Seeing the Sights

Soon I'll be leaving for a weekend in DC, where I will be attending the wedding of a longtime friend in Maryland.

I'm feeling a little ambiguous about the wedding itself - only two of our friends will also be attending, one with her family (husband and two kids) and the other one, my last single friend, is a bridesmaid so won't be around much. And since the wedding is not in our hometown -- it is, in fact, halfway across the country -- so aside from my friend's family and our two old friends, there won't be many people there who I will know.

Add to this the fact that I'm so incredibly socially awkward that at my own brother's wedding last month, surrounded by family and people I've known most of my life, I still spent quite a bit of time either standing awkwardly alone in a corner or following my sister around like a shadow.

So despite the fact that I love my friend and I'm extremely happy for her, I'm not particularly looking forward to the wedding part of the trip.

However, all is not lost!
 
I'm not completely dreading the entire trip, just the wedding part, thanks to my sister. She happens to also live in DC, and since I have a day and a half open for sightseeing, she has volunteered to play tour guide for me.

I'm super excited about this part of the trip because I've never been to DC before and there's so much to see there! It's such a fascinating city, a mix of the old and new. There are sights of great historical importance around every corner, but people currently making history also call the city home.

Right now I'm researching everything to decide the places I most want to visit, which only serves to make me even more excited.

I love traveling and visiting new places, and DC is crammed full of historic, important, or just plain beautiful places and things to see.

The hardest part is going to be narrowing it down to the little I can squeeze into such a small amount of time.

My friend arranged a monument tour the evening before the wedding, so I imagine that will cram in the National Mall and most of the monuments.

I know I definitely want to see the White House and visit the Capitol, so if those are not included on the tour I'll have my sister take me. Fortunately for me she's lived there for a long time and has played tour guide for visiting relatives and friends many a time, so she knows all the tricks.


At the top of my list is the Library of Congress, of course. Then come a museum or two, definitely the Newseum, and beyond that I'm a little hazy. There's nothing else really of pressing importance that I'm just dying to see, and there is so much to see and do in DC that it's hard to pick just a few things if you're not dying to visit.

Clearly this will require some more thought...

My Favorite Experience in Kabul

For the last day of Eid, since I was alone at the school while everyone else went home for the holiday, my favorite student who fortunately for me lives in Kabul invited me to her home. It had been a little boring being at the school all by myself for a week, but shortly before everyone left I had caught a really bad cold so it worked out pretty well because I spent most of that week in bed recovering, and then was fine by the time Eid rolled around and I got to go to Maryam's home.


My student Maryam is twelve and her mother, Amina, is only about a year older than me (28 or 29) and incredibly kind. Amina and I clicked immediately and I had a really good time at their house. Even though Maryam is the only one in the family who really speaks English I had no trouble communicating with Amina even when Maryam wasn't in the room to translate. Thanks to my little bit of Dari and her little bit of English, we made it work.

 Maryam is the oldest child with four younger siblings (two boys and two girls, who are the youngest), who are all really sweet. Particularly the youngest girl. I felt bad though, when we were laying on the mats against pillows watching TV, she kept sitting down next to me and cuddling up to me and sharing my pillow, and would occasionally say something to me. Only my Dari is so terrible that I couldn't understand her, so I had to keep saying "Nehmi fahmam," which means "I don't understand," and smile. I smiled a lot this summer. I had only intended to spend the day there, but when it was time to go home Maryam begged me to stay so I spent the night as well and went home the next morning. When I left, Amina, Maryam's mother, thanked me for coming and told me to please think of their home as my home while I was in Afghanistan.

Other than just because I absolutely love Maryam's family, this was my favorite experience from the summer because it was the only time I was able to spend time with a regular Afghan family and see how they live, what daily life is like. I treasure that experience because I'm well aware that it is one most foreigners would never get in Afghanistan, even in Kabul.

Also, I got to wear my brand new beautiful punjabi that was a gift from my best friend from the school. Traditionally Afghans get new clothes for Eid, and rather coincidentally I ended up only taking this to a tailor a couple weeks before the holiday so it turned out to be my Eid clothes, just like Afghans get.

BTW, that was the most comfortable thing I've ever worn. Way more comfortable than any pajamas I've ever owned, which until now had been the most comfortable thing I've ever worn. If I do end up going back I'm investing in a ton of these.

 

Seriously, how could you not love this kid?

Fresh fruit and lunch in one of Kabul's 'hidden gardens'

A few weeks ago I spent a quiet afternoon in the lovely garden belonging to a friend of some of the students at the school where I volunteer. To thank her for inviting us as well as for all the help she's given them in the past, the girls decided to cook lunch for her. 

I can't cook, but these girls certainly can. So I stayed out of the way and photographed them instead, and then took a walk around the garden.

Most homes in Afghanistan are surrounded by a high wall with a gate for entrance in order to protect the modesty of the women of the family. Inside these walls are the home and nearly always a garden bursting with fruit and flowers.  It provides an outside space for the women, and also a source for fresh fruit. After all, it doesn't get much fresher than just plucked off a tree a few steps from the door!

 The kitchen window looks out onto a trellis heavily laden with grapes, and beyond that a flower, herb, and fruit garden.

