So I’ve been thinking why not combine both. Of course this is a great office joke. I have a very lightly scented candle (Aveda) that I sometimes light to which co-workers pass by and say in a snarky way, “I see the spa is open.” Anyway, to date my spa-ffice has been a pretty big disappointment for the most part mainly because I haven’t invested anything by dreaming into it. So here is what I want:
1. A noise machine
2. A blue light to combat winter woes
3. Another Scented candle
4. A vinyl wall decal for decoration
5. An ergonomic chair or support to align my spine (it feels so much better to sit up straight)
6. A foot rest
7. A big screen (I work on a laptop) with an arm (so that I can adjust where the screen is positioned)
8. A really cool pencil holder to keep on my desk

So yes, I realize converting my office into a “spa-ffice” might make me that person. But it would be awesome to be able to spend my working day in a place that is pleasing to the senses. It might even help productivity in terms of reducing stress, adapting to change, and being more creative.

I think he’s right about staying focused. In the speech he says he would ask himself every morning, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” If the answer “no” came back too many days in a row, Jobs says he would move on. It seems like simple logic, but how many people work jobs they hate or are in unhappy marriages? So many of us avoid intentional step towards happiness. Why?Perhaps we’re too scared of the changes in our lives that could help us be happier.

Besides being singularly focused, I think the factor Jobs never explicitly talked about was having a huge risk appetite. He made choices like completely giving up on college and pursuing something else, starting a new company and staying in Silicon Valley after public humiliation that took a great deal of risk. In my recent interest in leaders, I have read the autobiographies of Nelson Mandela and Ghandi. Unlike others, what separates these leaders from non-leaders is their exceptional ability to take risks. Perhaps their focus is their safety net, and without focus taking risks doesn’t make sense.

I think that Jobs is also right about seemingly random experiences informing his success. In Nelson Mandela’s autobiography he talks about grappling with an issue of justice in his adolescence. At the time, Mandela had a student council leadership position, and intentionally disobeyed a rule he viewed as unjust. It seems like he chose, even unconsciously, such experiences and ultimately used them to fight apartheid in South Africa.

‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says

This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Almost 15 years ago, Warren, Lewis’ older brother, studied in the town of Schlietz in East Germany. As luck would have it, work sent me to Frankfurt, and his host family had since relocated to Mainz. This meant we were only 90 minutes away. So on a Saturday morning, Lewis, my uncle who lives in Germany and I, set off to meet complete strangers. We had no real information about the Welsh family. We didn’t know what they looked like, whether they could speak English, or what they liked. We guessed sizes and brought a couple of t-shirts and key chains out of courtesy.  We didn’t have a real connection to the family either. Petra, Michael, Stephanie and Frank were only names. So walking up to their apartment building was awkward. With what kind of conversation could we possibly fill an entire afternoon?

Once seated, coffee and German cake in hand, our conversation slowly began. Petra, Warren’s host mom, was as nervous as we were and kept jumping up and down to ensure that our glasses were never empty. She had looked around for remnants of Warren’s stay in her home and produced pictures of a young, skinny kid playing with her then 2-year old. The same girl, now a young woman, smiled politely and nuzzled her boyfriend just to my left. What an incredible change from the swaddled toddler. Stephanie, assured us that she remembered Warren and her eyes twinkled as she recalled the attention he gave her, to which her boyfriend shot her a weary and jealous glance. Petra produced a translation rock on which Warren had written a message and a toy that he had sent. She laughed as she admitted that after so many years she still had not mastered it. Lewis stood up and demonstrated its use; it was a clear connection to his older brother.

As the day wore on, the distance between us slowly wore away. We learned that Petra had re-married and her new husband, at her insistence, spent hours looking for Warren on the Internet. She had remembered Warren’s middle name and found him by trying combinations of his first name, last name, and middle name before being able to connect with him over LinkdIn. We told her about his new and beautiful home. We told her about how much he loves his children, what a good father he is, and about how healthy and happy his family his. There was an audible sense of relief in her voice and her eyes welled with tears to hear the news.

While I didn’t show it, I too was overcome with emotion. Just an hour ago Petra, to me, was a complete stranger, living in a different country, and with the stress of her own life. Yet we were somehow connected to each other for the care we shared for the Lewis family. She said that Warren was like a second son to her and that there were not many days she didn’t think of the year he spent with her family. She said that she had seen parts of Germany because of him and I got the feeling that his stay had changed her in ways she could not express with her limited command of English. I thought of the butterfly affect and the way that we can touch one person’s life without really knowing the effect until years later. It moved me that someone so far away still cared, and reminded me how, despite distance, people connect in meaningful ways.

