GUYS I SUCK!

Blah blah, I whine that no one reads my blog but then I never keep it up. What do you WANT from me??!!!

K so here's what happened after my last blog post. In super-summed-up style. [EDIT: ok I knew this wouldn't happen. Disregard.]

I finished up working at ECLAC in Mexico City at the end of July and it was vacation time for me. I'd promised Marco's family I'd visit them again once I finished work, so I went there to Querétaro for a few days and stayed in the little green house again.

I loved spending time with Bere and Isaac; they really spoil me with their attention. The last time I saw them they were 3 and 4 years old, and now they're 9 and 10. Bere swears she remembers me.

Bere and Isaac; me, Marco and Isaac

I felt like an honorary aunt. I have tons of little cousins (or not so little anymore, like I would know) but I barely see them.

After Querétaro I went back to Mexico City so I could drive with the frisbee girls to the national tournament in Xalapa (or Jalapa) in Veracruz state. The tournament was Aug 6-7. It was awesome, altho we only won about half our games and got bitten terribly by some bug that left bites way bigger and more long-lasting than mosquitos. Either that or Jalapa has some mighty huge mosquitos.

The girls drove back to Mexico City, but I stayed in Xalapa with a Couchsurfing host. I visited a couple of tiny but cute villages nearby (Coatepec, Xico) and saw the horribly ugly centre of Xalapa. Then it was off on a bus to the Port of Veracruz. I thought it was humid in Xalapa, but I got hit with a wall of humidity getting off the bus there. Sweet! Tropics time.

This girl Liza from the frisbee team told me her parents lived in Veracruz and would be happy to host me. I felt guilty about taking her up on it, but also felt rude not to do so. So I stayed with her parents in a really nice house in a subdivision right near the coast and her mom took amazing care of me, driving me all around and hooking me up with her nephew Emilio to show me around. He enlisted his friend Isaías to do the grand Veracruz tour with me, and I had a great time hanging out with them both, eatin' tacos, swimming at the beach, etc. (Taquitos... playita... chelitas...)

Not the world's nicest beach, but no complaints outta me. (Isaías.)

Next up was an 8-hr bus ride to Oaxaca, on the Pacific rather than Atlantic coast of Mexico. There I stayed with a friend of a friend of Liza's parents, so it was kiiinda weird to be taken in by them. But I basically got my own tour guide assigned to me again. This time it was a couple of grandparents with a big, gorgeous house and their kids and grandchildren visiting. So to take care of me, I got the maid to take me all around. Nice!

She and her friend brought me to the market, had amazing chocolate, ate some locusts, yada yada. The next day we went to the ruins of Mitla, about an hour bus ride away. Not that impressive, but we did eat some AMAZING nieves, which are like snowcones but about 100 million times better.

I'd heard about Hierve el Agua, which are calcified waterfalls, a little further on. So we jumped in the back of a pickup and wound up a mountain for another hour. That ride was the best part.

Hierve el Agua. You can see the falls on the right.

And the NEXT day, I got driven on a moped by some other really nice kid up to the ruins at Monte Albán. Those were pretty sweet, and I am a huge sucker for motorcycle/moped rides. HAPPY ME!!! Love summer, love the wind in my hair. Helmet what?

Then it was another bus ride to San Cristóbal de las Casas. There I was in a hostel, and met some nice people, most notably a Kiwi named Jonno. (Only Kiwis and Aussies get away with calling themselves shit like that.)

San Cristóbal itself was for me largely meh. Except I DID have the best nachos and michelada of my LIFE in a bar there (Revolución. GET THE NACHOS AND MICHELADAS!). We went to watch a soccer game, maybe the under-17s, and I also kind of developed a crush on the girl wearing the Interpol shirt serving us. SHE'S PRETTY AND SMART! SHE LIKES INTERPOL! SHE LIKES DOGS! SHE LIKES DARK BEER! We are clearly meant to be together. A dog came in out of the rain and I took pity on him, but then the manager said he had to go. I tried to convince him to stay near the door, but that didn't work, so I had to kick him out. The waitress thanked me for doing it, because she didn't have the heart. If only I could have adopted that dog and the three of us could have been together until the end of one of our natural lives. Oh well, yet another love that could not be.

Anyhoo, the best part of San Cristóbal apart from that was outside the town. A few hostelers and myself got a bike tour together to a village near(ish)by called San Juan de Chamula. I guess all the tourists go there to check out the church, but I HIGHLY recommend it anyway. You can't take pictures inside, otherwise I'd put one up. The people there mix Catholicism with some type of paganism, and the result is tons of burning candles stuck onto the floor and Coke being used for a ritual. You gotta go.

The other cool thing was the (water-filled) canyon that also all the tourists do. But I still think it's awesome. Kind of fjord-like.

Then I set off to Palenque with Jonno. We hooked up with some Frenchie to do the ruin tour. Gorgeous.

Palenque.

Thennnn I took a 12- or 14-hour bus ride back to Mexico City, and met WEINER! Nice time.

Us on the bus tour.

Then I flew back to Monterey, California.

And began my third semester at MIIS! Finals are in a few weeks. So far everything's great, feeling comfortable, getting good marks. Just can't believe I'm supposed to get a job soon. I am NOT that good yet.

