Girls Camp and a little bit more

This past week was
a) the first week of mid-school break
b) the second week-long episode of "Chicas Poderosas"
c) the scene of a great cucaracha fight
d) the week before I travel to San Andres
e) all of above

Ding ding ding, the answer is E!

Sorry...I've been studying for the GRE's, which is a whole other barrel of not-laughs, since it's been actually a decade since my last math class and, well, have I ever told you that I majored in creative writing? 'Cause I did. My brain es aun chiquitica, I have space for only one academic skill. It...is not math.

Moving on! Last week, we finished Semester One of school. (woooot) Meanwhile, for various reasons, I've started to focus more of my energy away from my "primary" goal, which is co-teaching, and put it to other uses.

Like, for instance, leadership activities! This past week, I lead a girls leadership camp for seventh graders along with some other Barranquilla volunteers and my all-time favorites, the Scouts of Colombia. It was fantastic to have the older girls in Scouts help out and put their amazing leadership skills to use.

Of course, there's only a small bit of time between this and my next adventure, which includes flying to San Andres with the Ministry of Education on Tuesday. Each year, the Colombian government holds trainings for English teachers from all over the country in San Andres and Providencia, two of Colombia's (resort) islands. The interesting thing about these islands, aside from their coral reefs, volcanic beaches, and government-protected mountainous black crabs, is that they were originally an English colony. They speak a creole as well as a unique brand of English. Anyway, on a week's notice, I'm going with three other volunteers to teach workshops on different teaching methodology topics. We'll be there for two and a half weeks. Did I mention we only got a week's notice?!

In other news, tonight, my host mom, a fellow volunteer and I won a close fight with a cucaracha. You might say, three against one hardly seems fair. But when cucarachas have wings and are the size of a construction worker's thumb, I say, more than fair! Sandals are very handy missiles. Needless to say, both the dogs and cat ran away when the fight commenced. Cobardes!!

Speaking of Zanycat....he's doing well, thanks for asking!

Bus money?! Where we goin'?

Exercise is for pussies

Dinner for two...

My cat, Zany

This, dear friends, is a long overdue, if completely gratuitous post about my cat, Zany. Meet Zany!

Meoooww!

 Zany-cat was born in La Playa, to the cat of another volunteer’s family. (La Playa a neighborhood that is not actually a beach, despite its name…) His brother, Diego, has Jessica as his human.

Diego, also known as Dizzy, with his human Jessica

I’ve had Zany for about a month, now. His name is Zany because he’s awesome. Also short for Zanahoria, which means carrot (pronounced Zah-nee in Spanish). My host mom thinks that Zah-nee sounds like a girl’s name, so she calls him Zah-nee Monolo.

There are many good reasons for owning a pet in the Peace Corps, if your host family is in favor. A few:

• ·        They snuggle with you happily, NSA
• ·        They are bilingual
• ·        They are wonderful conversation starters/topics with people of every age
• ·        They are a great way to integrate with your family – you can go on a shopping trip for pet toys or pet food, or to the vet
• ·        When you have no words, you can bury your head in their fur and they purr in all-knowing sympathy
• ·        They are adorable and they make you smile.
• ·        They make your host family smile
• ·        They love you without reservation or judgment, and ask for no explanations
• ·        Showing pictures of your pet to successful students are highly motivating bribes in class
•     They give you a purpose in life, that, if highly specific (You are their human!) is clearly defined and never needs to be questioned

Zany is pretty sure that he is the greatest

Ready for more cat-crazy? Okay! Here is Zany’s origin story:

I never thought I’d own a cat--one, because I am highly allergic to cats. Two, because around here, cats are not a favored kind of pet. I don’t mean that there are dog people and cat people. Instead, folks here are reared to consider cats as rodent-equivalents—dirty, gross, vicious, etc. My last host family provided loving care to three incredibly yappy, completely un-housebroken Chihuahuas. When confronted with the thought of a cat, they screwed up their faces—“Ugh, the feel of a cat’s fur is disgusting! They leave spots on tiles!”

My current host family, perhaps convinced by my incessant talk of how wonderful kitties are, or perhaps just weary of my chatter, told me one day, “Why don’t you bring him home to us?” It also helps my host mom has a deep-seated fear of the rats that like to run up in the powerlines and over the roof of our house and sometimes come into the back patio…

Zany-Eats-World

(As for point 1, the houses here are made of tile and are wide open. A great way to avoid allergen accumulation! It’s working so far!)

