Sunday, December 13, 2009

2009 Book Awards


So heres my 2009 Book Awards, based off of the 33 books I've read so far this year. The complete list is printed on the right side of my blog. To start off, a few of my favorite quotes about reading...

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. -Mark Twain

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. - Anna Quindlen

Medicine for the soul. -Inscription over the door of the Library at Thebes


Best re-read:

East of Eden, John Steinbeck. 

 I read this for the first time in high school and it is a constant topic of conversation between my best friend Katie and I. Steinbeck’s hopeful account of the human condition holds its place in my top 5 favorite books of all time. Timshel, baby.

 

"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected."


Honorable Mention: The Things They Carried -Tim O'Brien 

 

Best non-fiction:

Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson  

   Mortenson was robbed of this years Nobel Peace Prize. While Obama continues to send troops into the Middle East, touting the importance of war before peace, Mortenson has taken a more radical approach towards the war on terrorism, education. He is creating a future filled with opportunities rather than dispair for the children of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"You can hand out condoms, drop bombs, build roads, or put in electricity, but until the girls are educated a society won’t change."

"I've learned that terror doesn't happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren't being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death."

 Honorable Mention: Tender at the Bone -Ruth Reichl

 

Book that makes me feel homesick:

The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan 

Also a re-read from high school. Tan’s collection of short stories explores strong mother- daughter relationships, love, family and understanding of the past. Set in the foggy hills of San Francisco, she leaves me teary eyed and wanting to snuggle up on the couch at home with my mother.

"Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever."

 

Guilty Pleasure:

The Twilight Series, Stephanie Meyer 

  Four truly horrible works of literature, but this is the guilty pleasure category and I enjoyed this vampire sci-fi fantasy series of relationships between the dead and the undead bordering on pre-teen pornography. Personally I’m more of the werewolf type, team Jacob all the way.

 Honorable Mention: The Sex Lives of Cannibals -J. Maarten Troost


Biggest Disappointment:

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz 

 I expected the winner of the Pulitzer to offer more than just footnotes, Spanish lenguaje de la calle and poor character development. There were some chapters in Oscar Wao that I did enjoy but overall it left me feeling as though Diaz’s new style and edgy language were simple a cover for a lackluster plot and over stereotyped characters.

 


Biggest Surprise:

Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides 

 Recommended to me by several people, I’ve been anxious to read this book for a while. Eugenides takes a story filled with incest taboos, pre-teen sexual exploration and the difficult coming of age of a pseudo male hermaphrodite and creates a story of love and pain, growth and family, and grief and hope, that is remarkably relatable to all. He shows us that normal only exists in fairy tales and that it’s our differences that bring us together in this shared experience of life.

 

"Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. "

 Honorable Mention: The Time Travelers Wife - Audrey Niggenegger


Book of the Year:

The Cider House Rules – John Irving 

Irving’s tale of Homer Wells and the St. Cloud’s orphanage guides the reader through such an array of emotions you finish feeling that all the compassion, the love, the wit, the hate, the anger and the confusion of this characters is somehow a part of you. One of the most sincere novels I’ve read and by far my favorite of 2009.

"“Here in St. Cloud’s,” Dr. Larch wrote, “ I have been given the choice of playing God or leaving practically everything up to chance. It is my experience that practically everything is left up to chance much of the time; men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should watch for those moments when it is possible to play God – we should seize those moments. There won’t be many”"

Honorable Mention: East of Eden, John Steinbeck

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Packing

I’ve been in Guatemala for almost a year now and the new class of Healthy Schools volunteers are receiving their invitations and preparing for their January departure. I’ve got a few emails from people asking about packing tips for Guatemala, so here it goes.

Guatemala is a very geographically diverse country. Some volunteers live in the mountains at altitudes about 9,000 ft. Temperatures can drop below freezing and with no in door heating, fleeces, flannels and down sleeping bags are a must. I’ve got friend whose pilas (large basins used to store water during the week) freeze during the night, and they’ve sent home for warmer pajamas, thicker socks and hats and gloves. I spent the last week in Antigua, and a major cold front came in. The temperatures didn’t get above 50 all day and there’s no heat at the training center so be prepared to be bundled up even  in the classroom.  Out of the 180 or so volunteers in Guatemala, around 170 would tell you leave your flip flops, tank tops and sundresses at home, its too cold to get a tan. However, I spent most of the months of April, May, June and July wishing that it was culturally appropriate to wear a bikini to work. I live in arguably the hottest site in Guatemala. It’s a constant joke at the training center that the volunteers in Chisec don’t know how to pack for trips out of Alta Verapaz because I never show up with enough clothing (this was also a problem of mine back in California). Temperatures here range from about 75-110 year round. Its so humid that any thick cottons will mold before they dry and everything picks up this warm jungle smell. The only long pants I’ve worn in site are my white linen pants because they protect my legs from bugs and sun, and even those get too hot sometimes. I rarely wear anything with sleeves and I don’t even know what happened to all my socks (I haven’t pulled them out to wear since basketball season ended in June). While I own several pairs of shoes, great hiking boots, running shoes, business casual flats, I only wear my rainbow sandals in site unless I’m working out. I’ve yet to see a Q’eqchi woman wear closed toed shoes and really I could probably get away with not wearing shoes at all. Men tend to wear rain boots or cowboy boots all year round, but they make up for the amount of coverage on their feet by rarely wearing shirts. One of the returned volunteers from Chisec decided he was going to go an entire month without wearing a shirt to see if anyone notice. He was disappointed to find that people simply assumed he’d finally “gone native”.  A few weeks ago I took most of my clothes into Coban to get washed and dried (no dryers in Chisec). I left everything at a friends house in San Cristobal so that they don’t get ruined by the mold up here. I guess the best bit of advice I can give is  don’t pack anything you aren’t willing to part with after your service. Hand washing, harsh soaps and the weather wear away your clothes here much faster than in the U.S.

