Happy, happy New Year. This year I welcomed in the new year by going to sleep nice and early. i can't imagine a better way to wish myself a happy new year or the people around me.... If i don't get my 8 hours a night i can be quite a crabby girl. Actually truefully it wasn't like i was going to go anywhere. Most every new year celebration had been called off in the bay area this year because of the huge rain storm we were having. Most of the highways were closed because of complications due to the storm and a half a million homes were with out power, mine included... I have to say there is something so right about welcoming the new year in by candle light and drinking tea warmed by a camp stove. It was quite poetic. We didn't have power for 24 hours. A tree fell down on all the power lines at the bottum of Lakeview Drive closing both the highway we take to get into town and leaving us electicity free. My mom and youngest sister Genevieve were in Canada for the week on vacation. I was left at home with my sister Celia and my mom's husband, Dan, both of whom were terrified of the weather and being left with out electricity. I think my mother's husband was mostly afraid of living without his television. Celia really is afraid of the rain and spend the whole day running around the house shouting, "rain gone!! rain gone!!" I personally adore the rain. I found it a very spectacular way of spending new years and new years eve with a huge storm raging out side and me tucked snuggly in the cabin in the woods reading a good book. It just felt so cleansing and a return to basics... maybe that is what this year is going to be all about. It pretty much sums up my feelings about this past year. I spent the year cleaning out my body of all that shouldn't be there and finding hobbies that i really like doing in addition to getting to spend a lot of time with my mom and sisters. This year, I am sure will be much of the same for the first six months and then from there i am equally mistified by what will transpire in my life as you might be.

Christmas has always been a hectic and crazy time in my family for so many reasons... as a child it was because we would wake up at home open presents, eat breakfast and go to church before going over to my mom's family for their Christmas party as early as possible and then in the evening going over to my dad's family for their Christmas party. Every holiday actually worked that way and it wasn't too bad because everyone lived with in a few minutes of each other and expect for us everyone else in each family wasn't running around.... Then when I was a tween and preteen we were living with my grandparents and in addition we started going to mid-night mass the night before... As a teenager and young adult it was a bit crazier because we were living in Santa Cruz because it involved us driving the six hours to LA and then doing the usual Christmas stuff followed by two weeks of visiting my dad and grandparents. Five years ago however everything changed when my grandparents moved to the beach house, which is an hour and 20 minutes from their old home and all of my dad's family. Two years ago my sister Anne and her husband moved to Riverside, which is an hour in the opposite direction from my dad's house. And in addition to that three years ago my sister married Andrew so now in addition to the logistics of my own family we also are dealing with sharing the holidays with her in laws. For months now the family has been asking us girls what we were going to do for Christmas and honestly we just didn't know. It was so easy before to share it with everyone but logistically it just isn't feasible any longer. Plus my mom was insistent that she was not going to go down to spend Christmas with her own family this year and wanted us girls to stay here in Santa Cruz and spend the holiday with her instead.... The four of us talked and talked about it but every choice we made would leave one or more of our parents alone on Christmas and them disappointed with the our choice. In the end Anne, Genny and I all defered our decision making up to Cecilia (my sister who has down's syndrome).... She knew what she wanted... to go to spend Christmas eve with my dad and his family and then to spend the night at the beach house with my mothers family and spend Christmas day with her and then for my dad to come and visit us there before we came back to Santa Cruz. She kept saying "Robbie, Heather, Allison, church, beach house, SANTA CLAUS, dad" in that order again and again... I didn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out.... Exactly a week and a half before Christmas my grandmother called me and told me that because of a family emergency she wouldn't be able to buy us presents so she was sending me a generous check and she wanted me to go and buy, wrap and bring everything for Christmas. I also had been calling my dad for several weeks asking him what he was planning to do for his shopping. Usually my sister Anne does the shopping for him but this year she was in Santa Cruz with us and wouldn't be able to help him out. He kept saying that he was going to do the shopping with my sister Genevieve and I just knew what was coming... Exactly one week before Christmas (Sunday the last weekend before the holiday) I called him again and he told me that Genny hadn't found time to shop with him because he boyfriend had been in town for a few weeks from Ohio and she had been busy with him, so would I please do the shopping. AND in addition to that my mom asked me to pick up several presents for Celia and my nephew Nathanael from her and Santa. I spent all of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday morning shopping up a storm for them. I had it down to a military exercise.... the only hang up of course was that I was suppose to be staying off my feet because they were still bound on Monday... By the end of Monday I was in tears due to the swelling from standing on them all day and the wraps got really tight and my toes were purple.... not a good day for Maggie. Tuesday I had my doctor's appointment and the wraps were mercifully removed!!! I spent 12 hours on Wednesday (until midnight) in my mom's office wrapping gifts. It was the only place I could think of to hide the presents from my sister and Nathanael both of who still believe in Santa. When