HAPPY BIRTHDAY DIANA!

~*~*~*~*~FRIDAY~*~*~*~*~
we have somewhat similar looking walls.

"another world is not only possible, she is on her way.
on a quiet day, i can hear her breathing."

we have a pot of flowers picked from the garden sitting
on our kitchenette table. little bugs come out and watch us eat.
they crawl onto my hands; i let them stay
(or create a bridge for them to climb back onto a flower).

why are we so scared, repulsed by bugs?
they just want to live, like us.

'hey remember that time we mopped
up human blood together?'

harrison: yeah! i was just thinking about that
the other day as i was working at the theatre.

COLEUS 9/27

my housemate just came over to say good night to me.
earlier, we all gathered to inspect a bright neon green
grasshopper on the window who had a personality,
wiped his mouth, groomed one of his antennas, and
looked quite pleased with the world.

i'm greatly enjoying all my classes this quarter so far:
ANTH 150-Communicating Anthropology
ANTH 176-Meso-American Archaeology
EDUC 170-East Asian Schooling & Immigration
MERR 85-Classroom Connection Field Study

i've overcome my fear of talking to professors
(many of them are famous/brilliant/successful/traveled the world)
but these are all reasons why i should go and talk to them more!

today, i learned how to write numerical amounts in Mayan.
i got severely confused but then it started making some sense.
lots of dots & bars and different stratified levels.
our base number is 10; their's is 20.

i also got a new diary! it is sewed with patches.

today was crazy, but good.

a walk in the woods.
the PICA (program in community & agroecology) camping
trip was a great way to start off the first weekend of school.
we hiked, visited the Mother & Father of the forest,
ate lots of delicious local vegetables, had
s'mores, and musical instruments by the fire.

plants are [definitely] up to something.

sydney baked banana bread last night.
it.was.the.best.banana.bread.i've.ever.tasted.

she's from mt. shasta. she actually lives on the mountain
& can point to her house on tourist postcards.

BANJO.
BANJO COVERS.
BANJO COVERS BY THE FIRE.
BANJO COVERS BY THE FIRE IN THE REDWOODS.

MOON ROCKS.
after a communal garden dinner under little hanging lights & sheets
with fresh wildflowers and hoards of wonderful people,
some friendly fellow Picans including an exchange
student from Australia asked if i wanted to go to moon rocks with them.
i've always wanted to go the limestone mountains
with carvings and sculptures in bonny doon.

so we all piled in a car, drove down a windy forest road,
and turned on a street called Ice Cream.

"should we stop for snacks or some berries?"
(no one said anything, for we didn't know
what the aussie meant by berries)
"i love berries. you guys eat those here right? i love raspberries."
"ooooh, i thought berries was some Australian term for something"

i said "santa cruz is really great because it's super easy to eat healthy here"
"i'm having a hard time. i've just been eating so much American candy..like reese's pieces"

i learned about violet crumbles.

he kept on calling the flashlight, "torch"
but corrected himself and said
"i mean...flashlight."

and when a car drove by as we were walking down the road,
he asked "should we hide?"

after lots of hiking, we all laid down and admired the milky way.
there were so so so many stars. i saw a shooting one.
no one said anything for 30 minutes, we were all
lost in some kind of trance gazing at the twinkling,blinking stars.
jupiter smiled
at us.

not having a camera feels strange but i think i am doing OK for now.
now i rely on internet webcams for taking pictures.
but i suppose i can't bring that camping this weekend...

this is my new room! although i enjoyed having roommates,
it is nice going to bed whenever you want.

hannah can pick apples from out the window
while sitting on her bed.

i really miss my plants. i must resurrect them as soon as possible.

i am constantly surrounded by really

friendly, down-to-earth, open, honest, nice, humorous
people all the time here. they are
overpopulating this village.

GOALS:
-sleep at 11:00pm every night
-drink more water/tea
-be more conscientious of recycling & composting
-do all readings/assignments/papers early
-tidy up room daily
-eat 3 meals with lots of vegetables & protein
-plant things again!/work in the garden
-unplug cords when not in use/at night

i cooked dinner in the village communal kitchen today.
i made orzo rice, sausage, brussel sprouts
and ate it with a piece of bread.
(it might sound good but it wasn't that good).
mops, you're my little dog now!
my sister told me mops seems really depressed
(either because i left or because he has a
stomach ache).

