I made a StumbleUpon account yesterday. Today I was graced with this picture.
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| here |
Thanks a lot, National Geographic. Now I want a baby Asian elephant.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Once Upon a Time
What do you know about yourself?
What are your stories?
The ones you tell yourself,
and the ones told by others.
All of us begin somewhere.
Though I suppose the truth is that we begin more than once;
we begin many times.
Over and over,
we start our own tales,
compose our own stories,
whether our lives are short or long.
Until at last all our beginnings come down to just one end,
and the tale of who we are is done.
This is one of my all-time favorite books. I've read it a billion times. It was one of two books I brought with me on this trip. They told us that maybe we should bring a comfort food to have a taste of home every once in a while; I brought this book. I fell in love with it the first time I read that first paragraph. I was reading it at the beach last week and have been thinking about it lately. I've never read that paragraph and then really thought about it for myself, but this time I did.
What do I know about myself?
What are my stories?
What stories do I tell myself about myself?
What stories do I allow others to tell to me? About me?
What times in my life have I decided to start over?
How is my tale coming along?
If my beginnings were to come to an end today,
would I be happy with that end?
Sometimes it's hard for me to think about good qualities I have, but I've been trying to do that since I read this last week at the beach. I also read a quote last week that said,
"Always be a first-rate version of yourself
instead of a second-rate version of somebody else,"
(Judy Garland)
and decided to make that my goal. Thinking about these questions have helped me do that, I think. I have still a ways to go before I'll be at the desired end for my beginnings, but I like the way my tale is coming along so far.
How about you? Instead of just reading this and moving on, try reading it and applying it to you. Maybe you'll still be thinking about it a week from now like I am.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Monday: Papers papers.
School was hard today but not impossible to stay awake :) It was a little sad because today was our good teacher's last day... Tomorrow we start with the blind man. I'm going to die.
Adrienne was also super funny after school today. I was telling her about the Copo bus and asked if she wanted to go with us so we could show her how to save a bunch of money, and she said, "Well, if I'm going home on a different bus and there's a chance of me getting lost, I'm going to the bathroom first." ..... I guess you had to be there. Just know it was awesome :)
I can't remember if I've told you about the Copo bus... so last Sunday we had that pachanguita, remember? And when Emma and Cassyie came, they told us about a bus route that they found out that goes from our house to the school! They just found out about it because they were trying to figure out how to get to our house and their maid was like, "Oh, you didn't know? There's a stop right by our house that goes just where you want to go!" and it's the same bus they can take to school. So now we only have to take one bus to and from school instead of two! That saves me $1.20 per day! And it's nice because it always seems to come on time (about 6:30), picks us up closer to our house than the old bus, and just drops off a little further away from the school than the other bus. Plus there are always empty seats! Usually the other bus is suuuuuper full. Sometimes so full it doesn't even stop because there's no more standing room, and then we're late for school. VIVA COPO!
When we got home, Jill went to get a drink and I walked into our bedroom, looked out the window, and saw two giant machetes on the back patio table!!!! So we proceeded to make ninja masks out of black t-shirts and take a million pictures of us with the machetes :D It was so fun, and when Carmita saw us she got a huge kick out of it :) It was awesome!
After playing ninja for a while, I took a nap and it was impossible to wake up! I kept wanting to be asleep. I don't know if I've ever been this tired in my life.
Lunch was yummy! I have the ingredients written down... I'll try and post it when I get the recipe all typed up and everything. It was a bean soup with hamburger-type meat on the side and you eat it like a taco. Yum! I ate lunch with Ariana because Jill wasn't hungry, and boy, is that girl crazy. She begged for food but then she wouldn't eat it. Carmita finally lost her patience with her (Ari is one of the most un-disciplined girls on the planet) and spanked her, which at first made Ari cry and eat her lunch, but then she called Carmita a rude name (I couldn't understand it) and when Carmita god upset with her, she started laughing at her. Dang. If Ari were my child, I would say, "Oh, you're not hungry? Okay, you don't have to eat, but you won't get any food until the next meal unless it's leftovers from lunch." She totally needs to be more disciplined. She does not respect Carmita or her mother in the slightest.