I woke up early on Thursday, departure day, it was pouring and Nathanael was in quite a state. The night before my mom had been responsible for babysitting him while Anne was at work at the movie theatre and she hadn't put him down to sleep at his usual bed time of 7. Instead she let him stay up till 11. One might think that he would have slept in that morning but instead he was up at the crack of dawn "when the sun woke up" and he was hyper.... Thursday also marked the day that the school district had to have found a class for Nathanael by. He is slightly autistic and they had been showing Anne a class for a week that they wanted her to agree to let him be in. She wasn't comfortable with it and refused to sign the paper work. They were in a panic because they thought she would cave in and they hadn't thought of any alternative placements for him. They had to find a place for him that day or they were opening themselves up for a potential lawsuit. So that morning the phone was ringing off the hook for Anne. Every potential program director was calling her asking her to come and see their class January 9th and trying to get her to commit to something over the phone... the whole month had been so emotional around this whole issue and problem and it seemed ironic that it was all coming down right then as we were trying to pack and get out the door. Eventually we did, four hours later than expected. We went to my mom's office to load up the gifts in the back of the truck. Anne had to keep Nathanael and Cecilia occupied while my mom's assistant Karen and I wrapped the presents in three layers of extra large trash bags and tied them all down in the back of the open truck all in the rain in front of all the patients in the office while still trying to answer the phone and run the front desk. Karen showed her true super hero self in the process taming the wild beast of the truck, plastic, and rope to do what we wanted. None of the presents were water logged in the process.... amazing. We have driven down to LA so many times in our lives that the seven hours don't even faze us, usually.... This time however Nathanael had a seven-hour tantrum and I can safely say it was the worse trip to LA that I hope to ever have... The next day we left Celia and Nathanael in Andrew's care and Anne and I headed down to San Diego (2 hours) to pick up Dorjee and Mnarina, two dear friends from Nepal and India that I had known in Korea and who were spending the month in San Diego doing a research project at UCSD... We had invited them to come and spend the weekend with us. On the way home we stopped and shopped until the stores closed at midnight and then went home to wrap the presents for several hours. Between picking them up and going to the stores we had stopped at the bank to deposit several checks and with draw some money... when the ATM machine ate the depit card. When we went into the bank to complain they said they couldn't do anything until Tuesday when the company came to service that machine and that they didn't have access to open it. We asked if we needed to file a complaint or fill out any forms to get the card back an they said it wasn't necessary, that the card would be waiting for Anne to pick up on Tuesday. Talk about bad timing. The next morning came very early. At this point I was averaging about 4 hours a night of sleep. While Genny went to do more last minute shopping, Anne and Andrew went to the bank to try and get the checks deposited and some cash. When Andrew asked about getting his card back the bank said that they had opened the machine the night before and had destroyed the card and the manager reprimanded him for not filling out the appropriate forms the night before and had rebuffed his claim that the manager the day before had not offered the forms when we asked.... I hate Washington Mutual Bank... they are always so rude. In the end they were told it would take two weeks to get another debit card. Nice timing Washington mutual While Anne and Andrew were fighting it out at the bank, and Genny was shopping, Dorjee was watching Nathanael and Celia with strict instructions not to let them into the garage or anywhere near the front of the house where all of Santa's presents were. Mnarina and were left to move Genny's queen size bed from her upstairs room and into the back of the truck and to tie it down. Right as we finished that everyone pulled up and we started sorting and loading carloads of presents to go to all the different parties. While we were doing that Genny ran upstairs to pack for her weeklong trip to the beach house for Christmas, Santa Cruz for a few days and then for a trip with my mom to Vancouver for 5 days. (How they came to go on that trip is a very long and painful story that I am sure I am not allowed to share) While packing Genny realized that she had lost her passport somewhere in her room and wasn't leaving until she found it. Andrew piled the kids and visitors into his car and took off for Maritza's house while Anne and I went to target to get some stocking stuffers and medicine for my IBS problem before heading up for Maritza's house. Maritza is a dear friend of mine that I have known since I was a baby. She herself had just had a baby girl, her second. I hadn't seen baby Emma yet and I was very anxious to do so. I couldn't believe how much her daughter looked exactly like her. By the time I arrived at Maritza's house there wasn't much time to visit before we were off to my cousin Heather's house for the Dobbins family Christmas eve party and then as planned we went to Santa Barbara for mass and the beach house for Christmas. Actual Christmas day was pretty uneventful and quite traditional. I like it that way: void of family drama. All the drama happened on that way to Christmas with lots of pledges by me never to be in this country again for the holidays. (Which I am sure I will break in the next couple of years) And now I am back in Santa Cruz trying to catch up on sleep and fighting off a cold.... Go figure and Merry Christmas

I have now officially lost 103 pounds!!!!!!!!!!! Holy cow!!!!!!!!!! a major land mark!!!!!!! only 50 left!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am 2/3rds there!!!!!!!!!! it is a very exciting momemt!!!!!! not many people loss 100 pounds!!!!!!!!! I am just so excited and proud of myself!!!!

