Thursday, January 27, 2011

Singing oh, January, oh

The Decemberists new album = rockin', albeit a bit country sounding, was inspired by REM so I'm gonna give them a break.

Went to the Mercy Corps Client Day and Trade Fair during the weekend, some pictures ahead (HAHA get it?! Well, if you don't you'll see soon enough...). I got some cool stuffs, including PORK which we made pulled-pork sandwiches with and they were DELICIOUS.

Yesterday was the end of the 4th Nine (see my post about the Nine Nines)… which is the coldest Nine. Only warm from here on up, yeah? I’d like to call BS since it’s only the end of January, but it seems that it might actually be true- the weekend calls for the lows to be ABOVE zero, and highs of +23F! I don’t even remember what that feels like! Break out the bathing suits!

At the Trade Fair
This little sheep went to market... 
Also a month from today (*ahem* this was written yesterday) I’ll be headed to the good ol’ US of A (and Hong Kong) for a nice vacation. I’m thinking either I’m going to FREAK OUT (dreading reverse culture shock) or it’ll be perfectly fine. Hopefully the latter. Although my mom said she had it when she came back from Scotland for the first time, going into the huge supermarkets. One can only hope that I freak out whist eating a wonderful Jimmy Johns sandwich. #9 with no tomatoes and extra lettuce and onion… here I come.

…Need to stop thinking about American food. Just gets depressing. I’ve noticed I get on “food kicks” here. Like I’ll eat one kind of thing for a long time then suddenly get sick of it. I once was hugely obsessed with veggie melts but once sliced cheese disappeared from the delguur (store) shelves, I’ve been mostly eating sliced veggies with a Thai sweet-and-sour sauce, sometimes with chicken if I have it. For breakfast I used to be a hard-core egg eater but now I’ve gotten lazy and, with the help of Alex’s oven I’m still pirating, I’ve been eating toast nearly every morning. Partially also due to the fact that eggs are becoming a rarity again now that Tsaagan Sar is less than a week away.

Excuse me...
i lose mai bodie... plz help mi :(
In other news we finished our grant for the Children’s Camp this week and I’m just waiting until Friday to get the final signatures so we can send it in. This week I’ll be starting another grant to address road safety in our community. When my coworker said that the hospital was interested in doing that project, I was right on board. We’re going to try for a MCA (Millennium Challenge) grant… but the deadline is April 4th, just after I come back. So I’m going to try my darndest to punch this thing out next month with the help of my coworkers.

A little random, but I had a momentary freak-out at work today. I haven’t been feeling very good this week (tired/sore throat), I don’t know if that has anything to do with this. Anyway. I had “Doctors Without Borders” on the brain for some reason so I decided to check out their website. My thought process went a little like this:

Oh this would be a really awesome thing to do, what are the requirements? *clickity click* --> Huh, two years clinical experience with less than a 2 year gap in between --> Well, that’s ok, I can do my masters before hand, then I can work for a couple of years and then do this --> Let’s look at U of M’s nursing master’s programs! *clickity click* --> shit, do I need to take the GRE? WHEN? --> wait, what the heck to I even want to do my master IN? Clinical nurse specialist in GI diseases? CNS in adult acute care? Community health? Education? --> Should I start applying now?? --> Oh, but what if I wanted to take a year off? Then I could go down to Bolivia to do the photographs for Hugh’s university --> What about those photography classes I wanted to do? *clickity click* --> What about the continuing education classes in Japan? *CLICKITY CLICK* --> What about doing a year in South Korea teaching English? You get paid for that! --> What if I want to do a 3rd year here?! I’m going to be SO OLD! I’m going to be the OLD SPINSTER with the nice career and no love/personal life, aren’t I? AREN’T I?? --> …I really should be working on that grant. *hastily closes browser tabs*

…Luckily my coworkers did not notice such a thought process.

Chairs chairs everywhere
Here's a nice picture so you can think happy thoughts after this blog post!

4 comments:

  1. You'll figure it all out! You're young, and you've got lots of time. At least you've got a sense of what you want to accomplish now so you can get a head start on learning what you'll need to do to reach those goals. You can do it! And in terms of the spinster issue, I'm right there with you! ^_^

    love ya!

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  2. Don't worry about the future Kate (too much) (maybe there's a fine line between planning for the future and excessively worrying about it). And "single" sounds a lot better than "spinster". I'm so proud of all you're doing. Hope you're feeling better physically. Can't wait for FL/Harry Potter/ and the Blue Man Group (I bought tickets--have you seen them? ask Monika about the show...) Lots of love, Mom

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  3. No worries about the Freak out Katie. It happens to everyone. I get Them quite frequently now that I'm almost out of school. you just have to stop yourself and think. Deep breaths. and then just focus on whats right in front of you. Plus no worries about the spinster thing. You have been friends with mostly guys for 8 months! gives you a big advantage.

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  4. Dear Katie,

    Look at the bright side! At least you're thinking about it and you have so many interests. You have some idea which is better than no idea! You still have over a year of Peace corps left so you have plenty of time to think about it before you need to start setting things up. And Ellen is right! Just take things one step at a time. Besides you're not going to be that old that soon! You're not even 25! And you won't even be 30 by the time you're changing your life path! Our generation is different in that we won't be settling down until we're in our 30s, possibly even late 30s! You definitely won't be a spinster. But in all honesty if you foresee tons of travel and living in different places over the next 10 years, then yes it would be difficult to retain a relationship. Maybe you should think about at what ideal time you would want to start a family or settle down? And see what kind of time frame that might give you! Or just isolate what means the most to you. For now you just need to do some soul searching! But no matter what, you'll make the right decision and we'll always be proud and supportive!

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