Oslo!

Falling behind

Whoops - haven't posted in awhile. My bad. In my defense, it's been a busy couple of weeks.

Last Saturday I went home to get some stuff figured out, see family and friends, etc. It was a whirlwind trip - I left early Wednesday morning. But in that short period of time I: spent the afternoon with Dad and Celeste (we discovered that Revere beach is not a shit hole and had some amazing French Cambodian food), had ice cream with Alyssa, had several awesome conversations with Amie, bonded with Orie and Hakuna, spent an afternoon with my mom (I got us completely lost in the Fells - it was GREAT!), drank a beer and obsessed about school (among other things) with Naureen, went to the gym, went running twice, had a doctor's appointment, laid in the sun and finished Unaccustomed Earth, drank about 5 million bottles of seltzer, met with my professor, spent some lovely time with Jen after a year of not seeing her (and remembered how awesome it is to spend time with her) and enjoyed many many iced coffees. It was so short and so amazing. And amazingly hard to leave. Sigh. The weather was great and I could walk around without getting drenched in sweat. Ok...I need to stop thinking about this. Homesickness. Ugh.

I officially started my job as of 8/1, but then was away until 8/5, so I started 8/6. Today was my third day. I'm feeling a mixture of overwhelmed and frustrated. I need to read a lot and organize files, etc. But all of my like tasks (i.e. things with deadlines, actual products, etc.) are on hold except for one report that I'm editing. I hate waiting on other people, particularly when they are very busy. Oh well.

What else...um...well I decided to go hardcore on my diet/exercise routine. Very exciting - I know.

Oh super sadness - my cat, Harpo, is missing. He wasn't at home when my mom returned from her visit with me last Monday and he hasn't shown up since then. I still have hope - he is the coolest cat. He simply can't disappear. Send a little cat prayer out into the universe if you have the chance. Look how cute - this is him when he was just a teenager:

One more thing...

Another hilarious part of life right now is that there is a large tree outside my room that has these hard, round fruits. Well apparently it's that fruit's season because they are dropping like crazy. And there is a tin roof below. So I'll be sitting in my room reading and all of a sudden BOOOOOMMM. When it's raining, it's sounds like a war zone. The first time it happened, I was like what in the...??? Fun stuff.

the way out is through

This might be a long one. Apologies in advance...

I struggle with this in my journal as well - the pull to write about both the actual occurrences in my life and the things in my head. There's too much! I will try to mix it up.

I guess the main feeling I have in my life right now is that there is simply not enough time in the day. There never is and it's getting to me yet again. I'm trying to read, learn, and brainstorm as much as possible for work. I'm trying to read/take notes/do research for my thesis. I'm trying to learn Spanish. I'm exercising about an hour a day. Oh and I have a full time job. It's too much. I'm stressing out about the thesis in particular. I want to do the best job I can at INSTRAW. The more I learn about my responsibilities, the more excited I get. I was nervous at first about my abilities to handle this job. But I have the increasing feeling that I am going to do a fantastic job. My confidence in my abilities is increasing every day. Why? Because while I might not have as much of the content-related knowledge (I have not yet read every single publication on gender, peace and security or worked on these issues "in the field"), I have the passion, dedication, motivation, creativity, and discipline to get a lot accomplished; I have a fresh eye; I think strategically while also being detail-oriented. I'm sorry if this sounds like I'm selling myself to the people reading my blog. It's more for me, to be honest. And it's also because I am excited about this. Tremendously so. Nervous, yes, but excited definitely.

So I'm stressing about my thesis because I feel like I need to throw myself into this job headlong and just make as much of a mark/impact as I can in my short time. This will require a huge commitment and will not give me much thesis time. I recently reconceived my thesis topic - instead of widows and transitional justice, I want to look at the discourse of victimization in transitional justice through a gender lens. Basically, I want to look at how are "victims" defined in transitional justice both at the legal level (mandates, peace agreements, etc.) and then practically speaking (in the functioning of the transitional justice mechanisms). Then I want to look at the implications of these definitions. The legal and practical definitions of transitional justice mechanisms have tangible results on people's lives, for instance if someone receives reparations or not. But then there are also the implications for people's lives in terms of the stereotypes that surround victim discourse and the processes of self-identification as a victim. For instance, many anti-apartheid activists rejected the notion that they were victims even though they had experienced what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had defined as "gross human rights violations" because they didn't "feel like victims." By using a gendered lens, I want to tease out how the traditional "women as victims" plays out in transitional justice. It would also be interesting to look at the people that TRCs deemed as male victims with an eye towards self-identification as a victim and the hierarchy of masculinities. And then there's the whole media attention given toward transitional justice - how conflicts are talked about, which people are picked out to be portrayed in media about conflict to emphasize the innocence of one party versus the evilness of the other. And finally, there's the dichotomization of victims versus perpetrators, which, in my view, could perpetuate existing societal divisions and be a hindrance to reconciliation. So yeah. That's what I want to do. I think it could be incredibly interesting, has the potential for some really in depth theoretical work, and would also allow me to really get to know the mandates and human rights violations in the different TJ mechanisms. If only I had an academic adviser who actually communicated with me and could give me feedback and tell me whether I'm completely whacked or if it is a valid research topic. Oh well.

