Peke figures things out

lunch and dinner the last few days:

2012-02-16T10:42:00.000-08:00

popcorn with this on top:

i thank the porter beer bar in atlanta for the inspiration (which i was in love with, until i found out that their popcorn is just microwave popcorn with malt powder sprinkled on top. even for $3, i felt cheated).

actually enlightening

2012-02-12T15:57:00.002-08:00

Common misuse of the word "nauseous" (and other grammatical goodies that made my head kinda hurt):

"
Nauseous

Undoubtedly the most common mistake I encounter. Contrary to almost ubiquitous misuse, to be “nauseous” doesn’t mean you’ve been sickened: it actually means you possess the ability to produce nausea in others. e.g.,That week-old hot dog is nauseous. When you find yourself disgusted or made ill by a nauseating agent, you are actually “nauseated.” e.g., I was nauseated after falling into that dumpster behind the Planned Parenthood. Stop embarrassing yourself.

"

possibility

2012-02-10T09:54:00.001-08:00

dying of boredom while writing my lit review's haptoglobin section.

on time

2012-02-08T19:30:00.000-08:00

just finished my section on thalassemia. finally, a self-imposed deadline that I actually adhered to. next week I need to be done with haptoglobin, and then i can finally f-ing re-start my analysis.

advisor has STILL not responded to my email with my draft on the two other diseases. pretty sure he is discontented.

one upping

2012-02-07T03:53:00.000-08:00

i asked my brothers to help me find a used car, because while i don't know where i will be next year, *most likely* it will necessitate one.

unfortunately, according to my eldest brother, my tastes run along the lines of "mortally fatal tin-cans," so likely anything i get will never be as awesome-looking as the car below.

but i snapped this picture when i was on my run yesterday to send to my brothers, just to poke fun, and this is what i get:

brother II: I'm sure Keith will still consider it unsafe, however that looks to be one of the few turbo 4 cylinder Mustangs out there, actually a pretty cool car. This particular generation was called the Fox Body and was the ride of choice for high school quarterbacks in the 1980s.

brother I: The turbo fox body mustang? Yeah it's a collectors item with marked historical significance. Reviled by Mustang enthusiasts because it is the only 4 cylinder mustang ever created, it was based on a wet noodle chassis from the 70's, unreliable 80's turbo technology, but produced less power through more complexity than mom's astro van. As the nadir of mustang evolution it is an important bookmark of how far the mustang has come since then.

just in case this has not been shared:

2012-02-06T19:15:00.000-08:00

i spend about 20 minutes a day exercising barbara-melvin (aka BM, babs, and barmel). how?

another perspective:

cheapest toy ever: a knotted up plastic grocery bag. she loves this way more than her automated laser pointer toy. when she wants to play, she just drops the ball next to me, and i just throw the bag up and down. up and down. up and down. until she gives up and lays down.

love her!

in other news...

2012-02-05T18:58:00.000-08:00

I actually don't have any. I thought I'd try really hard to think about something other than school to write about, but I can't. So here are some pictures from atlanta and break.

fall in the atl

my office @ work. I put up all those flour sacks.

the barbara-melvin

sweet

oh, this boy.

feeling good

2012-02-02T11:02:00.000-08:00

a day's success is measured by progress on my thesis. (big surprise, I'm sure)

it is 2:00, and by 10:30 am, I'd gotten about 2 hours in and was feeling that the end was near for the section on sickle cell anemia. since then, I've worked on my case study for tomorrow and been productively typing out notes from India (finally).

the sole point of this entry was to just pat myself on the back. paaaaaaaaaaaaat

?!

2012-01-31T18:44:00.001-08:00

THERE ARE TOO MANY LARGE WORDS THAT I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO SPELL IN MY THESIS (AND THAT MS WORD DOES NOT RECOGNIZE!)

back to the t-word...

2012-01-28T19:10:00.000-08:00

i spent this week (a WHOLE WEEK) writing fellowship applications. peace corps, global health corps, fulbright, and PHPS. finally submitted my last one, and can finally get back to thesis. while listening to trance music.

sometimes i wonder

2012-01-23T18:33:00.000-08:00

why i am spending my entire evening applying for crap-pay fellowships ($750 monthly stipend) when that is almost my entire monthly loan repayment when i graduate?

woeee

good to know

2012-01-23T06:30:00.001-08:00

goat milk cappucinos are nauseating.

long day, somehow

2012-01-20T15:12:00.000-08:00

i say 'somehow' because i haven't done any work yet. it is 6:04 pm and i am now sitting down to my dinner (carrot miso soup, fried tofu, orange) and about to start on editing my thesis lit review. i spent about 1 hour this AM on thesis, followed by 4 hours collectively grocery shopping and cooking my week's worth of food (that soup, this, this and this - i had a lot of turkey broth to use up). then i had 3 hours of class, and i guess there goes your day.

p.s. i picked up a food tip re: freezing firm tofu - it helps the tofu soak up flavors later on in cooking. this is the first time i've done it, and i think i like it. the tofu's airier, kind of spongier, which is a debatable preference, but it is definitely drier, which is a better texture for panfrying.

i think i'll be blogging a lot, because i don't foresee much social contact this semester.

back to atl

2012-01-19T18:02:00.000-08:00

got back tuesday night. classes began wednesday at 8 am. haven't had any time to cook, but luckily, i had food stashed in the freezer - though, now that i am defrosting it, it is hardly a well rounded diet:

-9 servings of cornbread
-4 quarts of turkey broth (and 2 turkey carcasses leftover from thanksgiving, waiting to be brothed)
-1 quart of ricotta
-3 frozen, carmelized bananas (for banana bread)
-1/3 loaf of bread
-1/2 quart of honey roasted rosemary-chili nuts

so, today and yesterday, i had cornbread for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. it's pretty delicious, but i need to get to some produce stat. did you know that you're supposed to get 9 fruits & vegetables a day?

tired of personal statements.

2012-01-09T14:38:00.000-08:00

"I understand thatin another country, you cease to be an individual. Becky Txxxx's actions do notsimply represent Becky Txxxx's - they become theactions of every single other American as well."

I am almost ashamed that I wrote that sentence. But what else does the peace corps want, if not over-the-top sentimentalism?

reason # 1039481024 why i can't move back home

2012-01-03T19:21:00.001-08:00

my mother nagging me about how I can't walk the dog by myself.

low carb sugar free lemon bars

2012-01-02T14:16:00.000-08:00

that sounds gross just typing it.

but my parents have diabetes, keith is on a low carb diet, and jeff and i wanted lemon bars.

-substituted 1/2 the flour with almonds and shredded coconut.
-substituted all of the sugar with splenda and reduced it 1/3.
-used EIGHT whole meyer lemons, pith and all (or more, i lost count. i just kept adding more and risking salmonella by tasting the batter).
-still 1/2#+ of butter.

they are not bad, i guess. good in small quantities. i think just because i know they have splenda in them, i'm hyper aware of the tinny aftertaste. my mother loves them. i won't tell jeff.

pet peeve

2012-01-01T01:40:00.001-08:00

reading through a painfully long, dense literature review only to reach the conclusion statement: "effect of X on X is not clear. more research needed."

i need to learn to skim.

dark.

2011-12-31T23:00:00.000-08:00

“I think the relationships that you have when you’re older are different than the relationships you have when you’re in your 20s,” he said. “In your 20s you have this idea that you’re going to grow together, build a life together and kind of grow up together.”

His current relationship, Mr. Sharlach added, is “much more mature.”

Another reason

2011-12-29T11:24:00.000-08:00

I hate being transient:

My permanent mail always gets sent to Rowland Heights. I do not trust my mother with my mail.

Example 1: I find my travel insurance confirmation forms in the living room, where she's used them for scratch paper.

I asked her what she was doing with the paper, and she said, "Oh, I meant to ask your brother to read this to me so I could see if it was important, but then I forgot and started using it to write something."

Example 2: I added Jeff to my AMEX account. The card got sent to RH because that's the account address. He said he never got one. Four months later when I'm finally home, I ask my mom, "Did a credit card come for me here?

She said, oh yeah. I cut that card. "WHY?" Well, I meant to ask you if you needed the card, but then I forgot. Then a few months passed and I figured it had been too long, so I just cut it.

...

wtf mom.

also -

2011-12-28T20:29:00.001-08:00

i'm horribly inefficient. i spent at least 4 hours today formatting the skeleton of my thesis. and 0 hours actually writing any content.

--
edit: 1 sentence! woo!
--
oh dear. i just re-started my lit review - encountering the first sentence "iron metabolism and malaria" just made me realize that i did not choose a thesis topic that i find particularly compelling.

i have the feeling

2011-12-28T19:57:00.000-08:00

that my mother does not think that i'm an (aesthetic) catch.

-yesterday, she said that i need to dress up more. like my younger cousin, who curls her hair. (i don't think i need to be encouraged to be more vain)
-she just asked if am balding. (i like to think this is because i have slept with my hair in an unkempt bun on one side of my head for two days straight now, but who knows)

i guess i really let myself go when i come home?

willy loves me no matter how i look!!

mixed opinion

2011-12-27T23:15:00.000-08:00

"Unlike George W. Bush, who was a year behind [Mitt Romney] in business school and was immortalized in the yearbook blowing a huge bubble of gum, Mr. Romney had limited interest in socializing. (The two barely met, but if Mr. Romney had known where Mr. Bush “was gonna go, I would have been on him like white on rice,” he later told The Atlantic."

proud to be

2011-12-26T18:50:00.000-08:00

from covina-

meeting a friend tonight here:

their website's selected review?

holy india in 7 days.

