April Fools Day, Kiva Fellows Style

Quite honestly, I think creating a “fake” blog post is way harder than working on a real one. Fortunately, our satirical “Special Update from the Field” is out the door and I can go back to working on troubleshooting databases and visiting borrowers. Hope you enjoy the efforts of the 14th class of Kiva Fellows!

Fake "Update from the Field" for April Fools Day

Revelation to Action Final Event

Come to our networking and celebration event!

It’s hard to believe that the Revelation to Action competition is on the verge of completion. Six months of research, outreach, troubleshooting, brainstorming, and community-building are coming to a close but I truly hope the participants received more attention, support, and resources than they would have received in a typical grant application process. I also hope that next week’s networking and celebration event in Boston (more on that in a minute) helps lay the groundwork for future partnerships.

So, if you’re in Boston next Wednesday, July 14, you should join me, Ashoka’s Changemakers, Green Mountain Coffee, and the Revelation to Action finalists, entrants, expert commentators, partners, panelists, and community members for an afternoon of panels, networking, and celebration. Complete details can be found here but if you have any specific questions, just leave a comment and I’ll respond.

All you have to do is RSVP by July 13, 2010 to RSVP@RevelationToAction.com. Hope to see you there!

Blogging Round-Up

Photo from Chicago. Stopping off there again on this summer's road trip.

The Changemakers blogging fun continues with a post this week about “Resources for Changemakers” and a post last week about “Connecting with Changemakers“. After today, I just have two posts left before the end of the competition and the end of my contract.

While I feel a little obnoxious talking about a seven-week long summer vacation, that’s not enough to stop me from doing it anyway. As I mentioned in a previous post, we’ve got a few East Coast trips planned before we pack up the car and head back to California. I’m envisioning a lot of reading, running, hiking, yoga, and relaxing. And I’ll also take a United Nations Capital Development Fund Microfinance course as part of my Kiva prep. Plus, I promised to help Dan with skinning* his boat. We are going to get that thing in the water before we leave or else!

So we’ll have a few weeks of cleaning, packing, and checking things off lists followed by a few weeks of driving, camping, and visiting with friends and family. Should be a lot of fun!

*I love how skinning is one of those words that can also mean its opposite.

Counting Down

One of the many places Dan and I will be spending time this summer: Incheon International Airport

Well, we’ve got another action-packed summer ahead of us and I just realized that there are only a few more weeks before the fun starts in earnest.

Last week, I even checked a few things off my woefully incomplete and uncompleted check-list, including booking our tickets to Malaysia and getting some exciting immunizations (flu, typhoid, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis), but I’d rather just email long-lost friends on facebook who happen to live where we’re visiting and read random articles about Malaysian food and Malaysian reality TV.

And now for my current count-downs:

-17 days until my job ends
-18 days until visiting Dan’s grandfather in Florida
-23 days until camping in Vermont and attending some crazy-sounding Harpoon Beer festival-thing
-35 days until visiting New York for a wedding and final hang-out
-42 days until we leave Boston for a road-trip back to Southern California
-69 days until we leave for Malaysia

Can’t wait!

Plotting another road trip

Glacier National Park in Montana. Just remembered that I need to go back there.

Last summer, Dan and I quit our jobs, bought a car, and headed out west. (Well, north first and then west eventually.) After about two months on the road, we rested for a week in Southern California and then headed to South Africa for what turned out to be another two months. Back in the States, we spent a few weeks in Boston and New York and then flew to California where we thought we’d be settled for a few months before returning to New York for a job Dan had lined up for March. But in January, I landed a job based in the Northeast so we were off again, driving 3000+ miles in five days (not recommended!). This summer, we’re going to strike a balance – we’ll have about three weeks on the road before we catch our flight to Malaysia and I’m trying to figure out how we want to approach things.

I’ve got family in Chicago so we’ll definitely stop there. And we have friends in Northwestern Arkansas so even though we’d dip a little further south than planned, we might go there anyway and spend some quality time in the Ozarks. But what Dan really wants to do is check out Colorado and Utah. I have a feeling this is where we’ll spend the bulk of our time (not counting hanging out with family in the Bay Area and Santa Cruz). If you have any recommendations for things to do along the route below, let me know! (Plus, check out a few pics from last year just for fun.)

