There's an advisory board called the Volunteer Advisory Committee in every post in Peace Corps. Each cohort has to elect representatives (in our case, about one for every ten volunteers). Since GUY29 was only ten of us, I was the only one elected. For 2016 I was just a regular member of the committee. For all of 2017 I was the co-chair with GUY28's Jackie as Chair. Now for 2018 I'm the Chair. I don't know why I keep forgetting to mention that, but I'm actually pretty proud of it.
So what does that mean? It means that if volunteers have issues, or need go-betweens or mediators with staff, they can go to their VAC person. If staff has ideas for change, they can run it by the committee to get an idea of volunteer perceptions. We do a bunch of projects and stuff too, but in my opinion, those two things are the most important that we do.
In other news, I'm using the fact that I have no running water currently as an excuse not to do anything today.
Also, I'd probably sell my soul for some sour patch kids, or peanut m&m's right now. Cravings are a major downside of living in the middle of nowhere.
Saturday, May 12, 2018
A Day in the Life
I've been posting a lot for incoming volunteers lately. The newest batch is coming in soon, but the timing is such that those who are sent out to the Rupununi are going to get here just barely before we all leave, so there's very little overlap. We won't get to help them get settled the way Steven did for me. Also, I completely remember just the months of obsessing about how I didn't know what I was in for. Usually, since I have limited internet access (which is why I so often post half a dozen entries at one go) I only manage to post about events. Events are great, but since it's the exact opposite of normal, it doesn't give anyone a very good idea of what the "normal" really is.
So here we go: This is what an ordinary day in my life here is like.
On a week day, a student will whack the metal pipe with a hunk of wood at oh-god-thirty in the morning (sometime around before five A.M. which is just mean). This gong is the signal for the students to get up. The sun isn't even up yet. I am morally opposed to being up before the sun is.
Soon after, the gong sounds again to signal that the students need to go do grounds-work. They have to rake up the leaves on the compound, pick up the trash that the donkeys have spread everywhere after knocking over the bin in the night, feed and water the chickens, and do stuff down in the garden. By about 6:30 they're raking outside my house, playing music on their cell phones and sometimes even singing. Sometimes I hear them say something like "I think Miss is still asleep." God I wish. Where am I? Usually whimpering and trying to get dressed in the dark as the mosquitoes suck all the blood out of my body. Why am I dressing in the dark? Because there's no electricity, and I can't open my door or window to let in light while I dress, because there are students EVERYWHERE. I can't even pee until I'm dressed, because my bathroom is outside off the porch.
7:30 the gong rings again and the students go in for breakfast. I continue to fumble around my house for my coffee, muttering "I don't wanna go to school today" to myself. In case you haven't noticed yet, I'm not exactly a morning person.
8:00 is when the assembly is supposed to happen. It usually doesn't. It usually starts around 8:30, which is when it's supposed to be over and classes are supposed to start. I trudge the 20 yards from my house to the school, followed by my loyal puppy Freddy, and stand in the back stifling yawns. The kids sing, have a prayer, all the teachers give long-winded speeches about discipline, the kids sing again, there's the National Pledge in there somewhere, and I get jealous of Freddy, who is practically snoring at my feet and try to subtly check that I have all my clothes on right-side out. At around 9:00 we finally get to classes... sometimes.
Half the classes on the schedule don't actually have teachers, so they get skipped, and more often than not the kids are pulled out of other classes to either spend more time in the garden (which I'm sort of okay with) or to rehearse for whatever: a pageant, a holiday, graduation which is half a year away, or even just opening a meeting with a song. I have not been very good at hiding my eye rolling at this. My Counterpart even has me look away from the students before he'll tell me classes are canceled again, because he knows the face I'm about to make.
For the next three or four hours, I'm either in back-to-back classes, or waiting for the other teachers to do something. I do a little bit of everything. Every few minutes I hear "Miss, are you busy?" and so begins my next project. Then we have lunch, which all the teachers eat in the cafeteria with the students. It's chicken and rice. Every day. I go chat with the cooks in the kitchen, who tease me about being a white girl eating farine, or about my longing for vegetables.
Sometime around 1:00 or 2:00 we go back to classes. Half the students have decided not to come back to class. We rally the rest and attempt to hold classes until they get pulled out again for more rehearsals. On Thursdays and Fridays in the afternoons the kids do sculpting and weaving. I love that part. I wish the kids could do more things like that.