2011-12-26T08:38:00.000-08:00

ahh.

2011-12-24T23:42:00.000-08:00

back in LA. after an 20hr trip - which included the MOST delightful reunion with eleanor & plakky at heathrow airport - had a buffet xmas eve dinner w/ my brother's inlaws. then i came home, and intended to go straight to bed - but was distracted by the amazing rediscoveries in my room:

-the most comfortable home outfit ever. i think i packed all of my uncomfortable jammies for atl.
-my dental molds! home teeth whitening here i come! (damn all that coffee from this semester)
-anti fungal cream (3 brands!!). holdovers from persistent ringworm 06-08, and some of it is not expired. i just found a new patch on my right arm. i blame kimi & bm.
-an old verizon phone. good, something to hold me over until the pre-owned 4s is in stock.
-a funnel & pepper grinder. YES. but where is my thermometer??

woooooo

grateful

2011-12-12T18:10:00.000-08:00

-for my never-ending awe at this hotel's sumptiousness

i also get two free ironed items a day as a 'club' member. crispest shirt that has ever touched my skin!!!

oh no

2011-12-10T21:41:00.001-08:00

it's 11:10 am. 1 am in atl. that 1.5 hour of sleep is now kicking me in the butt.

today is going to be a long day.

del day 1

2011-12-10T18:23:00.001-08:00

hi friends. i got into delhi last night around 1:30 am local time. which was... 3 pm atlanta time, i think. i didn't go to bed until 5, and i woke up this morning at 6:30, so got about an hour and a half of shoddy sleep. went running this morning to at least make use of my time, and ran into my boss who was also using the treadmill. good way to get in the morning pleasantries.

so friends. my travel to delhi was not without a little bit of drama. my seatmate on my MIA-LHR leg stole my iphone. what an asshole. am i going to be able to travel abroad again without my trip starting with theft? he was so brazen as to reach over me while i was sleeping to pickpocket the phone out of my jacket. jerk.

anyway, one positive thing came out of it - british airways upgraded me to business class, so i got a pretty swanky set-up on my LHR-DEL leg. (i was so confused when the flight staff told me to go upstairs. waiiit...) and i have traveler's insurance, so i hope it's not too much of a headache to get that through. cross your fingers.

checking into this hotel was a trip. our coordinator here negotiated us rooms on the "club" floor, and i have a top floor room. complimentary bottle of wine, butler service, even a bed note + daisy with a dalai lama quote. for guests on this floor they do private room check-in - private as in in-your-hotel-room. we don't even mingle with the plebians for breakfast.

pictures later - they are taking a bit of time to upload on this connection.

weeeeee

2011-12-06T07:25:00.001-08:00

third semester of MPH done!

time to plan for eendeeah!

over & under punctuation

2011-12-05T20:21:00.001-08:00

finals diet

2011-12-05T08:49:00.001-08:00

breakfast
-garlic soup
-scrambled eggs
-coffee

lunch
-apple (attempt @ virtuosity)
-tortilla chips
-multiple cubes of cheese
-mixed nuts
-spoonfuls of nutella

delicious.

so so done

2011-11-28T23:18:00.001-08:00

i am taking this parasitology class for the sheer love of parasites.

i chose to write my semester project on how to collect poop and pee during epidemiological surveys.

since we got to choose our project of interest, there aren't hard requirements for what is in the final product.

which means, i could really work on this damn thing forever.

at this point, i don't really want to think about parasite microbiology again for a long time. i never even took microbiology. mistake.

unhappy face

2011-11-27T12:52:00.001-08:00

google imaging "parasite stool."

not bad

2011-11-26T12:06:00.001-08:00

we decided to run the atlanta thanksgiving half marathon on the saturday before.

time: 2.09.15
average per mile: 9 mins 51 seconds

not fast, but definitely not slow, especially without training.

publix half marathon in march?

gracias

2011-11-21T20:13:00.001-08:00

let's be honest. i have been in a cranky funk. complaining way more than necessary, unmotivated in school, half-assed in general.

so in light of an impending thanksgiving, here i go:

1.) my mother knows how to entertain herself. she called me yesterday to tell me about her day gambling at morongo, her walk in the rain, and the $19 surf and turf spread that she ate alone because her friends were too miserly to spend that much money on a meal. she told them that the best money is spent on what goes in your belly. amen, mother.

2.) i went running in shorts and a t-shirt in late november. actually, in SF that would be a feat any day of the year.

3.) in general, sanity (self perceived, or not). always humbling to hear of accomplished people my age having schizophrenic breaks.

it never fails - towards the end of these lists, i always end up feeling like i'm the luckiest girl in the general vicinity. (let's not hyperbolize with the world)

good night!

parasite overload

2011-11-15T17:22:00.001-08:00

literally - my first thought when i opened the cupboard and saw a shoelace:

"what is a tapeworm doing in there??!"

shabaab + kenya

2011-10-28T12:36:00.000-07:00

today is october 28.
i left nairobi august 24
i left lamu august 21.

september 11, a british couple was kidnapped/killed by shabaab somalis, in kiwayu, near the somali border.
http://www.kiwayu.com/

october 1, a french woman was kidnapped (& has died) from her home in manda island, right next to lamu. i sunned on the beach across the water from her hut.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/pirates-prey-on-tourists-in-paradise/story-fn3o6wog-1226178305061

and october 24, exactly 2 months after i left the capital, a grenade was thrown in downtown nairobi, killing 1 and injuring 20 (#s are hazy)
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/1260730/-/10e6btaz/-/index.html

i know that it is superficial to feel more connected to on these things just because i was there. i was not kidnapped, i don't know anyone who was injured, and i don't even really think of it as "it could have been me."

i know that this would provoke an "i told you so" reaction from my family. we never thought kenya was going to be a completely safe place to be. spanish aid workers have been kidnapped from dadaab refugee camp - a place that i've recently seen job postings for, circulated through the school.

it's not that i intend to put myself at risk, but i think this is what makes traveling and living abroad worthwhile. it makes you a part of an international community. because honestly, before i wouldn't have even cared. i don't know if i would have even noticed the news. because there is just too much going on in this world to care about every single thing. we (i) have limited empathy and compassion, and while i am grateful that i (and anyone i know, as far as i am aware) am safe, i am also grateful for having had the opportunity see and experience the little bits of kenya i did.

fatherly

2011-10-01T08:39:00.000-07:00

i'm presenting on my summer project at school on monday. it's not a big deal - just a prerequisite of the funding to come back and report on what i did, so that future students can hear about projects, learn from our mistakes, lalalala.

both my advisers are coming. at first, i thought that it was because of the political nature of this whole business - you know, wanting to make sure that things are presented appropriately, facts are correct, etc, but when i saw them yesterday to have them review my presentation, they were encouraging me to shit-talk as much as necessary if that's what i felt was being true to my experience.

now it just kind of feels like they're coming to support me, which is a very odd feeling since this is definitely something my actual parents would not come to. (whenever my mother did come to my recitals, she was always an hour late and i could SEE her coming in late to the performance.)

things i wish i had more time for:

2011-09-20T18:53:00.000-07:00

-my thesis (actually, maybe this should be a priority)
-REHAC
-job searching
-exercising
-reading
-learning languages
-leisure learning in general.

what i regret most about undergrad is not taking advantage of the academic experience more. There were so many amazing lectures that i didn't even bother to attend because i was so busy with sopi. actually, i didn't attend a lot of my classes or even try very hard to study. i really enjoyed the time i spent with the sorority, but i really took the berkeley environment for granted.

now at emory, i'm starting to feel the same way, except it's hard to not justify blowing off all the interesting lectures/seminars/presentations when i'm spending my time doing schoolwork instead.

back to (school) reading.

great

2011-09-04T20:48:00.000-07:00

of the many things i learned today:

2/3 of fatal diarrheal cases in the US involve the elderly.
type O blood types are more susceptible to cholera, and have more severe cases when infected. (red cross doesn't broadcast that on my Type O Hero card)

but much more immediately distressing:

the typical flea population at any given time is 50% eggs, 35% larvae, 10% pupae, and 5% adults.

i found 3 on barbara melvin #2 today. i don't care to extrapolate.

ATL: 1 week later

2011-08-30T20:32:00.000-07:00

jet lag is finished

back to work

back to school

things to look forward to this semester:

captain of the co-rec soccer team (despite never having played a game in my life)

building the india fortification strategy plan (i'm actually very interested in this)

a house with friends!

tours of the south - next stop: nashville?

not boring at least...

