Meet Rainbow Dash

Meet Rainbow Dash, the 928 W. Lovell st. house mascot who, after our post-graduation-dispersal, has become a means of connecting us. Ever heard of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants? This is the Sisterhood of the Traveling Rainbow Dash.

So first, the pegasistas: Jordan, Charlotte, Emma, Chelsey and Alex. Alex, Emma and Chelsey were friends and hall/room/housemates for 4 of 4 years. Jordan and Charlotte, met in their first year seminar during freshman orientation and after progressing from name games to waxing one another have their own history of room/house cohabitation. Through independent and collective friendships, we signed a lease from August 2013-2014 in a four bedroom house. We named it soon after- the Jolie Pit[t] because our racial make-up resembles that of the celebrity family and we once pretended we were sisters at a family portrait studio. As we left the photographer said, "I wish I could meet your parents. They seem like really cool people." 

Jordan replied, "Yeah, we're pretty much the Jolie-Pits."

Our main hobbies include trolling the happenings of Kalamazoo college both live and from the comfort of our own home via social media. 

 From left to right, top to bottom... the pegasistas: Emma (Ann Arbor, MI) Chelsey (New Orleans, LA), Charlotte (New Orleans, LA), Alex (Minneapolis, MN), and Jordan (Chicago, IL) 

Along the way Alex happened upon the netflix documentary "Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Ponies". Simultaneously delighted and perplexed, we changed our end of the year 30 kegs in 30 nights party theme  to Bronies/Pegasistas (and everything in between): Friendship is Magic.Wednesday May 15th we got ourselves a keg and a half (one of which rolled out of the car onto Alex's foot (yeah- ouch) who spent the rest if the night in her room cycling through RICE in anticipation of leading a 30 day wilderness trip in Montana not long after), some glitter face paint, my little pony coloring pages,  accessories, and all took the My Little Pony Quiz. 

Results:
Charlotte-applejack

Jordan- twilight sparkle

Emma- rainbow dash

Chels-flutter shy

Alex-applejack

Rainbow Dash (center), on adoption day. She was adopted
from the children's play area at the Falling Rock Cafe in Munising, MI.

One college graduation later Jordan and Charlotte were on a road trip to Michigan's upper peninsula and "camped" out of the car and in Munising, Michigan's falling rock cafe. On our 6th or 7th visit in a matter of three days, Jordan happened upon Rainbow Dash in the children's play area. She had a few nibble marks on her nose. We couldn't imagine anyone playing with her better than we would and knew she we had to have her. We discussed stealing her, asking for her, buying her, and settled on trading some friendship bracelet thread for her. She has since gone with certain individuals or combinations of us to Fredonia New York, Lake Michigan, Chicago, New Orleans, Eagle River and Camp Manitowish Wisconsin, the Adirondack State Park and now Chiang Mai, Thailand and Sabah, Malaysia.

You can add rainbow dash on Facebook and keep up with her travels between the five of us, together and apart. She is a delightful conversation starter, friend maker/repeller, and companion (traveling on myself I don't feel like I have to take selfies all the time... she is a perfect photography prompt).

Rainbow enjoys beignets from Cafe Du Monde

"Rainbow Dash is a female Pegasus pony and one of the main characters in My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. She is responsible for maintaining the weather and clearing the skies in Ponyville. As a huge fan of The Wonderbolts, she dreams of one day joining their elite flying group. In Sonic Rainboom, Rarity and Princess Celestia both declare that she is the best flier in all of Equestria. Rainbow Dash has a pet tortoise named Tank, whom she chooses out of Fluttershy's offered animals in the episode May the Best Pet Win! She represents the element of loyalty." --wikia.com

Nature is Calling? Answer with Pee Rags

One of my favorite parts of being in NJ is sharing a bathroom with my youngest sister Frances. Actually, that is not true at all. Over the course of sharing a bathroom I have had one of my showers straight up stolen from me (turned the water on, started getting undressed and then naked Frances came dashing out of her room and jumped in the shower), waded through days worth of dirty clothes strewn about, and feared for my life when meeting angry Frances in the bathroom in the middle of the night (which happens often) both having to pee. Frances does NOT like to be bothered in the middle of the night.

