Patriots Game!!

So one of the outstanding things on my 30 before 30 was to FINALLY see a Patriots game live and in person. With all the rumours about Tom Brady possibly leaving  – I’m writing this in August 2020 – he has since left and I am still in such total and complete denial, I don’t even know what to say. He’ll be back? In his prime? The dynasty will live??! So much denial – we knew if we wanted to see Tom Brady’s Patriots, the window might be closing.

Luckily we were spending Christmas 2019 in the states with my family, and the Pats had a home game on December 29th. Though tickets were quite expensive, we splurged and THANK GOD WE DID. TOM BRADY I WILL ALWAYS MISS YOU.

My dad has a friend who works at one of the pregame tents and full disclosure we went, were given like 15 free drink vouchers each, and got wasted. And that means I took very, very few photos because I was busy screaming at everything because we played like shit.

Though not our best game, I will be forever grateful I got to see Tom’s last regular season game plated with the Patriots – in Gillette. Basically, got this one done just in the nick of time.

Also I like watching at home better than at a stadium. I miss the slo-mo, reply, commentating, etc. You miss so much by being there live!

Fort Dauphin, Madagascar

MADAGASCAR – MONTH THREE

Obviously, the top highlight is WINNING THE SUPER BOWL. What else was I gonna say? To some it may be the most boring Super Bowl in history, but I was pretty stressed out the whole way through – it was within a field goal or tied down to the last 7 minutes. Also, our D played lights out and JULES GOT MVP! Brady got SIX. We tied the Steelers, life is good, etc etc.

Nearly tied with the Super Bowl win was the AFC Championship though. THAT GAME. OH MY GOD. From the moment it started to the heart attack inducing final moments, I wasn’t sure I’d survive it. Kansas City. Kansas City of “we’re onto Cincinnati” fame. Kansas City where we played so poorly I named my newly adopted (and now 5 year old) kitten Brady in remembrance of the once-great QB. In Arrowhead Stadium, which was only happening because we couldn’t close the Dolphins game. We didn’t look like us. This wasn’t our year. We were going to make it to a record breaking 8 th straight AFC Championship and then go home. I just wanted to keep in close. AND KEEP IN CLOSE WE DID. I honestly do not think I’ve ever been so stressed throughout a game but man was it worth it.

For both these games I had to watch from 2:30 – 6:00sih and the next days at work were rough. But well worth it. I miss football. Gronk and McCourty please don’t retire. Trey Flowers, how ‘bout a team friendly deal??

Fort Dauphin, Madagascar

Gareth’s last days in Mada

I spent quite a few days this month at Talinjoo, the fancy hotel just outside of town. It was heave.

Talinjoo, Fort Dauphin, MadagascarTalinjoo, Fort Dauphin, MadagascarAnother overarching theme of the month has been illness! I don’t think the giardia ever really went away, and I spent the break getting sicker and sicker until by the new year I was properly really quite ill again. That led to another round of being bedridden, though this time I went to the doctor much earlier so I wasn’t REALLY sick for as long.

Before I even finished the antibiotics for that, dehydration led to a UTI and kidney infection which was really quite hellish. They don’t have that dye medication that takes away the pain here, so I was drinking loads of baking soda to try to lessen the pain which was semi-successful. The medication for all of these things made me really sick, so it was just so many compounding things. I lost a lot of weight and looked like a really malnourished version of myself.

Now for serious life stuff, unfortunately.

A colleague’s son died from measles and that was really difficult. We’re in such a weird position here because we have the privilege of being Vazahs, have health insurance, get to travel to beautiful parts of the area, can eat at the nicer restaurants sometimes, but then there’s this other side of life where water is scarce and my bed is infested with fleas and you’re sick all the time and life is fragile for people who live in this context all the time. Our night guard and his wife and 7 month old daughter live in a tiny wooden shack in our back garden and their daughter got measles (it’s outbreaking here). The treatment was about $7, which they couldn’t afford to pay. We obviously paid for it, and made sure she got ongoing care. However that turned into them asking us for basic necessities like fruit and vegetables, which was fine, but then turned into about 2-3 daily calls with requests for luxuries like diapers and sugar. It’s so hard to know how to handle things like that, and luckily SEED took over once it got too excessive – but it’s hard because you’re so privileged compared to people who have nothing. It honestly took us about 6 weeks to even realise anyone lived there – through our unadjusted eyes it seemed impossible a family could fit in such a small space.

Fort Dauphin, Madagascar

a family lives in this shed in our garden

Someone else in the office has Scarlett Fever and it feels like every day someone else is ill with something new. I will say, it hasn’t been me! Since getting over the stomach stuff and kidney infection, I’ve been relatively healthy which has been SUCH a nice break. I was starting to doubt I’d ever adjust/feel healthy again in my life. You hear horror stories of someone contracting something once and never really recovering digestively and I was terrified that was me. But nope! All good on that front (or as good as can be expected in the context haha).

It hasn’t been that eventful of a month. We had a really fun retirement party with lots of dancing. Lots of studying for my masters.

Fort Dauphin, Madagascar

It continues to be so hot it’s difficult to work or focus or breathe, and we’ve started having near daily power cuts and I gotta tell you life without the fan isn’t my favourite.

