I Can't Sleep

Thus ends the first day we are a part of the Peace Corps family: my mind simply will not stop. For once it is not due to stress or anxiety. Quite simply, I am thrilled and finally can allow myself to feel so. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world! That is what I used to tell Scott when we first got together. Cheesy, I know, but I am so happy and literally cannot stop smiling and thinking about how lucky we are to be going to Belize and to be going together. It is proving to be worth the wait, already.

Our Staging Director, in charge of our general introduction to the organization, told our training group of forty-five people we hit the jackpot in the Peace Corps lottery with Belize. Tropical paradise. The scary bugs are there only so we will have stories to tell people back at home.

We were prompted to create lists related to our anxieties and aspirations, with illustrations. I drew a scorpion at the request of someone in my group. Scott, in a different group, wrote about being able to use what he learned in school. Other examples were language learning, outhouses, malaria, host families, lack of vegetables, usefulness, the job, playing with children, gender roles, creative projects, acceptance, integration.

We talked about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and how the bottom of the pyramid consists of the most basic needs, which is the survival level and the place at which most people the Peace Corps serve exist. From there, in general, people graduate to increasing levels of awareness. Once the basic need for food is satisfied, people in turn try to satisfy the need for security, like shelter and bodily protection, and then the need for love, or belonging and becoming a part of a community, and then the need for dignity and self-respect, relating to the ego.

Finally, when all of the other needs have been satisfied, people can attain the top triangle of the pyramid which is self-actualization. The director asserted that each of us had reached the point of self-actualization by persevering in the process of becoming a Peace Corps trainee, but that each of us in the next few weeks would probably spring up and down among the levels of the hierarchy of needs. Reasons for this may vary from getting enough food to eat in a country unfamiliar to us to beginning meaningful and lasting personal relationships with hosts very different from us in custom and manner.

These are ideas and realities I discussed in college with classmates and experienced to some degree while working for a nonprofit and traveling a bit overseas. Even so, it is exciting to think of living with them as a reality in daily life again. Change can be exhilarating, as can challenges, especially when bolstered by lofty ideals. I can understand what our director means by this term self-actualization in that something as seemingly intangible and ethereal as reaching outside oneself to help someone else can be realized by something as simple as committing to learn and share. How elemental is that! It is something we did in kindergarten, learning and sharing with others, and yet it can contribute to the betterment of societies. I also can understand that an important facet of self-actualization is that it makes you feel good, and not just about yourself.

No Good at Good-bye

This is one of the first pictures I saw of Logan, Utah, where I have lived with Scott for almost two years now. It does not capture the open views of Cache Valley and surrounding mountains, but still I like it. These are simple, uncluttered days for us, so we have had time to reflect and prepare for Peace Corps. This week we have been taking care of last minute details for our upcoming itinerant life and seeing friends when we can.


The picture is of Scott and Andrew, the son of our friends Scott and Liz, and it was taken near Brian's house. Brian is the good friend with whom we are staying until we leave for Miami. I am thankful we have friends like him. I have learned a lot from Brian; I think Scott and I both have.


Brian lives in a rustic house north of Logan, where there are more hayfields and open land compared to where we lived this year a block from downtown. It is refreshing and peaceful. After Scott sold our car on Friday and our remaining unclaimed possessions were littering Brian's driveway, Brian and I talked about how attached people can become to material things. I felt it was freeing to be rid of so much stuff, but the process was somewhat awkward and humiliating, finding people who wanted some of our stuff and then seeing in the end what was left on the ground like trash. How can we be strapped to so many things?


Brian told me about meeting a guy who saw his house and asked about his ambitions, if he eventually wanted one of the sprawling houses of the well-to-do on the mountainside. Brian said no without hesitation. I guess the guy thought that having excess wealth would guarantee him friends and an exciting life. I agreed with Brian that it is best to have only what you need and to be content with fewer things rather than always wanting more. It seems like such a fair and sustainable way to live. I am glad we are going to a different world, in a sense, with Peace Corps, where money is not so handy and priorities are sometimes upside down to the American way of accumulating extraneous possessions.

Brian is unassuming and has a generous personality, not only in giving of material things like sharing his house with us, but in his evenness of temper. I think he could get along with almost anyone. He can see other people's points-of-view, or at least agrees to try. At the same time, he is ready to admit his limitations as a human being. We all have limitations, but I do not think he has very many. Brian was a very strong climber before I knew what climbing was. This is a picture of Brian climbing a 5.13b route in Logan Canyon, and below is a picture of Brian mountain biking with us in Green Canyon.

One week to go!

We have one more week before leaving for Belize, via Miami. The last two weeks have been filled with fun and adventure. Instead of describing everything I'll just make a list in chronological order starting on July 30:

July 30

We cleaned our apartment out and left for California to see my parents (with a car load of crap we wanted to keep) at 10:30 pm.

July 31

Slept in the car around 4 am in central Nevada.

Met my parents in Nice California around 3 pm, hung out and threw the frisbee after dinner.

