Frustration

After getting spoiled by email access on the internet phone, yahoo has
quit working on us. Working on a fix but meanwhile know that we are
alive and will respond to messages soon. Many posts pending

Produce

Produce comes in and out of season on a schedule we do not yet understand. Tomatoes seem to always be available, along with onions, greens and cabbage. I bought a purple eggplant at the market yesterday. Little white ones that look like eggs were popular a month or so ago. We had green beans for a few weeks, but I haven’t seen any lately. I’ve only managed to buy one lonely avocado, but I search for them avidly every time I shop. I asked Trevor’s friend about planting an avocado, but he says it would take five years to bear fruit. Dang!

Snacking

Prepared food is hard to come by in Chadiza. There’s a covered open-air market where ladies sell yeast buns in three sizes ranging from dinner-roll-size up to one that yields four slabs of bread if sliced carefully; fried fritters like big donut lumps; and sometimes rice-filled samosas that cost 100 kwacha each. (I had five for lunch today. They are deliciously greasy.)

Women also sell popcorn informally all around town. For 500 kwacha (about 15 cents), you can buy a plastic bag the size of a Nerf football. It’s lip-burningly salty and goes well with Coke Light, now stocked in cans AND bottles in several Chadiza shops, thanks to a certain white lady who prefers it over the ubiquitous regular Coke.

The most common prepared “food” is actually a drink called Super Maheu. You can buy it in the smallest tuck shops. It is a slurry of corn meal, sugar and water and seemingly thousands of flavors, including banana, cream, and chocolate. Maheu comes in colorful plastic jugs that form the chassis of toy trucks Zambian boys pull around on string.

Booze

Since we’re on the subject of food, I might as well address the subject of booze. Trevor and I enjoy an evening cocktail as we’re starting up the fire for dinner. He found a bar in town that stocks Carlsberg from Malawi and trusts him to return the bottles.

I prefer a glass of wine. Shop Rite in Chipata sells decent boxed wine from South Africa, but it’s expensive and hard to transport to Chadiza, so I’ve been looking for a local alternative. I’ve tried several from Mozambique that range from tolerable to not even good enough to cook with. Mind you, I’m not picky. The other day we splurged on a bottle of white “crackling” wine the turned out to be carbonated. That seems a little too fancy for everyday drinking. I’ll keep looking.

Bikes

Americans tend to overdo things, as evidenced by supersized fries, mcmansions, the SUVs driven by people who anticipate seeing a few inches of snow a year. But I appreciate every feature of the tricked-out mountain bikes Peace Corps bought for us.

As PCVs, we’re not allowed to drive cars or ride motorcycles, so bikes are the basis of our transportation. This is perfect for Trevor, who has been a bike freak since riding to Colorado from Missouri years ago. Me, I still pine for my Honda.

Our bikes are highly coveted among Zambians, who ride one-speed Chinese models that sound like stuck-wheel grocery carts being pushed across a bumpy parking lot. Zambians never joyride like we do; their welded rebar racks are always loaded with 50-kg sacks of mealie meal, charcoal, or paying customers, generally ladies with babies, suitcases, or both.

Our bikes are unique in this country, which makes it kind of unnecessary to lock them up around town. Stealing our red Treks would be like trying to make off with an ambulance, or the Weinermobile.

Still, we get asked longingly what we plan to do with them when we leave Zambia. Uh, give them back to PC so Admin doesn’t take the price out of our resettlement allowance. We’re going to need that money for a tank of gas.

Mileage

Since receiving our shiny red bikes a few weeks ago, Trevor and I have put on serious miles on the gravel roads of Eastern province.

My regular commute to the boma involves 20 minutes on a road studded with potholes, oxcarts, goats, chickens, pigs, children playing soccer, washouts, and ladies walking to town balancing massive bundles on their heads.

We’ve also made several five-hour treks to and from Chipata, a ride most notable for a shortcut that follows a path through villages that seem impossibly remote and across a stream whose bridge is a giant felled tree. The last two times we have crossed, a herder has been there with his cows, singing to himself.

Make hay

While we await the start of the rainy season around October or November, construction is booming. People are gathering grass to repair their roofs. Others form mud bricks to build houses and stores. The road crew has been working on our road. They were out there this morning with their hoes, chopping at grass in the ditch, presumably so the road won’t wash away once the rains come.

Salaula

One of the excellent things about shopping in Zambia is having access to European thrift castoffs. There's a lot of American stuff, too, but it's not as funky.
Much of what's offered in local markets still has markdown tags from Value Village and Goodwill. This morning, we bought a circa-1970 flowered fitted sheet and coveted a Holly Hobbie bedspread that could have come straight from the Midwestern canopy bed of any girl I grew up with.
Just for fun, we priced bales of rags. Trevor has always talked about opening a thrift store. Maybe in Zambia we'll finally do it!
The bales are sorted by category. You can buy women’s t-shirts, sweat suits, men’s blazers, children’s stuffed toys (today we saw a pile with one random Scooby Doo slipper mixed in), boxer shorts. All used, mind you. A 45-kg bundle ranges in price from 575,000 kwacha to more than a million.

Literacy

We’ve hired a language tutor to help us stop forgetting what little we know of Chinyanja.
Art helps run the local adult literacy program that we have begun working with, so he seemed like a good person to advance our literacy.
Art spent last Friday morning going over a grade four textbook with us. We read a story about wild dogs ganging up on a lion. I understood about three percent of it until Art explained it, word by painstaking word.
Can it be truthfully called “adult literacy” if a grade four textbook is way, way over my head?
In town yesterday, I bought grade two. With lots more pictures, it is more my speed. Grade four I’ll work up to.

Shameless

In emails, people keep asking what they can send us. When they ask, I can never think of anything. This is very frustrating since there are a million things we crave, and since getting a package is the high point of any day.
Unfortunately, it seems impossible to send cheese, wi-fi, and friends through the mail.
That said, we would groove on coffee, powdered cheese mix things, coffee, powdered mashed potatoes, coffee, Bacos (the fake kind, not the real bacon kind), coffee, and magazines, as always. Also, I know I said to quit sending candy, but as I finish up a bag of Valentine’s Day conversation hearts, I have already started craving those candy-corn-style pumpkins you can only get at Halloween. So if there’s any holiday-specific candy floating around, send it to Zambia! And coffee.
We are rationing out the last of what Lea sent us a few weeks ago. Trevor actually recycled a batch of grounds the other day in an attempt to stretch out the precious grounds a little further. Isn't that sad? Doesn't it make you want to send us coffee?

