our dog is so smart! one of our cats has been catching and eating the birds who come into our yard. so today, the cat and the dog were both outside near the tree where the birds feed, and the dog wouldn't let the cat sneak up to the tree! he kept walking in front of the cat and sitting down, blocking the cat in a really non-agressive way. it was funny and cute, because the cat kept trying to slink down and be really flat against the sidewalk, but the dog wasn't having any of that. so smart.

i's a damn shopper!

i drove home from edmonton with emiline on friday. we shamelessly indulged in listening to hanson for the last 15 minutes of our trip, and let me say, it was awesome. it instantly took me back to grade 8 - back to the first summer i played soccer; back to the last year i was in catholic school; back to a time in my pre-kelsey history, when i was still afraid of her (she was, and is, unassailably cool. how can you contend with a girl who is dating a boy with a green mohawk? you can't.).

since i've been home, i've been spending most of my time crafting and sewing. i usually wake up around 5 or 6 (which is when i've been getting up in guyana), and get so excited about my craft projects that i can't fall back asleep. so far i've made a corduroy messenger bag with a bear appliqué on it, and reconstructed an old t-shirt. more recons and appliqués are on the way. i will post pictures soon.

in love with the place, in my mind

yesterday was a really cute day. i just love being in edmonton.

i woke up at 4 a.m. and couldn't fall back asleep, because i get so excited about all the crafts that i want to make and all the things i want to see/do while i'm here. at 8:30, i went to MEC to pick up a backpack for a girl in guyana, and then i went to kaylin's. i love hanging out with kaylin. we went to safeway to pick up some food, and then we drove around downtown looking for richard seine. we both miss him like mad. unfortunately, we couldn't find him. we talked about working in the inner city and how much we loved the people and hated the organizations that employed us. i'm so glad we're both out of there now. those jobs were seriously so destructive for us. then we went to second cup and had a really good conversation. my favorite conversations lately have been with my post-christian female friends. it's comforting to know there are other people out there who are dealing with the same issues as me: guilt, loss of identity, believing that "satan has a hold on [me]." yikes. then we went to the legislature and talked about missing colin powles and how we've both always believed that the other was too cool to be friends with us. ah, insecure middle-class christian white girls. so predictable. i still feel that way about her though, as i do with a lot of my friends. i was so confident in high school! i guess junior high is catching up with me now. anyway, kaylin and i had a super cute time at the leg. we walked around the pedway and talked about loons going extinct and about how we are all doomed because the earth's magnetic field is shrinking. then i wanted to show her the "magic spot" at the leg. because she had never seen it. so this cute lady named maggie took us on a tour of the legislature. she was so excited! she couldn't stop talking and smiling! i want to see if i can volunteer to do tours there next year. the whole leg. was so interesting. i forgot all the neat stories about it, which i must have learned in elementary school when we visited the place on field trips. we especially liked the mace. alberta's first mace used in parliament was made out of garbage like those floaty toilet-tank balls and plastic pipe and broken teacup handles, and spraypainted gold! and they used it for FIFTY years! our province is so cute and neat. i am in love. we also really liked the magic spot (the "acoustic anomaly" where you can hear the fountain). i always like hanging out outside the leg., but i think i am going to start spending more time INSIDE. we also found out that on canada day, they bring out the red carpet and all visitors are allowed to walk up it and then into that room where all the government business is done (sorry, i forget the name. i was always TERRIBLE at remembering political science stuff) (and this is the ONLY time of year visitors are allowed in the room, and the ONLY parliament building in canada that EVER allows visitors in) and then out the back. so kaylin and i are planning to go next canada day. the day made us even more excited about our province than we already are, so we decided that sometime in the next couple of years we are going to go on a vacation to small towns and notable cute places in canada. exciting.

after hanging out with k-lin i hung out with kev. i haven't really talked to him much since the summer because i knew i would be tempted to ask him questions about darcy that i don't want to know the answers to. but hanging out with him was so fun! i really missed all his constant, lame jokes. i like that he doesn't mind going shopping with me (we went to whyte ave and i bought a sufjan album and some american apparel clothes. so predictable.). he is fun, and i am glad that he will be in edmonton next year.

finally, i hung out with joel kelly. i feel like joel must spend all his free time reading books entitled "how to be a great friend." he is just always the right amount of fun, and supportiveness, and concern, and silliness, and intelligence, and conversation. and he is my most reliable source for new music! we just went for supper, but it was really nice. i am excited that joel will be going to school in edmonton next year too. so many fun friends in such close proximity! life doesn't get much better!

new dog

with kelseydawn having relocated herself to the depths of the 403, i've had to find myself a new (if only temporary) bf. done and done.



