To Africa!

Tanzania to be specific. Home of the Serengeti, Mount Kilimanjaro, and me for six weeks this summer. I'm going on a humanitarian trip with a group called Help International which focuses on fighting poverty through Entrepreneurship, Education, and lucky for me, Health.

I have always wanted to travel internationally and have been fascinated by Africa for years, but I always lacked either time or money. Since I am employed at a type of school (which oddly is the last place I ever wanted to work, but I find I actually don't mind it) I get 6 weeks off in the summer. Money still doesn't grow on trees (last I checked) but I do have more of it these days than I have before so I figure I had better get on the ball and take advantage of the opportunity.

I still don't have all the details worked out as far as the projects I will be working on but they will be health related and I will most likely be helping in a clinic that treats rural Masai villagers. I may also be working on some public health campaigns like teaching first aid or sanitation. I'm really excited to get to work in both the clinical health and public health areas because I have been trying to decide which one I want to devote the rest of my life (or at least the next few years of school) to and I am hoping this experience will help me decide.

I'm also glad to get the opportunity to help others. I feel like I have been living the last few years for myself and focusing solely on what I need and what I want to do. I'm hoping this experience will help me get a better balance and focus a little less on myself. (I also realize that this is a somewhat selfish desire in itself- I want to do x because thinking about others will be good for me. But that's pretty much how I went in to my mission (thinking about what it could do for me) and that turned out ok in the end. I may have gone for selfish reasons but I stayed for the right reasons.) Anyway, hopefully this experience will turn out similarly.

Now you may be asking yourself, "Self, how can I help Linds in her humanitarian expedition? She has kept me entertained on countless occasions, surely there is something I can do for her." You weren't thinking that? Too bad, I'm going to tell you anyway : )

There are three ways that you can help me help others. The first is by donating to Help International under my name. The instructions for doing so can be found here (Be aware that if you donate through pay-pal they charge a 2-3% transaction fee, which will be deducted from the total donation). The money that you donate will be used to fund projects and supplies that will directly benefit the local people (I don't earn any money for my time and I have to pay my own way).

The second, and more fun way, is to come with me! Seriously! I get a discount on my program fee for every person I recruit, whether they come to Tanzania with me or go to another country like India, Thailand, Peru, Nicaragua, Fiji, Belize, etc. There are over 10 countries that Help International operates in. Just be sure to mention my name when you sign up : )

The third and final way you can help me in this endeavor is to hook me up with your airline miles. I still have to purchase plain tickets and travel to Tanzania ain't cheap. So if you have a bunch of frequent flier miles built up that you aren't using, or know someone who does, feel free to send them my way. I will definitely put them to good use.

Ok, I will stop the shameless soliciting now and move on to the personal thanks. I have to give a special shout out to Lacey who served as a personal reference for me and must have done a good job singing my praises because Help decided to let me go to Africa with them : ) Thanks, Lace!

If you decide to donate I will write you a personal shout out as well on this widely read and highly acclaimed blog : )

If you have questions about donating or the program in general feel free to contact me {lindsey lou s AT gmail dot com).

Now I have to get back to singing "Africa" by Toto (The words to which I did not realize are "I BLESS the rains down in Africa" not I MISS the rains down in Africa. I find myself slightly disappointed by this. )

Not As Fat As I Thought (Or, I Am My Own Worst Critic)

I randomly stumbled across an interesting website that I am now going to link to and encourage you to visit.

http://www.mybodygallery.com/

It is a gallery of photos of women of all different heights and weights and you can search for pictures of people with your same stats. It sounds weird and I thought I was going to be very depressed but I actually found the opposite. It made me feel a little better about my current body size.

See, I never worried about my weight or looks growing up. Beauty was always an odd concept to me and even now when somebody compliments my looks (which fortunately for me doesn't happen too often) I am not quite sure how to respond. Ex: "You have nice eyes." "Thanks...I grew them myself?" It's like complimenting someone on their height. They didn't really choose it or have much to do with it so how do you take credit for it? And weight wise I was maybe a little bigger than my friends but not enough to be made fun of or take much notice, so I never worried about it. Which was good because I had a kind of angst-y adolescence as it was so at least I didn't have to add self-esteem problems to the mix.

