So, LJ informs me that it's been 21 weeks since I posted.  Guess I've been busy.

I had some thoughts to share but before I get around to that...brief update.  Since May, I've started a new job, moved to Ecuador, been back to the US twice, and got a kitten.  Amazingly for those of you who know me...I do not (yet) have any new godkids.  I've also gotten a few grey hairs, mostly courtesy of the godkids I already have.  Ecuador got itself a new constitution last weekend, which could bring some changes here, but so far nothing that is having much of an impact on my life here.  I also recently finally got internet service at home - yay!  This was a challenge since the place where I"m living has not cable or phone lines, much less internet service - but I've got a cell phone modem now and am back online.

I now live in an "invasion" community of Duran, just across the river from Guayaquil.  Invasions (probably the closest translation would be a squatters' area or shantytown) are areas that were once stretches of unoccupied land, until some people got together, came in one day and set up houses.  After years of fighting with the landowners/government, they can often get legal title to their land.  They often lack basic services like electricity and running water.  We've got electricity most of the time but have to get our water shipped in over dirt roads in big tanker truck.  Garbage removal is sporadic.  The schools are awful and overcrowded (about 80 students per teacher).  Most of our neighbors live on about $2 a day.

The job is intense and overwhelming at times, but I really love it.  I love working with the volunteers, and learning about all different areas of development, and getting to know our neighbors, and being able to spend time with my kids on a regular basis.  This is really feeling like home these days, and I'm just glad to be where I am.  That's life in a nutshell - I will try to do better about keeping in touch.

Here are the illustrations to go with the last post

It's been an amazing couple of weeks, so I wanted to write about it before I leave. Which is happening in...JOLIN, 4 and a half days...

( excuse me while I hyperventilate )

And now, I'm in that stage of frantically packing my bags and getting a partial draft for my advisor and making sure all my paperwork is in order. But I'm so grateful for the past few weeks. I wish that I had had more time out there - I definitely did not see everyone I wanted to see - but it was an amazing trip. Through all of this, I just felt so supported, like my batteries were in a giant charger, storing up the warmth and strength and love for the challenges ahead.

Please tell me she did not just say that.


Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."


Excuse me while I go bang my head against the wall.

 Ten million.

That's how many kids die annually from preventable diseases.

Ten million.

Many of them die for lack of 30 cent antibiotics.  Or simple oral rehydrating solution.  Or clean drinking water.

Ten million kids a year.


Last night I had a little bit of panic.  JOLIN, I'm moving to South America in a week.  What was I thinking?  Am I nuts?

I saw this today and...that's what I was thinking.  I'm not a doctor, I know I can't save the world.  But I also know that I've got to do something.
Which is why, exactly seven days from right now, I'll be on a plane somewhere over Panama or the Pacific.  

Jolin.

This ad made me laugh. And then I realized that one of the actresses seemed very familiar, despite the bangs...guess what Amber Benson has been doing lately?

Courtesy of kateorama  ,the list of 106 "most unread books," books people own but don't read(or at least don't finish).




I have read: bold
I own (or have owned): underline
I have started, not finished: italic



Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude (in Spanish :D)
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion (love all things Tolkein.)
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice (In Ecuador, I rarely get English-language books. I once went to a book exchange in a different city and got the completeworks of Jane Austen in one volume, more English language material than I’d seen in months.)
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov (Given to me by a good friend in high school. Yes, we were nerds. Never could finish it – it still taunts me from my bookcase.)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera (Movie sucked. Book was beautiful, more so in Spanish.)
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath (this was one of my favorite books in high school.)
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel (I love Kingsolver)
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Opinion piece on Pope Benedict and undocumented immigrants.

I am moving to South America in three weeks.  JOLIN.

Meeting with advisor in 20 minutes.  I will finish this dissertation.  

 
Ecuador breaks ties with Colombia

"Ecuador's president said his government "will take stronger measures in the coming hours" against Colombia."

It seriously sounds like they're on the brink of war.  Ay.

Major tensions along the Ecuador-Colombia border.  Colombia went into Ecuadorian territory and killed the 2nd in command of the FARC (Colombia's lead rebel group in the decades-long civil war).  This occurred:

Colombian version: in hot pursuit after a firefight on the Colombian side or
Ecuadorian version: as the rebels slept at night.