I’m blogging live from the field, but the posts will actually go up once back in DC. Out in the field is one of the only times when my brain is fully concentrated at the task at hand. So many times I don’t find the time, mental energy or motivation to write anything, but what I’m tasked to write. But I thought I would try blogging live from the field to capture my thoughts.

Day 1

Met with team leads and coordinators to set the week’s agenda. I imagined the work here to be intense, but wasn’t expecting stakeholders to look to us for so much. Must manage these expectations. Headed to Nimba and Bong counties on Wednesday. Long drives, bad hotels, food is questionable IF we can find it, don’t count on electricity. One  guy asked me, “Do you like bucket bathing?”

UN vehicles everywhere and army guys sharing the “Palm Resort” in the area of town called Congo Town with us. We can see hand water pumps on the side of the road. There are these mini gas pumps that can’t sell more than 20 gallons of gas as well. Have seen lots of furniture businesses and salons like the one called “Dis and Dat” or the one with a picture of Fu Man Chu and the warning, “This could be you.”

Liberia has some oddities that I would like to understand. I ate at a Korean restaurant managed by an Indian. I had Chinese style stir fried chicken except that it was served in tahini for $10, which I paid in US currency.  My colleague had ramen complete with Korean style pickles. Aren’t we in Liberia?

Day 5

I’m out in Nimba county where I’m staying in the town of Ghanta. Ghanta is referred to as the “city that never sleeps” and is probably one of the shadiest places I’ve ever been in my life. It’s a border town and so therefore the intersection of all sorts of trade- legal and illegal. One of our out of school youth focus groups illustrates how rough life is in this place. We learned that young people spend a lot of their time in risky places. Here are some direct quotes “Clubs start as early as 13…age is not the limit money is” “Youth especially females spend a lot of time in motels for commercial sex” “Youth spend a lot of time in the ghetto with bad guys…and drugs and alcohol.”  These are the types of pervasive activities around this place.

The hotel here is sufficient, but still shady. On the first night my colleague found a multi-colored braid made of hair next to her bed and a mouse was in her suitcase. One the second night we heard loud yelling as we approached the hotel. The manager reported that there was a presidential candidate staying at the hotel and a mob of people had come to demand money. They were standing outside his door yelling. Unfortunately for us, we were to be moved to the rooms adjacent to this mess; that is the so called VIP side of the hotel. After the angry group left another group starting their round of yelling. This time it was in the name of God and a group was shouting “hallelujah” late into the night.

As we were driving the beat up dirt roads that barely connect Nimba county, we saw a brigade of UNHCR vehicles carrying refugees from the temporary camps on the border to more permanent camps in town.

In addition to the various UN organizations (UNHCR, UNFPA, UNICAEF, UNDP, UNMIL) there are in fact, NGOs all around despite the small size of this country. Liberia has a population of 3.6 million people, so one can imagine the size of a town. In the baseline study that we are using, Nimba has 3,000 people. Just driving around I saw signs for CARE, Save the Children, Norwegian Refugee Council, Education Development Center, IRC, and ACDI/VOCA with Project Concern International. There are probably more, but I just didn’t see them. After 14 years of civil war, NGOs are able to begin development projects as opposed to relief work. With 5 years of peace, Liberia is still very fragile and scars of such a long war take time to heal. One scar is the depletion of human capital. Even the literacy of teachers is low no doubt due to weak education to begin with coupled with little opportunities for learning. So one can imagine the education available to Liberia’s next generation. I also noticed the physical appearance of children. Food shortages and years of living through the annual “lean or hunger time” has impeded their mental and physical development thereby causing permanent damage to their future ability to learn and stunting their growth. I don’t have any first hand evidence, but know that war leaves considerable emotional trauma. Ex-combatants must live among society and people suffered death, rape, kidnapping, killing and any number of tragedies for many years. These traumas will certainly materialize more and more as Liberia maintains its peace.  With so much work and a population in such need I can see why there are so many NGOs operating in such a small space. At the same time, as much as I believe in true grassroots development work, my mind begins to wonder whether just giving people cash and building infrastructure wouldn’t be the way to go instead. In general I believe dumping donations on a population only creates dependency. But in places where people are in such poverty, perhaps donating the right resources would be of help.

