The blog of Linds

Israel Day 2: Jerusalem

2010-11-24T15:04:00.001-08:00

I'm bound and determined to finish this up. I never did finish Germany last year after I got back. I'm making progress.

So Tuesday (Oct 26) was Jerusalem day. We started out at the base of the Mount of Olives at the Church of Gethsemane. There are 8 olive trees in the garden area there that are possibly the 8 remaining olive trees from the Garden of Gethsemane where the disciples and Jesus prayed and where the atonement occurred. There were, of course, hordes of tourists there but we managed to get some pics in between groups that almost make it look like we were by ourselves!

After that we headed back into the Old City. On the way we saw this guy and I had to sneak a pic. The entire street is lined with tour buses and the drivers just have to wait for their groups to come back. This is inside the bus in the cargo hold area. Looks pretty comfy!

In the old city we walked around for awhile. We went to one of the synagogues and talked to a guy there for awhile. Then we went to the Tower of David Museum. That was pretty interesting - they had a history of Jerusalem video and displays of different time periods in Jerusalem and such. Its close to the Jaffa Gate of the old city so it had some good views of the city from there. And we even got a rare picture of the 4 of us too!

The Jaffa Gate is neat. The pic came out a bit blurry, but you can still see the gate pretty well.

We did some shop hopping in the bazaars and such. Very similar to the bazaars and narrow tunnel type streets we saw in other places too, but still cool to see.

We went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is where Catholics believe Jesus was laid after the crucifixion. Hence it is a madhouse, tons of people there! In the entry way there is the Stone of Anointing, which is where they believe Jesus was laid to be prepared for burial. People were laying all sorts of handkerchiefs and stuff there and rubbing it and kissing it etc. I got an ok pic from up above of it.

Also there in the church is some remaining stone from what is supposed to be the original Calvarly or Golgotha. They've got it very lavishly decorated:

It was quite a difference to go from that to the Garden Tomb, which is outside the city walls. We headed over there after being in the Old City. There were still tour groups there and such, but not nearly as many people as in the Church of the Sepulchre. Actually we even saw a BYU group as we were going in. It has never been confirmed that that was the spot where Christ was entombed, but it could be. Neat to read the sign on the door and really contemplate the resurrection and the miracle of it.

This is inside tomb and then the view from outside of it as well . . . pics will probably look familiar from the back of the newer edition of the Bible!

Pretty neat. Anyway, we headed back thru the Old City to pick up some souvenirs and such. One thing I love is to see the different things for sale. I love the blends of colors and sights and smells as you walk thru some of these places. You've got fresh produce, all kinds of candy, and traditional treats. Actually the guy at the shop with all the treats let us taste some of them without buying them. He cut off little pieces to give us just a taste. A lot of them were REALLY sweet - honey seemed to be the main ingredient. The reddish pretzel looking things were made maybe entirely of honey. Good for one little bite but pretty sweet.

Anyway, after we had wandered around in the Old City enough, we headed back to the car and drove to Tel Aviv. We had a beast of a time finding a place to park but we managed and our accommodations in Tel Aviv were pretty great. I'm getting so close to being done blogging about this trip. Two more days worth. I'm so proud of myself.

Israel Part 1

2010-11-21T19:48:00.001-08:00

If I don't do Israel now, I'm afraid I never will. Time flies! I've already been back for 3 weeks. Sheesh. I'll at least get a start on it . . .

So Monday morning after Brian and I did our second dive, we packed up and got a taxi to take us to the border to cross over into Israel. We had to walk across basically . . . first go thru the exit process on the Jordan side - pay the exit tax, get the exit stamp etc. Then we walked over to the Israel side to do all the entry stuff. We couldn't decide what the part in between was. No mans land or something. Here's the in between part:

And here's me before we crossed over into Israel:

We had heard some stories about getting into Israel - people being detained for hours at a time etc, but we didn't have any problems really. They asked us a lot of questions about why we were there, how long we were staying etc etc but it was pretty normal.

After crossing we took a taxi in Eilat to the rental car place to pick up our car. We had a joyous adventure there because the Hertz guy in Eilat was putting up a fuss cause Allen wanted some things marked on the sheet that he thought didn't need to go on there. He kept trying to say it was just dirt. He was not understanding that overmarking is fine cause if it comes back better there's no problem. And he didn't want to let Allen mark on it, so Allen told him he wouldn't sign it without being able to mark. Anyway, the manager had to get involved etc but we eventually got the car and headed North. First stop: Masada. Ok, actually we stopped along side the Dead Sea first and snapped some pics. So glassy!

Anyway, the first real stop was Masada. Masada is an ancient fortress that was used by several different groups at different times, but is probably most famous for being the last stronghold of the Jews when the Romans conquered the area in 73 or 74AD. There were just under 1000 rebels there that defended themselves for several months. With Masada being on top of a mesa with steep sides all around, it took the Romans awhile to conquer, but they eventually brought a tower with a battering ram up a huge ramp that they built and got thru the rebels defenses. When the rebels realized that the Romans had won basically, Eleazar Ben Yair gave a couple speeches where he basically convinced all the people that it would be better for them to take their own lives than to be slaves to the Romans. So when the Romans did break thru, on the morning of Passover no less, rather than finding defeated rebels, they found dead ones. The men killed their families and then killed themselves and lots were drawn to determine who would be the last guy to fall upon his own sword. Fascinating. Ben decided he didn't want to spend the money to go up on the gondola to the top and since Allen had already been there he decided to stay down with Ben, so just Brian and I went up. It was pretty cool.

Hard to really give a portrayal of how big it was up there . . . other than how far you can see below us . . . I pulled this aerial view off the internet to at least give some of an idea.

There were several cool things up there, including a swimming pool! Herod lived in the fortress before the rebels used it as a stronghold and he had to have his niceties, including this swimming pool with stairs leading down into it and everything.

Here's a view from on top overlooking the Dead Sea and the surrounding desert.

Anyway, after we went back down, we headed toward Jerusalem. On our way, we found a public area on the Dead Sea to go swimming. They had bathrooms and showers and stuff - perfect! So we changed and hopped in the Dead Sea. Surreal. Completely foreign feeling but so cool! You just bob in the water! It was getting dark pretty quick so it was hard to get a good pic, but we sure tried.

Pictures don't really do it justice cause its hard to see how easily we're sitting on top of the water like that. But it is a trip. Brian took the one of the 3 of us then I got out to get one of him while Ben and Allen headed over to the mud pit to check out the Dead Sea mud. Its so crazy that there's not anything under him but water!

Originally Brian and I were going to stay where we could see our stuff while Ben and Allen went and got mudded up and then we were going to switch, but it was further than we realized so Ben and Allen just brought us some mud back with them. Brian got lathered up as well and I played cameraman and then tried it myself.

People pay high dollar to get mudded up like that! It was really oily and slick and when we washed it off, my skin felt so good. I liked it. Too bad there wasn't a way to bring some back.

Anyway, after our Dead Sea escapades we headed on to Jerusalem. We checked into our hotel and headed into the Old City. So neat! I love cobblestone streets and alleyways. Amazing to think about how old the city really is. We wandered around in there for awhile just checking it out.

We made our way to the wailing wall, which was fascinating. There were many ultra orthodox jews there worshipping and it was interesting to observe. I'd like to read up on it all some more so I understand the significance and purpose behind it all.

On the way back I got some good pics of the city wall and the dome of the rock . . . that's it there on the right.

Thus ended our first day in Israel. Wow. I went into a lot of detail for that day. Which means I'm now burnt out. The rest of Israel will have to come later. But that was a great day. Diving in the Red Sea, Swimming in the Dead Sea, Masada, and Jerusalem. Not too shabby! Already wishing I was back out traveling again.

Diving Jordan

2010-11-02T19:27:00.000-07:00

The Jordan days were pretty great - Petra and Diving in the Red Sea on the same day! Then the next day, diving again and then crossing into Israel and floating in the Dead Sea . . . but more on that later.

I didn't have any sort of underwater camera for the diving, but I found some pics of some of the things we saw while diving. The water was crystal clear and blue as could be. On the first dive we went to a ship wreck called the Cedar Pride. There's an air pocket in it and the dive master took us up to that part. Pretty cool feeling to be way underwater and surface in an air pocket in a sunken ship. We swam thru the wreck a bit and then around the beautiful coral. There were so many different bright colored fish and other sea life.

Allen and Brian, well and the dive master actually, saw a big octopus. I technically saw it too, but can't claim it cause I didn't pick it out of the reef it was camouflaging itself in. They said it was one of the biggest ones they've ever seen though.

Monday Brian and I got up early to go on another dive, this time to a sunken tank. In that dive, we saw a couple of sea turtles. SO FUN. One of them was eating and when we swam up and stopped it actually swam closer to us and then chilled there for a bit. It went up to the surface for air and then came back down pretty close to us and met up with another turtle and they swam pretty close to us for several minutes. Brian has dived in MANY places and has seen turtles before but he said they normally take off pretty quick when they see divers and you have to swim after them to be able to watch them at all. It was seriously like finding Nemo what with the water being so clear and having it swim right up to us and stuff. Oh, and I saw clown fish and anemones too, adding to the whole Finding Nemo experience. I like diving a lot. Still trying to get the whole buoyancy thing down though. Brian and the dive master had to pull me down a couple times cause I'd start floating back up to the surface . . . or I'd sink right to the bottom. Definitely haven't mastered that quite yet.

Anyway,the diving was definitely one of my favorite parts of the trip. It was incredible how close all of it was to the shore. We walked into the water from the beach almost right across from our hostel and swam out just a bit and there it all was. So many bright colors, and the bluest clearest water ever. So great.

Our hostel was pretty awesome there too. I wish we could have spent more time there. It was right across from the Red Sea and was pretty picturesque.

Our room was pretty sweet too. The room was barely big enough to accommodate 4 beds, so we basically all slept in one giant bed. Not really, but its kinda what it looked like.

I'm a big fan of Jordan. There are several more dive sites there where we were that I'd like to check out sometime. That's an interesting little area too - the cusp of multiple countries. Egypt is across from where we were, the Saudi Arabian border was only like 10km away, and Israel has a little piece right at the edge there too. All bordering the Red Sea.

I'll try to get Israel done here tomorrow or the next day. I'm actually home . . . well not really. I got home, but now I'm in Salt Lake for work. I did get a whole 3 and a half days in AZ though before taking off again for work!

Jordan

2010-10-25T13:34:00.001-07:00

[I'm sitting in the lobby of a little hotel that faces Old Jerusalem as I write this, and the lobby is full of orthodox jews, many in the full get up, standing in front of the window facing the city walls and the temple mount praying and reciting things]

I love Jordan. I think its my favorite place we've been so far. Friendly people, amazing things to see, lots to do. I would definitely go back there and spend more time, we were only there for a couple days. We flew into Amman on Saturday - got in right around noon. Originally we were going to spend the afternoon in Amman, but we decided to head straight to Petra (or Wadi Musa rather) right off the bat so we could try to do Petra in the morning and get to Aqaba and dive in the afternoon. Main goal being to maximize the time in Israel.

Our hotel in Wadi Musa (the little city where the entrance to Petra is) lined up a taxi for us from the airport in Amman back to Wadi Musa, which is several hours away. Boy am I tired of sitting in the back middle seat in those little taxis! (As the only girl and a short one at that, its not even a question, I just climb in there straight away).

We got into Wadi Musa midafternoon and went and had probably the best meal we've had so far: hummus, pitas, falafel, chicken and rice. Best hummus ever and the meal was so cheap. One of the people at the hotel told us about the place and it aws a bit of a walk to get there but our whole meal was something like 6 Dinar. Closer to our hotel, the prices were WAY higher. Of course I took a picture of the meal . . .

After we ate, we got a taxi to take us out to Little Petra and wait for us for a little bit. It was already pretty late in the afternoon and it gets dark really early here, so we didn't have a whole lot of time, but it was definitely worth going out there.

I'm going to have a lot of reading to do. I want to learn a lot more about the people that carved all of this out of rock. The geography itself is fantastic. "Bubbly" rocks and cliffs all over.

You can see one of the stair cases in this one. They were all over. I'd start climbing stairs and end up on the top of some fantastic cliff looking down over everything. I could explore places like this for days.

Here's a view from a little higher after climbing one of the stair cases.

The next day was the real deal: Petra. We got up and ate breakfast about 6 and then headed to the entrance and entered the "park" around 6:30 or so, which meant we beat the majority of the endless tour buses of people. There were maybe 15 or 20 people total in there when we got down there. I LOVE early morning time. The light, the chill in the air . . . fabulous.

On the way you walk thru these rock cliff walls that are magnificent.

Then, as you continue, you see the beginnings of the treasury.

When we came back thru on our way out, there were HORDES of people throughout, and especially in front of the treasury. It was so awesome to be there nice and early with no one else there to obstruct the view or the pictures. Here's Brian, Ben and I in front of the treasury . . . taken by a Bedouin man who didn't quite line it up right. Oh well.

All throughout the park here there are caves and things carved into the rocks. Its very unique and very incredible what they were able to do.

You can walk thru most of them too . . . here's one tomb that had some colorful rock formations going on.

I have countless more pictures of amazing things in here, but we're about to head out into Jerusalem for the day and I want to get this up before we go. After Petra we got in another small taxi for another couple hour drive down to Aqaba where we went diving in the Red Sea. My first time diving. WOW. I wish I could have had a way to take pictures of what I saw. But more to come on that later, gotta go!

Egypt

2010-10-22T23:51:00.000-07:00

Summation of Cairo: one huge dirty brown city where everyone wants your money . . . but at least they're very friendly about it! Thursday we got into Cairo about 10:30 or so. The hostel was supposed to have a driver waiting for us when we got there, but there was no driver. We were in a building adjacent to the airport using their wifi to get a phone number or address for the hostel and a guy approached us and asked if we needed a taxi. So that ended up working our alright.

The hostel ended up being on the 7th floor of an old building. And the room they were going to give us didn’t have a/c and Egypt is HOT, so the guys opted for a hostel on the 3rd floor of the same building that did have ac. The guy that runs it has been pretty helpful, although I think his helpfulness has cost us a bit more than we would have paid otherwise. But whatever. The exchange rate is about .17 on the dollar, so getting overcharged normally only translates to a dollar or two. We went to a shop a few doors down that he took us to and learned about oils extracted from flowers that they have here that are used for perfume and since they don’t have alcohol its stronger and supposedly lasts longer. Allen and I both bought a bit. Later we realized we probably got a bit taken advantage of . . . in the bazaar they were selling it a lot cheaper. A guy showed us how they make papyrus and then of course tried to sell us some, but we didn’t buy any of that. Everyone in Cairo seems to speak at least a few words of English . . . we got a lot of “What country?” or “Where are you from?” etc. People are pretty friendly though. The hard part is knowing whether or not they’re just being friendly or if they’re trying to work an angle for money.

Thursday afternoon we went to the Egyptian National Museum and saw a whole lot of mummies and tombs and statues and the like. The most interesting thing in there was King Tut’s mask. Big gold mask with each facial feature carved out. Unfortunately they don’t allow pics, but its pretty well known so I think just about everyone has seen a picture of it.

After a few hours in there we walked over to the Nile and over a bridge on it and stuff. Big dirty river. The traffic here is CRAZY. South America had its own brand of crazy traffic. Its similar here, but different too. There are something like 18 million people in Cairo and so there are ALWAYS tons of people milling about and cars all over. People literally dart out into traffic and the drivers just swerve slightly to miss them. No one pays attention to lanes and people are constantly on their horns as a way of communicating. They pass each other in the same lane and just give a couple toots on the horn to elt them know they’re coming. Its pretty crazy. In taxis it almost felt like we were in a video game, dodging pedestrians and other cars and stuff.

Today, Friday, was pyramid day. The hostel guy lined up a car and driver for us for the day and we went out to Giza to see the pyramids. We ended up paying to have camels take us around them and so we were on camels for several hours. It was pretty fun – those camels are TALL! A lot taller than being on a horse. The pyramids are huge. It was neat to see them. The guys from the camel gave me a Bedouin head dress thing to wear so I wore that all over by the pyramids . . . I think it actually kept me cooler. We saw the tombs and the sphinx and the 3 big pyramids and then the driver drove us around Cairo some. We saw the citadel and a big mosque and some of the Islamic area and then called it a day.

You can tell the guide had done this many times . . . when we got to the "panoramic spot" he put me in the spot, put my hand on my hip, held my hand up just right and took this before I even knew what we were doing! He took all of these actually. Not bad other than being slightly crooked. Good job Soloman.

We found this street restaurant place that makes these schwarmas that are delicious, so we’ve been eating those for the couple days we’ve been here. They’re pretty cheap too, which is nice. There’s a bakery right by our hostel that we’ve been frequenting for breakfast and stuff, so we’ve gotten to try a few different things.

Cairo is pretty much a big dirty city. So many people and the whole thing is brown. So brown. Tomorrow we head to Jordan. Hard to believe I only have one week left. Time is flying for sure.

With the painfully slow internet we've been getting, pics take forever to upload, so thats all I'm doing for Egypt. The pyramids were the most interesting part anyway.

Tunisia

2010-10-22T21:56:00.001-07:00

So our lil cabin in the ferry to Tunis was pretty cool, just a small room with 4 beds that fold down from the wall and a little bathroom with a shower and all.

The beds weren’t too bad, and since the ferry wasn’t as big as the cruise liners you see, there was a fair amount of sway going on. It felt like you were being rocked to sleep.

In the morning Ben and I went to check out the ship – we went out to the deck and WOW was it windy. Humorous trying to walk straight as the boat was rocking so much. I started to feel like I could get seasick, so decided to get back in bed since it didn’t seem to affect me when I was lying down. The video won't load with this slow internet, but you can see from my hair that it was very windy up there.

We docked in Tunis and got stopped for a little while at the border but we weren’t sure why. Seemed like they just wanted more information about where we staying, for how long, etc. We took the train to Sidi Bou Said and hiked up the hill to our hotel. So quaint. We paid more than we would have in downtown Tunis, but it was a pretty decent little place and they included breakfast and wifi etc. Sidi Bou Said is a very picturesque little town on the coast of Tunisia. Most of the buildings are white with blue doors, making me feel a bit like I was in Greece or something. The doors are beautiful, with different designs and archways etc.

We walked around Sidi Bou Said, then went to Carthage which is the city right next to Sidi Bou Said. There are some very ancient ruins there and such but we didn’t want to pay to get in. We could see a lot of them thru the fence anyway. We also got somewhat rained out again. The rain ruined the plans to go to the beach, unfortunately.

As in most tourist spots, there are people selling all sorts of things, or doing things they want you to pay for etc. We walked past a guy with a falcon and before I knew it he came and put it on my arm. I tried to give it back telling him I had no money but he insisted it was free. Thus I ended up with pictures of a falcon on my head and on my arm. I thought of Ty – he loves falcons. After they took my picture with it, he immediately took it and put it on Brian’s head. We took pics of that and then they put it on Allen. Ben had no interest, so no bird pics for him. Of course at the end the guy wanted money. We told him he had said it was free, but he said it was free for ME, we had to pay for Brian and Allen. So stupid. So annoying. We gave him a few coins and left.

The next day we went into Tunis and went to the medina. The medina is basically the old part of the city. Its full of merchants wh0o nowadays mostly hoc tourist stuff. It almost feels like tunnels since everything is is so narrow and its hard to see the light above. One thing I had read about was the Turkish baths, called hammams. I was pretty excited about them . . . . its an ancient tradition and there are several hammam places in the medina. Basically you go in and get scrubbed down by an old masseuse guy and sit in these spa type tubs and such. You get a little massage as well. So we found one . . . and they wouldn’t allow women in. Ha. So I got to sit out in the lobby and wait while the guys went and did it. They said it was an interesting experience to say the least. There’s also a mosque in the medina, but we didn’t want to pay to go int. We wandered around and bought little trinkets and such and then walked around Tunis just a bit.

After that we got back on the train and headed to La Marsa, another little city really close to Sidi Bou Said that is known for its beaches. We took a few pics out there on the beach and walked thru the mall they had there and then went back to Sidi Bou Said. We got our last kebab –there was a little shop really close to our hotel that had great kebabs on pita bread with delicious spices and such. We also got some ice cream, which wasn’t nearly as good as the gelato we had in Italy.

That about covered it for Tunisia. There isn’t a whole lot to do there but it’s a cool place and neat to see. First time in Africa, so that was cool. Its interesting to see the blend of Islamic culture and Western influence. There weren’t quite as many women wearing the head wraps as I thought there’d be, but still a lot. And all the signs etc were in Arabic and French, in fact most of the people there speak French as well as Arabic.

Anyway, Tunisia was interesting. Thursday morning at 4AM a taxi driver picked us up to take us to the airport for our 6:30am flight to Cairo. Tunis Air is pretty cool. It was only a 3 hour flight but they gave us a pretty big breakfast and had the in flight movie stuff and gave us headphones etc. Nice. Thus ended the time in Tunisia. On to Egypt.

Thus Far

2010-10-19T12:53:00.000-07:00

Written last night:

I am currently sitting on the ship that will take us from Palermo to Tunis, scheduled to depart any minute now. There is no wifi available, but I thought with the time available I’d use it and have a blog post ready next time we have the internet.

It was fun to see Rome again, there is so much there. The architecture is pretty fantastic. I’m going back in time a bit cause I didn’t have time to do much detail last night. When I got in, Brian and Allen and I headed to the Vatican to go thru the museum and the Sistine Chapel. We waited in line for 45 minutes. It was long, but nothing like what Katie and I saw when we were there over the summer a few years ago. Thank goodness they both do museums the way I do – fast. I think we spent an hour and a half tops in there and its huge.

They had all these chairs set up in St Peters square, we asked why - there were 6 saints being canonized the next day. Thats what the tapestries are hanging down - pics of the saints to be.

After that we walked around and saw quite a few different plazas and monuments . . . some I’d seen before and some I haven’t. We got the standard margharite pizza for lunch and went to a market and different things.

I tried alcohol at the market. Twice. Oops. There were all these flavored little barrels out and little cups for free samples. I tried a chocolate one and thought it was the weirdest tasting chocolate drink I’d ever tried when it burned going down. Should have been my first clue, right? Nope. Didn’t even cross my mind – I told Brian to let me try his mango one. Yep, that one burned too. The booth owner confirmed when we asked “alcohol?” We had a good laugh over that one.

It rained for awhile in the afternoon, so we waited it out for a bit in a plaza. Then we decided since it was raining we should go to a movie. We went back to the hostel to google it and then ended up in the same plaza where we waited on the rain. We went in to the theatre and found out that all the movies were dubbed in Italian. None in English or with subtitles so we decided to forego that. We walked down to where the ruins and such are and started taking some really fun pictures. Allen has a lot of them on his camera, but it died so I got a few too.

Mine was too dark to see the coliseum behind us, but its there. And the orange thing in front of my face is the whistle/clasp from my backpack. Nice.

