For the want of a doppelganger

So, all week on Facebook, people have been changing their profile pics to celebrities that they may (or may not, in some ridiculous cases) look like. This is Doppelganger week, my friends. And yes, you would be right if you think it sounds annoying and a waste of time.

However, as a true product of my generation, I enjoy procrastination and silly efforts to entertain myself on the most surface/non-thinking level...

So anyway, I went to www.myheritage.com to generate my own list of celebrity doppelgangers. In the past, I've been told that I look like Karen from Will & Grace.

(She's the one on the right. I definitely don't look like Madonna. Photo from gothamist.com)

But that might just be because we both enjoy martinis, talk loudly, say what we feel, and have lovely dark brunette hair. ;)

So to see who else I might look like, I submitted this photo of myself:

 

And here's who they said I looked like: 

Believe me - I'm ridiculously flattered to be compared to Scarlett Johansson and Katherine Heigl, but come on, let's be real. I don't look anything like them.

But what I find the most interesting about these results is that two of my doppelgangers are from China and Japan, respectively. Who knew I had a bit of an Eastern Rim look to me? Whatever! I'll take it!

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NEWS ALERT: Kansas education actually gets some good press! ;)

Mama Mona (Manager of the K&M Ranch in Southeast Kansas) sent me the following email today:

"Oswego’s Neosho Heights Grade School is one of the top ten finalists in the nation for a library makeover, and they need everyone to spread the word because the winner will be determined by the number of votes they get.  You can vote once from each e-mail address.  Please go to  http://professional.us.acer.com/edu/LibraryMakeover to place your vote.  They are the only school from Kansas, so I think it would be nice if we supported them."

I didn't go to Neosho Heights Grade School (I'm a Meadow View Falcon, baby!), but I'm happy to support Kansas education in any way I can. (Including voting absentee for 6 years of college and grad school to help get a new tax approved to build a state of the art high school. But that got rejected everytime...silly Kansans.)

A little known fact about Southeast Kansas, is that it's one of the poorer regions of the state with the number of families utilizing social service assistance above the state average. So, if you get a moment, please help support rural education and vote for Neosho Heights to win the Acer library renovation. 

And, if you're in the market for a computer upgrade yourself, check out these deals on Acer Laptops. :)

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Going sans alcohol & meat for February 2010!

Yep, that's right all you cats and kittens. This Kansan rancher's daughter is giving up the hard stuff and the meat stuff for one whole month. We'll just ignore the fact that it's the shortest month of the year. ;) As part of my Niner Project, I'm giving up all alcoholic beverages for one month. I had also planned to go vegetarian for a month, so I thought I'd do two for one (after all, February is the month of the President's Day sale).

I didn't decide on the alcohol Niner because I drink too much or because I have a problem...in fact, I think I'm a pretty responsible drinker. Regardless, I can also recognize that even a little alcohol isn't always great for your health or your organs and its about time I went through a little detox to flush out all those toxins. And hey, I might lose some weight if I'm not drinking a couple of beers each weekend. :) Bonus!

The vegetarian thing really has nothing to do with any kind of moral or ethical issue that I have with eating other animals - I haven't read all those scary books about the meat industry. I'm just going to stay in my delusional world where I believe that all cows live a lovely happy life chillaxin in a wide open pasture like the cows on K&M Ranch. This Niner really came from my motivation to know what it feels like to eat more like a caveman - just fruits, nuts, and vegetables. However, since this is my Niner Project, I'm going to take a few liberties in how I define vegetarianism. First, I won't be eating any meat, so no fish, poultry, beef, pork, or four legged creatures of any kind. I will, however, allow myself to eat eggs and dairy products. Gotta have my morning latte. :)

So I guess all these guys are just going to have to wait until March. See ya fellas! To be honest, I think the "no meat" thing will be way more difficult than the "no alcohol" thing. Stay tuned for my attempts at vegetarian cooking. And at the end of the month, I'll give you my before and after weights (I'm prolly going to regret this), so stay tuned.

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Picture of the Day 123: Journey to Xunantunich Mayan Site

We spent the morning back out at the mud hut site, but sadly, most of our work on the hut was stalled due to tons of rain. All that moisture made the dirt/mud unusable to fill bags, but we were able to make progress on plastering the inside. But we didn't let a little rain get us down or halt our productivity. They put us to work ditch digging, literally. We dug a half mile trench to lay pipe for an irrigation system. We dug the trench, laid the pipe, and covered the trench, a job that would have taken the small local crew about 2 weeks...it took us 5 hours. :)

 

 

Before we left the mud hut on our final day of service work, we took advantage of a few photo ops: 

Show me your sexy face!

 

Show me your gangsta moves! 