The work day is over between 4:00 and 5:00, and I can finally go back to my house for a few minutes. I say a few, because at 5:30 I go over to my host family's house and take my sisters for our evening walk, because it has finally cooled off enough that I can go outside without an instant sunburn, but still gives us half an hour before the sun goes down.
When I get home from that, if my house has electricity, I'll do some stuff on my computer (like writing up the blog posts I'll put up next time I have internet) or watch a movie or something. I like to clean my house in the evenings because not only is it less hot, but like I mentioned before, I hate mornings and am incapable of functioning as a human being then.
If I have no electricity, then I bathe, sweep my house in the dark, and climb under my mosquito net to read a book by flashlight in the dark until I fall asleep.
At some point in all of this, I have to take care of the plants growing on my porch, keep tabs on what's going on at the gardens, do all my reports, and take tons of pictures of everything.
Freddy follows me for almost all of this. If I have to talk at assembly, he'll come up on stage with me. If I'm teaching, he's in the classroom sleeping under the blackboard. If I'm in the teacher room, he's sitting on my feet under the table right in everyone's way. He's my furry, bug-covered shadow.
On weekends, it's all laundry, cleaning, hammock time, and movie nights with the students.
I'm never really "off" though. Since I'm one of the only adults living on campus, if the students need anything, they come knock on my door at any hour of any day. If one is sick, I may need to take them to the clinic in the middle of the night. If they're bored, I have to help give them something to do, or they might just come to talk to me for awhile.
A staff person at the last VAC meeting made the suggestion that volunteers use vacation days to "vacation at site." AHAHAHAHA no. That's not a thing. At all. Ever.
So here we go: This is what an ordinary day in my life here is like.
On a week day, a student will whack the metal pipe with a hunk of wood at oh-god-thirty in the morning (sometime around before five A.M. which is just mean). This gong is the signal for the students to get up. The sun isn't even up yet. I am morally opposed to being up before the sun is.
Soon after, the gong sounds again to signal that the students need to go do grounds-work. They have to rake up the leaves on the compound, pick up the trash that the donkeys have spread everywhere after knocking over the bin in the night, feed and water the chickens, and do stuff down in the garden. By about 6:30 they're raking outside my house, playing music on their cell phones and sometimes even singing. Sometimes I hear them say something like "I think Miss is still asleep." God I wish. Where am I? Usually whimpering and trying to get dressed in the dark as the mosquitoes suck all the blood out of my body. Why am I dressing in the dark? Because there's no electricity, and I can't open my door or window to let in light while I dress, because there are students EVERYWHERE. I can't even pee until I'm dressed, because my bathroom is outside off the porch.
7:30 the gong rings again and the students go in for breakfast. I continue to fumble around my house for my coffee, muttering "I don't wanna go to school today" to myself. In case you haven't noticed yet, I'm not exactly a morning person.
8:00 is when the assembly is supposed to happen. It usually doesn't. It usually starts around 8:30, which is when it's supposed to be over and classes are supposed to start. I trudge the 20 yards from my house to the school, followed by my loyal puppy Freddy, and stand in the back stifling yawns. The kids sing, have a prayer, all the teachers give long-winded speeches about discipline, the kids sing again, there's the National Pledge in there somewhere, and I get jealous of Freddy, who is practically snoring at my feet and try to subtly check that I have all my clothes on right-side out. At around 9:00 we finally get to classes... sometimes.
Half the classes on the schedule don't actually have teachers, so they get skipped, and more often than not the kids are pulled out of other classes to either spend more time in the garden (which I'm sort of okay with) or to rehearse for whatever: a pageant, a holiday, graduation which is half a year away, or even just opening a meeting with a song. I have not been very good at hiding my eye rolling at this. My Counterpart even has me look away from the students before he'll tell me classes are canceled again, because he knows the face I'm about to make.
For the next three or four hours, I'm either in back-to-back classes, or waiting for the other teachers to do something. I do a little bit of everything. Every few minutes I hear "Miss, are you busy?" and so begins my next project. Then we have lunch, which all the teachers eat in the cafeteria with the students. It's chicken and rice. Every day. I go chat with the cooks in the kitchen, who tease me about being a white girl eating farine, or about my longing for vegetables.
