...Rules to Live By in 2010...

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resolution:: [rez-uh-loo-shuhn] the act of resolving or determining upon an action or course of action, method, procedure, etc.
rule:: [rul] a principle or regulation governing conduct, action, procedure, arrangement, etc.
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As I often do, I'm going to buck tradition this new year's eve and instead of making resolutions, I'm going to make rules. Rules to live by for 2010. I'm reading this interesting book by David Kessler, MD about our brains and how we can change our behaviors. Basically, Kessler says we can change our behavior through creating 'rules' for our brain. The longer we act by these rules (ie: I will not snack after 7pm) the more engrained they become in our behavior and become locked in the executive function of our brain. After a while, our brain just turns these 'rules' into normative behavior.

Whereas resolutions can become more of just anthems we live by instead of things that actually change our behavior. Or, they just become a check-list of things we do instead of helping us grow through them.

1. Let my mind see the sentence before my tongue says it.:: I often find myself saying the first thing that comes to mind and sometimes it would have came out so much better if I would have thought about it for a minute. It also opens the floodgates to be quick to anger or defensiveness.

2. Say yes (a bit) more.:: One of my defining characteristics is that I say "No." I say no when I don't feel like doing something that doesn't directly benefit my happiness. I try not to say no when I know saying yes would make someone else really happy - but I think I need to do more of it. Say yes to travel, yes to risk, yes to new cities and yes to new people and friends. Perhaps not yes to a new credit card.

3. Explore more kinds of music.:: In the few short weeks I've been home my sister has basically let me raid her iTunes playlists and I've discovered so many awesome new artists and albums. It was so nice to send out mix tapes for Christmas presents that had songs on them I knew my friends hadn't heard before or hadn't been played on the radio. I'd like to discover even more music!

4. Live Louder.:: Needless to say, spending the first three months of the year in Africa is most certainly the 'loudest' I've ever lived - but I want to make sure I take the attitude of searching out a higher meaning to my days carries through even when I'm back. I want to spend more time finding a job and making sure I'm living somewhere and doing something that makes me feel fulfilled not just fill my days. I want to be open to living anywhere. I want to be open to love. I want to be more open in general to all the things going on around me. I want to live out loud instead of in hi-fi.

5. Learn to cook a full chicken.:: I just think this is something I want to learn to do. In 2009 I mastered fried plantains, so I need a new food to master in 2010. If only for the fact that I know tons of things to do with shredded chicken, I just don't know how to do the part before the shredding. AND a good friend made me a roast chicken once that kind of changed my life.

6. Learn to can something - preferably pickles (the bread and butter flavor ones).:: Mostly as an homage to my country-livin' family, but secondly because it is an awesome way to (cheaply) make really awesome holiday baskets!

7. Embrace European attitudes towards food and wine (ie: lots of good wine and great meals).:: I need to expand my wine pallette and I also want to let go of the American attitude towards food which is: insatiable and constant appetites. I want to focus on a few really awesome meals each day that fill me up but don't put me into a coma. I want to explore more tea and coffee options. I want to make food an accessory to the outfit of life - not a pantsuit.

2 Stories For the Ladies with 2 Days Left in 2009

Being as the Manolos are both women - anytime we see inspiring stories about women we feel compelled to share.

First is a story about the most admired women in the country. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham-Clinton held on to her number 1 spot on the list. You didn't need to be living under a rock to know that Clinton has faced her share of sexist media punching in the last year, so it's good to see that people still hold her in the highest regards. These lists to me often reflect the aspirations of the people they poll and it feels like a triumph that people aspire to see more women like Hillary Clinton in positions of leadership. It gives me hope that the ultimate glass ceiling may actually have the potential of being cracked if we continue to view smart, well-spoken, driven women as our most admired.

The second story is about women in the workplace. Titled 'We Did It!' Economist features a profile on the status of women in the workplace and the fact that in the very near future, women will cross the 50% mark and make up the majority of the workplace. The story is hopeful and shows that in a time of financial strife and corporate collapse - there may be a glimmer of hope: women. Although women face more challenges than men in the workplace (less pay, family responsibilities, etc) we have come a long way from the Mad Men era. The story does a great job describing the challenges and benefits of a majority-women workforce but there is one thing I don't see present in the story. Something the Manolos experienced first-hand; a trend that we hoped was isolated but that we fear was not - the lack of the "Good 'Ol Girl" network.