And so, Zany came into my life. In the last month, he has made friends with the two Chihuahuas, my host parents, and the neighbors. He does cute things like steal into my host parents’ bed during the night and play with his host dog-sisters during the day. He curls up on my lap when I’m reading and softly purrs. He lies beside my chair on his back with his paws waving like tentacles, dreaming.

Zany's host-sister chihuahua, Mali, is the lump under the cover!

He does not-so-cute things occasionally, like shredding my yoga mat, or tracking kitty litter in my clean bathroom, or taking out an entire roll of toilet paper to nest in (okay, it’s actually super cute. Just messy!). But it’s okay. Because he is beautiful!

He makes an excellent door-stop

He also likes to climb me like a tree. All my life I’d read that cats like to sit on shoulders. Never saw this happen. Until Zany. He scrambles up my nearest side to my shoulder (claws extended) and sits, purring, while I brush my teeth, make my oatmeal, and get dressed. We are working on the clothed-versus-not-clothed distinction. (For now, I wear my cat-scratch-scars as a badge of his love!)

Whew. That was a lot of cat-crazy. But who wouldn’t be crazy for this guy?!

Zany says, hydrate!

Camping with the Scouts

This past weekend, I got to do something pretty exciting. I got to…go camping! For the last month, I’ve worked with Scouts de Colombia as an honorary dirigente – a leader. I have a few students in the troupe who found out I did scouts growing up, and the troupe has since accepted me as their international friend.

Scouts here is much more like Boy Scouts back home (a thing I can attest to due to my countless hours attending my bro’s Scouting events…which were numerous, since he made it straight up to Eagle. Good thing they at least did Pinewood Derbies to keep things interesting!) 

Troupe from Cartagena checking out "El Joe,"
our giant statue of famed Salsa singer Joe Arroyo

Anyway. Scouts here is mixed, boys as well as girls. We meet for four hours once a week and do different sorts of ceremonies and plan events. This past weekend, we had an "integration” with a group from Cartagena. Our oldest scouts, the Rovers, planned the event. It was targeted for the “Caminantes,” or Scouts aged 15-18.

So, on Saturday morning I met up with the troupe leader and the 8 Caminantes from Cartagena. Caminante means “Walker,” and off we went for the next 5 hours through the city with all our scouting stuff for a walking tour of Barranquilla! Nothing like hauling tents and potable water for two days through midday Barranquilla heat, in uniform…but it was also pretty adorable. Fueled by my excitement of being with folks who LIKED walking, I made it through…although I turned bien roja by the end of the day…

"Arming" the campsite

Finally we met up with all the Barranquilla folks and boarded the bus out to the finca.  The bus being a public one, packed from top to bottom, didn’t stop the excited teens from shouting full-voice just about every Scout song in Spanish that has ever come into existence…so that was fun. Arriving at our corner of the road, we headed down the 2km dirt trocha to the campsite.

The finca where we camped was a small plot of land out near Sabanalarga, belongs to the grandparents of some scouts, with mango trees and yucca plants. Pitching our tents among mango trees during mango season came with the added excitement of a day and night punctuated with the wsssshhhfomp of ripe falling mangoes but fortunately no incidents occurred!

"Arranca La Yucca":
pull the human yucca plant from the tree!

The afternoon and night were full of games, including a capture-the-flag-paint-water-balloon-ball event that ended with myself and a few others hurling bags of paint at a row of Caminantes execution style,

Making use of the extra water-paint-bags:

The pueblo-dwellers found us pretty entertaining

a late-night hike to the nearby pueblo where we played more games in the plaza, and a midnight bonfire, constructed in perfect log-cabin style. I fell asleep around 1:30am by the dying bonfire to the sound of cicadas droning, and an hour or so later awoke to move into our tent. Six am, the scout leader blew the whistle for morning warm-up exercises, then we deep fried arepas, packed up, and headed out.

Scout leader Ramiro drinking his morning coffee

 Despite the impressive vocalization abilities of the Scouts, I still heard toads at midnight, cicadas

through the evening and night, the wind in the trees, and saw stars. When the Scouts sang me a birthday song and presented me with a Colombian kerchief, I made a speech and hold them how important they were to me, as my international family.

 It couldn’t have been more true. Nothing like good people, good nature, and a good few hours of sleep to make a weekend Scout camping trip a beautiful thing.

