Hey, you! Yes, you.

A while ago (back in April) I wrote a post promoting equality amongst my equivalent of Gretchie's "imaginary friends." I had twenty people, because that was the most number of labels I could include, and since it's pointless if I mention someone but doesn't include their label, I just chose twenty people.

Today's lucky people are:

• Amanda
• Camel
• Dora
• Gretchen
• Irving
• Joss
• Mario
• Matt
• Melissa
• Micro
• Mogley
• Nyx
• Owen
• Reese
• Sonny
• Stella
• Tamir
• Tybalt
• Vincent
• Yuma

(*Zephy: Sorry! I was also going to include you, but you were the 21st, and therefore did not fit. I will dedicate a new post entirely to you later.)

But before all of this, I would like to say that I have started reading the DMV booklet for my permit test, and it's so far going well. I don't know what kind of test they have though, so we'll have to see. And besides, I suck at memorization.

Also... why, why do they use clock hands for steering wheel positions, instead of diagrams? I like my digital clock just as much as the next person, and the only time I use analog clocks are when I'm trying to figure out how much time I have left in a class, and it's become second-nature to me that I don't even know the hours, just the minutes.

Anyway. Let's commence!

Amanda-Amanda's sent out a FB message to me (along with various other people) asking me if I wanted to join her on a NYC trip sometime in the summer. I do, but I have to okay it first with my parents, so I'm holding on responding just for now.

Camel-I don't think I'll ever have another class with Camel. He's being boring and taking Physics B and Calc AB, and somehow I don't think he's going to take AP Lit or any of my other classes. Doesn't sound like him. We don't really talk outside of communicating with Nyx, so I guess we won't really talk ever again.

Dora-Right! Movies, possibly. I still have to get back to her on that as well. So many things happening this summer! I'm glad that summer's finally here. There's definitely less stress right now, which is good, but I think I'm going to be looking forward for school to start, surprisingly.

Gretchen-Can you believe she's behind Irving, of all people, in my tag-list? I can't. Well, I suppose it's because of all the math team things where I mention Irving because he's usually doing something outrageous (but usually less so to some extent) with Mario. Anyway, Gretchen and I need to land in Japan soon. I'm getting a little air-sick right now.

Irving-Mentioned above, and that I probably won't ever see him again, unless I get into Hahvahd (unlikely) or get into MIT (also unlikely) and he happens to bike by because I can't bike by him since I don't know how to bike.

Joss-He still has spiky hair, even though he cut it shorter earlier. I don't know what else to say of him. Not very exciting right now.

Mario-Oh, Mario. What to say of him? I think he's going to have superiority issues next year in math team. To think that he said of Irving's behavior during Moody's, "I think he had trouble realizing who was the real boss. Next year there won't be a question as to who's in charge." No doubt. It's not him.

Matt-Super skinniness aside, he's leaving as well! I somehow cannot process that, even though I could process Irving and Owen and Melissa leaving. I guess it's because he wasn't away on the senior internships, so I haven't really felt him leave. I'm really going to miss him, even if he doesn't talk much.

Melissa-Ambivalent on her leaving. I think things are going to be a lot quieter without her, which is both good and bad. We won't have her cookies anymore as well, so that could be bad.

Micro-I'm trying to communicate to him in sign language, but neither he nor Sonny understands it, so Yuma and I are having a particularly difficult time.

Mogley-Didn't know he was taking Econ next year. Maybe we'll be in the same class again. He had English scheduling problems earlier, and I told him, "Just get AP English," to which he said, "No way, me?" Our English teacher agreed with his sentiment, and not just because of his horrible grammar (I still can't forgive him for writing lists without commas).

Nyx-Has a super early arena time but has no need for it because of her singletons. I'm slightly envious, but then I remember that no matter who I have they're either not bad or they're unavoidable, so I don't care that much either. And I'll probably have physics with Tea (unless it runs out) so it doesn't concern me very, very much.