Probable road trip route for August 2010

Adam and Dan at a crappy campsite outside of Quebec City

Weird lighting in Montreal

Fun times at the Mississippi River

Homesteading: No thanks

The Badlands looking pretty badass

We crossed the border into Alberta to spend our last $10 Canadian on fries with gravy

Taking the ferry in Puget Sound. Want a cheap place to stay near Seattle? Camp on Vachon Island.

Sand dunes in Oregon

The California Coast is so damn photogenic

New Orleans

The Mississippi River

Well, I’ve waited so long to write this post that it’s hard to be sure I even went to New Orleans last week. It was a spontaneous trip – we left less than 24 hours after we booked our tickets – so we had very little time to figure out where we should stay and what we should do. My first stop for recommendations was jauntsetter, a site that amplifies my wanderlust with every post. (Sometimes I have to steer clear if I’m not able to travel any time soon because reading about all the wonderful trip ideas can be downright agonizing.) But they had great overall suggestions and specific food/drink recommendations that I quickly printed out and threw in the bag.

But my saving grace was my friend Anne who recently spent a week in New Orleans and has impeccable taste in food and fun. I knew she wouldn’t disappoint and we basically squeezed in as many activities/destinations as possible from her list. Fortunately for you, she’s agreed to let me share a few of them.

We didn’t have time to go on a walking tour, although I’d love to explore more of the city and surrounding area next time we’re in town. Anne’s tour was led by a “knowledgeable history buff” and she mentioned she’d like to go on their weekend jazz walk on her next trip. Instead of officially “touring”, Dan and I spent all afternoon wandering through the French Quarter, the Warehouse District, and the Garden District, stopping in at tasty-looking places whenever we needed a snack, a drink, or a blast of cold air.

Anne’s a big fan of local art museums and suggested the Contemporary Arts Center and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Unfortunately, they were both closed on Tuesdays so Dan and I regrouped in the Contemporary Arts Center cafe, bought a few cool pieces of local art, and moved on.

This next recommendation is apparently a “MUST SEE” but we didn’t get a chance to check it out (and it probably would have been closed anyway considering our luck). According to Anne, the Backstreet Museum is “essentially someone’s house converted to store an amazing collection of second line and authentic Black Indian Mardi Gras costumes. They are gorgeous! It’s not open every day, but if there was one thing I could have differently, it would be that we go to this place earlier on. This small tour says a lot about NOLA and the true local heritage and customs (like how the Mardi Gras most people are familiar with is not the ‘real’ Mardi Gras). The owner will also tell you where to go at night for the best shows.”

On the food front, we stopped at a number of places for snacks and meals, including Cafe Beignet (beignets, chicory coffee, po-boy), Anne-recommended Surrey’s (salad, limeade), a random Mexican place on Magazine Street (beer, margarita, tacos), and Stanley (Eggs Benedict with fried oysters, orange juice, coffee). Dinner on Tuesday night was exceptional but I’m prevented from divulging too much information about the location since the locals don’t want the restaurant overrun with tourists and Anne made me promise not to tell. Dan and I were a little full from wine and cheese thanks to Ursuline Guest House and our host Bill (more on that in a minute) but we still managed to take advantage of the delicious Spanish offerings, including ceviche, garlic shrimp, and seafood paella. Yum, yum, yum.

Other suggestions from Anne that we didn’t get around to: gumbo from Gumbo Shop and fancy, all-out dining at Commanders Palace. Next time!

Before I move on to the “music” section, I just wanted to highlight a few recommendations from our host Bill. I’m trying to make sense of my notes during the wine and cheese hour (actually, it was more like two) but here are a few more places worth trying out:
-Acme Oyster House for oysters and just about anything else seafood.
-Clover Grill on Bourbon Street. This was suggested as a good place to go if you needed breakfast before, during, or after a hangover.
-Coop’s Place for Cajun food, specifically gumbo and jambalaya.
-Some place named Gregos(?) that I can’t seem to find online.
-Oceana for some of the best crab cakes that Bill has ever had.

Sadly, Dan and I started petering out by the music part of the night but we did stop in at d.b.a. and Anne also suggested we check out Howlin’ Wolf, Maple Leaf Bar, and anywhere the Rebirth Brass Band is playing. Even though we got back to the guest house embarrassingly early, it was really fun to walk down Frenchmen Street and listen to all the music pouring into the streets. On a Tuesday night no less. Can’t wait to go back.

Cool porch in the Garden District

Possibly the creepiest sign ever

Dan's looking a little groggy at Stanley's

Waiting for the cab in front of Ursuline Guest House