"stets," honorably monikered after the neighbour who found him abandoned in a ditch last summer, has apparently adopted himself into my family and my parents' home. i am in love! stets is so friendly and cute, and he loves to go for walks. he likes tummy rubs and eating snow. he wags his tail furiously, and has a bad (but cute) habit of getting so excited that he will jump up all over us and try to lick our faces. having been mothered by an animal rights passivist (and by this i mean "peacefully resistant in response to injustice," and not merely "inactive toward injustice"), and then having taken that to an extreme, i have a solid conviction that animals shouldn't be taken as pets for humans unless the animals themselves choose us. and that's what stets did. i guess after wayne stetson found the dog, he tied the dog up in his yard. but whenever the dog was unleashed, he came over to our house. it was perfect timing, too, because my parents needed some company and youthful energy around the house now that all of us girls have moved out.

i am considering trying to find a job in vermilion for the summer just so i can hang out with stets. i like being with him, because i feel safe going for walks with him, but there is no need for verbal conversation when we are together.

somehow i'll find my way home; celebrity crush list

a briefing on my trip from annai to edmonton:

i flew out of annai village (5 miles from bina hill) last friday, heading to georgetown, the capital of guyana. we stopped over in lethem to pick up some people, and a soldier at the airstrip kept trying to flirt with me. he kept asking if he could come visit me at bina hill. i am always too timid to say what i really mean. and what i really mean is this: i have taken dr. long's "marriage and the family" sociology course, and have learned that despite the fact that this may sound "bad," things like social class and geographic location and race/culture really DO play a big role in relationships. and so i just want to shout at guyanese boys, "quit flirting with me! it would never work! not in a million years! don't take it personally. but get out of my face, please." but instead of just saying what i want to say, i usually drift away from the conversation (physically). but i have to admit, having boys flirt with me is definitely a confidence-booster, because it certainly doesn't happen much in canada. anyway... it was neat to be able to see guyana from the air. i liked to see the dirt paths made by people and animals in the rural areas, and contrast them to the straight streets in georgetown. it was neat to be able to see which areas are travelled most, and think about why that is. in the rural areas, people dictate the paths and where they lead; in the city, the roads dictate the people.
it was also nice to see all the rainforest. thousands of acres of unspoiled green. neat-o.

i arrived in georgetown in the mid-afternoon on friday. i took a taxi to my hotel and basically just hid there for the next three days. i am pretty terrified of georgetown, because it's a pretty violent place. they say that the violence isn't directed at foreigners, but i'd rather not take my chances. i had pizza hut pizza delivered to my room, and i basically just watched movies on t.v. and swam in the pool all weekend. two trinidadian men invited me to have drinks with them (which i very politely declined) and a creepy man from alaska told me his life story while i was trying to do sudoku at the pool. aside from those minor interruptions, i enjoyed a nice vacation by myself. i've always known it, but i am realizing now more than ever how much i like being by myself. apparently the new trend in travelling is women vacationing/travelling solo. i can see why.

on monday morning i flew from georgetown to trinidad. i almost missed my plane because i was talking with a girl from toronto and her mom, who were supposedly on the same flight as me, but as it turned out, they were on flight "B" and i was on flight "A." one of the security guards had to shout my name into the crowd to remind me to get on the plane. i was impressed because i think he is the first person in history to pronounce BOTH my first and last names correctly on the first try. amazing. anyways, this girl and her mom were really neat: the mom was born in guyana, but now lives in toronto, and is teaching at york university and also finishing her ph.d. there. she is writing about the effect of emigration on guyana. i got their e-mails, and am excited to talk to her about that a little more, because it is definitely a concern with the program i am working with. as soon as north rupununi youth are qualified in the least, they move to the coast or to brazil or canada or somewhere else. no good. i understand why they do it, but it is hard for me to understand that not everyone is as attached to their home countries/regions/towns as i am to mine.