Frances pees more than anyone I have ever met. More than me, in fact, and many of my friends would say I am the most frequent pee-er they know. She pees especially much in the middle of the night, so much that there is often a line to use the bathroom. Over the past couple of weeks, whilst sharing a bathroom AND doing the household toilet paper purchasing, I calculated that she goes through 1/2 roll of toilet paper per night. Per night, folks. That's one roll of TP every two days. Frances is also the president of Green Group at her High School, and prioritizes environmental sustainability in her daily routine. So, if it's yellow she lets it mellow, accumulating 1/2 roll of yellow, mellow toilet paper in the toilet bowl over the course of the night. You can imagine the clogging.

Frankie Jane on Day 1
Also featured: pee rags and wooden box for used ones

Because 1/2 roll of TP every night is just plain excessive we are starting a pee rag challenge. I forget if there will be any reward for this challenge. I first used the pee rag at Wildside Farm with the Juliusson family. Sara is a Kalamazoo College alum and I stayed there for 10 days on an externship program. During my orientation to the farm/house I was encouraged to participate, and quite liked the system.

We have cut up some squares of old shirt and stowed them in a basket. When we pee, we will use a square and dispose of it in a wooden box with a lid. When we have used a round's worth of pee rags we will boil the used ones for reuse. The only time we will use toilet paper is in the case of a poop. Even when we poop, though, we have agreed that if we think in was a "clean sweep" (a solid poop that slid out without leaving gushies on butt hole) we will then also use a pee rag.

This is a cool environmental website for people who do little things to help save the planet. In High School I ordered shirts for a bunch of people when we started our composting system. They should make ones that say "Use a Pee Rag". "Cloth Diapers" is pretty much the same, though. If this all works out maybe we will order shirts,
wear them for a little, and then cut them up to use as more pee rags.
We would love comments of thoughts/question/encouragement/reactions. Updates to follow.

1/18/16: we never used the pee rags. In fact, I think they are still in that little box near the toilet, untouched.

Tea and Tampons... and Geese: A Poem

Hi again, this blogging has been less-than-regular. This interlude in my 2014 is called "Tea and Tampons" as I am on Tea and Tampon duty for youngest sister Frances while my parents come and go to/from our home in New Jersey over the next few weeks. I was literally instructed to make Frances a cup of tea every once in awhile, and go out and buy her tampons if she needs them (Frances is an extremely self-sufficient High School senior with a driver's license).  I'm just back from 5 weeks in Thailand and have about another 3 weeks until I move to New Orleans with my friend Chelsey, so I'm spending them here at Fox Sparrow Pond in good old Jersey Jers.

Frankie and our dog Chesapeake who I have also
been taking to the vet kind of a lot. We have bonded.

Let's see... if this interlude had a theme song it would be Stolen Dance by Milky Chance because I am digging that song at the moment (shout out to Shannon Haupt for introducing me to it on LandSea and for liking that song before liking that song was cool), if it had a currency it would be mother's debit card which we use to feed ourselves, if it had an emblematic food it would be a meatball because we eat a ton of those, and if it had a state bird it would be a GOOSE! When I'm not making tea, buying tampons, eating meatballs, or rocking out to Stolen Dance I am watching the oh so peculiar, but also majestic and fascinating geese that seem to have invited their own residence on our pond. So, in my enchanted existence, I wrote a poem.

Without further ado I bring you......

Geese

[Not] by, Mary Oliver

You would think we feed them or tend to them,

the way they assemble on our pond.

Black Friday

I hear their call as they descend into the yard… a call of belonging,

a call that is

afraid of being left behind.

Tonight there are 192, I count

quickly while they swim around.

Though that is just an estimate—rough

like their formation in flight.

When I walk down to the pond they paddle

away and find

their rightful cluster (or flock I guess is the scientific term).

The other morning, when there were 254 of them,

I ran down through the frosty grass to get some pictures, soaking my slippers through.

I went

all the way to the edge of the water and they dispersed, paddling away,

becoming agitated.

One flustered call became 7, became 27 became 47.

One twitched its wing, then 3, then 33.