I went to my brother's wedding in September and had a great time. Might have given too many shots to the bride.

Also me and Perki are back together, he came to visit in October and showed up my cooking skills as usual.

Dan, Perks, Becky, Calli on our way to the beach in Carmel.

I'll do another post sometime with my final observations on Mexico. For now I hope I've tantalized you sufficiently with my very exciting life.

ya casi casi

Right so... last weekend I went to Querétaro with Burnsy and the frisbee team, all us gals in a van, left at 5am to get there by 8.30 or so to register. We played two games and half of a third, at which point it began to rain profusely - cold rain, drops as big as your thumb, driving wind, etc. - and after bravely plugging through for a bit, the pathetic throws and inability to catch the frisbee made it impossible to score any points, and we could barely see anyway at that point, so the other coach finally yelled "Ya!! That's it!!" and we all sprinted for the stands. The guys packed it in a little bit afterwards and we all sat, soaking, on the concrete steps, the wind blowing the rain in at us, lakes widening on the fields. Eventually it let up a little bit and we all headed for our respective vehicles and the hotel. It was cool, we had a suite for all 10 girls, sitting around eating peanuts while we each went to shower. Dinner out in the pretty centre of Querétaro, then I was fucking dead from having slept around 5 hours two nights in a row, so I went and passed out in the hotel.

Oh and! I had a break between the second and third games on Saturday, and I took a taxi into Querétaro to have lunch at a mall with Marco, his mom, and his sister Alma, and then walked over to their house where they made me an ice cream sundae and I taught Marco's 10-year-old sister Bere, Alma, and Marco how to play Crazy 8's... it was so nice to be back there again in their house, speaking much better Spanish than I spoke 5 years ago and feeling at home in Mexico, and yet feeling like not a whole lot had changed.

On Sunday Marco's mom, dad, Alma, Bere, and the little brother Isaac came to watch me play frisbee and gave me my birthday present, so thoughtful! We had two more games on Sunday plus the other half of the one that was cancelled, and I scored the last point for us in the tournament! Although through most of the tourney I was just running around like a chicken with its head cut off, I slowly started figuring out where I was supposed to be and started defending better, so, cool.

Then it was my birthday week with the actual day on Wednesday. The girls at work made me a cake, on Thursday I went out to the pulquería (where else?) and CS meet at the Oslo, Friday we went to see the last Harry Potter flick, Saturday Burns and I went to Teotihuacán (pyramids just outside the city) and at night Luis and Flor had organized a crazy party for Luis' birthday. I was feeling pretty burnt out but once I walked into my house at 11pm and the DJs were at it and the house was full of people.. I suddenly felt up to it somehow, hehe. I went to bed around 5am and most people had started leaving by then. The house was disgusting the day after... broken beer bottles in the shower... whole floor sticky... some guy passed out on the couch, on the half that wasn't vomited on... ha. Real good party.

Hum hum, what else? I only have this week and one more after that at work! I still haven't quite figured out what I'm doing after I'm done, except that I decided I'll stay in Mexico, since I'm here and I haven't gotten out of the city much.

On Tuesday went with Eduardo - another awesome Couchsurfer - to buy souvenir-y things in the market at the Ciudadela, yesterday had a short frisbee training complete with a million mosquitos, and tonight I went with Eduardo again to our awesome Cantina Crawl... just me and him, haha. La Camarita (Corona), some random bar to get a hamburger (Sol, and yes it does taste like water), El Salón Corona (i think that's its name) - tarro de clara, and Dos Naciones, now serving prostitutes and no music!! (Bohemia). I think it was good that Dos Naciones was last on our tour, haha.

I feel like more things must have happened, but maybe not. Lately it's been sunny in the afternoon instead of overcast/raining. God I love summer when it's summer.

COCK

I just walked into my room right now and noted that my room actually looks pretty lived in. Granted, I still don't have any more furniture than my blow-up bed and the mini-closet racks Luis installed for me, but I have this habit of spreading out all of my worldly possessions... all over the place. Happens everywhere. But at least here it makes my room seem more cozy.

Someone told me once there are people who need to see their stuff to remember it exists, and if that is true, I am one of those people. The weird part is I like having my things organized... but I also like to have them everywhere. No idea.

So anyway, what news in my humble existence? I saw my first cockroach here the other day, on the wall, beside my bed. Thankfully I didn't have to wake up to stare into its (eyes?), it appeared during the day and Luis came to the rescue to knock it scurrying back where it came from (gap between baseboard and floor, which is now limed, fingers crossed), cuz I sure was not going near that thing.

But seriously, how have I been filling my existence. Well I've gone to a couple Couchsurfing meets - they meet on Thursday nights at a rotating circuit of bars and usually go out afterwards (I may repeat myself here, just stop me...) to someplace else to "bailar", as the Mexicans say... we've gone a couple times to this tiny (for me, classic Latino) bar that puts on salsa, bachata, whatever else Latino music that I can't identify or dance to. There are like three people that work there, plus the DJ, and including the guy who hands you toilet paper over the stall door. My favourite part is the buckets (really, they're like metal washtubs) of beer they sell as package deals, since I always seem to get offered one just for being li'l ol' me. (A beer that is, not the bucket of 'em. Someday.)