Friends, Young and Old

Over on GoGirl:

Some thoughts about how my concepts of friendships and "hanging out" have changed, 17 months into my Peace Corps service.

http://www.travelgogirl.com/2013/05/16/friends-young-and-old/

Life, Liberty, and Happiness

Hello there, friends. It’s been a bit of a time. The long story short: life has been good.

The slightly longer story, list style:

In the past few weeks (in addition to work, which is chugging along) I have

·         Visited Santa Marta

·         Become an honorary “Scout de Colombia”

·         Moved

·         Joined a gym

The elaborated story –

Santa Marta:

Almost a month ago, I was invited to go to Santa Marta by the family who were my neighbors and another volunteer’s family during training (invitation of the “come and join!” rather than the “come and we pay!” kind). I eagerly accepted. Weeks went by and I heard nothing, so I assumed the normal, we-invited-you-because-we-like-you-but-didn’t-plan-to-follow-up sort of invitation. Then, two days before the weekend, I get a call. “Emily, what days are you joining us this weekend?”

Oh. They meant it!

I canceled my (not-too-existent) alternative plans and headed down to Santa Marta. We visited the beautiful Playa de los Muertos (Beach of the Dead) aka Playa Cristal. It’s a part of Parque Tayrona that can be reached by boat, which we did along with our lovely tour group. We swam, relaxed in our chairs, and ate the pescado sudadoso or “sweated fish” the family had packed as a picnic lunch (alongside rice, yucca, and patacones.) And drank a huge thermos-ful of SunTea, the local “Nestea” (pronounced soontee).

Some pictures:

 

 



Scouts de Colombia:

A few girls in my one of my eighth grade classes were ecstatic to learn that I was a girl scout, growing up. They invited me to come to their scout meetings, here. (How do you say Scout in Spanish? For phonetic reasons (“s’s” before consonants are given an “eh” push-off), “Eh-scout”!)

Scouts here are mixed boys and girls. There appear to be more similarities to the Boyscouts of America than the Girlscouts…which I am aware of due to years of enforced attendance to my brother’s boy scout ceremonies.  Their official patch is basically the same as the boy scouts, and they also attend international scout jamborees. They also have a lot of rituals, including lots of saluting and shouting at the beginning, and do many wonderful leadership activities. The categories of Scout are by ages: Lobato, Caminante, Scout, and Rover, from ages tiny to 25. They also go camping! In tents! I’ve been invited to attend a camping event in a few weekends. I’ll keep you posted :)

Last weekend was Dia del Niño, which involves celebrating the existence of children through energetic displays of child-love such as: activities in all the local malls, free candy given out at school, debuts of lion cubs at the local zoo, and neighborhood events where there are free treats (for the parent and/or child, whomever gets there first), an “animator” who encourages the children to jump and yell, lots of loud music, burlap sack races, cheerleading performances, etc.

My Scout Troop helped out at the neighborhood event at the park where we hold meetings. As an honorary “dirigente”, or, Scout Leader, I helped oversee the members as they secured exits, gave directions, and held an exhibition of scouting gear for the local children. I’ll just say – these kids are really wonderful kids.

Afterwards, we trekked to a favorite fast food place for a late dinner called “Tronco ‘e Sabor” – which translates roughly to, “A Super-lot of Flavor” and got the biggest plates of salchipapa-esque food I’ve ever seen. Every meat imaginable chopped up with French fries, bollo, lettuce, sauces, French-fry-onion pieces, topped with cheese and three ribs. Yeah. It was a good day and night.

My move:

So. For the last year y pico, I’ve lived with a family of 10, 2-3 chihauhuas, a parrot, 3 turtles, a partridge, and a pear tree. With always something going on at every hour of the night and day—picos blaring, family running in and out of the house, babies everywhere, food getting fried willy-nilly, and generous, kind, super-attentive host moms, the experience was enlightening, challenging, tumultuous, and one-of-a-kind.

Recently, a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer had to return home for health reasons. The house he left belonged to a family I lived near during training – the very same family who I joined in Santa Marta. I was ready for a different sort of living experience, and when the host mom invited me to take the former volunteer’s place in her household, I accepted happily. The family is childless, the mom is a teacher and the dad is a chef. I have unlimited access to the kitchen – and I’m making my own food(!) There are times when I am alone in the house.

We go to bed by 9:00 (host mom and I both have to be at work super early) My room has a window.