2011-08-20T22:22:00.000-07:00

my last day in lamu. i have mixed feelings about this place.

on one hand, it has WAY more character than i've seen anywhere else - and is beautiful in some regards (absolutely the dumps in others).

on the other, i managed to get myself mixed up with a tout hyped up on drugs. not quite as melodramatic as it sounds, but basically, i gave my money to a shady character for a dhow trip. after allying with several other lamuians who testified to this guy's shadiness, i hunted him down and threatened him until he gave me my money back.

although, i guess if i hadn't done that, i would not have made friends with my captain and his crew, with whom i commiserated with over a meal of chapatti and beans, and chewed some nasty mouthfuls of miraa (a mild stimulant plant drug).

though then again, maybe i would have eaten better food.

anyway, all in all, i found lamu overwhelming. for the first serious time, i began wondering if i am just over it. the amount of hustling, badgering, and pressure i've had to deal with from people wanting me to a.) come over for dinner b.) go on a tour c.) take a boat ride has really sapped my energy, and to top it all off with a frenetic drug addict did not make for a pleasurable experience. i can't help but wonder if it would have been much more bearable with a companion.

after a slight breakdown, last night ended well - abdul & abdul (captain & first mate) tracked me down and we had a dinner of swahili pizza (which is really just an omelet with fries in it) and chicken bbq. then they proceeded to lead me to a dark alley (again, misleading - ALL the alleys here are dark) where there were about half a dozen people selling miraa.

this miraa thing is hilarious. the entire ship crew i was with is muslim, and the way they talked about miraa, you'd think it was cocaine. "it's magic," "you'll never fall asleep," "i chew this at weddings to keep me up all night" (seriously). in reality, it just made my tongue go numb briefly, and maybe i was a little more alert, but that could have also just been sugar from the juicy fruit gum. and i had no problem falling asleep. some pictures from the marafa depression in malindi:

From 2011

feller

From 2011

baboons

From 2011

kids racing for school supplies

LOUD

2011-08-17T10:38:00.000-07:00

my guidebook recommended the hostel i am at (ozi's guesthouse), and it did note that it's right next to the mosque, which may be noisy in the AM.

woah, noting that it is noisy in the morning is not the same as noting that it BLARES calls to prayer. there is no way i am going to sleep through it in the morning.

going diving tomorrow! a few observations from today:
1.) i really need to stop eating in front of/offering food to muslims.
2.) MOSQUITOS. almost forgot my malarone today.
3.) not sure if halwa is my dessert of choice, but the man was adorable today.
4.) making faces at kenyan children works here too.
5.) being asian in kenya = what being a celebrity must feel like
6.) it does not help that i can actually speak a little japanese
7.) even europeans tell me that i "do not look like" i am "from the US." really, you don't get multiculturalism either?
8.) a man was fondling himself on the dirt path in front of a field today. in direct view. i thought that sort of thing only happened in public in san francisco. unfortunately, he saw that i saw him, which is probably precisely what he wanted.
9.) i LOVE riding on the back of motorbikes.
10.) kenya is so much better when a.) you are not in nairobi b.) you are not working 18/24 hours of the day.

that was a lot.

<3 from malindi.

goodbye nybes

2011-08-15T12:02:00.000-07:00

getting in a taxi tomorrow late afternoon to get to the bus station by 6 to pay for my ticket. probably a good idea to get to town before it gets dark anyways.

my to do before i take off:
-finish steering committee minutes
-make an RSPH video
-ugh, try to code a lab form in epi info.

my coastal itinerary for next week (mangoes! seafood!)

Tue Aug 16, 2011
8pm - nairobi to malindi: mash poa

Wed Aug 17, 2011
malindi hostel - ozi's: +254 721/104099
5 am - arrive in malindi
7am - 2pm gede ruins, kipepeo butterfly farm, bio-ken snake farm
3pm - 4pm diving refresher

Thu Aug 18, 2011
malindi hostel - ozi's: +254 721/104099
9am - 12pm blue fin diving

Fri Aug 19, 2011
lamu guest house: +254 042/4633338
9am - 1pm bus: malindi to lamu: tawakal

Sat Aug 20, 2011
lamu guest house: +254 042/4633338

Sun Aug 21, 2011
lamu guest house: +254 042/4633338

Mon Aug 22, 2011
7am - 11am bus: lamu to malindi
8pm - bus: malindi to nairobi

Tue Aug 23, 2011
ywca
6am - arrive in nairobi
6am - 12:30pm nairobi national park

Wed Aug 24, 2011
8:10am - 4:10pm NBO-AMS
4pm - 8pm AMS-ATL
8:20pm - 9:20pm arrive atl

Thurs Aug 25, 2011
Class!

wrapping up

2011-08-12T07:08:00.000-07:00

today is friday. this does not necessarily mean it's the weekend.
most likely there will be work tomorrow
MAYBE work on sunday.
a range between 1-4 days left?

this always happens, but it's not until around when you are about to leave a place that it becomes more comfortable. maybe precisely because i know that i'm leaving soon, all of a sudden i am meeting girls at the YWCA, joking and playing around more with the enumerator trainees, and feeling more comfortable running the training sessions.

today i gave the enumerators a quiz; i certainly did not expect to be running a class by myself in a room of 60 kenyans, microphone and all. it was kind of odd, but i didn't feel that self conscious (except when i was telling them how much i disliked the liver at lunch). i guess i got something out of running voice lessons in a a roomful of awkward japanese people for a year. one of my advisors actually got on the stage and conducted a SONG with everyone though - don't think i'm quite there yet.

not sure how i can learn to break out of my shell faster. maybe the combination of exhaustion and defeat facilitates it that much faster.

oh hay

2011-08-10T13:11:00.000-07:00

btw, my GFE was approved.

YAY, i didn't go into debt to do my practicum!

**in re: to a.oshima's comment, and thought you should all know this as well - i actually RAN INTO the GFE committee head here in kenya. she was in the country teaching a short class, and of course, GFE came up. she said something along the lines of - 'you'll get your money when you get back to school' - to which i replied, 'actually, i wasn't aware that my GFE was even approved yet.'

1 week later is when i got the approval. so... probably less so the repetitive emails than actually seeing her her mid-practicum in another country. probably did not hurt that my advisor also apparently took her aside and gave me some praise. :D

wish list: sleep and salad

2011-08-10T11:26:00.000-07:00

i need to get out of this place. my eating habits are rapidly deteriorating, and i need to get a fresh, crisp fennel/apple/almond salad.

it's not so much that i dislike the food here - i actually greatly appreciate the fact that kale and beans are regularly appearing staples (though, you wouldn't know it by how contentious my GI tract is being) - but the combination of 15 hr+ days and no exercise (NONE), leaves little room for eatin a half cup of peanut butter for dinner. no joke.

dinner last night was an avocado with hot sauce.

i just put a teaspoon of raw oats in my mouth to just chew on. i'm not entirely sure why.

happenings

2011-08-06T10:13:00.000-07:00

training is still going on. we're entering week 3, which is 2.5 times longer than was expected. hah, to think that it was initially 7 days of training, followed by 2 days pilot? did we forget that we were in kenya?

since training began, i have:

-discovered tree tomatoes (tamarillos) - deeeeeeelicious. apparently there are red & yellow varieties, the yellow one being sweeter. i haven't seen the yellow ones anywhere. these aren't cheap by kenyan standards - 180 shillings/kilo (for comparison, bananas are 5 shillings apiece, mangoes are 60-80 shillings/kilo), or about $1 a pound. worth it.

From 2011

a kilo's worth of egg shaped deliciousness

From 2011

innards

From 2011

sans seeds

-eaten massive quantities of indian food, both high end & low end... and delicious everywhere. my favorite has to be at the diamond plaza food court though - where a man shoved a kebab menu in my face and said, japanese? what, was i supposed to believe that the pita was rice?

From 2011

laird's eyes are WAY bigger than his stomach (do you see how massive that dosa is?)

-danced at a wedding with little boys (slightly misleading - there was a wedding being held in the parking lot of KIE - interesting? - and the little boys that we were measuring for anthropometry crashed it and were jumping around dancing [one of them named barack]. i started dancing with them, and they began imitating all my dance moves. after a while, i turned around and saw at least 20 people staring at me.)

From 2011

pow!

From 2011

i like barack's shirt
(he told everyone his name was barack obama. his first name really is barack, but last name is something that sounds like mckenzie. considering he's 5 though, i don't know how likely it is that he's actually named after the president, unless he was still really well known here as a senator.)

-gone through three jars of peanut butter (and effectively tried all the kenyan brands). my favorite is angel. runny, but nicely roasted. dominion tasted like it was from raw peanuts, and nuteez was so stiff that i gave up trying to spread it and just ate spoonfuls while alternating bites of bread (true hardship, i know). too bad, because it was the closest to the three to having actual peanut chunks.

From 2011

pretty sick of pb by now.

-have had camel milk in three forms - whole, vanilla yogurt, and low fat. the first was with the training crew, and noone finished their glass but me. it definitely tasted like it was from another animal. and perhaps my judgement was biased based on the animal, but it tasted... dry. the yogurt tasted less camel-ly, probably due to all the added sugar, and the low fat is as watery as skim milk. i shared the latter w/ the cook at the YWCA and she did a little jig. probably less due to the excitement of having oatmeal & camel milk and more due to her joyous nature, which was pleasant.

From 2011

camel film

From 2011

dinner of oatmeal & vanilla camel yogurt.

