Christmas Christmas Christmas!

i made mom's classic gingerbread last night for a little dinner party at our place. oooh i bit in and felt like i was sitting in villa park or sundance. it was amazing.

it snowed! :) but didn't stick. :(

this is beautiful and makes me think of les and steph.

i have 14,000 out of 100,000 words written of my phd thesis. HA.

we leave for Germany a week from today. hurrah!

and! look what delights we got in the mail today! grammy sent toni and me these amazing little Christmas tree ornaments with pictures from our wedding, our very first ornaments! i'm totally in love.



Merry Christmas!

o magnum mysterium

i told you the last week of term was magical, and it truly was. it started out with seeing toni sing in a performance of mozart's requiem in the sheldonian theatre. here's a blurry picture of the choir and orchestra:



here's a less blurry one of the gorgeous 300+ year old theatre...



you know those moments when you sit back and realise - oh heavens i'm so happy i am married to this person? that gosh darn it they are so perfect for you? that was one of those nights. the whole thing was gorgeous.

then the last evening of term we headed to exeter college chapel for a "9 Lessons and 9 Carols" service. oh heavens! it was perhaps the most beautiful Christmas event i've ever been to. nine passages were read from the Bible progressing from the fall, to the announcement of a Redeemer, to the miraculous birth itself. interspersed were old english carols we all sang together, but then even better, stunning pieces sung by the choir. i was more moved than i can say by the spirit of it all. the setting (where we had our own lovely ceremony just months before :), the beauty of the old carols' words, the angelic voices, all centering on the story of the birth of Christ.

we went with our intellectual-doppelganger couple from sweden, anna and magnus - she just finished a masters in public health looking at maternal health in ethiopia (!) and he's just started a phd in politics with toni's same supervisor, AND they just got married this year. they're utterly lovely and we're so happy to have met them. after the service we had some minced pies then went over to the stunning old dining hall at exeter for a proper Christmas feast, paper crowns and carols and all! here's toni and magnus looking suave.




and toni and me. yay.




luckily enough the choir sang one of my all-time favorite pieces of music, lauridsen's "o magnum mysterium." here's a video i found of the piece sung at king's college chapel, cambridge - a bit of a grander scale, but it reminds me so much of that night we had at exeter... how can you listen to this and not feel the spirit and beauty of this Christmas season? truly, what a great mystery and gift it all is!



loves and Christmas well-wishes!!
jooj.

week 8, or end of term, or advent begins!

this week i was met with two pieces of truly sobering news from loved ones, and it's hard to take in. it makes toni and i look around at our little life here and remember again, it is all a miracle. our lives are miraculous, no?

in honor of that miracle, and to properly process it all - the end of the week, the term, the year! - we took a long long country walk on the environs of oxford this morning, our first day of term break/holiday. naturally, it was gorgeous. perfect.





seriously beautiful, right? sigh.

also. i really wanted to go off and forage for some Christmas ornaments. there are so many colorful winter berries around england that i wanted to make into a wreath for our red door:



:)

all things considered, this past week was actually one of my favorites in this ancient little town of Oxford - England does the Christmas season right, i tell you. will share more in the coming days. in the meantime toni and i are off to Cambridge for a conference on reproductive health. (ok ok I'M going to the conference and toni is nice enough to come along so we can stroll through more beautiful-ness together :)

much love to you all, and hurrah for the start of the most glorious season of the year!
jooj.

from one oxonian to another...

so, just preparing my Sunday School lesson for tomorrow (very first! totally pumped!!), and was reminded of this quote by dear old c.s. lewis. it's just too good not to share:

‘the practical upshot is this. on the one hand, God’s demand for perfection need not discourage you in the least in your present attempts to be good, or even in your present failures. each time you fall He will pick you up again. again He knows perfectly well that your own efforts are never going to bring you anywhere near perfection. on the other hand, you must realize from the outset that the goal towards which He is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in the whole universe, except you yourself, can prevent Him from taking you to that goal. that is what you are in for. and it's very important to realize that. if we do not, then we are very likely to start pulling back and resisting Him after a certain point. i think that many of us, when Christ has enabled us to overcome one or two sins that were an obvious nuisance, are inclined to feel (though we do not put it into words) that we are now good enough. He has done all we wanted Him to do, and we should be obliged if He would now leave us alone. as we say ‘i never expected to be a saint, i only wanted to be a decent ordinary chap.’ and we imagine when we say this that we are being humble. but this is a fatal mistake. of course we never wanted, and never asked, to be made into the sort of creatures He is going to make us into. but the question is not what we intended ourselves to be, but what He intended us to be when He made us.’

