life is good

yes, beirut. lebanon. and a little bit of istanbul just for shits.  maybe even literally b/c my stomach hasn’t quite recovered from haiti yet. anyway. beirut.

a completely self-indulgent internship: photography. which i realize has nothing to do with economic development, but which i also absolutely love doing. and i’m good at. and the editor of the daily star in lebanon agrees. and i have been hired. i leave in a few hours.

if my writing’s as good he says he’ll consider publishing. i’ve never written journalism-style before, but i think i can do it. well.

i am the luckiest little brown girl this side of the mideast. and i’m extremely excited. see also: mildly terrified. they’re giving me a lot of responsibility based on a few photogs my friend submitted for me. without me knowing. i didn’t even apply. until after the editor had said that he’d seen my photos and to send a resume, etc.

holy moly man the things i get into. i am a lucky lucky one. and i am petrified i’ll mess this up. but even if i do this will be an amazing experience. valuable maybe, is a safer adjective to use there.  

let’s not even get into what mr p thinks of this. of me and my behavior right now. i of course have his blessing b/c i would not go without it. but i am certainly not his favorite little one lately. i should go start packing.  

---

 

 

 so hopefully this’ll be a quick post, because if i don’t fall asleep soon tomorrow’s gonna suck. but i have a feeling it’s gonna be a long night. actually that’s another thing i’m doing tomorrow, is seeing some sleep specialist.. which i’m kinda sketched out about. but anyway.

 i guess my detox ended officially about 5 seconds ago. i poured myself a glass of reisling. not b/c i want it, but in a last-ditch effort to make myself fall asleep.

sad? schwhatever. if it works i won’t be sad at all.

 

so my last night in haiti was intense. since no white tourists in their right minds go to haiti, it’s just haitian elite playing around. mildly sickening, but i’m not gonna lie. i had fun with them. first i made fun of them, but after they offered bottle after bottle of aged rum, i accepted them as decent people. our last night in Haiti was  spent away from the hospital, and included the King of Nepal’s nephew, Steve Green’s daughter, some ambassadors, and i don’t even know who else. i just know at one point i was in a pool with about 20 naked people, 6 or 7 of which were having sex, discussing my future plans in study abroad with a 30-year-old italian woman. (one of the 6 or 7).

i stayed sober for most of this fiasco, which may have been a mixed blessing.

“To be honest, I didn’t care for most of the crowd that night. They all seemed kind 
of plastic and superficial, even though it was kinda cool they were 
from all over the world.

nonetheless, I had a great  time, partly because it was kind of a surreal, once-in-a-lifetime,
situation, living the lifestyle of the rich and famous”..a lifestyle i would never. ever. want for myself.

you’d get bored with your fake friends, too much sex and too many drugs. not for me.

 

anyway.

 

alright so i’ve rambled all my thoughts into a journal and i’m set now. just need to figure out a way to beirut.

bonne nuit.

so i haven’t had real internet access in a while. i keep going on random 3-day trips here and there so idk when i will. i’m still mildly jobless and probably will be until i stop constantly leaving town. i’ve been mooching. it’s been lovely. i’m interviewing with a temp agency in the city next week though and i start my volunteer work in the nyc next wednesday, so the laziness will have to end. it’s sooo cold here. technically i guess it’s in the 90s, but i’m still freezing. anyway. i put up the haiti pics on facebook. i’m gonna go back and edit the bad ones out, -just wanted to get them up for people. alright i gotta go give mama chuang her computer back. sorry if this is a really boring post - i was on that 6am wake-up schedule for a while, which was great. but after a week with ev my sleep schedule’s back to being really messed up. or nonexistent. we slept from 7am to noon today. i don’t know how she lives like this. but then i don’t really understand how i’m still alive sometimes. anyway. i had a lot of little realizations after haiti. not in a good way either. i was in ithaca yesterday listening to a girl whine about the design of her ruby/diamond ring. normally, even on an non-moralixtic/righteous day this type of conversation would make me want to vomit, but this tine i just couldn’t stop thinking about how that is one of the last things in the world that matters. it’s things like that. - just feeling a little moralistic/righteous right now. and definitely appreciating running water/clean drinking water quite a bit. still sickly though. but eh. -nowhere near as bad as at HAS. that one was a doozy.

