for International Women's Day - a link to a song I wrote about street harassment and corruption in society. Street harassment and sexual violence happens in every country, everywhere. When I tell people who harass me on the street to leave me alone, I get called a bitch, a dyke, or a whore who's asking for it. That's why I'm pretty sure they are more afraid of me than I am of them.

They can’t keep up, they can’t keep up

I smooth the grade out, but they still can’t keep up

I don’t need them, I want my freedom

I've got to leave them like I just don’t hear them

You don’t know what you don’t see because

They just tell you when to keep your eyes shut

You don’t know where I’m coming from

You want my money and you want my freedom I know what you say to my back every day

You’re just afraid, afraid of a woman

afraid of a woman, afraid of a woman (2x) They just watch me, they just watch me

I smooth the grade out while they still just watch me

I don’t need them, I got my freedom

I keep on walking like I just don’t see them

You don’t miss what you don’t have because

They just give you what they tell you to want

You don’t know why you think you need them

You give them money but that’s not freedom I know what you say to my back, I know every day

You’re just afraid, afraid of a woman

afraid of a woman, afraid of a woman (2x)

You just break,

break when you’re under

the feet of a woman

the feet of a woman

You’re so afraid, it looks like you’re running

away from a woman

away from a woman

now I’m free, I’m free, I’m free

It's been nearly a year since my last post. I always like to jump back into things with a big splash, so here I go. March is Women's History Month, and that seems apt for what's been going on lately in current events. American conservatives are hell-bent on making women's rights history. They are also extremely interested in the contents and goings on inside of our uteruses. (Uteri?) I wonder if any women's groups have considered a nation-wide uterus drive so that we can donate some uteruses to all those poor male Republican politicians who don't have one. Perhaps if they had one of their very own they wouldn't be so gosh darn interested in what's happening in ours. We'll send them a pocket pussy too, and a transvaginal ultrasound wand, and they can have a big party.

In honor of Women's History Month, I'd like to take a brief trip back down memory lane, to revisit my own history with women's rights and feminism. When I was a lot younger, like middle school and high school-age, I was pretty much convinced that all men/boys were assholes. In fact I didn't really do any dating of boys, other than bringing one to a few high school dances, until I went to college. For this, I got called a lesbian and a bitch a lot in high school, which further cemented my conviction that ALL MEN/BOYS ARE ASSHOLES. Most of my close friends were all girls, and the only guys I was friends with were of the non-threatening Drama Club-type. Then I got a little older, a little wiser, a little more sure of myself. I graduated from college and became close with some male friends. I became less angry at the male gender, dated some men casually, and was more comfortable around men in general than I'd ever been before. I became of the mind that not all men were assholes, that in fact they were human beings with feelings and thoughts (and that their feelings and thoughts were not all about sexing/subjugating women and girls.)

I became comfortable with what I thought was the status-quo; my experience in life was that I, and women in general, had enjoyed equal standing with the men I knew and that the woman's fight for equality in America was basically won.

Then, when I was 27, I joined the Peace Corps and worked as a volunteer for two years in the former Soviet Union. Upon arrival, I received a metaphorical pile-of-bricks-on-the-head and crawled out, barely alive, to discover that patriarchal domination was alive and well in the rest of the world. As a young American woman living in a community that had little to no contact with other foreigners, I was treated like shit on a daily basis and viewed by most men as either a sex object or a money-dispensing machine in the form of a person (but not really a person.) And my experience wasn't even that bad compared to the women who lived in my host country. As in many former Soviet Union countries, corruption is rampant, unemployment is high, education is bad, and the women do all the hard work. In my host country, a lot of men don't have jobs, but they like to pretend that they do. They get up in the morning and dress in these very fancy, pressed shiny suits and ties, and they wear shiny, pointy shoes. They go down to the main square, and they stand around all day talking to each other and smoking cigarettes and blatantly staring at any women who are walking around doing stuff, like carrying heavy groceries or going to work. In the evenings they like to go to each other's houses and sit around playing backgammon and getting drunk while being served food and waited on hand and foot by the lady of the house. Eventually they go home and their own wives wash and press their shiny suit so that it's ready for tomorrow's day of doing the exact same thing. The wives, and the daughters and sisters, they do the actual work. They tend the garden, clean the house, wash the clothes, cook the meals, clean up after their husbands and brothers and sons, and often also work outside the home by selling things at the market, or teaching at a school, or working at the post office. The men do...nothing. This is actually how most of the world works -- that is, the world where people don't have regular electricity, running water, or cable TV. You know, the REAL world? (During a conversation with one of my female friends who lived in my host country, I was sharing how betrayed I felt by an incident with a man who I thought was good. She told me, "No men in my country are good." I said, "Really?? You don't know a single man you think is good??" She briefly conferred with her niece, and then amended her answer to say that she did know ONE, the neighbor of an aunt who lived in the capital. "He has good character," she says. One guy out of a few million, apparently.)

So yeah, I lived there for 2 years, and came back to the U.S. last year. Despite my recent high powered check with reality, for some reason I was expecting to be met by a lovely hot shower of women's empowerment and power to the people and rainbows in general. Instead I came back to this:

- Santorum is no longer just the frothy mix of semen, lube, and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex, but an actual forseeable presidential candidate with the first name Rick.

Points for American women at large: 0

Points for the Republicans: 0

Points for the human race at large, as a species deserving of existence: 0

- Newt Gingrich is no longer just a fat, ass-faced, hate-spewing butt turd who was kicked out of the Senate for breaking the law, infamously left his recently-diagnosed-with-cancer-wife for a younger woman, and became widely regarded as a lying hypocrite and sack of shit, but an actual forseeable presidential candidate.

Points for American women at large: 0

Points for the Republicans: 0

Points for the human race at large, as a species deserving of existence: 0

- Mitt Romney is no longer just the most obvious representation of wealthy elitism, corporate greed, power-hungry 1%-ishness EVER, combined with the some of the most asinine mental retardation EVER PERSONIFIED, but an actual forseeable presidential candidate.

Points for American women at large: 0

Points for the Republicans: 0

Points for the human race at large, as a species deserving of existence: 0

- The Susan G. Komen Foundation announced that it's de-funding a Planned Parenhood program that offers free breast cancer screenings for women who don't have health insurance or otherwise can't afford them. Again, this funding was NOT for abortions. It was for BREAST CANCER SCREENINGS, which, as the nation's biggest breast cancer charity, Komen would seemly want to fund as much as possible. But no, instead they decided to out themselves as an anti-choice, politically conservative breast cancer charity -- in the most retarded fashion possible. The backlash was quick and overwhelming. And the whole thing was over a yearly grant of $500,000. Using the Komen Foundation's decision as a fundraising ask, Planned Parenthood received $4,000,000 in donations in about a week or so. Then, the Komen Foundation, having realized that it had just done one of the stupidest things in history, announced that it was "just kidding" and un-de-funded Planned Parenthood.

Points for American women at large: 10

Points for the GOP: 0

Points for the human race at large, as a species deserving of existence: 1

- Republican-controlled Congress held a special committee meeting to decide whether birth control should be given to women for free under the Affordable Care Act. Since it was conference on women's rights, they invited a panel of old white men to testify. They also prevented the one woman who was invited to speak by the Democrats from actually attending. The woman, whose name is Sandra Fluke, is a law student who was going to share the story of her friend who was prescribed birth control for a serious medical condition, but couldn't afford to pay for the medication because she didn't have health insurance, and because the friend didn't take the pills she was prescribed she became very ill and lost one of her ovaries. But no, no, no! We don't want to hear about that sort of thing! We are already quite sure that sex pills are for whoring, not for preventative health care! Silly. Women should stop worrying their pretty little heads about this complicated man-stuff. Then, Rush Limbaugh went on the radio and called Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute. He said (click here for audio), quote:

"What does it say about the college coed Susan [sic] Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We're the pimps. The johns, that's right. We would be the johns — no! We're not the johns. Well — yeah, that's right. Pimp's not the right word. OK, so, she's not a slut. She's round-heeled. I take it back."

