Random...

Reunion!

2008-02-12T00:01:00.000+01:00

This last weekend I went to Guadalajara to see my old roomies Martha and Mineko. They still live in the same house, so it was like coming home again. With a few noticeable differences. The furniture is different, and Martha replaced me by buying a dog. Flattering, really.

We spent a great weekend catching up, eating too much, gossiping and shopping. It was so nice to see them again, it was like not seeing my sisters for three and a half years. I got to meet their new dudes, see other old friends and realize that time passing doesn't necessarily mean that things change that much.

Carnaval in Veracruz!

2008-02-11T23:33:00.000+01:00

It's no Rio, but Veracruz is one of the best places in Mexico to celebrate Carnaval. Obviously we couldn't miss out on the party, so 7 (six girls and one guy-- lucky bastard!) of us traveled to Veracruz to see how the Veracruzanos got down. Before the festivities started, we attempted to do a bit of sightseeing. Veracruz is a port city, so while there is a boardwalk along the ocean-- it's kind of ugly. Veracruz also is the home of the Mexican Naval Academy (pictured above), so there were a few sailors to be seen that weekend.
The first night we were there, we managed to get into the carnival spirit by purchasing these cheesy masks! We went to see a few performances, and of course-- started to get our drink on. The vibe in the city was pretty amazing, it was ridiculously full and everyone was there to have a good time. The best thing about people in Veracruz is that they love to dance! So, while bands are playing or parades are going on, people are getting their dance on. We partied late into the night/early morning, and woke up ready to do the same thing the next day!

The next evening, before going to see the big Carnaval parade, Katie and I decided to buy the shiniest fabric we could find and make these shirts. To add to the beauty, we also purchased some intensely fake eyelashes that made us look like drag queens. Luis got in on the fun by buying a moustache.

We were obviously looking very good that night, because we even got interviewed by a Mexican television station! The anchorman loved Katie, and she egged him on by blowing him kisses. The parade ended up being pretty awesome, lots of dancers and great floats. It was a VERY Mexican parade- it started 4 hours late. It was worth the wait, as there was entertainment while waiting for the parade. The beer Sol sponsored Carnaval so it had set up all these stages where people were competing in competitions such as dance-offs. The copious amounts of cheap beer made those competitions pretty entertaining.

Luis, Katie and I met up with the others later on (they were too lazy to come to the parade) and ended up going to a cantina where there were lots of old people dancing to salsa and banda until the wee hours of the morning.

The next two days we decided to relax on the beach. The one small problem was that we had no hotel room booked for the last night. That small problem was more like a big problem because there were absolutely no hotel rooms available. Luckily, our friend Chelsea had 2 friends in Veracruz for Carnival and they had a hotel room with 2 double beds and ample floor space. We managed to all sneak in for the night (definitely cozy). However, Chelsea's friends had a flight out at 5 a.m. the next morning and the hotel had no idea we were all crashing in their room. We figured we had at least a few hours grace period before the maids came around to clean, but they came sooner than expected. Around 8 a.m. the maid opened the door, screamed "AY, DIOS!" and slammed the door. A minute later, the phone started ringing and we all realized that our free stay had come to a hasty conclusion. We grabbed all of our stuff and headed out one at a time. Luis tried to convince the maid that the two girls had just found him on the street and brought him back to the hotel, but they weren't really buying it.

Despite the stressful awakening, we spent the rest of the day on the beach relaxing, headed back into town for a romantic seafood dinner (I ate seafood at least 2 times a day the whole time I was in Veracruz....mmm....mariscos) and caught the bus back to Mexico City, arriving 2 hours before class Monday morning!

Groupies

2008-01-28T21:13:00.000+01:00

It's official. My friends and I are now groupies.

Our neighbor, Gonzalo, is a musician who plays in 4 bands. This weekend and last weekend we went to his shows, got to know a bunch of his friends and have basically embraced our lives as groupies. It's pretty awesome, we even got a shout out at the show this weekend-- they thanked their Canadian fans for coming all the way from Canada to watch them. Nice, eh? It's fun walking into places and not having to pay because we're "with the band". ;)

It's a pretty good life- Gonzalo and his friends drive us around, take us fun places, help us improve our Spanish and most importantly- they are really entertaining guys who love to party. My sleeping patterns and my liver are suffering a bit, but it's more than worth the sacrifice.

It's quite a different vibe hanging out with these guys, they are all super creative (mostly musicians) and they have a completely different lifestyle than the grad-school-then-work-for-the-government . I'm pretty sure some of them will end up being semi/famous. A few of their friends already have their own Mexican television show where they play pranks on people. One of the guys on the show is going to be in a Christmas movie sponsored by Warner Brother's where he plays an elf that has been expelled from the North Pole for wanting to commercialize Christmas. Random, but awesome!

Here's a photo of Gonzalo onstage.

The Krazy Kanadian

2008-01-21T20:44:00.001+01:00

I have to admit, this is the story that really made me realize I had to start blogging again so that I could share this story with the world because it's SO RANDOM!

There was a party at my friend Julia's apartment last week because it was her Mexican roommate's birthday. A bunch of us went to hang out (because what's better than a house party on a Thursday night?) and were chatting with her roommate's friends. One of my other friends- Andrea- saw this random girl with 2 braids that looked really familiar. A few hours later, we end up talking to this girl, and it turns out that Andrea and this girl had a class together at McGill. It was so random-- we were at a pretty small house party in Mexico City, where one of our Canadian friends runs into another Canadian that she had a class with Montreal. Yet another example of how freaking small the world is!

Now, this chick was really nice but pretty crazy. Apparently, she works at a bar back in Montreal and always has a lot of energy and is a little loca. She left the party with some Mexican dude (not the one she had come to the party with). We all thought she had just gone to umm..."experience Mexican culture"-- but that wasn't the case. Most of us went home by 5am, but then this Krazy Kanadian shows back up at my friend Julia's house. She doesn't just show up, she shows up HAMMERED and holding one of her braids! According to the girl, she just decided she wanted to shave her head! So she had this random Mexican dude CUT OFF one of her braids and shave HALF of her head. When she shows up to my friend's place she's just running around trying to figure out how to get home- she doesn't have her phone, purse or her friend's address because her friend took her stuff home for her after she left. She wakes up my friend Julia's roommate (please imagine yourself in Julia's roommate's position- it is your birthday, you are very wasted, you have to wake for 8am to go to work and you are woken up by some chick who is half bald and swinging her braid around) and gets her friend's number, but the phone is dead. Oh, and she is also holding a shaving kit that the random Mexican dude lent her.

She ends up just crashing on Julia's couch and comes over to my place in the morning with Julia and Andrea for breakfast. Now, Julia and Andrea didn't really know how to react the night before when this chick showed up (Julia kept trying not to laugh, but couldn't really hold it in), so they just didn't really say much about the whole head shaving this. Well, you know me-- I obviously said something along the lines of "what the HELL were you thinking?". She gave me some bs answer about how she wanted to cut her hair for a while, and she just really felt like doing it that day. Riiiiight. I am interested to know how she is going to explain that situation to a Mexican hairdresser when she shows up to get rid of the other half of her hair.

The photo evidence is above. Unfortunately, a scarf is covering the bald part of her head- but she is holding one braid and the other one is poking out from her scarf.

Baggage, Bronchitis and Boats

2008-01-21T20:36:00.001+01:00

The three B's pretty much sum up my first week and a half here. Both my bags were lost (and one may be lost forever), I've been coughing a lung out because I have bronchitis (welcome to Mexico!) and we had some fun at Xochimilco. Xochimilco is touted as the "Venice of Mexico"-- boats maneuvering around canals. That's about all it has in common with Venice, since it's more like "pimp my boat", it's not really romantic and people of all ages go there to party in the middle of the day. Basically, it's an all-around good time!

Some more pictures can be found here.

The Return

2008-01-21T20:23:00.000+01:00

I know it's been a long time since I've blogged-- and I'm not sure exactly why I've let my blog lie dormant for so long. Actually, that's a lie. It's mostly because I was busy/lazy/talked to a lot of people on a semi-regular basis while I was in Ottawa. Since my last post a lot has happened which I can't really be bothered to recount in detail (a ridiculously fun summer in Ottawa, trip to Colombia, finishing my last classes and defence at NPSIA, too many parties, road trips etc.). So-- I'll just start with the here and now.

The impetus for the renewal of this blog is to chronicle my time the second time around in Mexico. I'm in Mexico City for the next five months, and judging by the events of the last few weeks, it's going to be a crazy ride. I don't want to inundate people with mass emails (although they are so personal and give everyone a warm, fuzzy feeling), so I've decided to just start blogging again so people can check up on me at their leisure. Feel free to comment!

Quebec City

2007-02-21T18:49:00.000+01:00

A few weekends ago some friends and I went to Quebec City for Carnival. Our first mini-road trip together! Quebec City was beautiful, I felt like I was in Europe again.

One of our main goals on this trip was to find Bonhomme. Or just-- a bon homme.

Highlights of the trip:
-Our plastic trumpets. Which, unfortunately, were lost by the end of the night. But were so awesome while we had them.
-The really trippy Carnival parade. Why were there so many balloon animal formations?
-The outdoor dance party. Only in Canada would you have an outdoor dance party in -25.
-Jean playing the piano for us
-Mini-quiches at 3am
-Singing the car. Trying to think what the songs of our lives would be and just after we got lost in Montreal Blue Rodeo said it best. "When we're lost, we are lost together..."
-Jean trying not to lose us in Montreal and stopping every so often and asking his friends: "Where are the 4 anglophones?!"
-A little Quebecois guy telling us our french accents were "special".
-Looking for Bonhomme. Singing the Bonhomme song. "Bonhomme, bonhomme, bonhomme, bonhomme, bonhomme"

Minorities on Ice

2007-02-06T02:27:00.000+01:00

This weekend I took part in a quintessentially Ottawa activity- skating on the canal. The canal runs through town and quite a few people actually skate to work/school when it freezes over in the winter. Some friends and I decided to get out there and skate (my first time in a couple of years). Skating is the one winter activity I can actually sort of do (unlike skiing and snowboarding) so I was in! I did manage to wipe out once while I was trying to talk on my cell phone. I ended up catching my skate in a rut and fully wiping out. As I was attempting to gracefully get up again I heard a lady skate by and say to her friend "Oh, she was on her cell phone". Thanks lady.

As well, my friend Nicole turned and said to me "Aruna, look around, we're the only minorities here, we're surrounded by white people". We then agreed in the future we have to choreograph a "Minorities on Ice" routine. Stay tuned!

A Labour of Love

2007-01-31T17:58:00.000+01:00

It's taken a while, but it's finally off the ground.

Dobre Pivo.

For all those people who are in my heart everytime I have a pivo.

Activate!

2007-01-24T04:50:00.000+01:00

So my friend is at a math party for graduate math students. Yes, apparently math grad students do party. She's not in math, but she decides to go to the party anyway. So, there she is in the middle of a conversation with the PRESIDENT of the math society when all of a sudden he stops talking, sticks his fist out, waits for her to offer up hers as well, and then turns it to the side all the while saying- ACTIVATE! He then proceeds to keep talking as if nothing had stopped their conversation. She was a little perplexed but decided to roll with it. Now we all like to start, end, or punctuate conversations with "Activate" and then just keep going as if nothing is out of the ordinary. This picture is of her "activating" with the president of the Math society. Good, clean fun.

Entertainment

2007-01-14T19:56:00.000+01:00

By now most of you have probably seen THIS. If you haven't, you should.

But have you seen THIS?

I love youtube.

Cowboys and Indians!

2007-01-11T23:26:00.000+01:00

What's the best way to start off the new year? With a grossly politically incorrect party? That's right!! Cowboys, Indians, and Indians (dot or feather).

Here's a shot of some of the brave people that came out to this party. Notice, they are all dressed up. Theme parties are so awesome. Even Skully came out to play!

My friend Jean came all the way from Quebec City JUST for the party. He makes a good horse. I was dressed in a "fusion" costume with elements of cowgirl, Indian with a dot, and Indian with a feather.

Here are some of the ladies with one of the hunkiest men at the party. Nitin is from India/NY and works at IBM. He really loves his mustache, tucking in his shirt, pulling his pants up really high, and greasily side parting his hair.

Great party. Top memories include backing it up on the dance floor, cowboys whining about feeling objectified when we ripped their shirts off, people shooting each other with darts (plastic), arrows, and toy guns, line dancing, singing Bohemian Rhapsody, lassoing each other, dance-offs, and the police stopping by.

Year in Review --

2007-01-09T06:41:00.000+01:00

2006

It was great to spend the holidays at home in Edmonton, fun to see the family and friends since I missed it last year. Basically-- I spent a lot of time visiting with people, eating, sleeping, and shopping. I accomplished all the lofty goals set for the holiday season.

2006 treated me well. Lots of adventures, new experiences, and most of all randomness.

Someone once told me that only boring people get bored. At the time I thought that was a pretty stupid quote because there were a lot of times that I was bored and I didn't really think of myself as a boring person. This quote just popped into my head because I realized that there is not a single moment of 2006 that I can remember being bored. The year was awesome. I traveled to a lot of places, but it was definitely the fact that I had the luck to spend time with amazing people that 2006 was so memorable. Even in the worst of times, the right friends and a sense of humor combined to make everything seem fine (and spawned quite a few memorable stories). Luckily, the fond memories grossly outnumber the not-so-fond ones. I realize that I'm so fortunate to have great friends-- from the kind you see or talk to frequently, to the ones who you see or talk to after years or months only to have the distance of time melt away.

So, thanks to my friends who have totally shaped this past year and supported me through everything. I really appreciate it. (This includes family too!)

2007

I don't know why I had this impression that once I got back to Canada and started going to grad school my life would develop into a monotonous routine that I couldn't wait to escape again. That has completely not been the case-- every week brings something new. Every week I discover something new-- about myself, others, Ottawa, etc.

Goals for 2007--

Vague yet Valuable

In Canadian terminology-- "Just Give'r". I know that sometimes I'm complacent or apathetic or don't try as hard as I can in some facets of my life. I realize that I'm at the point of my life where I should really try harder. This year I'm going to do that.
Be a better person-- I know I should be nicer. I'm going to try.
Indulge whims-- Don't worry about being too cool for school. That's lame.

Specific Stuff

Some of my friends and I are going to run a 10k run in May. This is big news because I am fundamentally opposed to exercise and am very out of shape. But it might be fun. And now that I've committed to it I have to do it. My friend Kari said, "Aruna, don't worry, I used to be 200pounds and now I can run 10km so you'll be fine."

That's it. I don't want to be too over-ambitious.

Just to Keep Things Interesting....

2006-11-22T08:03:00.000+01:00

My friend Jennie decided that her birthday party this weekend should have a "Wild Kingdom Animal Theme". The fact that this theme allowed her and I to re-use an integral part of our Halloween costume (ahem...leopard-print tights) was no small coincidence. Full costumes were not required, but some sort of animal print, animal on shirt, animal anything was appreciated. Surprisingly, some of the boys participated with more more enthusiasm that the girls. One guy had an orangutan mask, another made a jellyfish out of a pink umbrella and streamers, and yet another wore a Miami Dolphins jersey and was-- yes, a dolphin.

In other news, my sister's friends are in town and one has introduced us to what may be the end of productivity and our eventual downfall. Settlers of Catan. A strategic, dorky, awesome board game. We played all day Sunday and I finally won my first game yesterday. Sweet!

Nicaragua!

2006-11-13T03:57:00.000+01:00

Last week I had the chance to do probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. A few weeks ago, my department at university emailed around that the Organization of American States was looking for young Canadians to participate in their first Youth Electoral Observation Mission. The presidential elections in Nicaragua were occurring, and in addition to the observers they were already sending they wanted to have youth participation. I emailed in my application, and I was accepted!

At first thought, it seemed like a pretty awesome all-expenses paid trip to Nicaragua. What it was, was something SO much more than that, and it was definitely NOT a vacation, it was exhausting, but totally worth it.

For those of you who want the short version, here are the main points:

-I met about 40 other youth (mostly Latin American) who were honestly some of the best people I’ve ever met. Super buena gente. Fun, intelligent, articulate, great! Totally open and I never felt bad about the fact I'm not a native Spanish speaker
-I stayed in the fanciest hotel I’ve ever stayed in while traveling in Latin America
-Staying in fancy places apparently does not agree with me (some food issues)
-I had a scorpion in my pants (literally) and was stung twice
-I met the ex-president of Argentina Raul Alfonsin
-I observed electoral activity for like 16 hours in one day (fun!)
-I went to many of the same places I’d already been to in Nicaragua and a random man recognized me in the market
-We found ourselves in the middle of a Sandinista victory rally
-Canadians know how to party, we definitely represented

This experience was really awesome because it related directly to a bunch of stuff I’ve been studying at school- things like democracy in action, role of civil society, and other things that make me sound like a massive dork when I talk about them. It was really interesting to be able to see things in the real world that are related to what I’m studying though. I’ll stop talking about that now.

The schedule for my trip was pretty intensive. Two days were basically spent there and back in transit, one day in training (a reallllly looooong day), one day going to the location where we would be observing the election, election day, return to training, debrief, and trip home! Whew…

I was a bit sick when I was there so all my new friends got to hear my man-voice. I still did sing karaoke on the last night with that awful voice. Awesome!

While in Nicaragua we had our training at a resort near the Laguna de Apoyo which is really beautiful, and fun to swim in because it’s a volcanic crater and sometimes the water is hot in some spots and cold in the others. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a chance to do that much, but I managed to go in once before I left. The Canadians tried to spend some time in the sun while the rest of the delegation was complaining about the 35 degree heat and humidity.

Probably the most entertaining story I have to tell is the scorpion story. It was so weird. Honestly. I actually had a scorpion in my pants. WHILE I WAS WEARING THEM. We were waiting for the cars to come and take us to the place where we would be observing the elections. We were all standing outside when I felt something bite my leg and it really stung! I thought it was just a mosquito or something, and just tried to get over it. A few minutes later the vehicles arrived and I was sitting in the backseat with a Bolivian girl. All of a sudden I felt something again! I figured it was a thorn, or something random and started to shake my pant leg to see what fell out. You know what fell out? A LIVE SCORPION! So I start screaming and freaking out and flick my foot and the scorpion flies over and lands near the Bolivian girl’s foot. She starts screaming too! Luckily, we hadn’t left yet so we opened the doors and got outside and started to jump up and down and scream. All the coordinators run over and completely do not believe us when we tell them, but then they found the scorpion and killed it. Then I was “scorpion girl”. It was funny, a Costa Rican guy assured me that the scorpions in Nicaragua weren’t that poisonous because the REALLY dangerous ones were in Africa. These ones were just kind of annoying.

The scorpion thing actually turned out to be kind of a blessing in disguise because originally I was supposed to go to a rural city but then I ended up staying in Managua because they wanted to keep an eye on me. That meant less time traveling AND I met the ex-president of Argentina because he was at the OAS headquarters in Managua. I even have a picture to prove it! He was a totally cute man, gave me a kiss on the cheek and everything.

Election Day was really interesting. Really tiring, since we I was “observing” from 6:00am to 10:30pm but interesting. I ended up in Ciudad Sandino, which is about 20 minutes outside of Managua. I asked someone before I went if it was big. Yes, it’s big, but it’s not much of a city. It’s pretty rural. I learned a lot about the Nicaraguan electoral process and it really made me think about the Canadian process as well. It was kind of frustrating at times because people wanted us to solve their problems, but we weren’t actually allowed to interfere or do anything.

Something I was so impressed by was the Nicaraguan people. There were people waiting in line for HOURS to vote-- in the sun, rain, everything. They were committed to expressing their political will and it was amazing to see. The voter turnout was honestly so much higher than in Canada. You could tell who had voted because after people vote they apply ink to their right thumb. So everyone was walking around with red thumbs. It was one of those experiences that while you are doing it, the experience is so intense and tiring that you think, “I’ll never do this again” but when it’s over you realize how much you took from it and you totally want to do it all over again.

In terms of touristy stuff, we hit up a few markets (where some guy asked me if I’d been to Nicaragua before because he recognized me), and went to a lookout that’s supposed to be one of the most beautiful views in Nicaragua. Right when we got there it started to rain though. Which was funny because I went there a few years ago when I was backpacking through Central America and the EXACT same thing happened. Just as soon as we got there-- rain and clouds. Oh well. We also went to Granada but were severely behind schedule and ended up spending only about 15 minutes there since there was a massive Sandinista victory rally on.

It was hard to say goodbye to everyone after such an intense bonding experience, but hopefully we'll stay in touch. Thank you msn! All in all, an amazing and motivating experience. And free! Hmm...wonder if I can go to Venezuela?

Notice to Readers

2006-11-13T02:28:00.000+01:00

My mom googled me and found my blog, so entries will probably involve less swearing from now on.

New York, New Yoooooooooooork!

2006-09-22T07:23:00.000+02:00

The song was in my head the entire weekend. It was my first time in NY and being there was weird because everywhere you looked you realized you had seen either the exact same thing or something very similar in a movie, on television, in a photograph. The friends we stayed with (Neil and Noopur) lived just a few blocks from the Seinfeld café (well, from the sign they used for the Seinfeld café at least).

Background:

I went with my sister and another friend. The three of us had been in Spain and Morocco together, so we were used to traveling together. Well, my sister and I are used to each other anyway and our friend was forced to get used to us. Apparently traveling with siblings can be entertaining. When my sister and I talk to each other in “you are a fucking dumbass” voices Leah calls us on it. She’s even named it “sister tone”. It makes us be nicer to each other.

Also we got to meet up with Nitin, a friend from Edmonton who lives a few hours from NYC and Prasanna, another friend from Saskatchewan who is doing his master’s at Colombia. Fun times!

Goal Setting:

My two goals for the trip were:
1. Eat a lot of really good food
2. See the Statue of Liberty

One out of two isn’t that bad. Obviously eating won. We were kind of near the area where you can see the Statue of Liberty I just forgot about it until it was too dark and got too cloudy to see it. Oh well.

Noopur and Neil were perfect hosts and led us on a gastronomical tour of New York. As fellow cheap asses, they had made it their priority to find the best “economically-priced” meals in New York. I think we paid less than $10 each for every meal except for one.

Top New York Meals:

1. Somewhere in Chinatown—we had these things called soup dumplings. I’ve never had one before, but they were damn good. We just ate A LOT of food at this place. And it was cheap. Food for 6 people with everyone absolutely full afterwards was $42. Amazing.
2. Korean BBQ- I had never had Korean BBQ. It’s like my dream. Meat…lots of meat. Delicious meat. Yum.
3. Sushi- I can’t remember where this was either. But if you ordered $14 of sushi or more it was half price. Honestly, we ate like a barrel of sushi. So good.

Entertainment:

--Jazz, Rent, and the Lion King--

On our first night in town we decided to just wander the streets of New York (Greenwich Village I think). We passed a cool jazz café and decided to go in since there was live jazz playing. I’m not really one for jazz normally, but this guy Eli Degibri was amazing (you can listen to streaming music off of his website).

