a year in facebook status updates – 2009.

January

does believe people should go to the new and improved http://www.redefinemag.com

done did got her laptop infected by a virus. ~__~ BSOD FTL.

February

got a web facelift: http://www.redefinemag.com — and a new arts blog: http://www.redefinemag.com/arts/

is going to be in Los Angeles tomorrow, until the 17th! Holla!

is wondering if anyone would like to go to Peru with her in late March / early April for a couple weeks?

March

is wondering if anyone knows anyone trustworthy who needs a room to stay in for SxSW?

is going to Peru, April 1st through April 23rd. Confirmed, son.

is wondering if anyone else noticed Facebook looks different! Rounded profile pictures, omg!! Bigger fonts!!!!

thinks the Indian holiday, Holi, is AWESOME. ^__^

is pretty sure SxSW is the best shit ever.

cannot WAITTTTT to get back to Seattle where allergies are more or less tolerable and not complete complete death action.

… did I say I couldn’t wait to get back to Seattle? Well, I don’t want to be in Austin, but I don’t want to be here, either. RESPONSIBILITIES. BLACHHH.

It’s funny when you have a sudden epitome on a way to fix something that is obviously wrong, with so obvious an answer it’s ridiculous. Naw mean?

Today I hung out with a 23 year old Australian dude I met at SxSW and an 18 year old super mature and smart (and classically very good looking) British lad. I rarely ever meet and get to know English-speaking foreigners while living in the States. It’s in…

Feeleth so dehydrated…

is headed to Seattle’s Green Festival… for anyone who wants to go tomorrow, if you go to PCC and buy some shit, you get a free ticket ($15 value).

Sometimes you just need a giant 16 ounce cup of cappuccino / hot cocoa mix from — no, not the coffee shop down the street — 7/11. Hail. Yeah. Son. Sure, you’ll regret it later as you are shaking with its sugary nastiness, but the first half hour or so o…

is headed to Mexico City / Peru in one day and seven hours. Here’s to not pulling a “Tony Cordova”. Not pulling a “Tony Cordova” can be defined as, but are not limited to: 1) not breaking arms while arm wrestling, 2) not getting rings stuck on fingers til…

April

was told that her brother’s house has Oreos for consumption, but the Oreos cannot be seen!!!!

is in the Lima airport, at a Starbucks. Ohhh nooeettthh! They’re seriously everywhere. X:

is in Lima, waiting to go to Trujillo, Peru. Lima is just a city, like every other city, but man, is Peruvian cuisine colorful and exciting. But people here drive like maniacs. It’s super fun to be in a taxi, wondering if you’ll get in a crash, but even i…

is going to Huacas Del Sol Y De La Luna today… and then off to the desert. – http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huacas_del_Sol_y_de_l a_Luna

is wondering about how strange it is that I’ve been here for like… three days… and it feels like an ETERNITY somehow. It’s fucking bizarre.

is thinking about how a girl on my flight from Seattle to SF five days ago finished off our 2 hour conversation with one another by telling me that I have “really nice hands” and that she has an “obsession with hands and necks.”

has photos online at http://picasaweb.google.com/veez0ri

helped another teacher teach some 2nd graders English today. We did one class in Spanish and one class in English, teaching kids things like, “What’s your name?” and “What’s her name?” and the class taught exclusively in English did MUCH better than the c…

$569 roundtrip to Iceland from Seattle this summer. Who wants to go

es muy confundido.

is PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY. K thx. Off to the mountains of Peru this evening for Semana Santa!!! Holy Week!

is just a girl.

has new photos from an awesome weekend in Cajamarca, Peru: http://picasaweb.google.com/veez0ri/042009Cajamarc aPeru#

has just been reminded that holy shit… art is better than pretty much everything. – http://www.redefinemag.com/arts/ – http://1988watcher.blogspot.com/

is wondering who wants to go to Burning Man this year… like, for real. This time.

& Mihae received many a love letter this evening from Peruvian men. Here is a note a hot 17 year old Peruvian waiter wrote us before we left: “Cuando vas muy lejos adonde yo no te puedo ver se que vata (?) o extranarte mucho Vivian te extrano mucho quisie…

is forever in love with “Gorecki” by Lamb. One of the most awesome songs ever.

feels like she just smoked at least five cigarettes due to the plethora of secondhand smoke this evening ~__~

doesn’t like secondhand smoke but residual smoke-in-hair is SO GOOD. So good.

is sad to be leaving Trujillo cause the kids are SO cute. ~__~ Want to come back for longer. How to do so logistically…

is Lima-bound tonight. Hello overnight bus.

says: If you’re riding a bus in Peru, reserve the freaking 1st row of seats on the 2nd floor of the bus. AMAZING view (And “Bruce Almighty” in Spanish is amazing, too.)

is in Cusco, and NOT altitude sick! Yay. Mihae is yet to be determined, however.

Cusco / Cuzco is uncharming, expensive, drab, unexciting, and completely un-Peru-like. Machu Picchu may be great, but this tourist trap mecca definitely is not. Just saying.

is tired after a day of hiking up a 3,500 meter (11,500 feet) above sea level mountain because two Peruvian waiters (we sure like making friends with waiters) told us to. Tiring and hard, with some parts of the “trail” actually being giant ladders we had…

is thinking, WTF, BBQ, LIFE, and using the internet while sitting on the floor of our hostel in Cuzco.

actually heard a stranger fart last night in an alleyway and then SMELLED it. That’s SO wrong.

got a tarot card reading today from a Peruvian jungle man nicknamed Captain Jack, while sitting on a giant rock and stuff.

is in the Lima airport… again. Living in Trujillo was SO cheap, but coming to Cusco and Lima is SO expensive!! BAHH! Sapping money like a motherfucker!!

is leaving Peru tomorrow. Already? Is it over already?! :[

is back in the States after a night of 0 sleep and techno music in Mexico City. Thanks, Franco.

is dying of stomach ache! WTF!

is feeling better. Yay for no Mexican flu

is wondering why people would install shit on my computer. Kinda annoying.

wants it all -- brand new socks and drawls -- and I'm ballin every time I stop and talk to y'all. I want it all, all, all, all.

lied a little. Stomach still hurts. :X And it is not reassuring that one of the people I was hanging out with in Mexico City also has had a stomach ache!!! (But I don't have any other flu symptoms, so I'm not going to die, right?!! RIGHT?!!)

can once again think of a zillion reasons to never live at home.

is wondering if anyone wants to pick her up from the airport at 11:00pm on Tuesday. No? OK.

is going to interview Crystal Antlers tonight at the Crepe Place in Santa Cruz. Bands? At a Crepe Place? We'll see how this goes.

is wondering WHYYYYYY WHYYYY STOMACHE WHYYYYY!

is pretty convinced what burned my stomach was drinking a glass of absinthe (when I never drink) on an empty stomach. Finally took medicine, and now it's all peachy.

is thinking four days or so is about the maximum amount of time to visit the parentals in California without going batshit crazy.

is wondering if anyone is going to Sasquatch, cause I'd actually maybe like to go for once, perhaps.

May

is thinking that looking at high school people's Facebook profiles is some Twilight Zone shit.

wants Red Lobster Cheddar Biscuits. SRSLY.

is having her patience tested, z0mg.

reckons there's always a lesson to be learned in experiences that test you, but man, it's hard to glean something super positive from someone's annoying the shit out of you.

is gonna see some dags. Do you like dags?

revolutionized nail-cutting this afternoon. Cut your nails outside; never worry about mess again!!!!!!!!! ZOMG!!!!

gives in to Conor Oberst. I had always written off Bright Eyes as mediocre, but dammit, it's kind of good.

is wondering if anyone wants to go with her to either The Kills / The Horrors' show or The Curious Mystery / Ole Time Relijun's show. Both on Friday and free. Hollar.

is going country line dancing or something tonight. They call it 2-steppin? What? We'll see.

is HOLY FUCK, round-trip tickets from Seattle to NYC for $219 and from Los Angeles to Australia for $646. HOLY FUCK ASS!!!!!

just fell in the mud with my Nikon d40 D-SLR. But dude, smoothing concrete is fun (and the camera is okay).

is now officially only one degree of separation removed from Mike Patton (of Faith No More / Mr. Bungle fame). Wee!

is going to Hammingbell, aka Bellingham, for the day...!

recommends that you go watch The Kills and The Horrors, on tour now. They killed it this evening.

needs to need to not want to need.

loves the VH1 show "Daisy of Love." I'm just a lameass.

sometimes wishes she liked alcohol even a little bit. But alas, no.

is an idiot around boys I have even remote interest in, and I will run away prematurely. But hey, if I don't like you, I will talk to you for fucking hours.

