My students like to say this word in order to signal an abrupt end to a speech, followed by scurrying back to their seats. I’m going to borrow it right now to wrap up the past three years and maybe this blog. I’m officially an RPCV now and have been back in the US for almost two weeks so I figured I should end one adventure before another begins tomorrow when I head back to Bolivia for an 8 day vacation with Kelley.

With my COS, I think it’s also time to reflect on my service as a volunteer. Finishing Peace Corps is a big change…coming back to the US and readjusting to life here is a struggle for some, but I think the more significant change is not being a PCV anymore. For the past three years it has been my identity and the reason for why I was where I was and why I was doing what I was doing. It was also a security blanket…interestingly enough, I am transitioning to what many consider a safe haven for not growing up (grad school) but to me there is a lot more stability in being a PCV…your time in a certain place and what you will do there is planned out for you…the stakes are high (making an impact on peoples’ lives) but low (no struggle to get a raise or promoted through excellent performance) at the same time…no worries of health insurance or making those real decisions that adults need to make. So I find that coming back to the US is a bit scary because it means taking that leap again similar to what it felt like to graduate from college…except now your peers are already three years and three steps ahead of you. It’s not that I don’t think the PC experience is valuable, it is and I would do it all again if I had to make the choice again…but in this day and age when we want it all…and when I’m headed into a grad school program focused on career advancement…I am reminded of what I missed out on.

Did PC live up to my expectations? It’s hard now to think back to what I thought PC would be when I left in 2007. I think I expected to have a transformational experience where I would gain clarity about what direction I want to go in life…but I believe the only revelation was that there would be no revelation. I didn’t discover that I want to work in international development forever (there, I said it) and I’m about 50% sure that I will end up in the public or nonprofit sectors. I do know that volunteering will always be a part of my life and what I cherish most about it is making connections with individuals. I probably wasn’t the best PCV because I lacked some of the necessary skills and passion at times but I did change a little and gain a lot (sadly I think I gained much more than I was able to give back to the people that I worked with).

So here we go with some of the ways I think I have changed as a result of my experience…

• Grew to be more environmentally conscious and less wasteful – hard not to when you’re surrounded by tree huggers and their worm bins and see littering and pollution everyday

• Gained more confidence, especially in public speaking – I tried to live “do one thing every day that scares you” and when you stand in front of a class of 40 students everyday you’ll tire yourself out if you get nervous every time you have class

• Recognized one of my flaws in my impatience when it comes to inefficient processes – trying to harness this for my future career while also learning to be more patient with people

• Realized it takes a lot more than joining Peace Corps to make a meaningful impact on someone in the developing world

• Improved my Spanish and Chinese and learned a few choice words of Sichuan dialect and Quechua

• Became more uptight and laid back at the same time when I found I had to be more assertive in order to get things done but in general lived a pretty lazy (napping) lifestyle

A blog entry about finishing PC wouldn’t be complete without a few notes about readjustment so here’s a few notes about my first few weeks back in the US:

• Unexpected anxiety when driving and dealing with all the choices when shopping in Target and the grocery store (why are there so many kinds of cheese???)

• The phenomenon of walking outside and not seeing a single person (Toto, I don’t think we’re in China anymore)

• The beauty and lush greenery of suburban America…endless well-manicured lawns and trees being the only thing I can see from my bedroom window

• Subsisting on non-stir fried foods…bagel sandwiches with turkey and cheddar, yogurt, fruit, cereal with milk, salads of avocado, fresh mozzarella, carrots with blue cheese

• Relearning to crave sweets – I lost 8 pounds in China due to the lack of snacking and absence of sweets from my diet (they just sucked so much in China that I didn’t want to eat any of them) but I did have a huge ice cream craving last night so I’m back in the saddle!

Not sure if this will be my last blog entry, but I have to leave you with some tidbits from some assignments that I had graded earlier in the semester but didn’t have a chance to blog about.

From the second installment of resumes and cover letters of my Business Writing class…

Under “Interests” my students included exciting things such as: making documents, making friends, “my favorite is chemistry experiment,” and “watching” (no, that was not followed by TV or movies…just watching).

Under “Languages”…”Chinese – naive, English – poor.”

As seen in cover letters:

• “In the holiday I worked out, so I have work experience.”

• “I was a best man at a wedding.” (Yes that’s nice, I should give you a job now?)

• “In my first year, prepare to be a Communist partier. In my second year, be a real Communist partier.” (maybe I should get my student this t-shirt http://www.threadless.com/product/383/The_Communist_Party)

• Scary misspellings of things such as their names and the city that we lived in!

And some confusion that students had (maybe resulting in plagiarism…or a gender identity crisis?)…on the same resume I saw “sex: female” (with a strikethrough) and “gender: male”….and another resume I saw “gender: female” and a sentence that began with “I am a man…”

And finally…ten points to the person who can explain what “Marital Status: Discoverture” means…

I will leave you with a response to a news article that was about the recession: “I hope the global economy will recover as soon as possible so that the Chinese economy will grow more rapidly. Then I can get a good job since I will graduate next year. God bless me, but God maybe is not effective in China.”

That is me. I recently found out from my Chinese teacher via the Panzhihua University rumor mill that I have a rep. Apparently students were talking, either to each other and another teacher overheard, or to the other teacher, and the other teacher asked my Chinese teacher if I was a penny-pincher because students say I wear the same clothes every day. Firstly, I can’t believe they are pots calling the kettle black because, as Jeff can vouch, our students wear the same clothes so often that we identify who they are from afar by what they are wearing. Secondly, really? Don’t students have something better to do than talk about my clothes? How about going and memorizing the English dictionary from A to Z (which they do do for exams)?

I will admit that I do find it a little embarrassing (a little 丢脸if you will) that they are talking about me in that way, but come on, I’m a Peace Corps volunteer, not a fashion model (hmm…although I wish I were?)! Aren’t PCVs supposed to be judged by their magnanimous acts and not their superficial appearances? Oh, who am I kidding. I should have figured I was in the land of frilly skirts and high heels (while mountain climbing) and taken heed. I would like to use this chance to defend myself though since I cannot do so to the rumor-mongering students!

First, although I may wear the same clothes for a week every day to class…I do wash them mid-week! I have stepped up my personal hygiene routine from my Bolivia days and shower (almost) every day and make sure I don’t smell. Second, the clothes I wear are professional and formal(ish). I don’t wear jeans to class, always dark colored pants and a semi-professional shirt (polo shirt or solid color semi-dressy short sleeve shirt)…although I will admit I have not kicked the Chacos habit. I believe this is better than many of the other teachers who wear jeans and t-shirts to class. Okay okay, so all of those that do are guys…the women mostly dress up in fancy garb and HIGH high heels (way beyond US business casual)…but hey, I have seen teachers come to class in workout clothes (like stretchy workout pants and polo shirts) including women! Therefore, I don’t think it’s so outlandish that I wear the same clothes for one week as long as I look professional and put together for class. Honestly, I will attribute part of this to the fact that I am the foreign teacher and maybe they hold me to a higher fashion standard or had lofty expectations for my fashion sense. Finally, I will attribute the wearing the same clothes every week to personal preferences and habits. I still do all my laundry by hand (in my twisted mind I consider it an upper body workout) even though I have a washer so I try to avoid getting too many things dirty. I sweat a ton here (hiking up a mountain under the blistering sun at 3 pm to teach classes in 100 degree weather without AC or a fan) so logical reasoning suggests that I should wear a semi-sweaty shirt instead of getting another one dirty that I have to wash by hand. I will also note that I would prefer to project an image of substance rather than superficiality and that my current clothing style reflects this. In conclusion, maybe I am frugal when it comes to clothes (um, I doubt anyone that knew me in HS, college or my first few post-college years would say that based on my shopping habits) but why buy clothes when you can buy 火锅，烧烤and串串with that money? (hot pot, barbeque and skewers of deliciousness boiled in broth for the Mandarin illiterate)

P.S. Mom, if you’re freaking out that I will maintain this reputation when I am back in the US, don’t worry. Just take me on a shopping spree.

As COS draws closer and closer (only about a month until I am no longer a PCV), I have realized the thing I will miss most about China (other than the delicious MSG-laden food) is the humor that is part of daily life. A day doesn’t pass without me laughing about something I find ridiculous or random...maybe it’s because I find Chinglish more amusing than the average bear or that when I meet those 哭笑不得 (don’t know whether to cry or laugh) situations I have learned to choose the latter.

For example, last week a student presented an idiom in class as part of what M. and I have coined “The Daily Show.” The student taught his classmates what “let the cat out of the bag” meant, but I have to admit that due to his mumbling I had him repeat what he was saying several times. Finally I gave up and had him write it on the board. “Carelessly diarrhea leaked secret.” Sans diarrhea, I believe it would be a perfectly normal definition, but with diarrhea, I become confused. I need to find this online translator that he is using and write them a complaint. I did ask him why 拉肚子 was part of his definition but I didn’t manage to get much of a response since I don’t think he knew what he was saying either. Maybe while I’m at it I need to work on my teaching skills so that my students don’t present nonsense to their impressionable classmates?

Last night, I was a judge in an English drama competition and was trying to control my laughter during several performances that involved random dancers in the background. Sometimes with an umbrella, sometimes a whirling dervish that ended in a collapse on the ground, taking down and popping a string of balloons hung on the wall. I am still trying to figure out what value the interpretive dance added in their plays.

This morning during Chinese class, I was trying to figure out the phrase 传播开来 so I had lovely 魏老师look up in her handy phone dictionary phrases that contained 开来. What she did manage to come up with was 联想开来 which means (maybe somewhat inaccurately) when you start to think of something it just makes you think about it more and more. The dictionary definition? “Shower breasts.”

Yes, this is what I will miss the most.

Last summer I spent a whole month in Beijing and managed to not get to the Great Wall…nor the Summer Palace…nor the Forbidden City…or any other major tourist destinations. I didn’t get to the Water Cube/Bird’s Nest (although I made it to Kro’s Nest, a restaurant with Beijing’s best pizza). Surprisingly I did make it to Tiananmen Square one afternoon after class when M. dragged me there. After COS conference last week in Chengdu, I headed up to Xi’an for vacation…and managed to stay there for four days without seeing the Terracotta Warriors. Ha…I will attribute that to the fact that the tour leaving from the hostel was full and that it was a Chinese national holiday so the city and everywhere was packed. I think that will be my new travel style…go to as many big tourist destinations as possible without seeing the most important things there…

Oh well. I figured when (not a question of if) I come back to China I most likely will be going to Xi’an again so I will have an opportunity to see them then.

