Caring for my Gi

I've studied and trained in martial arts since I was a kid.  When I stopped to think about it today, I realized that I started training 20 years ago.  I haven't kept it up solidly through that entire time, with logistics of locations and styles and payment plans preventing me from consistently training in any one dojo.  But I find myself drawn back to practicing, studying and training in martial arts, despite a few years away.  I've branched out and learned about other styles and arts, and will continue to train in whatever style is available.  My martial arts experience is a large patchwork quilt, with every new technique, philosophy, experience and pattern adding a color, a patch, a counterpoint, a harmony to the whole.

I've studied mostly Japanese martial arts, but I've also studied a few Brazilian martial arts.  I've talked with others who train in Chinese martial arts, and even did an academic study into Indian martial arts.  Across all of them, there's an underlying philosophy which is much more important than the techniques or defense.  No martial art is developed in a vacuum.  Every style asks "Why is the attacker attacking you?" and "What are you going to about it?"  I find myself gravitating to the styles that teach the Peter Parker mentality of "With great power comes great responsibility."  First comes the sense of restraint and the weight of choice to use your skills, then comes the teaching and training that allows you to become dangerous.  Just because you can hurt someone does not mean that you ever should.  The current art that I study, Kokikai Aikido, teaches that the better you are, the less hurt your attacker ends up.  It's like the Native American tradition of Counting Coup, where the most extreme case of defeating an enemy was hitting them without causing harm.

This ordering of priorities greatly influenced my development, and ends up being a huge draw for me to return to training, despite much time away and many cultures experienced.  It's not religious, and I'm not a religious person, but it does become a baseline for a code of behavior.  I can see where Buddhists are coming from.

One aspect of martial arts, and the reason for these musings, is the respect demanded of the place of training (dojo), one's training partners, and one's equipment.  Foremost in the equipment department is the Gi, or uniform.  One must always practice in uniform, and most dojos are very choosy with their forgiveness for laundry disasters or other mishaps.  You train in your gi.  It's a mark of respect, of safety, and comfort.  It also puts you in the right frame of mind, and helps establish an atmosphere in the dojo.

A gi, therefore, is not something to be tossed around lightly, or another item of clothing.  It's not your sports bra, your yoga pants, your favorite synthetic t-shirt.  People usually have one gi.  Period.  It's your gi.  It's with you during your training, during your journey.  You bleed, sweat, and cry in and with your gi.  Belts may come and go, you may change dojos or styles, but your gi is a history of your practice, of your study.  It deserves respect, and it deserves care.  Gis are not discarded lightly.  Wear and tear happens in martial arts (it's rather physical, if you don't know much about martial arts), and that adds character and weight to a gi.  A worn gi is a mark of long hours of training and effort.  A gi is only retired after much fatigue, or at the end of a student's career.  A gi may go to another owner when sizing or training ability force a change.  They're sturdy and well-made pieces of equipment, so they can last throughout years of training.

I got my gi second-hand, from a dojo that I attended in college.  I lamented my lack of gi (my previous gi was a light-weight, and from before high school, so not going to work for the current situation), and one day one of the instructors brought in a few second gis.  There was one that more or less fit, a little raggedy around the edges, but would suit the situation just fine.

Nine years later, I still have the same gi.  It doesn't fit perfectly and it is much more raggedy.  But it has 9 years of off-and-on training with me, 9 years of sweat steeped into the fabric, 9 years of occasional washes to turn creases into tears, 9 years of painstaking repairs to prolong its life.

Today was a day for more repair and rehabilitation.  I had skinned my elbow during a recent class, apparently, which I had not noticed until I got out my gi to sew a torn sleeve.  Little dots of dried blood showed through on the sleeve, so half the day was spent soaking and scrubbing with every combination of bleach and cleaner that I could find in the apartment.  After thorough cleansing, I moved on to repair the entire left sleeve, that had ripped a few years ago along its crease.  

