you know i think instead of talking to my little sister im just going to start buying stuff she cant eat so i dont go "oh i want x" and find out shes demolished the entire thing in a short timespan

3rd day in 10th Grade 8/31/23

I was pretty excited about today since the One piece live action was gonna be released today!TT

I woke up in a good mood and started my day with eating breakfast while watching The disastrous life of Saiki K.!! I ended up finishing the first season which felt refreshing I couldnt wait to come home after class and watch the 2nd season!!:D

I planned on wearing the males uniform today for the last time since I probably wont be able to wear it in the future because of some teachers:D though ive never announced this in my bio but Im actually genderfluid Ive always felt comfortable with both being feminine and masculine and wearing male and female clothes (clothes dont have gender but Im talking about the stereotypes of what society think they're supposed to be worn) anyway I messaged our teacher to ask permission for me to wear a males uniform so she doesnt scold me infront of everyone (though I think shes not that type of teacher but I just wanted to be cautious) later when I kinda doubted that she would even reply I almost unsent the message but then she replied saying "just for today, I'll open up to the other teachers about this" and I felt some of the weight on my chest was gone and skipped my way outside of our house hopping because of happiness...it really meant a lot that she said that....

then I got to school....it wasnt as crowded as before so it felt kinda nice... I then see some of my friends already chatting and after I dropped my bag in our classroom I joined them

Later when class starts....we answered the 7 intelligences by Howard Gardner...we answered this before last school year....though seeing my results nothings changed about me.... I got spatial-visual....butttt our past teacher never actually told us what was the suitted proffession of our intelligences so I was kinda shocked about mine...she said that people who have spatial-visual intelligence will most likely become an "artist,photographer,scultor, and etc" (I forgot what else she mentioned) and like isnt it crazy because I'm an artist...I also like taking pictures (but I dont really have a professional camera)....and I've always wanted to try sculpting....it was so spot on......no wonder my results never changed...

Snack breaaaaaaaak some of my friends havent been dismissed yet or already had their snack breaks so its just me and my 2 friends (that in the same section as me)...we decided to visit our past classroom...sighh even though it was a pain having to LITERALLY HIKE our way to our classroom because it was so high up we still made tons of memories:D while we were there I bought some turon(banana spring rolls) since the canteen was packed as alwaysTT

on our way back we looked up and saw some of our friends from the 4th floor waving at us so we decided to go to the 4th floor!! I met den there and hugged her when we saw each other!!....we talked about one piece shes so nice to chat withhhh and we also talked about the live action that just dropped (the release time was 3PM and it was currently 3:15)

after chatting I headed back to our classroom....the teacher was kinda busy I think and let our most reliable classmate(he was our president in 9th grade) handle us...we just had to take our height and weight...I was kinda surpised of my weight....it was 47.9kg like........wasnt it 51 last time????.....and it hit me....didnt I do fasting......well it was most likely that I was jealous of other peoples body and did it for the sake of looking good...........but honestly I kinda like that fact that, thats my weight...as for my height though....it didnt change at ALL TT IM GONNA CRY.....now that I think about I think I messed up the numbers because wasnt I 155cm last time..? NOW WHY AM I 152???WHAT WHERE DID THE 3CM GO??????AM I TRIPPING?....well I already passed it to the teacher so....sigh....Im not supposed to be 4'9 I WAS LITERALLY 5'1....oh well whats...done..is ...done.......i guess.....T.T ihatemylife

then class ended....we were in charge of cleaning but it felt like a breeze because this time in my new section there are actually people who HELP FOR CLEANING THE CLASSROOM.

I got out of the classroom as soon as we got dismissed my friends were already outside so I just joined them....then headed home:D

I took this photo while I was walking home...

its a lot later than when I really post my journal but I think it will probably change a lot in the future....I started watching the one piece live action right after I got home because I couldnt wait any longer><.(also ber months starts tomorrow, theyre gonna start counting down the days before christmassTT I cant believe its already been more than half a year already)

thats it for todayy thank you for reading<3 baiiii

Welcome to Surgery Day!

Alright so, this was an interesting turn of events. You go in to the OR and honestly I remember doing breathing exercises to try to keep myself calm. I don’t even remember the people telling me to count backwards. I think they already knew I was freaking out and knew I was in my own zone to keep myself calm. It was nice, the whole staff was great!

They sat with me before hand and helped keep me calm and were talking to me until things went back. I know I was kind of out of it because every time they asked for my birthday I would say 1983. Of course this threw them off and they asked for my whole birthday and would sigh and go “1 - 9 - 8 -3. 1983″ It took a second for them to get it but I have always been amused that my birthdate is also the year I was born.

So the surgery went well for me. I had other things happen that most people won’t. I have a scarred liver so the doctor took a biopsy of it to make sure everything was functioning right and there was nothing else wrong with it. He told me late that day that there was a lot of scarring but it looked like it was repairing itself. The liver is just as amazing as your skin yaknow? It repairs itself. You could lose the majority of it and it will regrow. It will be slow but it does it.

Because of him seeing the scarring I had to explain about how we found out I was allergic to acetaminophen (Tylenol, Ofirmev, Mapap, Pharbetol, FeverAll, Tylophen, Tactinal --- It is called different things all over the world}.