I have returned from the Christmas trip to LA... that adventure in itself is worth a whole blog entry... but i am back..... I will be spending my week 1) working at my mom's office: she gave her assistant the week off as her christmas bonus.... 2) taking care of my sister Celia: my mom went to Vancouver for five days with my baby sister Genevieve to have bonding time together.. which leaves me with solo parenting of celia 3) moving my bedroom into the loft so that by the time my sister Anne comes back from LA on january 2nd she will move into my bedroom with nathanael and I into the loft.... 4) taking care of the dogs, my mom cancelled doggie daycare since i will be around to let them in and out of the house 5) trying to keep up with my usual exercise and daily mass: especially important after the holiday!!!

A typical Saturday morning… Because my feet are bound at night they tend to swell and get really hot under all the blankets so somewhere in the middle of the night I woke up miserable and decided to cut the toes off my socks. I have to wear socks right now because the purple medicine/dye they put on my feet has seeped through the several layers of wraps and I don't want my sheets to be dyed. But the problem is that my toes just get so hot during the night that I had to cut the toes off, open the window, keep my toes exposed outside of the blankets and put several ice packs at the foot of my bed to rest my toes against. In all I end up struggling to get a full night of sleep. Not only that but last night as a major treat my mom took us out for Chinese food at a new restaurant next to the movie theatre that my sister and step-father work at. All the staff was very Chinese, from shanghai and spoke Mandarin with each other. It was a bit weird that I could understand them completely as we were seated next to the kitchen. I spent the whole night very thirsty from all the salt in the food and I going to delay my “weigh in” a few days to let the salt out of my system. I started waking up around 7 am when Nathanael woke up and ran down stairs for his quality time with my mom. The two of them love this tradition. He draws pictures while my mom read one of her catholic or conservative newspapers. There is something so literary about my mom refusing to read regular mainstream papers and focusing so carefully on alternative sources for her news. Nathanael tries his hardest to be quiet during this time but usually can' help but screech for about half of it and likes to run up and down the stairs trying to wake the rest of us up. Some where around 7:30 am he successes in waking my sister Celia up and the two of them spend the next hour or two (or really day or two bickering) So many people feel really sorry for Nathanael that he has to deal with my very controlling sister Celia. We have worked so hard on her for so many years about what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior that it just kills her that Nathanael gets away with so much. She is always trying to correct his behavior, which is what everyone sees…. But the truth is that he is in her face far more that she could ever be in her face and he is the one who likes to challenge her on everything and he always refers to her as “mean Celia”…. He also refers to my other sister Genevieve as “mean Genny”. For the longest time he was calling me the great pumpkin which in his book equals Santa Claus in everyway…. But since he moved in with me I have lost the glorified title… From about 7:30 till 8:45 the two of them, C and N take turns coming into my room to tell me “something” and to try and wake me up. Eventually I do and go down stairs to join my mom in reading the newspapers and to drink some tea… Today Nathanael was drawing pictures of the Christmas lights we went to see last night. There is a neighborhood in Scotts valley that goes pretty much all out on Christmas decorations every year and this year N was 100% into it. While I was downstairs he pretty much accosted me to try and remember every since detail of what we saw. He was really in my face about it and finally I complained to him and my mom that his breath was just too much for my overly sensitive nose and that he just HAD to brush those teeth. While my mom snuck him into her bathroom past the sleeping “grandpa Dan” Celia came down stairs and started her ritual of begging for lunch at 9:30 AM… I appeased her by giving her a V-8 juice. My mom came back with Nathanael and told me that she would like to take Anne out for lunch and spend the afternoon with her and leave me home with Celia and Nathanael. When I balk at the idea because I already have to watch the two of them on both Friday nights and Saturday nights and that I had already spend all of yesterday with him and that I would really like some time off she said that Dan, her husband would help… HAHAHAHHA…. If there is anyone in the world that Dan dislikes more than me it is Nathanael and Celia simply based on the fact that they aren't NORMAL. And ironically just a few minutes after she told me that, he came out of his room and asked my mom if she was going to spend the day with him. When she told him that she already had a full day and started to list what she had to do he cut her off and said that he was leaving to go and play golf and do some “errands”… I have to admit that I did gloat a bit over my victory… it was more than obvious to me that he wouldn't be around… Around 10:30 we all went up to my sister Anne's room to try and wake her up and spend a good half hour playing with the preschool threading boards that she had to try and encourage Celia's and Nathanael's fine motor skills after which we went into my room to watch the first half of Polar Express…. And watch Nathanael rip apart my bed that I had just made. Eventually everyone lost interest and went down stairs to each lunch… I am really worried about gaining weight from the couple of Christmas cookies that I had and the Chinese food that I ate the night before (although I was very very careful to do my best ordering the least harmful food and to eat very small portions) and I am quite stressed that I can't really do any aerobic exercise since I am not allowed to do anything that would cause the skin on my feet any friction. So for breakfast and lunch today I had several cups of tea and as much water as I can get down my throat. And now here I am…. A typical Saturday morning…

