bus rides, street food, and a thousand paper cranes.

our time in phnom penh came to a close, and with one last scrumptious breakfast at java, a cafe that caters to ex-pats and serves up absolutely delectable food while doubling as an art gallery, we headed off to the bus station to find the chariot that would whisk us away northwest. after fighting the mad dash to get on the bus, we snuggled down for the five or six hour ride.

arriving in battambang, i was struck by the relative clean and quiet of this fast-growing city, compared to the smog-laden haze of phnom penh. the paved main road wound through sleepy neighborhoods, the residents understandably hiding inside from the heat of the day, before depositing us, dusty and travel-worn, at the jesuit center. a seeming oasis of closely-clustered buildings peeking out from behind grand, green trees organized along a central, dirt road - i breathed deeply for what felt to be the first time in a long time.

being sunday afternoon, we had time to wander. meg gave me the grand tour of the various buildings, describing their individual purpose, creating in my mind a complex infrastructure of community services offered to everyone but especially targeted at the marginalized - children victims of polio or land mines, the elderly, and women. i marveled at the scope and breadth of work as well as the pervading sense of calm, peace, community. i can see how people come to visit and end up staying...

and here i am, sitting in the office meg shares with her staff at the women's health program. taking a break from chopping large, shiny sheets of what seems to be wrapping paper into squares small enough for origami folding. tomorrow is international women's day, and there will be a grand event here at the center. an estimated 200 women are converging from surrounding communities and villages to celebrate being a woman, standing for women's rights, and protecting women's health. we will share the task tomorrow of folding the individual birds, and i feel so blessed to be able to throw my wishes in with these wonderful women.

motos, tuk-tuks, and passionfruit rum

i'm in cambodia!

after a long, but relatively uneventful flight, i have safely arrived in phnom penh, cambodia, and into the open arms of my dear friend, meg. since she picked me up, we have been galavanting around the city, although the word galavanting might belie the relatively slow pace at which the excessive heat and humidity force us to move.

the afternoon after i arrived, we unceremoniously dumped my things at our guesthouse before heading off to a japanese salon where meg had made appointments to get our hairs cut. such a surreal experience - sitting in this ultra-polished, quiet salon, faced with my japanese hair dresser and her khmer translator. everything i said, filtered through this girl and then filtered back. the constant hovering presence of the assistants was certainly unnerving, but probably not a better introduction to cambodian customer service. although, meg assures me that invariably, when you actually need someone, there is no one to be found!

newly coiffed, we stepped back into the city streets, grabbed a moto, and headed off to the riverfront and grabbed a couple of fruit shakes. after a dinner of indian food (i'm in cambodia, i know, but meg assures me all i'll be able to eat in battambang is khmer food, so we're expanding out horizons while here), we headed off to the apartment of her friend for a little get together. seeing a bit of meg's life here is such a wonderful gift.

yesterday was more focused on sight-seeing. we started off in the big market, where i bought some wonderful fabric, and then we scooted over to a cafe near the tuol sleng genocide museum where we relaxed under the bougainvillea. after i felt a little less faint from the overwhelming heat, we entered tuol sleng, what used to be a primary school that under the khmer rouge (or democratic kampuchea, as it called itself), was turned into a prison, torture center, and site of execution for political prisoners. of the 20,000 people on record for staying there over the 3 years or so it was in use, only 7 survived. a place of horrific human brutality, definitely worth seeing, but so, so difficult at the same time. the energy itself in that place was so oppressive, so deeply saddening...

we capped the day off with a tour of some of the riverside bars, tasting an insanely delicious passionfruit rum made locally. the the sun tucked away for the day and the cool tendrils of the riverside breeze, it was an absolutely gorgeous way to end the day.

this is LA

yesterday, i had one of the most bizarrely wonderful experiences with the city of LA. after sharing lunch in culver city park with my date, we headed over to the museum of jurassic technology on venice blvd. i hesitate to even write about this because it was several hours of indescribable wonder, disbelief, and fascination that i know i will ultimately fail to communicate with due justice. still, such a place deserves a nod, for sure.

opened in 1988, this is a museum dedicated to the rare, the improbable, and the curiously unbelievable. the introductory slide show indicates that the museum was opened with the intention of carrying on the great tradition of the saints' relics held in the great cathedrals and jacket pockets of itinerant street peddlers.

the items on exhibit ranged from an apricot seed with a tableau supposedly carved into it (i never could make out the figures), a series of memorial portraits commemorating the deceased dogs of the Soviet space program, a display of the logic alphabet, interactive media recounting the history of cat's cradle, and a significant portion on two individuals, Madalena Daley, a Romanian opera singer who suffered from short term memory loss, and Professor Sonnabend, a son of a German bridge-builder, whose groundbreaking research on experience, memory, and the act of forgetting was unknowingly influenced by Ms. Daley as they both spent a sleepless night at Iguazu Falls in Argentina. so, so, so bizarre.

when we finally dragged ourselves away, we decided to detox with a cup of tea and some art at Royal T, a tokyo-style cafe and art gallery nearby. only that as we drove up to the place, a gaggle of korean girls decked out in full make-up and traditional han-boks were streaming out the door. taking that in stride, we entered to the scene of approximately eleven young ladies dressed in black polyester french maid costumes with platform heels practicing what seemed to be a hip-hope routine. inside the cafe.

dumbfounded, confused beyond belief, and loving every minute of it, i ordered by yuzu sencha green tea and spent a moment realizing that this is LA.

reflections on a welcome conundrum

i'm back in LA after yet another wonderful visit with my sister, my brother-in-law, and my darling baby niece. i can't believe i haven't written about the little bundle of joy (literally!) that stumbled into my life almost four months ago exactly...

