life is justifiably open to debate, and right and wrong have been shifted in every direction since setting foot in the country that I’ve chosen to call home for two years.

I’m going to dive right into this post because despite the title, it’s probably anything but culturally sensitive. I’d like to think the fact that the person in question lives in America dilutes the need for attempted empathy, but on top of this, I’ve never heard of a person who is so annoying that every Cape Verdean I know collectively talks negatively about her at the mention of her name. So…I’m just integrated, right? And it’s one of those things that up until a point, I wouldn’t have written about for the sole reason of trying to accept my situation for what it is and move on. But all aforementioned reasons aside, life at home has recently dipped a toe into “so ridiculous it’s hilarious” territory, and I can’t resist a good story.

For the last month and a half, our landlady has been living next door to us. She usually lives in America but comes here every few years to work on the house that she lovingly reminds me on a constant basis is hers, and thus the decisions she asks me to make with her, in those cases where I disagree, are deferred to her alone. Every morning as the sun rises in the cool, peaceful countryside, she walks outside of my window, waking us from our innocent slumber with her melodic Kwaaaackckkkkuuuughhhkkk noise, as she seems to perpetually have a limitless deposit of phlegm lodged deep, deep in her esophagus which she can never quite clear out. But she’s persistent.

The first bit of work they did on the house was putting in a new door and a new window inside. The door is located all of five feet from another door, and it leads to a room that she’s ordered us to board up and never use. So I totally understand why she wants another door there; I’m shocked there wasn’t one to begin with. Two doors that access an inaccessible space, of course! The window allows us, if we’re on tiptoe in our kitchen, to gaze into the dark hallway in the back of the house that contains both previously described doors, and remains unfinished. That was a quick piece of work and I was happy in my naïve thinking that this house project surely (one eyebrow raised in retrospect) wouldn’t take a full two months.

This construction leaves the back exit to the kintal open, so the day that Sarah and I chased our chickens around to clip feathers and clean them up a bit we had a nice peanut gallery of one telling us how to improve. Which, I assure you, is exactly what you want to hear when you’re trapped inside of a chicken coop because you shut the door behind you to keep them from escaping and didn’t think about the fact that when the mama hears her babies squawking outside of the coop, days after the father of her babies was slaughtered in front of her, she’s going to attack the big threatening thing that doesn’t belong. In this case it was me, running around a chicken coop and screaming as the biggest chicken inside dive-bombed into my shins and scratched at my kneecaps. Kwaaaackkkuugh.

Next came the interior painting. This was about a week into her happy two-month visit, and it was about the time when I threw in the towel on any attempt at productive conversation with the woman, leaving my poor (more patient) roommate to deal with her one-on-one. Which meant that it inevitably started. Every day. With about a two second Mississippi pause (that may be generous but I’m rounding) in between each shrill, smoker voice shriek. SAH-rah. SAH-rah. SAH-rah. Yes? Are you here? Oh, ok. Cue any excuse to leave the house. Any possible thing that a person would have no logical reason to say to another human being became just cause to yell Sarah’s name with barely enough response time for a proper eye roll (a half roll, yes, but it’s not nearly as satisfying, especially when considering you need to get in a good sigh and maybe a hysterical laugh as well depending on what time of day it is by now) before the next harpy shriek. After painting the rest of the house, she and I had a feisty debate over the need to paint the bedrooms, and she ultimately gave me all of one days notice that she was going ahead with it, so one lovely Sunday was spent taking down my card wall and moving things out of my room, only to hear the next morning, oh, we don’t really need to paint your rooms. Our response was a culturally sensitive insistence that they were painting the effing rooms.

After that was the tiles. There aren’t words for the tiles.

My personal favorite thing that was directed at me was when I was cooking on the opposite end of the house from my room: RaKEL? RaKEL? RaKEL? Mmmhmm? Open the window. Um, sure you can open my bedroom window. No, come open the window. I proceeded to turn off the burners, walk across the house, walk outside, walk directly in front of her (please note she was holding and doing nothing) to open the window she would have walked into had she taken one step forward, look at her for a moment with my eyebrows raised and my mouth slightly ajar, then go back to cooking. This surprised me because she has before taken the liberty to open windows (surprise!) at the ass crack of dawn to look into bedrooms to talk about her plans for the house, because asking if we want a bathtub is just that important. She has also butted in on conversations with other friends—usually to disagree with something we’ve said, has told us how we should cook our American food that she’s never seen or eaten before and has no idea how to make, interrupted my every thought on the rare occasion that I’ve had the patience to try to share one, taken our water despite numerous pleas to stop and reminders that her family literally stole all of the water from this house last year: forcing the girls who lived here to carry water on their heads up a mountain just to get by, criticized us to other people in front of me in assumption that I don’t understand the language that I speak with her on a daily basis, and has generally been the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.

And yet I remain as patient as I possibly can. I try to ignore our new wood paneling tiles that I think maybe sometime in the 1960s a lumberjack or a burnout somewhere would have been excited about, probably in New Jersey (sorry dad, just thinking about that timeshare back in high school), and the terrible craftsmanship of the installation, which makes sense to me now that the elderly man who was in charge of it just left my house with a bedong on his head, reeking of grog and drooling on himself (no seriously, toxic bubbles down the face when saying a word that includes F or P) as he walked into walls while he asked me how old I was. Which I find to be extraordinarily sexy.

With this exchange happening outside of my back door, another man was loading bucket after bucket of our rapidly diminishing water supply onto a donkey to walk it up to the house next door to fill up that family’s water tank. I asked him why he couldn’t go to the public water supply down the hill, since it’s free and our water is dwindling because of their work and he has a freaking donkey. I even threw in a snarky comment about how it literally wouldn’t be any more work for him, just the donkey. He said he didn’t have time. For cultural sensitivity reasons, I’m not going to delve into that one. I waved a lock around, little does he know I unsuccessfully tried to remember the combination for an hour today, and told him to let his friend know that after tomorrow she can expect the water supply cut off. She’s tapped a whole new level of sass (that’s what she said! Stealth and avoidance* = The Office reruns) and I think everyone involved is happy that this experience is almost over.

So, where am I now? She leaves on Monday. God forbid the construction on the new airport (yes, anyone considering visits, your experience will now be more streamlined and you may be able to fly directly to Fogo…details pending) takes longer than people anticipated. My roommate is freshly gone for a two-week trip to Maio, so the patience has left the building. My current project: playing with fire and recycled bottles. Focus tends to be on the fire. My current pastime: stealth and avoidance, referenced above*. Current song playing on Itunes: Y’all Been Warned. Jus sayin, Wu-Tang don’t lie. Word.

This is one of the few moments in my life when the number of things that I have to say are too impossibly numbered to say them. I've spent the past week on the island of Sao Nicolau in celebration of Carnaval, and after the dust has settled, I feel that I may need convincing that it happened at all. Everything about the past two weeks makes me think I couldn't possibly have been living my own life. When I booked my tickets two months ago to come to the northern island that we've endearingly nicknamed "man island," both for the *ahem* suggestive shape of the island and the fact that female volunteers are not sent there, I had a totally different vacation in mind. The only way I think I can feasibly write this is as a journal entry. Too many facts and thoughts to sort through, so do with it what you will.