I compare Nigeria and Liberia since being in Nigeria is my other experience in West Africa. I think that the poverty in Liberia is more pervasive and deeper. So it’s not surprising that in my experience Nigerians have a higher level of literacy and numeracy. However, Liberians seem to have more hope. (Not that I can generalize about an entire population after 1 month in Nigeria and 2 weeks in Liberia).  I remember thinking that the poverty in Nigeria was especially depressing. Liberia is worse off, but at least Liberians have hope. They believe there is a better future and they are excited about it and willing to put in effort to get. I think this makes a huge difference in my ability to encourage and be encouraged and to motivate and be motivated.

How could a blog of mine be complete without paying tribute to food? There are a couple of popular dishes in Nimba. GB is a mildly spicy and slimy soup with fish and meat that is eaten with pounded cassava (similar to fufu). You take a small piece of the cassava and roll in it in your right hand. You then make a small indentation in cassava and dip it in the soup. You’re not supposed to chew, just swallow. We sat outside the office and shared a bowl. I found it really strange to swallow and my mind could barely stop my mouth from chewing as soon as a piece of food entered it. Plus I had to predict how much I would be able to swallow. The Liberian staff had a good laugh when they saw how big a swallow I intended to feed myself. Rice is also a major staple here. One meal includes a huge portion of rice (probably 3 cups) that is served with pepper soup. Pepper soup is a spicy soup served with veggies and chunks of odd looking beef. I say odd because I cut into one piece and it was black inside. I had some of this, but could not finish the entire portion of rice or soup. The rice was too much, and my mind was influencing my taste buds so that I felt really disgusted eating the meat. I felt bad knowing that there were literally people starving in this country and here I was sending back a half-eaten portion of food. Later, I wanted to go to the market to capture some images we could possibly use designing training materials. While there I discovered live snails that were being sold! I hate to say this about anyone’s food, but they looked disgusting- slimy, black, and crawling all over each other in a hot and dirty heap. I don’t think I’m ready for that.

The main concern for me about food here is not so much taste, but cleanliness. The dishes are sort of swished in a bucket of dirty-ish water to get clean, and everyone eats with their hands. Looking back I don’t know how I ate in the field so much in Bolivia. But after a while I didn’t mind it. In fact there were some dishes that I looked forward to eating such as llama meat that was dehydrated and then fried served with a hardboiled egg, potatoes and salty cheese in the Altiplano and fresh chicken with rice in the valley. I also like drinking soda when out in the field.

1. What did you do that you’d never done before?
Lots-
Lived in Arlington
Traveled to Nigeria, Palestine, Guatemala, New Hampshire, Albany, Poconos
Developed a youth friendly loan product for a micro finance institution
Developed a full curricula in Spanish with topics related to sexual reproductive health for girls
Danced tango
Got engaged
Experienced a blizzard

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
At some point I realized that I don’t do New Year’s resolutions

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes! My sister in law

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Yes, my grandfather

5. What countries did you visit?
Nigeria, Palestine, Guatemala

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?
TIME

7. What date from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Feb 8- I got engaged

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Professional accomplishments
Finding an awesome apartment

9. What was your biggest failure?
Being behind on wedding planning

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No

11. What was the best thing you bought?
A desk for my fiancé
A wedding dress

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
JL for being awesome

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Everyone has bad moments.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Student loan payments, wedding stuff, domestic travel

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
diamond ring, reducing my commute time, living with JL, personal training, tango dancing, my shun knife, being back in the US

16. What song will always remind you of 2010?
Hmmm “Oxford Comma”

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
I. happier or sadder? happier
ii. thinner or fatter? fatter
iii. richer or poorer? richer

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Spent time outside
19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Shopping

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
Spent Christmas in San Antonio with family. It’s always nice to go home.

21. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?
JL, Jen, Summer

22. Did you fall in love this year?
Yes. I fall more in love every year.

23. How many one-night stands?
None. Why is this question even here?
24. What was your favorite TV program?
Lost and Glee

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
I don’t hate anyone.

26. What was the best book you read?
The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo (I know, but what can I say read it followed by its successor).

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Feist and Vampire Weekend

28. What did you want and get?
Wanted to get a place with JL and got it. Wanted a job with a future and got it.

29. What did you want and not get?
To be thinner

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
I think I only saw 3 and can’t remember them

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 29 and celebrated with Rose, a wonderful Nigerian woman who celebrates her bday on the same day. She surprised me with vanilla ice cream and then we talked into the night.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasur
ably more satisfying?
Having more time to spend with friends.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?
Scraping by

34. What kept you sane?
Being with JL, watching Glee, working with cool people

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
None

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
Israel-Palestine conflict

37. Who did you miss?
My family

38. Who was the best new person you met?
Too many to say the best. Probably Rathi at work

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.
Rest your mind when work becomes too stressful.

