Belated Happy Halloween! I was a butterfly. My whole small group here were insects. There were a lot of Halloween festivities, and everyone in Chicago seemed to be out and dressed up.
Some of my time during the day here that I love is when I get to do online research and gain inspiration from malaria news and other cool things people have done to raise awareness. I found this great website yesterday (thecausemopolitan.com) and I wish I would have known about it before Halloween so I had time to plan a cool party like that. I also found a great article written by Rick Reilly a few years ago that is fantastic and worth a read. It was quite inspiring to us. (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/rick_reilly/04/25/reilly0501/index.html)
Rebecca and I had the chance this weekend to attend an interfaith Baha’I music devotional service. It was a fantastic time to connect with some of our Baha’I friends and have an awesome jam session (I got the maracas) while people read various scriptures of inspiration from their various holy books. Rebecca sang a Jewish prayer (Shalom Rav), and I read some from Psalm 36. We have connected with some of our co-workers at the Muslim organization over excitement about the new Twilight movie, and it looks like we might be going to see it together at midnight. An interfaith Twilight party! Rebecca and I are also working hard to set up a HUGE event in Chicago in the spring for World Malaria Day. There are so many steps that go into planning a monster event, and we are working on getting permission from various government officials. I’ll give you more details once we know if it will actually go through.
I think Chicago decided it was November and there is definitely a distinct chill in the air these days. I bought Payless snowboots in preparation. Five months from now it will be warm again! I am slowly becoming a South Sider here. I am excellent at parallel parking, I don’t always pull all the way over for sirens anymore (since it is so common and no one else does either) and I have eaten all you can eat sushi to the point where I thought my entire body was going to turn into a sushi roll. Basically, life continues, and I am adjusting to being a Chicago-an. The biggest challenge we are currently facing is that of connecting the global issue of malaria to the local level where faith communities actually see the importance of eradication to the point that they get involved. If you have any advice, shoot me an email. My website is http://www.faithsactfellows.org/amy.
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