The trip started with either a fizzle or a bang, depending on how you look at it. Coming from Fogo is difficult. We made it from Fogo to Praia, Praia to Sal, and then due to plane malfunctions that I'd rather not think about, we found ourselves stuck on the island that offers three things: salt, windsurfing and resorts. The airline had no choice but to get us rooms for a night, which included a fantastic free dinner with Portuguese wine, white sand beaches and a chance to explore the nightlife of the most Westernized island of this archipelago. After dinner and wine, we caught cabs to go to Santa Maria, which is the focal point of the nightlife and also the site of the most extraordinary stretch of white sand beach that I've seen in a long time, if ever. The night was an adventure that is too strange to explain, suffice it to say that we passed it by bar-hopping, befriending Italians in their gelato store, snapping photos outside of a dance club that is pirate themed, and stumbling back to sleep for a few hours before getting up to catch the flight. Luckily the flight was delayed and we were able to go back to Santa Maria beach to explore the beach, which is a hot spot for windsurfers. Definitely worth the delay, but we were ready to get to Sao Nic.

Our flight put us in Sao Nicolau in the mid-afternoon, but somehow in the brief skip of a flight the airline had managed to lose my bag. Just mine. It was the second time it's happened and I was partially convinced that it was stolen, so I stayed at the airport with a friend and drank enough to get belligerent before giving up and ensuring that we had extracted a promise that the airline would call me with updates. The next few days were comprised of two days of preemptive Carnaval, a day of rest, and then Carnaval proper. This is a difficult thing to do for days in a row, although I wasn't aware of that until afterward when all I wanted was the simple promise of not having to move. This was the first year that girls from PCCV had costumes made. I had ordered one, but given our delay in Sal I was unable to get it altered and didn't end up dressing with the girls. I also didn't have baggage, so I shamelessly borrowed sequined skirts and used a quirky Christmas bow as a brooch.

That night and the following consisted of parades, firework attacks, dragons, Optimus Prime, canary feathers, power cuts, dance clubs, tables thrown by angry Portuguese tourists, goat skins, Pirate beers, cheese runs, Freedom dog, pontxe and a multitude of things that wouldn't make sense even if I tried. So I'll try to sum it up in a few pictures instead:

Once Carnaval was over, we had one more day in Sao Nic. A handful of those who were left packed daybags and boarded a Hiace towards Taraffal, the beach-town where Nelson, a third-year volunteer, is living and teaching. It was beautiful, and we were able to see at least two, maybe three islands in succession in the distance over the ocean as the sun was setting. We played bocce ball and made some epic chili for dinner, which was the perfect way to wind down.

The last day we stopped for lunch in Cachaco, another PC site, that had gorgeous views and Dragoeira pontxe (dangerous) which is really only grog mixed with sap from the Dragoeira tree, which for all intents and purposes is fairly isolated to Sao Nicolau. We didn't have time to climb Monti Gordo unfortunately, but maybe next year.

So now it's back to real life, and I'm finding it a process to resettle into the normalcy that has been uprooted. A lot has changed, life won't be the same that it was before, which is both exciting and scary. But that's why I'm here, after all.

Two posts in one day!! Whaaa?

I haven't had internet in weeks and I haven't posted in even longer. The past month or so has been a rough one for me. It's part of the service and I found this quotation the other day that sums it up better than I seem to be able to:

Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it. – Cesare Pavese

Well said, Cesare. Part of the deal in being here is acceptance of bad days and the resolve to take them as they come, trusting the whole way through that we have the inherent strength to make it through to the other side. But sometimes we mess things up along the way. But this post isn't about bad days or the peculiarities of change. That's just a thought.

The past three days have comprised the festival of Campanas here in Fogo. Aside from festa Sao Filipe in April/May, this is one of the "bigger deal" festas on the island. Saturday was the killing day. I've seen a pig slaughter, and despite remembering the shaky feeling in my legs that persisted through the screams that gradually became gurgles and chokes on a seemingly endless river of blood, I figured I could witness an assembly line slaughter, having heard that goats are less vocal.

After we hunted down the house, my roommate and I sat in chairs along the wall and tried to figure out where the killing would take place. Gradually, the sound of drums broke through the assortment of voices, and grew until the assembly of drummers entered the house. A crowd of people holding flags preceded them, some with blood-stained pants and machetes with brilliant splashes of red down the sides tucked into belts. Everyone had blood on their shoes, having come from a house farther down the street where numerous animals had already been killed. One woman wearing all white--a torn shirt, pants and a scarf--looked like a violent Pollock painting. Others had red handprints on their faces, or splashes and dots between their eyes.

The house filled with so many people that we had to stand up. Eventually we saw an old woman carrying a large, metal bowl and we knew that the killing was about to begin. They collect the blood in bowls to use in chorizo, or blood sausage, which is one of the only foods here that I haven't developed a stomach for. We circled to another part of the house where I squeezed in just in time to see a goat being bled to death, with two grown men holding it above the bowl. I kept locking eyes with a Portuguese guy right around my age who evidently hadn't witnessed fora parties before. I wasn't sure if he was going to make it. One after another they led in a goat and professionally hoisted it above a bowl to saw through its neck, before stringing it to a tree to skin it. As one was being killed, another would be standing behind it, calmly, watching everything take place.

They killed three goats and I thought it was over. There was a gelatinous coating of blood on the dirt floor that people covered and danced on. Gradually people began to scatter, and seemed to be nervous. I looked towards the trees, now occupied by numerous dead animals, and saw a giant cow being led down to the area where the goats had been killed. Killing a cow is a process. First, four grown men led it to a tree where they tied its head to the stiff trunk. The hind legs were tied together, which was a fight, and gradually the animal was felled to its side and all four legs tied in a bundle. One man readied its neck, which meant sitting on its head to make sure it couldn't move. Two others held down the body, and a man with a knife broke through the people pushing past to try to find a comfortable distance. The woman holding the bowl danced through the crowd, the drumbeats not pausing during all of this, and after what seemed like an hour of nervous preparation, they slit its throat.

Watching a pig die is difficult. The screams last for such a long time that it almost seems necessary to look away. The cow didn't make a noise. Or if it did, it was drowned out by the drums. One of my students came next to me and put her arm around my waist, and after seeing so much blood throughout the day, I was worried that I might fall on her. The smell was overwhelming. Blood smells sickly, and thick and salty. I walked away for a breath of air and quickly heard the screams of a pig that was being killed on the other side of the house. There's no escape on festa day. But I held my own, though a little shakily.

It was astounding, really. The rest of the festa seemed fairly normal. The street was lined with people and it felt almost like a party that happens in Blacksburg every year, when people crowd in the streets to eat good food and drink a few beers and listen to the live music. Except here everything is public, from start to finish. Including the slaughter and preparation of the food that everyone eats. The rest of the time I wandered the cobblestone streets, ate good food (except no chorizo), watched the stars and talked to friends.

The background of this festa is the most interesting part, in my opinion. In the days of slavery, the only way that slaves could feasibly have an uprising was to dress in costume from head to toe so slaveowners couldn't recognize them. They would run from house to house in an attempt to scare and intimidate the slaveowners. Because of this, the "Rae di Festa" or king of the festival dressed from head to toe, even in blackface, kind of like a clown. He and his son (who also dressed up) got up early in the morning and went from town to town. Every man who wanted to participate in the killings that day had to catch the man and his son before they would be allowed to participate. If they caught both men, they could be part of the procession and help kill the animals. Another part of the tradition is that the king of the party steals things throughout the day, so I would occasionally see him running from a crowd of people who would be throwing rocks at him. At the festa after the killings, whenever I saw him he was carrying a goat head and threatening to attack people with one of its horns.

So it was a weekend filled with significance and emotions that left me absolutely drained when things were said and done. I regret not taking my camera with me, but will try to scavenge a few to post.

Adaptation is a funny thing. A primary goal in Peace Corps is integration. Yet one of the things that becomes difficult to grapple with is becoming accustomed to life and no longer feeling as though everything is exciting and new. There's not even sides, this is just the same coin.

