water

this weekend, as a boil-water order was in effect for two million people in the metro boston area, i learned one important thing i will keep with me for the rest of my life. it was not to appreciate clean water (i think i already do that), or realize that in many countries this is what life is like everyday (i get that, too). i learned that i loathe bottled water. since graduating college, i have made small steps towards this conclusion, but this weekend pushed me over the edge.

these small steps started at home. instead of buying water to drink, i would just drink tap water or filter my own water with a brita filter. when going out, though, i would still tend to stop and pick up a plastic bottle of water. then, my mom bought me one of those klean kanteens and the convenience meant i would just load up my own water bottle with water from home before heading out on a walk or road trip. it was so logical. why would i buy something that i could easily provide myself for free? and on top of that, i was helping the environment. it was one less plastic bottle that needed to be disposed.

it wasn't until this weekend, though, that i became morally opposed to buying bottled water. when i first heard of boil-water order, i did just that--boiled some water. i knew i was going to need some to brush my teeth, wash my hands, and wash a few necessary dishes, so i figured i'd have it ready. it wasn't until i turned on the t.v. to try to get some more info about the order that i saw a story about a run on bottled water. it was a few hours after the order was issued, and many places were completely out of water. one co-worker later told me of seeing a woman in CVS with a cart full of fiji water and smartwater. it must have cost her at least $50!

the stories about people in search of bottled water baffled me. so many people were quoted as traveling (in their SUV's, i'm sure) to five or ten different locations looking for bottled water. there were reports of pushing and shoving, chaos, and price gouging. all for water that they could have for free by boiling it at home.

i ended up boiling about three pots of water over the course of the weekend (adding to the three bottles of water that we keep in the fridge that were filtered before the order was issued). let me tell you something about boiled, unfiltered water. it does not taste good. but you know what? it quenched my thirst. i had ways to flavor it with lemon juice or salt. was it ideal? no. did i spend my saturday night fighting with people over the last of the bottled water? no.

think about that woman who bought $50 worth of bottled water when she could have just walked to her kitchen and boiled some water. she could have taken that $50 and donated it to an organization to help hundreds of women in countries around the world who have to walk miles to get the same kind of water that we had to live with for three days.

i can't say that i will never drink from a bottle of water ever again, but i can say i will try. living through our water "emergency" made me realize it was no emergency at all. it put into perspective how far past logical many people have gotten about this. buying $50 worth of smartwater so you can brush your teeth with it is not normal. elbowing other residents out of the way to get bottled water before they can is not normal. increasing the price of water (water!) when there is a run on it at the stores is not normal. i don't want to add to a culture where these things happen.

kyrgyzstan

When I was 14, my family took a vacation to Kyrgyzstan. I’ve never heard of anyone else who has vacationed in the small Central Asian country bordered by China and Uzbekistan, but my dad was in a peculiar situation. His sister, who studied Russian history and culture for most of her adult life, was in her last of four years living in Kyrgyzstan. Originally working on a year-long Fullbright scholarship, my aunt fell in love with the country. Through her work, she met a great friend, whose family essentially adopted my aunt. Eventually, they invited my dad to come and stay with them. Not wanting to offend his sister’s adopted family, and realizing that an opportunity like that would not come along again, he accepted. So, in the summer of 2000, I found myself on a plane to Kyrgyzstan. I had no idea my life was about to change.

We spent 5 days in Bishkek, the capital, and 5 days in a village by Lake Issy-kul, the second largest natural salt lake in the world. It had been a decade since the Soviet Union fell, and Bishkek looked like it had not been touched since then. There was a statue of Lenin and the architecture was exactly what I expected--big, heavy, concrete buildings. As we walked through the city and the apartment buildings of my aunt’s friends, I couldn’t help but notice how every single building was falling apart. I will never forget when one woman told me that, of course, they were happy that the Soviets were no longer in charge, but now no one had any idea how to take care of the communal property. In the Soviet system, all buildings were taken care of by the government so it was still unclear who would do that now.