Over two years working at various corporations with varying and diverse co-workers both of us experienced or heard stories of some of the most intense criticism and harsh treatment from female counterparts. We saw a 'woman eat woman' world where competition was standard and brutal. We saw young women come through the doors of our companies to only face harrassment by upper management men. We saw women opt to make a fresh-off-the-college-boat girls into blackberry toting assistants running personal lives instead of pushing them into challenging roles of managing accounts and supervising interns. We saw jaded, cynical attitudes directed at the wide-eyed young women entering the workplace.

Needless to say, we were surprised, but we persisted on. We saw hopeful networks of women who wanted to lift each other up and develop the careers of younger women. We saw the guiding hand of some of our women mentors reach out and lift us up; challenging us but leaving the demoralization at the door. We heard stories of the 'old days' while looking forward to a future of women who owned the societal networks just like men do now.

We are hopeful. We are hopeful that enough young women have experienced negative relationships with older 'chip-on-their-shoulder' women, that they will put in extra time to developing relationships with and mentor younger women. We hope that we will be able to help younger women get a pedicured toenail in the door to start working towards the career of their dreams. We hope that if we ever get to the level that we need an assistant we will make them feel like a valued team member and set them on the path of world-domination one blackberry message at a time. So, closing out the year on a hopeful note is something we couldn't be more happy to do.

In the words of good friend and author, Leslie Sanchez, "We've Come a Long Way, Maybe."

Percolator! (the coffee pot, not the dance)

"A cup of coffee shared with a friend is happiness tasted and time well spent."

There truly is nothing the assistants love more than coffee. Okay - well - GOOD coffee. One thing we've been particularly excited about is the locally grown Rwandan coffee we'll have access to for three glorious months. Coffee is quickly becoming one of Rwandas most accalimed exports - even garnering the support of the Clinton Foundation in their Hunter Development Program.

Today we stumbled upon another fanastic program centered on sustainable growth of Rwanda's rich coffee bean resources through USAID. The SPREAD Project (Sustaining Partnerships to Enhance Rural Enterprise and Agribusiness Development) is the USAID Agribusiness Project partnered directly with Rwanda. http://www.spreadproject.org/rwanda_exports.php

First, for all our friends, here is a list of locations (Murky's Coffee in Arlington, VA & DC; Intelligentsia in Chicago & LA; and select Starbucks to name a few!) carry beans from this project.

We can't wait to share with you the first cup of Rwandan coffee... the assistants are already scheming things that don't need to be packed just to make room for the coffee we plan on bringing back!

Just Do It

"...you got tuh go there tuh know there. "
-Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

I enjoy watching people's reactions when we tell them we're going to Rwanda. Some, realize the genocide was 15 years ago and go - Wow, what is that country like now? Others, quickly think of Don Cheadle and say - Is it safe there - are people going around the streets with machetes?! Of course, we acknowledge and are preparing for our own personal safety, but until we hit the ground and start living in Rwanda - we won't be able to talk about what it's like. We'd be remiss to consider ourselves experts on the country after mere travel blog reading and research.
As we grow ever closer to our departure date I've begun thinking less about our role in Rwanda and all we'll be doing - and more about Rwanda, the country.

I've been wondering what makes the people of Rwanda tick. What do they get excited about and what do they think of America. What do they listen to on the radio? What do their libraries look like - and are they filled with African writers or all kinds of writers? I wonder about how long the sun stays out and if people are outside a lot when they're not working. I wonder if it's a walking culture or a driving/car culture. I wonder if they buy all their groceries at the beginning of the week or if they go each night. I've wondered if they make guacamole. I've thought about what times they eat meals - are they early risers and late dinner eaters?

So, I've thought a lot about the quote at the beginning of this entry because until you can talk about a country or its people - you have to go there. You have to immerse yourself in it and then you MUST talk about it. So many times we learn about other countries and other cultures through Wikipedia and Google. One of the main goals of the Manolos blog is to tell our friends and families as much as we can about this country that many of them won't experience besides through us and the stories we tell. I haven't had many close friends travel so far from home for such a long period of time, so I'm so excited to be giving my first-hand account to everyone I care about.

