Sex Ed, Peace Corps Style

During the three months of pre-service training in Ukraine, my training cluster had several visits from the medical office to give us inoculations, supplies and some general health lessons, the most memorable of which was the sexual health lecture. Lasting several hours, it was as explicit and comprehensive a sexual education class as you can imagine, complete with a mandatory rolling of a condom on a rubber penis that we all had to do before we could be officially sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers. The intensity and frankness of this lesson (and the subsequent availability of an unlimited supply of condoms and birth control pills) felt almost a little desperate, leaving us all with the notion that we were important people and our choices actually mattered. After all, the government was investing a lot of time and money in us so we could do a specific and important series of jobs, so this attitude made sense. We were valuable resources and the Peace Corps had a vested interest in protecting us, even from ourselves.

That lesson stuck with me, and I imagine that it had a similar impact on other PCV's because, despite having a very large number of (sexually active) volunteers, the PC-Ukraine program had/has almost no one leave the service for sexually-related issues (STI's, pregnancy, etc). My point is this, though: why on earth shouldn't the same sense of desperation and intensity be applied to every single high school sexual education class in America? The conditions are similar, after all--lots of time/money being invested in the students (tens of thousands), the risks are tremendous since so many are inevitably sexually active anyway, and the correlation between comprehensive sex ed and lower pregnancy and STI rates is clear. It's like we were only worthy of receiving complete and accurate sexual education (and the needed birth control to functionally follow through on those teachings) because we were important Peace Corps Volunteers, which is just silly--every teen in America is just as important and deserves that same treatment.

Tough choices

A few weeks ago I was at a restaurant and needed to pee. It had been a while and I had had several beverages, so I was ready to have one of those Austin Powers pees that lasts 3 minutes and involves me putting my hand against the wall. However, when I got into the men's room, there was a problem. See, in the one and only stall someone was having violent, loud, offensively smelly diarrhea (did I mention this was a Mexican restaurant? Does that help explain it? Think a bad reaction to 8 pounds of chips and salsa) and the one and only urinal was apparantly broken and wouldn't flush, though that hadn't stopped what I could only assume were dozens of men from pissing in it anyway. So, I was left with decision--wait out that guy with dysentery or add my contribution to the bright yellow urine pool and probably get spash-back piss on me and my clothes, plus hepatitis.

Life is all about the tough choices.

In the end, I chose to just hold it and wait for the sweet salvation of my home toilet. I made it, though it was a photo-finish. The best bathroom stories always are.

Cars

Jessica hadn't ever been to Seattle, so last weekend we decided to go visit our Peace Corps friends Katie and Kelly, who are universally some of the coolest cats you'll ever want to meet. Kelly likes Asian stuff and Katie likes to say the phrase, "or it gets the hose again," so we knew we were in for a good ole' time. Being responsible adults, we took the new(er) car we were driving/being given by my super awesome aunt and uncle to a mechanic for a trip inspection the day before we were planning to leave, and he topped off the fluids and told us that everything was fine.

*cut to creepy behind-the music theme* But then, on our drive up, everything changed.......

We actually made pretty good (OK, average) time up to Seattle considering that it was rush hour on a Friday, but after having driven 175 miles from Portland, the car stopped working about 5 blocks from Katie and Kelly's place. When I tried to drive, the car wouldn't go forward...I put the pedal to the floor and it barely moved, so I swerved off into a parking lot and called AAA. After waiting an hour and a half, a super-nice tow truck driver showed up and he took me (Jess went ahead to our friend's place) to a repair shop about 2 miles away, but not before a mean parking lot attendant showed up and demanded 10 dollars for parking in his lot EVEN THOUGH MY CAR WAS BEING TOWED AWAY BECAUSE IT WASN'T WORKING.

The more concerning problem(s), though, was the fact that I was starting a new job in Portland on Monday morning and I absolutely couldn't miss that first day. After talking with the mechanics on Saturday morning, they said they knew it was a transmission problem but that they couldn't fix it until Monday when the "tranny guy" (hehe) showed up. That meant that I had to leave Jessica in Seattle for a few more days and take the train back Sunday afternoon (which was fantastic--Amtrak is amazing and totally beats the crap out of Ukrainian trains!!!).

