this is what happens when you work from home

i have been a baking machine since coming to berlin. now ok, i understand terms are relative: for me "baking machine" means making one loaf of bread and a batch of cookies in less than 2 years. i don't bake at home - the whole measuring exactness has never meshed well with me. so why oh why would i pick up baking when i'm in europe? where...

1. you have to attempt to successfully convert all measurements to grams/ccm?

2. you have to go to 3 separate little berlin grocery stores just to find baking soda?

3. you have to translate every ingredient into german and write them down before you go to all those stores?

4. they don't even believe in extracts over here so you have to use creativity? [which with my no baking experience, i don't have]

but mostly i do it because elliott's google reader always has the most delicious looking things, i actually have a boy right next to me who can share the bounty of my baking journey with me, and most importantly, i really really have wanted to make this cake ever since ginger posted it. and it's toni's birthday on sunday and i'd love to make it for him and his 10 friends at their fest tomorrow evening.

and just for a quick recap: so i tried steph's cinnamon banana bread, and it turned out more like banana granola bars. still yummy, but not loafy enough. SAD.

but THEN i found this masterful website which calculates every known baking substance from any US measurement to the annoying metric systems. brilliant. so yesterday, i made these cookies to resounding success - even with substituting for almond and vanilla extracts. they are SO GOOD - and because of the olive oil they stay moist and yummy and fresh.

so i'm revved up to tackle this cake tomorrow. but ging [and everyone] - i won't have apple butter at my disposal... what should i substitute it with? also i'm concerned about finding cocoa powder... and i'll have to just chop up a chocolate bar because chocolate chips don't exist here. gah! i'll let you all know how it turns out.

LAME! blogger is digitally messing up my swiss photos, but i post for you nonetheless!

so yes, toni and i went to switzerland. his wonderfully kind cousin barbara runs an amazing little mountain hut hotel in the alps - 3000 meters high, tucked into a tiny village of cow farmers, and invited us to stay for a full week, with no expense to us whatsoever. we had 4 course dinners and scrumptious breakfasts and mountain views. in a word, it was heaven. we have been back in berlin for a week now, and BLAH... how does anything compare to the beauty of the swiss alps? it really makes you want to quit all jobs and make cheese on a mountaintop. sigh.


at the matterhorn [even if it's covered in clouds, it's the real thing - promise!]

alaskan fireweed in switzerland too! [one of the views from our hikes around the hotel]

this was our hotel and our view. we spent lots of time reading here :) [pictures do no justice. i'm not a professional photographer, obvs.]


i really want to go back.

in other news

1. had my first experience in a legit public city pool last night. dang, germany does those right: this one was more four seasons resort than a scene from the sandlot. [when i think of public pools, it's all about wendy preffercorn. this vision was subsequently dashed last night - but in a good way.]

2. speaking of swimming, had my second experience swimming in a bona fide lake this weekend. [first experience was with toni last year at the lago maggiore - i grew up next to the pacific ocean! i couldn't help it - forever lakes just seemed like waveless, green, puddles to me. this has also been categorically dashed.] toni and i went to wannsee, a super short trip out of central berlin to a gorgeous, huge lake with all the sailboats and mansions and former-genocide-planning-sites that you could ever want. [wannsee conference. in between eating plum cake and scoping out a beach location, toni and i did stop by the historic site. in case i had forgotten i was in germany, and they happened to be the instigators of WWII.]

3. i have many mixed feelings about nicholas kristof, but i am a HUGE fan of this article. it is basically a summary of everything fave byu professor and former employer dr. valerie hudson ever taught me. everyone should read it. it renews my vigor to want to work with women in africa forever.

4. tomorrow toni and i head to visit his cousin in the swiss alps for a week, where there are absolutely no computers. HUZZAH!!! so i'll be hiking and eating cheese in remote locations but not checking email. i do have a german cell phone that i will have on me that if anyone wants the number to, you have but to ask :)

5. love everyone so much. realizing that germany is even farther away from dear fam and friends than new york. alas.

famous!

mom just rang me on my little german cell phone with the thrilling news that me and toni (well more toni) made the cover of august's anthropologie catalog! i had to post immediately.

check it out yourself.

thanks to matthew/katie for spotting us! :) it's absolutely dead on of toni. hahaha!

berlin! berlin!

today is beyond gorgeous in berlin. i mean look at those clouds!

too bad that even though the whole ruse of "flying to europe" would make one think one was on holiday, one is in fact still tied to an actual kinda-hectic-at-the-moment fulltime job at unicef back in new york. [thus lack of communication. oh that and the fact that i'm with toni again. sorry. ok, maybe not really THAT sorry :)]

good news: toni's apartment is the breeziest, sunniest, most wondrous place to call my office. [photo above taken from his kitchen window. I KNOW.] i don't mind being trapped here to my laptop on a day like this. i mean look at my new desk:


yup.

and in case any one was wondering, i would recommend visiting berlin in summertime - though my january stint was nice, HOLY HEAVENS the city is so transformed with some sunshine! it's pleasant and beautiful and inviting. so hurrah!!! :)

and an adorable side note: when uploading these pictures to my computer this one popped up from my camera too:
































:) :) :)

[i do miss alaska lots btw.]

these are not from the hothouse

towards the end of the 2-hour hike mom and i took this morning i couldn't help myself and just had to start collecting all of the various species of wildflowers lining the paths for a lovely bouquet now on our kitchen counter.