The return….. Some people cringe when I tell them I moved home to my mother's house, others sigh with envy. And I must admit that I came back hesitantly mostly under the strong arm of my mother. Until the last few weeks things were going well enough… I couldn't say that I am enjoying it but it hadn't been as bad I remembered from childhood. I was here for a few months last spring before I went to Duke and then I came back the last week of September right before my mother left for a three week trip to Europe. Then when she came back things were going well enough but since then it has just gone down hill. I absolutely hate living at home these days. I know my sister Anne feels quite guilty, that it is her fault that I hate the living situation but it really isn't her fault. She and Nathanael are challenging but it is my mom's 3-month sour mood that is really putting a damper on things. She yells at us in the morning all the things that she wants us to get done. My sister politely asks her not to hold me responsible for what she is to get done in the day, but my mother pays no attention to her. Then at night when she comes home she walks in the door reprimanding us automatically. And I get to be the brunt of most of her comments. When I ask her not to speak to me that way she YELLS at me that I am just to sensitive. The other night her husband, whom I have never gotten along with, firmly yelled right back at her that she was unfairly scolding me for a telephone message I was just passing along. I know she is under great stress right now because her business is really down…. (It might help if she didn't yell at her patients either) and there is a lot of commotion in the house now that Nathanael (my autistic and hyper active nephew) and my sister Anne moved in. But my gosh, she invited, in fact insisted, that they move in. She knows that they will move right out if she goes after them with the same vengeance she has gone after me…. I would do the same thing right away if I could but my mom “borrowed' several thousand of dollars from me and can't pay me back. I kind of think this is her passive aggressive way of making sure I don't leave the country yet, because I defiantly would if I were to be given the money back. For the past three months I haven't even had a dollar in my pocket….. It is all out of control… The return home A very very bad idea……

My feet are bound and wrapped… I have always struggled having the world's ugliest feet ever since I was a very small child (from the time I was able to notice my feet)… they are full of callesses, blisters, and stinky. No matter what I do I can't ever seem to get them to a normal state. I have tired coating them in thick layers of oil and creams and then wrapping them in layers of plastic and then socks over that and then sleeping with the whole thing on and in the morning when I take the whole thing off they are soft and beautiful for about an hour before reverting to their usual hideous character. I have tired the scrubs, footbaths, creams, and pedicures I have also seen three different dermatologists on several occasions and in several different countries (America included). They have all taken samples of the skin and diagnosed each a totally different problem each giving me a different dietary restriction or cream… and again these things help for a short time, a very short time, but make no difference in the end. It is all very very frustrating. They are truly of the banes of my existence!! Yesterday, I had to skip both my ballet class and working out with my trainer because there were so many very painful tiny baby blisters on two of my toes… I was so frustrated that I finally called the podiatrist who works in the same building as my mom. As a service to my mom she squeezed me in at the end of the day. I am sure she was sorry to do that because the appointment took about and hour and a half…. She said she had no idea what it was but since I had been struggling with them for so long it could be anything, plus the years in Asia might add a new twist. She talked about the problem being a combination of a possible virus, bacteria, fungus, autoimmune disease, etc… which pretty much covers the basis… Dr. Kraft decided to take several very painful samples (think needles going into deep tissue and then squeezing out the puss) that won't come back until next week at which time she is going to put me on a very rigorous cocktail of drugs. I will have to get my liver checked every 6 weeks because of the drugs… but she said just in case it might work she painted my feet with a violet solution, something she called old school, and wrapped them with several layers of medicated wraps with other layers on top of them, basically binding my feel tightly. For the outer layers she choose some very festive green and red wraps so that it looks like I have two Christmas presents where my feet should be. I have to keep these all on for the next 6 days. I am not allowed to shower or get them wet, or stand on them for very long or really move around. She said that I am going to have to get rid of a lot of my shoes and get insoles for the other ones and that I have to spray them with bleach…. Not only that but everything that my feet go on needs to be totally sanitized… YUCK!!!!!

