Acupuncture

I had my first session of acupuncture today. She addressed my bad ankle, my weight loss efforts, my asthma and overall circulation. Most of the needles I barely felt - but a couple of them, especially toward the toe end of my feet, stung like an electric shock would sting.

There's an interesting article about how acupuncture is entering the mainstream.

My ankle hasn't hurt since I left there, but I'm not naive enough to think that's all it takes. But wouldn't it be great if acupuncture could solve this 2 year old problem?

Hail! Hail! The Gang's All Here!

Finally our family is once again complete as Maya and Sophie have finally arrived in Bosnia. Caroline arrived on the 19th of October with the two dogs in tow. They had a wonderful trip from Guatemala with much attention and support lavished upon them by airport and airline staff. I'm sure Caroline drew many eyes as she apparently spent hours walking them through the LA and Munich airports during her long layovers. When they arrived in Sarajevo, we could hear Sophie barking for quite a while, long before we saw her. It was very exciting to bring them home.

They have been getting quite a bit of attention here in Sarajevo as well. The park right by our house is full of people, dogs being walked, and congregating pigeons. Maya in particular loves the pigeons. Yesterday, in the public walking zone, men kept calling to them and saying Sitz! Sitz! Did they think they were German dogs?

These pictures are from right before they left Caroline's house in Guatemala.

The Top 100 Books Of All Time

I love to find these lists of the "greatest" books. I picked up this one at my bookclub today and knew I could find it online.

How many have you read?
Do you have a favorite?

More importantly, do you have a different list of the best books?

My international book club.

Everything is so much more interesting here - even my Book Club. Everything I attend is like a mini-United Nations. Have I already said that? For instance - at my book club today there was a woman from Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Holland, Canada, Bosnia, Iran, and two other Americans. As you can imagine, this makes the discussion much richer. Today we discussed The Kite Runner.

Our upcoming books are The Fortress by Mesa Selimovic, The Three Arched Bridge by Ismail Kadare, The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle and Blood Brothers by Elias Chakour. I love discovering new authors so I am very happy. If you've read any of these books, I'd love to hear your opinion.

Also recommended is the book Fran's War by Sally Trench which looks particularly interesting to me.

Qi Gong

I was invited to start attending a Qi Gong class for 9 weeks. Today was the first day. My lungs are in horrible shape and have been since I had serious pneumonia as a pre-teen. Qi Gong is supposed to be particularly good for people with asthma and many people end up being able to go off their medication all together. What a miracle that would be! There were 5 of us students and it was very interesting as the doctor of Chinese medicine showed us the first 2 movements. Basically you do a movement as you breathe in a particular way - concentrating on expanding your diaphragm downwards and relaxing your shoulders. You breathe in very deeply, expanding your diaphragm downwards, then hold your breath for some period of time, and then breathe out through your nose very silently. I kept having to hyperventilate until I shortened the period of time for the breathing once she told us to move at our own pace. It will be interesting to see how it goes over the next few weeks.

Below is information from a website discussing various forms of eastern medicine:

"The word Qigong breaks into Qi and Gong: Qi = vitality, energy, life force, Gong = practice, cultivate, refine; Qigong = to cultivate and refine through practice one's vitality or life force. The Chinese believe that the primary mechanism that is triggered by the practice of Qigong is a spontaneous balancing and enhancing of the natural healing resources in the human system. Over thousands of years millions of people have benefited from these practices believing that improving the function of the Qi maintains health and heals disease.

In the paradigm of mechanistic Western science, the practice of Qigong triggers a wide array of physiological mechanisms which have profound healing benefits. It increases the delivery of oxygen to the tissues. It enhances the elimination of waste products as well as the transportation of immune cells through the lymph system. And it shifts the chemistry of the brain and the nervous system. You can find a summary of the many physiological mechanisms that are initiated by the practice of Qigong in the Information Center."

This is just one of many towns we passed on our way up the coast. Each one looked more intriguing than the last. The islands of the Croatian coast must stretch for over a hundred miles - they were always there in the mist.

The waterfalls of Krka National Park just go on and on - cascading one into the other. The path crosses them at the top through a combination of dirt path and wooden platforms and comes down the far side. At the bottom there is a very long wooden footbridge that crosses over them again. We only got 2 hours in the park and would gladly go back for a whole day.

Trogir is a small island connected by a short bridge to the mainland of Croatia. It has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Besides being very picturesque, it has this very cool castle/fort that you can climb around in and up. Apparently they also hold concerts in the open area that you can see inside the walls.

A picture cannot convey how very very very far up we were. When we looked out the window of our bus we could see nothing but a tiny speck in the distance that might have been a car driving below. These photos make the hill look slanted -believe me, when you're perched up in a bus, it doesn't look slanted at all. It looks straight down!

Supertroopers!

The kids were super-troopers for the whole weekend. Spending 3 days traipsing around old medieval towns is not their cup of tea but you would never have known it!

The Cathedral in Sibenik has these stone carved faces that went all around the whole outside of the church. Every single face is different from the others. It made me wonder whether these were townspeople and instead of "donating a brick" like we do as a building fundraiser today, donated their face!

These are two photos from Sibenik on the Dalmatian Coast. This ended up being my favorite town of all the towns we stopped at. The cathedral is really beautiful inside, but a service was going on so we had to be discreet in our "peering around." The town itself is full of narrow alleyways somewhat like a maze and since we arrived at sunset we got to enjoy them as they look in the picture after nightfall.

I am so proud of Shelby. On our recent trip to Croatia she ordered fish for lunch and got a little more than she bargained for. But she was a trooper and ate the whole thing, just leaving the little fishy carcass...

I would have loved to have been there!