This is a night time view of my favorite building in Rome:

We had so much fun doing it that after Allen’s camera died (his takes better night shots than my little one and my big one was not conducive to the circumstances) that we decided to go back to the hostel for a bit and let the camera charge and then come back and take some more. So we have a slew of jumping pictures in front of the coliseum and such. Pretty fun.

When we got back to the hostel, Ben had just gotten in. After he was all checked in, we went and had dinner and then back to the hostel for bed.

Our flight to Palermo was around 9am on Sunday so we left the hostel about 6am. We took a taxi to the airport and then had plenty of time to wait around. Our flight got delayed cause one of the engines was having difficulties, but we ended up getting in around 11am.

As we were taking the shuttle from the airport to the heart of Palermo, we saw tell tale signs of a soccer game, so once we got to the hostel and confirmed that there was indeed a game that day we decided to go. Palermo’s team wears PINK jerseys, so everyone was decked in pink and black. We took our time making our way to the stadium and saw a lot of what Palermo has to offer on the way. I quite like Sicily, we decided it’s the Hawaii of Italy. Beautiful lush island with awesome beaches. The city is neat – smaller and not nearly as touristy as Rome but still plenty to see.

Today the plan was to go to Cefalu and see the great beaches there. It’s a little city about half an hour outside of Palermo. We took swimsuits and flip flops but it was all in vain – it rained all day today. Makes for a pretty miserable situation when you’re soaking wet. Thankfully I brought my rain jacket so my top half was dry underneath it, but my pants were pretty soaked and my feet were quite wet. We waited it out for awhile in the duomo and then headed back toward the train station seeing a couple spots along the way. Such a bummer cause I think I would have really liked that little town had it not been raining. The postcards and pics we saw of it were pretty fantastic. Guess I’ll have to come back sometime.

Once we got back to Palermo, we dried off at the hostel for a bit and then went to check out the other things we hadn’t seen yet. It started raining again so we waited it out awhile in another cathedral and then later again in a grocery store. Finally we went back to the hostel again and waited there. The girl that worked there was crabby and ended up kinda kicking us out. Originally she had told us we could leave our stuff there that day while we were out and about for 1Euro. She was upset that we were chillin there and using the internet and stuff I guess. So we left and made our way to the port to check in for the ship.

It was a long cold wait, but we are now in a compact little cabin with 4 bunks. We’ll be crossing the Mediterranean for 10 and a half hours and get into Tunis tomorrow morning. First time in Africa. Awesome.

We’re having a great time so far. Good dynamics with the 4 of us – we laugh a lot and have fun. Good stuff. Heading to bed now, its after midnight . . .

Italy

2010-10-17T11:41:00.000-07:00

Typical story: can't post pics yet. We are in Palermo - got here this morning. I have about 5 in so I'm going to do a quick recap! After a very long couple days of sleeping in airports and going thru multiple cities, (Phoenix, Detroit, Charlotte, New York and finally Rome) I'm here and Ben is here which was the hard part. Ben ended up having to go thru Paris but he made it ok to. So now the 4 of us are all juntos.

Spent yesterday in Rome - went to the Vatican, saw the Sistene Chapel again and such. Then this morning flew to Palermo and spent the day wandering around here seeing cool things. Even went to a soccer game - Palermo's team is Pink so we saw LOTS of men wearing pink. They beat Bologna 4-1 so it was fun to be at a home game when the home team won, and soundly at that.

We're having a great time so far...tomorrow we're going to hit up some Sicilian beaches and then tomorrow night we'll board the ferry for Tunisia.

I've realized that with 3 other travelers, I'm probably going to have a lot less time to blog as we're usually doing things. So it'll probably be quick recaps. But I'll get some pics up next time we get to a hostel that has wifi. This one doesn't so I'm on their one computer.

Feels good to be traveling again. Love it.

Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau

2009-11-12T12:53:00.000-08:00

Yeah, just try pronouncing those names. I'm so thrown off kilter with the whole German thing. Romance languages I can deduce a lot because of the common Latin base they share with Spanish but I'm just done when it comes to German. I got nothin. ANYWAY.

Today was castle day. I headed to Fussen this morning and ended up on the train with a guy from New York who is here on business. We chatted for awhile until my transfer. Once in Fussen, I caught a bus up to the little area right below the castles, walked right up to buy a ticket and headed up to Hohenschwangau to wait for my number to flash on the screen. I love the off season. Sure, I'm there shivering and being rained on, but it is FABULOUS to see all those snaking line guard things and walk right past them and up to the window without waiting behind a single person.

The way they do the ticketing and such for the castles is very interesting. And very conniving. Haha. Very efficient when there are hoardes of people, and maybe a little frustrating when there aren't.

When you buy tickets, there is a time and a group number on your ticket. No matter what, there will be at LEAST a half an hour from the time you buy your ticket until the time on your ticket. This is by design. With nothing much to do, the royal family, who still owns most of the tourist shops, restaurants etc, hopes that you'll spend more money. The minimum you can get between the 2 castles is 2 hours, which leaves you with about an hour and a half to kill after touring Hohenschwangau. Those sneaky royals!

Anyway, here's Hohenschwangau:

Its so big this is the only way I could get the entire thing in the frame! This is on my way up to Queen Mary's Bridge.

A little history: Although there is a long pedigree of kings who had something to do with Hohenschwangau, they kind of focus it around King Ludwig II since he's the one who built Neuschwanstein. He was born here and grew up in this castle and lived here while Neuschwanstein was being built. In fact he even had a telescope set up in his room pointed toward the new castle so he could watch its progress. There were lots of childhood busts of him and his brother as well as some other cool things. The coolest being the first ever glow in the dark stars on his bedroom ceiling. They were translucent and lighted oil could be added from the floor above to make them shine! Genius!

When I finished the rather quick tour there, I headed back down into town and ate some German Potato Soup (P90X anyone? anyone? Leslie will get it if no one else does!) at a little cafe and it was delicious. Nothing like hot soup and a freezing rainy day. Then I started truckin up the path to Neuschwanstein. Didn't take me long to go from shivering to sweating with that steep of an incline! There was a shuttle option as well as a horse drawn carriage you could take . . . but not for me! I baby tractored my way right up.

[Sidenote: I just got new roommates in my hostel - 3 guys from Edmonton. They promptly informed me that they are completely wasted and are headed downstairs to continue drinking. This may turn out to be an interesting night!]

Anyway, I got to this little waiting area and finally remembered to ask someone to snap a picture of me!

The views from up there are obviously amazing. The castle is seriously like a huge fantasy land. It was not designed by an architect, it was designed by a painter! Ludwig and Wagner were very good friends and Ludwig loved Wagners work so he basically did the entire interior as a tribute to Wagner and his works. Each room represents a different opera and has paintings from scenes from the operas on the walls. One of the operas has a cave in it, so Ludwig had a cave built right inside! Unfortunately you can't take pictures inside. Its a pretty fanciful castle. He died under mysterious circumstances (murder or suicide, no one is quite sure. He was found in the bottom of a lake) before it was ever finished and he lived there for less than 6 months! Crazy! The thing that was sad to me is that Wagner died before ever having the opportunity to see what Ludwig had done for him.

Anyway, after touring that castle, I headed up to Queen Mary's Bridge. Here's a view of it from the castle:

It was another steep hike to get up there but more than worth it when I walked out onto the bridge and saw this view:

AND, I even asked someone to take a picture for me. Twice at one place, am I on a roll or what?!

Another sidenote: one of the guys just came back and climbed up to his top bunk bed and passed out. I have never seen someone fall asleep so fast. He was snoring in less than a minute, I'm not even kidding!

Anyway. Its after 11 oclock so I'm gonna start majorly condensing. I'm so tired and I need to get up early to make it out to Dachau.

So I took this secluded trail through the gorge that goes under the waterfall that you can see from earlier. Apparently no one else knew it was there, I was the only one on the trail! It was incredibly beautiful. I wanted to make the 4:30 bus back to Fussen though so I quite literally ran down the entire mountain. I stopped and walked only when it was too steep, slippery and wet to run. I was glad I did though cause I made it just in time for the bus.

As I was waiting for the bus, I heard a guy call out to another girl in Spanish and I immediately recognized his accent and asked if he was from Spain. He was. I got to talking to him and his girlfriend and they are AWESOME! They had met another girl, Megan, from Cali so the 4 of us sat together on the way back to Munich. We had to make 2 transfers on the way back and one of them was about 40 minutes long. So while Megan went to the supermarket that was close, Victor, Sara and I went and ate bratwurst in a little cafe. I seriously love both of them. It was so so fun to speak in Spanish and talk about Spain with them! We all felt like old friends by the time we got back to Munich. They're going out tonight to bar hop. Won't be joining my new friends on that trip! But we are officially Facebook friends.

Anyway, great day. Another tiring day, what with the hiking and all. And train travel. Tomorrow will be another full day. Sheesh, I still need to blog about actual Munich! Tomorrow. It sure aint happenin tonight. Sorry for the lengthy post with fewer pics. It happens.

So Long, France

2009-11-11T12:12:00.000-08:00

So I started typing today on the train for a post - so this is from earlier:

So I am currently sitting on a train headed for Munich. My train left this morning at 7:30 and I’ve already made my one transfer in Stuttgart. On the first leg, I sat next to a very nice German guy named Tim. He is living in Paris for a year working at a home for people with Alzheimers. He spoke English really well and we talked for a long time. It was great. He translated words on my train ticket for me and asked the guy the question I had about transferring. And he carried my suitcase off the train for me. Awwwww! It was cute cause he’s been speaking in French (obviously) a lot lately so he was struggling switching to English. He would revert not back to German but to French. I can totally understand that. Anytime I’m somewhere where another language is spoken, I somehow automatically revert to Spanish, not English – as though my brain goes “oh yeah, non-English . . . I’ve got non-English stuff in here too”. I catch myself starting to say gracias instead of merci or thank you. Funny.

Anyway, Tim and I got each others’ names so we can be Facebook friends. Cause I’m so into Facebook. Haha. He was very cute, but way too young for me. [Now that I'm here in Munich, Tim has already added me and I was definitely right about too young for me. He's 20. And just turned 20. HA. But I can prove that he's cute thanks to Facebook. Fyi, he didn't look like he was posing for a hair magazine today. His hair was done quite a bit more . . . conservatively. Check out those cheekbones!]

So I’m officially done in France. Sad. I really liked Paris a lot. I found people to be very friendly and helpful and I loved the city. AND, I never got rained on! Before I came, the forecast showed rain for every day. I was prepared to be battling rain the entire time, but Heavenly Father must really love me cause no rain! It rained overnight and the streets were often wet, but I never got fully rained on. So nice. The forecast for Munich shows rain as well, so we’ll see if it comes to pass this time.

Anyway, I thought while I’m sitting here on the train, I’d put together a post of things from Paris that weren’t part of the specific “sights” necessarily.

First of all, I realized I never posted the pictures I took of my hostel room. So here they are now, now that I’m gone.

This was a really nice hostel – as you can see all the beds have curtains, which was great. Also, each bed had 2 plugs and a little light so you could light up your own little bed area. The “lockers” were under the bottom bunks and they’re basically big cages with a spot for a padlock. Here’s mine with my lil suitcase in there nice and secure. Last night I finished getting all packed up and ready so I could sneak out early this morning. I put everything in my locker, shut and locked the padlock and as I did so realized that the key to the padlock was inside my backpack . . . now locked up in the locker. Way to go Linds. The couple from Singapore was in there and saw me shut the lock and then immediately slap my forehead. They were so nice and helped me tip the cage and the bag until I could reach in and grab the key. SOOOO glad I realized that last night and not this morning when I was trying to be quiet enough not to wake the 9 other people in my room up. Luckily, it wasn't too loud last night. I was a bit worried. But the Australians were only getting started on the cheap stuff in our room before they went out for the night. I guess alcohol is really expensive here. They were even nice enough to offer me some of the cheap stuff they were drinking! If they only knew.

Next subject. A couple years ago, Paris started this AWESOME (in my opinion) initiative where they have public bikes. Seriously the coolest idea. All around town you see these rows of futuristic looking bikes that can be “rented” from any of the depots and returned to any of the depots. Like a Redbox for bikes. They’ve all got baskets on front and headlights and such and I just think it was a genius idea. No need to lock them up everywhere you go, you just leave it at the depot and get another one when you’re ready. I loved seeing the depots all over the city.

And while we’re on the subject of transportation – bikes specifically – one of the things I LOVE about Europe in general (not just Paris) is how people of all ages and from all walks of life use numerous means of transportation. You see men in suits riding bikes or scooters all over the place. Old men with white hair on bikes with a messenger bags. I love it! This is the only shot I could get while being surreptitious; I wanted to get one of the older gentlemen so bad.

Actually a lot of the shots in this post are going to be a bit blurry or tilted in the name of sneakiness. I obviously didn’t want to bust out the camera and snap a picture of someone right in front of them, as though they’re one of the attractions . . . so I’d pull out my little point and shoot and pretend I was looking at a picture or something. Hold it down at my waist, not up by my eye. I’d keep my head up like normal and be walking and trying to point the camera in the right direction as I went. Standard trick I’ve used many times. Haha. Sometimes it works great, but lots of times I have random pictures of my own feet or the tops of peoples’ heads and such. Good times.

One thing I realized is that Paris is not the fashion capital of the world for nothing. It seems like EVERYONE dresses out of a magazine there. And they’re all super skinny. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many bone thin people. Kinda funny – every once in awhile I’d see a girl and think, “she’s not as skinny as the rest of them, I guess there are normal sized people too!” and then I’d hear them speaking English and I’d realize they weren’t French. Obviously, this is a generalization but it feels like everyone looks like a model. There are a lot of attractive people in France – men and women. I’d say quota wise, Paris is up there in regards to number of attractive people! Haha. Maybe even as many as Interlaken Switzerland. Anyway, here are a couple sneaky pics of fashionable ladies. And they totally pull it off!

I honestly didn't realize that people actually dress like the stuff you see on the runways. There's my ignorance coming through. Complete ignorance when it comes to the fashion world.

Anyway, the HUGE thing right now is BOOTS. EVERYONE wears boots. From 10 year old girls to 60+ year old women. Half boots, whole boots, lots and lots of boots. Boots with leggings, boots over jeans, boots with shorts and tights, boots with skirts, boots with dresses. I suppose that is in in the US as well, but wow I've never seen so many people wearing the same thing! I have to admit, though, I think the boots are really cute. Even the half boots and boots that only cover your ankles are growing on me, whereas before I thought they were hideous. Just call me the frog in the increasingly hot water that's too stupid to jump out. Or the guy in the desert that lets the camel in a little at a time.

So I love the random things you see on the streets in large tourist filled cities. The musical instruments and acts change a little bit, but you find these guys everywhere. I love the piano guy!

Another thing you see, and this one might actually be particular to Paris, is a photo shoot of a model happening right in front of the Army Museum. Nice!

Actually, I take it back now that I think about it. In Madrid in the Plaza Mayor we saw them doing something similar with a lady all dressed up.

This one just made me laugh. American Apparel. I love that the mens clothing is all red white and blue. As though people in the USA only dress in American colors. LOVE IT! [Walking around Munich tonight I saw a "Western Store" - that was literally the name of it, and the point seemed to be the same. They had Levis. Very American]

Anyway, that about covers it for Paris. Great place. Glad I got to spend some time there! Munich looks promising as well. (We're back to the present tense now) Tomorrow I'm headed to "Mad" King Ludwig's castles in Bavaria. I did some stuff in Munich tonight but I'll have to blog it later. I'm tired, I'm waiting for my laundry to finish and then I'm going to bed!

Versailles

2009-11-10T09:44:00.000-08:00

Versailles is . . . let's see, what's a superlative that I haven't used yet?! Magnificent! Completely, wonderfully magnificent. After visiting there today I am suddenly very interested in reading up on things like Louis XIV, Louis XV, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Napolean, and the French Revolution. Louis XIV is the one mostly responsible for the grandeur that you see at Versailles today. Wow did he have a flare for the fabulous.

Here he is on his horse with the enormous palace behind him:

The picture is a little dark but I can't fix it on this computer. As you walk up, you see the golden gate that is actually a new edition as of 2008 . . . 5 million euros later. Sheesh.

The palace is home to this Royal Chapel - Louis XIV worshipped from the upper level facing the altar and the organ while the peasants worshipped below facing Louis.

There are endless rooms with different names and I didn't take many pictures of those. Lots of paintings and furniture and huge four poster beds etc. The coolest part, in my opinion (and probably a lot of other peoples'), is the Hall of Mirrors.

This is one famous room! A few stats: the room is 250 feet long with 17 arched mirrors that reflect the view of the gardens coming from the corresponding 17 arched windows. Along the way are 24 gilded candelabra and a host of Roman busts. Ambassadors, nobles and guests would congregate for parties and other things here, which was a special treat since they could admire themselves in the mirrors. Also, this is where the Treaty of Versailles was signed that ended World War I!

This is also where I took the only picture that has (part) of me in it. I just forget to ask people to take pictures for me and it seems like a hassle sometimes. So I have a lot of pictures of cool places and not many of me in those cool places. I was also using the big camera, which means you get a huge shot of my face. Nice.

After finishing in the Chateaux, I headed out to the gardens. Wow. Unreal beautiful. I LOVE going to different gardens and this was definitely no exception. In Spain on our trips, Jas and I would often use our free time to explore the main garden of whatever city we were in and we found some beautiful ones. There's just something about being surrounded by all the cultured lawns and flowers and trees and shrubs that are perfectly trimmed etc. Love it.

Anyway, here's one little side of the gardens called the Orangerie. Louis XIV grew ORANGE TREES in France! He had greenhouses where they were kept when it was too cold and they were wheeled out on almost a daily basis.

This next view is the view. This is the Royal Drive. With the fog you can't even see it all. Actually you can't even see it all without the fog! And this is in just one direction!

The body of water you can see toward the back there is the Grand Canal. Yep, just like the one in Venice. Louis XIV decided he needed one too so had this one built. Its a mile long and he had authentic gondolas brought over from Venice to be used in it. Boats would move along side the gondolas with musicians playing music so they could listen as they went. Now that is a life of luxury!

I walked down one of these endless tree-lined paths to get to the Trianon area. So Louis XIV built Versailles as a retreat from all the hubub of Paris, but it soon became so busy that he needed a retreat from that too. So what did he do? Built another palace deep in the garden.

This one is the Grand Tianon. His successor, Louis XV, built the Petit Trianon, another smaller residence. There was also a summer house where Marie Antoinette spent time with her friends, as well as the Hamlet - her little get away that was remiscent of where she grew up. The Hamlet felt like I was stepping back in time . . . or into a Thomas Kinkade painting! SO vastly different from what you see in the palace. Completely picturesque and homey all at the same time.

Anyway, I LOVED Versailles. I have more pics but my hostel room is now quite busy. 3 new people just showed up from Australia (actually 5 including the 2 that went to bed already - but they're from a different part of Australia) and they're busy drinking cheap booze. The couple from Singapore just got back as well so there's a lot going on. And as I was typing that, the girl from Canada just walked back in, so we've got a full house!

Tomorrow I head to Germany. Paris has been fabulous. I've been pleasantly surprised, its been better than I expected! More to come.

Another Day in Paris

2009-11-09T08:54:00.000-08:00

So today's agenda was a little less demanding than yesterday's. Only walked about 14 miles today!

I started off at the Arc de Triomphe. That thing is WAY bigger than I realized it was. Way bigger than the arches I've seen in Rome and such. So cool too.

This week (November 11) is Armistice Day and so they were already setting things up for it outside. I think there will be a huge parade and such because there were also barricade things all along the Champs Elysees. Not in use yet, but just there to be used. I talked to someone that said there will be lots of celebrities here for it and stuff. I'll be on my way to Munich though!

Anyway, they also had a HUGE French flag flying beneath the arc as well. I'm not positive, but I think that is normal, I don't think that was special for the celebration. Could be though.

Champs Elysees

After leaving the Arc, I continued right down the Champs Elysees toward the Louvre. The Champs Elysees is a famous street that has been the "it" place since the late 1600s. There are car dealerships and cafes (which celebrities frequent) and Louis Vitton and other high end stores, night clubs and an apparantely very famous cabaret.

I stopped in the Peugeot dealership and saw some of their futuristic cars. Cool.

After passing through the Place de la Concorde, I got to the gardens that lead to the Louvre.

The Louvre

The Louvre is HUGE. So huge. Beyond huge. Incredibly huge. I was standing this far back and still couldn't get the entire thing in one shot!

The famous pyramid:

Thanks to Rick Steves, that was yet another long line that I didn't even think about standing in. I went to another entrance underneath one of the buildings where there was no one. NO ONE. Not a single person, which made me wonder if I was in the right place. But I walked up and showed the guard my pass and he sent me through! I ran my bag through the xray machine and walked right in under the pyramid. Again: massive. There are 3 major wings that branch off in different directions. This is directly under the pyramid, which is where all the light is coming from. You can see the escalators going up to different wings.

So I didn't spend all that much time in the Louvre. I know, I know. But after the Prado and the Thyssen and all the other museums I went to in Spain, most of it looks pretty similar. You can only see so many Madonnas on the Rocks. And naked women and babies. The sculptures are always cool, but again, after Italy and the Vatican museum and such, very similar. SOOOO, I hit the highlights and called it good enough. The main highlight, of course, is the Mona Lisa. Here she is:

Venus de Milo is another of the "must sees". Here she is in all her armless glory:

She is a rare Greek original rather than a Roman copy. The cool thing about her is that her entire body is in motion: left leg raised, right arm dropped, knee pointed one way, head the other. What talent to capture all that in STONE!

Winged Victory is another boasting point for the Louvre, from 190 BC. Amazing that we can go look at something that was created 200 years before Christ was born.

This is the Grand Gallery - where Jacques Sauniere dies in the beginning of "The DaVinci Code".

Other than that, I looked at all of Leonardo DaVinci's paintings - the Louvre has the biggest collection in the world: 5. Also some of Raphael's. I took pictures but I'm feeling more than done with blogging and it takes awhile to upload pictures.

Here's a little clip that shows all of the Louvre since I couldn't get it all in one shot:

And here's the picture the couple from Queen Creek took for me:

After the Louvre, I went to the gardens at the Palais Royal. Very pretty. One more picture:

I actually took quite a few there that I'm excited to play with once I get home. I don't have Photoshop on my mini so the adjustments will have to wait. But I think there are some print and frame worthy ones.

ANYWAY, another good day. Tomorrow is Versailles, I'm pretty excited for that. Paris is incredible. It has exceeded my expectations quite a bit. There is still a lot that I want to blog about and other pictures I want to post but I've had it for today. I'm ready to take a shower and go to bed early.

Paris Day Two

2009-11-08T11:26:00.003-08:00

WOW. I have done so much today. I brought a pedometer with me and I am so glad I did! I have walked over 17 miles today. No kidding. Over 37,000 steps. And at least a couple thousand of those were stairs! I left the hostel around 7:30 this morning and enjoyed some very quiet streets of Paris. Here's a clip:

A word about the clips: they're probably boring. I do them for journaling type purposes and it probably gets annoying, so feel free to skip em.