Aug 1

Spent a whole day near Mendocino California kayaking in a bay that has sea caves and blow-holes and lots of seaweed and divers getting Abalone and April even saw a seal!

Ate dinner at a fancy 'organic' restaraunt and drove back to Nice.

Aug 2

Went wine sampling nearby my parents hotel and even bought two cases of Rose' wine that is delicious and only cost $26 for both cases (the wine was made by the winery we went to for another company that was targeted towards the gay community, it is called Butch Blush and has a half naked farm-boy on the label).

Unpacked our car and loaded down my parents van.

Said goodbye to my parents.

Aug 3

Left Nice and headed towards the Bay Area, we got ourselves a really nice campsite at China Camp State Park near San Rafael Ca which is about 15 miles north of San Francisco.

The camping area had really nice mountain bike trails, so April and I rode them on our single-speeds, mine is a mountain bike but hers is a road bike. It was a lot of fun passing guys on $6,000 (I mean that) bikes with my thrift store find, some people spend too much time at work and not enough on their bicycles.

Had a good campfire and smores.

Aug 4

Packed up our camping gear and drove to San Francisco. We parked near the warf and rode our bikes down the Embarcadero, up Market Street and to the Castro District. We walke around the Castro and stopped at a specialty cheese store that I recognized from the television show 30 Days where they sent a middle American boy that believes homosexuality is a sin to live with a gay man in Castro, they had the guy get a job at the cheese store we went to. Next we went to Hot Cookie to get some of the best cookies I have ever had.

We rode our bikes to Haight Street and checked our Email at a coffee shop that had free wifi and I looked for a pair of adidas I wanted at a few of the trendy shoe stores there. Then we went back to the car and drove to Berkeley so I could check out the guide book for Lover's Leap near Tahoe at the Marmot Mountain Works.

We drove to Angel's Camp and stayed at a Hotel sort of thing that my dad got us for the night, with intentions to go to Yosemite the next day.

Aug 5

We got up late and dinked around the hotel room till check out time and decided to forgo Yosemite and headed towards Tahoe.

We stopped for lunch at Kirkwood ski resort and payed too much for lunch meat and cheese, but it was a good place to stop.

We stopped in Tahoe for some supplies and went to Lover's Leap to set up camp.

Lover's leap is gorgeous, a quiet campground with wonderful rock.

Aug 6

We got up early so we could try to do two big routes in one day, but after the first route we decided to hang out at this single pitch crag that had some really fun crack climbs that we could top rope after climbing this fun 5.9.

we arrived back at camp around 4 pm ate some food and went down to the river and sat in the cold waters, it felt great.

Aug 7

We got up packed up our camping gear, ate breakfast and headed back up to the wall to do Corrugation Corner, probably the best 5.7 anywhere! We decided to do the first pitch of Travellers Buttress to get us up onto the ledge that Corrugation Corner starts on, it was a fun but kinda burly 5.8. We climbed Corrugation Corner in three long pitches and hiked down to the car and headed towards Utah.

We stopped in Tahoe to eat some dinner and then drove straight through with stops for bathrooms and gas arriving back in Logan around 7 am on Aug 8.

So now we are crashing at my friend Brians house for the week. We sold our car on Friday, I posted it on Craigslist and had it sold within 3 hours of the post. I should have asked for more, but I thought we would have a hard time getting what we owed on it, but I under-valued what a Honda Civic in crappy condition would sell for. So now we both still have our bikes to get around town, no big debt to worry about and just a few bags of food and the two bags each we are taking to Belize.

here are some pictures we took on our trip:

So Sad

We drove up to Idaho, about 20 miles from here, to drop our adorable cats off with a family that lives on a farm up there. We were excited to give them to a family that we thought loved animals, so much so that we decided to drive up instead of letting April's coworker take them up there. The family is April's coworkers sister. They have two small children, a couple of dogs and 5 or so cats and the live on a rural highway that people haul ass on. We left sad, April crying and me feeling like a jerk. The family must like cats, but I think they felt as though they were doing a good deed, but could really care less about them. The cats they already have are really small, and 4 of them are half grown kittens and the other is there mother. I believe that if you care about pets you will get them fixed, so that was one big reason we felt so terrible about leaving them there. The Mother of the family said that they go through a lot of cats because they chase mice from out of the adjacent wheat field onto the highway, so another great reason for this horrible feeling. Also the mother cat was very upset about these two new cats showing up she even chased our girl cat around the house within 5 minutes of us showing up, I guess our cat which is twice the size was too unsettled to attempt to stand up for herself because she was scared out of her mind. I really just hope that this decision was better than taking them to the pound where they would likely have been put down, or end up at an old ladies house with a huge heart and tiny house. After we get back from California I think we might go up and check to see if the cats have settled into this new life and if not try to find a different home for them, if you know anyone that loves cats and hasn't already overloaded their household with animals please let us know so we can 'rescue' them.

