Italy Day 1: Arrival in Siena

Just to confuse you all, while Petra is currently in Haiti, I (Erika) am in Italy visiting my sister Lisa.

After a 2-day delay thanks to snow storms in Europe, and a rather yucky long flight on an old Delta plane with inedible food and unwatchable movie screens, my mother and I flew into Rome. We made a swift and heroic trip across Rome on public transit, successfully purchased tickets and found the right track twice, and proudly took a bus from the Rome station to Siena.

This of course meant we got to drive through the Tuscan countryside. Notable sites included hilltop and cliff-clinging towns, green green harvested fields, lots of rain, sheep, umbrella trees and tall pointy trees, crumbly stone and brick buildings, geometric vineyards, and very rolling hills.

By mid-afternoon we had arrived safely in the center of Siena, where my twin sister Lisa greeted us. We spent the rest of the afternoon dragging our bags up and down the very steep hills of the city, first to Lisa’s apartment, which was modern and moldy and cold, then to Lisa’s friend’s apartment. We are staying at her friend’s place since he’s away visiting relatives, and because his place is clean and warmer and more spacious, has a view from the back garden directly onto the old city walls, and is conveniently right by the Porto Camomille, one of the main gates of the old city.

Warmer is a relative term, though: I am so unimpressed by Italian building standards, tending as they do towards making houses as miserably cold and damp and unheatable as possible, with incredibly high ceilings and huge plate windows and damp plaster walls and solid marble floors. It is consistently colder inside than out. I suppose that’s nice in the summer, but not now. I am incurably cold.

As we were too wiped by travel to cook, we had dinner at a family-style restaurant Lisa frequents, named Fonte Giusta. We ate some truly amazing food. And then off to blissful, long-awaited sleep.

hello from Haiti

It’s the end of my fifth day in Haiti, and so far everything is going well. I spent the first full day working in the pharmacy end of a mobile clinic in Cinnieas, a tent city of 18,000 in the suburbs of Port-Au-Prince. Beyond a variety of coughs, colds, psycho-social conditions related to stress and trauma, and the ever-present malnutrition, the main ailments are worms, vaginal yeast infections, and UTIs. Given the atrocious sanitation infrastructure, this is hardly surprising. We treated about 200 people and went through what felt like pounds of amoxicillin, mebendazole, and anti-fungal creams. It’s wonderful to make such a direct and immediate positive impact on people. At the same time, it’s infuriating that so many people are suffering unecessarily from conditions that are so easy not only to treat, but to prevent.

The second day, I spent a lot of time in a four-wheel drive truck bouncing from one end of the city to the other attending meetings and collecting a donation of medicines from Americares at their airport warehouse. The remaining days have been variations on the first two. The traffic combined with the poor roads exponentially increases the amount of time it takes to run simple errands, as do breakdowns in infrastructure (Gas, for example, are in short supply: it took visiting 12 or 13 gas stations over two days to find a place to fill the truck!). Consequently, we get up at 5:30-6:00 AM every day in order to allow enough time for mishaps and delays. I am keeping my journal consistently, but each day is a bit incomplete because I've fallen asleep with pencil in hand every night so far!

Haiti is a beautiful country. I love the weather, and the stars at night are absolutely clear and lovely. The food is excellent: lots of rice and beans and thick stews of meat and vegetables. The people have been nothing but lovely, warm, and generous. I'm having an intense experience, but so far it's good. Tomorrow we will throw a Christmas party for the orphans in nearby Camp Toto, with food, singing, games, and a few gifts: namely, blankets for the cool nights. From the tent city next door, I can hear strands of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing," in Creole.

My internet connection is to slow to upload photos, but I will start posting as soon as I return. In the meantime, my Facebook profile has a link to a friend’s album. He has just returned from working here in Haiti with ESF, and we overlapped for a few days. More photos coming soon.

Petra's going to Haiti!

Exciting news! I (Petra) will be volunteering in Haiti over the holidays with Explorers Sans Frontiers. I’m excited both about the good work I’ll be able to help do, and with what an amazing opportunity this internship provides for me.

Starting tomorrow, the work I’ll be doing in Port Au Prince will be twofold: Firstly, I’ll be assisting at a mobile medical clinic, observing and acting as an extra set of hands. The health concerns are huge, and they need all the help they can get to assist and educate the populace. I’m grateful to be able to help people in such immediate need. Secondly, I’ll be serving as an institutional consultant, applying my experiences from World Vision to streamline their administrative practices and help set up an office base to help make their work more efficient and effective. As a small and new organization, I hope that my input will make a big difference for ESF and, through them, for Haitian people into the future.

