7.15.10
Why is it the most wonderful thing ever? Ji-Soo and I left the house today at 8:30 a.m. on our bikes and returned at 5:00 p.m. This is what we did:
From Brooklyn Hts. crossed the Pulaski Bridge then over to Roosevelt Island. Looked at some apartments there and left feeling like I'd spent a few hours in the Twilight Zone. Back into Queens, through Astoria, across the Tri-Borough and rested for a bit on Randall's Island. A loop around the island and then across the foot bridge into Manhattan, down the East River, across the Queens Boro Bridge back into Queens and then more or less traced our steps back home. Phew.
And it was awesome.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
De-Centering?
I just read a reflective post on my good friend Laura's blog about her time in Mexico (lauritadianita.info) in which she talks about her search for fresh chicken. In her mind this meant a store with refrigeration. What she found was a woman willing to slaughter a chicken in front of her. This sparked an "Oh yeah, I guess I never thought of it that way" memory of my own.
On an early morning taxi ride the day before I left Costa Rica the cab driver commented to me how much he loved the rain.
"You live in the right place, then." I said. "But how do you dry your clothes?"
"Well, I have a little covered space where I hang them. They dry fine there. In two days just about everything is dry."
And then he went on to share with me how one can use the back of their fridge to dry small pieces of clothing, like underwear.
"It's great," he said. "Everything will be dry in two days!"
And I thought: "So this is my problem. I thought two days drying time was slow!"
So, there you are LauritaDianita, my own reflections on de-centering.
On an early morning taxi ride the day before I left Costa Rica the cab driver commented to me how much he loved the rain.
"You live in the right place, then." I said. "But how do you dry your clothes?"
"Well, I have a little covered space where I hang them. They dry fine there. In two days just about everything is dry."
And then he went on to share with me how one can use the back of their fridge to dry small pieces of clothing, like underwear.
"It's great," he said. "Everything will be dry in two days!"
And I thought: "So this is my problem. I thought two days drying time was slow!"
So, there you are LauritaDianita, my own reflections on de-centering.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
NYC: Day 1
This may not be very interesting to those of you who have your own lives, but here are some reflections on my time in NYC in comparison to life in Monteverde. Hopefully very soon I will either be too busy with insane summer fun or a job to be able to update regularly, but for now, here it is (much more exciting life updates can be found at lauritadianita.info or ebomb.quehubo.info, which is the story of friends biking across Mexico and other exciting adventures):
On Day 1 I met Ji-Soo for lunch downtown by Ground Zero. We got, on his right-on recommendation, falafel platters from a truck vendor. This is one thing I have missed about NYC - street food, everywhere.
My falafel platter with Business Ji-Soo in the background.
Business Ji-Soo and I being super serious downtown. Me rocking my new pearls. Behind us there was a whole mess of florescent green and orange as workers from Ground Zero took their lunch break. Business Ji-Soo headed back to the hive and I started back for Brooklyn. When I came out of the station at Borough Hall I found myself smack in the middle of a mini-, mid-week farmer's market. This is another thing that doesn't happen in Monteverde - random awesomeness like street performers and farmer's markets. As I walked back to the apartment laden with multi-grain bread and apple cider I was a aware of how out of touch I was with the fact that it was a gorgeous day. Sure it was warm and sunny, but there was no full body and soul awareness that you get in Monteverde. Pros and cons, yings and yangs, I guess.
Snuggling scorpions. In my bathroom. Right by the toilet. Apparently they are mating and the male is leaving his sperm pouch on the frame of my bathroom door and then pulling his mate over it to pick up. Awesome. Get a room, jerks. But they have a room, and it's my bathroom.
Captured snuggling scorpions. Ha! Take that!
Volcano Arenal seen from the hike down to the San Gerardo biological station in the San Elena Reserve. This was in April sometime and we were lucky enough to have a clear night and a good set of binoculars to be able to see lave flow at night (orange glowing rocks tumbling down). Recently, with all of the eruptions in Latin America, Arenal has been more active than usual. Gas and ash are being thrown 200m up into the air and the temperature in town has been rising. All of this is within the normal activity of the volcano but it has not happened in a few years.
Stupid horrible asshole scorpions that I caught in my house. This is the other species that they have in Monteverde.
Eating guava for desert. This is not what I knew as guava, which I guess here in Costa Rica is called Guayaba. Who knows? In general I'm confused about fruit in Spanish.
It looks like a giant grub that we ate segment by segment.
I found these three chillin' in the corner of my bathroom one evening. They were having a party and didn't invite me.
Scorpion + black light = awesome.