Ecuador's pissed, Chavez is even more pissed, Colombia is now accusing Ecuador of collaborating with the FARC, and it's a big old mess.  Plus, a lot of the region see Colombia's right-wing president as a puppet for US interests, and are accusing the US of being behind the whole thing. 

And one of my godkids is in the Ecuadorian military, stationed near the border.


This article comes out and says that this could lead to war.

Chavez isn't really helping.

Brazil is trying.


Yikes.

Article is here.

Video available here, It's in spanish but even if you don't speak the language, you can still see what Guayaquil is like these days.  All the shots in the video are from Guayaquil and its outskirts.  Poorer neighborhoods are harder hit as they often lack sewer lines and/or paved roads, so the water has nowhere to go and turns into giant mud puddles where all kinds of nasty diseases breed.  And then the mosquitoes start breeding which leads to other nasty diseases.

And in other news, my godson's wife was rushed into surgery today after she passed out.  Doctors found that during her C-section nearly a year ago, somebody left a piece of gauze in.  This from the semi-free government hospital.  They'd gone back there multiple times because she felt like something wasn't right, but kept getting brushed off.  She got rushed into surgery at a private clinic, so now they've got to figure out how to pay for it.  Please send those warm thoughts and prayers her way.

With stuff like the flooding, people wonder how I can go back.  And with stuff like that, I wonder how could I not.  Even if I can't do anything, it means a lot just to be with the people you care about when crap like this happens. 

Oh, and in other news...one of the priests who I've been working with for years had a stroke on Saturday.  Luckily he was rushed to the hospital right away, otherwise they say it could have been fatal.  He's beginning the recovery process.

Ten weeks until I'm back.

My new job!

It is going to be really hard work, and push me to grow in areas where I'm not always comfortable.  In part because of that, I am so excited!  I spent five days on-site (including a sleepover) and feel so lucky to be working with an amazing group of people.  It also turns out that I'll be living in the same neighborhood as some of my kiddos from the shelter.   The neighbors were very welcoming and open, it was great to sit down and talk to several of them and I'm looking forward to getting to know the area better.  I'll be living in Duran, which is just across the river from Guayaquil.

I really want it to be May already.  And for my dissertation to be done.  

More ecua-news soon.  I'm still just decompressing. 

No time for a long post right now but i had an amazing time on our yearly beach trip with the kids, my godkids are mostly doing well, i am insanely proud of a kiddo who just graduated from high school, and my new job is going to be awesome.  I get oriented this week and start in may.  It is going to be a lot of hard work but the people are amazing.

YAY!

:)

Ecuador ranks higher than the US?

I've seen Ecuador's environmental standards firsthand. This is scary.

In other Ecuador news, some growing unrest in Guayaquil. Ruh-roh.


And, back on the home front more on Hillary. Grrrrrr.

Dirty tricks in Nevada. Apparently, according to the Clinton campaign, it's not illegal unless they tell you so. And even then...guess it depends on what the definition of "is" is.

So, after conversations with a couple of dems and a conservative-leaning independent, I've been trying to put my finger on exactly what bugs me about Senator Clinton. What is it that would make me consider voting for a Republican? On most issues, my politics tilt far-left - like, Kucinich-left. I think it comes down to this: I believe that she will say or do anything to get into power. She may want power for lots of good reasons. I may even agree with a lot of the things she would do if she were president. But I don't trust her. As much as she and Bush may hate each other, I think both of them share a belief that they somehow have a superior knowledge of what is right, and that achieving their goals can justify any means. Bush seems to think he's God's anointed. Clinton doesn't have the theocratic element, but somehow the underlying attitude strikes me as similar.

I believe a president should be able to give thoughtful consideration to the idea that s/he might be wrong. And I believe that s/he should have some kind of moral compass, a line that s/he will not cross. I understand that politicians have to be fighters a lot of the time, but I don't want a president who gets so caught up in the fight that winning becomes the only thing that matters, without regard to the greater good.

So that is why, even though politically I agree with Hillary's policies a lot more than any of the Republicans, I might have to pick McCain over her.

Frickin' Huckabee.  By contrast, here's McCain on the same issue.

Wow, that author likes Huckabee even less than I do.  So glad McCain won.

