Rent

Fiona and I went to a movie. There's wasn't much out there appropriate for a 44 year old plus a 12 year old. We saw Rent. I did not have high expectations after the Georgia Straight recommended just watching the Rent parody in Team America World Police ("I have AIDS, you have AIDS, she has AIDS, we ALL HAVE AIDS...").

Well, now I know that you can agonize for over a year about your art and still churn out cliche-schlock (like the two main characters, a song-writer and a film-maker do), or maybe I just didn't get it. I also know that a bad rock song that takes more than a year of misery and a soul-searching cross-country journey to create can have the power to bring a lover back from the arms of death. I am also reassured that I still don't like pretty-faces on boys unless they are drag queens, then they are wonderful.

There were a few good moments and fun songs and the character of Angel was lovely, and I think it was still a better choice than Cheaper by the Dozen. Fi and I had a great discussion about it (and many issues connected to it) on the way home, and the whole thing cost just $13 with my parking totally paid for by the theatre validation. As a mom and kid experience it was good. As a movie, I don't recommend it. But then I also hesitate to recommend Team America World Police unless you just fast-forward to the Rent parody and skip the extended marionette sex scene.

Just to clarify:

• We saw Harry Potter already.
• Fiona dislikes Narnia
• I did not watch Team America World Police with my 12 year old

question: seen any good movies lately that you could take your kid to?

mompoet - I love the movies but they don't always love me

Nelson's Big Day Out

Nelson the rat has been watching us coming and going all Christmas. From his place of honour on the "Santa shelf" he has seen us heading out the door to parties, shows, suppers, shopping and all manner of exciting events. On Thursday morning he was looking a bit sad so I asked him what was the matter? He told me that he wanted to come too.

So we took Nelson with us on our busy and fun day. We began at Grandma and Grandpa's house (my mom and dad). They served us our traditional Christmas/Hannukah lox and bagels breakfast. Fiona made Nelson a little paper yarmulke in honour of the occasion.

Next we did some shopping, but Nelson waited in the car because he doesn't have any money, and people get alarmed when you have a rat in your grocery cart. After that we met Louise and Sam and Robin and Emma at Capitol Hill Szechuan for lunch. Nelson could not believe how much fun that turntable is that moves the dishes around the table. But I think he got a little carsick from riding around on it. If you look closely you can see he dropped his hat and scampered out of the picture just before I snapped. Nelson's fortune cookie advised him to keep his nose to the ground and stay out of holes. This was especially appropriate with the suffix "in bed" added. The kids thought that was very funny.

After lunch we went skating. I offered to loan Nelson one of my skates, but he preferred to sit on the sidelines and watch the Zamboni. He asked Al for a ride on the Zamboni, but Al says only the mayor gets to do ridealongs. Nelson says he will run for mayor next time.

Back at home, Nelson helped me set up the carport for the annual "sit in the carport after Christmas and drink hot mulled wine and feed all of our leftover cookies and chips to the kids" party. Nelson liked the mulled wine, although he's not partial to allspice. He stayed away from the chips, but the declared the shortbread perfect. After a nosh, he chatted with Kirsi and Karen for a bit, and I think he's now invited to a New Year's Eve Party.

The party ended about 7:30 and we came inside. Nelson said it was the best day he has ever had.

question: have you taken your rat out on the town lately?

mompoet - some of my best friends are plastic rodents

Happy News from Eritrea

My sister has just posted a new blog entry. You can read about her family's Eritrean adventures at The Eatburn Chronicles. There's also a letter that just arrived at my parents' house yesterday. We're going over for breakfast this morning. I can't wait!

No more dire news of war or evacuation. I'm hoping and praying for peace on earth, especially the part of the earth where they are living now.

question: have you been to Africa?

mompoet - ankle deep in Canada (for now, anyway)

Yummy Lunch

Leftovers are often better than the first time round. Mostly for the cook, I think, because you're not eating something you just sweated and fussed over - or even if you did not sweat or fuss it still feels like you culinary baby when it's first prepared, and it's not that great eating your baby.

For lunch today I ate leftovers from the perfect Boxing Day supper. Here's the recipe for those who check in to my blog for recipes. I haven't posted one in a while:

Roasted Eggplant with Peanut Sauce

Slice up one medium size eggplant or about 10 baby eggplants or maybe 2 of the Japanese kind. If the skin is tough, score it or cut strips away. It will soften with cooking but it can be a bit much. Season with salt and pepper and put on a baking pan liberally-coated with olive oil. Bake at 450 celsius for about 10 minutes on each side until it's looking toasty and shiny and smelling like eggplant should smell.