But the other option is to make my thesis more in line with INSTRAW's work so that when I start working on my own working paper in November, I could be doing research and writing that could be included in my thesis. That would mean doing something (most likely) on security sector reform and transitional justice. This wouldn't be as interesting to me as my first topic, but this scenario could set me up for spring semester really well.

Advice anyone? I'm struggling!

I still owe Jen a post on my work (I think my work environment) and the wealth dichotomy in the DR. But instead, I will end with these two little living life down here tidbits; ok three actually. First, most of you know, but I want to record here as well - I found a cockroach on my toothbrush. I think I need therapy just for this event. Second, I was walking to work the other day and say a bunch of DR soldiers, one of whom was holding an alto saxophone. If I had the vocab, I would have asked if I could try it out. How surprised would he have been! Third, I have been eating so well down here. Lots of fruits (pineapple, tons of papaya, mango, starfruit(!!), bananas), vegetables (eggplants are my new fav), lots of salad, low fat granola and yogurt. It's nice. AND my fabulous venezuelan roommate (the plantain queen) occassionally cooks for us/me. Last Sunday she made me typical Venezuelan food which I don't remember the name, but was like corn patties with a tomato, onion, ketchup, mayonaise salad. The next night her husband made typical Spanish food, including my new favorite: gazpacho! It's amazing! It's salad, blended, that tastes creamy and rich, but is actually excellent for you! A dream come true really.

Ok this is ridiculously long. So, I will leave you with a picture of my favorite flowers (how can you not love periwinkle colored flowers?) and get my exercise on:

(i highly recommend clicking on the photo. look at those raindrops! what an awesome photographer! :)

Oy vey what a day!

Not really. It was just long.

So the last two days we've had "project management training" which was really just like this woman telling me stuff I already knew, but in Spanish. There were a couple interesting moments, but really it was just a waste of time. And those were some damn long days. For example, for about four hours yesterday, we learned about the database that her branch of the UN uses to track projects, but it's a database that INSTRAW will never have the resources to purchase. Very helpful.

Today, I started my training for taking over my boss' job. Today I learned mostly about information management, which was mostly about the listserves she subscribes to, what she does with interesting and pertinent information, how she managers our own gender peace and security listserve, the newsletter that we publish monthly, the virtual discussions that have been held and how to hold a virtual discussion. I'm going to have a lot to do! I think it's going to be a good mix of administrative tasks and content-based stuff, which is perfect. During this and my last internship, I have found that I usually have a small number of tasks that are largely content-based. While, the content-basedness of it is really nice and I feel lucky that I have had internships that have provided me with such an amazing amount of time to learn, it's hard to do that all day and I feel like it's also unrealistic as most jobs are mixed between content and administrative. I'm sorry, but sometimes I need something mindless to do. Editing, reading, writing, thinking all day is exhausting. That may sound lazy, but that's just the way I am.

After work, I had a bit of an adventure. I had my first Spanish lesson! My teacher lives a bit far away - it takes about 25 minutes to get there from work. But I found my way and had a good lesson. It was hard to focus after 8 hours of learning new stuff at work, but I did it. The thing is, I can understand Spanish - when it's spoken "correctly." When people speak slowly and without slurring their words, dropping endings, etc., I can more or less understand. It's just that in the DR, and anywhere really, they talk super fast, drop endings, use a lot of idioms, and slur their words. It has made me more cognizant of how I speak English and I have been trying to speak better English around non-English speakers. But yeah, the lesson was good and I think it will be really helpful. Yay! I am totally going to learn Spanish.

And now...time for exercise and then thesising!