As for Rent and the Lion King, they were both so well done. I had no idea what Rent was even about until I went and I was blown away by the musical talent and emotion in the musical. I guess I didn’t really fully appreciate what experiencing a musical live would be like. I won’t lie, Leah and I held hands and may have even shed a tear at the really emotional parts during Rent. Wonderful. The Lion King had really spectacular costumes and visual effects, and was definitely worth seeing as well.

The best thing about Rent was: raw emotion and musical talent
The best thing about the Lion King was: costumes and black men with nice muscles

Partying Parmar-style:

Noopur and Neil said that even though they had been in New York for a while they didn’t usually go out clubbing. Once that was said we realized we had no choice but to party Parmar. (Parmar is their last name). We decided to make “Parmar” the word of the night…could be used as an adjective, verb, whatever you wanted! We decided to “get our parmar on”, “parmar it up”, sing songs and switch lyrics so they included “parmar” and all sorts of other parmarifffic things. I should probably also mention that during this time we were sipping “road pops” that Neil and Noopur made us to drink on the way to the club since we got out of Rent late and wanted to be a little tipsy before getting to the bar.

Friday night was the night of randomness. We met the most random people. Leah went up and gave some person a high-5, we met a guy named Alejandro who was wearing an Ethiopia shirt (Leah is Ethiopian) and then started to talk to us about his time in India. Weird…

In the line to the club we started to talk to the guy in front of us (Michael). He was wearing a really hideous grad ring and I took a closer look and realized it said “University of Waterloo”. So I said, “Michael, are you CANADIAN?” He was, he bought us drinks and hung out with us that night, and I asked him if that was the first time his Waterloo ring had helped him make friends. He said yes.

Other things from the night:
-Meena and Leah mistaking the place where the dartboards were for a dance floor and being told “you better move or you’re going to be hit with a dart”
-Me chatting with the bathroom attendant in the unisex bathroom (a middle-aged Mexican man from Veracruz) and introducing him to Noopur and Neil. The line was long, so we started to chat and I got pretty much his whole life story!Meena going in later and wondering why this guy was talking to her in Spanish.
-Meena and Leah trying to get us into the club (not verbatim)-
Bouncer: It’s $5 for girls and $10 for guys. But it’s full so I can’t let you in.
[Meena and Leah try to smooth talk for a while]
Bouncer: Fine, $50 for all of you.
Meena: That doesn’t make sense! If there are 4 girls and 1 guy it should be $30.
[Leah elbows Meena]
Meena: Ohhh, I mean uhhh….
[a few seconds later Meena turns to Leah and whispers]
Meena: OH, he wanted us to BRIBE him!
Leah: Yeah dumbass. (she probably didn’t call Meena a dumbass but I would have)

Other:
-Went to Ground Zero
-Went to the MET (it's HUGE!)
-Hung out at South Street Seaport
-Shopping in Chinatown and SOHO

New York Didn’t Want Us to Leave:

For our flight home Sunday we were responsible people and tried to get to the airport 2 hours early for our flights. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. We were waiting for the airport bus which for some reason didn’t come so we hopped in a cab.

Dialogue from a ride with the world’s most aggressive and agitated cab driver:
[drives for like 2 minutes]
Us: There’s quite a bit of traffic
Taxi Driver: I think the road is closed. If the road is closed we can’t go.
Us: Let’s ask that traffic cop.
[Lean out the window and ask, traffic cop says it’s not closed. The traffic cop is wrong because about 2 blocks later they are diverting traffic]
TD: I TOLD YOU WE COULDN’T GO THIS WAY! I TOLD YOU THE ROAD WAS CLOSED. I CAN’T TAKE YOU TO THE AIRPORT!
Us: Isn’t there another way to go?
TD: DO YOU KNOW ANOTHER WAY TO GO? IF YOU KNOW A WAY TELL ME!
Us: Uhhh….we don’t live here…we have no idea how to go but there has to be more than one way to the airport.
TD: I TOLD YOU THERE ISN’T A WAY!
[we kind of look at each other like…what the fuck….]
Us: Well, we have to get to the airport. If you can’t take us we’ll just get another cab.
TD: FINE, BUT THERE’S NO WAY!
Us: Uhhh…ok.

So we had a cab driver with a fatalist attitude. We got out (all the while he was yelling at us and telling us there was NO WAY to get to the airport). We talk to a traffic cop and he says that if we walk two blocks down the street that is blocked off to traffic we can get another cab from there.

At this point we didn’t really know where we were until we saw this sign. There were a lot of people in the streets and it looked like there was a parade going on. We asked someone what was going on and it turns out it was African American Day. Yes, we were wheeling our carry-ons by the Apollo Theater in Harlem surrounded by people and pretty much about to hit the African American Day Parade.

Here’s Leah’s take:
"It was just another random adventure that added to the fun of the trip. My favorite memory was Meena running down 125th street in front of the Apollo loudly commenting that "there are a whole lotta black people coming at us" (which caused many a furrowed eyebrow amongst the black folk in earshot- which was many) and me thinking "we do not have time for Meena to get shot right now". Oh Loose Lips strikes again."

We got another cab and found our way to the airport. We missed our flights, they lost our bags, but we still managed to get home safely (without getting shot) and our bags came yesterday! Oh New York. Always an adventure.

YARRRR Pirate Monkeys!

2006-09-13T20:42:00.000+02:00

Things are settling down in Ottawa (although I still haven't bought a bed!) and this weekend we inaguarated our new apartment with what should be the first of many parties.

The theme: Pirate Monkeys!!

Quite a few people dressed up (mostly as pirates without incorporating anything to do with monkeys), and I was impressed with the enthusiasm. We also passed some time telling each other piratey jokes like:

What's a pirate's favorite appliance?
A toastAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

And my personal favorite:

What's a pirate's best feature?
His BOOTY!

We also gave each other fake tattoos with markers which ended up rubbing off on the walls when people leaned on them. The good news: we are going to paint anyway so it doesn't matter.

I asked someone what they thought of the party. They said, "Overall, great party. Name tags might have been nice since there were so many people I didn't know. And it was great that you didn't get mad when people broke things".

The next morning our house looked like a pirate monkey exploded-- pieces of monkey costume everywhere and assorted pirate paraphernalia all over the place that people left behind. Now I have a few more eyepatches and swords. Yippee!

Here are the piraterrific pictures!

Ottawa

2006-09-06T00:38:00.000+02:00

I've been in Ottawa exactly a week and here's what the schedule's looked like:

Tuesday-Flew in at 5:30pm. Helped Meena's friend Lesley move that night. Just what I loooove to do after flying across Canada! (I like Lesley so it's ok)

Wednesday- My birthday! Unfortunately, I have no friends here (wheee wild birthday!). But my aunt and cousin were around, as well as my sister so that was good.

Thursday-Crazy shopping and cleaning. My sister Meena and I have our own place now, that means buying all the crap to put into it as well as cleaning it. Our building is at least 60 years old and the people that lived here before weren't exactly the cleanest people ever. And they had a cat. My sister is allergic to cats. Eww.

Friday-Moving day! We had to move all the stuff from Meena's old apartment (some furniture, clothes, computer, PLUS many things in storage). We didn't hire movers so it was me, Meena, and one of Meena's friends. Imagine 2 short brown girls trying to lift heavy things and Meena's friend Francis a tall, white (face turns pink when he exerts himself lifting heavy boxes) trying to move all the stuff Meena has accumulated in the last 3 years. Yeah. We did manage to go out this night though, so kudos to us!

Saturday-Picked up some more furniture and stuff (my sister rented a truck for moving, etc), tried to unpack, went to an Orientation thing at campus (basically...go for beer) and my sister threw me a "You have no friends" birthday party. We went for karaoke with her friends. Good times.

Sunday-Unpacked, attempted to do stuff. Can't even remember because I was so exhausted this day.

Monday-Errands, went to a "kick-off party" for grad students. I know you think that grad students can't party. Apparently they can party more than you would have thought. Evidenced by the fact that EVERY night this week is a bar night/drinking night. God. I thought my liver was going to have a break after the Czech Republic.

Tuesday- Official orientation for my program (MA International Affairs). Met lots of nice people. Dealt with stupid administrative paperwork and realized that Carleton University is technologically stuck in the dark ages in many ways. Karaoke tonight as the "get to know people so you aren't a loser" activity. I have yet to pick a song.

Busy, busy but will calm down after the first week I'm sure. This is why I haven't emailed many people back (sorry!) but will be better about that soon!

That is soooo Vancouver...

2006-09-06T00:14:00.000+02:00

After leaving Edmonton, before coming to Ottawa I had a side trip to Vancouver with Medha. It was a good time, lots of girl talk, sightseeing, and eating. I had possibly the best meat ever. If you are ever in Vancouver go to the Memphis Blues BBQ house and get the Memphis feast. It wasn't just a platter of meat...it was a FEAST!

I haven't been to Vancouver for years and it's a beautiful city. There were some notable differences between Vancouver and Edmonton and sometimes (as Albertans) Medha and I would just comment or give each other a look meaning "that is sooo Vancouver".

Examples of things that are very Vancouver:
-Starbucks everywhere. Like across the street from each other.
-People exercising at EVERY hour of the day...early morning, late night daytime...it didn't matter! Practically everyone in the city is a fitness freak. (Kind of weird because even the fit people drink a crapload of Starbucks)
-That leads to the next point: hotter people. Well, it's debatable as to whether or not the people are hotter or just take better care of themselves. Even the old people! All tan and skinny and stuff. I'm dark, but I'm not as skinny as people in Vancouver.
-Lululemon everywhere. Everywhere.
-More expensive than Edmonton..but a lot more restaurant selection I guess it's a tradeoff.

When in Vancouver I also got to meet up with Chris from Prague for dinner, and Albert a trainee that used to work at the bank I worked at in the Czech Republic. It was nice to see everyone and gossip and reminisce about pivo. Dobre, dobre. Unfortunately Erik couldn't make it out because he was sick. Prosim, we told him that pivo would cure his illness. Or maybe he was just scared that I would bring up embarrassing stories about him in the Czech Republic (although he has quite a few on me). Don't worry Erik, Chris regaled the table with a gooood story about you! Oh, Krakow. My friend Jocelyn also made it up to Vancouver so it was great. And it didn't rain while I was there, so it was a nice end to the summer before moving to Ottawa where the hecticness was waiting.

Adios Edmonton!

2006-08-23T23:50:00.000+02:00

It seems like I just got home and I'm leaving again, but it's been a great two weeks! A lot of lazing around and catching up with people I haven't seen in a while. Last Friday I had a bbq at my place so that was good since I got to see a bunch of people. It didn't end up being a WILD party as towards the end I had a bunch of tequila shots (when you open the bottle you have to finish it!) and wanted to have a heart to heart talk with my friend but we both fell asleep. I was wondering why the last party of the night was kind of hazy but then I looked at the pictures and counted how many times I was taking a shot.

I also went to a movie theatre the other day for only the second time in a year to see 'Step Up'. It was like 'Centre Stage' meets 'Save the Last Dance'. Yes, it was as bad as it sounds. The dancing was good...the acting was PAINFUL. Awful, awful movie. My friends and I agreed we should write a screenplay...it would have been much better.

Also found out that one of my friends has rickets. And one of my other friends had a parasite in his eye when he was traveling south-east Asia and now he's partially blind in one eye. Wtf? Random.

People keep asking me if I'm excited to move, nervous, etc etc. I never really know how to answer that question (although I'm guilty of asking it to other people as well). Should I admit that I hardly ever anticipate things much? I mean, I have trouble sleeping the night before sometimes but I'm never really overly optimistic or pessimistic about what is coming next in my life. It's just the next thing I'm doing.

Tomorrow I'm off to Vancouver for a few days with my friend Medha (even going to meet up with some ex-Praha people along the way!) and then to Ottawa. Good news-- my sister found an apartment for us. Bad news-- she expects me to paint it by myself, unpack and arrange furniture, and yes...cook her dinner. I owe her a lot of money so I can't argue. Damn servitude!

I [heart] Technology

2006-08-23T22:31:00.000+02:00

I love technology and I love people that I used to work with. I went out for lunch last week with some of my old colleagues (free lunch AND a beer!!) and I was telling one of them about my stupidity in deleting pictures by accident. One of them is a medical photographer (I used to work in a hospital) and he told me that you can recover a lot of them from your memory because of some computer crap that I didn't know about. Thanks to the wonder of the internet I was able to download the program for free--and it wasn't even an illegal download! I got back probably about 80% of my pictures thanks to the fabulous people at Art Plus. Yay!

Pandora

2006-08-17T18:31:00.000+02:00

Someone told me about this a while ago. It's cool. http://pandora.com/

Fotos de Mexico

2006-08-17T18:22:00.000+02:00

Haz clic aquí

The Craziest Picture I took in Mexico

2006-08-15T01:00:00.000+02:00

(It's not this one) This is in Oaxaca City in the centre on a Sunday night before the start of the Guelaguetza festival the day. There were tons of people, speeches, dancers, parades, and fireworks being set off from the church amongst other places. Mexico doesn't really have fireworks regulations as you know...so sometimes things like this happen:

I think without a doubt this is the craziest picture I took during my trip. Something went wrong with the fireworks and one exploded in the crowd. There were a bunch of people running away from it, and the crowd was a bit subdued, but the party kept going...so hopefully the injuries weren't too serious. I didn't see anything in the news the next day, but this image makes me wonder. Kari and I started off down in the crowd, but retreated to a restaurant with a balcony and a view of the festivities. That was probably a wise decision.

One year ago....

2006-08-15T00:12:00.000+02:00

I had just arrived to Ostrava, Czech Republic. How time flies! It was kind of weird timing, my flight back to Edmonton from Mexico was on the day that exactly a year ago I got off the train in Ostrava. This past year has definitely brought me a lot more than I could have imagined (friends, weight gain, increased alcohol tolerance, ability to swear in more languages...all good stuff). I think the next year might be a little more tame, but we will see. I am going to be living with my sister and she wants to have a theme party next month. At first she was thinking about having a pirate theme party. Then her friend suggested "pirate monkeys". Why? Because multiple themes are so much more fun than just one theme! My sister then proceeded to send me pictures such as this one:

And links like this. Do you have what it takes to be a pirate monkey??

Now I am back in Edmonton for about a week and a half more, then off to Vancouver with my friend, and then moving to Ottawa. Busy, busy.

Last but not least, this is is really dorky to say, but I must spread the news. Yesterday I went bowling with 2 of my cousins and I bowled the BEST GAME OF MY LIFE. I shit you not. I was on a roll. In my first 5 turns I had 3 spares and 2 strikes. I ended up with 154 points. The funniest thing is that the lanes were all full but my cousin saw some of her friends so we bowled with some 17 year old boys and they were thoroughly immasculated by the fact that I beat them. Mwahahaha.

Sometimes I hate...

2006-08-09T18:34:00.000+02:00

Technology. Myself. My sister's camera.

Yesterday I accidentally deleted all of my pictures from the last 2 weeks of travel. OOPS.

On the bright side, I did buy some cool Lucha Libre masks. There's always a bright side.

Chacahua-Puerto Escondido-Oaxaca-San Cristobal-Palenque-Tikal-Veracruz-Xalapa-DF

2006-08-05T22:19:00.000+02:00

Mucho tiempo since the last update. I will let the pictures do most of the talking later but for now here's the scoop!

Chacahua--
After leaving Zihuatanejo, Kari and I travelled further down the coast to Oaxaca and went to this place called Chacahua. It was one of those places that took a little more effort to get to (bus-collectivo-boat-collectivo), but it was totally worth it. Really great beach, cute place, lots of wild life etc. The one thing about Chacahua that Kari and I didn't get the memo about was that it was a place for COUPLES!! There were a few other people single people there, but the vast majority of the people were on a romantic trip together. I will admit, there was a beautiful sunset. Oh, and the scariest bathroom I encountered on the entire trip. Very, very scary. Probably would have been better to go behind a tree.

Puerto Escondido--
Surfer's Paradise, a place we had heard so much about. It was pretty fun, lots of other travelers around, and crazy waves. We were going to try surfing but we were too lazy. Playing in the waves was strenuous enough for us. We were both feeling a bit under the weather as well, so the place wasn't as magical as it could have been.

Oaxaca--
We headed inland towards Oaxaca City (we had spent enough time working on our tans) and this was the last place Kari and I were together since she had to go home. We had been to Oaxaca City a few years ago, but it was at the end of a trip around the south of Mexico and we were very cranky and did not appreciate it much. The city was quite different this time since there's a teacher's strike going on and the town square is full of striking teachers, and most of the streets around the centre are blocked off. It was still a really good experience though, Kari and I had some intense conversations with different people about their perspectives on the whole situation, about Mexican politics, etc (more later on this since Kari and I had the weirdest conversation ever with this random jewelery making guy and a really enlightening conversation with a pottery store owner).

The crappy thing that happened in Oaxaca was that I got ROBBED! I had never been robbed---after a year living in Mexico, backpacking through Central America, Europe etc. so I was kind of pissed. Although in retrospect it wasn't THAT bad because I only lost about $40 and my student ID cards (which were expired). It was more the fact that I was robbed and that my bag was cut! I really liked that bag! And the little coin purse that was stolen was a gift, I miss that more than the money. I can't complain too much though, I know people who had it much worse. MUCH worse.

After a few days in Oaxaca Kari had to head back to Vallarta to catch her flight. I stayed for another day and went to a festival called the Guelaguetza which showcases a lot of traditional Oaxacan dancing. The 'official' Guelaguetza was cancelled this year, but I went to one in a small town near Oaxaca. It was definitely an experience, got dropped off in the middle of nowhere and was wondering about whether I had been completely insane to try and see this show and ended up making friends with random Mexicans and going out to karaoke with them afterwards.

Oh, and I ate a grasshopper--typical Oaxacan snack.

San Cristobal de las Casas--
The main reason I went to San Cristobal was because I thought I could get to Tikal easily from there, which turned out to be wrong. It is a really cute city though, so I ended up just staying there for a few days (also was recuperating from a cough so felt like taking it easy). San Cristobal is the perfect place to do nothing. I am good at that.

Palenque--
Turns out it's really easy to get to Tikal from Palenque...so I went there! I had possibly the most stressful time of my entire trip in Palenque. I was out of cash so I decided to wait until Palenque to take money out. For some unknown reason, my Canadian debit card doesn't work in some ATMs in Mexico. This is usually ok because there are always like 5 banks around. In Palenque I went to 2 banks and then asked about whether or not there were other banks around. Well, turns out that the ATMs at 2 of them were out of order (I had to run around town a few times before realizing this) and there was one other bank machine but it belonged to the same bank that I hadn't been able to take out money from. And no one takes credit cards in Palenque. This was very stressful and I had all these completely unrealistic scenarios about how I would be stuck in Palenque forever (and starving since I honestly had only about $2 left) all because I couldn't withdraw money. Oh, and I was really excited because I realized I had $40 Canadian so I asked someone where I could change it. And I got the response "You can't change Canadian dollars anywhere in Palenque. Only Euros and American dollars". Bastards. Anyway, I ended up trying the other ATM of the bank that didn't work at first, and it worked! So basically, I freaked out because of nothing and I realized that I should never wait until the last minute to take money out.

Tikal--
Why was I so intent on going to Tikal? Because last time I went to Guatemala we skipped it and I didn't know when I would have the chance to go back. Plus, Tikal is the big daddy of Mayan ruins...who wouldn't want to see that?

From Palenque you can book a van-boat-bus deal to Tikal. Leaves bright and early at 6am. I met some really nice Norwegian girls on the van and ended up hanging out with them and staying with them while in Guatemala. Kind of a long trip and really, really dusty. Flores, (the town near Tikal) ended up being nicer than I expected and we were lucky enough to get the "penthouse" hotel room with a nice view. So posh!

The main topic of conversation amongst us and other travellers in Flores/Tikal was the tour operator, San Juan Travel. Basically, they have a monopoly on Tikal tourism. They operated the last end of the transport from the Mexican border town to Flores, and they organize tours to Tikal. So, the last leg of our journey consisted of a sales pitch for San Juan Travel. If you want to go to Tikal early to see the sunrise, they are almost your only option. They also organize the transport from Flores to Tikal. You can't get away from them. Anyway, we decided to wake up at 3:30am to go on the tour to see the sunrise. Afterwards they were supposed to take us around the ruins as well. Unfortunately it was cloudy, so we didn't really see the sun rising over the ancient Mayan ruins of Tikal, and they didn't really give us a tour. This was after advertising repeatedly about how the tour guide at Tikal would explain every details about the 5 temples (we got there and realized there were actually 6 temples). But, it turned out to be a fun day anyway as the Norwegian girls and a few others and I just did our own tour by reading Lonely Planet (it is good for something once in a while). And we saw spider monkeys. Everything is better when there are monkeys around.

Veracruz--
I had the longest day of travel on my trip after Tikal. I basically went from Guatemala to the Gulf Coast of Mexico, the city of Veracruz. But it wasn't THAT bad since there were a few good (although depressing) movies showing on the bus. Million Dollar Baby and Hotel Rwanda. Not exactly happy movies. But, I did once see the movie Glitter (with Mariah Carey) twice in 2 days on the bus in Mexico so I wasn't complaining.

I only stayed in Veracruz one day because it was really humid and kind of a touristy port town...although there was cheap seafood there so I still didn't mind it THAT much.

Xalapa--
Xalapa is the capital of the state of Veracruz and also the home of the jalapeño pepper. Fun fact! I stayed in a nice hostel where I met up with a bunch of people. We checked out a nice waterfall one day (I hiked, it was intense) and then just went around the city the next day. They have a really nice anthropological museum. Yes, I went to a museum, and it was even kind of interesting!They also have ridiculously cheap seafood in Xalapa. I was in heaven.

DF--
Now I am in Mexico City with Erick, one of my roommates from Ostrava, Czech Republic. He lives here, and is nice enough to let me stay with his family. His mom is trying to make me fat by feeding me lots and lots of Mexican food, but it tastes so good I can't complain! On Friday when I got here Erick showed me a true Mexican night out which (of course) consisted of mucha cerveza, meeting random people, stopping at a taco stand, going to an afterparty, and getting home around 7:30am wondering what you did all night. I'm here for a few more days until I fly home on Friday. It's been nice to reminisce with Erick about all the good times we had in the Czech Republic and talk about how much we loooove pivo.

That's the update for now! Pictures later.

Zihuatane-who?what?

2006-07-18T03:07:00.000+02:00

We are currently in Zihuatanejo, a coastal town in the state of Guerrero. Both Kari and I have never been to Guerrero before, so we were actually really excited to go to the museum (yes, I know...I'm not usually into museums) but it was closed! How sad. Soooo...we just spent the day on the beach. The day was not without its high points though, a beautiful walk to the beach and most notably...Kari being serenaded by fishermen on the bus back for being a stunningly beautiful guerra. Gotta love Mexico.

Off to some lagunas and then Puerto Escondido!

Maruata

2006-07-18T02:37:00.000+02:00

Yeah! We're in Maruata! On the side of the road!

