Friday, December 23, 2011

23/12/11

Peace Corps Mozambique suffered a terrible tragedy this week:

http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.media.press.view&news_id=1934

Thursday, December 15, 2011

15/12/11

The other day I was in a public restroom when the toilet just suddenly flushed while I was still on it. Automatic toilets. I forgot about those. My reaction was probably something out of a movie, momentary pure surprise and terror.
My friends keep making fun of the comments I make. I’ll say things like “it’s so weird how people write the month first, then the day second in a date” and my friends make fun of me because I say these things as if I never took part in them. My friend was going to the grocery store and asked if I wanted to come. I forgot that I hadn’t been to a real grocery store yet. By the end she told me she would just wait in line until I was done wandering around in wonder. I forgot that grocery stores here sell really cheap sushi—it’s amazing! And the variety in America is absurd, why in the world do there need to be 12 different variations of baked beans? They are all pretty tasty though. And what’s craziest to me I how cheaply you can buy any kind of food—spaghetti and meatballs, casserole, potato salad, sandwiches—already made and ready to eat. I was raving about how amazing it is that you can buy a slice of pizza that’s ready to eat for so cheap. “Think about it! Think about how much work went into that one slice of pizza! Someone has to take care of the cow and then make the cheese, someone had to make the dough, someone had to pick and cut the vegetables! And in the end you pay less than $2 for the slice!” My friend responded, “yeah. That’s why whenever you yell ‘America!’ everyone responds ‘**** yeah!’”
At a rest stop in New York I got to spin around in the first snow I had seen in almost three years, since maybe February 2009. And I made and threw a long-awaited snowball.
Speaking of accents, the Boston accent is really hard to understand when you haven’t heard it in two years.