Jen’s husband agreed to give his Saturday to wrangling 2 young kids so that Jen and I could go dress shopping. She made appointments at 2 boutiques. The first boutique seemed to be run by an Easter European or Russian family. They had hundreds of beautiful gowns displayed on mannequins. The process is to pick a gown off a mannequin and try it on. All in all I tried on about 50 gowns at this place.

The lady helping me had very strong opinions about what worked and didn’t work on me. She didn’t like me in anything but a straight neckline, or silk taffeta. While she picked out very flattering and elegant things, many of the dresses just weren’t “me”. I finally said, “This is very flattering, but I’m not really an elegant or sophisticated person. I’m more funky and maybe strange, eclectic. This dress looks like a 1950s housewife, and I am DEFINITELY NOT a 1950s housewife.” Still she did a great job. The funniest part was when she somehow managed to squeeze me into a size 12 dress. I’m a 14 in wedding dress and even a 16 is only a tad too big. Like I’ve always said (or thought to myself), “fat moves in mysterious ways.” I felt like Scarlet O’Hare being squeezed into a corset. She was pulling the strings on the corset of the dress with so much tension, I thought she would break the dress. She had to get an assistant to help her with the zipper, and at one point I thought they were going to bring out the pliers.  But they finally managed to get me into the dress, which was gorgeous. Of course I looked amazing- you look like an hourglass when you can’t breathe. I thought I would buy that dress in my size. I even picked accessories, and had them take my measurements. The seal the deal, they gave Jen and I chocolates and $50 spa gift certificates.

On our way to our next appointment, we thought it would be just a matter of looking quickly and then going back and buying the other dress. The next boutique was quite small. There were maybe 30 dresses. The atmosphere was completely different. It was like being in a circle of friends. The ladies had a professional but friendly banter, and I immediately felt more relaxed in their intimate shop with only 2 dressing rooms. The ladies in the shop knew right away which dress I would look great in. They pulled it down, and said I was the first to ever try it on. I tried it on and the fit was just right. I wasn’t convinced right away since I had developed a fondness for the dress at the previous shop. Jen took pictures of me and sent them to my folks. The second dress was much more simple and less funky than the dress in the first shop. I asked my dad which of the two dresses he liked he said, “You probably like the first one better because it’s more funky. You’re wedding will probably be different, and you don’t need to be the funky part of it. Besides you’re funky enough as it is, so you don’t need a dress to make you more funky.” Jen who had been pulling dresses on and off me all afternoon said, “The only funky thing here are those pits.” What a friend. My mom also liked the second dress better.  So I bought the second one. Much to my surprise it was hundreds of dollars cheaper than the other dress.

I was hard to describe the feeling of dress shopping. It is stressful, and I still think it hasn’t sunk in. As I was looking at myself, I didn’t have that “I’m a princess, my world is spinning with happiness” high that I think some people get when they have found “the dress.” When I finally decided on the dress, I did have tears, but they were more for Jen. Thinking that someone cares enough about me to spend the day wedding dress shopping. It was thinking that she was the one who introduced John and I, and she was the one who helped me find “the dress.” It was also being able to trust her judgment both in what looked flattering, but also what fit my personality. Thanks Jen. I owe you!

There are a couple pieces of news.

First, Lewis and I have finally got a wedding website together. Please visit us at www.marikoandjohn.com In addition to details about our wedding, you’ll also find music, and our engagement story.

Second, I have discovered the awesome power of wait for it ….wait for it ……

Spinach! I made a quinoa spinach soap that was plain and boring, but left me feeling amazing- more energy, happier,  stronger…Despite the good feelings it was hard to get down for the lack of pizazz. So I decided to add pizazz and by pizazz I mean chocolate. Hence the choco-spinach power shake. This swamp looking green-brown shake has spinach, quinoa, unadulterated chocolate powder, soy milk, water, agave, fat free plain Greek yogurt, a banana, and flax. The color is honestly pretty bad, but I like it. Most people would probably like it a bit sweeter than I do, but I like the elemental flavors of spinach and chocolate so keep the agave to a limit.