Still plugging along trying to get the rest of our funding. Organising some activities we can be doing now, which is exciting!

Fort Dauphin, Madagascar

MADAGASCAR – MONTH TWO

YOU GUYS I SUCK. Time moves strangely fast here and I missed posting so many of these. I wrote most of them at the time, so I’m gonna post them all in one go and try to be better in the future… here goes.

So, time flew by and somehow it’s well past my two month mark here! Month two was much
easier than month one, mostly because Gareth was here for such a large chunk of it.

Fort Dauphin, Madagascar

I had two weeks off over Christmas and we mostly hung out around Fort Dauphin, getting to
know the area better, spending so much time at the beach and fancy hotel, working on my tan, sorting my flat, and ringing in the new year. Still struggling to grasp that it’s 2019!

Fort Dauphin, Madagascar

Fort Dauphin, MadagascarFort Dauphin, Madagascar

We found some time to get to Berenty, which was a fantastic way to spend a Christmas so far
from home and in the southern hemisphere. It was incredibly difficult to say goodbye to Gareth
– life here is one million times easier and more enjoyable with him around, but it got easier
quickly knowing we’d see each other in March – less than two months away at the time of
writing this!

it started getting very hot

Work started back up, and that was great because I really, really enjoy my work here. My job
changed a little bit, instead of being on an HIV project and a WASH project, I’m just on HIV and
then helping to develop strategy for the community health department as a whole. I’m really
excited about the new challenge/opportunity and think it’ll be a great way to develop my skill
set. Also, my HIV project is about 50% funded now! It’s all very, very exciting.

lunch spot

SEED office (L)

school toilets I assessed for the WASH project

Fort Dauphin continues to be gorgeous. Have a progression of sunsets from this month:

Fort Dauphin, Madagascar

Fort Dauphin, Madagascar

Fort Dauphin, Madagascar

from my bedroom window

AND OF course one of the main events from month two was the Patriots beating the Chargers
in the Divisional round. Luckily for me it was on at the only slot that didn’t keep me up all night (looking at you AFCCG), and we BEAT LA!

Updates from the AFCCG and THE SUPER BOWL will be included in my month three write up,
where they belong. But I have a LOT OF FEELINGS about it, obviously.

SUPER BOWL 51

I know this is late but it’s a basically my version of a major life moment so I’m posting about it anyway.

CAN WE TALK ABOUT THAT SUPER BOWL?!

(Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

When we won in 2014, I was ecstatic. That was an epic Super Bowl, it was ON MY BIRTHDAY, we seemed to break the curse of last minute miracle catches (or we at least learned to overcome the curse, the miracle catch still happened). It was the first time we had gone to the SB since I got settled in LA. (We actually played a month after I first moved there, in 2012, and I watched at a party of 100+ Giants fans. After we lost I hid in the bathroom while Katie got the car from the valet. It’s not a high point.)

2014 was spectacular. It felt like a magical season, the day we signed Revis I texted a friend saying if we didn’t win the Super Bowl that year, I wasn’t sure Brady would ever get another ring. Then Gronk stayed healthy and it felt like our year. This season, I knew we were good, but it felt so impossible. That Brady could have five. That we could win twice in three years. That we could so without Gronk.

Then we beat the Steelers in the Championship (fun fact, Katie is a Steelers fan and it’s like they waited until we no longer lived together to match up in the playoffs, which was v. considerate of them), and suddenly we were Super Bowl bound.

Gareth was there that weekend for my birthday. Months before, when he realized it was also SB weekend, I don’t think he was very excited. I am generally not super fun to be around during playoff games (right, Jake?), and I basically cried stressed out tears all through SB 49. I love winning Super Bowls but can’t actually handle the emotions of the Patriots playing in one. (I KNOW IT’S JUST A GAME, caring too much is the definition of being a sports fan.)

Anyway, back to SB 51. Wow, was it bad, huh? I remember when the Broncos were blown out by the Seahawks thinking we probably still would have lost but we’d never let ourselves be embarrassed like that in a Super Bowl. And suddenly it was happening. The game didn’t start until 12:40 am my time, and an hour in it was so clear we had lost I stopped feeling upset. I realized it was the last game before a very long off season, and decided to enjoy watching them play for the final time until September. I did stay aware of what we needed for a comeback, and truly believed if any team could make a historical, never before seen comeback it could be us. But did I think the odds were in our favor? Definitely not.

sad we’re losing

And then Hightower sacked Ryan and changed the tone. Suddenly we were unstoppable. Everything changed. We got our own miracle catch, and made TWO two point conversations to tie the game. It was insane. It was the most amazing comeback, most amazing game I had ever seen. And then it was overtime. We won the coin toss. It’s football and nothing is ever certain (the Falcons will back me up on this), but it didn’t feel like we couldn’t lose. Not after everything.

I did a presentation on American football for my kids at the beginning of the school year, and when the playoffs started I showed them clips and kept them informed about what was going on. When I went to school the next day, everyone knew we had won and all my classes were begging to watch. So not only did I get to see it live, but I got to relive it about six times that week, haha.

And now I get to update my bio section for SB 51 and rewatch this commercial about 1000 more times. What a season!

Brady, our good luck charm