Okay, I'm going to try to get back into blogging...after a 5 month hiatus.

Quick update:

1) 2 months left to go in Peace Corps! (and I'm ready to be DONE!)

2) Post PC plans are set: starting bschool at University of Michigan in August (GO BLUE!)

3) Plans for rest of time in China: COS conference, Xi'an, Lijiang, take HSK (hoping for a level 6), enjoy myself and try not to get too worked up about delinquent students :D

4) Back to the US in early July in time for Evie's wedding!

5) Summer plans - vacaciones a Bolivia!

But for now, back to work. 6 hours of student midterms to listen to today so I can run away for a week to COS conference and Xi'an!

Okay, you probably are skeptical at this point that I'm actually posting something on my blog since I haven't in 4 months but I figure now is as good a time as any to get back on the wagon.

Newsflash! Pizza Hut has come to Panzhihua and that is where I'll be having Thanksgiving dinner next Friday (Thursday doesn't work well for me because I have class 8-12 on Friday and M has class until 10 pm on Thursday). Very exciting though!

The bane of my existence this semester has been grading homework for my English Business Communications course that I am teaching to a class of mostly disgruntled senior International Economics and Trade majors. Although it's a task that I avoid doing, I think a few good laughs always come out of it. Number one thing that makes me mad/makes me laugh is the rampant plagiarism that I come across (two students even managed to plagiarize incorrectly - they were supposed to write a dialogue where two people are negotiating the price for a product and they just happened to copy the same part of the dialogue and then hand it in thinking that they had each copied the opposite parts and then had no idea why I gave them a "low" but generous 70%). The second thing is the use of the translator. Oh boy. I don't even know where to get started with this one but I definitely enjoyed how the word "gourmet" kept on popping up in papers that had nothing to do with food or drink.

Here's some excerpts for your enjoyment (I think the people on mymomisafob should start a "mystudentisafob" website...although that doesn't work because they've never gotten on the boat but I say this stuff is just as good as the mymom and mydad stuff):

In a writing assignment to answer job interview questions:

Question: Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10 years?

Answer: Imagine 5 years later you will see a successful trader. 10 years later, not only a successful trader but also a successful housewife you will see. I can do it.

I had asked students to answer the question "why should we hire you for this job?" and numerous (5+) students wrote on their paper "why should we fire you for this job." Ah yes, you have to understand the common Sichuan error of mixing up "h" and "f" (a la Claire - "I thought it was fupiqingjiao (for 2 years)!" in reference to "hupiqingjiao" aka tiger-skinned green pepper, a dish she would eat at least once a week). This time is was particularly clever and comical though. Also the "n" and "l" mistake..."oh lo! what fappened!" is a common chorus that M and I like to use.

A few more from job interviews...

Q: "Why should we hire you?"

A: "If you hire me you will get a machine rather than an employee." (I fail to see how that helps her case???)

Q: “What is one weakness you have?”

A: "Maybe I’m a little careless. But I will pay attention to that." (Ha, that one was a little clever humor that I don't think they intended that I got a kick out of)

Q: “Tell me about yourself.”

A: My motto is “never say die.” (I am having trouble imagining someone saying that seriously in a job interview yet that was one boy's response)

In resumes that the students wrote, I found their responses in the "Interests" section particularly enlightening and creative:

“I like to do many manual things very much.”

"My done the stars is very delicate" ($10 if someone can interpret that for me)

"Attending parties" (just what an employer wants to hear)

And in the "Interesting" section (apparently "Interests" were too plain-vanilla for this student): "playing the ping pong ball" :D

Under "Work Experience" and under the position of teacher a student noted “have tasted of teacher’s hard” (stop thinking those bad thoughts now!)

Under "Qualifications": "Have a passion for the Internet and an abundance of common sense." (what does that make you qualified for?)

I also had some fun with scripts that my sophomores turned in for their midterm plays so I will share a few excerpts from those as well:

"Such a good-shaped girl. I love your long hair, big eyes, and sex make-up. Give me reasons to conquer me." (If you can make sense of that $10 for you, I believe it was part of a play where someone was interviewing for an airline stewardess job)

"This story talks about some nature members want to have a party one day. But the party becomes a condem." (Hmm...this one was from a convoluted play about bunnies, trees, rivers and pollution)

Alrighty, hope that tides you guys over until I am inspired again in 4 months...or sooner perhaps. Happy Thanksgiving All! Gobble Gobble!

So I finished up my first semester of teaching a few weeks ago, handed in my grades, and sat back ready to relax and enjoy my summer. After a few weeks of saying goodbye to C., C. and L, a bit of lesson planning and relaxation, I will head to Leshan tomorrow for two weeks to teach teachers in Peace Corps’ summer project and then continue on to Beijing via Chengdu where I’ll take a TEFL certification course during the month of August (visitors welcome in Beijing anytime during the month of August!). Also, as summer progresses, deadlines for grad school (particularly MBA) applications are rapidly approaching so I’ll also be spending every spare moment filling out forms, pondering the meaning of life and how an MBA relates to that, and writing essays (suggestions welcome for tricky topics like “what matters most to you and why?”). Next semester I’ll be busy finishing up apps (hopefully followed by some interviews), teaching 4 classes of sophomore oral English and one class of English business communications for the international trade and economics department. Alright…that’s all I got for now, until more exciting things happen to me…chau!

Unfortunately this account comes months after it happened…but still amusing nonetheless. By this point both C. and C. (other PCVs in town) have finished their services and are either back in the US or traveling before returning home. It will be exciting to see who PC sends down here as my new BFF.

So C. thought that her rat was gone, squished underfoot by her sullen college student neighbor; the hole in her bathroom where she thought the rat came from was plugged with cement and she was living a blissfully simple life…until one night. C. was innocently washing some dishes when she suddenly dropped the sponge. She felt something on her foot and assumed the sponge had just hit her foot and then bounced off but when she looked down the sponge had fallen into a bucket by her foot. She glanced to her right just in time to see RJ (let’s call him RJ for Rat Junior, not that it was any smaller than the first one) scurry towards the study next to her bedroom. Yes, the sensation on her bare foot was RJ scurrying over her foot as an obstacle in his path.

With her experience in dealing with rats, C. quickly sprung into action and slammed the door to trap RJ in the study. Since it was late at night (maybe 10 or 11), C. figured she would just contain RJ in the room and then get a manly man (such as M or PM) to deal with RJ the next day. But little did she know, RJ was not just any rat, he turned out to be a world-class acrobat that displayed oddly human characteristics. C’s apartment has extremely odd architecture…her bedroom is separated from her study by a wall…but a wall with a large window in the middle of it. Thus, began a sleepless evening of rat watching for C. At first, C. tried to go to sleep but just as she thought she was going to get some rest…RJ started his crazy antics. RJ started climbing up the window and hanging on the window frame like some high-flying trapeze artist -- C. would counter-attack by banging on the window – only to have RJ run down the window and then later on run back up to repeat the routine. RJ’s other tactics included periodically (on the hour) running full force and slamming his body into the window, picking up a small set of keys with his mouth and scraping them against the window, and staring C. down like she was some worthy opponent. During the course of the night, she had texted us to update us on the events, 3 am, 4 am, 5 am…and so on. Finally, the next afternoon M made it over to C’s apartment to take care of the problem, armed with courage…and of course…a broom. The plan of attack involved M and C darting into the study and closing the door behind them, C assuming her perch on a stool (similar to last time) as M began the search around the room for RJ. Interestingly, a preliminary search of the room turned up nothing so M and C decided to do a more thorough search which involved going to the big closet in the room and taking everything out to see if RJ was hiding among the things in the closet. During their search through the closet, M lifted up a suitcase that was on a shelf…and lo and behold…there was RJ lying there….natural reaction: M screams, C screams…then they think about what to do next. With broom in hand, they formulate a plan to get RJ to come down from the shelf so that they can get rid of him. With a leap of faith in M’s baseball skills…they open the window and miraculously get RJ to jump down from the shelf and in mid-air M bats RJ out the window! RJ flies out the window (of the 4th floor) and lands with a thud…but not 4 stories down as M and C had hoped. They look out the window and see RJ lying on the awning of the 3rd floor, one floor below C’s apartment. RJ is lying motionless and M and C thing that he is a goner…but a few pokes with the trusty broom and they realize that RJ is stunned but still quite alive! So they decide to push RJ with the broom off the awning and he lands with a thud on the 2nd floor awning and out of view. The end of the story is up to your imagination…all that is known is that RJ was building a nest in C’s closet (evidenced by paper scraps and an enormous quantity of rat poo) and that he has since moved on to a new place of residence or an untimely death.

So even though I signed up for a Freedur account so I could access blogspot (still not accessible in my apartment), I’ve had an inexcusable absence from blogging. I believe the problem here is that 1) my English writing skills are in decline so anything I write just sounds awkward and 2) if I don’t write something down immediately after it happens, the vividness of the memory tends to fade and then I don’t feel a burning desire to write about it anymore and share about it with you loyal readers.

I promise I'll try to update more often, but I can't promise I will take pictures (China doesn't seem that exotic to me compared to Bolivia so I don't feel the need to document it in pictures). Moving on...

Here is some feedback that I received in my semester-end teaching evaluations. I asked students to answer the following questions and hand it in anonymously to help me improve my teaching and the classes for next semester. 1) What activities did you find helpful? Enjoyable? 2) What activities did you think were not helpful? Not enjoyable? 3) Do you have any other suggestions or ideas for the class?

Yes, I am aware that some of these things are completely random and do not answer my questions.

“Climb mountains is most helpful. It tell me don’t give up till you reach the top of the mountains.”

“One thing I enjoy most is communicating with you. Discussing with somethings. Joy is a knowledgeable person!”

“I think you had done well in this semester. I love you!”

“Joy is a very good teacher. You have done more for us. Thank you. Thank you very much! And, I like your smile very much!”

“To by honesty, you are really very kind. I have no suggestion because you are perfect.”

“You teach very good. (apparently not good enough to use well) Perfect! And you are beautiful. Treating us very kind. No activities are not helpful. And I strangely hope you won’t leave us next term. Sincerely! Good! Good! Good!”

“I think you are a cute girl. In my eyes. You’re perfect. I advise you to have a boyfriend. Maybe in this way you will work better.”

“The only advise I’ll give you is that please smile more. Smile makes you be young.”

“You can smile more and make students feel more relax. Also, you can be more beautiful!”