 One of the best parts of Kabul is all the different kinds of mouth-wateringly delicious fruits that grow in these backyard gardens. These are apples, but also common are apricots, grapes, blackberries, peaches, and many others.

 

 The yummy finished product - our meal was just as delicious as it looks!

 

I just realized that I haven't even updated this blog for ages. Not that it really matters, because no one follows me, but I figured I might as well.

I ended up in Kabul after all, and that's where I am as I write this. I'm volunteering at a girls' school in exchange for room and board, and supposed to be doing my thesis research but haven't actually done much of that yet.

So instead of getting some work done, here are some pictures I've taken since I've been here.

It's been a while, and a lot has changed. Most significantly: I am going to Afghanistan after all. My parents changed their tune and decided to lend me the money for the trip, so I leave in a week for the wilds of Afghanistan. Or, more accurately, the chaos that is Kabul. I can't wait, but there's still so much to do before I can leave!

Afghanistan Update

Where I will not be this summer.

I didn't get ANY of the three fellowships I applied for, so it looks like I will not be heading to Kabul this summer after all...

I could not possibly express how disappointed I am. I was really looking forward to this experience, not to mention the fact that my degree depended on pulling off this project. It was going to be an amazing project, too! And I was really looking forward to living with and mentoring the Afghan students, as well as telling their stories.

Now I guess I'll have to come up with some stupid thesis topic and do that instead. Which I have absolutely no interest in, and therefore no motivation to do it. Basically, I'm putting off graduating by a semester for nothing now, without this project.

Also there goes my "experience living and working in a developing country" that I was hoping to leverage into a job next fall.

Out Beyond Ideas

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing,
there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase
each other
doesn't make any sense.

-Rumi

Lives of great people all remind us, we can make our lives sublime,
and, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Although as long as I've got this platform, I'm going to use it to vent. I'm waiting to hear back about one of the fellowships I applied for; I had emailed the woman in charge to ask when we would find out about it and she responded that all applicants would be notified by the week of 3/12. That's today. So I assumed that I would be notified Friday, and subsequently spent all day in front of my computer, staring at my inbox, willing that email to show up.

It didn't.

So I assumed that it instead meant that I would find out today. Inbox-watching resumes.

Still no email.

So apparently "by the week of" means "anytime during that week, and quite possibly after it," because that's just the way my luck goes.

Grrrrrr!

I NEED to find out if I received this fellowship because I can't officially make a call on whether this trip will happen until I know if I can pay for it, which I won't know until I find out about this fellowship.

And I desperately need to start knocking out all the small little details like buying plane tickets as soon as possible, but I can't do that until I've officially accepted the volunteer position with the NGO in Kabul, which I can' t do until I know if I'll actually be there for certain.

So I'm going slightly insane at the moment. I hate having everything up in the air like this. I'm not an impulsive person. I hate surprises. I'm a planner. I stay sane by planning out every detail so there are no surprises. However, until I know WTF is going to happen in my future, I can't plan anything and it is making me crazy.

It's bad enough that I'll be returning from Afghanistan in September with no home, no job, and no money. That is already keeping me up nights. I don't need all this extra tension too.

It's been a while...

Both since I last updated and since I've posted any of my old photos from Afghanistan. Which is rather odd considering how much Afghanistan has been on my mind while planning for this summer's stay. So in honor of my upcoming second amazing (hopefully; and hopefully I won't be using another adjective to describe it once I return) experience there, I'm posting one of my favorite photos from my last trip. These are students at a girls' school we visited in Kabul.

Still trying to figure out Afghanistan; crazy busy with schools, fellowship applications, job applications, family stuff, money troubles, and life in general.

So instead, here is another photo of the desert.

It's an appropriate metaphor for my life right now, anyway.

I'm feeling much better now. Things are finally starting to come together, and I'm moving forward on planning my trip to Afghanistan. I might be getting some money back from the university from a screw-up regarding one of my classes last summer, which obviously is something I am in desperate need of. Another scholarship to provide funding for travel has come up, so obviously I'm going to apply. The only problem with that is that I'm pretty sure one of my friends/classmates is also applying and she stands a much better chance of getting it.

But we'll see.

Right now I'm just happy to be back on track!

Update:

So, the professor who also happens to be my committee chair hates me, I'm on academic probation due to the two Incompletes currently on my record, I have an insanely high credit card bill with the penalty APR kicking my monthly bills into the supremely-unaffordable range, things are not looking good for my trip to Afghanistan this summer, I've got my parents on my case about the expensive MacBook Pro they just bought me without realizing just how expensive it was EVEN THOUGH I KEPT TELLING THEM HOW EXPENSIVE IT WAS, Persian class has gotten ridiculously hard and my friend who tutored me last term is gone, and to sum up:

my life sucks.

Desert Beauty

Christmas is not complete without a baby cousin to play with

I am now the proud new owner of a MacBook Pro, which I am over the moon about. I've been in desperate need of a new computer for the past year now, and my parents finally decided to take pity on me and buy it for me, since there is absolutely no way I could ever afford it on my own.

As a result, I'm just now getting my photos from Christmas loaded, and couldn't resist sharing a few of my favorite shots of my 1-year-old cousin Severin, just because he's so absolutely adorable.