... sometimes you think you know, but then find out what you know ain't shit. But it's nice when that can be said in a positive manner. SON!

spent the night at a bar with a fucking banana in my purse. SON!

eats a little too much hummuses!!!

necesita aprender mas espanol :0

was late for the bus but forgot bus money, had to run back home to grab the bus money, grabbed the bus money, kept it in her hands while running down the hill, lost a quarter of the fare in someone's unkempt lawn (where it was never to be seen again), and...

was called by her mother today, and her mother said to her in Chinese: "Your house is actually pretty clean now! But you live with boys, so make sure you wrap up your pads well when you throw them out while you're on your period." To which I replied (verb...

thinks the problem of being a sucker for pretty writing and pretty words is that, more often than not, that's all it is... pretty words... not pretty actions.

thinks may all die a nuclear death... in 2012.

just interviewed Mike Weiss of mewithoutYou. They have a new disc out: http://www.myspace.com/mewithoutyou

has been trying to install a Ruby on Rails environment on the computer all day. ALL DAY. Lord.

is being FUCKED OVER by Google. Motherfuckers. The Redefine website is inaccessible via Firefox without a warning of "vulnerability", and I fixed the errors, but they're still not removing this warning. PISSED!!

June

is up late, being emo. ~o~

: incentive for waking up earlier... $290 round-trip tickets from Seattle to Madrid, including taxes. *WTF*. Too bad I slept in and it got sold out. :L

is going camping in the Olympic Peninsula until Tuesday. Suckaz!!!

... just saw *the* most amazing dance-off ever at Trinity, by a pair of strangers, to dub-step. INSANE. They were *literally* climbing on the wall, crawling on the floor, and doing the fucking splits. In fact, the chick did the fucking splits on the wall,...

had an awesome weekend playing Rock Band, white trash golf? (testicle toss?), eating yummy catered food, and seeing ScM friends from looong ago. Congrats Pwny & Renae, and thanks! Even the sanest of girls is crazy.

is going to Ashland, Oregon for July 4th to watch Macbeth at the world's most awesomest Shakespeare Festival. Hail yessssss, dawwwwwgggg.

totally kind of believes in astrology crap. Do you?

July

was volunteering at Real Change today and Rosette made a joke about my going to bed at 4AM last night because I was watching Michael Jackson videos. That was untrue. Today, however, I am actually staying up til 4AM watching Michael Jackson videos. ~__~ Li...

thinks it's hilarious that *NOW* the FDA says Tylenol (and Percoset and Vicodin) is bad. - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/31671172#3 1671172

inhaled too much nail polish, omg... headache galore.

still can't get over the fact that my parents have Facebook. Can they read this?!!! I have no idea!!!

just had a car trunk closed on her head and it hurt like a motherb!tch. If a giant bruise emerges on my face, I'm going to have to pin domestic violence on some lucky person!!!!

battled four nosebleeds today and won. Then again, if they keep coming back, does that still count as victories? Are they all the same nosebleed coming back to life again or are they four separate nosebleeds?!! HMMM?!!!!!?!!!! And if they're separate nose...

+ sports bra = boy... pretty much.

wonders if you would ever read a magazine in downloadable PDF form???? Check yes or no.

is disturbed by how different raisins in the same pack taste from one another Some are so nasty and mushy I have to spit them out!!

hates going through all the CDs we get for Redefine and really realizing how many bands we simply don't have the resources to give the time of day to. :{

spent the last four hours sorting through CDs. Got a couple discs in the mail that seem fairly exciting for me personally: Volcano Choir (JagJaguwar), OKie Dokie (Aagoo), Forks And Knives (Self-Released) and INF (Beats Broke)... WOOHOO!!!!!

is putzing around Portland for the day... what to do, what to do, other than talking to random crazy awesome strangers...

pretty much loves Portland. Seattle's still more beautiful, though. But Portland's more fun.

told Kyle that my house is really super empty because Chris moved out all his furniture. Kyle told me to try doing cartwheels now that I have space. I've been trying to do them... and I'm not going to give up til I actually do a legit one... but what's pa...

It's a bitch convincing people to like you/ If I stop now call me a quitter/ If lies were cats you'd be a litter/ Pleasing everyone isn't like you/ Dancing jigs until I'm crippled/ Slug ten drinks I won't get pickled!.../ Oh I could throw you in the lake/

fucking loves cherries! WHY OH WHY MUST I BE ALLERGIC! WHY!!!

is going to sleep at 4:30am and waking up at 9:00am. WOOOOO!

thinks is unfair that Block Party is this weekend in Seattle (still haven't been!) for a zillion dollars and PDX Pop Now is a free event this weekend. Pish, posh, poosh.

thinks it's kinda sorta fun to live without: a microwave, a television, a bed frame... a clue. Just me, music, hardwood floors, dreams, and a zillion dust bunnies are ADEQUATE!

had a freaking amazing day doing the "Talk To Us" thing in downtown Seattle (imagine Christian women's conference meets Narcotics Anonymous crowd meets Torchlight Parade participants), choosing from 60 FREE CAKES in Seattle Center, high-fiving marathon ru...

... when all the furniture goes away, all the spiders come out to play :/ including the hobos the size of your palm. WOO! This is when sleeping on the floor not so good.

... [stolen from someone else cause social experiments rule.] This is a Facebook Experiment. If you are reading this, even if we don’t speak often, post a comment with a memory of you and I. When you’ve finished, post this paragraph into your own status u…

HOW IS IT 105 DEGREES IN SEATTLE? THIS IS NOT RIGHT.

… damn you, bleeding from the nether regions! I wanted to go swimming!!!!!!!!!!!!!

wonders if anyone knows of good electro/disco-type bands in the Portland and Seattle area??

August

had a memorable dream for the first time in a long time… kid ghosts, kid ghosts, kid ghosts… so plentiful in number they were flying and practically overlapping with each other in my vision. plus feelings of being insane.

enjoys the sleeping positions of the two cats I’m cat/house-sitting… teehehehe! Their names are George and Bert (because of resemblance to a Muppet)… but strangely, they’re both female. (Crazy cat lady in the making?!!…)

is going to hit up the $7-haircut-run-out-of-a-house place I’ve been wanting to try for almost a year now! Wish me lux.

“Your skin is something that I stir into my tea/ And I am watching you/ And you are starry, starry, starry…”

… me: going to tillamook today, never been / rachel: huh / me: what could possibly be confusing about that statement lol! / rachel: cheese / me: yes / rachel: holy shit, didnt know that was possible

is loving the new Portugal. The Man disc, The Satanic Satanist. More falsetto + blues/funk? Sweeeet. – Free MP3 here (not the best song on the disc, though, but whatever): http://freedownloads.last.fm/download/278763095/Pe ople%2BSay.mp3

… “Lovers loving love just like these lovers are loving in love.” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv3z8m1qbOQ

had a fantastical evening with Miss XL consisting of (but not limited to): getting lost in a maze of freeways, taking the LONGEST freeway detour EVER, being hit on by a guy using the classic, “Are you hot wearing that jacket? I mean, you’re HOT, but are you hot?” line, and laughing our asses off when a whole crowd of ridiculous clubbers got, “Low low low low,” in unison because “Apple Bottom Jeans” told them to.

is so very jaded by traditional Christian weddings… receptions rule, though. Fo’ realz.

is officially REALLY bad at frisbee golf. Really good at living off of snack foods, though.

… “A horse is a horse, of course, of course, and no one can talk to a horse, of course, that is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mister Ed.”

should give lessons on being a nomad. August / September / first half of October = PDX -> SEA -> PDX -> SEA -> LA -> NEVADA -> SO-CAL -> PDX -> SEA -> SF -> ????. All rent free. Jea.

… new nomad schedule for Aug-Oct 2009: Portland > Seattle > Los Angeles > Black Rock City, Nevada > Long Beach > Austin > Orlando > Seattle > Portland (MusicFestNW) > Chicago (La Dispute!!) > Detroit (:D) > Chicago > New Orleans (:D) > Pittsburgh > Seattle > San Francisco (Fever Ray/Castro St. Parade!) > New York > New Jersey > New York > Montreal > New York > Seattle…! (Settling down in Nov? Mayhaps. TIPS??)

… despite making films that would lead one to believe the contrary, David Lynch IS in fact Captain Obvious. Gems include, “And I thought to myself that in California, people wear sweaters! So it must sometimes be cool at night or something, because it was kind of a night-time thing, I imagined. And I thought, ‘What a great climate, that it’s warm in the day, and cool in the night — cool enough to wear a sweater!”

… 1) does anyone know if you need to take a GRE to get a Master’s in Social Work?… 2) does anyone know why I keep freaking getting Charlie Horses in my sleep? CHARLIE HORSES *SUCK*!!!