I've also gone to the pulquería another couple times - man I love that stuff. The one on Insurgentes I've been going to is a cute dark indie type bar with three levels, and tons of flavours of pulque. Last time I was there it was way too busy because of some DJ they put on, it's definitely better as a chill place to chat and drink your pulque. PULQUEEEEEEE!

I've also been going to play ultimate frisbee a bit - a couple Wednesdays and then this past Saturday and Sunday. Tonight was cancelled due to inclement weather, sad face. We have a tournament in Querétaro this weekend... happy face! Not that I know how to play, of course, but there's only one way to learn, and tournaments of any type are always a good time. Hope the weather's good! And maybe I'll even get to hang out with Marco a little bit and see a bit of Querétaro. Also a great part of frisbee are the girls on the team. They're all buena onda and there are a few pretty funny ones on there. It's gonna be a good time. Also, there will be boys at the tournament. :P

Oh! Wow this feels like a while ago, but I went with a couple Couchsurfers (Paco - Mexico, Alper - Turkey) to the Six Flags here in Mexico D.F. one Saturday. It was fun - going to theme parks always is. But of course this one was kinda teeny compared to Wonderland (which in turn I consider sorta teeny compared to Cedar Point), and if you combine that with lotsa people on a Saturday, you get long lines. We stood a lot in the sun, but they're cool dudes and we had a nice time. Afterwards we went to San Ángel, Paco's barrio, and got some freaking delicious tacos - ok mine was a gringa, I don't if that counts. But those cold Coronas after a day in the amusement park were... delish.

Oh yeah that was the day we met up with other CSers at the pulquería, and then I ended up in that little Latino bar till 4am... I was supposed to go to frisbee that Sun buuut.. didn't. Ha.

Since the CSers meet on Thursday nights (and like to go out, as I might have added, plus this week we're going to the place with 2 for 1 beers) last week I had a pretty unproductive Friday (and Thursday, but no real excuse for that). At work I'm almost done the project I've been working on, just proofreading and final touches and whatnot, so if I'm a good girl I'll get it mostly done tomorrow and then... no idea for Friday.

Ah! This Saturday after frisbee Burns and I hit up the gay pride parade happening on Reforma/in the Zona Rosa. It was sweet, dance music playing in the streets, rainbow colours everywhere, people dressed up like crazy, lots of energy... and lots of people. Loooots. We kinda ducked in, watched the dancing boys on the floats, got our picture taken with some guy (actually he grabbed us out of nowhere and got his friend to take a cellphone pic of us... and when I was like "what are you doing?" he goes, "whaaat? don't worry! I'm gay!" .... alright, it makes MUCH more sense now. ...) and then went for cheap chilaquiles. YUM!

Oh, and if you're wondering about the title still, nope it's not because of all the guys reeeally wanting to teach me to dance (they are just so considerate), nor because of the gay pride parade, but rather it's the name of a play that Diego Luna is currently starring in here which Burns and I went to see on Sunday. It's about a mostly gay guy who falls for a girl and can't decide who he wants to be with, her or his boyfriend. It's really funny actually, he's really cute in it.

Well it has reached the late late hour of 10pm and I am feeling sleepy... can't believe June is almost over already, and I haven't even left the city yet!! Well, this weekend. Byeeees everyone! :)

Mexico: two-week mark

Well, I am still in the learning phase, that's for sure. At least now I can navigate around certain areas with relative ease, which helped out a lot today, but still didn't save me from failing on a couple counts.

First of all, I wanted to send a letter, but my Internet search showed that post offices are few and far between around here. The nearest-ish is in the Zona Rosa, basically midway between work and my house. So I got out of work a little after 4, and instead of heading to the metro with Burns, I walked all the way down to Chapultepec and over, just to find - of course - that it was closed. The security guard informed me that they were open from 8.30 till 4pm, inconveniently enough coinciding with my work schedule. Ooook. I guess tomorrow I'll take the lunch hour to wander back there - it's not exactly in the greatest spot transit-wise either, which complicates things.

Second fail, part one, was when I tried to find a laundromat yesterday to do my laundry (which badly needs doing). Right, Sunday, the day everyone does their laundry? Well, I guess that's not the official laundry-doing day here, because the two I stopped by at were closed. Fair enough, everyone needs their day of rest, etc. So today, after the botched attempt at mailing my letter, I took the Metrobus home from Insurgentes and stopped into the laundromat so see what the deal was. They closed at 6; it was now 5.30. Offfff course!! Again neatly making it really hard for me to get home from work early enough to get it done. My plan is now to drop it off in the morning, have them do it, and then pick it up when I get home from work. Let's see how that goes.

So, I guess I should rewind a bit and see what needs talking about. I went to work last Monday, but was feeling pretty shitty - my cold was only getting worse. I had a brutal cough, was blowing my nose all the time, and my eyes ended up getting infected. On Tuesday I stayed home and got some meds from the pharmacy (they offer a free medical consult to get you to shop there, I guess.), and I didn't go back to work until Friday. Both days I was doing my United Nations "Basic Security in the Field" course and the Advanced part of the same. It is basically to educate UN staff on what to do in dangerous situations, e.g. hijackings, bombings, natural disasters, etc. They (sorta) teach you to stay away from land mines and how to navigate using the sun/stars/whatever, how to avoid getting AIDS, cultural sensitivity, and so on. So pretty much, it applies to people going out to duty stations, and not to us sitting in our office building getting paid (or not) to type for a living. But it was a not-bad way to spend a day and a half, especially when I wasn't feeling that great.