Also I would encourage people to take a stand against the rascist/right wing propaganda machine that is Fox News. People that scream hate speach like Bill O'Reilly are holding this country back. To see Nas talk about this subject go here: http://www.hulu.com/watch/27867/the-colbert-report-wed-jul-23-2008

Also to learn more about this one-sided 'news' network go to http://colorofchange.org/

New Games

Today we had some input on what to bring to Belize with us, one item was soccer cleats. So I looked around the internet to see what soccer boots would cost and decided to check out a local outdoor store called Al's which had a pair of leather shoes marked down from $60 to $20 that fit me, so now I have a pair of bright white soccer cleats with bright red swooshes that represents that they are a devil brand. I also picked up a really nice looking soccer ball and shin guards from Ross for much less than suggested retail. I figured April would get upset if only the boys were playing soccer so I headed back to Al's and convinced the sales guy that the same model but for females should be marked down as low as mine were, so now April also has some fancy footballer boots.

April got to help watch kids at a summer program today so after she played with the children I made her play with me, by kicking the soccer ball around a local school field which was very fun but hot. Hopefully by the time we get to Belize we'll be able to kick the ball straight, and in the direction we intend. We also played with our new 200 gram frisbee which is nice when it is windy and easier to chuck for long distances. So maybe I'll get off my ass a touch more often before leaving.

Waiting and waiting

So far I've sold about $1600 worth of stuff on Ebay, some stuff went for far less than I thought it would and some went for more than I actually paid for it, so goes the free market. I also went to SLC for the weekend with April. We went for two reasons first to see the Band of Annuals play with Hello Kavita and Will Sartain, and to sell my fixed gear bike. The show was great although everywhere on the web claimed the show started at 9, but as most SLC'ers know the Urban Lounge doesn't start shows till 1030, so we got to bed around 2 that night. We stayed with our friend Jon that we both met when we were living in Yosemite, the same time that we met each other. Sunday Jon talked April into hiking up to Blanche Lake up Big Cottonwood Canyon, so I got to hike the 3 miles with them so Jon and I could climb Sundial Peak. Some might think that because I ride bicycles around and climb 3 days a week I would have a touch of fitness, but this was proven wrong as I crawled up the trail Sunday. I did make it, but I definitely need to be much fitter which might be why April says I have to run with her in Belize. Monday April and I had an interview with our Peace Corps Belize training official, she was really nice and the 'interview' was for her to establish what needs we have for training so we don't waste each others time going over redundant information. I am really excited to go to Belize, I wish we didn't have to stress out about all of this everyday crap like emptying our house. After our interview we ate lunch and took a nap on the floor of Jon's house which he shares with 5 other 24 year old friends, 4 of which also work at BD. After our nap we rode our bikes the 8 miles downtown to hit up a swimming pool then we headed back which is all up-hill for 8 miles, good thing cycling is a lot easier than hiking. Soon after getting back to Jon's I got a call from the kid that wanted my Fixie, so I headed over to his house to make the lucrative exchange, lucrative for him. If you ever have a bike you love don't sell it unless you have to, they go for approximately half of what they are worth monetarily and about 1/10th of what they are really worth. So we ended up going back downtown to meet up with April's friend Heather that used to live in Logan but recently decided to go to Culinary School in SLC. Heather is a really nice girl and it was fun to see her again, probably for the last time before leaving.

Sun Dial Peak, the route started around the lowest point of the wall, bottom right

of face in pic and ended before the actuall summit (picture from http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3251693)

When I thought we were headed for Jamaica I was super stoked and read every touch of info about it, made contacts with people and even invested in some equipment to establish climbing routes down there. For Belize I've emailed a couple of PCV's, but mostly I've just stopped worrying about what it will be like and I'm just waiting to find out in person. For Tucson I've been looking at all the pictures of Mtn. Biking and climbing going on there, I'm not to keen on the heat of summer, but the 9 months of perfect climbing/cycling weather is getting me stoked, I've already been looking at what I would want for a bike down there even though I know that by the time I get back the bike industry will probably look a lot different, which would be great since it currently looks like crap. I'm actually thinking that there is a strong likelihood we will stay in Belize longer than 2 years, I'm not too sure April is dying to do so, but 2 years probably isn't enough time to ween ourselves from all of the material comforts we deem necessities right now.

Hanging Out

Since I don't have a job right now I've been sitting around the house trying to not spend any money, which isn't going so well. I have been climbing 3 whole days per week most of this month, last night I even dragged April up to China Cave where I'm working on a route that I have no business getting. I think April went just so she could use her new Chacos. I bought April a pair of Chacos for $66 w/shipping this week even though we get a bigger discount from Chaco ($47.50) once we actually get to Belize, which sucks because we would have to get them shipped to a U.S. address ($5) and then have someone ship them to Belize ($24), overall it was cheaper to get them sooner ($10 difference) and April gets to wear them for a month longer (priceless). I brought my camera along last night so we could show off the beauty of China Cave:

April on the 5.9 gear mixed route

April with her new Chacos

Todd Parr on his Project: Tweak (5.13d)

Mr. Yuck sorting gear