Take Two

I got into blogging while serving in the Peace Corps as a therapeutic way to both digest what was going on around me, as well as to share vignettes of my life in TZ with my friends and family, and strangers, back home. It was fun, it was interesting, the internet cafe had AC, and I enjoyed it so much I got a books-worth of material written [see link on the right hand side of this blog].

Now I'm in Chicago. I've been back in the States for a little over 5 months, and for the most part I've readjusted to life here. I still occasionally check my shoes for scorpions or spiders, or use a Swahili interjection in conversation, and I definitely pick my nose while driving in my car [though not when I'm speaking with people, as some Tanzanians do]. Certain things pop out at me, like the standard beach-art version of a painting of 3 Maasai men standing in their traditional clothing, which I spotted on the wall in an apartment next to my building, while I was walking down the street and looking into people's apartments. For the most part, though, it's been a return to life as normal. Not old-me normal but new-me normal, if that makes any sense.

And now that I'm back in Chicago, making new friends, about to start work at a new job, I've decided it's time to start writing a new blog. Probably one that will be far less interesting than it's predecessor, but serve similar purposes.

For the all important first post, I've decided to talk about the most awesome thing that I've done in the past week or so. I just parallel parked my Mazda 626 into the tightest spot, and upon completion calculated that I had less than 6 inches between me and the cars in front and back of me. It helped that the one in back was an enormous Escalade which I felt not at all concerned about gently tapping, repeatedly, nor that it took about 10 reverse-forward-reverses to get my car close to the curb. The key is that I did it, on my first attempt, and in a space that is not scheduled for street cleaning for another 2 weeks. And given the terrible parking offenses committed by numerous drivers in the streets around my building, I think it stands out even more as a really amazing feat. It would have been nice, though, to have a passerby or two on the sidewalk at the time, someone to admire my work.