 

I’m off to wash my pillow cases (all my bedding molded while I was away for the week)

 

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Halloween


So just because we're living in remote villages in the middle of the jungle does not mean Peace Corps volunteers don't celebrate American holidays. In fact, many PCVs spend months planning, designing and sewing costumes. The volunteers in Alta Verapaz (the best volunteers in Guatemala) throw an annual Halloween party and this year the theme was  super heroes and super villians.












Saturday, October 24, 2009

Where in the world is Amy Van Buren.


Amy and Becca do Guatemala


Church in Panajachel
Amzo in the boat
Santa Cruz la Laguna
Lago Atitlan and the volcano
A room with a view
Catching some z's
posing
our attempt to spell out KT, missing our other best friend
surprise?
View from the mountains above Santa Cruz
Amy reading up
Relaxing
Guatemalan man on the boat
Hammock style
Lake side
lunch.
Road down to San Marcos
Lots of love.


Saturday, September 26, 2009

Roomies

Love them or hate them, life is full of sharing rooms, houses, and leftovers with roommates. I’ve had a lot of roommates in the past, some I’ve loved, others I’ve been less than enthusiastic about and life here in Guatemala is no different. Now Peace Corps policy prohibits us from cohabiting with other Peace Corps volunteers, something about not integrating with society kind of deal, although personally I think Guatemalans find it quite bizarre that I’m not living with my family or at least friends. I think some even generally feel sorry for my solitary home life, which may explain the frequent early morning visits from several of my male teachers. (that or my habit of doing yoga at 6am in just shorts and a sports bra). Someone must have put an ad up on craiglist advertising my house. Possibly something along the lines of:
Gringa seeks roommates in her cozy two bedroom hut to aid in further integration into jungle lifestyle.

Recent responses to the alleged ad have included, scorpions, tarantulas, this horrendous arachnid known as a tailless whip scorpion which is neither scorpion nor spider, toads, mice, iguanas, ants, mosquitoes and the neighbors dog (he came running into my house a few nights ago dragging not just the chain they use to tie him up with but the entire tree branch he was tied to). And just like roommates they eat my food, keep me up late at night and steal my stuff. The dog ran off with one of my shower sandals earlier today, I took off after him but the little mutt is fast.
Generally my roommates are annoying but I deal. Its easier to gently relocate the tarantulas outside then clean up the hairy squished mess and I even caught one of the scorpions (hes living in an empty peanut butter jar). The tailless whip scorpion has escaped my attempts at smashing him with a boot so many times that I’ve decided to adopt the motto “walk softly and carry a big stick”.  If my life were a reality show it would be called Survivor: Guatemalan Jungles, life in a giant terrarium…lets just say I'm glad I sleep underneath a mosquito net.


Would you want this living in your shower?
Tailless whip scorpion

Sunday, September 13, 2009

smattering of photos from life in Guatemala

Chris and some guatemalan boys
new roommate
mike and chris bbqing in tactic
mike and michelle
lorba and her meat
the famous arch in antigua
antigua churches

salto(waterfall) 
antigua with Volcan Agua in the background
carrying a load
the parrot that lives in the yard
cuevas candelaria campo santo
Chris's house (where ive been living until he comes back in Oct)

mudslide!

About a month ago Chris and I were headed to Coban to watch a big soccer game. About an 45 minutes into the two hour ride all traffic stopped, and for a road that rarely sees more than two or three cars in the same mile stretch, it was crazy seeing about a hundred cars backed up. Everyone got out, and after arguing with the driver about getting a refund on half of our fare, we followed the crowd and started walking. Turns out heavy rains turned the hillside to heavy mud and in the middle of the night a huge plot of a corn field fell. We had to walk about 300 yards through mud below the highway with all of our stuff to get to the other side. Chris was wearing boots so he had no problem, but I was in my rainbows (as usual) and ended up hiking in my bare feet. Here are some pics Chris took of the mudslide.