I've so been trying to not only, soak in new experiences (loading wood from the back of a truck into the basement; getting a pick-up unstuck from mud; driving in snow/ice again) but appreciate them and hold them close. I'm working to train my brain to savor each moment and each new experience. I'm trying to look not through a rose colored lens, but through a little less cynical lens. I want not only my planning and my physical self ready for the trip - but I want my mental self totally open and appreciative of each experience. Because everything from waking up to working to chatting will be completely different there. Much like my morning coffee in DC was rushed and sometimes violently pursued, coffee in the morning in Indiana is (much like Indiana) never rushed and always sipped instead of gulped down in a caffeine induced frenzy.

Still Need Stars When You're Wishing at Night

You know how certain memories stay with you, the sense of them so disctinct that it can bring you back to a moment in time as though you're still right there? I can remember 4th of July, 1995, with absolute clarity. The year I was 9. I was running along the beach with my friends, waiting for the fireworks to start, and I looked up suddenly and found myself so stunned by the night sky I got dizzy and fell down. I wasn't sure what was different; it certainly wasn't the first time I'd star-gazed. I just knew that the stars suddenly looked like they were right on top of me, close enough to touch, and a clear night in New Hampshire can still bring me back to that exact moment. To this day the first thing I do when I get out of the car up there is look straight up, just to have that feeling again, that the sky and all its mysteries are endless and very, very close.

I've seen the sky over Massachusetts in every mood and every season. I navigate by it; it brings me home. I measure the weather and the coming storms against its colors. I crave it when I'm so unfortunate as to be far away for too long. I learned later that it looks different from the NH sky because NH was and remains largely uninhabited and entirely devoid of major cities (have you ever seen Concord? neither has anyone else). When I went to Mexico I was shocked - it wasn't that the sky seemed closer, just that it was so full, and it went on forever. You could see stars behind stars behind stars, and it continued in every direction for, as near as I could tell, eternity.

In Washington, D.C. you rarely see the stars at all. But it does make for some very cool moons, larger than they should be, entirely alone in the night sky.

So what are the stars going to look like in a city that more often than not doesn't have electricity in most buildings, on a continent that mostly lacks for artificial light? What constellations can you see there during the winter rainy season? I try to follow Orion when I can. Not only is it a widely referenced romantic notion in many of my favorite works of literature, but aside from the Big Dipper and, obviously, the Scorpion, its one of the few constellations I can accurately identify in a pinch.

...Life In Motion...

"To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow."

- The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver

I've always tried to live by the motto 'live out loud.' The past few years, that vision has been a bit clouded by things like career, drama, a city that feeds on all your baggage and a lifestyle of endless workweeks with nonstop blackberry attention. The Assistants have been fighting to wrap our heads around what exactly we want to gain from this adventure we're departing on in a few short weeks. Lately, even as the stress piles up on having enough money for clean water and everything else on our checklist, it's becoming more and more clear why we chose to do this: to live, to expand our thinking and to take the chance of letting ourselves not have a plan.

Here's the thing about the Assistants: we're planners. We plan everything. We plan down to the minute and we itinerize and we make tabbed folders and binders. We've been living life through a very planned and precise lense - and it was fine because it was our job - but that lense got real heavy, real quick. Now that we've been able to detach from that type of lifestyle, we've been able to say - forget the posty notes, forget the agendas and let's just live each day as it comes. Even if this comes mainly from the fact that we're both way too broke to plan anything on any sort of financial stability - we still have started to fathom what it will actually be like to wake up in the morning and not feel the world crashing down around us in the form of checklists, to-dos and planning.

Speaking of living - today I helped my brother (who is a corn-fed, tall, strong ass farmboy) get our farm truck unstuck from the mud. For some reason, I felt high I was so excited I could help him. I was raised in town, so trust that I have zero experience in 'farm living' so I walked outside in a pair of crocs (Gasp! - I know) got beside my brother and helped him shove the truck out - okay, full disclosure, I pushed a couple times, then he made me get in the cab and hit the gas while he pushed. I felt like I was touching a different kind of lifestyle and I didn't feel an ounce of resentment towards it or an ounce of 'this is below me' attitude.