One started to flap, then 10, then 20 were flapping and kicking furiously

GET ME UP IN THE AIR RIGHT NOW AND AWAY

FROM THE LADY WITH THE IPHONE

They thundered away.

Now it is growing dark and still they sit.

I wonder:

are these the same geese as two days ago?

The same as last weekend?

Do they like it here? Is our pond is a sort of cabin, cottage, weekend getaway?

Or are we just a rest stop on the interstate?

Is this flock from Maine? Nova Scotia?

We do have coffee

They’ve clearly found the bathroom.

What would you put in a vending machine for geese?

Up close I hate

them. As a child I remember being swarmed on a

park bench holding bread

up above my head.

But if they stay

away

down there

on the pond

they are quite nice. Especially because they are heading south.

Though it is taking them quite a while.

The Geese literally litter the pond.

"The Cooking Altar": Indo Adventures

5 Hours until my flight home from Thailand, and I need something to do.

Today on my viewer stats the viewers in Thailand and other countries were MORE than the US (because P' Lee kindly posted the link to the Akha Ama Facebook page). You should “like” Akha Ama.

Listen to one of my favorite Thai Song while you read by clicking on the link. Its calming me down.

Also here is the link to the BEST bagel recipe ever. I have only made them 4 times in unpredictable temperatures and humidity, but each time they turned out perfectly. Try it, just do exactly what they say and you will melt when you eat them.

Make them! You won't regret it

So my companion (in this context this word means more than a friend, more than a caretaker, more than a partner in crime but everything I could ever want/need in someone who I take on the world with), Emma (also a blogger-she is entertaining, I think you will enjoy it) and I went “bai tiou” ("out" in Thai) to Indonesia for 2 weeks. 

Emma and I during some down time

All of the lodge volunteers at "The Cooking Altar"

If nothing else, we learned how to cook... some of the most amazing secrets I could ever learn! And one of the most gorgeous kitchens I have ever seen. I refered to it in the title as “The Cooking Altar” which is not my own creation of a name… our host told us a recent WWOOF-er called it that. But it is perfect. The stove faces outward, and the chef/cooker stands on a raised platform and does their thing. It is magical… within one hour of seeing it I had started sketching a design for my own kitchen if I ever get the chance to build one.

We were WWOOFing technically, volunteering in exchange for room and board on a usually farm-oriented operation. But lucky for us we were at a guesthouse, Lodges Ekologica where we mostly helped to cook, clean, and tend to guests.

So, I would like to share with you our 

Top epic food Inventions:
*Note: Some key ingredients supplied by southeast Asian food world*

1) Leftover rice with a little bit of coconut milk and coconut sugar (like a rice pudding!)


2) Water boiled down with Coconut sugar to make syrup (we ate on crepes)


3) Iced leftover Tea with passion fruit, lime and coconut sugar


4) Thai style green papaya salad shreds with apple, green bean, tomatoes, garlic and shallots pounded with lime, coconut sugar and vinegar


5) Mashed sweet potatoes with balsamic vinegar/coconut sugar glaze


6) Coffee with chocolate milk


7) Kalua/Rum soaked guava slices with soda water and lime and a sugar cane stirrer

8) Thai fruit sangria
 (made in Thailand)

9) Almost Carbonara (saved by Jocean) with rocket and corn

10
) Yogurt, lime, honey and cilantro dip served with fried cassava (Yucca)


11) Herb butter, smashed in the croc with basil, garlic and salt


12) Coconut milk pesto


13) Deep fried breadfruit/flour balls

!

14) Tempeh deep fried with garlic/shallot/Sambal/KatchupMayonaise

#whoneedsrealsugar?

#SEasia

Happy cooking and see you in the USA!

Louic fries some Tempeh

Tempe. Delicious! but hard to find like this in the US 

Herb Butter by Jan in action 

We also visited the Jakarta Zoo and made friends with the hippo keeper who let Emma have a real live up-close hippo-encounter. I feel lucky to have been with her on this special day.

Akha Ama: Mother of Akha Coffee!

I was on Thai TV! Check out This PBS episode at 9:00 to see the segment about Akha Ama and 10:00 to see me helping out :D
** Many of these photos were taken by Pi Pakee, now studying in bangkok. Kawb Khun Kha!