isn't it lovely? mmm...



just fyi, i am in heaven. sundance is paradise........

please don't make this harder

last day in the office for 2 months!!! !!! !!!

i know that within a week my belly especially will be missing new york: pumpernickel bagels, pretzel croissants, likitsakos mango + peach yogurt, mutsu apples from union square farmers market... i'm sure i'll miss the subway and the parks and the galleries and films and bookstores and all that...

but hey. i'll be back. and missing all that stuff doesn't compare to missing babies, friends, and germans.

in my last hours in the office i am actually getting a huge amount of work done [despite what it may seem by blogging], all whilst listening to the marie-antoinette soundtrack. plainsong and what ever happened seem to absorb my mood PERFECTLY right now :)

see you all soon!!! (for real this time!!!)

what i learned this weekend

my initial "grand" plans as noted before fell through, but no matter! the weekend was still perfect and fabulous and as new york-y wonderful as ever.

so. onto what i learned:

everyone (and i do mean EVERYONE) must see this film. i tell you, there is no movie/documentary about rwanda (or maybe even africa in general, or war), that compares to this film. it was beyond belief. i really cannot explain how much i feel or felt after seeing it except by sighing and weeping. see it.

everyone (and again, i do include everyone here) must read this book. yes it is in german. yes there is an english translation. yes it is out of print. but yes, that is what amazon is for.

they will make you wiser, open your perspective, deepen emotions and feelings, and overall make you a much better person.

or at least that's what they've done for me. it has been a much richer 3 days than the 3 days before, and i hope to continue that trend for awhile.

california cuteness and oxford brilliance (always go hand in hand i find)

aah! ever since i saw this on matthew's blog this morning and subsequently made it my desktop background i CANNOT stop staring at it. oh my goodness. SO CUTE. it makes me (AND my coworkers who keep commenting on the cuteness as well) ridiculously happy. since i have my coworkers' testimonials of the cuteness of the 3rd generation of our family, i can hereby claim that we are not just influenced by familial bias. all 14 of the p fam's grandkid generation (who are all represented on my cubicle/desktop walls) are just really stinkin' cute.

ALSO

read this in a report earlier today:

"in the face of widening inequalities and relentless poverty in much of the world, there is no room for complacency. we should not spend aid money on concepts we do not really understand. no one wants to spend their working life spouting meaningless jargon. to be effective in changing the lives of the poor and marginalised, we need to know what makes a difference." (rick james, from oxford of course!)

absolutely sums up everything i said in my post yesterday.

boo-yeah.

and it's my last weekend in ole' nyc for 3 months! i have grand plans... hopefully pictures will work and i will report on monday.

happy weekend!

the fog of [ ]

at work in the last days i have been in and out of many, many, many meetings and my mind is being stretched quite a bit. i just got out of my last meeting for the day, and i'm allowing myself 15 minutes to vent my mind so it will be clearer to tackle the afternoon's work at my desk. you see the further i get into it, the more i am realizing that my job at unicef is actually quite hard.

it's hard to be in meetings and walk the halls and be surrounded by people who are all so well-read in poverty reduction literature and best practices, who are exceptionally well-traveled, who themselves come from nearly every country on earth [awesome multinationalism - for real. based on staff, this is not a "western" organization], and still wonder how all these intelligent people i'm in intelligent conversations and meetings with are actually improving the lives of the world's children.

it's hard to realize that somedays, me and everyone else can only think about our personal lives and issues and simply count the hours until we're out of the office where we simply couldn't concentrate on work, for all too human and natural reasons of course.

it's hard to walk to the elevators and through the lobby past huge pictures of adorable children from around the world and think of how you're paid to concentrate on them all day, paid to make their lives better, but wonder what you have just spent the last 10 hours doing.

it's hard to stream out of this massive building with hundreds of employees and realize that we are all supposed to be making the lives of the world's children better, it is literally our job, but poverty, abuse, and war persist to a pernicious degree.

it's hard to read reports, attend meeting and realize that poverty and abuse and war have multifarious actors and are so complex and overwhelming that i cannot wrap my head around how best to move forward against them aside from simply continuing as a cog in this "development/child rights/humanitarian" wheel.

the bottom line is everyone here is incredibly intelligent... i have a great deal of respect for my colleagues - they are from all around the world, it is not one nationality "saving" the world's children - it really is the world working together.... but still. what is being done? what do we do everyday? what are these conversations good for? we - and i do include all people around the world at local levels too, in country offices, civil society groups etc, all who are enlisted in the fight for child protection - we all are simply too human and weak to not fail again and again - even though so much is at stake. not to say all is up to me, or up to us. but still. if we don't take some responsibility, what are we even working for?

...................but. then i remember ana paula. the woman who ran that amazing childrne's home in mozambique i worked with 5 years ago. unicef supplies her with a car to get around: to visit villages and give children homes and help build communities. there we go. there is a direct thing that unicef has done that i have seen with my own eyes. i just wish it was all more apparent, that change happened more quickly, that the disconnect wasn't so strong, and that i didn't so often feel that working on a global level is utterly pointless.

*i put this picture on this post because yes there are photos of audrey hepburn - and even a dedicatory statue to her in the courtyard! - all over the unicef house. i get verklempt everytime i walk past :)