sometimes my thoughts make a hell of a lot more sense in my head...

Okay, so aside from finally changing my facebook to Spanish, other big things have been happening in my life. Well not really big, but I did find another class to replace silly ecology (which, it turns out is actually a 300 level class here and not 100 level with a bunch of crazy prerequisites that I didn’t take…good thing they didn’t tell us any of that…and thank goodness I got out) which is Science, humanism, the Environment, and the Sustainability of life.

So Thursday night I went out with what ended up just being Chatham and Chris, oh what bonding time. We had a nice little heart to heart, awkwardly watched the male dance crew that came to the club for ladies night, and really obnoxiously and unsuccessfully tried to push girls on Chatham. Pretty funny. Friday night a bunch of us went out with Tracy, but then some of us left for ladies’ night at FoFo, and Maria and I made some friends. Mostly because we wanted to sit down and the only table was with these two lovely gentlemen. We chatted and bid them ado and then ran into them again later and Maria, Tara and I decided to go with them to dance at Mira Flores. Now just about the second we got there and started dancing a drag queen and a midget chose couples to be in a dancing contest. Maria ended up with Alex (who, by the way, is about 8 inches shorter than Maria…) and Tara and I with the other gentleman. Tara ran away because she didn’t want to be in the competition, and by the way, it’s awkward to have a couple made up of three people. When Maria and Alex introduced themselves during the contest they said they had been married for two years and had met at FoFo (a local bar). They lost pretty quickly. I, on the other hand, although know nothing about dancing technique and virtually nothing about Latin Dancing, cannot stand losing. So I milked everything for all it was worth. I yelled “Yeah Jersey!”, translated things from Spanish into English, and flailed my body wildly in order to garner applause. Somehow this got my partner and I into the final two couples. The other couple consisted of a boyfriend and girlfriend in their sixties. At the end, I had to be Rose from Titanic standing on the bow of the boat with the wind in my hair, and my partner, not fluent in English, had to say endearing things to me in English. He said things such as, “You will be marry me?” And “You are beautiful”. And then Maria and me and Maria’s partner were given free re-entrances to Mira Flores (worth $4!!).

Saturday a group of us went to San Jose to see the DeVinci exhibit which was MAD COOL and took about 4 hours to go through. Because DeVinci was absolutely brilliant. How does anyone use both sides of their brain that flawlessly? Fun facts that I learned: 1. It’s really awkward when you’re having an in depth conversation with your friends about one of DeVinci’s anatomy sketches that depicts two people having sex and saying how demeaning it is to women because all of the male’s internal parts are drawn and just the uterus of the female is there. What a statement that makes. And then where are their legs? And you’re pointing at the picture and a museum worker comes up to you while you’re doing this and at no other time during your four hour stay and tells you if you have any questions at all or want anything described or explained he’d be glad to help you… 2. DeVinci once worked extremely hard on building a statue of a horse and then in the middle of it the metal he was using had to be melted and used to make cannons. Sure shows our world’s priorities of art vs. war 3. Some child threw rocks at the Mona Lisa when he went to see it and permanently damaged it. Also, someone stole the Mona Lisa and thought they could get away with trying to sell it to another museum years later without either them or the museum getting into trouble…guess what? Not true. 3. it is very mysterious as to whether DeVinci had the complete first design for the bicycle; he designed a parachute that, when tested, functioned years later. He designed a tank. He designed this ridiculous thing you attach in front of horses pulling a carriage that’s a spinning blade spiral that will chop up anyone coming towards you from that end. It will also chop up your horses if they make the slightest wrong move, so maybe more trouble than it’s worth… 4. I want to make a tiny work of art that people will say it’s crazy for anyone to be able to buy it for $10,000 and that it’s worth something more like $200,000 or the price of over 133 of Elissa’s old mini vans.

Then, Ana and I went to Tranquilo Backpackers hostel http://www.tranquilobackpackers.com/contents_en/location.html (getting lost several times of course, typical of Ana and me. Never let us go anywhere alone, even with a map). The hostel is super duper cool and funky with some pretty sick people. It ended up being Ana, Chatham, Stacy, Maria, Molly, and me at the hostel that night and we ate dinner and befriended a German guy with a British/Australian accent and dreads named Dominic and some guy who made the sickest jewelry and a guy from Berkeley who stopped going to the University of Montana and built a house and it was pretty sweet.

Then Sunday we walked around, bought sliced mango for a dollar, 6 avocados for a dollar, and some lunch. And we met some friends who were high school students making a movie for English class and we had to speak English for the movie and Spanish to them (first time that’s ever happened). And they really liked us and took pictures with us and got our facebook info (we’re all now friends and we’re in half their profile pictures J). Also, I have a new admirer. One of them taught me how to say that he had a crush on me and said how beautiful my hair was and my eyes…the cutest things ever. He was pretty cute too…if only he was older jaja. And then we went to see Carmen in El Teatro Nacional with a bunch of other people from our program. And we had ten dollar, pretty awful seats, especially because it was in Italian with Spanish subtitles and most of us couldn’t even see the subtitles. But then in intermission Ivana worked her magic with the super cute usher and he found almost all of us seats really close-Julia and I were main floor like 10^th row for the second half!! And the show was about three hours long, and the acting and singing was wonderful, but I didn’t really love the plot. It’s dumb that people think being with someone is more important than life and that Carmen was so arrogant and prissy and that people were madly and passionately in love when they didn’t even know each other. The word “love” is taken entirely too lightly. Anyway, enough of my typical ranting.

Last night I had another several hour life chat with Marco. It’s so nice to have a good friend living in my house! I think my host mom is scared something might happen between us or something, but that’s not going to happen, and I hope she knows I respect her too much to do that…anyway, that’s a whole nother can of worms along with some other drama here that makes me realize that no family is perfect or without problems but at the same time a few problems don’t make a family bad. Actually, they’re often still wonderful.

Today I ran this RIDICULOUS hill with Marco (we were supposed to meet up with Tara and Chris but it ended up being a huge miscommunication) and then beat him at the end-chicka yeah I love those days, but then I’ve been pretty sore all day, and I’m running again tomorrow. Oh, also, I went to $3 yoga class at this gym Friday and it was pretty good. It was in Spanish, so thank God I know yoga…but a lot of people didn’t know what they were doing. But I corrected some postures and the teacher is super flexible and pretty cool and I’ll definitely be going back along with trying another yoga class at the Palacio de Deportes here. I also had my geosciences class today-I still am really awkward and friendless in that class and it’s going to be kind of hard because it reminds me of a 300 level environmental science class except it’s in Spanish and I don’t know so many of the words he’s using (different words for elements and minerals in Spanish and gahhh) but I’m excited to have a class that will intellectually challenge me and help me out a lot with improving my Spanish. And the professor is super understanding. Then Introduction to Tridemension was missing the beautiful boy today but I made some friends, thank goodness for one of them being so super friendly! and they told me he doesn’t ever do work…might have been why he asked to be in my group, because no one wanted him in their’s…oh well, my dream was good while it lasted. But it’s going to be kind of hard and a lot of work at home. It’s kind of like architecture and right now we’re building the simplest thing we’re going to build and it’s hard! It’s a cube made up of 37 exact 15 cm x 15 cm perfectly cut planes each separated by 3 mm and the whole thing is made out of cardboard. And I’m using an exacto knife type thing with other random tools I’ve never seen before, and trust me, it’s so much harder to be exact and neat than it sounds! And the end product won’t be as pretty as ceramics, but I’m hoping I’ll learn something in it…Anyway, I should probably do the Spanish homework due tomorrow…