Apr 12
Over the past weeks, on my bus rides to and from work, I've been reading the Ender's Game books by Orson Scott Card.
It was, after all, the book whose philosophy took up a good portion of the first serious conversation I had with my current partner, E
...read moreMar 10
I have a job interview coming up where a clean-shorn face wouldn't be a bad idea (State Department). On March 9, in the following stages, I went from hirsute to glabrous (yes, those are real words):
#beard_bum
#goatee_viking
#stache_disco_king
#lo
...read moreNov 20
At the end of a Peace Corps volunteer's 2 years, s/he has the daunting task of compressing those 2 years into 2 pages. It's called the Description of Service (DOS). Artifacts found below:
(1) My official Description of Service
Peace Corps Description
...read moreNov 18
1. I will not start sentences with, "Well, when I was in Peace Corps..."
2. I will not take my self too seriously.
3. I will not presume that Americans know nothing about hardship, and will not use the phrase, "Well, you just don't understand how it is
...read moreOct 26
I recently exammed and passed the first step in the process of becoming a United States Foreign Service Officer--the Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT).
My results letter gave detailed (down to the hundredths decimal place!) scores on the 4 components
...read moreOct 19
"Untitled No. 1." Graphite and ink on construction paper.
"Untitled No. 2." Graphite and ink on construction paper. Translation: "In your teaching of us, we did not simply have a teacher, we had a friend. We will not forget you, even if you are far
...read moreOct 16
In my second year in the Philippines I was asked to be a guest lecturer at the University of the Philippines Visayas, Tacloban Campus. Though a comparatively small school, UPV's students, coming from all over the islands of Leyte, Samar, and Biliran, are
...read moreOct 9
After a week in Manila full of goodbyes to my fellow Peace Corps volunteers and one immemorial jeggings-and-jorts dance party that resulted in only one set of stitches to a volunteer's upper lip, I was back at the Eastern Visayas State University. Teachin
...read moreAug 18
It is Thursday, August 16, 2012. There is nothing particularly special about this day but it is a day in the life and sometimes that's enough. Almost two years ago to the day, I entered a passageway through an Airbus A300 and we 146 Peace Corps voluntee
...read more