The lovely beach in Maruata

After that amazing week in Vallarta, it was time to move on. With all intentions to leave Friday morning, inevitably it ended up being Friday afternoon. We were headed towards Maruata, a beach recommended to us by friends and touted as being one of the most beautiful beaches on the Michoacan coast. With that in mind we headed towards Maruata.

Unfortunately, we were unable to get the bus directly there that day, and ended up staying over in Manzanillo. Also unfortunately, it was deathly hot, we were hungover and we ended up being on a second class bus with no air-conditioning. Pobrecitas. Anyway, we finally end up in Maruata on Saturday morning.

Surprise! The bus drops you off on the side of a freeway! No town in sight! But we were near the sign that said 'Maruata' on it so we knew we were headed the right way. A nice little girl pointed us along the right direction (she laughed because we asked where the hotels were and she said 'there are only cabañas here'...now I know to just ask where the accommodation is). We were definitely a freak show in the small town, a guerra (white girl) and a morena (dark girl) in a place I would hardly characterize as a town. Our friends didn't lie though, it was amazingly beautiful. Surrounded by lush mountains, blue water, not too many tourists...perfect!

Kari and I walked around, lazed around etc, and the next day it was time for us to go. (The schedule is a bit tight because we left late and Kari has a plane to catch sooner than me). We had been informed that the bus comes by every hour...well...yeah no. Two hours and 45 minutes later of waiting on the side of the highway like hookers, we finally got on the bus. But hey, it's all part of the experience!

Spanglish Lesson

2006-07-18T02:26:00.000+02:00

Spring Breakear (verb)- to behave in the manner of a person characterized as a "Spring Breaker.

example usage: Vamos a springbreakear (Let's springbreakear).

Now you ask, how can you recognize a true Spring Breaker? My fine friends here in Vallarta have taught me the following--

Signs of a True/Extreme Spring Breaker. (In no particular order)
-true-will dance on the bar
-extreme- will strip on the bar

-true-will make out with someone and forget their name
-extreme- will sleep with someone and forget their name

-true-will take shots at some point of the night
-extreme- body shots

-will stumble home but be smart enough to stop for tacos
-will fall asleep fully clothed
-will visit at least 3 bars in one night
-will never buy their own drinks
-will go for a night swim in the ocean or a pool
-will wake up wasted
-will have a constant dance mix from the previous night playing in their head regardless of the time of day
-will wake up and do it all over again!

The girls and I were definitely Spring Breakeando this past week in Vallarta! A huevoooo!

Guadalajara Businessman Hunting

2006-07-12T23:43:00.000+02:00

I know there's no such thing as a free lunch. But there is such a thing as a free drink. Especially in Puerto Vallarta if you're a girl. Kari and her roommates Annie and Julia often pass their time doing the following--

Guadalajara Businessman Hunting

1. Establish whether or not the guy is actually from Guadalajara. Usually can be determined by whether or not they are wearing a long-sleeved dress shirt. Many times it is a striped shirt.
2. They should be men in the age range of 25-40 standing around a table with at least 3 other guys that look exactly like them.
3. The table should have bottles of alcohol on it. More times than less it will be a bottle of Bacardi or whiskey.

If they meet all of these qualifications you have at least a 95% chance of getting a free drink. Not just what is on the table, anything you want. Don’t be shy.

Why Guadalajara Businessmen?
-They have a lot of money and don't mind spending it
-Locals are cheap
-Travellers are cheap
-Free drinks are good!

Vallarta

2006-07-09T02:27:00.000+02:00

Finally! Reunited with my Pareja-- Miss Kari Lynn Bornhoft. When we lived in Guadalajara Kari and I spent mucho tiempo together. She even lived with me the last month when her host family kicked her out. Kari once made the very astute observation about Morritas (a gummy like candy) that "son super ricos" (very good)! Julian wanted in on the picture too so we decided to be nice and let him.

My sister was nice enough to lend me her camera for the trip, and we discovered that you can take these cheesy pictures with a heart around them. Kari and I have decided to try and take such pictures in the most romantic locations possible.

I don't know why I am constantly surprised by how little things change. I always expect things to change and generally, they don't change that much. Walking around Vallarta now is like walking around 2 years ago. I still remember where stuff is. (I guess it's not that hard to find the beach)

Kari lives with 3 loco roommates about 3 blocks from the beach and in the area I always used to stay in when I came here. They are bundles of fun-- 2 American girls and 1 Mexican guy. We've made it our mission to echar desmadre and yesterday we did just that. After we travel through Mexico Kari has to go back to Lee's Summit, Missouri so this trip is going to be her "Spring Break". I'm feeling pretty good about that. A huevo guey!!!

Guadalajara, Guadalajaraaaaaaaaaaa

2006-07-09T01:41:00.000+02:00

There's a mariachi song about Guadalajara that we always used to hear but the only words we knew were "Guadalajara, Guadalajaraaaaaaaaaa". Somehow never got around to learning the rest of it.

It was like coming home again. It's been two years since I left Guadalajara, and despite a few cosmetic changes it's pretty much the same. I hung out with my friend Julian who is doing some research there (he was on exchange with me too) and we went around to the touristy shit and reminisced (gossiped) about the good old days.

A trip to San Juan de Dios (Latin America's largest indoor marketplace) and many a michelada later made my return to Guadalajara a good one.

Some things I had forgotten about Mexico that I quickly remembered:
-Guys give up their seats to let you sit down
-Nothing is ever on time
-People make out in public everywhere (excessively)

A Wedding Story

2006-07-03T04:13:00.000+02:00

I love weddings. I cry when I watch '"A Wedding Story"(a show on tv that shows people and tells how they got together and follows them through the preparations for and during the wedding). Noopur and Neil's wedding was fabulous. Very well done and they looked so happy. Pictures are worth more than words at the moment. Aw, I'm getting teary just thinking about it. Aren't they just the cutest thing ever?

Me looking like a nice Indian girl in a sari.

A bunch of us with the bride and groom.

Now that the wedding's over, I'm off to Mexico on Tuesday!!

Surprise, surprise

2006-06-26T01:18:00.000+02:00

Surprise--The Oilers lost.
Heartbreaking but not completely unexpected. It was a good game though.

A real surprise-- last Wednesday.
Two of my friends Hilary and Kimberly told me I should be available no questions asked. They come pick me up from my house and I walk outside not really expecting anything and there was a limo! I can't remember the last time I've been in a limo, I was telling them that even for graduation we went in Ricky's Honda in our fancy dresses (which was fine too!). Anyway, we spent the night riding around, making some random stops and just catching up on what happened in our lives during the last year. It's amazing that so much can have happened, tons of things changed, but nothing really changes. Just picks up where it left off.

More surprises--I'm lazy.
I meant to post pictures and all that stuff about my trip, but I only have about a week before I go to Mexico (I'm going for about 5 weeks to visit friends and spend beach time), and I have some pressing social engagements before then. My friend is getting married and since she's brown they've decided to have a bunch of parties (like one yesterday, one Wednesday, Thursday, and they get married on Saturday). I can't really complain, it's fun! And I need to spend family time since I haven't seen them much. So, my blog might be kind of boring for the next few weeks, but hopefully once I get back from Mexico I will feel more motivated. Once I get back I have a few weeks before I have to move to Ottawa, and I am not going to be employed, so I'll make a real effort then. Maybe :)

Home Sweet Home!

2006-06-19T16:19:00.000+02:00

After about 10 months I'm back in Edmonton! The last few weeks around Europe have been amazing, I'll post pictures and updates when I feel more motivated.

Move over World Cup...right now the BIG news is that my town's hockey team, the Edmonton Oilers are in the Stanley Cup Finals and playing game 7 TONIGHT! They were down 3-1 in the series, and they were only like 8th place in the Western Conference during the regular season so this is pretty out crazy that they are even in the finals. We'll see how it goes! I feel so Canadian right now, writing about hockey.

Anyway, to all of you that made my time in Europe so awesome, here's a big thank you! I miss you guys, but I'll try to make it back for a visit hopefully in the not-so-distant future.

Eurotrippin' Part 1

2006-05-14T19:19:00.000+02:00

The Praha Goodbye aka the Weekend That Almost Killed Me!

Jenny wrote up what happened the last weekend in Praha so you can read that here! Basically, drum and bass party, a birthday party, lots of party party. It was a legendary weekend. I would also like to add that I was really sick that weekend and was running on little to no sleep. I had been planning to stay in (even though it was my last weekend) but I hate when people have fun without me. So, my black lung and I decided to party it up in Praha. I don't know what possessed us to hike 10km on my last day in the Czech Republic, but it was really beautiful. Even when I had to stop every little bit because I was coughing so much!

Berlin!
After Praha I went to Berlin and stayed with my friend Alex. He lives in a hotel, so it was pretty nice! His friend Tobi was staying there too and he hated me because he had to sleep on a mattress on the floor once I got there and I snored! Oh well. Berlin was nice...really relaxing. I was super lazy and just walked around a bunch and tried to recuperate from the Czech Republic!

Amsterdam!
I stayed with my friend Jacqueline and also met up a bunch with my friend Sandy. It was a fun time. I almost died the first time Jackie was biking me around. I am so impressed with her biking skills it's ridiculous. Really. When I had to catch the train to the airport she biked me to the station on the back of her bike with my huge backpack and stuff. And she wasn't even out of breath! I also had my first experience with intoxicated biking. Fun!

Copenhagen!
An all around good time! I met up with some friends that I know from Edmonton since they were on exchange there. And a friend from the Czech Republic. They always used to whine about how you can't walk down the street holding a beer in Edmonton and how Copenhagen is so much cooler. It was really fun! Being in Denmark is basically being in a land of beautiful people. It's unreal how the general populace looks here. Oh! And I had this totally random "what a small world!" incident. I was in the park with my friend Morten and he saw his girlfriend's cousin and we went over to sit with him. I was staring at this guy for a few seconds because he looked really familiar and it turns out I KNOW HIM! I met him during my exchange in Guadalajara, Mexico. He's my friend's girlfriend's cousin and I ran into him in a park in Copenhagen. Random! Morten's girlfriend is Danish-Mexican and same with her cousin, so it makes a bit more sense. Oh, and I was biking around with the other Morten and I FELL OFF MY BIKE! I have no idea how that happened, but all of a sudden I was on the ground. Embarrassing! But I wasn't seriously injured so it was ok.

Stockholm
I am one of Stockholm's finest along with my friends.
Look!
http://sthlmsfinest.com/
scroll down and click on Loge, 2006-05-13

I met up with 3 friends from Mexico for our reunion here. There were supposed to be a lot more people, but hey, it was fun! We have big plans for the next reunion, stayed tuned for news. Stockholm is beautiful but ridiculously expensive. Oh well, Scandinavia! There are a lot of the beautiful people here. Even my Finnish friend looked around on the metro and was just like, "My god, these people are SO Swedish!!" Not a bad thing necessarily.

Off to Barcelona tomorrow to meet my sister! Out of internet time now!

Thank you very many. Hi.

2006-04-26T15:16:00.000+02:00

(Czech people sometimes say thank you very many instead of thank you very much. They also get confused because Ahoj/Cau in Czech mean hello and goodbye. It's so cute when people I work with say Hi! instead of Bye!)

It's my last day of work! True to form I haven't done anything work-related although they did wait until 4:00pm to tell me there was drama with closing my account when I get off at 4:30. Thank you KB.

So, I'll probably have really sporadic email/internet contact from now until I get home. I'll try to update once in a while but no promises. If you email and I don't reply it's because either I haven't read it or I just haven't had a chance to reply. I promise I will be better in mid-late June once I am home.

For all of you that are wondering what I'm doing from now until then it will be something like this:
Prague- Jennski's Bday and Cesky Raj trip
Berlin-seeing a friend from Guadalajara
Amsterdam-friends and dropping off luggage
Copenhagen-seeing my friends that were on exchange in Edmonton last year
Stockholm-meeting some friends from Mexico
Barcelona-meeting my sister and her friend and traveling with them through Spain and Morocco
Rabat
Marrakech
Granada
Sevilla
Portugal-haven't figured out exactly where yet and will be traveling by myself. A first. Scawy!
Madrid- seeing friends
Barcelona- seeing a friend
Amsterdam- picking up my luggage, seeing friends, and back home!
June 18- Edmonton!

And yes, my trip was determined in part by visiting as many places that I could possibly stay for free in. I am cheap. And I really want to see my friends! Really.

Na shledanou to KB and the Czech Republic (soon)!

No shit! Punish!

2006-04-25T08:59:00.000+02:00

This last weekend was spent at an Aiesec conference in Sec hanging out with a bunch of the other trainees. It was eventful.

On the way there our train was about an hour late so we missed the last bus connection from Pardubice to Sec. We then decided it would be a good idea to try and hitch a ride. We were wildly unsuccessful but we did manage to meet the 2 creepiest people in Pardubice. Go us! Nuria also made a beautiful sign. I really can't understand why our requests of, "Prosim!!! Prosim!!!" didn't get us anywhere. However, we managed to get someone from the conference to pick us up so everything worked out.

Once there we got the party started until about 5:30am when Claireski and I looked at each other and were like, "this is boring now, let's go to bed!". We were lucky once we woke up, the weather was beautiful and the rest of the day we spent lazing by the lake. Well, I lazed, the guys actually played ultimate frisbee, can't believe they were exercising. That night was much like the previous one (drinking games, drinking, socializing, topalky this time) and the next day we woke up and just sat around until we caught a bus out of there.

Stuff from the weekend:
-Menia explaining the seriousness of topalky (Boat races- where people stand in a line facing each other and each side is a team. One person drinks their entire beer then the next person starts. Whichever team finishes first wins.). She was describing a situation in which she held off on drinking her beer to make the competition more exciting and her friends almost killed her. Words of wisdom: "There are friends, and there's topalky".
-Mauro lamenting the fact that he "tried so hard tonight and still didn't punish last night!"
-Will's totem pole story- his boss who always corrects his English (but doesn't speak English that well) doesn't believe Will when Will tells him the name for a large outdoor sign (like the one outside of a car dealership that says Ford or something) isn't totem pole. The boss is convinced the proper term is "totem pole". Finally, the boss relents a bit-- he changes "totem pole" to "totem (outdoor sign)". Right. This story is a million times better when Will tells it.
-Mauro's presentation on his time in Mozambique. There is a serious side to Mauro, he spent 6 months in Mozambique teaching English staying in a place without running water or electricity. When asked if he had ever picked up a girl after telling them this inspirational story Mauro said "oh yeah, last time I gave this presentation in Italy". Unfortunately, he did not pick up that night. Mauro, don't worry, you've still got it...somewhere.
-Drinking games with a bunch of the trainees-you learn so much about people in such a short time. Really. You did what in a H&M dressing room??
-Claire adding the "hlavni nadrazi" dance to her reportoire. Her other dance is the "namesti dance". They are both futsking dobře. It was also awesome to see Yuanski bust a move at the par-tay. Go Yuanski! We all shook it like a polaroid picture
-The completely awful food at the conference- cold chicken shnitzel (looks like a big chicken nugget) and liver soup are not good. I didn't eat properly until Sunday night.
-The Brno trainees said the most overused word by the Prague trainees was "shit", in sentences such as "No shit!" or "I shit you not!", and they all told us that we said "punish" way too much. Maybe we'll convert them and they'll start to say it too. I'm feeling pretty good about that right now.

All the futsking dobře pictures are right here.

Thank you Captain Obvious

2006-04-20T14:53:00.000+02:00

I just read this while surfing the internet at work.

The first line says "A new survey suggests workers are surfing their way away from job productivity, with a full 2.09 hours a day on average spent wasting time on the internet."

My first thought was, "Dude, I spend way more time wasting time than that! Does that mean these people work the other 6 hours?"

I'm not good at math, but here are some numbers

2006-04-20T14:04:00.000+02:00

Number of minutes I was late to work today: 163 (I was still responsible, I sent them a text message saying I had to speak with my landlord. By speak with my landlord I meant sleep in.)

Number of "working" days left (not counting today): 4 (Probably should be "number of days I have to come to work and try to occupy my time for 8 hrs when I don't have ANYTHING to do")

Number of days left until I leave Brno: 7 (Tear!)

Number of days until I am back in Edmonton: 59 (Do you miss me?)

Number of days since I came to the Czech Republic: 251 (Holy futsk)

Number of countries I have been to since I came to Europe: 9 (Yay!)

Number of other countries I will visit before going back to Canada: 7 (Double yay!)

Number of degrees it is outside today: 19 (I finally put away the winter jacket)

Number of castles I've been to in the Czech Republic: 7 (They're everywhere!)

Number of Czech crowns needed to get 1 euro: 28.5 (Painful)

Number of minutes spent trying to think of something entertaining to add to the list before giving up and staring out the window because thinking hurts: 2.8

Prosim! A Tairyfale: Part II

2006-04-19T14:41:00.000+02:00

The journey continued the next morning after a multitude of cold showers as the group ventured to the true land of tairyfaleness- Cesky Krumlov. With its beautiful castle tower and all around quaintness despite the hordes of German and Japanese tourists, it is indeed the land where dreams come true. Also the land where usage of the word “prosim” reached previously unimaginable levels. There were just so many examples of prosim-ness that there is a photo album dedicated to PROSIM! After a tour of the castle (with a splendid tour guide who did not make eye contact and let out big SIGHS!), random wanderings, dances in the namesti (the German tourists loved Claire dancing it up in the square) much food, cocktails, and rousing games of Uno the group decided to embark on what was to be the mission of the night. Get the party started for young Yuan (aka Yuanski) who was turning 22. Yuanski rang in her birthday in a truly unforgettable manner: on the bridge in Cesky Krumlov looking at the tower and the Jesus statue, with birthday dances and many words ending in -ski. Why is it so much funski? I don’t knowski! It just iski. Or isski? The search for fun endured for a while as the group tried to find a gathering place that was affordable and ended up at a different hostel bar playing sociables til 4am when they were subsequently cut off and then kicked out. The fun wasn't over yet, as they then managed to enrage the other occupants of their hostel room with late night pizza eating and pathetic attempts at whispers. And then Erik fell asleep in bed with his glasses on.

Alas, even good things must come to an end. The following day the kids had to leave, but not without doing more eating, drinking, and castle-seeing. And there were bears. Why? They lived in the bear moat of course!

Now all that remains of this real-life tairyfale is the memories, copious amounts of pictures and video, and of course… all the shit that was stolen (well, don't they factor that into the price?)

The booty: (yes, I just wanted to say booty)
-Approximately 6 candleholders (It’s bohemian crystal!)
-Ashtray
-A lighter
-Beer mug
-Napkins + napkin holder
-Coasters (aka beer mats) and the holder too I think…
-Wine glass
-Mini wine pitcher
And that my friends, is alternative souvenir shopping.

Here are the photos.

Prosim! A Tairyfale: Part I

2006-04-18T15:31:00.000+02:00

Main Characters: Claire (UK), Jenny (China), Nuria (Spain), Erik (Canada), Yuan (China), me

Takes place in: Praha, Hluboka, Ceske Budejovice, Cesky Krumlov

Once upon a pivo... there were 6 merry youngsters who decided to see what Southern Bohemia had to offer. They travelled from far and wide (Brno and Praha) in hopes of having a magical tairyfale weekend. It was futsking dobře.

They began their journey Friday by meeting in Praha, and went out for some pre-trip bonding where they had the pleasure of watching a Czech man dance on a pole and push girls out of the way so that he could have more attention whilst displaying his sensual dance of love.

Early the next morning they embarked on a journey to the village of Hluboka to see a castle that appeared as if it had come straight out of a Disney movie. In line with traditional Czech Easter practice, they carried with them a lucky stick (it is Czech tradition to whip girls with birch sticks on Easter Monday, but since Erik was the only boy, the girls decided to whip him instead). Many a funny moment ensued with the stick, but the girls were soon to realize that Erik should not be trusted as he plotted to gain control of the stick. Alas, (for Erik), the girls were cunning enough to recover control of the stick. He was punished accordingly.

The youngsters, having resided in the Czech Republic for a while, decided to tour the castle with the Czech tour as they had missed the English tour. They soon realized that although they have lived in the Czech Republic for a while, they are incapable of understanding anything in Czech that does not refer to ordering beer. After the tour, in true tairyfale fashion, they witnessed 2 weddings. The merry group was astounded at the utterly unsightly wedding dresses, and more troublingly, the hairstyle of one of the grooms. The groom had taken pains to fashion the most hideous mullet known to man. The girls questioned, “Why? Why? Why would you marry a man with a mullet?”, and were puzzled as the bride was not even ugly. Prayers for the bride, hope Mr. Mullet was rich. Yuan was previously unfamiliar with the term mullet (best explained as business up front, party in the back), and asked “What if you’re balding and you have longer hair at the back, but nothing really up front?”. She was soon to learn this maxim, “The mullet is a choice, baldness is not your fault”.

After admiring the beautiful castle, our fair group decided they needed a change of scenery and moved along to Ceske Budejovice, the home of the “original” Budweiser brewery. They met many a character inside the restaurant/brewhouse, including a table of people who were testing their alcohol level with a breathalyser a la Tucker Max, and a fat man who came over and gave everyone at the table little paper umbrellas to stick in their food. Nuria was presented with a decorated egg from another intoxicated fellow as well. All in all, a good time. Our group also was informed that beer is 90% water, a fact which, in itself, justifies beer consumption. One needs 8 cups of water a day! Keeping this in mind, the braver few opted to try the 1L beer, which came in glasses larger than the size of most of their heads.

Once the beer was finished, the troupe decided to find their accommodation for the night in Ceske Budejovice. Lost for a moment, they soon realized that there were a few Mormon missionaries around (recognizable by short sleeve shirts and ties), and asked for directions. Soon they were able to locate their pension, although they had no idea what the grandma who showed them their rooms was saying. After a trip to the town square, and dinner, the day soon came to an end. Exhausted from the day, the group decided to have an early night.

To be continued...

Note--
The three most overused words on this trip were:
1. Prosím-Czech for "please, you're welcome, or pardon", which we soon adopted to mean pretty much anything based on context and how you said it.
2. Dobře- Czech for "good, ok, all right"
3. Futsk-'Fuck' read as if you were reading it in Czech (where 'c' is pronounced 'ts'), therefore futsk.

All three in a sentence: "Prosím! That was so futsking dobře!"

Aidez les oiseaux / Help the Birds was the subject

2006-04-12T14:46:00.000+02:00

My sister forwarded this email to me that she received from her friend at Environment Canada. No joke. Actually, maybe it's a joke. My comments are in red.

************** Canadian Wildlife Service Migration Alert *************

Help the birds – turn off the lights! I don't want to help birds.

Hundreds of thousands of birds will soon be winging (what clever word usage) their way back to Canada, filling the skies with song (which is freaking annoying, especially in the morning). Unfortunately, human-built structures, especially highly reflective or brightly lit structures, can pose a fatal obstacle to birds. Birds in flight are confused by lights, mirrored glass and windows. (ie birds are stupid) The good news is we can all take simple steps NOW to significantly reduce bird collisions.

Up to 100 million birds die in collisions each year in North America.

