We have been here, in AZ, since July 16th. It's been a while since I've written so there's lots of updating to do. We've made some changes in our master plan. (changes seem to come around every few days :)).
Ian and I are both working. He's gone back to Outback steakhouse where he worked prior to moving to Seattle, and I got a job at the Starbucks up the street (perhaps not the evil empire after all? At least not from an employee's perspective. They treat their staff amazingly well) but only half time as I'll be starting school soon.
Originally the plan was to work with Americorps, and I had some interviews lined up, but as Ian and I drove the 30 some hours from Seattle to Mesa we decided that perhaps it would be better to go ahead and start with the nursing program at MCC so that life could get on it's way (diagram that sentence ;)). As much as I would really love to work with Americorps (there are some invaluable opportunities out there!) at my core I want to get into school, learn how to help people in a lasting way that I can turn into a vocation. After I'm through the 2 year program (that will probably take more like 3 years because of pre-recs and waiting lists) I will work full time so Ian can have his turn at school.
For now, though, I start school on August 26th with the first Math class I've taken in some time as well as a Biology refresher. It will be interesting to go from being a creative writing major to dissecting a cat.
{For many of you who do not know and are still startled to hear that I am going into nursing--I wanted to be either a nurse or a pediatrician since I was 6 or 7 and got thrown off by a chemistry class in high school, it took me this long to climb back on that horse. I pursued creative writing and literature as a BA and still write as often as I can face the big bad blank white paper/screen. Depending on when you knew me best I contemplated teaching but in the end couldn't face the education system, thought about counseling but it felt too passive and though I firmly believe in psychological therapy, I need a career where I move around and where I can see both
emotional and physical results. So. back to square one and it really feels good.}
As far as our Burundi trip coming up summer 2009, there have been a few changes made. The "away team" has gone and come back to scout out Carama (the region of Burundi we are trying to aid) if you go here you can read the very engaging journal posts by our brilliant and indefatigable program director, Brock. Start from the bottom of the page and work your way up. It sounds like they had a very productive trip. I had a phone conference with the crew last week and there will be a GCJ picnic and meeting when we are in Seattle: August 20th-24th. I'll be able to post more concretely about the project then, but it looks like our water project is changing into an agriculture project. And as always if you go to the GCJ website you can donate to help Ian and myself get to burundi. any money at all is useful. More to come!
-Christine
Monday, August 11, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
Touchdown
Oh, moving. It is so humbling to constrain your life within cardboard, so frustrating to realize how much junk you own, so scary, in it's way to scuttle like a hermit crab between shells. In packing up our belongings I was rather gratified to learn that by volume we own more books than anything else, though kitchen implements and clothing were jockeying for a close second.
Needs are needs and I can't really gainsay that, but there are so few material belongings that I actually care about when the chips are down - it makes me wonder at the fact that we haul all of this other nonsense through life with us. There are days I really yearn for a simple and somewhat ascetic life - I think my ideal retirement would be setting up a secular "monastery" with simple furnishings and a sustainable farm and a really good library and some excuse for communal singing. You know, we're all so used to putting in eight hour days for our livelihood already, I wonder if that wouldn't cover the chores are work necessary to meet the needs of a small group of people. Because having eight hours to sleep and eight hours to read and discuss and break bread and make music sounds pretty ideal. Maybe that'll be the next next project.
All this to say we've arrived safely in Arizona, are settling in, and have managed to avoid both melting and spontaneously combusting so far.
After loitering around for three hours waiting for our number to come up, Christine and I were both informed by our respective academic advisors that we had been hopeless optimistic about our educational timetables. We're gonna be here a while. But it's good. I miss Seattle, but I feel being here really brings a sharper focus to our goals. And it is so wonderful watch Christine interact with my family, I am a heartily blessed man.
Postings should become more regular as a routine (Ha!) is established. Thanks all for reading, and I'll blather at you again soon.
-Ian
Needs are needs and I can't really gainsay that, but there are so few material belongings that I actually care about when the chips are down - it makes me wonder at the fact that we haul all of this other nonsense through life with us. There are days I really yearn for a simple and somewhat ascetic life - I think my ideal retirement would be setting up a secular "monastery" with simple furnishings and a sustainable farm and a really good library and some excuse for communal singing. You know, we're all so used to putting in eight hour days for our livelihood already, I wonder if that wouldn't cover the chores are work necessary to meet the needs of a small group of people. Because having eight hours to sleep and eight hours to read and discuss and break bread and make music sounds pretty ideal. Maybe that'll be the next next project.
All this to say we've arrived safely in Arizona, are settling in, and have managed to avoid both melting and spontaneously combusting so far.
After loitering around for three hours waiting for our number to come up, Christine and I were both informed by our respective academic advisors that we had been hopeless optimistic about our educational timetables. We're gonna be here a while. But it's good. I miss Seattle, but I feel being here really brings a sharper focus to our goals. And it is so wonderful watch Christine interact with my family, I am a heartily blessed man.