  

After we said farewell to Georgeville and the future site of an incredible orphanage, we headed to a nearby ancient Mayan site called Xunantunich (pronounced: Shoe-nan-too-neech). Talk about glorious! 

  

 

 

  

The creeper move goes to Belize. Jordan is an excellent apprentice!

Let the jump montage being!

[I love the facial expression of the man on the left. He definitely thinks I'm crazy. hehe]

The Boys!

[The date on the picture is wrong.]

And then the girls took a turn:

 

And they all fell down...

And just before we left this glorious site, we had to get a little "Go AWOL!" video to use back on campus (with my ridiculous move edited out, of course. ;).

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Picture of the Day 122: Mama & Papa Chuc..."Is this a problem?"

One of the best parts of our trip to Belize is that we all stayed with host families for 8 nights during our time in San Ignacio. We each stayed with families that were unique, quirky, and helped us to create personal connections with the people of Belize - something we would have missed staying in a hostel.

Let me introduce to you my homestay "parents," Mama and Papa Chuc:

 

They've been married for 40+ years, have nine children and have been hosting foreign students for over 20 years. Mama Chuc speaks intermediate-advanced English; Papa Chuc thinks he speaks intermediate-advanced English (but actually it's about beginner level). :) 

My homestay homies (two students named Jake and Jeremy) and I enjoyed a daily breakfast cooked by Mama Chuc that usually comprised of a bowl full of fresh fruit including pineapple, papaya, oranges, and bananas. Then she would really make sure we didn't go hungry by giving us a heaping mound of scrambled eggs with tortillas, fritas, or johnny cakes (don't ask me what that is...some kind of biscuit thingy). 

Then she would hand us a sack lunch to take to our service site. This usually consisted of a bologne sandwich with lots of mayo and mustard. I didn't have the heart to tell her that bologna and mayo both gross me out, so I usually participated in our daily blackmarket of sack lunch items swapping bologna for a burrito, a cookie for a banana, or whatever.

Then we would come home in the evenings to a house full of spicey aromas and a plate full of hot rice with savory chicken, beans, vegetables, and the like. Mama Chuc, you're the best!

FAMILY PHOTO

Back: Jake, me, and Jeremy

Front: Papa Chuck & Mama Chuck

 

About their names: No one in town ever called them anything other than Mama & Papa Chuc. In fact, if you called them by their first names, most people wouldn't know who you were talking about. But if you said "you know, Mama and Pap Chuc" everyone would say "yes, of course!!!!!". From what I could tell from their stories and comments, the Chuc's host foreign students both to supplement their income (since Papa Chuc is retired) and because Mama Chuc likes the company and likes to keep busy. All of their children are grown and married and Mama Chuc's profession is taking care of others. And she's very good at it.

Luckily most of their children still live in San Ignacio. In fact, two live on either side of them on the same block. Therefore, the Chuc house was always bustling with grandkids and kids coming and going. If you walked by, you'd hear Spanish, English, and Creole conversations and laughter echoing from the house. Let's me some of the famous Chuc family grandkids:

First there's Josh. He lives next door and constantly wants you to watch him ride his bike. 

 

Then there's Melody, a sassy little beauty who liked to give me lots of hugs: 

And finally, there's Harmony. He's probably sassier than his older sister. At six years old, he's a self proclaimed vegetarian who loves his food spicey spicey spicey. He was Jake's #1 fan.

 

Mama Chuc's spicey sauce! Just a couple drops of this and your entire meal will go up in flames. It was amazing! 

 

One reason we decided to go to Central America for this year's international AWOL trip is because the weather would be nice enough in the middle of winter for us to work outside (giving us more service project options). It also didn't hurt knowing that SD would be about -25 the entire time we would be gone. Well, like most of North America, Central America was having a record-setting cold winter with temperatures at night dipping into the 40s. And for a country where indoor heating is rarely used (and therefore never installed in homes), we had a few shivering nights. Regardless, enjoying days with the temperature in the mid-60s was fine by us (even though we'd hoped for the 80s). Anything's better than SD in the winter! Explaining this temperature difference to Mama and Papa Chuc wasn't easy. They were sure there would be people in Belize who would freeze to death with temperatures as low as - GASP! - 40 degrees! ;) To illustrate our point that it was way colder in South Dakota and that people can live through those winters, I had Papa Chuc try on my winter coat. It was hilarious! 

Here's me showing him how to put on gloves. Classic.

He's so freakin cute! 

 

To put it simply: In just nine days, we fell in love with the Chuc family!  

What a great way to spend our stay in San Ignacio, Belize.