STEP #1 – Know when migrating birds are passing through your region
Atlantic Canada: April 5 to June 7
East-Central Canada: April 1 to June 7
Prairie Canada: April 15 to June 7 thank god I'll be out of the country for this
Pacific Canada: April 1 to June 7
STEP #2 – Consider the following measures to counteract collisions

For building managers:
ensure that non-essential exterior lights are shut off between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m.
encourage occupants to take some of the actions mentioned below

For building occupants:
make sure you either turn off your office lights when you leave, or pull your blinds down to block indoor light
at home - turn off spotlights or other exterior lights between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m.
keep pet cat(s) indoors
consider the potential lethality of house windows to birds when designing a garden - don't plant bushes too close to windows Yes, let the birds dictate your creative freedom
consider hanging bird deterrent devices (such as old compact discs and tin can lids) (decorate your house with crap! You can pick some of it up at the local landfill too!) at windows that pose a high risk (like picture windows)

For more information:

Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP): http://www.flap.org/new/nestegg.htm
Canada Green Building Council: www.cagbc.org
Lights Out Chicago: www.cityofchicago.org/Environment/BirdMigration/sub/lights_out_chicago.html
Birds and Buildings Forum, Chicago: www.birdsandbuildings.org
New York City Audubon: http://nycaudubon.org/NYCASBirdWatch

ALSO---
REAL BABIES SHOULD NEVER SMOKE!
I also read this in the news today. The reason that this is funny is because my friend has one of these. If you look closely at this picture, you can even see the smoke coming out of smoking baby's cigarette.

Full of Magic, Lacking Cheese

2006-04-10T15:49:00.000+02:00

This weekend we had some visitors in Brno. The lucky few were Tommaso (Ostrava) and Erik, Jenny, Rapha, Michela and Michela’s sister Kendra joining us from Prahaha.

Highlights of the weekend:
-Beautiful spring weather-- you know it’s spring when you see 2 bugs doing it (as Rapha calls it) “buggystyle” . I’ll post the picture later
-Visiting the Mendel museum where not only did you learn about how Mendel is the “Father of Modern Genetics”, you also had the opportunity to (as the brochure said) learn about “Mendel, the man”. Also had fun taking pictures with the statue outside
-Rapha doing the “reach for the stars” dance at the Spilberk Castle. Why? I don’t remember why, but I have an embarrassing video of him doing it now
-Talking with Jenny and Erik about feelings and magic
-Doing B-52 flaming shots with Nuria, Erik, and Jenny. Jenny got really mad at me because I blew the flame out before I drank it. I know you’re not supposed to do that but my straw caught on fire and the flames were moving rapidly towards me! Sorry Jenny-- I didn’t want 3rd degree burns
-Comparing the guy’s asses and reminiscing about how much fun it was to do that with Bina around
-Sandwiches
-Tommaso bringing his dance moves to Brno again. They still are (and always will be) awesome
-Telling Jenny and Erik that the best smazeny syr was in Brno and we would go to get it after the bar, only to have them run out of smazeny syr by the time we got there. Well, actually there was 1 left and I ate it. They said I could!
-Going to Olomouc on Saturday after getting only 5 hours of sleep
-Taking fun pictures with the Olomouc turtle.
-Being really excited to see the astronomical clock on the hour after missing it during my last visit and then wondering what the fuss was about, the figures didn’t even turn! Ahhh well….
-The carnival like music on the Olomouc trams, much nicer than just a beep
-Forgetting to eat the special Olomouc cheese, a tragedy that was only offset by the fact that we had really good ice cream. Mine was healthy, it was a banana split!

As always, it was dobre. Fakt!

Pinche Pájaro!

2006-04-05T10:39:00.000+02:00

Last night I went to see a Mexican film called Matando Cabos at the film festival that is currently on in Brno. It's not the only hip and cool thing happening in Brno at the moment, there's also an agricultural technology trade fair at the conference centre near my place, and the knife show is coming up just around the corner!

Anyway, the website of the film festival said it was in Spanish with English subtitles. It turned out to be in Spanish...without subtitles. Not so good for my friend who didn't speak Spanish, but ok for the rest of us. For the Czech people there was "simultaneous translation" that was obviously delayed because the audience was always laughing a few seconds after us. I think it's funny how there's always just one person translating the movie....poor Czechs have to listen to one lady's voice for all the characters. I think it's the same sometimes with some (probably older) Polish and Russian movies that are dubbed--just one voice for all the characters. Special. Can you imagine something like Napoleon Dynamite being dubbed with one monotonous voice? It would kill the magic.

The movie turned out to be pretty funny, I would definitely recommend it even though there are some kind of gross violent moments. I also loved the fact I could actually understand what they were saying, Spain Spanish still throws me for a loop. It's the damn lisp!

Watching it made me feel really really nostalgic about Mexico--not just for all the great times I had and the people I met (I still think about you hijos de puta all the time, espero que you're having fun at Wal-Mart), but nostalgic for Mexico as a country. I miss the obvious things like tacos (ok, pretty much all food from Mexico--I have a craving for some coctel de mariscos or some pozole...mmm...pozole or chilaquiles or or maybe I shouldn't have started to write this post around lunch time), the beach, the good weather overall, etc etc but also the other random things like the pimped out buses, the weird conversations with taxi drivers, checking out the transvestite hookers on Lopez Mateos, banda music, how people sing along in public when songs they know are playing, random encounters with the police (D, remember that?), bargaining about everything in markets (I tried to bargain in Paris and it so didn't work), just everything. Well, not everything-- but a lot of stuff.

My manera de hablar was so much better when I could punctuate it with things like 'No mames! Que pedo wey? Vete a la verga! No la hagas de pedo!' etc etc. I think my accent in Spanish is permanently fucked up from speaking Spanglish with the other extranjeros in our stupid voices because sometimes when I'm trying to have a serious conversation with someone and have a proper accent one word or phrase that we used to pronounce like idiots will pop out (fgdp- por lo MENOS! Son thuper ricas! Will think about you during Semana Santa even though I will be nowhere near a perfect beach, but maybe I will find a rude waiter like that asshole at the Papaya Playa. Oh, and I won't be stuck wearing my sarong for 3 days straight because they didn't do my laudry overnight like they were supposed to.Hijos de la chingada). No puedo creer que ya hace como 2 años desde que estaba en Mexico con todos ustedes!

I guess another reason for this reflection is because I'm leaving the Czech Republic at the end of April (last day of work in 3 weeks, thank jesus maria) and I know I'm going to go through the same withdrawal and drama of saying goodbye to people that have become like my extended family. I like some of them better than my family! No, I'm kidding...but I still really will miss them (and some of my family reads this blog hehe). At the same time, it will be nice to go home after about 10 months--and I am getting home at the best time of year. Summer. I'm travelling around Europe after I leave the Ceska Republika, so I'll be home mid-June. (Start planning my surprise welcome back party now)

I'm sure after a few months I will be cursing Canada, but unfortunately permanent responsibility-free escape won't be mine for about a 1.5-2 years since I got into grad school. Yes my friends, I was accepted into Carleton for International Affairs so come September I will be relocating to my nation's capital to pursue my lofty ambitions of having a career that involves travelling and (fingers crossed) wearing cute outfits as well. Hopefully I can go on exchange again-- South America is the dream.

For now I'm left wondering how I will cope without Czech pivo and friendly interaction with the locals (Ne! Nerozumim!). Serious about the pivo, not so serious about the locals. Although some of them do have really beautiful mullets.

Pictures

2006-04-04T15:01:00.000+02:00

As the title indicates, I posted some more pictures--

Paris!!

March 2006 Brno Randomness

Nishant's Going Away Party

Policie eh?

2006-04-04T14:53:00.000+02:00

On Friday night while doing a little bit of grocery shopping Nuria’s purse was stolen. Not a good thing, especially since she had 2 cell phones, her wallet, her passport, and other assorted valuables in there. She went to the police but we were pretty much resigned to the fact that she wouldn’t get it back.

Sunday afternoon we decided to take advantage of the beautiful spring weather and go for a walk. It was actually quite warm when we left the dorms so we decided to wear cropped pants and flip flops. We got some weird looks from the Czechs. It was a good idea when we left, but since the sun had set by the time we got back we were a little chilly. We were just walking into the dorms when we saw a sign telling Nuria to go to reception. We went there and the receptionist managed to explain to us (in Czech of course….) that the police had been there earlier to see Nuria. Just as she was finishing this up, the policeman came back! He was very nice man with a moustache and took me and Nuria to the police station because they found her bag!

We thought we were going to die on the way there because he drove like a maniac. When we got in we were going to put our seatbelts on, but they didn’t work. We managed to make some conversation on the way there. In almost 8 months of being in the Czech Republic, my knowledge of Czech is below basic. This was the conversation on the way to and in the car.

Me: (to the officer) Mluvíte anglicky? [Do you speak English?]
Policeman: Ne, nemluvím anglicky. Mluvíte česky? [No, I don’t speak English. Do you speak Czech?]
Me: Uhhh….maličku…[A little bit. Actually it translates to “small” so sometimes when you ask Czech people if they speak English they say….”small!”]
Policeman: (starts talking rapidly in Czech)
Me: Umm…. Nerozumím. [I don’t understand]

[in the car]
Policeman: (starts saying something again)
Me: Promiňte, nerozumím česky . [I’m sorry, I don’t understand Czech]
Policeman: Taky nemluvím anglicky nebo španělsky. Mluvím rusky! [I also don’t speak English or Spanish. I can speak Russian!]
Me: (laughs) Ahhh rusky není dobře! [Russian is no good!]
Policeman: (laughs)
Me: Dobře, dobře! [ok, good]

So basically, I can only say that I don’t speak Czech, I don’t understand, and whether something is good or bad. I guess that’s….good.

We got more weird looks once in the police station-- for being foreigners and for wearing flip flops and cropped pants when it was cold out, but everything turned out alright since Nuria got her purse back. It was missing the cell phones and some money (about 15 euro) but everything else was there! Nuria said that they must not have been real thieves, they left pretty much everything. They didn’t even smoke her cigarettes!

Afterwards we were total dorks and got a picture of Nuria with the police officer, he didn’t want to, but after we said “Prosím!” [Please!] he relented. That’s a good word to know too. The picture of Nuria and the policeman is right here!

Beer Spa?

2006-03-29T13:48:00.000+02:00

I read today that the Czech Republic opened the world's first "beer spa". Understandable since they have the world's highest consumption of beer per capita. The statistic is something like 160L a year for every man, woman, and child in the Czech Republic. Hey, that's only one beer a day!

Check out the beer spa website here. A news article quotes the owner of the spa saying, ""Beer can treat a range of conditions, particularly skin conditions, and the health centre should appeal to men who are put off by 'posh' traditional spas. I have heard of some places in other countries where people can swim in beer but it's just a gimmick. We believe in the healing properties of beer and we offer the full range of treatments. We are a fully-fledged beer spa."

Beer has vitamins, slows aging, fights impotence, reduces likelihood of a heart attack, and can HEAL you! Nazdravi to that!

My Personal Tragedy

2006-03-28T15:08:00.000+02:00

This morning I came to work and as per usual went to the gmail website to log-in. My heart stopped for a moment when I saw this:

Přístup odepřen / Access Denied (content_filter_denied)
Váš požadavek byl zamítnut z důvodu zakázaného obsahu v kategorii: "Restricted;Web-based E-mail".
Your request was denied because of its content categorization: "Restricted;Web-based E-mail".

Yes my friends, when I thought that I had beaten the man, the man came back to beat me. Do you know what this means?? NO GMAIL AT WORK AND NO GOOGLETALK! This is tragic. I am doomed to boredom and back to using only my work email address during the day which blocks half the messages I am sent!

The filter here is crazy though and sometimes pages are blocked but when you go back a few days later they are allowed again. I'm hoping that is the case. Otherwise it's going to be a long 22 days more of work at Komercni Banka. And what's really annoying is that the filter is unfairly targeting me! (Jenny said yes I was being targeted, but no it was not unfair. I disagree, there is some sort of conspiracy happening here!) Anyway, I checked with the KB trainee in Ostrava and her gmail worked. So not cool.

So if you're wondering why I haven't been responding to emails within minutes or been chatting on googletalk, it's because I can't. And it's raining outside. Could this day be more depressing?

Oh wait, I just remembered, the website I use to post picture isn't working either. Fabulous.

Paris~~ Oooh la la!!

2006-03-28T14:16:00.000+02:00

Paris was amazing, impressive, beautiful, and all those other adjectives used to describe it! Even with the gum on the roads, cigarette butts everywhere, and drivers that try to kill you-- Paris is something special. Even when it’s raining and you pay 11euros and wait 2 hours to go to the top of the Eiffel tower only to realize once you’re up there that it’s too cloudy to actually see anything…yup, it’s still worth it!

So, our lovely trip to Paris began Thursday around 2am when Tommaso picked me up in Brno to get to the Prague airport. Our flight was at 6am. Special.

Once we got to Paris we managed to find our way around and get to the metro station where we met Lulu!! It seemed like just yesterday that we were all living together in Ostrava. I can’t believe it had been like 3 months since I saw Lulu. And of course when I saw her I yelled “LULU! MON CHERIE!!!” and ran over to hug her-- you could definitely tell I was not French. She took us back to her apartment which is located in a really cute area of Paris- little streets, vegetable markets, boutiques, bakeries, etc…the typical thing you think of when you think of Paris.

Unfortunately she had to go to school, so Tommaso and I did some sightseeing. We saw Notre Dame and a bunch of other stuff you can see in the pictures once I post them. One thing we were reminded of was this: If you need to ask someone to take a picture of you, ask the Japanese tourists. They are the best. They will even crouch down and move around to get the best camera angle. Other people are stupid. Honestly-- if I am standing in front of some kind of monument, and I ask someone to take a picture I would assume they would realize that I would like to have the monument in the picture. Why would I want to have like 1/3 the Notre Dame and a bunch of dead space? Really, some people’s children.

Lulu cooked dinner for us 3 of the days we were there. This is extraordinary because the entire 4 months or so I lived with Lulu all she ate was musli, chocolate, yogurt and vegetables. And sometimes soup, but only the kind where you just add water. Her salad was really good, I won’t deny it, but I had never really seen her use the stove before so this was kind of crazy. The food was great Lulu!!

I also had the chance to see my cousin Nandini, but only for like an hour and a half since her hotel was REALLY far away from where I was staying, and we had completely conflicting schedules. The metro ride there was entertaining-- a drunk guy singing and stumbling around and then while walking to the hotel some man started yelling at me and saying “MERDE!!! Blah blah blah”. I really have no clue why because 1. I had just been listening to my ipod the whole time so I was kind of out of it and 2. I don’t speak French. So, there are definitely some crazy people in France, especially those that hang in/around metros. It was nice to see my cousin, and she even brought me some stuff from home/took stuff for me, so that was a bonus!

Oh yes, Lulu also informed us about the 2 rules of the Paris metro:
1. Don’t look at other people- it means you don’t like them
2. Don’t talk loudly and don’t laugh. People don’t like that in Paris!
Obviously we broke these rules. And when Tommaso was looking at me he said, “I’m looking at you because I don’t like you!” I know he’s lying.

Friday morning we got some sad news. Lukasz (who was flying from Poland and supposed to meet us) had missed his flight! Which sucked because it was supposed to be the last time I saw him before I left Europe. Boo to that!

Anyway, Friday we went to Versailles which is unbelievably opulent. It was really sunny when we got there and we were excited about the good weather but then it started to rain. Which was not so great. The gardens were cool, but definitely would be much more impressive in summer. Oh, and it was here that we realized how many people thought Tommaso and I were a couple. We asked someone to take a picture of us and they said “Ooh, get in close to each other like you like each other!” I guess it’s not that common for a male and female that are friends to travel around the most romantical city ever!

We also did a bit of shopping once sightseeing was done and I bought shoes and boots for 5 euros! I decided to take a fashion risk (I am not very fashionable) and buy some of those boots you tuck your pants into since they were only 5 euros. Now I know this is fashionable in Europe, but for me it’s weird because when it was snowing and I was younger my mom would tell me to tuck my pants into my boots so they wouldn’t get wet and I would be like, “Mom, that is so not cool”. And now people are tucking their pants into their boots all over the place. Lulu told me that it looked fine…but we’ll see if these boots ever come out once I’m back in Canada.

Tommaso and I were lucky enough to experience a bit of French student culture on Friday night because at Lulu’s school there was a party of different student groups. We pretended to be exchange students and got in free. There was free alcohol (but the drinks were really not that alcoholic), dancing, and all around good times. At 7pm. Pretty crazy! It was fun though, we got to meet a bunch of Lulu’s friends. We also learned about “the helicopter”. It’s when a guy pulls his pants down and swings his penis around. Why? I don’t know. I asked one of Lulu’s friends and they said, “because it’s funny, no?”. That happened twice. Ohhhh the French people.

Later on that night we did some walking around the area with Moulin Rouge and a bunch of sex shops, but did not go in because Lulu and Tommaso had already visited a sex shop the night before when I was with my cousin. Naughty kids!

Saturday was the day we had planned to see all the big stuff- the Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees, Arc d’Triomphe, Place de la Concorde and it was the day with the worst weather. Raining the ENTIRE day. But still wonderful and beautiful as Paris is. We went out that evening for dinner and drinks with Lulu’s friends who are all very nice. We realized another thing: we are too poor to party in Paris. 7euro for a mixed drink is beyond my budget. We ended up going back to Lulu’s friend Helene’s apartment but were all really tired after sightseeing the entire day and also had to factor in the time change…so we left pretty early. We were waiting for a taxi back to Lulu’s at the taxi stand with a bunch of other people when some reallllly drunk people stumbled along yelling, “IT’S HER BIRTHDAY! WE NEED A TAXI NOW! CAN WE GO IN FRONT OF YOU?!?! WE REALLY NEED TO GET THE DIIIIISCO!!!” Riiiight, because when we’re tired and waiting for a taxi home it’s a really convincing argument that people should let you go ahead of them so that you can get to the DISCO!

Sunday was our last day, and turned out to be the day with the best weather. We went to the Louvre (but didn’t go inside because we didn’t have time and I’ve heard the Mona Lisa isn’t really that impressive anyway), walked around the Jardin des Tuileries, to the Hotel des Invalides to Montmartre, and back to Lulu’s and then the airport. I have to go back to Paris, it’s impossible to see all you want in just 4 days! Of course, I’ll go back when I actually have more money and don’t have to make my own baguette sandwiches and pack lunches and snacks everyday. Yes, we did that. We even brought snacks from the Czech Republic because they are cheaper! Can you say….ghetto?

At the airport there were 2 really annoying groups of people. First was this group of 4 or 5 extremely drunken Czech guys. Someone later informed me they were Czech soldiers that just came from Iraq. Anyway, they were drunk, and carrying beer in the airport and drinking it. I thought you weren’t supposed to let visibly intoxicated people on the plane…but I guess it’s ok when you fly with a budget airline. Next, there was a group of about 50 French junior high kids that were screaming and raising bloody hell. Tommaso and I looked at each other and hoped to god those people wouldn’t be on the plane. We have really good luck, both of the groups were! It was a COMPLETE gong show. The guys were being loud and drunk the entire time, the kids were running around screaming, one chick started crying and called her mom because she was supposed to sit next to one of the drunk guys and she was bawling her eyes out and on the cell phone while the flight attendant was standing there saying, “you have to turn your cell phone OFF when you are on the airplane!”. Finally, after about 30 minutes delay (fucking kids wouldn’t sit down!) we managed to get in the air and then the running around resumed. So much for sleeping on the plane! When we landed everyone clapped. Why do people do that? Are they really surprised the plane landed without incident? You’re more likely to die in a car crash than on an airplane. Should you clap every time you’re in the car and arrive safely at a destination? God, it’s like when people clap after movies. That’s stupid too.

Eventually we got our luggage, found the car, and I made it back to Brno without problems! I didn’t clap when Tommaso dropped me off, but he knows I appreciate it!

-Other stuff-

-Baguettes-
It’s true!! A lot of people in France walk around carrying baguettes! Especially in Lulu’s neighbourhood. Lulu and I had the following conversation:
Me: Lulu, how many times have you ever seen someone drop a baguette?
Lulu: Never.
Me: You have NEVER in your entire life seen someone drop a baguette or dropped a baguette yourself? Or run into the side of a building with a baguette or had any other baguette related incidents?
Lulu: No, really. I’ve never seen that.
Me: I guess I better be careful with this baguette then.

-While engaged in random conversation with an American lady and her son-
American lady: You speak really good English! Where are you from??
Me: Canada
American lady: Ooooh really?

-Later on in the conversation-
American lady: I’m surprised at how rude French people are! We have manners where I come from.
Me: I live in the Czech Republic, I don’t think French people are ruder than Czechs. Plus, when you live in a touristy town you probably just hate tourists because they’re annoying. And they probably don’t like you because you’re American.
American lady: I really just don’t get it. Why wouldn’t they like Americans?
Me: Well…that whole Freedom Fries thing probably didn’t help you too much…

I love Paris!

Paříž tomorrow!

2006-03-22T16:06:00.000+01:00

I've been having problems posting pictures at work, so that's why they're not up-- I'll try again later.

As for now, I'm just about to leave work and yes...off to Paris (Paříž in Czech) TOMORROW! I need a vacation from all this hard work I do.

Should be a fun time, going with Tommaso and Lukasz and staying with Lulu. Plus, my little cousin Nandini (who is 17 and taller than me, so not that little) will be there with her high school Europe Trip. Which means a rendezvous is in order. This will be the first family member besides my Mom I've seen in 7 months!

Yay! Can't wait!

Conversation with my Mom

2006-03-20T15:01:00.000+01:00

Talking about life decisions, choices, current situation, etc:

Me: What's the problem?
Mom: Don't get me started with all that stuff.
Me:(trying to change the subject) Sooo...what else is up?
Mom: My blood pressure.

Ha! I hope she was joking.

The weekend was uneventful, had Polish dinner with Brno trainees and went out Friday night but pooped out on the party, for dinner Saturday, and relaxed Sunday. There are some good pictures though, and those will be posted tomorrow. :)

A Working Day in the Life of….me!

2006-03-16T14:18:00.000+01:00

Here’s a little insight into what makes the day go by---

7:45
Wake up even though I should be at work at 8. Sometimes I wake up later. Depends on whether the boss is in or not.

8:30ish
Arrive to work. Turn computer on. Make tea.

8:30-12:15
Check my email.
Read world news.
Write emails.
Read blogs.
Googletalk!
Maybe have 1 conversational English lesson. Most likely not.
Try to stay awake, especially if have gone out the night before.
Drink more tea. Maybe even some hot chocolate.
Coordinate lunch date with other trainees.

12:15-1:15
Lunch with other trainees
Reflect on the events of the night before which may or not include drunken hilarity. If yes, try to figure out what happened with collective memory. Maybe plan for fun later that night. Or, attempt to make conversation but just have everyone look back at you with the “I’m hung-over” eyes.

1:15-4:30 (unless I go home earlier, which is likely if the boss isn’t around)
Maybe have 1 English lesson, most likely not.
Try to stay awake, am tired after food!
Update the blog if am not feeling too lazy.
Upload pictures if not feeling too lazy.
Write more emails.
Read more news.
Googletalk!
Wait for my sister to come on the computer in Canada and email chat.
Search for meaningful jobs so never have to do this again.
Try not to poke eyes out from boredom.
Make personal phone calls.
Make tea/hot chocolate.
Go home. Take a nap as am tired from stressful day.