writer's block: the hum of the electrical lines outside my bedroom window coupled with the steady whir of freeway traffic and the smell of incense wafting from the stick i put up a few minutes ago lull my over-tired body and mind to a state of numb as i conjure images of the family i have so recently left behind once again. my sister's face. my brother-in-law's laugh. my grandmother's accented speech. my mother's gentle hands. my father's bear hugs. and the topic of my post, my adorable, so-elusively-beautiful-beyond-description niece.

how do i conjure for you the feeling of my niece's two perfectly round hemispheres of cheeks cupped in each of my palms? what words adequately communicate the mildly repulsive yet alluring scent of soured milk that swathes her by the end of the day? can you imagine the utter bliss of burying your face into the unadulterated neck of a baby? especially one filling the air with a joy-filled cacophony of coos and shrieks. or who wants to take a stab at conveying the feeling of absolute empowerment when one's clownish antics and ridiculously huge grin are rewarded with a whole-body smile?

spending time with her, love is so blatantly obvious, so banally natural. i don't think i ever stood a chance against those large, blue eyes or that tiny fist when both first clapped hold of me almost three months ago. and suddenly, the dreams of traveling widely or living abroad that i have kept alive by spoon-feeding them adventure travel novels and late-night web searches, wane pale when placed in competition with the chunky monkey i call my niece.

aside from all the overly-dramatic inner turmoil of dreams torn assunder, the simple reality is that, for the time being, happiness means looking at her photos, recalling the sound of her laugh, and ticking off one by one the days until i see her again.

sacred spaces

saturday i left work exhausted. sunday i left work frustrated. yesterday i left work in love.

with my job. with life. with the darling (new) family i had cared for that day. mom is french. dad is from argentina. they met in switzerland while getting their phDs. they have a new baby girl. and they are in love. with each other. with her. how do you describe the feeling you get while watching a new mother watch her baby? how lucky am i to be welcomed into such a sacred moment and space?

piquillo peppers and kiwi blokes

all this past week i have been contemplating an conundrum. invited to a dinner party and told i could bring an appetizer, i struggled over what to bring. requisites: tasty, vegetarian, exciting, and easy to make ahead/transport. i thought about pita chips and hummus, but alas i have no food processor and felt that since i had the whole day (minus the hours spent watching the terribly disappointing defeat of the us world cup team), i could probably do better than the buy-and-serve route.

i thought about little tartlets, a new dish that would challenge my culinary skills, but everything used puff pastry, which - while delicious - kind of defeated the health kick i was aiming at. sushi, summer rolls, salads - none of the multitude of recipes i skimmed through seemed to meet all of my criteria. then i found a recipe for stuffed piquillo peppers. aha! at last something that might actually work.

piquillo is spanish for "bird's beak," and these deep red peppers have a little pinched end that gives them their name. the great thing is that you can generally only get them roasted and jarred, which is exactly how you want them for this recipe. and really it couldn't be simpler.

warm some goat cheese to room temperature. while that's warming up, drain and pat dry the piquillo peppers, checking the insides for any remaining seeds. then, scoop a teaspoonful or so of the cheese and gently stuff the peppers. plate and serve. i found it helpful to sometimes tear a vertical slice the side of the larger peppers and then wrap the edges around the cheese, securing with a toothpick, since stuffing them full of cheese would have entirely used up my little goat cheese log! you can either serve these cold or warm, broiling them in the oven for a few minutes with a little olive oil drizzled on top.

in the end, this is such a versatile recipe! the peppers have a slightly smoky flavor from being roasted, and the goat cheese can be mixed with a variety of flavors. my goat cheese was infused with honey, but you could easily use other flavors like fresh cilantro, cumin, or roasted garlic. yum!

and what a lovely evening it was, as well. hosted in honor of four kiwi blokes who are headed south on motor bikes with a goal of reaching cape horn at the tip of south america, the conversation was lively, the company lovely, and the food excellent. how lovely it would be to leave work and go on such a grand adventure! i wish them all the best, and plan on following them on their website/blog. Check it out!

the making of apricot jam

last night, per a conversation with a friend, i was reinvigorated to get back into my blog. going forward, i want to expand on my normal philosophically-based musings and include more stories from work, things i'm learning, and recipes that i'm eating. there are so many wonderful things in life, and i think having a dedicated space to record them can only help me realize and appreciate them in a whole new way.

so, on that note, a new outlook, a new format, and a new topic for today: kitchen conquests.

yesterday, i was over at josselyn's house and a long-awaited dream came to pass. we made apricot jam.

now, while this may seem relatively inconsequential, the six little jars we got out of the process were the realization of a dream i've had for almost three years, ever since tasting amazing apricot jam while visiting lisbee and her family at their cabin in eastern washington. apricots are one of those strikingly seasonal fruits, so fragile, and yet so absolutely good when ripe and ready to eat. to be able to capture that burst of summer in a jar seemed like an appropriate challenge for a wednesday afternoon, and so we set upon our quest.

first, the perfect recipe. there are many variations, as one might imagine. all include apricots, of course, but there the similarity ended - how much sugar? what about adding extra ingredients like apricot kernels or lemon juice? and don't get me started on the raging pectin debate. after much searching, one recipe stood out from amongst the rest. first it comes from an 80-something-year-old in france. france - it has to be good, right? plus there was an additional philosophy behind this recipe, the author explained: do as little as possible to the fruit. i love that, and the simplicity of the recipe was striking:

3 pounds (1-1/2 kg) apricots, pitted and quartered
3 cups (600g) granulated sugar

1. Place the apricots and the sugar in a non-reactive pan or bowl, stir, cover and let macerate for at least 12 hours.

2. Transfer the fruit and sugar to a large, heavy saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat so the mixture is boiling merrily and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and ladle the jam into sterilized canning jars, leaving 1/4-inch headroom. Seal according to the jar manufacturer's instructions.