…basically, it’s wonderful in every respect.

 

Gym:

This year, I promised myself I’d avoid and/or actively take action against things that are challenging, that I actually can change. Including things in the “luxury” category. For example: one thing that’s been really tough is a lack of aerobic exercise. Although I bought an elliptical, after about 8 months it was broken more often than not. My new house is a block and a half from a local gym of the “professional” sort (Barranquilla’s gyms range from garages outfitted with weights where you can pay 1 or 2 mil by the hour, to super fancy gyms that are over 300 mil a month). This gym isn’t a cheap one, but it’s affordable and, although heaven knows I never expected a gym to factor into my Peace Corps service, I’m loving it.

…So basically what I’m saying is that, this month has brought a lot of good change. For the first time in a long time, I am happy in many aspects of my life…at the same time! Challenges come and they go, but having exciting experiences and peace in my home life is making all the difference. Here’s to a wonderful May!

Parental Visit!

After months and months of excitement and anticipation, the parents finally made it to Colombia. We saw some highlights of both the country and my daily life. It was wonderful to have them here, and wonderful to share so many moments. Miss ya'll already!

Funny side effect: people from all around the city keep telling me they saw all us walking around in the most unlikely places, and that I look just like my mom. Can't argue with that :)

Highlights in pictures

Easter Parades in Bogota

Sampling the local brew

Villa de Leyva beauty

Heading down from our hostel

:)

We rode horses! Cowboy style

We bought hats on Cartagena's wall

Something of a family resemblance

Enjoying the "local" foods...ahem.

My students were super excited to meet my parents

Exploring downtown Barranquilla

Nothing like family to brighten the month!

March is almost over?!

I've been a bad poster, I know. So. Briefly:

• I've had a few friends come to visit, which was great. One even showed me how to do some awesome things in the classroom, aka using a storytelling method of teaching English called TPRS that involves all the students and gets them into the whole listening/speaking/writing/reading...you know, language learning process. We ended that class at school with all my 8th graders chanting "TE QUEREMOS NATALIE!"  It was adorable. 

• We held a volunteer-organized all-volunteer meeting and VAC election, which left us with productive all-volunteer goals for the year as well a super well-organized VAC. VAC stands for Volunteer Action Committee. It's similar to a student council and acts as a liason between volunteers and staff. One exists in every country, but as a new Peace Corps program, it's been lots of work to get this up and going. Jessica is our new PCV Colombia president and the meeting was the culmination of lots of work on our end, so that was an awesome thing!

• Semana Santa happens now. There's no work this week, which means lots of prep time for the upcoming outreach program Jessica and I have in the works. Come July, we'll be offering a methodology certification program to English teachers of Barranquilla. We've got the Secretary of Education on board, and it should be awesome and a sustainable, effective option that takes advantage of our super urban placement. 

• This weekend, I'll be flying to Bogota to meet with my parents, who are coming to Colombia!!!!!! It's finally happening. Super excited that after this, my entire immediate family will have at least some idea of my life and the setting that I tend to talk about, well, constantly. Woot woot!

• And, finally, the latest in GoGirl:  an overdue post on Minca aka my favorite place on the Colombian Coast.  http://www.travelgogirl.com/2013/03/21/minca-magic Since Minca is incredible, and since I consider it my informal mission in life to inform everyone about what they should also consider to be the best things ever, you should probably check it out :) (I may have succumbed to the temptation to gush, just a bit. Just FYI..)

Carnaval 2013, recap

As written for GoGirl -

http://www.travelgogirl.com/2013/02/21/barranquilla-carnaval-2nd-time-around/


Carnaval is finally over, so now we'll just have to talk about it all the way until next year! (Because really, what else is there in life??)

Why have school when you can have Carnaval?!

Carnaval officially starts tomorrow...the second and last of my Carnavals here! After the craziness of last year, I wobble between fleeing from and throwing myself into the party. The place where it's entirely unavoidable, of course, is...school!

My school loves Carnaval. With less time to prepare this year, since Carnaval is so early, it wasn't quite so ridiculous...mostly because the weeks of practicing leading up to it were cut down, which meant, a few fewer weeks of insanity...which does wonders for being able to survive the real thing.

A matter of survival?? you ask. How can it be??!!!

Well, let me tell you, the day after our school Carnaval, my ears are still ringing. This year, I took some video on my lil camera. It's not great quality, but here it is, in an attempt to bring you some of the ridiculous, amazing, spectacular, "bulla" of Carnaval at my school.