Merry Christmas 2005 621 Lakeview Drive, Felton, CA 95018 USA 831-335-7149, maggiedobbins@yahoo.com on-line photo albulm: http:photos.yahoo.com/maggiedobbins December 3, 2005 Happy happy holidays from the little cabin in the big woods. That's right, I found my pioneer roots and made one of the bravest and scariest journey's this year to the complete unknown. I returned back to my mom's home a small cabin in the redwood forest of Santa Cruz, a place I left running and screaming from to go to college 12 years ago and never really looked back. I spent the year doing a lot of returning. Returning back to the states, returning back to Santa Cruz, returning back to North Carolina where my Grandfather Dobbins was from orginally and where so many of our family stories originate, back to a weight that I was when I left santa cruz for college, back to a healthier self, back to the room I lived in while growning up, back to sharing a room with my sister, back to shopping in the same stores, going to church with the same people, and the most amazing part of all of this is that I am enjoying it. Two years if someone had suggested that I do any of this I would have shuttered at the thought but instead I am having a good time. 100% of why it is working out is that I am such a different person than I was at 19, what a difference a decade, 40 countries, and several life times worth of experiences make. Last Christmas I came back for a three week visit with three fantastic Korean students of mine. We toured around california and had an amazing and full time. Most people in Korea thought that I was a bit crazy for bringing students home with my on my own vacation from them but it was really the perfect way to re-introduce myself back to america. In addition while I was home and trying to organize some things for when I returned back I came across a copy of a pamphet that a college friend had been given as she left the peace corp and was making her way home. Don't actually know why but after I read it I felt such a peace about coming home. I realized the reality that I wouldn't be staying home for ever. I wasn't actually going to be trapped at home, the millions and millions of people successfully and contently live in america and I was sure that I could find a way to make it a pleasant experience too and above all that I was coming back for a reason and that I was READY!! In January I returned back to korea for my last two months and quite honestly it was a blurr of goodbyes, finishing up the school year, snow, recruiting and hiring new teachers for my school, packing up my apartment of three years, a very fun surprise goodbye party (thank you Louisa) and just getting everything done… And suddenly march 7th I almost shockingly found my self back home. Armed with the knowledge of why I was back, “to loose weight and regain my heath” I started dieting with a vengence. LOW-CARB was the name of the game and I played it really well. I had only planned to be in California for a few weeks. I had found what looked like a fantastic program at Duke university called, “Duke University Diet and Fitness Program”. However it took two full months before I was able to go because of a problem with starting my health insurance. (No one thought that I was going to be able to get insurance because of my weight and previous health problems but our faboulus insurance representive was albe to find a loop hole that I could fit into, since I had previously had korean national health insurance but it was a long and labourous process getting them to recongize it and producing dozens of documents of proof and getting the insurance company to find a translator they trusted to translate all my korean documents) In addition my last surviving great grandmother died, delaying my departure another week so that I could attend the funeral. ( acutally it felt like quite a blessing to have been able to go to her funeral since she had been on the brink of dying for so long and living overseas I never thought that I would actually be home to go to the funeral) Finally May 1st I was able to set off in my new car (thanks mom) with my oldest friend, Maritza for a week long drivng across america to North Carolina. Before this trip I had been to 40 of the 50 states, a feat I was quite proud of. But this trip offered me the chance to get to 49 states. On the way to Duke I hit Oklahoma and arkansas, to of my “missing states”. I also detoured a bit through mississippi down to New Orleans and stayed in a fantastic new hotel right off the french quarter. A dear friend from college, Adele, lives there now with her husband and three beautiful little boys. It was such a treat to spend and afternoon and evening with her after exporing the city in the morning. Obviously I had no idea in May that the detour to New Orleans would become such a treasure for me to hold in my heart in September when Katrina hit them. The next two days were a bit of a mad dash through the bottom of alabama where we visited the stunning but no longer existing Bellingrath Gardens and then up to beautiful Savannah in Georgia before arriving in Durham. To say that I was feeling scared, vulnerable, and nerious about starting the program at the DFC (diet and fitness center) that Sunday morning is quite the understatement. I knew that I was going to change as a person but I had no idea in what ways they would find that I needed changing or how painfull it would be. My experience of change was always ususally quite painful… what were they going to do to me? How were they going to get rid of the 150 plus pounds that I needed to loose? What horrible means were they going to put me through to get me in shape? Where they going to need me to do blood work? And if I told them about my sever phobia of needles were they going to kick me out? Who were the other people in the program going to be? I hadn't spent any time with any other obese people in the past decade, what were they going to be like? Much to my complete shock, I was completely excepted as I was and even though it seemed like not enough food I was never hungry (Elizabetta my nutritionist kept calling it volumatrics) . The head doctor assured me that I wouldn't have to have any blood work done if I refused but that they had a great team of therapists who would be happy to work with me on the phobia if I was willing. My trainer Mary Anne Dobbins seemed like a perfect match for me and ironically she had a step daughter also named Maggie Dobbins. Not only that, I was guaranteed that I wouldn't be asked to do any exercise that I wasn't ready to do. The old saying “no pain no gain” was