Despite all this, a vote in the Senate for free birth control under the Affordable Care Act passed, 51-48. Which means it almost didn't pass.

Points for American women at large: 0

Points for the GOP: 0

Points for the human race at large, as a species deserving of existence: 0

- Lawmakers in Virginia got a bill to the state senate for a vote that would have made any woman seeking an abortion in Virginia legally required to submit to a medically-unnecessary and invasive and rape-y procedure called a transvaginal ultrasound. This involves a 6 inch+ shaft being put inside a woman's vagina so that a picture of the unborn fetus can be taken with an ultrasound machine. Many doctors, women, and people who are not ignorant religious zealots protested this bill. It was ultimately vetoed by the Republican governor of Virginia who either decided that women have the right to decide what happens to their own bodies or that it was too politically dangerous in an election year to let blatantly stupid legislation like this pass.

Points for American women at large: 1

Points for the GOP: 0

Points for the human race at large, as a species deserving of existence: 0

Happy Women's History Month, everybody.

On the eastern edge of Rajastan, 150km of desert between it and the border of Pakistan, is the ancient fort town of Jaisalmer. Jaisalmer felt as deeply Rajastani as we could find. The fort of Jaisalmer, built of golden sandstone with intricately carved and decorated exteriors, is thought to be the oldest "living" fort in the world; the palace is now a museum but hundreds of residents, as well as plenty of barnyard animals, still live inside the fort's high walls and narrow streets. With plenty of plush fabrics, furniture, and antiques for sale all around you, walking through the fort and the bazaar below feels you've been transported into the pages of 1,001 Arabian Nights. And, if you feel like you need some extra help to get your mind in the right frame, you can pay a visit to the government-authorized bhang shop! Bhang is basically fine powder of pounded cannibis that can be served mixed into lassis (smoothies), or in cookies, chocolate, and other treats. Bhang is traditionally consumed by Hindus on special holidays, but obviously now has mass appeal for tourists -- it's totally legal, and inexpensive! At the bhang shop in Jaisalmer, you can buy special "camel packs" -- a sampling of all the bhang treats to take on your camel safari. But if you come to Jaisalmer just looking for a bhang lassi and a camel safari, you'll miss out on the real magic. You need to give yourself a few days of just wandering around and taking in all the atmospheric streetlife of a place that truly lives up to the image outsiders have of Rajastan. This is a place where you feel like you've really travelled deep into India! Weeks after we left, whenever we found ourselves stuck somewhere where the honking, insanely chaotic traffic, pushy crowds and smelly trash heaps had pretty much obliterated the atmosphere of India, we found ourselves wishing we could just go back to Jaisalmer.

amazing Rajastani architecture at Mehrangarh Fort

The street... watch out for motorcycles, scooters, cows, pedestrians, vegetable carts, and poop.

Mehrangarh Fort at night

Blue houses below the ramparts of the fort

colors of Rajastan

The Blue City!

Jodhpur… the Blue City; an ancient city once ruled from a high fort by Rajput kings and queens; also the namesake of those silly puffy pants worn by posh horseback riders, which were originally made here. The massive Merangarh fort towers over the city from its site on a sandstone peak. From the fort you can really see why they call it the Blue City … every neighborhood is speckled with houses and buildings painted in the same shade of milky, periwinkle blue that really stands out against the beige color of the surrounding desert scrubland. The city is criss-crossed with narrow, winding streets that are filled with bazaars of every category. Besides the overwhelmingly impressive fort, I loved the energy, hustle, bustle, and shopping delights brimming over the streets of Jodhpur. Don’t go to Rajastan without visiting the Blue City… despite the traffic congestion and pollution, Jodhpur was one of my favorite places yet! (Just don’t look too closely at the black stuff in your Kleenex when you blow your nose at the end of the day.)

The holy lake of Pushkar, where Lord Brahma dropped a lotus flower and created the lake in its spot.

A lake-sized pot of milk being boiled for making delicious masala chai (spiced tea)

Tourist bazaar (bad hippy clothes)

Pushkar is a holy temple town with a mythical lake where Hindu pilgrims pray and bathe. It’s relatively small and very quiet compared to everywhere else we’ve been in Rajastan. Our hotel, the Paramount Palace, upgraded to us for free to a really nice room with a balcony and views of the town. However, we found we were disappointed after all the hype we heard about Pushkar – other than the Brahma temple and the small lake, there wasn’t much else to do in town except browse the tourist bazaars of handicrafts and Indo-western clothing. We spent most of our time relaxing in our room and at the rooftop restaurant in our hotel. The most exciting thing that happened in Pushkar was when I opened the door to the balcony in our room one evening and came face to face with a monkey that was sitting on a chair. Judging by the expression on the monkey’s face and my own racing heartbeat, we were both equally surprised and dismayed/scared shitless by each other’s sudden appearance. I quickly shut the balcony door and left the monkey alone…and in the morning discovered that he’d left plenty of poop on the chair outside as thanks for my trouble.

Entrance to the Queen's Bath - aka Temple of Awesomeness

The step well just keeps going down....

Faded grandeur inside the once mighty palace of Bundi

Bundi Palace, with fort walls behind

Bundi is another small town with a mighty history in southern Rajastan. It’s busy, colorful place in a paradoxical state of complete decay and steady commerce. In this sense, it’s a typical Indian town. The pipes from the houses empty directly into overflowing street sewage gutters, and cows, pigs, goats and dogs wander freely, living off of (and adding to) the piles of garbage and excrement in the streets. Meanwhile, merchants sell their wares, women dressed in dazzling colors and flowing skirts gracefully dodge speeding motorists, temple bells ring and the scent of incense floats in the air. We visited the ruined palace at Bundi, taking in views of the town below from the high ramparts and peering at the much-faded but still grandiose frescoes covering the walls of the palace rooms. The highlight of our visit, however, was seeing the 17th-century step wells commissioned and built by members of the royal family of Bundi. Step wells are square-shaped, immense underground recessions with carved stone walls and long flights of stairs leading downward nearly 50 meters to pools for bathing. The wells are open to rain and sunlight as well as underground reserves of water. Entering the Rani-ki-Baori (the Queen’s Bath) in Bundi was like walking into Indiana Jones’ Temple of Doom, but in the best sense possible! It was like stepping into a vast, underground cathedral for water worshippers. An incredible amount of workmanship and vision went into creating these step wells – one of the most striking and truly awesome sights in India….in the world!!

Chittor, in southern Rajastan, is an enormous medieval fort on a long stretch of cliffs above the town of Chittorgarh. It is famous for being the final stronghold of Rajputana warriors and royalty who never surrended to the invading Moghuls. Rather than surrender, the fort occupants chose death by their own hands. The women submitted to self-immolation (burning themselves alive) while the men voluntarily rode out to certain death in hand-to-hand combat with the much larger invading army. Fast-forward 300 or 400 years – we arrived at Chittor around 10am and feasted our eyes on a stunning vista of ruins stretching on for several miles: fortified walls and ramparts, a huge palace complex, ancient temples, towers, bathing pools and mansions. Chittor is truly worthy of its reputation as the greatest fort in Rajastan.

