death, corruption, and bears

so it's been an eventful couple of weeks for me!

First i'll start off with my Grandpa. I think all of you know he passed away. It was bitter sweet because i really was needing a trip to oklahoma to calm some of my nerves.

The wake and funeral were very sad. Honestly the hardest part for me was watching my mother, aunts, uncles, and grandma hurting so much. I mean obviously i was very hurt too, but for them it must've been a lot worse. 7 of my grandma's 8 kids came to the funeral, it was the most of the family that has been together in a really really long time. I met some more of my family on my grandpa's side too that i'd never met before. It was a great visit to woodward and was really nice to get to see so much family. My niece is shooting up like a weed. She's saying a few words and walks around the house like she owns the place.

I went back to okc on monday so i could do a couple things and see some people! I went and bought a bunch of dogfood and took it over to beth's for boris. Happy to say he didn't forget who i was! haha i was honestly a little worried!

i spent about an hour over there playing with the pups, then i went out to eat lunch with aquanita. was really good to see her and get caught up on all the work drama/gossip. after that i left and headed to norman where i met up with Josh my gay friend. I wanted an oklahoma shirt so we went shopping. (i think i got the same one you have tracy) then at 5 i met blake delao, laura, jess, and clarence at the library!

We ate a lot and drank too, had a great time! After a bit, jess, blake and josh all had to leave so laura clarence and i went to the mont for a couple swirls! afterwards we went back to the house and laid in carolyns bed talking for a while before going to bed to catch my early flight!

All in all the trip was great. I'm sad for the reason that it happened but grateful to have the opportunity to visit.

ok now on to the elections. So once again, they were rigged. The guy who "won" the presidency is the son of the first ever president of kenya after their liberation. He is also awaiting trial with the international court for war crimes, things having to do with organizing a ton of the post-election violence that took place last election.

Well anyway his party won literally every election. meaning one party will run the entire government....

A lot of people are taking their opponents to court to try to get justice, but this is a very timely and very very expensive endeavor. Something we don't have the money, or time for that matter, to even attempt. So what this means is Meitamei will not be in parliament.

What's this mean for me? well basically we have to work really really hard now to have funds for me to continue working here for more than 3 more months. It's something that i'm optimistic about, but at the same time i need to be realistic. It's hard enough to get grants and raise enough money for just our projects. Adding my salary on top of that isn't going to be easy.

ok enough sad talk, fun talk time.

This past friday in Phoenix was the Bearracuda event! Something that happens once every 3 months. Just a big ole bear gathering! I went down early friday morning and worked out with bartender in the afternoon. We were going to go jock strap shopping for something to wear to the bar that night but instead bartender just told me i could wear one of his, so went to the store and cooked us a nice big lunch. That evening they invited over a bunch of guys to pre-party before going out. There were about 30 people there. It was a lot of fun. I drank a lot there, probably enough to last me the whole night haha. After some random making out there we left and went to the bar. It was a ton of fun. At some point in the night i didn't have my shirt on. I thought someone stole it but apparently it was tucked into my waistband on the back side of my shorts hahaha!

I danced a ton and made out a ton and had an all together great time there! We left there probably around 1am and went to charlies the western bar to do some more dancing! I don't think i've talked about it, but there is an amazing taco/mexican food truck that parks right outside charlie's and everyone eats there after. It's always the best tasting burrito of my life!

The next morning we all slept in till noon trying to sleep off the night before. Then bartender and i got up and went to the gym again to try to sweat some of it out. While we were lifting though i kept feeling like i was about to throw up, but i made it though! That evening we went to bartenders sisters house to help her and his brother move some big heavy things. He's not out to his family (his family is mormon) so i was "a friend of bf's" to his sister and other family there. Then his sister cooked some polynesian food for us to thank us and it was amazing! she's opening a catering business and wants to start a restaurant. After that we went home and watched a couple movies just relaxing.

Then sunday, st patty's day we woke up kind of late again and went to charlies because they have an amazing drink deal on sundays. We didn't get trashed or anything, just kinda relaxed drinking most of the afternoon. Then in the evening we ordered some pizza and got some frozen yogurt from a little place.

Then i came back to prescott to find this lovely surprise!!! 

thanks for the card laura! i know you sent it ages ago, but it just now got to me! might have been the zipcode confusion!

I think i have a lot of work i'll be doing this week so that will be nice to occupy a lot of my time. I'm sorry there aren't a ton of pictures in this blog but i guess we didn't take as many this time!