During the entire day the Europa 2 radio station is playing. They have 5 songs on their playlist. Their 3 favourites are “Camisa Negra” by Juanes, “No Fear” by the Rasmus, and “Cim to je” by some Czech/Slovak band. They are also quite fond of “La Tortura”. These top songs have been the same since August when I got here. I will know the words to Camisa Negra for the rest of my life. Really.

Suggestions for ways to entertain myself while sitting in front of a computer that blocks pages randomly if they fit into the following categories are appreciated.

Komercni Banka Blocked categories
Adult/Sexually Explicit (understandable)
Chat (no msn, but googletalk!)
Criminal Skills (really, what does this mean?)
Drugs,Alcohol & Tobaccco (erm…ok)
Gambling (don’t have money for this anyway)
Games (tetris would be so good)
Glamour & Intimate Apparel (no Victoria Secret!)
Hacking (I don’t know how to do this anyway)
Hobbies & Recreation (no fun!)
Photo Searches (you can still do image searches on google, but some photo websites don’t open)
Remote proxies (huh?)
Sex Education (Sorry Salt ‘n’ Pepa)
Shopping (no e-bay!)
Streaming media (no radio or video)
Violence (feeling a little violent)
Weapons (where’s my fun at?)
Web based Email (google works, hotmail doesn't--thank god for google!)

Brno-Ostrava Encounter

2006-03-14T15:37:00.000+01:00

This past weekend me and 5 other trainees went to Ostrava to party for Lukasz’s last weekend and to experience the magic of Stodolni. Fun was had by all.

Friday’s golden moments included:
-Flaming shots
-Absinth
-Going to a club with a giant bed in it that we all lounged on
-Meeting very drunk Czech girls who love them the international boys
-The boys drooling continuously over the ladies/girls on Stodolni. They would trail off in the middle of a sentence sometimes.
-Dancing on the bar at Desperado (always a favourite pastime on Stodolni). Everyone danced, even those people who vehemently exclaimed that they never danced (you know who you are).
-Running into people I knew who said “We haven’t seen you in a really long time!” Uhhh it’s because I moved to Brno…
-Eating kureci burgers from my favourite stand
-Jumping on Karen who had gone home early around 5:30am

Saturday I was sick. Not from alcohol but actually ill from who knows what. Maybe bird flu. I stayed in bed alternating between chills and being really really hot. It was probably the first time I ever said ‘No’ to going to Stodolni. Really, really tragic. I never say no to going out! But even as we were eating dinner I was feeling close to death so thought I would be responsible for once in life.

I was woken up around 4am by Lukasz and Tommaso who didn’t have a key. I went back to bed and was woken up around 5:30am by Gavin, Mauro, and Hugo jumping on me. I screamed, I’ll admit I was a bit startled. It was really funny because they were smiling when they jumped on me and then one of them said “Wow, you are really hot right now”, to which I replied “It’s because I’m sick” and all 3 of them just kind of drew back with a collective “Ewwwww”. After that they continued to jump on other sleeping people, sing to no one in particular, play drums with a bucket on Hugo’s head, scare the shit out of Nuria, rub shaving cream on each other, declare their love to each other and other people around, plus other assorted drunken antics. I’m quite sure they enjoyed Stodolni.

In other fun news, apparently one of them met a girl and went to another bar with her, but fell asleep at the table and when he woke up he was nowhere near Stodolni, the girl wasn’t there, and he had no clue where he was. He walked for a half an hour, ended up near the town hall, called Tommaso, and eventually found his way back to civilization. Funny. Luckily, all friends were safe and accounted for by the end of the night, although their livers might have been punished a bit.

Pictures are in the Brno in Ostrava album. More pictures will be added in later.

You Know You Have Been in the Czech Republic Too Long When.....

2006-03-10T16:03:00.000+01:00

These are things I have noticed, or that have been discussed with/by other trainees and friends here in the Czech Republic. Special thanks to my favorite mango Jenny for her input and additions. All of you with something to say...please comment and help the list GROW!

1. You crave smazeny syr (fried cheese)
2. You need to eat meat and potatoes EVERY DAY
3. You start to think Kofola and tartarska omacka are good (Czech soda and tartar sauce)
4. "Cože? Prosím! It's futsking dobře, isn't it?" are all part of your lexicon yet the only complete sentence you can actually form in Czech is “Jedno pivo prosím” (one beer please)
5. You don't feel shocked when your boss says "Fakt yo!" because you know it doesn't mean what you thought you heard. (It’s not fucking ho! It means Oh, really?!)
6. You measure the beer you drink by litre instead of bottle or glass
7. You don't gag on the absinth shots
8. You know how to dance to 80's music without having to get drunk very fast first
9. (girls) You start wearing ridiculously short skirts in the winter
10. You use the "display toilets" and don't check out what's there anymore
11. You blow your nose loudly, in public. Even at the table when people are eating.
12. You wear socks and sandals at work.
13. You say "Jesus Maria!" when you are frustrated, or "kurva!" when something goes wrong
14. You believe Czechs when they tell you slivovice cures illnesses
15. You get used to walking out of a restaurant or a bar smelling like an ashtray and feel very suspicious of restaurants or any public place marking itself as non-smoking.
16. When new arrivals ask you what are the first 5 Czech words to learn, you rank "pivo" (beer) above "dobry den" (good day) and "dekuji" (thank you).
17. When soon leavers ask you what are the typical souvenirs to buy you say "pivo, absinth, and bohemian crystal" without one second of thought.
18. (boys) One of the first questions you ask a girl you meet is how old they are (just to make sure they’re not 17!)
19. You can hold lengthy discussions on the quality and characteristics of many, many kinds of Czech beer and the merits of different Czech alcohols
20. You think it’s weird when people you don’t know smile at you or when anyone working in a restaurant or store is nice to you

Italy Part 2

2006-03-08T11:32:00.000+01:00

And it continues...

-Verona-
We went to Verona with Tommaso’s friend Massimo who reads this so I can only say good things about him. Thanks for driving us Massimo! It was really nice-- a big difference between Czech Republic and Italy is that people are actually on the streets at night and enjoying life. The atmosphere is great. We visited Juliet’s house and rubbed her right boob (It’s supposed to be the lucky one! Everyone does it!) and me, Lukasz, and Massimo waited outside while Tommaso and Mirka shared some romantical time. Love is in the air! We did some walking and sightseeing and afterwards we had some pre-dinner wine (which is the cool thing to do in Italy) and pizza. I ate a lot of pizza that weekend, and it was fabulous.

-Venice-
Venice is really beautiful, no cars-- just walking and water transport. Tommaso was the perfect tour guide-- reading out of his Venice book and pointing at buildings along our boat ride. There were boatloads of Japanese tourists who waved at us, and they were so cute we just had to wave back! The whole day we were in Venice we made fun of Lukasz’s face in pictures because he would look perfectly fine until you took the picture and then he would have a funny look on his face. We called it “Lukasz’s stupid face”. This sounds mean but I promise you it was actually really, really funny. “Hey Lukasz, don’t do your stupid face in this picture!” Then he discovered if he smiled a certain way he wouldn’t look stupid. It was kind of a fake smile but atleast it wasn’t a stupid face.

Most people who know me know that I do not like birds. Let me clarify, I like some birds (for example tropical birds like the resplendent quetzal) but I don’t like pigeons (rats on wings) or sea gulls. In the Piazza di San Marco (like in a lot of squares worldwide) there were a lot of birds. And there were people who put birdseed on themselves and let birds fly all over them. I don’t understand this. Why? Gross. Birds. Yuck. And possibility of being pooped on. I can think of much better things to do with my life. Anyway, the Piazza was nice except for the gross birds.

Luckily, contrary to reports I have received from other people, the water wasn’t really smelly in Venice. A few people have told me that it REALLY smells, but I guess since it is wintery it hasn’t really gotten around to smelling bad yet. Score!

The day in Venice was perfect and relaxing as we walked through the small windy streets, took a gondola across the river just to say that we rode in a gondola (the long rides are pretty expensive), ate gelato (so good!) and took loads of photos. Yay for Venice!

-Mission-
Saturday night we met up with some of Tommaso’s friends for drinks and dinner. Mirka and I decided that it would be our mission to steal something as a souvenir from every place we went that night. Luckily I had my bag with me. I now have a really big red candle and a beer glass, and Mirka has a little dish. Classy.

-Ciao Venice-
We left Venice expecting to get home about 8 hours later (for me, 10 for the guys). What we did not count on was stupid Austrian roads in the mountains. It was really weird because on the Italian side the roads were shovelled and perfect, and as soon as we drove across the border it was really snowy because they didn’t plow the roads! I thought the Italians were supposed to be the lazy ones (no offense to the Italians reading)!Icy roads and snow= bad driving conditions. We were actually stopped for quite a while then driving about 40km an hour. It took 11 hours to get to Brno, and the guys still had to keep going to Ostrava. And they both started work at like 6am. Lucky!

So that’s my trip to Italy! Thanks to the guys and Mirka for a great time, and special thanks for Tommaso for driving us!!

Italy Part 1

2006-03-07T15:57:00.000+01:00

It was fantastic. I’ll try to break down the randomness into categories. Part 1 today and Part 2 tomorrow. Amazing that I haven't done any work today but still managed to run out of time to write my blog post. Oh well, have to save some "work" for another day!

-Open borders eh?-
The boys swung by to pick me up in Brno Thursday night and we were off! The mission-- make it to Italy as fast as possible via Austria. It took 8 hours. On the way down I was a bad girl and broke road trip rules by sleeping for about 4 hours. I woke up really disoriented around 2am and asked the guys if they needed my passport for passport control when we were stopped somewhere. It was a toll booth, not passport control. AND they don’t even check your passport when you drive through these countries because it’s all EU! I didn’t believe them at first when they told me there were open borders because I always get checked (ahem…POLSKA). Lukasz informed me that with the new entrants (i.e. Polska) they still check on the roads. But the other people don’t! So for the whole weekend whenever we went by a toll booth, or actually- ANYWHERE the guys would laugh at me and ask if I brought my passport.

-Marcon-
Tommaso’s village is like 20km outside of Venice and around 4am on Friday morning when we finally rolled into town I looked at the street sign and started to laugh. Why? Because if there was an ‘i’ in the name it would spell maricon. Maricon means gay in Spanish. Ha! Tommaso is from the almost gay town!

-Surprise!-
Ok so maybe the most spectacular thing about the weekend was the BIG SURPRISE that everyone BUT Tommaso knew about. Currently his girlfriend Mirka is on exchange in Greece. They hadn’t seen each other for about a month and were pining for each other because they are so in love.[insert vomit here](Just kidding, I love them and I am happy they are in love) Anyway, last week I got a text message from Mirka asking what I thought about helping her to surprise Tommaso. I said “FUCKING AWESOME IDEA”. It was. She took the boat from Greece…a mere 24hour trip away. Then the bus from Venice and showed up at Tommaso’s door. She woke him up and he was completely surprised. Stunned really. He couldn’t even be excited because he was so surprised. It was perfect.

-Treviso-
We went to Treviso on Friday for lunch. Basically, we just went there to eat and walk around a bit. Italian food is great. I sent my friend Ricky some pictures of the food from Treviso and he googled Treviso to see what it was all about. Let me quote his email:

i was wondering what the fuck treviso was (is it a place? is it that yellow puree that is a recurrent theme in a couple dishes?) so i googled it. the first thing i read is:

Treviso and its province are teeming with restaurants, trattorias and wine bars which invite visitors to drop in. Eating and drinking well is a true commandment for Treviso's inhabitants. Abundant amounts of meat are eaten; the most widespread dishes include assorted meat on skewers, grilled meat, and sliced steak with herbs.

if that does not describe your purpose in life, i don't know what does.

Well said Ricky, well said.

-Bublifuk!!-
Why? Why did we buy bubble liquid and blow bubbles in Italy? Why not? Anyway in Slovak bubble liquid is called “Bublifuk” (booblyfook). That’s just funny. I decided instead of saying the word fuck I would substitute the more fun word…”Bublifuk”. What the bublifuk is going on?? What the bublifuk are you doing? Don’t bublifuk around.

-Tommaso’s Family-
We stayed with Tommaso’s family in Marcon which was really nice. His parents are super sweet and his dad prepared us breakfast every day! We also got to meet Tommaso’s 82-year-old grandma who is really the cutest lady ever. She was telling us how “Canada” got its name. The encyclopedia says that “The name Canada is believed to come from the Huron-Iroquois word kanata, which means "village" or "settlement".” They are wrong. Tommaso’s grandma has a better explanation. It comes from two Spanish words. “Aca” (here) and “nada” (nothing). Shortened to “Canada”. Translation: there’s nothing in my country. Tears.

More to come tomorrow. Stay tuned for tales from Verona (yes, Romeo and Juliet's hood) and Venice. Pictures are already posted in the "Italy!" album

One road trip down....

2006-03-02T14:57:00.000+01:00

And embarking on another one today! This time it's to Venice with my ex-roomies from Ostrava Tommaso and Lukasz. Nothing quite as special as going to such a romantic city with the 2 most unromantic people ever(guys who are like brothers to me and have girlfriends). Such is life. I'll take pretty pictures and pray the roads are much friendlier than Polska!

Oh, and I need an opinion on the following scenario. You are at a club. You are friends with two guys #1 and #2. #1 is dancing with a girl that you kind of know. #2 wants to be introduced to the girl. You (meaning me) introduce girl and #2. They end up chatting for a while and exchanging numbers. #1 gets really, really mad-- says you are at -1 million points, it's completely inappropriate and unacceptable and he'll never forget it. You think #1 is over-reacting a bit. You also think it would have been weird to say to #2, "No, I'm sorry, it's not possible-- I CAN'T introduce you to girl". You understand why #1 is a little mad, but really, shouldn't #1 blame himself or hey here's a novel idea, realize that maybe the girl wasn't as interested? Nobody likes a blame shifter...

Thoughts? I'm just a girl who can't quite grasp the way the male mind functions.

Warszawa- A Logistical Nightmare

2006-02-27T15:50:00.000+01:00

First, I would like to say that I had a really awesome weekend, and wouldn’t have traded it for anything despite all the ranting I might do in the post. In terms of transportation, timing, etc. I have never had so many things go wrong in a trip. Which means I am pretty lucky--because it wasn’t even THAT bad. An adventure one might say.

I went to Warsaw with my Aussie exchange student friend Jenna and my ex-roommate from Ostrava, Tommaso (he drove us to Warsaw from Ostrava). In Warsaw we stayed with my friend Kasia who I know from Edmonton (we went to high school together!). This combination=FUN!

On Friday as we were sitting on the train to Ostrava Jenna said to me, “You know, when you invited me on this trip I had to say yes because I know that you will have planned it out perfectly!”

Oh Jenna, if only you were right.

Plan on the way there:
-Take the train from Brno-Ostrava and arrive about 5:00pm
-Drive to Warsaw, which should take about 5 hours
-Be there in time for Friday night partying!

Reality:
-Train from Brno-Ostrava was delayed 65min
-Stuck at the border for about 30 minutes and yelled at by border control for taking fun pictures and video of waiting at the border
-Found the right road…but it was closed
-Took a detour but were unsure of how to get back to where we needed to go
-Stopped for food in a sketchy roadside café. Realized that understanding some Czech doesn’t mean that you will have any clue what a menu says in Polish
-Got to Warsaw around 1:30am dead tired. No partying that night.

Kasia has the cutest apartment ever in a really good location. She didn't believe us when we told her that her apartment was pure luxury until we showed her pictures of where we were staying. She had 2-ply toilet paper!!

Saturday was really nice. A perfectly sunny day we spent wandering around the city. Meant to party it up on Saturday night and started to...but around 2am we realized that there was something that we needed more than alcohol. And that was McDonald’s. We were really excited there was a 24hr McDonald’s nearby. I know that McDonald’s is bad for me…but no matter what country you are in-- at 2:00am McDonald’s always is a solid choice.

Plan on the way home:
-Make breakfast at Kasia’s place
-Hit the road, hopefully without any mishaps
-Take the 9:00pm bus from Ostrava-Brno
-Home sweet home!

Reality:
-Breakfast was great….mmm..bacon
-Started to drive around 1:00 pm
-Missed the turnoff for Katowice and drove aimlessly for a while
-Went back and found the right way
-Hit another detour, but had no idea where we were
-Stopped for directions twice. Both times were told to ‘go straight and turn right’
-Finally found the way (and stopped at a really good roadside restaurant with a crazy salad bar!)
-No border problems, they just took the passports for 2 minutes, looked in the car and said our names and it was dobre! (good)
-Went to buy tickets in Ostrava for the 9:00pm bus. It was full. Went to the train station and the next train was at 2:30am
-Went back at 9:15pm to buy tickets for the 11:55pm bus. There was a little booth with 2 ladies inside. We could SEE them through the blinds. They made eye contact but didn’t respond to our knocking at the window. Didn’t even acknowledge us to say “Sorry, we’re closed and will not provide any information”. These were possibly the rudest, bitchiest people I have ever encountered in the Czech Republic. We just wanted to know if there were even tickets available for the 11:55pm bus, but they didn’t respond even though they saw us and we could see them! So we got pissed and kept knocking at their window. Finally we got a reaction, which I assume meant, “You better stop doing that or we will call the police”. The only thing I could understand from their yelling at us was the word 'police'. Frustrated and annoyed at the lack of service in the Czech Republic + tired from traveling all day is not a good combination. We decided to make the best of the situation and go for some drinks before attempting to take the 11:55pm bus. We also thought if those 2 bitchy ladies were there, our chances of getting on the bus were slim to none.
-Had some beers with Tommaso and 2 other trainees, then went back to the bus station and got the bus! The ladies weren't around, just had to buy tickets from the bus driver.
-Home Monday 2:45am. Score!!

Summary:
-Poland was fun, we had a good time singing to cheesy oldies in the car, it was great to catch up with Kasia, and it was an entertaining weekend. The company was fantastic. We all know each other much better after so many hours in the car together.
-McDonald's makes me Mchappy.
-Poland really needs to spend some money on repairing roads and putting up signs. We were going to the freaking capital city and the signage wasn’t that good. Also, when there’s a detour it is nice to know how to get back to the main road!
-Czech customer service sucks/is even worse than non-existent, it is just openly hostile. I can’t believe how angry people get when you expect them to do their jobs-- it’s not a revolutionary concept!

Pictures are in the Warszawa Part 2 album, and pictures from last week’s Cuban Salsa Night are in their own album as well!

Notes to Self

2006-02-23T15:17:00.000+01:00

#1
Put the alarm on BEFORE you go out because you won't remember when you come home. You are not one of those people that wakes up on time without an alarm. You are that person who, without an alarm, will sleep until 10:30 then wake up wondering why it's so sunny outside. Oops, work starts at 8!

#2
If you take a shortcut home it's best to know where the flip you are going. Otherwise you might end up climbing over 2 fences and trespassing on private property. This can be dangerous, especially in the dark and if you have consumed some "beverages".

#3
If you are climbing over a fence, the ones without barbed wire at the top are better. Pat on the back for realizing this and walking a few meters down to that section. Things could have turned out poorly.

Pictures

2006-02-21T15:13:00.000+01:00

Check the Big Pig 17-19.2.2006 album for pictures from the past weekend and the Kutna Hora & Telc 2-3.2.2006 album for pictures from earlier this month. This album has the pictures of the cathedral decorated on the inside with human bones! Yummy.

Big Pig 2006! Oink Oink!

2006-02-20T14:23:00.000+01:00

This weekend I went to an event put on by Aiesec Brno called Big Pig. It involves a bunch of trainees, aiesecers, etc. in a small town in the middle of nowhere killing a pig and then cooking it and eating it. Yes, it was a big pig. We didn’t actually kill it, a professional did, and I didn’t actually watch the killing because….well…that’s gross!

So what did we do?

We got to the train station in Krizanov on Friday evening and were greeted by Eva-- who then informed us that we had to walk about an hour to get to the actual location of the conference (apparently the public transportation was not so good in the village). Anyway, it was completely dark and kind of cold, but still not that bad because we got some fresh air, and seriously I saw way more stars in that sky then I have in a long time. After about 45 minutes of walking one of the aiesecers in a large van picked us up, and we didn’t have to walk the last bit.

That evening there was not much of a program as the pig was only being killed the next morning so we amused ourselves by playing ‘Flip the Cup’ (thanks Will for introducing us to this wonderful game). Much beer was consumed and fun ensued.

When we woke up the only available food was bread, fried pig fat (or something along those lines), and sausages. So some of us decided to walk to the village to buy some beverages/snacks and some lunch as well. We walked to the village, and since this is the Czech Republic- pretty much nothing was open. We went into a casino/bar/restaurant type thing and attempted to ask where the store was and whether it was open.

First, Elina (Finnish girl who has lived in Czech Republic for over a year) goes inside to utilize her Czech skills and to ask:
-If they speak English
-Whether or not there is a store nearby that is open
Result: She comes outside and says that they don’t speak English, and there is a store nearby probably within 1km, but they don’t know if it is open (well, she thinks that’s what they said). Also, there is a guy inside who speaks German.

A-ha!! We had a trainee with us, Tillman, who is from Germany! We figured he might be able to communicate and clear things up. He goes inside to ask.

Result: The guy inside doesn’t really speak that much German and Tillman gets pretty much the same information.

We were prepared to go off in search of the convenience store when I saw through the window that they were selling Coca-Cola. I hadn’t eaten/drank anything all day and I am addicted to Coca-Cola. So I told the guys to wait for a second and I went inside. There were 2 people at the bar and a table of men with mullets enjoying an afternoon beer. I asked for the Coke, however it was in a glass bottle. Through hand motions I attempted to ask if it was ok if I took it outside (to drink during our search) and brought the bottle back. I cannot say that in Czech. I asked them if they spoke English. Stupid question, they obviously did not speak English and looked at me like the retarded foreigner that I am. I gave up and went outside.

Apparently I missed something very funny because while I was inside attempting to buy a Coke, the rest of the guys were standing outside and 2 little Czech girls were walking by minding their own business, not even showing recognition of the fact that randomly--in their town outside the casino/bar/restaurant-- there was a group consisting of a Danish guy, Italian guy, American guy, German guy, and a Finnish girl. However, the tranquility of their innocent stroll was soon shattered by Elina, the lovely Finn who startled them by asking them really loudly “DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH??”. To which she got the classic Czech answer, “Nerozumim. (I don’t understand).” And then the little girls got the hell out of there. Will did impressions of Elina for the rest of the night. “DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH??”

Anyway, after my departure, one very friendly mullet-man followed me and then showed us to a store. It was just a few blocks away, and it was closed. Luckily, the owner lived in a building attached to the store and he opened it just for us! How special!