Postings should become more regular as a routine (Ha!) is established. Thanks all for reading, and I'll blather at you again soon.
-Ian
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Well, to catch things up a bit: We have less than a week now before we head out to Arizona. I have had a few phone interviews and have some face to face interviews coming up when we get there. Ian's been pretty much guaranteed a job at the restaurant he used to work at.
Packing is most certainly not my favorite past time. We have way more meaningless belongings than I thought we had, not to mention the amount of clothing that people have given to me that i just never say no to--even though it doesn't fit! But this is why i love moving. I love to purge. (not to mention my nomadic tendencies) We never really realize how much useless stuff we keep around until we have to fit it all neatly into boxes.
So next on the agenda is a goodwill run. Which brings me to a little rant. Thrift stores. Around Seattle we have two main options in thrift stores: Good Will and Value Village. There are a few others but more or less these are the two that the masses frequent. I will be taking our no-longer-needed belongings to Good Will because Value Village, though marketed like a non-profit is just the opposite. You take your clothes there, they sell them for their own profit. You take your clothes to Good Will, and they are sold so the company can offer education, occupation and training to people who are: welfare dependant, homeless, and who lack the education or work experience needed to find a job, as well as those with physical, mental and emotional disabilities (directly quoted from goodwill.org). So friends, take a second, wherever you are, and look up the info on your local thrift store. If it's not a non-profit please find one that is. It's really an easy way to help out the community.
-Christine
Packing is most certainly not my favorite past time. We have way more meaningless belongings than I thought we had, not to mention the amount of clothing that people have given to me that i just never say no to--even though it doesn't fit! But this is why i love moving. I love to purge. (not to mention my nomadic tendencies) We never really realize how much useless stuff we keep around until we have to fit it all neatly into boxes.
So next on the agenda is a goodwill run. Which brings me to a little rant. Thrift stores. Around Seattle we have two main options in thrift stores: Good Will and Value Village. There are a few others but more or less these are the two that the masses frequent. I will be taking our no-longer-needed belongings to Good Will because Value Village, though marketed like a non-profit is just the opposite. You take your clothes there, they sell them for their own profit. You take your clothes to Good Will, and they are sold so the company can offer education, occupation and training to people who are: welfare dependant, homeless, and who lack the education or work experience needed to find a job, as well as those with physical, mental and emotional disabilities (directly quoted from goodwill.org). So friends, take a second, wherever you are, and look up the info on your local thrift store. If it's not a non-profit please find one that is. It's really an easy way to help out the community.
-Christine
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
First Things First
Aqua vitae
n. Strong distilled alcohol, especially a strong liquor such as whiskey or brandy. [Medieval Latin: water of life]
Hello, Ian here. The first steps into anything tend to be rather intimidating, and I'm slowly discovering that first blog posts are no exception (especially when you already have something like a ten year plan for the blog - oy vey!). But after much hemming and hawing Christine has convinced me that getting something down is the important thing, journey of a thousand miles etc. etc. so here we are.
To distract myself from the beginning of this voyage, why don't we concentrate on the eventual goal for a moment? After all our various preparations and diversions are completed, it is our hope to be able to open a nonprofit bar that benefits humanitarian organizations. The guiding theory behind this is that improving other people's lives should be as easy and accessible as possible. I believe that there is a vast and largely untapped demographic in America of people who would be happy to contribute to worthy causes if they were presented the opportunity in the course of their everyday lives. People who might get behind the idea of the profits of their happy hour cocktails being used to produce clean water halfway across the world. And for the people who make a lifestyle out of charity already, this is just one more avenue for them to contribute. Not only is there the direct monetary donation, there is also the added bonus of gathering local humanitarian minded people in one place - and plying them with alcohol! Who knows what corollary consequences could result from that kind of community!
In future posts I'll share more particulars and a bit of the history, but for the time being I humbly submit to you the premise of Aqua Vitae, a Humanitarian Bar. Here's hoping.
Thanks for being here with us (or reading through the archives if that's the case :D) for our first steps towards this goal.
-Ian
n. Strong distilled alcohol, especially a strong liquor such as whiskey or brandy. [Medieval Latin: water of life]
Hello, Ian here. The first steps into anything tend to be rather intimidating, and I'm slowly discovering that first blog posts are no exception (especially when you already have something like a ten year plan for the blog - oy vey!). But after much hemming and hawing Christine has convinced me that getting something down is the important thing, journey of a thousand miles etc. etc. so here we are.
To distract myself from the beginning of this voyage, why don't we concentrate on the eventual goal for a moment? After all our various preparations and diversions are completed, it is our hope to be able to open a nonprofit bar that benefits humanitarian organizations. The guiding theory behind this is that improving other people's lives should be as easy and accessible as possible. I believe that there is a vast and largely untapped demographic in America of people who would be happy to contribute to worthy causes if they were presented the opportunity in the course of their everyday lives. People who might get behind the idea of the profits of their happy hour cocktails being used to produce clean water halfway across the world. And for the people who make a lifestyle out of charity already, this is just one more avenue for them to contribute. Not only is there the direct monetary donation, there is also the added bonus of gathering local humanitarian minded people in one place - and plying them with alcohol! Who knows what corollary consequences could result from that kind of community!