okay. flew trinidad to toronto, sitting next to the woman i mentioned in the above paragraph (we had been on different planes, but then in trinidad we all got on the same plane). waited around in toronto for 5 hours, bought a sudoku book, flirted with a boy flying to edmonton (and i think i was flirted WITH by same boy), flew to edmonton, feigned interest in the conversation the man sitting next to me tried to pursue with me (while feeling grumpy and exhausted and sudoku-obsessed), arrived in edgemonton at 1 in the morning, drove back to vermilion with my dad and arrived at 4 a.m. to surprise my mom. also, my dad brought some of the things i had ordered over the internet and had shipped to my sisters' while i was in guyana, including the sufjan stevens christmas box set! hip, hip, hooray! and he brought my ipod too! so good to hear my own music again. joel added all of his (ie. joel's) music to my ipod while i was gone, which included the "50 states" song, and i have decided that sufjan and i are kindred spirits. in that there is no one who loves our respective countries more than us. i need to contact him and arrange an exchange visit or something.

room to make her big mistakes

i hitched an unexpected ride to lethem and back yesterday with some of the red cross staff who were in annai, putting on a camp that my program was helping out with. one of my favorite things ever is going for long drives, because it gives me time to think. and thanks to this trip, i think i've discovered why i am so drawn to prairies and savannahs and wide open spaces.
1. i grew up on the prairies, and so did my dad and his dad, etc.
2. my own body shape is like the prairies: flat
3. 13 years of ukrainian dancing taught me to use all the space available on stage
4. in the same vein as #3, years of playing soccer (especially with claire paterson) taught me to identify and then move into space
5. thanks to yearbook camp in high school (yes, i did go to yearbook camp, and it was sweet, even though the organizers hated everything kelseydawn and i did) and years of editing yearbooks, creative arts publications, and various newsletters, i have been conditioned to find and fill "white space."
6. i am a girl. "blank page" and all that. wanna know more? take dr. hales' "women's writing" course.

i can't help it. it's like a killer instinct. except no killing. my soul finds space, and goes there.





also... i am developing a profound appreciation for enrique iglacias' music. well, maybe not so much a "profound appreciation" as an "irrational addiction." don't tell anyone.

three cheers and a non-alcoholic toast to g-hugh

gareth, famed oxford/cambridge ph.d. candidate and stellar dominoes player, walked out of my and crystal's lives forever on sunday night when he boarded the bus to georgetown to return to the u.k. this post is a tribute to him.

thanks, gareth, for:
-heightening my perceived level of security when walking after dark by accompanying me and crystal on:
-late-night and early-morning walks in the rupununi savannahs while the moon is shining
-being easygoing enough to endure our teasing
-being a fountain of silly entertainment, despite your incredible credentials on paper (describing a flying arrow moving "literally, as straight as an arrow!"; being able to catch only vegetation on our fishing trip...)
-renewing my faith in the male gender by being sensitive and strong and not making me believe i was crazy because of the things i thought or felt
-giving life to my passive-agressive revenge on an unnamed person by making crystal and me your preferred companions for the duration of your stay
-sharing your computer... against norma's wishes!!!

thanks, friend. be well.

dasher, dancer, prancer, vixen

last night, bina hill institute had its christmas party. there were about 100 people, and we had delicious food: baked chicken, cook-up rice, curried beef, mashed potatoes, beans, cucumbers, cake.... afterwards, we had a dance party. i haven't danced for a long time, probably not since lane's wedding in the summer. it was tons of fun. i seriously love dancing so much. i have blisters on both my feet now. the normal thing was that i spent much of the evening rocking out by myself (it was more like fo-ho-ing (i don't know how to spell it. faux-hoe?), with a little bit of shakira-ing and sean paul-ing). the anomalous thing was that i actually danced with some people. i think boys/men see that, to some extent, i have rhythm, and think i would be good to dance with. what a mistake. i get really awkward and stiff and i trip over my feet and their feet and it is all just a disaster. i tell myself this happens for two reasons:
1. i am a prairie girl. i need my space. i like being by myself, and i like dancing by myself.
2. when i used to go to church, i would hardly ever sing. i am not a singer. but i would dance. and i still like to dance as worship/a celebration of all that is good/an expression of myself/because it feels good to move every part of me. and therefore it is somewhat spiritual for me. and i don't like having testosterone and toes and hips standing (or dancing) in between me and my commune with everything i am excited about/in love with.

i need to start clubbin' or something.