Highlights from the security course:
-- Outdoor tip: "Avoid camping under coconut trees."
(No further explanation. Just that.)
-- Cultural sensitivity tip: "Find out how close you can stand to someone without making them feel uncomfortable."
-- Security question: "Does this package look suspicious to you?" (Package is oily, smelly, and lumpy, and making noise, with wires poking out and a badly typed address on it.) "Yes/no."

Ohhhh yeah.

Friday and today I worked on editing an article on the Mexican economy and the financial crisis, and apparently I am going to start translating something on the film industry tomorrow. Also today, I went to the other UN building (houses everything except ECLAC) to get my picture ID done. So now I have an official UN ID with my face on it! Howww exciting.

About my office... the people are super nice and there is a gorgeous terrace where we can go eat for lunch, but there is no fridge to store my lunch if I bring it - I guess I need a lunch pail. :( I work on the 13th floor and I don't know my unit, and Sarah works on the 11th, in the agricultural section. I share a little office with a Mexican girl named Natalia, who is really nice, and works on water and sanitation projects. The back wall of our office is made of glass, which means we have a great view of the city (and the pollution smothering it), and there is also a Mexican flag just outside, which is nice.

I have been taking the Metrobus and metro to work, but there are a couple other possibilities I'm investigating to get there, because I'm not convinced that this is the most efficient method. The Metrobus is nice, but the metro makes for a long walk to my line because there are three lines that meet in the same station (Tacubaya), and then it's really hot down there, and super long lines to take the escalator up. I walk the stairs, but (I'll blame the altitude for this) one flight of stairs basically tires me out. Then from Polanco, I still have to walk 10 or 15 minutes to work. So it's a really roundabout way of getting there. Tomorrow I'm going to head the other direction and try to catch a bus to Masaryk from the Alvaro Obregon metrobus stop on Insurgentes.

On the weekend Sarah and I went out a little bit, we got a beer after work on Friday (upon my insistence) at a pub on Masaryk, and later went out with Pedro for another drink. On Saturday I went to the airport to hang out with Marco -for five hours, thank God I like Starbucks here- and by the time I got home I was pooped, as was Sarah, so we didn't do anything that night, but Sunday we went to the Anthropology Museum in Chapultepec Park.

I guess that's all the news for now... I'm feeling 95% better, and do not want to be in my house more than necessary. So I think I'm going to go wander around Condesa after posting this! Saludos a todos.

MEXICO

Impressions of Mexico: warm and sunny, loudspeakers, food everywhere, people selling stuff everywhere, guys with greased hair, lovers littered on benches, steps, the ground... and everything for DIEZ PESOOOOOOOS!!

I got to Mexico Monday afternoon; it was hot and humid. I lugged my suitcase to the metro and on the way to my hostel I watched the sunny streets with the painted buildings roll by. People came through the cars every couple minutes selling gum, candy, cd's, little toys, all for five or ten pesos. The food cooking in the jumble of a market in front of my hostel smelled amazing, and was everywhere. Yup! I was in Mexico. Annnnd loving it.

I went for a walk once I got established in my hostel. Got a cell phone from Telcel. went back for an umbrella, and then walked through Zona Rosa (cute area with pedestrian walks, restaurants, erotica shops, and gay bars.) It started raining as I walked back along Reforma, but I had my umbrella (one of about 3 other people that had one, poor suckers), and it was still warm, so it was a beautiful walk back to the hostel under the trees on the wide sidewalk.

That night I hung out with my hostelmates on the roof, one Uruguayan, two Americans, and one French-Canadian from Ottawa, and then we went for a drink in Zona Rosa. All in all... I was super happy to be here at last.

Tuesday: I slept in, then went with the Americans from the hostel to the Castillo in Chapultepec park through some protest that had taken over Reforma. We did the mini train ride through the park and then headed up to the castle - nice path, beautiful building and gardens, and view of the city. We headed over to the Zócalo afterwards (main plaza in the city) to see if there was anything interesting to buy at the stands there, but there wasn't, and it was just hot at that time of day. Basically, since the thunderstorm on Monday, it's been beautiful weather. In the morning, not too hot, nice breeze, by afternoon it gets hotter in the sun, but still tolerable. Perfect weather really, just what the doctor ordered. Or not, considering I caught a bad cold somehow.... but whatever, I am loving the weather.

In the evening on Tuesday a guy from Couchsurfing, Pedro, picked me up to show me a couple apartments, and then we hooked up with a couple German girls he knew to go to a bar for some mezcal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezcal). We drank it together with orange slices sprinkled with chili. It seemed pretty strong to me, and I could only sip down the shot slowly, but yesterday my roommate gave me a couple shots to help with the cold, and it wasn't as worthy of making a face. But I digress.

After the mezcal, we got some tacos, and then to another cute bar that sold pulque (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulque). I didn't order it, but I tried some of Pedro's. Seemed alright. Afterwards we checked out another apartment, but the room was taken already, so my housing thing wasn't solved, but it was still a nice night.