Anyway, I got on the Metro and headed for my first stop, which was:

The Eiffel Tower

Wow. There's a very good reason the Eiffel Tower is such a recognizable icon in all the world. It is an engineering marvel. It was built in 2 years, 2 months and 5 days for the World Fair in the late 1800s and Gustave Eiffel was involved in every step of the way. It is absolutely incredible!

I started out at a little park to the North of the tower. It was empty and I had no one to ask to take my picture so I did the timer thing and got this:

It just gets more mind boggling the closer you get. This is standing almost under it as I was walking closer:

It was cheaper to climb the stairs than to take the lift, AND the line was way shorter so I decided the stairs were definitely the way to go. Little did I know how many stairs I would end up climbing today! The picture isn't great cause I was walking as I took it, but that's what the stairs in the Eiffel Tower look like. The public is only allowed to climb to the second level, you have to take a lift to the 3rd. So that's what I did! Here's the view from the top:

Pretty amazing. Even though there were lots of people, I know it was way less crowded than the summer. There were times I was pretty much by myself up there, which was nice! I planned on it taking at least 2 hours, probably 3 but I actually did the whole thing in a little over an hour!

When I got down, I headed South toward my next destination:

Napoleans Tomb

I love the grandeur of so many of the monuments in Europe. They go all out to impress, and they do a great job! Napolean is laid to rest under this golden dome. The tomb/coffin thing is massive and enshrined with other statues and stuff. Incredible. Hard to get a good perspective from the picture, but this is his coffin:

Sidenote: One of the guys in my hostel has a cold (or the Swine Flu . . . heaven forbid) and is coughing like every 30 seconds. It is driving me nuts. Good thing I'm a deep sleeper. He told me earlier that he was coughing all night and someone gave him medicine in the middle of the night. I semi remember hearing coughing but I slept right through it. THANK HEAVENS.

ANYWAY, so after the Tomb, in the same complex there, I went to the

The Army Museum

I didn't really take any pictures. They have multiple wings of different war eras etc. I went to the World War I and World War II parts and left the rest. With so much to see and do, I admit I didn't read much as I went. I just looked and walked. LOL. But that's the beauty of doing what I want when I want, I don't HAVE to read the plaques if I don't want to!

Walking away from the Army Museum through the garden type area there has been one of my favorite parts of Paris. It is beautiful. Amazing. Fantastic. I got down a ways and came to this intersection:

The bridge right after or behind that intersection is incredible. There are statues and obelisks and intricately carved banister type things and beautiful lamp posts. So great.

As I was walking, I also saw these guys playing some type of hockey . . . on bikes! Whaaaaat?! How does that work without someone getting killed?! Looked pretty cool though.

I got back on the Metro and headed back over toward Notre Dame so I could go to the

Saint Chapelle

From the outside, it doesn't look like much, but its definitely worth seeing. I climbed yet more stairs to reach the top level with this chapel that is almost entirely made of stained glass windows. So intricate and there are about 15 panes just like this. They depict over 1000 scenes from the Bible all in vibrant color. Amazing. Pictures don't do places like that justice in any way shape or form.

After I finished there, I continued on to the

Conciergerie

This was another pretty quick visit. It was used as a torture/assassination building until the invention of the guillotine, and then it became the final holding place until people were beheaded. Marie Antoinette had a cell here before she lost her head. Now, in addition to recreated cells, they have some modern art type stuff to fill the halls. In my opinion, the building itself was the most interesting thing. Very beautiful.

I finished there and went back over to the Deportation Memorial.

Deportation Memorial

The Deportation Memorial is right behind Notre Dame, but it was closed yesterday by the time I waited to go to the top of Notre Dame. It is a tribute to the French citizens who were sent to concentration camps. Its a very beautiful tribute. There is an eternal flame and this hall that stretches all the way down with lights:

Archeological Crypt

The archeological crypt is something that I can access for "free" with my Paris Pass (actually everything I did today other than the Eiffel Tower was included in that pass) so I stopped in there. Its right in front of Notre Dame and you can see the old foundation from Roman times. I think I spent a good 5 minutes in there walking through it. :)

Hotel de Ville

I walked by the Hotel de Ville, which is Paris' city hall. Such a beautiful building! I walked by it on my way home as well and got an ok night shot of it too.

After passing by that, I continued North to the

Jewish Museum

The Jewish museum included more and more stairs for me to climb. This was another quick walk through. I'm sure I could have learned a LOT by reading and listening the free audioguide but I just wasn't feeling it! This is the only picture I took there and its from the outer courtyard.

Almost done with my day, promise. Believe me, it was longer doing it than reading about it. My last stop of the day was the

Pompidou Center

Here's part of the front - I couldn't fit it all in the shot.

The back was the coolest though. The tube up the back is where the escalators are once you're inside. Awesome!

The ground behind it was painted with a huge calendar. You can see the massive line there . . . there was another one in the front that was even longer. There was no way I was going to wait in a line like that (especially at the end of my day) so I did what I usually do - find another way. I walked to an area where I saw people walking right through and saw that it was for annual pass holders. I walked up to the guard and showed him my Paris Pass and asked if there was a special entrance for me. He flashed me a smile and let me through right there. So I skipped all that waiting! LOVE IT!

Modern Art is so interesting. There is some that is really fun cause of all the colors and shapes. Some that is weird, some that is scary and a lot that makes you go, "huh". I took pictures of some that fell into each of these categories, but I have now been blogging for over an hour and I must go to bed. Its almost midnight but I knew that if I didn't do this tonight, I'd get behind and never catch up. You're welcome mom. Lol.

So 17 miles later, I'm completely trashed. Whereas yesterday I was tired from serious lack of sleep, tonight's exhaustion is more of a bodily sort. My body is worn out. Therefore I'm going to sleep now. Goodnight to all.

Paris! Notre Dame and the Seine

2009-11-07T12:54:00.000-08:00

Wow, I am BEAT. I can hardly keep my eyes open. I am excited to go to bed and I want to RIGHT NOW, but I have to blog first. Sigh.

So after eating lunch (at an ever ubiquitous Doner Kebab - they're everywhere!)I was able to check in at the hostel and then head downtown to Notre Dame. Paris is pretty stinkin great. Its very similar to other European cities in a lot of ways, but still new and intriguing. Have a looksee:

Notre Dame was pretty cool. After all the basilicas and cathedrals I've been to, it was hard to be TOO amazed; but Notre Dame is pretty much the I Ching. The original. Its massive! Climbing the tower was included in the Paris Pass I bought, so I waited in a very long line to do that. (I thought it was the off season?!) It was a great view though. You could see the gargoyles right up close and some great panoramics of Paris. Here's one of my favorites - thats the Eiffel Tower in the background.

Ok, I need to take more pics with my little camera for the explicit purpose of blog posting. It takes a loooonnnng time for the ones from the big camera to upload. Bummer. Anyway, here's the same gargoyle but from the front. He's the famous one.

Here's Paris in the fading light. The cloud in the upper left was tripping me out. I kept thinking someone's finger or head or something had gotten in my shot. Nope, its a cloud.

I was supposed to see a lot of other things in that vicinity today, but by the time I got done waiting in the line to climb the tower, everything else had closed. Oops. Maybe I can fit some of it in tomorrow. I learned today that the Picasso Museum, which was one of the things I was going to go to tomorrow, is closed for renovation until 2012. Thanks Murphy. But it might free up some time to do the things I missed today.

Okay, that's as much as I can do today. I'm going to bed. I can't keep my eyes open any longer!

On the Road Again

2009-11-07T03:23:00.000-08:00

I love to travel. Have I ever mentioned that? Love it! I landed in Paris a couple of hours ago and I'm in the lobby of my hostel. Can't check in for another hour and a half so I thought, "Why not blog?!"

My journey started Thursday night when I caught the red eye flight to PHL. My dear friend Amy picked me up at about 6 AM on Friday morning. Amy was one of my mission companions and I absolutely adore her! It was great to spend the day with her and her beautiful baby boy, Freddy. (And her husband, Burgess, briefly before he went to work!)

With the strike in PHL, downtown was out so we spent the day mostly talking and hanging out! I was also able to take a nap which was GLORIOUS after a fitful 4 hours of sleep on the plane being my only sleep for the night. We went to a great Thai place for lunch and drove through Valley Forge on the way. BEAUTIFUL! I definitely plan on going back to King of Prussia to spend some more time with the Coffields and see some of the sites that are close to them.

That evening, Ames took me back to the airport and I took the 9:00 PM flight to Paris. The flight was not too shabby! The flight was not full so I was able to semi lay down for part of the way. That coupled with some Dramamine meant at least some sleep. But boy is it hard to wake up! My eyelids want to close so bad. After I check in I'll head downtown and walking will help me stay awake til tonight so I can get on their schedule.

Anyway, Not much to show or tell at this point. After landing, I took the airport shuttle to the train then connected to the metro and ended up here, at St. Christopher's Hostel. Here's a lil clip from the train station:

And here is the only picture I've taken in Paris so far - from where I'm sitting in the lobby looking out. As I walked up, the bridge you can see was hydrolically lifted cause a boat was going by. Cool. I'm right on a canal, its pretty cool. Lots more pics to come.

One Year

2009-10-25T11:02:00.001-07:00

Today marks one year since my good friend Shane was killed by a drunk driver. Life is so precious and it really hits home to have someone close gone in an instant. I've thought of Shane's wife and baby on almost a daily basis over this past year. I know how much he loved them and though I can't imagine what it must be like, I know it has to be incredibly hard to keep on with regular life after something like that.

Shane was amazing. Had the kindest heart and was always smiling and making people laugh. I miss him.

Nostalgia

2009-06-06T16:31:00.000-07:00

Yep, I'm doin it. I'm updating the blog. I've been missing Ecuador and South America a LOT lately so I was going thru my pics and decided to do a trip down memory lane on here. Not much writing, lots of pictures. Here's a night view of Salinas, my "home". So pretty.

Looking toward the boardwalk from close to where we live. Its amazing to look at the first picture and see all the high rise nice beach view hotels and then realize that literally a couple blocks back this is what it looks like. Its not even paved.

Other typical things you see in our neighborhood there in Salinas:

I miss walking everywhere on those dusty streets

And seeing "family transportation"

Things like this made us laugh so hard. NOT Sunglass Hut, but Sunglass HOT!!

I don't think I ever posted pictures of the aquarium in Valdivia. Pretty much the coolest aquarium I've ever been to! Completely antiquated and amazing. The barefoot boys that work there are volunteers but boy do they know their stuff! Check out these crazy crabs. Everything they have there was brought in by village fisherman!

I love this! They're growing things in these bags of water. Seriously the coolest aquarium ever.

The black tub is where the sea turtles were and the concrete pool thing those people are standing by holds "baby" the seal. The thatched roofes you can see in the background are where all the tanks were. There were 5 or 6 little covered areas like that, each with old aquariums in them.

This is a blue footed booby. Check out those blue feet!

And here's nena (baby) the seal

Its hard to see through the dirty scratched glass, but these starfish were awesome. Black with bright orange spots on them. Psychadelic! All of the tanks had 2 liter bottles rigged up like this one. So great.

This video is one of my favorites. This is one of the little boys that was acting as our guide. We had just finished feeding chunks of squid to the sea turtles and he was showing me the leftovers on his hand. I'm asking him what it is, and when he answers, he says "a hand!" SO FUNNY! So cute.

This was at the aquarium as well . . . a screaming penguin. This guy was NOT happy. Pretty funny though.

At the end of our "tour" we had acquired quite a few lil guides. We nicknamed all of them in English and they practiced saying their new names. They were so dang fun!

The other really cool thing about Valdivia is the archeaology. They've found tons and tons of relics, some that are 5000 years old! We talked for a long time to this guy who just had tons of them. He was telling us how people find them when they're digging up their gardens or digging footings for houses etc. Awesome

I really miss cheap amazing produce. We'd go to market with like $10 and hardly be able to carry it all home. Fresh pineapples and mangoes and avocados and grapes and blackberries and bananas, and so much more.

I miss friends! I miss laughing and talking with everyone and meeting cool people. Like Oren from Israel and Megan from Chicago and Luz and Stefani and Jorge Luis and Erika and Danilo . . . such fun times!

La familia Chavez, the greatest family EVER! We stayed with them when we first got to Ecuador and anytime we were in Guayaquil. Nena and Caro (the 2 girls) came to Salinas a couple times to visit us. They are the best.

Traveling was the best. So many cool little (and big) places to explore. Such adventures getting to said places. Like when Andy and I headed south for Peru and before we'd even gotten to Cuenca, we hit a roadblock:

We later found out that the purpose of the road block was to try and get speed bumps on that road. Its a main road that goes right through a little town and apparently 4 people had been killed that week by cars going through there. :( By the time they finally let us through there were news crews there and lots of military guys. The road was very backed up on either side.

You can hear me sigh in the video when I have to move for the guy who came on the bus to sell things. Kinda funny. I had started that little video like 3 times and every time had to stop cause someone was getting on or off the bus and I had already stopped to let that guy on! Haha. Good times.

Machala was seriously the shadiest place. We sat for hours in that little waiting room watching Eddie Murphy movies and drinking stuff that a guy was selling right there on the property. Traveling is the greatest! I love all the crazy unexpected things that come up that make it memorable.

This was somewhere in Peru. Ollataytambo perhaps?! Hard to remember right now. The little shower stall down there was I think the coldest shower I've ever had. And there were spiders in there. Nice. But it was actually a pretty nice hostel all things considered.

So Andy bought a charango on our trip to Quito and being the music genius he is, taught himself to play it. Its got 10 strings, so quite different than a guitar. As you can see, he got pretty good! And his voice is amazing. That song is SO ECUADOR to me. Andy and Brett both played it and sang it. This was in Aguas Calientes, I think the night before we went to Machu Picchu. This place told us they had hot water too. Also a lie.

We saw a lot of cool things in Peru, like my Peruvian Abuelita! It was so fun to see her in Lima.

Other random great things we saw while runnin around South America:

Beautiful Andean women in their native dress. Love it.

Natives washing their clothes in the river in Cuenca

Awesome houses on the island of Puná

The majesty of the cathedral in Quito

Ollataytambo was one of my favorite cities. The cobblestone streets with ancient ruins in the mountains overlooking it were just magnificent. I had such a great time wandering the walkways early one morning with just me and my camera.

I love this dog just chillin on the mini bridge.

This boy was herding his goats along one of the walkways and had to work very hard to keep them away from a native lady selling her produce along the way.

Here's the train that took us from Ollataytambo to Aguas Calientes. It was a beautiful trip. The only way to get there is by this train. You can't go by bus or car, this is the only option.

This is in Aguas Calientes. I love the layout of this city! Its right in the mountains and the city just goes up and down with the lay of the land.

This shirt says "The coke leaf is not a drug". Its all about coca there. Coca candy, coca tea, coca everything. We sucked on coca candy to avoid altitude sickness. Apparently it worked cause we didn't get too sick.

These market type places are the best. Tons and tons of hand made incredible artesania. Rows and rows and rows of this stuff everywhere.

To be honest, I'm not even sure where along the way I took this, but what a beautiful valley!

I never did say anything about Panama. Andy and I spent the day in Panama on our way home and quite literally almost didn't make it out of Panama. We went to Casco Viejo and wandered around the old part of Panama City and had a great time. We rented a car and forgot to take traffic into consideration and very nearly missed our plane. Another sprint thru the airport - great memories!

There's the Panama skyline in the background.

Some of the old apartment buildings in Casco Viejo. They're so colorful and so old. Very interesting.

Hard to see thru the fog, and such, but the bridge in the distance is the one that goes over the Panama Canal. Several U.S. administrations have done really questionable things over that one spot. Don't even get me started.

There was a lot more of a Caribe feel in Panama, I liked it. Made me really want to get to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and such. I love seeing the different varieties in the way the natives dress. I love the ankle wraps they wear in Panama.

Moral of the story is: I miss Ecuador. A lot. I think what I miss most of all are these three:

I miss the laughing good times. And there were plenty of those to go around - just look at those faces! Actually, last month Andy was in Sacramento visiting Brett . . . and I risked being held in contempt of court to go visit them for one night. I was on jury duty and flew out after getting out of court one night, stayed the night at Brett's and then flew home the next morning. Except the flight was completely full and I couldn't get on and had to by a standby pass for Southwest where I was the last and only standby person to get on. Dangerous. But I had to see them! We had a great time laughing and talking and reminiscing. We even did a video chat with the Chavez and it was GREAT!

Anyway. As for my current life, I work for US Airways - it rocks. I bought the cutest dang car you've ever seen and I love it.

Being back in AZ after years of not living here, no longer being in school, and attending a Spanish Branch rather than a singles ward equals not a lot of people to hang out with, but life is good. I just fly to where my friends are!

So after 6 months, that's all I have to say. I'm dying to travel. Being able to take lil trips on the weekends certainly helps but I'm feelin the itch like crazy. I keep changing my mind about where I'll go this fall. India? Australia? More Europe? More South America? Egypt? South Africa? I just can't make up my mind!

Machu Picchu Part II

2008-11-28T09:36:00.000-08:00

Por fin, some pictures of Machu Picchu. Its been awhile, I do realize this. But I am now back in good ol AZ with full speed internet and it will take me way less time to upload pics. Sweet! I miss Ecuador like crazy, but it was great to get home just in time to spend Thanksgiving with my family. Good news is I still have hammocks available as I brought a couple home. They're a hit. Everyone loves them, and why shouldn't they? They're so dang comfortable!

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to put up pics of Machu Picchu. So here we go. Andy and I got up at 5 am so that we could be on one of the first buses up to Machu Picchu and therefore make it in the line to be able to hike Waynu Picchu. The Peruvian government put a 400 person daily limit on the hike, so we wanted to make sure we were able to do that. Thanks to Brett and Nikki, we knew the way to do it was to get there early and not stop to enjoy Machu Picchu until after getting in line for the tickets. We got tickets for the 10am hike and then entered the ruins for the hours before we could hike.

There are llamas walkin around the ruins and its so fun to see them. When we first got there in the morning, they were on the trails and stuff, but as more people got there they moved onto the grassy parts where people weren't. I love llamas. Ever since Emperor's New Groove (which is pretty much a tribute to Peru) I have had a thing for llamas.

Here's a little video (hooray I can finally add videos!) of the ruins that I took while we were exploring.

Seriously breathtaking! Machu Picchu is amazing. As we were walking around, we saw this cool bird chillin' there. It let me get pretty close to take its picture. How kind.

There were these amazing bright red flowers all over that were just beautiful. There were the hanging kind (first picture) and then some other ones that were on the ground. When you'd look at the hill side it looked like little fireworks all over.

Here are a few different angles of the ruins. It seemed like every time we turned a corner we'd have another spectacular view!

Andy is an artist (a really good one I might add) so he was really enjoying sketching the incredible things we were seeing. I love this picture cause you can see the sketch there with the actual stuff right in front of it. Sweet!

Right before 10 we headed over to hike Waynu Picchu. It was such a steep hike! It didn't take long, less than an hour, but it was tough! Waynu Picchu is the big steep mountain that you see behind Machu Picchu. It juts straight up and there are more ruins at the top. The view from up there is AMAZING!!

That's Machu Picchu down there behind me! The hike was so totally worth it. It was an incredible view from up there.

This is a shot of just Waynu Picchu that I took after we had hiked back down. Its hard to see, but if you look close, you can see little white dots on the mountain side. Those are people. You can kind of see how steep the climb is by looking at where all those little people are. Crazy!

I like this picture of the llama chillin there looking around with its legs crossed. Llamas are so cute!

And to finish up, here are a couple of shots of Machu Picchu as a whole. Or at least as much as my camera could get. I was feeling the lack of a wide angle lens there!

Anyway, it truly is an amazing place. Easy to see why its one of the 7 Wonders of the World. Has to be pretty special to merit over 100 hours on a bus to see it, right?! Gosh I'm thankful to be done with hours and hours of bus trips. But I miss Ecuador like crazy, its such a great place. I miss our house in Salinas and the malecón and our friends there and and and. Now its time to WORK like crazy and pay off this great time I've been having. Once that's done, I'm thinking India . . .

MACHU PICCHU!

2008-11-19T08:43:00.000-08:00

How sad is it to blog about Machu Picchu with no pictures? Sad indeed. We went yesterday and it was absolutely fantastic. I don't have long on the internet so I won't go into details now, I'll save that for when I can put pictures up. We're back in Lima kicking it all day until our night bus at 9:15 tonight. Only 9 and a half hours to go. Nice.

One cool thing that happened in Aguas Calientes is we met a member and he told us there was a baptism that day so we went! The branch is quite small there so church is in a house and we went out to the river to see the guy get baptized. It was awesome!

Anyway, we must run but Machu Picchu ROCKED!

A Few Pictures

2008-11-17T07:12:00.000-08:00

Well we are here in Ollantaytambo, one of the many little stop off points on the way to Machu Picchu. You have to take a train from here to Aguas Calientes, which is the closest little town to Machu Picchu. From Aguas Calientes you have to take a bus to Machu Picchu. Anyway, the trains from Ollantaytambo get full fast, so there was no room open when we got here yesterday. Therefor, we had to wait until today. We leave at noon today to go to A.C. which means Machu Picchu tomorrow! Yay!

Anyway, I finally remembered to bring a card reader to the cyber so I thought while we were waiting for our train to go I'd put up just a couple pics. Not many because we don't have a lot of time and I don't have a lot of patience, but at least a sampling.

Here's the main plaza in Trujillo. I know its tilted, I was trying to be subtle with the camera. All of the buildings were painted different bright colors like this all the way around the plaza. Beautiful!

This is in Lima, and the picture again looks horrible because it was taken through a dirty taxi window. There are a lot of cool old buildings in Lima though.

Here's one continuing with the same theme - this time through a rainy bus window. This is on the way into Cusco:

Oh and one more! This is a picture of the roadblock stuff on our way to Cuenca. You can see all the piles of dirt and people sitting on them etc.

Anyway good stuff. We're excited for Machu Picchu tomorrow - then its lots of travel time again! Oh well though. Tomorrow is the payoff.

Peru Part 2: By Bus

2008-11-15T09:57:00.001-08:00

I am SO DONE with buses! But the sad thing is I'm not actually done. Ugh. Alright, lets see I left off in Trujillo? Yeah, I think so. Ok so after leaving the cyber there we asked what there was to see in Trujillo and we were directed to the Plaza de Armas. BEAUTIFUL! Pretty much the most colorful plaza I've ever seen. It was really cool and way better than sitting in the station.

Our bus that night was about 9 hours and we got to Lima early in the morning. What was so great is that my abuelita is currently in Lima so we got to see her! On my mission, in Columbus (my HEART) there were some Peruvian families that I got really close to - one in particular - and the grandma of that family goes back and forth between Nebraska and Lima. Luckily for me she happens to be in Lima right now! Her son and she came to pick us up and we went back to her house. It was so cool because it was where this family (the Rodriguez family) had lived before moving to the US, so I had seen pictures of it etc and there I was.

