Katy Murtaugh's Next Big Adventure! » First Three Months

Pictures are here!

Katy — Sun, 04 May 2008 13:36:40 +0000

I am for the first time connected to the internet via my very own laptop! Which means that I can use flickr’s uploader rather than their dumb on-line tool, which means there are pictures for your enjoyment on flickr. Just use the link over there on the sidebar! I have yet to grace the blog itself, but progress has been made!

Baking in Guinea!

Katy — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:32:33 +0000

Holy smokes! What a trip! I am so sorry I was ever critical of bread in Guinea; I take back anything bad I ever said about Guinean baguettes (except for it not having enough salt); they have to do so much work to produce what they produce that they deserve nothing but admiration. I am fascinated by this process and now feel like there producing a “pas mal” product given their conditions and their equipment.

There’s a women’s groupement here who has a center for girls’ education (for girls who otherwise won’t have the opportunity to go to school). They teach math, literacy, French and also technical skills like fabric dyeing. They, in the somewhat recent past, received a grant to build a bakery (a wood-burning clay/stone oven with a building built around it, with a little extra space for a baker to work) and have been looking for someone to teach their girls baking skills, enter Katy. We had a few false starts, but I finally got to spend some time (i.e., 7 hours) with the baker who uses the oven currently for baking baguettes to learn how to use it. Below I’ve outlined the completely impressive process for churning out 90+ baguettes in 7 hours with nothing but your two hands and this gargantuan oven. It’s a slightly detailed account, mainly for my own recollection purposes, but I also know that there are a few of you out there who will be as interested as I was in how the process works.

Side note as to the ridiculousness that happenes here sometimes: Dalaba has about 40,000 people in the town itself; I learned last night that it also has a total of 71 of these huge ovens. I simply cannot imagine how after 40 or so ovens, someone thought building another oven was a good idea, which clearly somebody did another 30 or so times. (Granted, this oven I’ll be using was probably the 71st.) Because of this plethora of ovens, and also bakers, there is a bakers’ association that creates a rotating schedule for who bakes/what ovens are in operation on any given day. Each day one half of the ovens/bakers are in use, and they alternate days. The amazing astonishment of this is that there is actually a practical and financial loss by letting an oven not be used for more than day at a time – an oven that has been brought fully up to temperature one day from cold (which takes at least 5 big, long, fat pieces of wood, 3,000GF each to 5,000 GF), can be brought up to temperature the next day in about half the time with about half the amount of wood. Every single baker in town is forced to use their oven in the most inefficient way possible, waiting just long enough for the oven to completely cool before firing it up again. On top of that, since baguettes are usually the only thing they bake in these ovens, no one makes any use of that residual heat to bake anything else that requires lower temperatures and it just goes away. I was amazed! I sort of thought it was in domains like these where practicality won out over everything else, especially when it came to being fiscally conservative, but it seems there was some decree of what “fairness” ordained in the face of more bakers and ovens than the town can employ.

Anyway, here’s what I witnessed:

Mixing
Even though baking happens at night when there is almost always electricity here in Dalaba, there’s not money for anyone to buy something like a big ol’ mixer, so the baguettes of Guinea (which are even more ubiquitous here than in France, given their lack of any competing breads) are made entirely by hand and are mixed entirely according to look and feel. First, roughly 25 kilos of flour goes into a trough (not dissimilar from Anne’s goats’ feeding trough, though higher off the ground), which is to say a 50 kilo sack is opened and about half of it goes in. A pre-measured “2 gram” plastic bag of salt is added (though was definitely more than 2 grams, given what I saw him measuring out, I couldn’t figure out what he meant by “gram” — he definitely didn’t mean gram, but he didn’t mean kilogram either, an unsolved mystery). A tomato paste can is used to measure out the yeast (good ol’ SAF instant yeast), and it looks like he’s shooting for about 3/4 of a can. He does his best to mix the dries thoroughly and spends at least 5 minutes with his arm swimming back and forth and down into the corners (although he may have been showing off for company). Then in one half of the trough, he starts to compress and pat down the flour, getting it ready to receive a deluge of water; he pours about half a bidon of water (at least the size of a Fry-on container, though it might be bigger….how quickly we forget) into that side and starts swinging his arm back and forth to incorporate the packed down flour underneath a little at a time; once the flour all they way to the bottom has been incoporated, he starts adding some of the flour from the other half of the trough, still one-armed, starting to scrape down the sides and check the corners. At some point it’s clear that more water is needed; the mixture is ressembling dough, but there’s still a bunch of flour left on the other side of the trough, so he makes a wet, sticky mess out of that remaining flour and combines his two mixtures. He’s now working the dough with one hand and adding more flour with other, trying to make the mass a less sticky one. Once he’s got the consistency he’s looking for (fairly wet and loose without being sticky), he repeatedly plunges both hands down into the dough and cuts off a big chunk of dough (like you would if you were plunging your hands into a river to grab a fat fish); the first few chunks (probably a tenth of the entire mass) go back on top of the pile making a space to the side of the trough where the following chunks get transferred as they get sectioned off. He goes through the whole mass of dough like this probably 7 or 8 times, every once in a while tossing some flour in around the edges to keep it from sticking. While he is certainly working the dough, it looks to me like this sectioning off serves more of a mixing role than a kneading role. The dough now rests for maybe 20 minutes or so.