However, after going on a mission and eating copious amounts of Mexican food every day and packing on the pounds as a result and then graduating from college and getting depressed about not finding a job for 18 months and drowning my problems in too much food and not exercising or even sweating out a few calories by hiking up to campus everyday and then worrying about how I'm still single and probably will be forever because nobody finds fat, self-pittying "elderly" women attractive, I find that all of a sudden I have some self-esteem issues. Now, this is not to say that I am overcome by depression and self-loathing, and I am definitely NOT crying out for attention or begging you to tell me that I am gorgeous (I wouldn't believe you anyway. Cute I might believe. Gorgeous no.) Rather, it is just to say that I was really lucky for a long time not to have to worry about my image because overall I felt pretty good about myself. And I still do, I just find that lately I have been a little harder on myself than I have in the past.

And I have wondered what I would think of myself if I was somebody else and saw me. Would I think I was fat and grotesque or would I even notice that? So when I stumbled across this website and started looking at photos of girls who look like me I was pleasantly surprised. I think most of them look pretty good. So that must mean that I look ok too. And that made me feel better. I know it is cliche to say that they don't show girls who look like me in magazines and on tv but as I was looking at these other women I found myself thinking, "Hey, these girls look normal. They are what I see in real life every day." So then I didn't feel quite so bad about not looking like (insert waifish movie star name here).

So. There is my rant on my self-esteem issues. I'm sure you all wanted to be my internet psychologists and listen to me be self absorbed, right : ) But I figured that if I found the website to be so helpful then I ought to at least share it with the rest of you. You can consider my opinions of myself as an extra bonus :) Now if you'll excuse me I have to get my squishy, jiggly self to bed. I need my beauty rest you know ;)

*Update* So after posting this yesterday I read it again today and started to get paranoid that I was sharing too much info or weirding people out or something, which was definitely not the point. Mostly I think I just wanted to say I found the site that I linked to highly interesting and enlightening. I think in my head I am always comparing myself to people skinnier than me so of course I feel bad that I don't meet those standards. So when I looked at that sight and compared myself to people who looked like me I was judging myself in a less harsh light and was surprised by the results. Maybe you don't have this problem so none of it is relevant and you are thinking "Linds, you are just weird and I don't know what to make of this post." That's ok. I guess just consider it the price of reading my blog...sometimes you have to wade through the weird areas of my head to get to the good stuff (if there is good stuff...probably its all weird. But that's ok, there is a big underground of weirdness out there so maybe its relevant to somebody.)

Anyway, I also wanted to link to another site that I found fascinating. It shows pictures of people and tells whether they are underweight, normal, overweight, obese or morbidly obese according to their BMI. I won't go in to details about my problems with the BMI or my rant about the obesity "epidemic" right now because that would take forever and you don't want to get me started. But do check out this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/77367764@N00/sets/72157602199008819/

And feel free to tell me what you think, whether it is that I am off my rocker or should just quit worrying about beauty rest and try to just get enough rest to keep my frantic mind from going off on bizarre themes : )

Clarification

Since my last post outed me ask a dork (yeah, like that was a big secret) I got to thinking about the difference between Nerds, Geeks, and Dorks. I always considered myself a dork because I don't think I am smart enough or hygienecally challenged enough to qualify as a nerd (think the boys in Weird Science), and not tech savvy enough to be considered a geek (think Steve Jobs or the IT guy at your work) . In my head, a dork equates to someone who is somewhat socially inept and also really enthusiastic about things that normal people don't really care about much, but not to the point of being an expert in them.

For example, when I was about 14 I watched a documentary about a specific aquatic plant that is an invasive species and has migrated from tropical waters to just about all the oceans on the planet. It turns out the plant was originally harvested and hybridized to serve as decoration in home aquariums. It was really popular because it was easy to maintain and cheap so people all over the world with aquariums bought it. Then when their fish died they dumped it into local waterways and oceans where it took up root and started choking out native species.