I've been feeling that I'm moving closer everday to being more of the person I want to be in my life and less of the person I have to be to survive. It's also becoming more clear that if these minor experiences are opening me up in ways I couldn't have imagined - Rwanda has many surprises in store for me, my psyche and my life. I'm starting to let go of the fear that those surprises will be something I'll regret and closing in on the idea that these surprises are going to change my life in amazing ways.

When It Comes to the Rainbow

An interesting (or, you know, terrifying) question of human rights has been raised recently that brings a new dimension to our travels abroad. Our flight will land in Uganda, and we will take an 8 hour bus ride down to Kigali. Uganda faces a number of challenges right now, including constant plots to overthrow the government and the kidnapping, training and amassing of "child soldiers" along the Northern Border (we will be ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE NEAR THERE, in case you're wondering). But everything's relative, and these problems combined with an otherwise stable government and not completely tanked economy make Uganda a fairly normal country in Africa. It is also a largely Christian nation (although as with most of the continent there is a significant Muslim population) and as a result, Western Christian leaders - particularly American Christian leaders - have sought to have an influence there. In the U.S., despite the recent success of the Catholic Bishops in pushing anti-reproductive rights legislation through Congress, we have at least a nominal separation of church and state, but Christian leaders are not hampered by such restrictions in most African countries. They have managed to make the political ENORMOUSLY personal. As a direct result of Western interference, a new bill will be voted on shortly in Uganda. A Times article explains its consequences better than I can:

"I am the gay doctor," the physician whispered to me, making sure nobody
around heard. He talked about the gay and lesbian couples who go to his office
to avoid ridicule in public hospitals. "They know they can trust me, and trust
is a big issue," he said. "There is the stigma of being gay, but also the stigma
of being [HIV] positive. They are such hidden communities. Nobody wants to deal
with their problems."
In a matter of weeks, the Ugandan doctor's admission
to TIME could land him in jail and his patients on death row. An
anti-homosexuality bill now before Uganda's Parliament would include some of the
harshest anti-gay regulations in the world. If the bill becomes law, the doctor,
who asked that his name not be published, could be prosecuted for "aiding and
abetting homosexuality." In one version of the bill, his sexually active
HIV-positive patients could be found guilty of practicing acts of "aggravated
homosexuality," a capital crime, according to the bill.
Thanks to a clause in the would-be law that punishes "failure to disclose
the offense," anybody who heard the doctor's conversation could be locked up for
failing to turn him in to the police. Even a reporter scribbling the doctor's
words could be found to have "promoted homosexuality," an act punishable by five
to seven years in prison. And were any of the Ugandans in the park to sleep with
someone of the same sex in another country, the law would mandate their
extradition to Uganda for prosecution. Only terrorists and traitors are
currently subject to extraterritorial jurisdiction under Ugandan law. Even murderers don't face that kind of judicial
reach.
(Update: Reports out of Kampala late Wednesday indicated that
the death penalty may be dropped from the final version of the bill, which may
come to a vote as early as two weeks from now.)

A lot of Ugandans don't think much of the bill either:

If Uganda's anti-homosexuality bill becomes law, it will be little short of state-sponsored "genocide" against the gay community, a prominent member of the Ugandan Anglican church said this week.
Canon Gideon Byamugisha said the bill, which recommends the death
penalty for anyone repeatedly convicted of having gay sex and prison sentences
for those who fail to report homosexual activity to the police, would breed
violence and intolerance through all levels of society.
"I believe that this bill [if passed into law] will be state-legislated genocide against a specific community of Ugandans, however few they may be," he said.