Yields about 10 cups (2-½ liters) [SIDE NOTE: we only got 6 cups from this recipe]

From: On Rue Tatin, Cooking School in France with Susan Herrmann Loomis

the apricots were sliced and macerating (isn't that a great word?) by 10pm on tuesday night, and by morning the kitchen was filled with a slight apricot-y scent, at which time i realized i probably should have refrigerated the covered bowl overnight. sliding it into the bottom shelf of the fridge a bit late, perhaps, i set off on my bike to yoga. all in all, i think they had macerated (!) for probably seventeen hours by the time we used them that afternoon.

after procuring the half-pint jars (side note: apparently no grocery stores in los angeles carry canning jars any longer. i visited three different ones where sales clerks of various ages looked at me in puzzlement and told me they haven't carried canning jars in years. "who does that any more?" was one particularly special comment...the crisis was averted by a charming little hardware store near josselyn's house), we cleaned them and began heating them in a large pot on the stove.

then we made the jam.

i can't describe how wonderfully alchemistic (is that a word?) it is to make something like jam. into the pot went huge chunks of apricots and a really sugary syrup. after 10 minutes of a gentle boil, out came thick, tart, bright apricot jam. oh. my. goodness. this stuff is good. (a note on cooking the jam: we probably left it on higher heat longer than necessary, noted by the excessive amount of foam that kept threatening to spill over the edge of our pot. once it comes to a rolling boil, i'm pretty sure you can turn the heat down and keep it bubbling/thickening but not producing as much foam. as it thickens, the foam will die down as well. and really 10 minutes, while a seemingly short amount of time, is perfect)

pulling the jars out of the hot water, we ladled the jam into each one. a jelly funnel would be ideal, but we used a rolled up silpat (silicone baking mat) which worked perfectly. if you have those flexible cutting mats, i bet that would work, too. on went the lid and the ring (which had been cleaned and sitting in hot-but-not-boiling water).

now, we flipped our jars over while they cooled because that's how my dad does it at home, but i could never find the rationale for this online. maybe flipping the jars over keeps the heat closer to the lid and facilitates a better seal? whatever the reason, after the jars had cooled to a safe handling temperature, we flipped them back right-side up to be rewarded by the merry little pings of our jars sealing themselves shut.

supposedly a properly sealed jar can last two years in a dry, cool pantry. i'm thinking it will be gone long before then...

especially if i keep having breakfast like this morning - fresh blueberry scone (a future post, for sure) with apricot jam and a apple-berry yogurt parfait.

you should come over for breakfast.

it's the little things

typically, when you talk to a nurse about pee, he or she will automatically think about how 12 hour shifts and busy schedules and multiple patients with equally multiple and diverse needs often keep you from being able to pee. sometimes the few moments of peace and quiet in the restroom are ones that i relish, especially on the busiest of days. today, however, i started to think about pee in a different way.

for almost all of our postpartum moms, going to the bathroom is a little bit of a production. what with the pain of a possible abdominal incision or an extremely sore bottom that just let a baby pass through, whether its getting out of bed or sitting down on the toilet, it's never very easy. today i had a patient for whom it was virtually impossible. i got her as she was gearing up for her fourth attempt to pee independently. three times the foley catheter had been placed in her bladder, and three times it had been taken out followed by six torturous hours waiting, feeling the need to go but completely unable to do so.

and so it was a day of back and forth - watching and waiting, expectantly anticipating the most mundane of things, and celebrating the smallest of achievements. at the end of the day, i'm exhausted but so very thankful. i don't often think to name my own bodily functions among my list of blessings, and yet what a lovely gift for which to be truly thankful.

match up: RBC vs. dotting i's and crossing t's

i'm seven weeks into my new job, and i'm already amazed at how different each day of work is now, as compared to those first few weeks on my unit, wondering what the heck i was doing masquerading as an actual nurse. now my days have routines and i can stay more or less organized despite discharging two patients by eleven am and admitting another. charting is still, more than anything else, the bane of my existence. More than confidence in direct patient care, the electronic charting system somehow manages to trip me up more than anything else. i forget to chart a med or the urinary output of my postoperative patient or the feedings and diapers of one of my babies. sometimes i've recorded it in one place but forgot the other two places where you have to document the same information. more than anything else i forget to document my teaching.

in my nursing orientation class for all new employees be they new grads or experienced nurses, the instructor addressed us newly graduated nurses and said something along the lines of - our focus here at the hospital is to provide relationship-based care. we know you will be more task-oriented at first, but we look forward to when you can step away from the tasks and really focus on your relationships with your patients. my personal experience, on the other hand, is that what i do better than anything else is seek to build relationships with my patients. sometimes to the fault of my hospital-required "tasks." vital signs must be taken every 4 or 8 hours, depending on the patient's status. but what about that time my patient was in the neonatal intensive care unit, squeezing in every possible minute with her baby who has taken a surprising turn for the worse? or what about when, as i'm on my way to administered a timed antibiotic to one patient, i stop in one of my other patient's rooms, only to find her in tears about these new and unexpected stresses of motherhood? how do i advocate for my teenage patient, who has no real home to go to and a history of abuse in her relationship with the baby's father but loves her child to pieces and desperately wants to keep her, while still accomplishing the necessary steps of involving social work and the department of child and family services?

these are my new, daily quandries. i still puzzle over how quickly to push an IV med i've never given before and how to interpret certain lab values, but as these things - relatively black and white - become more familiar and more clear, it's the deeper shades of gray that continue to challenge me in my nursing practice. technically i'm on probation until the end of may at which time my performance will be reviewed and my employment extended or terminated, i guess. kind of an eerie feeling of big brother, or this case, big sister watching over you. i know my charting is being reviewed regularly, and i find it interesting that despite all of the emphasis on patient satisfaction and relationship-based care that ultimately, what i'm being graded on in large part are the tasks.



one last note: because hooking my computer into the internet isn't the easiest thing at my apartment, i've been writing more in my journal than online, but i hope to break that habit a bit and make more of an effort to share with you here more of my stories both from inside the hospital and from the outside as they unfold.