hehe - don't we all just think we're simply "decent ordinary chap[s]"? the lesson is on "the chosen generation," based on 1 - 2 Peter, and dang. it's a goodie. i can't wait for tomorrow to share it with these lovely teenagers. we all need to be reminded of how divine our nature is time and again, no?

beijos,
jooj.

yay.

i love thanksgiving. it was always the best growing up in villa park - using the fancy silver, going to a matinee after, marie callendar's pumpking pie and mom's stuffing! aah! so this year i told toni we have to stay away from the libraries and seminars that day and celebrate proper: spend all morning cooking, then eat around 3pm. also planned: seeing the new "wuthering heights" movie later that evening. proper p* fam thanksgiving, right? :)

but in all honesty. i remember driving up to sundance at the start of january this year, with mom's leg in massive pain from her surgery, dad's knee swollen 5 times its proper size... we were returning from a stay in a hotel off the I-15, praying that by the time we got back to the house the power would indeed be restored after 48 hours+ black-out. both mom and dad were not in the best shape, and i just didn't know what we'd do if the house was still frozen over with no heat in sight. our house was the only one of a handful whose power was still off despite mountain repairs, and i have rarely prayed so hard for a miracle on that drive... it had been a stressful 3 weeks of SO MUCH SNOW and power outages and non-functioning roads and SO MUCH SICKNESS of every one of the visiting extended family (except me, miraculously). remember that, ya'all?

anyway. the miracle happened. the power was on. mom could rest and recover in warm peace. i vowed to pray for more miracles, big and small, this year. and by heaven! what a year it has been. miracle after miracle, and the prayer of gratitude to be said on thursday is going to be very very long... here's a quick list of the biggies:

toni moved to brazil to join me.
a quick 3 weeks later, toni and i decided to get married!
and just 6 weeks after that, toni and i got married!
i got into oxford (again).
toni got into oxford (again).
i got a full 3-year scholarship.
toni got a full 3-year scholarship.
we got to move back "home" to england, and found a lovely little flat all our own.
both sides of our families flew all the way here to celebrate with us in september.
that wedding seriously was miraculously wonderful.
toni and i got to go to ethiopia (already) and explore and learn.
we bake bread.
we get a bursting box of yummy seasonal veggies from the neighbouring farm every monday morning.
the oxford ward is wonderful and i have two perfect callings and some beautiful women in the relief society to be friends with.
there's really yummy chocolate in england.
we live across from a peaceful meadow with cows in it.
we have hot, running water and a lovely, clean kitchen with electricity.
we have grocery stores really close by that have everything we could need. (and more.)
libraries! seminars! lectures! professors!

ok i'll stop there. but really, what a year, no? what a life! it's too much. the too-much-ness is astounding. i had no idea the year would end up with so many miraculous things happening when we were driving up provo canyon that cold january night. i'm sad to be so far away from everyone on thursday, but i'm also so happy that this year i'll be celebrating thanksgiving with dear toni in our little flat as a little family. hurrah for that!

and hurrah for 2011! and happy thanksgiving to you all!

loves!
jooj.

week 6 it is!

sheesh am i bad at transitions these days. or maybe i always have been? (i remember nearly breaking out in tears at the cheesecake factory after mozambique - ha!) but it's been a rough patch the last 5 days getting re-acclimated to oxford from a mere toe-dip into addis. my bearings are all off. though the air does smell incredibly sweet and lovely here after all the urban exhaust in ethiopia...

but that was the whole point of coming back to oxford, so toni and i could end all the mad continent hopping and truly settle. (seems improbable with us, no?) but we DO feel so in love with our oxford home. on returning sunday night we realized we wanted to keep this flat for the full 3 years, it's just so perfect and we feel so happy in it's little walls. keep fingers crossed our landlord will let us sublet for 7 months or so while we're on fieldwork... eep!

otherwise, as thanksgiving draws near, and then Christmas after it, oh sigh! i realize how much i miss dear sundance. knowing i'll miss the winter season altogether :( no bob's Christmas party or warming up at the pellet stove or breakfasts at the grill... but most of all i'll miss lovely things like this...



and this...




hehehehe! can you believe how little david was back then! the cheeks! love.

anyway. onward on and upward. parties to go to in london, thanksgiving potlucks, loads of classic British Christmas dinners (and by dinner they do mean lunch), and of course my first gorgeous German Christmas to look forward to! (really really excited about that one :) it's going to be wonderful. just hug all the little ones close for me (and toni, too)!

