I believe that we all should maximize our skills to help make the world a better place. In the case if Debbie Rodriguez, it meant teaching the art and business of hairdressing to the women of Kabul, in Afghanistan.
Reading the New York Times Bestseller Kabul Beauty School, I could not help but think about the plight of women all over the world. How many of us take for granted the relative freedoms we experience on a daily basis, and how different another person’s normal could be really like. It is great that there are aid workers risking life and limbs to help make life a little better for other people. More importantly, I am grateful for dreamers and movers who are unlocking possibilities and opening doors where there used to be hopelessness and a quiet acceptance of the cards they have been dealt with.
I also could not stop wondering whether it is now possible to be a tourist in Afghanistan. Despite the security concerns, and the lack of first world amenities, the author painted a picture of Kabul for me that I would love to explore. I have no idea what the situation on the ground is these days, but I would like to know if it would be possible to visit someday.
13 of 100!
Kabul Beauty School is my eleventh book for this year. I set 18 books for this year’s Reading Challenge at Goodreads but it would be great to exceed that by a mile!
Vera has
11 of 18 (61%)view books
verabear The 100 Day Project #100daysofblogging, #100daysofwriting, #driving, #the100dayproject, #verawritesfor100days 0 Comments	
I love driving! I really do. I don’t ever really mind when my husband asks me to drive him somewhere, or to pick him up. Except when he falls asleep and leaves me to battle my own sleepiness while stuck in EDSA traffic. I’ll do the driving, but he’s gotta do the entertaining, you know what I mean? 🙂
I would love to take roadtrips more often. Straight boring highways make me sleepy, but winding roads, going up and around mountains, or navigating inner city new-to-me roads – those keep me wide awake. Hmm. Yes, let’s take more roadtrips.
Over a year ago, in January, I had an accident. I was on my way to work, and at past 11 in the evening, it would have been just a 10 to 15-minute drive. One minute I was changing radio stations, just about 50 meters before I turn left at a cross-roads. The next, well, I heard the sound of what seemed to me like crushing metal.
I had made that last crossroads safely, but have no memory of it. I was about a hundred meters away now, at another crossroads – apparently an accident-prone one. I had no idea that I had fallen asleep. It was scary. I crashed into the drivers’ side of the other car so my first thought was to open my window and ask if he was okay. Which thankfully, he was.
One might say that this accident was my crossroads. It had driven the point that I needed to seek help for all that uncontrollable sleepiness. I wasn’t going to wait for another accident that might cost lives, or limbs.
Since then, I’ve had my sleep apnea officially diagnosed, and I’ve been sleeping with a CPAP machine (well, maybe not all the time, but as much as possible). Whenever we have to drive, we also make it a point that I get some rest. Or, that if I get really sleepy, we look for a safe space and park for a quick nap. When driving alone, I munch on nuts or chocolate when I have to. Lately, I feel like things have been better.
Driving is such a big responsibility. Your life, your passengers’ lives, as well as the lives of pedestrians and other motorists are in your hands. That’s been on my mind lately.
I wonder if every driver thinks of it this way?