The other CRAZY cool thing that happened was that Andy looked at one of the photos abuelita had up and he got a pensive look on his face and asked me the name of the father. I told him and he asked the name of the mother. I kept expecting to hear him say, oh different family, but no, he asked me the name of the son and I told him and then he asked if they had ever lived in Norfolk Nebraska. I told him that I thought so, yes, and he totally met them there! He served his mission in Iowa and Norfolk Nebraksa is part of that mission. He totally met the Rodriguez while he was there and then everyone in Norfolk lost track of them . . . when they moved to Columbus! It was such a crazy cool connection. Especially considering that Andy and I didn't know each other before coming here, he served his mission years before I did and met them when Paola and Luis were kids, and then I knew them years later! The funniest part is that we put it all together in LIMA, PERU! So fun.

Anyway, Abuelita fed us breakfast and then sent us to bed. Bless her soul. That was seriously the most heavenly nap I've ever taken. After two nights of sleeping on buses, laying on a bed was the best thing she could have given us. After that we talked to her a bit, and the Rodriguez called and I got to talk to a couple of them for awhile, which was totally surreal with me in Lima and them in Nebraska. Anyway, then we went to Tio Felix's house (Brother Rodriguez's brother) for lunch and it was absolutely delicious. I LOVE Peruvian food! I always loved it in Nebraska when the Peruvian families would cook for us and I was reminded of how delicious it is. Felix then took us back to the bus station where we learned that we had missed our bus by 5 minutes. Good ol Murphy.

We had gotten stuck in traffic and knew we were going to be a bit late, but without fail (or so we thought) the buses always leave late. Of course we missed the one bus in Latin American history that left on time. The bummer about it was that the one we missed was a buscama (bus with the recliner-esque things) and the next one was not so. Also, because we missed it, they wouldn't refund the difference in price. We had paid more for the buscamas and we lost that money and had to take the 22.5 hour trip in a bus with seats that just recline a bit like airplane seats. It was MISERABLE! The first 15 hours or so weren't so bad, but after that I seriously wanted to die. By the time we got to Cusco, I figured out that in the 72 (actually 73) hours since leaving Cuenca, we had spent 52 of those hours on buses. 52 hours in 3 days. Sick.

Anyway, good news is we are in Cusco! We're planning on taking it slow for today and tomorrow we'll head up to Aguas Calientes which is the closest city outside of Machu Picchu. Then after that - its buses back to Ecuador. Joy. I'm excited for the payoff (Machu Picchu) that will make me feel that this is all worth it!

Anyway, still no pics. Total bummer. Oh well. Peru rocks and I like it a lot. I still miss Ecuador though. A lot.

Peru!

2008-11-12T12:33:00.000-08:00

Well, no pictures, so right off the bat not too exciting . . . but here's what's happened the last couple days:

Monday Andy and I headed to Cuenca - its FABULOUS! I loved it, its a beautiful little city. Oh, on our way there we had a bit of a delay . . . there was a road block. The people of one of the little cities along the way had piled dirt in the road and were sitting on it as a way of protesting the lack of speed bumps there. Apparently 4 people have died this last week by people going through there fast. So we were held up for about an hour until some military guys came and such and they let us through. There were a couple news crews there and stuff, it was interesting.

After spending Monday evening until Tuesday afternoon in Cuenca we headed to Machala on a bus. Oh - we found an indian food restaurant in Cuenca! I was so dang excited. It was good, but it was no India Palace. The samosas and naan were great though. Anyway, we took a four hour trip to Machala and were told we needed to go to another station to take the bus that would take us into Peru. The guy we talked to said, "its not far and I would tell you to walk, but you'll get robbed so take a taxi". Nice. It was definitely the most shady place we've been. We got to the other station and learned that the night bus wouldn't show up until 10:30 (this was at 8). The bus didn't actually show up until 11:15 so we spent over 3 hours in the little waiting room watching weird Eddie Murphy movies and drinking Morocho.

The overnight bus was great because it was a "buscama". Basically the seats have these little parts that hook to your seat and it becomes a recliner of sorts. They're also bigger and more comfy than regular bus seats. That combined with a dramamine equals pretty good sleep. Except for when we had to stop first at the Ecuador border and get our exits stamped and then at the Peruvian border where we had to get our entries stamped. Lines are no fun, but whatever.

We got to Piura Peru at about 10 to 6 this morning where we took a taxi to another bus station to catch a bus to Chiclayo since the direct buses from Piura to Lima don't leave until the afternoon. The trip to Chiclayo was about 2 and a half hours, and from there we took yet another taxi to yet another bus station where we took a bus from Chiclayo here to Trujillo. Wouldn't you know it, the buses from here to Lima don't leave until 10:30 tonight, so we ended up with a big ol layover anyway. Our trip tonight should be about 8 or 9 hours and then once we get to Lima, its another 21 hours or so down to Cuzco. All I have to say is thank goodness for Dramamine.

Anyway, I have pics of Cuenca (and the road block) but those will have to go up later. Good times.

Quick Update

2008-11-09T19:47:00.000-08:00

Well we are back in Guayaquil at the Chavez house! We left our Salinas this afternoon and it was sad. But the last couple days have been FABULOUS. Friday night was another concert - this time El Gran Combo - a very famous Salsa group that has been around for over 40 years. It was great fun, Danilo and I danced until almost 3 am! Being that Saturday was my birthday, I got an early start on that! There were fireworks and everything, so a great way to start my birthday.

Brett and Andy made my birthday so great! We had a little party that was a combo goodbye party since it was our last night and they rigged up a piñata and everything! We had people over and danced and talked and laughed and told scary stories and all kinds of fun stuff. Brett made me some AWESOME cd's and Brett and Andy gave me some really cute sandals as well as a tres leches cake - my favorite! Good friends are the greatest. Stefani (Andy's student as well as our friend) and her mom and sister came over as did Danilo, Jorge Luis and Erika. They all helped make it a great night. So fun! I have lots of great pictures, but I'm using dial up internet at the Chavez' right now, so that will have to wait.

Anyway, that's the quick update. Andy and I head to Peru tomorrow for Machu Picchu! So exciting. What's not exciting is the 3 days we'll be spending on buses to get there. Our first stop will be Cuenca tomorrow, only 4 hours to get there. Then we start the serious busing - all night buses for days at a time. But it will be more than worth it!

It was pretty sad to leave Salinas behind today and all that goes with it. I love this place so much. I so want to come back. Ecuador ROCKS!

Oh, one more thing! The trick to great rice is less water! And add oil and salt. I think the normal amount they say on the package is 2 cups of water for every cup of water, but that's way too much! I have never measured, but all I can say is that the trick is a lot less water. Mmmmmm, rice.

The FARC ya es de todos

2008-11-07T09:42:00.000-08:00

As most anyone who reads this knows, I'm fascinated by South America politics and such. I have been trying to get a good picture of this from the bus for the last couple of weeks, and its still not a great one but at least you can read it.

It says, "Las FARC ya es de todos y el hambre tambien". During the Si campaign by Correa, one of his principal slogans was "La Patria ya es de todos" . . . loosely translated it means the homeland now belongs to everyone. There have been accusations that Correas campaign for President was funded in part by the FARC (drug funded Colombian revolutionary force considered terrorists by numerous countries - U.S. and Colombia included), so I found this graffiti really interesting. It showed up after Correa won his campaign to rewrite the constitution of Ecuador (the Si campaign). It means now the FARC (as well as hunger) belong to everyone. Pretty interesting! Actually, as I think about this, quite possibly the only other people to find this as interesting as I do would be the Laraways. So Profe and Michelle - this is for you! :)

I have a lot of other pictures to post and other things to tell about (like the coolest aquarium I've ever been to) but I don't feel like taking the time to post all the pictures and describe it all right now. Boy am I lazy.

Laundry, Perfected Rice, and the King of Merengue

2008-11-03T06:56:00.000-08:00

I recently learned that the Province of Santa Elena has not been a province for long . . . one year actually. Its one of the things that Correa did shortly after being elected - added I think two new provinces. (Similar to a state) This week marks the one year anniversary of the province, so the entire peninsula is celebrating. All week, there are different shows and events and cool things going on to mark the occasion. Its pretty cool to be here for it!

Saturday night, there were three simultaneous concerts going on in Salinas, Libertad, and Santa Elena which is a real bummer in my opinion because I would have liked to see all of them! The biggest decision, though, was whether to go to Santa Elena and see Elvis Crespo or stay in Salinas and see Wilfrido Vargas. Wilfrido Vargas is the king of Merengue . . . basically the one who made Merengue popular outside of the Dominican Republic (where he's from). Elvis Crespo is a current Merengue singer who is hip and new and modern - I really like his songs. Hard decision! Icon/legend or modern cool guy. In the end, Danilo and I chose Wilfrido Vargas. It was so fun! Danilo and I have learned some new Merengue sequences that are AWESOME and so I'm pretty in love with Merengue right now. Therefore, seeing the one who made it famous was pretty cool. Also really cool: all the concerts are FREE! They just close off the road that goes along the boardwalk and set up a stage right there in the street and people just fill up the street!

Oh, here's an interesting cultural difference. Here, the main act doesn't actually play until about 1 AM. Yeah. The program thing that has everything listed said that it started at 8. When I told Danilo that, he just laughed and told me to remember that this is Ecuador. At 8, the stage was empty. At 9, someone finally came on stage and started talking! Then, we were subjected to about 4 hours of opening acts, some of which literally made me cringe they were so bad. We're talking the outtakes of American Idol that make your face go all weird cause it almost hurts to listen to. There was one guy from Guayaquil who was pretty good . . . he sang and then did a dance sequence to a mesh of Michael Jackson songs. He was quite good! Then, right before Wilfrido Vargas a group from Colombia played (they're called La India Melillara) and they were really good. Wilfrido Vargas was so dang good! Its not just him, there are lots of guys playing a bunch of different instruments. Good music.

Anyway, that was a lot of fun. I could hardly stand by the time it was over (I think I went home at 2:30 or 3:00) and my ears are STILL ringing. This is really not good, I am aware of that. And to think I ruined my hearing by listening to 4 hours of some of the worst music I've ever heard. Sad day.

De todos modos, it was a very fun weekend. I saw Salinas transformed. Its normally so quite and calm since we're in the off season, but there were SO MANY PEOPLE here! And every time I mentioned that, whomever I was talking to would just laugh and tell me it didn't even compare to the on season. During the season, they block off the entire road next to the boardwalk because they need that room for people to walk. Wow.

Also this weekend, we were finally able to do our laundry. We had some issues this time around - the number we had for the guys that rent us the machine stopped working. We got the number from someone else though and finally were able to do it. And I remembered to take pictures! So, get ready for a picture journey of the laundry experience.

First, the guys come in their baby truck and take the washing maching to our back yard. Here's the truck with another washing machine in it.

They hook it up to the hose in our back yard and we start filling it. Here's a top view of it . . . you can see there's no center column like in washing machines in the U.S. That green part at the bottom does rotate the clothes back and forth though.

Once we've filled the washer with water, our clothes, and soap it does a 15 minute cycle of rotating. At that point, we let all the water drain out (through a hose that they attach) and it makes a big mud puddle in our backyard.

When the soapy water has finished draining, we fill it again and it goes through a 15 minute cycle again - this time as a rinse cycle. When that's done, we once again drain the water and then move the clothes into this part of the machine:

Here's where the spin cycle comes in. We pack the clothes in there and then put this rubber thing over the top of them (you can see it on the picture of the tube going into the dirt) and that part spins for 5 minutes. Its pretty amazing to see how much water comes out of the tube during the spin cycle. It gets them from soaking wet to barely damp! Once the spin cycle is done, we put them in the dryer. Oh wait, that's just wishful thinking. We hang them up on the lines in our back yard, where they often fall off into the dirt and have to be rewashed.

Anyway, there ya have it. Its quite a process. We normally rent the washing machine for 4 hours (at a dollar an hour). And we pretty much have to babysit it the entire time. It takes awhile for the machine to fill up, so we've got to be there for that, and then after the first load is done we're simultaneously spinning things, hanging things up etc. Normally there are about 10 minute gaps where you have time to go inside and eat something or do something else, but mostly you're out there the entire time. Oh! One more picture - this is the water we're washing our clothes in. And no, that's not dirty from our clothes.

Oh yeah. This is the same water we shower in and brush our teeth with. There's a reason they say don't drink the water!

In other news, I've finally mastered the rice they make down here. Many times in the U.S. our rice is sticky and clumpy and such. Down here, its not like that at all and I LOVE IT. On my mission, there were a couple of Peruvian families in my branch that would make us dinner and I remember asking them how they made the rice like that. It was always so good. Seperated, not clumpy and sticky. Well, I've got it. And I will forever make rice that way. Before we ran out of gas a few days ago, Brett and Andy and I were getting really into cooking for ourselves rather than going out. The market is less than a five minute walk from our house, and for three bucks we come home with all kinds of produce and such. I bought a pineapple for $.50! Yeah, an entire pineapple. Completely fresh and delicious. Anyway, one day we were so proud of ourselves and our meal that we had to take pictures.

Andy made the guacamole that we put on the rice (DELICIOUS) and I did the chifles. Chifles are delicious. They are platanos (plantains in English? I think . . .) sliced very thin and fried in oil. Lets get honest, just about everything is good when its fried in oil. Before we were making patacones, which are thicker and then smashed with a rock, but I think I like chifles better. They're both good. Anyway, then Andy and I cut up mangos, grapes, blackberries, and strawberries and added just a bit of yogurt and a little bit of sugar and let it all sit for a bit. Let me tell you, that was one of the most delicious meals I've had here! Look at how colorful it is! And look at that rice, all seperated and stuff. Good stuff. We were proud of ourselves.

Anyway, that's about all for now. Oh, one more picture! After realizing that Brett's family reads my blog, I realized that there is a serious lack of pictures of Brett on here. So, here's a picture of Brett's goatee that he grew for a few days. He looked pretty tough with a shaved head and a goatee!

And here's one of my favorites of Brett and Nikki - this was when we went to the Island of Puná.

Anyway, life continues to be great. I'm so dang thankful for the opportunities I have to do stuff like this! I swear, I learn more from traveling than anything else. My perspective broadens every time I go somewhere new. Its fantastic. I love my life.

Smorgasbord of Schtuff

2008-10-28T09:16:00.000-07:00

Turns out smorgasbord is in the dictionary and that's how you spell it. Huh. That's cool. So I thought today I'd put up some of the random pictures of different things re: Ecuador and add some random thoughts to go with them.

First of all, I've been meaning to do this for awhile, I want to give a visual portrayal of just how cheap meals are down here. And mind you, here in Salinas its a bit more "expensive" than in Guayaquil. This is a picture I subtly took of one of our meals - un almuerzo.

The almuerzo comes with soup to start out with, then a full plate of rice, chicken, verdes or maduros, in some cases menestra (beans), and a drink. And its all delicious I might add. Everything thing you see on this table, aka 4 almuerzos, cost $6. Yes, that's right. Six american dollars. Six dollars for ONE almuerzo would be a good deal in the U.S.! Its pretty awesome. And like I said, its a bit more expensive here. In Guayaquil you'd pay a dollar a meal, whereas here its normally a dollar fifty. We feel gauged when we go to Montañita and have to pay a whopping $2.50 for a meal. Its pretty great.

Another thing that I find fascinating in Ecuador is the transportation. Or rather, one form of transportation. I have yet to get a satisfactory picture of this, but here are a couple mild examples.

LOTS of people down here have dirt bikes that they use as street bikes as well as the family transportation. Its so common to see a family of four piled on a dirt bike cruising down the main street with only the man wearing a helmet. I've seen tiny babies carried on motorcycles by the mom who is holding the baby in between her and the man or one little kid standing in between mom and dad with his arms around dads neck. On the scooters, you'll see the little kids standing on the front part with sacks of groceries and behind the driver is mom with another child on her lap. Its fascinating! I need to make a goal of getting better pictures of that. The bus is the only time I feel I can do it subtly enough.

You also see this a lot as well:

Its really cool actually. A lot of times they'll screw a board to the part on the bike in between the seat and the handle bars and cart people around. Not just kids - its quite common to see a couple on a bike like that. Sometimes you'll see a board behind the seat as well. I saw one dad taking his two girls to school on a bike like that - one girl was sitting in front of him and the other girl was standing on the back board with her arms around his neck. Ingenious!

What else? Oh, last week Andy and I went with Danilo to the university and it was pretty cool. Danilo is studying archeology and so we first went to a smaller branch of the university and they showed us a dig there. There are human remains from 3000 years ago right there on the university campus! It is so interesting to see the differences in how things are handled. Peter (the guy that was showing this stuff to us) pulled away this tarp covered by sticks

to show us 3000 year old remains. You can see a couple craniums there.

He said there are 3 but one was damaged by the rain! Wow. Next he pulled out a big paint brush thing and uncovered a plate that they just found last month. They leave it covered to protect it and they put a couple pieces of old newspaper there in the dirt to protect it and mark the spot. (You can see the newspaper in the picture)

As he was uncovering it, there was a little bone next to the plate. He said that it was a human forearm bone and as he was saying that, it broke in half. I cringed. Anyway, next we headed over to the main campus of the university where there's a museum of mega-fauna. InCREDible! I'm going to show my ignorance when I say that before going, I didn't know this stuff existed. Turns out that right in this area, there are all kinds of fossils of mega animals. They first found them starting about 5 or 6 years ago . . . some oil workers found them and called the university. The entire collection of the museum we were in as well as hundreds of other fossils came from a 10 meter squared spot here in Santa Elena. Obviously there are more where that came from! They're trying to get approval to section off a large chunk of land there to excavate and study some more. There were fossils of huge mammoth type animals, but not mammoths exactly. These ones didn't have hair like a mammoth. The coolest thing, though, were the sloth fossils. As in Sid the Sloth. Sid the Sloth on some amazing steroids. Here are Andy and I with the skeletal frame of one of these gigantic sloths:

HUGE! With muscles and fat and fur on those bones, my goodness. It was pretty incredible. To give another example, here's me being silly, but that's not the point. This is the leg of one of the giant sloths. Its as tall as me, and that's only its leg. Look at those two toes! Massive!

Anyway, it was a cool to see all that stuff. Next on the list: Anconcito. This is actually pretty old as far as news is concerned. This is from last month. One day Andy and I decided to check out another city, so we took a bus a little less than an hour away to Anconcito, which is a little fishing village. We were standing at this spot overlooking the cliffs here

and these three 10 year olds came over and were looking at our cameras and stuff. They talked to us for a good half an hour and it was so fun! They were telling us stories about fishing boats and which are the best fish to eat and all kinds of stuff.

Here are all the fishing boats anchored down.

You can also see the black specs in the sky. There were tons of birds! All waiting for fish guts. Yum. Anyway, Aconcito was interesting. We were only there for an hour or two before we headed back, but its always fun to check out new little places.

Well, I've got more to comment on but I'm feeling so done right now so this will suffice for now. Life is great. Ecuador rocks.

Near Death Experiences and Other Good Times

2008-10-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a crazy last few days its been. Hmmmm, where to start? How bout the near death experience. So yesterday we decided to go to Montañita one more time before Nikki left (she flies out today). We got there around noon and went to see Moreno, our friend that we rent surf boards from. We picked out our boards and headed to the beach.

Turns out that Montañita is a completely different place during the week! There was hardly anyone there! I think we were the only ones in the water when we got down there. The beach was almost empty. Anyway, the current always carries us off to one side, so after getting down to the beach from the street, we got in knowing that it would carry us down to the other part of the beach. The surfing was great, there were really big waves and I had a board that felt just right for me and I was able to have more control and stand up a bit easier. So fun! Anyway, we had been carried a ways down the beach when Nikki's ankle strap broke. Brett, being the amazingly thoughtful fiance he is, took Nikki's board all the way back to the shop to get it fixed so Nikki didn't have to. Since we had been carried down quite a ways, the 3 of us decided to get out and walk back down to where we had started and get back in there.

We got back down by the street and got back in. The undertow was so powerful. I got up to about my waist and the waves were HUGE! Some really big ones rolled in and it was the sort of deal where they came one right after another and I was coming up just to get a breath before trying to duck under them etc. After a few minutes of that, I came up and realized that we were SO FAR off shore! Nikki and I were right next to each other and we climbed up on our boards and we were shocked at how far away we had gotten. We commented on it and the need to get back in and both started paddling for shore. Andy was not too far from us either and we were all pretty freaked out by how far we were.

With the waves etc, we got separated pretty quickly and they were making serious progress toward shore. Not me though. Nope, I got caught in a large whirlpool. Not like I was swirling around in a circle or anything, but the current was so strong it just kept taking me further out. I was so far out there! The horizon was getting smaller and I'm going out to sea . . . on a surf board! Andy was yelling at me to stay on my board and paddle and I was yelling to him that I was trying and I was scared and didn't know what to do. We laughed about that later . . . I was yelling very non pertinent information. Anyway, after a bit they realized that they could do nothing for me out there so they both paddled like crazy for shore to get help. (Yeah, it was that bad). It was the oddest type of fear - very slow and calm fear. The "Wow, I really can't get back" kind. I had to keep reminding myself that it would be ok - someone could get me on a boat if it came down to it.

I saw Nikki and Andy reach shore and I saw people running so I knew they were trying. I just kept paddling and praying and paddling and praying and I finally realized that the horizon seemed to be getting bigger. Yay! The next scare came when I got to the point where the waves were breaking. Holy cow those were some big waves! At that point it was not the slow fear anymore, it was the "wow I might drown RIGHT NOW" kind of fear. It was like getting tumbled about in a washing machine but worse than I've ever experienced. There were a couple times that I'd hit the ground and push up to get more air and not break water. That was scary. I had to make sure I sucked in a breath every time my face broke. Andy came out to meet me when he could and told me to take off the board so I did that and gave it to him. It felt SO GOOD to get my feet back on shore. I was trembling I was so exhausted.

There's my story, now for Andy's. When I got back I saw Andy's board on the ground . . . or rather the pieces of his board. Yeah, that's right. When he got to the point where the waves were breaking, he was paddling and turned to look behind him and saw a HUGE (20 feet was his estimate) wave bearing down on him. The only thing he knew to do was to keep paddling so he did and it turned him completely over and during that it snapped his board into pieces and cut him up on his side. WOW. We made our way back to Moreno's shop and talked about how much to pay him for the shredded board. He felt bad too cause he said he normally goes out to check the water and he didn't do that. We ended up paying him $500 for the board - he felt good about it and so did we. Here's Andy with the pieces . . . you can see his scraped side.

We all came away just happy to be alive. That board and/or the wave could have done a lot more to Andy and things could have gone a lot worse for me as well. We're alive and well though! The only casualty was an earring I lost cause I forgot to take them out before we went out.