The previous stitching had pulled out, so I picked it out, and resewed it with dental floss.  It's got a cool, minty cast if you look closely, but that just adds character.

Real Vacation

It felt like the lead up to the first day of high school.  I say that having never really felt apprehensive about my first day of high school (my school was the same for middle school and high school, so I already knew everyone).  But think of stereotypical social-anxiety feelings.  Who will my friends be?  Where will I eat lunch?  What if I trip and fall flat on my mask?

I was hours away from a weeklong liveaboard charter on a dive yacht.  I was going scuba diving for seven days with 10 complete strangers.  I was going alone.

I had gone on a similar trip with the same company a year and a half ago, in Belize, so I knew what was coming.  There, I had an excellent time, and had absolutely no problem being a solo traveller.  That gave me confidence to book another trip, and I was looking forward to some much-needed relaxation time.

So I was surprised when a few days before flying out, my misgivings flared up.  Didn't I go through this last year and had my every fear put to rest?  Well, I guess no matter how many times you do it, how much you 'grow up,' the first day of high school is kind of nerve-wracking.

I fly from San Francisco to Kona, Hawaii, and make my way to the Kailua-Kona pier to board the Kona Aggressor II for a week of manta rays, sharks, coral, fish, gear talk and fine dining.  The weather was not ideal, with some rough swells making their way into our sheltered side of the island, but it was far from bad, with sunny skies and calm enough water to make every single dive.

Five dives a day included a night dive, and let us see a wide variety of life, from tiny nudibranches hidden among coral to hammerheads cruising by to check us out.

The routine of breakfast-dive-snack-dive-lunch-dive-snack-dive-dinner-dive-sleep-repeat was an excellent change of pace from 2 weeks of visiting family and friends, traveling between states via bus or car every other day, or 9 months in Chad solving everyone's problems.  It was a real, grown-up vacation, where you pay your money and you get your relaxation.

Now it's time to call the office to see what my next posting is.

Six states of visiting

I delayed thinking about Thanksgiving until I got back from Africa.  This was smart, since I had only a feeble internet connection, and plenty of stress and worries to preoccupy me.  This was not smart because I got back a few weeks before Thanksgiving with no flights booked.  Plans to visit people can fall together (or apart) in no time at all, so I wasn't too worried about fine details.  But I did have to get from San Francisco to the east coast at some point.  Preferable on miles, to fit into my humanitarian budget.  This proved a challenge.

After trolling the web for a few hours (hey, this wasn't rocket surgery), I found a flight there and back on miles, making this a free trip home for the holidays.  I ended up flying into Boston and out via New York, and with that itinerary, I set to sketching out a plan of visits.  I wracked my brain for who I knew where (I really need a list) and put together a game plan.  I put a few necessities (tooth brush, change of clothes, and the warmest coat I owned) into a small backpack, and went.

Here's a log of my itinerary:
Nov 20 - SFO to Boston, stay with family
Nov 21 - Boston, talk about MSF in my uncle's class, stay with friends
Nov 22 - Train to Providence, car to Connecticut to hike, stay with friends in Providence
Nov 23 - Visit friends, have friends visit from Boston, stay in Providence
Nov 24 - Bus to NYC, lunch with a friend, dinner with another friend, stay with a friend
Nov 25 - Relaxing walk around NYC day, stay with same friend
Nov 26 - Parents pick me up and drive to Long Island to visit Grandparents, spend night there
Nov 27 - Thanksgiving with the family!  See some cousins I haven't seen in 5 years, take ferry to New England, sleep in aunt/uncle's house in Boston
Nov 28 - Arrive in New Hampshire!  Stay with family
Nov 29 - Climb mountain with snowshoes.  Stay with family
Nov 30 - Drive to Boston with relatives, stay with family.
Dec 1 - Bus to Philadelphia, cat/house sit for a friend
Dec 2 - Relaxing walk around NYC day, see a show with a friend, stay in housesitting house
Dec 3 - Visit various people around Philly, stay in housesitting house
Dec 4 - Bus to NYC, see a show, stay with a friend
Dec 5 - Subway to the airport, fly JFK to SFO

Trains, planes, buses, cars, boats, feet, subways, and snowshoes were used as conveyance in this two-week visiting spree, involving living out of a 20-litre daypack and staying with friends and family.

