San Jose: Part II

One of the main impressions I've gotten from the city is that it is a lot like other cities. There are a lot of things here that are incredibly American, including stores advertising American clothing, a lot of music from the US, and advertisements. There are many things that make San Jose different, one of which is a general feeling of being more at ease and relaxed.

Today I visited the Museo de Jade, which has the largest collection of jade in the Americas. It was nice to get some information and connect a bit with the history of the country. Here are some of the things that I saw:There were a lot of these shoe-horn looking things. I think they may have been axe-heads.

This dude struck me as looking a lot like a viking.

Phalluses! Wooooo!

Yesterday I also had a chance to get to know a local tico a bit. He showed me around the city and also took a picture of my in front of the Teatro Nacional. Also got some amazing coffee and saw some awesome parts of the city. I feel like I got much more of a sense of the entire city. There are a lot of really great murals all over the city and a lot of the grafitti is very beautiful as well.






The second mural depicts a destroyed polluted world of death then turning into a happy, green recycled world with smiling squirrels and such. Very nice.

Tomorrow I have a tour scheduled to the Arenal volcano and some hot springs, so should have more jungle-y pictures. I will also have to dedicate an entire post just to flowers at this point.

San Jose: First Impressions

So, after my long night of sitting on airplanes failing at restful sleep, I arrived at San Jose Airport. The green hills are visible from the runway and on the entire walk through the airport and drive into the city proper. I had a great chat with my driver en espanol and had a great, pressure-free refresher. It didn't go as well at lunch when I tried to ask the waiter to repeat himself and mistakenly asked for more options.

The hostel is awesome. It's got a very homey, comfortable feeling, and that awesome mish-mash of buildings/rooms that bed and breakfasts usually have. There's a wonderful central outside area with a pool, hammocks, and awesome jungle-like vegetation. There are so many gorgeous flowers and I had fun just walking around getting to know my hostel. Then, I went out onto the streets in search of a store for bottled water, a bank, and some lunch.

I just started wandering a bit in the area around my hotel, making sure to be able to backtrack if I needed to. The only place I found for water was a Texaco gas station store. Then I had lunch at a little soda and ate the traditional combination for lunch meals: rice, beans, a meat dish (amazing fish this time), mashed potatoes, and fried plantains. The plantains were surprisingly delicious and one of my favorite parts of the meal. I wish I had a photo of the deliciousness, but I'll just have to discretely snap a picture of another meal. The strangest part was dessert, which was strawberry ice cream on top of jello.

the view of the hostel from my door

It began raining in perfect timing after I returned to the hostel and I enjoyed sitting outside my room smelling the rain. I love rain, and it's even better here with the warmth and the jungle plants surrounding me. This is a great start to the trip and I'm so so excited to see more of the city tomorrow.

Life, You Have Begun Again!

So, in approximately 5 hours, I will be on a plane on my way to San Jose, Costa Rica. More accurately, I will be on the way to Los Angeles, then connecting from there to another Central American city, then connect again to San Jose. I'll arrive at 9:30am local time (Central Standard) and begin my first solo international trip.

That is only one piece of news and one way in which my life has started up again. My life never really stopped, but became much more stagnant for about six months. My stagnation is over and everything is happening again. I found out late Friday night that I've been accepted at the University of San Francisco School of Education for this fall!I can't help the exclamation mark. I've been on a wonderful, natural high since I read the acceptance email and have been coasting on it since. I feel like I'll come back from my trip and be able to begin the next steps rather than scrambling to figure out what those steps are.

So, life is about to get back into the craziness of action and motion and I couldn't be more excited for it to get started.

Anxious Wedding Dreams

Man, I just seem to LOVE glomming onto someone else's stress and eating it up so that I can have effed-up dreams. During the planning phase for my brother's wedding, I had a few anxious dreams, the ones where you can't fully fall asleep because you know more has to get done. I would keep dreaming the same thing over and over and in my dream, not all of the bridesmaids had their dress altered by the day before the ceremony and I had to make sure to do that and get it done.

Maybe that's normal for an involved bridesmaid. I was pretty stressed about the wedding leading up to it because I was helping a lot and responsible for getting important things done so that it could be the wedding they wanted (and deserved). But is it at all normal to have wedding anxiety dreams about a wedding that isn't yours and that's already happened???? I had another anxious wedding dream the other night, and this one was more strange and stressful than any I had before the wedding. I swear, I was just overwhelmed by all of the family and the big to-do and the stress of being asked about MY OWN WEDDING (gag) and my brain exploded as I slept, bringing up odd concerns such as: What if my dad decides to wear purple lipstick???