The other thing I remember about Bishkek was driving through the city (in a “cab” we hired by flagging a random driver down and negotiating a rate). As our guide was pointing our important places, she casually mentioned that you could tell any house that was owned by a government official. Anyone who had a three-story house must be rich and anyone who was rich must be a corrupt government official.

Up until then, my United States education had taught me that the we were good and the Soviets were bad. This was the first time I realized that there was no black or white. While the policies of the Soviets were not the greatest, at least there were policies. In some ways, the mess that remained was worse.

If my time in Bishkek taught me about the politics of Kyrgyzstan, my time in Issy-kul taught me about the people. We rented a van and a driver to take us the 8-hour trip to the lake. We paid extra so that the van driver would not pick anyone else up on the way, but when a distant family member of the driver flagged him down, we squeezed to accommodate one more. For the driver, it would have been more of a dishonor not to give this person a ride that is was to break his promise to the strangers who had paid him. We eventually arrived and stayed with some mutual friends who had no electricity or plumbing. Our bathroom was a hole in the ground surrounded by a hut. Our shower was the lake. I woke up every morning to their cow, who was tied to a tree outside the house, mooing.

Our visit was a great honor to this family and, to celebrate, they spent prepared an all day feast for us. In the morning, the men went out into the mountains to find and kill a sheep. Then they butchered it and cooked all the meat over the fire in the yard. In the afternoon, we started eating., moving into different rooms for each course. In the final course, the most important parts of the sheep were divvied up between those attending based honor. My dad, being the male guest, was the most honored person there. As such, he received the sheep head and was expected to eat everything, including the eyes. (Traditional says that he should share it with the person he loved the most. The looks of horror on my step-mom and my faces meant he shared it with my brother.) The brains are considered a delicacy and my dad did everyone a great favor by sharing the bowl of brains with the room. Being the youngest female guest, I was left me with the tail.

We had never met these people before and labored all day to give us the most delicious parts of the meal. Everywhere we went, we were treated as family. I realized that, despite the language and geographic barriers, these were people just like me. I just happened to be born in American and they just happened to be born in Kyrgyzstan.

Since then, I have kept a close eye on the politics of the country. When I heard of the most recent opposition overthrow I didn’t have to get a map to figure out where the country was, read a dictionary to figure out how to say it, or think of our country’s military interests. I thought of the people who, for ten days, treated me like family. Those aren’t faceless victims of third-world violence; they are my family members who just happened to be born in Kyrgyzstan.

health care

today i watched the highlights of president obama's speech celebrating the long anticipated signing of the health care reform bill and i teared up. i have no idea why. i have health insurance, i have always had health insurance, i have no preexisting condition, and i live in massachusetts where we already have a universal health care law. for all intents and purposes, this law has little to no meaning to my life.

yet there are so many other people like me, who have always had health insurance and are in no danger of loosing it, that are staunchly opposed to this bill. this is my blog so i can say what i want. and honestly, i just don't get it. the people voting on the have health insurance and, like me, have probably always had health insurance. so, like me, they cannot even begin to fathom what it is like to not have health insurance and the kind of worry and stress that would put on life.

because i have no personal connection to this debate, and i don't really understand the politics behind it. i don't really care about deficits, nebraska, or taxes on tanning beds. i can't pretend to know what all of the stipulations mean and there is no way i have actually read the whole thing. at it's most basic, what i understand the new law to be is providing health insurance for those who cannot afford it. i just don't get how giving people who want health insurance but don't have money for it the opportunity to buy health insurance is a bad thing.

i see it more as a judgement and common sense issue. if there is a large group of people who need something that i have, use, and consider a necessity, and i have the opportunity to help them get it--even if it means giving more of the money that i make--then i feel morally obligated to help them. and really, let's face it. i pay taxes for tons of things that have no affect on my life. that is how our society works. and that is why our country is pretty cool.