In future posts I'll share more particulars and a bit of the history, but for the time being I humbly submit to you the premise of Aqua Vitae, a Humanitarian Bar. Here's hoping.
Thanks for being here with us (or reading through the archives if that's the case :D) for our first steps towards this goal.
-Ian
Monday, June 16, 2008
Ch-ch-ch-changes: The beginning of the beginning.
Ian and I have slightly less than one month before we throw all of our belongings into a gas guzzler of a truck and move to sunny, not to mention sweaty, Arizona. Seattle has been all winter in preperation for our big change and I have to ask myself if this is the universe, or god/God?, telling us to soak up the chill while we have the chance. But as Ian remarked, "this higher power is a bit melodramatic, 42 degrees in june is over-kill."
I set up this blog about 6 months ago in hopes of documenting our journey from here to there, present to future. This move feels like the kick off to the rest of whatever. Seattle is where our hearts lie; it's just a little too comfortable to get us moving. So we are moving. From family and friends to family and friends and school.
The plan
is to move to Arizona from Seattle, get our first apartment, a place for just the two of us--and the cats, of course. Ian will go to school to get a small business degree and will continue to work as a server in hopes of moving up to bartending. I will (hopefully) be spending my first year in the desert working with Americorps and then using that education stipend that they give you in the end to fund nursing school. Once we're both done with our degrees it's off to Peace Corps. Then after we travel a bit back to Seattle for Aqua Vitae and The Grill Next Door, and maybe some traveling nursing in between.
But for now Ian is finishing up work at PF Changs and will be done on the 3rd of July. I'll be done with the mailroom at Deloitte on July 2nd. July will be spent saying goodbye to our city and the loved ones we will miss so much, if we're lucky we'll get another http://www.myspace.com/thetailenders (tailenders) show before we leave. I have lived here for 7 years. and Ian's heart has been here for 6. It'll be a bittersweet farewell.
As Far as Logistics Go:
I've packed 3 boxes to date which i count as totally ahead of the game seeing as i've got a month to go. We have 2 hotels reserved for the drive which i got rockin deals on through priceline! And a truck reserved with Budget for the drive. We are trying to diligently save our pennies and nickles (along with green monies) for the ever skyrocketing gas prices. We pretty much have the kittens decked out for the drive. (not looking forward to driving 28 hours with 2 cats in the small cab of a great big truck!) Our lovely roomate (vet-tech) Kelly suggested using Benadryl to sedate them; we got them a large crate to hang out in and some treats and good food for the road. Hopefully they won't be in hell the whole time. Still trying to find creative ways to make this move as cheap and easy as at all possible. Have any ideas? drop us an email or a comment. It will be most appreciated.
I'm hoping to update every other monday, and maybe I can gouge Ian into updating every other monday. Until next time...
-Christine
I set up this blog about 6 months ago in hopes of documenting our journey from here to there, present to future. This move feels like the kick off to the rest of whatever. Seattle is where our hearts lie; it's just a little too comfortable to get us moving. So we are moving. From family and friends to family and friends and school.
The plan
is to move to Arizona from Seattle, get our first apartment, a place for just the two of us--and the cats, of course. Ian will go to school to get a small business degree and will continue to work as a server in hopes of moving up to bartending. I will (hopefully) be spending my first year in the desert working with Americorps and then using that education stipend that they give you in the end to fund nursing school. Once we're both done with our degrees it's off to Peace Corps. Then after we travel a bit back to Seattle for Aqua Vitae and The Grill Next Door, and maybe some traveling nursing in between.
But for now Ian is finishing up work at PF Changs and will be done on the 3rd of July. I'll be done with the mailroom at Deloitte on July 2nd. July will be spent saying goodbye to our city and the loved ones we will miss so much, if we're lucky we'll get another http://www.myspace.com/thetailenders (tailenders) show before we leave. I have lived here for 7 years. and Ian's heart has been here for 6. It'll be a bittersweet farewell.
As Far as Logistics Go:
I've packed 3 boxes to date which i count as totally ahead of the game seeing as i've got a month to go. We have 2 hotels reserved for the drive which i got rockin deals on through priceline! And a truck reserved with Budget for the drive. We are trying to diligently save our pennies and nickles (along with green monies) for the ever skyrocketing gas prices. We pretty much have the kittens decked out for the drive. (not looking forward to driving 28 hours with 2 cats in the small cab of a great big truck!) Our lovely roomate (vet-tech) Kelly suggested using Benadryl to sedate them; we got them a large crate to hang out in and some treats and good food for the road. Hopefully they won't be in hell the whole time. Still trying to find creative ways to make this move as cheap and easy as at all possible. Have any ideas? drop us an email or a comment. It will be most appreciated.
I'm hoping to update every other monday, and maybe I can gouge Ian into updating every other monday. Until next time...
-Christine
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