I also finally got around to going to the police station to get a stolen camera report for my insurance. i really wanted to get a picture of the records room, but after i didn't get asked for a bribe (despite all my guidebook's warnings), i decided to not push my luck. the fellow also looked less than friendly.

tomorrow, we get a day off - although, of course, we still have work to do, we just don't have to go into KIE - and sarah and i are going shopping at kariorkor, the biggest open air market in nairobi. weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

day 42

2011-08-05T00:05:00.000-07:00

i leave for mombasa on the 18th. unfortunately, because the train only goes twice a week and neither day works with my schedule, i'll have to take a bus there. it's faster (the train takes 14 hours, the bus 7), but i love trains, and it's supposed to be pretty atmospheric. dining car, sleeping berth, etc. i would feel like i'm in darjeeling express.

today is august 5th. just under 2 weeks left. that doesn't sound long, but it feels long. i spent 3 weeks at the research institute, now i've spent 3 weeks (with another week at least left) at the Kenya Institute of Education. Neither place is really all that interesting. (although, as i mentioned before, toilet seats +++++)

at this point, i am feeling very fatalistic. there is no point in us pulling our hair out if noone else seems as in a rush.

so, in the meantime, i'm daydreaming about diving in watamu, and biking around the gedi ruins.

mm.

day 36

2011-07-31T03:50:00.000-07:00

you know, i would not be sad if my NBO-AMS flight missed my ATL connection and I had to spend another day in amsterdam.

pictures finally:

From 2011

imbibing

From 2011

grading papers

From 2011

i really enjoy my mattress

From 2011

i told the reception that i don't need my room cleaned every day, just once a week. they decided to not come at all. ever.

bleary

2011-07-28T12:58:00.000-07:00

when i wrote that post earlier, i completely forgot to write about the impetus for the entry to begin with.

as i mentioned below, we are all sleep deprived, stressed, and anxious here. i also have to contend with a scarcity of toilet seats in the women's restrooms - everyone must hover here, which befuddles me to no end. even with the toilets that DO have intact seats, they're usually lifted, so clearly the women don't see their use.

i am fine hovering when i have to. but i have to hover everywhere. all the time. the YWCA toilets do not have seats. the only time i ever have the luxury of sitting down is when i am at a.) a hotel or b.) have found a clean, intact toilet seat, which you can imagine, is not exactly ubiquitous.

my bowels have been behaving contentiously, possibly due to impending menses, and today i found myself in luck with a toilet seat (the only one of the four stalls) that looked clean enough to sit w/ some tp.

it was beyond great. i sat, relaxed, not having to perform wallsits during #2 in DAYS, and out of inability to not multitask, played a game on my cell phone.

and when i found myself lingering longer than necessary, i realized that was unfortunately, the highlight of my past 4 days.

training day 4

2011-07-28T01:14:00.000-07:00

today is thursday. i say that because i needed to confirm it with myself.

like i said, monday was the training kickoff - with speeches, general overviews, etc. 24 hour recall training started a week before, but tuesday marked the first day of actual training for the enumerators (survey interviewers) and lab personnel. the lab people consist of nurses, phlebotomists, and lab techs, who will be processing specimens in the field (blood, urine, poop) before shipping to the central nairobi and international labs.

SO. it's been crazy. since monday, every day has been 19 hour work days. sarah, the phd student with us, and i were musing over the long days and laughed that we've been working ibanking hours for free. that's public health, i guess.

it's not just long hours, but incredible frustration. it reminds me of the log frames that we put together in our gh542 global health strategies class: it was an exercise in logistical program implementation and organization. in a hierarchical manner, we listed the activities that would have to be carried out in order to achieve specific goals and objectives. however, the caveat was an area of the log frame where we had to list possible barriers - infrastructure, funds, etc.

an easy one that i'm sure all of us listed at the very top was 'political will.' while making the log frame, i remember brushing it off because it seemed like such an obvious gimme answer. i could fill the entire barriers column with 'political will' - it sounded so vague, so nonspecific, it didn't really seem worth adding.

unfortunately, not so vague anymore.

oookay

2011-07-25T11:05:00.000-07:00

i think i am finally tired of ugali.

i mentioned ugali before - it's african polenta, but much less fancy. no cheese, milk - just water and cornmeal. and usually white corn. it's bland, slightly gritty, and has the consistency of a brownie. it's oddly appealing in the same way that plain, sticky white rice is. i've only been here 1 month and i'm already craving it at every meal.

which kind of makes me curious about staple foods. i've talked to some kenyans about traveling, and invariably, someone tells me about how on day 3 of their travels, they start insatiably craving ugali. much like how japanese people travel with japanese rice. in kenya, and in japan, i've found that bread has been my constant craving, which is kind of unusual considering i hardly ever have bread in the US. (and whole wheat bread, while kind of impossible to find in japan, is very common here)

growing up chinese in america makes me feel like i don't have a staple food that is my constant fallback. i love bread, but i would say i love noodles more. except, i don't mash noodles into my mouth the same way i fold and crumple slices of bread. and i can't say that i have really craved noodles here. i don't really crave rice, though i grew up eating that with far more consistency than noodles or bread.

this post makes me realize that i write about incredibly mundane things.

i suppose i haven't posted much on kenyan going-ons. the survey training officially kickstarted today - the director of the ministry of public health and sanitation, all the various funding NGOs, and even press came to celebrate the opening. i had to borrow a business skirt from another girl here because everyone was all fancy-like. during the NGO/partner introductions, they also introduced collaborating academic institutions. one of the first ones they mentioned was emory - not because of me, but because there is an iodine expert at the university that they have been consulting with. but i awkwardly got presented as the institution representative and had to stand up and wave to everyone. after lunch, the director spoke, and of course, i kept nodding off. i hope he didn't notice.

all during the day, it was a subdued form of manic activity. we (me, my advisor, and a phd student) were trying to rush to finish all of the training materials (i know, the day that training begins), and they still won't be sent off to the printers until tomorrow morning. it is not possible to do anything in advance here, which makes me constantly uncomfortable.

life for the next 9 days is going to be constant training. the participants don't get a day off, so neither do we.

ugh, i ate too much ugali for dinner.

camera-ed

2011-07-23T15:08:00.000-07:00

just got a camera! helen sent hers to one of the researchers who just arrived from atlanta.

and guess what i plan on documenting first?
camel's milk taste testing w/ the whole team:
http://kenyadairy.com/news/got-camel-milk-or-scoop-cold-hump

(the grocery store sells the option of sour and fresh milk. in 500 mls)

kind of embarrassed, but not enough to care

2011-07-23T13:50:00.000-07:00

the walls at the YWCA are THIN. i can hear people's cell phones as clearly as if they are in my room. i can hear someone showering from my room, and i am all the way down the hall. but very, very, very oddly enough, i never hear people. i don't hear coughs, i don't hear people talking on the phone, i don't hear tvs or moving around. only very occasionally there has been someone else hanging out in someone's room, and i could hear them talking.

so, i am fairly confident that when my colon is having a flatulently raucous time, everyone in this hall can hear it. it doesn't help that i am sitting next to my door either.

but what else am i supposed to do? hold it in? i think not.

***
i think i just heard someone else let one rip. OR it could have been a chair scraping the chair. i think i will choose to believe the former.

where am i again?

2011-07-20T02:46:00.000-07:00

in the training for the 24 hour recall.

(a 24 hour recall questionnaire involves asking someone exactly what they ate in a 24 hour period)

we're going over how important it is that you capture all sorts of details about a food, because they can entail very different things nutritionally. a green mango vs. a ripe one, draining boiling water, vs. not, etc.

listening to the kenyan version of a 24 hour recall is interesting. so many details that i would not have necessarily thought of.
1. whether sugar is fortified or not.
2. how to record non-food items like soil or stones.
3. differentiating between tomato sauce and ketchup (tomato sauce is a bastardized vinegar version)

a kenyan participant just asked if we need to record whether the egg is free range chicken or caged. where does this woman shop, whole foods? just when i start thinking how different things are here, someone reminds me actually how similar they are.

meehg

2011-07-19T23:55:00.000-07:00

threw up a little last night. i don't what it could have been. i didn't eat out for dinner. the water? stomach was in knots and i had chills.

but after the second round of vomit (there wasn't even anything coming up since i'd eaten almost 10 hours prior), i felt pretty finished and fell back asleep after not long.

um... i guess i should still be grateful that the bug hasn't extended further than that?

ireallylikethis

2011-07-19T12:12:00.001-07:00

go immune system go

2011-07-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

feeling congested and snotty. i remember feeling like this in buenos aires, which is kind of sad because argentina is nowhere near as air-polluted as nairobi.

nasal/throat problems began after i stood at the bus stop for an hour waiting for my ride today to the training center. this may not sound like a big deal, but not exaggerating, probably 100 buses/matatus went by spewing their black exhaust fumes right in my direct vicinity. my poor respiratory system is just not used to it.

my ride was late because of a flat tire. which i understand, is not their fault. i just wish they had told me so that i wasn't waiting on the side of the road for so long.

DISCREPANCIES

2011-07-19T02:41:00.001-07:00

this is growing intolerable.

whoosh.

2011-07-17T03:15:00.000-07:00

that's the sound of me letting out my breath (though I hope, not prematurely).

although i will never know exactly how close the survey was to being delayed even further, or whether it was all a bluff, i am relieved that finally, training will begin tomorrow for the 24 hour recall component.

it's as if i'm finally able to see how helpful it is to be here. i'm grateful for even all the earlier drudgery on the questionnaires - i know exactly what's in them. being secretary in all of the technical meetings allows me to fully participate and understand all the decisions that have been made.

supplies are arriving, interviewers have been invited to come. training materials are being made.

suddenly nairobi got a lot more pleasant.

OMG

2011-07-15T09:51:00.001-07:00

I JUST TURNED IN MY GFE APPLICATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(crossing fingersXX)

***
haha. response from rollins so far: "thanks for your persistance."

age

2011-07-14T21:10:00.001-07:00

for several nights now, i've been waking up in the middle of the night to go pee. am i turning into my mother much?

twice so far, i've woken up from a dream in which i was actually urinating - which leads me to grope my crotch upon awakening to make sure i'd not wet myself.

last night, someone left something - a hose? a late night shower? - running, and i woke up at 4 am from a peeing dream, only to hear actual water sounds.

it was terrifying. i had to check multiple times that i wasn't actually soiled.

upper tolerance limit

2011-07-14T06:51:00.000-07:00

my toenails went 5 weeks without being cut before i forced myself to buy a nail clipper. not very long.

news from the n.e.