A friend of a friend served in Senegal years ago and before I left the States, she wrote me a wonderful heartfelt letter of advice and thoughts on two years of service in a foreign culture. One of the things that she wrote is that one day I would likely wake up and find that things that used to be mysterious and exhilarating would feel normal, and it may result in feeling like I've fallen in a slump. I have to say that this part of service has been true for me. As it is with everything, really. But the great thing is that occasionally unexpected things happen that can puncture the mundane when I find myself slipping into routine.

A good example was this past week, when I was slowly trudging up the hill to my house, explaining to a student once again that I wasn't going to leave him my computer when I leave, nor my Ipod, and no, not all Americans are rich. It was getting tiring; the smiles and friendly gestures from this kid had been replaced by constant requests for electronics or food. He used to be my favorite, until he called me a bitch. But the point is that I was feeling a little disheartened, and more than a bit disrespected.

About halfway to my house, we noticed a little piglet standing in the street. Patrick, my student, asked me if it was mine, which of course it was not, and a few steps later the piglet noticed us coming. There was a brief moment of panic and it started to run in different directions to find which way to go. At this section of cobblestone street there are high walls to either side, and it couldn't duck into the crispy tall grass that has yellowed along the sides of most stretches of road. It turned around to run away from us, and I realized that its front and hind legs on the left side had been tied together to keep it in place, which evidently didn't do the trick. So the best it really accomplished was a ridiculous lopsided sprint.

As we continued up the hill, looking around to see who it could belong to, I saw my friend Junior running down the length of the wall on my right side. He disappeared for a moment and I wondered if he was out for a jog or if he even knew about the lost piglet in the road, when all of a sudden he burst out from the bushes and landed a few feet below in the middle of the street. Both he and the piglet paused for a brief second and locked eyes before the piglet turned toward us and hobbled past with a frantic squeal. Junior took off after it. The piglet started swerving in all directions to try to outmaneuver him, and after a few failed attempts to catch it, Junior jumped over the animal, landing on his left foot and simultaneously reaching back to tap it with his right in a perfect stop that would make Benfica proud.

Of course, Patrick and I had stopped to watch all of this. We were close enough to have been considered involved in the chaos but neither Junior nor the piglet seemed to notice us. The piglet stayed in the patch of grass he'd been stopped in and, victorious, Junior picked up the little pig by the front legs and stopped for quick greeting and kiss on the cheeks before heroically returning the lost livestock to an elderly woman who was still gushing her gratitude as Patrick and I turned the corner. It caught me completely off guard. As soon as I feel as though I "get used to" this place, something happens that I can almost not even react to it's so absurd, and I remember where I am.

I've been taking more notice of the strange little things that knock me on my ass and place me back on my little isolated island when I've allowed myself to forget where I am: an epic piglet chase, sitting on a rock heated by the sun and shelling peanuts with a friend, stumbling on a fisherman friend fishing from the divider of a road and stopping for a moment just to talk, long Hiace rides crammed between a fish lady and a young mother with her child. The part that really strikes me is that now I have the weird passive, float-away-from-reality experience about the life I used to have, and when I find myself whirling back to reality, I find myself ending up grounded in the place that I used to dream of going to. That part is still surreal.

Hi lovelies,

I received a care package recently and it made me wish I could show all of you how much I appreciate everything you do from me from the States. And then I realized...I can show you! So I did a video tour of my site in Ponta Verde which I've put on Youtube for you to see. It's not the best tour in the world (partially because my video cut out in the end), but you'll have to come visit to see for yourself :)

Take a look:

All of my love xoxox

The title of a blog is deceivingly difficult to come up with. You want to decide on something that explains what you're all about and give a concise explanation of why this forum of opinions exists to begin with. At the same time, you don't want to take yourself too seriously, it's just a blog. So up until now, this has just been "Rachel in Africa." Straightforward.

But most of what I write about here is a reflection of what this process is to me. So, after a few months of settling in and recognizing what these two years are truly going to mean to me, and realizing that they won't be what I expected, I decided that my collection of thoughts needed a change. And so, with a quotation in mind from author Mark Jenkins, I've realized that all of these moments can be summed up in the way that my art-inflicted mind has always seen them: as little splashes of color.

“Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins

Just a few highlights: beautiful sunsets, experiments with the camera and new baby chicks!

Where to begin.

This morning I woke up bright and early to go outside and enjoy the free wifi that comes in at my friend's house since he lives so close to the Camara. He left brighter and earlier to go to a wedding at the opposite end of the island, and I was getting ready to enjoy a full day of internet, Skype dates, food and rest on my own. Unfortunately, within five minutes of coming outside at 10am (3 hours ago) the wind blew the door shut, and I've been stuck in this tiny ass space since then. However, the internet just kicked in (finally) so I can at least amuse myself for a while.

I put on The Life Aquatic to stave off the claustrophobia. Halfway through, my friend called to tell me that he would be two or three hours later than he had expected, bringing my anticipated total time outside to six hours or so. Current status: hungry and kind of have to pee. Luckily my friend lives next to a restaurant owned by a deportee, who came out for a minute. I yelled at him and asked for a cheeseburger. They're out of bread, of course. Just as it was starting to sound so good....but anyway, now he's on his way to find a small child who is used to scaling walls and can go to the roof of this three story apartment building to break in and open the door for me.

Outcome pending...

Update: as I was sitting outside waiting for my friend to get back, a kid maybe thirteen years old or so came by asking if I was the one who needed help. As soon as I said yes, he started climbing the wall. In the time that it took me to even consider that as an "adult" I should tell him to stay put and find someone with a key, he scaled a three-story apartment building like it was nothing, came downstairs and casually opened the door to let me in. My hero! And now the door to the balcony is securely held open with a copy of War and Peace. Lesson learned: Americans are pansies.

To my astonishment, I found exactly one week ago to be the six month mark from the day that I woke up in my nearly empty condo, fanatically deconstructed and reassembled my luggage, and, bewildered, loaded 80lbs worth of my life into a taxi cab and sat silently watching the chaos of the DC metro and traffic of Port Republic fade into the distance and into memory. It is a morning and an assortment of feelings that I'll never forget. But as soon as I made it into that moment I realized I would survive it, and I knew that everything would be ok.

I've thought about those many moments that we anticipate and make ourselves sick over. They are huge moments in our development that usually involve leaving small parts of ourselves behind to grow into the new. I've wondered how often people carry through with a decision that they've lost sleep over and regret it. It certainly happens. But what if it doesn't? In elementary school I used to come down with cases of "the Thursdays and Fridays." I would call home every week right before music class and, initially, whine to my mother about how my throat hurt or how my stomach was killing me and I wanted to die. She would come pick me up and I would watch cable tv at my friend's house or go to work with her and eat pizza. Eventually she caught on.

It turned into pleading and begging because I couldn't sit through that class again. I always wanted to sing, but I never once had the courage to volunteer, so I begrudgingly sat in the back of the room with a recorder and a sorry rendition of "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" with my heart beating out of my chest, knowing that this next moment, or this one, or this next one, could be that time that I ask the teacher if I could sing in front of the class and allow my life to change. It wasn't a decision that would make one day better. It was a decision that could have turned two days of every week for at least a year of my childhood from something to dread into something to be excited about and gain confidence from. It was a decision that I never brought myself to make, which I still regret, because now I can't carry a tune in a bedong.

Alternatively, in college I took an entrepreneurial course that culminated in a very formal presentation of the business plan that we had spent the semester creating-- cross-checking demographics and budget analysis, spending nights in the computer lab until we saw two computer screens and had to call it quits. I took the class because I had stumbled into a travel boutique in Paris that made me want to gather up everything I owned and open a store, and I realized that I had no idea how to do it. During the presentation at the end of the semester, the room was packed with small business owners and investors, and I was completely out of my element. The presentation itself was terrifying. But I did it, and I was still alive. I also realized that certain aspects of entrepreneurship weren't for me at that point in my life, and it allowed me to move on to different things without getting caught up in what could have been, which I'd allowed myself to explore.