Wednesday: Jeff, one of the Americans, had lost his passport at a bar the night before, and he was flying out that day. So we grabbed a taxi in the morning to the bar, and luckily there were people waiting to start work and even more luckily, they had his passport. So it was off to the airport for him.

Burns had arrived that morning, so we met up outside my hostel. Woo! Reunion! I got her a cell phone at the same place, and we walked through Zona Rosa, before going up to Presidente Masaryk to find our place of work come Monday. The building is super nice, you can check it out on Google Maps: Masaryk 29, Mexico City. There are lots of trees and also lots of pricey restaurants and shops around - I guess Masaryk in Mexico is comparable to Yorkville in Toronto or whatever your upscale reference might be. A kind of ritzy neighbourhood, but it's not crazy or anything.

At night we met up with a couple guys from Couchsurfing and went to the Coyoacán area to get some food and then churros. We sat up on the second floor in this tiny churro place where Salvador couldn't even stand up straight and it filled with smoke... but the warm churros were delicious, you could pick your filling... I got Nutella, of course.

Thursday: I went to go look at the apartment where I'm living now in the morning, and then went to pick up Burns from the clinic, where they gave her a shot to fix her swollen eye. Goddamn hostel. We moved my stuff to my new apartment - Avenida Baja California, 318. You can also check it on Google Maps. :P It's a pretty big apartment, right on the edge of Condesa, which is a nice, chill neighbourhood with a lot of young people and restaurants, and a bike-share program. My roommate is Luis, he's 35, from Mexico City, and works as a credit analyst at WalMart, oh yeah.

Anyway after dropping my stuff off, we did a bit of shopping near Zócalo, walked around Condesa and got some supper at an organic food restaurant (first salad or really, greens at all since I'd been in Mexico), and then I headed home to have my cold hit me with a vengeance. When Luis got home we moved all his entertainment shit out of my room and into the living room where we left it in a pile on the floor.

Friday: sick. I managed to take a shower and go with Luis to get some groceries, but I spent the rest of the day laying around with my throat and glands killing me. I did reorganize the kitchen cabinets while Luis put up all the electronics, posters and hammock in the living room. Burns slept over since she left the hostel and hadn't found a place yet.

Saturday: felt a little bit better, and decided I didn't want to spend the whole day in the house, so when Sarah found a house she liked, I jumped in the taxi with her to go drop off her stuff. Her apartment is pretty far from me - it's a ways north of Reforma, whereas I'm a ways south. But there is a fairly direct Metrobus line that runs along Insurgentes that connects us pretty well, The Metrobus is basically a metro that runs above ground... with buses, or I guess like a tram system where the buses have their own lanes in the middle of the street and closed, elevated stops.

Once we dropped off her stuff, we took a walk to a nearby Walmart to get a few basic things, and then we took the metro to Polanco, which is the nearest stop to work, to see how long it would take from her house. We still have to figure out how to get a bus from the metro station to work, cuz it's still a bit of a walk even from the metro station. IIn my case, I might end up taking the Metrobus to the Tacubaya metro station, then take the metro to Polanco, and from there, a microbus to work. 5 pesos, 3 pesos, 3 pesos. Shit, stuff is cheap here. 5 pesos is about 40 cents. In Toronto it costs what now, like 3 dollars for one ride on the subway? ......

The whole microbus system... I really have no idea how that works. There are no marked bus stops. People just stand at the side of the road and somehow know if they flag down the bus, it will stop there for them. Every bus is green and white and says "Ruta 2" (Route 2) on it. In the windshield they put a sign that says where they're heading. As for the stops until you get there... that's anyone's guess. We observed where the buses were going by and positioned ourselves near some other women, and took one down from Masaryk to Chapultepec. Success! Now just to find out one that goes down Masaryk...

I was still feeling kind of shitty so we headed back to Sarah's pretty soon. She's living with two young Mexican guys, a photographer and an engineer apparently, who have a bookshelf I already took advantage of, and an orange corner couch. It's a cute, small-ish, sunny apartment with a retro feel. I just wish it weren't so far away!

Well folks it's been a crazy long post I know, but everything is just so exciting and it all needs an introduction. Do forgive me dear readers if I write too much, but I kind of use this blog so I also remember what I've been up to.

I'm totally excited to be here for these two months. It feels great to be speaking Spanish again, and yes, I have dropped the Spanish lisp. Que me perdonen los españoles. "Work" starts on Monday. I'll keep y'all updated.

Pictures are on Facebook, it's too much of a pain to put them in here.

love, moi.

randommm

At the farmer's market last week I saw a guy wearing a shirt that said on the back: "We learn Arabic so you don't have to."

........

Nice obtuse fear-mongering? We have the Defense Language Institute here in town, where army guys and gals go to learn languages that might come in handy for people in the army to know for intelligence purposes. Dave, the guy who lives behind my house and who I went surfing with a couple times, was learning Arabic for a few years, for example. That's all they do. Just spend eight hours a day learning a language. Yikes.

I don't know if they guy wearing that shirt went to DLI or if it was a DLI-sanctioned shirt. But really? Are we feeling that vulnerable to the Arab threat? ....