Third, I have re-discovered hot yoga. There is a yoga studio just down the street from my office, and I’m trying to go. The only problem is that making the class offerings is a bit difficult. One of my colleagues happens to be a yoga teacher who knows of the original teacher I began practicing yoga with years ago. Isn’t that odd? Plus, the kind of yoga I’ve re-discovered is the same as the style I originally began with. Isn’t that odd 2?

Fourth, Lewis and I went to the Renaissance Festival, which oddly is where we met the very first time (there was no romance then). The first time I went to the Ren Fest I was too overwhelmed by the whole thing- mainly white people walking around a fair ground in Maryland that is turned into medieval Europe. There are jousting, knight costumes, corset dresses bearing lots of cleavage, mead, hypnosis shows and more. This year I was able to concentrate more on what was surrounding me instead of just being overwhelmed by all of it. The most memorable part was a woman wearing tight jeans and a tight leather vest bearing her stomach. She was also wearing a fox tail and I swear there was a hole in her jeans. I’m no historian, but WTF does that outfit have to do with medieval Europe?

Fifth, I, like the rest of DC read The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. It was surprisingly twisted. I also watched the movie on Netflix.

Sixth, Lewis and I went camping again. Like the first time we went, it got really cold at night. However, this time we were prepared with sleeping bags and mats. We were in Vermont. It was awesome to see a sky FULL of stars, mull fresh apple cider, sit around the camp fire, and go hiking. The foliage was amazing too.

Seventh, since writing the last blog I have probably written near 1,000 pages of reports, training materials, etc. 400 of those pages were in Spanish.I have also developed two high profile presentations, two presentations for clients, participated on a panel discussion,  conducted 3 full days of training, participated in 3 full days of training, and experienced Ramadan in Palestine. Ramadan deserves its own post. I’m tired just thinking about that.

Eighth, I’ve actually had time to start going to the gym again. This is very exciting since I realized that my entire body was sore from lack of movement. When I first started going back to the gym, I wanted to ease in. However, that was leading to sub-par workouts. I didn’t know this about myself, but I prefer hard workouts to light ones. Walking on treadmill is only satisfying for me if I’m really tired. Instead I need to shock myself back into working out by challenging myself and making things fun.

I already feel like the baby and I have some things in common. He was born 9 days ealry and I was born 10 days ealry, and we both celebrate our birthdays with a grandparent  My grandfather and I share the same bday, and Nathan shares his bday with his grandmother.

It’s so wonderful that I’m in the country and get to celebrate this event with the family. I thought he would be born while I was away, so this is a really nice surprise.

I’m also inspited by his mother. Jen does an amazong job of taking care of herself. As a result she has overcome a series of health challenges, and had a drama-free pregnancy. When I heard she was talking and up for visitors only 5 hours after giving birth, I was totally surprised. Also, if went to the hospital for a pre birth check up, and they decided to induce, I probably would have flipped out. I can just imagine what I would do/say if someone told me, “Get ready to have a baby tomorrow.” Jen on the other hand seemed to just go with the flow.

Congratulations!

Friday July 23 was one of those awesome days that reminds me of why I do the work I do. Making Cents was hired by the Population Council to provide training and curriculum revisions to a program that provides life skills and health training for girls and young women living in rural Guatemala. This is a program that is driven by the sheer passion, compassion, and devotion of the Population Council program staff. The program, Abriendo Oportunidades (Opening Opportunities) has recently and deservedly received a lot of attention from the United Nations Population Fund for the changes it has made in the lives of the participants. Here is a link for more information: http://www.unicef.org/emerg/index_48500.html

On Friday, the UN and a film crew stopped by the office to take some shots they are putting together for a forthcoming video. Odunola Ojewumi, winner of the Marie Claire and United Nations Population Fund award for the Health and Dignity of Women was in Guatemala to share her inspiring story of struggle as well as visit the Abriendo Oportunidades program. Here is her thoughtful blog: http://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity-lifestyle/travel/unfpa-student-womens-safe-space 

On Friday, I was working with this inspiring team so that they could improve the way they work with the girls. The team of trainers themselves hails from rural communities where they grew up in large families and with few opportunities for education or even good nutrition. It’s difficult to describe the challenges that these women overcome without sounding too preachy, but let me describe a little of the context. The women don’t usually speak Spanish since part of the richness and challenge of working in Guatemala is the variety of indigenous cultures. Second, they are very vulnerable to domestic violence and have little control over when they enter into intimate relationships. They marry early and have many children. This has to do with little knowledge about family planning methodologies, few female role models who do anything but drop out of school in 6^th grade and marry at 15, and succumbing to male advances because that is what women in their communities do.