So here I am, reevaluating my boundaries and fears and detriments, and realizing that I've spent too much time imagining them. Or, at the very least, letting situations define them for me, and not realizing that with a small amount of inner reflection and the courage to try, I could break them down in a matter of seconds. It's astonishing how much of our limitations are the products of our own minds.

I suppose the physical equivalent that comes to mind is skydiving. When I was in Switzerland, watching the Alps approaching from the open door of a plane, watching the color drain from everyone's faces and realizing I was about to jump out of a freaking plane, there was a voice in my head that kept forcing its way into consciousness, saying, "you don't have to do this." But I knew that I did. The work that I'd put into making the trip happen--the emails back and forth, the phone calls on the hostel phone, the amount of time and energy spent convincing the other party involved that he had to try it--had made turning back impossible. And despite my nerves, I was still smiling inside because I knew that I was accomplishing something that I'd always wanted to do.

The initial feeling of falling out of a plane isn't like anything that I've felt in any other context. There's a draw back, like reaching the top of a rollercoaster and looking down and trying to back up in your seat as the car slowly tilts over the edge. Only there's nothing there. Nothing. There is air to every side of you, and another blunt object that you're strapped to that can do nothing to stop you mid-way. You're committed, 3,500 feet in the air, there's no turning back. There is confusion, and a desperate internal and external attempt by every conceivable sense to find something, anything, that is there to help you. And then for no reason, aside from perhaps the understanding that there is no alternative to acceptance, there is just a calm. Beauty and an appreciation for life and this new spectacular view of it. The freefall by far is the best part of skydiving. Because it contains every emotion from start to finish that life should encapsulate.

The book I'm reading has a line that keeps standing out to me. It says, "life is untidy." In a world of people strugging to control their comfort, happiness, relationships, finances, bodies, thoughts, and even other people, I feel that sometimes the best thing to do is to embrace the mess. By all means, do the research and think things through, but if after all of that your heart is still beating, why not? If you take a wrong turn and need to backtrack, congratulations, you know something that you didn't know before. You'll stop wondering now. Life is a freefall! Life is always one step ahead of control. And it all ends the same way, so fall into it, and love the unknown for what it is: a chance to experience something new.

So I climbed the volcano last Sunday! It's the highest point in Cape Verde. We were above the cloud line before we even started climbing. Cha is beautiful; very rustic and simple but there's a lot of character there. I can't load too many photos, so here are some of the select few:

Happy Holidays!

I've been hearing from everyone that it's cold in the States. It's still as hot as ever in Fogo. Sao Filipe especially; something about this town attracts the sun. This is the first time I've ever wanted a bikini for Christmas.

It's December 7th, my classes are slowing down and my students are preparing to take their tests to end the trimester. Some days they're brilliant. When one of my students wrote, "Beyonce is prettier than Rihanna" on the blackboard last week, perfetly, I almost cried with happiness. But instead I told him it's bullshit, Rihanna is definitely prettier. Other days, they're not so brilliant and I bop them with their notebooks, which makes them laugh. My 8th graders took their test today. Some of them came over yesterday evening and we spread out on the kushion on my floor in the living room and had a study session. They are so outgoing and shy at the same time. The first three boys took the initiative to come over and then were almost too shy to come into my house. I had to lure them in with candy, which always works (God I'm creepy). By the end of an hour and a half, they had become comfortable enough with the material to do well today. Or so they say. I have yet to grade.

Thanksgiving is going to happen this Friday at my house. We haven't had the time to celebrate it yet, and I'm so ready to eat some epic food and then fall into a blissful state of lethargy for a good few hours. One of the volunteers somehow managed to find cranberry sauce, and Peace Corps DC sends everyone turkeys every year, so the one male on this island is excited to be manly and take care of the meat (364 days of the year, Fogo is "sorority island" and I think this is a bigger deal than it sounds). I think I'm going to make mac and cheese. Is that normal for Thanksgiving? My sister and cousins always demanded Annie's mac and cheese on Thanksgiving so it's standard, along with drinking absinthe prior to dinner (but that one proved to be more difficult on my little rock). It seems appropriate.

In other news, my incredible friend Chris and I are planning to do a penpal type program between our students. He teaches in Arlington and knows so much about teaching, and we met in Ghana so he also has an idea what teaching in Africa is like, so I couldn't ask for a better person to exchange ideas with. His students sent me a list of questions the other day about life in Cape Verde, which were really fun to answer. Because I never experienced an exchange like that in my own schooling, it got me thinking about my past education, and the things that have made a difference in my life. Being here as an outsider has occasionally made me wonder what I can do to make a difference. What can I do differently that Cape Verdean teachers can't do on their own? Half of these kids respect me solely because I'm white, and the others are hesitant to believe anything I say for the same reason.

I remember my Spanish teacher at JMU. He was new to teaching, and didn't quite have the structure of the University down yet. On top of that, he didn't speak perfect English. And being a stupid kid, used to a particular structure and armed with a preconceived definition of "competency," I didn't take him as seriously as I should have. Now I'm on the other side, in a country that no one has heard of, speaking a language that I'd be surprised if anyone I'll meet for the rest of my life will be remotely familiar with. It's a completely impractical language in the scope of my life, yet my inability to speak it fluently results in a classroom of preteens not taking me seriously enough. Hindsight is a bitch.

But after I remembered my old Spanish teacher, I thought of the man who taught my Geography course sophomore year--the same semester as the Spanish class. I remember that we sat in a large room in the ISAT building, with tiers that seated a few hundred students. I played games on my cell phone sitting next to my boyfriend at the time and listened to half of what the man said. Despite having at least two hundred students in the class, participation was part of our grades, and he never made a mistake in remembering names and who participated and who didn't. How he acquired that skill, I will never know. He gave us quizzes on every country in the world. It will never again happen, but by the end of that semester I knew every single country on this planet and where it was on a map.

I remember him because all of the things that I remember him saying were things that he told us from his own travels. He was practical, and realistic, and he looked past the gimmicks and tricks of travel and did things the right way. He told us that when he was in Asia he learned never to give money to starving children, always give them food. There are too many drug addicted family members who send these kids out to get money that never benefits the youth begging for it. He taught me about Rwanda, and I cried when I studied the genocide for the test. He taught me so much about child prostitution that when the World Cup was first set to be hosted in South Africa my first thought was by what percentage this problem would increase, given the inevitable influx of Westerners touring the country. He unwillingly taught me something that I didn't appreciate until later: that oftentimes it's easier to choose to believe what we want to believe, and ignore what we want to ignore, than it is to have the courage to see what's truly in front of us. And over time that thought expanded, and I started thinking that if we go too long tricking ourselves, our nervous skirting grows into a blind investment in a dream world, and we're left in a fog that blocks out entirely the realities that we've become too afraid to acknowledge at all. He was calm, opinionated, open-minded and immovable. I don't remember his name.

Going back to finding out what makes an effective teacher: I started thinking that sometimes, we don't know what it is that impacts our lives. Sometimes when something happens we aren't able to immediately understand its gravity. Things stay bottled up somewhere inside ready to be used when we're ready to understand. So maybe that's what I can give that Cape Verdean teachers cannot. I've seen other parts of the world that none of my kids have seen, maybe don't even know about, and maybe the simple knowledge of something existing will spark within a few of them the desire to see more than what this one island in the compass of the entire world has to offer. I suppose that my hope in being here is that I'm able to put the potential for new thoughts into these kids, even if they don't understand the weight of the meaning right now. Because I damn well guarantee you, they aren't getting it now. I suppose my point is that you never know what you say or do that will affect people, even after you've exited their lives.