First

It’s been a week of firsts. I had my first flat on the new bike. I made my first batch of village fudge. (Mixed reviews: Though it never solidified, perhaps because the sugar never dissolved, it was still sweet and chocolately, and that counts for a lot when you’re experiencing a cookie shortage.)
Then, I found my first tarantula in the house.
It was hiding out in a stack of books on the floor, looking way more like an animal than a bug.
I captured it in a cut-off two-liter bottle so Trevor could witness it when he got home. He was duly impressed.
Later, the carpenter tossed it over the fence, not quite far enough from the house in my opinion, but it’s not back. Yet.
Our host dad says he will apply some type of traditional medicine to keep the bugs out while we’re in Chipata this weekend. All the Americans we’ve asked say that while tarantulas bite, they aren’t poisonous. The Zambians, however, insist that the bite can kill you.

Holiday

Monday was African Children’s Day, marking the date schoolchildren were gunned down in Soweto in the 1970s. Kids had the day off school and the Chadiza Basic School hosted a ceremony with Nyau dancing, poems, drumming, and two skinny Zambian teenagers in oversized sorority t-shirts lip-synching to rap music.
Since the head teacher told me the event started at 9 am, I showed up around noon. I was standing in the back of a crowd about five deep. Within less than five minutes, Sister Jeanette found me and led me through the crowd to a seat at the lace-covered head table, where I commenced to attract far more attention from the hundreds of spectators than the excellent choir performing a song about HIV prevention.
I had hoped to sneak away, but instead sat through about two hours of performances, such as girls around six years old doing what appeared to be a fertility dance and a dramatic poem that included a character dressed as death, dripping fake blood and reminding the audience repeatedly that condoms are not 100 percent effective.
Afterwards, the head teacher invited me to the lunch with the honored guests, where the offerings included goat, chicken and offals, plus nshima dispensed out of a (presumably clean) garbage can.
I took Tuesday off.

flat

we finally got our new bikes last week. This means we no longer share one, a huge improvement in our quality of life. We celebrated by riding them home from chipata, a five hour trek.
I have already had my first flat tire. I was prepared to fix it myself with my pc issued pump and patch kit but Zambian men can not abide a damsel in distress so several stopped to help. And to get a look at the highly coveted trek mountain bike, i suspect. A guy appropriately named gabriel got me back on the road.
A few days earlier we had another mishap when our approach caused a kid to steer his ox cart into a pothole. The hitch came loose and the ox ran into the ditch. We stopped along with several Zambians of course and got it fixed.
Luckily the bikes came with shiny new helmets too. Hazards abound. And opportunities.

Nature Report

Every night when I brush my teeth, I get to look at stars, including the dense swath of Milky Way I never knew I couldn’t see back home. Also, we get buzzed by bats when we sit on the hammock for our evening wine and sunset ritual. Rough life, I know.

Diving

There is no trash here except what is truly trash, but Trevor and I have still managed to start dumpster diving. We’ve started burning corn cobs for fuel, an endless supply of which our neighbors are chucking as they hull corn. Why they don’t save them for their own use, we don’t know, but we’ve been grabbing and hoarding them beforethey have a chance to burn them.

Thrift

A few years ago the New York Times magazine ran a great piece following a t-shirt from a New York thrift store to an African market. We have taken our place in that cycle, from the sacks I delivered to the Salvation Army during our move to the shirt I am wearing today. I bought it out of a pile on the street in Chipata for 1500 kwacha, about 40 cents. It had a thrift tag stapled on marking it down from a buck seventy nine. I washed it but it still smells like a thrift store. Trevor saw a guy in a shirt from Tuscaloosa, where we went to grad school. Soon we will see something we donated ourselves and will have to decide if we should buy it back.

Adjustment

We've been in zambia three months now. I have finally stopped patting the wall for a light switch every time I enter a darkened room.

Food

My mom and Trevor's aunt are worried that he is starving.I am happy to report that we are eating very well. Last week in town we made real bagels, inspired by the Encyclopedia of Country Living. Tonight I plan to make cheesy cabbage using powder from Grace. Even now I am snacking on goldfish crackers. Butthis weekend we got the biggest thrill yet when we received a pound of coffee beans from Lea who used her Whole Foods discount. We both huffed the coffee bag. I actuallygot teary. I spent the rest of the weekend daydreaming about whole foods and their carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and little piped carrots on top.If any readers out there are fast food kleptos, throw a few packs of splenda into your next letter, ok? Ok thank you! Love lisa

Africa Freedom

Yesterday we went to town hoping to avail ourselves of electricity, but it was Africa Freedom Day so the school was closed. Back home, we hedged our bets and didn't fix lunch. Inevitably the call to shima came soon after. I ate my beans with the women and children as usual. In theory this helps with language. But yesterday I said nothing, just watched our host's sister hull corn by hand. The house is surrounded by sacks of grain but they hardly seem to have made a dent in the pile of corn.

Reading!

Although we don't have nearly as much free time as I thought we would, we have been managing to do quite a bit of reading. Karen requested requests.
There's a huge library of fiction here at the Eastern province Peace Corps house with a lot of recent literary-type stuff. Anything newish would fit in well, especially whatever the book club has discussed!
We're both huge non-fiction fans, and that's one area this library lacks much of. Trevor would especially welcome anything that deals with Africa. We have both read the recent AIDS book whose name escapes me at the moment, plus he read "The State of Africa" and just finished David Halbersham's books about baseball. Me, I'm more into memoirs. Before we left home I enjoyed one by a neuroscientist, "Julie & Julia" and "Eat Pray Love."

Cold season

Is relative. I would never have called a daytime high of 76 degrees “cold.” But that was before my bathing routine consisted of stripping down in the back yard to take a tepid trickle shower in a stiff breeze. I have a whole new appreciation for why Zambians are bundled in down coats and stocking caps.

Scrubby

The other day when we came back from washing the dishes at the spring, our host dad took the blackened cooking pots away from him and sent his daughter Precious to scrub them shiny.

It turns out I have also been washing my feet wrong. After eating shima and beans, my host mom and I were chilling out on the reed mat and she scolded me about my cracked, dirty heels. She told me I need to scrub my feet with the stone in our bathing shelter. It worked! My feet look better than they did in America.

Good fences

Our host dad is concerned that the neighboring villagers are looking at him, jealous of what he has. So he’s having a tall privacy fence built around the property, made of sticks and grass.

I have enjoyed the last of the box of wine musing about the many layers of irony involved in this.

Greens

In America, when you buy greens, they come tied in a bundle with a rubber band or twist tie printed with a bar code. Here, they come lashed with a strip of bark that has been soaked so it’s flexible.

I think I get charged the white lady price still, but it’s hard to be too grumpy when you’re spending about 15 cents.

Commute

Since we still only have one bike, if we want to go to town, one of us rides while the other walks, or in Trevor’s case, runs. We decided to check out the English-language service Sunday morning at the Catholic church. It starts at 7 a.m., so Trevor started running around 6 a.m.

I caught up on the bike and delivered his dry clothes so he wouldn’t have to sit in his own pew. As he ducked behind a building to change, a lady started up the path, so I called out, “Hurry up Trevor; here comes a nun.” Then I had that Beatles song stuck in my head all day.

