After surgery, I was forbidden to sit for a week because of the strain sitting places on the lower back- I could lie down, I could walk but sitting was strictly verboten. I didn't do much those first few days - ate, slept, read a bit before dozing off again. I was amazingly weak - it seemed that I slept all the time, and even when I was awake there wasn't much I was up for. I was very fragile

There's nothing written from this time period - between setting the date for surgery and actually arriving there - I remember going to museums with Brenna (my friend from art school and the best person to travel with in the world), and her and her husband Chuck taking me out for sushi the night before my operation. Sharing the room with the other med-evac from the Russia Far East program, feeling

Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2001 hey you guys - Well, it looks like I'll be going under the knife on Friday (as in this Friday). Think good thoughts for me. I expect to be in the hospital a couple of days and then at least a week here in recovery - after that I may be free to travel (carefully) for a bit. They'll re-evaluate me after 5 weeks or so, and it looks like I've got a good chance of

When I got into DC, my mother and Brenna met me at the airport - that was a godsend. Peace Corps DC usually makes ambultory volunteers find their own way to the hotel, which I would NOT have been capable of by any means. My mother had flown down from Vermont, and Brenna lives in DC, with her husband Chuck and several cats of their own. Pets aren't allowed in the Peace Corps hotel (Peace Corps

This was my last letter to the World Wise school before I was med-evac'd - it actually should have gone before my last post, but.... o, well. This is a bit later going out than I would wish - my apologies, though I must say life has been a bit more interesting of late than I care for. I'm going to offer that as my excuse and leave the subject, go on to describing my reality for your amusement

The word came from Washington; I had to go. Char assured me I wouldn't be coming back; Peace Corps made me pack up all my things to be shipped home if I didn't make it back (I later found out that this was NOT a free service); they came and took everything from my apartment. My boxes, their stove and propane tanks and fire alarm and water filter and all. I was having a noticable hard time at this

Notes From the Edge: Two weeks ago on a Friday I went in to Yerevan for my first MRI. I gotta say it wasn’t as much fun as I’d expected. The music was bad, for one thing, and looking at the MRI itself was even worse. The normal discs show up like little jellyfish, or cloud puffs, or anything else that’s soft and watery and whitish tucked in between each vertebrae. Three of my discs look like

Peace Corps finally took me in for an MRI - there's one machine in Armenia, located in a tractor trailer in Yerevan; I went in with the Peace Corps medical staff, Dr. Anna and Char. They gave me headphones with Russian music, had me pull down my pants and slide into the machine. The news was bad; I could tell from the technician's face as soon as I got out of the humming tube, and Char (the

And to the World Wise school, I sent yet another version of what was happening. I remember crouching on my porch with my shortwave radio, trying to get reception, trying to hear what was happening all those thousands of miles away. I remember Varton and Arkadi taking me to the post to call my friend in New York; ArmenTel was giving five or ten minutes calls to America free to Armenians, you had

This I wrote for the PC newsletter - yes, there are a lot of similarities.... Notes from the Edge: Horrible. Shock. Unreal. War. These are the words for the week. I listen to the scratchy radio voices, I watch the planes plow into the buildings again and again, people running through the streets, burning buildings, the columns of twisted steel. The bodies falling from the towers, the towers

It was the next big thing that happened. What can I say? You already know all about it - and here is what I wrote home at the time. I've been listening to those scratchy radio voices for days now, ever since the night we got the call from Bill Benjamin, our Country Director. BBC and VOA rolling over me with the current body counts and the talk of war, smoke filled voices choked with fear and

heh! There isn't one! You'll have to sing along without its' aid.... Every year there's a big party when the new volunteers are sworn in - all the volunteers that can make it go to the city that training took place in that year; watch the swearing in; pay their money down and eat out at a restaurant with all the new volunteers. There are silly skits and at least one song composed for the new