Sometime around 1:00 or 2:00 we go back to classes. Half the students have decided not to come back to class. We rally the rest and attempt to hold classes until they get pulled out again for more rehearsals. On Thursdays and Fridays in the afternoons the kids do sculpting and weaving. I love that part. I wish the kids could do more things like that.
The work day is over between 4:00 and 5:00, and I can finally go back to my house for a few minutes. I say a few, because at 5:30 I go over to my host family's house and take my sisters for our evening walk, because it has finally cooled off enough that I can go outside without an instant sunburn, but still gives us half an hour before the sun goes down.
When I get home from that, if my house has electricity, I'll do some stuff on my computer (like writing up the blog posts I'll put up next time I have internet) or watch a movie or something. I like to clean my house in the evenings because not only is it less hot, but like I mentioned before, I hate mornings and am incapable of functioning as a human being then.
If I have no electricity, then I bathe, sweep my house in the dark, and climb under my mosquito net to read a book by flashlight in the dark until I fall asleep.
At some point in all of this, I have to take care of the plants growing on my porch, keep tabs on what's going on at the gardens, do all my reports, and take tons of pictures of everything.
Freddy follows me for almost all of this. If I have to talk at assembly, he'll come up on stage with me. If I'm teaching, he's in the classroom sleeping under the blackboard. If I'm in the teacher room, he's sitting on my feet under the table right in everyone's way. He's my furry, bug-covered shadow.
On weekends, it's all laundry, cleaning, hammock time, and movie nights with the students.
I'm never really "off" though. Since I'm one of the only adults living on campus, if the students need anything, they come knock on my door at any hour of any day. If one is sick, I may need to take them to the clinic in the middle of the night. If they're bored, I have to help give them something to do, or they might just come to talk to me for awhile.
A staff person at the last VAC meeting made the suggestion that volunteers use vacation days to "vacation at site." AHAHAHAHA no. That's not a thing. At all. Ever.
Should you be PC?
Before I applied for Peace Corps, I half-applied a hundred times. I'd look at the site and the postings, get about halfway through the initial application (the easy part) and then never submit it. I wanted to be a Peace Corps Volunteer, mainly for the cool stories I'd be able to tell when I'm a crazy old lady with dementia (I might already be there...) but I wasn't totally sure I was cut out for it.
After all, two years is a really long time, and I'm not even going to pretend I don't have commitment issues. I have panic attacks just signing up for a cell phone plan, let alone leaving everything I know and being stuck somewhere for two whole years. Plus, what if I wasn't really as tough as I thought I was? What if I couldn't hack it? I mean, I probably could, but looking at the washout rates, maybe only hardcore philanthropic hippies with military-level toughness could really do it. I don't like people that much, I'm way too high-strung to be a hippy, and some days I have all the toughness of a baked potato. Still, if I was going to do this, I was going to have to really do it. I would have to stick it out the whole two years. I couldn't come home before my time was up. How embarrassing would that be? I'd have to explain to everyone every time they said "I thought you were going for two years...?"
For those of you considering Peace Corps (or already on your way in) does any of this sound familiar?
I finally bit the bullet and sent in the application. I'd looked through all the postings, and most of them seemed do-able, except one hardcore sounding one in Guyana. "Oh well," I thought. "As long as they don't send me there I'll be fine." What are the odds of that? So I checked the "Send me anywhere" box and said "oh god please don't make me work with kids" (in a more professional sounding way) in the "preference" section, and sent it off.
For those of you who have read more than this one post, you'll know I got sent to Guyana where even the "Environmental" volunteers work almost exclusively with kids, because there's nothing the world likes more than to laugh at any self-assurance I manage, and slap me back down to the high-anxiety gutter where I spend most of my existence.
Still, somewhere was better than nowhere, so I shrugged, packed my bags, and headed off.
When I got to staging, I had another horrifying sense of "I am so not cut out for this" when I walked in and met the rest of my cohort. They all seemed so confident, and one, Ellen, looked like she'd stepped right off a Peace Corps recruitment poster. Seriously. When PC Guyana staff had called me for a phone interview, they'd asked questions like "do you go camping?" Heck yes I go camping. I'm a camping pro. When I was a kid, my retired-Marine dad used to judge our forts in the woods. Camping? Check. Then there's Ellen, Miss "I was on a research project in the middle of nowhere in Alaska or something and we didn't even wash our hair more than about once a month" (my memory may be a bit exaggerated, but you'll have to forgive me because every time she opened her mouth my insecurity skyrocketed). Suddenly my camping looked like a six year old sleeping in a tent fort in the livingroom. Not exactly hardcore.