Tripoli gates at the City Palace, looking towards the heart of Udaipur

Beautiful Lake Pichola, built by a Maharaja of Udaipur

**************** During our last month in India (I can't believe we've been here 2 months already!) we're hitting up the Big 5 old cities of Rajastan: Udaipur, Pushkar, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer and Jaipur... and all the whistlestops in between.

Udaipur definitely lived up to its reputation as one of the Big 5, and of the most romantic cities in India. 4 thumbs up! (from both of us.)

We made the indescribably regrettable decision to fly Jet Airways again, this time from south India to north India. If you've been reading this blog you will know that I should've known better than to fly Jet Airways again.

Our flight from Mangalore to Udaipur via Mumbai was supposed to take about 3.5 hours. With Jet Airways we arrived in Udaipur 9 hours later after enduring a horror-genre version of the film Planes, Trains and Automobiles. It was more just like Planes, A Stupid Carrier Called Jet Airways, and Automobiles. I'll spare you the details and just let you know that Jet Airways really seems to get a big kick out of making my life as difficult as possible whenever it gets the chance.

We left Hampi on an overnight sleeper bus to the coastal town of Gokarna, Karnataka. At around 2am the bus stopped and everyone who wasn't continuing through Karnataka to Goa was told to get off. We were then told another bus was going to pick us all up and drive us to Gokarna. We waited for about an hour in the dark next to a lamppost on the highway until the next bus showed up and then dumped us at the Gokarna turn-off to the beach, which was still about 4 kilometers away. So we found ourselves dragging our bags down a steep cliff trail to the beach at 4:30am with a cell phone flashlight. When we got down to the beach all the guesthouses were of course, shut up for the night, so we snuck inside the gated patio restaurant of the nearest guesthouse and laid down like miserable hobos with our stuff on the floor until around 8am when we were finally able to check into a room.

We had planned to stay for 3 nights at the beach in Gokarna but ended up staying for 6 because we needed to do...nothing. It was the best vacation from a vacation I've ever had.

It took us about 9 hours and two buses to get to Hampi, and long before we reached it we were both grumbling that this darn place better be worth this mind-numbingly, insanely uncomfortable journey. Riding on these buses feels like you’re sitting in a hot tin can, bouncing over miles and miles of broken tarmac. After a while I started to think I was going to have serious brain damage from it slamming against the inside my skull. But we finally got here, and with no amount of begrudging-ness I can say that the journey was definitely worth it. Hampi is a village/town right next to the ancient ruins of a city of temples from the 1500s, called Vijayanagar. The entire region is littered with huge volcanic boulders from which the ancient temple city was sculpted. There are about 13 kilometers of ruins to explore, so we decided to spend 4 days here to take it all in.

On the other side of the river from Hampi is another smaller village with guesthouses, so we decided to stay there to get away from the noisy bazaar area. The only problem with this is that you have to take a “ferry” (aka, a motorized rowboat) jam-packed with people, bicycles, and motorbikes to go back and forth from the village to Hampi. The boat supposedly stops making trips at 6pm. Our first we headed down to the “dock” around 5:30 thinking we had plenty of time before 6, but this was a grave underestimate of Hampi's boat-riding population. There was a huge, jostling crowd on the steps waiting to get into the boats. There was no queue or any type of organization, except for a very skinny man with a plastic broomstick which he use to splash large amounts of water on people to keep order. The whole thing got way too frightening, so we decided to take our chances on hiring our own boat after all the 6pm hoopla was over. When we returned an hour later the crowd was mostly gone, so we got sped over to the other side in semi-darkness but in comfort. All in all, though, the Indians were a lot friendlier and more accomodating than some of the surly-looking tourists waiting to go over in the boat. We think some of these dippy-hippy types who come over to India with their dreadlocks and lame tribal tattoos give us normal tourists a bad name. As far as we’re concerned, these losers can go back to Granola Mountain and leave India to us!!

About 4 hours north of Mysore are two ancient Hoysala-era temple sites in the towns of Belur and Halebid. These temples were begun to be built sometime in the 11th century. One of them is still in use today, and both are extremely impressive. We actually took over 200 photos of the detailed stone carvings covering the outside and inside of the temples… it’s hard to stop! The temples were truly an epic scene, it reminded me of something out of a history book. We were lucky enough to see it up close and in the flesh. One of the highlights of our trip thusfar.

schoolgirls in Mysore

typical street scene

at the Maharaja's Palace

getting catty in the Maharaja's garden

man hand-rolling beedis

lady rolling incense sticks (the black stuff is honey-based)

Being in Mysore got me to start thinking, “Whatever you say about India, at least it’s never boring!” Mysore was the home of a dynasty of maharajas, and the architecture of the city gives it an air of faded grandeur. As we’re starting to discover about almost everywhere in India, Mysore is a small town with a big city feel. I guess that’s just how it goes in a country with a population of over a billion people. Whether it’s a big tourist destination or someplace seemingly in the middle of nowhere, the towns here are all chaotic places that never stop moving, and seem to constantly be on the verge of bursting at the seams with people, traffic, animals, sounds and colors. But just when you’re on the verge of overload and need to get out of the crowded streets, you notice something really intriguing (or something that just smells delicious) and you have to move in closer to the thick of it to have a better look.

We left Kerala on Wednesday on a 9 hour bus to Bangalore. My very good friend Kristen, who I hadn't seen since I left California for Peace Corps/Azerbaijan in September 2008, was coming to Bangalore for a business trip and invited us to stay with her at her 5 star hotel! We arrived, in awe, at the Leela Palace in Bangalore. The lobby literally looks like a marble palace and the room has Persian carpets (and a telephone next to the toilet in the stunning bathroom.) We spent the evening reveling in the comforts of Kristen's luxurious room while she went out for a business dinner.

In the morning, Kristen's Indian work counterpart, Deepak, took us all out on a tour of some of Bangalore's sights: the shopping district, the Bull Temple, and the cave temple. Deepak also took us to his parents' house so we could catch a glimpse of home life in Bangalore. We arrived unannounced, but the house was uncluttered and spotlessly clean. They showed us their puja room, with shrines and offerings to the Hindu gods and we got to put puja dots on our foreheads with the red kumkum powder. His mother wanted to feed us and insisted we try some treats she had made, because hotel food is "bad." The hospitality and the familiar exchanges of conversation reminded me so much of my friends in Azerbaijan that I felt tears come to my eyes. This was a place that felt like home, not the 5-star hotel built for rich tourists.

Next destination, Mysore...

We are now back on the coast, this time in the north of Kerala near Kannur. Everyone tells us that this is India how it used to be way back when, and might not ever be again 10 years from now. We are spending about a week here, whiling away our days swimming and playing Scrabble on the stretches of unspoiled white sand beaches that go on for miles. Despite that this is the tourist high season, and vacation time for Indians, we basically have these beaches to ourselves. It’s sensory overload time every time we look around here!

One day a nice family gave some bananas to a gentle sambar.

But Mr Monkey was watching and wanted a banana too!

Mr. Extra-Casual Monkey casually walked by the sambar.

Monkey: "La la la, don't mind me... oh look I found a banana

that doesn't belong to anyone."

Sambar: "Um... you know I can see you, right?"

Monkey: "La la la... don't mind me, I'm not doing anything..."

Sambar: "I hate you."