Finding Emmanuel

So last night was my first real night out in LA since I moved. I've been to happy hour once with my roommate and her friends and then out for dinner for my roommate's birthday, but definitely the first out-to-a-bar-solely-for-drinks-and-socialness since the big move and the start of my job. My coworker Lauren and I headed down to Manhattan Beach to meet up with a few people I had met at a holiday party last weekend.

As we were driving down from the hospital (oh yes, we worked a 12 that day) to the south bay area, everything seemed perfectly natural. And yet, as I was sitting there sipping my fat tire, looking across the table at Lauren and next to me at Josh, our local guide to the dive bars of Manhattan Beach and my connect person from the weekend before who had graciously invited us out, I couldn't help but feel a little...whelmed by the situation. I say "whelmed" because I wasn't overwhelmed - struck down by the situation or paralyzed by any particular emotion - but definitely impacted.

Huh, I thought. I guess this is what the social part of life looks like now. And it's not a negative or really even a positive statement. It just is. For all intents and purposes, I pretty much avoided the college drinking/social scene until my senior year.

You see, I'm a collector of good conversations. I love stories. Human connections are what keeps me going from day to day. It's part of why I love being a nurse. I love hearing about my patients, their lives, their hopes and fears. I'm not opposed to alcohol. I love a good beer or a great glass of wine and i'll never turn down champagne, but while bars are great places to chill out, have a few laughs, and generally unwind, I crave the intimacy of a few close friends over for dinner.

Perhaps what I'm really trying to say is that I'm getting tired of small talk. When you're always the new person, when you're constantly meeting people and not meeting up with people, the same information - the interesting facts and important details - get recycled over and over like stale air in a plane. And when everything stays on a surface level, there's a heartbeat of intensity that is missing, leaving me feeling slightly dried out and those human connections - such a force of life - slightly dead.

From my childhood, from my years in college and my summers in various places, I should understand by now that community-building takes time. In fact, the larger the group, the longer it takes. The five or six of us volunteering in Sierra Leone fell into community quickly - the intensity of our experiences as well as the shared life and ample free time when we were restricted to our house easily facilitated strong bonds of friendship. In a city like LA, where you many only see any given person once a week at most, community is harder to construct. It feels rather like trying to cling to a handful of sand in the shallows of a beach while the tide whips in and out around you, prying the small grains from between your fingers. Let up at all, and everything's gone in an instant.

It seems a bit dramatic to throw in a line like "it's times like these that define our lives," but I can't help but feel the little bit of a challenge, the push to hold on tighter despite the pull of the sea - these tides of work, material culture, comfort. How much do I really care about community, deep and enriching? How long and how hard am I willing to fight for it? How far am I willing to go for it? How much traffic will I wait in to get to it?

Good questions all, and as I sit here on my couch, meditating on Sufjan Stevens' christmas albums, I ultimately find a core of inner peace, a center of perfect community that is forever closer than my breath and stronger to hold me together than fingers made of steel. Emmanuel, God with us.

coming to christmas

it's a rainy day in the city of angels. after a week of work (more about that later), i was all ready for a day off. plans for an afternoon in the park, maybe an outdoor cup of coffee or stroll on the beach. and now rain. it's funny how quickly i've adjusted to the general sunniness of southern california. i didn't even look out my window this morning and was absolutely shocked when i stepped out of my apartment to find wet. very, very wet.

but as it turned out, a rainy day was exactly what i needed. after a walk to trader joe's which left me thoroughly wet, i warmed up with hot tea and a warm oven, baking up a batch of christmas cookies - ginger oatmeal with fresh cranberries. yum. let's just say my apartment smells heavenly right about now. with over the rhine's snow angel record playing on permanent repeat, i feel a little closer to christmas, despite the distance from anything i am used to around the holidays. when i was away from home in boston, it was still easy to get into the holiday spirit with snow on the ground and huge decorations in store windows downtown. not to mention enough garland and holly on the campus buildings to dress a whole neighborhood. but here, it's been a bit different. very few homes are decorated, very few christmas trees make their way into shop windows. at work, we have one lone, artificial tree at the end of the hallway.

work, by the way, is going well. really well, actually. i am consistently floored by the warmth, encouragement, and support i have received as a new employee and a newly graduated nurse from the other staff members. my patients have all been lovely - all with their own quirks, of course. i find more than anything else, though, that the authority, decisiveness, and responsibility of the nurse that at first was so overwhelming and seemingly far off is becoming more and more a part of who i am at work, and i'm enjoying this new role quite a bit.

other things are coming slowly, a church community, a few choice hang-out spots. i am still exploring, and in a city like LA, there's quite a lot of exploring to do. :)

in case i don't happen to write again before the holidays, merry christmas! i really love this time of year, and while it might look a bit different this year, i still believe there is plenty of light, love, and laughter to be had and shared. many holiday blessings for your christmas and new year - i've got some twinkle lights to hang!

thanks.

tomorrow will mark one week in la-la land (as my mother calls it). i’d like to say that i have fit into this city like a hand into a glove, but that would be glossing everything over a little too much. actually, when you think about it, i’ve never had a pair of gloves that really fit all that well, so maybe that cliché is relatively close to the truth. because, you see, the reality is that there are many things i love – my apartment is in a great neighborhood, i can walk to trader joe’s, my roommate and her friends have been more than welcoming, and my job promises to be everything i could hope for and more. but there are also a lot of things that take getting used to. some things, like the way of driving and general direction-sense, i will have to adjust to. other things, like the ever-present emphasis on image and external appearances, i feel creeping in to my train of thought and will have to work extra hard to stay comfortably un-l.a.

as we near thanksgiving, i am absolutely floored with gratitude. my job, my apartment, a roommate who is pleasant and helpful, parents who take off two weeks of work to come with me, who have provided so indescribably much for me in not only the past few days and months, but in my whole lifetime as well.