The one saving grace was my newly assigned roomie at staging, Sam, who confided that everyone else scared the crap out of her, too, and she was wondering if she had maybe bitten off more than she could chew. Yay! I'm not the only one!
Okay, so now that I've exposed myself to be neurotic, flaky, a little bit misanthropic, and wildly unsure about myself, I'm hoping that at least one other person is feeling like I did. If you are, and you've been reading this whole blog just to try to figure out what Peace Corps is really like and if you can actually last the two years, now that I'm almost done here, let me try to give you a better idea:
First, the necessary disclaimer: Peace Corps Volunteers' experiences vary wildly even within the same country. Most of the volunteers here live on the coast, and they might as well be on Mars as far as how closely their lives relate to mine. Kirsten, from my own cohort, is able to travel in to the PC office every Friday. I'd rather stick a fork in my eye, but that's just me personally. I'm going to just highlight some of the things that seem to be fairly across-the-board for at least the hinterland volunteers (meaning those of us who were cast out into the middle of nowhere).
1) Bugs are in your food. What do you do?
A) If you answered anything like "what kind of bugs?" "How many?" "Maybe try to scoop them out?" or anything other than just straight up "ewww" that's a good sign. There will be bugs in your food. It's going to happen. Sometimes it's ants, and it's not so bad, sometimes it's little worm things, and sometimes you're not even sure what the hell it is but you seriously debate still eating the food anyways. Sometimes the bugs are the food.
2) How easily grossed out are you?
A) "Not easily" is really the only good answer. My first week at site with my new host family at my permanent site, they asked me to rip the tongue out of a freshly dead cow. My first DAY with my training site host family, they asked me to eat a worm as big as my thumb. Many of you hinterland volunteers will only have a latrine, not a flush toilet, and it WILL be filled with cockroaches. Lizards and bats will come into your house and poop on EVERYTHING. Welcome to Peace Corps Guyana.
3) There is no one around, your cell phone is dead (or doesn't work), and you have no TV or internet. Relaxing day? Or torture?
A) This is going to happen a lot. Be really sure that you're happy in your own company. Entertaining yourself is a huge part of Peace Corps. Being alone even when you're in a crowd of people is also an everyday event.
4) People are staring at you and whispering. How uncomfortable does this make you?
A) If you're offended by the attention, Peace Corps is not for you. If you're uncomfortable about it, that can be okay (That's what I am, usually, and it hasn't messed me up too much), and if it makes you feel like a rockstar and you love talking about yourself, great.
5) (For the ladies) How much is it going to drive you nuts to be married off or advised to have babies?
A) Yeah, this is going to happen all the time. I've never had so much attention paid to my uterus before. I don't think my gynecologist is this interested. If you can handle this with at least a tiny amount of grace, you'll be fine. If you're totally comfortable telling people to mind their own beeswax, that'll work too. Gents, for you it's going to be people just encouraging you to leave little half-Guyanese babies behind everywhere you go. Don't do it. Even if they come up with an adorable name for it. In Nappi, they keep suggesting Thomas make lots of little "Tomlets" before he goes. I applaud the name, but still not a good idea. (I've told him whenever he DOES have kids, if he doesn't refer to them as "Tomlets" we won't be friends anymore.)
6) How much do you need privacy?
A) If your answer is "at all" you're pretty much hosed. You're not going to HAVE privacy. Every minute of every day, you're going to be on display. Your host siblings will invade your space on a regular basis, the local children will peep through the cracks in your house, or your neighbors will comment on the amount of toilet paper you seem to be buying. Are you okay? Are you having explosive diarrhea? You probably are, they decide. They'll discuss it with everyone else, don't worry. As someone who loves privacy, this was my biggest fear, and is still my biggest aggravation (along with the bugs.)
7) Are you a hypochondriac?
A) DO NOT DO PC. You are going to get sick. You will probably pick up some parasites. The real illnesses are bad enough. Don't add imaginary ones. Plus, if you're a hinterland volunteer, your access to medical care might technically be within an hour's reach, but it will take you anywhere from 2-12 hours to actually get there.
So basically, there's no way to know for sure whether you'll make it two whole years. Lots of people leave, for lots of different reasons, and most of them are completely unforeseen. What will completely unravel one PCV will be no problem for another. In my case, it's mostly come down to sheer stubbornness.