The bad and the ugly: “Lack of activity. Class is very boring. “We are not interested in your class.” *Ouch* And that's a student I'm going to have next semester. I will get my best song and dance ready for that class. Perhaps a rendition of the butt floss followed by a few coffee grinders is in order...

I'm alive!

Yes, in Bolivia I had to deal with all sorts of nonsense. Such as when they tapar-ed a BRICK WALL in front of the door to prevent anyone from getting in the Alcaldia's (mayor's office) but never did I have to deal with censorship (the virtual brick wall that is built up around the Internet in China). I will explain my absence of the past few months from the fact that the Chinese government decided that blogspot hosted too many controversial blogs so they had to block the entire website. Along with youtube (lakjdflaskafj!).

But now I'm back. Props to Adam Bender for his bit of computer saavy and Freedur and I will once again be posting blog entries (once I write something meaningful) :D Plus I am happy to say that I can continue reading all other PCV blogs and other meaningful blogs that are hosted on blogspot such as FUPenguin and Hungry in Taipei! Wheee!

Finally getting around to updating. I think it actually takes me about a month to collect an adequate number newsworthy stories (or those that I deem newsworthy) in order to post an entry. Anyways, I find that living outside of the US is the best way to realize how American you really are. I recently was talking with a student who told me about her plans to start running again soon but that she needed to limit her running because running everyday is "bad" for you. When I asked her why, she pointed to her calves and said that it was because if you run everyday then your calf muscles get bigger. Oh my. That would be horrible to have toned muscular legs. Good thing I've been lazy in China so I only run once or twice a week which must keep my calf muscles in a semi-atrophied state. Ha, apparently this comment goes along with the Chinese mentality that the more waif-like you look (as in I could break some of these girls over my knee with one hand tied behind my back), the more beautiful you are. Another thing...Chinese women are fanatical about hiding from the sun. Yes, it is true that the sun can cause skin damage and give you wrinkles, especially in a place where it is so strong like Panzhihua...but I saw a woman taking this too far the other day. She was riding on the back of a motorcycle carrying an umbrella...that was open in order to hide from the sun. Hmm...somehow I think the risks of obstructing the view of the driver outweigh the benefits from 5 minutes of sun exposure. Isn't a bit of daily sunlight good for you anyways? How about that vitamin D? That wasn't the first time that I saw parasol/umbrella carrying to the extreme though...I've also seen people open their umbrellas while sitting on the bus in order to block the sun coming in the window. I'm just waiting for the day when I see someone carrying an umbrella while engaged in basketball or soccer. Oh wait, girls here don't play those sports. Ha, they already find volleyball too painful for their arms. What delicate creatures they are!

In other news, I said goodbye to the GMAT after I took the exam in Chengdu. I surprised myself with a good score so no more studying for me...which actually makes me feel empty in a way. Looking back I spent almost a year studying on and off for the exam so now that I don't have to study I need to find something else to focus my attention on...Chinese?

Also, I have been having major western food cravings lately. I am not sure why since I just came back from Chengdu less than two weeks ago where I had lots of Pete's and Bookworm but I have been thinking about barbeques lately. Something along the lines of a grilled chili dog and some potato salad would be good right about now. Add in some corn on the cob smothered in butter and salt and a nice kebab and I would be a happy camper. Also some sandwiches! Reuben or Cuban? Mmm... I haven't been too hungry lately because it's been too hot and the food around here isn't appetizing when it's so hot so I think I've actually lost a few pounds since the pants that I bought when I was in the US are actually a bit loose now. I have discovered that wide leg dress pants are the best thing for a summer teaching wardrobe, especially when worn with Chacos. And I think my students must have thought I was dressed well during class this week because during the break of one of my classes they wanted to have a photo shoot with me. This means they took random pictures of me by myself and then photos of me with them also. Plus I caught a girl taking a photo of me when we went outside for our Earth Day activity and I put on my "100% paper hat" (made in China, bought in Bolivia, brought to China). That hat has evoked responses of laughter (workers at the noodle shop) and comments from others that it is either a farmer's hat or an old man's hat but I refuse to give it up! Mark my words, I am a trendsetter and soon you will see everyone with floppy straw hats on!

Oh you know you love the puns. Here's something extra for you if you do! http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/opinion/28Tartakovsky.html My favorite line -- 'I asked a friend of mine, an inveterate punster, whether he punned while on dates. “Sure, I pun on dates,” he replied. “On prunes and figs, too.”'

Anyways, moving on to the rat's tale. So recently C. was doing battle with a rat that decided to occupy her home. She noticed that bites of apples that she would leave out were missing so she called up the Waiban and had the maintenance people come in and plug up a hole in her bathroom that she thought the rat was coming in through. She was avoiding taking any major action (aka getting a cat or rat poison) because she was afraid of coming home with a dead rat body lying on her floor and was trying to avoid a bloody scuffle between a cat and her rat. BTW, you would normally think that it was a mouse occupying her home, but it was a confirmed rat because although its body was the size of a plump mouse, there was a "telltail" sign of a long rat tail! One day she came home and was going about her business making oatmeal in the kitchen when she turned around and was face to face with Mr. Rat. He was perched on her shelf where she keeps her food and just stared back at her. C. began to freak out so she called M. who took about 40 minutes to get there, the whole time C. stayed there staring at the rat, perched on a little stool (afraid that if the rat came down it would...uhh...bite her feet?), trying to scare the rat into staying put temporarily so that when M. finally got there they could catch him. C. managed to keep the rat in place and when M. finally arrived they managed to scare the rat into coming off of the shelf. M. then proceeded to sweep it (yes with a broom) towards the door to get it out of the apartment while Mr. Rat ran frantically in all directions bumping into things. So eventually M. swept him out the door...but this is the kicker...Mr. Rat attempted to run back INTO the apartment! Apparently Mr. Rat had been living there for quite awhile and decided that it was his home, not theirs and that M. and C. should leave. So M. continued to sweep Mr. Rat down the stairs (from the 4th floor that C. lives on I believe)as Mr. Rat kept on trying to run up the stairs to get back "home." Finally M. was sweeping Mr. Rat down the last set of stairs and landing to get him out and a student comes walking up. This student apparently had an expressionless face (I am picturing someone like Frankenstein that is not smiling) and was just stomping up the stairs. So M. is there with his broom and rat and is about ready to sweep the rat down and out of the apartment and decides to warn the student with some yells of "lao3shu3! lao3shu3!". The student completely ignores this and keeps on stomping up to the first landing where M. is there with the broom and rat. And then...the student keeps on stomping and with one big stomp squashes Mr. Rat under his foot! As a result, M. and C. (who was following the action) shriek and scream and run back upstairs to C.'s apartment without looking back for the dead squashed rat. And the student Frankenstein follows them and apparently is C.'s next door neighbor! So the day I heard that story, I discovered another cultural difference. When it comes to mice or rats, they are like any other vermin (e.g. cockroaches, spiders, etc.)...you just squash them under your foot to get rid of them. But I'm going to say one thing, that I was as grossed out as C. and M. by this because I can imagine squashing a fat mouse under your foot getting very messy...ewwwww. I guess Mr. Rat is no longer going to be bothering C. anymore due to the fact that he met an untimely death under the foot of a student.

Side note: the other night at dinner we (L., C., M. and I) were laughing about farting. Yes, I wonder if we will reach an age when bathroom humor fails to amuse. Anyways, the idea was that in Oral English class or at English Corner we always do impromptu speaking (basically draw a topic on a slip of paper from a hat and speak about it for 1-2 minutes) and that how hilarious it would be if we did crazy impromptu topics. Such as "My Biggest Fart"...oh we just got a kick out of imagining our students receiving that topic. Because there is definitely a culture here in China that farting in public is generally fine (M. told us a story of a man in the bookstore right here in our own Panzhihua that demonstrated this) so maybe the amusing part is all in the American mentality (but then again, L. who thought our discussion was amusing is Chinese). And as a final note, today's Chinese lesson. If you wanted to call someone a "Fart King" or "Fart Queen" (aka someone who farts a lot) you can use the term "Pi4 Wang2" (yes, as in fang4pi4 de pi4!).

Yes Evie, I know I did. My life is not exciting as of late though! Let's just post some random stuff why don't we.

I had my Chinese class today with Wang Laoshi and she warned me to use an umbrella when I go outside because the sun in Panzhihua is especially strong and I will get very dark if I don't. She followed it up by saying that Claire and Colleen are not required to do so because they are white, and white people actually become whiter when they are in the sun. Now how's that for a little known fact?

T-10 days until the GMAT! I compare it to the last 200m in an 800m race (my personal favorite) so I think it's time to buckle down and study hard. This upcoming weekend is a holiday (we have the day off on Monday) but I will be cooping myself up in my apartment to study study study.

Jelly Belly! I am working on finishing off the canister of these that Kelley gave me when I was in Chengdu. So delicious. I especially like them when they are all mixed together like this and you get yucky flavors intermittently...I have always found buttered popcorn a bit odd and I still do and I'm not a fan of the banana flavor (I think that's the dark yellow with brown spots) but the juicy pear flavor is really growing on me and I also enjoy the vanilla ones (white with black dots, not the brown spots which I believe is smores flavor or something like that).

Chunk of beef in vacuum sealed package or a full package of "Salt & Crisp: cheerful Gangdong good taste for you" cookies? Those are your choices when it comes to airline snacks in China. I flew to Chengdu this past weekend for a meeting and got some beef chunks on the way there and cookies on the way back. I was quite surprised by the cookies since I am used to receiving a miniature package of pretzels or peanuts or whatever on the plane, but apparently China Airlines goes all out and lets you have a large pack of cookies to yourself. I am not complaining, although I do prefer the beef chunks.

Today, I had students in my class do movie scene role plays in groups where I gave them a genre and they had to create a story and then perform it for the class. Oddly enough, the "martial arts" film had people using guns to catch the bad guys (no martial arts involved) and then the "mystery" film...well...I'm still trying to figure out what it was. More like a brainteaser I guess. They had one student go up there and explain how there was a woman (40 yrs old) and her daughter (20 years old) and then a man (42 years old) and his son (22 years old) and the woman marries the son and the man marries the daughter and something about their convoluted relationship and what you were supposed to call the father (grandfather) and the mother (grandmother) and how they would be brother and sister to the son/daughter. Or something weird like that. I still don't have it straight and clearly I should have explained "mystery" film better. I was thinking we were going to get a whodunit type scene where someone is dead and they try to figure who did it...but yeah.

Okay, that's all I got. More to come when interesting things actually happen in my life!