beijos.
jooj.

i have no idea what term week this is anymore. oxford? wha?

toni and i have officially one more day in ethiopia, fitting in all last minute appointments we can. i'm starting at 8am with the head of the Gandhi Memorial Hospital, a maternity hospital built in the late 1940s by indian missionaries. (cutting for stone!!) i'll then pay a visit to the Empress Zewditu Hospital up the road... in both cases i'm keen to see if any records remain at all on-site from the early days of operation, though i'd be frankly shocked if there were, since nothing really exists anywhere else... the military government which ran ethiopia for 2 decades after a coup in the 1970s were pretty systematic in their destructive mission, leaving the whole country with scattered archives at best. this means several things...

1. i completely understand why there is virtually no medical history written about ethiopia (as compared to nearly every other african nation), it's a diligent mission of detective work to piece together what happened pre-1976....

2. in addition to working through some files about a british-funded hospital (thankfully) housed in london, i may have to spend a great deal of time combing through archives in OSLO. can you believe it? norway of all places? (mom will totes visit me then. hehe) but their lutheran mission branch ran a host of hospitals and clinics in the southern region of ethiopia, and i talked to the guy today who personally took all the boxes and boxes of files out of the country once the military revolution occurred... so there they are, safely stored up in oslo. (ran.dom.)

3. aside from that, it'll be tons of oral histories. over lunch today with an ethiopian friend we found out he was born in one of the hospitals i'm looking at, so hurrah! i can interview his mother! and all her friends! toni and i sat over tea with richard and rita pankhurst yesterday (if you don't know who richard pankhurst is, DO google him - it was an amazing privilege) where for 2 hours they just sat and blurted out random old doctors, nurses, or missionaries that they knew who were around at that time that i could talk to.

anyway. research aside. yesterday after hopping off the minibus to come home, a young mother with her infant on her lap were begging for money on the side of the street. it is admittedly everywhere in addis, and i am constantly aware that these early maternity wards i'm researching have had so little to do with the majority of ethiopian women. the truth is that they were and still are for the elite, and are a real sign of privilege beyond anything else. (ok so these hospitals are now state-run and mostly for lower middle class, with wealthy women going to private korean clinics. but still. even the state-run are by no means serving all.) it's a strange and frustrating position to be in, to see so blatantly these two worlds. here i am in limetree, this comfortable cafe with $2 wheatgrass shots (and wifi), surrounded by such a small segment of such a massive country. the privilege is staggering to say the least.

so sigh! there you have it. a hugely productive week. lots learned, but many more questions and roads to discover than anything else. it's truly its own world, ethiopia - it's been lovely to be an observer of it all for the last 10 days...

much love to you all.
jooj.

tenay'stelleny!

totally writing this from ethiopia, which is thrilling beyond words! i'm actually ducked into the lobby of a 4-star hotel near our (very kind) friend's home where we're staying, sitting next to 2 chinese guys playing games on their laptops. it's pretty par for the course of being in an african capital city that you perch yourself on poofy armchairs and buy a tea so you can use the rare internet connection. (or in the case of niamey, ali and i would duck into the 4 star hotels to feel the reprieve of air conditioning in 130 degree weather... aaaah....)

anyway! have been here in addis ababa for less than 48 hours, so of course all is very new, but it's been wonderful so far. it's a gorgeous highlands city, with clean streets, cool weather, and green green hills... i feel totally sucked in and can't wait to properly live here later on for fieldwork. toni and i are already scouting neighborhoods and amharic schools...

have also already had some success in research-scouting, and i can't help but feel like the modern-day equivalent of the egyptian pharaohs sending envoys to "punt" (their name for ethiopia) for myrrh, or the ptolemies scoping out the interior to buy elephants for their armies. this whole process of arriving at a place as a foreigner and begging people for trade - for me it's information and personal histories and archives, but i can't help but feel sucked into the ancientness of ethiopia. of course every african nation has centuries of rich histories of change and development and trade and war, but ethiopia is unique in how much of it has been recorded in forms that still exist today, so we can really sketch out a rough image of what it has looked like for 5 thousand years. the ancient aksum empire was converted to Christianity in 400 AD by Syrian traders (oh how history has changed, no?) - there are churches 1000 years old carved totally into rock-faces, stelae and standing stones 2000 years old...