to be thrown out the door. The other clients, as we were called, were fantastic. I started off with a a group of 8 amazing indiviuals whom may have had a weight problem but I ever noticed. The 12 weeks that I had strech out to 14 passed by in a wink. By the end I couldn't believe all that I had accomplished. Not only had I gotten over my needle phobia and had tons of blood work and all the vaccinations done, but I had lost 75 pounds, and was in great shape. I had also descovered a new found love of watercoloring and painting with different meduims. Durham had a fantastic Art's council that offered a great variety of classes and I took several more pottery classes. I had taken pottery classes for the three years that I lived in korea but these ones in Durham were my first classes in English since high school. Also in korea you have to wait years before you are allowed to use the wheel and once you are allowed you have to practice centering the clay for at least 6 months before you are allowed to do any thing else. I just didn't have the patiets to spend all of my clay time on just making cones for hours each week (it was very martial arts of them) however in Durham they put you on the wheel right away and immediately I was able to start making bowls… very exciting stuff…. The teachers there kept saying that I was a natural.. I think it had more to do with the hours and hours I had put in on centering the clay in korea. The DFC offered watercoloring with a fantastic teacher Kate. I had never used water colors before to do anything more than create things for my classroom. Never just for fun and never to use my creativity, from the very first picture I was shocked that I could realy do it. I honestly had no idea that I had it in me. One of the true tragities of my summer is that while I was at Duke, I had several good friends from Asia come to visit me in California.. and luck not being mine I wasn't there…. So instead of them visiting me they ended up visiting my sisters and family in CA. I was assured they all had a great time. I just couldn't believe after all these years I was going to miss all of these visitors. Three of my Korean co-workers came out and my very good friend Marinia whom I had known in Korea but she is from India and my dear friend Dorjee, the tibetian from Nepal who was spending the summer in San Diego doing research at UCSD. The middle of August finally arrived and it was time for me to leave the safety of the DFC and try to live the “program” on my own. I knew I needed to be home by the 26th of September when my mom would be leaving two days later for her trip to central europe. That gave me about a month to get home. Now the direct line between North Carolina and California would be right through the middle, I 40 or even I 80 would do…. But not for me… Not only did I have a few more out of the way states to get to like Montanna and Maine but I really wanted to visit my old college friends whom had spread out in all different directions, and I wanted to visit my good friend adele from South Africa whom I knew in Korea and had returned to her country to teach poor children and had contacted an international literacy group based out of Atlanta. They had brought her out to Atlanta for a month of training. Since I had no idea when in the world I would end up going to South Africa next I thought it too much of a shame not to run down to atlanta and spend the weekend with her. The day before I left I got a phone call from my good college friend sharon who had been living near Boston with her adorable daughter, francesca. They had just moved that week to South Carolina, the same town that our mutual friend Jeanine had just moved to from chicago and as fate would have it Greensville, South Carolina was on the way to Atlanta from Durham and I was able to visit them on the way to and from my trip to see Adele Botha. In addition on the way back north from Atlanta I was able to go and visit with my Dad's cousins Robert and Kay and their daughter Donna whom still live in Rockingham, North Carolina where my grandfather was from. I hadn't been back to Rockingham since I was 13. As Donna and I were talking we found out that we had almost exactly the same respitory and hormonal problems. Every doctor had told me that the hormonal problems that I and my sister Genevieve have are hereditary, which seemed odd because my family and I couldn't think of anyone else in our family that had the same problems until Donna. She said that my grandfather's sister Esther also had the same problems… missing link found!!! It doesn't change anything but it is nice to know where the problems came from since doctors are always asking. I went back to Durham for one night to pick up my things and to meet up with a few friends. Much to my surprise my good friend Sandra from Columbia had come back to Duke for a two week refresher and I got to have breakfast with her and spend a few hours packing my car and catching up before I headed up to Nova Scotia, Canada by way to Washington DC, Front Royal, VA, Carlisle, Pa, Philidelphia, New Jersey, Brooklyn, Bronx, and Queens, NY, Rhode Island, and Maine where I was able to visit several friends from my University, Asia and Duke days. In Nova Scotia I spend the weekend visiting my good friend Diana a former co-worker in Korea. I was really looking forward to going to Prince Edward Island and Nova scotia although “a little bit” off the track home gave me a great excuse to visit the land of “Anne of Green Gables”. Much to my amazement Nova Scotia was spectacular and far surpassed the homecoming I felt in PEI. And oddly enough I found out that my Griffin side of my family had lived in Nova Scotia between the revolutionary war (they had moved up there because they were loyalist to the british crown) and the American civil war (where they came down to fight on the side of the yankee's). I had no idea, I knew my Campbell side of the family came from a little island north of PEI called Shippegan Island, but I didn't know I had Canadian roots from so many sides of my family, how poignant since I had spent so much time making fun of canadians in korea with my sister Genevieve. I really wanted to go up the extra few hours to Shippegan but I just didn't have the time.. I had spent a few extra days at each of the stops I had made on the way up to canada and I was really running out of time and I had so many more people to visit on the way back so instead of going to up to shippegan I turned south and drove like a mad woman down through Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont (hitting three more of my missing