RSPH Outtakes: Bianca Birthday Edition

My days are numbered...*

















*And for the record, there are pictures that I didn't include. I'm saving them for blackmail.

I Can't Stop Now, For No One

Oh yeah, and my research is officially dead. I am going to now consider this a creative vacation in the sunny Balkans region.

More RSPH Outtakes

India Schmindia

Hi all,

I'm in the Subcontinent as well. Things here are going relatively well. I've made friends with a few british IT geeks here in Bangalore and thankfully have a few people to drink with. Much needed release from the chaos and isolation of being a foreigner on the other side of the world. My research has been crazy. I've been going all over Karnataka State, and have gotten 90 surveys and 5 FGS's in less than 2 weeks. I am tired, mosquito-bitten and sunburnt, but this is really just a taste (or a smell?) of what people here live in their whole lives.

Personally, I am more grateful than ever to have what I have on the other side of the world. It makes me more determined to try and balance out the lopsidedness of our little planet. I think it makes it spin funny, and could be dangerous.

Check out my blog: http://grelican.blogspot.com

Peace

EJ

Street life in Dhaka

So every day to get to my NGO's office (where a lot of revising, organizing, waiting, and drinking tea is going on, but no actual interviews or research yet--the current goal is to start going to villages Monday... or Tuesday... or Wednesday... or Thursday, but if we start waiting any longer I'll be taking boats to get there since monsoon has officially started!) I take the little three wheeled taxi thing called a CNG that I mentioned in my last post. They are perfect for inconspicously taking photos from, as the small side openings and low-to-the-ground nature sorta hides both my foreigness and my camera flash. So when I'm stuck in traffic, which is all the time, I take photos. So, enjoy...

A Room with a View

RSPH Outtakes, Cont'

Graffiti Seen at a Post Office in Sarajevo:

THIS IS SERBIA!
THIS IS POST OFFICE!

RSPH Outtakes

In light of the fact that I have nothing of interest to report, may or may not have a research project, and am thousands of miles beyond reach, I have to decided to take this opportunity to post up some pictures, a few per day, that many of you either never saw or hoped would never see the light of day.
So without further ado...

Survived turning 30 and other fun facts

To all of you overseas who are getting attacked by bugs, making language mistakes about sex with buses and touching men's private parts, almost losing passports, and other great things....I am so jealous. My great highlight/adventure was turning 30 this Sunday and surviving. Thanks for the b-day wishes from some of you and to Meg and Darren for being part of my celebration. Atlanta just turned into a cess pool of humidity literally overnight and I feel like I'm trapped in a sauna. My internship is going well and so is my BSHE summer school class. Can't wait to head to India in August to vacation and see Sarah and Gargi and finally have an adventure or two like all of you. Best of luck with your work, travels, experiences, language speaking, and love lives while you are all in foreign lands. Stay safe and know that I love and miss you. (P.S. Bianca and G - Let's talk about me visiting you in Mexico over July 4th weekend - email me soon). LOVE, LIZ

Sarajevo in Haze

Sarajevo is a city of lovers - young lovers at that. It is as though everywhere you go, a young couple is nuzzling over their beer and cigarettes, tough in their love, unintimidated in their fancy jeans, confident in their own beauty. But most of them, the lovers, are an age that remembers. Those who are our age, 20 at least, have memory. We know they remember. They know we know but are too afraid to ask. The pockmarked faces of their buildings betray secrets that polite company wouldn't dare ask anyone to reveal.

It is a strange thing living in this city rebuilt of shiny facades and happy faces knowing that behind each are stories. As children, we watched their shame unfold on the 5 o'clock news. Life here balances precariously on the unsteady perch provided by the Dayton Accords, wedged awkwardly between Western Europe, the Middle East, and some notion of the Communist legacy of the Slavic East.

Each night, the muezzins chant their separate harmonies calling us to pray, and Sarajevo's lovers bid themselves goodnight, undoubtedly uttering their own intimate prayers among themselves.

And I wonder, do they tell each other their secrets?

I see your extra fiber, Karen, and raise it by one large cockroach crawling on my neck

Yes, on my first night here in my non-air conditioned apartment in Dhaka, I woke up in the middle of the night to find a very large (we're talking thumb-sized) cockroach crawling on my neck! Fortunately, as those of you who know about my friends who live in my apartment in ATL, I am an expert cockroach killer and had my trusty Reef/Cockroach-Killer flip flops nearby and I got those suckers (there was more than one) on the first shot. My roommate was appalled, as the girl who lived in my room for a year before me never saw any roaches the whole time she was there.
Other than the cockroaches, Dhaka is hot hot hot. But now its pouring rain, so its a little less humid and hopefully I will be able to sleep tonight without sweating all over my little bed on the floor.
I went to the office yesterday and today and got introduced to everyone, including the two office peons. Seriously, the other people in the office actually call them peons. The peons job is to bring in coffee, tea, and Wimpy sandwiches on a regular basis, and of course I can't bring myself to call them peons, although no one has told me their proper names and of course they don't speak any English.
But, research-wise, things look good, lots of help from the director and the partner at UNICEF and they are already setting up field visits, though we have to wait for police permission.
In the meantime, the best thing about Dhaka is the little three-wheeled green CNGs (so called because they use natural gas) that I take to get around. Its like a combination motorbike/rickshaw/donkey cart/cage and you kind of zoom around low to the ground. Although putting your taka (rhymes with Dhaka) in through the holes in the cage part where the driver sits when you pay makes it feel a little like you're either in the back of a very tiny police car or an animal in a cage (not that I would know)!
Salaam aleikum...

I already lost my passport. I am so genius.