I've had some other amazing Carnaval experiences, more on those later.  For now, enjoy!

 

Food and foodblogging fun.

I started a food blog last year. I really meant to be good about posting. I had a lot of fun when I did it semi-regularly..for a tad over a month. Then life/a host family quite zealous about feeding me/etc got in the way...and I wasn't cooking very much.

But...that's no way for a girl who likes to cook (read: is food-obsessed) to stay sane!

So, tonight I cooked. I ate what I cooked. I turned down the additional dinner my host family very sweetly tried to press on me after watching me cook and eat (thirds of) my dinner.  (Their way of thinking was--pure vegetables?? that can't be a real dinner! You should eat these fried bananas and lentils and rice, too!)

Tongue still tingling with the tangy ginger-garlic-passionfruit-cayenne-spiced stirfry sauce, I posted what I made. The blog has a new name and address, too. Maybe I'll get to post a little more regularly...that's the goal at least!

Anyway, if you're interested in passion fruit stir fry fun, look no further :)

http://cookingdownthehouse.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/passionfruit-spicy-veggie-stirfry-the-right-decision/

Some early successes

Last post, I talked about some exciting differences between this year and last year. Here are some happy updates:

Co-volunteer Jessica and I held the first annual January in-service all-Barranquilla-English-teacher workshop. It was a success! We were teaching methodology: curriculum development, evaluation strategies (rubrics, whaaa?!) and classroom materials.

With 40 spots available, we filled them all. Both days. Teachers who'd had to work in their schools' morning sessions came for the entire afternoon...both days! We had positive feedback, confirmed by very official survey responses. Even more exciting, Jessica and I began enacting our plans to take advantage of our extremely urban site; we put out our citywide year-long outreach plan out for public consumption (traveling Peace Corps TEL workshops sponsored by the Secretary of Education, to complement our all-city Saturday classes), and have already had strong positive responses, including official requests for school visits. Woohoo!

The business cards Jessica and I jointly created are pretty awesome, too. (Who woulda thought I'd be using business cards in the Peace Corps?! Apparently that's not such a strange thing, in the realm of Peace Corps volunteer-ism...but we're still a little slap-happy about them and their effectiveness. Jessica and Emily going "pro" = fun!)



Anyway, since my school worksite is still in the early, non-academic flails of the pre-Carnaval school-year (no schedule, don't know which teachers will actually be working at our school, all pre-Carnaval-planning is put ahead of classes, etc), it's pretty great to be able to say something truly useful and productive happened already this year. Plans in place to continue onward in these broader-outreach pursuits!

ADDENDUM: Jessica's post on our workshop is a really great description of why this all makes me want to dance like Happyfeet (note, not like the local Shakira, because that's impossible for a gringa. We'll stick to Happyfeet-style..) The workshop, see, was kinda a big deal -- we think it says good things not just for us, but for the future work of Peace Corps Colombia. Why?? Check it out!  http://colombiajessica.blogspot.com/2013/01/when-things-go-right.html

Meanwhile, in the vein of successes, I made a short video with some of our girls leadership camp for 7th graders myself and two other volunteers held in December of last year, at the end of the school year. It's in Spanish, but the girls are pretty adorable!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDq9PCxsuQo


Here are some pictures of our wonderful workshop participants:

Carnaval is a few weeks away, and we'll see how things go from there. Here's to school starting...slowly...gradually...in the traditional Barranquilla-Barranquilla-coastal way, to savoring Peace Corps successes, and to remembering the positives during the daily slog.

Jan GoGirl article -

A little of the same as before, but check it out on "Go Girl" !

http://www.travelgogirl.com/2013/01/17/a-trip-home-and-some-thoughts-about-peace-corps-success/

And we're off...again!

Sitting in the "audio-visual" room at my school site, watching an animated short of penguins defeating a whale over and over (in the name of teamwork), I knew I was back: in-service 2013. The first day of the rest of my Colombian life as a TEL co-teacher/teacher trainer in Barranquilla. The students don't come until next week, but school has officially begun.

Some things are the same as last year, some things aren't.