I've always thought I would have loved to have been there to hear Sojourner Truth's famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech - although I understand that there's controversy over whether it is actually an accurate accounting of her speech, including whether or not she ever uttered that now famous phrase, it still is a marvelous speech just brimming with passion.


Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.

Oops...I did it again

I seem to go through the same cycle, time after time. I decide that maybe taking college classes isn't for me and I really don't need a degree anyway. Then as the registration deadline looms, one night I'm possessed and I apply for my classes and order my textbooks all in a fevered rush. Excitement builds until the first week of class as I'm reading over the syllabus and project descriptions, in order to see what I'm in for. As I read over the project descriptions, I start to feel a flutter of panic in my gut (who am I kidding? I have nothing to say on any of these topics? Finally...I'm going to drown in the amount of words that are expected for these papers and the teacher is going to realize that it's all mush.) That would be where I am tonight. What do I know about gynocentrism or first/second wave feminism - not to mention, what the heck is a "choreo-poem"?

Maybe college is meant for the young - for the 18-22 year olds with all their confidence. As I get older, the more I know how much I don't know.

Have You Ever Felt Incredibly Helpless?

I spent a couple hours this afternoon at Roosevelt Hospital's pediatric wing with Sue Wolpert here in Guatemala City. I learned the real meaning of the word "helpless" as I sat by the bedside of this poor 9 year old girl who was in incredible pain. She apparently had had surgery earlier today and blood was seeping out of her wrapped leg at an alarming rate. She just rolled back and forth and moaned and cried out that her foot hurt. Occasionally she would sit up and clutch at it, but that was hard to do. My helplessness had two fronts - one of course was my inability to stop her pain but the second was my inability to understand much of what she wanted. My Spanish has actually gotten pretty good for only being here a year and not being some language wiz, but still I was constantly running down the hall to ask Susy to come and translate.

It's incredible to watch her with the kids. She's so patient and loving and FUNNY. She makes even the ones in the worst pain laugh.

Far worse than sitting there feeling helpless, though, was walking away and knowing that these kids were going to be crying all night, no parents there, and the nurses seemingly uninterested in anything but the most essential of interactions. Susy says that that is the way it is here, but it's hard to watch.

One interesting thing as I was leaving. A mother came up to me and asked me where I was from. When I said that I was from Los Estados Unidos, she said to me "Todo alegre en Los Estados Unidos, Si? I was so puzzled...everything is happy in the United States? I asked Susy about it and she said that there is this myth that everything in the United States is better, happier, richer, etc. etc. Jeff confirms that in this part of the world they almost believe that our streets are paved with gold. No wonder they struggle so hard to get here.

When is a Ham not a Ham?

When it's a "Fresh Ham" of course!

I love ham. I look forward to Easter for all kinds of reasons, but I must admit that one of the biggest reasons is the huge Ham that I'm guaranteed to have on the dinner table. Mmm...

This year, Jeff and I went shopping together well before Easter to make sure that we had everything we needed for our dinner. We were excited to find that we got the last Ham at Price Smart and it was enormous.

The day before Easter, Jeff came to me with a downcast and guilty look on his face. Apparently he had discovered that "Fresh Ham" was not, indeed, Ham at all. It was a huge leg of pork. I, of course, wanted to run right out and see if we could find a Ham somewhere else but Jeff pointed out that this leg of pork was thawed and needed to be cooked!

After consultation with his mom and "Better Homes & Gardens," he came up with a recipe and a plan for cooking this enormous thing. I don't know if it was my low expectations or what, but it was DELICIOUS! So delicious, that I think I'll look for another "Fresh Ham" to serve next time we have a houseful of people.

Although, I must admit, next Easter I will again be on the lookout for a "real" Ham!

Pope John Paul II, 1920-2005

I've been spending so much time watching CNN and FoxNews for coverage of the Pope's imminent demise that you would think that I was someone who had a lifelong fascination with Pope John Paul II. On the contrary, until the day before yesterday I don't think I've given him a thought. But for some reason, the more I watched the last couple of days, the more I wanted to know. I've learned that it's estimated that he met more people in his lifetime than anyone else on earth. He apparently was an unlikely choice for Pope back in 1979 and the media was ill-prepared for his election and had to scramble to come up with information on him. He had a particular love for children and youth and created the Catholic Youth Conferences that sound like they must be huge pep rallies for God and Catholicism.

I think that I will be on the lookout for a good biography about him and I'm starting to regret that I didn't pay more attention to his life and the things that he said and did. I guess I always figured that since I wasn't Catholic, he was irrelevant to my life. Apparently, that's not the case, as he's said to be one of the top 5 or 6 most influential men in the world.

It will be interesting to see who is elected Pope next and I think this time around I will pay more attention - I'm curious to see what his impact will be on the world - Catholic and non-Catholic.

For a pretty comprehensive look at his life and his actions as Pope - go to this article http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050402/D897FNB80.html


Rest in Peace.

Imagine my dismay when our "road to Monterrico" ended at this mangrove swamp. I refused to drive my beautiful car onto this...ahem...ferry and forced my sister to instead. I figured - how mad would Jeff get if SHE drove it into the swamp compared to if I did! 

Dead Bodies

What is it about Jeff, dead bodies and Guatemala? He's seen more dead bodies here than he's ever seen in his life! Well...two...but he'd never seen any before!

The week that we moved here, one of the Wackenhut guards was shot outside of APHIS just before Jeff walked by. He says it doesn't count because "he wasn't dead yet" - but he was practically dead so I'm counting it.

Then yesterday on our drive back from Panajachel we came upon a village where it seemed everyone and their 20 cousins were standing around the street. As we got closer we saw one cop. What I couldn't see, but apparently was all too vivid to Jeff as it was inches from his side of the car, was that there was a dead body in the road with lots of blood.

We've only been here 5 months so I wonder what the next 18 have in store for us!