i’m always a little uncomfortable with the idea of thinking of those “less fortunate” in order to bolster your attitude of gratitude. it feels like i'm taking advantage of those who are caught under systems of oppression, recognizing their need but then sitting back and saying something along the lines of “thank thee, o god, that i am not like other men.” if i’m not mistaken that jewish priest wasn’t exactly the hero of that particular parable. i suppose, then, that true thanksgiving should lead us to recognize that what we have is actually a gift – one that wasn’t necessarily meant to stay in our sole possession. if everything we have is god’s, then everything we have – down to our time, energy, and ideas – really belong to everyone around us, god’s children.

of course, this quickly gets more complicated, especially in a city like l.a. where the homeless population is significant and omnipresent. extend that out to those individuals who make conscious choices to do drugs, abstain from psychiatric medications, willfully commit crimes. are they god’s children, too? there’s a fear that if i open my arms too wide, i’ll lose myself in the process. but isn’t that exactly what christ did?

after all, what's box unpacking and picture hanging without a healthy dose of soul-challenging theology. :)

what we do with them

jet lag isn't completely gone. but each day is filled with its little victories - this morning i woke up at 6:30 am. definitely a bit improvement on the 5:15 am-on-the-dot wake up i've been living with for the past few days. i'm still tired earlier than normal, but my days have been steady enough to also play a part in my exhaustion.

i'm moving to california. i imagine this doesn't come as a shock to anybody in particular, and i of all people should know this. but i think perhaps there are many layers of realization and many levels of knowledge. mentally, i've been organizing this whole cross-country shenanigan since i graduated in may. first it was to be a month early and now, finally, four months later, it's really happening. plans, details, little bits and pieces of information flow freely from my mouth with an ease and confidence that don't betray the moments of sheer panic that periodically stab through my heart.

you see, it's not just that i'm moving to california. i moved to boston four years ago to attend bc, and i've moved for summers to various locations around the country and the world. my whole life has been a grand sequence of moves. it's what this particular move means. it means my bed comes with me, and my room for the last six years that was always my haven, my sure sign that i was home from the stresses of school, will change. it means i live somewhere else and come home to visit my parents, not the other way around. it means i have responsibility, a job with expectations of me, an apartment, an income, a budget.

in those moments of breathless terror, it's much easier to hunker down and simply wait for the feeling to pass - much easier than looking up and seeing the harsh and gaunt realities we lump together under the ambiguous name of "life." loneliness, isolation, frustration, embarrassment, steep learning curves, and awkward moments stand before me. the cousins of transition, they try to hide among their brighter and more exciting siblings - exhilaration, discovery, adventure, surprise - yet their negative energy casts a pall over everything creating an atmosphere of dread, worry, and concern.

they say misery loves company, and i'm hoping that will prove to be true. if i square my shoulders, stare these clinging fears in the face and consciously choose against them, do you think they might just leave in order to find someone else who might join their un-merry band? one thing i think i've sorted out about life (from what i've known of it so far) is that they never stray too far. i used to think there was one perfect serendipity, one ultimate destination for each person where these morose fellows were banned once and for all by the infinite positivity born out of total fulfillment. well, when put in those terms, i guess that would be my best working definition of heaven...

but for now, for this life and this earth and this set of broken people, i imagine life sort of like one of the last scenes from a beautiful mind. In answer to a question as to whether or not his psychotic hallucinations persist despite the many years since his diagnosis and multiple forms of treatment, john nash, played by russell crowe, answers that they are always there, he has simply learned to ignore them. meanwhile behind him, you see the man and child - his consistent hallucinations - standing. silent. these feelings of overwhelming despair are with us every day, in the ebb and flow of emotions that float beneath the surface of our seemingly rational minds. they, like nash's illusory friends, will always be there. it's about what we chose to do with them.

there and back again, a traveling story

i'm back in oegstgeest once again. crazy to think that the in-between has held nijmegen, frankfurt, prague, brussels, aalst, ghent, brugges, and antwerp. but, the beauty of it all is that nothing has felt rushed or contrived, and it has been a joy to discover once again the natural rhythm that traveling is for me. the dynamic of arriving, discovery, and learning that manifests itself in the exponential growth in familiarity with the city streets, transportation, language, and people.

in brussels, oom ad, tante mareijke, oma, and myself met up in one of the central parking garages before filling our afternoon with the royal museum of art, the grote markt, and mannekin pis with a healthy dose of walking around and picture-taking sprinkled in. then it was off to our hotel in aalst, about a half hour drive away. we were treated to an elaborate dinner in the hotel restaurant as a part of our booking package, and while i enjoyed it, the late hour left much to be desired. one thing i really haven't adjusted to is the generally late hour of eating here in holland, and europe as a whole. five on the dot goverened so much of my life while on board ship, and while i recognize that's a bit too early, eating your main course at nine is just a bit too late. :)

still, we all survived (obviously), and were up and ready to take on brugges the next day. and take it on we did. parking near the center once again, we roamed through the streets despite the misty rain and managed to squeeze in the grote markt (there seems to be one in every belgian city), the belfry, nearly every chocolate or lace shop, the stadshuis, and the beguinage, which i learned is a place for elder, unmarried women to live in community in a consecrated life something like a step lower than full consecration as a nun. good to see there's hope for community living at every age :)

the next day was ghent and while the weather was much lovelier, the day itself seemed to drag on. maybe it was another heavy meal the evening before or the late hour of sleep, but i started the day somewhere hanging narrowly above exhausted. that plus the fact that over 70% of the historic city is covered in tarpaulins and under restoration kind of marred the fairytale like atmosphere the city normally has. still, we had a fine time walking about and spent quite a lot of time admiring the polyptych by hubert and jan van eyck that sits in st. bavo's church on the (surprise, surprise) grote markt.