The Pachyderm Palace, our guesthouse in Wayanad, organized our safari into Nagarhole National Park. We were prepared for possibly not seeing anything at all except the beautiful scenery, but we ended up seeing several groups of spotted deer, a wild boar, flying peacocks, monkeys and 2 wild elephants! We also watched the antics of a semi-tame sambar (a kind of wild deer/antelope-ish animal) who playfully tried to climb onto the shoulders of a German woman in our group (see 1st photo.) Whenever I need a good laugh I open this photo to look at Tim's expression.

We left Kochi on Dec 27 on a mission to get to the reknowned wildlife sanctuaries near Wayanad, Kerala. We knew we were going to be on the road for a good 8 hours to get there, but we figured that if we started the trip on a 6:45am train, we would be able to get there before dark. However, the journey got off to a foreboding start when we unthinkingly bought tickets in unreserved second class on the train. We boarded a train car where we thought we were allowed to sit, but less than 20 minutes after the train had left the station, the conductor informed us that we were in a reserved second class car and kicked us out of our seats. By this point all the seats in the unreserved second class were full of people. We doggedly dragged our stuff through car after car stuffed full of people until we got separated and I couldn’t go any farther. It was standing room only. I ended up squashed somewhere between the train door and the toilet, and spent the next 5 hours half-standing, half-squatting on my bag. Tim was in the same situation on the opposite side of the car, miserably huddled with his backpack against the wall. Finally we reached our stop at Calicut, and stumbled off the train in a glassy-eyed haze of post-traumatic shock from the experience. In Calicut we made a detour to the post office so I could send a box of stuff home to myself. (Side note: I had ended up leaving Azerbaijan with more stuff than I could carry through India; some of my Azeri colleagues and friends had given me some rather bulky gifts including a small carpet and a huge copper vase. I had planned to send it all home to myself right after landing in Mumbai, but my bags got lost on route and due to a series of mix-ups I didn’t get my bags until the day after Christmas - 15 days after I arrived!) Anyway, Calicut was my first chance to go to the post office and since I already had most of the stuff boxed up and ready to mail, we thought it wouldn’t take too long. But, India being India the process took almost 2 hours and by this point we were starving and in need of sustenance before we got our bus from Calicut to Wayanad. But by the time we finished lunch and dragged ourselves to the bus stand in Calicut of course the buses were all full! We weren’t on the road for our 3 hour ride onward to Wayanad until 4pm. And when we finally arrived in Manathavadi near Wayanad…the bus to take us to our hotel had stopped running. So we had to get there via ANOTHER bus AND a jeep, FINALLY arriving at the guesthouse at 9:30pm. And we had gotten up at 5:30am that morning! What a day.

(click to see bigger image)

Jew Town: A neighborhood in Fort Cochin, Kochi, where Jews were living since the 1500's. There's a beautiful old synagogue here and you can spot stars of David in the architechture of the buildings and Jewish names on some of the old shops. Don't mess with JEW TOWN.

Tea: We are currently addicted to masala chai, which is black tea spiced with cardamom, cinnamon, and cloves and has lots of creamy milk and sugar.

Beaches: white sands and blue sea at sunset.

Shiva: the destroyer.

Kerala thali: a set meal served on a banana leaf, usually several types of curries plus sambar, dal, mango pickle, and pappadam.

Ganesha: lord of success.

Goats: Tim's favorite animal.

Kathakali: The ritual dance/"story-play" of Kerala.

We arrived in Kerala, South India, about a week ago after 2 days in Mumbai. I am still kind of in shock to be here but at the same time it feels natural to be back in the tropics. It is a completely different world than Baku, though. Everything is so colorful here -- the palm trees, the flowers, the people's clothing, the food! We have not eaten one bad meal yet. The specialty here in the south is seafood. They do a lot of coconut curry things with the seafood but overall the curries are less spicy than I expected. Today we had our first experience on the Indian Railways on our ride from Varkala to Kochi. It was completely hassle free and I got to eat a masala dosa and take a nap.

The one thing that surprised me the most is the scent of India. It was one of the first things we noticed - it always smells good! Whether it's the smell of some food cooking, or incense burning, flowers, someone wearing jasmine perfume or coconut oil, it just always smells great here. If by chance you happen to smell something bad, like a pile of trash or stagnant water, within 5 meters of passing it, the bad smell is eradicated by the smell of something delicious.

I left Brent's house in Baku at 7am...eyes still puffy from last night's lack of sleep/over-participation in group crying sessions. I arrived in Dubai at 1pm, left the airport and headed out for a little sightseeing and shopping excursion since I had a 9 hour layover here. The public transport system in Dubai is great! The metro and buses are in pristine condition and very user friendly. They even have helper people at all the bus and metro stops that will show you how to get your ticket and stuff. The first thing I noticed was how culturally diverse everyone in my metro car was. Then I realized they were all women! The women ride in the front and the men ride in the back. It's actually really nice. You don't have to deal with creepers at all. I did some shopping and then got some awesome Chinese food. I was tempted by the curry stand in the Dubai Mall but decided I would snub them for the real thing in Mumbai.

When I came to Azerbaijan in September 2008, one of the first things I learned was that autumn is “nar fəsil” -- pomegranate season. From mid-September until December, nar is everywhere. Most volunteers have never eaten a pomegranate before coming here. During my first week in-country, I remember my host mother, her fingers stained black with nar juice, showing me how to cut an X into the top of the nar with a knife and then twist the fruit open, exposing the glowing, ruby-like seeds inside. Nar is not an American fruit in more than one sense; you can’t find it at Safeway for 20 cents a pound when it’s in season, and you can’t peel it like a banana and scarf the whole thing down in 45 seconds while you’re on your way out the door. Eating nar is a distinctly Azeri experience to me – like all fruit during harvest season, it usually comes free by the bushel from your neighbors and friends, and is best eaten when there’s nothing else to do but sit down for a nice long chat (or, for my host mom, the latest episode of her favorite Turkish soap opera) because it takes more than 10 minutes just to open it. First you X the top, twist it in half and then into quarters, then gently peel out the delicate red seeds and shake them into a bowl. Then after you’ve lingered over each juicy seed you have to go wash your hands and clean up the splatters of red juice that are inevitably everywhere. You need to have time on your hands to properly enjoy nar. In Azerbaijan, time is what people have – time for peeling a huge bowl of fruit or shelling a big bag of nuts, doting on family, visiting neighbors, waiting in line, chit-chatting, gossiping, arguing, dawdling around watching the strange foreigner do her laundry (fascinating!) and eating ever more food.

By the time this pomegranate season is over and winter sets in, I will have left Azerbaijan. It makes me laugh to read my application essay about what my expectations of the Peace Corps experience were before I came here two years ago. It makes me a little sad too. I’m not the same person. I’m not so naïve or gung-ho, I don’t have the same overconfidence in what I thought would be a great mission of goodwill and personal growth. Azerbaijan is not a place where you can have the stereotypical Peace Corps experience. I don’t walk to work holding hands with happy barefoot African children, or live a simple existence in a cute little mud hut surrounded by palm trees. The lingering winters here can become one cold, dreary day after another. The people seem always to be wearing black, shuffling slowly down the street. The staring never seems to stop, and neither do the episodes of blatant disrespect, harassment, and narrow-minded prejudice. A few people, the people you grow to love, stand by you, take care of you, and understand what you’re trying to do. But most people never will. Every small success comes with a lot of heartbreak. Everything is just so much more difficult here than it ever was back home! Whether it’s buying and transporting classroom materials from the city to the village, trying to explain the internet to someone who’s never used a computer before, or just fixing a broken lightbulb – everything takes hours, days, weeks or months longer than it ever did before and your stress level rises while your patience gets thinner (as do your molars from the constant teeth grinding.) Of course, the Azeris are just puzzled when they see me in a state of despair over some seemingly unfixable broken household appliance or another work deadline that I failed to meet –“Narahat olma, problem yoxdur! Allah qoysa!” they say – which basically means, “Don’t be worried, there’s no problem! May God make it so!” Because for them, there’s always time to figure it out later.