… emo emo emo mo mom oomaoo.

is gonna interview Theo Ellsworth in a hot sec. Awesome. – http://theoellsworth.blogspot.com

presents… a cross-section of Dutch words cuz Dutch is awesome/impossible … afschuwelijk = horrible, beschonken = drunk, droogtrommel = tumble drier, eigenaardig = peculiar, hulpvaardig = helpful, loopjongen = errand boy, natuurwetenschappelijk = natural phenomenon, ooghaar = eyelash, prijzenswaardig = commendable, raaskallen = talk nonsense, schurkenstreek = roguery, verachtelijk = despicable, zaniken = bother

… all of this past month’s Redefine updates in one handy ol’ August 2009 newsletter: http://www.redefinemag.com/newsletters/2009-08-new s.html (you can sign up for future similar updates in the right-hand column of http://www.redefinemag.com)!… … duude. Redefine life is doing good. It is, it is. A horse is a horse, of course, of course.

is pretty godamn satisfied. Bitches. And you need to listen to Leftover Cuties. – http://www.myspace.com/leftovercuties

… I know I just had a conversation recently about how band/musician names really shouldn’t play a role in determining how good he/she/they are, but man, Mac McAnally’s name is pretty funny.

is wondering if anyone in the Seattle / Portland / Los Angeles areas have crazy, super HOT desert weather clothes that they don’t need anymore that they want to give me to wear / demolish / never return (?)

wonders how many of the neighbors can hear me singing my ass off through the open windows. Hahahahahahahahaa.

wonders where I should go from Austin… Boston, Raleigh, Charlotte, Portland (Maine), Fort Lauderdale, Orlando…?? Decisions, decisions. VOTES?

is wondering if anyone in LA has a shitty bike he/she wants to sell/lend me? EH?????

has too much to do and therefore wants to do *nothing*…

… dude, coffee-drinking today has been CRAZY and has kind of sent me into this world where if I sit still for a hot sec I’m reeling into the unknown folds of the universe. Seriously.

is friggin pissed. Got a virus trying to download Simon & Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits. Virus rendered Internet unusable. Now, while trying to clear space on my hard drive to back up data, guess what I find? Simon & Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits. Godammit.

is watching a documentary on noise music called “People Who Make Noise”, and the cats are definitely freaking out in parts.

hates iTunes. I formatted my iPod Touch when my iTunes was set on shuffle and now my songs will only play on shuffle. Anyone know how to fix short of reformatting again?

September

is back in the real world (as real as Los Angeles is, anyway). Hello dry skin and straw hair.

is Austin and San Antonio-bound tomorrow, September 10th, through Monday, September 14th. Holla, Texans! And recommendations, por favor!!!!!

… funny press release of the day: “Name Your Tune is an exciting new children’s music compilation that is made-to-order and personalized for each child. Children will hear their name more than 80 times throughout 14 much-loved songs, such as If You’re Happy And You Know It (becomes If You’re Paul And You Know It) and Old MacDonald Had A Farm (becomes Little Ringo Had A Farm.)”

… guy’s name at the Long Beach Airport (the weirdest airport I’ve ever been to, BTW): Rohan McGee. AWESOME!!!

… one of my new favorite names for a city: Gay Hill, Texas!

equals not impressed by TexMex. TexMex is kinda sick. I’ll take Mex over TexMex every day of the week.

… dude, there’s a PLEASANTON in Texas!!!!!!!!!!!! 30 miles or so from San Antonio!!!!

passed a 5-mile stretch of highway in Houston today in which like, every American chain store had a branch. It was both amazing and disgusting! I’d begun to think that for sure every chain store had already shown up, but new ones kept popping up! Bed Bath And Beyond was like, “Don’t forget about me!”, Kohl’s was like, “I wanna play, too!”, and Panda Express was like, “Eat me!”

… three-hour-long+ adventure on Los Angeles Metro, here I come!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

… actual synopsis for the film “Hood Of Horror”: “The Ghetto can be a scary place. And thanks to Snoop Dogg, it’s about to get even scarier. Snoop brings us three tales of terror from the hood featuring Billy Dee Williams, Method Man, and Jason Alexander. They’ll scare the shizzle out of you.”

loooooves eavesdropping on non-English-speaking humans (that I can understand, obviously)… cause sometimes you get real gems cause people think no one around can understand them!

… funny press release of the day: “Megan Fox is hot. She’s everywhere. And those short shorts and tank top and the black leather motorcycle costume she wore in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen are available for all to buy.”

… awesome press quote I just saw on some taxi in Chicago about some theatre show: “Like Cirque du Soleil, but with horses.” — WTF!

… two assholes, at two shows, two days in a row. One racist in Detroit who said the Asian Yale girl who got murdered and stuffed in the wall begged her murderer, “Please no keel me; I sucky sucky for free,” (seriously??) and another dumbass who told Micachu And The Shapes that their music wasn’t music and that he “didn’t pay to have my ears pissed in.” Why so angry, Chicagoans and Detroiters?!!

self-loathes with a vengeance this evening, and to top it off, my electronics keep committing suicide, too. UGH.

… yet another low: MySpace Music is now brought to you by McDonald’s. WTF?

was thinking it was too early to sleep because my computer clock says 11:45pm, Pacific Time. Realization: I’m on the east coast. Dammit.

… MOTHAFUCKIN THESE ARMS ARE SNAKES IN DC, BEEYOTCH!

is so frustrated with myself!!! The airport security workers were totally being a dick to this Spanish-speaking lady and I wanted to stand in and translate, but I kept asking the security worker what she needed to do and he kept ignoring me, so I just stood down. It was so sad! They just wheeled her off in her little wheelchair and she was like, “No comprendo!” and had no idea what was going on :{

October

… Sondre Lerche twittering about Redefine? Awesome!

thinks it’s funny when people (*ahem, Sherry*) get all worked up over sports on TV.

… TONIGHT: Fever Ray in SF!!!! YAYYYYYY!!!

… who wants to make me a cupcake costume for Halloweenie!?

… anyone have experience with podcasting and can chat with me about it?

… funny press release of the day: “Dell [has] partnered with Major League Baseball to offer fans across the nation opportunities to bring their team spirit to their PC. Dell Design Studio offers designs for all 30 MLB teams in three customized levels – Fan, Classic and Die-Hard.”

is gonna be in New York City until the 13th, Montreal until the 17th or 18th, New Jersey until the 24th. Let’s meet up!?

is pissed! Of all the freaking delicious places to eat in NY I somehow settled on a place with THE WORST godamn eggplant parmesan sandwiches ever!! How could an eggplant parmesan sandwich possibly be this disgusting? AND it’s expensive. I’m craving one from Romio’s now. Ugh.

wishes bugs didn’t like biting me so much!! AAHHHHHHH. Three bug bites on the face… mostly no big deal, except for the one around my eye that makes me look like I got punched in the face

wants to eat something warm and hot, but I don’t have any Canadian money left except for $1.11, and I’m leaving tomorrow! I can’t even buy something from McDonald’s here with that! Much less the poutine next door.

being in the Northeast during the fall might be one of the best things ever… so beautiful, aaaah.

… my 16-year-old cousin doesn’t have ANY idea what Schindler’s List is. That’s almost as scary as Lingo’s nephew {?} not knowing who Michael Jordan is. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Social networking does a REDEFINE body good.

… explaining non-meat-eating to 85-year-old Chinese grandpa = impossible. Meat sickness impending. Not to mention they were pork buns, which I hated even when I did eat meat regularly!! ~__x

… wowowow Spaceland venue in Los Angeles!!! Taking word-for-word my article on Nurses for use in their promotional mailer: “By blending everything together in a way that turns layers of instrumentation, samples, and loops into structured tracks, Nurses create underlying backgrounds which teem with life and create a visual musical experience.” FUCKFACES. Where’s the credit!?

is geeking out on music so hard. Amusing finds for the evening: Terrible Records – Ghosts (http://terriblerecordsus.com/blog/wp-content/uplo ads/2009/10/ghosts.mp3), Yura Yura Teikoku – Dekinai (http://girlieaction.com/yurayura/sounds/Dekinai.mp3), Pylon – Beep (http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=down load&ufid=C646D21D51E64387), and finally… this really rad Nesey Gallons album, Eyes & Eyes & Eyes Ago! Yay!

is thinking, in this day and age where music videos are better than ever, why don’t VH1/MTV actually show music videos???????? Certainly they would hold someone’s attention…

just turned in my absentee ballot today, and I actually looked up all the candidates, but I feel like they’re all just about the goshdarn same. They all care about the environment and safety… blahblahblah. So I just went with whatever person seemed like he/she liked public transportation and homeless people the most. Ha!

November

… The Norwegian word “Røyksopp” means puffball fungus (lit. “(a) smoke mushroom”)… now you know!!!!!!!

… ever get those moments where you’re so insanely idiotic that you can scarcely believe yourself? They’re kind of special.

… funny press release of the day: “The Beatles cover [of] “I’m Only Sleeping” was recorded the day “The Beatles: Rock Band” game was released in protest of the idea of great musicians wasting time playing games about making music instead of actually making music.” – AEONs

… “I did not stir, and presently I began to breathe with the dispassionate rhythm of sleep. He listened, that was certain. I listened to his listening. He listened to my listening to his listening. Something snapped. I noticed that I was not thinking at all of what I thought I was thinking; attempted to catch my consciousness tripping, but got mazed myself. ” – Vladimir Nabokov, Despair. <3 <3 <3

… s o m e t i m e s l i f e i s r e a l l y r e a l l y a w e s o m e a n d i t f e e l s a m a z i n g . i feel like i'm onto something.

… loudly listening to music on Mihae Jung's $700 speakers = kinda better than going outside.

… so glad I don't work for a corporation… some corporate politics are truly ridiculous.

… "And we were laughing at the stars while our feet clung tight to the ground. So pleased with ourselves for using so many verbs and nouns. But we were all still just dumb, dumb, dumber than the dirt, dirt, dirt on the ground."