This is such a great opportunity for me for a number of reasons: in order to advance my international affairs career, experience in multiple regions is a huge bonus, as is multiple language environments. My previous experience has been in the development side of international work, so having experience with the disaster relief / humanitarian aid / medical side of things will be invaluable. The very small grassroots structure of ESF is a useful organizational contrast to the enormity of World Vision. And in the interests of being closer to most of my family and friends, I’m exploring working in the closest place to the US where great need (i.e. abject poverty) exists.

It should be quite the adventure. I’m somewhat daunted and very much excited. Check back here starting Dec. 20th or so for updates from the road, though if you don't hear from me don't worry: I'll be very busy. I'll tell you all about it as soon as I can.

Happy Holidays 2010!

I think it’s been about three years since our last holiday letter, so we have a bit of ground to cover! If I recall correctly, we left of at Christmas 2007, having just returned from volunteering in New Orleans for the fall.

First thing in 2008, we moved to Melbourne, Australia. Erika attended the University of Melbourne for a postgraduate degree in Philosophy, focusing on environmental ethics. She loved her job there, teaching and tutoring students in the Philosophy of Biology. Petra worked for World Vision Australia, a Christian international development and humanitarian aid organization, and not only loved her work but made some great friends amongst her colleagues.

We both enjoyed being near Petra’s Aussie relatives, and spent most of our social time with cousins. We had fun taking short trips to the Dandenong mountain ranges east of the city with their towering mountain ash trees and giant fern trees and elusive lyre birds; the Great Ocean Road southeast of the city with its tiny fishing towns and glorious cliffs; a big trip up north to Queensland with Petra’s parents where we basked in the tropical splendor and snorkeled amazedly amidst the teeming life of the Great Barrier Reef; and a few beautiful weeks in New Zealand where Erika’s sister and mom met us for hiking. The wonderful people around us in Oz, the fascinating and beautiful natural world of Australia, the amazingly humane standards of living there, and its mild weather combined to make a truly great year. We look forward to returning to Australia in a few years’ time.

Through her work at World Vision, Petra was offered a position dually with World Vision Thailand and the Australian version of the Peace Corps. So, first thing in 2009, we moved to Bangkok. Petra’s job was in Anti-human-trafficking: she mainly led workshops training staff in the small local offices around rural Thailand and Cambodia about how to integrate anti-trafficking goals into their existing programs. As part of this work, she not only learned Thai very well and got to travel around the Mekong region regularly, but also fell in love with Monitoring and Evaluation, the nerdy quality assurance side of NGO management. Human trafficking is of course a heartbreaking problem, and Petra struggled to keep her optimism in the face of the extremes of human suffering.

Erika spent the year volunteering as a children’s and adult’s English and Music teacher at a UNHCR refugee center in the center of Bankgok. The refugees came from not only Thailand’s neighboring countries, but also places of strife like Somalia, the Congo, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Iraq. The cultural, religious, and linguistic mishmash combined with their broad span of life histories (subsistence farmers to elite politicians) made the center the most truly diverse community we had ever experienced. This diversity, while usually delightful, often made teaching a challenge. Additionally, the center was under-resourced and went through a number of major staff changes throughout the year, leading to significant management and oversight gaps. With the help of Petra, ex-patriot friends, and volunteers from the refugee community, Erika took on a number of extra satisfying projects, including renovating, cleaning, and painting the derelict classrooms and public spaces of the center.

Living in Thailand was generally fascinating, surprising, and tiring. We loved the food (Petra LOVED the fruit, Erika the curries and soups), the architecture, the Buddhist animist religious environment, the playfulness of the Thai people, and the many dear friends we made. In addition to Petra’s regular work trips, we also vacationed in Chiang Mai, an ancient walled city in the northern mountains, where we meditated in temples, participated in the annual water festival, enjoyed the Hmong handicrafts, mountain-biked, rode elephants, and went rafting; in the islands in the Gulf of Thailand, where we slept in hammocks strung between trees on the beach, ate lots of spicy fish, and where Erika fell dangerously in love with scuba diving; in the Siam Reap area of Cambodia, where we gloried in the Ankor Wat temples and pretended to be Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider, laughed at monkeys, and chatted with the children; and in Bangkok itself, where we shopped in the markets, explored the rivers and canals, admired the palaces and temples, and retreated to the underdeveloped neighborhoods of leafy banana forests and stilt-houses. Of course, we miss all of this now.

It wasn’t all glorious, though. It was really, really sweatily hot all the time (which Petra loved). Our workplaces and the violent political turmoil tested our mettle and morals. We both became ill on a very regular basis, from bad food, bad water, and insect-borne illnesses. Having to grapple against extortion and corruption daily became infuriating. The crowdedness and pollution and infrastructural danger (bare wires, kamikaze buses, etc.) of Bangkok were often very uncomfortable, as was missing our favorite foods (dairy products, bread, etc.). And of course we missed our friends and family from the US and Australia.