Later on that evening we watched the hockey game (Finland won over Czech Republic…many an unhappy Czech that night and 1 happy Finn), listened to traditional Czech music, learned to polka, ate some PIG and participated in Topalky. For those of you who don’t know what Topalky is-- it's basically just boat races with beer. I am amazed at how fast some people can drink beer. One friend was on 2 teams, and they ended up playing each other. So, she had to start on the first team, run to the other side and finish for the other team. And there were like 2 rematches between them since they tied the first two times. She had a lot of beer that night. Luckily, one of her teams won! So it was worth it!

Maybe I didn’t get the full BIG PIG experience since I didn’t even eat that much pork and I didn’t watch the pig die…but I’m ok with that!

Jóvenes canadienses prefieren las 'relaciones sexuales' virtuales

2006-02-15T11:26:00.000+01:00

Thank you to Juan for directing me to this article (which apparently is not a joke).

I'll summarize in English beneath the Spanish.

Febrero 14 de 2006
Jóvenes canadienses prefieren las 'relaciones sexuales' virtuales

Según un estudio, en vez del contacto personal, se inclinan por abrazar sus monitores y tocar sus teclados.

El 87 por ciento de los 2.484 estudiantes encuestados en 150 liceos y universidades en Canadá señalaron tener “sexo virtual” a través de la mensajería instantánea, cámaras webs o teléfonos.

“Estamos muy sorprendidos de que el número sea tan alto”, dijo Noah Gurza del servicio CampusKiss.com, que auspició el estudio.

La mayoría de estos estudiantes, de entre 18 y 23 años, crecieron utilizando computadoras y continúan rodeados de tecnología, ya sea para estudiar o interactuar con amigos, dijo Gurza.

Usar Internet forma parte de ellos “por lo que tiene sentido que esto se extienda a otros aspectos de sus vidas, incluyendo las experiencias sexuales”, destacó.

El 51 por ciento de los encuestados eran mujeres, y 49 por ciento hombres. Entre ellos, el 53 por ciento ha tenido 'relaciones sexuales' virtuales a través de la mensajería instantánea mientras que el 44 por ciento por cámaras web o teléfono.

Ottawa
AFP
http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/inte/eucanada/noticias/ARTICULO-WEB-_NOTA_INTERIOR-2743884.html

Young Canadians prefer virtual "sexual relations"

According to a study, in place of personal contact, they are more inclined to hug their monitors and touch their keys.

87% of the 2,484 students surveyed in 150 colleges and universities in Canada said that they have “virtual sex” through instant messenger, webcams, and telephones.

“We are really surprised the number is so high”, said Noah Gurza of the service CampusKiss.com that conducted the study.

The majority of these students, from between the ages of 18-23, grew up using computers and they continue to be surrounded by technology, to study or interact with friends, said Gurza.

Using the Internet forms a part of them “and it makes sense that this extends to other aspects of their lives, including sexual experiences”.

51% of those surveyed were women, and 49% men. Between them, 53% had virtual sexual relations through instant messenger while 44% had them through webcams or telephone.

Juan asked me if this was true and said that if he ever comes to Canada he is wearing gloves to use the computer. I said “No, Canada is cold, you need someone to keep you warm in person! This survey can not be accurate”. I’m sure that any survey conducted by Campuskiss.com isn’t reputable. But it is still kind of funny. Imagine the pick-up lines--"Wanna stroke my monitor baby? Can I caress your keyboard?” Endless fun. Could soon be another stereotype to add to the list:
-Friendly
-Polite
-Say “Eh. Oot. Aboot.”
-Like to get naughty on the computer.

Thoughts?

Amsterdammit visits Prahahaha

2006-02-13T14:09:00.000+01:00

As previously mentioned, Sandy (from Edmonton working in Amsterdam) came to visit me in the Czech Republic, so we made it our mission to party hard in Prague (a.k.a. Prahahaha). In Sandyspeak—“It was the mostest!”. This weekend was totally rocking. We stayed with some Prague trainees at Andel (as usual…because it’s free and they’re fun!). There were actually only 3 of the Andelers in town for the weekend but we managed to entertain ourselves with them and the other Prague trainees.

Sandy and I spent Friday meandering around Prague and having fun girl talk during the usual castle-bridge-centre route. We made sure to hit the most important spots that day since we weren’t sure how we would feel the next 2 days. Juanito (Brno trainee) met up with us as well. We had some nice chats, found a fabulous restaurant with the friendliest staff ever (even though the waitress kept forcing beer on us), and just had all around good times. In the evening we went to a tea house (thanks Jenny and Al for the scenic tour on the way there) and ate baba ghanoush and smoked shisha before going out. We ended up at some bar that I can’t remember the name of with some other trainees. There were some really drunk Czech chicks who were the worst dancers ever who kept telling us we had to dance with them. We relented, and boogied a bit. They might have been bad dancers, but they were still friendly! Around 2am we decided a change of venue was needed and went to a club down the street that was playing everyone’s favourite type of music--80's! However, since it was the end of the night it was the “take me home” 80’s music and we were surrounded by drunk people slow dancing and making out. I still managed to snag myself a slow dance partner- Jenny. She just can’t resist the brown sugar. (Well ok, she can,but we did slow dance!).

We finally made it back to Andel and just as Sandy and I were in bed engaging in the usual pre-sleep chatter we had a wonderful guest stop by. Will decided it would be a great idea to jump on us and then tuck us in. It was special.

Saturday morning we decided to stop by another Prague landmark-- the John Lennon wall. According to some website, "the Lennon Wall came to represent not only a memorial to Lennon and his ideas, but also a monument to free speech and the non-violent rebellion of Czech youth against the repressions of neo-Stalinism." It’s basically a wall with a lot of graffiti on it. We had a lot of fun there taking Commie pictures, peace and love pictures, etc. We also added our own contributions to the wall with such witty comments as:
-John Lennon is kind of a big deal (Will)
-Come play with us, forever, and ever, and ever… Prosim! (Jenny on behalf of Andel)
-Thanks for the fun! Hugs and smooches (Sandy)
-Just give’r (me)

I was trying to think of some inspirational quote but I couldn’t manage it.

Afterwards we went to look for a place that Sandy wanted to see where they made new stained-glass windows out of old stained glass-- but it was closed! We then consoled ourselves with a meal and some hot wine. Sandy, Will, and I went on a little boat tour down the Vltava river (advertised as the Venice of Prague!) where instead of learning random historical facts about Prague we had a discussion with the boat driver on the pros and cons of communism. Yes kids, there can be happy things about communism too! Everyone has a job!

In the evening we went to the Staropramen brewery and then over to a housewarming party of some trainees. They officially have the nicest apartment of any trainees in the Czech Republic. Their list of luxuries include a couch, television, proper kitchen, and a fancy shower. A bunch of the Brno trainees came up as well, so lots of people there. After socializing we went out to a club. Great night. We were partied out by the end and just wanted to sleep. Around 9am Sunday morning we had another visit from Will who just got back from partying and burst into our room and said, “Ohmigod! It’s 9am and I’ve been partying ALL NIGHT LONG!” Then he jumped on us again. And tucked us in.

We got up a few hours later and went for lunch with Jenny to celebrate Chinese Lantern Festival. We went to Pizza Coliseum. Very traditional. Sandy and I did a bit more last minute sightseeing and cheesy souvenir buying before heading back to Andel to pick up our stuff and go to the airport. We were back at the Andel flat around 2:30pm and decided we should wake up Will. They have a gorilla mask and a werewolf mask (I’m assuming they are leftovers from Halloween) so we figured it would be funny to wake up Will while wearing them since he would probably still be kind of drunk and disoriented. We didn’t really bargain on the reaction though because apparently he had enough coordination to be startled and punch me in the face when we woke him up. I guess he didn’t like the gorilla mask. Fortunately, it was not a hard punch and there isn’t any bruising. It would be kind of hard to explain that at work the next day.
“So Aruna, why do you have a bruise on your cheek?”
“Well, uhhhh I was wearing a gorilla mask and trying to wake someone up...uhhh…and yeah...”

It was weird dropping Sandy off at the airport, it felt like she just got there. Another fun fact: her round-trip flight duration from Amsterdam to Prague was shorter than a one-way drive to Calgary! And actually, it took her less time to get back to Amsterdam than it took me to get home to Brno. Great weekend, although I think it will take me a few days to get rid of the pesky case of man-voice I seemed to have picked up from too much smokiness, partying, and not enough sleep. It was totally worth it!

Some of the many pictures are posted in the Praha 9-12.02.06 album.

Contributions from my sister Meena for your Entertainment

2006-02-08T15:57:00.000+01:00

She's related to me, so obviously she's entertaining. Enjoy!

A little late but still noteworthy--

My Sister's New Year's Resolution

-Background-
The problem about my life in Ottawa, as exemplified by my contrasting experience in Edmonton, is that I am not surrounded by fabulous people. There are certainly some fabulous people worthy of our collective attention but at this point I feel my life being sucked away by people that I am around.

-Resolution-
No more. I say "NO MORE BORING PEOPLE". I say "SAY YES TO FABULOUS". I say "NO MORE HALF ASSED EVENINGS". This will be the year of adventure, the year of new experiences, the year of just given'r. This will be the year that I say no to parties with boring people and yes to random invitations. This is the year that I will refuse to hang out with people that just stay in their comfort zones-that look at people as 'cool' or 'uncool'. I will not subscribe to cool or uncool. We are adults now-we know many characters now-and these complex, wacky people enrich our lives. This is the year that I am open to random conversations with strangers (not scary ones), the year of road trips, the year of filling my life with interesting, unique people. This is the year that people stop telling me what to do--I am making my own destiny. This is the year that I learn diplomacy, coolheadedness and how to be forgiving of people. I will learn to be kinder this year, less judgmental. This is the year that I do not let the terrorists win-I will not let people who hate my way of life take me down, yo.

Hurrah!! Go Meena! I hope you learn diplomacy and coolheadedness if you want us to move in together later this year :) Make up some more dance moves too! Yes to FABULOUS! JUST GIVE'R!! (This is a Canadian expression some of you might not understand. I first heard it in the movie Fubar. Google it, maybe you can find the proper explanation)

My Sister's List of: Things You Learn at a Work Wine and Cheese

1. Get lots of food early because otherwise the good stuff (artichoke dip) is all gone or cold

2. Do not say you won't drink all night and then struggle to catch up when peer pressure gets to you

3. Do not invite people over after said work function and then ask them to cut carrots and cucumbers because it's healthy food or they are liable to take out a chunk of their finger

4. Do not keep saying 'my roommate hates me right now' over and over while slightly inebriated because eventually he will start to hate you

5. Even while inebriated making jokes about French Canadians is still slightly not okay-especially when they are right there

6. Learning how to do a sleazy French laugh is always okay....harh harh harh

7. Office gossip needs to be transmitted in a slightly lower volume

8. Going to sleep drunk on a work night means nightmares about waking up very late and subsequently v. poor sleep

9. Seeing people in the elevator at work the next morning and knowing you both were drinking together the night before but still can't remember their name is probably not the best way to start out the day.

10. Feeling like ass is so the right way to start out the day.

Everything in moderation my pet. Thanks Meenie!!! Yay for my big sister. She's 24 and single- any takers?

Movie. Message. Madness!

2006-02-08T14:42:00.000+01:00

--Movie--
Yesterday I went to the European Film Festival in Brno (pretending to be semi-cultured) with some friends to see El Septimo Dia (The Seventh Day). It wasn’t the best movie I’ve ever seen, but it was quite well-made. A bit gruesome and disturbing because of the fact it’s based on a true story-- of a rivalry between two families in small town Spain that starts with a love affair and ends up with a lot of people dying. There was a shoot-out at the end of the movie and 9 people died. Juan (Colombia) said, “Come on, that’s not so bad, only 9 people! You want to see real violence, come to Colombia!”. Funny.

--Message--
Dear Ralph Klein Premier of Alberta,
I am very happy that I live in the only debt-free province in Canada and that there was a surplus. I think you are a fool for not investing the extra money in education, infrastructure, more money for the rainy day fund for when our oil dries up, or some other worthwhile cause. Instead, you chose to give every resident of Alberta a $400 cheque. I think you are stupid, but I still plan to spend that $400 that was deposited in my account yesterday. Ha!

--Madness!--
Tomorrow I’m off to Prague where I will be meeting my friend Sandy (from Edmonton working in Amsterdam)!! Can’t wait for some good gossip and girl talk. And of course, it will be great to see someone from home. In the words of Sandy, “Super YAY!”

Just Call Me Pocahontas

2006-02-06T12:05:00.000+01:00

On Saturday morning I met up with Tommaso and Mirka at the Brno bus station since Mirka was taking the bus to Greece. Yes, the BUS. Like 33 hours later I think she made it to Greece, but it’s cheap so you can’t complain. It was, of course, sucky (yes, that’s such a smart and descriptive word) to say goodbye, but what can you do?

Anyway, we wanted to make sure that Tommaso wouldn’t be too depressed with Mirka gone, so we decided the only remedy would be to get wasted. We met up with Lukasz in Cesky Tesin to get our party on. Cesky Tesin is a town on the border with Poland with half the town on the Czech side and half the town in Poland. It’s weird because across from Lukasz’s place there is a river and one side is Czech and the other side is Polish. The Czech side doesn’t really have much to do on it, so we went to Poland to hang out. We had dinner at a really good restaurant where the owner seemed to take a liking to us (yay for being a freak show) and gave us some free shots and suggested other liquors we should try. After that, we went to a disco and were dancing around and having random conversation with people.

First random conversation with a guy who said he was a police officer and Lukasz insisted was probably a security guard at a grocery store:
Guy: szszszszszszsz (whatever Polish sounds like)
Me: What is he saying?
Lukasz: He’s calling you a gypsy and saying he’s a police officer etc etc
Me: Why does he think he can call me a gypsy? What an asshole!
Guy: szszszszszssz
Lukasz: He doesn’t understand what you are saying. And he is still calling you a gypsy.
Me: (turning to guy) Fuck you! Rozumis (do you understand) that?

Then me and Lukasz made fun of him. He was a total loser.

Later in the night we made friends with some random Polish guy. Well, Lukasz made friends with him, I had no idea what he was saying.

Guy #2: szszszszszszs
Lukasz: This guy wants to know where we met. I told him we met in the States and that we are married. (making up stuff is so much more fun)
Guy #2: szszszszszsz
Lukasz: (turns to me) He says that you look like Pocahontas.

Yes kids, Pocahontas. Poca-fucking-hontas. Definitely the high point of the night. So, since I’ve been in the Czech Republic I have been called:
1.gypsy (more than once)
2.Mozambique pearl (by a really drunk guy on the bus)
3.Indian princess (by the ladies I used to work with in Ostrava)
4.Pocahontas

I am still struggling to decide which one is my favourite, but it’s definitely either Mozambique pearl or Pocahontas, they are much more imaginative than gypsy and so inaccurate.

Food Fun and Surprise Vacation

2006-02-06T11:17:00.000+01:00

Food Fun

Last week I cooked for my ex-roommate (I had to move dormitories so now have a new roommate) and a bunch of exchange students. I forced them to eat with their hands--to get the true Indian experience and convince them that food REALLY does taste better when you use your hands. They enjoyed it, but suffered a bit as the French, Germans, and Greeks are not used to the effects of chilli powder. As well, I was in Prague overnight last week and cooked for the Andelers. They said they liked it too, but once again—chili powder usage was a bit excessive for their tastes.

Surprise Vacation!

Due to continuing drama with my work permit (which I got today, so drama is over) I couldn’t come to work last week on Wednesday and Thursday on the off-chance that the Labor Office did a surprise inspection and noticed that I was working illegally. So…I decided to take Friday off too and make it a proper long weekend and visit some places in the Czech Republic that I wasn’t sure I would have a chance to visit otherwise. I went with my friend Claire (French ex-roomie) and her friend Arno (I’m sure I spelled that wrong because it’s French and I have no idea how to spell it, but that’s how it sounds) on a little excursion to Kutna Hora-Prague-Telc. Kutna Hora is a town between Brno and Prague with a totally creepy weird attraction. There is a church that is decorated on the inside with bones. BONES!! A chandelier made with bones, candle-holders with skulls, and all sorts of other fun things. Once I get the pictures from Claire I will post them because they do more justice than this description.

After spending the day looking around Kutna Hora we continued to Prague where we met up with the Andelers and had dinner. Then I went to the movie theatre for the first time since August. We saw Munich, which was good (though a bit on the long side). Makes you think, which is good since I don’t really do too much of that here in the Czech Republic. (kidding)

The next day we caught the bus to Telc. Well, we caught the bus late after I got confused and was convinced the bus left from the really far away bus station instead of the really close bus station. Yeah, we spent some quality time on the Prague metro that morning. Anyway, Telc is on the UNESCO World Heritage List (so is Kutna Hora actually) because of the beautiful town square and the chateau there. It’s nice, but small, and really probably only worth it to go there in summer. Things are generally less impressive in the snow and cold. And apparently the gardens are really nice there….in the summertime. It was still worth it since I don’t think I would have been able to go there otherwise. We got back to Brno Friday night, and decided that since it was a Friday—we had to party. I met a bunch of the new exchange students and they seem nice.

So for all those people that say to me, “Do you even do ANY work?” the answer is that last week I sure didn’t. Although today I have been stamping papers with today’s date. Awesome!

Train drama, Conference, and Zilina

2006-01-30T13:52:00.000+01:00

-Friday, January National Conference (JNC)-

I met up with Mauro (Italy) and Hugo (Portugal) at the train station tickets in hand to go to the Aiesec conference in Sec. We go to the platform and the following scene ensues (well, not verbatim, but something like this):

Time: 17:07—when the train was due to arrive.
[a really shitty looking train pulls up to our platform, says it’s final destination is Krujiskovicicece or something like that]
Mauro: I think this is our train.
Me: I don’t think this is it guys, we paid an extra 60kc to be on the nice train.
Mauro: I’ll go check the schedule. [goes to check] This is definitely our train, it says it goes via Pardubice (where we needed to go).
Me: Mauro, I really don’t think this is our train. Let’s ask someone. (We asked a few people and got 1 yes and 2 no’s)

Convinced that he is right, Mauro puts his bags ON the train, tells Hugo to watch them and then drags me over to the board.
Mauro: [pointing] See! The train goes through Pardubice.
Me: (trying to find exactly what he is pointing at) Uhhh….

Whistle blows, train doors close and train begins to move. Mauro runs after the train, grabs the handles next to the door, jumps on and tries vainly to force the doors open.

Hugo: Mauro, Mauro! (waves Mauro’s bags frantically)

Mauro falls off the train.

Mauro: Oh my god, I’m so glad you have my bags.
Me: I’m glad that you have so much faith in Hugo that you think he would be stupid enough to leave your bags on the train as it pulled away.
Hugo: Actually, I just grabbed them in the last 10 seconds. It was close!
Me: Oh ok. Sorry guys, you’re really going to hate me if that was our train. (Mauro was a little heated at this point and may have expressed some strong opinions).

Time: 2 minutes later
Our train pulls up.
Me: Ha! I was right.
Hugo: But that was really funny.

It was funny. We did countless “Mauro holding onto the side of the train” imitations after that. We also hypothesized on whether or not he would have been able to hang on to the train until the next station. (Conclusion: Only if there were no tunnels). We also started talking to a random guy in our compartment and were telling him this story and he said, “Oh, that was you? I saw you fall!” Awesome.

Eventually we did get to Sec and got the party started. However, nothing too crazy- just the requisite dancing and beer drinking that comes along with any conference like this.

Pictures in the JNC album.

-Zilina-

On Saturday, Hong and I got up bright and early (11 am) to catch the train to Zilina, Slovakia where we were meeting up with Tommaso, Lukasz, Mirka, and Sarah. Beautiful day that was spent mostly waiting for the train (yay for delays) and being on the train. The best part was when about 45 minutes away from our destination they decided to turn the heat in our compartment off. It was FREEZING! Gotta love Slovakia.

Once there we just found our hostel and went for dinner. We then went to a few clubs around the centre (it’s a small town so there are only a few clubs). We pretty much got stared at whenever we entered a location (I guess they don’t get many minorities in those parts and me and Hong were representing) but it was fun. We found a place that allowed us to get our dance on. Tommaso made sure to show us all his dance moves (the foot tapping, the pointing, etc) and it was great. [Ostrava family-- we missed you for La Tortura and Camisa Negra and all those songs we partied to on Stodolni!]

The next day we did a bit of sightseeing around the town and to the castle and then said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. Oh, and we saw a security guard take down and start beating up a guy that had stolen 2 bottles of alcohol. It was totally entertaining.

Pictures are in the Zilina album.

I’ll see Mirka next week for a bit before she leaves to Greece since she is taking the bus from Brno. But I don’t know when I will see Hong next.

That is why I have to write this next bit.

Things I will miss about Hong
-yelling “HONG!!!!” whenever he is taking too long to come to wherever he’s supposed to be
-yelling “HONG! DRINK!” whenever we are anywhere with alcohol
-how Hong always asks, “Why? Why?”
-how if Hong is not saying “Why?” he is saying “A-HA!”
-the fact that we are all always entertained when we introduce Hong as “Hong from Hong Kong”.

Gay Restaurant

2006-01-27T13:48:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I went to a gay restaurant for lunch. And I don't mean gay in the politically-incorrect-intended-to-insinuate-gayness-is-bad-when-it-isn't kind of way. I mean that I went to a restaurant that only has gay waiters and everyone calls the 'gay restaurant' (by everyone I mean the 2 other people that told me about it and me).

Let me tell you, it was honestly one of the best restaurants I have been to in the Czech Republic. Not because the food was stellar, or the decor was out of this world, but because of something completely simple. The waiters were NICE! This is the Czech Republic--the service is usually awful at best, and generally non-existent. That is something that you have to try to accept even though it can be difficult coming from a country where you have to be nice to the customer and the customer is always right. Remnants of communism I am told. You can't expect people to change their behavior and become friendly in the short span of 16 years. Shit like that takes TIME.

Things the waiter did that one does not expect from someone providing a service in the Czech Republic:
-Said dobre den (good day) and SMILED
-Asked how we were
-Promptly served our food (with a smile)
-Asked us how the food was (and actually sounded like he cared!)
-Told us to have a nice day (with a smile!)

You can't even get that many smiles at Mcdonalds and smiles are supposed to be free there!

Conclusion: Gay waiters are great, I am so going there again.

Plans for the weekend--going to an Aiesec conference one night and then rendezvous-ing with my Ostrava roommates in Zilina, Slovakia. I have been promised a good time. They better deliver. (This is not in doubt)

New Roomie and Hair Talk

2006-01-25T15:42:00.000+01:00

My new roomie:
-is French and an exchange student here
-speaks English pretty well (score!)
-seems really nice
-has a hair straightener that she lets me use!!

Ok, the whole hair straightener thing might seem insignificant and shallow to the people who are reading this and don't know the wonder of a hair straightener, but I know some of you are feeling me on this one.