Anyway, this is obviously going to be another long post. But the second half will be more fun cause I've got pictures. At stake conference a few weeks ago, we met Danilo and Jorge Luis, two guys from Libertad, and since then we've been hanging out with them and another girl named Erika, a lot. Its so fun! We LOVE them and we have a lot of fun together. Danilo is 28, is the only member in his family (baptized when he was 15) and served a mission in Columbia. Strangely enough he was actually companions with Andres Chavez, my friend from Guayaquil whose family we stayed with when we got here. (Its a small world) Jorge Luis is almost 26, also the only member of his family and also got baptized when he was 15. Erika got baptized about 7 months ago and is 19. They rock!

Danilo is a great dancer and has been teaching us and last weekend we went dancing. It was so great! Oh, we also had two visitors and they came dancing too. On their way back from Machu Picchu, Brett and Nikki met a couple of people on one of their buses: Oren from Israel and Megan from Chicago. They came and stayed a couple of days with us before continuing on their travels. Here are some pics from the discoteks we went to. This first one is Jorge Luis and I at the first discotec. Its blurry, but oh well.

This is in the second discotec. The green on Oren's face is from one of the lasers that was flashing.

Here's all of us. Danilo and Erika are in the back, Megan is next to me, Oren is in the green and Jorge Luis is in the red.

Here's my favorite dance partner and I!

The other night we all went to Erika's house in Libertad and had a little late birthday party for Nikki (her birthday was a couple weeks ago - while they were in Peru).

And here's one night when Andy and I went over to hang out with them. We were on the boardwalk in Libertad.

Last night we had them over to our house for the last night before Nikki left today. Danilo taught me and Brett and Nikki some awesome Salsa sequences (before that we had mostly done Merengue) and then the girls danced for awile. Brett snuck some pictures of us.

It was a lot of fun. We love our new friends! We all mourn the fact that we didn't meet them the day we got here. They're great!

So the sad news of the day today is that Nikki left. She's flying home today to start wedding plans and such. I LOVE THIS GIRL!

I'm going to miss her like crazy, we've had a ton of fun. She gets crazy with me and its a ball. And boy can she dance!

Anyway, I LOVE ECUADOR (have I mentioned that?) and I think if I didn't have debt I need to get back and pay off I would stay forever. Maybe not forever but definitely for a lot longer. I love it here. Love love love. End super long post.

Pictures

2008-10-14T14:14:00.000-07:00

Wow, so I just spent HOURS putting up pictures of the trip. I had almost finished with the older post when I tried to upload the video of me jumping off the bridge. The @#!& thing froze and when it came back all the pictures were gone. Grrrrr! I had to start all over. I put commentary in red so its clear what's new. I shrank the pictures and made them lower quality so they'd upload faster. I think I'll try and do the videos now on a seperate post, or maybe I'll do it tomorrow. I'm pretty much sick of sitting here. But there are now over 40 pics so scroll on down!

Ok, so I just tried to upload the video and I'm still getting an error message so no videos for now. But two full previous posts full of pics!

I'm In Love!

2008-10-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

[October 14th: Additional comments in red.]

Ok, I love Ecuador. There is so much diversity here as far as culture goes. So we got into Quito and when I last posted, we were in a cyber practically inside the bus station and had not yet ventured out. Oh my goodness. Didn't realize I had left Ecuador and entered Europe when I got to Quito!

Quito is AMAZING and I love it! We were in Old Quito which is seriously mini Europe. My heart was pounding because it reminded me so much of Spain. There's even a huge basilica! It was fun to see it and get excited again . . . I remember getting a little jaded as far as cathedrals were concerned in Spain. We saw them everywhere. But I totally got that awed feeling again when we saw this one.

Here's a good example of what Quito looks like. Tons of boxy looking colored houses seemingly stacked on top of each other. Looks pretty cool!

Here's the basilica. I think the full name (if I remember right) is La Iglesia de la Basilica del Voto. Beautiful building!

When we went inside, there was a man sweeping the floor. I asked him where the elevator was that takes you to the top of the tower. Little did I know that from this we would get a full blown tour! Eduardo was his name and he just started filling us with facts about the church and showing us different things, it was amazing. He even opened up some of the little closed off naves and took us in there to tell us more. There was an American tour group in there and a couple times he quite brashly told people not to do the things they were doing (opening little doors etc) and then he'd beckon us along to continue explaining things. We felt like VIPs! I love being able to speak Spanish.

Anyway, he took us underneath the cathedral too to the catacombs. There are eight thousand people buried down there! Some are in coffins, but others its their ashes that are stored down there. It was fascinating. He also showed us this little hole where if no family came to claim the ashes after the alotted time, they would dump the ashes down there. Wow.

Here are pics from the catacombs. These ones are the coffin things.

And these smaller ones are urns with ashes. (The ashes that get dumped down a hole in the floor if no one comes to claim you after your paid time has expired)

This is right when you get underneath. Each one of those naves you can see is full of the coffins like the first picture. Pretty interesting.

Eduardo took this picture of Andy and I outside of the cathedral. The statue is of John Paul II. There was an Ecuadorian couple sitting there on the stairs and he made them move so he could take our picture!

After he showed us all over and told us a bunch of history, he showed us where the office was to buy tickets to go up to the top of the tower. Oh! One other way cool thing he told us . . . that cathedral is a replica of Notre Dame! He said its a tad bit smaller but its modeled after the Notre Dame cathedral. So cool. Anyway, we took the elevator up as high as it went, and then we climbed staircase after staircase and then ladder after ladder until we were seriously in the tip top of the tower of the cathedral!

This is before we got to the high part. This was overlooking the inside of the cathedral. Pretty cool!

We were in a part where there wasn't even a floor, just metal beams and wire mesh over the beams. Then we found little holes that went to the outside, so Andy and I crawled out and were actually standing on the OUTSIDE of the tower of the huge cathedral. It was terrifyingly exhilirating. We took pictures, but I don't know if they'll do it justice. We were standing on like a 2 foot by 2 foot little outcropping way up high in the air. No guardrails, no signs saying not to, nothing. Liability is just not as issue here! I love it!

Here is Andy from the outside, when we were crouched on the little platform. You can't tell how precarious it is, but you can tell that we're pretty high!

This is part of Quito from up there. It is one packed city! And WAY bigger than this. In every direction you can see this type of packed housing for miles and miles and miles.

Oh, man, I almost forgot. This is going to be another long post. Anyway, that night we got there, when we were walking around the city, we heard some music and decided to check it out. There was an Andean band playing! It was BEAUTIFUL. They have awesome instruments. There were also dancers doing traditional dances that were so dang fun to watch. It lasted for almost an hour! A very nice man there told us that they did things in this plaza where we were (sidenote: I LOVE plazas! I think I said this on every other post when I was in Spain and there are plazas in Quito, reminding me of my love for them) every Friday and Saturday night. It was great. I took pics and video that I'll post once we get back to Salinas.

Unfortunately, the video issue is stopping me from uploading. I'll try it when I'm done with all the pics! Here are a couple of night shots from Quito though. This is the basilica at night.

This is a plaza . . . lets see I THINK its the plaza de independencia. So beautiful!

This is right outside of said plaza on a European looking street.

On Saturday (yesterday?) we decided that we should head to Otavalo and do the rest of Quito on the way back. Oh, and turns out you CAN beat a $4 hostel! On our way back we decided to stop in another hostel or two because the rat hole where we stayed did not have conditions very conducive to sleeping. We went into a pretty nice looking one expecting it to be more like $7 or $8 a person . . . nope! $3.50! So we told the guy we were headed to Otavalo but that we'd be back to stay there. Pretty exciting.

Ok, on to Otavalo. I'm in love. This place is incredible and I want to live here. We went to church this morning and the entire meeting was in Quichua! I would say 97% of the people were dressed in traditional Andean clothing and I loved it. I could not stop smiling the entire time. They are some of the most beautiful, loving people I have ever seen or met. As people came in the door they would come over and shake our hands. Even the little tiny girls had on the traditional dark skirts with bright colored fabric belts, billowy white lacy shirts and the shawl thing as well as gold necklaces and earings. So beautiful! Many of the women came in with babies wrapped in material on their backs. I even saw some 3 or 4 year old looking kids strapped on this way!

Something really interesting is that the hymns and the sacrament prayer were in Spanish while the rest of the meeting was in Quichua. The brother conducting the meeting was wearing the traditional white shirt and white pants with a colored toga type thing over the top. Oh man, I know I'm gushing, but it was seriously fantastic. All the guys have long thick hair pulled back in ponytails and the women all use colored fabric strips to tie their hair back. I can't wait to post pictures. They wrap it and wrap it so that they end up with a long column of hair covered in colorful material. Its beautiful. All of these people have amazing thick dark beautiful hair. I want to live here. I want to speak Quichua and know these people and play with the kids.

Anyway, after church we walked around the city some. We found the center of town where there are little stands lining each side of the street selling all kinds of things - fruit, veggies, traditional clothing, t-shirts, shoes, soccer jerseys, belts, toys, electronics, everything. This is a beautiful little city. I'm really glad we came here.

Here are some of my favorites from Otavalo. This is a sister standing outside of the church (the white railing in the back is the church . . . not the one we went to but another one across the city. Otavalo has a LOT of members and a lot of church buildings. The missionaries told us its nickname is Utavalo - Utah Valley). I was sitting in a park with my big lens on so I could get some pics unobserved. You can see the baby on her back.

This group of kids walked out from the church and walked around a bit and then walked back in. A couple of the girls were in traditional clothing and the others weren't. Isn't she just beautiful?!

This is the market close to the center of town. There were these traditional shirts for sell everywhere. So beautiful!

Here's another lady with a baby strapped on her back. I just love it! I love how their little legs just dangle underneath the fabric.

This is how they tie their hair. I think its so pretty. We were sitting toward the back in church and so looking at the backs of everyone's heads. There were all these different colored wrapped ponytails. So pretty.

Here are a bunch of the fabric wraps for sale. I think some are for hair and others are belts.

This I just had to get a picture of. It says not to urinate there, and there's a wet spot right underneath it. Seriously, men just pee everywhere here. And they don't wait until no one's around.

I better get. We need to get a bus back to Quito at some point here. I think we're going to try to go back in a way that will take us to "la mitad del mundo" (The middle of the world). There is a marker thing (from what we've heard) on the equator that you can go to. Might as well! Oh, what's weird, when we left Quito we were in the Southern hemisphere and right now in Otavalo we are in the Northern hemisphere! Cool. I love Ecuador.

Ambato, Baños y Quito

2008-10-10T15:03:00.000-07:00

[October 14th: Second try, here we go. All additional comments are in red. Blah.]

Ok, I am DYING to put pictures up right now, but I can't! This internet cafe does not have card slots and I don't have a card reader with me, so it will have to wait.

The last few days have been INCREDIBLE!! Lets see, Tuesday? I think it was Tuesday . . . anyway Andy found out that Stefani (his student) got another temporary job for a few days and wouldn't be able to do class. Brett and Nikki were planning on leaving Wednesday for Machu Picchu and Andy and I decided that we might as well do something too while Stefani couldn't have class anyway. Oh, I also got a student on Tuesday. Her name is Friollera and she's 15 . . . I met her dad on the boardwalk one day and he called and I started teaching her. Its great! Anyway, Andy and I decided to head up to Quito and do some of the things that people have told us about up in this area.

Wednesday we got up and headed to the bus station. We spent about 9 hours on the bus that day . . . 2 1/2 to Guayaquil and then another 6 1/2 or so to Ambato, our first stop. The trip was amazing! Long time, sure but we were going through the Andes! We saw some amazing views of volcanoes, huge valleys and the greenest mountains I've ever seen. They seriously rival the Alps! Andy and I both spent a lot of time with our cameras out on the bus.

Ok, I'm not even going to intersperse them like I did before. I'll start with a few of the pics from the bus ride. The first one is a volcano that we could see from far off, but I'm not sure which one.

This is Chimborazo - beautiful isn't it?!

Here's a truck we saw full of platanos. I just thought it looked cool.

We also saw banana/platano plantations along the way. You can see the bananas covered by the blue bags here:

Anyway, we stopped in Ambato because we were SICK of being on the bus and because its not too far from Baños, our destination of choice. We stayed in a hotel for $15 (that was for the both of us!) and didn't do much in Ambato. Thursday morning we did go to this market thing where all the indigineous people bring their produce and sell it. We got some pretty cool pictures, which I'm dying to post.

Here are the ones from the market in Ambato. We went up to the top part where we could look down on it and take pictures a little more subtley!

Look at all the pigs feet in the bottom left of this one! There were stalls like this full of meet all over.

Right below us they had these tubs full of chickens. Look at their little feet hanging out!

My favorite part of being there was seeing the native men and women in their traditional clothing. This woman must have gone back and forth at least 10 times hauling all of her produce to one of the stalls! These are such strong people! Along the way we'd see them climbing steep switchbacks with things on their backs like this.

This woman looked like she was struggling to walk, yet she went up and down these stairs. Incredible!

Around 11 on Thursday morning we got on a bus for Baños, a little less than an hour away. Right when we got off a guy approached and asked if we needed a hostel. We said yes and checked it out. We paid a little more than we probably could have (We paid $8 a piece) but it had really nice beds and hot water that worked. I took my 2nd hot shower since being here in Ecuador in that hostel and the $8 was therefore worth it!

Baños is to Ecuador what Interlaken is to Switzerland. It is incredible! Totally a backpackers stopover, we saw a LOT of travelers there. Its surrounded by huge majestic green mountains and waterfalls etc.

Here are a couple of pics of the scenery around Baños. Its so beautiful!

We took a tour to see a bunch of different waterfalls and it was amazing. We had already seen a couple of waterfalls and then we pulled up to this bridge and the guy told us we could jump off the bridge. I was instantly all about that! It was SO COOL! I wish I could estimate how far down it was to the river below, but I just don't know. Andy and I were talking about the differences in doing it here and if you were to do something like that in the US. A) We paid $10. B) Once you said you wanted to go, they strapped you in a harness and the instructions given were "hold your arms up and step off". C) There were no waivers, no helmets, no signing your life away for liabilities sake. It was THRILLING. The first couple seconds were completely breath-taking, as in I literally couldn't breathe. It was different from sky-diving because when I went sky-diving it didn't ever make your stomach fall really cause there was so much pressure in the air from falling so fast. This definitely brought my stomach right up into my throat. I loved it.

Here are a couple pics of the tour. This one is one of the first huge waterfalls we saw. Couldn't help the sunspots! And I know my hair looks like I'm an orphan child. I don't do much with it when traveling.

Andy and I in front of the big waterfalls:

This is one of the pictures of me jumping off the bridge. The video is way cooler but it was what messed up the adding of pictures last time. Maybe I'll try and put it on a seperate post when I'm done!

The other thing of note on the bridge was that I accidentally let Andy's bag fall off of said bridge while he was jumping. I had taken a bunch of pics of him doing it and then set his bag down to put my camera away so I could get ready to go do it and turns out the wall of the bridge did not meet up with the sidewalk I was on and it rolled right through the crack. I was SICK! Luckily people here are so nice and this guy hiked down and got it for us and therefor Andy didn't kill me. Sweet.

After jumping off the bridge, we went a little ways and then got off the chiva and walked down to this little tram thing. What?! No one mentioned a tram! It went over this vast ravine with a river and yet another waterfall on one of the canyon walls. It totally reminded me of Emperor's New Groove actually. It was way fun.

The tram went so dang fast that I couldn't get my wits about me in time to set up some nice shots. But this gives you an idea of the ravine we were over.

This is from where we started, you can see the little green tram car on the cables and the waterfall in teh background.

Next we went to this other spot and hiked down through the Amazon(!) to this other big awesome waterfall. So lets review. So far in one day - awesome views of amazing waterfalls and beautiful mountains, a jump off a bridge, a tram across an amazing ravine that was huge, and a hike through the Amazon. I love my life. And that wasn't all. After that, we headed back to Baños where Andy and I got on another Chiva to go up to the gigantic Volcano that's right outside of Baños. So add that to the list. Unfortunately the sky got really cloudy and you couldn't see much of the volcano at all, but we did have a spectacular view of the city.

Also in Baños, I found a Che shirt. Hooray! I've been wanting one. Yes, I know that by the end of his life he was pretty violent and killed a lot of people. No I don't support or agree with that. But I'm still fascinated by him and his life and the way he's become such an icon. The other really interesting thing (I remember talking about this is in Professor Laraway's class . . . pretty much my favorite class of all time) is that he was so anti-capitalism and was of the opinion that it ruined people and such and yet his face is now one of the most marketed (if not THE most) things in the world. I read somewhere that "the" picture of him is the most recognized photo in the world. Wow. Anyway, I'm pretty excited to have a Che shirt.

This morning before leaving Baños, Andy and I went and swam in the natural hot springs right under, you guessed it, another waterfall. I took pictures of that too. Man I'm going to have a load of pictures to load. We went back and showered etc and I went and bought an Alpaca sweater for $10. Andy was shocked. He told me he had read an article right before coming to Ecuador about Alpaca and how expensive it is in the US. He said they had $500 sweaters on there. Yeah, I paid $10. Its way soft.

Here is a picture of the natural hot springs. The closest one to the camera is the hottest pool, the next one is still warm but more temperate and the blue one you can see in the back is the FREEZING cold one. It was the same idea as the baños in Cordoba - you go from one to the other. Loved it! You can see the pretty mountains in the background as well. To take the picture, I'm standing right under the waterfall from the second picture on this post. So pretty!

Anyway, we got on a bus just after noon and headed here, to Quito. We are staying in a $4 hostel that is pretty nasty, not gonna lie. But hey, $4?! Can't beat that! We're talking light bulb hanging from a hole in the ceiling, cigarette butts on the floor, holes in the walls, peeling paint, and sheets that look like they've been around since the 60s. Funny thing is, I kind of love it. All part of the experience. Including the fleas, right?

Super long post with no pictures = not that exciting. Oh well. Tomorrow we'll poke around Quito a bit and then head up to Otavalo. Otavalo is in the mountains . . . Professor Laraway told me about it and then the next day the missionaries were talking about it to us. Then the day after that we met a sister missionary from there and after hearing so much about it in such a concentrated amount of time, we decided we pretty much had to go. Profe said there are textiles and leather there. Exciting! After that we'll head back to Salinas. You know, to our house by the beach. I love my life!

Posorja and the Island of Puna

2008-10-07T07:32:00.000-07:00

So yesterday was fantastic . . . we went on a day trip with some friends to Posorja and then by boat out to the island of Puna. It was awesome! Our guide from the whale watching tour, Stefani, is the one responsible for setting up the English class that we were teaching. Were being the key word. The class is no longer, but Stefani is still taking classes from Andy. Sometimes when Andy can't teach for some reason, I'll go and do it.

Anyway, Stefani's mom, Luz, is normally there as well and she'll talk to us and stuff too. Well she had told both Andy and me about this city where there are always dolphins close and we talked about going out there. Well yesterday Stefani finally had a day off so the 4 of us gringos, Luz, Stefani and Carlos, a guy that works at the same travel company and was in our brief class, went out to Posorja and then took a boat to Puna, an island a little ways out from the city there.

It was AWESOME!! The dolphins were swimming right by the boat we were in and they would even bump into the boat sometimes. It was so great. Brett and Andy had their hands out in the water in hopes of touching them and one of the dolphins came right up and was just looking at their hands as though considering getting closer.

It was pretty thrilling - I love dolphins. A few of them jumped and stuff but I never had the camera ready at the moment.

Anyway. On our way out to the little island, we saw these rock outcroppings with TONS of pelicans and other cool looking birds for which I have no name. I got some good up close shots of them flying close to the water and stuff. Here are a couple. this first one is supposed to look grainy and such. I was experimenting.

I love those beaks! Most of the ones we saw had the long really skinny beaks but you can see the one guy here that has the thicker deeper beak. Way cool.

When we got close to the island, we could see this guy on a horse riding along the waters edge and I immediately thought of my dad. He would LOVE that! There was also a guy on a burro - the kind you imagine when you think of donkey. Small, lightish gray etc. I didn't get the camera out in time to get a good shot of him though. If you look in the background of this pic you can see all the donkeys back behind him. Love it! When we got to shore, this family made us lunch that was delicious. Fresh, big shrimp and rice and verdes, yum.

After lunch we went on a walk to this secluded beach where there were lots of crabs! Not the little tiny dark rock crabs, but red medium sized ones. Carlos herded them toward me so I could get some pictures of all of them - if you look you can see all the little orange and red spots . . . those are ALL crabs!

Brett and Andy caught a couple so I have some good up close pictures of them. This first one was cornered so I could get pictures, then they started picking them up.

Their eyes are so cool! They stand up straight sometimes, and then other times, they lay their eyes down in the little slots you can kind of see. So dang cool. Anyway, Brett and Andy got them close together and this is what happened!

After swimming and exploring the rocks there etc, we started to head back. On our way we saw these big red crabs. As in Sebastian from Little Mermaid. As in what your mind conjures up when you think of crabs. So cool!

We headed back into Posorja and caught the bus back to Pasero, where I guy in a little pickup truck charged us $.25 a piece to take us to the spot where a bus would pass that would take us back to Salinas. It was about 2 1/2 to 3 hours each way. What a day! It was a blast and I love seeing different parts of Ecuador!

El Voto

2008-09-29T17:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a historic day as far as Ecuador is concerned. The president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, (who was elected in December 2006) set up a committee to rewrite the constitution and they did just that and yesterday Ecuador voted on whether or not to adopt this new constitution. The constitution passed by a long shot, and Ecuador just took a big step to the left – a step that moves the country into socialism.

It has been so interesting to be here during the middle of the heat of this. I haven’t even brought it up before now, I know, but I’ve gotten totally caught up in it. I find this stuff so interesting! When we were in Guayaquil, we began to see bumper stickers etc that said “No, because Ecuador loves God” and things such as that. During our one day visit to Salinas (before we moved here) we saw the immense number of walls, signs, stickers, shirts etc that said “Mil veces sí” (Yes a thousand times) and other things like that. When we got back to Guayaquil Andy had a pretty good conversation with Brother Chavez about what was going on and we learned that this was trying to pass. Guayaquil strongly favored the “no” side of things while most other parts of Ecuador were very much for the Si campaign.

In addition to moving Ecuador into socialism, the new constitution also grants more rights to gays and allows abortion among other things. Correa has stated that he's not going to be a part of the Venezuelan/Bolivian movement although he does consider Hugo Chavez a personal friend. He's made a whole lot of promises to the poor of Ecuador and it will be interesting to see how many of those he follows through on. A couple weeks ago, he actually came to Salinas and spoke to a large group of supporters. This took place at the dirt soccer field a block and a half from my house and I missed it! I was so mad! There were a bunch of buses parked out in front of our house and after a little while Nikki and I decided to go investigate and we went over there and they told us that he had just been there. A block and a half away! Ugh. Oh well I suppose. This is the field where he was and you can see all the Si propoganda on the walls and such in the background.