Kneading
At this point he starts to give the dough double-fisted, straight-elbowed punches directly down into the dough; he seems to be putting the whole weight of his torso into it by way of his two fists and locked arms. (He speaks very little French, so I can’t ask him a million questions; the head of the woman’s groupement is there to be my translator.) He covers the dough with punches and then pulls the far side up and over the rest of the dough, another 10 punches or so, then pulls the near side up and over the rest of the dough, another 10 punches and then pulls the right side up and over the dough, another 10 punches or so and then pulls the left side up and over the rest of the dough – the punching/pulling routine was probably repeated three times, with one 10-15 minute rest in there somewhere. To me it seems like, after all that work, it is only approaching the desired smoothness, uniformity and slight tacki-ness. It looks like the gluten development is coming more from than the pulling than the punching, but it’s hard to say without it having been my hands punching down into it! Given the quantity of dough, this is the back-breaking step.

Bulk Rise, Portioning
After that it rises in the trough; tonight it rose for 30 or 40 minutes and didn’t even double, though I suspect the intention was for it to at least double because he later made a comment about not having added enough yeast. From here he weighs out “3 gram” portions of dough (looked to me like maybe 12 oz-ish), and as the table fills up, pre-shapes each portion into loose boules and lines them up. The dough is still fairly wet, though not sticky, and the boules grow into each other rather quickly. When all the dough is portioned (at least 40 minutes), the dough sits for another maybe 15 minutes and tonight it rose quite a bit on the table. The yield was 94 baguettes.

Shaping
He shapes his baguettes in almost the same way as I think of as being “Dan’s-way-of-rolling-Katy’s-way” – de-gassing, rolling it up in a nice compressed way, flattening again, folding the top edge down to the bottom edge, flattening again, folding the top edge down to the bottom edge again and firmly sealing the seam. To finish it off, he deliberately makes odd little extra bits on the end, which remind me of the unfortunate over-sized outie-belly buttons that are common here.

Final Rise
The baguettes rise on 2 portable shelves separated by canvas, seam-side up. The room tonight was an odd mix of temperatures between the no more than 65 degrees outside and the at least 500 degree oven about 3 feet away, and the baguettes seemed to feel the cold more than heat (the oven radiates amazingly little heat, there must be more effective insulation in the walls than I imagine) and took an hour plus to be ready.

Heating the Oven
The fire gets started in the oven with leftover coals and 3 or 4 new, fat, long pieces of wood about 7 PM. That burns with door of the oven open (and the front chimney open and the back chimney closed) until it stops producing a flame and is smoldering; then the door gets closed and it smolders until everything in the fire is white on top; then several fresh smaller, thinner pieces of wood get added and left to burn again with the door open. This time when it stops producing a flame the fire gets one fresh big piece of wood (I suppose maybe they’re called logs, English is failing me these days), and then maybe another once that one has stopped actively burning. The point of all this is to get the entire oven hot, hot, hot and to have it sustain that heat once the fire itself becomes a more mellow, hopefully constant, smoldering presence. I would say the oven is slightly larger than the size of Cafe Soleil’s copper counter area and probably 7 feet tall with an interior space that is probably 8 by 8 and no more than 3 feet high.

