Today would have been my Grandma Nancy’s 84th birthday. And on this day, I’m going to talk about grieving. It’s been 2 months since she died. My aunt told me that she has found, as part of the PTSD/grief research … Continue reading →
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So, my other grandmother was in the hospital. She had symptoms that made it look like she had stenosis decreasing the drainage of her cerebral spinal fluid. This put pressure on her brain. The test to figure out if this … Continue reading →
My dad’s mom had surgery the same day as the memorial service for my mom’s mom, and she had a hard time (as a matter of fact is still in the hospital now, 3 weeks later). That’s why I haven’t … Continue reading →
Hello, and welcome on behalf of myself and my family, to this memorial and celebration of my grandmother’s life. Family, extended and immediate, official and unofficial, and community meant a lot to her. If she were here, she’d act embarrassed … Continue reading →
Let’s start with a definition of Living Will. This has nothing to do with who gets what when you die. A living will has to do with how decisions are made about your health when you can’t make them. There … Continue reading →
I posted the link to the obituary on my facebook, but eventually it will go away, so I want to post the actual obituary here. YAKIMA – Nancy Ann Tobin Putney Faller, 83, died July 17, 2010, at Yakima Valley … Continue reading →
I haven’t been around much lately. On top of the busyness I was expecting: finding an apartment, moving, preparing for David’s visit, my grandma was sick, and then she died. And now we’re in the aftermath. I should clarify. My … Continue reading →
is done and done and done. The tabs lead to Shannon, pearl, and my recipe blog (designed already and coming soon), and the archive of my Peace Corps blog. Have fun looking around! (P.S. Here’s an old photo just for … Continue reading →
A sea turtle lays 90-100 eggs in each clutch and comes up on the beach to lay a clutch 6-10 times per season. Out of all these eggs laid in a season, one of the baby turtles will make it to breeding age (about 30 years old). Also, genetic diversity is reduced because the increased [...]
My last full day in Parismina, I was starting to worry about not seeing any turtles. We had protected a nest, and examined a recently hatched nest, but there were oddly few turtles to be seen. So, Kara, Dugan, the Bellinghamanians, and I took a couple boats out to the ocean to see green turtles [...]
I noticed that Joshua was speaking to other volunteers with tú, the familiar you form in Spanish. I thought the other volunteers were starting to tutear Joshua because they didn’t realize that Costa Ricans speak in usted, the formal you form. Ticos even get in trouble in other countries sometimes because the usted form is [...]
Parismina is wicked humid; bright and shiny humid, and over 90º after midday. As a plus, all that sun helps my Chaco tan lines make a reappearance, which makes me happy. It cools down a bit at night, but it doesn’t really get tolerable until after midnight, which is the one blessing of the midnight [...]
If you ever want to go to Parismina, which you do, it looks complicated, but isn’t*. I left Heredia around 6:30am and got to Parismina around 2pm, but there was a fair amount of time in that trip that I put there so I wouldn’t freak out about possibly missing connections. There’s an orientation to [...]
Every night we go out to the beach, trying to make our presence as discreet as possible. We carry no cameras, no phones, no ipods; nothing electronic except red-lighted torches we don’t use and maybe a watch. And yet, we are betrayed by our footsteps: they fill with foam from breaking waves and glow when [...]
The food has started coming. Gifts of food from friends. Who have all done this before. Too often, too recently. I’m not hungry I hate stoves like this, all flat taking forever to warm up and even longer to cool down. It’s too hot for this shit I don’t want to be gone from the [...]
It’s so weird, listening to a person you love being reduced to sentences and words. She likes . . . She did . . . . Justifying her life to a stranger. To one who is not judging and yet it feels as if we remember every single thing about her, maybe we can conjure [...]
After spending the morning learning how to did turtle egg holes, and relaxing in the hammocks for a while, we did a bit of a beach clean-up. Dugan and I spent a good 15 minutes trying to get this thing that looked like a fender made of really thin metal and then crinkled up, lots [...]
One thing I really like about Costa Rica is that they actually hold their elected officials accountable. There have been two ex-presidents who were investigated, caught, and convicted of corruption, and they’ve both actually served time. Can you imagine that happening in the US?