Love you guys!

phoenix fun and STD's

hey everyone! been a while so here's my life since last blog!

first of all, i thought i'd post this funny picture. this is from the first crazy weekend in phoenix, when we went to the second bar to play darts. Here's my teammate trying to distract the other team!

things are still going well for me. I've spent the past two more weekends in phoenix since my last blog, staying with bartender and bf both times. two weekends ago we went out a lot. one day i spent the whole day with BF so i got to know him better while bartender playing in his flag football league. I also got to meet some more of their friends and get to know the ones i'd already met a little better! We went to a hispanic gay bar that weekend too which was a ton of fun. Bartender really likes dancing and doesn't care what other people think, at the end of the night his shirt was drenched with sweat! made me feel better about myself after a night of dancing hahahaha. One morning we woke up and bartender said "what the hell happened to your nipple. I looked down and saw this: 

not really sure how i got it, but i have a couple guesses? i mean there can't be that many ways to get a bruise like this on your nipple! hahaha. We had some good brunch at a little place too which was nice. Here's us at brunch

(great picture of me right)

then after a night of drinks at the house i came back to prescott on monday.

the week in prescott was a little stressful. not knowing anyone here, i have a lot of time to myself to sit and think about things. I think this is sometimes a good thing but sometimes my crazy mind gets the best of itself and i start to worry about things. Well in two days time i had convinced myself that i was HIV+. My reasons are as follows-

One of the first times i ever had sex with a guy, i didn't use a condom (stupid i know, don't get me started on it. i will never do it again). About a week after this happened, i got the flu. If you didn't know, that's basically the only symptom you get when you contract HIV, flu-like symptoms about a week after you contract it. Well anyway i was of course super worried about it then. But i had also not come out to anyone yet and was very very ashamed and wasn't able to bring myself to talk about it to anyone, which of course made it worse. Anyways over 6 months later, i got my test done to make sure i was clean and praise the lord i was. The fear of actually being positive never has plagued me again, until a week ago, and for some reason i convinced myself that i was positive and that the test just had messed up or something. I had a couple horrible nights where i just laid in bed thinking of how my life was over, how i wouldn't be able to end up with who i wanted among many other things that super depressed me. Well i went and got tested the next day, and hooray negative! Thinking back i don't know why i went so crazy, but i did, but it's all over now and i'm fine. after i got my results back it was like a boulder was lifted off me and i've been able to be myself again and think clearly. 

so after that scare i worked some more, have been working on a newsletter to send out after the election and also working on a couple grant proposals, one for our beading co-op and one for education. basically the beading co-op is a group of women in the narok area who have joined together and are trying to sell their beadwork to tourists. currently most of the beadwork that is bought is made by men of other tribes who can afford small stands in prime locations. tourists often don't know this and will buy them, thinking they are getting the authentic stuff but in reality, they aren't. anyway it's a great group of women and they just need some help getting things off the ground, so hopefully we get the grant!

this weekend, as i said i went to phoenix again. had another great time. friday night we stayed in, invited a few people over, and had some drinks. then on saturday this weekend i went and watched bartender play flag football. he plays in a mixed (gay and straight) league so it was pretty fun to watch. There are the straight guys who are genuinely nice people and open to getting harassed by all the gays about grabbing their front flag when they try to tackle them. Then there are the gays who are over-compensating trying to be overly athletic and sports-like. And then there are the queens running around throwing the ball with both hands and doing their bast to catch the balls coming at them. I actually had a lot of fun and even got a little sun which is something i needed! too bad it's more of a farmers tan though haha.

Saturday night we went to a bear event i guess you could call it, someone said it was gonna be fun, that's where i posted the pic on out facebook message thread at haha.

that's a volunteer on stage in the jock strap, the tied him up, whipped him, punched him in the gut, slapped him, and burned his back using a match and some mixture in a spray bottle lol. it kinda took us a little by surprise so we finished our drinks and went to charlies, bartenders western bar.

this is roomates face when we walked outside and saw what was happening :)

a little after we got there BF got tired so he went home and left us there. We watched a little bit of a drag show put on by the flag football league that bartender is in. It was all guys who play flag football so was funny to see them in drag after seeing them as a man first.

we danced a lot that night too, and had a great time! i have a new drink that i love which is really simple but never had it, just a tecate or with a shot of kettle (or other vodka) citrone in it. tastes great and packs a punch! Here are a couple pictures of the night

us on the dance floor, that's his roomate on the left in the picture

us in the bathroom, not sure what the guys behind us are doing.... hahaha

sunday we slept almost the entire day, really. we woke up at about 9am messed around some, then went back to sleep, we napped until about 5pm! hahaha but we didn't get home till about 5 so that makes it a little better! then we got up and went to the gym (all 4 of us) roomate and BF did cardio and bartender and i did arms. was really fun and nice, but made me sad i don't have someone to workout with in Prescott! After we got back bartender made us some spam fried rice

was my first time eating spam, but it was pretty good. way better than i thought it would be. Bartender is samoan, actually grew up in samoa, and they ate spam every day so he loves it haha

then that night his roommate wanted to go out, so roomate and BF went to a strip club, and then to charlies, bartender had homework he needed to do and told me to stay with him so i did. we ended up just cuddlin and watching water for elephants and a couple other shows all night though. was a nice relaxing night after another fun weekend! then i came home the next morning!

The elections in kenya just happened, but we still don't know anything, we have some speculation, but i'll write a whole blog about the outcome and stuff about it as soon as i know things for sure!

so for now i leave you with a picture of me in my triad.....(no i'm not really in a triad)

love you guys! miss you tons!