This is a snapshot of my normal.  Of my life.  I don't get to say I'm going out of town.  I don't have a town to go out of.  I don't put my life on hold for two weeks and go have a live-out-of-a-backpack adventure, where I skimp and hold out until I can resume normal living.  These two weeks are not a vacation, a parentheses or a gap in normal living.  It is normal living.

I think that's the biggest difference between my lifestyle and that of most people.  It's hard to explain, but this trip proved a good case study.

Hiking South Moat

Part of my Thanksgiving Vacation included a visit to my Aunt and Uncle's New Hampshire house, which is nestled among the White Mountains.  I had spent some time in the area in 2009, when I climbed a few Presidentials (see posts from late 2009, like this one which I quite enjoyed re-reading).  The day after Thanksgiving, I caught a lift with my parents and headed up to revisit the Whites and to spend a weekend with family.

We looked for a nice short hike that wouldn't be too challenging, and strapped on the snow shoes.  It was approximately a 5-mile round trip, with a summit height of approximately 2500 reasonable feet.  We powered through the trek, with hardly any stops or rests, to come out to a bright, clear day on the summit.

Time Travel

I read a lot of historical fiction or medieval fantasy.  You know, knights on horseback, traveling takes a while, peasants and lords, servants and manors.  It's a highly romanticized time (hey, wouldn't it be cool to joust?  Yeah, right.  More likely to die of the flu from lack of ibuprofen than to see a tourney), but I've started to glimpse access to this world.

This medieval landscape is found in third-world countries.  Not completely, as there are some serious anachronisms (the, um, lord doesn't ride in on a fancy carriage; instead it's a military helicopter.  But darn right the whole town turns up to watch him arrive), but the mindset is surprisingly similar.  I'm not a medieval scholar by any means, so I couldn't tell you what technology or everyday life was like in feudal England, for example, but I get the impression that it's similar to the village in Africa that I worked in for the last 9 months.

The outlying villages are several days' travel by foot, but travel time can be reduced by our expensive means of transport (landcruisers could be carriages) that require resources that only we can provide (diesel instead of oats, a mechanic and spare parts instead of a farrier and metal shoes).  Cattleherds come through with their possessions lashed to the back of a prized cow.  Some ride horses, most walk.  You cross the river by using the ferry, when the ferryman is around.  If you fall ill, you go to the local shaman/barber (even if there's a hospital; please go to the hospital; why don't you go to the hospital?).  Children gather and stare at strangers, because they know the name of everyone in their village (and how they're related to them).  You can tell people's class by the state of their dress (fine new tunic you've got there).

In a 4-day process, I left the field.  I took landcruisers, small humanitarian flights, trains, planes, and buses.  I gradually phased back into 21st century life in the United States.

But a week out of a village in Africa, I found myself as a guest in the Google Offices outside of San Francisco, in one of the most technologically advanced places of the world, in a company that really cares about employee happiness.

It was the biggest shift in context I've ever experienced.  From thoroughly antiquated to cutting-edge modern, I think I got the closest experience to time travel we'll ever find.

Face-to-face

I’m a white American girl bossing around dozens of black African men.  I receive more as a living allowance during this mission than most of my staff earn as a salary to support their families.  There’s a big cultural gap between us.  Skin color, language, nationality, socio-economic status, education.  You have to dig pretty deep to find a greatest common factor (humans alive in 2014?).