Cleaning the Oven
The oven has only one chamber, maybe it’s the same with these types of ovens in the States, I don’t know, but I had assumed that the fire was built in a separate chamber, probably below the baking chamber, but the fire is made in the same chamber that the bread is baked in. In order to evenly heat the oven in the first place, the fire is made right in the middle, then once the bread is nearing to be ready to be put in, the smoldering coals get shoved to one side of the oven, and THEN the baker has to wash the deck of the oven, because of course the bread is baked directly on the stone. First this involves a 9-foot-long stick (if not longer) with a metal half-moon on the end for scooping and shoveling the coals to one side, then a different 9-foot-long stick (if not longer) that the baker ties a bunch of t-shirts onto the end of to be dunked in water and used to swab down the part of the deck not occupied by coals. To start he does this about 4 times, re-dunking his t-shirt pole vault in a big bucket of water each time. This obviously cools down the oven a fair bit, which is fine because it is now well after midnight and the oven has been getting progressively hotter for the last 5-6 hours.

Gauging the Temperature
Once the deck is acceptably clean, he dusts it with a heavy smattering of flour and closes the door. It’s temperature reading time, if the flour burns in less than 1 minute, it’s too hot and the t-shirt pole vault goes back in for a few more passes, if the flour burns in about 2 minutes then it’s just right (I don’t think the oven is ever not hot enough, so I don’t know what they do at this point if they discover that the oven is too cool, probably scoop all the coals back into the center and get a little annoyed with themselves for making the bread such that it was ready before the fire and/or starting the fire too late). Tonight, the flour burned in less than 30 seconds, so the oven was too hot and got another 4 or so passes with the t-shirt pole vault.

Prepping Baguettes
Each shelf of baguettes (of about 45 or so) is dealt with in turn, with each baguette getting transferred onto the peel (which can hold three at a time), getting scored (one big, long slash right down the middle), and then getting brushed with a flour-water glaze (really thin, maybe 1 part flour to 8 or even 10 parts water, where half the water gets combined when it is hot but not boiling and then the entire mixture is made to boil in the oven) and then getting placed on the deck. Assuming a non-sprawling set of coals and a skilled baguette-placing baker, the oven can hold about 50 baguettes.

Baking
Generally, the maximum expected time to bake: 8 minutes! And if he’s got a big batch (50 kilos or 75 kilos of flour), he’ll save himself some time by keeping the oven pretty hot, such that the bake time is 4 minutes! It took at least 20 minutes to fully load the oven, with a lot of opening and closing of the door, I’m thinking his 4-8 minute count starts from when he closes the door for the last time on a full oven.

Resting
Once the bread is baked, albeit mostly rather unevenly, it gets pulled out on the peel and put on flour sacks until the kid sitting there feels like it’s not too hot to touch and he can “clean” it – he takes a rag and rubs down the bottom side of the baguette to get rid of (or try to get rid of) any of the ash that was still on the deck – then the baguettes get placed vertically in the mixing trough to cool, where they will wait until morning to be sold to vendors and individuals. One baguette might get broken into for a quality check. (Tonight he wanted “to make sure there’s not too much salt,” I almost laguhed out loud – it appears the extremely small amount of salt is an actual preference.)

It is now about 1:30 AM and the bakery needs to be broken down and cleaned, a full day for a Guinean baker. One side effect (of many) of baguettes being the only bread that’s made around here is that when the dough/bread is resting/rising, the baker has nothing else to do; he just sits and waits for the bread to be ready for the next step!

25 kilos flour (250,000 GF for a 50 kilo bag)
“2 g” salt
75% of a tomato paste can of yeast (instant)
80% of a bidon of water
Baguette = “3 g”

(50 kilos = a little over 100 pounds)

Like I said, slightly detailed, good on ya for hanging in there!

FYI

Katy — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:43:39 +0000

Hi! Just uploaded a bunch of posts at once and the meatier ones first, so go down and go back, much new info to be found!!

Pas de Panique!

Katy — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:22:56 +0000

Before heading out to site, Peace Corps gave us a book compiled by previous volunteers called “Pas de Panique!” — it’s a guide to all the little useful things to know about at site, like creative/practical uses for old milk containers, anti-bug strategies, etc. It’s pretty funny and I thought you guys would appreciate a couple of quips from it…

From a compliation of quotes:

“Just because I rock, doesn’t mean I’m made out of stone.” -PCV

“It’s not unlike some parts of Minneapolis.” -PCV parent in Conakry

One section written by someone who must be a kindred spirit: Success Redefined (As in, “If at first you don’t succees, redefine success.”)