The bill came out to be about $900, of which I'm paying $300 and my super nice aunt and uncle are paying $600. We were considering just leaving the car in Washington if the bill was any more expensive than that, but it turns out that it's easier to commit a double murder and get away with it than it is to legally abandon or sell a broken car in Washington. The logic was, "well, we can pay 6oo bucks to dump the car there or pay 300 more and have the car." So, Jessica is road tripping it back to PDX tomorrow norning (in the car) and I'll be glad to have her home. All in all, she will have gotten to see a lot more of Seattle than she had planned, but all things considered, it didn't end as badly as it could have.

OMG SPELLING BEEEEEEEE!

I got up at 7:00 this morning to watch the Scripps National Spelling Bee Semi-Finals. This is my favorite time of year, I love this stuff. It's the only thing that would make me toggle between a Blazer playoff game (during the commercials or course). My prediction is Kavya Shivashankar and Sidharth Chand is the finals. Kavya has been in the top 10 the last three years, which is the Spelling Bee equivalent of eating 100 hot dogs in 10 minutes or something, and Sidharth got 2nd last year in his first bee, and you KNOW he wants to get that one back. There are even places where you can BET on not just who will win/lose, but on how many syllables the last word will have, whether it will be a noun/adjective/verb, if a kid will faint and/or throw up and if a parent will start screaming...I would post the link here but since the Bee has started, they stopped taking bets (of course). When in doubt, back the Indian kids to do well. Think about it--good news comes in threes. 1) The Assassination of Pakistani Political Leader Benazir Bhutto, 2) Slumdog Millionaire winning all those Oscars, and now THIS. JAI HOOOOOOOO!

Quick edit--First, I don't actually think Bhutto getting killed was good news. It was a joke and it wasn't even that funny. So yeah. Also, I wrote a short story about Spelling Bees three years ago. Enjoy?! http://cliffgardner.blogspot.com/2006/02/bee-all-you-can-be.html

Slow your roll

Nothing bothers me more than bike riders who roll around Portland with a huge sense of entitlement. We’ve gone out of our way to make PDX as bike-friendly as possible—there are huge bike lanes, places to hang bikes on public transportation and lots of well-established bike paths, and I’m not against any of these efforts. It’s a good thing to encourage people to bike places for a myriad of reasons, and I understand that, and for the most part, bicyclists are awesome. However, far too often, bikers ride through traffic, cut through intersections and turn lanes with no regard for anyone else, and act as though they deserve to do whatever they want on our roads--this attitude has got to change. Bicyclists need to understand that they are part of a larger community of commuters just trying to get places and they are not entitled to treat other people with such disrespect. Riding a bike does not make you better or more deserving of human decency than anyone else, and it's time that more Portland bikers got that through their heads.

I tweeting this blog right now

If you don't know, I'm the funniest Twitter person alive. Check me out at www.twitter.com/notalentclown, you'll be glad you did. What I like about twitter is that I can update my account from my cell phone, so the world doesn't have to wait to get hit in the face with my giant, swinging hilarity.

There's been a pretty big void in my life since all my favorite shows ended for the season. I was watching (and making Jessica watch) the Tudors, The Office, 30 Rock, The Girls of Hedsor Hall and The Tool Academy every week. Now all I'm left with is The Duel 2 (Evan's going to win, FYI) on MTV, plus whatever movie is on BET, Spike TV or random On Demand channels X, Y, Z and John Stewart/Colbert the amazing. Normally I would feel super guilty about watching this much TV, but after going 2 years without any real form of entertainment and considering that I'm about to start grad school where I presumably won't be able to watch much of anything, I think I'm allowed. Three cheers for technology.

Finally, I want you all to know that I've put on lots of weight since I got home from Peace Corps. I'm weighing in at 161 pounds right now, which for me is HUGE. When I was at Willamette, I weighed 115. For most of Peace Corps, I weighed 125-130. That was about 6 months ago. At this rate of 5 pounds a month, I'm going to on season 16 of The Biggest Loser in a few years--I'm even practicing my flabby arm thrusts of victory.