"mango season will save your life"

mangoes are in season in guyana, and just in time to battle impending scurvy. thousands of mangoes just fall to the ground and rot because there are so many. i had only ever had ONE mango before i came to guyana, and i didn't really like it. when i lived with lee this summer, she came into my room the first week i was there, holding a mango, and said, "i was saving this. i wanted to share it with you." cutest thing ever! so she cut it up and put it on a plate, and i really wanted to like it because the whole situation was so adorable, but i thought it was kind of yucky. but now that they are one of my only options for fruit here (guyana's interior has a terrible distribution system), i find them delicious.

on an unrelated topic...
last night i was lying in my bed, and i felt a bug crawling on my leg. i went to brush it off, but when i touched it, it was bigger than i expected it to be (sometimes ants and spiders get into my bed). i shined my headlamp onto it, and i saw that it was a baby centipede! yuck!!! they are so, so gross. and apparently they bite, but thankfully, this one did not bite me. i coaxed it onto a piece of paper and then threw the paper outside (it wouldn't get off on its own).

live a normal life with me

when gesa interviewed me for this position in late july, she asked me to describe what i thought living/working here might be like. i had only learned that guyana is a country the day before, so i didn't have much to go on, except for the word "wild." and when you're sitting in the middle of alberta, the whole prospect of this place and my position here does seem a little wild. i mean, a 12-hour bus ride through the rainforest, just to get to the interior where i'm living now? my work involving fishing trips, where we see monkeys and caimen up close? but to be honest, since i've been here, i haven't been struck by how "wild" everything seems, as much as i've been struck by how normal everything feels. i mean, having high-speed internet certainly taints that, but even when we do community visits to remote villages, it still all seems normal. crystal and i still have a hard time believing we're in south america, probably because nothing seems very strange.

omnivore

so... after a morning of movie-watching, i am confronted with these images just outside our "office." apparently, a cow had died, so some of the youth (not from my program, although they live here) were cutting it up and preparing it and selling it. i guess the cow had died from drinking cassava water. cassava is one of the main foods of the amerindians here: they eat farine and cassava bread, and they also have a drink (i forget what it's called), all made from cassava. it kind of creeps me out a bit that they are going to eat some cow that they just found dead, but i guess it's not like the cow drank mercury or anything. i don't know. i just like to think of my meat as happy and healthy before it's slaughtered.

on the table in the bottom picture is a watermelon, picked freshly from the garden, like one i enjoyed for breakfast this morning!

on the table in one of the other pictures is the cow's head. sick. for a girl who grew up in rural alberta, it seems a little strange that i haven't been confronted with this sight more often (as in, ever). i like this picture, though, because gilbert's facial expression is so classically kelseydawn.

no plans

most staff from bina hill are in lethem at the rupununi expo. i didn't have the cash to go (money is SO difficult to get around here), and i've been feeling sick anyway, so i stuck around here for the weekend. yesterday i holed myself up in the office and watched three movies by myself: the notebook, reality bites, and amelie. surprisingly, it's the first i've seen any of them. anyway, strangely, TWO of the movies (the notebook and amelie) featured the following:
1. one half of of a blossoming relationship uses arrows on the ground to create a trail for the other half to follow and find a surprise (sometimes i wish i had a few more arrows-then-surprises in my life, instead of just surprises or chaos-then-surprises).
2. a thick stack of still-in-the-envelope mail. in amelie, the envelopes had been opened and the letters read (but still saved); in the notebook, none had been opened (i am hopelessly in love with the idea of a stack of unopened, posted mail. so much so that i am tempted to save all the future packages i may receive while i am in guyana and not open them until 10 years from now. i hope, somewhere, there's a boy with an attic full of letters he's intended to send me but hasn't had the courage (wait, do i want an uncourageous boy? hmm...) to do yet. or maybe he just knows it's not the right time. yeah, that's better than being "uncourageous." and one day i'll find them, wrapped in a piece of brown twine, and i'll sit on my bed and read and re-read them. sigh. a more realistic version of that story will be that the most romantic piece of literature i will ever receive will be a post-it, stuck on a fridge, saying, "went to buy bread. love you, _______." i will still sit on my bed and read and re-read it. but it might feel a little bit different.).