Success is:

- peeling an orange like a market lady without making any holes.

- arriving at your destination without your or someone else’s vomit on you.

- not spraying your shoes when peeing in the bush.

- cold beer.

- making it to the latrine. (Sad, but sometimes true.)

Anyway, just a glimpse into the things have become funny in this world of drinking oranges and (I do realize that puke and pooping one’s pants have always been wonderful sources of amusement, but here in Guinea they carry a new, more sincere comedic weight.)

SED Games

Katy — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:21:49 +0000

There are a lot of things I admire about my APCD, but a big one is his light-heartedness. In the newsletter that goes out he posed a challenge to create 3 themed tongue twisters (Guinean economy, bush taxis, dried fish), 4 lines each. The prize? Your choice of bread pudding with caramel sauce, garlic hummus or a pile of pebbly rice. My submissions may be more alliterative than tongue-twisting, but here they are nonetheless.

Sylla’s sister is a sucky salesman; sales simply isn’t her shtick.

She certainly has staples to sell: sugar, soap, snacks, shoes.
But, her un-signaged, sad, sagging shop is in shambles and her service is seriously substandard.
Sylla’s sister’s SED friend shall shape up Sylla’s sister’s shop, so Sylla’s sister can start saving!

Poor portos pay a price to pile into a puny Peugeot.
Portos who are peeved at being pinched pine for packages plentifully packed with palliatives.
Portos who are patient play pleasantly through the pitching pandemonium.
Portos with plenty of pluck, par contre, are patently pleased with the panoply of people, pails, parcels and papaya.

The Phenomenon of dried fish:
Frail flounder fossils, found lying feebly in a fishy funk.
Faux fish with fairly frightful, fragile fins.
Frankly, a feeble feast failing to fill a famished foreigner.
With forbearance, the finicky feeder forgoes fussing and fretting, finally forking the phony flounder.

Since you asked…

Katy — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:20:40 +0000

I’ve had a couple more people ask about sending things which is wonderful and generous of you – here’s my list of coveted Americana:

Pepperoni, Beef jerky
Tuna in a pouch

M&M’s
Crystal Light and Propel mixes
Powdered soup mix
Powdered sauce mix (esp. Knorr Alfredo, Kraft cheese and McCormick Sloppy Joe)
Dried fruits and nuts
(Oh, and Mom, if you come across any short-sleeve or no-sleeve polos that would be AMAZING)

My mom is a package-sending expert, so she can share with you all the tricks for making sure packages get here. FYI: it ain’t cheap and every little thing sent is charished, so don’t think I’ll be disappointed with something small!

My Food

Katy — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:17:14 +0000

What do I eat in Guinea? Well, if I eat with Guineans, it is usually rice with some kind of sauce and possibly meat or fish. When cooking for myself I am again lucky to be in the Fouta because of the veggies that are available (fewer pineapples and sweet oranges, but plenty of lettuce, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, green peppers, cabbage, and mango and strawberry season just started – yeah!). Meat’s not easy to come by; I’ve got to kill the chicken if I want to eat it (though I have learned how) and I don’t even know where to find red meat that’s dead.

For breakfast I eat one of a specific set of things: scrambled eggs or omlet with tomatoes (and ketchup), oatmeal with jam, banana(s) with peanut butter, sweet milky rice with mango (yum). Bananas or eggs are always the best choice if I have a busy morning, but if I’ve got leftover rice or ripe mangoes, then I can’t pass up my breakfast rice pudding. In Conakry you can find quick oats, but I really want to find regular oats in order to make granola.

For lunch and dinner, it’s pasta if I’m in a hurry (although I’ve been using sauce packets I brought from home and those are almost used up, which is particularly what has made it a fast meal). I have two go-to meals when I want to eat good: french toast with jam, which just makes me soooo happy, and sloppy joe lentils, which I’ve been making with a sauce pack for lack of the ingredients, but there’s just something about that sloppy joe taste, can’t beat it some nights. Otherwise, I’ve been making soups, stir-fried vegetables, salads, guacamole (tho the avocadoes here are a little bitter), fruit salads, egg salad, cole slaw. I’ve made banana bread and carrot cake, but wasn’t thrilled with either recipe that’s here, so will be doing some looking around to get better baking recipes – lord knows why I didn’t bring more recipes with me.

