Sooke, Vancouver Island, with the family

Victoria, BC

And I did it!

TOP GUN TRIATHLON 2009
This past weekend, I participated in my first ever sprint triathlon. I was quite stoked about it in the months leading up to it. Then, in the last two weeks, I got quite nervous. The morning of the race, I stood on the beach at 6:30 am and thought: "What the heck am I doing here?"
My "wave" was third - following kids, and young men. My wave was made up of 20-39 year old women. My tri-age is 30 (even though I'm not quite there yet in real age), and so I was racing against women ages 30-34. Really, I was just racing against myself and my goal time of 1 hour 30 minutes. But as I stood on that beach, everything looked daunting - the waves, the other women, the already hot sun...
But they called us down to the water and the gun went off and I had no choice but to run into the warm gulf water with the hundreds of other women in my wave.

The swim actually went pretty well. There was a lot of pushing and pulling and grabbing. The conflicts with other women combined with the salt water and waves made it not the most pleasant experience of my life, but it definately wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Fortunately, the current was perfect that morning and it actually pushed us along in the right direction. I took my underwater camera in with me and just shot randomly and look who else was swimming with us:

Just kidding! That picture is from Sea World the day before. :) Can't say sharks didn't cross my mind a time or two while I was out there though!

Anyhow, I got to where I could stand, and started running out of the water. I checked my watch - 7:55! Woo hoo! I was banking on the swim taking me between 12 and 15 minutes! So as you can see from this next picture, I was excited and filled with new energy to keep going. (Yes, that's me waving in the middle of the picture like a big dork. Notice I'm not the LAST one out of the water!)

Then came the bike. I don't have a road bike, just a hybrid. So needless to say, I was not a superstar at this portion. However, I made sure to push myself and felt great during the ride. A LOT of people passed me, but I knew that would happen. By the end of my bike ride, the 30-39 year old men who left in the 5th wave were catching up to me, and speeding by me as if they were batman. Pretty crazy. Jon didn't manage to get a picture of me on the bike, but our friend Tim is pictured here in red.

And then of course, the run. This was supposed to be the easiest event for me, but seeing as it was after a swim and a bike, I was exhausted. It was a 5k and I did it in 27 minutes which I was pretty happy about - I had allotted myself 30 minutes. Jon missed the photo ops of that event, too. I guess I just whizzed by! :) Just joking.

Mine eyes have seen the glory! The FINISH line!

Tim and I, after the race.

My biggest fan:

I'm hoping I can steal some photo samples from the company that took race photos. They might say SAMPLE all over them, but maybe there's a shot of me on the bike and on the run. If I get them, I'll post them later.

All in all, I was thrilled with the race. I was shooting for an overall time of 1hour 30minutes. I got 1hour, 16 minutes and 48 seconds! 26/55 in my age group. 20/107 first-time women athletes. 488/1000 overall.

When's the next one?

Where's the Birth Plan?

REALLY great article.
The midwife mentioned in the beginning is the one I'm interning with.

Where's The Birth Plan? RHRealityCheck.org

Posted using ShareThis

A Brief Excerpt:
A new economic analysis forecasts savings of $9.1 billion per year if 10 percent of women planned to deliver out of hospital with midwives. (Right now, just one percent do). If America is serious about reform, midwifery advocates are saying, "Hey, how about us?"

It's all so LOGICAL....and therefore gets me so frustrated.

Stand By Me

I think this is one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI_0Hyn57Lk

Apparently, the organization - Playing for Change - raises money to build music schools for underprivileged children around the world. The first project is in South Africa.

Celebration

There's this town south of Orlando called Celebration - it's a New Urbanist Community - owned by Disney. Parts of it are pretty cute, but parts look like this. Too perfect. Too empty. Kinda eerie. I took this picture in the middle of the afternoon. Not a soul around except a gardner.

They have nice birds though.

Do They Raise Turkeys in Colombia?

These are the lovely children who have driven me somewhat crazy for the past while. This is the second group I've had in the kids camp - I didn't take any pictures of the first group. Honestly, we've had fun at times, but.....there have also been some miserable moments. Here they had all just gotten tatoos or face-paint and were pretty proud. Cute.

Weekend Away

We went to a wedding in a town on the beach about 2 hours away. It was nice to get out of Orlando for a bit, and the water was beautiful that day. I decided to practice my swimming here, because my sprint triathalon is in 2 weeks, and the swim portion is in the ocean. Let me tell you, ocean swimming is WAY different than pool swimming. Yikes. Don't know if I can do it. The waves, the tide, the salt, the sharks.....ugh.

And that's comfortable?

This is Atticus. He was seriously sleeping like this.

Childbirth in Tanzania

Click here to see some powerful photos.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/world/2009-maternalmortality/index.html

Shipping Containers

Hmmm...shipping containers. Thousands upon thousands of shipping containers collect in ports and just get stacked. It costs more to ship them back to wherever they came from (mainly China) than people are willing to pay. So they sit.

However, people have been creative recently, and have begun using shipping containers to build things. It's actually becoming more and more popular. Jon has had it in his head for a while that he wants to build us a house of shipping containers. At first, I was skeptical. But look what can be done!

I'm sold.

They are about $3000 each. Figure about 5 or 6 for a "normal"-sized house - not too bad of a price tag! Then we have the luxury of designing all of the inside ourselves!

It's a dream....

