Friday List!

Sarah's List:

Remember a while back when everyone was diagnosing each other with the ahem, less-than-happy resting face? Check it out. Now there's a cure. All you have to do is hop a plane to South Korea.

Baby resting face.

Along those same lines, science proves: Haters Are Gonna Hate. Researchers asked participants how they feel about camping, health care, architecture, taxidermy, crossword puzzles, and Japan. Note: this is not an Onion article, you can't make this stuff up.

"No word yet on whether playas gonna play 

or ballers gonna ball, but we'll probably find out soon. 

Researchers gonna research."

Okay, okay, everyone's seen this already by now. But in case you missed it, Zen Pencils hits the meaning of life dead on. More great stuff from Zen Pencils here: Ira Glass' advice for beginners, Roger Ebert on Kindness and Confucius in French.

© Gavin Aung Than 2012. Zenpencils.com

I've always kinda wanted to write about my thesis on how raising twins is surely easier than having kids less than a-year-and-a-half apart. But the fear of twin mom backlash was too much to handle. Then my twin mom friends started posting this. You've been outed mothers of twins! Slackers.

 

With my favorite twins in Dubai. Circa 2008. (Praying I won't have twins two years in the future.)

My favorite character on television. Hands down. (Not that we have television. More like my favorite character on bootleg downloads from friends' hard drives.)


On Being African in China. What happens when a girl from Ghana goes to Beijing. Maybe Mama Congo needs to do an exclusive on those roadside construction crews: "On Being Chinese in Congo."

Charlotte gets ready for her close-up when spotted by Asian tourists in South Africa. Photo credit: Jill Humphrey

Here's what happens when mainstream media starts paying attention to your country. Things get confused and no one really knows the answer. And it's not always about violence and politics. Sometimes it's about fatwas banning croissants.

Leave Syria's croissants alone.

  by  Nouhailler 

Jill's List:

We had a happy reunion with Madame Sidonie and her classroom today...on the way to meet Loulou and Charlotte's new teachers.  That's right.  Plural.  The "twins" are being separated.  Here's some reading on the topic.

This summer, I celebrated my extremely late-arrival to the world of cute cat videos on You Tube.  It started during Loulou's unfortunate 3am jetlag awakenings and ended up making the early-morning hours almost bearable.  I was thrilled to find out this week that watching such videos actually increases my productivity.  So...get working:

Kids learning foreign languages.  It works!

Image and story from the lovely Mama's Minutia.

In an effort to become sufficiently and appropriately outraged, I've been trying to keep up on Syria.  It began with listening to the extended Parliament debate this morning (good lord, those people are well spoken and satisfyingly rowdy) and proceeded to reading this, this, this, and this.  The Onion article is particularly helpful.

Somewhere nearish to Syria (I think).  From my Turkish Air window a few weeks ago.

Thinking about Andrew Jenner who confessed his illegal milk crates on Modern Farmer this week. What are you storing in your milk crates?

Image by Andrew Jenner for Modern Farmer.

Our hometown of Harrisonburg made the Atlantic.  "City of the future"?

Nostalgic Harrisonburg walk.  Circa 2011.  Red Front to the right.

And.  Joey speaks French.  (Sarah says this classic episode is a watching option on every Air France flight. Bien sûr.)

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Stories People Tell Me. (Or, I Tell Them.)

Whenever people hear that we are "visiting from Africa," they inevitably have a story.  It's what people do in conversation; they find common ground.  So, here are some of the things people have told me in the week since we became the folks "visiting from Africa."

Note: I love these conversations.  I am not at all annoyed, irritated, or exasperated by people's stories about Africa, Africans, African princesses, African dictators, Joseph Kony, expats, living abroad, airplanes, airplane food, and/or Obama.  I love it all and may, on occasion, "accidentally admit" to "visiting from Africa" when it is not at all necessary or socially appropriate.  A manipulative expat faux paus, certainly.  Fascinating, absolutely.


"I know some other missionaries that work in Africa!"

Alas.  We are not missionaries.  I know many very lovely missionaries in Kinshasa, but, my family is not among them.  Sometimes, people are disappointed to find out that I am not an exciting missionary-meets-romance heroine like Katherine Hepburn in The African Queen (totally filmed in the DRC, by the way).  But, their disappointment quickly turns to confusion.  Why would anyone live with their family in the Congo if they aren't missionaries?

"I knew this guy who married an African princess."


Which is when the conversation goes (because this dialogue has happened more than once.), "Oh, a princess from where?"  "No idea."  "Oh, okay."

My {aunt's cousin's sister} lived in Africa and caught malaria and she really never was the same again."


This general malaria concern is expressed by many.  From my mother (obviously) to my dental hygienist (really?), and I do get it.  Malaria is terrible.  Most of my Congolese acquaintances have chronic malaria, which takes them out regularly for a week of chills, fever, and malaise and they consider themselves among the lucky.  Johan did have one bout with the disease in April.  He still somehow managed to throw a (highly febrile) 30th birthday party for me.  We are among the happy people who can arm ourselves to the teeth with anti-malaria equipment and make use of it frequently.  I came to the U.S. with home malaria tests and Coartem should anyone be silly enough to get a fever in the first couple of weeks out of the "zone."

"Do you go on safari most weekends? I've always wanted to see a giraffe."


Nope. No giraffes in Kinshasa and I've never been on safari.

Kinshasa looks like this (kind of):

Kinshasa Miniature by Christophe Rigaud

Not so much like this:

"You came all the way from Africa to have your shoe soles repaired by me?  I had another customer come from Africa one time...what was his name?"


How unethical is it, exactly, to butter up a local business person by insinuating that you traveled to Harrisonburg, Virginia from the Congo just for their particular flair on shoe repair/hot dogs/haircuts/etc.?  Not at all!  Because it's absolutely true.  I have a notebook filled with lists about things that I was planning on doing when I came back this summer.  I wrote a blog post about it.  I have been dreaming of a haircut by Anna for months.  Johan really did walk around on peeling soles until he could have them fixed by the guy at Preston Dry Cleaners.  We rushed, still jetlagged, to buy enormous pork chops from Jim at the Farmer's Market 10 hours after we arrived.  Maybe you can get a glass of Evan Williams whiskey in Kinshasa, but it tastes better at the Blue Nile, listening to friends play super loud music at 1am.

I'm a little worried now that I've written this post that I'm totally that annoying person, (far worse than Sarah's "those people"), who uses the "I'm visiting from Africa" line to get attention after only being there for ten months.  I can think of a few people who are actually African and/or who have actual Africa chops that are reading this and rolling their eyes.  Sorry, everyone.  

I really don't know anything about Africa.  I know a little bit about Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo and more about Harrisonburg, Virginia.  I have a kid, who, if someone asks him where he's from, he says "Seattle, Washington."  We're all getting a little confused.  And maybe it's actually me that is telling the stories.

But, I really do think that it's okay in the end.  Okay for me to try identifying as the outsider, even if I'm really a townie.  Okay for my mom to remind me to buy even more mosquito repellent.  Okay if people assume we're missionaries.  Okay if people assume we're crazy.  Okay to strike up a mini-conversation about American influences in Africa with the bagger at Red Front.  Okay for the shoe guy to remember a long ago exotic customer who may or may not have been married to an African...or was it Indian...princess.  It's all okay.  Or, maybe kind of great, actually.

At One End of Lincolnshire Drive.  Harrisonburg, Virginia by Jill Humphrey

Kinshasa from the EU by Jill Humphrey

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