Side Storytime:

Back when I was 25 I got the flu really really bad. I was taking Nyquil and Dayquil as directed on the packaging. I was going on a week of taking them and was getting ready to make a doctors appointment to see what else they could do. So poor sick me was at home with my then boyfriend and our roommates. One of them called and needed a ride home from work. I was the only one who could drive legally so I sighed and said sure. I wasn’t going to make someone walk home 2 miles in snow and cold. So I left and picked up my friend and started to drive back home. Suddenly I saw darkness creeping into my line of sight. Just the periphery, but it was slowly overtaking all of my eye site. I pulled off the main road and onto a side road and pulled over onto a side walk.

Low and behold I pulled over and went into park right before I blacked out for a minute or two. By the time I woke up there was a stranger there pulling me out of the car and wrapping me up in blankets. The amazing part was he was an off duty EMT and knew what to do. He called his buddies and they came and picked me up, my friend drove my car home (we were seriously like 3 blocks from home!) and he told everyone what happened.

I was put into an ambulance and driven to the hospital (funny enough it was the same hospital I am had my surgery at!) I was rushed inside and they did blood work. I severely dehydrated, had no potassium in my system and of course a ton of acetaminophen. Because of that last thing there I was put on suicide watch. Oh boy, what fun that was. I was strapped to a bed and had to have someone in the room with me constantly. When the doctors finally came in to talk to me they found out I hadn’t tried to kill myself I just had a build up of acetaminophen in my system. So after that I still had to have nurses/security in the room with me but I ended up getting all the pregnant nurses who shouldn’t be on their feet for long stretches of time anyway (since you have to stay on suicide watch until you are cleared by a psychiatrist). We both enjoyed it, all of them got to hear my dad jokes and funny stories while I was on a drop with potassium and fluids. About 3 hours into the stay there, they came in to give me the counteraction of acetaminophen and left again.

About 20 minutes after the injection I was in the middle of a story and I stopped. The nurse asked me if I was okay and I asked her if my legs should feel like they are on fire. She said no and came over to uncover my legs. They were swelling up and bright red. That was all I remembered for the rest of the night. I apparently blacked out, my heart rate went erratic and it was scary. I was having a seriously badly allergic reaction to both the acetaminophen and it’s counteraction. They all felt back by the time I woke up, and then informed me I was allergic to both. My liver would not process either of them so I needed to avoid both as much as humanly possible (which is hard as hell since acetaminophen is in everything).

Later that morning the psychiatrist came in and asked my the usual questions: Are you depressed? Are you thinking of harming yourself or others? Have you thought of killing yourself?

Me being who I answered “Everyone gets depressed in winter, the lack of sun does that. Everyone has thought of hurting someone or themselves at least once in their life, but the question is have I ever thought I could act out those thoughts and if that is the question it is no. I don’t need that drama in my life. As for suicide? Nah. I’m too lazy for that crap.” From there I explained why I was too lazy, and why I thought killing myself would be too much work. I was obviously cleared as soon as I finished that explanation.

However, now I had a new story about how I am allergic to acetaminophen and probably have a damaged liver. Luckily I had friend and family who look out for me with medications and are constantly looking for things that doesn’t have acetaminophen in them. I have found a few but man, they are far and few between.

TLDR: The hospital though the flu meds were how I was killing myself and they almost killed me trying to get the acetaminophen out of my system.

I probably won’t know the results of the biopsy until I see my doctor on our follow up later this month.

After you are done with the surgery you go into a recovery area where they wake you up. Since there is a tube down your throat while you are being operated on they give you ice chips to suck on and such until you are cleared for clears (ha).

My room wasn’t ready right away so I stayed in the recovery back for longer that I probably should have been and I had a nurse with me the whole time because I had oxygen issues (this always happens with anesthesia and me) and the entire time she was pretty much prepping me for my ride upstairs. By the time I was going up I was fully awake and having deep conversations with the nurse and two orderlies that were moving my bed.

The room I was given to do my overnight recovery was huge it probably could have two people in it and their families comfortably. I met my mom, new nurses and staff and said good bye to the surgical recovery team.

My mother helped me unpack a little so I could have everything I needed within reach and gave me a hug and kiss before she left again. We did live an hour away and my daughter had homework she needed to do that night. Plus my mom had to be home so I could video chat with the kid later that night.

I was on IVs and pain killer drips for a bit, and they had my legs in these cuffs that randomly squeezed my calves to keep the blood flowing so no clots would happen. However, about 4 hours into my stay I decided I was done just laying there, plus I really had to pee. So I called in my nurses who helped unplug me from the various machines and helped me wheel myself to the bathroom.

I previously had made a promise to myself before my surgery that every time I got up to pee, take a shower or whatever I would going to try to walk a lot. Even if it was only to my door and back. So I kept my promise after I showered I asked if I could walk out in the hall, the nurses looked at me like a grew a second head but said sure. So thus began my new adventure of seeing how many people were on the same floor and wing as me and what their  surgeries were (since what we all had had done was listed on the outside of our doors). So I walked the lap they plugged me back in and asked if I could eat. So I started on clears.