      Akha Ama Coffee: A Socially Empowered Enterprise. A taste, a space, a community, a family. I spent January as an intern here researching the elements of success of a social enterprise. This one actively counters the profit disparities between farmers and coffee shop owners in the global coffee market, by creating a business with a smaller profit margin in order to actively pay coffee growers more than commodity buyers. I worked in the café for 3 weeks learning the finalities behind the art of pulling the perfect shot of espresso, pouring a cup of drip coffee with maximal flavor, and stayed for one week in the village where the coffee is grown, helping to harvest the beans. The perfect shot of espresso should be evenly sour and bitter and sweet, and the sweetness should linger in the aftertaste… My memories of Akha Ama are all sweet, and I hope the aftertaste lasts a lifetime!

Akha Ama Coffee shop in Chiang Mai, Thailand sources coffee beans from the Akha village "Mae Jan Tai" just three hours away in Chiang Rai province.

           You know what I love? I love the distance that comes with being semi-proficient in a language that makes you blissfully ignorant of social and conversational norms and therefore somewhat immune from embarrassment. It's virtually impossible to be self-conscious because it takes so much effort just to put words in the air. Your main priority is just to speak, rather than try to speak well, with wit, humor or wisdom. That’s what my Thai feels like right now. I don’t realize how I sound until after the words are out of my mouth, so the fear of messing up goes away.

  

Me, Pi Jenny (barista) and Pi Wee

            The people here make fun of my clumsiness but love me for my effort, and nag me about little things that I do that are impolite (like hold the coffee tray between my knees or put my foot up on a bench to tie my shoe- totally inappropriate in Thai culture) but understand that I forget. They are people working in a business to create more economic opportunities for the families and friends of their own villages.

            One of the most significant things I learned being a part of this place is the vast difference between the livelihoods and lifestyles of coffee growers and coffee drinkers. And Akha Ama brings them both together. There is one thing I am reminded of… how important it is to understand where your food/drink comes from. But we already knew I cared about that :).

Pi Lee (co-founder)
 after tasting one of my shots of espresso: yuck.

Why is it that we only really feel the momentum and scale of things that are important to us when they are about to be taken away? With 3 days until I head back to the US, I’m having some of those days… the days that put butterflies in your stomach, make you feel like you're tumbling down a hill faster and faster, maybe even make you feel anxious and sweaty, but mostly make your heart ache… when you try to re-create and re-live everything you loved because you are afraid the memory isn’t good enough, when you try to do everything you haven’t done, and when you try to hug everyone you care about extra much because you know they won’t always be there. It’s a rush, it’s a numbness, it’s a little bit of trembling, its warmth and its emptiness all at once. And as I transcend through time and space it will morph and change, and go away… but I want to remember the feeling because it represents the fear of everything that I love slipping away from me.

We made bagels, and they loved them! Pi Wee, Pi Too (other barista) and Pi Im (bake master) 

Making "Drip Drop"

Everyone

Brewing the coffee in the village

The coffee cherries

Right to left: Akha Ama (mother), myself and Pi Gip who I stayed with in the village

The coffee beans after drying in the sun for 1 week

Ready to be picked up and roasted in the city.

2013 Challenge

Fill this out, by the end of January, and share it with someone (ME! csteele1992@gmail.com)

Ten Things, by Paul Baribeau:

Name 10 things you want to do before you die and then go do them:

Name 10 places you really want to be before you die and then go to them:

Name 10 books you want to read before you die and then go read them:

Name 10 songs you want to hear again before you die, get all your friends together and scream them:

...

Think of all the things that are wrong with your life and then fix them:

Think of all the things you love about your life and be thankful you are blessed with them:

Think of all the things that hold you back and realize you don’t need them:

Think of all the mistakes you have made in your life and make sure you never repeat them:

Think of all the reasons why you never want to die and go and tell someone who might have forgotten:

Try to list the endless reasons why it’s good to be alive and then smile for a while about them:

Because right now all we have is time, time, time

You know but someday that time will run out

That’s the only thing we can be absolutely certain about.