Now, as I was writing that last paragraph I had to contain myself and keep it down to one paragraph because I was getting really excited about sharing it, even though I am aware that most people do not share my enthusiasm for the subject of invasive species. I also use it as an example to illustrate that while I probably know more than most people about this particular plant (whose name I can't remember), that isn't really saying much and I am definitely not an expert on it. That is pretty much the essence of a dork in my mind: interested in obscure things and willing to talk about them even if it is not socially acceptable or "the norm."

So when I saw this diagram explaining the differences between Nerds, Dorks, and Geeks, I was surprised to learn that I am actually a Dweeb!

Apparently my intelligence and social ineptitude put me in the Dweeb category. In order to be a Dork I would have to dumb down a little and be more obsessive about things. Unless maybe I am actually obsessive and just don't realize it? You, my faithful readers, will have to tell me what you think. And what you are! (If you fall into one of these categories. I wouldn't want to offend you by assuming that you do.)

In the end though I have decided that whatever category I fall into I will continue to claim myself as a dork. Because I am used to it and because I still don't quite see myself as being any of the others. Anyway, I'm off to learn about giant ground sloths. They used to live in Utah you know. -Dork out.

International Museum of Surgical Science: Because I'm a Dork : )

When I was planning my trip to Chicago this last summer there were three things on my list that I wanted to do: Eat a real Chicago deep dish pizza (because how can you go to Chicago and not do that?), Ride the El (because of my love of the movies "The Fugitive" and "While You Were Sleeping"), and visit the International Museum of Surgical Science (because I am a geek and fascinated by all things medical).

I am happy to report that I managed to cross all three things off my list while I was there, along with a few others. In case you were wondering Chicago Deep Dish is DELICIOUS and you should definitely get it from Lou Malnattis. The two most famous pizza places in Chicago are Ginos and Lou Malnattis and while I only tried Malnattis I can unequivocally say it was the best : ) They will actually ship it frozen to anywhere in the US and I have definitely considered that option since being home. But part of me thinks it would be an affront to pizzadom to freeze such a heavenly dish. (That and I can't quite convince myself to pay $100 to have a pizza shipped. Mostly its the money.)

The El was also pretty cool, as far as transportation goes. I mean, given the option of the El or a bus I would go with the El. And looking from the platform I can see that it would be possible to fall onto the tracks and then be saved from certain doom by having somebody roll you to the side. (The falling in love with your fake fiance's brother and adopting yourself into his family in less than a week and a half..well, that's a stretch. But it still makes for a cute movie so I won't question it.)

And the IMSS? Well, it was pretty cool too. If you are dorky like me and enjoy exhibits of old medical devices and history. I will say that for an International museum it was decidedly small (four stories of a historical house near the shores of Lake Michigan). It's price tag was definitely in keeping with what you would expect of an international museum : )

As a side note, money doesn't work quite the same way in Chicago as it does in other places. You know how Philadelphia is the "city of brotherly love?" I like to think of Chicago as the "city of extortion." You pretty much have to pay for everything. And large amounts. Except when you don't. For example, the zoo is inexplicably free all the time. And while most of the beaches charge an entrance fee, they cut it in half when high amounts of bacteria are found in the water (usually after rainstorms from all the yucky runoff) so you get twice the bacteria at half the price! Also there are some random free beaches and most of the museums in Chicago also have a monthly or weekly free day where you don't have to pay at all. Which, being the cheapskate that I am makes me wonder why you would go on any other day? We certainly didn't so the IMSS was free for us.

I saw a lot of cool things while I was there, like bleeders from the 17th century used for bloodletting, old patent medicine bottles with active ingredient lists containing things like Cocaine and Opium, statues and paintings of medical pioneers like Galen and Hippocrates, an actual iron lung from the not too far gone era when polio was still a serious threat in the US, and a few plastinated bodies from Gunther Van Hagen's Bodies exhibit (which I saw in Salt Lake when it came through a few years ago and would recommend to anyone who is not easily nauseous.)

Since this trip took place in July and I am just now getting around to writing about it there are a lot of things I have forgotten, but I do know that I really enjoyed the IMSS and would recommend stopping by if you are ever in the Chicago area. (Here is the link.) I would also recommend getting one of these from the gift shop they have there:

Plush disease causing organisms!!