I love the freshmen Class 2 girls. Today during our break they came to find me (I don't teach their class) and gave me a gift. I opened it, and lo and behold, a compact! It is adorned with a bear dressed up in a peacoat drinking some kind of cocktail and the phrase "Happy Virus" on it. Very sparkly and very fashion. It is the perfect gift because the other day at dinner they were asking me what I eat for breakfast and I said that I eat oatmeal sometimes and junk food other times. I said I didn't buy baozi (steamed bun stuffed with meat) or man tou (steamed bun) on the way to class because I was afraid of having it stuck in my teeth and teaching that way and I didn't have a mirror. But now I do! So I can eat baozi and mantou everyday on the way to class and be fat and happy.

Chinese lesson of the Day: Fat is not an insult here. Fat has a positive connotation of being pleasantly plump and cute. If you want to insult someone about his or her weight you need to call them 肥 (fei2) - which I believe translates more to "fatty."

So I gave my sophomore students an assignment to fill out a biography card with general data and the answers to a few questions. There were a few choice jewels hidden among mostly generic answers. My favorite had to be the card of a student where he put his gender as "Handsome Man" and went on to say that the one thing that makes him different from others is the following re: everyone's fave football star. "Most of us hope themselves have Beckham's face. However, for me, I don't want to have this kind of hope because everyone says to me: 'Beckham looks like you.' This is me." Yes, ladies and gentlemen, somewhere along the line Beckham became Asian. A few other notes of what makes a student different from others: "I think I'm a beautiful and fair maiden," "I'm fat and quiet," and "I'm good at thinking!" Classic.

I also went to a lunch today (something related to Women's Day and the teacher's union) where there were the usual rounds of toasts with beer. Of course, the men like trying to get you to chug a glass of beer with them, but what I realize is that as much as they like testing you to see if you drink, I like throwing it back in their faces and taking a sip and refusing the demands of "gan bei" until they give up. Headstrong independent American women, don't mess with us. We know that you think all Americans can drink a lot of beer and that we enjoy it, but if we don't want to, we won't. Muahaha. I win. I don't mind drinking some beer every now and again, but I don't particularly like doing it at lunchtime, especially when I have an afternoon of studying for the GMAT ahead of me. I particularly enjoyed one man's faulty logic that said I was obligated finish my glass of beer because China gave Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan (the pandas) to Taiwan. Right.

"Hi, my name is Joy, I am 19 years old and from Singapore and I will be your teacher for the semester." Yup, the good old Panzhihua U. rumor mill was at it again. One student told me she heard I was from Singapore and another student told me she heard I was born in 1989 (making me the same age as half of my students). Completely illogical, but then again does it ever make any sense?

So far, so good though. I had all four of my classes and although some went off better than others, all in all I think I made a decent first impression. Even the class that I felt went the worst of all of them (evidence was the clueless expression on about half of the students' faces throughout class), a student that was Michael's student last semester that was in that class told him that I was "funny" and I "speak loudly." Hey, you hear that one? Man, I never thought that day would come but I guess my slow yelling technique for presenting in class is working! My classes have anywhere from 35-45 students so I have to be a little loud to get the attention of the people in the back of the classroom :)

I was thrilled to have a big group of girls from one of my classes come to English Corner, rearing to get to know me better and hang out with me (although the Class 2 girls that I met last semester will always be my best buds). It's a good feeling to finally have my own students though, and as tiring as teaching may be (yes, we do need that hour-long nap if you teach from 8-12 in the morning), it's definitely rewarding. I can already tell it's also going to be a challenge though, keeping the students interested throughout the semester as well as finding ways to let them have fun, but improve their English at the same time. That's tricky.

Ok, I'm tired now! English Corner is an energy-drainer. Apparently Women's Day in China is coming up though so that means we have a volleyball thing and lunch (hopefully a tasty banquet) with our WaiBan and then Sunday we're headed to Xi1Chang1 for a daytrip. Woohoo. Now if I could just find time to study for the GMAT...

So things sometimes...or should I say frequently...don't work the way you expect them to in China. Last night I was going in and out of my kitchen and when I turned on the light I heard a crackling type sound. I looked up at the light and didn't see anything odd so I ignored it. But this morning when I woke up I looked up at the kitchen light and discovered that the lightbulb had melted through the plastic covering/light fixture thing. Whaaaat. Literally the lightbulb is half in and half out of the light fixture with melted plastic on it. Not sure exactly how that happened (I wasn't using the light for any abnormally long period of time yesterday that I know of)...but I think I'd better replace it. Time to call the Waiban!

So I’ve been inexcusably MIA for a few months now with no blog updates. But my belated new year’s resolution (along with many others) will be to write once a week something, anything, so you have something to read when you’re bored. Ha, most likely everyone has stopped looking at this blog so I’ll be writing in vain…but anyways. I actually have internet in my apartment so I should be updating quite frequently…but in reality I am spending a lot of internet time stalking people on Facebook and that just doesn’t leave me enough time to blog I guess. Somehow being in China seems like less of an adventure than Bolivia. Maybe to others China is a very foreign place, but to me it kind of feels like home being that I spent a summer in Shanghai and have been to Taiwan numerous times in the past couple of years (hmm…yes, that last point…well let’s just say based on the vicinity to China it seems not as out there).

I have to warn you though that these blog entries will probably be less well-thought out (you’re thinking…as if they were deeply insightful before?) since I’ll just post as I go instead of spending hours on my laptop without internet connection re-reading to make sure I got most of the grammar correct and didn’t reveal too many obscene details of my boring life :) Strangely enough, the reason I was inspired to write now, after all these months, is that last night I had a scary bug incident and it made me think of my time in Bolivia in my first house when I got acquainted with a few scorpions and the big scary bug that when it splattered it made a big mess. I saw a cockroach last night and so I got out the trusty Raid and sprayed it. And sprayed the area around the kitchen and bathroom. And then came back a few hours later and saw a bunch of semi-dead cockroaches squirming around. And then woke up this morning to 5 cockroaches of different sizes scattered around my apartment in the dying stages. Two of them were even encroaching on my bedroom territory (I think they were disoriented and got lost in their search for food). I did some research online and they said to flush them down the toilet so that’s what I did. But I wonder if spraying that spray and the scent of dead cockroaches attracted more to my apartment. Hopefully not or I’ll have to figure out how to say boric acid in Chinese to really deal with them (supp the most effective way to deal with them). Anyways, I think that cockroaches are really gross…definitely worse than the other bugs I encountered in Bolivia…I’d actually take scorpions over cockroaches. I think my fear of them is how fast they scurry around and they could scurry right up and onto me. But I guess if it came down to mice or cockroaches I’d have to think about it a little more. The annoying thing is that I don’t really keep food in my apartment so I’m wondering why they come here (maybe just to get a drink when they are thirsty). Everything I have is pretty much in plastic packages, I never leave dirty dishes in the sink, and the only things I “cook” in my apartment are ramen and oatmeal. Oh well. I think I need to get over my fear of cockroaches…I literally could not fall asleep last night because I pictured them coming into my room and crawling all over the place. Ick ick ick. Wah mommy wah.

Since I last posted I have gotten well-adjusted (习惯了!) to Panzhihua and celebrated my first Chinese Christmas, New Year’s with shaokao and a bunch of students, went to Chengdu for IST (3 days of training with other volunteers), went to Taiwan for 3 weeks for Spring Festival to hang out with the relatives and my mommy, and most recently gone up to Chengdu to see Kelley who flew in from London. Yup, that was my last two months. Now I have one week before classes start up so I’m busy planning and syllabus writing, etc. along with studying for the GMAT daily since I registered to take the exam in Chengdu on April 9th.

I also became extremely lazy in the past few months and stopped running completely…but then just tried to start a few days ago. 2 miles on the track and I’m sore! Lame. And if you ever didn’t know what muscles you use when you run, I have to say the most sore are the abductors and adductors (weird, you would think quads, hamstrings or calves, but no). Anyways, that’s another one of my things for this semester. So I’m working on being a good teacher of English, learning Chinese, studying for the GMAT, and not being a 胖子 (pang zi – aka fatty!). Which reminds me…one of the tastiest meals in Taiwan was at a little fast food joint called 周胖子饺子…some sesame noodles, dumplings, 凉菜 (a 1000 yr old egg that was actually tasty!).

Okay, that should whet your apetite (har har, no pun intended) for posts to come. Apologies if you wanted to hear about TEFL in China…I haven’t started working yet so I have nothing to talk about…maybe next week :)

So I've always been a person that is big on personal development and work-life balance...and after 2 weeks in Panzhihua I have come up with my official list of goals for my free time while I am here. I hope to spend the majority of my time that is not spent in class doing these activities (or combining the activities with hanging out with students and helping them practice their English). I'm finally giving up on my dreams of playing guitar (yeah, if it hasn't happened by now it's probably not going to) and focusing on a few things that I already have some interest in.

1. Chinese - Self-explanatory. It's one of my main personal reasons for being here and a lifelong (well, since college...what was I doing slacking off in Chinese School all those years...) goal of mine.

2. Badminton - A very popular sport that I used to love dearly in high school. So much so that I used to skip other classes to attend gym classes so I could play more. I don't want to play the backyard laid-back version...I want to play the as-seen-on-TV, birdies whizzing by, hardcore, diving all over the place, competitive version. I played 2 hours today and I can tell my arm is going to be very sore tomorrow.

3. Ping-Pong - Another national hobby. There's no lack of people to practice with and with the skill that they have, there's no choice but to improve.

4. Chinese Chess - Trying to re-learn a game that I used to play as a child. It'll probably be good exercise for the brain.

5. Mahjong - Who doesn't want to be one of those expert mahjong players? I want to be able to say I play, not just I know how to play. Maybe I'll even get a chance to play with my dad then.

As you can see, most of these hobbies are very Chinese...I am following the advice of one of Claire's students -- "when in China, do as the Chinese do." I find myself feeling very American some days, but I figure I can also discover my inner Chinese soul also during my time here.

1) I am going to have some killer legs when I leave this place. The city is nestled among the mountains and there are some steep climbs to get anywhere – including from my apartment to the classrooms and campus.

2) Bubble tea exists! I stumbled across a shop in my wanderings and the bubble tea shop (aka Jack Hut Fresh Drink) will probably be a regular stop for me on my trips into town.

3) I had my first cockroach sighting in my apartment yesterday. Today I bought my first can of cockroach killer. I don’t so much mind dead cockroaches, but I am not fond of the live scurrying variety. And although I had some issues with bugs when I first got to my site in Bolivia, I actually would prefer scorpion infestations to cockroach infestations…the natural countryside bug vs. city dirty bug argument. I’m just very squeamish.