--

when we were younger, my mom had this awesome countdown-to-christmas kind of thing for us girls. we each had this cardboard chimney, which had a santa on top and was filled with 24 numbered boxes, which my mom would fill with treats and little presents for every day of december before christmas. sweet. so i don't have that right now, but i AM counting down my days to edmonton by eating one package of cookies a day. i bought 2 12-packs (each pack has 6 cookies) a week ago, and i am using them to keep track of how much time i have left here. only 17 more sleeps!

fury and love

it's my week off (we work 3 weeks on, one week off), and i've been kinda sick lately, so i've been spending a lot of time reading in my room. today while reading in my room, i heard a group of teachers, who are doing a week of training here, singing christmas carols as a choir. it's always so strange for me to combine tropical climates and christmas together. i've spent 2 christmases in tropical countries, and i am spending this advent in a tropical country, and it just feels... wrong. to echo bri's sentiments, i miss all familiarities of a north american christmas. to be perfectly honest, i really LIKE a lot of the things that most people hate about north american christmases: i LIKE going to the malls and seeing them all decorated, blasting Christmas carols (in small-town malls) and christmas songs (in big-city malls where mentioning the name of Christ is apparently offensive); i like bundling up in all my winter clothing and taking edmonton transit through the dark, snowy winter to said malls; i like receiving presents just as much as i like giving them; i LOVE wrapping presents (so much so that i try to convince anyone less keen on wrapping to let me do theirs for them); i like the lethargy of post-christmas dinner. i like watching movies with kelseydawn and knowing that she will inevitably fall asleep before the movie is half over. there are really only two things about christmas that i DON'T like:
1. real Christmas trees. some people would call a Christmas without a freshly-cut tree blasphemous. they say Christmas just isn't Christmas without the smell of a freshly-cut spruce (or is it pine? i don't even know). hmm. to this i say: save the tree, go buy an artificial one that'll last you 20+ years (like ours has), and just go outside and smell a still-living one. or just decorate one that lives outside, instead of cutting one down and bringing it inside. hmm?
2. i feel like i have to say this quietly: i don't know a whole lot about Jesus, but what i think i DO know about Him tells me that i don't know if He'd be down with all this obsession with Him and His birth. i know a lot of people think He'd be disgusted with all the materialism and stuff. but i think it goes further than that. i just feel like He'd feel a little, i don't know, embarrassed? who knows. maybe i've just been reading too much david james duncan.

numb and number

a little-known fact about me is that i am really good at remembering numbers. well, reasonably good. better at remembering numbers than facts or dates. a lot of people hate the idea of being assigned a number, at, like, university or for a social insurance number or something. they think it contributes to making the whole system impersonal. not me. i like my numbers. i like going through them in my head. my social insurance number, my driver's licence number, my passport number, my old king's university student number, my new u of a number, my debit cards' numbers... i like them all. i have old phone numbers of former friends kicking around in my head, and i like to pull them out and roll them around for a bit. i have our old innisfree phone number still milling around up there. i even have numbers that i can't remember what they refer to (to what they refer?).

once, a few summers ago, i lost my debit card, and i was really upset because it meant i had to be assigned (and therefore learn) a new number. i don't think people understood how losing a number could bother someone like it did me.

i think i can remember numbers because it is easy to assign your own rhythm to them. like, i can remember poetry (because of its rhythm), but am terrible at remembering speech quotes or prose lines.

perhaps surprisingly, i've never taken up trying to learn the digits of pi. maybe i should look into that....

be still my heart, or, where's an interrobang when i need one?!

i've just been informed that there is a FREE pepe moreno concert tonight in boa vista, brazil (just two hours west of lethem). why am i not there!?! oh, because i don't have my brazilian visa yet. the brazilian government is paying for pepe to give this free concert. does that seem crazy/wonderful to anyone else!?!

Capitals City

since my last post:

YLP travelled to Shulinab, a village of about 300 people in the South Central Rupununi district (so, about 4 hours south of here). We took the bus to Lethem, and then got a ride in the back of a pickup truck. Unfortunately, it was raining that day, so we had to tie a tarp on top of the box of the pickup. That meant that we were squished like sardines in the back: our luggage took up half the truck box, and the rest of us (ie. 7 of us) were crammed on the bench-seats. Crystal sat in the front seat, with a little girl and some eggs on her lap. Fun times. We arrived in Shulinab around 7 p.m. (after dark), slung up our hammocks, and went to bed.

