Lychee-Coconut Cupcakes with Ginger Frosting 4 stars, Dallas airport 2 stars

In my post-Peace Corps stupor where I live in awe of hot running water, wall-to-wall carpeting, and being pretty clean most of the time, I've started baking but I'm also starting to lose my mind. In some countries this is considered progress. The lychee-coconut cupcakes with ginger frosting got rave reviews from my friends and family. The lychee is subtle, if you're not told that the lychee there it just seems like an extra tasty, mildly coconut cake. The cream cheese frosting that includes ground and fresh grated ginger with candied ginger on top really won everyone over. I cannot say that I followed the recipe exactly. I started to but I used coconut cream from a can instead of from the package like they suggest because I had it in the pantry already. Maybe that was the problem, but the batter for the cakes was really, really thick, probably thicker than toothpaste and sticky, which seemed problematic. So, to make it just a tad thinner I used about 1/3 cup warm water and about 1/3 cup liquid from the can of lychee fruit. In the end they were moist and had a good texture, but the frosting... make the frosting. I even used low-fat cream cheese and it was so fabulous.

So now I'm on my way to St. Louis, MO to visit family. As you might expect the Dallas airport is mostly very uninspiring. But, the reason that I'm in the Dallas airport inspired me. I was getting on my 5pm direct flight to St. Louis when I realized that my laptop that I was bringing along to continue to look for jobs and show my grandma my photos from Peace Corps, was not in my hot little hand. EEEEK! Heart attack! In this moment I was literally handing the gate agent my ticket so I had to run out of line and look in the waiting area. It was GONE! An airport employee saw me nervously pacing around the waiting room and as we do not like nervous people in airports, doing unexpected things like running out of line, he came to see what was the matter. When he realized that I was looking for something he smiled.

"Green laptop?"

"Oh my God, YES!" I squealed like a sorority girl.

"Already down in lost and found."

WHAT?!?! You have to love Texas and so many places in the US where leaving your laptop in the airport waiting area in the middle of major financial hardship for most people results in it ending up in the airport lost and found and not in you losing all of those half done job applications, all of your Peace Corps photos and the $600 that it cost you. I could have kissed this man, except I was busy problem solving how to get to my grandma's house. Unfortunately, because the lost and found is far away from the gates and outside of security I missed the plane to go and get it. Then my new, indirect flight left late so I missed my connection. American wouldn't pay for the hotel so the Peace Corps budget had me sleeping in the airport. That I believe is bunk, but whatever. I slept on a Coleman cot, with my laptop, in the back corner of the employee lounge after kindly gate agent took pity on me. Trying to regain my mental acuity is a bumpy road but, the road is sweet with cream cheese-ginger frosting.

The Unforseen cupcake on day 25 back in the US

I borrowed these images from edwardsaquifer.net

I'm starting to feel reemerged in the place and culture of my hometown. Austin is famous for being a cool, young, fun, creative place to live and like all Austinites I'm proud of that reputation but, the growth that Austin has experienced between the time I was a small child in far south Austin and today is ambiguously breathtaking. It's like I don't know if I'm once again watching the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen from the top of the hill at Davis Lane and William Cannon, or if I've been hit in the stomach with freeways, toll roads, and people who literally have bumper stickers advertising their zip code like it's freaking Beverly Hills. That and I'm lost all the time. I literally have no idea where all these freeways go. I guess my excuse is that I've really only lived here about 3 of the last 13 years. I can't stay but I can't really stay away either.

I'm so fortunate that some dear friends who served in the Peace Corps live here in Austin. Angela, Patrick and I went out to St. Edward's University last night where they were showing a movie called The Unforeseen about the growth down in south and west Austin and the fight local environmental groups put up to protect Barton Creek and the Edward's Aquifer. If you're not from here it's hard to explain what these mean for Austin. The creek feeds an huge natural swimming pool that is a place every Austinite remembers fondly and where many, many of us learned to swim. The Aquifer is the drinking water for all of the surrounding area but it also creates a really interesting ecosystem around here. If you're traveling here from west Texas you really notice when you get to the Hill Country because there is just so much more water. Anyway the fight to protect it was complicated because people wanted to move to this great place and economic growth is good for those of us who have been here a while. And a lot of it happened about 5 minutes down the road from the house I where I grew up. The film does great justice to the complex picture and interests at play, particularly for the main developer of the time Gary Bradley. It would have been easy, but not very compelling to make a movie about the greedy and evil land developer. Laura Dunn chose instead to examine the power and influence of our economic system in each of our lives.