the last morning, we parted ways at the hotel and birgit, merlijn, oma, and myself headed back to oegstgeest via a short stop in antwerp while oom ad and tante mareijke spent some time in aalst and also stopped over in leeuwen on their way back to nijmegen.

all in all, plenty of coffee drunk and cobblestones walked and history learned to satisfy even the hardest of history buffs, and for me it was quite, quite satisfactory. back in oegstgeest, though, i'm already missing oom ad's precise english and slow rhythm of speech that easily marks him for a teacher.

back in oegstgeest, we have a few more items on the agenda including a trip today in the car with birgit and merlijn as well as some last minute shopping for the essential dutch food groups: cheese and stroopwafels. tomorrow is oma's birthday and we will have a small get-together here at birgit's house for some of oma's friends and family before going out to dinner with the boys as a happy birthday/tot ziens treat. then thursday morning early will find oma and myself in schiphol, boarding a plane for the us-of-a.

definitely enough left to be done and experienced, but my traveling eyes are turning homeward once again...

dutch

kind of crazy to be blogging twice in one day, but seeing that i will definitely be away from the computer while we're in belgium, i figured i could load all of you family and friends up with an extra comment or two on my adventures thus far.

today - just to give a quick update - oom ad and tante mareijke returned from their friend's party around noon, and we hopped in the car around one, headed toward appeldorn (obviously something to do with apples at one point in history or another). there we met up with andor, monique, and their two children ivo and annika for some honest-to-goodness dutch pannekoeken. some people eat pannekoeken and say they are just like french crepes. it is the closest thing one might compare them to, but for the dutch it's a dish all its own (mine, if you're curious, was kaas, tomaaten, en ui and i'm still full full nearly six hours later).

which brings me to the theme of this particular entry: dutch.

every evening, around nine pm or so, i am absolutely exhausted. as i reflect on my days, there's no stupendous expenditure of energy that would warrant such tiredness, and a comment from marte, on our trip, made it all so clear to me. she asked if being around dutch all the time made me tired, and suddenly, i realized it did!

i find myself in a very unique situation. commonly, as most dutch people speak english, an english-speaker making painful attempts at dutch is quickly rescued by the gracious conversation partner(s), and english becomes the language of choice. it is not uncommon for expats to live years within the country and never learn a word of dutch beyond the basics of ''hello,'' ''goodbye,'' and ''thank you.'' i, on the other hand, find myself surrounded by family that have somehow come under the impression that i speak dutch. interesting. before leaving, oma swore up and down that it would be only english and that she herself would personally intervene in any and every conversation necessary to be sure that i was included. i'm not sure what is more surprising, her promise or that i believed her.

but, of course, that's not practical in the least, especially with shakier english-speakers like tante mareijke. so? so i have been spending a very quiet trip. :)

a friend once dared me that i could not be silent for ten minutes straight, and while that was many, many years ago, and i have since come to value the merits of quiet observation, these past weeks have taken it to a whole new level. i find myself appreciating, once again, the powerful communication inherent to body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, and gesticulations. also, i am amazed at the incredible language-learning potential in complete immersion. with dutch swirling around me almost constantly, i find myself noticing sentence patterns and commonly used words that then become intuitively understood by mere repetition.

like the word maar which is the conjunction ''but.'' from hearing time and time again that drawing out of the word and emphasis unique to the introduction of a contradiction in the voices of birgit and oma in the first days here, i taught it to myself (and confirmed it later on, of course). now oma and i have a pattern - i listen throughout the day and then mentally hold onto a few words i think i have figured out or some that completely mystify me and we go over them in the evening. as i write them all down in my moleskin journal, i realize how much my vocabulary has grown.

five year old annika still has me beat (she can count all the way to thirty!), but slowly but surely i'm getting a little closer every day. and here is the pinch - in view of my mental energy, i'm quite looking forward to englespraten but in light of the progress i've made in just a few weeks, i'm already missing those words i might have learned in the months to come. misschien een dag...

more on prague

oom ad and tante mareijke are off to a small birthday party for a friend in their athletic club, and oma is comfortably sorting through clothes for belgium with all of her hairs neatly dried and combed into place. here in the little garret office that has become my home, i have a few minutes to myself for some further writing on prague, as promised.

first, our host kate. always ready for a laugh and a huge conversationalist, both marte and myself felt right at home the moment we walked up to the looming mass of grey concrete and brick that is her apartment building and she popped her head out of her window to shout a ''hello'' to us down below. with convertible couches, a designated storage space, room in the refrigerator, and our own copy of the house key, it was challenging to not feel instantly at home, and of course we did. sheets, blankets, pillows - everything was provided, and with a cup of tea in hand we sat down for a long, get-to-know-you chat. she works for an it company, and had recently been to the us for a conference. we chatted about boston, new york, san diego, jon stewart, and stephen colbert for the large part of that first night.

in the following days, we say kate at least once or twice. usually she was just getting up when we were heading out the door (since her company is based in the us, she has a large amount of flexibility with her hours, usually working some from home and going into work after lunch) but we also often caught her in the evenings as well. she was always interested to hear how our days were turning out and quick to offer us advice and guidance as well as her wonderfully outspoken opinions!

we found her through the couchsurfing online community, and it was an awesome experience. everyone who doesn't yet know about it should check it out at www.couchsurfing.org

one of the biggest advantages was her insight into the culture of the county and the aftermath of communism, which i mentioned before. i realized, as kate was talking one morning, that the czech republic was the first post-communist country i had visited, and i was at times surprised and at other times not to see how prominent the fingerprints of that time still exist, exactly twenty years later. for one, there seemed to be very little nationalism, in terms of pride in the country's history and even awareness of the sort of stories we heard on walking tours and in the guide books. kate explained that soviet education was more about the greater soviet union with an emphasis on communist themes rather than the individualism of then czechoslovakia versus romania, ukraine, bulgaria, etc. similarly, people themselves rarely speak out in public, often avert their eyes on streets and in trams, and only the younger generation, born after the fall of communism really display that gregarious impudence characteristic of youth.