I don't know. Maybe in truth I'm just maternal and have a hidden, inherent desire to teach kids what limited things I know. I still don't know wtf a gerund is (it's a noun formed from a verb, I just looked it up) but I'm teaching English. Other, experienced people could do a way better job than I am; I knew that coming in. Who knows why we do what we do? Do we need to know, truly? If what we do stems from a sincere desire to do something good, and results in the bettering of our own lives and the lives of others, do we need to attach meaning to our motives? I read something months ago that a man wrote about his father (the beginning of the quotation is a quotation from his father), saying, "'I frankly doubt I could continue [volunteer activity] if I looked too hard within.'...In his own way, he was saying so very much about his mind, his way of thinking, of being. I no longer could regard him as someone who fled from self-recognition or, more broadly, denied the rest of us the authority to do so. Rather, he was telling me that what he did in the way of service to others came to, finally, a matter of unspoken faith. This was not a faith in the imperatives of transcendent code, but, ironically...a faith in the essentially benign workings of the mind, in its capacity to turn to good account all sorts of wayward or turbulent or egoistic impulses."

Weeks later, I re-read The Razor's Edge by W Somerset Maugham, who wrote, "I have never believed very much in...intuition; it fits in too neatly with what [we] want to believe to persuade me that it is trustworthy." The following week, I read The Alchemist, which read, "People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don't deserve them, or that they'll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly."

So how do those things tie together? I've been thinking a lot lately about why we do the things that we do. I've come to the conclusion that it's terrifyingly easy to trick ourselves. Into anything: into thinking that we'll be happy to continue one profession or relationship, into settling for one course of action in hopes that it will work itself out in the end. Into believing that the little voice that we all have that tells us that our lives can be better, and we can be more than this, is wrong--pass it off as childish impracticality, and sternly insist to our own passions that we are adults now and need to behave as such from now on. In my dictionary, "adult" is defined as "a fully grown life form; a fully mature person." I don't think we reach that state by abandoning our inner callings and settling for something that other people label as appropriate for our age, because when they were young someone insisted the same to them.

Why I am here: I don't know. Because I remembered the kids I taught in Ghana and thought I owed them more than two weeks of my time and a desire to "experience Africa." Because the very fact that it was a difficult decision for me, that scared me and made me wonder what I could lose, made me realize how profound and necessary a decision it was. I've been here four months now and the idea of having chosen not to be here seems absolutely absurd.

So, the Sparknotes version of my unsolicited opinions: People shouldn't try to rationalize everything. It's neither necessary nor possible. Some things run deeper in us than words or comprehension can reach. People shouldn't put much stock into feelings that stem from "intuition," which often seem to run parallel with the decisions that result in the most comfort. Concepts like "intuition" were probably invented by the same person who invented Valentine's Day; it's useless in the end and results in personal investments that are ultimately worth nothing. And no one needs more greeting cards. Finally, it's inexpressibly important in terms of both happiness and success to devote sufficient amount of time to getting to know oneself, even if that sounds too zen for modern-day, fast-paced existence. That's not a lesson that many of us are taught growing up. We live with ourselves 24 hours a day, it hardly seems possible to not know who we are. But I'm convinced that few people do to the degree that they should.

Well I was planning to write about my chickens or this guy I met today who re-named himself after Stevie Wonder (he actually called himself Stevie One, but I didn't have the heart to tell him) but this just popped out instead. In more lighthearted news: Christmas break starts in nine days! I've discovered that I make awesome sweet potato soup. I think I've partially adopted a dog, but don't tell my roommate, who hates it. She smiles when she sees me and rolls around when I blow on her nose (the dog, not the roommate...though I haven't tried so maybe). The sunsets here have been phenomenal and I have way too many pictures of the same view with different streaks of color. I have about ten million plans for art projects and am determined to start on them soon. I'm also planning to do the PC world map project at my school, which will entail painting a huge mural on a whole wall that my kiddies will be able to help with. The boys in Boavista just finished this project and it looks incredible.

That's my life, in a nutshell. Email me your plans for Christmas! I'm camping on the beach in Santiago. I have to say, I miss the snow. But I say that every year and then shortly after I realize that I hate snow...so I'm envious of you but probably not really.

The bottom few pictures are of the view from my house. The one with the railing is my rooftop...more pics coming soon!

I'm sitting in Fogo Lounge waiting for a chicken salad sandwich and french fries. This is the place you go to when you want to feel like you're in America, in a place that's trying to reproduce a little resaurant in Africa but doesn't quite get it right. It actually takes me some convincing on my own part every time I'm here if I want to remember where I am. The sweltering heat always does its part in reminding me. Not exactly a representational picture to paint you of my life. But I needed french fries and I knew where this place was, which was working in its favor.

So my blog has been slacking. I decided against getting internet in my house so that I can try to have as close to "the African experience" as a little white girl can have. Not that Cape Verde supplies one with the stereotypical African experience, whatever that is. There's a lot that I want to write about; all little things that don't really tie together in any discernable way. It makes it exciting to write, to have so many things that I want to say, but also frustrating that there's no obvious structure to anything.

I spent the last few days in Mosteiros--a more urbanized area settled in the north of the island. The town is built on the ocean, and my friend's house is a moment's walk to the beach. Everywhere you are, you can hear and smell the sea. I spent most of the first day, while my friend was at work, rocking back and forth in a hammock and reading one of my old favorite books. I wrote lesson plans on the rooftop, and we made some awesome food that put my normal dinner of improvised rice to shame. I ended up falling asleep on the roof the first night, which was the first time I've slept outside without a tent. I met his friend, "Tony the artist," who is the most creative and self-driven Cape Verdean I've met here. We're already talking about a potential recycled art installation project to put up in Mosteiros and art camps during the summer for kids in my town who are interested.

The hour-long ride back home was, oddly, what stood out to me. It's just interesting to drive most of the length of the island in the beginnings of the morning when the world is starting to move. It feels a little bit voyeuristic, or at least slightly imposing, but it's always such an experience. I may have told some of you but my decision to apply for Peace Corps came when I was in Grand Cayman, and Jared and I spent the day riding around in a Hiace with Reggae blasting, and we saw the people and places that most people who visit the Caribbean don't care to experience. So maybe I just have a thing for public transportation.

But the day started early because the only guaranteed rides leave Mosteiros at 6am. So I walked down the street to the Shell station (weird) to wait. So many people were already up! Students were walking around well before school started and some people were jogging. I caught a Hiace which was completely empty, so we drove around to find more passengers. I sat in the front, because one thing I've noticed about the cars here is that they always include the one boisterous woman who likes to hug you and keep her arm around you for the whole ride, and the one guy who hasn't showered in a few days. And I've been crammed between the two of them often enough to know that if the front is empty, you take it.

The first thing that stood out to me was this old couple that was sitting on the side of the road waiting to be picked up. The culture here, from what I've seen so far, typically fosters an unromantic, sometimes apparently disconnected approach to relationships and I figured they were both just traveling to the capital for the day. The old man helped the woman into the car, got her settled, said goodbye and shut the door, and said to the driver "Deus bai ku bo," or "God go with you," in such a way that implied it was more a warning to keep his wife safe than the obligatory farewell to someone about to travel. He then slowly made his way back across the street to his house. I was surprised by how surprised I was. On the way back I saw people standing on the tops of tall, isolated hills watching the ocean; a monkey house; a donkey running down the street biting another donkey, which is hilarious; kids getting ready to go to school (even if they aren't my students they all yell "teacher!!" when I pass) and this little girl with milk chocolate skin and ringlets of Swedish blonde hair in pigtails above her ears. She had piercing blue eyes and something about her was very touching, though I can't put my finger on what unless it was just her exotic features. I think what makes these car rides so exciting to me is never knowing what I'll see or experience. It's always one brief moment of reflection followed by something I haven't seen before or, if it's something I have seen before, it's always something beautiful in a new way. Or, again, just a fondness for bumpy car rides.