… "My grandfather used to say: 'Life is astonishingly short. When I look back now it is all so condensed in my memory that I can hardly understand, for example, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village, without his being afraid — quite apart from unfortunate accidents — that the whole span of a normal happy life is far from being adequate for such a ride.'" – Franz Kafka (The Next Village)

… three hours in Korea, and already I've been kidnapped and forced to drink beer and chat in broken Korean with two older Korean men (with the pimply-faced one stroking my back / laughing creepily and the other one — although hilarious and drunk as hell — calling me his wife and saying that Xinlei and I would be his friends forever); thank JEEBUS for being rescued by Xtra Large. <3 <3 <3

… mmmm, dreams about Joseph Gordon-Levitt…!!

… day two in Korea consistethed of going to seven different convenience stores to acquire seven types of banana milk and then taste-testing them one after the other. You'd be surprised at the array of flavors. The one with Bart Simpson sucking on a banana and having crazy eyes that looked like spirals was the winner.

… Portland's YACHT (http://www.myspace.com/yacht) and White Rainbow (http://www.myspace.com/whiterainbowwhiterainbow) are in Korea = free comped tickets for Friday night's show ($30 each!). Dunno if I actually like them, but it's not just a concert; it's a concert plus a DJ set by YACHT which goes until 5:00am. UMMMMMMMMMMM, AMAZING? 350 people confirmed on Facebook so far. S T O K E D!

… YACHT = awesome live show.

… I think I've done it. I think I've made myself sick of banana milk. THIS CAN'T BE!!!!!!???

… 2012 = worst movie ever……………… two hours of sheer and utter pain.

got rescued by the cops today. They pushed my car to the Honda dealership. Two of them plus one civilian. Hell yeah.

December

… cars are a pain in the snarse.

… breakfast! It’s what’s for dinner!

… the problem with always making faces or doing weird shit while taking photos is that when you actually need a professional-ish photo for business purposes, there are zero. Zilch. None. Nada. The closest to a passable photo might even be one you took with a Macaw bird on your shoulder. BLARGH!

= dry cereal addict. NOM NOM NOM. (so much better than wet cereal.)

… what’s an awesome name you think needs to be used more often? My vote: WYATT.

… Iceland/Europe in spring, anyone? Round-trip airfare from Seattle for $474…………. including taxes…….?

can’t sleep worth shiet.

is doing a post on Album Covers Of The Year!! Have any favorites from this year?? Anything blow you away?? Share

gets to eat lunch at Google today, heck yeah!!!!!!!! Free fooood come to meeeeeee!

… dude, remember Tomodachis?? And Furbys? Scary the random things you remember…….!

… REGIFTING RULE #1: Remove that sweetly-worded card that’s addressed to you. (Saving mother from embarrassment since 1983.)

… dude, did all of my tape singles get thrown out?!!!!! THERE WERE LIKE A HUNDRED OF THEM!!! Goodbye, childhood memories! You left without saying goodbye!

… 46 rad album covers from 2009! This is the most fun I’ve had writing an article in a while. Enjoy! (PS, Duran Duran is awesommmmmme.) – http://www.redefinemag.com/music/reviews_cover_2.php?artist=46-Fantastic-Album-Covers-From-2009,-Part-One&id=1379

hostelling in barranco, lima.

Strange things going from Cusco to Lima this evening. We came from the Southern Comfort Hostel in Cusco — where everyone was up and about all the time, all evening — to this hostel in Barranco, Lima. It’s a SOMEWHAT happening part of town, I believe, but practically everyone went to bed before it was even midnight. Da feck? It’s the Bohemian District, but we have to leave at 11:30am-ish tomorrow, so hopefully we’ll have some time to actually explore the godamn place.

For the two and a half weeks we were in Trujillo, spending money was lax and it seemed plentiful. As soon as we got over to fucking Lima and Cusco, though, money just went away like a MOTHERFUCKER. This trip is turning out to be much more expensive than anticipated.

In other news, Mihae left her camera in a taxi tonight. ~__~ Hopefully it gets found ASAP. Fingers crossed.

Tomorrow we head out from Peru to Mexico City for an evening, then back to the States. Is it over already? The first few days went by so slow, but now things are going by so fast… time… it’s many a trippieth thing.

Massive journal entries to come. I’ve basically been writing them down in notebooks here, there, and everywhere (actually, that’s a lie, because it’s all in the same notebook), waiting for the proper time to type them up properly. (I’ve decided I really like when Brits say “proper”, and that I’m going to work “proper” into my daily or somewhat daily quotes.)

trujillo, peru, day ten.

Another fucking fun day.

Woke up ass early to go to El Melinda (ass early being, in this case, 8:40am, because I simply don’t wake up that early here), which is this huge outdoor market. I went with Jean-Claire. Fucking awesome. Unfortunately, I can’t get my photos off my camera right away because I don’t have the fucking cable with me, and I have to borrow it from Lizette, so HOPEFULLY I’ll be able to get to them later, but yeah. So if there end up being pictures later on, they were added later. Word. (Not going to change this text.)

El Melinda is CRAZY! There’s like freaking rows that are dedicated to certain crops. I don’t even know if the place is actually called El Melinda, but yeah. One row will be like, 10-15 different banana vendor stalls, another row will be like, 10-15 different potato vendor stalls, and so on and so forth. A lot of it was pretty overwhelming and there’s not like there are very many tourists in Trujillo at all, so ordering things is intimidating. I didn’t actually have much I wanted to buy, although Jean-Claire ended up buying these interesting fruits, like guanabana, which I don’t really like. It’s weird-textured and kinda sourish. Not a fan!! Lots of fruits here I’m not a fan of, actually. She also got this fruit which is like a cross between a small plum and a tomato, called a ____________?! Which was really interesting and I can’t decide whether I like it or not, actually, but I think I do.

The only thing I really wanted to buy — at least, initially — was some bananas. We’d walked down the banana aisle but I’d been waaay too intimidated by the stacks of banana shit, though, so we left and I didn’t buy anything. These families like OWN individual stalls. One particular banana stall had a fucking baby in like a playpen, right amongst all the bananas. Really kind of truly bizarre. As we were walking back and forth, though, there was one particularly smiley lady who kept smiling at me when I was taking photos and waving and saying, “Chinita!” in a really friendly way. We made circles of the market and then came back later to buy some bananas from her, since I wanted some, and everyone else is kinda scary and picking from a lady who was known to be nicer would be really pretty nice.

She ended up giving me these bananas that are called “La Isla” bananas, and they’re really kind of small, finger-big, and ORANGE inside. I need to take a picture tomorrow, but seriously! Orange! It’s pretty bizarre and awesome. I’ve found that I’m eating a shitload of sweet stuff here because there’s a lot of fruit intake and a lot of other foods that are really just very sweet. Not so exciting, no no no. Sweet food, no no. Anyway, she like handed us three of those small bananas and three regular large-sized bananas, and I was thinking seriously, “WTF,” because I didn’t actually tell her how many I’d wanted, but then she just asked us some questions about where we were from and stuff and what we were doing in Trujillo, and then gave us all those bananas. There were way more bananas than I’d know what to do with, so luckily, I was able to pawn one off on Chris and one off on Josh once we got back home. Wee. Now I only have one small one and one big one. Which is still a lot.

And also, I bought these little mango things that are like, smaller, and supposedly more sweet than regular mangos. We could only buy it in half kilos (is it a kilo? Perhaps I forget the unit of measurement), so I ended up with three, and I actually wanted like, two. ~__~ So we’ll see how I’ll go about eating these in the… two days… that I’m still around this place :0

I totally got called, “Chinita,” a FUCKLOAD there, though, and at one point, we passed by a group of five guys who were standing in a line, selling things. The first guy said, really loudly, “Chinita!” out of surprise, and when I walked by, the third or so guy was like, “Chinita!” and extended his arm and did a little bow. Not like an Oriental bow — more like a, “I’M SUPER FUCKING EXCITED!” bow. It’s REALLLLLLLY interesting.

Actually, there were quite a few good-looking guys at the market, but it’s kinda hard to pay attention to those things in Peru because people are actually like working hard doing labor and are kinda dirty and stuff… they’re so busy and not just simply hanging around looking pretty, you know?

After that, we came back, ate some food, and shot some shit with Jean-Claire about politics and shit. She was saying how it was really interesting being here because she makes friends with people and because of language barriers, never really gets to know certain things about them which might otherwise be divisive, had she met them in Portland or something. Things such as people’s opinions on homosexuality, for instance… and how she makes friends here without knowing those things, and she wouldn’t really even WANT to know those things, but at home, those things would matter a great deal more. Pretty interesting.

I took a half hour or so nap. Was good. Then I woke up and did some writing — blog posts, in fact — and then got ready to head over to the IndoAmericano school where I’m teaching with Jean-Claire. Jasmine and Elliot and Fran rode with us as well, so the five of us crammed into a car together.

When we first go to the school, the door was locked to the classroom that we normally teach in. Four of the little kids were already outside, and two of the boys kept asking me how to say all these different things in English that they didn’t REALLY care about but they just wanted to ask about.