The (somewhat) bad news is that all of this weight gain is coming while I'm running between 5 and 10 miles a day, which just confirms my theory that my body does what it wants and no one can stop it. I spent about 3 years doing everything I could to gain weight and was completely unsuccessful, so it stands to reason that the opposite would also be true. The good news is that I've consulted multiple (internet) doctors and my Body Mass Index is still within the acceptable range (though just barely) and everyone seems to like this "filling out" I've done since I got home. Still, feel free to make fat jokes at my expense, I really don't mind.

Gotta go watch The Duel 2 now. LET'S GO EVAN!

10 things we've learned this week

I'm writing this from beautiful Southern California, where it's 70 all year and no one cares about anything. That's not true, it's not always 70. Seriously though, people care about the Lakers, which for me is like living in Occupied Paris. ANYWAY, here are things that I've learned along with the rest of society this week:

1) Don't show teenage hoo-ha in yearbook photos. It's bad news bears.

2) From TLC, it looks like Jon probably cheated on his wife (and all 8 of his kids because he hurt them too), and Kate might have even cheated on him. I've been saying for a while that Jon looks like the most miserable man in the world. Look at it this way--10 years ago, Kate (who is seriously cute now) was probably a straight up hottie when Jon, who is kinda funny looking, married her. My point is, whenever there's this big of a difference in attractiveness in a relationship, there's usually a catch. For Jon, it took a while, but the catch ending up being him having absolutely no choices anymore and living with someone who's hobbies include nagging, singing songs about school buses, and more nagging. OF COURSE it was wrong for Jon to cheat on his wife. It was stupid and horrible...and also one of the five more predictable things to happen in the history of reality TV. Just saying.

3) Darius Miles is a tool. The last holdout from the Jailblazers era got busted for weed, driving with a suspended license, and for general asshole behavior last night. He's also, apparently, the reason OJ Mayo is acting like a spoiled tool. Great move, Memphis. I hope it was worth it.

4) Pam might be preggers. I for one can't wait for the baby names episode next season.

5) Brandon Roy made the all-NBA 2nd team and was invited to try out for the Olympic team (along with Greg Oden and LaMarcus Aldridge). He was also the youngest person on the all-NBA list. THE FUTURE IS NOW. We have one of the top-7 best players in the league, and my argument is that we can't have a "well, just wait until they get better, they're so young, just be patient" attitude.

Look at it this way--when the Celtics got KG and Ray Ray two Summers ago, everyone thought the team was built more for 2009 more than 2008 for a myriad of reasons, and the attitude was, "we're going to win in 2009 so anything we get with these guys this first year is just a bonus." Well, every Celtics fan is really happy they won it all last year because KG snapped his knee in half and it looks like he'll never be the same. My point is, in the NBA, YOU NEVER KNOW. What if Brandon Roy hurts his knee(s) again? What if LaMarcus opts out in two years because the Sacramento Kings want to give him max money? What if Rudy decides to play for a team that runs more, like New York, or just go back to Spain? We have a great roster now but we can't afford to wait for these guys to mature. The Blazer front office needs to make some big moves this off season to put us in a position to win a championship next year. Everyone in Portland needs to have a win-now attitude while we still have a championship window.

6) Long Beach is amazing! I love everything about it--the location, the team, the coaches, the facilities, the program. The next two years are going to be fun, hard, challenging, exciting and amazing. I can't wait!

7) Twitter is fun. I've updated...a lot...in the past few days and I'm really enjoying myself. Check me out at notalentclown.

8) I'm really hoping to be a special guest on the321podcast because, as a spelling bee enthusiast, I feel I have a duty to tell as many people as possible about the upcoming competition.

9) Star Trek is great. I saw it twice and loved it twice. The hot green chick was one of Charlie Wilson's assistants, FYI. Seriously, IMDB that. When I texted my friend Hillary, who's from Iowa, about Kirk being from her homeland, she replied with a gruff, "Of course he is! EVERYONE knows that!" Um, no, actually--most people don't know that. Iowans really like their Star Trek, I guess. BTW, did you all know that at the Iowa State Fair every year there's a giant model of something out of butter? Last year is was a butter Shawn Johnson, the Olympic Gold Medal-winning gymnast. This year, I'm hoping for James T. Kirk.

10) I am happier now that I've ever been. Life is great! P.S.--Jessica is amazing.