Wei Xian! Buo Li! (Danger! Glass!)

My posts have been so few and far between. I've been so drained by school--sapped physically and emotionally--that I've often given up trying to muster some gem of insight or misadventure for my poor benighted blog. My discontent with what I feel I am not learning. My only partial understanding of what social work is. My own inability to figure out how I got into this school. Etc.

I'm in the throws of writing a paper about selective mutism, a condition found among school-age children whereby they refuse to speak in some settings, though will in others. It's a interesting topic, yes. But having worked all night to produce only a single page, which added to the page I already have only amounts to a whopping total of two, I just want this paper to be over with. Well, I attribute the halting work to the fact that I'm still trying to figure out how to write a social work paper. Do I need to quote a study every two sentences? I think so. Speak, paper, speak.
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I do have positive news to report. My thumb is healed! A week ago I was taking a stroll, a Saturday constitutional, when I felt something stick to the bottom of my slipper. Ah, a pretty piece of safety glass--a blue cube of (supposedly) harmless wonder. I pried it out with my fingers and continued on my way, ignoring the slight sting in my thumb. Later, reaching for a drink from my water bottle, what should I spy but blood all over my fingertips! I can safely report that after a week of washing communal dishes and cooking shrimp, I have still managed to survive without infection. I love my immune system.

Is your bedside companion round and orange like mine?

I made a pilgrimage the other day to the Berkeley Bowl, a grocery store that is spoken of with so much awe among the natives that I had to wonder, once I stepped passed its sliding doored, "Is this the bliss that is Berkeley Bowl?" It actually amounted to a rather cramped miniature of Whole Foods, but I do credit it with providing me with the newest and cutest addition to the piles of papers and books on my desk.

Is this the bliss that is mini pumpkins? Some things are nice in miniature.

Accio veins!

I volunteered once again to help with Hepatitis B testing, this time at a historic community center in San Francisco's Chinatown. The site is Cameron House, which during the 1800s provided housing to Chinese women who were lured to immigrate to America with promises of prosperity only to find "Golden Mountain" California to be anything but golden. Apparently there are still tunnels under the facility.

This time there were several medical students from UC San Francisco drawing blood as part of their training, much to some of the clients' chagrin. I see now how much skill really is required to be a good phlebotomist, especially when I decided to submit my arm to poking to get tested. I got an experienced phlebotomist, but even then my veins were incredibly hidden. After a fruitless, but painful, search for veins the phlebototmist settled for a vein in my hand. If only a simple tournaquette and tapping could produce juicy tubes of bloods.

To my future nursing friends, don't even think about asking me to help you learn to draw blood. I draw the line at blood pressure.

normative faux pas

What's a word that means "suseptible to influence" or "subject to influence"? I was talking to a classmate and tried to use the word "normative" when talking about trying to make a difficult decision and totally caught me using the word incorrectly. Sadly, what I want the word to mean has nothing to do with what it actually means. So before the lexicon police come after me, help me find the word I'm looking for! I'll stick it on my running list of new words. And I'll think of something nice to send you. Coupon for Quiznos?

Beshkempir, my son!

School continues to frustrate, so I thought I would write about something more uplifting.

I went to Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive to watch a Kyrgyk movie about a boy who's sense of identity is tested when he learns that he is adopted. Besides presenting beautifully mischievous scenes of adolescent boys causing minor mayhem in their rural village, the film gently unfolds a boy's passage from childhood into adulthood. The lingering scenes of country life are sweet without being sacchrine and honest without being didactic. There are moments when showing tells so much more than dialogue ever can.

And there is always the strangeness, for me, of observing the faces of Central Asian people and trying to fit their features into my conception of Asians. Sometimes I imagine that they must be Chinese, but then they'll begin speaking something that sounds to me like Korean. The main character, Beshkempir, also looks like a Chinese boy from my fifth grade class.

Another great movie from the steppes is The Story of the Weeping Camel. Beautiful landscapes and adorable children in padded jackets.