Anyway, the propoganda here in Santa Elena (the province where we live) has been INCREDIBLE! I can't even believe it. The walls on every block are painted with Si campaign stuff and there are flags all over town and posters and shirts etc. Its on everything. I turned on the TV for the first time last night to see what the outcome was of the vote and I listened to Correa for awhile and such. It was interesting. Oh, but I also saw some si commercials that were interesting. I've heard a Si rap song on the radio on the bus, the people are quite literally inundated. Here's a bunch of walls etc. FYI, most of these pics were taken from a moving bus (where I actually feel safe sneaking my camera out and subtly taking pictures out the window) and therefore are not great quality.

This is the only one I've seen that directly states that its a move to socialism:

There are walls like this all over town with a million different little sayings like this:

This one I don't know if I was taking a picture of the wall or of the dogs, but you get the picture. There are a TON of stray dogs here. They are everywhere. It actually makes me really sad sometimes, some are completely emaciated and a lot of them have fleas and sores etc. You always see them digging in the trash all over and stuff.

Anyway, history in the making here folks. Oh, one more picture . . . last night after Correa spoke this guy was on commentating and Andy and I couldn't believe this guy's unibrow. I think it has to be the most pronounced one I have ever seen. At first I thought he was wearing glasses and that what you could see was the rim thing that goes over your nose, but no. He's not wearing glasses. His name is Fernando Bustamante and I have no idea what his significance is in Ecuador (even Wikipedia couldn't help me there!) but I wrote down his name solely so I could post a picture of his unibrow on my blog.

Anyway, I really should blog more about life here, but slow internet takes away my motivation to blog, put up pictures, etc etc. Such is life.

Montañita

2008-09-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

So over the weekend we went to Montañita and I’m pretty much in love. With Montañita, with the chill attitude, with the beach, with surfing, with Carlos –in love with it all. I’ll start from the beginning.

We left on Friday right around noon and got to Montañita about 2 or so after changing buses in Santa Elena. It’s not a very big town/city, but it’s a tourist hot spot and I think we saw more Americans and/or white people there than I’ve seen the entire time we’ve been here. I wish I could describe the atmosphere of this place. It’s the most rasta-fied, free lovin’, pot smokin’, hippy haven chill place I have ever been. I would say that about 30% of the people there had dreads. Love that. I’ve always been tempted to try dreads. Closest I ever got were the fake braids I had in my hair for a month or so in 2002. Anyway. It felt like a town made up of 20 somethings, which was fun. Tons of people our age.

One thing I’ve decided is that Montañita itself is a tribute to Bob Marley. I’ve never heard “One Love” so many times in one day. The music from most of the shops was Bob Marley, there were Bob Marley t-shirts everywhere and of course tons of rasta stuff. Beanies, bracelets, t-shirts, pants, and more all in black, red, green and yellow. And plenty of people wearing all the stuff as well. My favorites were the guys with a huge mane of dreads stuffed under an oversized knit beanie type thing with a full on beard and those striped pants that I wish I had a name for. Oh and marijuana is everywhere. The drug itself, on bumper stickers, on t-shirts, on swimsuits, towels, necklaces, anything that can depict it does.

Even with all the pot and drinking, I loved the atmosphere just because everyone is so chill. Granted, this is surely from the pot, but it’s cool to walk around and just have guys sitting around banging on hand drums and enjoying life.

When we first got into town we walked around a bit and then found a hostel where we paid six bucks a piece to stay. Granted, the rooms had mini padlocks as the only locks on the door and the walls were made of one thin layer of some type of bamboo looking wood and you could quite literally hear EVERYTHING going on in the rooms around us and there may have been cockroaches and spiders but hey we’re used to that and plus it was still just six bucks!

After we left our stuff and changed into swimsuits we headed down to the beach to check out the famous waves. The beach there is so interesting! During low tide, the beach is so long and flat, not a rapid decline at all. The waves are big and roll by much closer together and faster than what I'm used to. (Read: San Diego) We walked along the beach for a lil bit and that's when we met Carlos. He was renting surf boards by the hour so we decided to do an hour Friday and then rent from another place we had found that was $10 all day for Saturday. Carlos is most definitely the best looking Ecuatorian I've seen here. Wow. He gave us a little lesson on the beach before we went out to try it. Andy was the only on that had ever tried surfing before, so needless to say we didn't get too extremely far in an hour. When we were done Carlos was waiting for us and I was talking to him as we walked back. I asked if he was going to surf now and he said yes. Then he told me that he is going to an international surf competition in Portugal in October and so he's getting ready for that. So we stayed and watched him awhile. Yeah, he's good. Way good. Walking up and down the board and doing cool tricky things. I ran into him a couple other times while we were in town and one time asked his last name and told him we'd watch for him in his competition. Then I may or may not have googled him later. Turns out he's won Ecuador's national surf contest for the last two years in a row and in other Latin competitions (that include all of South America) he normally comes in in the top 3. He told me the next time we come to Montañita he'll give me lessons one on one out in the water, so if we go before he leaves, I'll get help from Ecuador's best surfer. Sweet.

Anyway, we surfed all day Saturday. And I use the term "surfed" quite loosely. I layed on my stomach on my board a lot, I used my board as a boogey board and rode the waves in on my stomach, and I even got to my knees a couple of times (which right there proves I haven't got it, I shouldn't have been on my knees at all!) but it was still a blast. I stood up for maybe two seconds once or twice. Its totally addicting though and I want to get to where I can do it. When I was out there I started thinking about Shaun and Courtni and feeling like it was all wrong somehow. Montañita has some of the best surfing in the world and I, who had never until that point attempted to surf, was out there instead of bonafide surfers like them who could have gotten a lot more out of it. Court, you guys should plan a vacation there someday - its way cheap! :)

Anyway, the other highlight of the weekend was the choclo. I can't believe I didn't take a picture of it. Its basically corn on the cob on a stick (think Nacho Libre) that is grilled, covered with pesto, mayonaisse, and parmesan cheese. Ok, so it sounds weird, but it is seriously the most delicious thing I have ever had. Wow, I want some right now. Oh, and not too many pictures. Again. Its a conundrum. I want pics of the things going on, but I don't want to pull my camera out and chance it getting stolen . . . especially when I'm staying in a room that wouldn't even have to be kicked in. A solid push would do. Sometime I'll take more. Really.

In other "best ______ of Ecuador" news, I met this guy named Mauricio here in Salinas who is a supervisor with the police. I've talked to him a couple different times cause I run into him down on the boardwalk sometimes. Anyway, last night we talked for a long time and I learned that he's Mr. Ecuador. He's a body builder/weight lifter and has won Mr. Guayaquil numerous times and last year he won Mr. Ecuador. He showed me all of these pictures that he had in his car. That is actually not attractive to me at all. HUGE guys in speedo things all oily is actually kind of a turn off for me. But whatever. This morning I went to his gym with him and worked out with him. So I've gotten surf instruction from Ecuador's best surfer and worked out with Mr. Ecuador. All in 3 days. While I don't like to see pictures of him in competitions, him in work out clothes is not so bad. . . quite nice actually. :) We went out to breakfast afterward and we're supposed to go dancing this weekend. He's 27, quite attractive and super nice. And obviously ripped. Don't worry mom, its not going to go anywhere, I'm not that interested.

Tour of the House and Other News

2008-09-18T15:14:00.000-07:00

Hmmmm, where to start? Lets see. This morning I got up and decided to take pics of the house to put up and as I was doing so I got to the bathroom in between Nik and I's room, where I saw my soap knocked on the ground as well as my facewash. Strange, I thought. Then I noticed the nibble marks on the corner of my soap and Nikki's soap was nibbled as well. That's right, looks like Ricky had a party in our bathroom last night! And there is a good possibility he brought some of his friends - our shower was FULL of poop! So much poop. Possibly more than one rat could do in one night. Andy made the keen observation that maybe we don't have rats at all - maybe there are little tiny ninja turtles living in our pipes. I'd take Leonardo, Donatello, Rafael and Michaelangelo over Ricky anyday.

Anyway, We've got rat poison spread around the house, but so far that darn thing has been too smart to eat it. Curse rats for being smarter than mice. Oh, and speaking of mice, we know there's at least one mouse in addition to the rat cause Brett saw one in the kitchen the other night. We've named him Marty the mouse, and with Ricky the rat, Antwone, Boris, Carlos, Derelik (the cockroaches) and Geico the Gecko we're getting quite a full house! Oh and the other strange thing about our shower this morning is that Nikki's razor was on the other side of the shower (were they shaving?!) and the drain cover was moved aside. Are they possibly living in the septic tank?! Huh, weird. Pictures obviously don't do this justice, but at least give an idea.

Anyway, back to the tour of the house. This is the view from the outside as you approach the house.

I think it looks quite pretty from the front, especially with the colorful plants framing the gate. Anyway, here's the patio/porch area with our hammocks hanging up.

The hammocks seriously rock, I love them. They are so comfortable! Nik and I slept out there the other night and it was so dang comfortable. The only down side was all the noise. Turns out stray animals make a lot of noise during the night.

This little guy is one of our favorites of the house. Yes, he's going to the bathroom, except the most essential part is missing. And he's cemented to the ground so there's no moving him.

This is the view from the front door looking in.

On the left side of the picture, to the side of the chairs, there is an entertainment center thing with a stereo on it as well as two chairs exactly like these ones against the wall next to the front door. The door to my room would be immediately to my right, right after you walk in the front door. There is a jack and jill bathroom that is in between my room and Nikki's room, so both our rooms are on the right side of the house. The doors you can see in the background are the boys bathroom and the area where the boys rooms are. I got distracted by rat poop this morning and never did take pictures of their rooms, their bathroom, and our bathroom other than the drain and soap. The kitchen counter is the one you can see behind the table in the picture.

This is looking from the doorway of Nikki's room toward the kitchen.

The door on the right hand side is the same one you can see from the front door: the boys bathroom.

Here's the kitchen:

When you open the cabinets, there are some shelves and the ground - made of concrete. There are holes underneath there where Ricky, Marty and friends go between cupboards and such.

This is my bedroom, but I don't actually sleep in there since the AC doesn't work.

I sleep in one of the beds in Nikki's room, except she kinda moved into one of the other rooms so we may use the room she was in as the sleeping room since it has the AC. We washed the sheets the other day and I never did put them back on the bed since I don't sleep there anyway. Anyway, this is the built in dresser thing where Ricky lives with my clothes and other things.

And this is the bathroom door and facing out into the house. So the built in dresser is right to the right of the bathroom door.

This is one view of the bedroom where I sleep. I sleep on the bottom bunk where the blue blanket is.

The door is the door to the bathroom in between the two rooms.

This is the other bedroom that Nikki moved into. In fact, she's asleep in the top bunk on the left of the picture. Yeah, lots of beds!

So thats as much of the house as I have pictures of. Both boys rooms have bunk beds and bigger beds in them as well.

Man this post is getting LONG! I have more to tell about but maybe I'll save it. I'll just mention that we started an English class with the whale tour people on Monday and it went really well. We'll be teaching them 3 times a week normally but this week was Monday and yesterday only cause they have a conference thing. Its so fun! We have 9 students (supposedly normally there will be 10) and they're all eagar to learn. This came from talking to our guide on our whale watching tour - the students are employees of the company and their friends or family. We have not yet put up any flyers, but this is a pretty good deal!

Anyway, good stuff. I think we're going to Montañita tomorrow (another coastal town a bit further up the coast) and I plan on taking pictures while we're there. Supposedly Montañita is known for the best surfing in South America so yeah. We'll see about that. From what we've heard everyone there just surfs and smokes pot, which is not illegal here. Awesome.

Exciting News and a New Friend

2008-09-15T10:13:00.000-07:00

Wow has it been an eventful last few days! No pics right now, but I'm going to try and do a quick summary. Saturday night, with much planning, Brett proposed to Nikki and they are now engaged! It was quite the experience - Andy and I both played a part in getting everything set up just right and the proposal ended up being in a shallow cave on the beach over a candle-lit dinner. The stuff movies are made of! We're pretty dang excited for them.

Well after Andy and I had played our parts, we were EXHAUSTED (numerous things went unexpectedly different than planned) and we headed home to make some dinner. By the time it was done etc, it was after 10. We were both so ready for bed and we had both taken showers etc when Andy went out back to wash his pants. I was standing in my room by my built in dresser thing and started hearing noises. I had been suspicious previous to this when I'd hear a little noise or something, but always just told myself not to be paranoid. Well this time it was for sure - I could hear squeaking and something moving in one of the drawers. Great. So when Andy got back I had him come and listen and then he went out to get a stick. We then began opening the drawers. And by "we" I mean Andy. We didn't find the culprit, but we found droppings. On my clothes. Yeah, SICK.

Well the bottom left "drawer" isn't really a drawer at all, its a hinged door that just opens into an empty space. We had opened that (Ok fine, ANDY had opened that) and we were standing there after Andy had been pounding on the dresser etc with the stick. All the sudden a big fat RAT tears out of there and out my bedroom door. I started screaming like a banshee, I'm not gonna lie. So disgusting. We looked around for him but no luck, although at one point we were pretty sure he was in Nikki's room, we could hear him in there. We've named him Ricky. And we hate him. I have droppings in most of my drawers and he ate some crackers from an unopened pack I had in there. So gross. Since then we've heard him in the kitchen, and we're going to buy some rat poison today since yesterday was Sunday. I kinda feel like that could have been considered ox in the mire, but oh well. Along with the gecko on the kitchen walls, we're getting quite the houseful! The gecko doesn't really bother me, I'm used to them. And I think after Ricky showed his sick face, I'll take Boris and friends any day!

Anyway, that's a very condensed version of the last couple days. Since the rat revelation, I've been extra jumpy and Andy has been teasing me MERCILESSLY about it. I scare easy anyway, and now if he slams a door or something (on purpose I might add) I give a little scream. Pathetic, I know. I'll be glad when that vermin is DEAD.

Whales!

2008-09-12T14:43:00.000-07:00

So Wednesday we went on the Whale Tour, which down here costs a whoppin’ $20. It was so dang fun! Since this is a very slow part of the year here, we ended up being the only ones on the tour which meant we got the entire boat to ourselves. Also because there were only the 4 of us, I think they stayed out there longer looking for other whales than they normally would have. One thing that’s really cool is how friendly people are down here and how much they open up to you . . . especially when you speak Spanish. I think it surprises people when four Americans show up and all speak their language. When we had originally been approached on the beach about doing the tour, we were told it was an hour or so tour, 2 hours max if it takes longer to find whales. Our tour was over 3 hours! And it didn’t feel much like a tour . . . it felt like 7 friends out looking for whales. There was the guy who drove the boat, a helper guy who drove the little boat that took us out from the beach to the bigger boat, and Stefania, the guide. So 7 of us total on this big boat. This pic is looking at the skyline of Salinas, and it’s actually not all of it.

We got out to the area that is in the whale’s migration pattern and started watching for water coming from blow holes or tails to appear. We didn’t have to wait too long! The first whales we saw were a mother and a calf. They weren’t jumping out of the water, but we did see a lot of their fins and tails. Also the front part of one, if you can even tell in the picture. It’s a horrible picture. Just a disclaimer about all of these pictures of whales . . . we were on a boat that was rocking back and forth with the waves and I was trying to take pictures and not go flying off the boat all at the same time. I got a lot of pictures of the sky or the ground etc because I just couldn’t stay steady. And the whales come out so fast, it was hard to try to steady myself, zoom in, take the picture etc. So a lot of them are somewhat blurry and not as zoomed in as I could have been. So be it.

After watching for those for a little while, we decided to go try to find some others since it appeared that mother and baby were going to stay below for awhile. We saw another one that was somewhat coming out of the water. Again, horrible pictures, but you get the idea!

We went around the point of the peninsula and to another spot where we saw 4 or 5 more and then on our way back saw a couple more. Right before we were heading back into the bay, the driver spotted one jumping. What a finale for us! It was SO COOL! The pictures are so disappointing to me because I just couldn’t get the camera up there fast enough and they’re blurry but this at least gives you an idea of what we were watching. It was so great!

We were following him for a minute before we headed back in and I got this one final shot. If I had been steady I would have tilted the camera down a bit more so the tail wasn’t right along the bottom edge, but I still quite like this picture with Salinas in the background.

On the way back in I was asking the driver about all the different boats we could see out there. There were some pretty cool ones. This one is one of Ecuador’s naval ships. You can see the guys on the front of the ship.

These are Coast Guard boats:

This one is pretty cool, it’s a research boat that will be looking for things left from sunken boats. The driver was telling us that years ago people found all kinds of gold and silver from sunken ships – big pieces of it! When I saw this boat it made me think of Clive Cussler books.

This last one is a fishing boat 5553 copy. I love the big things hanging over the sides for the nets.

Anyway, it was a great day and we really had a good time. Andy started talking to Stefania at one point and told her that we were going to teach English here. She was really interested and Andy went yesterday and talked to her mom, who we think owns the tour place, and we officially have 10-15 clients. They have a room there where we can teach and Andy is supposed to go on Monday at 6 for the first consultation/class. He said the people have varying levels of English so we may have a couple of us go so we can divide them up and work with them like that. Pretty exciting!

Everyone we talk to down here seems interested in learning English. We’ve got some flyers made up and we’re going to start putting them up probably today. We also decided yesterday that we need to make some smaller ones to carry around with us – almost like pass along cards. We always end up scrambling for a scrap of paper to write our numbers on when we end up in a conversation on the street. I think this will work out very well for us.

That’s about it as far as news. Oh, last night I walked into our bathroom and saw a very large cockroach walking by the faucet of our sink. SICK. It was probably 2 inches long, with 2 ½ inch antennae. It crawled behind the counter of the sink before we could kill it, which means he’s still chillin’ in there somewhere. Unless the hairspray we sprayed behind there did him in. We named him Boris. We're going to use the hurricane naming system to keep track of our little friends. Antwone was the first one, I found it in the bathroom was on the toilet, but he was just a lil guy and I knocked him in and flushed him. Nasty little buggers.

Anyway, things are still great. We were talking yesterday about how nice the slower pace of life is here. That will probably change some once we stop playing and start teaching, but it’s sure been enjoyable. It’s so nice to go out on the hammocks in the evening and just talk and stuff. The invitation is still open – come stay in our roach and ant infested house by the beach!

Ecuador From a Bus

2008-09-12T14:22:00.000-07:00

These are some pictures I took from the bus on our way from Guayaquil here to Salinas. Since it was from a moving bus, they’re not that great, but you can see some of the housing etc, which is what I was going for.

I took this one because I find it crazy how people will get off the buses from any lane and from anywhere – many times while the bus is moving. Obviously this is acceptable as you can see the police truck right in front of the bus. People also jet across the street in the middle of traffic and stand in the lanes between cars going by waiting to cross the rest of the way. A lady in Guayaquil told us that if someone hits a pedestrian, they automatically go to jail so there are lots of hit and runs.

I love this. You see lots of little itty bitty trucks like this. They’re not always this full of people, which is why I loved this one. You do see a lot of this though. We’ll even see official trucks with guys in dress clothes and briefcases riding in the back.

Along the way there are guys that wait by where the buses stop to pick up people and they’ll get on and sale things. This guy is waiting in the middle of the highway for a bus to sell ice cream.

Most of the guys don’t look this official – they’re just regular guys in street clothes selling fried bananas or chicken on skewers or fruit – but this was the only one I could get from my side of the bus.

Anyway, there’s a little taste of Ecuador, from a moving bus. Good stuff.

Wow, Really?!

2008-09-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

So I wrote that last post the night before last and Andy and I left the cyber and went back to our cute little house only to be told by Brett and Nikki that Jose had come by and said that we couldn't stay in that cute little house. No, not joking. Apparently the owner was not planning on including the part behind the house in the rent, and he'd already rented that part to someone else who would be arriving within a couple days. But the "good news" (!) was that the owner of the other house had agreed to let us stay there for the amount agreed upon and for as long as we wanted. So the next morning (yesterday) we once again packed all of our things and moved to the house we planned on when originally arriving in Salinas. CRAZY!

This house has hot water and air conditioning . . . although so far the air conditioning in my room doesn't work and I was the one dying for it. Supposedly someone will come to fix it. And the hot water in Nikki and I's shower doesn't work either. So there go those pros. Haha. But we do have a stereo! This house feels a lot dirtier and stuff, so we're really looking forward to washing all the sheets and cleaning it up. Last night I went to go get in my bed and I pulled down the top sheet and a spider crawled across the pillow and there was a black hair on the pillow case. So I used a t-shirt as a pillowcase and went and slept on one of the beds in Nikki's room since her AC WAS actually working.

Still no pictures. But soon. I think we're going to go on the whale tour today. During September its 100% guaranteed you'll see whales so we want to go ASAP. Yesterday Nikki and I went to the beach for an hour or so and swam and we got FRIED. Oh yeah, we're on the ecuator. Oops. Last night we made dinner and it was so fun. We had rice, grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, fried platanos and blended pineapple drink. It felt like we were a little family - we cooked it all together and then sat down and ate together. Good stuff.

Anyway, I think today we're also going to start posting flyers for English classes. Brett and Andy found a bunch of materials online yesterday so we won't have any trouble with that.

I really will start taking more pictures soon. Its so fun to live in a beach town. We walk to the beach daily and either walk along the boardwalk or go down and walk in the water. Last night the four of us walked all the way down the beach in the dark and used flashlights to check out marine life in the tide pools. Fun!

Life In a Beach Town

2008-09-08T17:52:00.000-07:00

Sooooooo, Andy got really sick on Saturday - throwing up and other fun things - so we ended up staying in Guayaquil until Sunday afternoon. We got to go to church with the Chavez family, which was fun. After church we took naps and such and around 4:30 Andy said he felt well enough to go, so go we did! Alberto (Brother Chavez) dropped us off at the bus station and we made the 2 1/2 hour trip back to Salinas. When we got here, José was waiting for us and told us he had some bad news. Even though we'd already made a deposit on our massive six bedroom 21 bed house, apparently the owner was not wanting to rent it to us for less than a year because of money. Basically what it came down to was that he found out we were gringos and thought he could get more money out of us.

José told us that he felt really bad and that he had another place for us to look at and if it didn't work, we could stay in the first house for a few nights until we found something else. Mind you, we are now house hunting with all our luggage in tow after dark in a new town. Great.

So we went to this house that is a little closer to the beach and started looking around. It only has two bedrooms and one bath and so we said it probably wouldn't work. Brett and Nikki were already rethinking the living together thing since they're dating, so we were pretty sure we wouldn't be taking that one. While Nikki went to take a look out back, I started talking to José and asking more specifics of why we couldn't have the other house. After talking for a bit he said he thought he could get the guy to let us stay there until the end of November for the price we had agreed on since the busy season starts in December. So we started to go outside to get taxis over to that house and then Nikki said there was another place behind this house that was part of it.