but that process of begging for trade never ceases to amaze me in the way people open their arms with kindness and warm hospitality. immediately upon arrival we had a friend greet us at the airport, a lovely bed to stay on, and more friends to make sure we're fed and taxied around. (fyi my first dinner in ethiopia was at a tex-mex restaurant some of toni's friends took us to, so i ate fajitas and frozen yogurt as if i were a 12 year old again home in villa park. haha!)

also, sorry we didn't bring a camera this time round so you could get some sense of it all... i sort of hate taking pictures in a place where you already stick out like a big white sore thumb, but maybe everyone will just come and visit so we can show you around in person? they have tex-mex! :)

love to you all,
jooj.

week 3

seriously. downton abbey was so off the hook good this season. since neither toni or i have actually had a proper tv in years and years, we've mastered the art of watching the best of tv online (i.e. parks and recreation, QI, outnumbered, and bien sur, downton abbey). the 6th and last episode of this glorious bbc series just aired this last sunday, and AH! AH! all i have to say is i am in all seriousness so grateful that toni or matthew or elliott or lincoln or dad or mike or neal aren't conscripted into war. what an amazing blessing and luxury that is. sigh.*


i also made this cake last week, it was so delish and i was renewed in my gratitude to mom for lugging a massive jar of grandma's molasses over the pond for me - i really don't think it exists outside north america, and how on earth do all those non-north-americans survive without it this time of year? it boggles the mind, truly.


my old-oxford-oddity of the week involved donning my graduate gown and popping by the master of my college's fancy lodgings to sign the college register and gawk at the former signatures of university college alums, like stephen hawking, shelley, and yup - bill clinton. at least i could sign my declaration of enrollment in the college in english - it was in latin up until the late 60s. also i had to mention i came from "villa park high school and brigham young university," as "daughter of david and lauren p*", hehe! so funny to think villa park high is now listed in this massive old registry book with 8 centuries of latin entries before it. i think mr. barrett would be proud :)


the main event of the week though is preparing for ethiopia !!! toni and i fly off next wednesday, and i admit i'm terribly nervous. this trip will be huge detective work to see who is around addis that knows anything about the first maternity wards and midwifery practices in the country from 60+ years ago, and if there are any archives or records on those hospitals/practices anywhere to be found... eep! i have to fill 100,000 words with research, and this topic is quite literally a field of freshly driven snow it is that untouched... which is a great thing when you think about the whole point of a PhD, but a really scary thing when considering the practicalities of research! anyway. it'll be lots of running around the city, with lots of yummy ethiopian food scattered between. mmm.....! can't wait to report back once home in oxford.


i'm also skyping sadie on sunday and can't really wait :)

love you guys.
jooj.

*post-edit! i erred! 2 more episodes to come - hurrah!

her novels are also really brilliant, fyi:

so so good. (perfect companion to all that reading i'm doing, too.) especially at about 30 minutes when she says how europeans often view africans with this faux-jealousy of how they can live such a "simple life" and be happy and dance through it all. no- let's not romanticize poverty, and imagine that poorer women in africa wouldn't gladly have a washing machine and fully-stocked supermarket if they could have one. (and that there aren't africans who don't actually have washing machines and access to fully-stocked supermarkets, either.) anyway, it's a long vid, but well worth it.

the daily life of a dphil, or week 2

i really do spend the majority of my days reading, as any graduate (especially history graduate) student well knows. note this little screen-shot of a bit of my self-imposed reading list i've organized in excel (multiply this by about 5, so far! and it's only week 2!). i say self-imposed because an oxford dphil (phd) has no official teaching involved. i see my supervisor around once or twice a term, but it's all my own direction - you are left to basically figure the research out yourself. and i do know the material and what i need to read (i mean, i should by this point, right?)... but the more you read the more you need to read and so you just keep getting deeper and deeper in a pile of books and libraries.



good thing i do actually love this stuff, right? i mean look at those titles, so interesting, no?

and in other news, toni and i cycled up to blenheim palace last sunday after church. it's only 9 miles and is such a quiet respite from the busy-ness and noise of oxford's streets. it also reminds me so much of being a kid again. all those visits with the fam! it's true england.

toni's in berlin this weekend, and i'm heading to a lieder fest with a friend, some scones and tea with another, sprinkle in some more lectures and conversations and libraries, and then full evensong + formal hall to which i'll be wearing my "scholar's robes" at my college. still. i'd rather have toni home for the weekend :)

beijos, fam!,
jooj.