I remind myself of this as I’m struggling with the injustice of having to tone down my management style because I’m a woman.  It’s not fair that I have to be nicer and softer and more indirect than everyone else because it’s a little bit hard to stomach that I don’t have a penis.

How ridiculous is that?

Not ‘poor little me fighting on the frontlines of feminism,’ but the ridiculousness of caring about equal treatment for women in the face of racism, poverty, underdevelopment, malnutrition, and an entire population that is dying of a disease that was eradicated from the developed world a century ago.

But is it still valid?  A valid point, a valid argument, and a valid fight do not become less valid because of gross injustices that appear next to it.  Right?  But you have to pick your battles; choose which hill to die on.  Which is it?

I’m here fighting against malaria, which is the leading killer of children under 5.  But I’m surrounded by inequality, lack of opportunity, racism, poverty, and ignorance.  It’s exhausting to stick to your values and continue to operate according to a creed or code that you carefully built over decades of experience in a first-world country (or countries, even).  I’d even hazard that it’s impossible to not compromise.  And that’s a bit hard on the mind.  I have to accept that I’m a second-class citizen if I’m going to prevent children from dying of malaria.  But those girls that survive childhood malaria will then grow up as second-class citizens.  Which is not ok.  But you have to fight the enemy in front of you, and first you save that child.  Then you give that child a blanket.  Then maybe someone else will dig a well for that child to prevent her from walking miles to get water every day of her life.

Maybe the ad campaign spam message that the phone company sent to everyone in the country, saying “educate girls!” will have an effect.  At least for one daughter, one child somewhere.

And maybe in 20 years, that daughter saved from malaria today will be a first-class citizen, just like her brother.

But I’m still struggling on if and how I can back down from being too aggressively masculine for all of my colleagues.  Sorry if this woman has teeth.

Lazy Sunday

It's another typical Sunday, which means I'm trying to relax as things slowly go wrong around me.

This week, it starts at 8am, after a luxurious 11 hours of sleep.  A watchman calls me to ask if he can sign annual leave papers today.  I am not his supervisor, and I am not working.  I am not pleased.

I rouse myself, and stumble into the eating area for a leisurely breakfast.  I have to unload and fuel a car at 10am to prepare for the departure of 2 team members for the end of their mission.  I'm grumpy from the early morning wake up, since yesterday had a similar wakeup (three non-urgent problems demanding immediate attention before 8am).  Now that I think of it, it was the same last Sunday, when the generator at the hospital failed.  And the Sunday before that, and before that...

I can't remember the last undisturbed day of rest I've had.  Vacation in Turkey three months ago?

After the final preparations, cash advances, food orders, and packages to be sent to the capital, the car leaves, and I dive back into my book.  It's my one haven from the 100% French-speaking environment that I've been living in for the past 8 months.  I've always been a reader, but I've been devouring books at an exceptional rate during this mission.  I started keeping track in April, and am at 40 books read.  Looks like my average is 6 books a month, or a book and a half every week.

My reading is interrupted by a driver who just lost his sister.  He's seeking a ride to a nearby city, to get to the funeral in time.  Unfortunately, the car going to that city left this morning.  I offer two solutions, none of them satisfactory, and offer my condolences.  As he leaves, I call a replacement to fill in for him tomorrow and the next day.

Back to reading, where I finish a book.  I plunge on to the sequel, only to find that when I downloaded it a month ago (I'm kindle-only here in the middle of Africa--real books are a luxury I cannot access), my trickling internet access corrupted the file.  Sigh.  Back to find the internet modem, log on, spend a half-hour loading Amazon, then the next hour or two trying to download the sequel.

It's a good opportunity to take a break.  Time for lunch.  And probably for the next problem.  We shall see what the rest of the day brings.

Rainy Season

It now rains every day here in Moissala.  The dry, dusty landscape has bloomed into a lush jungle.  You can almost see the brush growing, as each pass becomes harder and harder as the path from the office to the house becomes more and more hidden.  Eventually, we'll be bushwhacking, I suspect.