As for the evangelical leaders whose misinformation, falsehoods, misrepresentations and outright lies lead to the bill, they're rapidly back-tracking, finally condemning the bill after weeks of being hammered in the media. Here's a phenomenal Rachel Maddow interview with one lying scumbag whose book - and the lies it contains - are directly quoted in the bill as evidence for why harsh measures against gay men and women, including DEATH, are necessary to protect society: http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rachel-maddow-takes-cure-gays-author-richa#comment-1380818

All in all, it puts a different spin on the struggle of being a first-world resident in a developing nation. Rserving judgment is clearly important. You don't want to be the American who goes to Italy and complains that you can't get a Big Mac, and you sure as s#@! don't want to be the American who goes to AFRICA and passes judgment on their development. The whole point is to learn, to take an experience away and hopefully give something back while you're there. Here we have an instance where Western leaders were clearly manipulating an African goverment for their own bizarre gains; it's sad, it's appalling and it's terrifying. But where does that leave the question of judgment? Is it enough to say Westerners should never have interfered? What kind of agency does that give Uganda? If this happened in Ireland, no matter who influenced it, I would hold Ireland accountable for what it was doing to its people. Does Uganda deserve the same treatment?

"...and you're doing what over there?"

The last few months people have been asking us about what we'll actually be doing once we hit the ground in Kigali. Well, besides the requisite avoidance of malaria and shopping of local produce, coffee and tea - we're going to be working with local women. In celebration of our most recent post, we're copying verbatim the program guide we were just sent this morning. It gives specific info on what we'll be doing, what's expected of us and what we can expect.

After reading the information - it was really exciting to see that we'd be doing some personal counseling with victims. Of everyone I know, the Assistants are the best at listening. We spent our formative years in DC listening to bosses, listening to coworkers, listening to clients and listening to strangers on the phone. If we excel at anything, it's listening.

The second thing I was most excited about was working with some of the out of school teens in Rwanda for informal English lessons to help them be more active in the workforce. Although most children in Rwanda complete primary school (up to 6th grade by US standards) - barely any complete secondary school. I see education as such an integral piece of a progressive nation - especially for advancing the lives of women. The World Bank's "2001 Household Living Conditions Survey" reported the average number of pregnancies was 5.6 for women with no education, 4.4 with primary education, and 2.7 with tertiary education. Although our program track focuses on the victims of gender based violence - we will have a role in providing some basic education tools from business management to English. If our work can provide a path to a stable source of income and limit a woman's vulnerability to become financially trapped in an abusive relationship - I consider our time there a success, even if we only get to one woman.


About: The program is aimed at assisting victims of Gender based violence (GBV)as well as carrying out activities that aim at reducing this vice. Activities will include education on GBV, trainings on small scale business management as well working with out of school teenagers.

Location: Gasabo, Kicukiro, Nyanza and Rubavu districts districts

Expectations of the project: your project will have its own expectations in regards to your volunteer responsibilities and duties, but you are also are expected to bring your own knowledge and skills with you and possess a positive outlook and a proactive style towards your work in order for your volunteer time to be successful.

Type of work available: You will be involved in psychosocial support (counseling) to GBV victims and also visiting and follow-up of victims for care. Other activities will involve teaching English in informal set ups to out of school teenagers and Women while interacting with them.

Additionally, volunteers will work with IGA groups in training associations on small scale business management, small scale agricultural activities that can generate income as well as daily monitoring of the activities of these associations.

Project ideas: You are encouraged to bring in creative and practical ways of fighting GBV as well as coming up with sustainable ways of problem solving.

About the Womenfolk

"There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women."

- Madeleine K. Albright

Have you ever noticed how the prep time for a meal takes longer than the cooking itself, or how researching a paper takes longer than writing it? The past few months have been like that. Filling out applications while working to save money while moving while sending letters requesting letters of recommendation while visiting while working while packing. And now we're at a pretty amazing place where the chopping and measuring is done, we're mixing it together, and we're preheating the oven. As a case in point, today was my last day at my temp job, where I have really enjoyed spending every day for the last few months. But no longer working is leaving me with a few weeks to travel, stand as a bridesmaid in my cousin's wedding, pack, and write this post I've been meaning to use as a chance to clarify my thoughts, even for myself, on why exactly I feel such a strong need to work with women.