so i didn't cry because i was excited for myself or someone i knew. i didn't cry because i was disappointed the bill was signed. i guess i cried because i was proud that, at least for a moment, it wasn't all that bickering that always comes from politics. it wasn't about the people who were actually voting. it was about the people who voted for them. it was the fact that we decided to do something that is right.

olympics

today is the last day of the 2010 winter olympics and i am about to go into mourning. i love the olympics and these two weeks every two years are my favorite in the sporting world. despite, or maybe because of, my utter lack of athletic ability i love watching sports. i like baseball, hockey and football and spend hours watching espn during the non-olympic times, but nothing compares to watching the olympics.

my love of these games seems to be at complete odds with my favorite sports analysts, though. many are only interested in the hockey games, and look down on nbc for airing what they call the marque events of the games--figure skating and skiing--and sending hockey games to the cable networks. the analysts make it seem that no serious sports fan can like watching the olympic games and that the most important sports are the ones that we are inundated with all the time.

in actuality, that is what makes the olympics so great. when else would i spend saturday night watching bobsledding? or a sunday afternoon watching cross country skiing? the competition is world class, so i know that the events are going to be exciting. the personal stories of athletes give me people to root for. most of these athletes have no real fame or fortune outside of their olympic experience, which puts them at a stark contrast to the over-payed, over-hyped athletes of the national sports leagues.

most of all, though, the teams in the olympics are not split by state or region, but rather country. when patriotism is combined with the sport and the stories there is really nothing better. when an otherwise unknown speedskater performs better than she is expected to, i'm excited by the sport, thrilled for her as a person, and proud that someone from my country could upset the best athletes in the world. the combination of those three things does not happen at any other sports venue.

i will root for the hockey team, but no more than i have rooted for the americans who had historic results in the nordic combined, or the american skiers who lived up to the high expectations set for them, or the american ice dancers--yes the ice dancers--for whom winning a medal was more than they could have thought. for two weeks, i had the opportunity to root for people who live ordinary lives with extraordinary athletic abilities. it is much more fun to root for them than the baseball, basketball, or football athletes that i will never be able to identify with because of their superhuman status. it is 2012 yet?

old soul

one of the biggest things i have learned about myself over the past several years seems to be one of the simplest--what i like to do. i began to notice that what i would ask my friends to do was a bit different from what they would ask me to do. one saturday night in college, instead of finding a party or a bar to go to, i had my two best friends over to make a gingerbread house in our pajamas. another time, a large group of us took a trip to the amusement park six flags. while everyone else was lining up for the roller coasters, i asked them all to ride the antique cars with me. even when i was beginning to hang out with and date my boyfriend, it was a little different than other people. our dates would consist of walking around the neighborhood, or sitting by the river and watching the boats. these days, i love spending saturday nights playing board games.

looking back, one of the best parts of this story is that my friends will totally humor me. they will do the things i want to do and actually have fun doing them. unfortunately, i had a harder time accepting this than they did. many times i felt myself feeling left out as all my friends were off doing something else. they would usually invite me, but i didn't want to do what they were doing. i did, however, want to be hanging out with them. i would also feel like i was crazy. there must be something wrong with me, i would think. why didn't i want to go to that house party with those people i didn't know? isn't that what people my age are supposed to do? instead, i wanted to do the things my parents and their friends wanted to do. or worse yet, i would want to do what everyone's grandparents wanted to do. this was clearly a problem.

recently, though, i've come to terms with this part of myself, and a large part of it is due to one phrase. my fourth grade teacher once told my mom that i was "an old soul." even when i was eight, she could see it. having an old soul seems like a compliment. it seems like something that i have that other people don't. it seems like it is a privilege to have. just as i was starting to embrace this idea of myself, my manager at my job told used the same exact phrase to describe me! if two completely unrelated people use the same phrase about me it must be true.

now i realize that what i have viewed as a problem all these years is actually just evidence of a larger character trait, and this character trait is something that i really like about myself. so if i like that i tend to be mature and composed, i will also like that i enjoy my valentine's day plans involve brunch and playing monopoly all afternoon.