At one point, I took a picture of this passage from a Bible verse that was on one of the walls. There’s not like any separation of church and state here or whatever. So I took a picture of that, and two of the kids asked me to translate it into English, and I did, half-assedly (putting “something” in place of one of the words I didn’t know). Then they asked me to say the rosary in English, and I’m like, “No se (I don’t know),” and you should have seen the look on their faces! They were like, “NO SABESSSSS?????” like it’s out of the fucking QUESTION to not know the rosary!!! Scary, really. Quite scary.

The class itself went pretty well, though, and as we taught it mostly in English this time (or perhaps other reasons, as well), the class actually more or less understood this time. Tuesdays are the fun days. Tuesdays are the days when the class is full of fucking cute ass second graders who are very responsive, very open, and very awesome. The first class is a little harder, but it’s very interesting to see the kids who get it right away and the kids who don’t. Makes you wonder if the ones who don’t get it are: a) kinda just a little dumb, or b) need a different style of teaching to learn. Very curious.

At the end of the first class, we had some extra time and asked the kids what kinds of words they wanted to learn in Spanish. They all wanted to know animal words, so we spent some time doing that. It seemed the kids picked up on “elephant”, or in Spanish, “elefante,” and “monkey,” or in Spanish, “mono,” pretty quickly, relatively speaking. And “cat” (“gato”) and “dog” (“perro”).

We had a little break and then began the second class by asking the three students who’d showed up on time what words they’d like to know in Spanish. Again, animals. So we listed some and there was some enjoyment, but they soon ran out of words, and one particular kid, Oliver, was not so quick with the thinking. Haha. But he’s really cute. I’m hoping and hoping during this time that the cutest kid ever, ALEJANDRO, will show up. He does. FUCK.

Alejandro is one kid, and the only kid, that makes me want to have kids, in the small percentage of hope that I could possibly have a kid as awesome as this kid. He’s cute as FUCK, super duper smart, and really, really hilarious and cute. He picks up on everything instantly, and then proceeds to make funny animal sounds and things because he’s so bored. This particular day, we began talking about emotions (moving off of things like, “What’s your name?” and, “What’s her name?”) and so, Alejandro (and everyone in the class knows his name) would act out the emotions hilariously… like, for the word “angry,” he would make angry growling noises… or when we were going around the class asking kids how they were (and they had to choose out of “angry”, “happy”, or “sad”) and all the other kids uncreatively answered “happy”, Alejandro answered that he was “sad” while making a frowny face, although he clearly wasn’t. And when asked why he was sad, he answered, “Because I am sad,” in Spanish. Haha. SO CUTE.

I took a buncha videos of him cause I’m a creeper and he’s just SO fucking cute. EEEEE. Seriously. That kid. Makes me want to have kids. But most likely my kids won’t turn out as cute and genius as him, so why have kids!!!

Anyway. After I was done being a creeper, Jean-Claire and I headed back to the house and I headed back out with Mihae to meet up with Ever. We had decided the previous day that we were going to meet at the restaurant at 5:30 after I got off volunteering — or at least, I thought we had decided that — but he wasn’t there, so I had to call him. Good thing I brought his phone number! He said he’d be there in ten minutes but took longer than that. Ass!

When he got back, he asked what we wanted to do and then suggested we go to the casino. He exchanged some money and we played slots for like. 10 minutes. Max. It was not exciting and 4 soles amongst me and Mihae went away in like, 5 seconds.

Then we took a taxi to play billiards. But it’s fucking SNOOKER! I’ve never played snooker before, but let’s just say that the game was fucking HORRIBLE and REALLY HARD because the pockets are super small. We were there for like 45 minutes and I made in one ball, but I also simultaneously made in the cue ball, so it didn’t count. By the time we left, all of the balls were still on the fucking table, HAHAHAHA. SO PATHETIC. It was seriously pathetic. Or maybe it wasn’t snooker. But it was pool with a really weird table and no fucking triangle for racking. Completely, completely confusing.

Oh yeah, Ever was supposed to be at the restaurant at 6:30pm for work and we didn’t end up going there til 7:00pm or so. Ha. I was like, the whole time, “AREN’T YOU SUPPOSED TO BE GOING TO WORK?!” and he’s like, “No problema!” So not sure if he was going to get in trouble or not but whatever.

So we got back to the Chinese restaurant and sat down there. One table was me, Mihae, and Ever. The other table was two of the Peruvian cooks, Jose and Marcos, and the waitress, Ana. The older Chinese cook man came over to us and talked to me in Chinese for a while. We later found out that his name was Kevin, and Mihae laughed at him for having a “gringo” name. He talked to me a lot and was again incredulous that we would be spending any time at all in what I assume he thinks is shitty-ass Trujillo.

At one point while the four of us were talking, the other table with the two chefs and waitress were like talking and laughing and occasionally making comments to us. Then the chefs were asking for our names, but not asking us, but Kevin and Ever. Ever called them over and they came over to sit at our table and were basically just watching us talk and not really saying anything. Twas really kind of strange.

Soon, some customers came in, so the chefs went into the kitchen and temporarily stopped harassing us. Or sooooo we thought. Soon, the notes started coming in. Hahahaha. So bad. So bad. I’ve kept a bunch of them. They are hilarious. Here are some sample quotes.

“Vivian Minjae (aka Mihae, but spelled in Spanish) con carino este corazon – Att. Jose – Escribeme tu correo.”
(“Vivian, Mihae, with passion, this heart. – Jose – Write me your address.”)
[There is a heart drawing, and all this is written in red. Crossed out is something that says, "Tell me your phone number!" HAHAHAHA.]

“Llamame love, baby forever, me gustas love – llamame amor – ###########”
(“Call me love, baby forever, I love love – call me love – ###########”)
[Scrawled alongside some weird obscure Chinese-looking letters, but not quite, to which I asked, "WHAT IS THIS?!! CHINESE?!" and they answered, "NO!"]

[Drawing, with a face with eyebrows, two flowers, and a heart that says "Love", with an arrow through it. Then the guy's name, Marco Antonio Saguma, and his cell phone number.]

[A note with their email addresses and names.]

There were actually more, believe it or not, but these are the only ones I kept. Fucking amazing. Seriously. Chifa at Nueva China in Trujillo, Peru, is always a fucking good time, motherfucker. Three for three. We hadn’t actually intended on staying all that long there, but it just turned out to be so entertaining we really could not leave that quickly.

Some girl kept calling Ever the entire time(even when we were at the billiards), and I guess he didn’t want to talk to her because he kept ignoring the phone calls. He had Mihae pick up one time and start talking random English gibberish sentences to her, like, “How are you? My name is Mihae. I like California. Do you like California?” etc. and then the girl called back again, and Mihae started talking again, but in Korean, saying things like, “Hello! Do you speak Korean well?” etc. Pretty amusing. The girl didn’t call back again. He said it was a friend who liked him, but who he didn’t like.

So at one point during this conversation, my Spanish got a slight bit better all of a sudden, and I was actually able to convey complex thoughts moreso, and it was really kind of exciting. We talked to Ever for a bit about money and things. Got some comparisons.

I asked him if he worked 12 hour days at the restaurant, because that’s what Kevin, the Chinese guy, had told me, and he said that he did, but his job was easier than that of the cooks, because he could sit around but they had to stand practically the whole time. To us, though, as Americans, a 12 hour day is fucking insanity!! And so Ever asked us how much we would make, and I calculated that maybe a waiter or waitress who received $10 an hour would get 30 soles an hour. He said he got 13 soles a day at his job (although later he said he got 700 soles a month, so I’m a little confused about that… either he didn’t get 13 soles a day, was confused, or gets some money through other means). But then I tried to explain to him the difference between cost of living, and how a bottle of water here in Peru costs like 1 sol but it would cost 4.5 soles in the United States… or how a meal would cost 5 soles here but 28 to 30 soles in the United States.

He asked us how much rent was, and Mihae calculated that hers was 2,010 soles ($670 USD) a month. Mine was 1,575 soles ($525 USD). He said that rent in the area of Trujillo was about 120 soles ($40 USD). The difference is really quite insane, so the wage difference is also kind of like… oh well.

He mentioned that although that’s the cost of rent just about, that he doesn’t pay for rent because he’s house-sitting someone’s house, because the person he house-sits for is a rich teacher who works most of the time in Lima and comes out about once a year to Trujillo for two months. He just has to watch the house and he gets to live there for free, watching television and enjoying a nice kitchen, apparently. He said he knew the family he was house-sitting for because he used to be an office helper for them.

Ever told us before that he wants to go to school for finance and administration, but I didn’t really know til today that it meant to be a banker, essentially. I asked him how much schooling cost, and he said it was expensive. He said the matriculation fees were $400 USD, and then each subsequent month had a payment of $400 USD tuition per month. Pretty fucking expensive, and really, unbelievable, although it was pretty clearly stated by Ever. I said essentially, “Well, then can’t most people not afford college?” and Ever said, “Yes, some can’t, but I can.” And it turned out that the reason that he can is because he’s from La Selva, or the Jungle area (Peru has three areas — the Jungle area, la Selva, the Mountain area – la Sierra, and the Coastal area — la Costa… and where people are from is very much engrained into the lives of people here) and his father works selling wood to people… and that his father earns $800 USD every fifteen days or so driving from the Jungle region to the Coastal region, selling wood to people. FUCKING INSANE.

