Fires and Gas Leaks

I am not sure which one it is (if it is any one of them), although I am leaning towards the latter. Mainly because nothing smelled burnt (I know the smell would also be there with the gas leak, but I am overlooking that part). Gretchen fretted over her notes for nothing, which, in the long run, is good because her notes are safe (for now).

But it was a small waste of a free-lunch-hour. Not that I did anything really productive anyway. I spent most of first lunch talking with Clay about Candide and museums, and then Yuma came along and we started to put up posters for the shoe collection NHS is hosting. But it was nearly second lunch by now, and since we were hungry, we just went down one hallway that was conveniently on the way to lunch and stapled posters on any bulletin board we could find, including the one in the music corner (also, thanks to Clay's height, we managed to staple a poster on the board above the doors when you're walking from the art wing to the music area).

We spent around fifteen minutes eating during second lunch (and also congregating with Tea, Gretchen, Dora, and Brunhilda) when the fire alarm went off. I was just done with my lunch (my lunch-eating speed has increased dramatically over the years, and I think it also applies to any-food-eating-speed as long as the food isn't too cold or hot), but unfortunately, I did not have my jacket with me, so it was a very cold wait outside. Offset slightly by the warmth Tea provided (that Bruney was not willing to take part in).

Five minutes into third lunch, we were allowed back in. Everyone else went back to their classes, and Yuma and I stayed behind for Clay to finish his lunch. Then, we circled another hallway and stapled some more posters along the way to the English/SS learning center. Completely out of convenience because there were lots of bulletin boards in that particular hallway.

The rest of the time was spent (for me, at least) reading some of the 40+ new updates from my 100+ blog subscriptions. And printing out an article for Middle East, which I should be reading and infecting with marginalia now, instead of typing this.

(P.S.: Before I go, I'd like to take this opportunity to announce that I have painted my nails three different colors, instead of two. I really like the shiny silver. Also, as I was walking down the hall to get my jacket, the girl who sits to the side behind Yuma in English—I don't know her name—told Clay that she never realized he was that tall, since she usually sees him sitting down in class. And Joss said he will probably go to the next Science Bowl meeting, since he won't have rowing anymore.)

Puntastic Days

Have I mentioned my list of favorite days of the week before? I don't think I have. Anyway, it goes like this: Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday, Monday, Saturday, Sunday, and Friday.

Yes, Friday is last. It's because I never get anything done on Fridays (no motivation to get anything done), and I have every class so I'm aware that I have a lot of work I have to do, but I still never get anything done. Pretty horrible all-around.

But today is (thankfully) a Wednesday, so it's 3rd on my list, which is pretty good. A fun English class, where Cammie and I came up with very formulated thesis statements, a bio lab where I stared at lactobacteria, and a physics class where my hunger-and-lack-of-sleep-addled brain failed to recognize the direction of a force arrow and subsequently tried to figure out a question for ten minutes. Not fun.

At lunch, I caught up with Argon (a good deal of time we were separated—a full, uh, 20 hours or so), then went over to play go against Yuma. Brian and Clay watched on, while making horrendous go puns. Like, after hearing that there wasn't a go club meeting today, Clay said, "So it's no-go for the go club?" to which Brian said, "Shouldn't go club be 24/7, since you're always on the go?" That kind of horrendous. Although they didn't make any 5 jokes (to be expected, since neither of them know Japanese).

Then I decided I needed to get my recs envelopes settled, so I left the I-am-almost-being-choked-to-death-while-Yuma-is-still-calm-and-winning board to Clay and walked over to guidance with Gretchen and Brunhilda. When I came back to the table (where everyone was), Kathrya, Nyx, and Cammie started making name-puns. And saxophone puns, but I think explaining those would be going overboard (but 80% of my reader-base already knows this, so it's all right). Also, I believe I saw Bryant looking over at us at the peak of the name-puns loudness, which was slightly awkward (did I tell you before that I think his eyes scream, "I CAN READ YOUR MIND"? I must have).