Home improvements

Every day we do some little project to make our house more comfortable or functional. This weekend, Trevor and our host dad built a high-efficiency wood stove that we hope will run on downed sticks and branches instead of the charcoal that has resulted in deforestation around our area.

The stove looks like something you’d see in an Italian restaurant. I could make a killer pizza if only I had some cheese. Sigh.

House with outdoor kitchen; House

Package

Thanks to the amazing generosity of our friends, I think I am done panicking about things we don't have here. I must sheepishly point out that even though postage has gone up, the international priority box is a good deal. Also my dentist would want me to admit that we have enough candy for now, and I hereby rescind my request for fabric now that I have found a tailor willingto sell me the most amazing sacks of wonderful Zambian cloth. Thank you package senders, and be watching your mailboxes for letters.

People Who Read People

At home, I read People magazine while slogging on an elliptical machine. In Zambia I flip through People while tending the fire to boil water for instant coffee. Rebecca, sender of People, if you read this, I need your address to thank you properly. I carefully trimmed it off the envelope, then immediately lost it.

Everything is Illuminated

Wearing a headlamp to the outhouse means seeing a little more than you want to.

Common

It finally feels like we're really in the peace corps. We attended a meeting of a local women's group that was so long I finally finished knitting one of the purple socks I cast on last August. The women already raise corn and pigs. They are interested in literacy and English classes. Also they wanted to know if I would teach them to knit. Now we're speaking the same language.

small world

they call service in zambia the quote real peace corps. Not sure what that means but i do feel like i've landed on another planet. Yesterday we set out for town on foot, hoping we could catch a ride. Not a single car passed up on the 5 km walk. Or the walk home. But we did get passed by several oxcarts and about a zillion bikes, most carrying at least one passenger.

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big day

i celebrated my birthday very Zambian. Stared down a wild pig, read babysitter club book aloud with host sister who is studying english, drank box wine, made no-bake cookies, hosted an impromptu sleepover with a neighboring volunteer. Memorable. Perfect. .
If you are thinking of calling, text or email to warn us. No reception at the house means our phone booth is the big log on the road. Not far, just takes some planning. Tre would especially love to hear from family.

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big day

i celebrated my birthday very Zambian. Stared down a wild pig, read babysitter club book aloud with host sister who is studying english, drank box wine, made no-bake cookies, hosted an impromptu sleepover with a neighboring volunteer. Memorable. Perfect. .
If you are thinking of calling, text or email to warn us. No reception at the house means our phone booth is the big log on the road. Not far, just takes some planning. Tre would especially love to hear from family.

____________________________________________________________________________________
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dishing

my host mom takes her teaching seriously. The other day she sent of to fetch my dishes and led me down to the spring. She showed me how to scoop water and use a paste of soap and sand to scrub with a sponge that is a wad of string unraveled from a mealie meal sack. I didnt even bother trying to wash the black from my pot. So she took it from me making clucking sounds. It looked new in a flash. Then she balanced the dishes on her head for the walk back.

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zip

i think about grace and the appalachian trail when i book over a wood fire here. Starting it is easy. I just walk next door with my tin circle and ask for fire. My host mom gives me a handfull of coals. To this i add grass and sticks and blow into a blaze. Then i poke in three bigger logs and nudge in bricks to balance my pot. Thanks to the fire, we have boiling water for coffee. The only drawback is that my pot is charred black. This doesnt bother of but it offends my amai. Hence the dishwashing lesson.

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fep

Zambians have a hard time comprehending trevor's first name. Given that we have met people called innocent, memory and precious, It's no surprise that people want to call him trouble or travel. But our favorite mispronounciation has given rise to trevor's new nickname. Call him fep.

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economics

the first day we felt guilty asking the family's boys to get our water. They tromp about ten minutes up the hill to scoop it out of a spring-fed hole. The second day, we figured out the economy. Kids get said in sweeties- in this case, one prized starburst for each jerry can. Immediately they offered to fetch another round.

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Friends who cook

As we prepare to move to mud huts and cook over charcoal fires, we are soaking up a little luxury here in the Chipata house thanks to our resident Gourmet (he's a former editor! the man knows what he's doing!) Eric.

Last night he made lasagna using homemade pasta and bread with freshly roasted garlic. Caitlin made cookies with chopped-up candy bars (no chips, but lemme tell you, Zambian candy bars work fine in a pinch), and S & A made an amazing cabbage salad with avocado/lemon dressing. Eating fantastic food on the patio with some red wine, laughing with a bunch of new friends: pretty darn civilized.

As I write this at 6:30 am, Eric is rustling around in the kitchen again. He said if he woke up early enough, he'd make quiche for breakfast. Fingers crossed the electricity stays on while he works his magic again.

Shameless request

I hate to turn this blog into nothing but a request line for package fixings, but if you are so inclined, here are some specific things I'm dreaming of following our recent trip to Shop Rite, where they sell peanut butter (thank god) but not Celestial Seasonings teas, alas.

-- mango ceylon or peach ceylon tea
-- decaf tea (Trevor especially enjoys Sleepytime)
-- Fantastic Foods chili mix (oh, how I miss cumin)
-- dark chocolate (yes, it will melt, but it will resolidify eventually), like especially those little Ghiradelli squares
-- seeds for sprouting (try the health food store)
-- generic Kool-Aid type packets (no sugar necessary-- there's plenty here) in cherry or lemonade
-- coffee grounds

Reading material

Besides the hot shower and people who speak fluent English, the best thing about the Peace Corps province house is the bookshelves. The living room wall is covered with books, and there are little stashes in other rooms full of gems. Trevor is reading Lost Grains of Africa and I just picked up Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible, which I've read before but I think will speak to me in a different way since I'm in a neighboring country to its setting of Congo.
I have an armload of things like Sense and Sensibility and Middlesex to take with me to the hut.
But last night at the dinner table, what was everybody passing around? US Weekly. We're following the Patrick Swayze cancer drama pretty closely.

Posting

We have officially sworn in as volunteers!! Now we're in Chipata, stocking up in preparation for being posted on Tuesday.

We spent the morning at Shop Rite buying noodles, spice packets, cans of baked beans-- all the essentials. There are lots of things we wanted that they don't sell here. Like real (not instant) coffee and flavored tea bags. So if you're wondering what would make our day in a package, think drink.

Also, we received a package the other day with another homesteading book, so we're probably covered on that front at this point. Thank you for all the great information! In a few days we'll start putting all the knowledge to good use. And thank you so much for the packages-- word is that we have THREE MORE waiting at the post office. This is a huge thrill. Thank you.