4) Wang Ke Long. It’s like Carrefour where you can buy anything from appliances to apples. I went there today to buy some household supplies and was attacked by the random salespeople on all sides. I think they enjoyed helping me because I actually bought their ridiculous fancy things after they convincingly gave me their best pitches and product demonstrations. 150 kuai wet/dry mop anyone? I also happened to checkout behind the guy that was buying the 3 plastic bags (as in shopping grocery bags, not small produce bags) of pig fat. No, these were not sealed bags, they were grocery bags that had been shoveled full of pig fat and tied at the top with the fat oozing and spilling out the top. No doubt, pig fat ending up on the cashiers’ hands and the handle of the broom that I bought. Lovely.

Here's the English website. Yes, we are so advanced we have an English website!

http://www.panzhihua-university.com/

Check out the photos under "The University" - "Pictoral"...

Although I’ve always fancied that I am a kumquat in the game of “if you were a fruit, what fruit would you be?” apparently I evoke responses of cuteness and apple-ness as well. That was the first remark I got when I was introduced to the medical assistant in the PC office here.

Yes indeed, I’m finally in China after a month and a half of slacking in the States. I spent one week in Chengdu for training and then took a 12 hr overnight train to arrive in Panzhihua, my site, this morning. It’s been an interesting experience so far. I can already see that the challenges of PC China (or shall we say U.S.-China Friendship Volunteers) are totally different from what we had in PC Bolivia. I am living in a city of 1 million people in southern Sichuan province, I have a washing machine and internet access in my massive apartment, and I have what appears to be a real job here as a university teacher. I blend in better than any other volunteer (it puts my sunglasses Bolivian disguise to shame) and am more likely mistaken for being mentally handicapped based on my level of Mandarin and blank looks following questions in Sichuan dialect rather than applauded for my feeble Spanish and Quechua. But there are some threads that tie my experience in Bolivia to what I see here. We’re still fulfilling the 3 Peace Corps’ goals of providing skilled people where they are needed and cultural exchange…and even the mountains surrounding Panzhihua make me think of las montañas del Valle Alto. So far, I’m very hopeful about what my experience can be here though. I spent a lot of my time in the States feeling guilty for not accomplishing what I had hoped to during my time in Bolivia and the choice I made to leave what I had started in Bolivia to go halfway around the world and start over in a move that can only really be called selfish. Finally arriving in China has helped me to move on and think about the future though. When I finish my work with Peace Corps, I will have spent more time in China than Bolivia and will hopefully have a better mastery of Chinese than Spanish. I hope that I will help students improve their English to the best of their abilities and that I will learn how to teach in the process. I have high hopes for my language skills and dreams of HSK success, but those are tempered by the fact that in contrast to where Spanish was critical for my work in Bolivia, Chinese is not especially necessary in being a successful teacher. Also, I will be teaching English majors who have blown me away in the classes that I observed with their huge vocabularies and overall knowledge beyond any English students that I encountered in Bolivia. It seems as if what they really need is just to practice all the knowledge that they have stored in their impressive memories and my job is to make sure that what they can read and write can be used in practical oral speech as well.

I’m actually not going to be teaching for a few months though…since I don’t have any formal classroom teaching experience (minus 10 student classes with Literacy Volunteers), I’m going to be spending the next two months observing classes and planning for next semester. Then we’ll all go on the long break for Chinese New Year and then I will start anew in February with a new class of students (hopefully having blazing success!). There are two other foreign teachers here, Claire, another PCV who has been here since Fall 2007, and Michael, a friend of another PCV that is in Panzhihua at another university. Other than us 4 Americans though, the expat community is pretty much nonexistent (this contrasts greatly with the concentration in Chengdu and Chongqing). We’re also pretty isolated from other volunteers which is a double-edged sword (hah, gotta start practicing those idioms so I can teach them to my students, did I even use that right? maybe I should call it a mixed blessing). It probably helps us integrate better into Chinese culture and concentrate more on the language without the distraction of going out with volunteers and expats every weekend, but getting to hang out with other volunteers is half the PC experience and we’re really too far away to even get together with others during weekends when there are holidays. Plus it stinks that I got to know some of the volunteers in Chengdu but it’s possible I might only see them once more before they finish their service since they are all in the group that came in 2007. Some of the more memorable experiences during my time in Chengdu were my first Sichuan hot pot and shaokao along with karaoke and getting to see the other volunteers teach as well as their secondary projects. I got to observe an English language singing contest that is held annually at one of the schools (one girl even sang Tori Amos and it was freaking awesome), a hip hop class that one of the volunteers teaches, and a lecture on American food that culminated in a sandwich making contest. The best part probably being the cute little Chinese students that did not know that mustard and peanut butter probably are not the best combination which resulted in their classmates that were the judges running out of the room to spit out the atrocious combinations that they were forced to try. Something tells me that those students do not have a very good impression of the American sandwich. Jelly and red onion anyone? I also had a lot of laughs from the English names chosen by students (and teachers!)…I met a teacher named Tomato and there were students with colorful names such as Moon, Jujubur, Fish, Lantern, and Auntie. Yes, there are fun times to be had in China!

So after a lengthy process and the most stressful week of my life, Alegría en Bolivia is no longer. I will be transferring to Peace Corps in China to teach university-level English for 2 years (pending medical clearance and visa). First I will be coming back to the States for a visit while I wait for my clearance...which could take anywhere from a few weeks to a month or so and then off to China (among the possibilities are Sichuan, Guizhou, Chongqing, and Gansu). I'll be doing 2 weeks of training/orientation in Chengdu and then be off to my site...which apparently will have a minimum population of 200,000 people. Goodbye rural Bolivia, hello urban China. I'm REALLY excited about the opportunity to FINALLY learn Mandarin at an acceptable level and just as excited to be getting a more structured job AND to teach English as my main job. Apparently every cloud has a silver lining.

Dear Bolivia - I will miss you A LOT. But it's not "adios," it's more of an "hasta luego" or "tinkunakama" because I know in my heart that I will be back. Te cuida bien y te amo.

Sad news... http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/09/16/bolivia.peace.corps/

Next steps...figuring out what to do with my life while here in Peru...

Posted some new photos...Chile vaca and random Bolivia moments...link at right.

I have discovered a love for reading fashion and celeb magazines since I have come to Bolivia. Nevertheless, I was disturbed by two articles in particular that I came across in the August issue of Vogue that my mom recently had delievered to me. They both appeared in the section which is titled “trouble spots”…all about plastic surgery and new fancy cosmetic procedures. These two articles each warranted two pages…one was on the “trouble spot” of the fat bulge that is in your armpit that overflows when you wear a strapless top and the other was on knees and the cosmetic procedures (such as lipo) that can be done to make your KNEES more attractive. I see several problems with this scenario. First, that someone actually is obsessed enough about their armpit and knee appearance to write a two-page article about each of them. Secondly, that people are actually spending money on procedures to reduce their armpit fat roll that you can only see when you wear a strapless garment or strangely unnatural surgeries on their knees to improve asthetics (we are not talking about repairing ligaments and critical components here). And thirdly, that I am wasting my time reading an article on making your armpit and knees more attractive. This last problem is definitely within my control…but I almost get the feeling that these articles are satirical and making fun of people that actually care about these things (do people REALLY care about these things?!). Whatever, the frightening nature of those articles was offset by the pretty pictures of Kate Moss and an article about one of the Vogue editors where she was pictured with all of her cats. Really cute, smashed-in-face, fluffy cats. As I said to Sarah during our vacation to Lake Titicaca after a particularly satisfying meal where we waddled out of the restaurant, “let’s go back to the hotel and stare at the cats in Vogue and then go to bed.” Sounds like a perfect evening to me indeed.

Other notes…I saw a picture of a proscuitto and fresh mozzarella sandwich on this really crusty bread with tomato and lettuce in a magazine and it made me very very hungry. Proscuitto-wrapped asparagus anyone? Also, Evo came to Tarata today! I saw him speak (well, heard him speak, I was too busy lounging on the grass by the ice cream cart ladies) and was impressed by the use of helicopter transport that created a big dust swirl when he landed and took off…just like the movies!

Just wanted to give a shout out for a couple of packages I received recently. First to Lisa for her Jelly Belly filled birthday package (it’s very difficult to get good jelly beans in Bolivia). And also to Yoko and Dan for the “religious articles”…which included holy water (REAL Starbucks coffee!) and Communion wafers (Chips Ahoy!) along with some really tasty looking Asian treats! Very much appreciated and will be fully enjoyed and in-joy-ed (I shall be consuming it all...you get the point). Thank you, thank you, and thank you!

I am going to have to admit that I realized while I was in Chile and Easter Island that for having been to around 25 countries and counting, I’m not a true traveler of the backpacking variety. Translation – I’m a sissy. My opinion on traveling is that there is a certain thrill when it comes to learning about a new place and culture and seeing some pretty cool things (and tasting some new foods!) that I crave. But in essence, traveling = vacation. Therefore, based on logic, if vacations should be relaxing and luxurious as possible on the available budget, traveling should be relaxing and luxurious as well. Consequently, I am now viewing my post PC service plans of “backpacking” through Central America with some trepidation, but then again, I should be in good company so the whole DMB “turns out not where but who you’re with that really matters” should apply and make scary hostels and torturous bus rides manageable right?

Anyways, so I guess some of you out there want to hear about my trip. Let’s start with the guilty confessions. My first meal was at McDonalds, followed by a second meal at Dunkin Donuts…and I certainly spent most of my budget on food (or a variety of ridiculously overpriced things that I either didn’t need or purchased in spite of the ludicrous price). I had two fantastic sushi meals, ceviche (which might be my new favorite food), a lovely mahi mahi dinner, and a super-splurge Indian meal…not to mention that tuna and scallop tartare…yum yum YUM. I bought Starbucks twice (vanilla latte and caramel macchiato) and my scariest moment was when I bought the current Time magazine in the Santiago airport for $9. Yes, that’s 9 USD. I could have bought an actual book for that same price…but I have acquired a certain addiction to American magazines since I’ve been down here. Also, I have a warning to people that have not been in a shopping mall for a long time that it can be a scary and disorienting experience. The first purchase I made in the mall I went to in Santiago was 4 pairs of neon colored capri tights (what I call the neon citrus colors – neon blue, orange, yellow and green). I am not sure why, but I thought Lindsay, Sarah, Kasia and I could use them during a “superstar” costume party during the all volunteer gathering. Don’t worry, that was followed by sensible purchases of hiking shoes and trail running shoes and spending money that I am not recouping via my nonexistent salary.