September 6th, 2001 - outgoing email from Armenia. I was still lying about my back - it was getting worse and worse and was intensely painful. Again, I didn't want to worry people, and I was still hoping against hope it would all get better - o, heal for thy Baby Jesus' sake, HEAL! I also haven't really talked much about the other volunteers in my group - mostly I found them kinda hard to

This is real time, folks - October 8th, 2004 - this is happening NOW. I just got off the phone with my family in Armenia - my host mother was crying on the phone, it was horrid. They don't have wood for the winter, their apples and pears didn't produce this year, my father is sick, the packages I sent haven't made it through. I just feel so damn selfish and greedy and stupid - I went out

The second part of that amazingly long email. I mention my back for the first time here, but still don't say much about it - I didn't want to worry anyone, and I was still hoping it would all just go away. That same week the computers made the trip up to Alaverdi, my last sitemate, Matt, finished up his service here and took off, along with the remainder of his group; I went and spoke to the

So you can tell how long ago this all really was - I gotta say I was absolutely delighted to be able to write something worthwhile in to the 20th reunion (rather than, say, I'm still a copy slave at Kinko's - the job I had before I joined the Peace Corps. I still have anxiety dreams about that place). We were supposedly going to Batumi for a competition in Ureki, and I had to get special

What I did that first summer at site - part 1 of a wretchedly long email. Having my dad and Mary come to visit was amazingly difficult at times, but also really wonderful in many ways. Nellie was my language tutor and friend, she was a great help to me throughout this first year, and the rest of the time I spent in Armenia. Having good Armenian friends and being close to my host family made my

Hey you - The next three weeks I'll be enjoying the company of guests from the fabled land of Milk & Honey - my dad and Mary are flying in to Yerevan 3:40 am June 19th, and I'll be at the airport to meet them. Don't expect any mail coming out of Armenia for a while - if you've written, it'll be your turn to bask in smug self superiority, and won't that be pleasant? After the three weeks are

This was my next letter home - 'scheefer' is corrugated roofing material that we had to get from Yerevan., since we had to use aluminum (rather than the usual cheap asbestos). There was really nothing for me to do once we got the grant money and started the work - everything just swung along nicely. I kept an eye on the work, shot copious photos but though the staff and the students did a lot of

And with that last email I sent out the next installment of 'Notes From the Edge' my column for the local PC rag - they were obviously desperate, and would take just about anything, no matter how poorly written. 'Hatz' means 'bread' or, more loosely, 'food'; 'sovaates em' means 'I'm hungry'. 'Hatz' and 'sovaates' should both pretty much rhyme with 'rots', despite the differences in

Well, I pulled the grant together, Arko and I went into Yerevan (Armenia's capital and the home of PC headquarters) for the presentation, and I sent off this email to the folks back home: Ok, y'all - Last time I was in Yerevan I got up extraordinarily early in the morning to trot off to Peace Corps and do the email thang, wrote a lovely long missive with all sorts of fascinating details,

About this time I started working seriously on my first real project - a SPA (Small Project Assistance) grant for the sports school in Alaverdi, with the funds being used to renovate the school. Which was in pretty sad shape - the floor was rotten to the point that there were actual holes in it; the roof leaked, and bits of plaster drifted down daily; there was no ventilation or running water.

My life went on, as life is wont to do. I still had no real job, but I went to karate classes on a regular basis and started to know Alaverdi and the people there a bit better. Somewhere in here I also started to think about working with the karate school as a possibility - the building was in pretty wretched shape (the roof leaked, the floor was rotten, the kids had to carry water from a nearby

I finally got my first letters from the school, with lots of questions from the kids, and promptly sent off this reply: Hey you - Wow! Thanks for all the letters - it was great to get so much mail, all in one massive package. From what I can tell, the envelope got sent out on the 19th of September, and I got it on the 13th of November - it looks like the mail may take a while. So if it

The Peace Corps World Wise program matches up interested volunteers and teachers in an attempt to help educate American children about life outside of our borders. I was paired up with a middle school class and was pretty faithful about sending them off a letter every month. Every now and again, the kids were assigned to write me back - I suspect when the teacher had a gap in his lesson plan and