I ate my food and started to sip on water and suck on ice the rest of the evening while I watched the election results start to poor in. About that time I called my family and video chatted with my kid. According to my mom and dad when I got off the phone with her, it was like a weight was lifted off her chest and she took a shower and went straight to bed. She was obviously more stressed about everything than what she was letting anyone know. Seeing me in the video helped her know I was okay, but she said I looked really tired. I am not going to like I was really tired.

I kept with my promise, every time I got up I unplugged all my things and went pee or got more water, then walked a lap. Each time my lap got bigger and bigger. The nurses were only ever called when my heart monitor leads fell off or I needed something like ice.

They said I was an anomaly, most people who went through what I did they had to force out of bed to walk around. I was doing it on my own. The majority people were calling them constantly for pain medication, I stopped taking any pain meds about 9pm that night, it didn’t hurt so why take something I didn’t need? Plus they were always asking if I though I needed it. I think they did give me some around 3 am, because my little insomniac self couldn’t sleep so I was finally able to get about 4 hours of shut eye which helped out a lot.

Come the next morning I got more new nurses and the night shift left. They did come into the room before they left to say goodbye because everyone knew that I was going home as soon as I talked to the doctor. That morning my doctor came in way earlier than anyone thought he would. We talked about my biopsy and how the surgery went and my recovery times. I asked him if I was allowed to shower and he said of course. So after he left I called in my nurse and asked if I could get towels and such for my shower.

Again after the shower and when I had redressed I was off walking laps again.

It was around noon that  I finally went home, after I could prove I could eat liquids and keep them down. The nurses all came to say good bye to me and had one of them walk me down to the entrance, they asked if I wanted a wheel chair and I said naaaah, I needed to keep moving or I would get lazy.

By the time we got to the entrance my parents had finally pulled up and I got into our car and left to go home. You better believe after I got home I ate some lunch (cream of chicken soup and pudding for the win) and went to go take a nap in my own bed.

I was in the hospital for a grand total of 28 hours, most people I guess are there for 36-72. So I guess I should be really thankful for my stubborn genetics and my normal diet. My whole family heals quickly and usually refuses to let ourselves become completely inactive. We just want life to get back to normal as fast as possible.

it’s national eating disorder awareness week, and a lot of my friends are posting about it on facebook, but i don’t want to do that bc it feels weird so here

i had disordered eating for the last 2 years of high school. it seems more severe now than it did back then, maybe because back then i thought it was normal. okay maybe not normal--i knew it wasn’t normal--but i’d hear about the girls who dropped 60 pounds and got so sick they had to be hospitalized and fed through an iv tube and i knew that was never going to be me so i thought mine wasn’t that severe. looking back on it now, i’m honestly amazed that any part of me thought what i was doing was in any way rational. 

i never wanted to say i had anorexia; i read stuff online saying you could only have anorexia if you were underweight, so i never used that word about myself. it was just a diet, or, at worst, unhealthy eating habits. i didn’t tell anyone except three of my closest friends from other schools, because i didn’t want anyone from my school to find out for fear that they’d try to stop me, or worse yet, tell my parents. one of my friends from my school noticed something was weird and she actually reached out to one of those people that i told and it was one of the scariest days of my life even though i know it was coming from a place of love.

it was worst at the beginning of my senior year. college applications and schoolwork and honor societies and extracurriculars and band and my job and everything kind of came crashing down at once, and i wanted to feel like i had control over something at least, but i guess i overdid it. i have some strangely specific memories of that time, almost like vignettes: sitting in my first period ap gov class, not paying attention, writing out on the little calendar in my planner how many calories i would eat each day and meticulously calculating how long it’d take me to drop six pounds (according to my numbers, 25 days.) recalibrating my daily calorie counter in my head each time i took a bite of something to make sure i wouldn’t go over 700. i was obsessed with myfitnesspal; i would literally measure out half a cup of granola, weigh the amount of blueberries i put on it, to make sure i was getting accurate counts. i had the same thing at lunch every day: a handful of spinach topped with either a few berries and walnuts, half of an apple and a bit of crumbled cheddar cheese, or, if i was feeling extravagant, maybe slices of boiled egg. i drank a lot of those zero calorie fizzy water ice things for energy. i can’t even smell them anymore without feeling revulsion. 

i would flip my shit over the smallest things. i’d never eat everything that was on my dinner plate; one night, i came home from work, where i’d had a leftover salad for dinner, and my mom wanted me to finish my steak from the night before. it was three bites. i knew automatically that was about 100 calories. i’d already gone over my limit and eaten 750 that day. i couldn’t fucking eat anything else. i ended up crying over a piece of goddamn steak and making up something stupid about failing a quiz in school. whenever possible, i’d throw food out sneakily, or not eat meals and then tell my parents i had. 

i was never bulimic, which i’m really thankful for. i remember the closest i ever got to making myself throw up: after my interview at barnard, my family took me out to an indian restaurant to celebrate. indian was--is--my favorite kind of food. my dad told me i had to order everything. i did. i tried it all. i ate so much that i felt sluggish. in retrospect, it was a normal sized meal for me now, but to my artificially shrunken stomach then, it was way too much to handle. i knelt on the tile next to the toilet in the single-stall bathroom staring at the toilet water like it was taunting me. i dry heaved a couple times, stood up, brushed off my tights and walked out. 