The guys said that it was just for storage, but Nikki said that it sure looked like more living quarters. After debating for a minute we decided we might as well check it out while we were there. So they got out all the keys again and we went back there and opened up the doors. Turns out - not storage! There are two complete bedrooms out back, one downstairs one up. Each one has 2 bunk beds (4 beds total in each room) with a bathroom attached to each one. Hi, perfect solution!!! The two cons (which are kinda significant but we couldn't pass up the perfectness of the situation) are that there is no hot water and no air conditioning. In the US this would be a huge deal, but its somewhat typical down here. Its a huge saling point when the houses do actually have these things.

Anyway, we ended up basically moving in right then. Nikki and I each have a bedroom in the house and we share the bathroom and Brett and Andy each have their own bedroom and bathrooms in the little casita out back! So we live seperately and yet together all at the same time. Its fantastic. I'll take pictures maybe tomorrow. And we're closer to the beach than we were before . . . 3 blocks I think? Sweet.

Anyway, we're getting settled and such. Today we rented a washing machine. Pretty cool system, you rent it by the hour and they bring it to your house and you use it and then they come pick it up. Hmmmm, I'll have to get pictures of that next time we get it. Its a dollar an hour. So we got all our laundry done. We also printed out a flyer for teaching English. We've already had a ton of interest, people we talk to almost always tell us they're interested. So that's exciting.

So, we live in a beach town in a very cute, clean little house with 14 beds and 3 bathrooms and life is good. I love it here! Haven't been too good at taking pictures, but the time will come. Life is great.

Iguanas

2008-09-05T17:10:00.000-07:00

So today we decided to see and do the things we wanted to in Guayaquil before moving to Salinas tomorrow. So right off the bat that meant Iguana Park. Its actually not called that, but everyone calls it that because of the, you guessed it, iguanas. Its SO COOL! When I think iguana I think of the medium sized lizards that my uncle likes to keep, but these are HUGE. The park is not that big but it is completely FULL of iguanas. Its rad. They're walking all over the sidewalk right there with you and climbing all the trees and stuff.

I'm retarded and forgot when we left for breakfast this morning that we would be leaving for the day and that I should take my big camera. Therefore I only had my point and shoot, which is ok - it takes pretty good pictures, but I was sure wishing I had it at the park! Oh well, here are some of the iguanas:

I love how this guy was just chillin on the steps of this monument like he's got not a care in the world. Awesome!

Trying to express my excitement at petting the huge iguanas

A face shot of this lil guy

Apparently the smaller one was too lazy to walk by himself. (Herself? Itself?)

Anyway, we had a great time seeing the park and then we went back to the Bahia and looked around. My only purchase was a hat - much needed since I got fried walking around Salinas yesterday. We also found a guitar for Andy. Good stuff!

Update

2008-09-05T16:29:00.001-07:00

Wow, so the last few days have been CRAZY and we haven't had a chance to stop to use the "cyber" here much. (Here they use cyber instead of locutorio) Anyway, things have been great. A ton has happened so I'm going to condense a lot. Lets see, Tuesday we looked for jobs all day. Not too encouraging folks. We met an American lady at an English Institute who is from COLUMBUS NEBRASKA of all places!! I about freaked out. Most of you know, that was the last area of my mission - my "home" in Nebraska. I LOVE Columbus. What's crazy is that after she lived in Columbus she moved to Norfolk Nebraska, which was an area that Andy served in twice on HIS mission. What are the flippin chances?! I love connections. Anyway, that was fun but she told us that with the possible changes coming to the Ecuadorian constitution, now is not the best time to be trying to get jobs as English teachers, especially when we don't have work visas. We stopped a few other places, but got mostly the same response. One thing she did suggest was to try some other cities and towns, and she mentioned Salinas specifically.

That night we went over to Juan Carlos' brother's house (Juan Carlos is a member here who teaches English, he's about 30 and we met him the other night) because his brother-in-law has a condo close to Salinas. Without all the details, he gave us the key to the condo so that we could go check it out and decide if we wanted to rent it for the months we're here. Jamie (the brother-in-law) and Silvia (his wife) are pretty well off and this condo was pretty much amazing. Wednesday we headed that way to check it out. It was a couple hour bus trip to Libertad, then a taxi ride from there to Punta Barandua which is where the condo is. I never did take pictures of the inside, but here's one of the pool in our little group of condos. The ones you can see in the background are exactly the same as ours was. 4 bedroom, 3 bath fully furnished. There's a pool like this one in every little group of condos, and when you go over to the ocean, its a private beach. Yeah, uh huh. A private beach. After dinner etc that night, we went out to the private beach (which was indeed very private, we never saw another soul out there!) and played in the ocean for well over an hour. It was so fun because it was after 10 pm so it was dark. Nothing like jumping huge waves in the middle of the night. And the waver were huge. We couldn't believe it! At one point we were out there and I saw something glowing blue in the water. It kinda scared me at first, I'm not going to lie. I asked what glows blue in the ocean and no one else could see them at first, but when we started watching we'd see the little blue glowing things. Turns out it was phosphorescent plankton! Soon it was everywhere! We were scooping them in our hands and stuff, it was so cool.

Anyway, the next day we went into Salinas to see what we could find. We decided that we didn't want to live in the condo . . . actually let me rephrase that . . . that while we would LOVE to live in a condo with a private beach and all the amenities that it had, we'd better not cause its a 20 - 30 minute bus ride into Salinas and there is NOTHING out there by Punta Barandua. No markets, nowhere to eat etc. To buy anything you have to go to Santa Elena by either bus or taxi. So we decided to check out Salinas. We divided into two teams and Brett and Nikki went to look into jobs while Andy and I started looking for places to live.

We started on the beach front property just for fun. It was amazing how cheap things were even though they weren't in our price range. For example, we looked at this fully furnished (sheets, dishes, decorations, everything) apartment that had 4 bedrooms, 3 bath and the entire wall that faced the ocean was made of glass and it was $800 a month. And this was right along the boardwalk. Crazy! After we decided to get realistic instead of dreaming, we met this guy named José who started showing us some places. We found the cutest little house that was really secure with a big block wall and a big wood gate, a nice tile courtyard, 4 hammocks hanging on the porch/patio, 3 bedrooms 2 bath, fully furnished (aka PERFECT for us) and we were so excited about it. Its 4 blocks from the beach and its $200 a month!!!! And that's INCLUDING electricity and water. That means $50 per person for the 4 of us. We told the guy we wanted it but that we needed to talk to Brett and Nikki first, so we met up with them and decided to grab lunch before going back to show it to them. While we were eating, José came and told us that he had called the owner and that the owner had just rented it to someone yesterday - for 3 months! Noooooo!! We were so bummed. We asked if we offered more if the guy would give it to us instead and he called and the guy said he would love to but that the people had already paid.

José told us about another house he had that was for $350 a month and we said we might as well take a look. It is big - six bedrooms and among those rooms 21 beds. Yes, 21. Each room has a tv in it (albeit small) and it too is fully furnished. Its also very secure and also has 4 hammocks hanging out in the courtyard. We talked about it and then talked to the owner on the phone and got him down to $300 a month, but he said we were going to have to pay electricity. We turned it down and were about to go keep looking and then José talked to him again and got him to make it $300 including electricity and water, so we took it! So we now have way more house than we need and even with each of us having our own rooms we still have two more FULL of beds. And for $75 a month each. Holy crazy cool. So if anyone is interested in an Ecuadorian vacation by the beach (this one's more like 5 blocks from the beach, but still less than a 10 minute walk) now's the time! Consider this an invite. Come and bring 16 of your friends. We figure its a great party house!

Anyway, so as of tomorrow we will be officially moving to the little beach town of Salinas. We've pretty much given up on working at a school, but lots of people we talked to in Salinas expressed interest in learning English, they said they just couldn't afford it. Salinas is a tourist town and so they need English for the tourist season. Since now is not the tourist season, it would be a great time for them to learn, so its looking like we're going to our own classes!

Another really cool thing is that September is whale season and during September when you go out on a whale excursion, they 100% guarantee that you WILL see whales!! So we'll be doing that for sure. José also told us that a lot of times places that do excursions need people to translate so we'll be leaving our phone numbers at some of those too so that we can do that as well. But lets get honest, we don't have to make much to pay $75 a month rent!

Anyway, this post is incredibly long already and with only one picture, not too exciting. But there's the update anyhow. Another reminder that my blog is my journal (I'm excited to do another blog book - the one from Spain turned out so well) so I put a lot of details in cause its for me!

I´m Here!

2008-09-01T11:06:00.000-07:00

Ecuador rocks and I'm LOVING it already. I love walking around (in the middle of the street I might add) and seeing all the houses and cars and boys playing soccer and people on bikes and flowers and trees and plants that I´ve never seen. I've got a lot of pictures to take!

The trip was long and eventful but good. Vin Scully was on my flight from Phoenix to LA. Vin has been the commentator for the Dodgers for 59 years!!! He's in the baseball hall of fame and stuff. Lest anyone be too impressed with my vast knowledge of baseball, I had to ask one of the guys trying to sneak a picture of him who he was. I saw numerous guys go over to him at the gate in the airport but couldn't figure out who he was.

Anyway, I wrote a lot of this yesterday but then the computer freaked out and I couldn't finish and post it. We're out looking for jobs right now and stopped here quickly to print resumes and such. Wouldn't you know, my computer is not recognizing my jump drive so I have to wait for one of my friends to finish so I can pull it off.

No pictures for now, there's not enough time. Ecuador is amazing and I love it. The weather is great, similar to San Diego, although more humid. There's an almost constant cloud cover and that helps keep it pretty cool except in the middle of the day.

We've tried encebollado which is amazing, I took a picture (slyly I might add) but I'll have to post it later. Right now we're somewhere in the middle of Guayaquil walking around. The Chavez family has been absolutely INCREDIBLE, I don't know what we would have done without them! Nena, who is 20, ran us all over town yesterday and this morning Consuela (la madre) brought us here and dropped us off to start looking around at English schools. They've been more than gracious! I met Andres Chavez in Provo and we became friends and he called a few days before we came down here and told me that his family would pick us up from the airport and that we could stay there until we found somewhere to live, and they did! So we've been at their house and they've treated us like family.

Anyway, this is not much for now but once we get settled I think we'll get internet where we live and it will be a lot easier to post etc. In the meantime, I LOVE Ecuador and I'm so dang happy to be here.

Believe It!

2008-08-28T09:43:00.000-07:00

Yeah, that's right. I am actually going to update this poor neglected blog. I leave for Ecuador on Saturday. Day after tomorrow. Awesome! Pretty much every single detail has almost magically fallen into place. Its been incredible!

Lets see, to recap the summer . . . Les and I drove down to AZ in July for the 4th in Round Valley. That was incredible of course - it always is! This year my grandparents on my mom's side as well as my Aunt Toni and my Aunt Sue's family all came up as well. We took the kids crawdad fishing - a must! After a few days in RV and all that entails we headed up to camp in the mountains. It was BEAUTIFUL! Sure we got rained on, but it was so so nice. Camping is something that never ceases to make me happy. There's just nothing like it, especially in the White Mountains. It just doesn't get any better.

About the middle of August I rented a car and moved back down to AZ. I am officially done with Provo! Since then I've been organizing everything I own. After coming home from a mission, Spain and Provo I had quite a collection of things tucked in here and there. So with time before taking off I devoted about the first week I was home to pulling EVERYTHING out and throwing tons away. I think I've filled our recycle bin twice, I took about 5 garbage bags to Goodwill and I've filled up a couple of trash bags on top of that. Feels so good. I've also gotten to see friends here in AZ. Lots of lunches and dinners etc. Its been so good. I love friends!

Anyway, I thought I'd throw up some pictures from the trip to RV in July and camping. Yes I did take pictures of people. Plenty of them. I just love to take pictures of scenery etc.

One of the mornings in RV dad and I got up early and drove around outside of town just enjoying the morning. We saw some deer and such and I got to snap away. The sky was awesome!

The rest of these are during the camping trip - we were up near the Black River. So pretty!

One morning my mom and dad and I got up early and took a drive and we ended up seeing a huge herd of elk. It was so cool! The lighting for this pictures isn't great but I was trying to get the entire herd in one picture. I didn't though, this isn't even all of them!

When we left we went out by Big Lake. The sky was absolutely incredible. Big thick fluffy clouds all over. I was dying. I think I took a few hundred pictures. No, that's not an exaggeration. I'm a tad obsessed with the sky.

We stopped at the lookout point on our way down. I LOVE this tree. The view from the spot is amazing. I love Arizona!!!

Anyway there it is. I still have yet to start packing and I still have an uncompleted list of things to do before I go. But doing this post allows me to check one thing off! And once I get to Ecuador the blog will once again become my photo journal since I plan to do another book when I get back. That means the posts will be way more frequent. Have to assure the mom that I'm alive!

Arizona!

2008-06-13T16:22:00.000-07:00

As Rylee has accused me of, I'm a slow blogger nowadays. Sometimes when I have a lot to say or a lot of pictures, it just seems a bit overwhelming to find a chunk of time big enough to do it. But enough of my whining.

So this last weekend, I took a random and unexpected spontaneous trip to AZ. That will make any weekend better! But before I get into that . . . Thursday night last week was awesome - I went over to the Laraways for dinner. I LOVE their family and I LOVE being around them! Before dinner I went with Michelle to take some bridal shots of a girl in her friend's ward. The same type of thing I used to do with my Aunt Sue, and I LOVE it! The pictures were in a beautiful backyard and the lighting was awesome. Michelle had me bring my camera too and so we were able to take shots from different angles. It was way fun. This is one of the pictures that I took that is just random but I like it for some reason.

Anyway, after taking pictures we went back to their house and made INDIAN FOOD! It was so incredibly delicious. And fun to make. When I'm eating Indian food I always wonder how they get the incredible blend of spices, and after making it with Michelle I could recognize the different things we had put in and how that added to that blend. It was so good. So fun to see the kids and so fun to spend time with their family. I absolutely adore them. When we got back from taking pictures, the boys had found a little baby bird out on the road that was precious. No one knew what to do with it, so Professor Laraway googled it and learned that you should leave it as close to where you found it as possible so the mom will come back for it. Obviously they weren't going to leave it in the middle of the road, but they put it in a bush close to there. And had fun holding it until then.

That night when I got home, Maren asked if I wanted to go to AZ with her. We had semi discussed it before, but almost jokingly. Well I told her yes, I'd come with her and she told me she was wanting to get started that night. So after Michelle came to get copies of the pictures on my camera, I threw my stuff in a suitcase and Maren and I left town at about 11pm! We had no intentions of driving all night, we even brought sleeping bags so that we could pull over and sleep along the way, but it didn't exactly happen. I fell asleep during the first leg while Maren was driving and by the time she was ready to sleep, I was feeling wide awake. She was going to sleep while I drove, but we got to talking and she never did! Right around Sanders we switched back and she drove again.

Oh! While I was driving, we had a run in with some suicidal dogs on the reservation. It was CRAZY! Rather than getting out of the way when they saw us coming (as I slammed on the breaks, swerved and MAYBE said a bad word) they ran toward us! They never stopped. I swear the one in the lead was looking me right in the eyes and trying to get into our path. When we kept going, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw a cloud from our tires. Dang dogs anyway.

Anyway, the funniest part is that Maren got tired 10 miles out of St. Johns, and I was beat as well so we pulled off and took a half our nap . . . 10 minutes from our destination! Silly and yet so smart. Anyway, we got into town and Maren's sister made us some breakfast and we chatted with her and played with her boys a bit. Then we headed to Maren's parents and her mom made us breakfast. Yes, we had two breakfasts - they were both delicious! After that we took a nap and then I headed over to RV.

The weekend in Round Valley was just what I needed! We just kicked back a lot of the time and I was lovin every minute. I think I took about a million pictures of Ryder - he's just too cute! Here are a couple of my favorites:

I LOVE spending time at the Davis'. I love all of them so much. Race recently got a nice camera and Reece knows all kinds of stuff so it was fun talking about it all and learning new little things. Thanks to Reece I'm now obsessed with my polarizing filter. And Race is so fun to talk about literature and stuff with! He is one of the most creative people I know.

Saturday morning, Rylee, Kathleen, Aunt Tonna, Brian's wife Karen and I went yard saling - another favorite of mine. I picked up a few cool things. Some little speakers, a book about places in Arizona (its really cool - it gives the names and histories of all the rivers, valleys, canyons, towns etc in Arizona. It only cost me 25 cents!) and a sweet pocket knife. I planned to give the knife to my brother but then I decided I really like it and decided to keep it for me. Yep, I'm a selfish giraffe.

Here's a picture of John Wayne's Ranch in Eagar - 26 Bar Ranch. As we were driving by it on Saturday morning, Rylee's mom said "If you look close you can see the Duke on his horse." I love it! Picture him up there riding on his property. Good stuff.

Saturday afternoon I went and took some pictures around town. How I love being there. I love Arizona! I swear as soon as we were across the AZ border I felt happier. Yes, I've got some serious Arizona pride issues. Anyway, here are a couple:

A view of Flat Top and the Dome

The beautiful land in between Springerville and Eagar

A horse and its foal. There were so many foals around town, so fun!

When I got back, the sun was about to set and the Davis' house looked AWESOME! They have the greatest porch ever, as you can see. Rocking chairs all along it so you can sit out and enjoy life. I love the shadows of the rocking chairs on the house.

That night we were supposed to watch a scary movie (can't remember which one) and thank goodness Redbox was out of it! I don't do well with scary movies. The Ring ruined me when I was in Nauvoo. I used to love them and I just can't handle them anymore! Sad I know. I'm a wuss. Anyway, we watched Mad Money and then went to bed. While I was there I slept in the same room where Ryder's crib is and it was SO FUN cause in the mornings when he'd wake up, I'd get him out and we'd play for a little while until he realized he hadn't seen his parents yet. Gosh I love that kid.

Anyway, Sunday was good. Rylee remembered we hadn't taken any pictures together, so we were able to get one. (Way to go Ryles!) After taking the picture, Reece goes, "Linds you're short!" Seriously. This is how every picture is - me a head shorter than everyone else.

After church we had tacos - does life get any better?! Everytime I have tacos at the Davis' I'm reminded of the time that Chelsee (Davis) and I left church early to go home and start the tacos and everyone was giving us a hard time for it. I can't remember who said the blessing, but whomever it was started to say "Please bless Chelsee and Lindsey for making the tacos . . ." and that was as far as they got before everyone cracked up. The argument was, of course, "You can't ask for blessings for them - they ditched church to make them!" Good stuff.

Anyway, after lunch I headed back to St. Johns and Maren and I headed back for Utah. We did the all night thing again, but it wasn't nearly as bad this time. We got home at like 2am - not bad at all! We stopped on the way out of town to take pictures of this windmill and stuff, I have a current fascination with windmills. I love pictures of windmills.

About the time we were driving across the reservation, the sun was getting close to setting and lighting was awesome! I took this one from the car so its not totally sharp and you can see that we were in motion, but some very pretty scenery for sure. Maren and I decided one time we're going to take a couple days to get to AZ and stop at Canyon de Chelly and all the other pretty things along the way.

Anyway, it was a very quick trip but well worth it. Maren and I had a ball, we talked almost non-stop. And being in RV was rejuvinating. In another 3 weeks or so I'll be headed back down - hooray! Les and I will get to Mesa the day before we all head up to RV for the 4th. My favorite holiday. Anyway. That's the latest and greatest.

The Latest

2008-05-24T09:05:00.000-07:00

So I actually have some things to blog about today. I'm surprised I haven't gotten to this before now, but sometimes, I'm just not in the mood!

Anyway, I'll start with last Saturday. Amber Whiting (after today, Amber Meek - congrats to Amber and John!!) had a bridal shower up here in Utah, for which I was SO glad since I adore her and her wedding and reception etc will be in Arizona. It was so great to see her, its been quite awhile. Her friend Julie was there as well, and I hadn't seen her for probably 5 years. We had a good time remembering different things from that time period.

The shower was great and I got to know Amber's sister-in-law's sister, Jessica, who is awesome. We had a great time talking and laughing. I also learned that Jessica's sister is Shannon Hale, a New York Times Best-Selling author. Shannon was there as well and it was fun talking to her as well. She was telling us how much she loves to drop Stephenie Meyer's name (they've become really good friends, in fact she had to leave the shower early to go have lunch with her) and she had some funny stories about it. I just finished reading her latest book, Austenland and it is great!

I highly recommend it to anyone who loves Jane Austen, Colin Firth and/or the BBC five hour version of Pride and Prejudice. (Katie Hogle Miller, I'm thinking specifically of you!!)

Anyway, I was so so glad that Amber had a shower in Utah and that I was able to see her and such before her wedding (today). She is pretty much the coolest girl ever and I love her so much!

After the shower, which was in Salt Lake, I decided to drive by East High School. Why would I drive by a high school in Salt Lake? Well, someone had told me that they were filming High School Musical 3 there. Yes, I admit it, I love High School Musical. I laugh at its corniness but I still think its great. But besides that, I LOVE movies, and as anyone who knows me can attest to, I love to see and learn how things work. When I watch movies, I try to picture how they've got the camera set up and how they're getting the shot etc. I realized too late that I would love to be a part of the movie industry. Maybe film editing or something. I would LOVE to do that! ANYWAY, a combination of these factors led me to drive by a random high school in Salt Lake just to see what I could see. I didn't even know if it was true that they were filming there or not.

When I got there, sure enough, there were big semis with tons of cables going over the roof and into the high school. As well as signs pointing people in different directions. That was about all I could see though, so being the curious George that I am, I parked the car and walked into the high school. There was a girl in there close to the entrance and she asked what she could do for me. I asked if I could watch or something, if I was quiet and stuff. She said sure and told me to come with her. She said, "We're already full for paid extras today, but you can work and have the money donated to charity if you want." Uh, ok. So she took me to a guy who gave me some form to fill out and when I was done I asked him what I should do next. He said, "Go get your outfit checked with wardrobe". Luckily I was wearing red. The girl had told me earlier that I picked a good day to come because they were filming the big basketball game. So I went over to the wardrobe lady and she said I was ok and sent me to the gym.

I got in there and went up into the bleachers and a few minutest later this guy came and said "I need you, you, you and you to come down here", and yes I was one of those four "yous". He moved us right down to the front! So the long and short of it is I spent over 10 hours in the East High gym watching Zac Efron, Corbin Bleu and a bunch of others play basketball. I'm in the second row right behind the basket, right behind the cheerleaders. I'm right next to the kitty cat girls and the band. What a day it was! We did take after take after take, which meant over and over I screamed at the top of my lungs for those Wildcats. I even had a red foam finger on. It was interesting to see how small all the actors are! I also learned that I really don't get very star-struck. It was cool to see them all but I didn't find myself getting overly excited or anything. I was so surprised to see how short Vanessa Hudgens is though.