and in week 1,

lots of wonderful things, like how i got to pretend i was in brazil again yesterday evening (brazilian studies seminar! logico em portugues), saw melancholia and can't get wagner out of my head, delving deeper into history and african maternal health issues and scarily realizing that things colonial officers said in 1920 kenya are the.exact.same.thing. public health people say today, getting more and more acquainted with the lovely oxford ward, starting a brilliant new project for a new fistula organisation, and, AND the fact that toni and i are about 95% sure we'll be spending the first week of november in ethiopia (!!!). as in, 2 1/2 weeks from now. will tell more soon. i love my husband. and the wellcome trust.

and lastly, i'm back to my old self again - long hair was a fun experiment of "i'm too cheap to get a haircut," but it does feel good to be back to the way i looked for the first 24 years of my life. (but should i have gone shorter? i kinda think so. i saw emma watson on the high street yesterday - yup, hermione officially goes to oxford - and DANG was her hair cute!)




and p.s. of course the photo i take is from my computer in the rhodes house library. membs all those similar photos i used to take first go round at oxford? oh the déjà vu...

0 week*

*oxford's terms are numbered weeks, and since it infuses your mind as a student and this becomes your new time-frame-reality, let's adopt it here, k?

i. tonight i had my first formal hall in college where i wore the same vintage dress i wore 10 years ago to my junior year homecoming with josh wilbur. (hehe!) my wardrobe has seriously changed so little since i was 16 it's crazy.

ii. our professors roped toni and i into speaking at the induction of the new MSc African Studies group (since it was our own course back 4 years ago and they wanted former students to reassure new students that it's actually really lovely and you'll have a wonderful year - which is 100% true). we also proved to them that the course is not only academically but also personally rewarding... wink wink :)

iii. but this week is really the first semi-official term week at oxford, and the events keep flowing, as do the insanely interesting conversations that i loved so much my first go round here. i talked a great deal about something that toni and i are both very conscious of, this fear of getting so removed in research and in oxford and in the luxuries of living a "first world" life that you forget you are writing about real people in real situations - actual lived experiences, often very very challenging ones for that matter. we talked with marco, an anthropology student who came back to oxford after 18 months field work in addis ababa's slums and had complete culture shock: how do you write about these subjects in a place as blissfully unaware of anything beyond cozy tea-time as oxford? literally. it's the coziest place on the planet. so where do these tough subjects come in, and how strange to write about them in such an environment? or i talked with isabella, a south african student concerned about the ethical dilemma of interviews - of taking these life stories from people only to pump yourself up and get a fancy degree. just this constant awareness that these are not abstractions, but practical day-to-day issues we are talking about, and to always remember to make the work relevant. i thought about that constantly before - say i gave my masters thesis to the women at the hospital in niger to read. what would they possibly say about it? would they think of it as entirely alien (probably), despite supposedly being a piece of "thorough" research into their very lives and surroundings?

anyway. i think about the women i've met and worked with for the last years - seidé and halimé in flatbush, brooklyn... ana paula in beira, mozambique... dear suellen in sorocaba. (sigh). how does any of this trail back to them and their realities.... the thing is, these women's lives - as powerful and complex and dynamic as they are, are simply not considered the apparent "norm." they are so far from the euro-american middle class lifestyle that is drummed again and again on blogs and media and our general consciousness. but that is not the norm! that is only one (seriously small) subset of the world, despite being the one always talked about and represented and re-represented. but there is so much more - so many more lives that are just as valid, just as rich in their depth and purpose.

so there you have it. lots and lots, wish i could share it all (but then again nothing is ever as interesting retold, no? ha. will spare you then. :) till next week!

the week before 0 week

1. work work reading reading cycling cycling trying-to-get-a-hold-of-ethiopian-nuns-ing library-ing library-ing.



2. toni and i cycled 2 miles out of oxford to the proper countryside for an evening walk and picnic. it was miraculous and heartbreakingly beautiful because it's england. (see photo, left) sigh.



3. please gaze upon the beauty that is this pumpernickel loaf i took out of the oven this evening. (see bottom photo, left) why yes this HAS revolutionized my home-baking! highly highly recommend.

dear leslie and stephanie,

i realize that the only way you'll have any idea what i'm doing these days is if i blog, sad as that statement may be. ya'all left here 3 weeks ago but it feels like 3 years already. how can i wait until next summer? sigh.

in the meantime, what have toni and i been doing?