On Day 1 I met Ji-Soo for lunch downtown by Ground Zero. We got, on his right-on recommendation, falafel platters from a truck vendor. This is one thing I have missed about NYC - street food, everywhere.
My falafel platter with Business Ji-Soo in the background.
Business Ji-Soo and I being super serious downtown. Me rocking my new pearls. Behind us there was a whole mess of florescent green and orange as workers from Ground Zero took their lunch break. Business Ji-Soo headed back to the hive and I started back for Brooklyn. When I came out of the station at Borough Hall I found myself smack in the middle of a mini-, mid-week farmer's market. This is another thing that doesn't happen in Monteverde - random awesomeness like street performers and farmer's markets. As I walked back to the apartment laden with multi-grain bread and apple cider I was a aware of how out of touch I was with the fact that it was a gorgeous day. Sure it was warm and sunny, but there was no full body and soul awareness that you get in Monteverde. Pros and cons, yings and yangs, I guess.
Some Random Photos That I Never Got Around to Posting
Snuggling scorpions. In my bathroom. Right by the toilet. Apparently they are mating and the male is leaving his sperm pouch on the frame of my bathroom door and then pulling his mate over it to pick up. Awesome. Get a room, jerks. But they have a room, and it's my bathroom.
Captured snuggling scorpions. Ha! Take that!
Volcano Arenal seen from the hike down to the San Gerardo biological station in the San Elena Reserve. This was in April sometime and we were lucky enough to have a clear night and a good set of binoculars to be able to see lave flow at night (orange glowing rocks tumbling down). Recently, with all of the eruptions in Latin America, Arenal has been more active than usual. Gas and ash are being thrown 200m up into the air and the temperature in town has been rising. All of this is within the normal activity of the volcano but it has not happened in a few years.
Stupid horrible asshole scorpions that I caught in my house. This is the other species that they have in Monteverde.
Eating guava for desert. This is not what I knew as guava, which I guess here in Costa Rica is called Guayaba. Who knows? In general I'm confused about fruit in Spanish.
It looks like a giant grub that we ate segment by segment.
I found these three chillin' in the corner of my bathroom one evening. They were having a party and didn't invite me.
Scorpion + black light = awesome.
Travel Makes for Good Blogging
6.7.10
-wear the wonderful brightly colored socks Mom gave me for my birthday so when I go shoeless through security at least I can do so in style. I can look down and wiggle my toes and remember my mom and I on my porch taking pictures of our newly decked out feet
-make six peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the hotel kitchen this morning even though there is no way I’ll eat them all in one day with out getting sick. Think about the past few weeks with the Queen of Thrift, Julia, and how she’d be proud.
-Listen to “Miss Otis Regrets” by Porter Project and try to remember what its like to listen to a song I love for the first time. Think again about my porch and sunsets in Monteverde.
-Send a silly Damn the Man email with curse words in it to Ji-Soo to pretend that me going to NYC to spend this summer with him ain’t no thang. Pretend that there is no belly butterfly ballet.
-Think about how Julia flew from Costa Rica to the USA just this morning and there is nothing to be nervous about. Wonder why the older I am the more anxious I get about travel.
5:05 a.m. Sunday – leave the house tomeet the taxi in front of Hotel Villa Verde, dragging giant broken wheelie bag over rocks and through mud
5:15 – 6:05 a.m. Sunday – wait for bus to San Jose. Decide that plain yogurt with passion fruit is too bitter to be worth it. Dash to front of the line when we learn that there will be two bus loads worth on people on one bus because one bus broke down
6:10 a.m. – give up hard earned seat in the front of the bus to a woman with a one year old baby
6:30 a.m. – 8:30 a.m. – stand up on packed bus heading down the mountain in the rain. Try not to get scared of falling off cliffs. Try not to get car sick. Try to be helpful when the four-year-old girl in the seat next to me starts vomiting. Julia offered a plastic bag, I offered a bigger one. With holes in it. Oops. Note to self – sometimes helping is not that helpful
8:30 – 10:30 – ride to San Jose seated and in peace
10:30 – 1:00 – hang out in San Jose airport with Julia, Adam and Jessica until Adam and Jessica go to their flights and Julia and I grab a place to spend the night in Alajuela
5:00 p.m. Sunday – buy belt in Alajuela for 1,200 colones. Fall in love with it immediately. Reflect on my attachment to material possessions.
5:15 – 6:00 p.m. – Early dinner with Julia. Sit talking, sharing a plate of Chinese friend noodles, sipping Imperial. Try not to get involved with the waiter who tells me about how crazy it is that his white Costa Rican female friend married a black American. I fail, get yelled at, and leave, wondering why I’ll learn to keep my mouth shut.