And, on the other side of the aisle, Bill is annoying.

The Hillary campaign is seriously bugging me.  To the point where if it's her vs. McCain, I'd have to think about voting Republican.  

Or I could just, you know, leave the country for a few years...

I must be dreaming. 

I have not been this excited since I found out I got the Fulbright.

I GOT A JOB!  IN ECUADOR!!!!

My reaction to both events was similar, and involved a lot of squealing, jumping up and down, and telephoning of godchildren.  There are a few more to call these days than there were in '04.

Must finish dissertation ASAP.

I will be working for a Catholic volunteer program that is based in Duran, which is just outside of Guayaquil. Its mission is to work with members of the local community to promote social justice, and to educate North Americans about poverty and ways of working towards long-term solutions to poverty and injustice.   Among my responsibilities, I'll be coordinating with local NGO's, working with members of the community and providing supervision to the volunteers, who work in health care and education.  I get to do teaching, supervision and a lot of community work.  It's pretty much a dream job for a social justice oriented community psych-type who is ready for a break from reasearch and loves Ecuador.

The people there have been so great and it just feels like a very good fit.  I found out about the position while in Ecuador and got to visit while I was there.   I feel like I get to use so much of my brain, my heart, all of who I am.  I know it's going to be challenging, but I can't wait.

I have to wait, actually.  Job starts May 15.  I will get to start a bit when I visit in February.

Must finish dissertation.

Tungu...wha? Tune-goo-rah-wah.

It's a volcano in Ecuador.  And it's angry.


It also is standing between my second home in Guayaquil  and my godson in the rainforest, whom I was hoping to visit.


Boo.

Hope everyone there will be ok.  Volcan..ism? Vulcanology?  What's the science of volcanoes called? 

Whatever it is, it seems to be an inexact science, but there's a lot indicating tthat fire throat is getting ready to blow.  Not good.

Happy Happy Joy Joy!


It's just the first step in this long election process, but I've got hope!

Preface: Last year, the muy awesome sillyduck8 gave me a book of daily reflections. I'm never very good at keeping up with those page-a-day things, (I tend to forget about them for weeks and then pick it up and read it all at once) but the book has been great as I've picked it up at various points of the year. It's called gardening the soul: soothing seasonal thoughts for jaded modern souls and is by an Irish nun named Sister Stan. Here's the thought for December 25.


Those without a home feel it very deeply at Christmas. There are people who pretend they go home at this time of year rather than admit to themselves or others that they have no home to go to.
Home is the place where we discover who we are, where we are coming from and where we are going to. It is where we are helped to establish our own identity. It is where we learnt to love and be loved. It is where our needs of the mind, body and spirit are recognised and met. It is where we learn to become whole, stable and yet always open to change and surprise.


Here's hoping that each of you can find your home during this season.

Until about 10 years ago, I was never a fan of organized sports.  I hated playing them and watching them bored me.

Then I went to Ecuador, and became a soccer mom.  Watching my boys play gives me incredible joy.  This year, we fielded two teams for the Guayaquil high school championship - the equivalent of JV and varsity.  We came in 3rd in both divisions.  

In addition, I mentioned some time ago that one of our kids set a new national record for the 200m dash and got to go to the Pan-American games in Brazil.  I got to see him run as well.

Sports pics...

Javier	Cristian
Watching the semifinal game	Manuel, Gustavo and Andres  showing off their medals.
Jimmy, one of our kids who's now playing pro soccer  Unfortunately, for the wrong team. To put it in U.S. terms, I'm a Sox fan and he's playing for the Cubs.  At least it's not the Yankees.	Jimmy and family
Alfredo and Fernando	Gary and Jonathan
JV soccer team	The cheering section  I got to organize the "cheerleaders" and teach them a bunch of cheers.  They did a great job and soon started making up their own.
Rafael's medal  I got to give the varsity squad their medals - which was made even cooler by the fact that three of my godkids are on the team.  This is me with godson Rafael	P. Pedro and Rafael
Josue running National champion Josue!	Josue right before the big race

 

Sorry if I've got a bit of a one-track mind lately. More ecua-stuff soon, but as Iowa approaches I'm getting sucked in.