So, as I deal with my ongoing reverse culture shock I'm going to make cupcakes. My brother recently moved out of a house where he lived with roommate who was a chef. We found tons of prepared Asian foods buried in the depths of the pantry, including canned lychee fruits and coconut cream. I'm off to make some Lychee-Coconut Cupcakes with Ginger-Cream Cheese Frosting. I'll tell you how they turn out.

Robert Frost's Inaugural Poem for President John F. Kennedy

I'm watching the inauguration of Barack Obama, my country's first black president. This poem about becoming was read by Robert Frost at Kennedy's inauguration.

~ The Gift Outright ~

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia.
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak.
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

~ Robert Frost; 1874-1963 ~

And we're back!

The last sunset in Rinconada.

I had to take a break from blogging for a while. I see this blog as sharing my experiences, what I'm learning, and what's going on in my bubble. For a while there was just so much happening so quickly that I didn't know how to summarize it for your reading pleasure. I missed you and I do apologize for my unexplained absence. Thanks to all of my friends and blog readers who contacted me to make sure that all is well.

So, my life in brief since Nov. 2, 2008:

Nov. 4: I closed Peace Corps service. DONE! My fiancee, Michael and I watched my country elect the first African-American President from a raucous and celebratory living room filled with gringos in Lima, Peru.

Nov. 6 - 13: I bussed it up to Ancash,Peru and hiked the Santa Cruz trail, a 3 day hike that reached 4,700 meters in the central Andes.

Nov. 19 - Dec. 9: I flew down to Argentina with my friends Casey, Amanda and Travis for a 3 week adventure. We visited the bottom of the world, Ushuaia where we hung out with a very kind guide named Leo. Then we bussed it up to El Calefate and El Chalten where we hiked in some beautiful mountains and celebrated Thanksgiving with Argentinian beef and a delicious Argentinean Malbec. Further north, in Bariloche I got hoppin' mad with a guy who nearly erased all of my photos when he was trying to burn them onto a CD. To calm my nerves Casey and I tasted copious amounts of wine and rode bikes in Mendoza, where I discovered that not all pink wine is gross. And finally, in Buenos Aires we ate lots of beef at fabulous restaurants, drank lots of wine, and watched living tango chess in a park.

Dec. 9 - 16: I returned to Lima where Michael and I spent a week with my parents and his family, getting to know one another and having meals together.

Dec. 17 - 20: I went to Washington DC for an interview with the US Agency for International Development (USAID). They freaking paid for me to go to DC from Lima for 3 days! I was stunned. I really didn't believe that it was actually going to happen.

Dec 24: I celebrated la Noche Buena with Michael's family in Lima. Missed my family terribly and felt more than a little guilty that I didn't go home for Christmas. But, I got over it and partied it up with Michael's family.

Dec 29: I realized that Michael and I have some pretty profound issues to work out and that I wasn't going to be able to resolve them from Peru, so far from my regular US life. I called up Peace Corps to ask them to fly me home, about 2 weeks earlier than expected. I received an email from USAID saying that I was no longer being considered for the position. :(

Dec 30 - 31: Flew to Austin arrived Dec 31 around 2:30PM.

Dec 31: I rang in the New Year with my parents, brother and his nearest and dearest at a party in his new condo. We toasted to love and life and my own shamelessness. My family was so happy to see me that they even took a temporary break from being mad at me for not being home at Christmas.

Jan 1: I gave out all of the Argentinian Christmas gifts that I had been saving for my family.

Jan 2: I bought and iPhone and some new underwear, and later obsessed about fabric for bridesmaid's dresses in my brother's wedding with his fiancee. She settled on shiny green for her big day in June.

Jan 3: I started actively hiding in my parent's house because I realized that everything in the US is huge, loud and fast. But, decided that I must escape once in a while to take advantage of my 10 day free trial gym membership.

Jan 6: I went to the social security office to try to replace my lost card, but I left after about 10 minutes of feeling like I was inside a Far Side cartoon and decided to return to hiding in the house. While I was hiding in the house I decided to call up the consulting firm that does the USAID interviews and see about what went awry only to discover that I didn't NOT get the job! It's not a "yes we love you" but, it's way better than a "no and please don't call again." The email that I received on Dec. 29 was an automated email generated when the online application service purged my application, but USAID IS still considering my application. YIPPEE!! a better kind of unemployed.

Jan 9: I did some more hiding in house and bought some makeup in an attempt to recover from the oh so glamorous Peace Corps-look.

Current state of affairs: I'm in Austin for at least a month and probably two. I'm still engaged and we're working on our problems. I'm looking for a job in a really rough job market. I'm going to visit family in St. Louis Jan. 28 - Feb. 4 and will be in Washington, DC for more job search fun Feb. 10 - 13.