The rest of the day picked up from there. There was a lot of cool vector operations in multi, which I must say was not my absolute favorite, but somewhere up there. And it just all makes sense now! I guess this is why it's so much harder to teach oneself with only a textbook. We're going to find areas of sections of planes in 3D tomorrow, which is exciting, but I have a McGill college rep visit (which reminds me, I've got to pick up the forms) so I'll unfortunately be missing part of it.

After multi was my free, which I spent in the learning center with Yuma and Clay. Clay attempted to do his utexas assignment (I must have also told you before how much I hate utexas), but he couldn't get the first question right (neither could I, as it turned out). After a half-hour consultation with Mrs. Cumulonimbus (I believe, because he has her for physics now), or some other teacher who has this free, he told me that it was because he forgot to add a negative to his answer.

Ugh. I hate utexas.

I also watched Yuma work on his chem lab. Oh, I miss chem so much. We'd considered switching science classes, whereupon I'd take chem again and he'd take physics again, but then I would need to switch my English class and he'd need to switch his design and tech class. Too complicated. Then I forgot that water and ethanol are miscible, which resulted in an "Oh, duh" moment.

Also, Clay's APUSH (I love the acronym) class is in the same hall as mine, so we walked down the hall together. Upon reaching my class, however, I realized that we were supposed to be in the lab, so I walked back again, where I spotted Argon. I convinced him that he had minutes to spare, so we stood in the hall, talking about random things, I'm sure, because I'm not sure what we talked about.

Wherefore Art Thou, Japan?

I am on a school computer right now, and the screen is flickering. I don't know why, but it has happened before, and when I told the librarian and she came over, it stopped. Then, when she left, it started again. It is most annoying.

Anyway, I had this wonderful post yesterday about how Japan might as well be in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, because we're not getting anywhere, when I realized, no, we're in the Pacific Ocean right now, and technically Japan is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, if not directly in the middle, so it's not as... argumentative. I didn't get to finish that post though, so here I am today, barely finishing my English essay (because of a lot of due date delays, I had plenty of time to work and read GWTW), beginning the first part of the voyage (which is us on the plane) because I can't bear the trip on hiatus anymore.

Besides, I will be gone tomorrow and over the weekend to visit colleges, namely Williams and McGill (and really just McGill, but Williams is along the way), and I won't have access to the Internet, so I might as well write something now.

Several hours later, on my home computer, with no flashing screen.

First of all, I need to ask Julie (and any other reader here): do you want to come on the trip as well? I still need to draw pictures as well (especially of Bruney, I'll get around to that one day).

Secondly, this will be a pictureless post because I have lots of random work to do.

So, to recap, Gretchen and Tea and I are on a plane headed for Japan, our next destination. We had just recently left Chile, and if you wish to read about our adventures there, you can click the "Round The World Trip" log, featured as a link above. There, I've archived all the links to the relevant posts we have written on the subject. Right now, however, we're aboard the plane, and despite what you may have heard about no viable source of communication on planes, there's some strange source of WiFi on here, and so we're not questioning it as all of us relax and check our random sites that we always check online.

Bruney is coming straight from home and meeting us at Japan, where we will have a great time. I'm sure of it. I mean, just the food itself sounds great, and if the food is good, nothing else can go wrong, right? But since we will be on the plane for a while since just as it's got WiFi, it's also got the ability to indefinitely suspend in midair until we declare it not to do so, we decided to catch up on some news.

Here's what I found out (not sure about Gretch or Tea):

1) Matt and I are interviewing/surveying our people next week during period 7. Here's some of the classes we may be dropping by (we will be, but I'm not sure which dates)—AP English, Latin 2, three western humanities classes, and numerous others. Yes, these are our not so randomly chosen classes. There are a lot of freshmen and sophomores. Hmm. I wonder why?

2) Reese can be quite adamant when he wants something. Or annoying. I suppose it depends on how you look at the situation. Also, he's quite savvy with Naviance (not sure if it's a good thing), and Argon has never heard of it before. Never? I guess people surprise you all the time. Or maybe he'll just fall into its evil clutches by the time junior year runs along.

3) This. Today. During physics. It looks painful.

MID—
Rhett: 2
Scarlett: 2.5

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.