KINDLES and hikes

1. I gotta Kindle*.

8 year old me is validated right now. Aside from radio, another thing that I've always loved since I was a child--libraries.

When I was little, I lived about a mile down the road from Hickory Grove Public Library. It's a small library where my mom would take me with my sisters, and we would  bee-line straight for the kids books. One day mini-Aja entered the library and all at once discovered that the kids books no longer held her interest. They were too easy. . .so that day I LITERALLY went up to a librarian and asked her if they had any more books. She simply grinned and gestured with her arms toward, well. . .the rest of the library.

And thus a love was born. I used to think that the library had a rule that I could only check out three books at a time. When I got a little older I discovered that this was just my mom's rule, not the library's. It was her way of making sure that my sisters and I didn't check out gazillions of books and lose them in the house somewhere. (Good thing there were three of us chilluns checking out books at the same time. If you collaborate with your two counterparts, you can essentially, for all intents and purposes, check out nine books at a time and never go without a book to read.)

Dude, they let you take home books for FREE in there. And even though you're not even old enough to drive yet, you can have your OWN library card. So legit.

And then I discovered the Dewey Decimal system and the downtown library. You can look up a book that you want in the catalogue, find out if there's an available copy of it ANYWHERE IN THE CITY and do thinks like put it on hold or get it sent to a library close to you. (The librarian at my school thought I was clever for not buying the 5th Harry Potter book, but instead putting it on hold at the library down the street and reading it when it came in.) Finding a book in a library is like a treasure hunt. You catalogue search an author or a title, write down the call number, and go through the shelves on different floors to find what you're looking for. You can even give the product a little test-drive. . .ya know, read a few pages of the book to see if you like the writing style and stuff.

Later in life I discovered used books and Amazon.com, but that's another story.

So, being anti-technology, I was not initially impressed with the idea of a Kindle. I like BOOKS, not .MOBI files. Then I moved to Panama, where the reading culture is. . .less present. I miss libraries! Getting my hands on a book I wanted to read proved a little more difficult. (Although I did get it in on some books circulating though the hands of fellow volunteers.)

Given the context of Peace Corps Panama, a Kindle is AWESOME!!! I have like 70 books on mine right now, plus an edition of Economist magazine. (What up news source? There are no papers in my town.) I just KNOW my productivity will go down following this new development. I am SO EXCITED about all the books I'm going to read. Some of the East Siders have already been giving me a hard time about straight up ignoring everyone around me so that I can go read on my Kindle.

I'm foreseeing replays of elementary school, when I didn't want to do my homework because I was reading library books. I mean, who wants to work on an English teaching seminar when I have. . .I mean. . .books? (Is 'book' really the proper word to use if it's on a Kindle? I'll ponder that, later.)

Anyway, Kindle=Awesome. I broke down and read Hunger Games among other things. #teampeeta

2. I went on a hike. It was so fun. Don't kid yourself, hiking is not Aja's strong suit, but she had a great time.

*Shouts out to my fellow G72-er/East Sider/wanna-be Darienita (but you feel the struggle tho) Danny for bringing me the Kindle! I ordered it online and had it shipped to his house in Ohio so that he could retrieve it for me when he visited Ohio for Christmas.

You've got mail!!

Shouts out to the 704, 803 and 919. . .and. . .well, 252, I guess.

What I mean to say is, Ebony Kennedy wins mad cool points.

Every once in awhile I buy some cheap international minutes to call my sister in North Carolina. As the holidays approached and I knew she would be seeing a lot of the fam, I told her to tell everyone to write me letters and to send pictures if she could. I also commented several times that I didn’t actually think anybody would do it.

Welp, Ebony took it upon herself to collect letters for me at Christmas and mail them all to me herself! It was a huge surprise. She didn’t tell me that she was mailing anything, just shot me a message 2 weeks after sending me the mail, letting me know that I should have mail arriving soon.

In the package, I found letters from a bunch of my family members. (I have a huge extended family.) There were even some scribbles from the babies. :) The package also included pictures of the family from Christmas dinner, and a picture of the ‘WRITE TO AJA’ box that was evidently circulated by my sister. . .which was wrapped in shiny, glittery, green paper and decorated with a red bow.

It was SO AWESOME to hear from everybody. A couple of my Peace Corps friends that were present when I received the package laughed at my immediate reaction upon opening the package which was displaying the letters and exclaiming ‘LOOK! PEOPLE LOVE ME!’

Thanks so much to everybody at home in the Carolinas who didn’t forget about me on Christmas. :) I love you all and can’t wait to see you whenever I get back to the States!

I ALSO have to, of course, give a shout out to my co-dictator of the free world and  fellow globetrotter Shelby Lake! I received a letter from him at the post office the same day I got letters from my family. As a fellow globetrotter, he understands how special it is to get a letter in the mail when you’re overseas. AND it was written on bright, ridiculous Japanese stationary. . .what more could you want? Shelby, hurry up and figure out where in Asia you’re gonna be next year so I can look at plane tickets!

The letters are the most exciting thing to happen to me, recently. Other than that, I’ve just been enjoying the summer (read: dry season) weather.  It’s the same temperature, but without the rain, and it actually gets chilly at night so you don’t wake up sweaty. :) I’m spending my time reading, hanging out around my community and with other volunteers who pass through and trying to get prepared the best I can for the end part of my summer, which promises to be super busy. . .I’ll keep you all updated!

Much love to you all at home!