1. being happier than ever. no joke - no words. full stop.
2. growing a nice herb garden on our kitchen windowsill - even with the grayness of oxford!
3. i stare at kenyan government files with big SECRET stamps on them all day long. even if they're 60 years old, i still feel quite spy-ish. it's for work for an old professor ours, and it is fascinating and thrilling and i'm stoked i'm getting paid to do it.
4. toni tries to make sense of some other work our professor has tasked him on, that i'm not going to talk about more - you can ask me later. the point is that...
5. ....we work across from each other in our professor's office, and it is absolutely ideal. our prof goes on and on with advice on writing up our phds, publishing, finding jobs, getting into academia, all that good stuff. he's the most well-connected man in the universe, utterly brilliant, and an absolute God-send to us both as we scope out our (exciting!) futures (ah!).
6. we take lovely lunch breaks at our favorite old spots - the woodstock road deli lentils live on!
7. we're starting to feel utterly british, having watched a great deal of "jeeves and wooster," and me discovering persephone press, an amazing little british publishing company that reintroduces forgotten and lesser known authors, mostly women, and mostly from the early 20th century. i've already breezed through a couple novels and am itching for more.
8. we also drink lots of tea and eat digestive biscuits. thus the britishness descends.
9. generally we're just revisiting old colleges, old streets, old libraries (got our "bod cards"/university ID cards this week!!!), old gardens, old everything from four years ago and feeling perfectly content and happy to be nestling into old oxford again for a good long stint. after all the moving about continents the last years, aaaaah how relieving it is i could not say....

and

10. i love this photo - look how happy we all were there on dear broad street! yay! thanks elliott for taking it.

miss everyone tons. still can't get over that you were all HERE! it feels like a dream.

love,
jooj.


p.s. toni shaved his beard today and he looks like he's 18! hehehe he also kind of has a superman chin :)

e nós também...

i actually wept when i looked into the eyes of the girls tonight when i said my last goodbyes. i cried because in my head i just kept thinking YOU DESERVE SO MUCH MORE THAN YOU ARE BEING GIVEN.

i think mom knows what i mean, as she came and visited the girls twice. they are just so dang rad, and have so much going for them, and yet have been so utterly smashed by their families and communities and even at times lua nova itself. my esteem for these moms has just skyrocketed since september, and i feel like any and all respect for lua nova as a functioning organization has just plummeted. and for this i weep for the girls, because again, they deserve so much more than the halted, disorganized and scattered care lua nova provides for them. if any of them manage to overcome their addictions and turn their lives around, credit must be placed squarely on their own shoulders - lua nova provides shelter and employment for them in the process (which of course is no.small.thing.at.all), but so little else. so little therapeutic care or direction or just plain ol' love and respect.

and so i weep thinking of what will become of the girls here now, just as i think daily of dear suellen who ran away, of larissa and alessandra and vanessinha... oh! neal maxwell once said... 'compassion is important, but it can readily degenerate into the kind of pity which immobilizes us in terms of our ability to really help one another'... i remember reading this shortly before i went to mozambique back in 2004 (!). oh how he hit the nail SO SQUARELY on the head it's not even funny. if there were any sentence to sum up my time in brazil it may just be that. i love these girls so dearly, but would so often be utterly immobilized in the extent of my frustration on how to effectively act on that love. (don't we all feel this way at times?)

i would be frustrated not only by lua nova's incompetencies, but mostly my own. the best days were simply those when i could trudge through the hour bus commute with these totally pointless doubts and negative thoughts swirling in my head and just arrive at aracoiaba and be with the girls. work through my paralyzed mind. realize and accept the fact that yes, there are 10,001 negative influences and people in these girls lives that i cannot control, but i can control this time i spend with them. i can own that time, and simply pray that it in some way rubs off into the other 95% of their lives.

'to look life in the face. always, to look life in the face and know it for what it is. at last, to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away.'*

so i am putting away brazil as i fly off tomorrow, and it tore my heart tonight to realize that in putting it away i no longer can have these beloved conversations with this beloved group of moms here in this corner of sao paulo state....

...ai ai... fiquem com Deus, meninas!

beijos,

ju.

*from the hours.

beginning of the leaving scenes

toni and i are truly quite torn to leave our very first little home as husband and wife, even if it is a shack with semi-functioning plumbing and multiple cracks large enough to see outside through... but it's our first home! we have been so utterly happy here....

dinner set for two in nossa cozinha da casinha.

we will also be really sad to say goodbye to dear friends we've had here. today our semi-adoptive brazilian family took us out to the country outside sorocaba to see some RAD 200+ year old buildings in this gorgeous park-cum-lake. it was absolutely fabbbbulous. history! beauty! hilarious company!


aaah.... this picture is such a perfect expression of the matriarch of this dear family. they have all been so kind to us, doing absolutely everything they could to make sure we had a home and furniture and love. with the occasional pastel or pao doce thrown in. what would we have done without them all, truly?