Oceans

Oh my goodness I’ve had a LOT of coffee today (for me) and I’m ready to just type about my life! I started my internship with Akha Ama Coffee today and it was AWESOME. I had a hot mocha with latte art in it, quite a few cups of drip coffee and a million sips of trial espresso while Pi Jenny, one of my bosses, was adjusting the grinder to make perfect espresso. Did you know the grinder often needs to be adjusted multiple times per day as the weather changes? Jenny drinks around 10 cups of espresso per day just tasting these different trial runs.

So… Oceans! My last excursion was to the south of Thailand to the coast- beaches, sunsets, sunburns, coral reefs and endless gorgeous rock cliffs and palm trees and shells! So many shells.

First we spent a week in a fishing village on the west coast of the tail of Thailand. Everyone who lives there is Muslim and subsides mostly off of seafood! YUM! Too bad we learned all about how fishing in the seas+climate change= no more fish in about 20 years. Unfortunately I am not inspired to fix this problem, I feel it is out of our control and I hope other people are inspired to deal with it. Some of my favorite moments here included visiting a mudflat (area where the tide has gone out and lots of sea life hangs out until it comes back in) where I saw a few starfish, armies of crabs, had hermit crabs walk over my feet, and live sand dollars. 
Looking back over my journal I was also perpetually seasick, but luckily that doesn’t stand out much in retrospect: “For some odd reason here I am also chronically nauseous- I don’t really know why but I think it has something to do with feeling at the mercy of the waves, tide and universe. Today we snorkeled through the dugong grasses, and that set me up for a tipsy day. There is nothing quite like floating, limbs splayed, on a bobbing chop of water that is moving under you, listening to yourself breath loudly through your snorkel and staring at a whole nother world below you. At times I felt like a vacuum cleaner or something odd like that, chugging and propelling myself along the surface of the water using my super strong fins”.

I also really enjoyed snorkeling: “Snorkeling was actually a dream- even though I was feeling rocked and nauseous everything was way too real, it just pulled you right in! Colors I had never seen before and fish I only thought could be drawn in animation (Nemo is REAL!) and seas of coral. It was like being in a personal museum or aquarium forever. I had three favorite moments. The first was actually being in the middle of a school of blue/yellow/silver fish and one swam up to me and just stared me in the face. They were all around me and I felt like I was a part of them. The second was seeing three completely different schools of fish all close together and at the same time. The fish and formations were different, but they were still organized in very much the same way. Finally, there was one species of fish that would have individuals of 3-4 other fish follow it around, and it was so cool to see them all in a row”. Who knew fish could be so cool?

Next we traveled to a group of islands out in the ocean where we kayaked, camped and snorkeled for a whole nother week. This time held many of the same experiences, including sleeping outside every night and watching a hermit crab change shells! “Eli and Lily found a hermit crab that is too big for its shell. They went to find it a bigger shell while I babysat. We could tell that it had feelings because it was notably flustered and anxty about its shell, self conscious even, because it couldn’t shrink away when we picked it up. Then the most amazing thing happened: Erin presented it with a bigger shell she had found. It straddled it for a second, feeling it with its antennae and then actually crawled out of its old shell and backed into the bigger one, which looked a little bit too bit (with growing room). It adhered itself to the shell and started walking. It looked like the skinny kid on the football team clunking around in too big pads with its helmet falling off. Everyone laughed and cheered”.

Our view every day!!

The restaurant that my family owned that I hung out at every day...

The beach

The mudflat I spoke of, that is a crab army!

The village from the mudflat

Nightly sunsets

The view from the restaurant

Incase you throughout pineapples grow on trees... they don't.

Tapping a rubber tree

My Ma making us dinner! All local!

The boat we took everywhere

Making Rotti, a deliciously fried Muslim dessert/food

Rotti in action

And Rotti ready to eat: condensed milk makes everything better.

My beloved instructor, Pi Tik!

Our celebration night, my Ma and host grandson

Me and Daniel with our Ma's

My awesome Pi's!

More of the family

Yes, the water is really that blue!

Swimming!

The beach where we camped

Our Thai class "goodbye Cassie" picture

Setting off lanterns, a Chiang Mai tradition for a yearly festival

Our campsite