Anyway, the director, Kenny Ortega (who, Wikipedia told me, also choreographed Dirty Dancing and a couple of Superbowls and did something with a couple of Michael Jackson's tours) told us that he wanted us to use our bodies to express the jubilation and the devestation when the Wildcats did well or not. So, trying to do as he asked, I'm getting SO into this "game". I'm throwing my hands on my head and throwing my shoulders backwards when they miss and jumping up and down and screaming when they make it. After awhile, I started realizing some things. First of all, with where I'm seated, its a pretty darn good chance that I'm going to be seen in this movie. Cool. Then, as I think about what I must look like making these expressions and such it starts to seem not so cool. I'm going to be mortified! I'm going to look like a complete FOOL! Not to mention the fact that if I was shocked at how small the actors were, how am I going to look?! Oh well I suppose. It was fun. And yet really boring (having to sit and wait while they ran the playback to see if the take was a keeper or not). I loved seeing where they put the cameras and all the different cameras etc. And it was interesting because we'd do a bunch of takes of one scene, and then they'd move the camera to a different place and we'd do a bunch of takes of that same scene so they'd have footage from different perspectives. All in all it was a very interesting day.

Anyway, so that was the grand hoopla of Saturday. The rest of this week wasn't overly exciting . . . until Thursday night. Thursday night I went out with one of the guys I'm going to Ecuador with and it was SO fun! We went out to Ogden (where the other guy that's going to Ecuador with me lives) and rode horses for a little while and then had a barbecue.

We were at a "ranch" that one of the guys parents had just bought. (There were 3 couples) The house was sitting there empty because his family was going to be moving in there the next week or something. Although we had all the fixings for hamburgers, we had no utensils so we had to get creative. J.D. (the guy whose parents own the property) is a dry waller (I believe) so we used his tools. The spackling tool became the hamburger flipper and the new pack of razor blades the knives for the tomatoes and onions. Ingenious! We used Brett and Janet's beanies as oven mitts to take the frozen fries out of the oven. We're survivors. Ha.

Anyway, after dinner, we went out into the barn and projected Silverado onto the wall while we all layed in the back of J.D.'s truck to watch it. It was so dang fun! That is one of my favorite movies. Anyway, by the time we drove back to Provo, it was 2:30 AM by the time I got home, but it was great fun. Every time I'm with Andy and Brett (the two guys going to Ecuador) I get so excited to go down there. We laugh like crazy and they're both just fun guys.

Anyway, re: Ecuador - the details are we all bought one way tickets down there (Brett, Andy, Nikki and I . . . Nikki is in Jordan studying Arabic right now but will be back about a week before we leave) and we plan on being down there for probably 3 or 4 months. We want to teach English and travel. We signed up for an online teaching English course, but beyond that we don't really have concrete plans for once we get there. We'll look for jobs once we get down there and stay in either a hostel, or at my friend Andres' house until we find somewhere to live. I LOVE this kind of stuff! I LOVE that we don't have jobs, don't have housing and that we're just going to show up and figure it out. Great stuff.

Anyway, once again, a massive blog post from Linds. I'm also excited that my blog might get somewhat intersting again. Hooray for South America! Hooray for High School Musical 3! Hooray for riding horses and movies in barns!

SWEET!

2008-05-13T22:01:00.000-07:00

I just bought a one-way plane ticket to Ecuador, leaving August 30th 2008. So exciting! When will I come back? I don't know. Whenever I feel like it. I have a layover in Costa Rica. Also very cool. I love traveling and I'm SO excited to go at it again. Macchu Picchu, the Amazon, Galapagos Islands, I want to do it all. My level of happiness right now is so high. Life is great.

Graduation!

2008-04-26T06:43:00.000-07:00

Well, graduation activities are over! What a weekend it was. So my parents flew in on Thrusday, which was the day of commencement. Murphy's Law has been a big thorn this weekend, and their plane was quite delayed, which meant that it was right around 3:00 when we got back into Provo - the exact time I was supposed to be in the parking lot of the admin building to line up for commencement. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt (silly me, I thought it was Spring - it SNOWED on Thursday) and since I was already late, I just ran into my apartment and grabbed my cap and gown and then my parents dropped me off at BYU. So yes, I wore shorts and a t-shirt to commencement. You couldn't tell though.

Anyway, commencement was good. Elder Bednar was the speaker and being the wise man he is, he started out by saying how many commencements he'd been to and how he knew that no one really remembers what the speaker says, so his gift was going to be a shorter than expected commencement speech. Love him! There were over 6200 graduates this year. Wow. What was fun was that Mason (Bradshaw) and I ran into each other on campus last week and decided that we should sit by each other at commencement since we didn't have plans to sit by anyone else yet. I realized after running into him that we'd been friends for well over 10 years. It was fun to be sitting there with him thinking about how we'd become friends in Mr. Thomas' 8th grade math class and then spent so much time in our group of friends freshman year and now here we were over 10 years later sitting together graduating from college - he with a wife and new baby. Crazy passage of time. Anyway.

After commencement I introduced my parents to the wonderfulness of Indian food. They loved it! I knew they would, how could you not? It's always great to have someone else appreciate what you rant and rave about. That was about it for Thursday. Friday, my convocation wasn't until 5:00, so that morning my parents and I went to the Krishna temple for a tour. It was very interesting, and I hadn't been inside either of the times I've been to the Festival of Colors, so it was neat to see. We played with the llamas for awhile after, which was my favorite. I want a llama! They're so funny, I just love them.

After doing that we had lunch and then came back to get ready for convocation. We got dressed up and headed to the Mariott Center to take some pictures. Convocation was great! I can't believe I'm done!

But still there is that "kind of" clause at the end. I'm done with 21 credits. Done with graduation stuff. I just have this last spring class to take and then I'm DONE done. Sweet!

Saturday morning, my parents and I went to Thanksgiving Point to see the Tulip Festival. The gardens there are just beautiful and it was really enjoyable. It was one of those perfect days as far as weather goes, and I was telling my parents that normally on those days, I wish I was doing something outside and enjoying it, but what I was normally doing was homework or something. It was so nice to actually be taking advantage of such a beautiful day.

We had Thai food for lunch, another new experience for my parents. That one went over well too. After that, we went and picked up Leslie (she had had to work both Friday and Saturday) and headed up to Heber to ride the old train they have up there. At first we were kind of disappointed cause it didn't go very fast and it wasn't too exciting, but then we discovered the open air car. It made it a completely different experience and it suddenly became so worth it! It felt so nice to have the breeze blowing and be outside watching everything. Again, very enjoyable.

That evening we went over and helped Leslie's friend, Jenae, work on a house that she's fixing up to sell. We did some painting and caulking and cleaning and such. That was pretty much the end of Saturday.

Sunday we took a drive up Provo Canyon and walked up to Bridal Veil Falls and enjoyed another beautiful day. We tried to drive around Timpanogas on the Alpine Loop, but it was still closed with too much snow. We drove by the house we lived in in Riverton and headed into downtown Salt Lake.

After dropping my parents off at the airport, Les and I stopped at Temple Square for a bit to take pictures with the beautiful flowers that are there in the spring. Man they do a fantastic job! I think there were more flowers there than at the Tulip Festival. Beautiful beautiful colors.

That concludes the weekend. It was a great one. Great to spend time with my parents and great to GRADUATE!! Good stuff.

I Should Have Been a Spy

2008-04-17T18:12:00.000-07:00

So my sister's friend is getting married and they're taking their pictures today. He forgot his boutineer (no idea how to spell that) and they asked my sister to stop by and get it from his place before meeting them where they were taking the pictures. I was dropping her off so we went by his apartment and she came back a minute later and said that no one was home and the door was locked.

It just so happens that I carry a lock picking set with me (long story, but not the story for right now). I reached for my purse to get it and my sister jokingly said, "What do you have a lock picking set or something?" Turns out I do.

I hadn't done it in awhile (I haven't done it much at all, actually) so it took me a minute as well as a call to my brother (who also picks locks - he's much better than I am) to get it done, but I successfully "broke" into this kid's house. I pretty much felt like the coolest person ever. Its the first time I've done it for real, not practicing on our garage door or something. I definitely felt like Sydney Bristow or something.

I had put the kit in my purse months ago thinking it might come in handy someday, and there it's sat at the very bottom of my purse, not being used at all. After today I feel completely and utterly justified in carrying a lock picking set around with me in my purse at all times. Great day!

Done! . . . Kind Of

2008-04-16T09:50:00.000-07:00

Well, yesterday was the last day of classes for the semester. I'm DONE with my 21 credits! Unless you count finals. Which I should count. Still a lot to do to prepare for those, but wow, so close. Today and tomorrow are reading days and finals start on Friday.

This morning I did a pretty accurate estimate (if anything its too low), and I have read well over 3000 pages of required reading this semester. A lot (most?) of that in Spanish.

In other good news, after at least 50 hours of work, my final project for my design class is DONE! I sure wish I had logged the hours I've spent on it. Now that I think about it, I'm sure it was well over 50. Anyway, at 1:30 this morning, I uploaded it to the printer's website to get it bound into book form and have it mailed to me. I'm actually quite worried that it won't get here in time . . . I have to have it by Wednesday for my "final" for that class - basically a defense of my portfolio. Hmmmm, I don't know what I'm going to do if its NOT here. You know, I'm not going to think about that.

So at this point, I need to do my final for my Text Processing and Analyzing class (another of the project sort), design and get printed/made a portfolio for my design class, do my portion of the study guide for my Spanish 451 study group, go over the study guide for Spanish 444 before our study group tonight and study up on stuff for the rest of my classes before finals. I'm so getting there!

Also in the next couple of days I'm hoping to be able to get some pics up here I've taken recently of different people/events. I'm sure excited to have more time to take pictures. I love doing it!

Reunions, Obsessions and Confessions

2008-04-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

Its obviously been awhile since I've done any sort of update. Things have been a little crazy. In fact I am currently putting off writing my term paper for my Quijote class in order to write this post. But I needed a break and decided I'd play a bit of catch up with what I've been doing and thinking.

Reunions: I've had a couple. Two weeks ago we had a Spain reunion at the Laraway's house, it was great to see everyone again and catch up - most especially the Laraways. I've seen them numerous times since being back, but I'll take any opportunity I can! Michelle made croquetas that I think were even better than some of the ones I had in Spain! They were delicious! Before going to the reunion, Jasmine and I went to the Festival of Colors at the Krishna temple in Spanish Fork. Its a celebration of Holi Krishna that has become the most popular thing for BYU students to do. Its so fun and yet somewhat sad to me that this holiday that is important to them is turned into a novelty type activity for a slew of people that don't even believe in Holi Krisha. Not that they're complaining, they make a ton of money and advertise all over Provo for it - they want us all there. Still makes me a little sad somehow though. Which in and of itself is a paradox because I'm right there participating! Huh. Anyway, here is a before and after of Jas and I:

Simon and Alex were outside playing football when we got to the Laraways (we didn't go home in between, we showed up covered in chalk. Not enough time!) and they were so confused. And Eva wouldn't come near me for a little while. I feel bad showing up like that, but if we had gone home to shower and stuff and then come back I think we would have missed the whole thing!

Anyway, it was great to talk to and see people from Spain. It felt so normal having that group all together. Like we had never left Spain at all. Even though I probably won't keep in close contact with most of the group, there will always be a bond there from having been together over there.

So the next weekend (General Conference weekend) was our mission reunion. I didn't go for long this time, I had Mike and Natalie with me, but it was great to see some of the people I love dearly that I don't get to see often. Primarily Amy Edwards Coffield. Pretty sure it was the first time I've seen her since the mission and it was so great! I love that girl more than life and it was fantastic to see her and finally meet her husband, Burgess.

Conference was great, as usual. It was interesting to participate in the solemn assembly. I remember the day that President Hunter died, I remember it was on the news and I was watching it in my mom's room. But I don't remember the solemn assembly when President Hinckley was sustained. Anyway, on to obsessions.

Obsessions: My current obsessions are work and transportation. I'm still pretty gung ho on the "work for an airline as the means to the end of traveling for cheap" plan and thats been a pretty dominant thought as of late. Dreaming of the places I'll go and such. Funny how I only think of the benefits of a job like that. I'm know it won't be all glorious. I've emailed some airlines with questions and hope to hear back, but I haven't had a lot of time to look into completely. Another week or two.

My other obsession right now is transportation. I've all but given up on the Vespa idea. What after having friend after friend call with news reports of rising death tolls of motorcycle riders, fatal accidents witnessed, and crazy statistics on chances of DEATH - I decided to do the responsible thing. SIGH. Still hard for me though. I still look at them with longing every time I see one.

That obsession has turned into a new one: Smart Cars. They started selling them this year in the US and I WANT ONE! I don't know when this happened to me - this obsession with tiny cars instead of huge trucks. Oh wait, yes I do. Europe. Before going to Europe all I wanted was a big ol truck, nothing but trucks would do. Somehow that changed while I was over there, and now all I want is the tiniest most gas efficient car possible. I do realize that the Smart Car doesn't necessarily fit both of these criteria, but it wins the tiniest category. Here's a pic:

That's right, a two-seater car. And one more, just to give a bit more perspective of how tiny this thing really is:

And no, I don't know who that girl is, google images helped me out with both of these pics.

The only hard part is that with them being brand new over here, you can't get a used one. Ok, that's a lie, they do have some 2-3 year old used ones that you can buy but because they're a novelty, people are selling them for like 28k. That's right. 28k for a two person car. Ridiculous. Anyway, even the new ones are pricey at about 11k. So I keep talking myself out of this obsession as I don't have 11k or a desire to get into more debt.

My plan, therefore, is this: use public transportation for awhile to get out of debt and save up some money and by then there will be a new model of Smart Cars out and I can buy a used one. OR, the Fiat 500 is supposedly coming to the US in 2009 or 2010 and if I can hold off until then (or even buy a junker to get me to then) then I could go for that. I would do that over a Smart Car for sure. I LOVE them!

So cute. Anyway. That's the plan. The public transportation option, if I'm in AZ, means bus. I've used the bus a tad bit, but not enough to know how efficient it is. Only time will tell if I can last with that as my only mode of transportation.

Confessions: Man this post is getting long! Ok, that is not a confession. Just an observation. No obligations to read the entire thing.

So I find myself starting to feel these little seeds of panic as graduation gets closer and closer. (Less than two weeks now). I love to learn. Love it. I have learned SO MUCH this semester and when I think about no more daily learning, I get scared! Obviously, I still plan to learn on my own, but its not the same as school. I would have no idea where to find some of the fascinating articles I've been given to read and such. I'll be honest, I won't miss all the paper writing and cramming and such, but I'm really going to miss the resources and the classroom instruction. Yeah, I'm definitely qualifying myself as a nerd here. I like going to class. I really do. Not always, I have my days just like anyone else, but I really do enjoy my time in my classes.

Also, I'm a little weirded out by the thought of life with no school. Its all I know. My current plan is wait 2 years or so before applying to grad school (still not entirely sure in what) but we'll see how it goes. I may miss school sooner than that. Then again, its time to get more experience in the working world. I've had quite a bit - almost 5 years at Bank of America as well as numerous other jobs, but those are a few years behind me now and I need to get back out there. As an airline employee with free flying benefits. Oh yeah.

Anyway this is a very long and probably kind of pointless post. And I've spent entirely too much time doing it instead of my paper. Time to get back. Oh! Yesterday I checked off one more pre-graduation thing: my Oral Proficiency Exam and the Writing Exam. Basically I spoke in Spanish on the phone for half an hour (from the Foreign Language Office at BYU) with some evaluator in some city in the US. Then I spent an hour and a half writing things like fake emails, newspaper stories, and argumentative paragraphs in Spanish for the writing exam portion. I wonder how I did. Hmmm.

Anyway, I'm really done now. For anyone that has endured until now - way to go.

I Really Have

2008-03-25T19:11:00.000-07:00

nothing new or interesting to say other than as of today, there is officially LESS than a month until graduation. Oh wow. That is so crazy to me, yet so wonderfully exciting. Life without school seems so very foreign at this point, but I'm pretty ready to know what its like. Oh, a new debate going on in my head: scooter or car? I am vehicle-less, although I share a car with my sister up here, and I'm going to need a mode of transportation when I leave here. With gas prices like they are, and with that debt I've accumulated while going to school, I don't want to spend a ton of money on either a car or the gas to fill it. Both of these make me lean toward a Vespa. A temporary type thing. Plus they're so fun! I know it'd be a little dangerous out on the streets but I don't worry too much about that, as anyone who knows me can attest to. Anyway. Sadly, that's all that's new in my life at this point.

Fascinating

2008-03-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

So I have a Latin American Civilization class this semester that I LOVE. It is absolutely fascinating and I learn a ton. Anyway, I've been thinking about Chile and the things we talked about in class this week.

In Chile in 1970, the people elected Salvador Allende, who was a Marxist. This was the first time in history that a Marxist gained control through elections instead of force. That in and of itself is fascinating. The other ironic yet fascinating part is that a coup WAS staged three years later by a group of military generals headed by Augusto Pinochet - a man who had liberal economic ideas and used force to try to undo everything Allende had done and have more of a capitalistic system. Incredible! Also of note is that the US was involved, of course. With this being the Cold War time, we were terrified of communism in any way shape or form and therefore funded and gave arms to Pinochet and his group. When they took over, they offered Allende a plane and safe passage out of Chile, but he refused and died that day in the coup.

I'll be honest, it has been really hard for me to learn about our involvement, as a country, in some of these things. We've supported and helped and funded some pretty corrupt governments. At first I felt so betrayed. Now I feel I have more of an objective outlook on it all. Any person, family, group, or nation is going to defend themselves and do what's best for their own. While I don't think its right and certainly not justified to go into other countries and help overthrow and kill their leaders, I can understand what would make them think they needed to. Still hard for me though.

I'm also watching this documentary of Fidel Castro that I borrowed from Skinner. He is a fascinating man. Again, I always like to hear/see both sides of a story. So often its not a question of one thing being absolutely right and another being absolutely wrong, its just a difference of opinion of what the right or wrong is. I feel like this lesson keeps being repeated for me. In politics especially, people get so uptight and ready to fight with each other over what they think is the best answer, when is there really a best answer? One that everyone would agree is the BEST answer? No! Never! There will always be a difference of opinion about what is the best way to run a country, each side has pros and cons, each side has things that are more important to them. Anyway, Castro is beloved by many people. We've grown up hearing about him as the enemy, so its been so interesting to watch this documentary about how he came to power and the different things he's done.

Skinner and I talked about this for awhile last night. Again, with our biggest fear during the Cold War being communism, he DID become the enemy to the US when he overthrew Batista's government and began to nationalize many things. He made a land reform and redistributed land to lots of peasants who hadn't had it. What's interesting is that his father's sugar plantation was one of the first parcels he redistributed. He nationalized oil refineries, including some owned by US owners. When the US owners refused to refine oil purchased from the USSR, it started this retaliation battle where he would do one thing, so the US would retaliate by doing another. He'd retaliate by nationalizing something else, and the US would retaliate again. Hence the sugar embargo that's still in effect today. Anyway, all of this led to the Bay of Pigs invasion and later the Cuban Missile Crisis. Basically he would not stand down to the US, he wanted to continue doing things his own way.

Again, always two sides to a story. I know that there has been a lot of controversy surrounding Castro. I know on the other side of the coin, he restricts a lot of things in Cuba. The media, the internet, the ability to travel, to form political organizations, to contruct churches etc. Obviously there are plenty of people who DON'T agree with Castro and his way of doing things.

Anyway, its just so interesting because I've always thought that Fidel Castro was this evil horrible person, but is he really? Is he evil for wanting to do what HE thinks is best for his country? I'm not saying that I agree with his way of doing it, I just always like to look at things from both sides. The truth is that you can't please all the people all the time. He had (has) his own ideas about what's best for his country and some people agree and some don't. One thing is for certain though, his impact (whether positive or negative) has been huge. His revolution in 1959 motivated and influenced numerous other Latin American governments and movements, including Allende and his election in Chile. He's dealt with something like 9 or 10 US Presidents and a ton of other world leaders. I just find it all FASCINATING.

For Some Reason . . .

2008-03-05T09:30:00.001-08:00

I find this so entertaining. Truth is I stole it off of a friend's blog. It is completely random (and kinda long - 4 minutes or so) but really funny to me. What do my friends and family think?

So I'm adding an addendum after reading a couple comments . . . if you can't make it through the entire 4 minutes, make sure you skip to the end. Like the last 30 seconds or so, its the best part!

I Learned Something New Today

2008-03-03T13:45:00.000-08:00

So while walking across campus today, I heard a guy on a golf cart telling two women about a tree on campus. Apparently, its an extinct tree from China and it is one of only 4 in the world! I was too far past to hear the story of how it got from China to BYU. But I thought that was interesting. That's all.

The End is In Sight

2008-02-28T07:10:00.001-08:00

So I ordered my cap and gown yesterday. Crazy. Awesome. Its actually real. I'm not just pretending. Now to come up with a plan for after. That's the hard part.

Not Much To Tell

2008-02-24T19:23:00.000-08:00

So I'm done with 2 mini-courses, over half-way done with the semester, and have actually started writing my paper on Spanish morphosyntax (more specifically, auxiliaries and perphrastic verb-forms in Modern Spanish and how they evolved from Latin) from my first mini-course. All very good news. I only have one more mid-term to take, and luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it) most of my classes only have a mid-term and a final. If I do well, great. If not, not so great as my entire grade will be based on that. But I feel fairly confident that I can pull all of this off. I can survive this 21 credit madness for another 2 months. Less actually, but who's counting? Oh wait, I am.

In other very non-related matters, Blu Ray has won the commercial war against HD DVD. This is good news because it means the prices of DVDs will start dropping, as will the prices of Blu Ray discs and Blu Ray disc players. So careful how much you invest in regular DVDs, they're soon to become the next VHS. Luckily though, most (probably all) Blu Ray players will play regular DVDs too so not so bad of a transition. Gimme another year and I may be ready to invest in a Blu Ray player. Because by then I may actually have a steady income again. Wonder where I'll be in a year. No one knows, least of all me.

An Attempt at Textures

2008-02-16T13:43:00.000-08:00

So I've discovered textures in Photoshop and I've been experimenting. I've got a long way to go, but here are my first attempts:

This sled was on Center Street the day I took pictures before. My first attempt at textures.

This is my cousin Lexi on New Years Day with her cute matching raincoat and boots. Lots of texture on this one. Too much? Again, I'm teaching myself by experimentation and I really have NO IDEA what I'm doing.

Anyway. That's all for now. In other news, the second mini-course is over which means one more to go!

Voki

2008-02-15T07:42:00.000-08:00

So I have another one of my mini-courses this week, and this one is a pedagogy class. The title is technology in language teaching. If you know me, you know I LOVE technology, so this class is right up my alley! She's shown us a bunch of different random links to things that as a language teacher, you could use as a creative way to enhance teaching. Aside from enhancing teaching, a lot of the sites are just plain fun! She showed us this one, www.voki.com, that allows you to create these little characters. A lot of the people in this mini course are grad students that are going to be teachers or they're already teachers that found out about this and came to learn more, and some have already used this. You can make them speak Spanish too, so one of the teachers put a couple on his website for his students to look at. Anyway, they're entertaining, so I thought I'd put one on here.

Get a Voki now!