I don't have the linguistic aptitude to depict this trek to you. Suffice it to say that I channeled Bear Grylls for part of the way when the txuba came (downpour). This day was an adventure through and through. But you'd have to see it to believe it.

The pictures posted in reverse order for some reason and I can't mess with HTML right now so...enjoy backwards.

I’m not fully convinced that I’m living in Africa right now. A music video from Titanic is on the tv (I think whoever airbrushes Celine Dion is one of the most underrated artistic talents of our generation) and I will do my best to describe the view I had yesterday, but it was a little (understatement) mind blowing so I’m sorry if I stutter. Or wax poetic…but I kind of have to in order to give you a semi-accurate mental picture.

I was riding back from Assomada in the karru and had the good fortune to be seated at the end of the bench, so I had a good view of our surroundings. As we reached the top of my mountain (it’s my mountain mostly because I live on it but also because I’m fairly certain it doesn’t have a name so it is now Monti di Rakel) I looked around behind me and almost fell out of the car because of how gorgeous this place has become. It was very pretty when we got here, but now that the rains have come, the green is springing out of the earth at a speed I never imagined was possible. But it was the mountains in the distance that surprised me. They looked like a scene from a Japanese watercolor scroll. The fog swirled around the mountaintops and between the crevices. Clear, brilliant white the color of untouched sketch paper. This view alone was enough for me to insist that all of my friends in the car crane their necks and bodies in impossible angles to catch a glimpse. So when I reached home, I was feeling inspired.

I grabbed my notebook and went to the top of the roof to write a little. When I reached the top and stepped out of the door, I saw more of the same Hiroshige-esque mountains, but there was also a rainbow shooting out of the clouds in a direct beam in a pristine blue sky that was streaked with pink. When I went back downstairs to finish writing (the only stairs up to the roof are precarious cement blocks of different sizes that twist around the back kitchen, and there is no light back there) I happened to look up. There was a half moon, clear in the sky that was streaked with pink, blue, purple and white. It was still very light out so I turned again to see where the sun had reached in the sky. The sunset looked like something you would see in the Caribbean, with yellows and oranges the colors of leaves in the fall and white shimmering on the surface of the ocean beyond Monti Brianda. I looked back to the mountains to see if the rainbow was there, and it had faded in front of cotton candy pink clouds that reminded me of spongecake, which had become a backdrop to a purple hazy mountainscape. At this point I was fairly certain that I had ingested acid at some point throughout the day. I felt like Lisa Frank had tried her hand at English landscape painting and I had somehow fallen directly in the center of the finished product. Seriously, if there were any time in my life when I would not be surprised to see a unicorn or Rainbow Brite, it would have been yesterday.

So that was the most sensory overload I’ve had at one time in a thirty minute span. Ever. In other news, we had a lesson on food items the other day in Kriolu and I was in desperate need of eating something other than rice and fish soup. We had made chocolate chip pancakes (or the closest equivalent we could manage) in the afternoon for a snack, but it didn’t hit the spot. Although my mood was improved drastically due to the contagious enjoyment of our Cape Verdean language instructor, who had never so much as heard of a pancake, and who became so excited with flipping them that he would let out an occasional, very African high-pitched “aaaaye!” and a giggle, and do a little pancake dance when it landed to his liking. Then he would stop to eat one of his masterpieces and forget that he was still cooking the next. I’ve never been so excited to see someone else so excited, and because it was all because of pancakes, it was also pretty funny.

Anyway, I had a craving and pancakes didn’t cut it. So after class I went to the Supermarket and we bought slices of goat cheese and crackers, which may be the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I read an article last year that people who spend even just five minutes a day focusing on the simple details of one thing, like eating a single grape, are much healthier and happier than those who don’t. People aren’t wired to focus on things like that, but next time you pop a grape into your mouth, close your eyes and really think about it. Break the skin open against the roof of your mouth and let the juice coat your tongue. Eat it slow, and think about the texture of the skin compared to the flesh of the fruit. I promise that if you lose yourself in it, for two or three minutes, you’ll be much happier when you open your eyes. In my case, I’m not convinced that I so much as chewed the crackers and cheese. That shit was good. But next time I’m going to close my eyes.

Some homework for those of you inclined to allow me to eat vicariously through you (send detailed emails and/or pictures):

1. Eat some mac and cheese.

2. Drink a glass of dry red wine.

3. Go out to a nice restaurant and order dessert after dinner.

4. Cook with pesto.

5. Eat a cheeseburger with seasoned waffle fries.

6. Sip on a margarita on the rocks (outside on a hot afternoon)

7. Most importantly: make an egg and cheese bagel with bacon. But don’t tell me about that one, I don’t know if I can handle it.

This is a pretty common phrase here. Light goes every night. So I write my updates at home (thank God for batteries) and post when I can. In this case, it's taken me a week to put this up. Since then, I have been sick with three different ailments, witnessed the slow bloody death of a large mammal, eaten parts of said animal, and contracted three botflies in three different areas. I'll spare you all the details of that one, suffice it to say that my language instructor thought I was trying to tell him "I have butterflies" for the duration of my story the day after I attempted to perform surgery on myself with my makeup mirror, tweezers, a flashlight, duct tape, and more flexibility than I was aware I had. Think about that one.

So this was written on 8.10.10, sorry for the delay:

I’m sitting in my living room with my feet propped up, with Barenaked Ladies stuck in my head from lesson planning today, enjoying a fresh mango from one of my family’s trees. I keep stretching my pinky finger too far for my asterisk key because I’m getting used to Portuguese keyboards.It’s been one of those days where I’m in between forgetting and remembering that I’m in Africa, if that makes any sense.

I got one of my fellow volunteers grounded last night. The story begins innocently enough (though in retrospect, the entire idea was bad to begin with on my part) right after class. We finished our language instruction in Assomada and were riding back to Ribierao Manuel and I was feeling really good. It was nice outside, I had energy, and I was focusing on the idea that I might have the best legs EVER after training because I practically climb a mountain twice a day to get from home to school and back for lunch. So I decided that I’d love to go for a run, which is something that the other volunteers in the village do often enough. So I decided to go. I got home, changed, stretched, and started to run to the bottom of the mountain to meet my friends and run to the neighboring village.

Walking and running, though undeniably similar, in Cape Verde elicit completely opposite reactions from people on the streets. Walking down the street every day results in “txiga! Txiga!” from all sides, which is what people say to mean “come over and eat some food and talk for a few hours.”Hence the Cape Verdean tendency to be late to things (which is unfortunate for my own personal growth considering the track record I was already working with in the States). Running, on the other hand, results in “Forsa, forsa!” which more or less means “go faster! Keep it up!” And given the fact that the average ten year old wearing flip flops (or better yet, nothing on his feet) can out-run any American here without breaking a sweat, the adrenaline rush and motivation is tenfold what I’m accustomed to on a treadmill. I’m justifying my pending story shamelessly, if you can’t tell.

The first bad idea was going out for strenuous exercise so early in the week. I take malaria medication every Saturday, and the pills give me sporadic dizzy spells and headaches, both of which I had experienced earlier in the afternoon. The second bad idea was running to meet my friends, who live a mile or more away or more, before taking a mile or two run to Monti Brianda and then turning around to come back. The worst idea of all was running down a freaking mountain. Did I mention that I live on a mountain? Because I ran down a mountain, on a cobblestone road, very very fast. I must have landed on a stone wrong at one point because once I reached my friend’s house and started slowing down, I realized that something was a little bit off with my left ankle. There are at least two or three doctors reading this right now who might email me when I say that I decided to keep going anyway. Diskulpa-n.