The next day, Saturday, we held a "cultural camp" in which we brought together youth and elders to share games and crafts and traditional teachings. It was good fun. I made another mokro basket, but this time, I did the WHOLE THING by myself! A lot of the kids came over to watch me, which was kind of irritating, but good too, I guess. I think it gives them a sense of pride in their culture, and sparks their interest in traditional crafts, when they see a white girl take interest in those things. This basket is a lot smaller than the first one I made, and it ended up breaking a little bit because one of Rawle's kids stepped on it on Monday, but I am still proud of it.

Our camp continued into Sunday, and we held a big bonfire on Sunday night. I usually go to bed as soon as it gets dark, but I stayed up this time. It was really neat. Most of the community showed up - about 200 people! There were all kinds of neat presentations: there was a traditional Macushi band/dance group (pictured here), some Scottish/Irish teachers who taught us to dance a Ceili, lots of songs and traditional stories and even a pork roast. Ha.

Driving back to Lethem on Monday was more enjoyable than the trip into Shulinab. We took the same truck back, but it was a sunny day, so we didn't need the tarp tied over the truck box. Most of us stood up in the box of the truck all the way back to Lethem (a 2 hour drive). I was very dusty and dirty when we got into Lethem. We were supposed to catch a bus back to Bina Hill that night, but it never came, so we ended up staying the night at Rawle's wife's house. It was nice to just chill and watch movies and music videos. Strange that my current favorite artists include Shakira, Sean Paul, and The Pussycat Dolls.

I walked around Lethem barefoot on Tuesday, and I got a chance to call my parents in the morning. I haven't talked to them over the phone since September, so that was nice. I bought a ton of chocolate and some Christmas presents. We caught the bus back to Bina Hill at 10 p.m., and got back home after midnight. The bus breaks down every time it starts, and Tuesday was no exception. We would be driving down the road, and the bus would just turn itself off and we'd coast, in the dark, until the driver could get the engine to turn over again. That probably happened about 30 times in our 2-hour drive. Ugh. Also, there was some creepy kid named Terrence sitting next to me. Apparently he works at Bina Hill as a construction guy, and he knew who I was, though I had no clue who he was. Anyway, the whole way home, he kept trying to touch me. He would try to rest his head on my shoulder, and several times he brushed his lips against my upper arm, and he also put his hand on my thigh underneath my backpack! He kept it there for 20 minutes (I thought his hand was there, but I couldn't tell for sure, so I didn't do anything about it. But later I DEFINITELY felt him move it off)! Little shithead. After the thigh thing, I decided I would elbow him hard in the chest if he tried anything else, but luckily for him, he didn't.

On Wednesday, I think I rested most of the day. I did a bit of laundry. Ostrich-lady from Britain arrived that day, so YLP has been spending all our time trying to avoid her. Additionally, a package from my parents arrived! It was wonderful! Among other things, it contained soup, instant oatmeal, gatorade mix, beads, a "Vermilion" t-shirt and "Canada" hat to give as gifts, crochet hooks, hot chocolate, peppermint tea, and "the lorax." Woo! Exciting. I also found out that day that I have officially been accepted into school again! Hip, hip, hooray!

Yesterday, YLP walked to Oasis restaurant and then hiked up the mountain there. I did my hike in bare feet. It was nice. You should try hiking in bare feet, if you've not before. I rested on a big rock on the top for a bit, and then we all slung up our hammocks and just chilled. Nice.

Today we had a meeting to evaluate our program and the events we've held over the last 3 months. I think it went pretty well.

Starting on Monday, we have another week off. I don't know what I'll do with myself. Some people from here are going to Brazil, but Crystal and I can't go because Canadians need visas to visit there, and we don't have ours yet. We'll probably go sometime in the new year.

That's all for now.

writing on stone

exciting things from the last couple of days:

-oasis restaurant, just down the road, started selling cranberry-raspberry juice!
-taught the kids from annai secondary school to play kickball last night. they loved it, which makes me happy, because i think it is my all-time favorite game.
-ray found a tarantula in toka village and brought it back here in a plastic pop bottle just for me to see! then he smushed it under his foot, because apparently they are super dangerous and can kill people. i wish he hadn't killed it, but i am glad that i don't have to worry about tarantulas sneaking into my room. neil told me i didn't have to worry about it anyway because the tarantula doesn't have a key to my room. so silly. i will post pictures of it when the other computer is working, so check back soon.