Overall my first real solo traveling experience went well. It had a slow start in Santiago when I got there because I have a general fear of new places the first day I am there and wandering too far off the beaten path, but the second day in daylight is always better. I found Santiago to be a very interesting city with lots to do (definitely worth a visit on a South American backpacking trip) and even more to do in the surrounding area if you’re into things like wineries, skiing, and beaches (none of which are my style). I went to a museum on pre-Columbian art and textiles, hiked up a few hills, did a little shopping, took in the sights, admired the super-cuteness of Barrio Bellavista and even managed to go see a movie (the new Batman one – dubbed in Spanish of course). I think that the solo traveling style suits me…as long as I can meet people to eat dinner with (best way is probably to join those organized tours where you actually learn stuff about what you are seeing). Lunch alone, fine, but dinnertime alone can get lonely. After a few days in Santiago I was off to Easter Island! I must say that LAN Chile is the best airline I have been on so far. So lujoso compared to crappy American-owned airlines. They have those screens in the back of the seats like JetBlue and they have huge selections of TV shows, movies, and music. I used the entertainment system non-stop on the way back and wish I had discovered it earlier on my flight there (got to watch Smart People – gotta love how they stick Donner Hall in there). Their food isn’t half bad either. And I like their little star with the wavy line under it logo! So Easter Island…has the feeling of a tropical island of Hawaii, the mystery of the moai, and really really good seafood. Definitely worth a trip out there if you have the time… During a tour I met some other American tourists who were my dining companions for the rest of my trip which was very nice (see note about eating dinner alone above). I did all the typical things of going to the sites to see all the moai and the volcanoes, avoiding stepping in horse poop from all the horses that roam around, and attempting to save money since everything is always ridiculously expensive on an isolated island (reminded me of the $7 box of Rice Krispies that gawked at in Hawaii). The only negative parts of the trip were probably my overspending, the loss of my Jcrew floppy white hat (whoever stole it, that green ink stain is permanent so too bad for you!), and the return trip from Iquique to La Paz when we apparently took more than an hour flight (almost the time it takes to get there) but ended up back in Iquique for a 4 hour delay while the bad weather (snow?!) in La Paz cleared up. I spent most of those 4 hours sleeping on a bench outside of the teeny tiny Iquique airport while people probably stared at me (I only got an hour of sleep the night before leaving). The funny part of that was that I was sitting next to a couple from New Zealand on the airplane and I was sleeping most of the time and when I woke up we were landing and the guy was like, um, we are back where we were before. I was like, no, can’t be…and Iquique seems kind of desert-y…almost altiplano like so I was convinced we were in La Paz. But then there were the palm trees…yeah, La Paz does NOT have those. Apparently even though they were making announcements continually on the plane about the bad weather and returning to Iquique, my Spanish was not good enough to understand the messages and the English translations were too fuzzy for my understanding as well. Such is life.

I really liked that karaoke song. Maybe because the video had people prancing around in bathing suits at the beach. Anyways, I will be off to Chile and Easter Island this coming week on my fabulous vacation with myself…followed by a few days in an “all volunteer gathering” which should be good times as always...then followed by a week back in my site before I go back on vacation to Lake Titicaca and Copacabana with Sarah! Hmm…August doesn’t look too promising as a productive work month but así es, pues.

I have a problem with food. If you know me, you know I really like to eat. And I can eat a lot. Maybe more than even I think I can eat. Not that this problem didn’t happen to me before I came to Bolivia, but I recently noticed that it has occurred with more frequency.

Today when I was eating a banana (one of two as part of my breakfast) I turned over to get my boiling water in my electric tea kettle and then when I turned back, my banana was gone. *poof* The only possible explanation is that I already finished eating it and didn’t remember. So of course I had to go get another since I clearly wasn’t satisfied with just one. The incident in itself would not have been cause for alarm, except that the very same day, in the evening I went to go make myself an egg sandwich with tomato, and realized I had one less “pancito” than I thought I did. Bread here in Tarata is purchased as single size serving rolls rather than a big loaf where you have no clue how many slices you have left until you’re down to the last few. How was it possible that I only had one roll left when I thought I had two? Only explanation once again, I ate it and didn’t remember I ate it. If the explanation of this forgetfulness is gluttony, I think I can live with that, but if my short-term memory is going this could prove problematic. It’s good that I’m not dieting because a part of dieting is being conscious of what you are consuming (which I clearly am not). I find the issue happens most frequently with bread, although it can happen with anything from fruit to candy to a bowl of pudding (what?! I already ate the whole thing?!). My course of action from here will be to monitor to see if this absentmindedness invades other parts of my spectacularly uneventful daily life or if it’s merely confined to the realm of the automated task of eating. Vamos a ver…

First off, I have not been very good at this blog updating business. My life has been less than spectacular lately so I am lacking in worthy events to recount to the masses. I would like to share that I am a big fan of the new Death Cab for Cutie CD though. At first I wasn’t too impressed (I got bogged down in the 8 minute 25 second track that appears second on the CD) but when you get past that, it’s quite pleasant. After all, how could you resist tunes called “Your New Twin Sized Bed” and “Long Division”? I also have been jamming out (by that I mean sitting in my room by myself bopping around) to the new Gavin DeGraw and Jason Mraz CDs. Both which I would classify as excellent.

Anyways, so a few weeks back I decided it was time to cut off the dead animal on the back of my head that I had been dragging around since August 2007 (I hadn’t had a haircut since I came to Bolivia). It had grown from my normal semi-bowl cut that I had before I came down to this atrocious scraggly mass that I kept in a ponytail about 75% of the time. I planned on meeting my counterpart Vivian to go to a salon that she recommended, “Los Espejos” but when it came time she didn’t show up…but I pushed onward and went to the salon where I got my 25 bs haircut. I had a little difficulty explaining to the woman what I wanted (which was very short, semi-bowl cut style which is my trademark) and I ended up with a bob that was noticeably different and neater than my hair before since she removed all the gross excess parts, but not what I had in mind. I got the feeling that she was afraid to cut it too short since most women here have LONG hair (maybe just so they can put it up in braids for dancing in festivals?) but I guess what I ended up with was kinda cute. My friends in Tarata thought so and I got some good feedback when I came back that first day about how good it looked (when it still was nicely styled and not flipping out in all the wrong directions as it naturally does).

But I wasn’t satisfied. Then this past weekend, Kasia, Lindsay and Sarah all were in town and we decided to take a little trip to Cine Center which is one of the most lujo (luxurious) places that you can go in Cochabamba. It’s just like an American movie theater and mall food court in one, with an internet café and salon and a few restaurants off of it. Lindsay, Sarah and I all decided to splurge on some seriously expensive (like 10 USD!) haircuts and we had spent the night before browsing Vogue and Marie Claire to find our models that we were going to emulate. When we got to the salon I found a cute pixie cut in one of the books of hairstyles and decided that was what I was going to go with. Very short, uneven-ish messy chunks, the type you don’t even comb (you just put some gel in and go) and totally me. So the stylist started cutting. And at one point even told me, “you can’t go back now” after she had hacked off a bit. Perfectly fine with me. I neglected to mention to her that I had my head shaved at one point which probably would have scared her. As she continued to cut, a few other stylists and assistants (hair-washing people?) gathered around to watch my haircut take form. I credit this to the fact that I was getting a haircut shorter than the man that was sitting next to me and they probably don’t see super-short cuts very often there so they are a novelty. In the end the haircut turned out exactly how I had wanted it the first time and it definitely was not your typical Bolivian woman’s hairstyle. The stylist liked it as well, I do believe, and I got some positive nods from the other bystanders along with compliments from Sarah, Lindsay (whose haircuts were also fantastic) and Kasia. But I think that’s where it ends. Vivian actually really liked my haircut and was telling me it was very fashionable and “te queda bien” several times which means it looks good on you. She’s also very fashionable so maybe she’s not as shocked by the supershort cut on a woman though. I would take the lack of comments from my other acquaintances in town (it was a major haircut that you couldn’t not notice) that they didn’t like it so much. I got a few, oh, you got a haircut, it’s a new look…a “why did you cut your hair?!” and a “you cut your hair, it was prettier longer.” I also got a few comments from some punk high school boys that were like, “dude, she looks like a boy.” Haha, too bad I’m used to getting mistaken for “sir” and “son” to actually think their comments were something novel and worthy of paying attention to. But gosh darn it, after this haircut I feel so much more like me. And I look so much cuter. Oh, I’m so egotistical.

Kelley – You might find this particulary interesting since we are the ones usually doing the running away (brings back memories of a particular incident where we stared at some dude behind the glass without his ID then ran away?). I’ve seriously been lacking in any good blog material so I though I’d tell a story about something I found amusing (although it could be interpreted as slightly embarrassing). So after some “despedida” (going away) party fun, another volunteer Karen and I decided to go meet up with my counterpart, Vivian, who was out on Pando (street with basically all the discotecas and bars) with three of her friends. We were having a grand old time of a girl’s night out at this place called “La Boom.” Yes, the name is highly suspect. Anyways, so in the middle of the night I found myself making eyes more than once at a very attractive (and tall! so not my type) gentleman and he was definitely looking my way too (this can be confirmed by Karen, and if he wasn’t this story never would have happened). Around 2 am, Karen gave me the signal that she was ready to go home and I told her I wanted to go talk to the “guy in the blue t-shirt” and she told me to go do it. After blowing in her face a few times to make sure I didn’t have bad breath (I couldn’t find my gum), I marched right over there where he was standing with his friend and asked him, “quieres bailar?” or “do you want to dance?” If you know me, I don’t normally do things of this nature, but it might have been the few beers that I had consumed that night while bopping around crazily while dancing (that is normal – and possibly WHY he was looking at me) or as Pat said, it might be that I have been watching too much Sex and the City and was trying to emulate Samantha but apparently lacked the technique that she has (I am so much more Miranda). So his response to this was that he couldn’t dance right now and held up his drinky drink (which I believe was a Red Bull and vodka)…which might possibly have been a line or was the truth? So I continued to make small talk and although I remember everything else about the conversation, his name fails to come back to me, I remember it was something difficult to pronounce that I had to repeat to him to see if I got it right. So it turned out that he was from Brazil (Rio de Janeiro to be exact) and we continued the normal conversation that I have with people which includes him asking where I’m from, I say I’m from the U.S., he says I look Japanese, what do you do, I’m a Peace Corps volunteer…blah blah. So I ask him what he does and it turns out he is a medical student (future McDreamy perhaps?) here and I asked him what year of med school he’s in and about what kind of medicine he plans to practice. He answers “neurosurgery”…and this is where I think I might have gone wrong. I was joking around and was like, “entonces eres muy inteligente, no?” (I think that might have been coupled with a cheshire cat-like grin too on my part) which means “then you’re really smart right?” But come on, if he said he was a rocket scientist I would have made that same comment, you know, there are just some careers that encourage that type of thinking. Then I went to talk to his friend who was standing next to him who turned out also to be from Brazil and in med school and I asked him standard questions like if they knew each other before they came here and stuff. And literally it was like in the (bad) movies. In the moment I was talking to his friend, I turned around, he was gone! He ran away from me! I think he was scared that I was a little too “fuerte” (strong, aka forward) but who knows. There are two theories: 1) he might have really had to use the baño, or 2) he was really scared of me (which I prefer to think because it makes a better story). After he disappeared *poof* into thin air, I kind of just stopped talking to his friend and sauntered over to Karen and told her that the boy ran away from me and we headed out. I did notice when I turned around as we were walking out that he was back with his little friend but I didn’t think to actually stick around to find out if he actually ran away from me or had to put his drink down or something. The reason I think he ran away is that I don’t recall him saying anything to me like, hey, I’ll be right back, going to the bathroom or put my drink down. Así es, pues. I’m still wondering if my failure was due to my outright (scary) flattery, the possibility that maybe he was looking at the girl behind me the whole night, or my grungy clothing (Karen and I were in typical PC attire that is sneakers, jeans, and t-shirts whereas everyone else was in cute little tops and heels) but there will be other opportunities! Seguimos adelante!