A lot of people here apparently calculate things in USD or accept USD because they think that it’s more reliable than their own currency in a way, so pretty much everyone knows the conversion rate from Peruvian soles to USD, which is super interesting.

At one point, and I don’t know why, Ever starts asking if we have an “enamorado”. I didn’t know that word and thought it was like, a verb, that meant, “to be in love,” or something. Turned out it meant “boyfriend,” and I only found that out after I used the other word for boyfriend, which is “novio,” and Ever said they were the same thing. So, I don’t know why he started writing this down in my notepad, but he wrote things down in my notepad like this:

Viviana Tu Tienes Enamorado?
R: No

Minjey Tu Tienes Enamorado?
R: Si

Como Se Llama?
R: David Martin

Cuantos Anos Tiene?
R: 27 anos

And below it, he had scrawled, “Recuerdos De Ever,” meaning, “Memories of Ever”… HAHAHA. What a funny kid. While he was writing it down, I kept asking him why he was writing it down, but he never really answered… but I assume because of the “recuerdos” that it’s because he wants us to have a memory of him in written form or something. No freaking clue. I can respect that, though. I like keeping every fucking scrap of paper, after all, for memory’s sake.

So then it got to us asking him if he had a girlfriend, to which he responded, yes, but that she was “muy mala,” meaning, “very bad.” We asked him why. He slapped his own face and said that she did that to him. We asked why. He said he didn’t know. But then later said because of “mensajes,” aka “messages.” What did that mean? He showed us his cell phone and showed us text messages from other girls, and essentially said that his girlfriend would hit him because of that. I pulled a word out of my ass, surprisingly, and it proved rather useful: “celosa” to mean “jealous.” And he said that was exactly what his girlfriend was.

I asked him how long they’d been together, and he said four months. She is older than him, at 18 years old. I asked him if he had a photo of her, and he said no, and then I asked if she was pretty, and he kinda said she was OK. And I was like, “But you should like your girlfriend, shouldn’t you?” or something like that, and he just said that she was really bad. So I made a motion with my hands of separating and said, “Then you should…” [separate]. Lol.

So at this point we were thinking of getting ready to leave because Ever started writing some things and it was like, “ERRRR?” Something he wrote:

“Que linda hacido estan juntos en una momenta de amistad juntos en una mesa de un restaurante.”
(“How beautiful they were sitting together in the moment of friendship at one table of the restaurant.”)

What a cornball, right? But there’s more.

“La noche contemplo lo luna hermoza en un frio tan tensa que hay en el paid de Peru como quiesa acompanante todo el tiempo pardonde ?? y lo que piensar pero solo se y voy a extranate”

All this, to me, seemed like a bunch of gibberish, so I wrote, “No entiendo,” or, “I don’t understand,” on the next page. To which he responded:

“No importa pero practicalo cuando vas muy lejos adonde yo no te puedo ver se que vaya o extranarte mucho Viviana te extrano mucha quisiera ir contigo.”
(“It doesn’t matter, but ?? when you go very far away where I cannot see you and you go, I will miss you very much, Viviana, I miss you very much, I wish to go with you.”)

And below, he drew some weird picture I don’t understand and wrote, “Recuerdos,” or “Memories.”

Truly bizarre. Truly bizarre. But really, really interesting. When we came back and relayed the story to Jean-Claire and Jasmine, Jean-Claire said that people like Bee and Liz say that people in Peru make friendships very quickly and it’s not SUPER unusual for people to say things so extreme as this upon not knowing someone for very long at all. Very interesting.

Oh yeah, though. Before we left the restaurant, the cooks really wanted to take photos with us, so we took some, and took some with Ever, too. And then they wanted besos before we left, but I wouldn’t give them any. Mihae gave them some, though. WEE!

trujillo, peru, day nine.

I’m listening to… Stars’ “Midnight Coward”, Tilly And The Wall’s “Cacaphony”, Rogue Wave’s “Chicago x 12″, Jenny Lewis’ “Barking At The Moon”.

Okay, going to try and update my journal for once!! I haven’t had time to update it a great amount, unfortunately.

Got up at like 10:15am this morning despite going to bed at like 3:00am the previous night (well, I guess that’s not bad) because everyone in the house is really loud and there’s always sun shining in through the window, and hell, with such a bustling house, it’s just really, really difficult to sleep most of the time. ~__~

Anyway, got up, sat around, and did some Redefine work. Was going to go eat lunch with Lizette and Veronica but decided to stay in and finish some more Redefine stuff. Stayed up til pretty late last night editing some articles just because I haven’t updated the site in so long. Got a buncha stuff done, and have to put up a Sunn O))) article tomorrow… or the day after… so that’ll be good. As long as I get it done before going to Cusco, really.

Anyway. Headed over to the SKIP office with Elliot around 2:00pm and was really hungry because all I really ate for breakfast was some jam and some crackers, haha. Totally forgot about that whole eating thing because I was so much in the zone with editing and writing articles. Oops? Giving directions to get to the SKIP office when it is Elliot and I is always kind of hilarious, because we don’t really know what say. I learned what to say today, actually, but this is my last opportunity anyway, so it really doesn’t matter. Well, actually, it may come in handy on Thursday when it is possibly Elliot and I again.

ANYWAY. We get to the SKIP office and Elliot like, talks to Francesca, who is supposed to go to class with him (and Jasmine is as well), but then disappears before she can follow him, which is SUPER BIZARRE and kind of super rude. So Fran and Jasmine (the new girl) head home and Jean-Claire and I hang around reading. But first, we look for easy-to-read English-Spanish books that we can teach the first graders with, because it’s SUPER hard to teach first graders English. They just don’t get it. The difference from first to second grade is absolutely humongous.

So we finish picking out books, and I see this one AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING illustrated children’s book which I’ll have to write about on Redefine later, because the graphics were just AWESOME. After that, we sit down on these prison benches, and Jean-Claire does research on the 7 week South America trip she’s going to take while I’m reading “The Old Man & The Sea” in Spanish… the book in one hand and a dictionary in another hand. Actually, it’s an easier read than I thought it would be. So it is a welcome challenge. As of tonight, I am about… 1/8th into the book. Not too shabby. But I’m not sure that I’ll be able to finish it by the time I leave Thursday evening, which is actually kind of sad. ~__~

We finally go to class around 4:00pm, while stopping to get myself some crackers on the way. Only one child shows up, just like last week. The first graders are fickle for who knows what reason. We (and by we, I mean Jean-Claire) teach her colors for half a minute using this poster that she made, but the first graders are shy and this girl is not particularly responsive, and her mom is waiting around the whole time trying to see if other kids will show up (because if not, the class will get canceled). No additional kids do show up, so the class gets canceled. How sad. That little girl and her sister are SUPER DUPER cute. And very well-behaved. I probably just like her sister because her sister really liked me, though.

So we go home after like 20 minutes and get to the house fairly early. Lots of reading gets done and lots of chilling. Then once Mihae wakes up and exchanges money, I ask her if she wants to go eat, and she suggests Chifa, so we go to eat Chifa. Jasmine and Elliot come along (and aren’t particularly excited, I think, because a meal at this place is slightly more expensive than a meal at other places… like twice as expensive, meaning, like, 10 soles instead of 5 soles per person, which is like, $3.33 USD instead of $1.66 USD), and the experience is ridiculous and fun.

We get there, and Eber, Ever, is sitting down at one of the tables and greets us with besos. We sit down, chat with him for half an awkward sec about what we should order, and then order three things, rice, and water to split amongst the three of us. He brings out some lemonade for us for free, which I’m not sure why even though we were saying WATER!!!! I don’t know if he gave it to us for free because he felt bad for messing up and bringing us lemonade, or if he was trying to be nice by bringing us lemonade. Hah. He served us, and then left.

At one point, he ran out of the restaurant, and then ran back in…

And before he left, the music that was being played was modern traditional kumbia.

When he came back, the volume started blasting (he MUST have turned it up) and freaking CELINE DION came on!! WITH THE FREAKING TITANIC SONG!! And we learned from last time that Titanic is Ever’s favorite movie!! I’m pretty convinced he actually ran out and bought the CD, but I don’t know if that’s true or not. It was just so damn coincidental!

Okay, so we start giggling at the fact that freaking Titanic soundtrack just came on, and the subsequent songs are equally corny, if not moreso, including Ryan Adams’ “Everything I Do.” Not sure WHY this music came on. WTF. But it was super enjoyable, although not necessarily in a good way. A Chinese restaurant blasting ’90s American power ballads? I don’t know, man. I just don’t know. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING EVER!!!

Jasmine sees him peeking over at our table a few times and thinks that he wants to stop and chat with us but is intimidated by the presence of Jasmine and Elliot. Haha. ~__~

So at one point, Ever has his keys and is heading towards the main door of the restaurant when I call him over and ask him where Lili, the owner is. He says she’s in Cajamarca visiting her husband. And then some more small talk. And then he leaves, kind of awkwardly. He doesn’t go back towards the door, although that’s where he was going in the first place. Interesting.

As soon as he leaves, Jasmine says, “Watch, he’s going to turn down the music and come back.”

Two seconds later, the music gets turned down.

We laugh hysterically.