Oops

Things my colleagues have dropped down pit latrines:

Whole roll of toilet paper
Flip flop
Head lamp
Leatherman tool
Video ipod

Playing chicken

There's a social taboo against going into people's houses. This is especially true with the children, who kneel in the doorway to make their requests.The other day Danger, the dog, chased a hen into our hut. She tangled with the mosquito net, ejected downy feathers all over our bed and danced around in my underwear with one of my bra straps around her leg. While we freaked out, Steven, who at ten isthe oldest of the orphans, strode in and grabbed the bird, taking the opportunity to glance around the forbidden territory he has seen only from the door.

Toy Box

In the US, trevor and I are dedicated dumpster divers. There is not a trash can to be found in the village but Zambian kids share our love for trash. We throw our empty chip wrappers, soda cans, and Q-tips in a meter-square pit dug behind a squash plant by the outhouse. The other day Eric the toddler was walking around carrying our empty banana boat sport sunscreen tube. He popped the lid off and squeezed it by his ear so it whistled wheezily and made him laugh. Our old plastic bags get incorporated into the balls the older boys kick around the yard all afternoon. One of the kids folded a bunch of candy wrappers into a bracelet.Everything else gets burnt in a bonfire tended by an eight year old.

Wildlife sightings

Recently: A giant tarantula crawling up C's leg during language class. A headless green snake (mamba? Let's hope not!) being carried on a hoe across the lawn during language class. Baboons chilling out by the side of the road during the drive to Eastern Province.

Our new host mom spends the days during harvest season (now) guarding the maize fields against marauding monkeys, who try to steal the corn.

Random Zam quote

Told to us in a training session by one of the head PC people:
"If you keep any of your American values in Zambia, it should be to cover your breasts and to keep time."

Mystery

Some days when we get up, there are mysterious rings of ash circling our huts. Our fellow PCT tried to ask one of the kids about it, but all she got was a blank look, then a handful of ashes. Then the kid swept them away.
I was convinced it was some sort of witchcraft. But Ba Charles explained at language class that the ashes keep ants away from the house.
Anyway, he said, everybody knows witchcraft doesn't work on white people.

Understanding

Ba Jane and I are aware that we don't quite understand each other, so we both keep brining up the same conversations, hoping to get information that will provide clarification. Luckily, every day provides chances to chat over nshima, the strangely addictive corn paste that is the base of every meal.
For me, the confusion is: who are all these kids running around the compound? She explained when we first arrived, but I didn't even bother trying to keep them straight then. All I caught was, these are two orphans. Later, she introduced a girl to me as her first-born daughter, and later the same girl as her sister's daughter.
Then we learned in training that Zambians consider the sons of their father's brother to be their brothers. Although this doesn't seem to be the situation with any of the family members here, it helps explain how Zambians identify "family."
The question Ba Jane keeps asking me: "You really never ate nshima before?"

Misc

Random items for sale at the Chipata Shoprite: Veggie burgers. Sour Skittles (only sour), with packing in Arabic.

Random Zam quote (from a technical training panel discussion on gender relations in Zambia):
If a woman can't dance, "Try to pinch her. Then she will definitely dance."

Family

Last week, I had the chance to visit the hut where I'll live for the next two years, starting in about a month. My host, K, who will also be our neighbor, introduced me to my new host Atate (father), who was warm and friendly but looked at me a little blankly until K explained that I wasn't just a random white visitor but would be moving in soon.

His face broke into a huge grin and he grabbed my hand again and shook it about ten more times. "Welcome, welcome," he told me. "This is your home." And, as the Zambians love to say, "Be free."

That night his wife cooked up some nshima and he fired up the generator to show the DVD of George of the Jungle II. Atate also owns a copy of Babe. With that same sense of wonder, he told me, The pig.... was talking!

The next day, he scolded me for saying "Odi" (excuse me) when I approached his house, as is the Zambian custom. "This is your home," he said.

Mail fairy

It's just like at summer camp-- the counselors/ PCVs walk around the cafeteria chanting "mail call." The kids who get something from home are the envy of everyone.

So far, we've been pretty envied. I tell everybody that it helps to be old-- we've had a lot of time to make friends. GOOD friends! Thanks to everybody who's sent news of the True/False film festival and other Columbia happenings. Keep it coming!

We will still be in training for another month, and the Lusaka address will always work (maybe slowly), but for anything you mail after today, use our new address:

Lisa &/or Trevor, PCV
Peace Corps
PO Box 510203
Chipata, Zambia

If you do send one of those fancy $11 international priority envelopes, besides afixing a customs form that declares a value of $5 or less, cram it full of useful items: rubber bands, pocket packs of tissue, hard candy (skittles! sweet tarts!!), spices, photos & cartoons & newspaper clippings, pens, pocket notebooks, tape or glue sticks, conference freebies (great to give to kids, esp balls and other toys), ziploc bags, binder clips, fabric scraps, hotel freebies or samples. Plus, of course, old (no matter how old!! this is Zambia!) magazines and paperback books, as we are sort of starved for reading material.

We promise to write back. And when you join the Peace Corps, we will write to you!!!

Legs

I had heard that Zambian women don't cross their legs, so I tried to ask my host mother, Ba Jane (Ba is a term of respect used for both men and women), about it by crossing my legs and pointing at my bare knees. "Is this ok?" I asked.

She said no, a lady should cover up with a long skirt, but it's ok because you're still learning.

(Zambian women wrap a two-meter piece of cloth called a chitenge around their waists, no matter what they're wearing, sort of like an apron or housedress over your good clothes.)

I still don't know if I'm allowed to cross my legs, but now I grab a chitenge when I head over to Ba Jane's for dinner.

Clean

It's not that I thought the people in Zambia would be dirty, but I wasn't expecting the incredible level of cleanliness that I've experienced here. Despite having to dip their washing water from a hole in the ground, Zambians are obsessed with washing.

There's a ritual where everybody washes each other's hands both before and after every meal, and our host offered us warm water to bath in the morning and evening before we let her know that our skin would fall off if we washed ourselves that much. There is a broom in every hut on the compound, including the bathroom, and in the morning the girls of the household sweep every inch of the compound, which has to be more than an acre, so that when we step out of our hut in the morning, our footprints from the night before have been swept away and replaced with the broom's wave-like pattern, overlaid with chicken tracks.

I've especially come to enjoy the afternoon al fresco bucket bath in the thatched bathing shelter, looking at the puffy clouds.

Carrie

Two weeks ago several education volunteers and I went on a site visit to stay with a current PC volunteer. We stayed with Carrie, so if you want to know what our life with her was like, read her blog!! She doesn't write about us, but we got to wallow in her wonderful rural Zambia homestead.

Her boyfriend, Doug, also writes eloquently and entertainingly about the Zambia experience.