I’ve conducted a couple of in-depth interviews with the girls in the program and they often speak of domestic violence but the inability to do anything about it. They feel worthless and scared to communicate. They feel isolated and that life offers few opportunities.

Women’s labor is almost always without remuneration, and the long hours they spend tending to children and home prevents them from pursuing other forms of economic productivity. As such, they enter into relationships and are dependent on men who may be emotionally, sexually, physically, and psychologically abusive. This becomes the norm. The problem is that such norms can exacerbate poverty as children grow up with few opportunities and families are stretched to provide for them. Social scientists the world over have already shown the relationship between women’s empowerment and prosperity and peace so I won’t go into that here.

The young women who provide training to the next generation of young women hail from these situations, but have stepped beyond to discover that they can be different. The trainers are in their early 20s and in college- they are the first in their families. They have traveled around the country, which is a sign of prestige in their communities as well as are earning an income.

This is where I come in. I worked with this group of trainers through a series of workshops to show them, not tell them some of the possibilities of working with girls. It was empowering to me to put these participants at the center of the lesson. It wasn’t about me telling them what I think they can do, but rather them telling me what they think they can do. It was a process of give and take where I offered them a few opportunities to open themselves to new ideas, and gave them say over what they felt was appropriate.

I could tell how excited they were with some of the ideas and materials I presented to them. When the UN crew asked for interviews, I sat in the background, but could hear them talking about things they had just learned. They played a series of games that came straight out of the materials I developed.

I have this vision that Making Cents writes training materials that fill 2 purposes. One is that they are easy to follow instructions that allow even the most disenfranchised girls to teach other girls. And the second purpose is that they allow the trainers to “self-teach” through funny, interesting and easy to read commentaries about a number of complex topics. My vision is that each set of training materials is appealing to the girls who receive the training as well as provides something to the trainers who use them.

International development as a career is not easy. It pulls me away from the people I love and is frustrating to establish a steady family-life. It’s a sacrifice in many ways. I travel to potentially dangerous places, and miss the small things like dinner parties while I’m away. It’s tiring to get on and off of planes and means that my loved ones also have to tolerate my absences. But for me, days like July 23^rd are so meaningful, and I feel like people search an entire lifetime to feel what I get to feel as part of my normal job.  Also, I feel like July 23^rd brought together many things I have worked hard to accomplish. I have a degree in Spanish and have provided a full range of written materials and workshops in Spanish. I’ve worked hard and for years to gain fluency, and living in Bolivia for over a year was part of that sacrifice.  As an undergrad I was also part of the only feminist group on a conservative campus. Women’s dignity is something I’ve longed believed in. I never thought I would actually get to work in the area because I’m not a gender specialist, and would actually not go down that path. I’m a feminist, but practice this belief in other ways. I also love being able to help people learn. Whether this is a trainer, teacher, summer camp counselor, I feel like teaching is just something I like. Finally, travel for me is more than gallivanting (although I like that too), it’s part of my personal and continuing education.  It opens and stretches me in ways I could never fully communicate. It’s gratifying that my career is allowing me to do things I hold dear.

 Entering the picnic there is a greeter who gives you raffle tickets, and low and behold I spotted a pie eating contest sign-up. For some reason, I just signed us up. Nothing went through my mind like we would be sticking our face into a heap of frosting in front of all his colleagues, that the pie would be nasty, that people barf when they do these kinds of things. I mainly thought I wanted compete against Lewis in eating pie. Now is that messed up or what? What the hell is wrong with me? Oh well.

Ok, it’s not like I thought I was going to rock the pie eating contest, but I did a lot worse than I thought. I sort of licked frosting daintily- I didn’t even get any on my nose. I learned that this was not a good strategy while I was watching the competition, which of course was another mistake.  When I checked out the competition, I noticed they had their faces completely buried in the pie- I mean from chin to forehead.

 Needless to say I didn’t place and neither did Lewis. Out of 6, I think I came in 5 and he probably came in 4. Oh and when we got home, we were so strung out on sugar that we passed out around 4 or 5 in the afternoon. I woke up around 10 to pack for Guatemala. He woke up early to cook me pancakes and drive me to the airport at the crack of dawn. Now that’s love- indulging your fiancée’s strange desire to enter a pie eating contest, and then making her pancakes before her flight.