another thing quite shocking to hear is that, growing up, kate was taught in school that jews did not exist. under a completely areligious government policy, judaism and other faiths were taught as sort of relics of the past rather than active influences. she knew about franz kafka, the famous czech writer, but only recently learned he was jewish. when we made a point to visit the memorial of the czechoslovak jews who died in world war ii, she sort of regarded us with a look of quizzical bemusement.

no facet of life has been unaffected, it seems. while people got married very early under communism because having a family moved you higher on the housing list, now most people delay marriage until their late twenties or early thirties because there is greater access to other things like traveling, work, university, etc. the first mortgages are appearing and many people cannot afford to buy homes or flats because their salaries haven't changed that much but the prices set by private industry have. so many fascinating tidbits that cracked open a whole new aspect of czech life and culture.

i definitely didn't see everything - sometimes because of the weather, other times because we didn't want to pay the cost of admission, and in the end, because four days really isn't enough. still, as i said to both marte and kate, i think we both saw enough to know that we would very much like to come back...

op de fiets redux

just back from a looong (read: 2.5 hr) bicycle ride with my great uncle, Ad. i love that when dutch people talk about bicycles, it's always by the full name or just "cycle" - it kind of highlights the quaintness of dutch "cycling." bike somehow always brings to mind harleys and the like, and you have to sort out for yourself which one, based on the surrounding details in the story. but with cycling you kind of know right away there are no overweight men with doo-rags and leather jackets involved.

dutch bicycles are different from the general american ones, anyways. they are usually more relaxed but with narrow tires, sort of a cross between a beach cruiser and a road bike. my old red bicycle from my time at bc would fit in just perfectly on the dutch fietspad. i have yet to see a bicycle with more than three gears, and with 60% of the country reclaimed from the sea, you rarely need to shift at all.

in any case, it was an absolutely wonderful ride as we passed along the dike off the vaal river and in between the little family farms and country homes.

yesterday was quite lovely also. we went first to the museum in nijmegen and saw an exhibit of some illuminated manuscripts from the mid 15th century. they belonged to catherine of kleve who resided in nijmegen at that time. the various pages normally live in new york and london, but they were specially reunited on home turf for the celebration of the city's anniversary. i have read a few different novels recently that involved medieval manuscripts and their illuminators, but i realized i had never really seen one in person. the miniatures were absolutely incredible to behold in person, and i'm very glad we went. you do go a bit bug-eyed, however, after several rooms of squinting in the dim light used to preserve the pages.

after that we did a bit of shopping in nijmegen center before hopping on a bus to bring us back to the house. for dinner, we hopped in a car and went to ''oriental palace'' where there was a chinese buffet and a rijstafel especially for oma. she hit up one of the young men working there as an entertainer, hoping to brush up on her indonesian, but unfortunately he was from the philippines and happened to only speak english and dutch.

when we arrived back at the house, i was able to show off my pictures of prague via oom ad's computer cable. i already miss the city and our wonderful host.

today is already half done, and i have very little idea of anything else on the agenda, but the sun is shining and the high is 15 degrees celsius, which is a lovely jump up from the 2 degree weather in prague, so i'm as happy as can be! for the meantime, i believe lunch is calling my name.

praha

i'm sorry to have left everyone in the dark for the past week - my little routine of morning blogging was interrupted on wednesday with a rushed morning, a whirlwind of sightseeing (including nordvijk, an art program for physically and mentally disabled adults in leiden, the apple orchard where leon works, and lunch somewhere in between). then i hopped on an afternoon train to come to nijmegen, the first of many legs of travel on my prague adventures. here's a quick rundown:

thursday: early morning drive across the border to catch a german train, somehow manage a train transfer all in german, arrive in frankfurt and meet up with marte, a dear friend, kindred spirit, and erstwhile traveling companion. walk for a bit around frankfurt and do the necessary catching up before boarding a bus to the hahn airport, two hours outside of frankfurt. catch a plane, land in prague, catch a bus, metro, and tram. arrive at our host's flat, chit-chat until 1 am, and sleep.

friday: walking tour of prague. we hit up an awesome free walking tour/stand up comedy show hosted by the ever-entertaining isaac from (in his words) a small village north of mexico known to some people as los angeles. gotta love it. somehow manage to see all the major sights in the old town in the midst of freezing temperatures and drizzly rain. honestly, some parts were completely blurred out by the pressing realization that i could no longer feel my toes and the constant contemplation of the feasibility of buying a winter coat from h&m. still we survived and warmed up over a delicious meal in a quaint cellar restaurant serving up a delicious czech beer. funny story about that later.

saturday: the rain seemed to hold off, so in the morning we headed up to the castle complex on the east side of the vltava river that overlooks the old town. a recommendation from a local on the tram directed us to a little pocket park with an amazing view of both the castle and the old city. (look for pictures once i'm stateside). we wandered around the castle, heard the 27 loreto bells, and ate our sandwiches on a park bench while discussing the communion of saints. awesome. in the afternoon we trekked over to the old town again and decided to splurge on some ballet tickets for swan lake. when in prague, right? we ended the day at a really wonderful little cafe recommended to us by our ever-hospitable host, kate. soup, original pilsner, and a shared piece of seasonal pear cake was just what the doctor ordered to banish the autumn chill.

sunday: mass in st. james' church in the old town followed by a cup of hot chocolate at a nearby cafe. marte opted for mulled wine which was also delicious. then as the sun broke through the clouds, we chose to wander for a while and soak up the art nouveau architecture of the old town center. heading over to the jewish quarter, we spent some serious time of contemplation at the memorial to the czechoslovak jews who died in the concentration camps of wwii and the children of terezin ghetto whose drawings survive today. more about that later, too. we took a quick respite from the cold in a truly unique teahouse (also more to come), before heading off to the ballet!