-an unlikely set of friends: a cranky canadian girl of irish/ukrainian heritage (me), a 30-year-old cree/soto girl from saskatchewan (crystal), and a startlingly unpretentious 25-year-old oxford/cambridge ph.d. candidate from wales (gareth, who is here for 6 weeks and then goes back to the u.k. to finish his ph.d.). we went for a REALLY nice walk last night to oasis restaurant just after the sun set. the walk was about 2 kilometres each way, and although we used our headlamps when we walked through the savannah, we agreed to all walk in darkness along the road. it was lovely! there were millions of stars, and fireflies, and only one vehicle passed us in each direction! the weather was comfortably warm, not stiflingly hot like it usually is here nor bitterly cold like it is at home. when we got to oasis we drank our cranberry-raspberry fruta (gareth had beer), and we played dominos and made fun of gareth's mosquito-repelling armbands and legbands. he is a fount (font?) of entertainment, i tell you. it is nice to have friends here. too bad he is leaving in december (he comes back to guyana after april, when we leave).

i always get really jaded about my work here, believing that it is not as important or valuable as the work that some of my peers (ie. king's graduates, AFL alumni, etc.) are doing at home or overseas. i am not feeding hungry people or saving aids-stricken africa, nor am i equipping ghanian women to set up sustainable small businesses for themselves (arg - that's a whole other story). i am playing kickball with secondary students and going on fishing trips. at times, i recognize the value of this program: youth in ylp are very obviously being equipped with communication and leadership skills, which are vital in a time when their country is being invaded by companies looking to exploit their traditional lands for natural resources. and we are building relationships and community, which are undoubtably important. but sometimes it is really hard for me to see those things.

god is going to make a change. mmm?

yikes. for some reason, blogger has opened my account on this computer in spanish (or portuguese?). at least i know the buttons on here well enough to manoevre around and post.

easily, the most exciting news to come to me lately has been this:
http://www.asthmatickitty.com/music.php?releaseID=63
i just found out about it minutes ago. my heart is racing. whew. anyways.

ylp went on a community visit to the village of massara this weekend. it is a really pretty community with about 400 residents. i was sick with a bad cold the entire time, and my eyes were burning again for some reason, which made the whole trip considerably uncomfortable, but it was still pretty neat. on saturday afternoon, the toshau (chief) of massara took us upriver in a motorboat. after about half an hour, we landed on a big sandy bank. toshau and the boys went into the forest to cut some trees and collect some bark to construct and tie up a shelter. it was so neat! they found about 8 logs, about 10 cm in diameter, each splitting into a Y on top. they dug holes in the sand and put the logs in there, and then laid two long logs parallel to each other across the Ys. they secured it with stripped bark, and then tied a tarp on top. we slung up our hammocks, and then went fishing. it was my first fishing trip ever! i didn't actually fish, but everyone else did. they just used line and hooks and bait - no rod. they would spin the bait/hooks around above their heads and then throw them out and reel them in. cute. everyone caught at least one fish - most caught piranahs, which were bright orange on some parts so it looked like they had been spray painted. while we were fishing, we saw about 8 or ten monkeys in a tree along the riverbank! they were so close! i think those are the first wild monkeys i have ever seen. we went back to our camp, and everyone ate fish while i ate bananas and peanuts. i was still feeling pretty sick, so i went to bed early. but not before i saw a caimen (crocodile) swimming in the river, about 30 feet away from us! exciting! the caimen come out at night, and apparently they are just like bears - they don't bother humans as long as we don't surprise them. it was right at dusk, so it was a little hard to see, but i definitely saw the caimen's head and back. crazy. i slept in my hammock and had a miserable sleep because of my cold, but was thankful for my midnight pee break because it gave me the opportunity to wander around alone on the sand under the stars and the moon. amazing. i hope we get to do that kind of trip again sometime when i am not so sick.