After lunch I went to work on my papers. I took a longer nap than I planned, so i had less time than I planned for my papers, but oh well. One of them was due today, but all but two people thought it was due so she said we can turn it in tomorrow. A bunch of people from our group wanted to go to this cultural dance in the Centro tonight for FHE, but because Jill and I both have to finish our papers and therefore don't really have time for that, we decided as a group that we would have a short spiritual thought at our house and then whoever wanted to go to the dance would. That way people who can go can still go, and the people who can't go don't miss out on FHE. It worked out pretty well. Jill did the spiritual thought about how being on a study abroad is like being alive (being on a study abroad away from Heavenly Father) and that Heavenly Father will make our weaknesses strengths if we work hard and trust in him. it was a good lesson. We chit-chatted for a while, and then everyone left, some for the Centro and some for home. It was nice b/c we got to still participate and have a brief respite but still get some work done afterwards.
Yuck. It's 1:30 in the morning. Every time I work on this paper I either purposely distract myself or fall asleep. This is driving me crazy. I'm going to bed. I'll get up at 4:30 or something to finish. I'm done with one and only need about one more double-spaced page for the other. Not too shabby.
Well, off to bed. Exhausted.
Adrienne was also super funny after school today. I was telling her about the Copo bus and asked if she wanted to go with us so we could show her how to save a bunch of money, and she said, "Well, if I'm going home on a different bus and there's a chance of me getting lost, I'm going to the bathroom first." ..... I guess you had to be there. Just know it was awesome :)
I can't remember if I've told you about the Copo bus... so last Sunday we had that pachanguita, remember? And when Emma and Cassyie came, they told us about a bus route that they found out that goes from our house to the school! They just found out about it because they were trying to figure out how to get to our house and their maid was like, "Oh, you didn't know? There's a stop right by our house that goes just where you want to go!" and it's the same bus they can take to school. So now we only have to take one bus to and from school instead of two! That saves me $1.20 per day! And it's nice because it always seems to come on time (about 6:30), picks us up closer to our house than the old bus, and just drops off a little further away from the school than the other bus. Plus there are always empty seats! Usually the other bus is suuuuuper full. Sometimes so full it doesn't even stop because there's no more standing room, and then we're late for school. VIVA COPO!
When we got home, Jill went to get a drink and I walked into our bedroom, looked out the window, and saw two giant machetes on the back patio table!!!! So we proceeded to make ninja masks out of black t-shirts and take a million pictures of us with the machetes :D It was so fun, and when Carmita saw us she got a huge kick out of it :) It was awesome!
After playing ninja for a while, I took a nap and it was impossible to wake up! I kept wanting to be asleep. I don't know if I've ever been this tired in my life.
Lunch was yummy! I have the ingredients written down... I'll try and post it when I get the recipe all typed up and everything. It was a bean soup with hamburger-type meat on the side and you eat it like a taco. Yum! I ate lunch with Ariana because Jill wasn't hungry, and boy, is that girl crazy. She begged for food but then she wouldn't eat it. Carmita finally lost her patience with her (Ari is one of the most un-disciplined girls on the planet) and spanked her, which at first made Ari cry and eat her lunch, but then she called Carmita a rude name (I couldn't understand it) and when Carmita god upset with her, she started laughing at her. Dang. If Ari were my child, I would say, "Oh, you're not hungry? Okay, you don't have to eat, but you won't get any food until the next meal unless it's leftovers from lunch." She totally needs to be more disciplined. She does not respect Carmita or her mother in the slightest.
After lunch I went to work on my papers. I took a longer nap than I planned, so i had less time than I planned for my papers, but oh well. One of them was due today, but all but two people thought it was due so she said we can turn it in tomorrow. A bunch of people from our group wanted to go to this cultural dance in the Centro tonight for FHE, but because Jill and I both have to finish our papers and therefore don't really have time for that, we decided as a group that we would have a short spiritual thought at our house and then whoever wanted to go to the dance would. That way people who can go can still go, and the people who can't go don't miss out on FHE. It worked out pretty well. Jill did the spiritual thought about how being on a study abroad is like being alive (being on a study abroad away from Heavenly Father) and that Heavenly Father will make our weaknesses strengths if we work hard and trust in him. it was a good lesson. We chit-chatted for a while, and then everyone left, some for the Centro and some for home. It was nice b/c we got to still participate and have a brief respite but still get some work done afterwards.
Yuck. It's 1:30 in the morning. Every time I work on this paper I either purposely distract myself or fall asleep. This is driving me crazy. I'm going to bed. I'll get up at 4:30 or something to finish. I'm done with one and only need about one more double-spaced page for the other. Not too shabby.
Well, off to bed. Exhausted.