Yesterday I straightened my hair for the 3rd time in the last 5.5 months. It somehow doesn't look as good as it used to. I blame this on these main factors:
-I have lost hair since coming to the Czech Republic so it's thinner (damn the hard water!)
-I haven't had a real haircut since August and twice since then I have taken it upon myself to cut my own hair because for some unfathomable reason I convinced myself that I was suddenly endowed with abilities I have always lacked such as 'the ability to cut straight', 'the ability to layer', and 'the ability to multi-task and hold the comb in one hand, the scissors in the other and look in the mirror all at the same time'. Oh, and for a moment there I thought I had some hand-eye coordination. LIES!

Anyway, I hang out with too many guys here so I don't get to do stuff like get into in-depth discussions about my hair. Plus, most people here have very easy to manage hair so they don't understand. (Spoonaka- I know, I have GREAT HAIR). It's kind of weird how some girls (ahem...me included) can spend so much time having the same conversation about hair, but just on different days. I remember in first year business I was talking to a girl in my class (who usually had curly hair but once in a while straightened it) about her straightener and how straight her hair was that day when my friend (male) just couldn't take it anymore and said, "You know what kind of straightener she has! It's a [insert model here], it takes her [this amount of time to straighten her hair]. She likes her hair better straight than curly but it just takes too much time to do! They're always the same questions and always the same answers!!".

Some people just don't know how to make conversation. Maybe that's why we aren't friends anymore. I'm capable of intelligent conversation, but sometimes you need to talk about stupid shit too.

Rambling

2006-01-24T11:51:00.000+01:00

-What some of my male friends learned about Czech chicks this weekend-

1.When your friends tell you that the girls you are hitting on are not attractive, believe them so that you don’t have a rude surprise the next night when you see them at the bar again.
2.Ask how old they are so that you won’t find out the next day that they are only 17.
3.You must be sober enough to realize that them teaching you how to count from 1-10 in Czech will not miraculously enable you to be fluent in the Czech language and that when you aren’t completely wasted you won’t have anything to say to them. (Worse is when they aren’t even cute so you wouldn’t even want to just make out with them.)

-Bratislava-
My friend Elina (Finnish living in Prague) and I went to Bratislava for the day on Saturday. We were there for about 4 hours and honestly, that was enough. The city is nice but nothing really stands out. It has the standard elements of any city in this region: main square, at least 5 churches, and a castle with a view. There were hardly any people there, which was a total contrast to Prague where there’s always WAY too many people. Not quite as bad as portrayed in the movie Eurotrip, and actually a relaxing place for a day trip. Check pictures in the Bratislava album.

-ZIMA!(Cold)-
It just seems wrong that the current temperature in Brno is about minus 20C when it is only minus 2C in Edmonton. The funniest/most tragic thing is seeing all the people around here (exchange students and other interns) who have no clue how to dress in the cold. Some girls yesterday told me they had no idea that it would be so cold because it was so sunny outside. I felt like my mom telling more than one person that it’s absolutely necessary to wear a hat, gloves, and scarf. Bundle up kids!

-Kobe Bryant-
It was brought to my attention that Kobe Bryant scored 81 points in one game (thanks Ricky). I wish I had seen it. Kobe, you’re a ball hog but I still love you.

-Conservatives…booooo!-
What the flip is happening in Canada? I will admit that I did not get my shit together and vote from here so one might make the case that I am not allowed to complain since I did not vote. However, I live in Alberta so my vote never really counts anyway. Anyway, boooo.

Random realization

2006-01-20T11:31:00.000+01:00

Last night was my friend Hans' going away party since he is heading back to Germany. Menia (a Slovak girl) looked around and started to count the different countries represented at the party-- Slovakia, Germany, Kenya, Portugal, Albania, Canada, India, Poland, Malaysia, Italy, Colombia,Spain.

Realization: There wasn't a single Czech person there.

Oops.

The Olympics of Waiting

2006-01-19T14:06:00.000+01:00

I beat my record yesterday, was waiting at the visa from about 9:45am to 2:15. Around 2:15 the server of the Foreign Police crashed so they told everyone to go away. We spoke with the lady for about 1 minute to say that we needed to drop off the documents and she said, "Ok, it will be ready Monday". This is the same lady who when we opened her door just to say we needed to drop off documents told us to wait. For about 4.5 hours.

The only good thing about the visa office was there was this cute little Asian kid running around and while it was walking it suddenly just fell over backwards because its head was so big. Literally, so big that it affected the child's balance so much that it would fall over backwards with no warning.

Side Note: The child was bundled up and had a really thick hat on so it felt no pain when it fell over. It didn't even start to cry.

Note to self: Stop going out so late on Wednesday nights if you want to avoid the inevitable pain of Thursday morning and the constant feelings of wanting to hide under your desk and sleep every minute of the day away.

I even had to drink coffee this morning. I never drink coffee.

Good News, Bad News and Bad News, Good News

2006-01-17T15:21:00.000+01:00

Good News: I still love my Ostrava roomies
Bad News: They had to go back to Ostrava!

Good News: I have a back-up husband for if I am unmarried at 30 (I know this doesn't carry the social stigma it once did, but still).
Bad News: Somehow I agreed to be the breadwinner while he stays home eating and gambling.

Good News: A new trainee from Malaysia came yesterday.
Bad News: She doesn't like beer (that will probably change).

Bad News: The original "Magic Stick" (reference Christmas Cottage)was stolen in Ostrava.
Good News: We found a new "Magic Stick" in Brno at the club!

Bad News: I caught my finger yesterday while I was converting the bed in my room from a couch to a bed. The nail is now blue and I can't apply pressure to my finger at all.
Good News: I am becoming very proficient at typing without the use of my left index finger.

Bad News: I have to go back to the Foreign Police tomorrow and I don't even know if all of my documents will be ready...my visa expires on the 23rd!
Good News: Erm...maybe living/working illegally in a country would add some excitement to my life?

Making New Friends

2006-01-12T15:46:00.000+01:00

Last night we were out at a bar in Brno (note to self: don't drink absinth on a work night) and I made friends with a girl while waiting in line for the bathroom. Guys- if you wonder why girls take so long in the bathroom it's because the line is ALWAYS long.

Anyway, she introduced me to all her friends (she's Spanish and they loved that I can speak Spanish because generally the Spaniards don't espeak the English so well) and said she would invite me and my friends to the party they are going to have. She was very nice and it got me thinking about how one may think it's kind of random that I made friends with someone in the bathroom, but it's actually not that uncommon.

Previous Bathroom Buddies:
-My favorite would have to be the girl that rescued me from the toilet stall on my 21st birthday. (I think it was 21 anyway) Now, since it was my birthday (the only time of the year when you can shamelessly make people buy you drinks) I will admit I was slightly inebriated. But, that does not mean I was incapable of operating a simple slide lock bathroom door. It was actually stuck. Anyway, I was fighting with the door trying to open it and contemplating the gross fact that I might have to crawl UNDER the door when all of a sudden there is knocking on the stall door mingled with the drunken inquiries of "What are you doing in there? What's taking you so long??" To which I reply, "the door is STUCK!" And she yells, "STAND BACK!" Thank the baby jesus (or Ganesha) I had the wits to move my ass as far back as possible because within seconds I hear WHOOOOOOSH and SLAM as the door hits the side of the stall. The amazon girl had KICKED the door open! And I loved her for it.
-All the girls I met in the bathroom in Ostrava were great and random. There was one I met the first week and saw pretty much every week on Stodolni for 5 months. I even got some phone numbers! I think I picked up more girls than some of my male roommates. Well, more than Malta guy for sure. I didn't remember them all though (really, all Czech chicks can look the same), so sometimes I would run into them on the street and have no idea who they were until they reminded me.
-In Edmonton with Medha at the trashiest bar in the world (the name escapes me, it used to be Club Malibu but for some reason I can't remember what the name of the place is at the moment) we met 2 girls who had helium balloons attached to their wrists with string. The problema? They were completely and hopelessly tangled together and not really in a state to rectify that situation. So Medha and I helped untangle them and they were very grateful. That night we coined the term 'barma'.

BARMA: Based on the principle that what you do at the bar that night and what you have done every night before influences every night to come. In short, bar karma.

Brrrrrrno

2006-01-10T15:03:00.000+01:00

I've been spending the last few days getting used to Brno. I have compiled a pros and cons list comparing to Ostrava.

Pros (always the good before the bad!)
-The city is nicer, more historical
-The beer is cheaper in pubs (I love saving 5 crowns! Whoohoo!)
-I have my own "kitchen" ie hot plate
-It's a change
-Nice trainees (So far! But as I always say, if you can't manage to make people think you are nice for the first while you must be a real asshole.)
-There's an Indian food restaurant here!
-I work in the centre right between H&M and McDonalds (I love me some shopping and McDonalds)

Cons
-Accommodation is more expensive and I have to walk up a freakin' hill everyday. This is a tragedy as I am very lazy.
-No maid at the dormitory whereas there was a maid in the "hotel" in Ostrava. Not cleaning my own bathroom for 5 months was awesome.
-I have to wake up 15 minutes earlier than I used to
-I miss my "Ostrava family"
-No Stodolni Street, the most wonderful place in the Czech Republic
-I work in the centre right between H&M and McDonalds (I will be broke and fat, but hopefully well-dressed)

No definitive decision at the moment, it's different but both are good! Plus, some of my Ostrava roomies are coming to visit on the weekend so that should be fun.

On a random note: on Friday I was out on the town with the trainees and some Indian guys that they work with (funnily enough, an Indian company outsources to Brno. Am I the only one that thinks Indians outsourcing stuff they are outsourced seems weird?) and 'Beware of the Boys' came on. I was dancing bhangra in Brno! That was something I never expected to do. We definitely got some weird looks.

For some Brno pics check the Brno Lake and Brno Bowling albums. Yes, I have done something besides party.

Ahhhh that reminds me what I have been doing lately. Waiting. To talk to evil visa extension people. You know what's annoying? When you have to take a number to talk to someone but you are not called in numerical order. So everyone stands around watching the board that displays the number of who is next and it goes something like this:
5
6
7
38
11
242
99
198
13
I shit you not. What is the point of taking a number that is dispensed in numerical order but called arbitrarily? Most people ended up crowding the door and just asking their questions as soon as someone left the office thereby negating the validity of the entire procedure anyway. I spent 3.5 hours waiting there yesterday, and 3 the week before. And I have to go back next week. Also, I have to go to Prague to the Canadian Embassy to get "superlegalization" of a document. Basically, a STAMP that proves something is valid, even though it's notarized already. And I have to pay for the damn stamp, it's like $50! To put that into perspective for those who don't understand the value of money in the Czech Republic, that's 40% of my rent for a month. Not exciting. It makes my Mexican visa process that involved taking pictures from the side without earrings and having a midget type up my forms look efficient. And the midget was much more friendly and even flirted a little.

Rant is over.

A Huevo Finlandia!!!

2006-01-06T15:24:00.000+01:00

I'm back from Finland and while not frozen, am considerably more poor. I had such an awesome time though, it was completely worth it!

The trip there was ok, first I had to head to Brno and drop off my stuff. Then I hung out in Brno for a few hours since I was getting a ride to Prague with my boss (free!). As I was walking through the Christmas markets I ran into a Turkish girl I know that was working in Brno. Completely random, but great because then I had someone to hang out with! The next day when I was taking the bus to the airport I ran into a Finnish girl that I know that lives in Prague and turns out she was on the same flight as me! Small world...I felt so popular.

I met up with Towa in the centre and we hung out for a while and then Heini arrived. It was so great to see my preciosa, it did not seem like it had been over a year and a half. We went to pick Dion up at the airport and then headed to Tampere. We spent about a week in Tampere/Lempaala for Christmas and then went to Helsinki for a few days and New Year's. We also had the chance to meet up with Christian (another guy we know from Mexico), so that was awesome! And I saw my buddy Timo as well..I never imagined I would end up knowing so many Finnish people!

Christmas Comparison:
-Christmas is pretty much the same everywhere...spend time with your family and feel like you have ate so much you are 10 seconds away from vomiting. And then do the same thing the next day. It was marvelous. Heini's mom and grandma were the best cooks EVER. I gained some serious weight. However, in Finland they celebrate Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day.
-Heini's family makes someone dress up as Joulupukki (Santa...or literally translated into English--Santa Stud) every year and hand out presents. Dion got to be Joulupukki this year while I was an elf. Hot stuff.

Some REALLY Finnish things we did:
-Ate reindeer (caused a bit of a value conflict and I got an email from my mom saying, "I won't get any presents, you ATE Rudolph!)
-Went to sauna and rolled around in the snow (I wore a bathing suit though, as Heini's dad remarked..."Don't you know that North Americans are the only people born with their clothes on?")
-Cut down our own Christmas tree
-Made a snowman (we called him Suomi Stud)
-Drank Salmiakki (now I remember why I don't like it)

The most UN-Finnish thing we did:
-Watched "Pimp my Ride" (or Viritetyt Vehkeet in Finnish)

New Year's:
-Started at a party with Towa's friends who were all very nice, successful, and good-looking. Fun to party with too!
-Kissed one of her "famous" friends who used to host a show on MTV Finland. The funny thing is that his girlfriend told me it was ok and to do it because it would be a great picture-- me kissing a famous Finnish person.
-Gallivanted around Helsinki to a club, a burger place, and an afterparty
-Managed to lose an earring and FIND it again in the streets of Helsinki.
-Was called "Bombay" all night by one of Towa's friends and was slightly offended until Towa said, "Well, you have been calling him "Fucker" all night". Ooops. Sign #1857458756 that I swear more than a normal person. I then explained to him that in my world Fucker=Honey.

Yay 2006!

Pictures are in the Helsinki and Tampere albums.

On the way back from Finland I stopped in Prague for a few days to spend Bina's last days in Czech Republic with her! We went to the largest club in Central Europe...a venue much less impressive than the name itself. It has 5 floors, but 3 of them were closed! We still managed to have a good time, I was surrounded by Brazilians. And really, it's good to go out with Brazilians because everyone loves to dance! We also had a really good time making fun of the guys at the club, there were a lot of mullets running around. Also, I met a guy from the Yukon which is weird because I've never actually met anyone from the Yukon before, so the fact I met such a person in Prague is kind of random.

Now I'm settling into Brno, more on that later!

Goodbyes

2005-12-20T16:05:00.000+01:00

Saying goodbye really sucks. It's better when you know you will see the people again, but you still know that things will never really be the same as they are in the moment, with the same people, and the specific place.

Last night we took Lulu to the train station and our goodbye was like a scene out of a movie. Lulu put her suitcase on the train and was coming out to the platform to say goodbye to us when the conductor walked by and slammed the train door shut before she could say anything. Our last view of Lulu was through the window on the train door and her crying with her hand on the window while the rest of just kind of stood there screaming "I love you Lulu!" and lamenting that our chance at a lovely goodbye had been so rudely taken from us by the bitchy train lady. As the train rolled away I turned to one of the boys and just said, "I didn't even get to hug her goodbye!" and started to tear up.

The only happy part to this sad story is that I will go visit Lulu in Paris before leaving Europe so atleast I have that to take solace in.

It's also my last day of work today. They had a little party for me with champagne and presents and I gave them maple cookies. Everyone lined up to say thanks and bye to me and I started to cry before getting through even half of the people. I am becoming such a sap in my old age. I never thought I would be so sad to say bye to Ostrava. But fortunately, I will come back!

I am leaving tomorrow morning to Prague and then flying to Finland on Thursday, so I probably won't update this until I get back in January. So....MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Christmas Cottage!

2005-12-20T13:17:00.000+01:00

This weekend me, my roommates, and a bunch of people from AIESEC spent our time at a cottage in the snowy mountains of the Czech Republic. It was definitely an experience.

We arrived on Friday evening after taking 2 buses into the middle of nowhere while it was snowing, drinking slivovice (Czech liquor made from plums) on the bus, and disembarking at a bus stop not having any idea where to actually go. It was dark and snowy and there was no cell phone reception. We walked down the one road that was there and hoped we were headed in the right direction. Without too much trouble we located the cottage only to find out 2 things: the electricity was not working and there was no running water. This meant:
-toilets did not work
-dinner was bread with cheese
-the pump for the kegs did not work since it needed electricity

However, we (my roomies and I) are smart people and had brought extra booze. The night basically consisted of my roommates and I sneaking off to drink so the other people wouldn't see and we wouldn't have to share. They pretty much knew what we were up to since we were obviously intoxicated while they were not.

The next morning the electricity AND the water worked so we felt like the cottage was a mansion. A bunch of us went for a walk in the snow and played around. I forgot how much fun that is. Me, Lukasz, Tommaso and Mirka hiked up a snow covered hill, laid on top of each other all linked together and rolled down the hill. I wish we had video, it was completely awesome. When we got back to the cottage we decorated the tree (with ornaments we made ourselves...needless to say the tree was not going to win any beauty contests), had a traditional Czech Christmas dinner and got our party on.

It was honestly the best way to spend our last weekend together as a "family". There was a lot of bonding that took place. Lulu said, "After a weekend like this, how can I leave??" Yeah, it was definitely a lovefest.

Some of the highlights (warning: they may be really immature and verging on gross):
-Tommaso and Mirka (we call them 'the fuckers' because they are dating) asking us, "you don't use the towel in the bathroom do you?" and also informing us that the kitchen is warm and empty at night.
-Drinking tequila and feeling perfectly fine the next morning (it's no longer the enemy! Now it's an amigo!)
-Hong asking us if he needed a visa for when he goes to the Vatican
-Debating with Lukasz about whether or not it is absolutely necessary for guys to wash their hands after going to the bathroom. Lukasz contended that he did not pee on himself, and it was just like holding any other part of the body. I informed him that was a horrible argument and made him go wash his hands. (Actually, my exact words were "I don't hold my vagina when I go to the bathroom and I STILL wash MY hands!")
-Making "Christmas clothes" for ourselves out of tissue paper. Lucie and I had "skirts" but during the course of the night hers ripped and there was a hole. So we said, "Lucie has a big hole!"
-Receiving a box of chocolates for Secret Santa with the brand name "Delicious Nut". I then asked many people if they would like to try my delicious nuts.
-Dressing Lukasz up like a Christmas tree
-Hong breaking a chair by accident (the leg fell off) and then taking the chair leg and naming it "The Magic Stick". We totally stole that from the cottage and it's back in Ostrava
-Tommaso (Italian) trying to give Vasek (Czech) a tutorial on how to seduce a girl. ("The bra doesn't matter! Push her against the wall!") Funny, funny stuff.
-Making all sorts of promises with each other. Including the fact that we ALL have to go to each other's weddings. That will be a total gong show.
-Stealing soup from the kitchen-there were a lot of leftover packages of soup and at night when we were hiding in the kitchen drinking Hong came up with the brilliant plan to TAKE some soup. He got Tommaso's duffel bag and stuffed a bunch of packages in there. We had soup for dinner last night.
-Talking about poop. Lukasz and Hong had to go into the wilderness to do their business (water not working) and were gone for about 45 minutes finding the perfect spot. They felt much better afterwards. The next day Lukasz had this really pained expression on his face and I asked "Lukasz, what's wrong?" and he said "I have to POOP!". Ok, we are probably part of the minority that thinks bowel movements are just freaking hilarious.

These are just some of the few priceless moments from that weekend. There were a lot of times we were literally on the floor laughing. It was great.

The Cheap and Lazy Motivational Theory of Aruna

2005-12-16T11:54:00.000+01:00

One of my latest realizations about myself was the fact that most of my decisions are strongly influenced by 2 things: the fact that I am cheap and the fact that I am lazy.

Sometimes these factors work in combination to influence a decision (i.e. I am too cheap AND too lazy to do that) or sometimes they work against one another (i.e. God, I am SO cheap and it hurts me to pay this much, but I am too damn LAZY to do anything else). As well, at times there are decisions which are influenced by one but not the other.

Specific examples in the Czech Republic:
-The fact I have a tram pass in Ostrava-
I work less than 10 minutes walk from my house and I rarely ever go anywhere that's more than a 10 minute walk from my house. But I still have a monthly tram pass which costs 200kc (about $10CAD). Why do I have a tram pass? Because I am so lazy that I take the tram to work so that I can have an extra 10 minutes of sleep. Also, I am much too lazy to poke around in my wallet for the 8kc needed for a ticket whenever I decide to take the tram.

-I don't buy much junk food in the Czech Republic-
I am usually too cheap to buy lots of chips and other crap when I have to pay for it myself. Also, if I were to get really fat I would probably still be too lazy to exercise.

-I have learned to cook a lot of things with boiling water-
Like instant soup. Yum! Sometimes I'm too lazy to go shopping and buy something better (even though the supermarket is directly on my way home from work), too lazy to wash the many dishes that more complicated meals would create, and too cheap to do something like order in. Plus ordering in would involve using my cell phone and spending credit. And speaking in Czech...which is just not possible for me.

There are probably (definitely) WAY too many more life examples for me to list. I won't go there.

As for what's happening lately...Wednesday we went to karaoke (not the same without Erick and Bina!), and yesterday we had a Mexican dinner at our house where we ate all the canned Mexican food that Erick left behind. Then we sat around feeling sick because we all totally over-ate. Hot.

Weekend Update

2005-12-13T15:51:00.000+01:00

This weekend consisted of:
1. Work Christmas Party on Friday- Yes, the drinks were free and it started at 6pm.
2. Chucho and Bina's Farewell Party on Friday- I had to make it to this party after my work party
3. Chucho's 2nd Farewell Party-Where we promised ourselves we would only go to Stodolni for a little while yet didn't get home til about 5:30am.

Bina left on Saturday (boooooo) and Chucho left on Monday (booooo again). Fortunately, I will see Bina again before she heads back to Brazil, so no reason for the crocodile tears yet. As for Chucho, hopefully I will see him in Mexico sometime soon. Pero te vamos a extrañar Chuchito Cachondito!!!

Quote of the weekend from anonymous trainee: "Desperado [our favorite club] was like my home. I had so much fun there. I drank there. I was naked there. I met girls there. I fell asleep there. It was like my second home."

That pretty much sums it up.

Christmas Dinner!

2005-12-09T15:08:00.001+01:00

I know it's a little early, but last night we had our Christmas Dinner in Ostrava. We even had a tree, Christmas music playing in the background, presents, and mistletoe. Fancy-shmancy. My roommate Mirka made sure that we got the full experience by showing us traditional Czech Christmas activities. It was a smart plan--made sure that we didn't gorge ourselves, rip open presents, and lie around like beached whales. We did all of that anyway, but did some other stuff as well.

-Good Luck or Death?-
For this tradition, you have to cut an apple in half width-wise and see what the shape in the middle is. If it is a star, you will have good luck in the next year. If it is a cross, you will either die or just have something really bad happen to you. Happy eh? Luckily, we all got stars.

-Health?-
You have to eat a wafer with honey and a big chunk of uncooked garlic. Yummy. Meet you under the mistletoe!

-Marriage in the stars?-
You have to throw your shoe over your shoulder and if it lands right side up and pointing to the door you will get married in the next year. Surprise, surprise, none of us are getting married.

-Presents-
Gotta love secret Santa. I believe the most entertaining presents were received by Lukasz (a thong and a rubber ducky) and Bina (a little toy with a Christmas tree on the end that when you press the button spins around and opens to reveal something naughty)

-Mistletoe-
I think there was way more same-sex kissing than anything. Very entertaining. Although Hong might feel a little molested now.