Before

Late night at the office in the rain

The Barh-Sara River is in the background.

Climbing on top of things

There's a slow leak in the greater water tower at the hospital.  It's a huge cement water tank about 60 feet in the air.  We're bringing in a mason to fix the leak and install an evacuation pipe for wash water.  He'll come this weekend, when the consumption is the smallest.  We'll fall back on our alternate water point, which is a small well just next to our borehole, with a submersible pump installed.  We have a second water tower that's a bit lower and bit smaller for just this sort of case.

In preparation for the work, after discussing finishing techniques and water-tightness, I decide it's a good idea to check out the tank myself.  I mount the 60-foot-high tower without a harness, without a spotter, and without telling anyone where I'm going.  Halfway up, I'm a bit spooked.  By the time I clamber up, I'm shaking like a leaf.

I've never been scared of heights, and I spent basically all of my free time in college at my student job of hanging lights in the theater, 40 feet above the deck, walking on nothing but eighth-inch-thick cables.  I'm no stranger to heights.  But this time, I'm thoroughly terrified.

I have no confidence in the welder who built the ladder I'm clinging to.  I have no confidence in the mason who installed the ladder to the side of a water tank in the sky.  I have no confidence in the cement used to hold it all together.  I have the nasty realization, as I'm up on the top of tower contemplating my descent, that I'm not in a story (or a blog post) where the ending (or at least the continued survival of the author) is assured.  At this moment, there's nothing much preventing me from plunging to my death.  Not even the power of a compelling through-line or an unfinished story arc.

I decide to take a few pictures.  One, to not miss the opportunity, because the view, even as I studiously ignore it to rally my failing spirit, is pretty cool.  Two, to convince myself that I'm not terrified and one step away from becoming a sobbing catastrophe that has to be rescued from the sky tower.  It would work, except my hands are shaking too hard to take a good picture.  Time to face my fears head-on.

As I remind myself that sometimes fears are healthy, and that I'm not guaranteed to survive this, I descend.

After I make it safely to the ground, I continue schlepping supplies to the waste area as if nothing has happened, and quietly ponder a bunch of lessons that I've just learned.

Field Birthday

In the heart of Africa, 50 miles from the nearest road and 4 hours from the nearest city, we're left to our own devices to mark special occasions.  The team here threw together a variety of means and modalities to make my golden birthday (27 on the 27th) memorable.

We decided to pack up early (it being a Wednesday, which is like any other workday during the week, we usually work until 7 or 8pm--well after dark) and head to a newly-opened watering hole (I'm using that phrase euphemistically--I realize that I could be speaking about an actual watering hole that you'd think of on the Serengeti.  I'm not near the Serengeti).  A large group of us assembled there, arriving from the market, the hospital, the office, and the house.  We split a few beers, then headed back for our security curfew.  I stopped at the office only to shut down my computer and grab my keys.  The luxury of an early night!

We headed back to the base and settled in to our usual spot, on plastic chairs clustered around a folding table.  C'est la classe.

As I was duped into retrieving my entire laptop and external hard drive to provide music for the evening, a stealth group decked out our outdoor hangout and installed a home-made banner and balloons made of rubber gloves.  I returned to an ambush and a rousing rendition of "Joyeux Anniversaire" sung in English (also known as "Happy Birthday").

A little while later, an expat arrived with crepes!  Real crepes, made with love by a real French person!  Nutella, sugar, lime, honey, and jam were passed around, and tears fairly flowed.  What an amazing change from the norm.  We scarfed them down, and shared where everyone was for their 27th birthdays.

Then it was off to bed, to get some sleep before the 6am wakeup for another work day the next day.

Life goes on.  But we paused for a beat to make me feel special.  Thanks team.

Would you like to speak to me in English?

