insomnia

I don't know why I haven't been able to sleep lately, but it's starting to get a bit inconvenient. It has, however, provided me with time to catch up on reading and music a bit. Here's what I've been doing instead of sleeping:

• Mountains Beyond Mountains - An account of the making of the great Paul Farmer, a guy who has been taking on public health in the world's poorest of communities. Really good book. It was interesting to me because of the work that my company does in sustainability and appropriate technology and the model we use to address public health issues. In the book, it didn't seem like Farmer really cared whether his methods were sustainable or not, but rather that each individual patient received the highest quality of care, regardless of their location or their ability to pay for treatment. He's written a bunch of books about the inequities of health care, which I plan on reading as well.
• New Moon - I know these books are written for 13-year-old girls, but I recently saw the Twilight movie, and for some reason am now obsessed. They're a fun read though!
  
• No One Belongs Here More Than You - Miranda July is awesome. She did the movie Me and You and Everyone We Know, which is so great. This is a series of short stories about normal people doing normal things, but written in such a sweet and honest way.
  
• CSS - Brazilian band who were apparently featured in an iTunes ad last year, but I missed it while I was abroad. Love them. "Music is my Hot Hot Sex" or "Alala" are two of my favorites.
• Grand Ole Party - Love the lead singer's voice. So cool. Download "Look Out Young Son."

P.S. - I got pictures from Cali up on my Flickr account finally if you want to check them out.

insta-friends

So I was supposed to be on a 1030AM Megabus from Chicago to Detroit. It's now 140PM and I'm still waiting. And sadly, there are people still waiting for their 830AM bus. And the worst part is that the Megabus doesn't have a station, so we're all just standing outside in the cold - the negative-20-degree-windy-Chicago-cold. I don't think I can feel my toes anymore. There are probably about 200 people waiting here on the street to go to about 8 different cities. We've been taking shifts waiting outside and warming up in Happy Village, the little Indian take out place across the street. To ensure no one misses their bus (even though there hasn't been a bus in hours) we have created very distinct signals for each of the cities, so the people waiting outside can alert those of us inside. Ann Arbor/Detroit is a karate chop/kick combo because, well, Detroit is pretty bad ass. Seriously. No one has any information on what's going on with the buses, the bus company has stopped answering our calls and the Megabus people here, bless their hearts, are just trying to prevent a riot. To pass the time, we've started to concoct elaborate reasons for 8 buses and counting to go missing. The theory with the most support so far involves a bus heist at the bus depot. I won't go into the details, but it gets pretty messy.

I do, however, love how unfortunate circumstances breed insta-friends. All my new insta-friends and I are bonded by the fact that we will probably all have to have at least a few fingers and toes removed due to frostbite, but it's fine because we can all hang out and be frostbitten freaks together. Awww...

Hopefully I make it home today. I think I must be pushing my travel luck - all those trips with no lost luggage, no delayed flights, no missed connections - the travel gods have been good to me so far. Let's hope Mexico City and Megabus are just two flukes in my tradition of good travel fortune!

'tis the season

I'm so excited for Christmas!!!!!

I haven't much been in the Christmas spirit lately. Since returning from Oaxaca, I've been crazy busy with a bunch of new work projects, leaving me little time to take in all the wonders that are Christmas. Yesterday, however, was definitely a Christmas turning point!

So yesterday was the first really big snow of the season. I decided I needed a Christmas pick me up, what with the snow and all, so I made my amigo Sean help me bake something like 820,287,392,281 Christmas cookies while rocking out to all the best Christmas tunes. We, of course, also decorated the apartment with Christmas lights and candy canes, made our Christmas wish lists and got all dolled up for no apparent reason. I just like dressing up. =) I did feel somewhat like a 50's housewife wearing my dress and heels and apron while baking cookies. Truth be told, Sean did most of the actual cooking, but he's a trained professional, so I figured it was best to let him do it.

Check out our cooking fiesta on my Flickr if you please.