Yes, my father, in preparation for the wedding, donned purple lipstick and a cowboy hat. He apparently also got cowboy hats for the rest of our family and I was so worried because WHERE WAS MINE?? Their wedding had already happened, but this was their second wedding, not unheard of in my family. Not my brother's second wedding to another person, but the second wedding of the same two people shortly after their first wedding to one another (my mom did it, long story). The bridesmaid dresses had changed into a draping, Roman-looking pretty dress, but my mother embarrassed me by making everyone look at me while describing how sexy and wonderful the dress was.

I couldn't seem to get anywhere I was supposed to be in this dream. But the most disturbing part of that was that no one else seemed to care. I remember at the end, I was helping to clean up with my mom and stepdad and explained to them that I seemed to just miss everything. I started to unroll toilet paper onto a table while speaking and then thought, what am I doing? this is ridiculous! I threw the paper down and began to cry.

Blerg. Man, I know exactly what my sister would say to me. RELAX. Breathe deeply and remember that I don't have to plan/help plan/be at all in charge of a wedding for a long time now. My siblings are married, my mom has had her two perfect weddings, and I will not be ready for marriage-or my own wedding-for a long time. (Ellen, please wait at least two years for my sanity's sake.)

Buried

Man, what is this feeling? What does it mean when you can't even identify your reaction?

I just saw and interacted with someone I haven't spoken to in years, someone I've spent so much time being angry with that I'm having a hard time forgiving myself for smiling. But this is exactly what I wanted. Ugh. Okay, I'm forgetting that there's even a possibility that any other person will end up reading this and should explain.

The two girls that I regularly babysit, who are a part of my family, have divorced parents. I was friends with their parents before the girls were born. When the oldest was two and the other about two months, their dad separated from their mom. When he told me, I felt a bit more broken. I've been pretty furious with him. Their family was supposed to make it; he was supposed to always be there and be the dad that those girls deserve.

Now, five years later and I've just come face to face with him, smiled warmly, and we chatted about his five-year-old. I invited him inside, encouraged his daughter to show him her drawings from the day, and genuinely tried to be a little bit his friend again. But about fifteen minutes before he was due to arrive until now, half an hour since I saw him, I've had this burning, acidic, boiling feeling in my stomach. Maybe it's undissolved anger bubbling to the surface, or an ulcer I subconsciously reserved for his return into my life.

I've been preparing for this. I wholeheartedly believe that the girls should have their father in their lives, that there should be some very genuine good feelings towards his impact and presence in their childhood. I also want to be someone they feel they can talk to about him, good or bad. I want to be a resource when they're pissed at him later, someone who can relate and listen and really be there. Oh, but this is hard. This physically hurts.

Part of it just has to to with him and me, though. Part of it is just missing a friend and the empty hole that sometime shows up when someone you care about disappoints you. He's still the same person. He loves his daughters so much, and I respect him for that.

I feel a little bit like a time traveler, looking over myself and my siblings and assessing my father's presence in our lives. This feeling is all too familiar, but somehow more potent when I'm feeling it for these innocent, developing little girls. These girls that deserve to always, always know that they are worth all the love in the world. Ugh. I guess things can't stay buried. I guess life has more connections than we're prepared for. I'm so tired of feeling angry but it's way too hard to let go, let the unresolved melt and warm me. I can't trust.

I am already in love with this movie

Away We Go. Not out until June, but I'll definitely be there.

Monumental

It's interesting that I had to come back home to realize what the monuments of Paris and London meant to me while I was in Europe for my week-long trip. I had my epiphany while crossing the Golden Gate Bridge for probably the fiftieth time in my life. I was thinking about why people come to see it and it suddenly hit me: tourists go to monuments in order to try and understand the city they are visiting, because the monuments of a place are some sort of expression of that place. They make sense to the people that live there, and as tourists, we want to be able to be close and connect with the place and the people. The Golden Gate to me as a Californian is practical, spectacular, historic, massive, impressive, and quirky; all aspects of the city in which it was born.As I walked around London and Paris, I was attempting to drink in the city through the possible meaning conveyed by the monuments, architecture, and layout. London spoke to me and told me it was a Very Important Place that should be Taken Seriously. It said that it was awesome, but in a dignified, practical way. It was not flowery, but traditional and proud. Paris on the other hand, shouted at me in lilting tones, "I am freaking amazing and you should gaze up and notice." It spoke in loud conspiratorial tones of its history and awesome feats of architecture, its emboldened statements of grandeur, its desire to be noticed and appreciated and "screw you if you think we're stuck up". Paris drops the "s" because it doesn't need it for you to know it's sexy and London keeps it proper and posh and clipped in two syllables because that's the way it's done. Paris language lives in the throat and breaths warm breath from high, ornate places, keeps spaces open for you to LOOK, LOOK AT ME, and London knows you're impressed, but won't let you know that it knows.
Anyway, that is what I read from my short time in both cities, and I absolutely loved listening to the cities, catching short clips of conversation and adding them to the milieu of a new place, of an attempt at a connection, trying to grasp at the meaning of cities that are centuries old and happy to have made friends with both.