We went a mile or more down the road and I realized I couldn’t keep going. The endorphins were pumping through me like I’d never experienced before, and it was wonderful and I wanted nothing more than to keep running until I reached the ocean, but the physical reality of what I was doing to my body was setting in. I was able to run in spurts, but couldn’t go a distance without my ankle hurting. We also started slowly realizing that, while the fact that the lights in our conselho were out seemed like another good reason to enjoy the outdoors, it was quickly becoming a reason why we shouldn’t be out.

On a poetic side note, there was one point when my friends continued to run and I tried to walk it off on my own. Toby had mentioned that on their last run, he and Lynette had seen grasshoppers jumping all around them and that it was magical. I was disappointed to have missed it, and had been looking for them all the way down the road. They weren’t jumping as we ran, but once I slowed my pace, they started exploding out of the dry brush like fireworks on all sides. Even the sound of dry tinder cracking as they took off and landed was beautiful, and the sun painted everything sepia tone as it was slowly starting to set over the ocean. I was floating.

Back to the problem: the sun was starting to set, and as beautiful as it was, the streetlights wouldn’t be turning on that night and I was easily over 2 miles away from home with a hurt ankle. By the time we reached Lynette’s house, the sky was turning grey. There was only one more mile to go, but we hadn’t seen a karu (public transportation) go by and we were wondering if they’d stopped for the day. The last stretch also included the two clubs in our town and people aren’t confined indoors when drinking. It’s not a route that I want to ever walk alone after dark, as independent or comfortable as I may ever feel.

We ran past the bigger club in our town, but it had already become too dark to see and the roads are too bad to try once vision is compromised. By this time I’d developed a limp anyway. We neared the top of the mountain and I saw my host mother standing in the road at our neighbor’s house waiting for me. I had reached home by curfew, but didn’t even try defending my decision to go. Toby and Lynette headed back fast, not sure of the reaction they’d receive from their respective families, and I apologized endlessly to my mother and also one of my brothers, who actually chided me in front of his friends for not going earlier. I explained once I was inside that I had hurt my ankle and there was no karu coming up the mountain, and that my friends had been wonderful enough to walk me back home to make sure I was safe. In reality we should have asked one of the family members at the bottom of the mountain to walk me back, or as Lynette later said, should have at least stopped for a second to explain to the other families and have them call my mother at home to let her know. Easy enough in retrospect. You can’t beat the setting sun if you’re walking up a mountain with a lame ankle. I think that’s a West African proverb (it will be by the time I leave here).

So I got off easily enough. Lynette, I think because she is blessed with the gift of language learning, suffered more dire consequences than I, despite her heroic efforts to ensure my safe passage home. First of all, when the three of us reached the top of the hill, my mother started to direct her chastising at Lynette instead of me. Though I got a taste of it later. But once Lynette reached her homestay, hell broke loose. She’s rightfully decided to chalk it up as a cultural experience that reflects her ability to fully and completely integrate into an African home, but really she was grounded. She’s not allowed out after 5pm; I’ve ruined her afternoon runs. I’m hoping it only lasts a few days, because I want to go out again and make it the whole way. Toby’s family wasn’t even home, so he got off easy.

In the end, the technical worst of it was that Lynette ended up returning home ten minutes past curfew. My limp is nearly gone, I’d only pulled a small muscle I think, but all of the other muscles that I’d been previously unaware of (did you know that you have an upper ass? I did not) are going to hurt like a mother tomorrow; they’re already starting. I have some great motivation to keep it up, however, and will use this opportunity to promote my small side of the world.

The volunteers currently on Fogo are trying to put together the island’s first marathon, tentatively scheduled to be held August of 2011. Fogo is a beautiful island (actually it’s a volcano) with a lot to offer. If the views don’t do it for you, it also has a winery and is the source of most of the country’s coffee. They’re in planning stages so anything is subject to change, but if any of you fit runners know of marathon organizers who might want to take part in this, please let me know. There was a lot of talk of marathon training from many of you right before I left, and I think this would be a great project to become involved with, even from the States. The people of Fogo are really excited about this idea and it would be really great to see it through. I think the time frame is scheduled around the time of Fogo’s Carnival as well, so if plans do pull through, any runners out there, this would be the perfect time to visit me. Just be prepared to suffer the embarrassment of having been passed by barefooted children and women carrying straw on their heads. They’re also in need of doctors to be on hand in case of injury if anyone is interested (hint hint, G).

In other news, I receive my site placement in two weeks. I’m reaching the end of month one of 27. PST is intense but I’m loving the pace of it. I’m getting used to the lights going out (sidenote, our lights just went out), giant bugs and cold bucket baths (much more enjoyable after a hard run). All of the trainees had a relaxing beach day at Tarrafal on Saturday, which was so fun. So all in all, things are good. Do me a favor and enjoy some mac and cheese for me. And read a book instead of watching tv tonight.

Txao, Rakel

I dont actually know these people

Grogu distillery

Ciudad Velha

I wasn´t kidding! This is the one that caused the whole karmic mess...

A view from Ribeirao Manuel.

I could see the ocean the other day from my house...beautiful.

My neice Lidiane, she is my babysitter.

More to come!

Hi all!!! I´m here safe, living in Riberao Manuel on the island of Santiago with a great host family and unbelievable view. I wish I could give you all the details but I don´t have much time at this cafe. I wrote a post from underneath my mustard yellow mosquito net at my home stay, but forgot to load it on my flash drive. I have some massive updates anyway.

Basically in my post I was describing a particularly embarrassing chase around my room involving myself, a tiny bottle of bug spray and a spider that was (I truly wish I were kidding) at least the size of my hand when my fingers are spread open. I chased the beast around my room for a good half hour, until I worked up a serious sweat, and eventually had to ask my sister to come ajuda me.

I wondered, I distinctly remember, right as the shoe met the spider, if such a thing as spider karma could possibly exist. It turns out, it does!!! My following story has since been discussed on our peer support phone network, and I wasn´t even the one to call.

One definitively foreign thing about life here is how dark it gets once the sun goes down. I mean dark, dark. I can´t tell if my eyes are open or closed dark. The verdict is still out on whether the malaria pills are affecting my dreams but I´m inclined so far to say that they are, which makes the process of going to sleep a little strange.

So, this particular night I woke up at probably 3 in the morning because I heard distinct scratching to my left on the wall. My bed is pressed against the wall, so this was only a foot away from me at most. I thought it was a rat, by how loud it was, until I realized that the noise was moving slowly up the wall. So I sat up quickly and turned on the light, and one of these spiders was sitting there in front of me, with only a mosquito net in between. I figured enough was enough, I needed to set some ground rules. Besides, I´m in Africa, there are creepy crawlies everywhere and I can handle this one. So I took my t-shirt, balled it up in my hand, and slammed my fist into the spider. I didn´t realize that it had a pouch of eggs on its underside, and as soon as I made contact, the one huge spider exploded into (again, I sincerely wish I were kidding) at least one to two hundred tiny spiders that started crawling around my wall. They were small enough that some of them started crawling through my mosquito net, so I grabbed my squeaky bottle of spray and kept pumping until I was out of spray. Unfortunately, I only got about 40 of them, and there was nothing left for me to do. This was the only room I could possibly sleep in, and being underneath the mosquito net was the best option I had.

I tried to sleep with the light on, but couldn´t, so eventually I had to trust that I was going to survive the night and turned the light out.

Think about that one next time you see a spider in the corner of your room.

You would never think that squeezing your life into an 80 pound weight restriction would be difficult. Well, allow me, three bags and nearly a bottle of wine to argue the contrary (there's no Trader Joe's in Africa, so shut it. I'm an angel from here on out).