6:00 p.m. Sunday – fall asleep face down on the bed with all my clothes on
7:00 p.m. Sunday – wake up, change
8:00 p.m. Sunday – go to bed for real, pajamas and all
12:00 a.m. Monday – wake up with a start when we hear what sounds an awful lot like six gunshots RIGHT OUTSIDE OUR WINDOW. Let me say a few words about where we spent the night: super clean, very affordable, bare bones. Part of bare bones means paper thing walls. So when you think someone might be shooting a gun right outside the door, being locked in your room does not make you feel any safer. I convince myself that it was not gunshots, just someone slapping mud off their shoes. Really hard. At midnight. I wait for my heart to stop pounding and start to drift off to sleep again only to hear a whisper from the other bed. “Ginna! Are you still awake? That was so sketchy!” I calm myself down, again, and fall into a nervous, shallow sleep.
3:00 a.m. Monday – Julia wakes up and gets ready to catch her early morning flight
4:00 a.m. Monday – We stand in the lobby waiting for Julia’s cab to the airport. In sleepy slow Spanish I ask the hotel manager, who called the cab for us,
“At around midnight we heard-“ he cuts me off by making two guns with his hands, throwing them above his head and going
“BAM! BAM! BAM!”
“You heard it too! Do you think it was gunshots?”
He looks at me calmly and says, “Of course it was. I went out back to check it out and could smell the gun powder.”
Awesome. And then Julia climbed into a cab and was gone and it was still 4 a.m. and I had to go back to bed alone in my paper and plywood fortress.
1:20 p.m. Monday – at the gate in San Jose. Ate two peanut butter sandwiches. Feel really full, but not too sick. Maybe I can eat six!
10:30 a.m. Tuesday, Brooklyn, NY - I never did eat more than two pb&j sandwiches. But they are in the fridge waiting for me!
How To Travel Internationally
-wear the wonderful brightly colored socks Mom gave me for my birthday so when I go shoeless through security at least I can do so in style. I can look down and wiggle my toes and remember my mom and I on my porch taking pictures of our newly decked out feet
-make six peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the hotel kitchen this morning even though there is no way I’ll eat them all in one day with out getting sick. Think about the past few weeks with the Queen of Thrift, Julia, and how she’d be proud.
-Listen to “Miss Otis Regrets” by Porter Project and try to remember what its like to listen to a song I love for the first time. Think again about my porch and sunsets in Monteverde.
-Send a silly Damn the Man email with curse words in it to Ji-Soo to pretend that me going to NYC to spend this summer with him ain’t no thang. Pretend that there is no belly butterfly ballet.
-Think about how Julia flew from Costa Rica to the USA just this morning and there is nothing to be nervous about. Wonder why the older I am the more anxious I get about travel.
Highlights From the This Trip to NYC
4:00 a.m. Sunday – wake up in Monteverde, shower, do last second cleaning and packing5:05 a.m. Sunday – leave the house tomeet the taxi in front of Hotel Villa Verde, dragging giant broken wheelie bag over rocks and through mud
5:15 – 6:05 a.m. Sunday – wait for bus to San Jose. Decide that plain yogurt with passion fruit is too bitter to be worth it. Dash to front of the line when we learn that there will be two bus loads worth on people on one bus because one bus broke down
6:10 a.m. – give up hard earned seat in the front of the bus to a woman with a one year old baby
6:30 a.m. – 8:30 a.m. – stand up on packed bus heading down the mountain in the rain. Try not to get scared of falling off cliffs. Try not to get car sick. Try to be helpful when the four-year-old girl in the seat next to me starts vomiting. Julia offered a plastic bag, I offered a bigger one. With holes in it. Oops. Note to self – sometimes helping is not that helpful
8:30 – 10:30 – ride to San Jose seated and in peace
10:30 – 1:00 – hang out in San Jose airport with Julia, Adam and Jessica until Adam and Jessica go to their flights and Julia and I grab a place to spend the night in Alajuela
5:00 p.m. Sunday – buy belt in Alajuela for 1,200 colones. Fall in love with it immediately. Reflect on my attachment to material possessions.
5:15 – 6:00 p.m. – Early dinner with Julia. Sit talking, sharing a plate of Chinese friend noodles, sipping Imperial. Try not to get involved with the waiter who tells me about how crazy it is that his white Costa Rican female friend married a black American. I fail, get yelled at, and leave, wondering why I’ll learn to keep my mouth shut.