But I’m a Peace Corps volunteer here, not an Azerbaijani, and my time to fix all my problems is almost up. I have until the first week of December to finish my projects, figure out the logistics of leaving, and make peace with this roller coaster of emotional ups and downs that have characterized my life here. It would be easy to just give up on it all, shrug it off and walk away, if it weren’t for the special people who have always kept me going. Those people are most importantly my two teaching counterparts, the Peace Corps staffers I’ve become close with, and other volunteers, all of which who have been like family to me here.

Nargiz, who has been my primary work counterpart and true friend from the beginning, is the one Azerbaijani person who I feel really understands me. She continually amazes me with the clarity and truth of her insights. From what she’s told me about her life, I’ve put together that she grew up in a large, fairly poor family in a small village without running water or electricity. (When she first moved from the village into the town, she lived in an abandoned boxcar for awhile!) Coming from this background, she graduated with a teaching degree from the Foreign Languages University in the capital. She speaks Azeri, Lezghi, Lahij dili (a Farsi dialect), Russian, English and a little French. Her father is Lezghi and her mother is from Lahij (these are ethnic minority groups in the Caucases.) Often when I am trying to be polite about or sensitive to some Azeri cultural thing, Nargiz expresses confusion over why I’m acting so unlike myself. When I explain that I know such-and-such thing is inappropriate in Azerbaijan, she just shrugs and waves it off, saying, “I am not Azerbaijani, I do not care about these things. They are not important!” Nargiz has a great interest in American slang, swear words and insults. For awhile she liked to refer to a certain faculty member at our school as “our dumb-ass” but after recently watching The Lion King with me, she now simply calls him “Hyena.” Nargiz tells me all the time that she admires me and that she knows it is difficult for me to live here. She is the only person in my community who has ever said this to me. Arzu, my other teaching counterpart, is my other “rock” in my community. She and her mother, who is also an English teacher, have treated me with nothing but kindness and generous hospitality. When I go over to Arzu’s house after school, her mother, Senam, always meets me with a big smile and a resounding greeting of “Marina! You are welcome here! And how is your mother?” Senam, who is very proud of having studied English back when the Soviets taught it in the universities, speaks a booming, grandiose sort of English which never fails to cheer me up even after a really frustrating day or week (“Marina, do you like fried eggplant? You do? Ah, then I shall bring you a plate, and you shall eat it with GREAT PLEASURE!!!” She also sometimes confuses the words “very” and “too much,” creating such pronouncements as “My little granddaughter is too joyful today because you came.”)

My volunteer friends are an amazingly accomplished, smart, admirable, hilarious, loving, and totally wacky group of people who I know I’ll remain friends with for the rest of our lives. We’ve depended on each other, laughed and cried with each other, sat around doing nothing with each other, watched a thousand dumb movies, travelled around, got lost, ate, drank, danced, sweated and shivered and vomited with each other too. It’s only us who can ever really know and understand what this experience was like. It sounds cheesy, but we are truly bonded in a way I can’t explain, I can only just think and grin to myself about it.

I’ll also forever be grateful to some of the people on staff here, like my doctor, our safety and security coordinator, and our language teachers, training and program managers who really care about us volunteers, the Peace Corps mission, and this country. There were so many stressful situations that I never would gotten out of without them. The Azerbaijanis who work for Peace Corps here do so many amazing things on their own as well as make our work truly sustainable for the future.

So what else is there to say about my Peace Corps experience? It’s so incredibly hard to sum it all up, and yet I’ll never be able to say it all. Thank you so much to all you family and friends who’ve supported me from afar, read my emails, emailed me, called me, skyped me, text messaged me, sent me care packages, and even came to visit me!! I can’t wait to see you all again very soon, and to be

Marina Javor

Returned Peace Corps Volunteer

September 2008 – December 2010

Ismayilli, Azerbaijan

So, how exactly does a PCV start and implement a successful resource room project in Azerbaijan? Since I am a 2010 recipient of a SPA (Small Project Assistance) grant to do exactly that, you might think that I would be the right person to answer this question. Sadly, the English resource room I wanted to start at my school currently exists only in my mind. This is not good, because ever since I conceived the notion to write a SPA grant, my mind has become a deeply frazzled, disturbed, and occasionally violent place where children should not have to go to practice their English. My brain is not a good location to hold an English resource room for other reasons as well, such as the fact that my brain is not a real place. However, after nearly 6 months of planning, reconnaissance, attempts and reattempts, continuous bad luck and many expensive trips to Baku, the real English resource room at school holds only half of the materials I have funds to buy, and has not done much to enrich this year’s English lessons. My counterparts can only look on helplessly when I am slouched against the wall in a catatonic state after yet another infuriating telephone call with Baku bookstore representatives who still haven’t ordered the books I requested 3 months ago. A certain member of my school’s faculty, who from the beginning felt that a $7,500 electronic blackboard would have been a far better investment of SPA funds than actual English books and teaching materials, feels no compunctions about telling me the English room is “like an empty box.” I feel that at this point I may be able to give a more authoritative answer on the chicken vs. the egg than on how to create a successful SPA project. (The egg. It was randomly laid by a mutant dinosaur, since birds evolved from dinosaurs.)

The most useful thing I can give, however, is a list of do’s and don’ts for anyone else who might be thinking about failing to start a resource room project at their school or organization. The following is a summation of what I have learned, which is quite a lot, about how to unsuccessfully implement a SPA resource room project.

Tip # 1: When your Program Managaer comes for a site visit and meets with you in the barren English cabinet at your school, sees your excellent working relationship with your motivated counterparts, and suggests you write a SPA grant to create a real English classroom, DON’T assume that if you like this idea, construct a well thought-out proposal with reasonable goals and deadlines, and enlist your eager-to-help counterparts, that your project plan will become anything but moot in the near future, because your future will soon consist of slogging around Baku trying to purchase SPA materials that the stores no longer have in stock. DO thank your program manager for her input, leave your site, travel to your nearest PCV friend, and have him/her slap you repeatedly across the face. Then you will have a good idea of what you would rather be doing instead of slogging around Baku 4 months later, in 90 degree heat, arguing with apathetic shop clerks, wasting your living allowance on hotels and transportation, and then returning to site without most of your SPA materials. You will return to Baku to repeat the slogging process several times. As I said, the most well thought-out project plan becomes irrelevant if you can’t actually procure the things you need. There is no guarantee when you go around pricing materials for your proposal’s budget that any of those things will still be available in the stores after your grant is approved. So, DON’T assume, while you are waiting for your funds to arrive, that if you told the manager of a store that you will return in one month to buy, for example, the books on a list you gave him, that he will have them ready for you when you return. In fact, DON’T even assume that he cares at all about taking your money. He doesn’t. And he will never return your calls to tell you he still hasn’t ordered the books so that you can save yourself another trip coming home empty-handed, either.