Owen-Writing about Owen here reminds me of his alpaca. Also my "choose your own adventure" story. Otherwise he doesn't remind me of anything except that I don't know who's going to keep Dino well-oiled in the next year. We might see an increase in system crashes then.

Reese-I'm talking to Reese on Gchat a lot now. He's using Digsby, which is apparently similar to the device that Tea uses except for PCs. I shall have to try that out soon.

Sonny-He's hilarious, even if he doesn't mean it. He also can't understand sign language or exaggerated waving. Also, I found out how freaky he looked while sunbathing with Scott and the like. A row of guys lying down on the ground in the courtyard just looks weird.

Stella-I don't talk to her nearly as much now. I should. In fact, I will talk to her today as soon as I get this Digsby thing working.

Tamir-Why did I even first mention him? Why do I keep on mentioning him? I don't know. Whatever.

Tybalt-From what I've heard from Kathrya lately, he's exceedingly sweet. This disproves my best friend from back before's theory that all guys are jerks. But then again, I knew that a long time ago. Besides, it doesn't disprove the theory that some guys (ambiguity on how many) are jerks.

Vincent-I need to go over to his house more often if it means more Clue time. I'm addicted to the game. It's unhealthy, I think, both physically and emotionally.

Yuma-I never knew he was so good at go, but then again, Yuma is amazing at a lot of things. We definitely need him on our Moody's team next year. Also, Mrs. MacDonald said that she was looking forward to seeing me (and presumably everyone on our team) next year for Moody's. I think that basically guarantees that, if we don't do something stupid and smoke pot in front of the principal or something like that, we're going to be on a team (if not on a team together) next year.

Whew. Now let's see if anything on my "Noteworthy" list looks better now.

Slow Down That Dance, Please?

Major spoilers: In the span of 60 pages (yes, I read all of that today during numerous "free periods" that I'm now doubting my capability of staying on task for long periods of time), Scarlett O'Hara has gone from overly optimistic about winning over the love of her life (or so she thinks, anyway) to becoming married to someone else she abhors, to becoming a widow with a child she doesn't really care about. Uh, what? She's not even Scarlett O'Hara anymore, since she's been married already, and obviously not divorced.

That's quite a lot of action (or really, more like drama) in 60 pages. Which, I know, for an ordinary book of 200+ pages, is quite a chunk of text, but for this book of 1000+ pages, is rather small. I can only imagine (as I haven't read it yet, duh) what comes next.

Instead of being the patient reader as I should be, and because I've been rather spoiled already by the movie's famous line ("frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn"), I decided to go fanfiction-hunting. It's only made me want to read the book more (despite those annoying "lady-like" callings that goes against almost everything I'm for), and so Amanda suggested that if I read 30 pages per day, I will be able to finish nearly 900 pages, and have only 100 more pages to go, which I can finish up on the horrible Courier New font copy online. I'm not a fan of anything over five pages in that font.

The rest of my day has been quite a daze, as I've been reading for most of it. The other parts, I was mostly worrying about homework (why do these even exist now?) and other things (including building molecules of 1,3-butyne with a glob of oxygen, sulfur, nitrogen, phosphorus, chlorine, iodine, hydrogen, among other silvery unnamed elements that probably does not have a coherent IUPAC name, although it did have optical isomers). Then, I started worrying about my job shadow tomorrow, especially the dressing "business casual" part. Needless to say, I am not a fashion person, nor someone who frequents the "professional" world as of yet, and therefore my wardrobe consists of little useful garments in this setting. So I'm still on the search for a pair of decent pants (contrary to my dad's opinion that jeans are okay). Other than that, I shall hope to be fine (nervousness aside, but I've always done that).

Also, major traffic jam tomorrow heading on one of the worst highways during rush hour in the country? Yeah. Not fun. I would take the train, but seeing as I haven't maneuvered that before, I'm probably not going to try that tomorrow. But before any of that, I have to figure out how to pronounce the name of the person I'm shadowing. I should try one of those fancy pronouncers that specialize in names such as Mozart and Bach and Beethoven (and other non-musician names, but those are the only few I remember—although there may be a Clinton one).