In the meantime, make the sauce: 2 tablespoons peanut butter, 1 tablespoon of something tangy (balsamic vinegar, lime juice, dry wine - whatever you have), 1 tsp sugar, 1 Tbs soya sauce, 1 small garlic clove minced up and a sprinkle of dried chili flakes plus 1/2 cup of water. Heat and stir on the stove until it bubbles. You may want to add some more water to keep it runny. Don't burn the peanut butter or you'll have to start over.

When the eggplant is roasted, arrange it on a platter. Drizzle the sauce over it. Garnish with fresh cilantro.


Szechuan Green Beans with Minced Pork

While the eggplant is roasting you can make this. Put on a pot of rice too.
Wash and trim as many fresh green beans as you can fit into your wok or skillet. More is better. While you are doing that, brown up 1/4 pound of ground or minced pork in some oil in your wok, nice and brown and crispy. You really only need 1/4 pound. It's for flavour - the green beans main event. During the last minute or so, throw in a clove or two of garlic, minced or sliced. Set the pork/garlic aside and put the green beans into the wok. Stir fry them. If you like them crispy, stop when they are all bright green and shiny. If you prefer them wilted, keep cooking until they are wilted. Both ways are good. When the green beans are cooked, toss in a spash of water (1/2 cup maybe?), a couple of tablespoons of soya sauce, and as much ground fresh chili paste as you like. I use sambal oelek. You could substitute chili flaked or chopped fresh chili or chili oil or sauce. Stir it all together, mixing the pork/garlic back in. Stir fry just a bit longer to distribute the chili heat evenly throughout the beans.

Serve the green beans with rice and the egglplant beside it. It's very yummy and good after a monstrous European feast, and even better reheated for a lunch a day or two later.

question: what do you like to eat the day after the feast?

alternate question: what's your favourite leftover meal?

mompoet - procrastinating

All I want for New Years

I never make self-denying or self-correcting New Years' Resolutions (well at least not for the past 20 years). Saying "I will stop watching Trailer Park Boys on TV" or "I will take my vitamins every day" is a recipe for disappointment in self, like a behavioural bandaid that just won't work because it's based on the assumption that I'm doing something wrong, or at least not living up to some arbitrary minimal expectation of virtue.

Instead, I try every year at some time (last year it was November, but I haven't got around to it this year) I try to think of something new that I will decide to do that will enrich my life. That's so much more interesting and utimately do-able than deciding to give up something or to take on a load of difficult but good-for-me or good-for-the-world behaviour.

This is not to say that I think I am too good for improvement. Like everyone else, I am constantly and consciously evolving. It's just that I choose to orient myself to positive and nourishing action. I like to pick something that will reveal new vistas. Maybe it's my background in early childhood education. Maybe I'm a young soul. Maybe I just like to have fun. I believe that we learn and grow through play, so I make play my vehicle of expression and road to achievement as much as possible.

Last year's "resolutions" were:

• To leave time unscheduled and available for spontaneous choices.
  
• To listen to music recommended by my friends and decide what I like and why I like it.

Number one was maybe too much in the denial category, because I haven't been successful in making a substantial change in this direction. There's always way too much to be done, and I find myself fully committed and scheduled almost all of the time. It's a consolation that I am enjoying almost everything that I do, and that there aren't many things I wish I could be doing instead. I'm very busy, but don't feel trapped by it. Luckily I don't need too much sleep. I also have a great degree of control over how I spend my time, so the stress level is minimized. Still, I'd like to be able to say "Hey family, let's pack our bags right now and head over to the island for the weekend." I guess there'll be time when we can do that. Probably not practical right now.

Number two has been a joy and a revelation and a total success. I started out by blogging my musical discoveries every couple of weeks, but that's fallen off. I am listening to all kinds of everything these days, mostly in the car. I'm still borrowing cds from friends and from the library, and buying them when I can afford it, or if I specially love something. In my car right now are Madeleine Peyroux, and by connection Billie Holiday to whom she has been compared but who is, of course incomparable. I'm still liking Red Hot Chili Peppers and also Nirvana and I am hooked on the soundtrack to O Brother Where Art Thou? I think this is because the voices sound like my Ohio Uncles - those soft rrrrrr sounds and lazy vowels feel like home. I have not reached any conclusion about "what I like" because it seems that I like just about everything I listen to. I have decided that I like dramatic expression, acoustic sound and good lyrics and a sense of history or connectedness - either to some other music or art or human experience. It's hard to put into words but it's important.