This is outrageous. Short story - a woman working for a contractor in Iraq was gang-raped. Her employer locked her up in a storage container and lost the rape kit. Her attackers get off scot-free because neither Iraqi nor US courts have jurisdiction. So she's suing her employer and its parent company (drumroll....) Halliburton. This blogger puts it better than I can.

Exactly how far can one man insert his foot into his mouth? Ask Huckabee. This article started off making me hopeful that maybe he'd gotten a clue, or at least was willing to talk to somebody who could give him one, but then...

"I want to make sure that when we look at a disease -- whether it is AIDS, diabetes or cancer -- we look at it from the macro perspective,and we don't just single out one thing that affects, in America, you know, about 5,000 people a year," Huckabee said. According to CDC,there were 42,514 new HIV cases and 13,064 AIDS-related deaths in 2004 (Kranish, Boston Globe, 12/12)"

Oh, and if his thoughts on HIV weren't enough... wives should graciously submit to their husbands .

And the one thing I did like about Huckabee, that compared to most of the Republican candidates, he was slightly less willing to appeal to bigotry and build a campaign based on immigrant-bashing...he threw that out the window, too.

And a final thought on Huck.


On a more pleasant note, got hope? I do. Here's a big reason why: organization. I volunteered at HQ in Chicago and am still on the email list - this campaign has been working so hard for the past 6 months to get people involved and committed in Iowa. I think he just may get the nomination. Even Republicans like him.

Huckabee stands by his comments.

In 1992, when Huckabee made these remarks, it was well-known that HIV could not be spread by casual contact. In 1992, I was a junior in high school We'd covered AIDS in sex ed our freshman year. A fourteen year old could tell you how to prevent transmission, and it didn't involve locking everybody with HIV up in isolation. Ryan White had died in 1990. Popular TV show Life Goes On (remember Corky?) introduced an HIV positive character in 91. Magic Johnson also announced in 91 that he was HIV positive.

This was the context when Huckabee made his comments. To make those statements in 1992 indicates a combination of willful ignorance and unabashed bigotry, a sense that people with HIV are somehow deserving of their fate and that their rights and dignity are therefore expendable.

To stand by those comments in 2007 boggles the mind.

Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee had some interesting thoughts on HIV/AIDS in 1992. Yes, it was fifteen years ago. However, still deeply disturbing.


A few direct quotes:

"If the federal government is truly serious about doing somethingwith the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague."

"It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. Itis the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriersof a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population,and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is beingtreated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents."

"In light of the extraordinary funds already being given for AIDS research, it does not seem that additional federal spending can be justified."

"An alternative would be to request that multimillionaire celebrities, such as Elizabeth Taylor (,) Madonna and others who are pushing for more AIDS funding be encouraged to give out of their own personal treasuries increased amounts for AIDS research."

How's that for a compassionate conservative? Let's lock everybody up somewhere to die, since we're not going to spend federal money on a cure. That's certainly not a civil rights issue.

I'm going to stop before my angry sarcasm goes too far. Time to go look at pictures and calm down.


I hearte Huckabee.

I got to make several day or weekend trips during my time there.  One to visit a good friend (actually, my very first Ecuadorian friend, who I met right after getting of the plane 10 years ago) and several to do follow-up visits with former shelter kids.  And really, it's just coincidence that they lived by a gorgeous beach.

One of the highlights of my trip was hanging out with my godkids.   Here are my three youngest.

	Danny Danny got to come over to my place to play several times during my trip.  He's doing great!  It was wonderful to see him so happy and having a great time.
	He loved bouncing this ball back and forth.  He's getting ready to start school in April.
	Andrea My goddaughter Andrea is doing great.  She's at the top of her class and got a prize for being the best student in her school, straight A's.  She's also on the swim team.
	Andrea and her sisters Here she is again with her two older sisters, Carolina and Ruth.  I can't believe Caro is 16 now and all grown up - she was younger than Andrea is now when I first met her.
	Natalia Here's my girl Natalia. I got to be there for her 7th birthday.   Guayaquil has two soccer teams, Barcelona and Emelec, who are big rivals.  To put it in baseball terms, I'm a White Sox fan (Barcelona) and her dad is a Cubs fan (Emelec).  I've been indoctrinating her since a young age and it's paid off :).  Here she is in her Barcelona jersey.  She even knows all the words to their fight song.