Tip # 2: As your problems mount, DO ask your favorite Peace Corps staff members for help. They will be very sympathetic and understanding of the issues you are dealing with. They will try their best to help you get the materials you need in Baku and perhaps even give you a ride to the stores so you don’t have to take the bus. They may even thank you for your efforts to help the children of Azerbaijan. This will make you feel a lot better. It’s for the children, see? However, DON’T allow yourself to dwell too long in these sorts of good moments, such as when a PC staff member helps you to successfully negotiate with a furniture warehouse owner for your new bookshelves to be delivered to your school. If you enjoy this victory too much, you will be unprepared for the shock of when the delivery man later arrives at your site without the shelves for the bookcase because he forgot to load them in his car when he left Baku.

Tip # 3: If you take heed of anything in this article, heed this: DO avoid Shamaxinka at all costs. Shamaxinka is bus stop and taxi stand in Baku where drivers wait to take passengers to Ismayilli and other regions. (It is not, as it is sometimes mistaken by PCVs, another name for Shamaxi.) Shamaxinka is also a gateway to hell. It is worse than the Yeni Vagzal. In fact, I would rather wear a bikini and sit on a huge golden throne in the middle of the roadway at the Yeni Vagzal, with a neon sign above my head that blinks “PLEASE HARASS ME” than spend any more time at Shamaxinka ever again. However, in the event that you must take a taxi from Shamaxinka to transport your missing bookshelves to site, and if the furniture warehouse owner calls you to tell you that he cannot meet you at Shamaxinka with the shelves until 6pm (because he is busy “working”) DO tell him that he can consider delivering your 300 manat’s worth of furniture as “working” and meet you earlier than that, otherwise he will get stuck in traffic for an hour and a half, stop answering his phone, and abandon the task altogether. By the time you realize he isn’t coming, it will be too late for you to travel back to site. To the great interest of many nearby men with extreme staring problems, you will be stranded at 8pm at Shamaxinka with your PCV friend, several bags of other SPA materials, and nowhere for the two of you to stay the night in Baku.

Tip # 4: Once you begin to realize that your project is not progressing forward and you won’t meet your deadline to begin implementing the resource room, DON’T try to remain calm by telling yourself that everything will work out in time, because there are other PCVs in your group who have successfully implemented resource room projects - so if they did it, you can too. No. This is a faulty logic. Those PCVs are not normal people. Those PCVs are magical, unicorn-people who were chosen by destiny to build capacity and bestow sustainability wherever they go. After you conclude that you are not a unicorn and your SPA project is in a shambles, DO go and look at the “Project Risks” portion of your original proposal and reflect that what you actually should’ve written in this section was “WHO KNOWS? THE FICKLE GODS OF FATE THEMSELVES ARE RISKS TO MY PROJECT! AND NOW I AM A RISK TO MYSELF AND POSSIBLY OTHERS!”

Tip #5: If you possess the ability to transform into a unicorn at will, DO write a grant to start a resource room, and be ye blithe. I’m certain that your magical abilities will help you to easily procure and transport your materials to your site and successfully implement your project on its intended start date, with extra time left over for cantering nimbly through the forest by moonlight. However, if you are not part unicorn, I recommend that you spend serious time with PC staff and your counterparts, to fully consider ALL the risks to your project (and the risks to your mental health) before you accept the funding. Since Baku’s stores can be unreliable, you may want to look into ordering your materials online from the U.S. and use a community cash-contribution to pay for shipping costs. Like me, you may start off thinking “Yes, I know this project will be challenging, and I will likely encounter hurdles along the way, but I want to do it anyway.” That is the mindset we all had when we signed up for Peace Corps. But you will need more than patience and determination to finish a large-scale project here. You will need a lot of pure luck, which in my experience, is not a sustainable resource.

Back in March of 2008 when I was going through the volunteer application process, months before I had even heard of Azerbaijan, I went to an interview with Nick, a recruiter at the Peace Corps office in Oakland. He asked me if I had any regional preferences as to where I would be posted. I said, regional preferences aside, I would go anywhere, as long it wasn’t cold. Nick said, “Don’t worry – we can definitely accommodate you on that!”

Ha.

After two winters here, I’ve discovered what sleet and black ice are, became acquainted with the many variants of sticky, unsticky, wet and dry snow, and noted the effects of unplowed roadways and unsalted sidewalks. I spent the last five months in my Soviet-era apartment, bundled up next to my only heat source, a wonderful Russian contraption called a “pech” which is basically a metal box with a smoke pipe and an open gas line which you light by hand each time you use it. On most winter mornings I can see my breath when I wake up in my bed. Along with most volunteers here, I wear the same layers of long underwear for more than a week at a time during the winter, because the thought of actually removing the warm under-layer to put on a fresh one is unbearable. My usual outfit for going to my unheated school consisted of several undershirts, a couple pairs of leggings or tights, wool pants, 1 or more pairs of socks, a sweater, a hoodie, an overcoat, scarf, hat and gloves. Also I wore plastic bags over my socks because sodden Azer-boots tend to leak. Keep in mind I grew up in San Diego, a place where the median temperature is about 70 degrees year-round. Inshallah I will never live in a cold place ever again.

Last April, the spring season finally hiccupped into being after a mid-month snowstorm; this April I am hoping that the green meadows and tree buds are here to stay. 2010 has already had plenty of highs and lows – I’m definitely ready for highs in terms of weather temperature! At the end of December 2009 my hard-core traveler friend Parita came all the way from California to visit me here. We spent about a week together in Azerbaijan before heading to Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, for several days of New Year’s celebrations. It was my second visit to Georgia, which is a magical country of delicious food and wine, beautiful sights, and friendly, gregarious people who write their language in elfin lettering and don’t give the stinkeye to foreign-looking women who laugh in public. That was a nice high for me. But as I tried to slog on through the rest of the winter back in Azerbaijan, for the first time in my life I began to wonder if at 28, I was getting old. Not only had a weird frown line suddenly appeared on my forehead, but I started to feel bothered by aches and pains all the time. It started with lingering case of strep throat that wasn’t helped by having to wait 4 days for my penicillin to arrive because of mail delivery delays. I ended up getting a dual sinus/ear infection too… and I began to be plagued by strange, uncomfortable and sometimes excruciating symptoms that eventually got me sent to the hospital in the capital because the Peace Corps doctors thought I had a kidney infection or a kidney stone. That was a low point, especially when they told me they might have to med-evac me to D.C. It turned out to be a much less scary diagnosis after some ultrasounds and blood tests, but it took 3 rounds of antibiotics before I felt normal again.

For now, my challenges are back to being work-related and not please-god-just-let-me-die-here-in-the-bathroom-related. After much soul-searching, hemming, hawing, grumbling and cajoling, I am in the midst of securing a $3000 SPA (small project assistance) grant from USAID to open an English resource center at my school. Teaching resources at most schools here consist of chalk, blackboards, a few abridged Azerbaijani-English dictionaries and the standard English textbooks mandated by the Azerbaijani Education Ministry. These books are riddled with grammar mistakes and boring, useless texts about the “sightseeings” of London. With the grant money, my counterparts and I will buy brand-new teaching methodology, grammar, and exercise books, audio lesson CDs, picture dictionaries, and lots of art materials for creating visual aids and games. Our project is also going to get us a computer from the Azerbaijani Education Ministry for the English classroom, so the grant will also fund a high speed internet connection, a Microsoft Office package and a digital projector. It’s been a lot of work to plan this project, and it’s going to be even more work to set up and initiate the project, so I may end up cursing myself by the end of it all. But the two lovely women who are my Azeri teaching counterparts are trying really hard to help me make this happen, so I’m doing it for them (and for not my school director who is still mad at me for wanting to buy books with the grant instead of an electronic blackboard. The fact that some thing called an electronic blackboard to my knowledge may or may not actually exist, and if it did exist, how it would be affected by daily power outages, evidently doesn’t matter to my school director.)