Dear Germany,
Thanks for visiting my blog! I like your pancakes and my husband speaks some of your language. :)
Love,
alisonmj
Love,
alisonmj
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Friday, May 27, 2011
Friday: Los Vampiros
Sorry, I know these posts are a long time coming :)
Wow. This morning, class was so hard. I was pretty much asleep the entire time! I always feel bad when I do that, but I tried so hard!
After school my sunburn was bothering me so I came home and put on my swim shorts and a t-shirt and sat in the pool while I listened to The Hiding Place on my computer. I don't know if it helped at all, but it sure felt great while I was in the water! It was the perfect temperature.
After sitting in the pool for a while, I took a nap :) It was really nice :) Jill and I were super hungry, and Carmita made this super yummy soup! It had a tomato-based broth and had squash and carrots and stuff in it, plus pork ribs. The ribs were pretty fatty, which was a little difficult, but overall I liked it! Because Carmita's father-in-law died on Sunday, she's been gone a lot during the week and we've been eating out a lot. I was thinking about it yesterday, though, and I've really missed her cooking. It's simpler and lighter than the food we've been eating, and I was really happy to get to eat her food today :) Oh yeah - the soup also had lentils in it, which I'd never had before, but I really liked them a lot! They help fill you up without adding a weird flavor or texture to the soup. I decided I'll have to cook with the more often cuando yo regrese.
Today there was a group of people going to the zoo, but they left at 1:00 and we didn't eat lunch until close to 1:45, so we didn't go. We both felt fine with it, though. We decided we'd rather go to the zoo with Bryce and his group instead. Hopefully we'll go sometime next week. Guess what - the zoo is free!
After lunch I worked on updating my journal. I feel like I'm never going to get caught up! It's fun to think about all the fun things we've done lately, though :)
So I was talking to Barroz on skype and he mentioned a free play going on in the Centro tonight called "Los Vampiros" that I decided it'd be fun to go to :) Only a small group of us went, but it was actually kind of exciting! We were going to see a French play from 1915 about gangsters called Vampires in a Mexican international cinema! When we first got there we couldn't find the theater at first because it only had the cross streets and not exactly where the building was, but we finally found it... and it turned out to be completely different than we thought! It was not, in fact, an awesome play about vampires, but a French silent film from 1915 about gangsters that went by the name Los Vampiros! with classical music in the background. jajaja, we were the only people in the theater! :D We stayed for an hour (each episode was an hour long, and it was super boring, I thought), but then we decided to leave. Brianne's roommates had left to make a copy of something, so we waited for them for a while.
Background story: Last week, somehow Brianne ended up in the Centro at night by herself and met this weird man, which led to her having a weird and potentially dangerous encounter with drug guy from northern Mexico. Anyway, so Brianne's roommates grounded her from ever being in the Centro by herself (because she doesn't really know how to get to or from the Centro, also).
So anyway, because of that whole story, we had to wait for her roommates to come back so we could leave the theater. It took them like, an hour! We almost just left because we thought maybe we'd misunderstood something they'd said and they'd gone home instead. We found out there was a free concert going on in the modern museum, and we went to go check it out, but eventually decided we weren't really in the mood to go. Actually, I was super in the mood to go home... buuuuut we decided to get some ice cream first :) Michelle and Adrienne told me about a place other than Colon in the Centro that had really tasty ice cream and that was cheaper than Colón, so we decided to check it out. They have grape ice cream at this place! It was super bright purple and the most delicious ice cream ever! I loved it! I got a little cup of chocolate almond and then grape on top, and it was sooo yummy. And way cheaper than Colón. While eating our ice cream, we walked over to the rest of the group, only to find them playing the saw! It was so awesome!
**So, there's this man who sits on the sidewalk by Colón and plays "Over the Rainbow" and a couple of other songs on the saw. And there's a little boy who hangs out with him. Apparently, someone from the group had asked if they could play it and the man had said yes and then gone to the bathroom or something, because when we got there, the little boy was sitting there occasionally giving help to people who were playing the saw, and we all got to take a turn! I was largely unsuccessful, but it was still really cool! And waaaaay harder than it looks! After a while, Adrienne, Michelle and I decided to go home, so they got off the bus at my stop and walked me home so I wouldn't have to go by myself in the dark, which was really nice of them. And then I went to bed after an awesome night of silent vampire gangs, grape ice cream, and saw music :) Goodnight!
Wow. This morning, class was so hard. I was pretty much asleep the entire time! I always feel bad when I do that, but I tried so hard!
After school my sunburn was bothering me so I came home and put on my swim shorts and a t-shirt and sat in the pool while I listened to The Hiding Place on my computer. I don't know if it helped at all, but it sure felt great while I was in the water! It was the perfect temperature.