do i sleep? not so much. does the word ’stable’ have any business being associated with my mood lately? not so much. times 2. rambles are coming. back-dated rambles. Bonjou zamis mwen! Vini Ayiti se yon baguay anpil anpil. Anyway, so Haiti was amazing. Tragic, gorgeous, a little warm and amazing. Pretty much one of the best things I’ve ever experienced. and No worries, Deschepelles is very safe. No comment on Port. Everyone there goes “Les Blans Les Blans!” when we walked down the road, and most ask for money or try to get it from you. It helps that we have none, And after you get past the money/asking for things, everyone’s really nice. The town of deschapelles basically is the hospital. So when i had written this we had repainted/reparied 3 houses in the village of L’escale, which is where TB patients go so that they can be monitored as far as medication and basic health care goes. ‘Basic health care’ here, is a different thing than I’ve ever seen. We also get the chance to attend dr’s meetings and we did some filing. also some work with reforestation. farming - or agronomy, is freaking difficult work. We live with doctors and meet a lot of others, and from what I’ve heard/read/seen, modern medecine is far far away from this country. (yea i’ll be switching in and out of presesnt tense..). I’ll write more later. Lot’s to say. But no free time really. and any ‘free’ time that we do have we pass out during. It’s a 6am wake-up each day with some manual labor and some heat. It’s not quite a pampered resort but I’m pretty sure everyone loves it. And even when we don’t - there’s NO complaining. When everyone within a 10 mile radius has MDR-TB, HIV, orange hair and pencil arms from malnutrition - you think twice about all the “I’m starving” or “I’m dying” comments/complaints. no/not much running water and access to food…clean water..etc. Yea there’s been some appreciation slash moral righteousness going on. The whole work group is amazing. Great people. HAS in general attracts some great people. I’ve been the weak link. At least I feel like the weak link. The reason I found a computer and am writing to you now is b/c I can’t give blood and we got the afternoon - or a few hours of it off to go do that. I spent the past 24 hours puking in a toilet which 10 men have…utilized. There is no flushing. maybe once a day. It was either the food or a reaction to the malaria pills. or dehydration or bad water or some combination thereof. There was a scabies-scare and there are spots of my body that scare the TB patients. But all in all life is absolutely amazing. I’ve gotta go now b/c there are doctors waiting for the computers and they perhaps have some more important things to look-up. Also, it’s time for pill-counting and grant-work until the others are done blood-giving. Alrighty. ps - this started out as an email to mr P, so there’ll be a bit more about debauchery and other whatnots later.

the weather rocks here. rocks. mr p. was in a gang. he always said ‘gang’ and i was always just like “nono, you mean like a club or a group of friends - the word ‘gang’ has different connotations”, but then i did some research and then called him today and asked for real, cause he has this gang tattoo that i didnt know was for gangs and prison members, and he was like ‘i told you i was in a gang’. i know nothing about his life…lives.   i’m hanging out with a gang this weekend. sketchy sketchy..     i need to find a way to hawaii. if i do, E has a cottage and covers the rest and even found me a job for 2 weeks waitressing unless i volunteer with her. and while i would love to, volunteering doesn’t pay and i can’t be so jobless. swimming there’s out, b/c mr p. says that if i can swim to hawaii i can swim the other half of the way to china and he won’t give me the frequent flier miles. plus i’ve been skipping out on practice a whooole lot lately.   i’m a sketchy sketchy little one. i’ve started disappearing again. it happens. life is good. the weather. oooohhh the sun. it makes stressful things and bad news matter less.  T’s baby #2 is a boy!!! i told her stomach to ‘be a boy be a boy’ a whole bunch of times and she texted me today and told me that it worked. i’m an aunt (more like a semi-related second cousin..) but i like aunt better. auntie steph. besides trying to get the ’second cousins’ to say “second-cousin steffi” is soo much harder. from now on i’m gonna work on ’steph’ or ‘aunt steph’. we’ll see…

life is good. life is sketchy. i’m so tired. all the time.

bonne nuit bonne nuit.  