It seems to me that the career of the Azerbaijan Peace Corps Volunteer has 3 phases. The first phase is when you arrive and begin working; nothing makes sense, you feel like a goofy idiot, and everyone thinks you don’t know anything. The second phase begins when you start to understand how some things work, so you start trying new things to see what else can work. Then you think you know how all kinds of stuff works. But you’re actually wrong. You discover that you’ll never really know how anything works. You are still a goofy idiot and everyone knows it, but they kinda like you anyway. The third phase is when you stop caring that everyone thinks you’re a goofy idiot. You understand how some stuff works but you’re no longer surprised when it doesn’t. Everyone else is still surprised that you know how to do things like buy eggs by yourself. You know you’re in the third phase when you feel totally comfortable accepting a random old woman’s request to go in her backyard and help her stuff her mattresses with smelly unbleached wool. It all feels normal.

The coming month of April is the opening of the final third phase of my service here in Azerbaijan. I have 8 weeks left of school before summer vacation starts, and 8 months left in country. I’m going to spend two and half weeks traveling in Europe at the beginning of June, but after that I’ll be hunkering down to initiate my resource center project, begin summer conversation clubs, and plan my final months of teaching in the fall.

I wonder what changes I’ll come home to, and often I wonder what you all would think and say about my daily life here. I am busy but have plenty of free time to think good thoughts, and I am glad to be where I am. I hope you are too.

Summertime in Azerbaijan is the best time.

It's the time for road trips:

exploring nearby villages

befriending homeless puppies

and watching thunderstorms roll in.

Summertime is also the time to make Mexican feasts!

Friends often come to visit, and to indulge in a tipple of the azer-beer.

I like watching my friends fetch and carry water for me (and I think the neighbors do too.)

Best of all is my kitty, Padma. I found her stuck in a thorny bush next to my school. My landlord has no idea that he is hosting the happiest cat in Azerbaijan.

I'd be completely lost without my counterparts at school. They help me with everything from creating English clubs for this summer to translating confusing text messages from my landlord. At school, we teach together, brainstorm ideas for future projects, and of course, drink lots of tea.

This is Nargiz. She and I teach two 6th form classes and one 1st form class together. Her name means daffodil in Azeri. She came to a teacher's conference in the fall, while I was a still a trainee, and we've been friends ever since. She had never used the internet before I came but recently decided to buy a laptop. Now she is learning how to surf the web, (she was especially interested in what "the secret of the Mona Lisa is") sends emails to her niece in Russia and my mother in San Diego, watches DVDs and listens to mp3s I gave her, and practices her typing skills with Bruce's Unusual Typing Wizard. I go to her house every Thursday afternoon just to hang out. She's amazing!

Asiyet is the youngest English teacher at my school. She and I teach two 5th form classes together - that's 30 ten-year-olds, 4 days a week! Asiyet is a lot of fun and very stylish. She always looks very sweet and innocent, but the students know not to mess with her because she can twist their ears like nobody's business.

Arzu is the English teachers' representative at my school. She is always very busy and important. Her name means "wish." Along with being an excellent teacher, Arzu is also raising a beautiful 6 year old daughter who, unsurprisingly, already has a better English vocabulary than most 11th form students. This is Arzu and her 7th form class. The letters are made of wheatgrass (for the springtime holiday, Novruz) and spell both AZETA (Azerbaijan English Teachers' Assoc.) and the dreaded iEarn logo. (Future AZ7 TEFL volunteers with sadistic tendencies, go to iearn.org and view the horror that awaits you. Azeri teachers LOVE iEarn.)

Duuring my two week break from school for Novruz, Azerbaijan's springtime holiday, I went to Georgia with Tim and Kim. Georgia is a WOW! The food.... and the food.... and the FOOD... oh, and the architecture, the people, the wine, the food. Wow. We spent 5 days in the capital, Tbilisi, and 2 days in the countryside. Everyone keeps asking us how our trip went, and now all I say is - don't ask. Just go. Georgia is still on my mind as I head back to school this week. More pics below.

Step 1. Take laundry and go visit a volunteer who has her own apartment

Step 2. Wash & rinse in chalky tap water

Step 3. Drape clothes over random furniture in front of the gas heater

Step 4. Fold and take back home!

My sitemate, Colleen, a Youth Development Volunteer here in Ismailli, organized an exhibition of her photography class students' work (and YDV Nate's class in Mingechevir) earlier this month. It was a rare opportunity for the kids to have their work displayed to the public and lots of volunteers came out to support it.

These are all the teachers who attended the first official meeting of the Ismailli chapter of AZETA (Azerbaijan English Teachers' Association.) Three of the teachers from my school were there (2 of which are my counterparts), and so were Rachel and Elaine, fellow PCVs.

On Sunday me & my gang -- Amy, Sara, and Josh -- went out to the salt lake just outside of Masazir for a much-needed outdoor outing.

Well, the day is finally here. It's my last day in California. Tomorrow I get on a plane to Philadelphia, where I will meet everyone in my group, AZ6. We all fly together to Azerbaijan on Monday.

The past 3 weeks since I left my job have gone by in a crazed whirl of activity. First I had to figure out how to pack up all my stuff in San Francisco, all the while trying to fit in my birthday party, a Bon Voyage gathering, and finding time to hang out with close friends. Last Friday I packed everything into my truck and made the long 9 hour drive to San Diego. Since then, I spent some time hanging out with my mom and enjoying my last days in the California sunshine. But mostly I've been unpacking and putting away the things that I'm not taking with me, and attempting to pack everything I need for the next 2 years into 2 bags that must not weigh more than 50 lbs. After much blood, sweat, and tears, I finally succeeded in getting everything to fit -- only to discover this afternoon that it is physically impossible for a 5'3" person weighing 125 pounds to wear a 50lb backpack AND lift an enormous 50lb duffel bag, AND walk at the same time. I have a lot of willpower, but the duffel bag stubbornly refused to respond. So at the very last minute, I made an executive decision and repacked everything in the duffel bag into 2 smaller rolling bags that I can pull while I walk/hobble with my backpack on. Take that, stupid duffel bag! Yeah, I'll have to pay a fee for having 3 pieces of luggage, but it's a small price to pay to keep my arms from ripping out of their sockets. Yay.

So, I guess it's time to really say goodbye. But I hate goodbyes. So instead I say - see you soon!!The Peace Corps is something I've been wanting to do for a long time, and I'm really grateful that I've been given the chance make my dream into reality. Not everyone who applies gets in, for all sorts of reasons. The application process was hard, but the job itself is going to be the real test. People keep saying how commendable it is that I'm doing the Peace Corps, and that they wish they, too, could do something meaningful. So I say, you can! Want to save the world? Here's three things you can do.

1. Practice good karma

2. Recycle, reuse, and compost.

3. ELECT OBAMA, PEOPLE ... get off your butts and spread the word! Sign up to help the campaign at barackobama.com. You can make calls from home to register voters and all sorts of other stuff. Just do something. If I wasn't leaving, I'd be doing it. Since I won't be here, I'm counting on you!

I would like to take a moment to debunk.

Many people have asked me if the recent conflict in Georgia will affect my Peace Corps assignment in Azerbaijan. The answer that I keep attempting to give with little success, is no. I have been told that I don't know what I'm talking about, that I can't predict the future, that I don't understand what it's like to live in a country in a "war zone" region, and that ultimately my desire to help makes me naive to the nature of good and evil in the world.