states) through Buffilo, NY (where my grandmother griffiin had been born and was very scared by the 7 winters she spent there) and back to Steubenville, Ohio where my adventure away from California had begun, life is so full of circles. I was to see my good friend Ann Dulany and we went to Columbus to see the Berabe family and Amy Sobie who drove over from Springfield, IL. In addition my sister's boyfriend Brian had just arrived in Columbus where he will be living for the next six years to work on getting his PhD in some sort of Science that I don't understand at Ohio State University. We all spent the weekend going to a Brazian circus and remembering old times. From there I drove to Dayton where my Korean family had moved for the year and then up to Wisconsin to visit my old roommate Marie and her family the Dolls. At that point time was becoming very very short and I had to make a mad dash to South Dekota (another one of the missing states) where I visited the family of my dear dear friend David Cozart (from asia who is now living in turkey). On the way I was able to stop in DeSmit, SD home of Laura Inglles who wrote the Little house on the Prarie books. My childhood was spent playing, watching, listening to the books being read and then eventually reading these books myself much the way my adolescent years were spent preoccupied by Anne of Green Gables. I drove like a mad women across South Dekota through the southwestern corner of North Dekota (bring the total up to 47) and then to Montanna, 48, over to Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, and Jackson Hole and over to Idaho making 49!!! Yahoooooo!!!!! My last two stops were to see an old friend Kyndra whom I hadn't seen in 10 years and then down to Sacramento to visit with my Uncle John, Aunt Lisa and their four children the youngest being born just this last spring my youngest cousin. On September 27th I finally made it back to Santa Cruz and back home. I was a day late because of a huge lighting storm in Sacramento that my very protective Uncle John said was too big for me to drive in. (He was the one uncle who e-mailed me years ago as I was about to go to Pakistan telling me that it was much too dangerous to go to, and now six years later I'll finally admit that he had a very good point there was a military coup and I did see an aweful lot of very big weapons but that is another story). I was only home for a few days before my sister Celia and I headed down to LA for my one and only nephew's birthday and the beginning of decorating their house for halloween. Some time the month before he had seen the Charlie Brown Halloween movie. He somehow idetified with Linus and his hunt for the Great Pumpkin and decided that the mysterious Maggie who had been sending him presents for years but that he couldn't really remember seeing last must be his Great Pumpkin. It is quite the honor. Even now that it is December he is still calling me the great pumpkin and any time I want him to do something like eat his dinner all I have to do is tell him that the great pumpkin and Santa Claus will not give him anything at christmas unless he does as the great pumpkin says…. It works like magic… The past three months here in Santa Cruz has been filled with me trying to recreate my Duke program and me trying to keep up the exercise and to continue to eat the right food. I joined weight watchers so that I had a place to weigh in every week. I am all about accountablity. The major acheivement in my life these last few weeks is that I am about 2 or 3 pounds away from the 100 pound mark. What a major milestone in my quest to loose the 150 pounds. Just a few days ago my sister Anne and her son Nathanael moved in. Originally they were going to move up here with Andrew her husband so that he could go back to university and find an internship in the sillican valley. But as things at nathanael's school went from bad to worse and they realized they had exhosted all options that their school district had and that the only next step would be a major lawsuit we as a family decided that it would be better for Anne and Nathanael to move up here now and that I could help Anne with Nathanael (who is autistic) and since we knew the special education system and all the people up here so well from dealing with them all with my sister Cecilia (who has Down's Syndrom). So now I am sharing a room with my sister for the next month as we orginize the house for them. And that is my year in a nutshell (or 7 pages). I hope your holidays are wonderful… Merry christmas, Love maggie

I love Sundays.... I know there is nothing new in that statement and that everyone feels the same way, but just the same, I love SUNDAYS! It is so nice to be able to sleep in and then get up and relax for an hour or so and have a nice deep conversation with my mom about what my youngest sister, Genevieve, should do with her life and how much we like her boyfriend, Brian. Then I went to eat breakfast, 1/2 cup of cottage cheese. Well actually I was planning to have an egg white omelet but couldn't be bothered so I decided to go with the cottage cheese. Yesterday my mom had finished off the cottage cheese that I had bought last week and she kindly went to the store to buy more only this time she wanted to buy organic stuff. I think it is always better to buy organic and I love that we shop at the little local health food store that isn't part of a big chain or anything and always when possible sells local brands. So this morning I opened up the newest quart of cottage cheese and carefully weighted out exactly 112 grams of the stuff to get exactly 80 calories... not half a gram more or anything. I then tasted it and it was horrible... it had the curds like cottage cheese but it tasted like very strange yogurt and i have had lots of strange yogurt in my life. I ran into my mom's room and had her try it and she said...hmmmm well it hasn't gone bad but it is defiantly different... Please Maggie try and find a way to eat it since she had bought so many packages of it, try a little splenda... Hmmmp splenda is what we through into everything that is a little off to try and fix it.... Southerners use butter but we dieting, low-carbbing, Californians use splenda. So I went back to the kitchen to try and figure out what in the world I was going to do with 4 quarts of this stuff, I thought maybe do some sort of a spinach/ egg/ cottage cheese/garlic dish... hmmm to much effort... finally i just added the tiniest bit of berry jam to it and of course some splenda and it came out tasting like a very strange and very delicious berry yogurt type thing with