 

Capricorn, You are all set to head off in a new direction, for you see the potential and you know
how you can make the most of it. Still, something holds you in place, preventing you from
bolting forward, especially if it involves love. You aren’t really interested in the
quick fix. You want long term solutions and relationships that can stand the test of
time. Slow your pace and temper your excitement for the best results.

LIFE IS SOO GOOD.

but i won’t have time to write about it til at least next week. mon-wed i will be going crazy with all the work i missed b/c i had the flu during midterms, and thurs-sun EV comes from NY!!!

costa rica. crazy scholarship program that i had so little chance of getting. this should buy me at least another semester at school. xiamen. NB talks. and i think health-or closer to health there, which means less worry here. babies and second-cousins. i love my family. my best friend. the summer? the summer. AHHHHH.  

Pura Vida.

burnt out. at the same time so excited. 

studying? the books closed on thursday. not that i haven’t been busy busy and working learning. AHHHHH.

need a shower. need to pick out the dreads. grocery shop. put my car back. get a phone that works. spin. yoga. study for chinese midterm. find spring break plans. find $300 and a way to make sure ‘george’ gets some bad karma…’george’.  Need to read contagious capitalism. write an essay about it. by monday. see also: need to purchase the book. need to find a store that’s not sold out of it.

soo very very much to do. but really i need to sleep cause nothing gets done when i’m a wandering tired little brown crackhead. useless. sleepless.

wan an for now.

   So.

   Between the bags full of UJB’s unwanted dvds, and the dvd player Sis gave me for my birthday, our room has turned into the hide-away for all the people who don’t want to go out on the weekend. It’s great. 

   Back at school now, and it’s busy busy. I’m ready for it though, even mildly excited. Though the credit hours somehow managed to creep back up into the maximum allowable range again.. It’s fine though, cause I wasn’t planning on leaving my room much this semester. See also: the Library. I’ll swim and I’ll grocery shop, maybe even start running again. I’ll do photo when I have ‘the chance’, etc. but ‘going out’ - that won’t be fitting in to my hermit lifestyle. The same hermit lifestyle I had planned for last semester before it was corrupted by friends and social lives and other things that don’t deserve blog-space. but this time, is different. All my friends are studying abroad or have graduated. - not an exaggeration: ALL of them. and, thank goodness no one reads this blog, b/c I can say that I’m…definitely more than 50% happy about that.

Don’t get me wrong, my friends are great. and after an entire semester friendless i’m sure i’ll get lonely, but…can’t say that i’m not really really looking forward to being left to my hermitting.

   sigh. I wish I had had more time for..everything before school started. My NY friends are still on break for another week and I’ve already turned in my first assignments. But I can’t complain - I had an amazing and relaxing break. I’ve been trying to figure out where to put everything and how all the even mildly-breakable things are going to survive dorm-life, as most non-plastic things don’t last too long around here..

   Anyway, I should go and do some more work. I’m figuring out my summer. my future. and i’m excited. Excited. See Also: mildly scared. - I don’t want to handle things..wrong.ly, I’m not sure how to handle things…right.ly, and i don’t want to come off as an incompetent little girl who can’t handle anything.   

   At the same time I realize that I am in fact incompetent - I’ve taken maybe 3 or 4 courses that hold mild relevance and have no experience whatsoever. But that’s what this time of life is I guess. that’s what all the applications and the internships are - they’re working on making me less and less incompetent. I just want to give it my best shot.

    So that’s the latest stress. I think my plan is to do some more economics homework until I can get a bit of help going over things. So I’m still working on the summer plans..

   So.

wow i just scrolled down, and this is not so much an ‘online journal’, as it is a collection of mid-morning whinings about sleeplessness. i thought i was holding back on that too - 5am last night i was tempted to sign on.. what i really want to do at that point is see someone/talk to someone - get some reassurance that i am not the only conscious human. whining to a real person would maybe be more gratifying but i feel like i’d run out of friends after a bit - at least ones willing to pick up their phones. and so i blog. and maintain some friendships. thank you blog.com.