SANTA CRUZING

i live in a beautiful crater/canyon surrounded by trees, gardens, farm, & wild animals.
i got to see friends from last year (exchanged gifts from traveling,
farmer's market, hung out in a yard with hammocks & strange ball toys).
i spent time with 4/8 of my nice new housemates (who i met yesterday).
we all chatted while eating our FREE dinners discussing
creatures of sea, the 90s, rapists, our hometowns,
and how students here have been attacked and/or killed by
bucks (male deer) on campus.

what a wondrous day.
plus the weather is beautiful.

some navajo lung "tea"(TISANE) from nadya!
(sometimes, my lung collapses.
but now that i have this tea,
i should have nothing to worry about).

herbal "tea" (made from flowers, roots, spices) is called tisane.

he was cautious around the prickles.

no one cares for the little park.
the fountain dried up.

let's sacrifice a puppy.

"excuse me, may i take your picture?"
"okay, but only if you promise it won't be
abused for commercial purposes"

starfish & scorpion kabobs. mmmmm.

this is little yang-yang. his name means sunshine.
lemons, turtles, chine-apples, and cannibals.

the stories of hungry childhoods, binded feet,
marriage, death, murder in this land of jujube trees.

i can't help but feel connected to these strangers
who experienced the same famines, wars,
winters, revolution, and hopes for the future as our family.
they are "lao xiang" ('old familiars')

mops howled like a wolf today. he pointed his nose
to the sky and ho0o0wled. he's never done this before.
perhaps a big natural disaster is coming and he felt
the need to make some instinctual remark to alert us.

one day, I was desperate to find a bathroom (i drank a lot of tea)
and le le finally pulled over so we could all pee. after coming out of a
grasshopper infested restroom, I noticed something very blue.

everything here is so untouched, natural, undisturbed.

a little park with flowers.

i found a rock with a strange texture in the Gobi desert in Erenhot
at the China-Mongol border. i stuck it in my pocket and forgot about it.
later, i was informed it was an asteroid.

i put it in my "box of things found in nature"
(along with the vertebrae, fossil, pretty feather, sand dollar, etc)

butcher central in a xi'an morning market.
heads. pig heads. hanging pig heads.

he remembered my name and the next day said:
"lin der, go upstairs to use the internet."
some ginseng for liu lao yie.

sunflower fields and dirty sheep.

fresh was the air, clouds, and sky.

yulin & shenmu, shaanxi province.

like fermina daza, i now like eggplants.
however, i still really hate eggs & tofu.
but they are still nice to take pictures of.

xi'an, shaanxi province.
visitors are allowed to visit 3 separate tombs.
however, the entire site is dispersed and spans over several kilometers.
emperor qingshihuang must have been pleased with the results.
what a luxurious afterlife he must have had.

it was massive.

this michelle, is jiaoken. a traditional mongolian breakfast food
made with the freshest dairy products!
i tried 'salty milk tea' but did not like it, so i added
spoonfuls of sugar to neutralize the taste. this made it even worse.

this place had grassland wolves, ostriches, peacocks, camels,
and a little pyramid of giza.

smokers in beijing. smokers in xi'an. smokers in shenmu.
smokers in xilingol. smokers in hohhot.
smoking in restaurants. smoking in trains. smoking in stores.
smoking in morning markets.

MONGOL EXPRESS.
we decided to take the day train from hohhot to beijing
so we could view the scenery of china's countryside.
we sat on wooden benches during this 12 hour ride.
i must have inhaled enough 2nd hand smoke to permanently
damage my lungs for good.

scale kitty.

whose house am i in?
whose daughter is this?

you can drive for an entire day & the grasslands keep stretching on.
cows, cows, and more cows. no bathrooms; just grass.

we took a road trip from xilingol to hohhot, inner mongolia.
we stopped in zhang jia kou, hebei for lunch.
i almost adopted a stray chicken wandering on the freeway.

the grasslands of inner mongolia are so beautiful. we visited the site of Kublai Khan's(Genghis Khan's grandson) Xanadu and walked through the remains of the city wall. long ago, the city was actually a trap, luring the unfortunate inside its walls, then they were shot with arrows. this pretty mongol girl was there and when she spoke, i became mesmerized by sound of the mongol language.