Eber doesn’t come back, but still, it’s hilarious. The music is ridiculous!!! Mihae manages to know freaking every song, though, because evidently, she used to be SUPER DUPER into ’90s power ballads. WOO!!

After we paid really super awkwardly, I asked Eber, “Quieres salir manana?” because we had said the previous week that we would go out on Tuesday. He said that he had to work, and that we should hang out next time, but I told him we were leaving on Thursday, so he said he was free tomorrow from 4:00pm to 6:30pm. I don’t get off volunteering until 5:30pm, though, so we decided that we’d meet at the restaurant right after.

On the way back, Jasmine and Mihae were having quite the girly freaking giggles, as Jasmine was now a convert who thinks Eber is a hottie pie. Jasmine is also 18, so she is actually around his age and it would actually work. Haha. Awesomeness. Jasmine thought it was soooo funny that we just “asked him out” but it’s not like a date really! We had said we would hang out before! We’re buddies now!! It’s not like he’s a random dude we’re picking up!

Anyways, once we came back, Mihae strummed some songs on the guitar, and then a bunch of us watched some horrible, horrible DVDs of Jean-Claire’s and Lizette’s, such as “Chinitos De Los Andes” (The Chinese From The Andes) which are like Peruvian music videos. Amazingly terrible stuff.

trujillo, peru, day seven.

Thursday morning begins with a roach greeting me hello on the sidewalk outside our house.

Mihae and I taking a combi (H-Corazon) to Huanchaco. People stand up and give us their seats every step of the way. Huanchaco is uber white surfer style action, with very few Peruvians, super clean beaches, surfing, hotels… it’s not really like a westernized beach either, though, but it’s definitely not what Peruvians are into. Most of the people there were quite obviously foreigners, and it is just a few strips of shit that seems custom-tailored for foreigners who like surfing. I mean, when the people in the house want to go out, they go to Huanchaco. Because they’re foreigners.

It is kinda cool that their are mountains in the background, I guess, but we wander around a bit and Huanchaco to me is just like any other surf town. Whatever, whichever. We play in the waves briefly. Zzz.

We see a playground and play on it for a while. Actually, it’s pretty amusing because it’s two playgrounds side-by-side: one brightly-painted, brand new one, and one old crappy rusty one. We obviously played on the new one. The other one was fenced up, anyway. Found out I can still do the monkey bars. Yay?

Then we saw some small shops selling various souvenir goods.

Then we found crab man.

We had lots of fun with crab man. Hah.

Then we walked a bit to a main rode and took another combi to Chan Chan, with random taxis and combis trying to stop for us a million times to pick us up to take us. I got to sit in the front seat of the combi, next to the driver. Here’s the view. It was pretty fun. Lots of religious memorabilia, as you will see.

When we got to Chan Chan, we were dropped off at the entrance to the archeological site, but what we really wanted — or thought we wanted — was to go to the museum first. So we walked a bit to the museum, being confused by all these weird plants along the way. It was like a blend of thorny plant with regular plant, and it was SUPER weird! I wish I had taken a picture of it :{

I did take a picture of this plant, which is related. It’s SOO thorny. Toothpick!

The walk to the museum was not that long and the museum turned out to be a pretty boring piece of work. Pretty pointless. I mean, it showed us the somewhat history of the Moche (Huacas Del Sol Y De La Luna) and the Chimu (Chan Chan) people, and how they went from hunter-gathering to agrarian, but blahblah, if anyone didn’t know ANYTHING about archaeology it MIGHT be just BARELY interesting, but if you know anything at all, it’s super uninteresting. So the museum was somewhat a waste of time, but they gave us a discounted student discount into Chan Chan at least, because they didn’t have change for a $50 bill!!! They only had one $20 bill and one $50 bill for change haha. Fucking ridiculous. This is in fact a HUGE recurring problem in Peru — people never having change for your godamn shit!!!! That and… the 5 centimos and 1 centimo coins are ABSOLUTELY useless and sometimes you will give them to people and they will just refuse it or will just give them back to you. That’s how worthless it is. These poor people will turn down these 5 and 1 cent coins because they are THAT terrible.

Then we took a taxi — though we should have walked — from the museum to the actual archeological site. 5 soles!!!! for a 5 minute taxi ride!! Granted that’s only $1.66 USD amongst two people, but in Peruvian dollars it’s ridiculous and TOTALLY tourist prices. But that’s obvious, I guess. We should have just walked. Woulda been like a 25 minute walk, honestly.

Little half-assed display in the museum.

So. Once we get to Chan Chan, we find out it’s 25 Peruvian soles to get a English-speaking tour guide, even though the dude at the museum had told us that the money we paid for the ticket included a guide. I asked multiple times this question, too! Liar! Trying to pull one over on *US*!?!! Anyway. We didn’t want to split 25 soles amongst the two of us, so we sat around a while trying to wait for other people to create an English-speaking group. Unfortunately, it was Semana Santa (Holy Week), so most of the tourists there were actually Peruvian and not foreigners. There was one other couple of foreigners, and I asked them if they wanted to split, and the chick just matter-of-factly said, “No thanks.” Haha. They were German, methinks. Our eventual guide also commented on the fact that they said no and joked that it was because they were German. Rofls.

Finally, after talking to the guide for quite a while, he offered us the tour for 20 soles, so we said okay. It’s about $3.33 USD. Totally, absolutely worth it. Everyone had told us that Chan Chan would be boring, but they are total newbs. It was VERY VERY interesting, and it would have been not at all interesting had we been without a guide.

The main temple. There would be an altar in that main section there, but it is no longer. So just like Huacas de Moche, which had been renamed by foreigners to Huacas Del Sol Y De La Luna for marketing purposes, this palace complex was changed from something created in honor of the moon to Chan Chan, something that honors the sun. Pretty fucking bizarre, considering all of the symbolism described by the guide pertained to the moon. There would be, for example, lots of sets of objects in 3′s and 4′s, representing the cycles of the moon or something. I don’t know details.

Chan Chan’s complex houses 9 different little mini-palaces, and the one we saw was the 8th to be created. The other 8 have either not been dug up at all or dug up slightly. This is since the place was discovered since like, 1940!! It’s really fucking expensive to get funding for archeological excavations, so it is really a long time coming in Peru. There’s a LOT more to be found still. Kings would essentially build a whole palace just for themselves, and when they died, some of the king’s entertainers, servants, wives, and concubines would be placed in the graves next to him, and then the entire palace would be closed up and they would move over to another complex, create another new mini-palace, and rinse and repeat this cycle of death. SO CRAZY. SO INTERESTING.

In these graves where the kings and their men would be buried, there were some riches buried as well, but the Spanish took them all when they came. They even uprooted the bodies of the kings (but did not uproot the bodies of the others), purportedly because the kings probably had some riches on their bodies.

Lots of symbolism in the construction of the palace, as previously mentioned. In the background, what is supposed to be male and female squirrels, with 3 and 4 tail flaps, respectively, that correspond with the moon. The horizontal lines are meant to be water.

http://hellomynameisvee.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php
Adorning the walls, these are representative of fishing nets.

The fish here are going up and down on rising and falling water, or currents. Oceans are controlled by not the sun, but the moon.

The inside of Chan Chan is a huge labyrinth. These birds, no matter where you are, always point to the exit of the complex. When the Incans first arrived in Chan Chan, they’d gotten lost because it was such a labyrinth, and they were killed by the Chimu. When they came later, though, with supposedly 50,000 soldiers, the Chimu fell to them.

Oasis thing inside the complex and rises and falls according to the rain water. Awesome. It was so beautiful and so unexpected in the middle of this desert area. And amazingly, so healthy despite the fact that it’s probably fairly stagnant.

Some of the non-dug-up parts of Chan Chan that just look like mounds of dirt, really. But they are much more.

After Chan Chan, we took the combi back again and ate at a random ass restaurant that was close to across the street from our house. Twas a little strange and scary initially. A lot of Peruvian restaurants like to show a menu on their door that has all types of items on it, but you find out once you go inside that they only have four or five of the things on the menu for that particular day. Only the “specials” of the day.

We got a 4.50 sol meal, which included chicken soup with chicken feet still in it (above), a chicken plate with rice and salad, and fresh-squeezed juice. It was a scary place, but the food turned out to be decent. And I haven’t gotten sick yet in Peru, so all is well! Lots of people have, but luckily, I haven’t! They eat a SHITLOAD of chicken in Peru.

After that, we returned to the house, I talked on the phone a bit, and packed and got ready to go to Cajamarca that evening with the other folks in the house. Essentially, we had been hoping to go to Chachapoyas where there’s this really dope ass ruin called Quelap, but it was much further and much harder to get to, so we didn’t go. Oh well. :[ I should like to go see the ruins at Quelap sometime, though. Saw some photos of the place on Lourdes’ computer, and it just looked fucking AMAZING.

Well, the bus to Cajamarca was super-duper freaking atrocious when we finally got on it at about 10:00pm that evening. Super atrocious. I was sitting next to Elliot, and we were towards the back, where it smelled like freaking like shit, chemical toilets, and piss the entire time. I didn’t know the windows opened, or I would have done that. Massive failure.

adventures of fun in a “chifa” restaurant in peru.