Because who wouldn't want to snuggle up to a little Anthrax and Rhinovirus?

Minor Differences

What I *think* I will look like with dreadlocks:

What I *actually* look like with dreadlocks:

Don't worry. I remembered I'm a white girl from suburbia and washed them out : ) But fun for about 20 minutes.

*Also, these were only temporary dreads that I did myself so I didn't spend massive amounts of time or energy on them, in case you were worried.

*And, I kinda like the angle of the first picture of myself. I look like I actually have cheekbones!

Exploding Lakes: Less Fun Than They Should Be

So I was going to write a post complaining about Daylight Saving Time and how I hate the darkness but then I realized that I do that every year and you are probably as sick of hearing about it as I am of having to live with it. And I also promised to write about exploding lakes quite some time ago and as I was reading a little more about them I realized that my first world problems kind of pale in comparison. So I will just say that if you are interested in learning about the cost benefits (or lack thereof) of DST, you can watch this interesting video here.

Now on to the lakes. When you hear the term exploding lake, you might picture something a little like this:

But actually, it looks a little more like this:

Sort of. Those are actually before and after photos of Lake Nyos in Cameroon, one of only three lakes in the world know to have the potential to "explode." There are two others in equatorial Africa and all three are known as limnically active lakes. (That's sciencespeak for "exploding").

What happens in a limnically active lake is that carbon dioxide (CO2) from rotting materials, such as occur at the bottom of a lake, or from another source such as a volcanic vent, dissolves in the deepest coldest layers of the lake. The pressure from all the water on top keeps it there where it builds up and builds up. Eventually the lake gets so saturated with dissolved CO2 that when something disturbs it (like a landslide or an earthquake) it bubbles out of solution and escapes to the surface forming a giant deadly cloud and you get yourself an exploding lake.

This is only known to have happened twice in modern history, both times in the 1980s. The first was at Lake Monoun and the gas cloud that arose from the lake killed 37 villagers and countless livestock in the surrounding area. The second explosion at Lake Nyos was even more deadly, killing between 1,700-1,800 people.

Perhaps the scariest part was that nobody really knew what happened. A giant cloud from the lake descended on the valleys below and everyone in its path lost consciousness. When the survivors awoke they found their neighbors and animals dead and the normally placid blue lake a frothy brown.

The government at first suspected terrorism but the numerous geologists arriving from all over the world put that theory to rest and figured out about the CO2. They also came up with some pretty ingenious solutions to prevent future eruptions. They installed CO2 monitors around the lake attached to alarms and told the villagers that if the alarms ever sounded they needed to get to higher ground as quickly as possible. They also installed a giant straw (basically) in the lake that brings CO2 rich water to the surface so the pressure doesn't keep building up. So far there haven't been any recurrences, though it would likely take quite a while longer for enough CO2 to build up again for another explosion anyway.

You may be wondering what you should do to protect yourself from the body of water nearest to you, but you shouldn't worry. Lakes in areas where the temperature fluctuates throughout the year naturally de-gas themselves. The water at the surface gets colder and heavier and sinks to the bottom, displacing the CO2 saturated water at the bottom and bringing it to the surface where it dissolves into the air. So I guess we should count our blessings that Daylight Saving Time, though annoying, is at least not deadly.

OCD

I was making fun of my mom today because apparently for the past 30+ years of her marriage she has always had to have matching towels for her and my dad. I don't know where I have been all these years but I only recently found out about this quirky little habit of hers when I used one of the new towels she purchased and was informed that I was not to use it again because then she would not have a towel that matched my dads.

I was thinking this was pretty weird but then I started changing my blog background, as you may have noticed. And I spent forever picking out the colors and trying different combinations before I settled on the ones that I did. And only after altering the HTML in blogger did I decide that it still isn't quite right and I am going to have to make more changes.

Which I guess is just to say that I probably shouldn't make fun of my mom's slightly OCD towel issue when I myself have OCD tendencies toward color schemes in blogger. But I still reserve the right to blame her genetics for giving me the OCD tendencies in the first place : )

Also, those posts I told you about are coming, but they just may have to wait until the background is how I want it. Or as close to it as possible. Well see if my OCD wins out again : )