wierd bumps in it.... Then it was time for church. I dug deep into my closet and found a black skirt that I used to wear all the time but that was skin tight and I think I even stopped wearing my last six months in Korea because it was just too uncomfortable.... so I tried it on and it was perfect... with my green turtle neck sweater... very east coast looking. I love that I am trying on my old clothes and that some of them look great, just so different than they did before. I had no idea that it was designed to look like that. What a difference. We went to mass at my favorite church in Santa Cruz, call the Shrine of St Joseph Guardian which is right on the beach… It is really beautiful and because it isn't a parish church the people who go to it are also pretty conservative devout Catholics who come from pretty far away to get there. (http://www.osjoseph.org/osj/shrine.php) We came home after mass and I spent the afternoon cleaning my room, on the Internet and quietly relaxing. I love Sundays, they are my day off of exercise, my day to let my body rest. Granted I am in lot of pain from the week of hard exercise but hopefully by the end of the day I will be feeling good again, or at least that is the theory. I also love really cleaning and organizing my room because I always find something good in it that I lost. This week it was “magic block” These fantastic white foam things you can use to clean. My whole family is addicted to them and since you can't buy them here in America like you can in Korea. It is a really big deal that I found a bag of them. Mr. Clean Company just started selling them here in the states but they aren't as good and are really quite expensive compared to Korea. I used to go crazy in Korea trying to watch TV because they would interrupt programs to bring you random length infomercials. My first year and a half it was almost always for “Maagieckk Bloock” (to be said with great passion like you have found the cure for cancer). You never knew if they were going to go back to the show or if that was the end of the show. They also didn't cut it off at a logical place in the show. It would be mid-sentence usually. Also the infomercials didn't just last for a minute or two they could go on from anywhere between 10 minutes to hours and hours in length. It would make me crazy. I would usually end up watching the infomercial for a good 5-10 minutes wondering first what had happened and secondly if it was going to end and eventually I would turn it all off in disgust or sometimes they would actually return to the program I was originally watching or (and this made me really mad) they would change to a new show and forget about the original one. Somewhere in that first year in Korea I vowed that I would never use Magic Block. I should have known better, never say never… About half way through my second year in Korea I realized that the parents were cleaning the students desks every week with this magical stuff. The students through out the week would write all over their desks with everything. I couldn't seem to get them to stop, and I guess it was because they knew their mothers could get it all off with ease at the end of the week. When I finally asked them what it was they were using they said, “magic block” I really couldn't believe it. It took me a little while longer to figure out where to buy it and which brand was better then the others, and then a little longer to figure out how to best use it or that it was re-useable. That's when I became a serious believer in the stuff. I cleaned everything with it and I unbashingly talked to everyone who would listen to me about “the wonders of magic block”. When my sister and mother came to visit a coworker and I both went on and on about Magic Block and included a demonstration of the stuff before sending them home with their own packages of Magic Block. Last year for Christmas I brought home a few large Costco size boxes of the stuff and gave it as presents to my mom and sister, who were very thankful. So you can imagine the great surprise and glee that I felt today when I found a shopping bag in the back of my closet full of small cubes of magic block. When I go to visit my sisters next week I am planning to bring them down a few small squares of it…. I told Anne today and she is quite upset that I am only sharing a few and I responded that if I gave her all of them next weekend what I would I fill her stocking with at Christmas?

I am sore, I am so sore that it hurts to move. After have two months of relative easy exericise I am getting serious about it all again and I am hurting!!!! Obvoiusly it is a good pain but pain none the less. I went to the gym this morning to get about 45 minutes in of cardio on the elliptical before running across the street to the public pool for my favorite water aerobic class. There is a nice group of ladies who go three days a week that I am learning to fit in with.... and the teacher, Jay , is just wonderful. I really enjoy her classes. Everything is just simular enough as Duke for me to be able to do it, but different enough for it to be fun and challenging. The diet is still going well.... I was getting the diettogo food for all three meals delivered here once a week but it was just too many calories (1200). It was at the top of what i wanted to have in a day and it meant no extras like fat free half and half in my tea, etc... So i went down to just getting the two meals in a day, so the best of what i can tell is that now i am getting between 800-900 calories between the lunches and dinners and it gives me three-four hundred calories to play with for the rest of the day making it all a lot more fun. And it is all very low carb.... So I will see this Monday when I go into Weight Watchers to be weighed in if it worked.... Tonight is Celia's annual Halloween dance. She and my mom have worked so hard on her weight and in this past year she has lost around 55 pounds (that is a size 18-6) amazing!!! the only problem is that her old princess costumes are now way to big and she is very upset about it. She has been fussing about it for a month now and having a fit about it for the past few hours.... But I think she has finally come down to the realization that she won't be wearing a costume to the dance tonight but that she will get a new costume this week to wear on Halloween and to the family parties next weekend and that might make it all bearable. Life with Celia is always a rollar coaster. Well i have and hour and a half to go before it is time to leave for the dance... Until then it is time to watch some UCLA football..... go bruins......