Reading Doug's blog reminds me that one thing we would really appreciate is homesteading type books and magazines, since we will basically be living a lifestyle of American pioneer days-- we hope to have chickens and maybe goats, will haul water from a well or bore hole, light with kerosene, etc. Since we have limited knowledge and skills in those areas, any help might put us ahead on the learning curve.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Little House on the Prairie. Who knew that Zambia would give me my Laura Ingalls Wilder opportunity??

Food

We're going to get fat here! The food is good, though my only complaint is that it's really starchy.

Here's our usual menu, courtesy of the host family:

Breakfast: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with instant coffee + powdered milk.

Lunch= varies, but lately has been "eggy bread" (french toast, basically-- 4 pieces) and Fanta several times. Not my favorite, but some days they feed us during training up at the Peace Corps substation, so that's something to look forward to.

Dinner is the best meal. It's rice plus nshima (cornmeal paste that you roll into a ball with your hand-- like very thick grits or polenta), and relish, which just means things to put on the rice and in the nsima. It's always at least three things: a tomato onion sauce, a green vegetable (usually chopped pumpkin leaves or rape) and a protein (scrambled eggs, chicken for Trevor, soya pieces, beans). Zambians eat nshima at least once a day, and some three times a day. They even make drinks from is: maheau, a thin fruit-flavored version; and shake shake, the alcoholic one. (It smells like vomit-- I didn't taste it.)

We supplement with cookies from the tuck shops. Clothes still fit-- so far!

Training

Hi!I'mon our Lusaka visit & getting ready to start week 4 of training. I'm atan in ternet cafewith high-speed access &abroken space bar.

News: we'd love some more mail!! (See a ddress at right) Specifically, we'd love hard ca ndy & skittles/sweettarts; books &magazines (used or old=fine!!); specifically-Americansnacks. We have lots ofcookies butnot much else.

Atthe end of April,we'll move t oour permanent site outside Chadiza, whichis outside Chipata. Willpost t hat address soon.

I have an internetphone--so we caneasily reademails butit's h ard to respond with morethan a few words. You can also call--we turn iton( our time) from 5-8 pm ish. the number= 0978964836. google the country code.consider using skype!

we a re very h appy here-- PC takes good ca re of us andour host family is so friendly. no complaints except they're working us to death in training-- thisis our first break in aweek.

We've started sending letters & will r espond to all. We hope to have more regular access oncewe're at our permanent site, so don't forget about us!

Wildlife

I have been disappointed to find that most of Zambia's wildlife has been hunted down and eaten. So we've seen no zebras, giraffes or lions wandering down Chalimbana Road. However, Zambia is a giant petting zoo. As I write this, a goat bleats nearby. My afternoon meeting opened with a confused and hoarse rooster. And then there's the drunk guys wandering around everywhere.

brand name

Host mom sent me to market for powdered milk to accompany instant coffee. Her request: "Buy more 'cowbell'."

Pit

I don't have a problemwith using apit latrine--it's much less scary th an anything at the state fair or acollege bar on the weekend. The h ole is deep enough thatyou can't smell or see anything. My problem is aim.

daily routine haiku

wake up by rooster
eat, study, eat, study, eat
by 9, sleep.

____________________________________________________________________________________
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loving it! People fantastic. No email, internet phone!? Need letters! Will wb. Learning nyanja, living in hut-heaven.

____________________________________________________________________________________
Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page.

http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

We've arrived! February 25 2008

Hi everybody. We have literally three minutes on the internet to let you know that we arrived safely (no delays! no lost luggage!) and I have even bought a cell phone. Supposedly the cell phone can do internet, so you may be getting another email from us that way, otherwise it will be at least a few weeks-- we leave tomorrow for a site visit,then back to training.love you all!!! lisa

(Posted by Grace-if you want Lisa's cellphone number, please email me at hokum69929BLAHBLAHWEHATESPAM@mypacks.net) Just take out the BLAHBLAHWEHATESPAM part of the address --what's left is my real address.)

Mail

Um, I know we haven't even gotten on the plane yet, but we miss you already, and would you please send a letter please?

OK thanks.

Training + eating

We started the morning with bagels and too much coffee with Trevor's dad and his wife, then drove up the street to visit the National Cathedral, where the docents wear hats fashioned of purple silk pillows.

After lunch, we said our last round of goodbyes and checked in for training, beginning with a long get-to-know-you exercise in which I got to tell everyone that I am a yoga teacher.

Of the 52 people in our group, I appear to be the second oldest one. PC has a push on to recruit more volunteers over 50. It may be working, but there sure aren't any baby boomers going to Zambia with us.

We've wrapped up the day as we have most days for the past six weeks: by eating as if there is no tomorrow. I hope I hate the food there, or people are going to have to start sending me my "fat" clothes.

We met a friendly Georgian waiter at the pizza place where we enjoyed calzones the size of our dog, and unleashed our one word of Russian on him. As a bonus, there is a Whole Foods three blocks up, complete with a three-row deli and lots of cheese samples.

The snow flurries and biting wind here make me glad we're not going to Eastern Europe, after all. Remind me of that when I start complaining about the heat, ok?

District

Trevor is having a stellar and unusual birthday! First Castro resigns, then we join the Peace Corps.

We met up with our PC buddies A&A at curbside drop-off in St. Louis and got to be nervous with them at the airport. We compared luggage-- we're roughly equal, with about a zillion pounds each. I may even have a kitchen sink in there somewhere.

In DC, Trevor's dad met us at the airport with dried prunes. That's a birthday cake Trevor can get excited about.

Our hotel room has free (albeit slow) internet access, warm M&M cookies in the lobby (also free) and a rack rate (posted on the back of the door) of $500 a night. Thanks, taxpayers of the USA!

Having a wonderful time; wish we were there (Zambia, that is-- we're anxiously/ eagerly awaiting that 16-hour flight).

Last day

It's our last day in Columbia. We spent the weekend saying 'bye to friends in a series of events that felt like attending our own funerals. Despite my loud and overbearing personality, I really do hate being the center of attention. But being surrounded by the most interesting, kind, generous, funny and best-looking people (see left) in town made me marvel at my own good fortune.

I managed to get through the entire weekend in a buoyant mood, but I'm on the verge of dissolving into a weepy mess. Just looking at the dog this morning brought me to tears.

What a gift to have friends so precious to leave -- and to look forward to coming home to.

The best thing is that I get to take my most favorite one with me.

Home

Some of our treasures have made their way to the curb in hopes of finding new homes. Our house is empty except for the random items rattling around-- the phone, a few towels, extra boxes, lots of hardware bits.

Fez went to her new home last night. With her gone, it feels like any old house.

An administrative note: On this blog, "I" means Lisa. Trevor is an inspiration and travel companion and may become an occasional contributer at some point. If he behaves.

The blog title is inspired by John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley in Search of America, in which Charley is a poodle. For the record, Trevor is even better than a poodle.

Help

Being the type A person that I am, I have often squirmed, suffered and freaked out rather than asking for help.