I was really bad about posting while in Ecuador, so to make up for it, I'm going to do a couple of entries to summarize the trip with photo highlights.  Still figuring out how to use the LJ photo album, hopefully these will come out ok.

	Juan getting baptized I got to be a godmother again!  Bringing the grand total to eleven.  Juan was a former English student of mine.  We spent a lot of time talking during this trip, and he asked me to be his godmother when he got baptized.  He's a really neat kid who's incredibly patient and helps out a lot at the shelter.
	With Juan, his mom and his godfather
	Washington I got to be there for confirmations, where three of my godkids plus several other shelter kids got confirmed.   This is my godson Washington.  He's very smart and the vice president of the student council.
	Rafael This is my godson Rafael at confirmation.  I got to be his sponsor.  He's the top scorer for the soccer team and has a great sense of humor.
	Patricio This is my godson Patricio with his sister Paola.  I got to be his sponsor, too.  He's another great soccer player, who finished up at the shelter last year and is now working in a carpentry workshop.
	Just before Rebecca and Wilfrido's civil wedding My godson Wilfrido has been engaged to the girl next door (literally) for two years now.  They tied the knot while I was there.
	Alexander, Rebecca and Wilfrido Here's Wilfrido again with his wife and son.  I'm a "grandma" yet again.

Today is World AIDS Day. No coherent thoughts, but here are some links for the day.

State of HIV in the US

Activities around the world.

Stories of kids living with HIV.

What you can do

For Christian-types, here's a new take on an old tradition: the advent calendar. Keep the Promise: Advent in a Time of AIDS. I really like this.

I know it's been forever since I posted, life update coming sometime soon. In brief, I'm back in the US, two months later than planned. Missing my kids - no surprise.

PS, note to self...when reading news articles on HIV, do not read the user comments from newspapers in Texas.
No offense to Texans, except the ranting prejudiced idjits who wrote aforementioned comments. Lots of offense to y'all.

Big elections in Ecuador tomorrow.
 
There was an article in the paper today that over half the population doesn´t know what the elections are for (they´re electing an assembly to write a new constitution) and that only 2 % of the population has ever read the current constitution.  Yikes.

In other news, the hospital sagas of the past week...if I can manage to speak English, it´s getting difficult.

Last Monday, my godson was working in the carpentry workshop and suddenly felt dizzy.  He started to pass out and the board he was feeding into the woodcuttercame spitting out and went right through his side, a few inches to the left of his belly button.  I was in the office when a little kid comes running in screaming, ¨MISS!  MISS!  COME QUICK YOUR SON IS DYING!"  These are words you do not want to hear.  The teacher there was already good with first aid, and calling 911 is pretty ineffective, so we slid him into the truck and took off to the nearest hospital.

Unfortunately the nearest hospital is a semi-private hospital.  So they took him in emergency and stabilized him with an IV and pain meds and then wanted to send him to a public hospital.  After some pleading with a very nice doc, they were going to keep him, but he needed xrays and their xray tech was MIA, so it was off to the public hospital.  They sent us in an "ambulance¨which was a stretcher inthe back of a closed pickup truck with what looked like a 30 year old oxygen tank.  It was just me and another employee in the back and a driver up front. 

After 40 minutes in there, we finally got to the public hospital, which is theoretically free.  Right.  They don´t charge you for doctors, but every 5 minutes, it´s...go buy a pair of gloves.  we don´t have this medicine, or this medicine, or thread for stitches, or a  tube for the iv...so if you want it, somebody´s got to buy it right then.  They don´t give you any treatment until you pay first.  And you´ve got to have someone right there with you or you´re out of luck.  There was a guy who came in who looked to be dying and they just sent him to another hospital after he had waited for like 3 hours.  We ran into another godson´s aunt, his uncle had been shot 3 days ago and needed surgery but was just sittng there because they didn´t have the money to pay for it.  Awful.

Bueno, long story short, after an xray and minor surgery, thankfully the piece of wood had not hit any organs, so they stitched him up and within days he was begging to be allowed to play soccer again.  Really scary though, the thought of losing any of my kids makes me freak out a bit.   I´m very grateful that he and my other guys are all ok.

Next Saturday three of them are getting confirmed.  And this Tuesday they play in the semifinals for the soccer championship, if they win that game they go to the championship.

Hope you all are well.