vomiting would’ve been a step too far. later on, while i was beginning to ‘recover’ (i didn’t fully get over my issues with food until this summer), i would stand over the garbage can in my kitchen, take bites of brownies my mom made, chew them up, savor the flavor, and then spit them into a paper towel and throw them out. if we ever went out to eat, i’d look at the menus online beforehand to figure out what the lowest-calorie option was. we went to cheesecake factory once; i remember being thankful they had calorie counts for all their items online, then disgusted when i saw how high those counts were, then breathing a sigh of relief when i found an appetizer-sized portion of vegetable tacos that replaced the shell with a leaf of lettuce. it was 300 calories--half of my daily total. 

the closest i ever came to telling a medical professional was during an annual checkup during my senior year. i’d plummeted from 162 lbs, my highest weight in the summer before my sophomore year, to 134. she asked my how i did it: was it exercise? was it being on my feet at my job? i couldn’t give her an answer; i just started tearing up. i’m sure somewhere on my record there’s a note about risk for an eating disorder, but that’s all it ever was: a note. 

there was no clear-cut recovery process for me. there was no one moment where i stopped and said ‘i need to fix this.’ it was kind of just gradual; i had relapses, of course, but it generally wasn’t that bad since i came to college. i did gain a ton of weight my freshman year; it fluctuated a lot because of the all-you-can-eat meal plan, which was designed to help prevent eating disorders and food related anxiety for the students at my women’s college, but ironically ended up giving me more anxiety because of the lack of autonomy i was given over my choices of what to eat. but at some point either at the end of my second semester or the beginning of the summer, i finally stopped tallying up calories in my head. 

my weight has stabilized since then. i haven’t been on a scale in a year, but last i saw, it was something around 140, which is probably where it still is. i’m fine with that. it’s weird: i’m finally the size 6 i’d always wanted to be, but i’m not even sure how i got there. i looked in the mirror this morning and realized that somewhere along the line, i’d developed the thigh gap i’d always dreamed of; weirder yet, i found out i didn’t really care that i could see light shining through a tiny gap between my legs. i bought a crop top this summer. i still have flab on my stomach. it pokes out over the top of my jeans. i don’t care, though; i like the way i look in crop tops. i still don’t own a single pair of shorts, a remnant of my battle with my most detested body part--my thighs--but maybe this summer, i’ll finally get there. 

i don’t have tips for recovery, unfortunately. i don’t even know how i did it. i just stopped caring at some point. i have better things to worry about than some arbitrary number that’s supposed to quantify my physical being. the best thing i did, i think, is that i stopped comparing myself to other people.

it still comes and goes in waves. some days i think i’m beautiful; some days i’m fixated on my acne, my fat chin, my saggy tits, the pouch of fat above my pelvis, the cellulite dimples on my thighs. there’s nothing i can do about it. the society i live in has programmed me to notice these things. the best i can do is remember that it doesn’t define me. 

My eating disorder - the origin story/summary (part 1) - 1/8/17

Everyone loves a good origin story, right? So I might as well explain what happened. 

From what I remember, it started when I was 15. First semester sophomore year  of high school. I know that because it was the year I was in A Chorus Line. And when I say I was in A Chorus Line, I mean I was in a local theatre production of A Chorus Line. 

Our costumes (amongst the girls) for that show were literally just leotards and tights. I’ve grown up dancing, so leotards were never a big deal to me. But there was this one girl on the cast (I think her name might be Christine) and she was SO pretty. I remember thinking that she looked fantastic in a leotard. She didn’t have quite a model-body, but she was pretty skinny. And then I decided that I really really REALLY needed to look like that. 

I never expected myself to develop an eating disorder. I grew up loving food and never having that many problems with my body. But alas, here I was with these thoughts not even knowing what I was getting myself into. 

I could’ve talked to someone in the beginning. Maybe it would’ve helped, but I don’t know. I feel like therapy doesn’t really help me that much. Like oh, you’re saying that I get panic attacks because I’m stressed?! WOW, I HAD NO IDEA!  I don’t like being vulnerable because I’m afraid people will see me as weak? Thanks for pointing out what I already fucking know. 

So sophomore year, right? I counted calories every day for a few months and started to shed some pounds. I remember sitting in culinary arts class after lunch (which I hadn’t eaten) clutching a bottle of ice cold water to fulfill my hunger needs. And then there was a day that we made cookies, and I “broke” and ate a whole bunch of them. Then as soon as I got home, I tried to throw them up. I remember sitting on the cold floor of my bathroom with my fingers in my throat and my head in the toilet, dry-heaving. And for some reason I couldn’t throw up. Nothing came up no matter how hard I tried. So eventually I gave up and probably just cried instead. 

While this was happening, I hid it from everyone. My parents had no idea. The only thing they knew was that I’d been dealing with depression (I got diagnosed when I was 11 or 12), anxiety, and some other stuff that I don’t really want to talk that much about (but maybe I will eventually).