After sitting in the pool for a while, I took a nap :) It was really nice :) Jill and I were super hungry, and Carmita made this super yummy soup! It had a tomato-based broth and had squash and carrots and stuff in it, plus pork ribs. The ribs were pretty fatty, which was a little difficult, but overall I liked it! Because Carmita's father-in-law died on Sunday, she's been gone a lot during the week and we've been eating out a lot. I was thinking about it yesterday, though, and I've really missed her cooking. It's simpler and lighter than the food we've been eating, and I was really happy to get to eat her food today :) Oh yeah - the soup also had lentils in it, which I'd never had before, but I really liked them a lot! They help fill you up without adding a weird flavor or texture to the soup. I decided I'll have to cook with the more often cuando yo regrese.
Today there was a group of people going to the zoo, but they left at 1:00 and we didn't eat lunch until close to 1:45, so we didn't go. We both felt fine with it, though. We decided we'd rather go to the zoo with Bryce and his group instead. Hopefully we'll go sometime next week. Guess what - the zoo is free!
After lunch I worked on updating my journal. I feel like I'm never going to get caught up! It's fun to think about all the fun things we've done lately, though :)
So I was talking to Barroz on skype and he mentioned a free play going on in the Centro tonight called "Los Vampiros" that I decided it'd be fun to go to :) Only a small group of us went, but it was actually kind of exciting! We were going to see a French play from 1915 about gangsters called Vampires in a Mexican international cinema! When we first got there we couldn't find the theater at first because it only had the cross streets and not exactly where the building was, but we finally found it... and it turned out to be completely different than we thought! It was not, in fact, an awesome play about vampires, but a French silent film from 1915 about gangsters that went by the name Los Vampiros! with classical music in the background. jajaja, we were the only people in the theater! :D We stayed for an hour (each episode was an hour long, and it was super boring, I thought), but then we decided to leave. Brianne's roommates had left to make a copy of something, so we waited for them for a while.
Background story: Last week, somehow Brianne ended up in the Centro at night by herself and met this weird man, which led to her having a weird and potentially dangerous encounter with drug guy from northern Mexico. Anyway, so Brianne's roommates grounded her from ever being in the Centro by herself (because she doesn't really know how to get to or from the Centro, also).
So anyway, because of that whole story, we had to wait for her roommates to come back so we could leave the theater. It took them like, an hour! We almost just left because we thought maybe we'd misunderstood something they'd said and they'd gone home instead. We found out there was a free concert going on in the modern museum, and we went to go check it out, but eventually decided we weren't really in the mood to go. Actually, I was super in the mood to go home... buuuuut we decided to get some ice cream first :) Michelle and Adrienne told me about a place other than Colon in the Centro that had really tasty ice cream and that was cheaper than Colón, so we decided to check it out. They have grape ice cream at this place! It was super bright purple and the most delicious ice cream ever! I loved it! I got a little cup of chocolate almond and then grape on top, and it was sooo yummy. And way cheaper than Colón. While eating our ice cream, we walked over to the rest of the group, only to find them playing the saw! It was so awesome!
**So, there's this man who sits on the sidewalk by Colón and plays "Over the Rainbow" and a couple of other songs on the saw. And there's a little boy who hangs out with him. Apparently, someone from the group had asked if they could play it and the man had said yes and then gone to the bathroom or something, because when we got there, the little boy was sitting there occasionally giving help to people who were playing the saw, and we all got to take a turn! I was largely unsuccessful, but it was still really cool! And waaaaay harder than it looks! After a while, Adrienne, Michelle and I decided to go home, so they got off the bus at my stop and walked me home so I wouldn't have to go by myself in the dark, which was really nice of them. And then I went to bed after an awesome night of silent vampire gangs, grape ice cream, and saw music :) Goodnight!
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Thursday: el 19 de mayo
Hola, todos :) So for some reason I didn't write hardly anything about today; no sé por qué. But just in case you wondered,...
School was so hard today! I could not stay awake! Yuck.
When we got home, I worked on my journal and then ate lunch of carne de res and lettuce coleslaw something that was actually a little hard to eat... It wasn't nasty, but I just didn't love it.
Hasta luego, when I remember other stuff we did today! :)
School was so hard today! I could not stay awake! Yuck.
When we got home, I worked on my journal and then ate lunch of carne de res and lettuce coleslaw something that was actually a little hard to eat... It wasn't nasty, but I just didn't love it.
Hasta luego, when I remember other stuff we did today! :)
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