And of course, homework. This week is turning out to be rather hectic.


MID—
Rhett: 1.5
Scarlett: 1

Easter Island—Finally!

Imagine this: in the middle of a cool, Chilean night, a silvery plane pierced the sky. Four hundred feet from a peculiarly-shaped bush, a llama stared at the plane, its eyes blank of emotion. It had seen these entities before, but knew not what they meant—those silver birds that were unforgiving in their paths.


Gretchen and I had a wonderful time in the Atacama, but unfortunately, we had to leave for our next destination, Easter Island. We had booked an early morning plane, hoping to arrive on the island and explore its renowned beaches before it got too chilly. At the airport, we were met with quite a pleasant surprise!

I apologize for the weird picture-ness. I got lazy and simply copied/pasted. For future pictures, I will actually redraw the people so they fit the background better. Or I'll just post pictures cause I'm lazy. Also, look, Air Canada!

Tea came! She bore news that Bruney would also be coming along on our next destination (after Santiago) since I still need to draw her as well to—drum-roll as I whip out random.org's random coordinates generator—Japan! Wow. That would be quite a huge leap from Chile. (Any suggestions to not go to Japan will be considered. That was just a random pick.)

Nonetheless, Tea said she would be coming to Easter Island with us! So we changed our boarding passes so we could sit next to each other (in a row, yay!), and excitedly got on the plane. Well, the plane part was boring, so I won't talk much about it. I did manage to fiddle around on my laptop for a while, and I've managed to memorize a few basic UNIX commands thanks to unixkcd. (Who knew "kill" meant transporting a terminator to 1984?)

Anyway. We got off the plane in the afternoon, before sunset. This really nice guy, Mark, from one of the guest houses on the island, came up to us and asked if we needed a place to stay. We said we were looking for a hotel, and he offered to drive us there. Now, before you get all suspicious about why a perfect stranger would offer to give us a ride in his car to some presumably unknown destination, this is apparently the norm among Easter Island guest hotel guides. So we hopped into his car and arrived at our hotel a short while later.

Here's a picture of our beautiful place that we will be staying in:

Mark told us that the food in "downtown" Hanga Roa, the only major town on the island and where we were right now, was pretty good, and that we should try some of it out—of course, after we go to the beach and check out the gorgeous sunset. I was really excited, because I love, love, love sunsets. They're top on my list of things I love, along with shiny things and sparkly erasers (although Jack says that the blood-red sunset in the mountains are the most beautiful things ever, drawn from his experience living in central Minnesota).

So, of course, we had to pay a visit to the Hanga Roa port. Isn't it coincidental that Hanga Roa faces west, perfect for a sunset? Or maybe it faces west just for the sunset? I guess it's just like the chicken and the egg—we'll never know for sure.

After the sunset, which was absolutely magnificent, I declared that I was hungry, and so we decided to find something good to eat. The most famous restaurant on the island had to be Te Moana, but we had to reserve early to get seats, and in my haste and tiredness, I had completely forgotten to do so. La Taverne du Pêcheur is another good restaurant that specializes in seafood, but it's really expensive. Granted, we had an unlimited budget because I say so and I am omnipotent in this trip, so we decided we would go there last, to treat ourselves to some "gourmet" food.

Mark had told us that there were some places around town that sold cheap empanadas, and so we went around town in searching for such a place. Well, we found one, right next to a market, and those empanadas were really delicious! We were going to take a picture of one of us eating an empanada, but decided we would just share a picture of the actual thing instead.

We went back to the hotel early that night, and woke up really early the next morning (at 6:30, which is very early for me unless I had to go to school, which effectively does not exist right now). Next on our agenda: the Moai!

For those who have not been privy to the Easter Island culture, Moai are those stone face-statues scattered around Easter Island that were used to commemorate the deceased. They are placed upon stands called Ahu, and we should not step on the Ahu because that would be disrespectful towards the dead.