We have been the recipients of a bunch of it lately, and this repeated exposure to my phobia is starting to smooth some of my sharper edges.

My mom spent an entire week packing up our kitchen. Our wonderful neighbor showed up with delicious lunches twice last weekend.

We spent the night at Trevor's grandmother's house this weekend. We had fretted over inconveniencing Millie or getting her in trouble-- technically, she's not supposed to have overnight guests in her senior apartment complex.

By the time we arrived at her house, she had fluffed up the carpet, pulled out a stack of blankets and cranked the heat to "tropical." She spent an hour telling us goodnight. In the morning, she sprang out of bed the minute she heard us stir and fired up her tiny coffee pot.

Millie was so thrilled to offer us her hospitality that it felt like we were giving her a gift in accepting it. When we bought her a loaf of bread later, I thought about how giving and receiving helps build the web of relationship. By the end of the weekend, we were "even," but from sleeping on her floor and drinking her coffee, I felt a depth of connection with her I had not experienced in the twelve years I've been part of her family.

These experiences make it harder to leave home, of course. But they also reminds me that when I get to Africa, my job is not just to sweep in and help the Zambians. Just as important will be accepting help.

(PS: The dog photo-- completely gratuitous. Isn't she cute, though?)

Stuck

Our house feels like quicksand. We went over this morning, thinking it wouldn't take long to finish up a few small details. Two truckloads and one ice storm later, we're a baby step closer, but finished still looks pretty far off.

And the packing piles and to-do lists grow while the clock ticks down: tomorrow, it's exactly one week until we get on the plane.

Home again

If this was an episode of Macguyver, he'd start sweating right about now.

T-minus eight days. Egads.

Visiting

The pre-departure visiting bonanza has begun. We've taken a break from whipping the house into shape to eat our way across St. Louis county.

It being Lent, we plan to take advantage of a fish fry tomorrow night. We spent last night with Aunt B. After dinner, Uncle J gave a little speech about his scapular. He explained that you wear the amulet under your clothes to keep you safe. Then he gave it to me. He gave Trevor his dad's rosary.

This all made me cry.

Then we drank more beers and watched some cable.

Grace

The noticing types who visit this site may have seen a new name under "Contributers."

My friend Grace has agreed to take on the role of Press Secretary. She'll update the blog if we become unable to do so, will forward emails as necessary, and generally will act as head gossiper of all things Trevor & Lisa-related.

Grace & I met on the Appalachian Trail in 1996. We told stories, sang bluegrass songs, laughed until we almost peed, shared care package booty, and agreed on the necessity of decent underwear at all times.

The other night, Trevor and I had drinks with our neighbors R and A. R is a returned volunteer from West Africa. Eight months in, he got medically evacuated to DC with kidney stones, accompanied by a morphine drip and a French nurse wearing leather pants. He calls it a highlight of his experience.

R's spin on the PC inspired and reminded me what I learned with Grace on the trail: Everybody hikes her own hike. On the trail, sometimes that meant we took a day off or stuck out our thumbs. My last job taught me that trying to hide your essential self -- for me, humor and irreverence -- kills your soul. Being myself is amazing grace.

Home

Since we're about to jet across the world to live in a mud hut with no electricity or running water for two years, we have packed up our possessions and officially moved in with my folks.

Living in the lap of luxury makes me cringe a little bit. Their house is bigger, newer and a million times nicer than ours. But I am enjoying perks like taking a long, hot! bath in a tub without the fear of contracting a fungus on my butt cheeks. And tonight when I was making a vegetarian pizza, I found, inexplicably, a huge pastry box in the fridge marked DESSERT'S! OK TO EAT! This rivals in thrill factor the time I found $72 blowing around a deserted parking lot.

We have strewn the house with our thrift-store clothes and cluttered their kitchen with our wheat berries and Fair-Trade coffee. It's already starting to feel like home.

Deployed for peace

Re: the ongoing conversation of "why did you join the Peace Corps?"

I hate war.

Specifically, I hate the killing, torture and misinformation currently being perpetuated in my name and with my tax dollars. You don't win allies by bombing people's houses and murdering their children; you breed enemies. I thought everybody knew this.

Two years ago, I took a temporary job as a military subcontractor, teaching literature and composition. I hoped to understand the people who volunteered to travel to distant lands and kill complete strangers because a guy who can't even string together a coherent sentence told them to. What I found out shocked me: The soldiers didn't seem to think much about the war at all.

If even the soldiers whose lives are on the line are disaffected, is it any wonder most Americans pretend the war doesn't exist?

I have spent a lot of time fuming, ranting and crying. The yard sign disintegrated months ago.

So I have "joined up" in the name of peace. It is something I can do.

Peace

One of the information books we've received from PC tells us to prepare for the possibility that some of the people we work with may die while we're there.

I wasn't prepared for people to die here.

Gail Shen died this week. She embodied childlike wonder and old-soul wisdom, wrapped in a package of baby-doll dresses and bouncy blonde curls. She operated a magical little shop that captivated me (and many of my $3 allowances) as a child. I worked there off and on as an adult, until pursuing a "real job" seemed more important.

One reason I quit my job to join the Peace Corps is that I resented being consumed by full-time work that kept me from treasured relationships. Unfortunately, this came too late for me to renew my friendship with Gail. I neglected her in the last months of her life. I will always regret this.

Good reasons to be worried

One of the reasons I had trouble sleeping a few weeks ago was my life-long habit of obsessing about terrible things that could happen to us in Africa (ie, hippo + canoe = death).

This morning when I was brewing up my (arguably unnecessary) next cup of coffee, I mused to Trevor about our former upstairs tenant’s comment that her new neighborhood seems safe, except for the gunshots. People get killed in their own living rooms from stray bullets. This makes perfect sense; a wall is nothing more than wood studs, drywall (paper and dust), fiberglass or foam insulation and plastic or wood siding. None of these is particularly bulletproof. Do people living in high-crime areas have bulletproof walls? Do they even make such a thing?

Trevor says my next book should be called Worrisome Things that Would Never Occur to a Regular Person or, Tapping into the Vast Reservoir of Lisa’s Paranoid Curiosity.

I realize that while I am nervous about moving to Africa, high anxiety is a normal state for me and no reason to be alarmed.

Job

People have been asking me what my job is going to be in Zambia.

Officially, I am working with Rural Education Development. Here's what the official PC website says about it:

Peace Corps' education project builds on the initial success of a national radio education program called 'Learning at Taonga Market.' This interactive radio instruction program produced by the Zambian Ministry of Education covers the primary school curriculum in a fun and engaging way, and is broadcast over the national radio station.

I read the official program guide several times, but zoned out over phrases like "capacity building." Cabinets and houses I've built. But capacity?? Hopefully it comes with a blueprint, maybe a pattern printed on tissue.

