Parenthetical

Conversation between two of my 7th graders today: S: I just finished a great book! The Incredible Adventure of…something or other. (I didn’t quite catch the name.) A: Is it about mice? S: No, it’s about a rabbit. Why’d you say that? A: Because those adventure books always have rodents. The kid’s not wrong! (Image [...]

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It’s September 11. I saw a headline on the front page of a newspaper this morning remarking on “Six Years Later.” And I realized: that means my 7th graders were 6 years old. Their awareness of the world around them has existed only in a post-9/11 world. They will remember 9/11 the way I remember [...]

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I had my first temp-agency interview today, for the earning of summer ca$h. Apparently I type 87 wpm with no mistakes while typing a boring sample corporate manifesto, which is kind of fun to know, as I had never taken a typing test before. Apparently this is also OMG the best score evar, because the [...]

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It only takes $5.60 and one week to get an envelope full of letters from students in a Boston suburb to students in a rural Ghanaian village. The global infrastructure is an incredible thing.

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Finally, finally, I have my Ghana pictures (or a good representative sample thereof) up on Flickr. Here’s my photoset. Enjoy!

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So as of Tuesday night, I am home at last! There will be pictures and more stories at some point soon, but in the meantime it is just unbelievably good to be here, in this place that I love more than anywhere I’ve ever been. Waking up with my boy after a night of karaoke [...]

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So now that the project is done, I’m being a tourist for my last week. I only have 15 minutes left at this internet cafe, so I will tell you quickly that this morning I got up at 5 a.m. to do a dawn walk through Kakum National Park, featuring the only canopy walk in [...]

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I unexpectedly have another shot at internet access today! And probably will again on Tuesday! So I want to write more, while I’m thinking it. Perhaps a run-down of how the basics of life work here would be interesting: Bathing: Fill a bucket from the house water barrel. Use a smaller pail to scoop water [...]

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Last Sunday I made French toast for the guys, with one of the bottles of maple syrup I brought. They liked it, though they mostly thought the syrup was too sweet. (They tried to put way too much on – sauces here are really more like soups that you plunk a big ball o’ starch [...]

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I’ve started thinking of myself as Snow White (appropriate on a number of levels, obviously) and the guys as my Four Dwarves. They take care of me, feed and shelter me, help my naive self navigate the big bad world, keep me on a bit of a pedestal, and lead sort of mystifying lives of [...]

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