My point is, if you're thinking about it, you might as well try it. You'll never know otherwise.
After all, two years is a really long time, and I'm not even going to pretend I don't have commitment issues. I have panic attacks just signing up for a cell phone plan, let alone leaving everything I know and being stuck somewhere for two whole years. Plus, what if I wasn't really as tough as I thought I was? What if I couldn't hack it? I mean, I probably could, but looking at the washout rates, maybe only hardcore philanthropic hippies with military-level toughness could really do it. I don't like people that much, I'm way too high-strung to be a hippy, and some days I have all the toughness of a baked potato. Still, if I was going to do this, I was going to have to really do it. I would have to stick it out the whole two years. I couldn't come home before my time was up. How embarrassing would that be? I'd have to explain to everyone every time they said "I thought you were going for two years...?"
For those of you considering Peace Corps (or already on your way in) does any of this sound familiar?
I finally bit the bullet and sent in the application. I'd looked through all the postings, and most of them seemed do-able, except one hardcore sounding one in Guyana. "Oh well," I thought. "As long as they don't send me there I'll be fine." What are the odds of that? So I checked the "Send me anywhere" box and said "oh god please don't make me work with kids" (in a more professional sounding way) in the "preference" section, and sent it off.
For those of you who have read more than this one post, you'll know I got sent to Guyana where even the "Environmental" volunteers work almost exclusively with kids, because there's nothing the world likes more than to laugh at any self-assurance I manage, and slap me back down to the high-anxiety gutter where I spend most of my existence.
Still, somewhere was better than nowhere, so I shrugged, packed my bags, and headed off.
When I got to staging, I had another horrifying sense of "I am so not cut out for this" when I walked in and met the rest of my cohort. They all seemed so confident, and one, Ellen, looked like she'd stepped right off a Peace Corps recruitment poster. Seriously. When PC Guyana staff had called me for a phone interview, they'd asked questions like "do you go camping?" Heck yes I go camping. I'm a camping pro. When I was a kid, my retired-Marine dad used to judge our forts in the woods. Camping? Check. Then there's Ellen, Miss "I was on a research project in the middle of nowhere in Alaska or something and we didn't even wash our hair more than about once a month" (my memory may be a bit exaggerated, but you'll have to forgive me because every time she opened her mouth my insecurity skyrocketed). Suddenly my camping looked like a six year old sleeping in a tent fort in the livingroom. Not exactly hardcore.
The one saving grace was my newly assigned roomie at staging, Sam, who confided that everyone else scared the crap out of her, too, and she was wondering if she had maybe bitten off more than she could chew. Yay! I'm not the only one!
Okay, so now that I've exposed myself to be neurotic, flaky, a little bit misanthropic, and wildly unsure about myself, I'm hoping that at least one other person is feeling like I did. If you are, and you've been reading this whole blog just to try to figure out what Peace Corps is really like and if you can actually last the two years, now that I'm almost done here, let me try to give you a better idea:
First, the necessary disclaimer: Peace Corps Volunteers' experiences vary wildly even within the same country. Most of the volunteers here live on the coast, and they might as well be on Mars as far as how closely their lives relate to mine. Kirsten, from my own cohort, is able to travel in to the PC office every Friday. I'd rather stick a fork in my eye, but that's just me personally. I'm going to just highlight some of the things that seem to be fairly across-the-board for at least the hinterland volunteers (meaning those of us who were cast out into the middle of nowhere).
1) Bugs are in your food. What do you do?
A) If you answered anything like "what kind of bugs?" "How many?" "Maybe try to scoop them out?" or anything other than just straight up "ewww" that's a good sign. There will be bugs in your food. It's going to happen. Sometimes it's ants, and it's not so bad, sometimes it's little worm things, and sometimes you're not even sure what the hell it is but you seriously debate still eating the food anyways. Sometimes the bugs are the food.
2) How easily grossed out are you?
A) "Not easily" is really the only good answer. My first week at site with my new host family at my permanent site, they asked me to rip the tongue out of a freshly dead cow. My first DAY with my training site host family, they asked me to eat a worm as big as my thumb. Many of you hinterland volunteers will only have a latrine, not a flush toilet, and it WILL be filled with cockroaches. Lizards and bats will come into your house and poop on EVERYTHING. Welcome to Peace Corps Guyana.
