Sold!

We officially sold the house! And in other news...Yesterday the sunset was absolutely gorgeous!

Micro Credit- Macro Impact

So today in my Anthropology class we watched a movie called "Small Fortunes: Microcredits and the Future of Poverty". The film (made by BYU) was fascinating. I had heard about the concept of micro loans before and thought it sounded like a great idea, but the film really demonstrated just how effective this. It's ingenious and unlike the charities and non-profits this idea is an actual solution for poverty in that it empowers people to support themselves. One man who started issuing these loans in India, went around a village interviewing people to find out how much money it would take for all of them to get them out of debt. Between 42 people, they needed $27 to get out of debt, so he just gave it to them out of his pocket. He then went about trying to find a way to organize a system of doing this. These loans are typically under $100 and given to women in third world countries who can't get loans from traditional banks because they have no collateral. It's counterintuintive that this system would work but amazingly, about 95% of the people repay their loans in full. For many people this solves many societal problems given that providing women with an independent source of income in these patriarchal societies equates to enough finances to educate and feed the children. In the film they mention that for many years the wealthier nations have been focusing on giving handouts and on filtering funds through governments (that are corrupt) which would trickle down to males and may or may not get back to the women and children. With micro loans, they've found that putting money in the hands of the women benefits society as a whole because the women make sure their families are taken care of. It was very emotional for me to watch the men and women interviewed talk about how they have overcome their impoverished situations and their businesses and how their families continue to prosper. They seemed so happy and their was hope in their eyes. Here's the link to the video's intro. It airs on PBS.
http://www.kbyutv.org/smallfortunes/?vid=1
You can also read the borrower's profiles. They have amazing stories and have developed creative ways to grow their businesses with their loans.
http://www.kbyutv.org/smallfortunes/borrowers/

Juli's In Town

My mom's in town for the next few weeks to prep the house for the move. We've been spending some quality time together. I absolutely love her and here's why:

1. At 1 AM She will instigate the wearing of bandanas in a gyspy/babushka like fashion.

2. She has her own take on the handsfree headset

3. She introduces me to exotic foods such as this AMAZING goat cheese from Trader Joe's.

Dream Boots-Take 2

Take I Take II ♥

My obsession with ebay, ranks almost equal to my obsession with facebook. The difference is that after spending hours on Facebook, I am left with nothing but secondhand memories and occasionally some hot gossip whilst my hours of scouring the auctions on ebay reward me with clothes and shoes galore with which to clutter up my closet. Hooray! Along with my obsession with ebay came my quest for the brown boots of my dreams. My quest has lasted for nearly 2 years! Much to my astonishment I won my pair of brown dream boots today! I can hardly believe it and won't really believe it until they arrive on my doorstep in 2-5 business days. My dream boots were not easy to find, and when found not easy to win. A few weeks ago I found a pair of boots that nearly met my qualifications, so I thought what the heck and bid on them. Though happy with Dream boots round 1, sometime last week I stumbled upon the Dream boots and of course I had to bid on those. I am now quite happy now with my soon to be little family of brown boots, and I'm willing to adopt any more that might need a good home. I feel that my meticulous long range shopping methods reveal a few things about my personality A. I'm a completely inefficient and indecisive shopper B. I am much too particular Or C. I'm the worst kind, high maintenance but thinks she's low maintenance "I just know what I want and how I want it " (When Harry Met Sally-Thank you very much). Or D all of the above.

Blog Debut

Blogging! Let me just say I am so excited to start blogging! Lately it seems like everybody and their mom and their dog and their news network of choice has a blog! As someone who must write, journal, text, and talk incessantly, I think it's high time I a found yet another way to communicate, and so I climb aboard the blog bandwagon. I admit that several times I have made a mental note of an event I would later report on my would-be blog. One such mentally noted event occured while with (who else?) my super hip mom Juli. On Tuesday we stumbled across a most interesting restaurant. The quirky name "The Banana Leaf" caught our attention, so we ventured inside. Before we could even walk through the glass door into the lime green room you could almost hear the record scratch sound denoting awkwardness as all the Indian patrons looked at us in horror with an expression that seemed to say "How in the name of Ganesh did the foreigners find our haven of deliciousness?" After a few moments of mutual gawking a friendly Indian lady seated us and we went on to enjoy our giganormous buffet of rice and curries and a never ending supply of other unidentifiable vegetarian delights. Note: The huge hubcap-like platter

Note: Juli's pleasant yet skeptical expression throughout the meal (Note: the "Rose" flavored smoothie -which actually tasted like a flower- and the cute little old Indian lady behind her)