I don’t know exactly how long it was, but after a few months of “dieting” I decided to give up, I guess. I’m not sure how that worked. But I managed to talk myself back into eating like a normal person. And then my life continued.

Fast forward to the summer before senior year of high school. I was eating tons of sweets and my skin was all broken out. My dermatologist told me I’d have to stop eating so much chocolate if I wanted my skin to clear up. So, slowly but surely, I started clearing chocolate, and then sweets all together, out of my diet. 

…And then I decided that I might as well lose a couple pounds while I was at it.

I was really serious about being “healthy.” I even downloaded MyFitnessPal to my iPhone, which is a calorie-tracker app. I started to like checking the calorie content of what I was eating and entering it into the app. I remember putting my starting weight in as 116 lbs (my weight when I was 15, right before everything started, was a little over 120. I think I was like 123, actually). Then it asked for a goal weight, and I figured that I’d set it to 111. Losing 5 pounds would be fine, right?

I eventually got to 111. Then I decided it wasn’t enough, so I decided to try and lose another 5. And then, when I was 17 and at a weight of 103.5 lbs, I landed myself in the ER. That day, I had eaten maybe 500 calories by the time it was evening. My heart was fluttering and I felt like I was about to drop at any moment, so I got scared and told my mom. 

My mom had definitely noticed, but I (of course) denied absolutely everything. I went as far as preparing my food like I was about to eat it, and then throwing it away. I started to get smart. There were several times that I’d make myself mac and cheese while my parents were out. I heated it up to get the smell wafting throughout the house and put it on the table, along with a glass of water and a napkin. I put a fork of mac and cheese in my mouth and then spit it down the drain and took a sip of water (so that there was some cheese on the cup from my lips) and wiped my mouth with the napkin and left it on the table, so it’d look like I had eaten. Then all (or almost all) of the food would go down the garbage disposal (sometimes I’d leave a little bit left on the plate for the illusion of, “Oh, I’m just too full to finish!”). 

The E.R. wasn’t fun. I had my own room where I was in a bed hooked up to a heart rate monitor and IV. I was so dehydrated (I didn’t notice that I hadn’t had enough water that day) that I needed 2 bags of IV fluid before I was allowed to go home. And I remember feeling so ashamed that I didn’t even want to see my mom or my dad for the several hours I was there.

I was 17, so treatment wasn’t exactly a choice for me. I was mainly pushed into it, but at this point I could see myself that I was sick and that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. I stayed for about 24 hours in an in-patient program at the hospital that was absolutely awful. I hated it so much that my mom withdrew me, even though it was against medical advice. 

Then recovery. Blah blah blah therapy, blah blah blah dietician, blah blah blah eating disorder support groups. And then I got better and got myself back to a weight where I wasn’t dying. 

So by the time I graduated high school at 18, I was almost fully recovered. I had managed not to act on the thoughts I had about not eating and be strong. I realized that being strong wasn’t NOT eating; being strong was allowing myself to eat as much as *I* fucking wanted to, not a voice in the back of my head! 

Honestly, my life improved so much. By the time freshman year of college rolled around, I was pretty much good as new. I moved out of my parent’s house and into my school’s dorms. Freedom!

The story only continues, and this post is already pretty long and I’ve been rambling a little bit, so I’m gonna stop here and pick up again later in a different post. I’ll try and have it up by Monday, so look out for it.