Finally. These took a LONG time to upload. Sorry Mom, yours will have to wait.

Click on link at right and it´s under the ¨Bolivia¨set. Wheee!

So you would think that after 8 months in a new job that you would be ready to move on to expert (let’s say “verifier” in OTC confirmation-speak) status. But alas, my friend, this is the Peace Corps. After 8 months I’m just getting started. I recently had a mini-success with my tourist survey that I administered at the last fair. I did what I do best, and packaged all my data into a pretty little document brimming with pie charts and the like and I think that my counterpart was semi-impressed (she said she wanted to hire me…too bad for her I already work with her and in some ways for her). Although I think it’s important to know who your clients (aka tourist target market) are, I am hoping that the most important part of that document is the recommendations that I came up with for things that are potential projects that should be supported by the guide association and tourist office. These include giving a workshop to the food vendors on hygiene and santiary food-handling practices and also continuing the involvement with the guides during the fairs where they’ll organize tours during the fairs and festivals along with selling postcards and posters. The thing about being a Peace Corps volunteer is that you try to do the same work as the other volunteers in your project, but the key is to avoid reinventing the wheel, exploit the synergies (ha! what the heck does that even mean, business terminology popping out of my arse) that exist, and leverage the resources that are already at your disposal. Let me say, that was an excellent sentence. I do believe for that reason I am a microenterprise volunteer and not a basic sanitation volunteer building latrines. Anyways, I’ll keep you updated on my work in tourism; I think (cross your fingers) it might be going somewhere!

I found this article (along with the readers’ comments) in the yuppy NY Times on public service careers and the incentives for going into them kind of interesting. I agree that until you can change the view people have of under-valued and under-appreciated careers such as teaching – followed by a major adjustment in salary (hmm…let’s think, if I want to make a lot of money do I teach 9th grade math or be an investment banker?), you can’t incentivize bright, practical, economically-conscious (some with large student loan debts) people to go into public service as a career. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/education/23careers.html?scp=1&sq=public+service&st=nyt

In more important news, after reading the June issue of Vogue, I’ve decided that I am a fan of Alexander McQueen dresses. Although completely irrelevant to my current situation, I still have the ability to admire couture fashion and fantasize about prancing around in frilly dresses and 4-inch stilletto heels.

As evidenced by my lack of postings, I’ve been suffering from a lack of inspiration as of late. At the end of May, my mom came for a very lovely visit and since then I’ve settled back into my daily rituals and work. I think that life here has ceased existing as a novelty and is just work as usual now so I don’t find anything noteworthy (or blog-worthy). This past weekend was the annual chicha and chorizo (corn beer/liquor and skinny sausage) fair in my town and Pat and I indulged in both chorizo and some beer, but stayed away from the chicha which we blame our most severe gastrointestinal illnesses on. We had a nice (but short) visit from several other volunteers (actually 5 volunteers and 2 other American girls that are working with one of the volunteers at an orphanage) so it was nice to show them our site. I think of Tarata as my baby and I am the proud mother that likes to parade it around; the colonial architecture, pretty views, and of course the lovely homes that Pat and I live in. Also, the fair marked what I might consider to be my first substantial work in tourism that I initiated since I’ve been here. I wrote up a tourist survey and organized the guides that are in the tourist guide association (started up by the prior volunteer) to have a stand during the fair where they sold postcards and posters and administered the survey that I wrote up (with the reward of free homebaked cookies that I contributed – chocolate chunk and oatmeal raisin). All in all, I think they did a pretty good job during the fair and I was glad to have them running the stand themselves since they should be involved in big tourist events in town.

I also finally got my kitchen set up while my mom was here (still missing a fridge and a table but will hopefully be getting those two things in the next month from a volunteer that leaves at the end of July) and have been making good use of it. I baked the cookies for the fair, a messed up pan of brownies (that I am eating all by myself), two birthday cakes (tangerine and chocolate), and made up a little stirfry of broccoli, chicken and bean thread noodles (that the grocery store inexplicably carried at one point and no longer are selling). There are a few upcoming events that I am looking forward to…such as my counterpart’s birthday (I haven’t been out since January, it’s very pathetic) which I am sure will be oodles of fun. Also, I’m trying to get down to Sarah’s site and Oruro in the next month to finally see where she lives (and spend more than ½ hr in Oruro from an inadvertent bus detour – which some may label as a stupid error). After that, Chile and Easter Island! I will be heading out on my first solo vacation to explore the archeological mysteries on Easter Island and hopefully also get a taste of Santiago and Valparaíso.

In other news, something right now in my room smells like rotting vegetables (not pleasant) and I’m trying to figure out if it’s me. I have also, as of late, started studying for the GMAT since rumors are that the 2nd year of service flies by and if I don’t start now I’m going to be sitting there in November 2009 wondering what the heck I should do with my life when I get back to the States. I’m not so much a fan of the reading comprehension and data sufficiency question types. I know, you must think, how difficult can reading comprehension be? But I find myself struggling with those questions the most on the verbal section (ha! I have declared a truce with sentence correction questions – my old nemesis on that PSAT that I took, I think with a little more grammar study I might be alright) and there’s not much you can do to study for that section. It’s all good though, I still have the decision to make of where I want to take the test…there is a testing center in La Paz, but I think I might be more comfortable if I took a vacation back to the States and took it there (or that could totally backfire and I actually might be better off taking the test here in my little Bolivian bubble). Vamos a ver.

Some people say that Peace Corps is a life-changing experience. Within the microcosm of this 27 months though, there are also service-changing experiences. My past week was spent adjusting my outlook that had unfortunately become very pessimistic and skeptical during the first six months of my service (holy baloney, I’m 25% done with my service!). I had started to think that the work that Peace Corps thinks that us volunteers will accomplish is nothing but a…uhh…pelican? (haha, from The Pelican Brief, does that mean it’s imaginary?) whatever, I mean that it was a figment of their imagination, impossible, unattainable, not viable. I have changed that attitude after my 5 day trip to Independencia to visit Dorinda, a volunteer from B-43 (microenterprise volunteer that started her service one year ahead of me) that recently decided to extend her service one more year so she’s now going to COS (close of service, aka finish her service) with my group, B-46. I initially went up there with Karen (another microenterprise volunteer from B-43) to get to know Independencia (which is about 7.5 hours from Coch on a really crappy yet beautiful dirt road through the mountains and happens to be in the middle of nowhere, literally) because Karen was doing an informal tech exchange to teach Dorinda’s group of kids that she teaches life skills to how to manejar (uhh…what’s the verb for that in English? Maintain? Use?) a cash box and contabilidad (aka the wonderful world of accounting and book-keeping). The Sunday that I was there was the biggest fair in the town, Feria de la Chirimoya (yes, that is the famed globby custard apple that is oh-so-delicious). The kids were baking cakes (that were ridiculously delicious btw, so many repeat customers once they got a taste of it) to sell at the fair and Dorinda was doing an artesania exhibition at their stand to sell the products (woven out of lambswool and dyed using all natural dyes – think plants, wood ash, etc.). So I probably did the most work I’ve done continuously since I’ve been here…preparations for the fair (and we didn’t even help with the baking!) included making signs, moving things, organizing things, transporting things (dude, I totally used a wheelbarrow for the first time and pushed things up and down hills with it, I felt like I was on a farm or something). Anyways, Dorinda is totally the model volunteer, doing really great work, meaningful work. The grassroots, get your hands dirty, make a difference work that we can all hope to accomplish while we’re here. She is one cool lady that went to culinary school, is vegetarian, environmentally conscious, spent years working in Alaska at Denali National Park…which makes her ridiculously outdoorsy and hardcore. She probably has 30 years on me but is 10x stronger than me (as evidenced by our comparative wheelbarrow-pushing abilities). Anyways, she’s doing what volunteers SHOULD be doing…capitalizing on their strengths to create projects around them that “aprovechar” the unique assets of each volunteer. She made me want to be a better volunteer. Or maybe just a little like her, haha. She has done a lot of traveling that makes me jealous. Plus she’s so HAPPY in her site, I mean, I should be as well right? My name is Joy. So after this experience of watching her work on the most important day of the year for microenterprise in Independencia, I came back to Tarata all hyped up to try to be a better volunteer. I have notions of maybe taking some of her ideas and modifying them for implementation in Tarata (perhaps with the Kid’s Club) and really going at it to make a difference in tourism and microenterprise. I guess what I was so impressed with wasn’t just her work, but the other little things she does like her environmental efforts of composting, growing lettuce, herbs and flowers, her resourcefulness (surprisingly good diet for not having a fridge and being 8 hours away from a city), and overall badas*ness of being able to handle the flota (bus) ride just to come to Cochabamba each time. Plus she makes great salads with cabbage, avocado, cucumber, carrot, tomato, campo cheese, salt and pepper, oil and vinegar. And she makes her own granola, pizza crust and bread since they use lard in the bread around here (but dang is it tasty). In conclusion, I am an incompetent sissy. There, I said it, and it has been confirmed the truth now that I’ve seen where and how a real volunteer lives and works.