The Chuc Estate

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Picture of the Day 121: Toilets, Sweet Tings, & TIB

One of the coolest parts of the orphanage/mud hut project is the fact that the site will be almost entirely self sustaining - complete with making their own compost for the crops they'll grow on site. We did our best to help out by using the on-site outhouse. Hey, we do what we can for the environment and sustainability. ;)

 

Even in just 10 days, we were able to create a few small traditions for our group. For instance, after a long day of shoveling mud, painting, or demoing a building, we liked to treat ourselves to a slice of cake at a little cafe in San Ignacio called Sweet Tings. It was a nice comfort of home...and they made a strong cup of coffee.

Me enjoying one of the few jolts of caffeine I had the entire trip to Belize. Oh coffee. I love you. 

 

We worked with an organization called ProBelize to organize our trip on site. Here's Adrian the program director. It was definitely a challenge for all of us to become comfortably with the "go with the flow," "everything will work out even if it all seems crazy disorganized" attitude of most Belizeans. A phrase we grew to loathe and love was "TIB! This is Belize!"

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Picture of the Day 120: Who's Hot for Mud Hut?

Today, out groups swapped service sites and I took my group out to Georgeville to help with mud hut construction; Jac-Attack took the other group out to Unitedvil to finish up the painting project. By the afternoon we were all back together working on the mud hut. Here are a few pictures of our adventures there:

Angela, our fearless student leader: 

 

The New Dorothy in action!

 

Yeah, the outfit isn't my best work, but i refused to buy new clothes for this trip and just used a mishmash of what I already owned. It's all in the trash now anyway...with paint and mud stains. :)

 

Look at that form!

Jake, one of the students, found a creepy big spider.

...then he killed it and proceeded to gross us all out with this move...

Progress on the mud hut! We plastered the walls and put in the loft window:

 

Our breakroom, mud hut style complete with water cooler for gossip-filled meetups. 

   

White shoes no more.

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Picture of the Day 119: You better Belize it! Painting Day 2

So our second service day in Belize resulted in our 18 person group splitting up for the day. Jac-Attack took eight students to the mudhut to help on that project. I took the other 9 students back to Unitedville to (hopefully) finish up the painting project. All I can say is that this group was awesome and remarkably productive. So productive that we ran out of paint other supplies and had to spend about an hour picking up trash (which there was a lot of) around the school grounds while the local organizers went to get more supplies. But spirits were high and I tried to entertain the group with some ridiculous charades. Note to self: Don't ever try this again. ;)

 

 

We got really lucky (and some of us a little sunburned) when the glorious, warm Belizean sun came out to greet us during our down time.

By the end of the day we had painted two coats of paint (top and bottom of the wall) in five classrooms and picked up tons of trash around the school yard. We had a great day, full of inside jokes ("Guuurrrrl, you paint good...") and blue and green paint everywhere. Don't stop Belizen'!

 

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Picture of the Day 118: Don't stop Belizen'...that this paint will KILL you!

Our first service day in Belize started with some group discussion and bonding on the roof of the ProBelize (organization that planned most of our projects in Belize) office building in downtown San Ignacio. It was also drizzling, overcast and unseasonably cool (for Belize). But we had a crew of gamers and they were ready for anything.

 

 

The plan for the day was to visit the site of one of the projects we'd be working on later in the week and then head to an elementary school  to do some painting.

We stopped to pick up supplies and then headed to Georgeville to the site of a yet to be built orphanage. There was another group there who had been in Belize for two weeks constructing what we loving refer to as the mudhut. It's a circular structure with walls made of recycled bags filled with a mud, clay, sand, dirt, manure mixture. When finished the mud-hut would be cone shaped, have a sleeping loft, two windows and a front door. The entire surface inside and out will be covered with plaster and over time the bags will disintegrate and the mud-hut will become a strong, brick structure. This particular mud-hut is the future home of the grounds caretaker for the orphanage. The orphanage will also be built in the same fashion, but be about 5 times as big and rectangular in shape. The entire project is meant to be completely self sustaining with a compost area that will serve as fertilizer for the crops that will be grown to feed all the children who will live there.

Here's what it looked like during our first visit:

Jac-Attack!

After our brief visit to the mud-hut, we headed to Unitedville to begin our painting project at the elementary school. First we had a to "clean" the walls, do some scraping, and then we got to the nasty business of painting the classrooms in some (almost obnoxious) bright colors with some lethal oil based paint. I'm guessing we all lost about a week off of our lives from the fumes. Here's how we progressed:

 

 

After getting the top half of the walls painted in the "lighter" color, we headed back to town for the evening. It was a long, dirty day, but it was awesome.

Stay tuned for Painting Day 2: The lower half of the wall. Dun...dun....DUN! :)

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