Snacks consist of fruit and peanuts, sometimes you can find sugared or caramelized peanuts – yum!

Guess that’s it! Not exactly the same as my Madison diet (some days I could kill for my Cafe Soleil ham sandwich on Honey Oat with yellow mustard, tomato, lettuce and pickle), but I’m sure I’ll learn some more tricks as time goes on!

My House

Katy — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:16:15 +0000

I love my house! When I first came for site visit, there was a ton of extra stuff in here and it was arranged differently, and it seemed awfully small and dark to me and I wasn’t too thrilled with it. Now I’ve got it all clean and organized and re-arranged and my green blanket from Katy & Claire on the couch. I have my mom to thank for a sublimely comfortable pillow and sweet, pretty things all around to make it nice and homey! I have my kitchen set up in one corner of the living room, and my water filter and a bucket set up to be a pseudo-sink, which has been handy. My “coffee table” is a green metal trunk, which is also my main food storage. My walls currently are decorated with 2 fabric panels that I bought here, dyed in a pattern from the Forest region of Guinea, and then a bunch of pages of Pulaar. My outstanding project is to convert some of the beautiful paper my mom has sent into things for the walls! I also need to get 2 chairs or stools that I can use to sit outside. I also have an attached bathroom with a shower, a sink and a regular toilet — all amazing and highly unusual! I’ve got pictures, which I’ll try to get uploaded. (I’ve identified part of my problem, files = too big, but I learned from my traveling experience that small-file pictures will only frustrate me later on, when I can’t make something bigger out of them…tough for uploading though…)

dark reprieve free download

Anyone who’s interested should come and see for yourself!!

My Life in Guinea

Katy — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:15:01 +0000

When at home, life here is remarkably similar to life in the States. I cook; I organize; I clean; I read; I listen to music; I mess around on the computer — granted, I do cook more, a lot more, than in the US and without all those wonderful conveniences (counter space, fridge, freezer, oven, a tool for every task) and I do clean more, a lot more, mainly because there are things living above my ceiling who send a light shower of dust down every time they move. I’m really lucky to have a comfy couch and two comfy chairs, so I’ve got a nice place for reading and napping in the “heat of the day” (upper-80’s would be my guess). Even better than at home, my morning routine includes yoga!

When I’m not at home, but still by myself, life is remarkably similar to life while travelling. I walk; I explore; I run; every once in a while I take a picture — the main difference is that I say “hi” to a lot more people, basically everyone (as custom more or less dictates) and I’m more likely to pass someone I know and have a little conversation with them, or more likely I will pass the house of someone I know and so go knock to say hi (as custom also more or less dictates). When I go for an actual walk, there’s a dirt road that leads away from town along the face of a hill, which has a beautiful view of the valley and eventually it also has a few different spots where you can sit under (or in) a tree and just be. It’s wonderful. When things are out of sorts and I need to do a little communing with nature, this is where I go. It’s quiet; it’s beautiful; no one bothers me; whatever was out of sorts always seems back in place by the time I’m walking home. There’s one easily climbed tree with a big ol’ rock underneath it that’s maybe a 25-minute walk away and that is just far enough off the road that most people walking by don’t notice me — I’ve decided to make this my new “office.”

Those are all the things I do to fill my time when I’m not (and also to balance the time when I am) doing what I actually came here to do — living and working with Guineans!

Work so far has been, I think, just exactly what it should be. My counterpart has helped to set up many, many introductory meetings with individuals, but mainly with organizations, associations and small businesses. I use these meetings to introduce myself, tell them a little bit about my background and my role in the community, and also to learn about their organization or business so that a) I learn more about the community, b) I can start to see where/how I might be useful and c) I see who might be open to/interested in working with me.Thanks to my rare specimen of a counterpart, all of this has been going really well. He has helped to make sure people know that I have not come with any money, that I’m not looking for a husband, and other important points that carry a little more weight when coming out of a Guinean’s mouth than mine. Really, Mr. Sylla belies all cultural stereotypes and generalizations — he is motivated and responsive; he works to be on time to things; he is open to taking risks; more often than not, he is working with a long-term, bigger picture in mind. I am lucky to have him as my counterpart and it is entirely due to his willingness and eagerness to help me get my work going, that my first month has been as productive as it has been.