when i woke up that morning, i felt even sicker than before. we packed up all our things by 6 a.m., and were back in massara around 7 a.m. i stayed in my hammock most of the day, while the rest of ylp went to church and then played volleyball with the villagers. massara has lots of fruit trees, so we enjoyed a lot of oranges and lemons and marvelled at how beautiful the mango trees are. mangoes aren't in season quite yet, but they are just coming out, so there are a lot of little green unripe mangoes everywhere. apparently during mango season, thousands of mangoes just go to waste because there is such an abundance of them. anyways. pretty trees. in the afternoon, i was able to venture out of my hammock, even though the sun continued to scorch my retinas. i watched volleyball for a bit, and then walked to the river with crystal and garreth (a welsh boy who is here to do natural resource management). a side note relating to this walk: a few weeks ago, i succumbed to the allure of flip-flops. i bought a pair of brown havaianas, and have stayed in them since. but on friday, i decided that since my feet were getting dirty anyway, i'd rather go barefoot than flip-flopped. so i have been shoeless for the last couple of days (including aforementioned walk to the river), and it has been wonderful. i read in my "rediscovery" book a little while ago that an elder said if she could do anything over again, she would "go barefoot earlier in the spring and later in the fall." done and done.

in the evening on sunday, ylp had to go to church again in massara to thank the people for having us. i was distracted because i was really sick and really hot, and we didn't even end up doing the presentation we were supposed to. but i'm glad i went, because the pastor was wicked awesome. at the end of EVERY sentence, he would end with "hmm?" he probably said, "god is going to make a change. hmm?" about 15 times during his sermon. my brain registered that that would be something i would normally laugh at, but i was too uncomfortable to actually laugh. i wasn't sure anyone else was amused by it, but when we got out of church, all my ylp youth were making jokes about it on the walk back to our "house." neil especially was super funny. my youth rule.

today? uneventful. sore eyes. oh! i got my first care package! i received a package sent by emilonely on september 18. yikes. thanks, em! i JUST ran out of chocolate today, so the vanilla bean hot chocolate and pirates of the caribbean m&ms are definitely appreciated.

my shirt tucked in and my shoes untied

gesa left yesterday. it was really nice to have her visit. before she left, all of us in YLP went to the hospital because crystal, gesa and i all have bitrouge (a tiny red bug that makes you itch a lot) and needed cream. rawle decided we should all get deworming pills too. everyone here deworms every 3-6 months. i'm glad he made that decision - i'd rather not know if i have worms or not and just be on the safe side, than find out that i have them and freak out and be disgusted. so... deworming party! sick. thankfully, the process isn't too x-rated - just 2 pills a day for 3 days.

our after school program is going remarkably well. the students love us, and our youth feel really empowered by the work they are doing. it is neat. i posted some new pictures on my flickr site today, so be sure to check them out.

i want to have a logo for our after school program, and in my usual un-artistic fashion, i've decided to have a contest for the schoolkids to design the logo. the prize will be supper at oasis restaurant for the winner, one friend, and two YLP youth of their choice. should be neat. the headmistress of the school fully endorsed the project and prize, saying the kids will "surely be motivated" to submit artwork because of the prize. cute. i think it will be great.

our garden has pleasantly surprised me with a new crop of watermelon! so exciting! i bought one a few days ago, and even though it was significantly underripe, it was delicious and a welcomed break from my daily dose of fried chicken/rice. by the way, i am putting on weight. which, as some of you may know, is good news, because i weighed 114 pounds before i came here. i'm not a fat girl yet, but i'm getting there. so expect it, and don't say rude things to me at christmas. one of the girls who was here last year started taking starch neutralizers to keep the weight off, because all we eat are carbs and fried food, but i don't know if i really want to mess with my body like that. but don't worry - i will make sure to get back to my usual twelve-year-old-boy physique within weeks of returning to canada for good in april.


in other news...

i think a lot about my breakup with darcy, and although we never actually said it (well, maybe i did), one of the reasons the breakup happened was because we both needed time and space. it is neat that i am in a place that has an abundance of both those things. i don't have a lot here, but i definitely have more time and space than i know what to do with. and i like it.

also... everyone: please make a list of good books you like and think i might like. i am running out of books and will need to buy a mountain of them at christmastime to last me the next three months. keep off the list jane austen, margaret atwood, and cookbooks. poetry books are acceptable.

an update on pepe moreno: it is getting more and more out of hand here. the only music people ever whistle is pepe moreno songs. the only music people play on guitar are pepe morenos. he is a keyboard-playing god.