2011-07-13T09:17:00.000-07:00

From WFP

I don't know what the news coverage in the US is like, but a huge issue in the region right now is the drought and food shortage in N.Eastern Kenya/Somalia. Somalian refugees have been fleeing into the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya at the rate of 1300 people a day (holy shit) - and the refugee camp is already the largest one in the world. There are a whole range of reasons - food prices, drought (it's so bad that camels are dying), war - probably the civil war in particular has kept the country from establishing any agricultural infrastructure and prevented aid from reaching whole swathes of the country

i won't pretend to know any more than that. but the images that we've been seeing in the newspapers here are heartbreaking.

some articles/pictures:
http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/charity-news/somalia-nears-famine
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/famine-and-drought-in-somalia/
http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/07/05/7016738-dadaab-the-worlds-largest-refugee-camp
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Kenya+in+Dadaab+refugee+standoff+says+UNHCR/-/1056/1200354/-/5djga1/-/

g-damnit

2011-07-13T07:22:00.000-07:00

lost my phone.

ugh. well luckily it only costs $20 and i had less than a dollar credit on it (it's amazing, i only go through a buck a week), but now i've got to go into town and get another one... and i still don't have my GFE funding yet.

you know, i can't say that i'm going to miss nairobi.

taking advance orders :)

2011-07-10T06:02:00.000-07:00

rehac's new chico bags. made from recycled water bottles. will be ready in august 2011! logo & artwork is by megan ann prior: http://www.unillu.com/

a few

2011-07-10T05:50:00.000-07:00

my advisor just gave me some pics that he's taken in the last two weeks.

From 2011

ismail, the survey coordinator, and i, working outside at the research institute canteen.

From 2011

having some drinks at ole sereni, a hotel that overlooks nairobi national park (you're looking at it). the only animals we saw were guinea fowl.

From 2011

wrangling with some crocodile meat at carnivore, a famous nairobi restaurant which used to be known for serving only game meat at it's peak. it's pretty much like brazilian churrascaria, with some unusual animals & offal thrown in. my favorites - ostrich meatballs and bbq camel.

From 2011

the boys at the table - sam, who is a freelance global health journalist, my advisor, and philip, the husband of one of one of the women at the table.

more like it.

2011-07-09T05:18:00.000-07:00

despite all my misgivings, i had a glimmer of affection for nairobi today.

first, let me explain. there is nothing terribly awful about nairobi (other than theft, ugh), not any worse than any other big city in a developing country. the streets are congested, the exhaust makes me gag, and i hear a lot of 'ching chong's and 'teach me karate.' but this is the case in a lot of cities.

the displeasure at being here is predominantly related to the work that's happening (or rather, not happening). i can't really elaborate on it much, but i often question whether coming here was the best choice.

but enough of that. today's saturday, and there's not been any work planned so far. so i took a walk up to parklands, which is the 'asian' (indian) part of town. it's supposed to have a great produce market, and i am always in the mood for curry and naan.

googlemaps (nairobi is all googlemapped out, which is very convenient) showed that it was 3 km away. it took me about 1.5 hours to walk. even though it didn't seem to take that long, it's not really a walk that i foresee myself doing again. walking anywhere in nairobi is not really that pleasant. sidewalks don't exist, red dust gets all over your mouth, throat, nose, and eyes, and crossing uhuru highway took some balls. i thought it would be a good way to see town, so i'm glad i did it, now that i know that there's nothing to see.

when i got to the produce market, it was AMAZING. first off, i have said this before and this only further proves my point - you will find chinese people anywhere where you find good produce. the asians always know where to get fruit and vegetables. always. we're like bees to honey.

anyways, so i had asked a bunch of people for directions to the market, and the last lady i asked was a kind, young-ish grandmotherly type who was very vehement that i understand her directions. she told me it was just up the street, and it was a biiiig market. as i kept walking, the neighborhood got more developed, and after i saw a big banner for a new 'chandarana supermarket', i started to worry that she had directed me there, rather than to an open air produce place.

but then i saw the watermelon. i don't know how far i was, but i was at least across the street and down a few hundred feet when i saw piles of watermelon at least 5 feet high. and monkeys. the whole place is covered with metal roofing, so it's a bit dim inside, but you could get everything there - it made me curse the YWCA for not having a kitchen that i could use. the green peas! the cranberry beans! the fennel!!

i left with only fruit - 3 big mangoes, four passion fruit, a dozen baby (3 inches max) bananas, a tangerine, and three big avocados - for about $3. then i made my way to diamond plaza, which wasn't too far, for an indian food feast. 11:30 is a bit early for lunch in kenya (places don't get busy until afer 1), so the tandoori wasn't ready yet and i couldn't get naan. so i ordered a dosa 'very spicy', and was given an enormous panfried crepe in the shape of an equilateral triangle with 1.5 feet sides. no joke, it was HUGE.

of course, i ate it all, along with the soup they gave me, and my stomach is still burning 3 hours later. it ranks as one of the most delicious indian meals i've ever had. i think i've got to make parklands my saturday ritual.

i caught a matatu back into town - my first time (a isuzu minivan that seats about a dozen people). i've been riding taxis with my advisor the rest of the time i've been here, and only taken the bus twice. there is something about riding public transit in another country that just endears the city to me; riding in that matatu, jostling around with other passengers, playing chicken with other cars, watching the pedestrian activity outside - was the most i'd enjoyed this city so far.

so. tonight i'm supposed to go to dinner and dancing with my advisor and a kenyan friend of his. we're going to carnivore, which i had a hunch was in my guidebook - anywhere that seems worthwhile apparently is in my guidebook - and is billed as nairobi's most famous restaurant. it's known for game meat, which i probably won't get, and it's not cheap either - $20 for all you can eat dinner. definitely out of my budget, but i guess what can you do when it's the most famous place in town?

tearing hair

2011-07-07T10:55:00.000-07:00

missing my mac so bad.

my cousin should really have told me that her netbook does not have a full version of microsoft office.

great article

2011-07-07T03:41:00.001-07:00

unfortunate title

miksi vs. carnation

2011-07-06T08:17:00.000-07:00

i have somewhat of a bad habit that started up again after i started at rollins. suddenly surrounded by an abundance of powdered non-dairy creamer containers, i took to sneaking a good tablespoon of the stuff whenever i found it - on the 6th floor coffee area, at the new office, i even considered taking a cupful when i was waiting at the gynecologist's office.

for the longest time, i wasn't sure where my taste for powdered non-dairy creamer came from (and it must be powdered - i don't drink the little single serving cups); i only remember standing on the countertops as a kid in order to reach the upper cupboards where the creamer was kept. (i used to also kneel on the floor next to the condiments cupboard and eat asian-soup-spoonfuls of sugar, but i'm sure that's fairly normal for a child.)

that is, until i mentioned it to my oldest brother not long ago, and he said, 'I used to do the same thing.' (this makes me fairly confident that i can trace most of my idiosyncracies to my siblings)

anyway, so i am also a fan of powdered milk. not to eat straight exactly, but i think it's a great way to put milk in your tea/coffee/hot chocolate because you don't end up cooling your drink, watering it down, or resorting to heavy cream to avoid both those issues.

without it, hot chocolate while in the high altitude salt plains of bolivia would have been impossible - fresh/packaged milk is heavy and doesn't travel well.

Powdered milk is more widely used in developing countries, probably due to lack of refrigeration. it's the same here in kenya, and the predominant brand is 'Miksi'. it's what they put in all of the milk teas, coffees, etc. Miksi, however, isn't straight up milk. it's skimmed milk, with some added sugar, vegetable fat (seems to negate the point of skimming it), lecithin, and some vitamins.

the table that i sit at has Miksi on it. after staring at it for a while, i started to wonder what it tasted like by itself. and the idea that i could just eat straight powdered milk(ish) to get my calcium started to sound both ingenious and tasty.

so the next time i found myself alone in the office, i furtively took the lid off, scooped up a small amount, and put it in my mouth.

ew. gritty. too sweet. salty? not good.

yesterday's lunch, with some edits

2011-07-05T10:53:00.001-07:00

i still don't have a camera, but i came across this picture while i was google searching 'muac':

this is essentially what i ate yesterday for lunch except substitute a few details:

a.) less pristine looking conditions (dirty red Coke tablecloth, not just a few flies buzzing around)
b.) a big piece of chapati (fried indian bread) instead of a round hunk of ugali (hard white corn grits/polenta)... but i eat ugali enough here that it pretty much feels like what i ate. i really like it actually. and this chick clearly went to a nice restaurant, because noone serves ugali like that.
c.) stewed greens instead of sliced kale (sukume wiki?). but then again, i had kale with my lunch the other day. it's a pretty standard veggie side.

and with it is a whole fried tilapia fish.

so there you go. it cost $2 at a grill next to the research institute.

fairview hotel

2011-07-03T07:35:00.000-07:00

my advisor and i spend the weekends (the two that there have been, anyway) working at the garden cafes at the fairview hotel. right now, we're working on creating the training manuals for the questionnaire interviewers.

there is a musician that the hotel hires for the evening, that is something of a linguist dilettante. apparently he's from the DRC, and we've heard him sing songs in french, english (don't cry for me argentina), swahili, and spanish (macarena, anyone?).

he just sang a super popular chinese song in mandarin. i wish i could find a link for it.

so wierd.

message

2011-07-03T01:41:00.000-07:00

becky.you moving to better room is good .but you still need be careful .close the window
for sleep .i hope you happy and safe.and doing good to.
mom

nairobi day 8

2011-07-02T01:21:00.000-07:00

i had another entry that i'd written earlier, and i've deleted it because i need to stop complaining. i'm here, and i need to be positive and take advantage of this opportunity.

so instead, i'm going to write a 'grateful list,' which, despite its cheese factor, actually really does help me put things in perspective.

i am grateful that/for:
1. my food poisoning last night was slight. nausea for an hour (went to bed with a plastic bag underneath my mouth), some unsolid poo (only twice!), and a bit of intestinal gurgling, but that was it.
2. my advisor is being so generous.
3. *cross fingers* the sponsorship letter will be done very soon.
4. my new window faces an avocado tree outside my window. i hope they'll be ripe soon!
5. the lack of mosquitos!! (or lord just thinking about this one improves my mood)

nybes

2011-07-01T09:28:00.000-07:00

yeah, another post. but i find it hard not to write.

on thursday, nairobi traffic took 2.5 hours go to 1.5 miles. and i thought living in LA gave me traffic credibility.

it was a little past 5 when lydia and i got in her car. she's the lab coordinator for the study, and we had just gotten back from scouting out new floor tiles for the lab (invigorating, that was).