3) There is no one around, your cell phone is dead (or doesn't work), and you have no TV or internet. Relaxing day? Or torture?
A) This is going to happen a lot. Be really sure that you're happy in your own company. Entertaining yourself is a huge part of Peace Corps. Being alone even when you're in a crowd of people is also an everyday event.
4) People are staring at you and whispering. How uncomfortable does this make you?
A) If you're offended by the attention, Peace Corps is not for you. If you're uncomfortable about it, that can be okay (That's what I am, usually, and it hasn't messed me up too much), and if it makes you feel like a rockstar and you love talking about yourself, great.
5) (For the ladies) How much is it going to drive you nuts to be married off or advised to have babies?
A) Yeah, this is going to happen all the time. I've never had so much attention paid to my uterus before. I don't think my gynecologist is this interested. If you can handle this with at least a tiny amount of grace, you'll be fine. If you're totally comfortable telling people to mind their own beeswax, that'll work too. Gents, for you it's going to be people just encouraging you to leave little half-Guyanese babies behind everywhere you go. Don't do it. Even if they come up with an adorable name for it. In Nappi, they keep suggesting Thomas make lots of little "Tomlets" before he goes. I applaud the name, but still not a good idea. (I've told him whenever he DOES have kids, if he doesn't refer to them as "Tomlets" we won't be friends anymore.)
6) How much do you need privacy?
A) If your answer is "at all" you're pretty much hosed. You're not going to HAVE privacy. Every minute of every day, you're going to be on display. Your host siblings will invade your space on a regular basis, the local children will peep through the cracks in your house, or your neighbors will comment on the amount of toilet paper you seem to be buying. Are you okay? Are you having explosive diarrhea? You probably are, they decide. They'll discuss it with everyone else, don't worry. As someone who loves privacy, this was my biggest fear, and is still my biggest aggravation (along with the bugs.)
7) Are you a hypochondriac?
A) DO NOT DO PC. You are going to get sick. You will probably pick up some parasites. The real illnesses are bad enough. Don't add imaginary ones. Plus, if you're a hinterland volunteer, your access to medical care might technically be within an hour's reach, but it will take you anywhere from 2-12 hours to actually get there.
So basically, there's no way to know for sure whether you'll make it two whole years. Lots of people leave, for lots of different reasons, and most of them are completely unforeseen. What will completely unravel one PCV will be no problem for another. In my case, it's mostly come down to sheer stubbornness.
My point is, if you're thinking about it, you might as well try it. You'll never know otherwise.
Phagwah
Okay, this post is waaaay late. This happened back in like... the first week of March, but I got a little out of order when I tried to catch back up and post about everything all at once. So, for reference, this was before Rodeo but after Carnival. Whatever; doesn't matter.
What is Phagwah? If you want the religious explanation, you'll have to google it. What it is for Amerindians, is an excuse to throw paint and water at each other, and a day off work/school. Really, what more could you want?
So we did just that. I had to check on a sick kid in one of the dorms first, and the students were nice enough to let me do that BEFORE they attacked, but that was as far as their self-control allowed. On my way back, I was ambushed with a bucket of water and handfuls of paint powder.
For a few hours, the kids chased each other around until everyone was a living rainbow and shivering from being sopping wet.
What is Phagwah? If you want the religious explanation, you'll have to google it. What it is for Amerindians, is an excuse to throw paint and water at each other, and a day off work/school. Really, what more could you want?
 |
| When you can't even get them to behave for a simple picture... |
So we did just that. I had to check on a sick kid in one of the dorms first, and the students were nice enough to let me do that BEFORE they attacked, but that was as far as their self-control allowed. On my way back, I was ambushed with a bucket of water and handfuls of paint powder.
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| Resistance is futile |
For a few hours, the kids chased each other around until everyone was a living rainbow and shivering from being sopping wet.
 |
| Cleunicia's shirt is pretty much my motto when I do anything stupid (so most of the time, really). |
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| I was not the only teacher caught up in the fray |
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| All that glitter, and it's his eyes that sparkle |
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| I always promise the kids I won't put up unflattering pictures, but I don't think Shena has ever looked less than lovely in a picture, even messy and covered in paint! |
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| Tennie and Bathsheba, shivering but sunshiny |
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| Who could resist these faces? |
 |
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| I can't tell if this is a candid shot, or his next album cover |
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