La Routine

Life this summer has been good. Tennis, dinners with our wonderful neighbors, walks with the dogs in the neighborhood, work (bleh), chilling at home, trying to find my passport (fail), and some more chilling. The weather hasn't been great so we have spent quite a lot of time indoors. It's been pretty perfect.

It's the end of August already. This is craziness.

I will try to be more interesting in my next post!

Ruined

Joe took me to a play on my birthday. The play is called "Ruined" and it deals with the situation in East Congo -rapes, war, and survival. It was beautiful, humorous, musical, and poignant. I couldn't stop crying when one of the characters recounted her experience of being abducted by rebels, held in the forest for 5 months, and rejected by her husband and entire community once she was released. Her whole story -from her abduction to the horrible rape experiences and rejection by her husband- is the story of many women in Easter DRC. I read quite a few of those in my first days at Panzi, when I was trying to know the hospital and the women better -I didn't speak Swahili and didn't want to have the women recount their stories to a stranger, so I read their intake paperwork instead. The actors are excellent and their attitude -from their accent to their gestures- really rang true. We just loved it.

I didn't know this coming in, but the theater was actually running a donation campaign for the Panzi Hospital. We didn't donate in the theater but I will send them a package soon. That experience in the DRC was so miserable that I slammed the door shut when I left and never re-opened it. Now is time for me to re-open the door and do something to support this hospital and its staff who work tirelessly to heal and re-integrate women in their communities.

Ruined is not playing anymore (if it is, I encourage you to see it pronto), but if you want to know more about the situation in East DRC, here are a few links you can go to:

www.panzihospitalbukavu.org

www.healafrica.org (the other Kivu hospital, located in Goma)

www.womenforwomen.org (to sponsor a woman in the DRC)

www.easterncongo.org (Affleck's NGO -quite promising)

30

I turned 30 on Friday. I was not happy about turning 30 and I am still not sure I'm embracing this age quite yet. I really did like being 20-something. I hope I am not supposed to act all grown up and think before I talk/write now.

Friday was actually pretty uneventful. I usually don't like to celebrate my birthday, so Joe and I went to dinner on Thursday night, cancelled our reservation for Friday night (at a great restaurant, but there's so much fat we can eat in 2 days!), and we spent the day driving around town, running errands -nice errands, though. In the evening we saw the play Ruined -which I will discuss in another post. All in all, pretty good day.

It's fun to compare where I thought I would be at 30 to where I am at:

* Thought I would live in the US: check.

* Thought I would be living in the sun: Seattle, you're killing me!

* Thought I would be married: check.

* Thought I would be married to a famous person: not yet (what? Joe might be famous one day).

* Thought I would have a child: working on that.

* Thought I would work in the entertainment industry: nope.

* Thought I would do something good for other people: through work, yes.

* Thought I would be filthy rich: damnit, no.

* Thought I would have a rock star body (not the mix-of-coke-and-booze type, but the awesome type): hahahha.

* Thought I would be rid of my fear of flying: uuuugh, that's a no.

* Thought I would own a house: no, but I like renting, so that's fine.

Well, that's pretty much all I thought. Not bad, akshully. I like where I'm at. I have been immensely lucky in my life (I wanted to write "blessed" but then I'd have to have a conversation with one of my besties about that, so let's leave it at lucky!).

So I think I'm ok being 30. Let's see what this new decade brings.

And Breathe!

I deleted my last post because I realized it might have been offensive. While I still very much am in favor of gay marriage -and hope that today it will be reinstated in CA- I didn't want to hurt any person who believes otherwise. Well, not that thousands of people read the blog, but still.

Anyway, today could be a good day for progress toward more equality and justice. I'll leave it at that!