December Photos!

As previously mentioned, I got a new camera! Check out my photos from the Holidays around the regional house.

Click HERE to see the album.

And surely you’ll buy your pint cup and surely I’ll buy mine. And we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne.

How have we reached the end of the year already? Have I been keeping my blog for that long now?

I mean, it hasn’t been as regular as I may have liked and I was feeling rather uninspired when I first started writing for it. It felt forced, out of obligation to you guys. I wanted to update you on my life, but writing about it just felt funny. I’ve gotten over that. Between keeping a semi-regular journal on top of a line-a-day diary (thanks again Sam!) I’m over the whole “writing about myself is weird” feeling

I have kept better records of this year than I ever have in my entire life and I’m sure I’ll appreciate them in years to come.

Want to see my resolutions from last year? Check them out here.

That being said, let me publicly reflect on the changes of the last year :

– I moved from the USA to Senegal. This has been a big move and this is the longest I’ve ever been away from home, it’s long enough to say that here is home now.

– I live without electricity or running water now. I’m actually fine with this as well, it may be “rouging it” but once you don’t have it, it’s normal. I’m looking forward to some rustic camping trips around the states when I get back. Who’s with me?!

– I have lost 80lbs (36.2kg). I’m considering publishing the Peace Corps diet when I get home. I’m going to call it “Africa: Just Live Here.” Seriously though, this diet will allow a bowl of oatmeal with a spoonful of Nutella every morning. For lunch and dinner, you eat steamed corn meal or rice with peanut sauce or leaf sauce (that’s right, leaf sauce, go pluck edible leaves off a baobab tree and then make a soupy sauce for that corn meal) which you eat until your gag reflex starts to kick in again – that means you’ve had enough. Lastly, every 10 days you need to fit in around 100-110km (62-68 miles) of bike riding. Space it out however you feel. Only have beers and cookies and various quantities of sugary things for 3 day stretches twice a month (but you’re allowed as much as you want). That’s it. Try it out.

– I am, apparently, a barber now. After watching mom give millions of haircuts from our kitchen or laundry room, I felt like I know the technique. I get it. I mean, I just hadn’t done it before. I cut my hair own hair now… with varying degrees of success. Cutting boys’ hair is easy, so some of the boys in Kedougou have coifs by the stylings of yours truly. (Please note that this is now a possible career path that I may pursue after the Peace Corps, not kidding, but I also have a hundred other ideas)

– I can be by myself and feel fine. I was always busy and filling my time with people and things. I now have the amazing ability to stare at a wall (or my kindle) for hours on end and be perfectly content. It’s a valuable skill here, especially during travel days here.

There are so many things I’ve learned about myself here. I kept with my writing, as I’ve already noted. My other goal was to read 50 books this year and I did it.

These are all the books I’ve finished since January 1, 2012.

1. “The Girl Who Played with Fire” By: Stieg Larsson
2. “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” By: Stieg Larsson
3. “The Hunger Games” By: Suzanne Collins
4. “Catching Fire” By: Suzanne Collins
5. “Mockingjay” By: Suzanne Collins
6. “The Beautiful and Damned” By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” By: J. K. Rowling*
8. “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” By: J. K. Rowling*
9. “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” By: J. K. Rowling*
10. “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” By: J. K. Rowling*
11. “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” By: J. K. Rowling*
12. “Nine Stories” By: J. D. Salinger
13. “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” By: J. K. Rowling*
14. “The Poisonwood Bible” By: Barbara Kingsolver
15. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” By: J. K. Rowling*
16. “Stuff White People Like” By: Christian Lander
17. “The Undercover Economist” By: Tim Harford
18. “Breakfast of Champions” By: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
19. “The Hobbit” By: J. R. R. Tolkien*
20. “The Fellowship of the Ring” By: J. R. R. Tolkien*
21. “The Two Towers” By: J. R. R. Tolkien*
22. “The Return of the King” By: J. R. R. Tolkien*
23. “Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk” By: David Sedaris
24. “Moby Dick” By: Herman Merville
25. “Something Wicked This Way Comes” By: Ray Bradbury
26. “The Martian Chronicles” By: Ray Bradbury
27. “Pride and Prejudice” By: Jane Austen*
28. “Freakonomics” By: Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
29. “My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands” By: Chelsea Handler
30. “Bossypants” By: Tina Fey
31. “Fahrenheit 451” By: Ray Bradbury*
32. “Are You There Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea” By: Chelsea Handler
33. “SuperFreakonomics” By: Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
34. “The Color Purple” By: Alice Walker
35. “Galapagos” By: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
36. “Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang” By: Chelsea Handler
37. “Ender’s Game” By: Orson Scott Card
38. “The World According to Garp” By: John Irving
39. “Lies that Chelsea Handler Told Me” By: Chelsea’s Family, Friends, and Other Victims
40. “In Cold Blood” By: Truman Capote
41. “Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories” By: Mike Birbiglia
42. “Life of Pi” By: Yann Martel
43. “Angels and Demons” By: Dan Brown
44. “Dead-Eye Dick” By: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
45. “The Da Vinci Code” By: Dan Brown*
46. “A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories” By: Flannery O’Connor
47. “Franny and Zooey” By: J. D. Salinger
48. “On Chesil Beach” By: Ian McEwan
49. “The Tale of Despereaux” By: Kate DiCamillo
50. “The Lost Symbol” By: Dan Brown

*Denotes a reread (13 out of 50 ain’t too shabby)

Okay, okay, okay, so I know some of these are easy reads but there are a few more challenging ones on here, am I right?

I’ve had a ton of time on my hands and loved all the books that I reread, for the most part. I just have to excuse myself for a hot second to some of you. I LOVE HARRY POTTER AND I WILL ALWAYS READ ALL SEVEN AT ONCE. Secondly, Dan Brown is a horrible author and only has a good sentence every 5 pages or so (I really counted). I’m a super Lore Boar though and I’ll read almost everything if the world of lore is exciting and developed so I READ ALL THE ROBERT LANGDON BOOKS, DEAL WITH IT.

I’m thinking of getting into my French books again and actually reading them in French this year, I also need to tackle the tomes of Russian literature that I have put off for long enough. To keep some credibility in the nerd world, I’m going to get into this “Game of Thrones” thing that everyone keeps talking about.

My Top 5 Books of 2012 (Get out and read them now, not counting the Harry Potters, if you haven’t read those turn off all electronics in a 15 km radius and don’t turn them back on again until you’ve remedied this problem):

5. “The Hunger Games” By: Suzanne Collins

Destroying things is much easier than making them.

4.  “Breakfast of Champions” By: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.

3. “The Poisonwood Bible” By: Barbara Kingsolver

Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.

2. “Galapagos” By: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

It pains me even now, even a million years later, to write about such human misbehaviour.
A million years later, I feel like apologizing for the human race. That’s all I can say.

1. “The World According to Garp” By: John Irving

You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.

I leave you there and will tell you about my 2013 resolutions soon. On that note, GO OUT AND READ!  If you have any ideas for my reading pleasure, leave me a comment or send me a book in the mail. I would love it!