Oh yeah, and he was standing at the table to sign up Republicans to vote. Big surprise there.

---------------

I had another fun time when I signed my new lease with Amy yesterday. Our new landlord, Ray, is a 72-year-old white guy who likes to chat, as most old people do. He told us a variety of things: that he likes to take care of himself - ie, never drank or smoke and keeps active (and to his credit, it shows); that he's a Christian and that's "worked out pretty well" for him; and then he gave us a mini-speech about how travelling really opens your eyes and gets you out of your bubble.

Ok, so I didn't mind hearing his life story. I actually like listening to old people. He reminded me a lot of my grandpa, too. Probably my grandpa believes the same things this guy believes. But I found it really entertaining. So he's a Christian, with three boys, grown with children. He said that he tries to lead a moral life and that's worked out pretty well for him so far. That's so sweet! Isn't it nice when things work out like that? He worked hard in Silicon Valley, didn't go out drinking with the guys, just got where he is through pure sweat and tears. He got married, had kids, now he has a really nice family he can be proud of. But the thought flitted across my mind... would his Christianity have worked out so great for him if one of his boys had been gay? How would that work then? What happens when a monkey wrench like that gets thrown into his clear life path?

Am I sadistic for thinking these things? I'm just curious how people deal with this kind of thing.

He laid out to us that he's a creationist ("maybe you guys believe in evolution or whatever", he said, waving his hands dismissively, "but I don't."). He told us that he believes since Adam, humans have had the same mental capacity. (Ok.) But then he said that "I know some people think that 3,000 years ago people were living in caves and hunting with bows and arrows, but that's not true! I was in Pompeii, and those people had running water!" Etc.

Right. Pompeii "happened" 2,000 years ago. I'm not sure who he thinks believes that people were living in caves 3,000 years ago. It's certainly not the creationists - if according to the Bible the earth was created 6,000 years ago. And it's not the "evolutionists" either (if that's the opposite): the Neandertals (if those are the cave people we're talking about) disappeared in Europe around 30,000 years ago. Cave paintings were around about 24,000 years ago.

Anyway I guess I'm just still astonished that people stick their heads in the sand about this. Fine, he's 72. And my Oma, who's almost 90, is extremely intelligent and well-read, as well as open-minded, but she might just take Ray's side on this. Not to mention all the people my age who will probably never change from being creationists. It just seems weird to me, is all.

Especially when he gave us the pep talk at the end about how travelling really opens your eyes to things and pushes you out of your little bubble. I couldn't help snickering inside a little bit. So he's a nice guy and I'm a jerk. But I just don't get it.

Whatever, as long as he fixes my sink when I need it.

blooming

Amy has been reviving her hydrangea for a couple months now. She left it out in front of our house in the sun during the day and brought it in at night, and it was looking much better. But then she started getting really busy. I brought it in sometimes when I came home; it looked so forlorn out the dark and cold. But then it started getting left out all night. Which was fine (Amy said) as long as it didn't frost overnight.

I wondered aloud, though, why no one took the plant. If someone were to walk by every day (/night) when It was just sitting out on the wall beside the sidewalk, they could possibly think we were leaving it to fend for itself in the wild. Perhaps some kind soul would have mercy on our poor wilted hydrangea and take it in. Maybe we should put up a sign saying we were just sunning it and it had a home? So don't take it?

But then maybe that would just tempt someone to take it even more. "Don't do this." They hadn't taken the plant so far, so why tempt fate and put up a sign?

Alas, yesterday, the very day that our Lord rose from the dead, the plant disappeared. This morning I was told by Amy that "somewhere between noon yesterday and noon today" the plant had been taken. The horror!! How could those bastards take a poor, defenseless plant right from someone's front yard?! On Easter?! Who even wants a sickly hydrangea??

Of course I figured maybe someone had taken pity on it and saved it from those evil people at 582 Van Buren who abandoned this poor defenseless plant.

In any case Amy made a sign pleading for its return and posted it out front. We'll see if the people around here have souls or not, I guess. So far no plant, but at least the sign has been vandalized or anything.



[apparently I can't rotate pictures. grrreat.]


Right, I also went to Victoria this past weekend. Let's see, how can I summarize Victoria. I don't even know enough to say if our hotel was downtown or not. It was right across from the harbour, and down the street was the area (I guess) where the tourists go. Actually really nice Irish/English/Scottish pubs, things-white-people-like type cute organic-coffee cafés, little "historical" alleys where Chinese immigrants a hundred years ago used to crowd into to smoke opium...

I was only there for Saturday and part of Sunday. Saturday was sunny and warm-ish and Sunday wasn't. Adam and his girlfriend Amanda came down on Saturday just to see me! We had dinner at someplace that A. was way closer than we thought and B. whose cool roof with volleyball courts was closed. So sad...



It was a great little getaway! Nothing like leaving Monterey for a weekend, and it's so nice just to sit and read... I got through a novel in two days, it feels nice.

A week and a half till final exams. And I'm stuck without Internet at home.

sun times part dos

O-M-G! Santa Cruz is soooo much better than Monterey.

