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

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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.

Smash

A lot of you already know that we smashed our car up pretty good last weekend. Well, WE didn't smash it, but some moron who can't see solid red lights smashed it...while we and Jon's parents were in it. We are, for the most part, okay but obviously the car is totalled. This picture was taken yesterday when we went to the place it was towed to get the plates off. Poor little car.

Although we feel very fortunate to have our lives and most of our health, we are still quite angry about the whole ordeal. Of course now we are in talks with insurance and that is such a hassle. Nothing has gone right so far. I know it just takes patience, but when you're paying out of pocket for a rental and have medical concerns, there isn't much of a patience well.

Also, we had just paid this car off - two months ago! We were thrilled to have one less payment each month and to be able to save that money or put it towards school loans. So of course that angers us as well. Insurance is offering us an amount that is about $4000 less than what we paid for it two years ago. That's an expensive two years! So we're trying to figure out the next move in terms of buying a car - buy a cheap not-so-cool car that will tie us over for a year, or just spend the money we get from insurance on a car that is somewhat equivalent to what we had. Grrr. It's all frustrating.

Anyhow, we'll post a picture of the new vehicle when we get one. And no, our bikes are not a practical suggestion. It takes me about 15 minutes to get to work on the highway. Plus, I don't think the birth center would like for me to pedal up all sweaty and nasty when I'm on call. :)

Please pray that this headache is over with real soon.

Da Jesus Book

My parents and I visited WordSpring Discovery Center, a museum-of-sorts by Wycliffe Bible Translators. Here are excerpts from "Da Jesus Book" - the Bible translated into Hawaiin Pidgin English. So awesome.

Thinking of you, Barnhoorns!

Spring Break!

"Spring Break! Woo hoo! Party on in Florida!" That's what my parents were shouting as they boarded the plane in Seattle to come visit us in Orlando. They hadn't been here in over a year and...well....they found that it was the same as how they left it. Not super exciting. BUT...we had a marvelous time. We left Orlando for the weekend and went to Sarasota, Siesta Key and Myaaka State Park.
Back in Orlando, my dad decided he hadn't yet seen enough alligators, so the folks and I went to the Orlando Wetlands. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, but I'll have to get some of my dad's pictures of the ginormous alligators that almost ate me and mom for lunch. Also, we saw really fabulous birds. When you come to visit, I'll take you, too.