So Peace Corps allows you to check exactly 80lbs of luggage, with a 50lbs max for one bag. I have spent the entire day, literally, playing tetris with mounds of clothing, small electronics, kitchenware and the little luxuries that I want to bring with me. I've laughed at myself a few times throughout the day, and was compelled to share parts of my list.

I have begrudgingly forfeit my face wash, some choice clothing, half of my bugspray, my favorite spices (blasphemy to my culinary father, sorry pops), numerous lotions, the one book I was dead set on bringing but which apparently weighs the equivalent of three other books and a pair of shoes, my new Disney World Tinkerbell mug (SAD!), half of my toothpaste, and my hair dryer (sorry Cape Verde, you have a hot mess coming your way) for the following essentials: A framed photo from Zurich, an old-school photo-booth print from LA, a small turtle from Grand Cayman and my Christmas ornament named Hootie.

Ten goodbye cards and an incredible letter from a friend's co-worker who is also a RPCV from Senegal. Totally worth it.A very random decoration from India that I bought with a friend currently serving with Peace Corps in Ecuador.A framed card from my sister, paired with a framed photo of me as a baby with my hippie parents while I was being baptized in a lake. My mom with huge glasses and braids, my dad donning a flannel shirt before that was all modern day hipster. Best photo ever taken.Two journals: one was my Xmas present this past year, from my mom. The other was from Clint and Katie, who have no idea how much love I'm going to pour into it.One bottle of sunscreen from Reveal so that my Dr friend doesn't write me scathing emails about how I'm ruining my skin. It's self-tanning, I still win. Also a two year supply of chapstick because crazy people work there.The Chipmunk Adventure. I kid you not. I would leave a kidney behind to bring this movie with me.

On a sad note, the thing that was at the tippy top of my list that I was unable to buy (don't sell your car until errands are done) is this beauty:

(This is a fantastic birthday present idea, second only to Annie's white shell cheddar mac 'n cheese)

I'm finding that one of the outcomes of being posted to an African archipelago is that most people have no clue what or where it is. Myself included, until recently. But in many cases, understandably so. Unfortunately, Africa remains--despite being an incredibly diverse and culturally rich continent--an area recognized for its abundant hardships, desolation and coups, World Cup aside. You'd think I would have known better, having already felt the embarrassment of realizing I'd formed stereotyped expectations once before in Ghana. Yet when I was told I'd be serving in Africa my mind generally migrated to thoughts of dusty villages, expanses of yellow plains and the occasional lion. After all, that's where I thought I might be the most help. Fool myself twice...shame on me.

Anyway, you've all seemed curious about general information: food, weather, etc. My experience will depend on the site that I'm chosen for, so you'll have to wait for specifics. But as for Cape Verde as a whole, here's a brief glimpse:

Environment

The Cape Verde archipelago is located approximately 375

miles off the coast of West Africa. It is composed of nine

inhabited islands and eight islets. The islands have a combined

size of just over 4,000 square kilometers (roughly the size of

Rhode Island). The islands are divided into the Barlavento

(windward) islands (Santo Antão, São Vicente, Santa Luzia,

São Nicolau, Sal, and Boavista) and the Sotavento (leeward)

islands (Maio, Santiago, Fogo, and Brava). The largest island,

both in size and population, is Santiago, where Praia, the

capital is located.

Of volcanic origin, these islands, boast some of the windiest

beaches in the world, and vary widely in terrain. An active

volcano on the island of Fogo is the highest point on the

archipelago (elevation 2,829 meters). Extensive salt flats are

found on Sal and Maio. On Santiago, Santo Antão, and São

Nicolau, arid slopes give way in places to sugarcane or banana

fields spread along the base of towering mountains. The

climate is tropical, but the archipelago’s location in the Sahel

belt makes for periodic sand storms and devastating droughts,

interspersed with years of greater, yet still less-than adequate,

rainfall.

Water shortages and successive droughts have greatly

weakened crop production capacity over the last century. Any

decline in Cape Verde’s import capacity as a result of the price

increases or grain shortages could have serious implications

for the food security of this country where corn, rice, and

bread represent the basis of the dietary consumption. The

country has studied various solutions to overcome its water

and energy development burden and has strategically decided

to invest in alternative energy resources. The announced

goal is to produce 25 percent of energy needs from renewable

sources by 2011 and 50 percent by 2020. There are also plans

to make the island of Sal fully reliant on renewable energy (a

combination of solar, wind, wave, and biofuel) in the next 5 to

10 years. Until then, Cape Verde remains highly vulnerable to

price increases in the energy and food markets.

Food and Diet

The variety of food in Cape Verde can be relatively limited

depending on the site. Small restaurants can be found in

most cities and towns. Dairy products are limited to imported

powdered or pasteurized (boxed) milk and locally produced

or imported yogurt and cheese. Butter, yogurt, and cheese

are available. Gouda and Edam cheeses are available in larger

towns. In the countryside, locally produced milk is available,

but it is not pasteurized; it must, therefore, be boiled before

consumption. Due to the limited rainfall, the availability of

fresh produce will vary depending on the time of year. The

Cape Verdean diet is mostly based on fish and staple foods

like corn and rice. Vegetables available during much of the

year are potatoes, onions, tomatoes, manioc, cabbage, kale,

collard greens and dried beans. Fruits like bananas and

papayas are often available year-round, while others like

mangoes and avocados are seasonal.

Fish is available at the markets most of the year. Locally

produced canned tuna is also available. It is more difficult to

find fish in the countryside in the interior of islands.

Bread is available locally. There are also some biscuits and

cookies. Pastry shops can be found in a few larger cities.

Geography and Climate

Cape Verde’s climate near some of the coastal sites may be

milder than that of the African mainland. At the sites near

the sea, temperatures are moderate, but it can get very hot in

the countryside in the interior of the islands and a bit cool at

night in the dry season (though still hot in the day). In most

places, vegetation is scarce, so there is very little shade or

protection from the sun, which makes it even hotter. Cape

Verde is part of the Sahel arid belt and only receives about 8

cm (3 inches) of rain on most islands. When it does rain, the

rainfall occurs between August and October, with

brief downpours.

Well, friends, the time is winding down to the start of my Peace Corps service. After a brief orientation in Boston on July 15th, I'm boarding a flight to Cape Verde, where I'll be living for a whopping 27 months. Surreal.

Island life isn't exactly what I expected when I was told I'd be posted somewhere in Africa. I knew it would likely be a Lusophone country, but it never occurred to me that it might not be mainland. When my offer letter and packet came in the mail I had to run to Googlemaps because I didn't know where I was going! As it turns out, Cape Verde is an archipelago made up of 10 islands, and it's about 350 miles off of the west coast of Senegal. The thought of being able to run laps around my country of service with an expanse of ocean on all sides took some getting used to. But I've learned about it, and hunted for pictures, and I think I'll settle in just fine, hammock in tow.

I'll post more details when I know them, but I won't know until I'm training where I'll be stationed so most details aren't concrete. What I do know:

I'll be training in Praia, the country's capital on Santiago island, and living with a host family. Address soon to follow.

I'll be learning Kriolu, a mixture of Portuguese and Creole. (Nha nomi é Rachel!)

I'll be teaching English at a secondary school, Monday through Saturday...

I would love love love to come home to letters and emails from you asking to visit, so do it!Seriously, I would love for you to send me pictures, emails, letters, poems, cds, drawings, requests/demands for Skype dates, wedding invitations, pictures of your kids, videos, essays, interpretive dances (you can figure out logistics), or yourself (!!!) to keep me in the loop, and you know I'll do the same whenever I can.

Love,

Rachel