A convergence of Petra’s contract ending and her desiring to try for her Masters as well as an especially violent attempted coup in Bangkok led us to move back to the USA in the spring of this year. For the spring and summer, we bounced around visiting family and friends while Petra finished her grad school applications, studied up on Economics and math, and Erika temped and applied for jobs. We got outside a bit for canoeing and hikes and the like, but not nearly as much as we'd wish.

In August we moved into our new apartment on the Upper West Side of New York City, and soon thereafter Petra started her Masters in International Affairs at Columbia University. Since then, Petra’s been studying like crazy, while Erika’s continued temping and applying for jobs. (If you know of any great jobs in international human rights or environmental NGOs in NYC, let Erika know!)

We've enjoyed having a number of visitors this fall, especially the long stay of Petra's cousin Matt from Australia, whom we wished would never leave. Let us know if any of you are planning on being in the city, we'd love to see you!

In a few weeks’ time, over the holidays, Petra will be volunteering in Haiti, while Erika will visit her twin sister’s new home in Italy. More information on these trips will be available on this blog as we travel.

We hope you and yours are well. Wishing you all the blessings of the season.
-Erika and Petra

I have a few blog posts to catch up on…

The past few months have been extrodinarily busy and intense even by our rather extreme standards, and writing is one of the commitments I have had to de-prioritize. I'd love to write more about my travel within Thailand and my experience of the escalating political unrest, the emotional and logistical roller coaster of my last two weeks, the precious interval reconnecting with my wonderful Aussie family, and finally my return to the States and everything that entails: culture shock, life decisions, and all the crisscrossing and travel within the US that we’ve been able to squeeze in to the past two months visiting family and friends (we’re traveling now while we can. Once we start full-time study and work again, we won’t be able to do this for a while). I would like to write a bit more about my work in anti-human trafficking Thailand. I'll post-date these writings to match the blog's chronology, so look back to find them.

I’ll do my best to keep things organized during this series of retroactive posts. In the hopes of eliminating confusion, I offer the following rough chart:
Month Erika Petra
January Bangkok & Boston Bangkok
February Boston & Connecticut (CT) Bangkok & Melbourne
March Boston & CT Melbourne & Boston
April Boston, Amish country, Chicago, NYC, Washington DC, & CT
May Boston, New Hampshire, Maine, & Erika went to Chicago again

Without further ado, I submit the first installment of Petra’s 2010 Blog Catch-up Extravaganza. (Ayuthaya, Nov 2010) Enjoy!

New York, here we come!

Hi everyone! I have all sorts of exciting things to share with you from my last month in Thailand, my weeks in Australia, and my experience coming home to the USA, but that will all have to wait, because I have BIG NEWS to share!

We're moving to NEW YORK CITY!

I've accepted a place at Columbia University to get an MA in International Affairs. It promises to open all the doors I want opened, and should set me up perfectly for my professional future. I'm thrilled! (Can-can dancing around the kitchen to Sinatra's "NY NY" with a glass of proseco in my hand.)

leafing spring

Yes, we are alive. Yes, we are doing things. Specifically, we are figuring out our lives, and traveling around the country while doing so (with reason). More on all that soon.

In the small-scale, I took a walk by the Concord River this afternoon, and was delighted by the appearance of leaves. Photographic evidence, including an ode to a skunk-cabbage:

thank goodness I brought my plastic shoes to Melbourne

Early this week I got a suntan on my arms walking ten minutes to the post office on a cloudy day. You can therefore imagine my surprise when the heavens abruptly opened up today and a ridiculous freak storm of hail and rain flooded all of downtown and brought much of the state of Victoria to a standstill. We're talking serious hail here: most of the hail stones where I was were at least 12 millimeters, and some places saw hail the size of golf balls. This is not quite what one expects from a region currently experiencing its seventh year of drought.

I was in the center of the city when the hail started to fall. I quickly elected to stay put through the worst of the storm (not a tough call to make), boisterously congregating with my fellow shoppers amongst the stationary, souvenir T-shirts, and other odds and ends. The streets flooded. Rubbish bins and milk crates sailed down from Little Bourke street, turning right on Elizabeth and floating smoothly down towards Flinders Street Station. Every shop awning up and down the street began to leak (they're intended mostly to shelter from sunlight).

I found out later that the storm caused a disproportionately significant degree of damage given it's short duration. Hail stones smashed windows and damaged roofs throughout the region, and a number of people were injured when they couldn't get under cover.