Kyle Woodward’s final blog post from Southern Africa. My visa issue finally got resolved, albeit with quite a lot of effort and frustration on my part. Unfortunately they couldn't swap my business visa for a tourist visa while in the country and the only way to fix it was to leave the country and come back in. Luckily Zimbabwe is just a 10 minutes drive to the border. It also just happens that the Zambia/Zimbabwe border is right at Victoria Falls. The border bridge is a tourist attraction, where people zip-line across the gorge and bungee jump off the bridge. Walking across the bridge with Victoria Falls as a backdrop was an unexpexted and surreal moment, and i made sure to take my time walking across both ways. It was a much needed stress reliever. The Falls are so close to you as you walk toward the Zimbabwe border post that the mist creates a perpetual light rain. Having not seen or felt rain in 2 months I was very confused at first. Since i got my necessary tasks done on Friday, I decided to go see the Falls properly all day on Saturday. I was going to be a tourist for a day, so exciting! On Saturday I had a relaxing morning and got a shuttle to the Victoria Falls Park entrance. I met another friend from the same hostel, and we hiked all the trails together. The Knife's Edge trail leads you out on a narrow peice of land thats been carved away by the Falls over time. It's the closest you can get to the Falls, and when you get out onto the edge you are completely soaked in a matter of seconds. Its like walking into a category 1 hurricane: the force of the water falling into the gorge creates a powerful uplift of air that shoots the trailing mist straight back to the top of the gorge, creating a barrage of wind and rain. There is no escape, and we willingly walked out to meet it in our bare feet and cheap ponchos. It is one of the best 20 bucks ive ever spent, and somehow my passport didn't even get wet. On our way down a separate trail to the bottom of the gorge, we were ambushed by a massive male baboon. We learned quite quickly that its not wise to carry food or drinks out in the open in this park because of these guys. We dropped our bottles of soda in order to avoid being mauled. It was actually terrifying in the moment but we laughed about it later. It was pretty funny watching this baboon open our soda bottles, dump out a ton of orange Fanta and sit there slurping it off the ground. On Sunday I went to the bus station at noon to catch my bus back to Sesheke, only to find out that the 12:00 bus i had purchased a seat on had left at 10:30 just because it got there early. It was another lesson in how things work out here: Disorder and unreliable public services create enough inevitable inconveniences in day to day life that society has adapted in order to provide quick and easy solutions. One of the bus company managers immediately took my money back from the attendant and drove me in his own car to the outskirts of town where a bunch of vans wait all day to give rides at the same or cheaper rate. He paid the van driver my bus money, I hopped in, and within a half hour we were on the way to Sesheke. We even got there right around the same time my bus would have. I met up with Michael and one of our enumerators in the afternoon and we drove back up to Sioma District for the night. The next day we drove the 1.5 hour journey into the bush to Makande. The drive seems to take forever as we creep along through a narrow sandy track, dodging trees and trying not to get stuck. Even with a 4wd truck it's not easy to get to by any means, yet people live here the same way as those right on the tar road in Lusu, Kaale, and Kalobolelwa. It's a remarkable thing seeing these communities operate with little to no outside aid. The idea that one can create and maintain their entire livelihood from the surrounding natural resources is so foreign to me, as I presume it is for many other 'Westerners'. Your health (ability to perform manual labor) and work ethic (determination to do so) hold greatest weight in village life. Lin, Michael, and I split our enumerators into teams of 2 for the first day of household surveys, then the second day Lin and I finished the rest of the surveys and did reference samples while Michael worked on resource area mapping. It went by so quick that I found myself scrambling on the last day to take a few pictures to remember this experience by. My pictures are mediocre at best, but Im pretty sure I won't ever forget this. Our last night camping in Makande was so fun. We ended the month of work talking, joking, singing, and dancing around our campfire, trading ideas, experiences, and standing on common ground. We also chased this weird goat around that kept walking into our camp. It was the funniest thing ever. No matter how far we chased it away from our camp, it would eventually wander back and stand there just staring at us. If they make another Disney movie based in Africa (shout out Lion King), this goat needs to be the typecast dumb animal comic relief character. The long weekend was spent back in our home sweet home, Sesheke. Michael needed to finish resource area mapping in Lusu, and Lin and i decided to collect more reference samples in Kalobolelwa, so we decided to set up at our usual campground in town. We took one of our enumerators along who wants to study environmental science, and he absorbed all the vegetation and GPS stuff like a sponge. It was a really fun day just walking around, seeing different landscapes, and talking about plants. Since we were officially done with the Zambia field season by the end of that day, we got to be lazy the next day in Sesheke. We walked around the market, bought some food and gifts, learned how to play Zambian rules Checkers, and had a good dinner in town. This past Sunday turned out to be a really special day, and may turn out to be one of the most important for future research pursuits in Zambia. Henry from DNPW allowed us to come along with him into Sioma-Ngwezi NP, where they are working on re-introducing wildlife the next 4 years. They created a fenced-in 100 hectare enclosure for the animals which they use to acclimate them before releasing them into the park. They had about 180 impala and 32 buffalo that they transported there a few weeks ago, and we got to come along on their weekly check up. We got to stand in their pickup truck bed as we patrolled inside the fence perimeter, trying to spot and count all the buffalo and impala. Michael and I came up with another research idea pretty organically as we chatted about the wildlife re-introduction process and the ways they currently monitor wildlife numbers in the park. The folks at DNPW and WWF sound quite keen to begin some research collaboration this coming year with us, and I'm glad Michael and I prioritized time to build those relationships. On Monday we said goodbye to Lin as she headed back to Botswana, then Michael and I drove to Livingstone. Having been in Livingstone last weekend, I already knew what it was like, so it was really great seeing Michael be totally blown away by all the city people, restaurants, shops, and 2 story buildings. We had fun wandering around, getting lost, and eating a ton of really good food. We have a special place in our hearts for Sesheke, but it is by no means a city. The fact that Sesheke ever felt like a city to us speaks to how much time we have spent in remote areas of rural Zambia. We felt like the Zambian village children this time, amazed to see so many white people in one place. I'm writing this on my flight back home and reflecting on all of the new and unique experiences I've had these past two months: flying drones in the Chobe river floodplain in Botswana, digging ourselves out of the sand more times than i can count, being immersed in village life and the language, playing sports with village children in Kapau and Makande, crossing international borders on my own, learning to drive stick in Zambia, and many others. They've all offered an opportunity to learn, challenge my own paradigms, and grow into a more worldly and introspective person. Southern Africa has given me so much, and I am eager to give back in any way an academic researcher can. I am so grateful to Dr. Pricope and all of the KAZAVA collaborators for supporting me and allowing me into their network. Michael gets a special shout out; we started out as two unacquainted grad students working on the same project, but by experiencing all the challenges and joys of a productive field season, we became both an unstoppable duo and great friends. I'm excited to pursue some of the research ideas we have developed in Zambia together. Lastly, for anyone who has not yet stepped foot on the African continent, this is my 5 star recommendation. It turns out Africa is huge and offers so much to the new traveller: the diverse cultures, the wildlife, and spectacular landscapes. I've only seen small parts of 3 countries, but I'm obsessed now. Africa will be high on my list for travelling the rest of my life, and I will do everything I can to get family and friends to experience it as well. Kyle Woodward.