madness to think of it all ending so soon - so soon!!!

leaving again

i kinda feel like the last 4 years of my life have been a series of leavings...

i left oxford (oh sniff)
then i left DC (i'm kind of ok with that one)
i left new york (sniff sniff)
i left berlin (sniff!)
i left brazil (visas!)
and now i'm leaving brazil AGAIN. (BLERG VISAS)

toni and i, especially now that we're hitched, are sort of keen on just arriving and BEING for a little while. you know? to have a kitchen where we can buy pots and pans. and have shelves to put books on. and not always be wondering if we'll fit under luggage weight restrictions. all this luggage schlepping is why i have not bought new clothes since before oxford (i do not kid).

BUT the good news is that all worked out beautifully: toni got his exams changed, we're almost completely done in the (semi-)refunding-previous-flights-purchasing-new-ones department, and i'm off to araçoiaba today for some good time with the girls. i just can't believe i have so little time left here with them. all those feelings of guilt on not having done enough just skyrocketed like crazy.

sigh.

BUT for your information: toni will be stateside on april 28th, i'll join him there may 15th (have i mentioned i'm going to ghana and then canada to present at back to back conferences? um, amazing. i'm beyond lucky and ashoka is beyond generous).

see you all SO SO SHORTLY OH MY GOODNESS,
joojie.

oh blerg

looks like my brazilian visa didn't get it's second extension (super surprised, but then again since this is brazil! no, not at all surprised), so looks like all my and toni's plans are UPENDED and we are leaving brazil in 2.5 weeks. tons of mixed emotions! the girls! the end of sorocaba! reuniting with family! the girls! omg all the changed flights and various fees and what-nots! (sic?)

2.5 weeks!

well, i am out of here for sure. or else i will have to sell my soul to the brazilian police. toni my beloved husband of just 2 weeks (today! our 2 week anniversary!) is still up in the air and PLEASE EVERYONE PRAY that the london school of economics lets him take a round of tests in the US rather than sao paulo as he originally said, or else he will be here for ONE FULL MONTH ALONE.

noooooooooooooo! no! no!

but here's hoping!

gaaah!

you think you know happiness...

...and then you run off to new york city and get married to your dear german at city hall and then spend a week frolicking through the city and truly! how the level of bliss has just grown and grown!

toni and i are married! we are married! married! mar.ried.! ! !


we realize it came as somewhat of a shock to 98% of our general acquaintance, but this was to be expected as we had told only our families and a (literal) handful of friends of our plans. it made that tuesday at city hall feel so intimate and wonderful, and then we were so so excited to burst with the news afterwards to the world. (and boy did the world respond in kind - heavens how wonderfully kind people have been to us!)



are there words to contain all the feeling? heavens no. deliriously happy/bursting at the seams/absolutely ecstatic doesn't come close.

love!!!,
toni&julianne
:)

one very long photo journey from rio to ilha grande to paraty! yay!

p.s...

sorry to just add more sorrow to the web... so i thought i would try to balance things out and say that if any one is looking for the all-too-rare super-legit-really-GOOD news these days, i will have just such a piece for you in just 2 weeks time! yay! i can hardly wait! :)

managing tragedies.

hello to the world! here i sit with wireless (!) at lua nova's downtown office in sorocaba, unfortunately one of the only options either toni or i can manage to have any connection to the outside world. we have no internet between us, and with this and that and this and oh that too happening around the world, it makes us feel so horribly cut off. with no internet, no phones that work internationally, and no tv, we just have our own little bubble of sorocaba/araçoiaba to deal with, wondering how everything and everyone else is coping...

it can be so disconcerting to feel so helpless AND far away with intermittent connection, but things get even more disconcerting when your own little bubble has it's unique little tragedies to manage as well. (as is the case for everyone, no? see: philo of alexandria quote to the right --->)

in my case, the tragedy is this mad organization. truly, lua nova is a train wreck. 4 girls have run away in the last month, one girl in particular who i was very close to, and the thought of the life that they have chosen instead of persevering through the halting care at lua nova's shelter is heartbreaking and makes me worry beyond measure. where are they? what are they doing? how are they surviving?

it's just so awful to see how much the girls - the very community lua nova is supposed to be surviving - suffer from the huge weaknesses of this chaotic NGO.

alas.

in any case i'm off back into brazilian anonymity - one last visit this week to the girls out in araçoiaba before dipping further into anonymity for the next 5 days where my only goal is to show mom a good time down here in the tropics - heat and chaos notwithstanding :) yay! a visit from the outside! :)

até mais, pessoal!

beijos e abraços,
jooj.