Most of the Moai sites around the island are free to visit, so we rented a Jeep and drove around the island along the major road, oohing and ahhing over all of the Moai. We stopped at a few of them, including the most famous Ahu Tongariki and Ahu Akivi. We reached Ahu Tongariki in the morning, and had a brunch of pescado a la parrilla (I'm sure there are accents somewhere, but since I am not familiar with Spanish, I am not sure where—also, this is grilled fish) and bread prepared by the wonderful cooking staff at the hotel.

When we were about to leave, a crowd of other tourists had arrived, preparing to eat lunch at this famed location. Good thing we were early! We (mostly Tea, who is the only one here who can drive right now) drove on in the Jeep, often staring at the ocean and its glimmering prettiness. By the time we got back to Hanga Roa, it was already late afternoon, and we were starving! I found some leftover tortilla de rescoldo in my backpack (back from Atacama), so we munched on some of that with the pebre, a sauce made with coriander, onions, olive oil, garlic, and ground peppers. It was delicious (I should find a synonym for "delicious"), but not nearly satisfying enough. So of course, we went to another restaurant and had some chanfaina (see below), this traditional soup of beef or lamb with a bunch of other things added to it. I wasn't too big on the blood, but I liked the potatoes. I like potatoes a lot.

We went back to the hotel and caught up on some rest and reading about all the things that happened to our friends back at home. I was really sleepy (since I had woken up so early), so I fell asleep first, and I have no idea what Gretchie or Tea did afterwards. But we woke up pretty early the next day, this time to go to Rano Raraku!

Rano Raraku is a crater volcano, but it's famous because most of those Moai—those things we saw the day before?—were carved from this mountain. Of course, there are tons of half-completed Moai lying around. I don't really know why.

It took us most of the day to climb up the volcano and see the crater and the island all around us and then to climb down again. Some girl who was just climbing down from the crater as we were climbing up complimented our ponchos. She was wearing a really pretty chamanto as well. Anyway, here's a picture at the top:

We had some really good ave pimienta (diced chicken meat sandwich with red peppers) for lunch, and we got back down, we had some pastel de choclo, which is similar to a shepherd's pie. You can tell that I am a huge food fan. Chilean food is absolutely mouth-watering, and I can't believe I've been missing out on so many wonderful dishes all my life.

The next day was planned to be a day of relaxation. We woke up reasonably early (at 7:30, an hour later), and went down to Anakena, which is renowned for its white sand beaches. The water was chilly at this hour, so we just sunbathed on the beach and watched some guys surf. One of the guys kept falling into the water, despite the other guys trying to help him.

After a few hours of nice relaxation on the beach, we went over to Motu Nui, where we picked up the snorkeling gear Mark had reserved for us earlier. I had never been snorkeling before, and I was kind of scared at first, but it was really fun once I got used to the whole thing.

Tea caught a lion-fish in her hands by accident, and after she let it go it would not leave her alone. It was so adorable! Which reminds me, we (Gretch and I) still have to ship Owen his alpaca, but I suppose that can wait for a while.

After a whole day around water, what better place to dine for the evening but the famed seafood place, La Taverne du Pêcheur? After all, I had promised we would come back here on our last day, and we would be departing the next day. So we all indulged ourselves with seafood. Tea ordered the ostiones a la parmesena, scallops with melted butter and grilled Parmesan cheese. Gretchie ordered the congrio frito, deep-fried conger eel, and I ordered the machas a la parmesena, similar to Tea's except mine were clams.

Here are the pictures of our dishes, respectively:

Sadly, we had to leave early next morning to go back to Santiago (without even a chance to visit Rano Kau, which supposedly had a beautiful view). Well, it was certainly a fun time in Easter Island, especially with Mark and the hotel crew, and none of us could wait for the next destination!

Santiago, here we come—hasta luego! Or until whenever the next update comes, which could be a very, very long time away.


OOH*:

As I was walking into my US class today, I realized that I forgot to add a "works cited" to the end of my paper. So I told my US teacher I would hand her a new copy during lunch. I had gym/health right before lunch, and so when I walked out of class to go to the library, I saw Vincent, who was walking the opposite way to go to gym.