Coraline 3D: two thumbs up

This was an amazing movie. It was visually awesome, the 3D was pretty much seamless, and the story was completely engaging through the entire film. It was definitely interesting enough for adults, and was done in such a flawless way that I completely forgot to think about how this world was accomplished and instead was wrapped up into it, only experiencing and drinking it in.

The story had a very good lesson, for kids and adults alike, about appreciating what one has even if it is not perfect. It was a little scary, probably too scary for kids under 6 or so. But every kid has a different sensitivity level and some younger kids could probably handle it. I watched some pretty violent, scary movies when I was younger and look at me now. Peachy-keen.

Anyway, Coraline was a stunning and entrancing film, and should definitely win awards for the quality of production and original screenplay. Voice acting was also notable, I couldn't recognize Dakota Fanning as herself and this film won me over as if I were a child seeing it, convincing me of the characters' existence and viability and bringing me into their world in so many ways. It was excellent, and everyone should see it. And definitely worth it to see in 3D.

On our incredible ability to underestimate

Apparently, elephants can play music. This is fairly unsurprising to me as there has been evidence that they understand and mentally process death and also paint. Elephants are incredibly complex, intelligent animals, but because humans have a limitless supply of self-importance, we are quick to decide that they are less important, developed, and capable than we are.

I think that we start out life with much more willingness to believe in the possibility in the world. As we grow older and are continually told that things are not possible, that certain things can't be true, we lose that supply of inspired belief in the world and what it could hold. Maybe this is a good thing, maybe if adults continued to believe that stuffed animals have feelings, closets house monsters, and empty cups actually hold tea, we may not survive. We wouldn't be able to get through school, maintain serious jobs, deal with such stringent guidelines when it comes to money and spending, etc. But what if all of these things were instead molded around the child-like belief in all things imaginable.

I'm not sure if that would work out, and I keep hearing that older voice in my head saying "we must fit into our reality" but what the hell is reality anyway? I'm just glad that every once in a while we learn that elephants play music, that some of them love it, that it is beautiful and possible and real. And I'm glad that I get to sit down with children who still believe anything is possible and remember that maybe it is. I get to watch them become amazed at something that seems so mundane to me. Sponges expand in water, dinosaurs can still exist in the form of small foam cutouts, and tea parties with stuffed animals are sometimes tea parties of the best quality.

Equal Pay for Fighting Crime

This video was posted on the Feministe blog and was brought to my attention by my wonderful sister, Jess. A good cause combined with awesome superheroes to convey a powerful message. I'm digging it.

Merry Christmas

One of the best Christmas stories ever. Definitely worth reading.

Happy Holidays. What I hope for everyone is that they will see and realize what is important to them.

Love,
Laura

Rush Hour

If I have to sit in traffic one more day home from work, I will set my car on fire.

Simple Things

On my way to work Monday, I saw a half rainbow. It was so gorgeous.

I absolutely love the rainy season. Everything is moving, alive, fresh, and crisp. I love being outside in the cold rainy weather and love driving to work with cloudy, dark skies and my windshield wipers on. I especially love when the beauty of this weather becomes visible to everyone in a perfect rainbow and other people are then grateful for the rain.

On Sunday I went on a hike through the woods in pouring rain. My hair was wet, water soaked my sleeves and creeped up to my elbows, and my shoes got muddy and socks completely drenched, but I was blissfully happy. I was out in nature in real weather and playing. It recharged me and reminded me what I love best in this world; simple truths that make the world what it is.

Brevity, one of my favorite comics

Kind of Cool

Among all of the crazy news every day, finding a 39-year-old message in a bottle is pretty awesome.