[during that trip, from the car, i saw something that looked like hooves sticking out next to a tree on the freeway median. we were moving slowly (there is never NO traffic here), and i remember thinking - no, that can't be a cow. why would there be a cow, dead on it's side, in the middle of the road? as we got closer, i kept telling myself it wasn't a huge, dead, bloated animal with its legs sticking straight into the air. but of course, it was. a donkey actually, covered in flies, and inflated like a helium balloon. sometimes in nairobi you can forget where you are.]

anyway, so lydia and i get in her car. she's offered me a ride home because she's heading that direction to go to a friend's fundraiser before going home. i would have taken the bus otherwise, which costs .30 and a half hour. i could have also walked, and that would have also probably taken 45 minutes.

but, i didn't. damn. it. we get in the car, and are automatically hit with a flood of cars. lydia turned off her car at least a dozen times while waiting in the crush. it took us an hour before we got about a half mile from my hostel. but her friend's fundraiser had already started, and she didn't want to be any later than necessary, so she asked if it would be possible to pop into her friend's thing, drop off some money, and use me as an excuse to leave early anyways. i said sure, so we kept heading into the city center - which can't be more than .5 of a mile from my hostel. and when we got there, we had to look for parking. we drove up on the curb and parked on the sidewalk.

the fundraiser, it turned out, was a harambee, which means 'united.' people throw harambees for multiple reasons - raising money for school, for new babies, anything. this one, unfortunately, was for a funeral. and the restaurant it was being held at was having a power outtage. so when we got there, it was just a table full of people, sitting around a single table, with a notebook. of all the names of the donors, and the amount they gave. so there i was, sitting in the middle of a bunch of strangers, at a white plastic table, in the dark. with a man who's father had just die of pancreatic cancer, and his friends and family. i felt slightly awkward to say the least. there was no food anywhere, or at any of the other tables, despite it being a restaurant, and the place was packed.

i am a terribly insensitive person, because the entire time we were sitting in traffic, i was thinking, 'what is this guy doing, arranging a harambee during rush hour, in the city center? does he want ANYONE to go home at a reasonable time?'

after lydia and i gave our bits and spoke to the bereaved (i said, somewhat cliched, 'i'm sorry for your loss,' which i don't think translated very clearly), and got back in the f-ing traffic. it took about another half hour to go the half mile. i got back to the hostel at 8 pm, had ugali (white maize polenta, basically) with kale, did some work, and went to bed.

i am never getting in a car between 5-7 in nairobi.

nairobi day 7

2011-06-30T21:34:00.000-07:00

nairobi day 7

happy one week anniversary in NBO.

and happy engagement, belated birthday, and new promotion to melanie l. schultz! no longer a slug in a garden of butterflies ;)

so, i FINALLY (i know, it's only been a week, so can i really say that in caps?) got a usb modem so that i can access the internet in most places. (apparently not my room, which sucks) i'd initially not planned on doing so, because i had assumed there was wifi at the hostel (or most places) - because that had been a given at almost all the hostels i stayed at in s. america. apparently that's not how it's done here, and the YMCA's cyber cafe's off hours (well, off for me) were inconvenient and inconducive to ever being able to check my email or get work done.

some stuff i wrote a few days ago to post:

(nairobi day 5)

[sometimes i still can't believe that my camera was stolen. i keep hoping/expecting that it will turn up in my bag and somehow i was completely blind to it]

i wish i had my camera so i could show you where i'm living. i'm at the YMCA, and it's about $12 a day, inclusive of breakfast. i have a tiny cubbyhole of a room - well, it's probably the same size as my berkeley room, but that was also pretty small - with a closet, sink, and small desk. i really like it actually, but my mattress could do to be a little less saggy. my left shoulder has been killing me lately, but it was probably my backpack that did it, because it started to ache in the netherlands. i'm sure the bed isn't helping things.

i'm not quite yet on a routine, but i've been waking up between 6:30 and 8 in the morning. [and i've had very little jetlag, which is astonishing. although i can't say that i sleep too well at night, i am certainly anywhere as tired during the day as i would expect.]

sometime in the morning, either before or after breakfast, i do my laundry in my little sink. considering how little clothing i brought, i don't really have enough with me to wait for a load, and there aren't laundromats here. so every day, i wash a shirt and a pair of underwear, and hang it to dry.

breakfast at the hostel offers: tea, uji (at least, that's what i think it is. it's a porridgy thing, kind of like cream of wheat, except runnier, and red.), bread, fruit (papaya, pineapple, watermelon), both fried and hardboiled eggs, and if you're early enough, a starchy vegetable (sweet potato and/or taro) and sausage. there's this old white man that i see every day at breakfast, regardless of when i go, and he's always got this complete spread with baked beans, tomatoes, and oatmeal that makes me wonder if there's an a la carte option as well, though i've not seen anyone else with it. he's got so much food on his table usually that i highly doubt he finishes it. (two heaping bowls of oatmeal?)

during the weekend, i went to my project advisor's hotel to work on the questionnaires. he's staying not far from me - about a 20 minute walk. he's of course, on government per diem, so his hotel is this expansive sprawl of a country estate, with something like 5 restaurants. this is something about africa (at least, tanzania and kenya) that i find a bit unsettling. to a degree that i've not seen in s. america or s.e. asia, foreigners can disappear into these gated bubbles that make it difficult to tell that you're even in africa. i had this surreal moment two nights ago as we were having dinner at the hotel, and the garden patio in front of us looked as though we could have been in france or italy from it's eurodesign.

and because they cater specifically to foreigners, the prices are pretty much what you would see in the US as well. i think his hotel runs in the $150 range, and meals are about $10 for a light salad, and $15-$20 for a meat entree. considering that my school funding hasn't gone through yet, and even on that amount, my daily food budget is $10, my advisor has been very generous about covering my meals when we're working together.

if you keep in mind that anyone staying in the tourist bubble here is spending on average $200 a day just for lodging and food, it's that much more of a stark contrast when your taxi driver and everyone else around them, does not have change for a $10 bill. it was like trying to find someone with change for a $100 bill at home. noone carries around that much cash with them. no wonder we are walking robbery targets. local people operate in under $1 for most of their everyday purchases: phone credit in .20 increments, bus rides for .10 a trip. my lunch today, cobbled together from the office cafe next door, consisted of tea, three pieces of bread and margarine, and a banana - for about .40. and it still makes me wonder if she overcharged me.

in my previous travels, i often felt like i existed in the same parameters as the local community. and i don't know if it's because i wasn't as exposed to the development work that was occurring, but even the foreigner spots that i frequented were only about 2-3x the cost of local prices, rather than the 10x+ scale that i'm seeing here. i remember in sucre, bolivia, my friends and i decided to treat ourselves a few times at a nice french place, and meals there were around $3-4 dollars. considering that a meal at a market stand would have been $1.50-2, it wasn't really that much more of a splurge. and geez, in vietnam, pho was .50 on the street and $1.50 at a restaurant. it just makes me think about to what degree foreign development has rooted itself here, and created such a dichotomous us/them world. or maybe this is just reflective of the gap in equality pervasive between the rich and the poor, that is that much higher here than anywhere i've been before. probably a bit of both.

anyway, those are just the thoughts i've had so far being here. i've been waiting about 2 hours now for my task... but my advisor told me this would happen. he said that a lot of the work in africa entails just waiting. everyone is late, and there is a lot of bureaucracy.

i spent the first hour or so finishing up the survey questionnaires, and then read some articles that i'd saved from the internet while i'd had a connection at the fancy hotel. (unfortunately, the YMCA doesn't have wifi - another item that s. america has a leg up on. can't believe that wifi was so available in the middle of bolivia and not at all in one of the biggest cities in east africa) even at the hotel, the internet was spotty, and i can't pick up a signal here at the institute. this means more blog entries for you.

tired of writing. will probably read now.

ball grabbing

2011-06-28T08:36:00.001-07:00

it's only day 5.

nairobi day 4

2011-06-27T08:48:00.000-07:00

12 noon - at the research arm of the ministry of health, awaiting directions to help with lab inventory tasks.

the weekend was spent editing the general questionnaires for the four target population groups - women of reproductive age, men, children under 5, and school-age children 5-14.

i should probably explain what i am working on exactly here.