I think the pictures probably do more justice to the night than my description. They are in the 'Christmas Dinner' album. Also, pictures from 'Bina's Karvina Goodbye Party' on Wednesday are posted in their own album.

Vitkovice 6 Karlovy Vary 2

2005-12-07T15:57:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I went to a hockey game with some of my roomies. We watched Ostrava's team (Vitkovice) pretty much kick the ass of the Karlovy Vary team. We really enjoyed ourselves, and tried to heckle the players a bit in our foreign languages as well as with our limited Czech knowledge. One of the expressions we know in Czech is 'son of a bitch' and we got some weird looks when we yelled that one out.

I noticed 3 major differences between NHL hockey and Czech hockey.
1. Definitely not enough violence.
I remember the first time I went to an Oilers hockey game my sister and I were appalled by how much fighting and violence there was. But then we realized that all the fights help make the game much more interesting. During this game, just giving someone a little push would incur a penalty. Consequently, there were a lot of penalties given but no real entertainment value. BORING!

2. There are cheerleaders for hockey games here!
This kind of spiced up the little breaks. Instead of people clapping half-heartedly to one of those songs they always play at hockey games (like We Will Rock You), there were perky little cheerleaders doing coordinated routines. Kind of fun.

3. No nachos.
And really, aren't nachos the best reason for attending any hockey game? With extra jalapenos. Yum.

Pictures are in the 'Czech Hockey Game' album of 'My Pictures'

My Very Difficult Name

2005-12-06T14:32:00.000+01:00

Many people in the Czech Republic are never actually called by their real names. Their names can be modified by adding something like -ka to girl's names and -ek to guy's names. For example: Hana could be Hanka and Jaromir could be Jarek. Sometimes it is good because the nickname is easier than the real name but sometimes the opposite is true.

However, this leads to an interesting problem sometimes when I introduce myself.

Person: What is your name?
me: Aruna
Person: That name is very hard for Czech people to say, isn't there something easier?
me: [after having this conversation many, many times before and realizing that for some convoluted reason this is actually much easier for some people] You can call me Arunka.

At first I said, "No, I don't have a nickname. It's just Aruna." But they called me Arunka anyway. I actually kind of like it now. It sounds soooo Czech! I guess adopting this Czech name makes up for the fact that I've been here 4 months and can't really speak any Czech. Right?

POLSKA!!!

2005-12-05T15:44:00.000+01:00

Whew, crazy weekend. Lukasz had to go home to Bialystok for the weekend so Bina and I decided to join him for the trip! He dropped us off in Warszawa Friday night and then we went around sightseeing on Saturday and took the train to his town Saturday night. We got to experience both a Polish houseparty and a Polish club, very entertaining. Plus, his mom cooked for us, it was so great. We cook here, but there's just something special about food prepared by a mom, it tastes so much better. It was my first home/mommy cooked meal in almost 4 months! So, here are some of the highlights:

-Warszawa-
I was pleasantly surprised by Warszawa, mostly because I've had a few people tell me it's a horribly ugly city. Considering the fact it was almost completely destroyed in WWII it's not looking so bad these days. The center is really nice, even though quite a bit of it still has that communist chic look. Bina and I had fun looking around, going to the museum and seeing the palace. It was our last romantic trip together!! Tears. It was funny, on Friday night in the hostel we stayed at I woke up around 2am to the sounds of a guy in a top bunk hitting the guy in the bunk below him with a pillow and telling him to go take his snoring spray. It was understandable though, because the guy snored really loudly. Sadly, the spray didn't help and the snoring continued ALL NIGHT.

-Partying Polish Style-
Me, Bina, Lukasz, and Lukasz's friend Beret went to some house party of one of their friends. Bina and I were obviously a walking freak show since we were random foreigners. Here's some dialogue from the night:

random guy: You know, Poland is much more advanced than the Czech Republic, we can drive faster here.
[me and Bina thinking...yeah ok...good logic...]

the same guy a bit later on
random guy: Oh, but Germany is the best because they don't have speed limits
[me and Bina thinking...mmmm....yeah...can't he make better conversation than this?]

and the same guy again
random guy: So what are you guys doing here?
Bina: Well, our roommate Lukasz wanted to bring along some beautiful, clever girls, so here we are!
random guy: You're not clever
me and Bina: What? Are you telling us we're not clever? Are you calling us stupid?
random guy: Yes.
Bina: You have a bad approach.

Honestly, how do some people ever expect to get action?

Later on a bunch of us were dancing to the song by Juanes -Camisa Negra. Afterwards we were in the kitchen and Bina and I were saying something in Spanish and this one girl who was wearing a black shirt said something to the effect of "Kurva [bitch]! I have no idea what the hell they are saying!" And since the only word Bina and I understood was kurva I turned to Lukasz and was like, "Lukasz, is she calling us kurvas?" It was so funny, she was just like...no, no, I am not calling you kurvas. And then we made friends with her and called her Camisa Negra (it means black shirt and she was wearing a black shirt...we are so funny).

Also, the owner of the apartment we were at (Kamil) was telling us how he was trying to impress this one girl that was there, and we were like...oooh which one is she? And so he said something to the effect of "the one with the shirt that shows her boobs". The rest of the night when he came over to talk to us we would just say, "Kamil! What are you doing here?? Go for the boobs!!" It was probably funnier in combination with Polish vodka.

After getting our party on at the house, we decided to head to a club to meet up with some of Lukasz's other friends. It was great, we managed to make friends even through the language barrier. Even though Lukasz and Beret helped out with translating ;)

-Lazy Sunday-
The next day we slept in late and went for a tour of Bialystok. It was cold so we only got out of the car once to take pictures with the palace, but it was still good. While we were busy being touristy Lukasz's mom made us food and it was delicious.

-On the Road Again-
We finally hit the road about 4:00pm back to Ostrava with the beginnings of a snow storm. Luckily, we left that behind in Bialystok and mostly just had fog to contend with the rest of the way. It was so weird, the fog would just come out of nowhere and disappear as quickly. Kind of creepy. It was funny though, the first few times we would drive for a bit through the fog and Lukasz would say "What the fuck!" and the fog would clear up right away. Divine intervention maybe. ;) We were making decent time until.....

-Border Crossing-
Generally, the border crossing is not that difficult. It usually takes about 5-10 minutes. However, on this occasion the border control people decided to be evil bastards and hassle me about a missing stamp. I went to Krakow last month and evidently I was missing a stamp for my way into Poland even though I gave my passport on the train to the passport control guy. They didn't care when I entered the country on Friday, but apparently on a Sunday around midnight when people are tired and want to go home it becomes an issue. We were stuck at the border for over an hour while they filled out some form. The form had like 10 blank spaces for name, address, etc. but apparently it takes a very, very long time to fill out. Idiots. Incompetency. We were getting so annoyed at the border waiting while we saw all the other cars go through that we decided to take some pictures. Then we were still waiting. Finally, things were sorted out. We were all a little cranky since we were tired and just wanted to go home. I've been trying to regulate my emotions and not become frustrated and yell at people lately but that trend ended at the border crossing. It was something like the following:

Border control guard to Lukasz: [blah blah blah in polish blah blah blah]
Lukasz to me: The border control guard says that you should make sure to get your passport stamped
me: But I gave the passport to the guy on the train! He was supposed to stamp it! And why is it a big deal now when it wasn't a big deal on Friday? [getting a little heated here]
guard says to Lukasz: [blah blah blah in polish blah blah blah]
Lukasz to me: He says to make sure you get your passport stamped
me: I GAVE IT TO THE BORDER CONTROL GUY! HE WAS SUPPOSED TO STAMP IT! THIS ISN'T MY FAULT!

Mmmm...yeah. I might have yelled a little. And ranted to Bina and Lukasz about how I was going to write an angry letter to...someone. Then we realized that we were free and we ran to the car and drove back to home sweet Ostrava.

So basically, Poland was amazing and a lot of fun although the Polish/Czech border control guards are totally on my shit list. Check pictures in the Warszawa and Bialystok album of 'My Pictures'.

Lesbian's and Gay's SONG!

2005-12-01T12:31:00.000+01:00

Yesterday the girls (me, Lulu, Sabrina, and Mirka) arbitrarily decided to wear our hair in pigtails when we went out to karaoke. We are so hot. We were going to do 80's side ponytails, but they give you a headache.

So--it was the girls, Chucho, Liviu and Ionut and good times were had by all. I think the best song of the night was definitely the Slovak classic by Horkýže slíže called Lesbian's and Gay's song. Now, it was a little difficult because 1. It is hard to read and sing at the same time and 2. It is even more challenging when some of the lyrics are in Slovak. The song itself is hilarious and dangerously infectious. I haven't been able to get it out of my head! Here are the lyrics:

Poď sem, nech sa s tebou zblížim,
poď sem, ja ti neublížim,
poď sem, ja ťa nezbijem,
I´m sorry, I´m Lesbian.

Poď sem, som tvoj dvorný básnik,
mám energiu za dvanástich,
a k tomu lubrikačný gel,
I´m sorry, I´m really Gay.

The best part is the chorus:
Lesbian´s and Gay´s song...Lesbian´s and Gay´s sooo-oo-oo-ooong(repeat continuously)

So we can't understand the whole song, but what we do understand is really funny. At our place at any moment you might hear someone yell out "Lesbian´s and Gay´s song...Lesbian´s and Gay´s sooo-oo-oo-ooong!!!!" And it hasn't stopped being entertaining yet.

Also, there's a clothing store here called Titty Twister. Hello flashback to junior high when guys thought it was really cool to run around and give each other titty twisters. On the way home from karaoke last night we took a picture of me twisting Ionut's nipple outside of it. Original, I know. I'll check how it turned out and post it later.

5 Things about the Czech Republic

2005-11-29T11:58:00.000+01:00

-You can get a ticket for jaywalking if you don’t cross at a pedestrian crosswalk, but no-one yields to pedestrians anyway
-Even when it’s freezing cold outside, there are still a lot of girls wearing short skirts. I personally don’t think tights are that warm, but maybe it’s just me!
-It is socially acceptable to wear your cell phone on a lanyard around your neck or attached to your belt (well, it is convenient!)
-You have to weigh your own fruits and vegetables at the supermarket. When I first got here I didn’t know that and the lady at the supermarket subjected me to a severe tongue lashing in Czech and everyone waiting in line wanted to kill me. I didn’t understand what anyone was saying though so I wasn’t too bothered
-Many people think that deodorant is optional. You will find most of these people on the tram/metro

On a completely unrelated note, after years of not attempting to cook anything much more complicated than spaghetti or stir-fry I have started to cook real food. Yesterday I made curry potatoes and green beans and my roomies loved it! Even though apparently they were a bit spicy (which I didn't notice due to years of de-sensitizing my taste buds). Whenever someone cooks well Bina says "Oh, you can get married now!", so I guess eventually one day I will be able to get married. But only as long as the guy doesn't mind the fact I can only cook 6 different kinds of meals. And he does the dishes.

Stodolni Tour 2005

2005-11-28T11:06:00.000+01:00

Stodolni Tour is an event organized by AIESEC Ostrava that invites trainees and Aiesecers from around the Czech Republic to Ostrava to experience Stodolni Street and get their party on. I helped out a bit with it and mc'd some of the stuff that night. Definitely crazy.

Highlights:
-I was on the OC and me and the other 2 girls did a dance to Hollaback Girl. Yes, it included some spanking.
-I had my "lips" from Hilary and Kimberly, they make a cool whooo-whooo-whoooooooo sound that everyone seemed to love. A lot of people kissed me on the "lips" that night
-There was a buffet and the Ostrava trainees (my people) decided we should bring as much food as possible to our table and share it, thus creating our own buffet. We are so cool.
-We had a competition for the titles of "Mr and Miss Stodolni Tour", both were won by Ostrava trainees--Bina and Hong. The challenges were hilarious, stripping, sexy dances, kissing etc. Check the pictures for more details. Highlights included when the guys were dressed in women's clothing, Hong and Lukasz dancing, and Bina stripping Chucho. Words are not quite enough to describe how funny it was.
-Whipped cream fight-we surprised the aiesec president and some other exec members by telling them to come onstage and not telling them why. They got creamed, and then everyone got in on the action.
-My roomies decided that drinks weren't quite cheap enough in the Czech Republic and that they should buy some bottles of vodka and drink in the street until we got to the next bar, hilarity ensued.
-My male roommates thought it would be a good idea to show people their nipples. Totally funny. Later on in Desperado I was talking to someone near a window and looked out the window and saw one of my roommates showing me his nipples through the window while talking on the phone. Random.

The next day: 3 jackets and a hat missing, Lukasz safe
-We realized Lukasz was not dead in a ditch like feared since he had left without telling any of us.
-He realized that he had forgotten his jacket at the club and walked home in 0 degree weather without it.
-The Dutch guy that was staying with us complained that someone stole his jacket when in fact he had left it at the club as Lukasz discovered when he went back there to look for his jacket.
-Erick was so smashed he wore someone else's jacket home from Desperado. The best part...it was a girl's jacket that looked NOTHING like his other jacket! And he lost his favorite hat.

My stomach was sore the next day from laughing so much the night before. Stodolni Tour was definitely a success.

Pictures are posted in the Stodolni Tour album of 'My Pictures'.

Pictures

2005-11-25T13:37:00.000+01:00

My work computer does not let me post pictures directly onto the blog, so check out the 'My Pictures' link if you want to see pictures. If you would like to see the one of Malta guy getting picked up by the stripper it can be found in the "Stodolni with the Boys" album.

Etiquette

2005-11-25T13:27:00.000+01:00

Dedicated to whomever may have done the following, whether it be a resident of Jindrich or our Dutch guests that are with us at the moment.

If you are going to puke, please puke in the toilet. It is there for a reason, and you can magically flush the evidence away. If you notice not everything is magically flushed away please wait and re-flush. The trash can and the bath are not acceptable locations for vomiting. And no, the sink is a not a good idea either.

Please have some decency and realize that while our accommodation is not luxurious, it is still our home. Also, note the fact that the employees of Hotelovy dum Jindrich are crazy at best, and people (like me) do not appreciate having a hostile encounter with the angry cleaning lady at 7:30am in which she yells in Czech something to the effect of "I am a cleaning lady not a slave" and proceeds to drag you around the flat pointing out unacceptable areas of slovenliness and telling you precisely where she found vomit. This cleaning lady manages to have body odor at 7:30am, and it is not pleasant to smell first thing in the morning.

Thank you.

My Roomies

2005-11-24T14:48:00.000+01:00

So, some of you have asked me to explain my living situation here in the Czech Republic. I have to say that the reason that I have such a great time is because I live with some of the coolest people to be found. And I'm not just saying that because some of them might read this blog. ;) Here are the people (my Hotelovy dum Jindrich family) that make my life in Ostrava so awesome! Most of them are leaving in December which sucks big time.

Ladies first!

Mirka (Slovakia)- We share a bedroom ;) Ooooh baby. She's super nice, funny, and calls me sweetie. I have to admit that I like it. A lot. And she's hot. Mirka is so awesome to have around because she speaks Czech unlike the rest of us. And she doesn't mind the fact that my part of the room looks like a tornado hit it. Yay for Mirka!

Lucie aka Lulu (France)- We have all agreed that Lulu is pretty much the only French person we have ever met that we really like. Even she admits that when she is in Paris and she smiles people think it's weird because they are not used to it. And she doesn't seem to mind that we make fun of how French people are smelly. She's not smelly though. And she is vegetarian. Her diet consists of yogurt, chocolate, soup, and musli. She's hot too! And a really good dancer. When I told her "Wow, Lulu, you are a really good dancer!" she replied, "My boyfriend is black, what do you expect?" Awesome.

Sabrina aka Bina (Brazil)- I call her Bina maria amor de mi vida (love of my life) sometimes. After the first name of a girl sometimes Bina adds maria for no apparent reason. So, I am Aruna maria. The first time I met Bina we immediately clicked and have some kind of cosmic connection. We can talk about anything and everything. And we both like to grab people's asses. We took the train to Prague once and talked for 4.5 hours straight and only stopped for bathroom breaks. It's crazy. She's leaving in 2 weeks and I can't think about that anymore because I will become depressed. Now I have to learn Portuguese and go to Brazil.

Erick aka Chucho aka Chuchito (Mexico)- His name is Erick de Jesus and the nickname for Jesus is Chucho. So we call him Chucho sometimes. I like Chucho because I can say stuff like "no mames!" and "que pedo!" to him and we understand each other! Plus he's a fun guy. Especially when drunk. No further comment there. Erick and Lulu constantly tease each other about being either a lazy French girl or a lazy Mexican.

Tommaso aka Tommasito (Italy)- Tommasito is a sweetie, very Italian. He always knows the right thing to say. The other day I was saying something about getting fat and he patted my belly and said "this is sexy on a woman". Riiiiiight. But still, nice try Tommaso.

Hong (Hong Kong)- It amuses us to no end that Hong is from Hong Kong. So sometimes we call him Hong Kong. He doesn't seem to care. He's a really good guy. The girls and I voted and we agree Hong is our favorite because he's nice and not always trying to get into some Czech girl's pants. No offense other guys, we still love you too. But We [heart] Hong.

Lukasz (Poland)- Lukasz is a pretty fun guy. Except for that time when he got into a fight with some guy at the bar and broke his glasses. Unfortunately, I missed that incident but now when I'm wearing my glasses around him and making fun of him I want to say "What are you going to do? Break my glasses?"

Liviu (Romania)- Liviu can be quite entertaining, he's got some funny stories. I also love that he knows random R&B music and obscure english phrases. Him and Ionut always cook full Romanian meals together. Unlike the rest of us he hasn't made an ass of himself when drunk yet, but there's still time. Or maybe it's only me that does that....oops...

Ionut (Romania)- Ionut's signature phrases include "Hey Baby" and "Can I be the meat in your sandwich?". Both good. Plus, he has a nice ass. And he's a better dancer than most white boys, so we are trying to learn some fun salsa moves.

I saved the best for last:

Malta guy aka Joseph- I can't even verbalize what Malta guy is like. Malta guy is impossible to imagine, you have to meet him to fully understand the extent of his weirdness. Many of us have come to the conclusion that it is actually quite impressive that someone like Malta guy even exists because it's hard to imagine an environment that would shape such a person. He's smelly and totally incapable of interacting in a social setting in a normal manner. Nastya (Russian) told us a Russian saying that is very appropriate here: There is no family without the freak. So we can conclude that while Malta guy is an irregularity, he is necessary to complete our Jindrich family. As my sister has pointed out numerous times- mutual dislike of one person brings the others together, so maybe that is why the rest of us get along so well. He also provides us with constant entertainment and things to talk about. (Reference stripper incident in previous post)

So that's it for the current roomies but I would also like comment on some of the dearly departed:

Nastya (Russia)- Yes, that's 'Nasty' with an 'a' at the end. Nastya was a great party girl, and we miss her a lot. She was always ready to dance on the bar/table with me and we broke hearts when would get our dance on. Too bad she went back to Siberia! And she would always tell us wise Russian sayings.

Sasha (Ukraine)- Sasha was a man of few words and spent the majority of his time drinking beer. He also refused to ever dance unless it was to a slow song. And he was always receiving secret calls on his cell phone and going to his room to talk so we concurred he must be a member of the Ukrainian mafia. They wanted him back home, so he left!

So, maybe this gives you a bit of insight into the people I live with and how I can manage to entertain myself without the internet at home or a television. I don't know why, but things are exponentially more funny in Jindrich. The other day Lulu and I were pretending to be monkeys and dying of laughter. Yesterday Bina was pretending she could speak Polish and reading lines from Lukasz's passport and it was HILARIOUS! Probably one of those "you had to be there" moments, but truly funny. I'm so glad I'm here for these random moments.

I'm easily entertained

2005-11-23T14:35:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Hilary "Spoon" Anaka for the following:

He's like a stairmaster, you know why? Because he's stepping it up!

[maybe one of these days I too will be like a stairmaster and step it up]

What do you say to a one-legged hitchhiker?

Hop in!

[funny!]

The hitchhiker joke is reminiscent of my friend Kari's favorite joke (miss you pareja!):

Why did the little boy fall off the swing?

Because he had no ARMS!

[you have to picture this and it's really really funny in that horrible "you are going to hell for this" kind of way and then I think..."HA I don't believe in the concept of Hell! Take that suckers!" But then I do believe in karma to a certain extent and that ALWAYS kicks you in the ass]

Lazy motherduckers

2005-11-23T11:06:00.000+01:00

When I was in Vienna with my mom we saw these ducks being lazy and I said to my mom "What a bunch of lazy motherduckers!" Then my mom told me to watch my mouth. This is funny if you know my mom. And no, she didn't smack me upside the head. Apologies to those who have heard this story, but I still think it's funny! P.S. don't tell my mom about the blog!

Last weekend I was alone in Ostrava with my guy roommates since the girls were all out of town and since we don't have television or alternate methods of entertainment we decided to go to Stodolni (the street with all the bars). After spending a few hours in Desperado (our second home...the best bar in Ostrava!) and having an encounter with a very drunk lady with a bindi on who kissed my ear, we decided to go home. There's a strip club on the way home with no cover charge. I was alone with 5 guys, so obviously we stopped there. Definitely the highlight of the night. We saw our weirdo roommate Joseph (who we never actually call Joseph but call him Malta guy since he's from Malta) with his head in the stripper's lap and getting some good value out of his 50 crowns (<$3CAD). The stripper picked him up that night. And by picked up I don't mean she was hitting on him, I mean she physically picked him up. It was hilarious. I will post a picture later.

Yesterday I went to Karvina (a town near Ostrava) for Global Village that was run by AIESEC Karvina and Erasmus (exchange) students. Basically there's a table set up for every country and each table has typical food and drink. Needless to say it was very fun. I spent too much time at the Finnish table since they were the last ones to run out of alcohol. It was hard to get up this morning, it's a good thing I am not challenged at work.

Another thing that pisses me off is the damn cleaning lady at Jindrich (place where I live). She starts to vacuum at like 7am! What the hell is wrong with her?? She knows we are sleeping. I have to wake up at 7:30 so I'm bitter that my last precious moments of sleep are so rudely stolen from me. But I am very happy that we have a cleaning lady, it means I never have to clean the bathroom or vacuum. All this with a room that only costs $90CAD/month. I guess I shouldn't complain.

Adventures in Czecholandia and beyond....

2005-11-23T01:17:00.000+01:00

Mmmm...yeah. So I've decided to start a blog since I have so much time at work to use in a more productive way than just reading other people's blogs. Plus, this might be better than clogging up everyone's email boxes. I know you are excited because I am so wildly entertaining. Kind of fashionably late with the blog thing---but hey, I'm never on time anyway.

So, for those of you who have been deleting/ignoring messages I send you or you just don't know me, I'm in the Czech Republic doing an internship for 8.5 months. I'm here until the end of April so plenty of stories should ensue. I will also post later about fun stuff that has happened so far.

My sister calls the Czech Republic Czecholandia sometimes. I think she's trying to be funny, but I'm mad at her because she hasn't emailed me in over 2 weeks. Meena, you're not funny. So there.