I also think it makes sense to start posting more videos. As things become more routine for me, I feel less inclined to write updates, so videos can reveal what exactly this “routine” is. Here are two to start with.
This is Class 3 Creative Arts. We play Vocabulary Bingo about once a week. I don’t actually do much since I’ve already taught them the rules, and the winner of each round runs the next round. Another volunteer was visiting, however, so she managed to get some (brief) footage of me in one of the clips.
And this is me washing a sock. This is designed to convey how much I hate laundry. Don’t expect to be thrilled.
Because I’m abroad, my taxes aren’t due on April 15—I get an automatic two-month extension until June 15, which is a week away. I just e-filed a few minutes ago, a full week before the deadline, which is the earliest I’ve ever done them!
Taxes are terribly exciting, I know, but I thought I’d share a tip for future volunteers (or the morbidly curious), and explain how this works.
I started my Peace Corps Service late in 2008, and I was working in LA prior to that. This means I needed to do my 2008 taxes just like I always do (using TurboTax), but I additionally received a W2 from the Peace Corps. They mailed it to my school here in Mombasa.
The only difference from the usual process is that I also needed to report the Peace Corps W2 ($150 dollars!). As far as the IRS is concerned, I”m not really a volunteer– I just have a very low-paying job.
So here’s the hot tip: Before you leave the US, TOAL ALL YOUR MOVING RECEIPTS. It’s deductable because it was due to a change in employers. I didn’t have any movers, just a U-Haul to NorCal, and even using the standard deduction I got a significant bump in my return.
Wow, what a boring blog post. I’m sorry… here’s something different: a picture of a Colgate box in English and Arabic. I’m always impressed with translated logos that look strikingly similar to the original English design. Arabic is especially hard because it’s read right-to-left and has its own alphabet, but somehow, when someone Arabic-illiterate (like me) reads the Arabic backwards (left-to-right) because of how it’s sitting on the store shelf, I can still tell it’s Colgate! (How did they pull off that “g”?!?!)
For all my fellow volunteers out there, and for many people in Kenya in general, this is a huge deal. Opera just release a beta of their version 10 web browser, and it finally does what their mobile phone browser has been doing all along—it works in tandem with Opera’s servers to recompresses data before it gets sent to you.
If you pay by the megabyte, you have no excuse now to use anything except Opera. It makes my little Firefox Greasemonkey/Mowser hack look silly.
They call the feature “Opera Turbo.” Basically, before the pages are opened by your browser, the Opera servers resize and recompress the images to use less bandwidth. They also perform similar tricks for text (HTML, etc). Bottom line: fewer megabytes used to visit the same exact sites.
It’s a little toggle-able icon in the lower left-hand corner of the browser. Super easy. Here’s a screenshot… go get it now! (It works on Mac and Linux, too.)
PS: If you’re nuts about privacy, you may want to read more about this feature. Your data is being intercepted by Opera, after all.
Paul,
Well done on the blog, especially the video integration. I’m leaving for PC/Honduras at the end of the month and am trying to figure out what the best way to capture video and photo would be while serving. What equipment are you using to capture video?
I use a Panasonic LX-3 still camera. It’s great for indoors: F2.0 24mm lens. It records 720p video to an SDHC card, and I plug that into my laptop and convert the MOV to H.264 using a program called MeGUI. Then I upload it to my FTP site and then link to it from my blog. Clear as mud?
Paul,
Thanks so much for the answer. Exactly what I was looking for! That camera looks quite nice. Another question if you don’t mind: what ftp site do you use?
Please excuse me if the way I asked that question reveals my profound ignorance of how ftp works…
You use wordpress.com for your blog, and they don’t let you upload via ftp, but you can upload with the control panel, but I find that too slow. I pay for web hosting to store my files: http://www.hostmonster.com.
i love love love the bingo video. they are so adorable! i think that is really cool that they run the bingo rounds on their own also. and as for the socks….does this mean you will still be wanting socks for all holidays…or do u never want to put on a sockagain?