That was pretty much the conclusion we all reached after today, anyway. We drove through the thick fog blanketing Monterey and surrounding area to Santa Cruz and hit the Boulevard on the Beach, which is basically a permanent county fair type deal. So we spent the day basking in the sun (and wishing we were wearing shorts) and riding roller coasters, surrounded by corn dogs, cotton candy, ice cream, and pretty much every (deep) fried food that's ever been thought up. People strolled along the boulevard in shorts and flip-flops, sailed through the streets on their beach cruisers, and played beach volleyball out on the sand.

In short - ohhhhh. THIS is what California was supposed to be like!!

Thank God paradise is only a 45min drive away. :)

sun times

Today I got to sweat like a pig three times.

First off, this beautiful day was begun by a trip to the Barnes & Noble in Gilroy with Sarah (Burns) to scope out the Nooks and the difference between color or regular. (For her, not me. Maybe one day I'll think about an e-reader. Right now reading for pleasure is a rare privilege.) We then cruised by MIIS campus with schoolwork on our minds, only to see the library parking lot filled with people. We'd forgotten it was the international food bazaar - and what convenient timing, just at the lunch hour! So we mingled with our friends in the sun, eating random nationalities' food - I got Taiwanese (calamari and deep-fried chicken apparently) and cupcakes from the Japanese stand. What a friggin' beautiful day. Standing in my light sweater, I broke into a nice sweat. I couldn't complain about that, but then I had to pry myself away from the festivities and try to do a bit of homework. I wasn't very successful.

The second pig-sweat came about at the climbing gym with Burns. This was possibly the nicest day we'd gone climbing, and the wooden roof at the gym seems to soak up the heat, so that when we get to the top of the routes, it's positively pounding with warmth. But even down at the ground we were sweating. So we did our best and looked forward to a shower at home.

The third episode came about after we had dinner with Dan, Becky, and their friend Sam at the Cannery Row Brewing Co. (amazing beer selection, great food and service = excellent place) and headed to Luxe (random, somewhat sketchy, minimalist bar that's popular here for whatever reason - has some chairs, some bartenders and a lot of space for dancing... guess that's all you need to succeed here) for Antonio's birthday celebration. Burns and I were on the dance floor most of the time, busy sweating and fending off random meaty Latinos.

Thus ended a sunny Saturday in Monterey. Good fucking Lord is it hard to find time for school right now. I know the semester's wrapping up and now's the time to be doing all that shit I kept saying I would. But this week's just been a write-off, what with free Ben & Jerry's day in San José on Tuesday, Paul's birthday on Thursday, the Stop Trafficking wine and cheese chez moi on Friday... time's getting away from me. I didn't even find time to put the dishes in the dishwasher - Nick did it for me. Tomorrow heading to Santa Cruz for a mini day trip. Next weekend I am going to Victoria (B.C.) to hang out with my parents, and Adam maybe.

I have more good news even... first of all is that I have a place to live next year. Amy's boyfriend and his roomie are moving out of their 2-bedroom apartment after school ends, so we can move our stuff at the end of May, and I'll have somewhere to come back to after the summer. Saweet!

Second is that it looks like I'm going to be working in Mexico City for ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, a part of the UN) as a translator for a couple months. The internship race has been crazy here, and in the end I started thinking I wanted to spend time in Latin America to work on my Spanish... and this came up, and it looks like it's the plan for this summer. Burns is also applying and will probably be my acompañante. I hope she will, I'm pretty sure she can protect me and recommend me good food :P

Janzen might also come out to visit me after my exams! I have about three weeks from final exams until I have to show up for work in Mexico City. I hope she can and that we can get up to some adventures out here in Cali. :P I haven't been to L.A. yet...

Well, I'm not sober yet, but I should go to sleep I guess... shall try to update this a little more often, and hopefully/definitely when I get to Mexico I'll see if I have anything interesting to report.

Till then, wish me luck,

yours,

the Juicemeister

Welcome

back to Monterey, and welcome to January. I had a couple adventures before getting here, but now that I'm all settled in, I'm feeling good. Mixed feelings about the start of the semester on the 31st, though.

So I arrived in Toronto with a slight delay after leaving Yellowknife, and spent the night at Janzen's. I was due to fly out the next day to Tel Aviv at 5pm, and I arrived to find that not one but TWO groups of birthright kiddies were on my flight. They sat in big piles on the floor at the gate, and when we had to line up to go through explosives-check security (extra security for the promised land, as always) before going on the flight, they were the first up, which meant waiting for a loooong time in line behind them. I was also on standby, which I'm not used to, but eventually after going through security checkpoint #2 they gave me my very own ticket with seat number on it. The birthright kids also got to board the plane first, but finally - finally! it was my turn to board the plane. I hand the guy my passport, he swipes it... and asks me if I have an Israeli passport. Um, no...

"Well, this one's no good. It needs to be good for six months, and it expires in March." Uh... WHAT are you SAYING to me?! Yup, I couldn't board the flight. I got shunted to the side and someone else got my seat. Bet they were happy.

I, on the other hand, was standing at the counter, getting left behind, running my hands through my hair. FUUUUUCK. What do I do now? Luckily enough, one of the security guards wandered over, happy to help damsels in distress I guess, and reassured me that one can renew a passport within a day if necessary. Wow. Really? That's good news if it's true.

