07.17.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:30 am by Crystal Graber
by Kahlil Gibran; taken from The Prophet
And facing the people again, he raised his voice and said:
People of Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you.
Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I must go.
We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.
Even while the earth sleeps we travel.
We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.
Brief were my days among you, and briefer still the words I have spoken…
… I go with the wind, people of Orphalese, but not down into emptiness…
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07.10.09
Posted in Life and the happenings there of at 8:22 am by Crystal Graber
the months are past and finally I comes to the last weeks and days of my long year in Germany. While there have been many good things, I am very much looking forward to going home. In honor of that sentiment, I thought I would share a list of things I will definitely not miss.
- picking up after children
- hearing children screaming (at each other, at their toys, at their parents, etc)
- being misunderstood bc i don’t use the correct words
- being corrected on my grammer
- cream sauce. on everything.
-potatoes. as many as the irish. and i don’t particularly like potatoes to begin with
-the lack of spinach, and complete lack of fresh spinach
- the program committee. they have been the bane of my life and are tormenting me down to the last week here, but very soon i will never, ever have to talk to them again, reason with them, or explain why i think they should close down a slave-labor program which has resulted in severe emotional trauma for multiple people
- washing windows, over and over and over…
- having everyone assume that if something went wrong or was done incorrectly, it was my fault
- having everyone assume i don’t know what i am doing and offer “helpful” critiques (usually contridicting each other)
- the only english on tv being news
- my host parents fighting
- lunch time dynamics. seriously, if lunch has been at 12:30 for the last 30 years, why can NONE of the germans (yet all of us foreigners) make it to lunch on time? i thought they were supposed to be punctual people. but they spend the first 15 minutes of lunch yelling at each other about being late.
- spiders
- stale cereal
- being unable to drive, not having a car, AND being 3 miles from the nearest train station
- working in the same house i live in, and therefore never really being off the clock
- oma ordering me around during my free time and breaks
- the sexism which assumes i need a man to move a trampoline, and i ought to clear then men’s dishes from the table, and so much more
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07.04.09
Posted in Life and the happenings there of at 4:41 am by Kaihaku
Ugh, I just got back from the Fourth of July party at the American Embassy in Phnom Penh… My family has strong military ties and I was immersed in that atmosphere growing up, so I have strong memories of the Fourth of July. In regards to music, the holiday evokes memories of Sousa and songs like God Bless America and America the Beautiful. That was what I had expected to hear at the Embassy. Since we are so far from home, literally on the opposite side of the world, I also expected to hear some sentimental singing at the Embassy today, classic rock and country… From what Carol has told me, that was what happened last year; indeed, the Marine Corp Band apparently quite got into their performance. This year the Embassy commissioned an Asian band for the holiday which sang..I suppose it would be classified as ‘hip-hop’. The low point of the evening was when the Band performed My Humps. I was stunned. It was a shameful presentation before an international audience. Most of the songs performed were explicit to some extent. Aside from music, there was a hot dog eating contest, a dunking booth for ambassadorial staff, a promotional raffle for local businesses, and a show by circus performers from Bangkok. The evening did end up being a positive one because of time spent with good companions far from the blaring speakers and disgraceful music. I’m glad that I had an opportunity to observe how a United States Diplomatic Mission presents itself in a socially conservative state. It was enlightening in many ways.
Regardless, Happy Fourth, everyone.
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