 You’re welcome into my domain, where I am master of words.  My vocabulary is a full shelf, a stock, a selection, a menu, a warehouse of options for me to choose from.  I can select, analyse, and target each and every word, with consideration for sentiment, significance, tone, texture, connotation and context.  I can say exactly what I would like to say; I can mean exactly what I intend to mean.

Step into my house—come speak English with me.

Early Morning Traverse

At 5am light is already finding its way into my window.  Even though it’s a Saturday, and I just worked a full week of 14+ hour days, my alarm pulls me up out of a restless sleep.  It seems that all sleep is restless, when it’s 90 degrees outside, the mattress has a comfy hole in the middle of its foam, and you might wake up to a lovely praying mantis corpse attached somewhere on your mosquito net.  But the day has started.

I grab breakfast (yesterday’s bread with Nutella), shove a soda and a cookie or two into my backpack, and walk across the street to the store compound.  The logistics supervisor there is already in full swing, munching his serving of bread as he watches drivers complete their daily checks of the landcruiser fleet.  We exchange pleasantries that mostly take the form of grunts, establish that all drivers are either already at the office waiting to depart, doing their checks as we speak, or on their way.  Except one.  I hand him my phone with all of our departments’ numbers, and wander over to the generator to say good morning.  She’s an old beast, with nearly twice the hours of the recommended cutoff for end-of-life.  All good here.  The log sup hands me back my phone, and I climb into the next departing vehicle.

At the office, I greet the team of 7 chipper nurse supervisors.  This is day 5 of this round of distribution, and day 2 of the early wake-up, so they are well-settled.  After some last-minute consultations, supplies, mapping, photocopying, and equipment checking, we climb into our respective cars and head off into the bush.

I’ve chosen to ride along with a car going to the East Axis, which means a trip across the river.  We load up, climb in, radio into the control room that we’re on route, and take off after the other car going East.  We settle in and get rolling, and 500 meters later we pull up to the ferry.

We stop, get out, stand around, say hi to the ferry operators, and generally go back to what we were doing at the office.  False start.  After a couple minutes, the ferry operators get the huge engine going, and we make the quick trip across the 60-meter wide river.

The sun is coming up as we start the journey, and mid-river, it breaks through the clouds.

Cool.  Not a bad way to start the morning.

We land, get back in the car, and head on our way.

We’re off to supervise the activities at the distribution sites for our prophylaxis campaign, where we’re giving free malaria-prevention medication to children under 5.  We’ve also taken this opportunity when every family in the district will search out this medicine to increase the vaccination coverage of children less than 2 years of age.  It’s a huge undertaking with many staff, resources, and numbers going to make it a success, and it is very popular with the population.  People will travel from great distances in neighboring districts to receive the prophylaxis.  This is our second of four distribution this rainy season.

"Yeah, it was hard."

I wrote this in April.  With a little perspective, I'm ready to share.

The ceiling that I’m staring up at blurs with tears.  That is the first time that I’ve admitted to anyone that I cry.  Feels a little late at the tender age of 26, but I guess we all grow up in little bits and pieces.  I keep telling myself, “This is the definition of hard.”  This is what it means when people say it wasn’t easy.  This is me living through a story that will start with the introduction “Yeah, it was hard.”  Four small words that will encompass the tears dripping down my face and the sob wracking my body.

I’m a dripping mess because of a number of factors, none being a particularly good reason for my current pastime of watering the sheets.  I’m tired, overworked, hot, lonely, and frankly, fucking sick of French.  Each of those adjectives has a long story and an elaborate explanation behind it.  I begin to go over them to calm myself down.  Analyzing the reason behind my emotions always helps me stabilize.