I should clarify. When I say “productive,” I don’t mean that I’ve been working 8 hours a day for 5 days, not even close, nor will I. Probably my most full, productive day here included two hour-long meetings, with a couple of other brief introductions to people — there’s a few things you have to realize about how a day unfolds here: 1) we walk everywhere, which could mean walking 20 minutes each way, and then adding at least another 30 minutes in going out of the way to see if we can catch someone at home to see if we can set up a meeting with them (we rarely, if ever, catch someone at home); 2) everyone takes a break from about noon to three; 3) it can take an hour to produce a basic meal, depending on what you have on hand (the quick stuff is also, generally, the expensive stuff you have to buy in Conakry).

My immediate plans include, in addition to to continuing my introductory meetings:

- developing a short, basic series of English lessons tailored to hotel workers and tour guides;

- developing a training (or series of trainings) for the reception and customer service of a hotel;

- learning more about a group of leather workers, so I can build a costing/pricing training for them;

- learning to use a new big ol’ wood-burning oven, so I can teach a girls’ group baking skills;

- going for follow-up visits to everyone else I’ve met!

There are sooo many different potential projects and so many different people with different interests that it is clear a) there will be no shortage of work, and b) it will be one of my tasks to make sure my attentions are balanced across groups. (I can easily imagine the hoteliers taking over all my time, at the expense of some women’s and girls’ groups.)

My “host family,” the family whose compound I live in, is very nice and friendly. They tell me I can eat with them whenever I want, but they eat quite a bit later than I do and I’m really enjoying cooking, so I’ve only taken them up on it a few times — which is probably a shame because each time it has been very yummy! They have a dog named Milo who guards the house at night and he stops by my room a few times a day to say hi and get pet – we’re friends. He’s always really dirty though, so I have to go wash my hands every time I pet him, but it’s worth it; he’s the first friendly, pet-able dog I’ve seen in country! The grandson of my host mom lives here (his mom is in Conakry), he’s 2, and there’s also a little girl here (the daughter of a cousin, I think) who’s 7, though she’s tiny. They’re both still a little shy around me, but slowly they’re warming up and I look forward to kid play time in the future. We did have a good hour of bubble-blowing one afternoon and that helped to start to make inroads. There’s about 5 teenagers around most of the time; two of whom are the children of my host family; one of whom is here attending veterinary school; and then there are two girls who go to school part-time and otherwise help around the house. The family is relatively well off (one daughter working in France, a son at school in the UK, dad works in the big town during the week at the university, mom actively involved in women’s associations) and so there’s usually some extra people around, staying for a few days or a few weeks.

In training, they told us about the collective-ness of the culture and you see a hundred examples of it everyday. Whatever someone has, no matter how little, it is shared. If you have a kid out in a village and a relative in town and don’t need the kid to work at home, you send the kid to be taken care of and sent to school by your relative. In part because of this, it can be hard to figure out who everybody is and how they’re related. The daughter of your mom’s cousin’s might have lived with you since she was 7, and so you just call her your sister, but when an outsider, like me, is trying to figure out why one sister goes to regular school while the other sister goes to vocational school and does the majority of the housework, it helps to realize that the 2nd sister actually has different parents in a different village. Add polygamy to the mix (and the fact that an additional wife and her children may live in a different town) and it can be a feat to figure out anything close to a family tree! In Pulaar they have different words for a sibling who has the same father and mother as you do and a sibling who has the same father, but different mother. (I suppose we do in English too, though “half-sibling” doesn’t have quite the same implications as “sibling from my other mother.”)

So, I’m learning a lot and trying to make good use of my first three months to set a good foundation for the rest of my service. (After training, our first three months are supposed to be spent focused on doing a community study and building relationships, more than working on specific projects, and then we re-group for two weeks for an in-service training, where we can touch bases with our colleagues about ideas.) I’ve met some very dynamic people who I look forward to working with and I’ve met some people who I’m sure will be a challenge to me. Either way, I’m happy to be here; I’m happy I have ways to balance; I’m happy this as a challenge seems like a realistic one; I guess I’m just happy!

Hi Everybody!

Katy — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:12:00 +0000

I’m here, I’m alive and all is well. I have a back log of blog entries which I have written at site which I am going to upload now, still working on the picture situation! If you don’t make it through the other entries, just know that I am healthy and even happy – yeah! Work is starting, slowly, and everyday this whole thing seems like a less big deal – yeah!

I miss you all!