I haven't settled on what to do for 2006. It's not urgent that I do so by January 1. Something will nudge its way into my decision-making machinery, or not. In the meantime, I'm listening and thinking about other people's ideas for new pages to turn in the new year. Whatever each of us chooses, let's hope the story's a good one.

question: what will you do for the new year?

mompoet - living a very good story

more seasonal haiku

chickweed emerges
through dank maple ground cover
for brief glimpse of light


dog noses damp soil
as eagle ke-keers raw joy
fishing's good today

question: hai?

mompoet: ku

This post my first from mom and dad's hand-me-down mac 7600, prompting this last haiku for today from a mom of teenagers, married to an internet card-player, now grateful for two comuters online...THANK YOU MOM AND DAD!

email never sleeps
msn is msn
my turn online please?

Christmas Surprises

While I sit in my pajamas NOT shopping (but making coffee in anticipation of pumpkin pie for breakfast) I will recap my Christmas surprises (so far).

I have spilled two beer (in two days) - unusual for me - beer are for drinking, not for spilling. Why is it when you do something stupid twice it becomes a legend, but if you do something intelligent twice it's still a coincidence? Apparently I am now cut off and dangerous even to drink water except from a sippy cup.

We finished the jigsaw puzzle. It's spectacular, and we stayed up until 1:30 doing it (practice for New Year's Eve I guess). We are missing 3 pieces, which is not surprising because we hauled it around to different places in the house on a piece of foam core for a couple of weeks. I'm sure I'll find the bits unless a child over 3 ate them. (No, they were not inside the vacuum cleaner hose.)

I fell in a ditch. This is completely unrelated to item number 1 (beer spilling). On Christmas Day I took the dog out for an hour of pre-feast fast walking. Almost home, ascending from the highway to our hillside home, we took a shortcut throught the woods. Trouble is you have to ford a ditch to get onto the woods trail. The sides were more slippery than I expected. I did not actually roll in the ditch, more like hitting the muck on hands and knees. The dog escaped unscathed. I was muddy and laughing. The legend is already blooming though that I lay in the ditch in the frigid cold (it was actually 11 degrees celcius) while the dog saved my life with CPR.

Aside from that, Christmas has been unsurprising. Just nice.

question: have you been surprised lately?

mompoet - always surprised

Going now to eat pumpkin pie and read Diana Gabaldon in my pajamas. How Diana Gabaldon got to wear my pajamas, I'll never know. nyuck nyuck nyuck

Christmas Warnings

We will be very safe this Christmas, or at least if we are killed or injured the products that have played a part in our demise will be off the hook legally (if not morally). Please heed with us the following Christmas warnings:

• Do not set your new cell phone battery on fire and stand close to it while it burns. (Nokia)
  
• Do not eat scented tealight candles or put them in front of a rocking chair (Ikea)
  
• Do not use dvd player case as a swing, carseat, or for any other purpose than to hold the dvd player. (Polaroid)
• Do not let children under three eat jigsaw puzzle pieces. (Great American Puzzle Factory)
• May contain peanuts or traces of peanuts - on a jar of peanuts.

And best of all:

• When the candles are lit for "Silent Night," please be careful not to drip wax or light people near you on fire. (St. Andrew's United Church Christmas Eve Service Bulletin)

Have a happy (and safe Christmas). You have now been protected, or at least warned.

question: when did risk management cross the line into the realm of the absurd?

mompoet - loving the silliness of ordinary human beings

Christmas So Far

I have been on vacation for one week. It's very nice to take a break from work and spend time with the family. Slowing down takes time, so I'm grateful for two-weeks-plus to do this.

Like always, I have lots of plans/ideas for my holiday. Some are turning out just like I thought. Others not so much, but so far it's mostly for the good.