In a happenstance of universal balance, I am applying for M.A. programs in gender and women's studies while preparing for three months as a volunteer in a gender-based violence prevention program. There are other volunteer tracks, every bit as important and some as relevant to my studies and interests; the HIV/AIDS prevention program, for example, speaks to the needs of women and children who are heads of household, and calls on my training as a gay rights activist (oh yes, I know how to put the condom on the banana. TRUST.). Yet I still felt the most important work I could do would be directly with women.

As we've mentioned, Rwanda is an unusual case amongst not just African nations, but all nations. Their relative peace followed by abrupt and terrifying violence and their subsequent westernized approach to justice have all created a set of unique circumstances in terms of both culture and economics. But no facet of this development is more singular than how women have taken a new place in Rwandan society. Following the genocide, there were more women in Rwanda than men. This alone created new circumstances. Women needed to be able to inherit land from their male family members who had been murdered. Women needed to be not only allowed, but encouraged to run businesses. And a generation of Rwandan men has grown up for the first time in a society where women are equals. The westernized approach to justice I mentioned also means that the political system has been totally restructured over the last 15 years, with one of the new laws being that women must hold at least 30% of elected offices - and the other 70% must be split between men and women. As a result, Rwanda became the first parliament in the world with a female majority. That's incredible, crazy, and rapidly changing the face of one of the fastest developing nations in Africa.

All of these things make Rwanda the most fascinating case study a hopeful M.A. in gender theory could ever wish for. What has Rwanda developed that is translatable? What's transferable? And what commonly held beliefs about gender development can this nation prove or disprove? What experimental programs can they lend credence to or prove useless in practical application? One of the things I personally hope to examine closely while I am there is the success of microcredit programs. I've been interested in these since I first read about them in college. Here in the U.S., we give loans on, oh, say, a house. Big loans. It takes 30 years to pay them off. We do slightly smaller loans for things like higher education. A tiny loan is a credit card; quite frankly, the holder of that debt hopes you never pay it back, but pay interest in perpetuity. Micro-credit loans are tiny, tiny loans, with strict payment plans. They often encompass financial counseling, and they are meant to help women and their families become financially independent. A woman might take out a loan for a cow and a chicken, for example, and use it to feed her family, sell any extra milk and eggs, and use that extra money to pay back the loan. The program is happy she paid it back quickly, so they can turn around and lend that money to another woman - or maybe two, if she paid enough interest. You'll notice I keep mentioning these loans in terms of women, and there's a good reason for that. Micro-credit programs exist in many nations, including small African countries, and bigger countries like India, but they all have one thing in common: they work best when they only lend to women. In many cases, they only work AT ALL when they lend exclusively to women. Men hold just 6% of micro-credit loans in Rwanda, but they represent 4 out of 5 loan defaulters. How is that possible? Why is that? Is it cultural? Why does it happen in so many countries? Interconnected as these issues are, I also want to examine: how does women's financial independence play into or deter gender-based violence? How has reproductive rights in a small, only recently de-colonized and still very religious country been influenced by such a dominant female presence in politics and in every aspect of the developing economy?

I struggle constantly to narrow my interest in what is such a huge field, such a small title for such a broad range of needs. I try to remember that it's more important to do one thing and do it well than to spread myself across not just countries but continents, not just ages but generations, not just issues but whole genres in an attempt to do whatever small part I can to meet every need, a feat not yet achieved by the combined power and (vague and inconsistent) interest of hundreds of nations. I'm currently obsessed with starting a charity and a non-profit. For the cost of a lunch out with the girls - $36 - a woman in Africa can be given everything she needs to save her life during childbirth, still the leading cause of death amongst women in developing nations. I want to start a "Ladies Who Lunch" charity, where women put down $36 for a meal, we give the money to hospitals in Africa (Tanzania and Rwanda are particularly vulnerable, tantalizingly close to meeting women's medical needs with just a little more funding), and they listen to a speaker instead. I'm also struggling with a local problem. Here in the United States, former child prostitutes are turned away from shelters because they are hesitant to deal with sexually active minors. There are currently about 44 beds in shelters where former child prostitutes are welcome - and roughly 200,000 competing for the privilege of a place to sleep. Most of them get lost in the foster system, become runaways, or are held indefinitely in detention facilities as material witnesses to a crime: their own statutory rape. Here are the most vulnerable members of our society, already victimized by circumstances beyond their control, being victimized yet again by our culture's inabilty or unwillingness to accept children who are sexually active, whether that was their consenting choice or not.