*this is a picture of dear suellen, the girl who most recently ran away. bah! she is so great! oh! suellen, be safe wherever you are!

this breaks my heart...

such tragedies are just too much to take! i think everyone who reads this blog reads leslie's, but just in case you didn't see this about an old family friend, do consider helping!

beijos to you all.
jooj.

i didn't fully love brazil until i went to rio

and oh what a place it is! what contrasts and extremes! while the beauty is seriously beyond belief, i couldn't help but remember that back at work in aracoiaba were over 40 young moms who are recovering from the kind of drug-war-frenzied environment that are brazilian favelas - those rough communities you see climbing up the gorgeous green mountains from rio's perfect beaches. being in rio reminded me so much of being in cape town - you pinch yourself at how delicious the life can be! at how yummy the food is, how gorgeous is the architecture, and stunning beyond stunning is the landscape and history and culture, but then there are the cape flats. then there is cidade de deus.

not to say there is no beauty in the favela, and no horror in ipanema or leblon - it would be awful to say that they are these polar opposites with vicious residents in one and perfect residents in the other, of course the contrasts are more nuanced. but they are there for sure - constant and everywhere.

also constant and everywhere: absolute and full-blown celebration. ohmygoodness. i loved it. LOVED IT. not only is rio drop dead amazing on its own, but carnaval! what! never have i been in a place that embraced such pure and absolute enjoyment - all through 24hour dancing, parading, and singing in the streets. it was hilarious and crazy and so so fun (and safe, mind you!). i didn't want to leave!* how fab to see something else in brazil besides little sorocaba! so much to learn, so much to absorb!

oh rio oh rio... deixei a ti o meu coracao...

but enough talk. here are some videos of the carnaval street parties toni and i went to. keep in mind that the first video was taken at 8:30am saturday morning. the party is literally 24 hours. rain or shine. amazing.

*did i mention that mom comes here next tuesday?! and that we are going back to rio with her? oh heavens i am so spoiled. and can.not.wait!!!!

i don't know about you, but i want to meet sorocaba.

toni's computer died this last week (tragic!), and so he's been hanging lots around a little internet cafe in our neighborhood. i went there with him there the other night, and the guy behind the counter heard us speaking english... i left a bit early, and then when toni went up to pay, the following conversation (in broken english) ensued...

"are you american?"

"no, i'm german, but my girlfriend is american."

(in complete shock and disbelief) "WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN SOROCABA?!? i want to TRAVEL! i want to see the world! I WANT TO MEET MANHATTAN."


ha. hahaha! oh haha. HA. finally someone gets it. hahhaa. oh sorocaba! what a funny place. little did this guy know that i virtually moved to sorocaba from manhattan. (via berlin, of course). oh hilarious.

still. as dull and frustrating and annoying and bureaucratic as life can be here in this town, at this blasted NGO, it does have one compelling reason for me to stay:

oh! i love these girls. all of that rest melts away when i'm working with them and their darling babies. um, isn't mariana gorgeous? and her baby aaaadoooorable?! ah!

happy weekend!

beijos,
jooj

despite the fact that my LAST post was about a holiday...

i promise i did work a bit in the meantime (full post dedicated to awesome new lua nova pics coming later today, maybs), but toni and i took another mini-cheap-little-holiday, this time to the beach...


ah... lovely, no? aren't we looking so happy on this beautiful, jungly, remote beach on the northern strip of an island off the brazilian coast? mmm.. i can taste the fresh maracuja juice now....

but wait wait wait - do you spy something fishy behind us?

let's look closer, shall we?...

oh yes. AWESOME. i told toni that if he dressed like that i too would snap some sassy photos of him. hehheheehehehe love.it.

newsssss

i was accepted into oxford's dphil (british way to say phd) history (of medicine) program(me) beginning fall of this year! YAY YAY YAY

one waiting game is over! (phew) yet three more remain in pending status....

toni has to be accepted.

i need to get funding.

toni has to get funding.


.....and if these three other things (miraculously) (truly, it would be miraculous) all happen, then in 7 short months toni and i will (once again) be cycling in narrow alleyways past ancient pubs like...

<----- this. (!!!)



aaaiii!!!!

toni i went to iguaçu falls! and argentina for a day!

in other words, it was GORGEOUS. and super hot. and jungly. and wet. and made us think constantly of "the mission."
but really pictures do no justice.
GOR.
GEOUS.