October 2011
1 post
September 2011
1 post
2 tags
August 2011
4 posts
Just another Sunday morning, running with the Prez... →
5 tags
Innovative Mobile Marketing
Everyone has a cell phone in Liberia, but there has been little in the way of differentiation among providers. We use Cellcom, which is the slightly more expensive provider that most Liberians would say has more exciting marketing. I think I remember seeing somewhere that Cellcom has about 41% market-share versus LoneStar’s 48%. Most of both companies customers are very much at the bottom of...
July 2011
1 post
June 2011
1 post
May 2011
1 post
April 2011
1 post
Paving and Tasting Progress
Liberia has seriously surprised me over the past couple weeks. The other night, while walking down the street to my favorite local sushi place, I was passed by a local on rollerblades. Then a couple days later, I saw yet another rollerblader in an entirely different part of town. Now, I don’t usually give much though to rollerblading — I lost interest circa 1992 after a fall in...
March 2011
1 post
3 tags
Paying to read my favorite paper? Blasphemous.
I knew this day was coming; I’ve spent months trying to come to terms with my conflicted feelings about it. Still, I just can’t quite fathom the concept of paying to read the news online.
In case you’re not hooked on The New York Times and haven’t heard, the paper announced today it is putting a stop to its online reading freeloaders. Effective March 28, if you want to...
February 2011
3 posts
January 2011
3 posts
3 tags
Going Up Country
The hubs and I leave this weekend for a week of voter registration monitoring in Maryland County, along Liberia’s border with Ivory Coast. We have a two day, 18-hour drive to get out there, which is slightly crazy considering Liberia is only about the size of Tennessee. We’re staying in Harper, which is straight down the coast from Monrovia, but luckily for us, there isn’t a road...
December 2010
5 posts
Ameriika
The past six months in Liberia have helped me to love my country more than ever before. Obviously, I have always been a fan of democracy, liberty and freedom, but there’s a few other things I didn’t appropriately appreciate previously. We’ve been on the ground in Chicago for about three hours awaiting our next connection; here’s a sampling of the things I’ve been...
5 tags
Feeling Festive
This weekend was all about the holiday festivities, which was slightly weird since it is always about 87-degrees with 95% humidity outside (seriously). Anyway, we hit up the Embassy’s Holiday Arts and Crafts Fair, a holiday concert, and a new Chinese restaurant (shout out to our Jewish readers, picked your Christmas Day Chinese place yet?).
The Holiday Fair was Saturday morning. I was on...
3 tags
Mark's Famous
The hubs gets quoted in the newspapers out here fairly frequently. Pretty much anytime the Consular Section announces anything he’ll be quoted. I’ve actually seen articles that simply read “Mark says…” with no last name, no title, just Mark. He’s got some visibility for sure, but things recently moved to a new level.
We were hanging out at our favorite expat...
2 tags
On the Home Stretch
Yesterday was the hubs’ one year anniversary of arriving in Liberia. We celebrated last night with fried chicken and good wine.
We got delivery from Monroe Chicken, a new place that just opened up downtown. It’s kinda KFC-ish, only a bit fancier, and far tastier considering there’s nothing else like it in the country. Dinner for two ran $31. This is Liberia after all ;)
Kudos to Kirsten →
There’s just something so exciting about seeing great people get the recognition they deserve. The HuffPost profiled LIFT (formerly NSP) CEO Kirsten Lodal as their greatest person of the day. I can’t say enough good things about my time with LIFT and Kirsten. Check out the article and feel free to donate in my honor ;)
November 2010
6 posts
2 tags
Gobble Gobble
We celebrated Thanksgiving day with a big ‘ole potluck at the Ambassador’s residence. I made my mom’s carrot souffle and cornbread recipes. The hubs made an excellent pumpkin inspired cinamon-honey-butter-concoction. I was really proud of the carrot souffle. It fell by the time we arrived at the Ambassador’s but (a) it rose initially and (b) it was my first time making...
3 tags
The Miraculous Trip to the Mechanic
Friday afternoon as we were driving through the gates in front of the Embassy, some dude tried to flag our car down. People are always trying to flag the car down for one reason or another (generally when I’m driving it’s because there is a white woman, gasp, at the wheel), so I paid no attention to it. The hubs was driving and he’s a little less skeptical about such...
4 tags
Marine Ball, Y'all
Last year Mark and I happened to be staying at the Richmond Marriott the night of the Marine Ball. We got to see lots of barely legal folks in fancy dresses and snazzy uniforms clogging elevators and thundering down hallways. Mark was running the Richmond Marathon the next morning, which starts from just outside the hotel, so we thought staying at the hotel would help ensure a restful,...
Richmond-Liberia Ties →
Who knew?
Happy Liberian Thanksgiving
We’ve celebrated by staying in our pajamas until 5:00 p.m., watching disk seven of Ken Burn’s Baseball, baking three loaves of bread for a bake sale, and working out with Wii Active. Gotta love a mid-week lazy day.
Pumpkin Please →
I miss fall: sweaters, foliage, and pumpkin flavored goodness. Slate reviewed the pumpkin offerings at Pinkberry, Jamba Juice, Dunkin Donuts, and Starbucks. Aside from Starbucks, it seems most of the offerings don’t really taste pumpkiny. That said, I would still consider trading my husband for a little something, anything, pumpkin.
Anyone want to send us a can of pumpkin? I’d...
October 2010
4 posts
3 tags
horrifying the help
Our housekeeper, Kebbeh, is quite possibly the sweetest woman ever. She comes three days a week, saves Mark and me from tragedy that would be washing our own dishes and generally keeps things lovely. In return, I decided to scare her to death this morning. It wasn’t an intentional act of cruelty. It is just that our apartment building was really poorly designed.