A few things that were the same:

• Everyone was happy and dressed to impress, in 5-inch stilettos and sparkly eye shadow (well, I wasn't, surprise!), making jokes and wishing everyone well. 
• I was told I must have eaten lots over Christmas, because I looked nice and fat. 
• We had prayer sessions and reflection sessions and avowals that we would improve further on our school's current good standing in the city. 
• The air conditioning STILL doesn't work, a product of the fire in our school last April

Things that were different

• We celebrated getting to use classrooms in a nearby church, which will house the primary school this year to help solve our major lack-of-space issue (we were holding classes on Saturdays last year to deal with that...no more!)
• The fan in the teacher's lounge has been completely removed. As in, it was a ceiling fan and we now have...a hole.
• The water fountain doesn't work
• Fans were installed in our school classrooms. Outlets in which to plug in the fans apparently do not come included.

Perhaps the biggest, most awesome-est difference between January in-service this year and last year was...I understood what was going on! This time last year, I'd been "speaking" Spanish for just about three months. I could barely understand people when they shot out a string of what seemed like impossibly rapid-fire words at me, usually simply asking me where I was from. This time around, not only could I understand, but I even did some translation for some of the English in the aforementioned teamwork-illustrating videos. I talked to my department, to other teachers, to students, and actually enjoyed myself! (All this a ridiculously huge improvement over last year, where my presence was much more similar to the wanderings of an anxious, though optimistic lost sheep who'd been shepherded into a herd of goats by mistake.)

So I say, yeehaw! (I get to use that because I headed home to Texas to visit family for Christmas...more on that shortly)

It's exciting to have finally reached this "second year" of service, and actually begin to feel the promised difference (it's a Peace Corps "truth" that the second year is loads better than the first). Work hasn't really begun, but it was plain to see how far I, at least, have come so far. The knowledge I gained last year-- from language skills to cultural information to plain old teaching experience, to relationships with my co-teachers and students was hard-won...and there's nothing like comparing the start of this year to the start of last year for me to see the difference.

I can't say that I made a huge difference in my "official" realm of work last year-- aka at my school site. To be totally honest, I'm not sure I will this year - at least as it relates to my conventional role as a co-teacher. In some ways, it often feels like co-teaching is the least effective thing I do here, in terms of making a sustainable/quantifiable change. I struggled a lot, last year, with coming to terms with this, probably focusing too much on the negative of that fact more than the potential positives. 

What co-teaching for a year did for me, however, was to give me necessary experience so that I can now help develop, improve, and change the state of the English programs in Barranquilla with my other projects. In fact, Jessica and I are teaching a workshop on methodology to teachers this coming Wednesday and Thursday, taking advantage of "in-service" time, with the support of the Secretary of Education. We didn't know if anyone would sign up (the first week of school is normally more about socializing than productivity); 30 out of the 40 available spots have already been spoken for. 

Even while getting excited about my out-of-school project-related opportunities this year, I'm still allowing myself hope for my "actual" role. From arranging my schedule so it's livable (no more 6am, 2pm, and 6pm classes scattered throughout the day!) to narrowing my scope to so that my work with teachers is more continuous and in-depth, I am finding ways to improve what I do in school, staying sane within and away from it. 

It would be ridiculous to think I could have gotten to this almost zen-like (for me) perspective, without the incredible happiness and refreshment that came from visiting the US over Christmas. That, for sure, was something I never thought I'd do. "Waste" time in the US, when I could be traveling the world? Well, living with a host family taught me how dear my own family is. One Christmas away was enough.

Family!

Dog and hot chocolate at Devil's Lake...
about as perfect a day as I've ever had. Actually.

My bro likes to tell me what to do.
Sometimes, on occasion,
some of what he says is helpful :D

If bloody marys existed in Colombia,
that'd be either the best or worst thing ever.
Either way, bacon swizzler sticks, smoked venison
and homemade tomato drink = best bloody mary EVER 

Friend Nick took hiking at Devil's Lake
'cause he's the absolute best

Home for the holidays was about the best decision I ever could have made. There are no words for the lovely times I had with my family, and the great life advice they keep on providing me. The too-few days I spent in Madison with friends and teachers...well...if the memories continue to make me smile only a fraction of how they did then and even now, I'll have happiness to last for years.

Looking towards the next 12 months, I finally am experiencing the reality of a second year, of the pressure of time to accomplish if not what I "set out" to accomplish, then what I want to accomplish now--as well as the rewards of a year's worth of experience to build upon. I am so happy to remember fully the wonderful parts of life I'll have closer at hand after service back in the US, but ready, at least, to take on this year!