A cup of hot choco is always twice as nice...

On sunday I went to school to work on my final term paper dealing with Gender and Tranlsation...who does it better. But that's not the interesting part. Two things happened. I saw a grandmother and grandmother fall down and my muesli bar got stuck in the vending machine.

I was leaving the train station to catch the bus that takes me to the uni and there was this older woman walking with a little girl. The grandmother points out to the little girl that the bus is at the stop so they should walk faster. In the process, the little girl trips, the grandmother tries to keep her from falling and trips herself. As she trips, she proceeds to fall bringing the little girl down with her and SMACK! They both fall face down on the curb. I was right behind them. I saw it happen in slow motion. I was in such shock that all I could do was stand with my mouth open in anticipation of watching to head crack right open on the curb simeotaneously spurting blood all over the place. I tried to help them up, but they said they were ok and continued as if nothing had happend, even though the little girl was crying like someone had tried to kill her.

At school, I realized that I have forgotten my lunch and on sundays nothing at the uni is open. So I had to resort to the choco machine which has great chocolate milk for $1.50 and the vending machine. After two chocolates I decided that I needed FOOD. So I stand in front of the vending machine for about ten minutes trying to decide whether I wanted choco bar, pretzels or gum or a museli bar. I went with the muesli bar even though it was $2.20. I put in my change pressed the corresponding buttons and watched the little metal coil spin but fail to release my muesli bar. It just hung there by a little corner of the wrapper. Darn! I hit the machine, but only succeeded in attracting attention to myself so I gave the muesli bar the look of death and left to go catch the bus. I was angry. I was hungry. I miss the bus. I'm still hungry so I decide to go back to the library with the last $2.20 I own determined to get the best of that vending machine. I bought another muesli bar and my original one dropped into the slot with the new one. It says on the package its a "mini-meal". Whatever that means. I needed a meal right then and there. I had originally decided just to eat half of it becauese it was more sweet than health, but I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast so I ate the whole thing. That resulted in a stomach ache and irrational guilt for eating the whole thing.

I also have started writing what will someday become a book about my adventures as an vegetarian exchange student in meat-eating Spain, living with a host-mother who had nothing motherly about her. There is just so much to tell about living with a host mother...its absurd. My favourite, is my magic stove story which involves a fantastical lie, a broken stove, power outage and repair men. My good bad-cheese dinner is another gross but all time favourite. I've never eaten so much bad food in my life in such a short period of time! There are the free for all weekends when she would leave me home alone every weekend to stay with her mother and I'd have people over, the night I stayed our really late, got really drunk, came home, left all the lights on, slept in the nude with a tomato stuck on me and left my door open, the time I snuck Bill in and hid him under the covers while my host mother got ready for work...the stories are endless.

Memoirs of a Domestic Godess

So last night, William and I were watching television after dinner drinking wine in the living room as usual. Internet wasn't working so we were forced to talk to eachother. Haha. So part of our after dinner routine is to talk about different types of desserts we'd like to eat. Banana cake...mmmmmm....cookies...mmmmmm....cookie dough...mmmmm. I'm really bad a making desserts because I always substitute ingredients to try and make them healthier. I never follow directions anyways when it comes to cooking anyhow, but apparently it doesn't apply to sweets. I suggest that I could make cookie dough myself, after all, it can't be THAT hard. I whip out my 1000 Vegetarian recipes book and look for cookie recipies. I found this Oatmeal cookie recipe. We've been getting oatmeal cookies from Safeway lately, and those are pretty darn good so I figured it couldn't be that hard to make.

I made cookies from start to finish in 20 minutes flat. I even substituted ingredients because I had had a few glasses of wine at that point and "forgot". I added more oatmeal, less butter, less sugar, more honey and used wholemeal flour...ooops. They came out pretty tasty...

I'm officially a domestic godess. Yesssssss!

Reflecting on 2004

1__What did you do in 2004 that you'd never done before?
Lived with a host family in Sevilla, ate some of the worst home cooking ever, attended a spanish university, misbehaved a bus full of drunk college kids, ate lots of soggy tomato sandwiches

2__Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
The one I can't seem to keep is speaking spanish with William. I made the same one again this year, I also want to start learning a new language.

3__Did anyone close to you give birth?
Nope.

4__Did anyone close to you die?
Thank goodness not.

5__What countries did you visit?
Spain, France, Morroco, Mexico

6__What would you like to have in 2005 that you lacked in 2004?
This year has started off to a good start, I moved to Australia with my partner in crime. It all uphill from here!

