Rebecca A. Foster

I found this link through Twitter; it's a short animated visual graphing of the rise of the wealth and health of nations over the last two hundred years. The Chinese breakout especially interested me; GuiZhou and the rural parts of China he mentions are where Peace Corps volunteers are mostly assigned; GuiZhou is the province just to the east of Chongqing. And yes, going to Shanghai was like going to Europe as far as wealth, cleanliness and public behavior were concerned. If you like social science, you will probably love this. If you don't like social science, you will probably love it after watching this.

Today I mailed off the paperwork to donate my body at death to the University of Utah Medical School. I already knew I wanted to be cremated and scattered, so it made sense to me to add this part to it. I checked with my family, because they are the ones this decision would affect, and they were very supportive of it. The medical school cremates you when your service is finished. I had the option to:  1. Have my ashes buried in a donor's plot at the local cemetery; each year, they bury the ashes of donors who wish to be buried there and conduct a memorial service for the families, medical students and anyone else who wants to attend.  2. Have my ashes mailed to my family by certified mail, with return receipt. This caught me off guard-- I had no idea you could mail ashes. Technically, you could mail them to somewhere random and boom, that's your final resting place.  3. Have your family pick them up at the medical school. This is the option I chose. My sister asked m...

The book Salt is fascinating, if you are into the history of how common items influence history and customs and such. The author traces the impact salt has had on societies since recorded history. He makes the point that how we feel about oil is how previous societies felt about salt; think we'll ever get to a point where oil is a non-issue? (Not because of supplies, but because of reduced necessity?) I also loved the part where he talked about the Sichuan rural peasant making declarations about Chinese inventions apropos of nothing. Totally. The Chinese do love their declarations! Salt, by Mark Kurlansky __________ This sparked a realization: iodine deficiency. Pretty sure I had it in China. In about my fifth month there, my hair started falling out in too-large-for-comfort chunks. I was horrified, as I am pretty vain. I called our doctor about it and she told me I needed to diversify my diet; I was a vegetarian and my normal protein substitutes (mainly dairy and nuts) were...

I was going to write today about China, but you know what? I realize my memories will never mean as much to other people as they do to me. And that's okay. I think if you've read my other posts, you have a good idea of what I loved, and what was difficult, about China. Sometimes I miss China so much my heart aches. Sometimes I'm relieved to be back in America where I understand the culture (although this took several months-- reverse culture shock is a real thing). I'm feeling much more comfortable here. Some big changes for me coming up. China did a good job preparing me for the rest of my life. It was a graduate course in flexibility, creativity, strength, courage, acceptance and doing things you never thought possible. I read an analogy recently that made a lot of sense to me, so I want to share it: if you think of life like a river, a lot of us are preoccupied with where we are in the river: what we have materially, or relationships, what we've achieved or...

In Chongqing there aren't many foreigners compared to other big, populated in cities in China. This led to 'Panda Syndrome': we were often treated like special pandas at the zoo. Sounds nice, but really? It's not. I learned I could never handle being famous. One night a few of us Americans were having dinner with some Chinese students. They made a dish for us called 'hui guo rou' known in English as 'twice-cooked pork.' Someone asked what the dish was called and I answered with the correct name. The students started teasing him for not knowing the name and then one of the students said, "The girl knew what it was."  The girl? The girl teacher? The girl version of an American? The girl what ? It bothered me at the time because it was a bit dehumanizing and I was fighting for every bit of my humanity, but now it's kinda funny. Of course the guys who were there started calling me The Girl. It ended one night at dinner when J. was trying to p...

What do you do for quiet time? I like my quiet time very early in the morning. In China I had the habit of waking up verrry early because the birds that lived in the bamboo growing outside my window also got up early. Older people did daily tai chi in the courtyard outside my apartment at the break of dawn. I loved seeing their quiet, uniform movements. It inspired me to find quiet time of my own. I began the habit of sitting quietly every morning on my mat, thinking about what was important to me that day and what I wanted myself to know. I hesitate to call it 'meditation' because I wasn't trying to clear my mind, have some kind of experience in enlightenment, etc. I just wanted to focus my energies and be aware of what I was bringing into myself in the best way possible. Now that I am home, I've had more time to focus on this process. I downloaded some podcasts about meditation that focus on breathing and relaxation. I've been reading a book my good friend J...