On Saturday, a bunch of us from IPED, including the owners—David and Zaida, and their son Andre—went on a day trip. We started out with a trip to Herradura, where Zaida had gone when she was growing up. The beach had been entirely different, but she still loved this beach. On the way, we saw [...]
This was the week the school exploded. We went from about 15 students to 40, in one day. Maria (the student) wasn’t too thrilled with the addition to our house of a grandfather and granddaughter team who didn’t seem all that interested in learning Spanish. Well, the grandfather was interested in learning a couple words [...]
The zipline tour we took in Monteverde was incredible. Because it was so high over the canopy, I didn’t see the monkeys and other wildlife I did on other ziplines. But, zooming several hundred feet above the ground at 45mph, for nearly a kilometer . . . . There were times when I was suspended [...]
So, let’s see, yesterday I broke my computer even more than I already had by dropping it, which forced me to remember that I actually had my Leatherman and therefore hadn’t had to allow it to act all princessy. I opened up the back a bit, fixed the connections, and ta-da, my computer is (so [...]
I was glad I decided to take the bus to meet up with the tour to Isla Tortuga, even though the bus driver forgot where I wanted to stop even though I asked him three minutes before we got there, and somebody else also pressed the next stop button. Having to walk back about 15 [...]
Nina, Maria, Sina and I went to a little University dance performance. The night started out as an adventure because we had to find the Auditorium. Finding the college is easy; it’s down the street a 10 minute walk. But then we had to find the library, (relatively easy: some girls told us to stay [...]
1 cup cooked beans, preferably black 2- 2½ cups cooked rice ½ onion, chopped 1-4 cloves garlic, chopped ½ sweet pepper, minced (optional) ¼ cup fresh cilantro, chopped 1 pinch sugar Salsa Lizano, to taste Saute the onion, garlic, and pepper in a little bit of oil in a pan. Add the rice and beans, [...]
Arroz con Leche Ingredients: 1½ cups uncooked rice 4-8 cups milk pinch of salt 1 Tbl butter 3-4 cinnamon sticks, chopped very coarsely vanilla 1 can condensed milk powdered cinnamon raisins (optional) Preparation: Put the rice, butter, salt, and cinnamon sticks in a pan over medium heat. Add milk to cover, plus about 2 inches [...]
Tres Leches Ingredients: Pan (Cake): 1 1/2 cups sugar, divided 6 large eggs, separated and at room temperature 1 tsp vanilla 5 Tbl juice or milk 2 heaping tsp baking powder 1 pinch salt 2 cups flour Liquid: 2 cans condensed milk 2 cans evaporated milk 2 cups whipping cream, divided Rum to taste (optional) [...]
This dessert is ridiculously easy but also tasty. The recipe as written makes for a pretty firm dessert, but you can change the texture by changing the amount of gelatin. Postre de Mango 2 mangoes, peeled and chopped. The mangoes should be deep in color and sweetness. The anemic mangos we normally settle for are [...]
The first week of Spanish school is always exhausting. Your brain is trying to grow like a two-year-old, and it doesn’t really like it. Also, sleep is necessary to reinforce the new pathways your brain makes when it’s learning new things. In the first week of Spanish school there’s a lot of pathways to reinforce. [...]
This is one of my favorite drinks, and I was so happy to find a recipe I could translate here. I have no idea why it’s called toad water, though. This is not a recipe for the faint of heart, as far as ginger goes. If it’s too strong, you can try cutting it with [...]
There are a few places I call home. I’ve called Zomba home, I’ve called Seattle home, I might even head a post “Home Again” if I landed in Ireland. Heredia, Costa Rica, is one of those places for me, and that’s where I arrived today. I’m not sure how this is all going to work [...]
Chorreadas (Note: these Tico recipes aren’t the sort that have specific measurements and the like. If you can’t deal with guesstimating, either find another recipe, or modify a pancake recipe to fit these ingredients. Ingredients: Fresh corn, milk salt flour baking powder natilla (Tico sour cream) Instructions: Use about 1-2 ears of corn per person. [...]
One of the most common things in Costa Rica are the Refrescos (or Frescos, or Fresquitos). They’re sort of a cross between juice and a smoothie, and they’re amazing. Refrescos Ingredients: fruit water sugar ice Instructions: Wash and cut up fruit into medium size pieces. There’s no need to be particularly careful about seeds or [...]