I have to leave you with a tidbit of how hardcore the flota ride is to Independencia is though. One time apparently Dorinda stood up the whole way there. That is ridiculous. It’s hard enough when you are sitting down…the regular schedule is that it leaves Coch at 5 am, and then it leaves Independencia at 4 am (and it’s freaking COLD…I took my sleeping bag with me on the way back because I nearly froze without it on the way there, luckily Karen shared her blankie with me). Anyways, so on the way there, through the winding roads, my stomach sometimes can’t handle it, and the old woman next to me (who was sitting in the aisle on a bundle of something or other…which is a perfectly acceptable seat around here for a passenger) was barfing into a bag for about 2 hours of the trip. You know when the Bolivians can’t handle it, it’s a little rough. And on the way back, while I was sleeping, Karen said she noticed a rank odor so strong that she had to open the window. She cautiously checked her backpack that was on the ground and her sneakers to see if someone had pissed on the ground and it was dribbling towards her stuff. Nope, nothing was there. So once at the first stop near Coch about half the passengers got out and I moved to sit in the seat behind me (that had been next to Dorinda) and give Karen more room with her stuff. At some point Karen looked down and gasped in horror. The seat had previously been occupied by a woman with her young child. There it was, a pile of poop under the seat I was sitting in. Yes, human excrement. Along with a little plastic bag, which apparently was supposed to catch the poop being expelled by the child, and which apparently was unsuccessful in its mission. And the woman also made the executive decision to leave the poop and bag in a pile on the bus where it landed instead of trying to clean it up. Thankfully, I did not step in it. The End.

In other news, I officially bought my ticket to Chile and Easter Island for August so I am off on my vacation! I am still looking for travel partners if anyone is looking to get in on it. As of now, it’s uhh…just me. So whoever comes will get some quality time with the Joy Dog. Joyster. Joy-a-rama. Joylicious. Joyimal (that’s for you, Dan). Joymeister. Fluffmeister (that’s the name of a pillow on an airplane, once upon a time, Helen, I know you didn’t change them, I had the Fluffmeister and you were just jealous). Okay, that was really random. I’m done now. Feel free to navigate away from this page and ignore me. I am the biggest dork you know.

Oh, but one more thing, my mom is springing a surprise visit on me that was supposed to happen in June/July. She will be here in about a WEEK! May 19th – 28th…so I know you are rushing to the post office to send a package to her express to bring to me so let me know if you need the address (aka if you love me) :) This way there is no ridiculous postage and I don’t have to wait 3 months to get it. Win-win situation right?

Pat and I recently watched this movie during one of our infamous “movie and chocolate” nights. Although the cover categorized the film as “documentary,” I would deem it more to be of the “horror” variety. The picture that was painted of global warming’s impact on climate change was kind of scary. The idea of a drastic change in global temperature causing Greenland and/or western Antarctica to melt and raise sea level by 20 ft…not exactly an ideal situation I would think. Goodbye New Orleans and all other low lying places on Earth, hello lots of scary diseases, storms, droughts and all sorts of other catastrophes…how about 100 million displaced people from low-lying areas? I have always believed scientific evidence to be the most convincing form of persuasion and in this case I saw more than enough statistics to make me believe. And I also was surprised by some of the facts…such as the emissions regulations that in the States are way lower than other developed countries and how auto companies are throwing hissy fits over Cali’s proposed tightening of regulations over several years that would put the state on par with China’s current standards. In conclusion, it served its purpose to make you think about your impact on the situation and what your role as an individual is in having a positive influence.

Although I am a PCV, I am probably as far away from a tree-hugging hippie as you get. I am guilty of eating more meat than the average person, driving a car when I could have walked (for 3 years), and doing more than my fair share of travel via airplane. I don’t believe that I am a wasteful person, although I can see through my experience here how living in the U.S. easily lends itself to the levels of consumption that makes Americans the biggest culprits of the causes of global warming. Here’s where the hope comes in though (we’re trying to avoid the denial to despair sequence that Gore spoke about), if we are the ones that are most at fault…that also means that if we change our habits, that we can also have the biggest positive impact on reducing the effects of global warming and thereby “saving our future.” In evaluating my lifestyle here, I notice the little details in things that demonstrate the lower level of consumption in a country such as Bolivia in comparison to the States. Take something near and dear to my heart for example, food (and the packaging it comes in). I buy chicken in plastic wrap and styrafoam in the U.S., in Bolivia they throw it in a plastic bag for you to take with you. In the U.S. you can find disposable cups at every corner (think Starbucks) and I have yet to see coffee for takeout here and the beverages served from carts in the market either come in plastic bags or are served in glass cups to be downed in one gulp. And although two frequent methods of waste disposal in my town are for trash to get burned or thrown in a pile by the river where some people wash their clothes, the reality is that there is a lot less trash and waste that results from the lifestyle here.

So what to do about it all? I’m no environmental expert or activist, but I figure when I go back to the States I should make some commitments to do my little part in this all. It seems too overwhelming and ominous sometimes when you think about the big picture, but I truly believe that if every little person does his/her own part it will make a difference in the end. It’s stuff like using those $1 green cloth bags when you go grocery shopping, buying the energy efficient lightbulbs that last like 20 years, not drinking bottled water (c’mon, there’s no giardia or amoebas in the water over there) whenever possible, buying a hybrid car (or at least energy efficient compact car if you can’t afford the hybrid), using heating and AC more efficiently and only when really needed, walking or biking or using public transport whenever possible, and trying out the methods of clothes-drying without using a dryer. As a “businessperson” (with no soul, as we microenterprise volunteers are sometimes labeled), the question of how trying to help the environment will affect the economy is an important one. I think so far the verdict is still out on whether being a leader in being environmentally conscious helps or hurts the bottom line, but I strongly believe that if these widespread initiatives are to succeed, action will have to come from all angles. From the individuals changing their habits, to politicians putting in place incentives (aka laws and subsidies) for people and businesses to change their behaviors, and also the companies that consciously decide to be leaders in taking on this “moral” issue…I think that if everyone works together there just might be some hope for the outcome that is desired. It has been proven though that humans are rational creatures (usually) and will only act to help the environment if it serves in their best interest; the conundrum is how to make it so that everyone (individuals, businesses, politicians, etc.) sees that trying to stop global warming is in their best interest and then they will willingly make the sacrifices necessary to do something about the problem. I think that the way that economies and technology have developed is a double-edged sword that creates necessity of some of the wasteful practices while providing promising technological solutions to solving the problem that might not have been there in the first place…but what can you do. It is what it is. Así es, pues! A stone’s a stone! Haha…okay, I’m done ranting and raving. A reader might want to hear more about the Peace Corps experience rather than my psychotic rantings…but I’m not very good at talking about that. I will throw in a related tidbit here though, that for Kid’s Club I would like to do some environmentally-oriented activities and sometime in the future I would like to work on a garbage cleanup in the town and maybe work with children on environmental awareness (man, where are those environmental education volunteers when you need them). That’s all I got for now though. Chau!

Click on link on side...new pics under "Bolivia" of my house, etc. and also new set "Artesania Rojas - Bolivia" with some samples of what the artisan woman that I am working with makes...

How many butterflies do you want? I’ve discovered that my favorite part of learning a new language is being able to say nonsense phrases. I take pride in having a little creativity when it comes to randomness and with practicing Quechua I don’t hold back. It is especially useful when you have a limited vocabulary and want to practice what you have at your disposal (as I do with my 10 sheets of picture vocabulary and 3 pages of verbs). Anyways, I was able to understand that the answer to my question that she wanted 10 butterflies so it was a useful form of practice. I have the feeling that if someone came across my blog they might think I’m slightly insane going around asking people how many butterflies they want and saying I believe in aliens, but you need to trust me, I haven’t gone crazy, I’m in the Peace Corps and this is what volunteers do. I was also able to get the idea across when I was practicing Quechua to ask Erlinda if she believes in life on other planets…and FYI, yes, she does.

My motivation to improve my language skills has recently been at an all-time high (I might ask Sarah to create a graph of that for me – x-axis for time, y-axis for language motivation) so I am trying to do a self-imposed language program of an hour per day each of independent studying (grammar, vocabulary, reading, etc.) of Spanish, Quechua and Chinese. I figure being able to discipline myself will actually come in handy when (if) I end up back in school when I go back to the States.

I like looking up at the sky here since you can see the stars so well. It’s unfortunate that I don’t remember any of the constellations from Advanced Earth Science but I still appreciate the beauty of the nighttime sky. Or maybe it’s because I never thought to stargaze until I was blessed with the enormous amount of free time that I currently have. Either way, I find myself always thinking when I look up at the stars that there must be life somewhere else in the universe. I believe that the universe is way too big not to have some kind of living being (and intelligent life) somewhere else and that it would be really really cool to make contact with them. But alas, that might be reserved for some far away time in the future or maybe just the movies (Contact is one of my favorite movies after all, not just for the fact that it includes Jodie Foster, one of my favorite actresses, and Matthew McConaughey – what’s not to like about him right?). Hypothetically, if I were to speak to someone from another planet, in another solar system, somewhere way far out, what would I ask them? I think it would be much like when you travel to another country and want to see how they live, what it looks like, what do they eat (do they even need to eat to sustain life?), and certainly they must have some really spiffy advanced technology that we could learn from. Until I meet those creatures from far away though, I will be content learning about the cultures of homo sapiens from the planet that we call Earth.

So I was walking to the plaza this morning behind a cholita (Bolivian woman in traditional dress) and another man and from behind me I heard a taxi honking for the cholita to move back since she was standing quite close to the street. Her exact location was near a large puddle. She moved back to let the car pass and then proceeded to swoop down and scoop water out of the puddle on the ground with her hands. For a second there (in horror) I thought she was going to drink it...but *whew* she took the water from the puddle to wet down her long hair, and then whipped out her little plastic comb to comb it and put it into braids. Well wonders never cease, I guess when you need some water in a jiffy a puddle on the side of the road will do just as well as any sink. What really puzzled mean was the fact that it was also raining at that time and I was wondering why she wouldn't just get her hair wet from the "uncontaminated" rainwater. Some things I guess I will never know. Ah, the things women do for beauty.