(Left to right: Lili, the Chinese restaurant owner – Ever, the Chinese restaurant waiter – me – Mihae)

A “chifa” is a “Chinese restaurant” in Peru, and all of them are called that.

Mihae and I went to a chifa tonight at like, 8:00pm, and didn’t make it back til about midnight tonight hahahahaha after the restaurant closed.

What were we doing?

Well, for starters, when we first entered, the lady at the restaurant and her two workers were, I guess, muttering stuff to one another about how I was Chinese but they were unsure of what ethnicity Mihae was. The owner lady is Cantonese but speaks Mandarin, as they all do, and was very excited to converse with me about all sorts of crap. Then they had a waiter there who was super good-looking, and I told the owner that, but I told her that in a way that was kind of like, the way a mom would say someone’s son is good-looking.

Of course, she called him over and told him that we thought he was good-looking, so he became really bashful and shy, haha. And then he would serve us food with his head down and not looking at us, even though he was our primary waiter. Actually, initially, the lady told him that she would serve our table, but then it looked like he wanted to, or something, so she was like, “Okay, okay, you can do it.” It was pretty amusing watching them communicate because she cannot speak Spanish and he cannot speak Chinese and neither of them can speak any other shared language, so it’s a lot of charades, basically.

The food was actually pretty good. We had been told by a couple people at the house that that particular restaurant was “expensive” — relatively speaking — but the best-tasting. It was pretty decent. I mean, the main dish was nothing like anything I’ve ever eaten in terms of Chinese food, but the wonton soup had a lot of chicken and was pretty “normal”, and the main dish tasted good even despite the fact that it tasted like nothing I’ve eaten. Haha.

After we were done eating, he came over and asked me what my name was, and I told him my name, and then asked for his, and it was Ever (or, in Spanish, ee-ber). I told him to write down his name cause I couldn’t quite understand it, and then he told Mihae and I to write down our names in English and in Chinese. We did so.

Later, we got to the question of: “How old are you, Ever?”

He wrote down on a notepad.

17!!!!!!!!!!!!

We laughed to death.

And then he asked us our ages, and we told him our ages — 25 and 24. It was quite comical.

Later, when he told me that I didn’t look like I was 25, he immediately said, “Comes muchas verduras (Do you eat many vegetables?)?” to which I said yes, and he said that Chinese people ate a lot of vegetables, as though that were THE reason for their looking young. Haha. Amusing.

He asked me for my phone number, and I said I didn’t have a number here, but he wanted my number in the States anyway, so I gave it to him, HAHA. Then got his phone number. We’re going to hit him up to play some pool later. Or billiards, they call it here.

I’ll finish this up later, but let’s just say that he stopped working briefly thereafter and we talked to him and the owner (switching turns, really) for about three hours, with me speaking to Ever in my limited, broken-ass Spanish (there was lots of drawing) and me speaking to the owner lady who had broken ass Spanish and not perfect Mandarin. And then there was translating between Mihae and Ever with my broken ass Spanish and translating between Mihae and the owner lady with my broken ass Chinese. So it was good times, all around, needless to say. Good times, although really painful at times, too, since I was the primary translator in this fooking mess. ~__~

At one point, there was also the cook talking to us, who we had run into a few days prior to that when we tried to go eat there. When we’d gone there a few days ago, it was like 11:30am and we were trying to eat there… and I tried talking to the cook guy in Spanish, and he didn’t understand, and then English, and he didn’t understand, and then Chinese, but by then I was shouting after him and he had stopped listening and was just waving, “Wait, hold on!” and trying to grab someone else, even though I was speaking Chinese to him. Haha. But he recognized us today, and thought it was weird that we were staying in Trujillo for so long since there’s shit to do here.

So, in my conversation with the lady, Lili, I learned:
* She has another restaurant which is larger and in a different city, and her (only) son (since she’s from China) works there.
* Her only son has two children and that the children always speak Spanish, although they speak to her in Chinese when they want her to buy them something.
* Their restaurant business is suffering as a result of the poor economy, and that many Peruvians are losing their jobs, too… and that she doesn’t take a taxi home because of the loss of money.
* A neighboring Chinese lady who also owned a restaurant (which all the people in the house said was absolutely DISGUSTING) came over and poked her head in, wondering why the restaurant we were at had decent business and the restaurant they owned didn’t have a single person.
* They purchase their supplies for their restaurant all the way in Lima, eight hours away, because there are no Chinese restaurant suppliers closer than that.

In my conversation with Ever, I learned:
* He isn’t interested in anything in Peru, not even Machu Picchu or the mountains or anything, and he’s only interested in the discotecas (or night clubs).
* He says the reason he’s not interested in Peruvian stuff is because, to him, a beer in Peru is a beer in Peru, but a beer in another country might taste the same or similar, but it’s a different beer in a different country, so it’s automatically more interesting.
* Chileans killed a lot of Peruvians over a dispute about the Peruvian flag… twenty-five years ago, he said. And that the Chileans wanted to use the Peruvian flag’s colors and the Peruvians didn’t want it, and so they fought. I don’t think he meant 25 years ago. Maybe 1925. But either way, I can’t find any information about that anyway, so I don’t know for sure that I heard right, even though it was pretty clearly stated by him, with drawings, even, of Peru’s flag. Haha. We’ve been told there’s a lot of disputes between Chile and Peru, but yeah… he compared the warring of Chile and Peru to the warring between Japan and China or the United States and Iran. Interesting.
* He thinks Chinese women are beautiful. HAHA. He totally smooth-talked a few times which was hilarious.
* He likes to play basketball, volleyball, and soccer.
* He finished high school at 15 and is basically just waiting until he has the money to apply to take a test that will get him into college. He’s going to take the test next year, I think, and then study Administration & Finance.

MORE LATER.

aahhh! mini ants!

There’s all these mini ants around, all over everything, and a lot of times, they’re just hanging out by themselves and there’s not a trail of them or anything, which makes it super hard to spot them. It’s starting to make me feel like, “OMG THERE’S AN ANT ON ME!” when I’m sleeping, regardless of whether or not there might be. And anyway, those ants are so small I probably wouldn’t be able to feel them anyway T__T

When I first got here, for the first two nights, I just passed out and didn’t get any bug bites at all. Two nights ago, I got 3, and last night I must’ve gotten another 4. It’s going up in number! They know I’m here! AAAHHHHH! HAILP!

trujillo, peru, day four.

Don’t know what happened. But I do know that we went to the giant supermarket, Tottus, which was HUGE. Like, bigger than a Safeway or QFC we’d go to here. Haha. Freakish. There’s also a fucking MALL in Trujillo, and apparently, the prices are not too far off from prices here. FREAKISH!

At some point, Elliot, Jean-Claire, Mihae, and I went to the roof of the Trujillo house and watched the sun set. Nice!

Edited a bunch of settings. Wee!!

trujillo, peru, day three.

Today we went to the Huacas Del Sol Y La Luna.

The taxi driver who drove us here charged us a lot of money but he had a nice car. He was also pretty well off. He said one of his sons, around my age, was some kind of medical professional, and that he was a part-time gym teacher on the weekends. I’d believe it, as his car was really freaking nice!

The Moche civilization was around before Christ, and they had these pyramids they left behind. Our tour guide, who was cool, told us that the place wasn’t ACTUALLY called Huacas Del Sol Y La Luna (Temples of the Sun and the Moon) by the local people. The local people called it Huacas de Moche, but… the whities renamed it to the Temples of the Sun and the Moon as a marketing ploy.

They sacrificed people here.

Original art and paint. This place wasn’t discovered until the 1980s or something, and this one that is excavated so far is the Temple of the Moon, and the larger Temple of the Sun has yet to be excavated. The Temple of the Sun is actually still on government land, which is fucked! Someday they’ll excavate it. The archaeologists here are very adamant about everything being all original, so instead of restoring things, they spray chemicals on the existing things to try and keep them in as pristine condition as possible. Interesting.

Originals. Our tour guide also told us Obama had just bought one of these hairless Peruvian dogs and named it Machu Picchu. Not sure if that is actually true or not. Again, fuck, Mihae had pictures we took with these hairless Peruvian dogs, but as her camera is lost, so are those photos. UGH. SO ANNOYING. SHE SURE HAD A LOTTA GOOD PICS. Mostly all of the good “forced” pics were hers. Annoying.

A graph of the civilizations of Peru.

Temple of the Sun.

Afterwards, we ate at some restaurant and ate some yummy arroz con mariscos. Or at least I THINK that’s what we ate. Haha. Who knows wtf we did afterwards.

I think perhaps this night was a night we had a potluck at the house. The stove at the house has to be manually lit once you turn on the gas. I’m scared of fire, so it was kinda terrifying. Evidently, this is commonplace in Peru. :X I imagine it’s pretty dangerous.

Anyway, I didn’t cook much, just some freaking tomatoes stir-fried with eggs. There were some candied bananas from Fran, this really good chicken thing by Lourdes, salad from Jean-Claire, and some others.

i’m a dumbass.

I found my camera. I had put it in the side pocket of my pack… which was a really dumb idea. But luckily, I found it! Now I’m wondering how I’ve spent $150 here already considering everything is dirt cheap But that’s how money goes, I guess!