Our building is arguably...
6 tags
great, glorious ghana
Whenever I mentioned to folks out here that Liberia was the first country I’d ever been to in Africa, I’d always get the same response: “Don’t judge the rest of West Africa on Liberia.” I got the gist of the statement — Liberia certainly needs work — but it was not until our Ghana trip that I finally understood. To put things bluntly, Liberia is an utter...
2 tags
monrovia city tour, part 2
We’re back from glorious, glorious Ghana. Before I get to that recap, here are a few final highlights from our Monrovia city tour.
We got to check out the place where all the presidential inaugurations are held. I can’t remember what the building is called, but the amusing/appalling highlight was a trio of bronze busts at the head of the building. Charles Taylor had busts made of...
1 tag
big news
Our internet and cable are finally up and running. Words cannot describe the excitement. I’d be tempted to stay home all weekend just to sit in front of the TV and play on my computer, but we’re headed to Ghana tomorrow for a much needed vacation.
Yay!
Be on the lookout for decidedly overdue updates and emails next week. Ooh, and maybe some iChat action too!
September 2010
3 posts
2 tags
summer camp vs. liberia
We got mail today. A lot of mail today. Two magazines and three packages (yay belated birthday presents (thanks, Mom))! Mark hasn’t brought everything home yet for us to open, and I’m already super excited. Getting mail in Liberia is a lot like getting mail at summer camp — a rare and exciting treat. The commonalities between life in Liberia and life as a summer camper...
2 tags
monrovia city tour, part 1
For those of you eagerly awaiting your chance to visit us in Liberia (or looking for excuses not to visit), here’s a bit of what Monrovia has to offer. The photos below are from a tour we took of the city — it was actually the first guided tour of the city since the war. It’s definitely promising that people are slowly beginning to invest in luxuries like tourism, but as...
4 tags
getting (kinda) back to work
After two long and lovely months of reading for fun, sleeping late, baking bread, and watching The Wire, I decided it was time to re-enter the world of productive people. I started volunteering full time a week ago Wednesday at Liberty Finance.
Liberty Finance is a local micro-finance institution with about 9000 clients and 6 branches in Liberia. It was started in 2005 as a program run by the...
August 2010
7 posts
3 tags
the guinea fowl predicament
We had dinner last Sunday night with a Lebanese businessman, Mr. N, and his family. Mr. N is a really nice guy. The kind of guy you can bump into at Mama Susu’s restaurant one night and who will invite you to join his full family the following week for dinner. The kind of guy who remembers when one’s husband casually mentions over dinner that he likes guinea fowl and wonders if...
3 tags
a boat-load of books
I don’t typically get excited about missionary work, but I am officially a fan of folks with OM Ships International. They run an international ministry sailing into various countries, bringing books, supplies and missionaries to help with medical and dental clinics, building projects, library trainings and the like.
Earlier this month they sailed into the Liberian port for two weeks of...
1 tag
our wedding looks all fancy...in photo summary... →
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world market delivers...
I got my day sofa assembly instructions via email. I am beyond impressed with World Market’s customer service.
This also means our apartment is finally fully unpacked. Pictures will come soon — we’re just waiting on the Embassy to send someone to hang all our stuff on walls first.
Also, please note how bureaucracy rules our lives…we can’t even hang pictures...
1 tag
we got wedding pictures!
Lots and lots of wedding pictures. This is one of my faves…
You can see the rest here.
putting world market to the test
I love, love, love World Market. Their stores are happy places, I always feel like I find great stuff, and their customer service is pretty darn solid. In fact, when I first moved to Chapel Hill for grad school, I felt like the first people I got to know all worked at World Market since I kept going back to buy office furniture. Granted, I didn’t really get to know them, but they gave me...
a dirty little secret
I have this friend who makes the best playlists ever. She even made our wedding playlist, so we’d have awesome tunes even when the band was on break. One of the songs she included was a bit…not my usual. I trust her taste and downloaded the song anyway, lest I risk ruining the flow of the playlist. When I told the hubs about the song, he too scoffed. So not our style.
Flash...
July 2010
8 posts
3 tags
i'm in love with mama susu
We had takeout last night for Mark’s birthday dinner (I know, I know…I’m sooo domestic). Mark picked the place and the menu; I came along for the ride. When we arrived at the restaurant, Mama Susu greeted us, smothered me with kisses, and gave us beers while waiting for our food to finish.
We sat and chatted a bit. She was shocked I’d never had lamb; I explained we...
2 tags
it's a big day
1) I drove by myself today to the grocery store. It’s hard to express just how exciting and liberating it is to finally feel brave enough to drive after a month of avoiding it like the plague.
2) It’s Mark’s birthday. I baked a key lime pie from a box for the occasion ;)
liberia's supernatural elephants garner... →
This has seriously been the talk of the town for weeks. The local newspapers keep reporting there’s “scientific proof” the elephant had supernatural powers…
3 tags
ode to an egg crate
I have this on-again off-again love affair with Anthropologie. On the one hand, their stuff is cute and fairly unique; on the other, it’s often totally impractical and unnecessarily expensive. Take for instance the Farmer’s Egg Crate:
It’s bright and cute. But who really cares enough about their eggs to transfer them from the carton? What kind of person really has that...
our first pro wedding photo! →
1 tag
living like a luddite
I know, I know, I promised updates. I’ve been remiss. We don’t yet have internet access or the ability to plug much in, which means I’m being forced to live free of technology. Oh how I miss my gadgets and regular communication with you guys. I promise I’ll do better, hopefully soon…