Story of Khutulun

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=822456431891

In the swirling, blood-soaked melee of a 13th-century battle against the Mongol Empire, it wasn’t all that weird to gaze into the ranks of the most overpoweringly-dominant land army ever fielded in human history and notice that, hey, check it out, a couple of the warriors currently massacring all my friends actually happen to be women.   At a time when most of the world’s female population would have just been happy to have the legal right to tell their husbands to stop hitting them, Mongol women were some of the most socially, politically, and militarily badass chicks anywhere on Earth.  They ran cities while the men fought on campaigns, built public works, helped manage the largest land empire of all time, had seats in the Kurulurai (basically Mongol Congress), and even occasionally fought in battle, a detail that was particularly scandalous and unacceptable to writers from Europe, the Middle East, China, and basically any other country that got the fucking piss stomped out of them by the Mongol Horde.

But while it wasn’t particularly bizarre to notice that one or two of the enemy archers may have had a pair of boobs, it was significantly more unsettling to encounter the warrior princess Khutulun on the field of combat.  Because while most warrior women of the Mongol Empire may have been expert snipers, firing their composite bows with deadly precision while riding a horse at a full gallop, Khutulun preferred a significantly more direct approach:  She would charge out at the head of her warriors, ride straight up to the biggest enemy officer she could find, grab that asshole off his horse with a one-armed choke slam, slap him in a fucking half nelson, and drag him back to the Khan while he screamed and pleaded for his men to save him.  Once that fucker was ripped from the battlefield and firmly in the Khan’s custody, Khutulun would go back to her primary combat duty – commanding a regiment of Mongol heavy cavalry.

This is the tale of Genghis Khan’s great-great-granddaughter.

Khutulun never met Genghis, and by the time she was born most of the great Mongol Conquests had already stomped nuts all the way from Beijing to Baghdad, cleaving a bloody smear across the map that ended up becoming the largest contiguous land empire in the history of humanity.  Her father was a Khan named Khaidu, and he ruled a fief of land near the Tian Shan Mountains, which is in the realm of present-day Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan (or however the hell you spell that), and northern China.  Khaidu was from the line of Great Khan Ogodei, who was Genghis’ third son, and Khaidu was basically the last of the old-school badass, “let’s ride our horses over this guy’s ballsack in front of his entire family and then throw all of his compost garbage into a recycling bin” Mongol barbarian motherfuckers who shanked faces first and didn’t want to be asked questions by anyone besides a fast food cashier or his favorite bartender.  As a good Mongol Prince, he constantly asked himself one of the most important questions any man can ever ask himself:  What Would Genghis Do?

The #WWGD lifestyle netted Khaidu tons of land, plunder, death, destruction and mayhem, and it also led to him having fucking 15 children – all of them boys, except for his youngest.  He named his lone daughter Khutulun, meaning either “Bright Moon” or “All White” depending on how you want to translate it, and then proceeded to give her the exact same badass Mongol warrior training he gave to her fourteen older brothers – how to ride a horse, shoot a bow, kill someone with a sword, wrestle, punch, tie knots, milk a yak, build fires, drink blood, sleep in a yurt, and mean-mug motherfuckers who are stupid enough to step to you.

The Princess of the Bright Moon was pretty over-the-top badass at everything she attempted, but out of all the bone-crushing military pursuits she excelled at, she was the most successful when it came to straight-up wrestling.  Having fourteen older brothers is probably a gigantic pain in the genitals, and you can be damn sure that Khutulun learned how to fight pretty early on, but this woman was so hardcore that no man or woman on earth could beat her in a straight up bare-knuckled throwdown.  It didn’t matter how tough you thought you were – this princess was going to hip-toss your dumb ass through a plate glass window onto a campfire and then everyone was going to laugh at you for getting your balls kicked off by a girl.

Now, I should mention that wrestling is the national sport of Mongolia – they fucking love that shit there.  Of the Olympic medals won by Mongolia, over half of them are won in wrestling events.  These are big, tough people who love to fight, and and Mongolian wrestling is intense:

This is literally just two grown men kicking the crap out of each other.  There are no rules in Mongolian wrestling – anything goes.  Bare knuckles, little padding, and there are no weight classes or any of that lame handicapping bullshit.  It’s just two big angry motherfuckers wailing on each other until someone falls down.  Once a guy hits the ground, he’s out.    Thing Greco-Roman wrestling meets Rocky IV.

From a very early age, Khutulun made a name for herself as being completely unbeatable at an ultra-violent sport that involves white-knuckle fucking hand-to-hand combat with a big angry man twice your size.  She was basically Ronda Rousey meets Ann “The Wall” Veal, and every man who stepped into the ring with her found himself getting flipped for real and eating a face-full of dirt.  Mongols loved placing bets on these fights, and the Princess was making a killing by powerbombing fools who underestimated her badass cred.