7__ What date from 2004 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Graduation. My family came from all over to come see my on my special day. The only ones not present were Oscar and Edith. Almost a full family. My family was together and there was no fighting.

8__What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Graduating and getting accepted to grad school.

9__What was your biggest failure?
Can't think of one.

10__Did you suffer illness or injury?
If getting your wisdom teeth pulled out while you're concience counts as injury, then yes.

11__What was the best thing you bought?
My ibook and my flash red coat.

12__Whose behavior merited celebration?
William! He graduated with high honors.

13__Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
My friend Keely's room mate from Boca Raton.

14__Where did most of your money go?
Preparation for the move to Australia and traveling when I studied in Spain.

15__What did you get really, really, really excited about?
When Bill and I got accepted to grad school

16__What song will always remind you of 2004?
Hey ya, Outcast

17__Compared to this time last year, are you ...
happier or sadder? happier
thinner or fatter? thinner

18__What do you wish you'd done more of?
Spend less money

19__What do you wish you'd done less of?
Spend money

20__How will you be spending Christmas?
I'll be enjoying summer here in Ausralia with William and my parents are coming to visit from Colombia. woo hoo!

22__Did you fall in love in 2003?
Once upon a time in 2000 I fell in love with a boy named Bill

23__How many one-night stands?
Yeah, right. Like I'd answer this one.

24__What was your favorite TV program?
Sex and the City

25__Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Nope.

26__What were the best books you read?
El Club de la Chicas Temerarias

27__What was your greatest musical discovery?
Stereo Sushi

28__What was your favorite film of this year?
Hotel Rwanda

29__What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I was 23. William and i took a greyhound to New York and had a great time with the Sevilla crew.

30__What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Finding a temp job that was longer than 6 weeks.

31__How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2004?
Pretty darn flash.

32__What kept you sane?
The thought of moving to Australia and having William to complain with

33__Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Gael Garcia

34__What political issue stirred you the most?
That Bush got reelected

35__Who did you miss?
I missed William when I had to stay in Sevilla alone for a month while I finished up my exams. I also missed my parents for the first time in years.

36__Who was the best new person you met?
Keely, Katie, Kristin, Becca

37__Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2004:
Live every year like it's your last and at the end of the year you won't have any regrets.

38__Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
Buleria Buleria, mas te quiero cada dia!

Otherwise...Asking Why Is Not the End of the Alphabet

Today I did this:

1. I danced without wearing a seat belt
2. Remembered that U is not the end of the alphabet, which explains why I couldn'd find a word beginning with Y before the word umbrella
3. Thought I was on the verge of insanity when I remembered something that changed my life forever when I was 9. Really. It kind of felt like eating to many cookies.
4. I learned what donec aliter provideatur means. I didn't think people spoke Latin these days, but apparently that's a falst assumption.
5. Wrote a comletely random email to a professor I had at Northeastern last summer telling him about meeting Dinka and Nuer people at my ESL job
6. Called New York at 7am to demand some answers
7. Chopped heaps of onions without crying
8. Chopped way too many vegetables at work and as a result my hands smell like a used cutting board

Almost Famous

Being that I live right across the street from the garganutan state library, I finally went with William to work on my final term paper this past Friday. Its a pretty nifty place where time doesn't exist. Somehow I managed to write 75% of a paper in a few hours, whereas I thought it would take weeks. We went back home for lunch around 1:30pm and upon returning and settling into our study areas, we were approached by a stranger with a strange eye, a camera and a clipboard.

"Excuse me..." he says. William and I turn around and meet eyes with a stranger holding a camera peering right back at us. "I'm a freelance photographer doing some publicity work for the library...It looks like you two've just settled down..."

"Oh...cool" William and I say inbtween nods.

"I've taken pictures of people walking into the library and well, now I need some pictures of someone leaving the library. I saw you two walk in and...".

Yeah I know, William and I are a hot item. He said he was brimming with vouchers and he'd like to take our picture for some brochure the library was publishing for tourism purposes.

"So if I could just meet you guys out at the entrance. Oh, and bring your coat" he said, as he made eyes at my fire-engine red winter coat.

William and I exchanged glances, started collecting our things and headed out to meet Mr. Freelance outside. Upon exiting the library we spot Mr. Freelance standing next to one of those boring statues of people you find mounted on horses in any plaza in Europe. He was with another guy, an Asian guy who shook our hands and told us he worked for the state library and was doing publicity work. He said after and only after they took pictures of us, we would recieve vouchers for a book store.