"Hey," I waved.

"Hi," Vincent said. "Oh, I have to ask you something."

"Okay, what is it?"

"I know you're not going, but, if you were, would you have gone to prom with me?"

Oh, uh. "Yeah, I would."

"Oh, okay."

"Are you going?" I asked him.

"No, it's right before AP week."

"Oh, right."

The two APs he's taking are in the second week, which was the same problem I have with my chem test. I have no idea who planned prom to be on May 8th, but it makes no sense at all. Unless you're not taking any APs, but I have a feeling a decent percentage the grade is taking some sort of AP test (there are so many of them, after all), so it still makes no sense. At all.

But enough of me ranting.

(I have also noticed that Vincent's hugging period is progressively growing. And to think all of this began with Amanda's hugging spree back when he was reluctant to hug people. Ahh. Life's unpredictable like that.)

*For abbreviation clarifications, see earlier posts relating to the round-the-world trip.

P.S.: All names mentioned in the trip that are not Gretchen, Tea, Bruney, or me are made up by me and have no basis in real life or those mentioned in the nickname spreadsheet or I was too lazy to add them in and stuff. Most of them won't be mentioned again, so I just made stuff up.

P.P.S.: Some of the pictures do not correspond with geographical location, most notably the ones that don't show specific geographical identities. Don't be confused if you see a similar picture elsewhere. Also, none of the pictures really belong to me, except those little people at the top. I would cite sources like I did last time, but it's a long and hard process and I'll probably do it later. For now, everything's just from Google Images, and they're even all from the first page with my keywords.

Dreamland

The girl beside me wore heels as well, but she seemed to have no trouble navigating the carpeted grounds. We were the last ones trailing a group of women who were examining a house. I had a vague feeling that it was large—larger than any I had ever seen—but I could only see the third floor right now. We were halfway up the stairs leading to another floor when someone in the crowd asked where we were going.

"Upstairs," said a guide. "Those are your rooms."

"Well, then that's not important," one of the women said. "Let's go downstairs."

The group agreed. They turned around and headed down once again, leaving the girl and me stranded on the staircase.

"Do you still want to go up?" She asked me.

"Yeah. I don't really want to go down right now."

I wobbled up the last few steps and landed in a bright, spacious room. It was green, with white carpeting, and it was so beautiful I had to pause for a moment to take it all in.

...

Amanda was by my side, and we were walking down the hallway. I thought that this was our school, but it was too dim and the path too crooked. I also still had my heels on, so I was half-hopping as I tried to move forward.

Not a pleasant sight. I made a mental note to myself to never, ever wear high heels unless absolutely necessary. My reveries were disrupted when I heard someone call out my name.

"Hi, Ginny!"

I looked up and saw Mr. Booth waving to me, in his typical cheerful manner. I waved back, still hobbling around due to lack of stability.

"Are you headed that way?" Mr. Booth asked, pointing down the hall. Well, was I? I had no idea. I did not even know where "that way" was. But I nodded nonetheless. I watched as Mr. Booth magically—and it had to be magically, because there was no way we could have traveled that far in such a short time—arrived at a pair of glass doors.

A group of people in yellow streamers stood on the other side, frantically waving at us. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but Mr. Booth ignored them and slipped through the doors. I was about to follow, but then I saw those yellow-streamered people pushing Mr. Booth aside and trying to shout something at me.

"Uh—I can't hear you," I tried to tell them. To no avail. They kept on waving around frantically.

"You're—no, I don't understand that—oh, wait, there's—huh? There's an infectious disease on the other side?"

Apparently they could hear me, because they nodded. Oh. Uh-oh. I wondered how Mr. Booth was faring, but I wasn't left any time to mull it over.

...

I was walking down another hallway, this time without my heels, thankfully. I didn't know where I was going, but it didn't matter, because Irving saw me halfway and called out to me.

"Hey, Ginny, can you do me a favor?"

"Sure," I said. "What is it?"

"Can you proofread something for me? I've got it here—wait."