Malawi has made me . . .. indecisive. I mean, I had occasional (frequent) problems making a decision before, but in Malawi you can make as many decisions as you want, and they rarely have any effect on the end outcome. Which is not to say there’s no point to making decisions; but, if you’re [...]
And, that’s it for Peace Corps. I’m still going to be writing at this address, but when I get back from Costa Rica, I’m going to archive all my Peace Corps related stuff at a different address, redesign and re-title my blog, and start new(ish). Someone once told me it annoyed her when RPCVs kept [...]
In an effort to catch my blog up to now(ish), I’m going to do the down and dirty version of what I’ve been up to. I decided, sometime in my last year of Peace Corps, that I wanted to get my MPH. So, when I got back I spent two weeks, more or less, staying [...]
The trip with the Americans was complicated, but not actually very interesting. It took two half-days of travel (actually what I was trying to avoid; the timing of it all just didn’t match up well on public transport), but I finally arrived in Marrakesh. Navigating the warrens of the Medina was a bit crazy-making, and [...]
Essaouira is a great town. The medina area is old white stone, with blue blue skies and splashes of color from all the vendors selling souvenirs and fabric and jewelry and spices and fresh juice. It looks like it could be the less elegant cousin-town to the Greek towns that are always in the movies. [...]
Merzouga was just what I needed. I arrived around 5 or 6 in the morning, after chatting in stilted English much of the way with a Moroccan who had been in Fez for a guide job. The guy at Auberge Mohayut was incredibly helpful; when I decided I wanted to do the camel trek the [...]
It was weird to think that in the course of one day I was in three countries, and not in the hanging out in the airport sense, either. Driving through Kampala at 2:30 in the morning, I was surprised to see people on the streets, tomatoes and oranges heaped up on maize sacks, women in [...]
I don’t really have much to say about Morocco. The feeling of wanting to be done with traveling ebbed and flowed, but had not passed. When confronted with the very different culture of Morocco, that feeling only intensified. Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy Morocco. I did. But, for the first time [...]
I left Lake Bunyonyi at 7 in the morning. I could have caught the midnight bus, and in retrospect I wished I had, as my trek involved a motorboat to the shore, a taxi to Kabale, driving around waiting for the minibus to fill for about an hour before heading to Mbarara, the sweet taxi/minibus [...]
A Ugandan man at Chimp’s Nest stopped me and asked me if I was going chimp tracking. I said hopefully, and he offered me a lift. His name was Charles, and he was tour guiding for two Italian women, one of whom lived in Kampala with her husband and the other of whom spoke no [...]
I headed to Lake Bunyonyi on a bus that went straight through to Kabale, where I caught a short taxi and then the boat to Byoona Amagara. The bus ride was a bit cramped, but not too bad—I had my own seat and played a little with the kid next to me.
When I got to [...]
Kampala is bigger than Lilongwe, and in better repair, at least in the center. Although it definitely felt like an African city (unlike, say, Maputo or Cape Town), it just felt more vast than anything in Malawi. It also has marabou storks, which I hate, a little bit because they are frigging huge and ugly [...]
We went back to the hotel so I could catch breakfast and to pick mom, who was feeling much better after more sleep. I had what seems to be the traditional Ethiopian breakfast: bread with creamed fresh honey in Hello Kitty-ish plates and coffee (ok, the Hello Kitty may not be traditional). I had decided [...]
Mom didn’t feel like going to see the actual festival in the morning. She wasn’t totally recovered from getting sick earlier in the trip (what with the go go go pace) and we both were a bit tired of the preferential treatment and especially of all the religious stuff. Eventually, after many longing looks at [...]
We got up and threw on clothes we had set aside the night before. I brought my shama, just in case. Michael was was waiting for us in one of the blue rickshaw-like vehicles that are so common, noisy, and pollute-y in Ethiopia*.
We drove through the pre-dawn streets, which were only slightly illuminated by the [...]
At the Lalibela airport, I was once again surprised at the ornateness, suburban-Ethiopian style. We had a new problem in Lalibela: a taxi and two guides waiting for us. Apparently there was a guide convention in Addis, because the guide Nebil had arranged for Lalibela was there, too. But he had sent a replacement, and [...]
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