"Well, this is the mood I'm looking for" said the photographer as he waved a wrinkled printout of a couple walking ecstatically in the streets of X city. "So what I need you two to do is just walk by me few times and look studious and like you're having a good time."

I've only recently learned how to flash decent fake smiles. I've hated my smile for a long time because I have the type of smile that makes my eyes disappear form two tiny slits below my eyebrows. I can barely see. I'm not fit to be a model. But I can do anything when William is there, so we just chatted about random stuff we saw in the distance. I kept laughing because the conversation was kind of tense.

"So what do want to do tonight?" William asks me as we walk by the photographer snapping away at us for the fifth time.

"Sushi!" I blurt out just a bit too loud. The night before we had stuffed our faces with heaps of vegetarian hand rolls and falafel. I couldn't even bear to think about eating sushi. I'm not very professional you see.

A few more snaps and we were finally done. We sign our consent forms, take our voucher and wave goodbye. Back at our study spots in the library we were reapproached by the Asian guy from before. He sets up his laptop in between Williamd and I. "Hey guys. This is the picture we've chosen to use. It's perfect, except for as you can see, your eyes are closed".

Those were my eyes he was pointing at. Those eyes that turn into narrow, almond-shaped things when I smile. Darn. "Well, if you don't mind, we'd love to have a re-shooot. We have more vouchers. William, you can just wear jeans and a t-shirt and Adrianna, you wear your red coat".

We agreed to meet again the following Friday. William would wear jeans and a t-shirt and I would wear my magic red coat.

We're going to be famous.

I Heart Melbourne

Posted by: dirtyflamingo

I Heart Melbourne
The other night when I was getting ready for bed, I felt a bit of sadness inside. I heard the tram bell ring outside and I knew I would miss that sound when it was time to move. There are just to many things to love about this city. I live above a major train station, next to the city's biggest shopping centre, across the street from the city's second largest shopping centre, one one of the most important and most happening streets in the city, there is a Subway sandwich shop at the entrance to my building which makes the elevators smell heavenly, I can leave my apartment 5 minutes before catching my train to go to school, I can get 30 cent icecreams at Hungry Jacks at the corner, I live in between two Seven Elevens, there is a Borders right next door which stays open much later than any other store in the shopping centre, there is a really cheap sushi place called Don Don 30 seconds from my building, there is a really cool bowling alley underground across the street and best of all public transport drops me 10 seconds away from the entrance of my building.

I usually don't go outside much during the week because I'm always glued to my laptop doing translation assignments or pretending to be, but when I do it makes me smile. It makes me smile because I live the world's most liveable city.

I Heart Melbourne.

NOTE: The letter E on my keyboard has almost rubbed off completely.

The Quarter-Life Crisis

"You worry about loans and money and the future and making a life for yourself and while wining the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender! What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out."

Is that what this is? A quarter-life crisis? (sigh). What's wrong with me? I haven't even gotten through the first semester of grad school and I'm already considering a PhD. I know what I want to be, but not when I want to become it. I know where I want to go, but not how to get there. But then again, I have plenty of things my other friends don't have...a fantastic relationship (the dating pool is dangerous, you need health insurance out there!), I've traveled to and lived in more countries than most of my friends will ever be able to, I know what I want to be "when I grow up", I know where I'll be three years from now.

I don't want to turn 30 because I think its old. Too old for what? I haven't exactly sat on my bum these past few years watching time go by. For some reason I think that time is running out...at some point I have to start a family and everyone knows that babies change your life forever and stop your life dead in it's tracks for a few (many, many...) years. There are so many things I wan to do. My father is past 50 and he's done heaps and is still doing stuff.

I guess I just don't want to wake up one day in the same shirt I've worn for the past two days, smeared in baby food and a green pea stuck in my hair and remember all of those "dreams" and aspirations I had...

I think I've been watching too much Super Nanny. That's what it is. It's Super Nanny.

"But I Need that $250 juicer!"