-I’m tired because I worked a 13-hour day today.  I can’t remember if I worked a 12-hour day or a 13-hour day yesterday.  The day before that, Sunday, I installed a submersible pump in our well, got sunburned, finished my monthly report, and solved some other minor problems before playing a rousing game of Frisbee.  I think it ended up being a 6-hour workday.  The day before that was a half-day of 6-ish hours, but I was woken up at 6am, 7am, and 8am for various problems.  The week before that, I worked 5 consecutive 12-hour days.  The week before that was the same, except I started it with an excursion to the neighboring district, with a night in a too-hot-to-tolerate hotel, with a grand total of 3 hours’ sleep.  I’ve been here for over 2 months, and the story is the same back to my arrival.

-I realized yesterday, after my coordinator asked me about any extra support that I needed, that I have too much to do.  As mentioned above, I work 12 hours every day during the week, and a good 12 hours each weekend.  I’m not particularly skimping on working hours, in case math isn’t your strong suit.  There’s no break in sight.  I usually never complain that I’m overworked, and I hardly ever mention it.  The only reason I’ll let on that I have too much to do is to get those extra tasks allocated to someone else so they’ll actually get done.  I have no one to allocate these tasks to.  I’m two months deep into a 9-month mission, and I’m still team building.  I’m building up my staff around me and developing their capacity to handle situations.  I’m training them in dealing with situations, and building their confidence.  I’m delegating, but it takes time to get used to each other.  And I have new things to do every day.  The list never gets shorter.  Coordination is here, and the thoroughly depressing realization hits me that the list they came here to shorten has in fact doubled.  I have a moment where I realize the enormity of what I’m trying to accomplish in two months.  I have to build a couple houses and repair a dysfunctional base of operations before the monsoon-like rains hit.  Shit.

-I’m hot.  It’s 95 degrees Fahrenheit in my bedroom.  That’s 35 degrees, for all the metric folk out there.  It’s night.  It’s 10 degrees cooler than it was during the day.  10 degrees Celsius.  It will be this hot for the next month and a half, until those monsoon-like rains (that will destroy infrastructure and dreams of construction alike) arrive in June.  It is remarkably taxing to be sweating all the time.  Sleep is an almost-forgotten dream to all of us here.  We rarely talk about it, but the circles under our eyes and shuffling gait betray us to each other each morning.  There’s no need to confirm that no one has slept.  We all know it.

-I’m in a French-speaking mission, speaking a second language for the first time in my life.  Just like the admitting to crying thing: again, a bit late.  I studied abroad in college, but I was in an arts program, not a language program.  Despite living in Italy and learning Italian, I didn’t ever have to use it, or reveal myself to be capable of only idiot-level discourse.  Here, I am allowed no such luxury.  I am the only American in a compound of mostly French people, with a Malian and a Colombian thrown in for some diversity.  Everyone’s level of French is expert or above, while my level is 3-years-of-high-school-French.  My major form of communication is pointing.  Studying abroad in Italy helped me with learning to gesticulate, at least.

            This manner of communicating is at odds with my self-image.  I am an articulate and verbose person.  I elaborate, and I have a large vocabulary.  I pride myself on using the correct words for concepts, and I am a proverbial grammar-stickler.  I am highly-educated and pedantic, and it shows.  In French, I am none of these things.  My identity is taken away from me, and I am missing who I used to be.  I am isolated from everyone else by culture, language, and comfort.  Everyone else is themselves, and I’m a pale imitation, pointing my way through a conversation.  No one knows who I am.

My tears have long since dried as I distract myself from my sorrows by enumerating them.  None of them have diminished, but I’ve made it through another evening.  I fall asleep translating my tirade into French—practicing, improving, growing.

A week in Istanbul

I'll let the photos say it all.  I recommend the city for a visit, a vacation, a conference, a layover, an excursion.

The Blue Mosque

A Wednesday in a park, with tons of locals out and about.

The Grand Bazaar

The New Mosque

Mosques and palaces line the Bosporus

The Hagia Sophia

The library in Hagia Sophia

The altar and mihrab in Hagia Sophia

The Basilica Cistern

A red moon over the Old City

The Bosporus Bridge and Asian Side

Cars are not allowed on Prince's Islands