Also worth mentioning: After we finished our baking fiesta, we decided to go to a psuedo-Christmas dinner at a really amazing Korean restaurant in Logan Square - Urban Belly. Sean, who is a chef at Hot Chocolate, is friends with this other chef who knows the chef of Urban Belly...I don't really know how it worked. Moral of the story is we got a ton of amazing food all for free! Love it. Even if it weren't for free, I would definitely go back. The food is so good, the prices aren't bad, the atmosphere is really cool and it's BYOB, which I love. So if you're looking for quality Korean food check out Urban Belly.

In other Christmas-y news, I'm so excited to be home for Christmas this year! I missed Christmas last year while I was in Peru (I should do a re-cap of my Christmas in Peru...perhaps another night). Anyway, I can't wait to see everyone! And with that, I'm off to make my company Christmas card...working at 1030PM? Kinda lame...

Peace out all!

oaxaca and back in 7 days flat

So I got back from Oaxaca, Mexico last night.  I had an amazing time.  Oaxaca is an amazing place.  It's a pretty small city...around 500,000 people...set up in the mountains.  Like Cusco, there is a large indigenous community around the city, but the vibe of the city was much more "city" than Cusco was.  It wasn't nearly as touristy, there were normal stores, there were things like movie theaters and organic markets and delicious food.  It's just a very cool place.

I spent the first few days in a hotel and going in and out of meetings.  For the first time ever since I've started working for ProWorld, all the executives were there - Nick and Richard.  IEP Abroad's execs, Scott and Troy, also came down, as well as SAE's President, Rich from Barcelona.  It was a really fun group.  Around day 3 or so, I moved in with the Martinez Juarez family - Evi and Samuel and their children and grandchildren.  In between spending time with my family and meetings, we did sneak out to tourist it up in the city - checked out some ruins, tried all the food, did some hiking, partied it up around town, worked out in the communities and on projects.  

Our site in Mexico does very similar work as our sites in Peru.  Health is the most in demand project field and we work with a number of different rural clinics and communities on both clinical health and public health education.  We also work with the Union de Museos, which is a group of community museums, and Vida Nueva, which is an indigenous women's cooperative.  There's a bunch more, but those were the big ones that I experienced while I was there.  Vida Nueva was particularly cool - these women have started this co-op together, working to sell their tarpetes (the Oaxacans are known for their weaving) directly to buyers rather than selling them at low-cost to some middle man.  It's very cool because as they've become more successful, they've begun helping their community in other ways - creating their own social enterprises to provide services to their community.  We spent a day at their cooperative as well as out in a community constructing a "temazcal" which is this little domed sauna type thing that is used in ancient Mayan rituals.

I'll close with my Top 10 Things about Oaxaca:

1. Quesillo.  Amazing.  I need to find some good quesillo here.  It was really funny, because you literally eat some form of quesadilla or tostada or flauta for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  So delicious.
   
2. Mole.  The United States is seriously lacking on the sauces.
   
3. The Zocolo.  It's the "tourist center" but there weren't too many tourists there.  It's always a party there - we saw fashion shows and balloon parties and Oaxaca - palooza with 3 stages of music.  
   
4. Dancing.  We went out dancing a few nights and it's just fun.  I need to start hanging out at some of the salsa clubs here for sure.
   
5. El Pechote.  Fridays and Saturdays there is an organic market called El Pechote near our office.  We went for lunch one day and it was just so amazingly delicious.  Really good juices, coffee, lighter foods.  They had a little movie theater there where they would show free movies every day and a gorgeous courtyard where you could just hang out with a pond.  It was the type of place you could bring a book and go chill out all day.  
   
6. Parades.  Literally every day, there was at least one parade, sometimes 2 or 3.  The first night I arrived, there was a parade that went by our office which I watched from the balcony.  Not sure what it was for, but there were definitely kegs being pushed around in shopping carts, which was very hilarious.
7. Mezcal.  Rough to drink, but you get used to it after awhile.  You have to, it's Mexico.
8. Chupalines.  Grasshoppers.  You eat them.  Some are small, others are big.  The big ones are a lot harder to eat, but put enough chiles in them and they're not so bad.

Ok, I'm tired, I'm leaving with only 8.  If I think of 2 more, I'll update later.  Oh yeah, and check the pictures on Flickr.  Buenas noches!