the kenyan government has called for a nationally representative survey of malnutrition in the country - the last one that was done in 1999, so it's hard to understand the current state of the population's nutrition without knowing what kind of deficiencies exist, and where. this entails doing biochemical tests of poop, pee, blood, anthropometric measurements of body size, and personal interviews. along with the ministry of health, the CDC, the bureau of statistics, and a whole bunch of other NGOs are collaborating together to get the whole project done.

something new to the survey this time around is a 24-hr dietary recall component - which basically calls for asking interviewees exactly what they ate in the last 24 hours of their day and night. done correctly, this is considered one of the best tools for accurately describing a population's quality of diet. however, these interviews are expensive. they require a lot of manpower, time, and to do it on a national scale is unusual. but, including it allows dietary details to be linked to their biochemical and anthropometric data.

the 24-hr dietary recall is the part that i am supposed to be helping with the most, and the part that i'm academically most interested in as well.

i've arrived in time for training (of the interviewers and lab staff) to begin soon; the 24-hr recall training begins next week, so until then i've been kept busy with questionnaire editing. crafting a survey tool is an interesting (and frustrating sounding) process - though i obviously wasn't involved with it from the very beginning, the short time i've been exposed to it sounds like it's a meticulous process.

today, we woke up early to meet with the director of the research institute (i don't want to name anything specific - i am a little paranoid, and from working in PR, i know that communications directors have google alerts on any key words that relate to them), and my project advisor left me here with some of the staff to see what i could help them with. we're supposed to go over the inventory, but there's been some dead time in between when that can start.

this entry's been long enough, so i'll write later about some cultural perceptions so far.

unbelievable

2011-06-25T07:02:00.001-07:00

1st day in nairobi. camera stolen. literally, right in front of me, as I held my bag, and I didn't feel it.

###

couldn't write much yesterday because right after it happened, i started helping with survey documents. probably a good thing - it took my mind off it for a while.

so what happened was that my project advisor and i were waiting at the mobile stand while he worked out the kinks of his phone. my side was against the wall, kind of, but we were basically on the street. after a while, a pack of gum fell out of my bag. i bent down to pick it up and put it back in, and when i turned my bag around, i realized the entire zipper was wide open. and my camera was gone.

the thing is about my day bag is that when i wear it, the zipper is upside down. you can't get anything out of it without turning it over to unzip - this can be annoying, but it also means that there was no way it could have happened any other time than when i was standing there, right in front of my advisor. because if i'd taken two steps with it wide open like that, everything would have fallen out.

it blows my mind how smooth the pickpocketer was - it's not a very big bag, and they must have had to be reaching under me (the bag was in front of me) to get it out. it seems like it would have made more sense that it was taken earlier, but again, that couldn't have happened with the bag open like that.

so what makes this the most frustrating part is that i've owned this camera for not even 1 month. it's the first camera i've bought in 5 years, and one week after i bought it, some girl at a wedding dropped it on its lens and i had to get it overnight shipped to canon for repairs - which totaled $200. (the camera is worth $400) i bought the camera because of wedding season and because i wanted a good camera for kenya.

soo. i also woke up in a bad mood this morning because i had a dream that having my camera stolen was actually a dream. my subconscious is so cruel.

nairobi

2011-06-24T23:47:00.001-07:00

got in late last night. somehow my body only felt like sleeping 6.5 hours. had breakfast (taro, sweet potato, boiled egg and tea), went into town to go shopping for some toiletries & other home items, and after this, am going to shower.

i found the nakamutt (a grocery/households store) immensely interesting and am disappointed that the hostel doesn't have a kitchen for self catering, because there are all sorts of things that i would like to try cooking with. there was also camel's milk, which i will have to investigate and report back on.

i had a dream last night that i started going out with Pacey from Dawson's Creek. which i find mostly odd because i was always on team Dawson when it was on.

in utrecht and it feels so good...

2011-06-23T09:53:00.001-07:00

got into amsterdam at 7 am local time, 1 am atlanta, meaning i didn't sleep at all on the plane because i had been distracting myself with three movies from the inflight entertainment (the tourist, gran torino [the acting was really stiff, but i cried!!] and country strong). before take off, we spent 2 hours waiting on the tarmac due to 1: runway lines and 2: a sudden thunderstorm right as we were about to take off. thank god that passed, and we only lost an hour during the flight itself.

my friend stijn from my study abroad years met up with me at 9 in the old pijp area of town, where the heineken experience is. we tried walking around the albert cuypmarkt, which is just basically a street market, but these areas are the only places that you can find freshly pressed stroopwafel. unfortunately however, the rain must've scared off the stroopwafel vendor because there was none to be around. i ended getting a smoked herring sandwich with an abundance of onions for breakfast. it was good, but odd, and my i didn't much like my fishy-onion breath every time i burped.

when it started to rain more heavily, we ducked into the museum of bags & purses, which was a nice diversion. there were old bags from as far back as the 16th century. by the time we were done, amsterdam was nice and sunny again.

we wandered a bit more, and around 3 pm dutch time, it was 9 am eastern, and i'd officially not slept for 24 hours. i was having problems responding to stijn in a coherent manner. so we headed back to utrecht, and stijn very dutchly gave me a ride back to his house with me riding on the back rack. me + my bag was about 75 kilograms. i was impressed.

after a nap, some friends came over and we ordered out for schwarma... which was good, but somehow not as ridiculously delicious as from what i remember when we were at UCU. sad. [Julie, i wanted to go to lombok, but didn't really get around to it.]

i brought back three packages of stroopwafel for Kenya.

It's back.

2011-06-21T11:44:00.001-07:00

Thought this would be helpful again for my family. Though, it is far less interesting because I basically plan to be in Nairobi the entire time. I'll try to also update with any siteseeing in the area that I do.

Staying at the YMCA Nairobi for now, unless I find a homestay with someone else. For now, it seems pretty well priced (about $10 a day), and it's got a aerobic classes and a pool. Huzzah. Really close walking distance to where I should be working, and downtown.

details...

2011-06-20T20:20:00.001-07:00

tomorrow is my last full day before leaving the country. i actually wasn't feeling that harried about getting ready to go - i feel like i've been preparing for some time now - and have been leisurely reading, running, and shopping to set up my room in the fall.

until today, when i met with my project advisors and found out that i need to have the institutional review board approve my work in kenya... something that i am kicking myself about. i'd wondered if i needed to do this, but i didn't hear anything back when i asked about it, and promptly forgot about it since my work there seems to focus on training and dealing with data on a secondary basis.

oh boo. so now tomorrow is going to be full of stress trying to figure out how to get that done. i hope it's not too much of a headache. and i hope the washer gets fixed, or i'll have to do laundry in NL...

i'm sure it'll eventually get itself worked out... it's just anxiety-inducing how long these things take. and no, gfe hasn't been turned in yet. i wonder if they'll still fund it retroactively??

i hate MARTA

2011-06-18T18:34:00.000-07:00

unrelated to why i hate MARTA (atlanta's public transit system), why is it even named after a middle aged woman? it's the same with BART.

so, let me name the reasons:

1.) Where is your Next MARTA GPS tracker? The website does have something akin to this - http://mycommute.itsmarta.com/hiwire?.a=iNextBus - but it's horrible. 1st off - you have to enter off some arcane stop number - and the link to find this stop number doesn't work. i have no idea why whoever planned this thought it would be easier for riders to look up their stop rather than enter in their cross streets. when I actually did find the accurate link for looking up my stop number, it fails to specify what bus line is for which stop number.

2.) Speaking of Next MARTA, where is your smartphone app so that people can actually look up when the next bus is when they're out? The transit website doesn't even have a mobile phone version, so you're left navigating their poorly organized full website.

3.) You stop service for the 36 busline at 8:49pm? I had just finished telling my roommate how convenient it was to get to Midtown from our house because it was just straight on the 36 to Piedmont Park. And while I'm getting ready, I looked up the bus route schedule and found out that I'd already missed the last bus for the night. The 36 passes through the Highlands - a huge bar scene in town - and this leaves everyone stranded if they're planning to go out for the night.

I'm going to stop there, because line infrequency goes without saying. I know MARTA's had a lot of cuts recently - as all public transit has. And I know it's really hard to support public transit in such a car heavy city - noone uses it. But it's also a vicious cycle - the worse public transit gets, the less people will use it. Considering technology now, the fact that MARTA lacks a smartphone app, mobile version, or an easily navigable site, it seems like they're also strategically ignored what works for successful public transit systems elsewhere.

GoogleMaps (what I deferred to after the MARTA site couldn't give me something that made sense on their Trip Planner) says it will take me over an hour (and 2 transfers) to go 4 miles, when my bike will take 30 mins.

Dreading that most likely I'll have to buy a car after graduation.

sometimes,

2011-06-17T09:32:00.000-07:00

i wonder.

baah.

packer

2011-06-09T23:36:00.000-07:00

... for the second year in a row now, i will not be having a summer. kenya is on the other side of the equator, but i still expected weather to be in the high 80s. good thing i checked weather.com though, because apparently since nairobi is a mile up from sea level, it is much more temperate than the rest of the country - highs will be in the low 70s and lows will be in the mid 40s while i'm there.

pretty ideal, because i've been having a hard time figuring out what i can pack that will not a.) cause me to faint from the heat while still being b.) somewhat professional appearing. mostly, i am really happy that i won't have to freak out about mosquitos while i'm there.

i think i'm almost completely done preparing for kenya. i have adapters. a guidebook. luggage locks. my visa. a swahili phrasebook. of course, i still don't know where i am going to stay - although i'm sure i can find something between hostelworld.com and my coworker's connections.

well, i have my gfe of course, which is still in draft form. one more edit, and some other administrative details, and the beast should be finally. finally. dead.

weddings are fun.

