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.