Have you ever had one of those days where you start thinking about all of the stuff going on in the world and you feel guilty about only eating half of the food on your plate because you decided that watching television while you ate dinner would be something “different”? Or sometimes I have some random pain in some random part of my stomach and I think its appendicitis or gallstones because I read about the symptoms in some first aid book. Lately, I’ve really been liking that saying, “Ignorance is bliss”. Sometimes knowing more makes you paranoid or guilty. Sometimes I feel like I’d be able to live easier if I didn’t know about what happened in Rwanda and that the most powerful country in the world did nothing to help or that there are heaps of people in America who still think that going to war was the right thing to do or that there are people who have the audacity to be anti-abortion but be pro-death penalty. In countries all over the world, people are going to bed without dinner, drinking contaminated water and not going to school because they live to far or can’t afford a uniform while I still want that really snazzy juicer I saw at Big W. One thing is true, being a US citizen, there is plenty to do in America as far as humanitarian efforts go. But the main difference between American and everywhere else is that opportunities exist in America. If you’re homeless, can’t afford to go to school or have been raped there are heaps of resources available to relieve you of your situation. There are homeless shelters, free money from the government if you ask for it and crisis hotlines and centres. As far as developement, America has plenty of it I think. It's over developed, if anything else.

Something inside of me has finally clicked and an alarm is going off inside telling me that I need to start giving back because I’ve received and taken so much. And I don't feel guilty for having had a "good" life. Just lucky. So where am I going with this endless banter?

To the Peace Corps, obviously.

Just Like You

"I started out as a kid, just like most people my age. I always giggled when there was nothing funny. The way I would keep track of how much I grew was by keeping tabs on which pieces of furniture I could see over. This one time my brother threw a giant stone into the air and it landed on my head. After church, my brothers and I would eat Skittles because we thought they were vitamins that gave us energy to jumps over cracks in the sidewalk."

-Chapter 1: Jigsaw

That's Jigsaw

I've decided to write a book. I haven't figured out whether it will be fiction based on autobiographical content or straight autobiographical. Mixing truth and fiction is always much cheekier.

Basically I feel like I'm a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that hasn't found it's place in the puzzle. I don't know if I ever will just because I've been bent out of shape and distorted a bit. But perhaps the puzzle is just too big and I've simply not looked around enough. Everyone is a part of a jigsaw puzzle. Some people only fit in one place, others fit in two places. Some people don't fit quite right anywhere, unless you jam them in with a fist like I used to do when I was younger. Some people cut off the edges of the piece to make it fit.

The story of a girl in search. That's Jigsaw.

(I've already made arrangements with an intellectual property specialist. This idea is already patented and registered. Just try and steal it and see what happends to your front door.)

The Shame of my Perma-Tan

This past Saturday was my first time at the SAIL (Sudanese Australian Inegrated Learning) Centre. I'm going to teaching ESL there on Saturdays as a volunteer. The centre is actually a dilapidated chruch out in Footscray (a very multicultual suburb east of Melbourne) that serves as a community centre for newly arrived Sudanese refugees. It was like being in a different country as soon as I stepped inside. Ebony faces with curious eyes were everywhere, kids, toddlers, adults, seniors. The Sudanese put my perma-tan to shame. The situation of these people is just so unfortunate. Many wives have lost their husbands and lots of the kids were born on refugee camps. So in order excape civil uprisings in the Sudan they've come to Australia to start a new life. Can you imagine having to leave behind everything you've ever know to be as life in a second and start all over again from nothing? Boy, do I feel lucky.

I didn't have to teach that Saturday, I was just to participate in a tour of the place and see other tutors in action. Its a very energetic environment, I'm excited that I found out about his volunteering opportunity. After the tour and after having met one of the tutors, I took the tram back to the train station and stopped in at Footscary Market. It reeked of fish and dead meat. There were heaps of different types of stalls selling anything from legumes to nuts to cheeses to tacky home decor. The area where the market is seems to have a high population of Vietnamese. A good nubmer of signs for salons, restaurants, trinket shops and travel agencies were in Vietnamese. Interesting. I finally found some queso fresco, bought 1/4 kilo for $2.80AU and dashed out of there. I couldnt stand the sight of dead animals cut into all sorts of shapes and chunks nor the smell of dead fish.

A large O.C. Please...

I just saw my first episode of the O.C. I must say I wasn't very impressed. It was just a bunch of beautiful people trying to pretend that their lives are just as messed up as anyone else's. Are there ever any average-looking people on these sorts of shows? I suppose I'd have to get into it, to really say whether or not I really like the show. I also saw Desperate House Wives a few days ago, I wasn't very impressed with that either. It was actually quite depressing. I think I have to be able to relate to the characters on a show to be interested in it. Both shows were actually kind of depressing. Maybe its just the luck I have with watching new shows.

Felcity. CSI:Miami. Third Rock From the Sun. Everybody Loves Raymond. Curb Your Enthusiasm. Sex in the City. Now these are shows I like. Sorry, The O.C. and Desperate House Wives got a thumbs down from me.

They're not bad shows, just not interesting. Sorry.