Irving pulled out a kindle-like machine and handed it over to me. I saw the first page, which resembled the first page of a novel, except with blood splattered over it.

Hmm...

And then the alarm woke me up.

...

I have read somewhere, in a writer's do-not-do manual, that you should never, ever end a story with "...and then I woke up." Because that's such a no-no. No character growth at all. You end up just as you started.

Well, I guess real life isn't that good of a story-teller, because I have often ended many a story of my life with "and then the alarm woke me up" or "and then I just happened to wake up, despite not wanting to do so." There's never even a sequel.

Oh well. I suppose I'll be off to dream moods to figure out what my dream meant now.

Things Aren't Always What They Seem

So, why does everyone seem to think that I am dating Vincent? (And yes, I am applying the "two people equates everyone" rule here.) I mean, yes, we're together a lot, and perhaps we have an over-propensity for hugging each other, but it's not any more than he hugs Amanda, and unless we have a polygamy relationship going on that I am not aware of, I really don't think I give off "dating" vibes.

Not that I would know what those are.

Anyway, in English class today, our desks were arranged weirdly due to tests, so we chose our own seats. Dora came over, sat in the desk next to mine, and turned to whisper to me,

"Are you and Vincent dating?"

Almost as awkward as when Argon asked me, "Are you in love with me?" Which was a huge miscommunication, probably on my part, as I drew a picture of a caged heart (because I really like to draw hearts and I got tired of drawing them with wings), and gave it to him after class one day.

Bryant was behind us at the time (hopefully a safe distance away). He didn't say anything, and I do hope he did not hear anything. I wasn't particularly articulate at the time.

Regardless, in an attempt to rebuff the whole I'm-dating-Vincent rumors, because they are utterly not true, I told her, "I like someone else anyway."

Okay, perhaps that was the wrong way to end this discussion, as it had an adverse effect.

"Really? Who is it?"

After seeing that I would not tell her straight out (because, really, I never do), she tried at guessing by asking questions.

"Is he in our grade? How tall is he? Is he skinny?"

Not that it matters anyway, since he'll probably never like me back well, it just won't matter. I like keeping my secrets at times. Although, keeping them for too long does get quite tiring and troublesome, as I've decided lately.

So I indulged a little. He's in our grade, he's taller than me (as most guys are, it seems, big shock there), and he's not skinny, I don't think. I think that cuts down 85% of the guys at our school.

He is also smart, as Dora figured out. Why this automatically makes Bryant the first choice, I do not know. Okay, okay, I do know. Still.

But he's eliminated in the "he's not skinny" round anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter either.

(I drew a picture of Bryant in physics yesterday, and showed it to Nyx and Camel, and they said that he was still not skinny enough, despite the near stick-like arms I drew on him. But he's on track, not wrestling, so he should fare fine in life.)

Luckily (for me), the bell rang at that time, so I did not have to divulge too much information. I stammered my way through the last question ("what color is his hair?"), and went to get my stat and calc book for Moody's on Sunday. I saw Tea in the hallway, talking with Angela, I think, about something.

"--they really ate it?" Tea was saying.

"Yeah, why? Should they not have?"

After much confusion and lots of explaining from Tea, I finally managed to piece together a coherent sentence. Treeburg actually ate my pudding!

And they actually said it tasted decent. I feel like I should flaunt this in Owen's face, as he was so unsupportive of my pudding. Although, I'm not sure if this will become a "Treeburg has weird tastes" evidence. Because, uh, it was butterscotch. A huge plate full of wobbling, brownish butterscotch pudding.

I wouldn't eat it unless my life depended upon it.

As Tea and I walked out, I saw Vincent again. We talked for a bit, and then as we approached his bus, we hugged again. Now that I think of it, he is a) in our grade, b) taller than me, and c) relatively not skinny, as compared to the likes of Bryant and such. But he's ruled out in the hair color round.

Life's coincidental like that, I suppose. My story of how Dino's apparently attached to fuzzy, grey baby bunnies pales in comparison.