Rebecca A. Foster

"Rebecca," people will say to me, "you have crazy stories! How do you get yourself into these situations/meet these people/do such crazy things?" I don't think I have a good answer, but the answer I do have is: I take chances. Sometimes they fail, spectacularly so. Sometimes they are a joyride in the slip and slide of my life. Sometimes...it takes a while for me decide which column to choose. When I read this article in the NYT about technology and love and ego and the difference between liking and loving and being a whole person, it clicked: the times when I seesaw and waver and hem and haw and wonder if what I am doing is of value or going to be painful or joyful or awful or gratifying, these are the times I am probably living up to my fullest potential as a human being. Not a great human being. Not a successful human being. Just...a human being. And that's enough. My dad, when he came to pick me up from the airport two days after his terminal cancer d...

I'd never heard of Magnum bars before I went to China, but they quickly became my favorite treat. One of my favorite ways to spend an weeknight evening was meeting up with R., J. and V. for dinner in R.'s neighborhood, then walking off dinner before crashing at a beer garden for some late night laughs. I spent more than one night searching for Magnums at every little ice cream seller we came across; more often than not, no Magnums, so when we DID find them, that made the evening all the better. I "mmmm"-ed all over the place. So of course when I saw Magnums in my local grocery several weeks ago, I excitedly took a phone pic to send to R: Magnums! In the U.S.! Worlds collide! In my humble ice cream opinion, they are better than Haagen Daz bars. I recommend the coffee ones, if you can find them.

Ma La girls like hot pot. I had a hot pot dinner party at my house this past week, with spices I brought home from Chongqing. (I saved the wrappers and I'll be taking them to the Asian market to see if they can order more for me.) Here is the food table, next to the eating table. In China the plates of food for hot pot come out on a multi-tiered cart, but because I don't have one of those, I used a card table. There are meatballs, little smokies, lotus, rice sticks, quail's eggs, noodles, squids, and two kinds of tofu. (We also had golden mushrooms and chicken pieces but those were already on the table.) Here is a shot of the table set up. I bought an induction cooker to use in my apartment, because that's the kind of cooker I had in China and I found I prefer it to the convection cooking more popular here in America. I used it that night for the hot pot; not only is it portable to the table, but inductions don't get hot like convections so no one was going to ...

(A topic from the book.) My 4-inch platform sandals were cute and somewhat practical in America, with our cleanly paved sidewalks and parking lots and car transportation culture. But in China, with its broken tiles, ripped up sidewalks and walking culture? Still cute, but wildly impractical. (Below, a typical sidewalk in my part of the Chinese woods.) I wore them anyway. 'Cultural integration' is one of the phrases you hear often in the Peace Corps; a large part of our pre-arrival weekend meeting involved telling us if we didn't successfully culturally integrate into our country of service, we were going to be a failure as a volunteer at best, and at worst, dead in the street. (No, not kidding. Now you know why I was so stressed out that weekend .) V. and I were making our way home from an evening downtown, he in his appropriate footwear and me in my platform sandals. I hadn't walked in shoes like these for several months and about every 50 feet, I weeble-wobb...

My Holy Grail of bras: no lining, no padding, and cute. Beige bra with embroidered flowers: Felina . Black lace bra: Victoria's Secret. Both have matching panties available. (I bought my Felina at Macy's.)  

While in China, I put this mix list together for a friend. I have vague memories of dancing to it one night at his apartment; I have even vaguer memories of dancing to all of these songs back in the day. The 90's were fun. (I've included hyperlinks to every song on YouTube.) 1. Wild Thing - Tone Loc 2. I Wish - Skee Lo 3. Return of the Mack - Mark Morrison 4. Dazzey Duks - 69 Boyz 5. Ain't Too Proud To Beg - TLC 6. Get It On Tonite - Montell Jordan 7. 1,2,3,4 - Coolio 8. Doin' It - LL Cool J 9. You're Making Me High - Toni Braxton 10. The Humpty Dance - Digital Underground 11. Hypnotize - Notorious B.I.G. 12. Rumpshaker - Wreckx N Effect 13. Sweat - Inner Circle 14. Wiggle It - 2 In A Room 15. Move This - Technotronic 16. Temptations - 2Pac 17. Do Me! - Bel Biv Devoe 18. O.P.P - Naughty by Nature 19. Pony - Genuwine 20. Baby Got Back - Sir Mix-A-Lot 21. Tootsee Roll - 69 Boyz 22. Ditty - Paperboy 23. Whoot! There It Is ...