Once Khutulun reached a certain age, it became time for her to get married off to a nice boy with a killer smile, tons of cash, and an excellent track record of slaughtering the Khan’s enemies on the battlefield.  Khutulun’s dad and mom were pretty desperate for her to get married, because marriage in the middle ages was a good way to link your family in to another powerful family, but Khutulun was a warrior and would only stand to be with a man who was worthy of her badassitude.  In a very Atalanta conversation, she told her folks, “Ok, sure, I’ll get married, but only to a man who can beat me in a wrestling match”.

The Princess was rich, powerful, cool as hell, and apparently very beautiful, and it didn’t take Dad too long to find a bunch of guys willing to throw down for love.  One by one, they found themselves hurtling through the air as she snapped bones and swept legs and basically demolished any wimp idiot who thought he was man enough for her.  After all the good suitors were done, Khutulun issued a general challenge – she’d accept a challenge from any man, but if you lost you had to give her ten horses (a couple conflicting sources say the entry fee was a hundred horses, but think about how many damn horses that is!).  Everyone from foreign Princes to local blacksmiths saw an opportunity to marry into the family of Genghis Fuckin’ Khan, and they came from all around to face her.

When Marco Polo met Khutulun in 1280, she claimed to have a pasture with ten thousand horses.  She was still single.

Pioneering travel book writers Rashid al-Dun, Ibn Bhattuta, and Marco Polo all met Khutulun, and when Marco Polo was there he talks about one foreign prince who arrived at the court of Khan Khaidu looking for the hand of the princess.  This guy was tall, handsome, and successful, and he bet the insane sum of one thousand horses on the match.  Khutulun accepted.  That night, the Prince found the Princess alone, and pleaded with her to throw the fight – please, let me win this one, and I will be so good to you forever.

She looked at him and, according to Polo, said she “would never let herself be vanquished if she could help it,” but that “if, indeed, he could get the better of her then she would gladly be his wife.”  Then she walked away.

They had the match the next day in the Grand Hall of the Khan’s palace.  People from throughout the city and the surrounding villages came to watch.

“The damsel threw him right valiantly on the palace pavement.  And when he found himself thus thrown, and her standing over him, great indeed was his shame and discomfiture.”

Around this time, a Mongol Civil War broke out between Khan Khaidu and his cousin Kublai Khan, who was the ruler of Yuan Dynasty China.  Despite being massively outnumbered and outgunned, Khaidu resented his cousin for going soft, giving up the old Mongol traditions like arm-cleaving and head-popping so that he could become some Buddhist hippie that was into lame things like sleeping on gold-embroidered silks surrounded by sexy naked ladies while consuming delicious food and expensive wine.   The two argued, bickered, then went to war, and Khutulun was brought along to help command the Mongol Heavy Cavalry on the battlefield.  Again, according to Marco Polo, “Not a knight in all his train played such feats of arms as she did.  Sometimes she would quit her father’s side and make a dash at the army of the enemy, and seize some man thereout, as deftly as a hawk pounces on a bird, and carry him to her father.”

Makes sense to me.  If she could hip-check a guy to the turf on level ground, imagine what she could do if she got the drop of you in a live-fire combat situation.

Despite torching some border towns, defeating main line Chinese infantry in battle, and face-shanking Mongol warriors on the field of war, the fighting between the cousins proved indecisive, and really the only thing that came out of it was that the Mongol Empire started to shatter into smaller kingdoms that didn’t wield nearly the same power as Genghis once had.

Khutulun did eventually get married, although not to a guy that beat her in battle.  Instead, she chose her husband – a “lively, tall, good-looking man” named Abtakul who was from a few towns over.  Abtakul was an elite soldier who had been hired by Kublai Khan to kill Khutulun’s dad, but the Khan’s guards caught this guy, threw him in jail, and sentenced him to death by beheading.  Well Abtakul’s mom was so upset her son was going to die that she threw herself at the Khan’s feet and begged that she be killed in her son’s place.  The Khan said “Ok, fine, whatever, as long as someone is decapitated that’s fine with me”, but then Abtakul stepped forward and said “fuck that, no way am I letting my mom die on my behalf.  I will face this like a man”.  The Khan was so impressed with this family that he immediately released Abtakul from jail and hired him to be an officer in the Khan’s army.  Abtakul fought in the war, was wounded in combat, and while he was recuperating in the hospital he met the Princess, who fell in love with him immediately or some shit.  Anyway, that’s the story, and it’s a big deal because medieval women typically weren’t lucky enough to choose who they got to marry.

Khutulun’s father died in 1301, and right before he died he appointed Khutulun to succeed him as the new Khan (technically the female version of a khan is called a Katun).  She declined, because she had fourteen older brothers who were all pretty fucking upset that they’d been passed over for the chiefdom, and instead she made a deal with one of her brothers – I’ll back you in your claim to be Khan, if you’ll let me command your army on the battlefield.

Much like her dad, she didn’t have time for palace life – she wanted combat, like a true badass.

Khutulun did end up taking over as General once her brother became Khan, but she wasn’t commander for very long.  After just five years as the Clan’s military commander, she died, passing away violently at the age of 45.  The sources are unclear whether she fell in battle or was assassinated, but I’d argue both methods are equally badass.