agape home.

Well, it's been about 8 months since I've sent out a plea for orphans, so I figured it was about time to call on your infinite kindness yet again.
We met Patty, who helps run the Agape Home AIDS orphanage, our first day at the Eubanks, and were immediately huge fans of hers. She has a peacefulness and a gentleness about her that is unique to find. We tracked her down at Agape Home before we left Thailand-- here she is, as documented by one of the kiddos who got their mitts on the camera:
Agape Home provides holistic care for AIDS orphans (85% of the kids there have also been diagnosed as HIV+), including antiretrovirals that have vastly extended their life expectancy, job training, foster homes in the surrounding area, and a beautiful facility for them to call home.

There is also a Mother and Baby Home designed to allow HIV+ mothers to stay with their kids. We became quite somber at the sight of a woman who appeared very, very old wandering slowly around the facility, pregnant and clearly in the late stages of AIDS. Patty later told us that she is only 16 years old, and that since moving to the center and receiving proper physical and spiritual care, she has visibly calmed down. It's a sobering sight that makes me so, so grateful for an ever-wider spectrum of blessings in my own life, and I only wish I could do more to help places like this. Donating will help them expand their foster care capacities and job training facilities, creating a sort of village of support for kids who are moving out of the home, as well as help continue to provide the advanced medications, healthy food, and clean living area that are so crucial for these kids.

Will you join me in sponsoring one of these sweet kids? It's easy even to make a one-time donation; I included the link on the righthand side there! Much like the project in Bolivia, it's really nice to know exactly where your money is going and how effective it will actually be.

I'll leave you with the parting shot I got on our way out-- a little sweetheart who rushed to the window to bid us adieu with a huge grin. Oh, my heart!

Happy Birfday, Boo!

Last weekend was meant to be a celebration of all things Schlosser: the 5 roomies all together at last, welcoming the first "mid-twenties transition" amongst us, blatantly and pointedly ignoring the looming figure of Father Time with a well-poured drink, a non-Europop song or two, and a few misplaced dance maneuvers. All of the above happened, none of them in the context we'd pictured. The timeline went as follows:

8 pm: one mattress careens through the front window, shatters the ancient glass and slices Aimee's right shoulder open.
9 pm: Aimee, Marlo and I are situated in Swedish' ER. People watching.
10 pm: the non-Europop songs begin (plus). They are on the Fashion Rocks Awards (minus). They are sung by Fergie (big minus).
10:27 pm: the misplaced dance maneuvers begin. They begin with Fergie and end with the hugely overweight woman we are sharing the ER with who has been violently screaming for 45 minutes that her tarantulas are eating her legs and that amputation is imminent. The social worker attempts to convince her otherwise. Fails. Woman calms down long enough to perform a complicated body roll upon observation of Fergie. We are stunned.
10:59 pm: another, much smaller but equally as crazy, woman appears carrying what may be the world's most well-stocked bag of salted goods. Places Doritos in front of her, crackers next to her, and Pringles in her lap. Eats Pringle after Pringle (she'd popped and couldn't, in fact, stop) until she began to lose track of where she had placed all of them and they began to accumulate on the floor below her as well as wedging themselves between her thighs. At this point realized we had spent much of our evening staring at the thighs and bosoms of fellow ER guests (visitors? victims? sociopaths?) and turned a newfound intensity of focus back to the TV.
11:05 pm: Aimee gets stitches to the sounds of tarantula woman, who had ostensibly been granted her one phone call, screaming that the hospital was going to kill her. At that point, I am fairly convinced that they gladly would have, especially considering the fact that a nurse, upon our departure, rolled her eyes in Madame Arachnid's direction and shrugged, "She's a regular." Good god. You couldn't pay me enough.

So we had, blessedly, escaped massive blood loss and gotten our dose of fluffy pop music and awkward dance moves, which is about all you can ask for in your average Friday night, I suppose.
You may be wondering about the well-poured drinks... we found them, in the form of the Silver Bullet, surrounding our two drunk roommates who had sprawled out in the living room with a case of Coors Light to wait for our return. God Bless the Rockies.

Happy Belated Birthday Schlossmo, if there is a sign that the universe loves you and wants you to be happy, it has got to be in the fact that for your big 2-4, it got you the cleanest glass cut Swedish has ever seen! Love you.

(ps. this event hit us a bit harder than it otherwise would have because it forced us to realize that it could have happened to ANY of us, which is fine, except that not all of us have medical insurance and stitches don't run cheap. Which is why I was thrilled a few days later to hear about this: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/business/14cnd-mayo.html?8au&emc=au)