The Big Push

Check out this video --
This is a midwife in my area who I have talked to several times all about her mission and goals. She is awesome and has made a huge impact on me.
Here she is giving a spiel at a Briefing on Capitol Hill last month.

http://www.youtube.com/user/BigPushTube

Good Stuff Happening

For a while now, I have dreamt and re-dreamt what my "practice" will look like one day. Lately, I've been on this kick that my birth center (if I ever have one) will be the first LEED certified birth center. Well, someone beat me to it, which is a good thing, I guess. I found this center, scheduled to open in NYC in 2011 which looks pretty darn cool. They'll have a team of midwives, mental health counsellors, childbirth educators. lactation specialists and others all working together to serve women. They are also going to reach out to "marginalized" groups who might not feel comfortable with standard health care - eg, the working poor, new immigrants, adolescents, etc. Pretty awesome. This is totally what I want to do in Michigan. My center probably won't be this big and fancy, but the concept is good. However, mine will also have a community garden and an after-school program.

Anyhow, if you're interested, you can check it out here:

http://www.newspacenyc.org/about/

Adolescent pregnancy: a culturally complex issue

http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/87/6/09-020609/en/index.html

Bonfires and Thunderstorms

It's just after 4:00. I'm sitting in my living room with the windows wide open and listening to the sound of rain pouring down on our tin roof. The thunder is going like crazy. Lightening flashes almost continuously. My cats are not scared; rather, they sit comfortably, each on his own chair in the dining room. If you were in the room with me, we'd have to shout back and forth to each other. Sometimes it still boggles my mind that I live in a place where we have tropical storms and I can see palm trees outside my window. I'm enjoying it right now.

Earlier today I was at work, teaching. This week I started teaching an English Kids' Camp. I wrote the curriculum for the intermediate level and am teaching the beginner level. The kids come in groups from Colombia. This first week, it was just 1 group, and I had 9 students. On Monday, another group will start and I think I'll be up to 12 in my class. The kids are cute...but naughty. (Erika - WORSE than some of the ones we had at WILS.) Their English is very limited, and the curriculum is too hard for them. Which means a lot of thinking on my toes and a lot of games! It's quite exhausting, really. They get two 10 minute breaks in the morning. Typically, I let them out of the classroom and watch them walk to the bathroom, and then escort them around the corner outside to a courtyard between two buildings. It's not a big courtyard, so they can't run and play or anything like that. Two of the boys brought hackey sacks today, so I figured: sweet! That will keep them occupied! Well, apparently not occupied enough. I left them alone for not more than 5 minutes to set up for the next activity in the classroom. When I cam back out, they were all sitting there, watching.....fire. Yes, they created a bonfire right there in the middle of the courtyard - surrounded by bushes, a bench, and two buildings. I guess one kid had brought a lighter. They lit their brown paper bags and juice cartons on fire. These kids are 8-12 years old! What little sh*ts!!!

I left it up to their school director (a petite, lovely nun) to deal with them. Discipline is above my pay grade. I just went back to teaching: January...February...March.....

Visit from the Folks!

Jon's parents, Tim and Linda, came for a visit several weeks ago. Actually, it was the weekend we got in the car crash. Despite the accident, we had a good time. You can see from the pictures that we went out into nature again (same thing we always do with visitors) and saw alligators, birds and bison. Good times. Notice the bison interrupting the people on their walk.

Unfortunately, I'm getting worse at taking pictures. The only picture I have of "people" the entire time they were here, is this one of Jon and his dad. As I write this, Jon's brother Nick and his girlfriend are visiting. Jon's sister Allison left yesterday. And his other sister Sarah left on Tuesday. All those guests...and no pictures. I just haven't been pulling the camera out. I'll try to do better.

School Picnic

Back in Korea?

A few weeks ago, we had a picnic with my school. Well, I had a picnic with my students, since I am the only teacher to show up to these kinds of things. I dragged Jon along, but we had fun. I was glad he got to meet a bunch of my students. Also, he took charge of cooking the hamburgers, so they were done perfectly!

Playing or Terrorizing?

Do I have urine between my toes?

One of my dearest friends just posted on her blog, asking the question: "Do I have urine in my hair?" I'll leave you to imagine how that story unfolds...
But this morning I find myself asking a similar question.

I got my things together, ready to leave my house this morning to go to work to do some curriculum development on this sunny Friday morning. I slipped on my shoes and headed out the door. While walking to the car, I noticed that one of my shoes felt a little damp and warm, but didn't think much of it because the shoes are SO old and worn out and my feet always sweat in them anyways.

As I drove to work, I noticed more and more that my foot was "slipping" inside my shoe whenever I'd put my foot on the pedal. Hmmmm.....

The thought occurred to me: Did my cat pee in my shoe?

Now, this isn't that ridiculous of an idea. Last night, Fallujah was peeing on the rug NEXT to my shoes. I didn't know it at the time, and just thought he was sitting nicely, so I picked him up. Which of course meant he was then peeing ON ME. Yup...all down my leg and it splattered all over the hallway floor. Grodie. So he doesn't ALWAYS use the litter box like good little kitty.

And last week, Atticus threw up in my shoe. No joke. There was a pile of barf IN my shoe when I went to put it on last week (not the same shoe as I'm wearing today).

Well, when I got here to work and into my little cubicle, I took off my shoe and smelled it. Sure enough, the thing smells like cat pee. In fact, I'm sure this whole office smells like cat pee. Sick.

Instead of being mad at my cats, I have decided that really, they are only showing affection. I think they are smart and they know that I have to put my shoes on before I leave the house, so in a way, they are trying to prevent me from leaving. They want me to stay home with them, where we belong together.

I love my cats.
They make life just a little more interesting.