Dear New York, I think we can both agree I’ve been nothing but complimentary about you since I arrived here. I’ve admired your general climate, your mostly efficient—and always entertaining—transportation system, and your abundance of parks filled with people wearing tight pants. For the most part, New York, you’ve treated one of your newer citizens [...]

For those clever readers out there able to read between the distinct lack of lines, that means I’m cheating. Sort of. Meh. For those compassionate readers out there who only assume the best in people, that means you get to look at photos! Specifically, photos of some of the things that I have been particularly [...]

Life feels a bit enchanted at the moment. Tonight, for the first time in months (4 of them in fact!) I will sleep in my very own bedroom, on my very own bed. The fact that I inflated said bed this afternoon does not dampen my enthusiasm at all. It is mine and I will [...]

I think teenage boys in a truck just threw a tennis ball at me as I was running. I assume they are just jealous because they aren’t moving to New York in 11 days. 11 days!

I remember getting off the plane, vaguely. Feeling the anticipated heat and humidity hit my body, and following the crowd of backpacks and tired, pale faces into a large cement room—everything tinted an odd yellow now in memory, as if lit by streetlights on a suburban street. I remember coming out of the bathroom and realizing that I’d used the [...]

Am I the only person on the planet who sweats while working out? Seriously, in a room full of women, after an hour of jumping around and vehemently denying that Billy Jean was every my lover, I look around and see a flurry of perfectly styled bangs, still poofed from their morning run-ins with hair dryers and [...]

Today has been better than yesterday, and not just because it hasn’t (thus far) included me cleaning up pug puke. I had a second interview today with the place in NY that I really, really want to work at, for a different position than the one I originally applied for. This one has the word [...]

The rainy season will begin in Fundong on Monday. It happens every year on March 15th, according to every single person you talk to, even the guy out on the sunny street on March 16th. That is when rainy season BEGINS, and no one can be bothered with pesky details like reality. So as of [...]

6:30am: Get up 6:31am: Reconsider the whole gainful employment thing, as I can only assume it involves more of this whole ‘getting up’ thing. 7:00am: Wait for phone to ring. Try not to feel like a middle schooler the weekend before the first big dance. 7:15am: Realize today’s job interview must be with the only company in NY who [...]

You know what I like to do? I like to followup a good weekend full of fantastic meals, good friends, two-year-olds that run around yelling “My underwear is crazy!” while adjusting their wedgies, and pretty people in pretty clothes, with a mediocre phone interview. It really starts the week off right. Hey there World of Jobs [...]

So I think what’s happening is that in an attempt to reacquaint myself with all things American, I’ve gone a little overboard. At the moment I’m leading this strangely domestic (and strangely enjoyable) existence, involving a lot of episodes of Malcom in the Middle, three pugs, cooking, ‘playing the guitar’, and my newest–and admittedly [...]

I highly recommend you take a hot air balloon ride in Goreme, Turkey, even if you are afraid of heights and prone to nausea. I also highly recommend being ticketed by Neapolitan Subway Police. And watching Jess try to fit her ENORMOUS backpack through the smallest door ever made. We’re leaving Turkey tonight. Well, we’re leaving Goreme tonight. [...]

So we’re sitting at this lovely couch surfing dinner in Berlin, listening to a charming Irishman (how are they all charming?) tell a hilarious tale of missing his flight to Paris by twelve hours because he didn’t realize the time on his ticket was in the 24 hr clock format, showing up at the airport [...]

Greetings from Napoli, and 2010. I need you all to know that I wrote about half of a stunningly articulate and poignant piece that really summed up my Peace Corps experience, but that due to technical difficulties involving flashes (and not flashing) my musings are now gone for ever. Sorry about that. I’ll try again from the States, [...]

I suppose COS (our Close of Service conference) is sort of like prom for Peace Corps Volunteers. You’re not allowed to go until ‘graduation’ is imminent, it’s held at a fancy hotel, and most of the people who attend are hoping to get laid. The fact that we actually held an 80’s Themed Prom on [...]

I was expecting the weekend to be terrible. All the ingredients of a minor disaster where in there—a 72 hour long double date involving travel, a lake that ‘officially’ killed 1700 people in 1986, crashing a dinner party at the mayors house, a seemingly never ending quest for ‘bush mangos’, and the violent death of [...]

Me! Y’all, it’s been forever. I apologize to all 7 of my loyal readers. Life has been a bit frenzied for the last couple months, but the truth is I’ve just been procrastinating. I don’t think a Peace Corps volunteer exists who doesn’t actually ‘have time’ to write a blog post. And if there is, I [...]

* This one goes out to my number 1 fan…Miss Jessica “Haricot Vert” Tharrington. (Also, what follows will be schizophrenic. I apologize. But its this or nothing.) Many, many things have happened in the last couple of weeks. I dressed up like a California Raisin. I spent a week looking at things like this: I had my fortune told [...]

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

My first Cameroonian birthday has come and gone. I celebrated by giving a startlingly detailed presentation on the wonders of breastfeeding. Hello 28! Colostrum is very good for babies! Then I probably went home and napped. I say probably because I don’t actually remember, but a brief statistical analysis of the last 15 days leads [...]

I’m finally headed back to post today after way too long in Yaounde, armed with lots of new work ideas and a free knitting pattern I printed off the internet for a small stuffed hippo. If that’s not a recipe for success, I don’t know what is. Leaving Yaounde means saying good-bye to hot showers [...]

I thought I should do a follow up to that last post, since it was written in May, posted in June, and now it’s July. Really, the fact that it took me a day to conceive of that post, and then a month and a half to get the internet to work remains a fairly [...]

Well people world, I actually wrote this over a month ago, but various trips to the ‘cyber cafe’ all left me post-less and with a burning desire to stab something with a fork. So, even though there are updates I could share with you since I orginally wrote this, I have neither the will nor [...]

This place is weird. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe I’m the weirdo. Who knows? Regardless, the following are some scenes from my life here. In the context of America they are ridiculous. Here, it’s called Tuesday. [...]

I’m heading back to post tomorrow after a spending a week with 20 other Americans. These people are all near and dear to me, but I think I’ve grown used to a different pace of life. Somewhat surprisingly, I find myself looking forward to sitting on my porch.  Our in-service training was simultaneously overwhelming and reassuring. [...]

Last Week, In Summary: Swam in Atlantic Ocean for the 1st time. (Actually, SAW Atlantic Ocean for the 1st time. I give it an 8.5) Ate sting ray Hiked up a beach to waterfalls (which fall INTO THE OCEAN) Skinny Dipped (Twice) Got stung by…something…jellyfish?…while naked. Twice. Slept in air conditioned room for 7 nights Got nominated for the ‘Peer Support Network’. (This means other [...]

So last week all of the chauffers (all they guys who drive the buses that make up the main form of transport between citys, as well as taxi drivers within the cities) went on strike. I asked Yannick why, and he said to protest rising petrol prices. Which totally made sense. And then he said [...]