I thought I would sleep more, but it seems like part of getting older is needing less sleep. I have been sleeping in until 7:30 every morning (I can hear Kirsi laughing as she reads that), which is kind of a luxury considering I normally get out of bed at 5:30. But I'm staying up until midnight every night. I have never enjoyed wasting time slumbering, and my back gets sore if I stay in bed too long. This week it will be harder to bound out at the crack of dawn because Andy is finally on vacation too. He likes to slumber. He likes me to stay. Some mornings, when he's home, it's like All-Star-Wrestling just to get my feet to the floor. But that's fun.

Spending lots of hours awake has allowed me to do a lot of things, which is what I had planned for this first week. I have: (in rough chronological order) kept up my cycle class schedule at the gym (pedalling for Almond Roca?), picked up an iMac at the challenge centre so our daughter can work on a film project over the holidays, picked up my dad from the hospital after day surgery to have a monitor implanted in his chest to track what the heck that heart of his is doing in there, made 2 cedar wreaths, shopped with Andy for a Christmas tree (big, beautiful, thirsty-fresh and only $16!), decorated the inside of the house including putting up the tree, attended a performance of A Little Night Music at the Playhouse (3 out of 5 stars), gone out for Italian lunch and Thai supper, watched "A Christmas Story," "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" and "March of the Penguins" on dvd, celebrated with the Shoreline Writers, taken the kids shopping for stocking stuffers for everyone in the family, enjoyed a singing advent church service thanks to the spectacular St. Andrew's United Church choir, stayed up late at the Vancouver Poetry Slam, phoned about a hundred households as a volunteer canvasser NDP candidate Dawn Black, taken our son to the barber's for a haircut, gone ice skating with my daughter and her friends, chaperoned a sleepover and provided the big breakfast in the morning, dropped son off at godson's so they could go see King Kong together, walked through the wet woods with Louise and Soleil, unplugged the clogged vacuum cleaner hose while chatting with Irene, re-negotiated our mortgage (we're in the home stretch and will own this place before our daughter graduates high school - yay!), tried to give blood but was just a bit too low on iron this time, worked on a big jigsaw puzzle, read the paper and drank coffee every morning, walked the dog a lot, baked pumpkin pie, washed a gazillion loads of laundry, cleaned up my side of the bedroom, and welcomed my dad over so he could set up a hand-me-down macintosh computer so we now have two computers online again (most helpful with teenagers).

What I thought I would do but have not is read. Except for the newspaper and the internet, I have not been reading. I am in the middle of a wonderful novel, but not craving it like I usually do with a captivating read. Maybe I should take a vacation from it and go wallow in the new Diana Gabaldon. We'll see.

Today is Christmas Eve. We're having friends over from out of town. Andy and I still have to wrap presents, and there's church. St. Andrew's family service is at 7, but we'll be there at 6 because Fiona and I usher. It's something like being a friendly greeter, something like packing commuters into a Japanese train at rush hour. On Christmas Eve it seems like the whole neighbourhood shows up at our church. There's always room for everyone, but you have to get cozy. After that there's Christmas day with supper at Andy's mom's and my parents coming too, then a whole week more of holidays to do some of the things that I planned, some not, and some that I never imagined.

question: how's your Christmas so far?

mompoet - my cup runneth over

Nelson Noel

Fiona sewed Nelson a hat for Christmas.

question: will Nelson go anywhere for Christmas vacation?

mompoet - glad to be home, but thinking that Nelson likes adventure in faraway places

How I spent my Christmas Vacation

Today I tried to vacuum but the vacuum didn't suck. I love saying that.

I discovered the "not sucking" day before yesterday and I thought I had solved the problem by washing and drying the filters (it has 3) and unclogging the carpet sweeper head with a straightened out coathanger. But it turns out that the filters and sweeper head were not the source of the problem. There was something plugging the hose. This I discovered by detaching the hose with a screwdriver and blowing on one end and nothing moved - like when you're checking for an airway while doing CPR. I couldn't fathom doing a head-tilt chin-pull to the vacuum cleaner so I got the coat hanger and started to dig. There was definitely something smack in the middle of the hose, which I could barely reach and could not budge.

About that time, my friend Irene phoned. I told her I hoped she didn't mind, but I was going to continue unclogging the vacuum cleaner hose while we talked. She was okay with that. By the way, does anyone else have a code of acceptable "things to do while talking on the phone?" For me, loading the dishwasher, folding laundry, cooking, tidying up are all okay. Going pee, eating and reading a book are not. Watching TV while on the phone is definitely not okay. And talking on two phones at the same time is also not okay.