2011-06-07T00:32:00.000-07:00

From 2011

like i never left

2011-06-01T23:16:00.000-07:00

just checked the 5 day report for while i'm in SF. each day does not break 60 degrees. in fact, saturday & sunday it is supposed to rain.

i missed you too, sf weather!

2nd aunt is now banned from social functions

2011-05-22T20:39:00.000-07:00

my mother, against my protests, set up another family 'meeting' with her friend's cousin's son. we went to his parents' house for a bbq. it was my mom's friend, her family, and his family - his mom, dad, and super spry and adorable grandmother. i want to be HER when i am 81. she was dancing with me in the kitchen. on our side, it was me, my mom, and my 2nd aunt.

so, we were really the only young people our age, so it was kind of normal that we were chatting anyways. much less awkward than the dim sum set up. he seemed nice enough, though i am really not interested in anything. we probably got to their house a little after 3, and around 7, my 2nd aunt comes up to us at the dining room table (mind you, he speaks cantonese too), and says, 'becky, me and your mom are going to go. why don't you stay here and chat a little bit longer?'

uh. super awkward. 1.) he understands what she's saying 2.) i can't respond because he would understand what i'm saying 3.) there is NO need for her to leave with my mom - they drove separately. they use the ridiculous excuse that my 2nd aunt didn't know the directions to get back to her house 4.) she's smiling in this grotesquely saccharine, teasing way, like, 'oh my, look how the young people are getting along!'

the fellow was nice enough, sure, but i did not want to be left in his house with his entire family & extended family. so i tried to say, 'how will i get home?' and 'i don't want to impose when everyone else has already left!' my aunt proceeded to insist and i wanted to knock her teeth out.

he gracefully excused himself (after we both agreed in english how astoundingly awkward it was), and i told my mom i'd be going with her.

and conclusion: not my next husband.

let's elaborate

2011-05-19T01:15:00.000-07:00

hi friends.

currently in california, where i've actually been since... thursday. except, when i got in, we picked up karen, and then immediately left friday morning for santa barbara. the rest of the weekend was filled with mackie's bachelorette festivities, which included:

-delicious california strawberries (which i've so missed! the ones from florida do not compare)

-an awesome surfer shabby-chic hotel right on the beach (as in, looking out our window, it looked like we were in the water)

-crotchless panties

-the bride & her mother taking blowjob shots

-dancing for four hours (not sure when the last time that happened was)

-unfortunately, a stolen camera.

anyhow, so i dropped karen off on sunday... and i can't really remember what i proceeded to do next. oh, agitate over what my summer plans were going to be.

so this is what happened: micronesia didn't happen, and i found out about that in april. then my coworker told me about kenya. which was tentative because he had to get people to sign off on it. it's the government, after all. actually, two governments. so, i continued to apply for internships just in case, and at this point, i was fed up with anything international. but it was kind of hard to apply for internships with the amount of work there was left to do at the end of the semester, packing, and moving.

i ended up interviewing with an internship in georgia (god, it was paid), interviewing with an Americorps in kentucky (also paid, and i was actually kind of really excited about living there), and interviewing with a *very* small nonprofit in brooklyn, which was... probably most definitely unpaid. and in new york, that just is not possible. it would probably work out to be more than kenya even without GFE funding.

i got the georgia internship. did not get the kentucky one - which is too bad, because at that point, i was thinking i would stay domestic, and that would be my first choice. but i interviewed with them while i was at the airport, boarding for my flight. so... not the most ideal of scenarios. i got the brooklyn one, but i don't think that was really ever a question.

and then my coworker called from kenya. very positive developments there. basically, funding is complete. everyone is on board. i can go.

so, my dilemma was: take something safe, known, organized, paid, or something completely and totally on the fly. because even though kenya would be with the government, i'm not being paid. so i guess it would be like i'm a guerilla intern. staying with friends of friends. finagling a free flight from frequent flier miles *i hope*. writing another 10 page funding proposal.

i will have to say that rollins is making me much more comfortable with the unplanned. funnily enough, the person that pushed me over towards kenya on sunday night (i had to tell the georgia internship on monday) was this guy that my mom was trying to set me up with (a whole other story, but unsuccessful to say the least). i asked him what he would do, and his answer made so much sense. so much that i can't quite remember what it was, but it was something along the lines of, "i'd choose kenya if it was something that i wouldn't do otherwise, if it was an opportunity i wouldn't have again."

which was totally true. i can analyze qualitative data and write papers on it anytime. i can volunteer for these people when i go back to school, because i think their org is awesome and interesting. but i cannot go work on the "cadillac" of nutrition surveys in kenya probably ever again in my life.

so. that's what's been happening with me. on monday, i turned down the internship, called delta, and have spent the last two days writing my GFE proposal. i just sent my coworker the rough draft for editing. tomorrow, i need to take care of getting my visa.

obviously, i'm not fed up enough with being poor.

i hope i'm not shooting myself in the foot.

2011-05-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

gaaaaaaah

gaagh crawling

2011-04-29T09:21:00.000-07:00

TO DO (in order of due date)

gh 534 final presentation slides
gh 542 final presentation
gh 545 biomarkers homework
epi 591 final presentation
gh 542 budget
gh 534 final presentation
epi 591 final paper
gh 545 final
gh 522 data analysis homework
bios 501 case 3
gfe proposal

i am working on my case right now. i only have 2 pages left to write, but i'm at a bit of a loss to know exactly how i am supposed to decide whether there is a violation of the proportional hazards ratio. i know, you're so excited, right?

that GFE proposal is NEVER going to get written. i am supposed to hear some more news about Kenya next week. maybe I can craft something just in the meantime... i've also been applying to jobs/internships domestically in case all fails and i am in the US. maybe i can at least make some money.

i wish

2011-04-27T17:32:00.000-07:00

i could look into the future and know where i will be, just so that i can decide whether i can get a dog now or not.

today's adorable petfinder.com puppy that NEEDS to be in my life.

update

2011-04-23T20:46:00.000-07:00

TO DO (in order of due date)

gh 534 final presentation slides
gh 542 final presentation
gh 545 biomarkers homework
epi 591 final presentation
gh 542 budget
*edit, omg omg - i can feel the impending fun*
gh 534 final presentation
epi 591 final paper
gh 545 final
gh 522 data analysis homework
bios 501 case 3
gfe proposal

*might I also add to my extreme productivity that I submitted an internship & scholarship application today?

4.5 pages down

2011-04-23T20:45:00.000-07:00

5.5 left to go. or, 10.5 left to go, but i highly doubt i will write the maximum length of this paper.

the first draft of my papers are so shitty. always. i just throw up whatever i've read onto the screen. my second and third drafts are essentially complete re-writes, usually. unless it's for biostats, and whatever i throw up is just what gets turned in, because refreshingly, they don't care about word redundancy (there are only so many ways you can say 'indicators,' and 'risk factors'), and the point is to just say what you did. not what you think.

today was enjoyable. we went to a professor's lake house about an hour away from atl... had some delicious bbq (i rather enjoy the south), laid in the sun, and swam across the lake while catching up with a friend. made me realize that i really miss depth of friendships here. there is so much running around between classes (and none of my good friends are in the same nutrition classes, so i don't even get to see them there), and i don't live with any friends (where i spend a lot of my time doing work). it was nice to talk more about the surface details.

tomorrow: definitely no social mingling. papering all day long.

Perhaps

2011-04-20T06:19:00.000-07:00

If I would like to maintain my (pubescent) girlish figure, I should lay off the copious hagelslag on top of my morning muffin:

Maybe tomorrow I'll actually take a picture of what I've been eating, so that you can be appropriately shocked at what a public health-nutrition major considers breakfast.

So sweet it actually hurts my molars.
(Wearing my paperclip shirt today for a class presentation. This should happen more often.)

inching

2011-04-17T21:23:00.000-07:00

I want to put big X marks next to my gh 534 and gh 542 presentations, but we've only just finished the slides - not actually done the presentation. so... a bit too early.

I have three days to now put together a presentation for epi 591. I think I only have 10 minutes, so.. 10 slides? It shouldn't take too long. Unfortunately, this has to be the basis for a 10-15 page paper. Gargh.

ALmost ALMOST almost ALMOST!

Peke figures things out

lunch and dinner the last few days:

actually enlightening

"Nauseous

"

possibility

on time

one upping

just in case this has not been shared:

in other news...

feeling good

?!

back to the t-word...

sometimes i wonder

good to know

long day, somehow

back to atl

tired of personal statements.

reason # 1039481024 why i can't move back home

low carb sugar free lemon bars

pet peeve

dark.

Another reason

also -

i have the feeling

mixed opinion

proud to be

holy india in 7 days.

ahh.

grateful

oh no

del day 1

weeeeee

over & under punctuation

finals diet

so so done

unhappy face

not bad

gracias

parasite overload

shabaab + kenya

fatherly

things i wish i had more time for:

great

ATL: 1 week later

not boring at least...

LOUD

goodbye nybes

wrapping up

oh hay

wish list: sleep and salad

happenings

day 42

day 36

bleary

training day 4

oookay

camera-ed

kind of embarrassed, but not enough to care

where am i again?

meehg

ireallylikethis

go immune system go

DISCREPANCIES

whoosh.

OMG

age

upper tolerance limit

news from the n.e.

g-damnit

taking advance orders :)

a few

more like it.

tearing hair

great article

miksi vs. carnation

yesterday's lunch, with some edits

fairview hotel

message

nairobi day 8

"
Nauseous