Fortunately for me and those I was caught out with, people in our area nothing worse than mild discomfort and chill from literally wading through ice water. There's nothing like a bizzar, widespread, and disruptive but generally harmless shared experience to bring strangers together, and for us the rainstorm and its aftermath were consequently quite fun. Everyone had their phones and cameras out. We took pictures of each other and the half-submurged post boxes, exclaimed as the water level topped the bumper of the poor little Fiat just in front of us, and observed repeatedly how unusual this was for Melbourne.

I do hope the rain keeps up a bit, as Melbourne's water storages are currently at 34.6% of capacity. Much as I appreciate the rain, however, I think I personally will choose to stay out of it.

rebirth and recovery

My mother had a seemingly-successful foot surgery yesterday, and I'm home in CT to help care for her over the next week.

In walking around her yard this afternoon, I spotted some encouraging signs of spring emerging.

It seems fitting to have the world regrowing while her bones are re-knitting.

the cold

Many of you have asked how I am dealing with the cold. It certainly is a big adjustment: Australia was much warmer and drier than New England, and Thailand was a humid 90 degrees every day, 85 degrees every night. I became accustomed to dripping sweat, living in a uniform of flip flops, loose shorts, thin t-shirt, sun hat: at home, often just a bathing suit, to better deal with the heat, and to easier jump in and out of our pool. I never loved the heat, but I became comfortable enough in it's wet melting ease.

I came home to cold cold, 0 degrees F (18 C), cold even by Yankee standards. I have delighted in getting at least the end taste of my beloved Winter, but my body has been blatantly slower to adjust than my tastes.

I noticed first and foremost that the cold has made me very aware of my teeth: they feel harder, more brittle, and each of their flaws are made tactile in the cold air. I imagine they are more white, scoured by the cold and gleaming with the pain of the cold.

I am also very aware of my air passages, down to every branching bronchi of my lungs. They, too, feel purified by the cold air, which feels more like liquid than gas and requires sipping. I am limited by how painful the air is in my lungs: I cannot run, and regret a gasp or deep laugh outside.

My eyes feel delicate in the cold, as if the eyelids are made more thin, the lashes more heavy, the liquid in my eyes thicker. My eyes are tired from squinting to keep out the snowflakes, to keep out the white glare of the sun's reflection on the snow. Salty wind-whipped tears trickle out into the New England crowfeet I am developing.

The cold air is dry, desert dry, which ages my skin, making the skin of my hands look and feel like the skin of my mother's hands. My lips become smooth with dryness, and then harsh and rough and a beautiful pink with chapping, then my lips break open like an overripe peach and bleed, the blood soaked up by the parched skin over which it seeps. Chap stick makes no difference: I consider seeking out bear grease.

The heat that keeps away the cold is also uncomfortable: the oven of radiator-baked old wooden houses, the harsh blasts of warm air from doors when opened, the withering wafts from forced-air heating systems. And the exhausting sweat that comes from too many blankets on the bed, not getting your coat off soon enough inside, or the flush from a cup of hot tea.

But the cold is well worth it.

The cold allows for snow, gorgeous quieting heavy blessing of thick white. Today was a snow-globe, a vertigo of fluffy spinning flakes sticking perfectly to the branches and lampposts and making clean and simpler all vistas. Now at twilight, the snow and dusk conspire to negate background, highlight foreground, and wash the world in vibrant glowing shades of light blue. I saw even businessmen transfixed and commenting to strangers on the beauty of the snow today. I appreciate the cold for delicately holding this beauty.

And the cold keeps everyone inside, the animals asleep, the woods open and dormant. I walked with a friend through some rural forest in Rhode Island on Sunday. It was deeply silent except for the surf-roar wind in the uppermost branches: no other people out, no cars, no birdsong, no squirrel chitter, no footsteps (all muffled in the snow), no leaf scuffing or stick cracking, no sound. This pure redemptive quiet was like balm to my overstimulated mind. I appreciate the cold for holding things still and private.

On a mundane level, I enjoy being in the cold because I like coats, hats, and jeans, and I get to wear them again. I enjoy feeling enveloped, bundled, held together, hidden. I enjoy succumbing and entrusting myself to a soft warm bed, burrowing down into cuddly folds of flannel, shivering with delight at the sudden relaxation of my body as it becomes warm. I enjoy the pore-opening brain-melting bliss of a steamy shower. I enjoy being enfolded in a long hug, reveling in the warmth of a friend. These are not things which one can enjoy in a hot climate. And these are all things that make me feel safe, relaxed, loved, and at home. So it seems that home must be someplace cold, at least part of the time.

Bonus slide show: the morning after aforementioned snowstorm, blue blue sky!