load 'em up

this week, chris and i received a package full of amazingness in the mail from a friend:

so, i figured it was time to talk about something that has been haunting me and causing me great joy each evening:

deciding which books to fill my kindle with before departure.

i am absolutely a self-diagnosed book whore.  i cannot read enough.  when chris and i backpacked across europe for a month, i brought 6 books.  i sacrificed who knows how many pairs of underwear and shirts for extra poundage in paper.  and it was so worth it.

once we were invited, i realized that i would require a large number of novels to fill my book whoring needs- fiction, nonfiction, books about cambodia, books about women, books about the peace corps.

so, because of my friend's generosity, i was able to cross quite a few books about my new home and life in the peace corps off my list.  i will add that "a life inspired," ten short vignettes in, is quite good.

i've been scouring the new york times bestseller list, npr's "you must read this" and even...yes, even oprah's book list for great reads.

and i've created a list seventy books deep.  averaging that most books are between 10 to 12 dollars, we're looking at... far too much money.

the other best part of this special delivery is that as i slowly purchase my stock pile of books, i have been holding myself back from using my kindle at all, in hopes of saving everything for our move.  which means, i've had very little to read.  and now i have TONS to read! hooray!

do you have any great books that i should add to my kindle? anyone else thinking ahead about books or the like in preparation for service?

women get fat

that was the title of the draft post i jotted down a few weeks back as an idea for a future topic. and i'm leaving it because it's true-

while serving in the peace corps, women are more likely to gain weight and men are more likely to lose weight.

well, shite.

i would like to not outgrow my clothes while living in cambodia, so in preparation, chris and i have been pushing the work out wagon pretty hard lately.  we're running an obstacle course 5k this sunday, and a 10k in early june. i'm hoping we can find another race down with my parents in july, and that all of this running will stave off of some of the weight gain- especially if we keep it up during service.

we were having lunch with a friend who is a rpcv from the dominican republic and we were discussing this phenomenon that leaves women hanging (literally.)  her thinking? when you live in another culture, where men typically engage in the the higher energy/more laborious activities and women are more likely to be confined to the house or home, male volunteers have more opportunity to burn off calories.  she suggested that it's not that women eat much more than men do while serving, it's simply a lack of ability to expend the calories.

which is why, no matter how crazy my host family thinks i am, i'll be running as often as possible in the hot hot cambodian heat.