But I digress. So Irene and I are talking and I'm jamming this straightened out coathanger with a hook that I made at one end using pliers to dig into the clog in the middle of the vacuum cleaner hose, first from one end, then the other, with no progress whatsoever, for 15 or twenty minutes. I tried massaging the hose and drilling the pointy end of the coat hanger into the middle of the clog. Nothing seemed to make a difference. Finally, while Irene was telling me about Christmas emails, this gigantic bulge started to move towards me from the middle of the tube - like a boa constrictor swallowing a rabbit or something. Wooooooo! Out came a piece of Christmas tree branch and about a dog and a half worth of hair, first in one big clump, then about 8 more assorted fluff-clots after. No wonder it wouldn't suck!

I told Irene that I got it out, and we finished our conversation with promises to forward good emails to one another. Then I vacuumed the gunk back up and it went through this time, but I put the bit of tree into the trash. I think that's what started the jam in the first place.

So that's what I did today. Festive, cathartic, social and constructive, all in one experience. Yaaay. Happy solstice.

question: what's on your list of OK and Not-OK to do while chatting on the phone?

mompoet - free-flowing

helping the cause

Alex and I volunteered at Dawn Black's campaign office today. Alex did data entry all day, sitting in a back room transferring information from yellow slips into a computer program that's keeping track of people who are willing to volunteer, put a lawn sign, make a financial contribution or all of the above. I feel proud of him. From what I could overhear from where I sat, he was doing a good job and having a good time with the campaign worker at the computer area. At the end of the shift he got a letter, and I took a photograph for his graduation portfolio (for the next 3 years he has to document and store every bit of good he does in the world in order to be admitted to adulthood at the end of Grade 12 by the ministry of education).

I did telephone canvassing all day. Mostly I left messages on answering machines, but I talked to quite a few people too. My job was to call through the voters' list, ask for the voter's support for Dawn and the NDP, and record the answer. My ear is still jangling a little from curt responses and hangups, but that's part of the territory. Mostly I got polite "undecideds" and a few "won't says." Maybe it's early in the campaign, but mostly I think people really don't like to talk about their own politics. It's the same feeling you get when you knock on someone's door to ask for a donation to The Heart and Stroke Fund or Cancer Society. There's something really uncomfortable about asking people to put their money or their vote on the line for someone else to see and know about. And phoning their house, asking for them by name and then asking about who they're going to vote for is intrusive, but that's how elections are won.

In the 2004 federal election, the NDP lost by just 115 votes in our riding. If every volunteer canvasser wakes up just one voter per shift during the course of the campaign and inspires/reminds/nudges that voter to vote for our candidate, we will win. I hope one of the yeses I got today will help make the difference.

We left the office in the late afternoon to get to the orthodontist. Alex said it felt like walking out of the movie theatre back into the real world. He's a smart one, that kid.

question: I won't ask it, enough already today

mompoet - walking through ooky-land for a good cause

solstice poem

I was going to perform this one at the slam last night, but there was this big group of teachers sitting in the front row, enjoying a Monday night out without having school in the morning. When I sold them a raffle ticket before the show, they mentioned my Subaru poem, which one of them got from me by email and read on the PA system to their elementary school during Poetry Month earlier this year. I was so tickled to have people in the audience who actually know one of my poems that I performed that one instead, and did not do the sostice poem after all.

So here it is, because it will now go to sleep for a year, except that it's in the Shoreline Chapbook so we might relive the solstice once or twice in the new year.

Don’t go into the woods at solstice
There’s a bear with a Coke who will give you a poke and make you think
You don’t have enough Christmas.
There’s a witch and her clan out-Jonesing the Joneses with her gingerbread sparkles and lipstick the colour of the apple that Snow White bit.
There’s a mackerel-scented Christ candle floating in a bowl of abandoned cranberries.
There’s a girl in a pageant dressed as Holy Mary Mother of God and her immaculate deception Traipsing holy holy around in the snow as white as her pure heart pretends to be.
But if she’s a good liver she’ll mean what she says and do better.

Don’t go into the woods at solstice
There’s an idea of joy that’s as easy to swallow as a golf ball washed down with curdled nog made from the egg of a dragon.
There’s a giant with nose hairs fashioned into a bouffant comb-over, all to hide that he’s been crying because the children will play in his garden but none will be his forever.
There are evil squirrels who do voice-overs for animé features about superheroes named Alvin,
Theodore and Simon.
And the elves spell evel with two “e”s.

