Four Resolutions Days 6-14

Days 1-5 are here

Day 6

Books: I am reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. So far three people have recommended it to me, so I'm pretty hopeful that I will like it.

High: I went to Koda to do a workshop with some other PCVs and the owners of Kargi Gogo at a social enterprise that Kim, a PCV, works at. I learned to make a felted scarf by first helping Kaitlin make hers, then making one of my own. Arts and crafts are the best. 

Low: It was a good day. No real low, except maybe contemplating the hardships of being an IDP.

Glitter: Kim gave us a tour of Koda and the day was a perfect blue sky day as she showed us the little plots of land with greens starting to sprout, boxes of bees, renovated apartments and the old shells still in need of renovation, the kindergarten, the little stores people have started up, and her apartment. It's comfortable for one person or maybe two, but would be really cramped for a family, though that's how families live - four to an apartment. Any more than four, and the family is allotted one extra room. 

Day 7

Books: Just a bit of Oscar Wao.

High: I made almond coffee cake just for fun.

Low: Meh work ethic. My mind is on vacation and I don't know why.

Glitter: Mindy's back on Hulu. 

Day 8

The Rachels of PC Georgia (most of us, anyway) Photo credit: Rezi

Books: Oscar is my reading before work and before bed. I'm on the section about his mother as she is growing up in the DR. As soon as she became a knockout, it filled me with dread. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion, with equally ghastly consequences. This book makes me think of the villains in The Shadow of the Wind, and Genet from Cutting for Stone. Like Genet, Beli imaged herself as the center of the narrative and couldn't see that she was ripe for crushing in someone else's story and it just so happens that the bad guys are those vile, inhuman monsters of dictatorship and terror.  

High: I finished my Hamilton post, and found so many amazing gifs and so much gorgeous fan art.

Low: Productivity is low bordering on zero, which does not bode well for finishing decent grants.

Glitter: I was part of the welcoming committee for the G16s and although I didn't really meet any of them, jetlagged as they were, I did make friends with a couple of the other PCVs I hadn't met before.

Day 9

Books: I'm flying through Oscar Wao. Even in fiction, Trujillo's DR sounds worse than Mordor. Atrocities too easily get distanced by numbers and statistics until you stop to think about even one of the people who survived so much brutality and terror, and each of the men, women and children who did not.

High: Lin Manuel Miranda won the Pulitzer Prize for Hamilton! 

Low: All the power was out all day, so we couldn't work at the office.

Glitter: No power meant that we went to Nino's house to work and finish Helping Hand and CSDC's grant applications, and had delicious salad, sulguni cheese, ajika and mtchadi for lunch. And super tasty sparkly red wine.

Day 10

Books: I finished The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz on the car ride back from Nukriani. It is fantastic. It melds Domincan history, superstition, past, present, and the delicate and uncomfortable balance of cultures, diaspora, and makes so many totally apt references to science fiction and fantasy at every turn. The narration is completely engaging, whether it's from Yunior's POV or Lola's or the third person narration to the audience of Beli's past or Abelard's Fall. Every chapter paints a more complete picture of the family, the history, the culture, and poor romantic Oscar's disastrous luck. I love that it throws in Spanish all over the place, and since I went to the DR last year I can picture in my mind at least a modern version of a lot of the places in the book.

High: Finishing Oscar Wao on the car ride back from our visit to Nukriani for the youth project for working with people with disabilities. 

Low: Realizing how very far Georgia has to go before they take care of their marginalized citizens and how much stigma destroys people's lives here

Glitter: We picked up a girl from Switzerland who just finished a degree in agriculture and is traveling around Georgia for a month and dropped her off in Sighnaghi to continue her adventure. Also, Harriet Tubman is going to be on the $20 bill and the other bills are getting upgraded to have major figures on the back (they're all here), including Eleanor Roosevelt!

Day 11

Books: No reading today. I'll start a new book tomorrow.

High: Tiko's excitement when an old friend came to surprise her in the office with a cake for her birthday. 

Low: Those many moments when out with my work friends because it's Tiko's birthday and I want to show that I care about her, but I really really just want to get out of the smoke, the noise and the feeling useless because I don't understand the conversation flowing around me and don't much want to drink and feel like shit in the morning. 

Glitter: Nino brought the tasty sparkly wine to share with the cake for Tiko's birthday, and it's just so tasty.

Day 12

Books: I started Mexican White Boy by Matt de la Peña. It's about a half Mexican kid with an absent dad. Danny is an awesome pitcher, and goes to spend the summer with his extended family in National City. It's about baseball and finding out where you belong and growing up.

High: I went to a birthday party with interesting people and great food and homemade wine, and it was fun. Meeting people like that is nice, and way less stressful and smoky than going out partying.

Low: forgetting that half of the metro doors close down early and having to go a very roundabout way to actually get to an open metro

Glitter: It's Saturday and I spent the day making bread and watching Misfits, and it was great.

Day 13

Books: I finished Mexican White Boy. I feel like I'm reading a lot of books recently about people trying to find themselves in a mess of mixed cultures and immigration, not to mention listening to Hamilton which has that current running through the entire play. It's something I never really had to deal with growing up white in America - I dealt more with feeling fat and being that weird too-smart kid - but I'm really glad writers are writing about it because growing up is hard, and doubly so if you feel like you're caught between cultures and never enough for either one. It's different now being in a different culture because I chose it, and I could go back to the US if I really wanted to and become invisible again. I've liked all of Matt de la Peña's books, and this is no exception. It's fast, it has sports, it has Spanish, it deals with growing up and family issues and feeling like you don't know your place in the world or how to find it, and it feels truthful. Ball Don't Lie is still my favorite, but this is still a good YA novel.

High: Getting to read all day without interruption or obligation.

Low: Nope. Reading days are the best.

Glitter: Emma liked the bread. I think I need to take this bakery idea more seriously.

Day 14 

Books: It's that time. I'm rereading Harry Potter. It needed to happen. Welcome back to my life, baby Harry.
High: The whole day was pretty fantastic because we went to Generator 9.8 to do a strategic planning session with Tina for Nino's organization, Civil Society Development Center. We hammered out a mission, vision and values, and got started on SWOT analysis and SMART objectives for their strategic directions, and had a delicious lunch and a banana nutella crepe with coffee for snack. The veggie sandwich there is tasty, and the space is cool. The day was beautiful and I made it home just before the drizzle started. Clearly I've failed on the no chocolate thing - 3 strikes already, but at least I haven't bought any chocolate for myself.
Low: I got a little lost for a few minutes getting to Generator, but at least it was sunny and I had my headphones in so I could ignore men's voices, if not their eyes.
Glitter: I watched Beyonce's Lemonade and it is breathtaking.

Thanks for being our fearless leader, Tina.

Nino taking charge like a boss in the strategic planning session

New Books Read: 128

Total Books Read: 172

Recommendations: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. It is an amazing novel that mixes Dominican history with superstition, culture with diaspora, follows three generations through the Trujillo dictatorship and aftermath, and has so many perfect scifi and fantasy references. It's completely engaging, and all the more wonderful because it throws in Spanish all over the place.