Perhaps my job will include editing the official program guides. I could build the heck out of some capacity there. And remove some random commas while we're at it.

Hunt & gather

Last week I spent a long time at the outdoors store looking at camping gadgets. In the end, I bought this wildly overpriced coffee thing.

We're going someplace where people are dying of AIDS and don't always have enough to eat. We will show up with bags full of camping accessories, technical clothing, electronics. Every day, I try to resist the urge to buy more crap. But until we get there, filling up my shopping basket feels like a way to prepare.

Emptying out

We went to a wine tasting tonight with returned PC volunteers. I wanted to bring some nuts and dried fruit, so I went looking for the Mexican dish I usually use. It was already packed.

Our house still looks full, but we must be making progress, because several times this week, I have looked for something that is already in my parents' basement-- or has gone to the Goodwill. Or the trash.

Yesterday was my last day of work. There's no turning back now-- even if we don't get on the plane to DC, everything has changed. Hanging out with the RPCVs changed my mental state, too. Our friends and family are excited -- some of them -- but it's tinged with sadness, fear. We will all miss each other, and they worry. But the RPCVs we met tonight were thrilled for us. It was contagious.

Wisdom

Before work, I stopped by my brother's house to drop off the dog. My nephew was laying under the kitchen table with the golden lab puppies they're fostering for the humane society.

We are both into animals, so I told him I read this weekend that it's unwise to go canoeing in Africa, as hippos sometimes knock over the canoes, and then crocodiles might eat you.

He did not believe this. Who can blame him? The internet is notoriously unreliable.

He told me that he had seen a television program on hippos, on which he learned that hippos weigh three million pounds.

Who needs internets when you have a nine-year-old nephew?

Simple

Making up an Amazon order a minute ago, I laughed at one of the items on my wishlist, a book called "30 Days to a Simpler Life."

Thirty days from today, we get on a plane to Zambia. I'm thinking I can cross that book off my list.

A saying

Part of my very important preparations include spending massive amounts of time surfing the internet for shreds of information about what to expect. I turned up this saying the other day:

PC volunteers to Latin America come back political; volunteers to Asia come back spiritual; volunteers to Africa come back laughing.

I don't know whether that's happy laughing or crazy laughing, but I like the sound of it.

Piles

I've started packing: piling up a stack of stuff I think I'll want in Zambia. There's no way to know what I'll wish I had brought, though I'm trolling blogs for hints and ideas. My Target list grows.

One advantage of Zambia over Eastern Europe: smaller clothes! I had been planning to cram the backpack full of coats, hats, long underwear, wool socks, boots. Now we're packing tank tops and t-shirts, sandals, sun hats.

Cookie time

My niece called the other night to hawk Girl Scout cookies. By the time they arrive, we will be gone.

Not that I need any cookies. And I'm sure they have cookies in Zambia.

Still-- we'll be gone. Yeeks! My mom came over this afternoon to help me pack up the Christmas decorations. We loaded up a bunch of books, too. The house gets emptier and it seems more real.

Mouse

My brother bought me a cheap used laptop online, back when we still thought we'd be going someplace with electricity. I'm ripping CDs like a madwoman, in hopes.

The touchpad is a little wonky, so this afternoon I stopped by the office supply store and bought a wee little mouse that is smaller than a twinkie. I want to kiss it, it's so cute. For a mousepad, I'm using a quilted coaster.

Speaking of mice, our friend HD said he's been online researching, and was going to cook us some Zambian food, until he found out they serve caterpiller and mouse. Did I mention I'm a vegetarian? Good to know I have the source of tonight's bad dreams lined up already.

Researching is a hot topic among our friends & family this week. I think we've already fulfilled PC's famed "third goal" of raising awareness of other cultures among people back home. There are many people in this midwestern town who can now find Zambia on a map.

Sleepless

If you're planning to go to Zambia as a PC volunteer, I recommend that you don't read The Unheard by Josh Swiller. I picked it up at the library last week and was so excited to find a book by somebody who had served in the country we're headed to.

Then I settled into bed Saturday night with it. The book opens with Swiller getting nearly killed by an angry mob. From there, it's downhill. When I closed my eyes, I imagined getting chased by angry villagers and wild animals. My imagination had a party imagining all the horrible possibilities.

With packing up a house crammed with junk, saying goodbye to my friends and family, and myriad other details, I'm having enough trouble sleeping as it is. I haven't gotten a decent rest since last week. I'm starting to feel undead.

Maybe I'll give that book another try in two years.

Clutter

Before I announced my resignation at work, I was scheduled to write a feature for the summer issue on clutter. I passed all my notes along to my irritated boss, then found out that the woman I had been planning to interview used to live in Africa. Now she helps people clean out their closets.

The whole notion of writing about clutter strikes me as ironic right now. Our task for the next 40 days is to clean out the mountain of junk in our house preparing to live in a grass hut with nothing but what we can carry in a backpack.

I was online a few minutes ago changing my address to Country Living so my mom can send magazines to me and Trevor pointed out a cover blurb: "15 Pretty Ways to Get Organized." He said, "I'm sure that will be very useful in Zambia."

Acceptance

First thing this morning, we accepted the offer to Zambia and within an hour the FedEx man had delivered a thick packet of materials that make it seem even more official: passport and visa applications, a million other forms, and a letter from George W. Bush.

While I walked the dog, I ran into the mayor, who was riding to work on his bike, so bundled up I could barely recognize him. I yelled out, "We're going to Zambia!" and he stopped to chat for awhile.

I said goodbye to our houseguest Hank and came to work, where I tried to quit, but my boss was in a meeting. Then her meeting was over, and somebody stepped into her office just ahead of me. Then she had gone to the bathroom.

But I finally did it! There's no turning back now. I will take next week as vacation, then come back to help ship the magazine the following week. Then, the next phase of the adventure begins.

News!

The waiting (part of it, anyway) is over! We're going to Zambia in six weeks (pending our official acceptance of the offer, which we plan to do tomorrow morning).

I'm so excited I couldn't sleep, and I feel a little sick to my stomach.

This morning when I dropped the dog at my brother's house, all I had to tell my nephew was 'Africa' and 'animals' and he was on board. "Can I go with you?" he asked.

Biding my time

All this waiting has me chewing my arm off. Some ways I'm finding to deal with the anxiety:

1. Getting snippy/irate with boss, husband, the guy who edges into the intersection in his W-sticker-plastered SUV while I'm trying to cross the street.
2. Drinking copious amounts of coffee, water and green tea.
3. Shaking; making numerous trips to the restroom. (see number 2)
4. Obsessively surfing blogs of places I think we might be going, and obsessively combing excel spread sheets found on a listserv to try to figure out where we might be going. (Note to self: if PC doesn't work out, consider work as private detective.)
5. Scratching psychosomatic rash that has sprouted across legs, arms, and midsection.
6. Dumping as much energy as possible into spinning class. I actually think my eyeballs were sweating this afternoon.
7. Eating more than my share of large pizzas plus rooting around desk drawers and coworker desktops for broken candy canes, Halloween-era Tootsie Pops, and even chewable vitamin chocolates (last resort; not recommended). (Hence number 6.)
8. Fretting.