6:00 p.m. Sunday – fall asleep face down on the bed with all my clothes on
7:00 p.m. Sunday – wake up, change
8:00 p.m. Sunday – go to bed for real, pajamas and all
12:00 a.m. Monday – wake up with a start when we hear what sounds an awful lot like six gunshots RIGHT OUTSIDE OUR WINDOW. Let me say a few words about where we spent the night: super clean, very affordable, bare bones. Part of bare bones means paper thing walls. So when you think someone might be shooting a gun right outside the door, being locked in your room does not make you feel any safer. I convince myself that it was not gunshots, just someone slapping mud off their shoes. Really hard. At midnight. I wait for my heart to stop pounding and start to drift off to sleep again only to hear a whisper from the other bed. “Ginna! Are you still awake? That was so sketchy!” I calm myself down, again, and fall into a nervous, shallow sleep.
3:00 a.m. Monday – Julia wakes up and gets ready to catch her early morning flight
4:00 a.m. Monday – We stand in the lobby waiting for Julia’s cab to the airport. In sleepy slow Spanish I ask the hotel manager, who called the cab for us,
“At around midnight we heard-“ he cuts me off by making two guns with his hands, throwing them above his head and going
“BAM! BAM! BAM!”
“You heard it too! Do you think it was gunshots?”
He looks at me calmly and says, “Of course it was. I went out back to check it out and could smell the gun powder.”
Awesome. And then Julia climbed into a cab and was gone and it was still 4 a.m. and I had to go back to bed alone in my paper and plywood fortress.
1:20 p.m. Monday – at the gate in San Jose. Ate two peanut butter sandwiches. Feel really full, but not too sick. Maybe I can eat six!
10:30 a.m. Tuesday, Brooklyn, NY - I never did eat more than two pb&j sandwiches. But they are in the fridge waiting for me!
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Some Thoughts
5.24.10
On peeing with the door open:
Why is it so wonderful? I ask myself, do men pee in front of each other the way women do? Do high school friends and fathers and sons stop their conversations when they need to use the restroom or do they le their words flow as freely as their bodily fluids?
I really do feel that there is a bond or expression of sisterhood among women who pee with the door open. Yes. Peeing with the door open = sisterhood. Thoughts?
On how curiosity killed the cat:
Scenario 1: You are on vacation with your family and a scorpion strings your poor cousin. Four times. And instead of smashing the vile thing to smithereens as is rightfully allowed by The Rules of The Universe (if it stings you, you can kill it ), you and your family capture it, Google information about it, study it, photograph it, talk about it, and then gently let it go.
Scenario 2: You find a scorpion in your house and instead of smashing the vile thing to smithereens as is rightfully allowed by The Rules of The Universe (if it comes into your house, you can kill it) you trap it in an empty yogurt container and keep it on your kitchen counter over the next few days. You slowly add to your collection so that when your mother comes to visit you have three scorpions to how her. The night your mother arrives, instead of going straight to bed because she’s been traveling all day and you have to work the next morning, you take the lid off the yogurt container, turn out the lights and play with the black light your mother brought. Instead of being totally disgusted, you are mildly fascinated by the fact that scorpions fluoresce neon green. Enough so that you save the scorpions for two more day in order to show your friends when they come over for dinner on Wednesday. Enough so that you’re a little bit glad when after dinner you friend finds a 4th scorpion to add to the collection, this one at least three times bigger than any of the others. Enough so that you keep all four scorpions in the yogurt container in the kitchen for an additional three days in order to show different friends when they come over for dinner on Saturday.
On being cold:
Tonight I am cold in my little mountain cabin. So cold it feels like my rings are going to fall off. And I’m happy because scorpions like the heat.
On peeing with the door open:
Why is it so wonderful? I ask myself, do men pee in front of each other the way women do? Do high school friends and fathers and sons stop their conversations when they need to use the restroom or do they le their words flow as freely as their bodily fluids?
I really do feel that there is a bond or expression of sisterhood among women who pee with the door open. Yes. Peeing with the door open = sisterhood. Thoughts?
On how curiosity killed the cat:
Scenario 1: You are on vacation with your family and a scorpion strings your poor cousin. Four times. And instead of smashing the vile thing to smithereens as is rightfully allowed by The Rules of The Universe (if it stings you, you can kill it ), you and your family capture it, Google information about it, study it, photograph it, talk about it, and then gently let it go.