balance

when i was growing up, i was constantly walking into things or, even worse, people. i would be lost in my own thoughts, absent-midedly pondering how it was that radios actually worked or if there were little men in the traffic lights who changed the colors from red to green. then, THWAP--there is a tree branch or BAM--into the back of my mom's legs. i was that cat you who is always under your feet when you needed to get somewhere quickly. more than once, my mom would sigh and say, in only the way that single mother carrying four bags of groceries who was just hit from behind by her daughter walking into her could say, "you are not the only person in this world!"

but, like the cat under your feet that you always let back on your lap, a minute later my mom would be listening to my latest revelation on the fact that there had to be some reason radios worked other than magic, or the fact that it was definitely little men in the traffic lights who changed the colors. all was forgiven because there was nothing malicious about my oblivion.

as i have grown up, i've gone to the other side of the spectrum. one of my friends once said that i would rather make myself uncomfortable than knowingly impose that on someone else. the other day a woman next to me on the train was talking loudly on her cell phone. i was more worried that she would think that i was annoyed at her than i was actually annoyed at her.

i imagine the best way to solve this dilemma is to find some sort of balance. of course i should never be so into myself that i tune out the rest of the world. that could be potentially unsafe, and just not something i would want to do. what if everyone was so self-absorbed that no one cared about what was going on in haiti? at the same time, though, i have to make myself a priority at some point.

unknowingly, starting this blog was a major step to finding that balance. it's here that i can get lost in my own head without accidentally walking into a moving car. maybe being in my twenties isn't really about finding myself, but figuring out how to be myself. it's about figuring out how to balance the different parts of my personality. maybe it's about knowing that there are other people in the world, but also knowing when to ignore them all. or maybe that's not what my twenties are about. maybe that is what life is about.

civil rights

when i was in elementary school, i asked my mom what she remembered from the civil rights movement. i know there was some sort of school assignment involved--i didn't just come up with this topic of conversation myself--but the details of exactly why this conversation happened are in the blurred area of the fish eye lens through which i tend to focus on memories. the focused part of my memories are usually dominated by my emotions toward the situation, with a few key details thrown in there.

the details i remember are of what my mom was telling me she remembered. she lived in the south in the 1950s. one day, she went to a water fountain to get a drink. i don't remember where she was or why she was there. there were two water fountains. one said white and the other said colored. she drank out of the colored water fountain because she thought that colored water was going to come out of it. needless to say, she was a bit disappointed when it was just regular water.

at the time she was telling me this, i was probably about as old as she was in her memory. i remember being dumbfounded by her innocence. (perhaps i wouldn't have used those words at the time, i might have described it best as "whoa.") my mom, who didn't seem to be ancient in years, had a point in her life where she didn't know what segregation was and didn't understand why there were two different water fountains. there was a time in her life when the word "colored" did not have the stigma associated with it today. there was a time in her life where she was expected to use a different water fountain that black people.

at the time, i also began to form small sense of awareness about my mother as a person. there was so much that i did not know about her life. of course i knew she had a life before having children, but at that moment i started to understand just what that meant. having a life means she was living, and living means that she had many moments and experiences that had nothing to do with me as a child.

in college, i developed an affinity for studying recent history. i took about 6 classes that covered america in 1900, many of which specialized in 1968 to the present. i wonder if my interest in the recent history might have stemmed from this conversation with my mom. the history of the '60s seems far more personal to me because of how it could shape one little girl's life.

for me, martin luther king, jr. day is not necessarily about the man. he was a great man, an inspiring man, and a man who died because of that. but i was not shaped by him. i was shaped by the people he affected--the people whose lives he changed. the holiday is not really to honor the man, but rather the movement that he represented. it's to honor a movement that completely changed the the social structure of my mom's life. it's about the fact that i have only ever known water fountains that anyone can use.