Don’t go into the woods at solstice
You’ll find yourself reflected in the frost-crazed cover of a mineral lake
And you’ll go blind trying
To carve your ideas about hope, peace, joy and love into an old-growth forest that’s been devoured by beetles because the winters are never cold enough anymore.
And those who read them before they fall
Will dismiss them as derivative and turn back to classic carols digitally re-mastered on melba toast rounds with smoked oysters for entertainment.

Don’t go into the woods
You might not believe them.
You might just open your eyes and see the clear sky still over the trees
And realize that twenty days or so
Of overdoing almost everything can’t really hurt anyone who isn’t hurting already
But why do it anyway?

Don’t go into the woods at solstice
Go into the world, go into your home, go into the street
The woods will be there another night
When daylight’s nearer
The bears, witches, Snow White, mackerels, Holy Mary Mother of God, dragons, giants, squirrels, animé chipmunks, elves, beetles and oysters
Will still be there too
But it’s possible you’ll find that they are just as afraid of you
As you are of them.

Don’t go into the woods.

question: what is it about the woods?

mompoet - if I wrote a poem about the equinox it would be a crossword puzzle

my favourite day of the year

Tomorrow is Winter Solstice. The longest night of the year is my favourite. The darkness is exciting, and there's the promise of winter which is upward, upward, into the light. Summer solstice is my second favourite, but sadder because the summer is a process of deterioration into less light. From its very first day, the summer goes downhill. Winter, on the other hand is the beginning of everything.

My daughter's favourite part of the weekend is Friday afternoon. Me too.

When I was a kid and we went cross-country skiing, my dad would always put me at the head of the line to charge up the hill and break a path for everyone else. I have always liked beginnings. I usually like to go first.

Winter solstice. Some may see it as ground zero, dark of the dark. For me it's just standing on the edge of everything and saying - another year? Yes! Let's go!

Question: what time of year do you like best?

mompoet - watching the morning begin to brighten at 8:06

seasonal haiku

thirty-five days til
election do you believe
in prime minister?

question - hai?

mompoet - ku

The Poet-Tree

Here is a tree that grows poems. We pick the poems once a year at our December meeting of the Shoreline Writers. We share some treats and mulled wine and we read the poems out loud and sometimes try to guess whose is whose. Then we sing and we sing and we sing, sing, sing, sing.

question: what holiday traditions do you share with friends?

mompoet - fa la la la la la la la laaaaaaa

all is calm

question: none today

mompoet - peaceful

size matters

At the staff lunch, my boss put her car key on the table. It is the size of a baked potato. She drives a BMW. My husband's new car key is the size of a hard-boiled egg. He drives a Mazda. The newer and better the car, the bigger the key. In the meantime, cell phones get smaller and smaller and smaller, unless you have a Blackberry, then it's roughly the size of one of those big chocolate chip cookies at the deli. Except for Blackberries, if your cell phone is so small you could mistake it for an after-eight mint, then it's the best cell phone.

They have the technology to squish a million complex functions into a teeny weeny little chip, so what's with these car keys?

Oh, marketing. I forgot.

question: why do we let people feed us arbitrary notions of what we should think is desirable?

mompoet - baffled

christmas pants

In case you are wondering, I stapled two kinds of Christmas tree garland all over my jeans. It was fun to eat many kinds of luxurious cheese and laugh with my friends while wearing garlanded pants. The dip was good too.

question: got dip?

mompoet - now on vacation

Eritrea

Half of me is wishing they would just come home right now. Half is wishing they will be able to stay so they won't be disappointed.

My sister and her family have been in Africa for just three months. Barb and her husband Kim are volunteering with VSO, working as teachers in Eritrea. They are there with almost-15-year-old Maya, 12-year-old Lukas and 10-year-old Simon. Eritrea and Ethiopia are fighting. My sister and her family are in a part of the country far from the violence, but UN personnel are being ordered out of the country by the government, and VSO workers are advised by their organization to register with the nearest consulate in case they need to be evacuated.

You can read about what they are doing in their weekly blog The Eatburn Chronicles.

I hope and pray that things get better so they can stay. This is something they want so very much.

question: where in the world would you be if you weren't where you are now?

mompoet - wondering