Scenario 2: You find a scorpion in your house and instead of smashing the vile thing to smithereens as is rightfully allowed by The Rules of The Universe (if it comes into your house, you can kill it) you trap it in an empty yogurt container and keep it on your kitchen counter over the next few days. You slowly add to your collection so that when your mother comes to visit you have three scorpions to how her. The night your mother arrives, instead of going straight to bed because she’s been traveling all day and you have to work the next morning, you take the lid off the yogurt container, turn out the lights and play with the black light your mother brought. Instead of being totally disgusted, you are mildly fascinated by the fact that scorpions fluoresce neon green. Enough so that you save the scorpions for two more day in order to show your friends when they come over for dinner on Wednesday. Enough so that you’re a little bit glad when after dinner you friend finds a 4th scorpion to add to the collection, this one at least three times bigger than any of the others. Enough so that you keep all four scorpions in the yogurt container in the kitchen for an additional three days in order to show different friends when they come over for dinner on Saturday.
On being cold:
Tonight I am cold in my little mountain cabin. So cold it feels like my rings are going to fall off. And I’m happy because scorpions like the heat.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Scorpion Update
Last night as I lay innocently in my bed watching a movie, I heard a clicking noise and looked up. There, above my head where the wall meets the ceiling was a three inch, tan, scorpion investigating my home. I paused for a minute in fear, cursed a little and then went to get a container and a broom. I paused again and then as I tried to sweep the horrid creature off the wall and onto the floor to be corralled into a plastic container it reached up and pulled itself back into the space between the wall and the ceiling. I didn't even know there was a space there. This is my bedroom. I hate this.
Tomorrow, when I go downtown to get my mom off the bus from San Jose, I am going to buy a can of Scorpion Killer. I am going to carry this lovely can around with me every second of every day and use it with glee.
Tomorrow, when I go downtown to get my mom off the bus from San Jose, I am going to buy a can of Scorpion Killer. I am going to carry this lovely can around with me every second of every day and use it with glee.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
I Live in a Freakin’ Zoo and To Be Honest, I’m Just Not That Into it Anymore
5.14.2010
All of these things happened tonight:
1.the onslaught of golden June bugs. I get dive bombed everywhere and wake up every morning to a house that looks like a battle field, with little beetled bodies scattered across the floor.
2. I flip on the bathroom light to see one of these golden beetles by my hand on the wall, struggling thru some spider web. On the beetle’s back, behind the head, where wing attaches to body, is a little black and gray spider doing something mean looking.
3. a lightning bug flashing away on the floor
4. a beetle the size of a hacky sac, buzzing like a helicopter, crashing full force into and careening off of the walls until I toss it outside.
5. a trio of grasshopper, giant beetle (see #4) and spiked green and black lizard, chillin’ in my bathroom. That’s right, a six inch lizard.
If you’d asked me a week ago if I’d ever had a tarantula, baby scorpions, lightning bug, helicopter beetle or spiky lizard in my house I would have said no. But that was a week ago. Ji says people pay good money to come to Costa Rica and see these animals. Well, I’m gonna pay good money to go to New York and spend the summer away from them.
Scorpion update: I spoke to my landlady today. Turns out she’s very allergic to scorpion stings. The sting site swells and she gets a fever. She says as soon as she sees them she sprays anti-scorpion spray on them and they die immediately. Maybe this is just the excuse I need to start killing these arachnids that I hate so much, instead of carefully capturing them and tossing them outside.
All of these things happened tonight:
1.the onslaught of golden June bugs. I get dive bombed everywhere and wake up every morning to a house that looks like a battle field, with little beetled bodies scattered across the floor.
2. I flip on the bathroom light to see one of these golden beetles by my hand on the wall, struggling thru some spider web. On the beetle’s back, behind the head, where wing attaches to body, is a little black and gray spider doing something mean looking.
3. a lightning bug flashing away on the floor
4. a beetle the size of a hacky sac, buzzing like a helicopter, crashing full force into and careening off of the walls until I toss it outside.
5. a trio of grasshopper, giant beetle (see #4) and spiked green and black lizard, chillin’ in my bathroom. That’s right, a six inch lizard.
If you’d asked me a week ago if I’d ever had a tarantula, baby scorpions, lightning bug, helicopter beetle or spiky lizard in my house I would have said no. But that was a week ago. Ji says people pay good money to come to Costa Rica and see these animals. Well, I’m gonna pay good money to go to New York and spend the summer away from them.
Scorpion update: I spoke to my landlady today. Turns out she’s very allergic to scorpion stings. The sting site swells and she gets a fever. She says as soon as she sees them she sprays anti-scorpion spray on them and they die immediately. Maybe this is just the excuse I need to start killing these arachnids that I hate so much, instead of carefully capturing them and tossing them outside.
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