First of all, I actually have done quite a bit of research on Azerbaijan and the Caucasus region since I received my Peace Corps assignment, as is expected of me as a volunteer. (Many of my friends and family had never heard of Azerbaijan until I announced I was going there.) Secondly, I lived in Sri Lanka for 5 months last year, where the national army is still in the midst of a guerilla civil war with the Tamil Tigers in the northeast part of the country. In my time in Sri Lanka I realized it is possible to live in a country which is considered to be 'at war' without being affected by the conflict or in danger of being caught up in any violence because the fighting was occurring in a region far away from where I was living.

However, these points aside, there is no reason to consider Azerbaijan unsafe. The fact that the Peace Corps does not work in Sri Lanka because of the security issue further illustrates my point. The Peace Corps does not work in any countries currently in a state of political unrest.

The most common crime against foreigners in Azerbaijan is theft; physical and sexual assaults are rare. Yes, Azerbaijan and Georgia are geographic neighbors. But the region of South Ossetia in Georgia where the conflict is centered is very small and many hundreds of miles from the Azerbaijan border. Also, the Caucasus Range, one of the tallest mountain ranges in the world with peaks over 15,000 feet, separates the two countries. Furthermore, there are no separatist regions in Azerbaijan who want to be part of Russia. Furthermore, Azerbaijan is a secular Islamic country with little cultural similarities to Georgia and Russia. Furthermore, Azerbaijan is currently at peace with all of its neighbors and an important supplier of resources to the region.

Finally, I would like to point out that within two days after the conflict began in Georgia, the Peace Corps/Georgia had already evacuated and relocated all of its volunteers and trainees to Armenia. All Peace Corps/Georgia volunteers and trainees are currently safe and accounted for. I think that it is important to keep in mind that all the Peace Corps staff and volunteers like me are essentially employees of a very well-known and powerful U.S. government agency. As such, I am virtually guaranteed to receive top priority as a foreign national should any conflict arise during my service.

From the Peace Corps press release following the relocation of its volunteers in Georgia:

"The safety and security of Volunteers and Volunteer-trainees is the number one priority of the Peace Corps. Each Peace Corps program has an Emergency Action Plan specific to that country and developed in cooperation with Peace Corps Washington and the local U.S. Embassy. The plans are evaluated and tested frequently and information is updated constantly. Volunteers are thoroughly trained in their roles and responsibilities, and posts are prepared for all emergencies."

I am touched by and very much appreciate the concern some of my friends and family have expressed about my safety in Azerbaijan. But it seems to me that we as Americans have made a lot of mistakes by allowing fear and prejudice to alter our judgement. I hope that eventually everyone will come to accept and support me in my decision to accept what will likely be a challenging but ultimately rewarding assignment teaching English in Azerbaijan.

My dear friends Kaylene and Kristal lost their mother, Caroline, to cancer on Tuesday afternoon.

I have so many memories of Caroline; her beautiful smile, her kindness, her sense of adventure.

Caroline is gone from this earth but not from Kaylene and Kristal's lives. The powerful bond between mothers and daughters can't be broken.

The women of the Grove family stay in my thoughts.

When I visited London on my first solo international trip in the fall of 2004, one of the highlights of my trip was riding around on the Tube. The passengers seemed to me to be a cast of characters right out of a Zadie Smith novel, with better shoes. I still remember arriving at King's Cross on my train from Edinburgh and how I randomly happened to disembark, hilariously, between platforms 9 and 10. I attempted to snap a photo of myself in front of the platform with the camera held at arm's length, eventually becoming aware that the Londoners hurrying around me were all incredibly disgusted by this pathetic display of Harry Potter nerdiness. I put the camera away and calmly walked off the platform, resisting the urge to start running toward the barrier with a luggage cart just to see if anyone would laugh.

As a regular user of SF's insanely disorganized, perenially tardy public transport system which is staffed mainly by apathetic nitwits, the Tube in comparison appeared to be a magical, punctual, easily navigatable system populated by charming employees and sparkly, courteous passengers. Also, you're allowed to drink alcohol and eat food on the Tube, a privilege we don't have here in San Francisco (or anywhere else in the US, for that matter) so in London I took full advantage of this by constantly munching on crumbly pasties and/or chugging beers as I traveled from station to station. As a final gesture of my love for all things Tube-related, on my last day in London I happily paid 30 pounds for a "Mind The Gap" cotton pajama set that promptly disintegrated in the washing machine the first time I washed it.

I was incredibly shocked and horrified when barely 6 months later, on July 7, 2005, four young British men boarded three Tube trains and a bus and blew themselves up, killing more 50 people. A couple days later, I was still following all the news on the bombings when I found a diary on the BBC News website written by a woman named Rachel, who had survived the bombing on the Picadilly line. She wrote about holding hands in the darkness with strangers who happened to be in her train car, not knowing if she would live or die, and how they escaped the smoking wreckage by walking out of the subway tunnel together. I continued to follow Rachel's story as she began chronicling her experiences on her blog, Rachel From North London. Since the bombings she has gone on to campaign for a public inquiry into the events of July 7 and has become a public speaker and writer on post-traumatic stress and terrorism issues. Eventually she decided to quit her job as an advertising executive and pursue writing full-time by publishing her first book, Out of the Tunnel.

Having followed Rachel's blog since the beginning, I was planning to wait to get Out of the Tunnel until after the American edition came out, but a couple months ago she wrote on her blog that the book was being discontinued due to the publisher having gone belly-up. So I ordered a copy from amazon.uk and it finally came in the mail just a couple weeks ago.

Out of the Tunnel describes in careful detail Rachel's haunting and remarkable journey from survivor to writer to political activist, and everywhere in between. Though I was already familiar with a good deal of Rachel's story from her blog, I was deeply moved by the candor in which she reveals some of her most private thoughts and experiences in her book. It is easy to understand why she chose to reveal so much, because in the months after the bombings the weight of her horror and sadness became a such a burden that she could only let go it of by writing about it. This theme, which continues throughout the book, is something I really connect to. The act of writing becomes as powerful as the writing itself. I don't know Rachel, but I know the need to speak out in order to banish your most terrifying thoughts from your mind, to somehow try to make sense of human suffering and violence by sending simple words out into the ether, like Morse code.

On her blog, Rachel writes, "The personal is political, more often then you'd think." The reverse is also true: something terrible happened in a place far away from me, to a person I don't know, with ramifications greater than all of us. Out of the Tunnel is a reminder how it is absolutely unforgivable and unacceptable that daily bombings in places like Iraq have become forgettable and unremarkable. If political events don't become personal to us, we lose the power to change things for the better.

Out of the Tunnel by Rachel North is still available on Amazon.uk.

BREAKING NEWS UPDATE

WASHINGTON (AP) JUNE 3, 2008 —

Barack Obama has effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination, based on an Associated Press tally of convention delegates.

The tally put Obama over the top Tuesday, ahead of the results from the day's final primaries in Montana and South Dakota. The Illinois senator becomes the first black candidate ever to lead his party into a fall campaign for the White House. Obama outlasted former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in a historic contest and now faces Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona for the presidency.

Hillary Rodham Clinton will concede Tuesday night that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, campaign officials said, effectively ending her bid to be the nation's first female president.

In a conference call with New York lawmakers on Tuesday, Clinton told congressional colleagues she would be open to becoming Barack Obama's vice presidential nominee, saying she would consider it if it would help Democrats win the White House.