monday: last day in prague. we hit up the vycherad cemetery and church, the john lennon graffiti wall, and the remaining synagogues in the jewish quarter before meeting up with kate for a drink at the same awesome cafe which was conveniently near her work. our last few hours were spent chatting about our various lives, hopes, dreams, and the laughter of strangers-cum-friends. picked up our bags from her office and then repeated traveling process in reverse to bring me to nijmegen at four minutes past 8 this morning.

so, so much more to say, but a museum here in nijmegen is calling (or maybe it's just Oom Ad's voice downstairs...)

delft

yesterday, we had a leisurely morning here in oegstgeest. birgit ran some errands, and i posted on the blog. (today is off to a similar start if you couldn't tell!). soon enough we bundled into birgit's car, hoping the sunshine would hold out as we drove off to delft. birgit has an old schoolmate there who runs a catering service and cooking school, so luckily we got an ideal parking space in the center of town but not before driving to the house where oma grew up - still looking, of course, the same as it always did. birgit knocked on the door, no one was at home, so we unfortunately did not get a good peek inside. we did, however, get to meet up with oma's old hairdresser, still in his shop, still cutting hair.

it was remarkable, in a way, to stand there and watch these old friends connecting with each other. perhaps they saw each other only two years ago when oma last visited, but the last time she really lived in holland, she was only 19. he maybe looked a little worse for the wear of life, but had a darling smile and that same impish glint in his eyes that my opa had. maybe there's something to dutch men... :)

another observation about the dutch: life is lived with no hesitation or reservation. two minutes after meeting this older man again, the conversation launched into obama, the nobel peace prize, american and dutch healthcare, and immigration. there seems to be, in everyone i have met, a universal interest in the opinion of others and, of course, strong opinions on the behalf of the asker who is not hesitant to share them, either. still, i so appreciate that sort of direct, blunt, and open way of talking. i don't know if i ever would have put it that way, and in many ways our family is much more american, but still, there is an honesty and openness unique to our extended family that i have always really valued but never was able to put my finger on exactly.

after coffee with birgit's friend marcel, we were off to delft, walking along the cobblestone streets through multitudes of exclamations and memories from oma. "this used to be the best music shop!"she told us in dutch as we passed what is now a fancy electronics store, and so forth. the museum birgit wanted to take us to was closed, since it was monday, but we found a nice alternative in a little tea shop and cafe that was serving some traditional dutch foods that were on oma's list of "things to eat." she had her flees kroketjes while birgit and i split the vegetable ones and a salad.

delft is a lovely place, much smaller than amsterdam, obviously, but twice as beautiful. for me, much more manageable!

birgit is back, and i have to dry oma's hair. today: den haag and the peace palace as well as some errands in the market at oegstgeest. tonight i have the opportunity to meet up with a friend from my time abroad, eva, who lives right now in delft. such fun!

amsterdam, etc.

After a later-than expected awakening, breakfast was a noisy but happy affair in the house yesterday morning. Dutch and English flew back and forth over bread, tea, cheese, jam, eggs, and leftover vegetables from the night before (in accordance with Birgit's new paleo diet). After we all had our fill - and the boys had a good laugh out of my eating vla for breakfast - we trundled off to the Leiden central station where we hopped on a train for Amsterdam.

I took to staring out the window while the younger boys regaled Frank with their boating adventures in scouts the day before. At least, I'm pretty sure that's what they were talking about. It was all in Dutch, so I can never be quite positive, but the handful of words I picked out and the wild gesturing were enough to piece the basics together.

We arrived in Amsterdam under ominously cloudy skies. Still, determined to see the city, we took off down one of many streets we would walk over the course of the next three hours. Later, when Merlijn would ask me what we had done and what I had seen, I didn't quite know what to tell her. Come to find out, we walked basically the entirity of downtown Amsterdam without my ever really realizing it!

Near noontime, we stopped at a cafe in Leidspleine. Funny story: we all ordered a different coffee. A large carmel latte for Frank, a medium Americano for me, and a medium "bambino" (a latte but with chocolate milk, so basically a mocha) for Koen. Leon said he didn't want anything. We get our drinks and sit outside. I asked Leon again if he was sure he didn't want anything, and he intimated he didn't want to spend his money on coffee. When Koen told him it was paid for with money Birgit had given Frank that morning, Leon nearly fell out of his chair. As the three of us nearly fell out of ours in laughter (especially Koen), Leon tramped inside to get himself his own "bambino."

Walking around, I recognized again the tall, narrow houses, rising above tha canals. The odd, outward slant of the buildings - for lifting furniture to the top floors - reminding me of a sort of surrealist painting. We saw the myriad of people who are drawn to Amsterdam, from the eccentric to the tourist, all traipsing about the same narrow streets. Amsterdam is unique in its diversity, and it was wonderful to be back in it.

In the afternoon, we met Merlijn, Birgit, and Oma back at Amsterdam Centraal before walking to a small museum. It's called Onze Lieve op de Solder, Our Lord of the Attic. Apparently, when Catholicism was banned in Holland during the 16th century, Catholic parishes moved into hiding. This one was the largest and best preserved, built in the attic space of three buildings. Walking through this narrow house, maintained in the style and furnishing of the 16th century, you climb up one last set of stairs and come up into a long, thin church obviously stretching back much further than the space of the house you were just in. Clever space-saving devices were built into the structure of the alter and the galleries, and the place has become a museum dedicated not only to this chapel but also of Catholic regalia specific to Holland. It was definitely impressive.

Following that, we made our way over to the newer part of Amsterdam and the modern construction that encamps the old city. A brand new concert hall has opened there, near the discovery science museum, and we sat in their lounge for a coffee (again). Then it was off to Merlijn's for dinner.

Definitely a fun, full day, and more to come. The boys are off to school and the sun is shining for the first time since we arrived. I think a visit to Delft is in the air...