And don't get me started on Afghanistan. It's better if I just don't read about the state of women there anymore. If I disappear, you'll know where my flight is headed. What a mess.

People like to remind me how lucky I am to be alive at this time in our history. Women can vote! they remind me. Women have equal rights, they run for President! And it's true in many ways. But it isn't enough. It isn't enough to have what we have here, and ignore how many nations oppress an entire gender, more than half their population. And it absolutely isn't enough to rest easy and pat ourselves on the back, thinking about what a great job we've done. Before the Shah of Iran was overthrown in the 70's, Iranian women had equal rights to men in the eyes of the law. They worked, they went to university, they dressed as they pleased. And then, in the interest of progress, they helped overthrow what they saw as an unjust regime, only to watch helplessly and horrified as it was replaced with one that took away their rights and over the years grew more and more violent towards them. If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. And as I watch Stupak amendment pass the House of Representatives, and see Secretary of State Hilary Clinton advocate for the needs of women and girls in every single thing she does from one of the highest seats of power in our government, I do wonder which way we're going. But the way I see it, we can always tilt in either direction, and only constant work and diligence will keep us on track.

Nicole's Flight - DONE AND DONE!

Nicole's flight confirmation screenshot!!! ow ow- we're getting close folks =)

All Over These Internets!

Hey ya'll! You can catch us on Facebook too - we'll try to update both as frequently as possible with as much info as we have.

Flights get booked tomorrow! The end is near! We're almost there!

edu'ma'cation

Today was my first day as a substitute teacher. I'm not sure if you've ever met middleschoolers, but they are certainly a challenging bunch. I have decided that being a middle school professor is by far the hardest job in the world - harder than my life as an Assistant, for sure. I have a few exciting stories to share with the masses.

-One girl asked me if I was 'just a substitute' or if I was doing this to be a real teacher. I said "No, actually I'm doing it in between leaving DC and going to Africa." to that she responded "I think being a teacher would be better than going to Africa - same amount of bloodsucking insects though."

-I let the kids call me by my first name. I had hoped it would help them be generally respectful - it worked with the 7th graders, not the 8th graders.

-In general, 8th graders are far more difficult than 7th graders. I figure there is something totally hormonal and psychological that explains that. or maybe they just take up more room because they sure are louder.

In general I enjoyed most of the kids and thought they were all pretty great. However, there were some bad apples. I wonder if there is anyway that educational experience can be individualized so that students can maximize their potential without outside influence from other students that may not be at the same level. For example, we watched a video today in the class I was subbing. A few loud talking students disrupted the entire experience for the class - whereas, what if they had all been watching the video on their laptops.

It also really made me think about what its going to be like working with similar-aged kids in Africa. Will they have the same respect issues? Will they be eager to learn? Will there be some kids who are eager and others who are annoyed? How do cultural differences affect our attitudes towards education? All these things I thought about working with the kids today. Maybe the thinking got in the way of disciplining and thats why they haven't called me back for another day!

or, "Boston Marriage"

I love the word "partner". I love what it means, and all the cultural meanings we have imbued it with since its origin. I love it partially because I have always worked in the gay community, so for me it has come to express love and a life built beyond what society cares for, because its what you need. But I also love it because to me it expresses EQUALITY between two people, the idea that life is an adventure you are going on together. I love it because it leaves gender with all its loaded meanings out of the equation entirely, and I love it because it refers to lovers and friends alike. I love the phrase partner-in-crime, and the way it feels when someone I love says "my partner" rather than "my girlfriend" or "my lover", although those have their place too. I just love everything it means and everything it stands for, and everything it says about a relationship it applies to.

Think about all the kinds of partnerships one might refer to with that word. Partners in a law firm, partners on a police force or in the military, partners in life, partners on an adventure, partners of convenience out hunting treasure and meant to soon part ways. It's such a cool word, such an awesome way to describe someone and such a neat thing to be. A "partner".

My partner in crime and I are buying our plane tickets on Friday - we'll keep you posted!!!