So I hop on up to ticket help, get my flight changed for two days from then (so much for spending New Year's in Tel Aviv, this time it's going to be in a plane) and head back home to Janzen's. I have to say, I was so lucky to be staying at a friend's house. Being rejected from your flight does not feel good. But she gave me a place to stay, food, and moral support, printed out the passport application for me, loaned me her TTC pass, and when it came to it vouched for me as part of the process so I could get my new passport.

So yes - the very next day I headed for the passport office down on Victoria St. and handed in the application. For a tidy sum - and proof that I did have a flight the next day - they promised me the passport would be ready by the following morning. By the time I got back to Janzen's apartment they were calling her and had already called my other reference. The next morning my brand new passport was ready. Such efficiency! I loved Canada just a little bit more after that. Everyone in that office was so goddamn normal and laid-back too. Strange really.

Thus did I successfully board the same flight two days later. This time, sans birthrighters, the whole thing was much more relaxed. I arrived in Tel Aviv twelve hours later without my suitcase (they'd sent it without me on the flight I didn't get on, and then ignored my instructions to keep it in Israel and sent it back to Toronto by the time I arrived at my destination) and walked out into warm and humid Tel Aviv. Then, of course, I waited for an hour in the airport wondering if my boyfriend forgot about me - turns out that iPhone alarms decided not to go off on the first day of 2011. But hey, no one ever said travel was perfect.

The silver linings to this story are that I got to spend more time with Janzen in Toronto, meet her boyfriend, and got to meet up with Jonathan, Ryan and Rachel; that I now know (as do my acquaintances I hope) to renew my passport before it reaches the six-month point; and that I got my passport renewed, hooray! I might've gotten heck for it when I tried to get back into the States, so I saved myself that.

Perki did eventually arrive to the airport. And my suitcase arrived mostly intact a couple days after my arrival in Tel Aviv, delivered in style to his apartment. Then it was all watching TV and reading, watching Dora play with her little plastic ring like she's a grand hunter, eating clementines, and sitting at the bar looking out the window at Tel Aviv. The Perks was busy for a week making some video player thingamabobber for school, but I got pretty frequent hugs, and he put new episodes up on the TV for me when I couldn't get up because Dora was sleeping on me. Sometimes I went to the grocery store for fun and I'd get cooked for at night.

We did get to an international press photo exhibition in the Israel Museum down the road which was very cool, and we went to the Nutcracker ballet in Rishon LeZion (! finally) where we were surrounded by children and English-speakers, strangely enough. We drove to Jerusalem early one morning to visit Kan Tor, get shown around En Karem/Ein Kerem/whatever (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein_Kerem), and see his new apartment. We visited a cool Russian Orthodox church compound; it was beautiful, but so quiet you could almost see tumbleweeds passing through. I kind of wanted to see the Old City again, but pretty much as soon as we got into Jerusalem my mind changed and we were both pretty happy to be back in Tel Aviv again in the afternoon.

Lior (Perki's roommate, Dora's master) also had his birthday, so the day before I left (Jan 15) we had a party in the apartment. I won't speak for everyone, but the Perks and I got pretty drunk and we had a nice time talking to everyone we knew.

My last day it was raining, so we just stayed inside and watched Black Swan. Creep-y!

At the airport, if you're leaving, they make you wait in a line, ask you a few questions about what you were up to in Israel (at least, if you're a foreigner like me) and then run your luggage through a big X-Ray machine before you can pick up your boarding pass and go through security. Perki and I know the drill by now, and he answers the questions about who I am, where I was, who I associated with, etc. But this time the guy questioning us asked me if I knew the origin of my middle name - Janine. I said, honestly, that I had no clue. He asked about my parents' names and went away for a minute. Perki turned to me and said, "I just figured out why they always flag you. Janine is an Arabic name." ...Well, it's not, but it just sounds that way to them. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenin) Ha. They've never given me a hard time getting out, though.

I slept for 8 hours or so of the 12-hour flight to Newark, which was A-maz-ing. I pretty much walked straight onto my six-hour flight to San Francisco - so far so good. Landing in San Francisco, though, it was extremely foggy, and this fog translated into lots o' delays. My three-hour layover in San Fran turned into a seven-hour one, but the most heartbreaking part was when we finally flew to Monterey and got turned back at the airport because of dense fog. We had to fly back to San Francisco and get shuttle-bused to Monterey. I felt pretty shitty by the end of that particular trajectory. I don't think I'll try to fly into Monterey anymore. I'm just thankful they offered us a shuttle bus instead of forcing us to book onto other flights - no one fancied spending the night in San Fran.

But I made it safely to Monterey, and all's well that ends well. Amy and Nick were both home, and while the first days being away from Perki again are always rough, I'm happy to report I am feeling much better and have been enjoying the amazing, 20+ degree weather we've been having here. I even went surfing on Sunday, although I did get hit in the forehead by my own surfboard and my face is not quite back to normal yet.

My parents and aunt Minnie should be arriving in San Francisco as I type, and they'll be heading out this way on Thursday. They leave again on Sunday - lightning visit - and I start school on Monday. Second semester! Everyone's been complaining that the vacation's too long, and it's true. We all know this semester's waiting for us and we're tired of killing time until it comes. But soon enough it'll be here! I'll let you know how it goes.