News is no news

Apparently I spoke too soon before. Trevor got a returned message from our placement officer saying he's working on three potential sites for us, all in Africa.

Africa? For a month we've been telling people Eastern Europe, probably Albania. But Africa, hey that's cool. Perhaps we will get to live in a hut, after all. (The laptop I ordered comes in tomorrow; that'll be handy in a hut.)

Also, the PO said we'd be leaving any time between the end of February to July. February, as in the month after this one. That would be right at six weeks from today. Egads! As Trevor said, better not send in those checks to the Little Rock Marathon, eh? (It's March 2.)

If all the Africa projects fall through, we're also up for one in Eastern Europe, leaving in May.

The PO is waiting to hear from African country #1, according to his voice mail. My research has taught me to expect this to take A Long Time.

Also, Trevor is no longer doing urban planning, but environmental education.

Well, at least it's news, right? Pardon me while I go have a small nervous fit.

Still waiting

Well, we still haven't heard anything, despite more phone calls. But I have developed an itchy rash all around my midsection and on my arm: the physical manifestation of the angst coursing through my body.

If I were an animal, surely I would have chewed off my own arm by now.

Still, we move forward. This morning I made a lunch date with a former colleague who is a lovely person, a former debutante, and an ESL teacher. Over pad thai Friday, she will give me tips culled from her years of experience --including the famous "Animal Sounds" pronounciation guide. If only I could somehow learn to channel her wonderful personality.

I just accepted a meeting for next Tuesday and sadly erased "Last day of work??!" from my calendar.

What started it

I’ve always assumed that eventually I would join PC, since I first heard about it when I was a kid. I’ve even sent away for the application packet before, at least once, but always chickened out before I finished and sent it in.

But I got started applying this time around because of AS, who sat in the adjacent cubes at work.

I was so impressed when I first met her because she seemed to effortlessly elegant and perfect, this California girl with blonde hair and expensive-looking clothes like a wrap dress that draped exactly right. On me it would have gaped open and showed my ratty old bra.
She had three framed pictures above her computer of her and her husband outside the hut where they lived while they were in Kyrgistan. They had just gotten back. Amy had been working in the office just a few months and probably already had another job lined up when I met her, though I didn’t know that at the time.

She had a fascinating resume, too, at glossy magazines. She was freelancing, too, and I could never figure out how the hell she had time for that plus grad school plus a full-time job plus going to the gym regularly (as she clearly did) plus making these amazing gourmet lunches that I would gaze upon covetously as I shoved my generic diet soda and PB&J into the office mini-fridge.

Just like with the cool kids in junior high, I was always a little sad that she would ask our other coworkers to get coffee and never me, though later I realized it was because she was already starting to disassociate with the job, which also explains why she didn’t pounce on my marginally better cube when she had the chance.

AS planted in me the seeds of dissatisfaction with my job, right from my first weeks in the office. She hated our boss; she wasn’t even planning on putting the job on her resume. Of course because she was so glamorous and cool and because I was new and soaking in everything, I too started to see the chinks in the armor and the stains on the carpet.

But it wasn’t until after she took another job and moved on that a bunch of us were having falafel at the International Café, sitting outside on a gorgeous spring day, and I mentioned again that I had always thought about doing PC and she said, “If you’re thinking about it, you should just do it. Don’t think.”

It was in the elevator going back up to the office that I thought, “Yeah, I should.” And when I got back to my desk, I went online and started working on my application.

Still nothing

If I listed all the times we thought we were going to know something new and then were disappointed, this would be the world's longest, saddest and most boring blog.

I called the DC office last Friday for news and our placement officer was out for the weekend. Somehow I decided that he would return my call Monday with news. Monday, he emailed to say everybody is out of the office and he may have an update Friday.

Friday?!?!? What about Wednesday and Thursday?

Breathe. It's the federal government, I keep reminding myself. All in good time. Patience.

Friday?!?!?!????

Movies, or, Why We Will Never Get Netflix

In the morning I got a phone call from our friend JM, who owns our town's only remaining locally-owned video store. She had some screener copies of DVDs she thought we might want for our upcoming travels; did we want to come paw through them?

Yes!!! Yes!!!

We spent a lovely hour or so in her store's cold, grungy basement filling a box. I'm already imagining movie nights with friends, showing films in English classes, watching something fluffy and silly when I'm feeling homesick. I hope they have popcorn in Eastern Europe (or wherever we're going).

This is why we will never get Netflix. Can you imagine them calling up with such a magical gift? (OK, if they call, I will take the movies. But our rentals dollars will always go to JM's store.)

Placement Officer

The good news: We are medically and legally cleared! We have been poked, prodded, processed and deemed fit for service.

We have a placement officer! This is the person who tells us where and when we will leave. (His name is Patrick. He works in the big D.C. office. He seems nice.)

The bad news: Patrick told us last week (the Friday before Christmas) that he would review our files this week and let us know where we're going. When I emailed today (I'm trying not to pester him too much), I got an autoreply saying he's out today.

Horrors!

The good thing: I won't spend the entire day obsessively clicking refresh on my email. It's over until Monday. (I also left a voice mail. Good thing I don't know his cell number.)

The bad thing: Three parties this weekend at which we will have to continue to deflect The Question. We'll probably revert back to our standard, "Maybe Albania."

Sigh.

Holidays

It's likely that next year, Trevor & I will be somewhere far, far away for the holidays.

This was making me sad until Christmas Eve afternoon, as we drove around the slushy and cindery streets of suburban St. Louis looking for somewhere to take a walk in the 4pm dusk before attending a gathering of cousins and eating hashbrown casserole in an overheated, overcrowded house while getting smoke blown in my face by a fantastically kind aunt who also votes Republican because of abortion.

We will miss lots of people. But I hope that this time next year, I will be able to look back on the succession of overwhelming parties, gift-wrapped junk, white-knuckle drives in the snow, and post-meal bloats and push away the sentimentality enough to remember the reality.

Listmaking

When I am planning a trip, one way I channel my nervous energy is by making lists. My current to-do list includes:

• Update phone & address list
• Visit friends & have parties
• Buy a new laptop (that can show DVDs)
• Collect used DVDs
• Make host-family gifts (potholders, maybe)
• Make travel sheets
  

Since this trip involves an international move, preparation is compounded by the need to purge junk, pack boxes, change addresses, resettle pets, and a million other tasks required to close down a household for two+ years. But obsessing about my to-do list is part of the fun!

Travels with Trevor begins!

We are planning a big trip. I am packing and preparing.