Japanese Furoshiki

My mother is amazingly talented and artistic. She made great efforts to raise four little artist prodigies and always made sure that our grubby little fingers had paints, crayons, paper, pencils, clay, beads, and multiple other art supplies within reach. I truly believe that the artistic gene skipped over me, but my mom seems to think that I have a little artist child inside that will grow with proper love and nurturing. She may be right, as I do love the arts and try to grasp opportunities to do projects and crafts when I can, although judging by my artistic output, my artist child is probably about 5 years old...

Last weekend the Santa Monica Museum of Art held and art workshop to benefit the Ocean park Community Center which helps homeless individuals and families. The art project was to make an original Furoshiki, a Japanese wrapping cloth, which would be used to wrap food donations being sent to families in need. The museum had a room designated a room for the project which was full of tables filled with art supplies and happy citizens decorating their cloths. We were each given two tea cloths, one to decorate and keep for ourselves and the other to donate. I had a great time drawing and painting and was happy to take part of something for such a good cause. 

Long Beach

I know that for some, the city Long Beach is associated with Sublime and Snoop Dogg, riots and minority uprisings, but my Long Beach is much less intense than all that. I spent four glorious years studying at CSULB and have many beautiful memories associated with the city as a result. A few of my good friends are still in the area so I ventured out of my ever shrinking "Santa Monica Bubble" and went for a visit this weekend. And as tends to happen when visiting these days, after exiting the freeway I was overwhelmed with the comfort of familiarity and felt like I had arrived "home." I even went so far as to stop at my usual gas station and run a few errands before meeting the crew.

We took a stroll down the beach to 2nd street and did some window shopping.

Upon returning to my friend's apartment we received a group email from another of our close college friends who recently moved to Peru. Since the three of us were together we decided to call her and say hello. If you'd like to live vicariously through a real live traveler, as I do, you should check out her blog; http://annienperu.blogspot.com/. She takes some stunning photos.

Thai food from Baiplu was the perfect end to a perfect day.

Bachelorette party: Las Vegas

My good friend Jenn is getting married in two short months and to celebrate her last days of singledom we took a trip to Vegas!  

I will leave the details of our weekend to your imagination, really, a weekend in Vegas doesn't need much explanation, but I will say that my craving for a "European" night out was thoroughly quenched. Two years in Spain were enough for me to adapt the mindset that anyone who goes home before 4am on a night out has not really taken advantage of the evening and deserves to have everyone give them a hard time for going home so "early" ("Vas a casa ya abuelita? Solo son las 3...").  Thankfully, Vegas makes it easy to stay out until all hours, and we did. 

I leave you with an image from Sunday's breakfast which was our last stop in Las Vegas and our first step back to normalcy...

Andalucia: Birthplace of Flamenco

"Flamenco music is one of the most technically demanding, yet least understood music in the world today."

I won't pretend to have an extensive knowledge of Flamenco music, but I consider myself very lucky to have lived in the region of Spain where it originated. While living in Granada, I saw a few phenomenal performances in the Albyzin and Sacromonte, most likely never to matched outside of of Andalucia, that gave me a profound appreciation of the music and dance.

A friend of mine is a dancer who specializes in Flamenco and was performing with her dance company this weekend. She'd told me about the performance weeks ago but recommended that I wait to see a later show that would supposedly be more impressive. I'd decided to wait until I discovered a few days before the show that there would be live musicians (!!!) which was the ultimate selling point. By the time I was trying to get tickets the show was completely sold out, but fortunately, my friend was able to find an extra one for me amongst her fellow dance company members.

The theatre was really small so it was no wonder the show was sold out. I took advantage of being alone and slipped into a single "buffer" seat between two couples seated in the third row. (This is an American phenomena that will forever perplex me. From my experience, no one in any other country would be so obsessive of their personal space to leave open seats between themselves and others when sitting down in a theater. Why do we do this?)

It was an enjoyable show. Three different groups of dancers performed. Two were part of the dance school and one was the dance company, of which my friend was a part. She was definitely the dancer of the group that the drew the eye during the performance because she had the sharpest, most authentic performance. This can probably be attributed in part to the three months of training she had in Sevilla, Spain.

Flamenco is such a passionate song in itself that when the musicians performed a few songs without the dancers, my undivided attention on the music combined with my memories of Granada was enough for me to get a little emotional. I suppose that means it was good. :)

Kings

Once upon a time I had dreams of becoming a figure skater and spent my free time fraternising with hockey players...

Ahh, the good ol' days. :) Until this weekend, the game shown in the picture above may have been the last hockey game I'd been too. Fortunately for me, a friend won tickets to see the LA Kings on Saturday and invited me to go with her. Our seats were in the "Premier" section, which means that if you get the hankering for some nachos, all you have to do is flag down a server and they'll bring them to you. Luxurious.  There's also a full view of the rink, which may or may not be more exciting than the food service.   

These little guys played during one of the intermissions. Freaking cute!

For the last period we moved to seats closer to the rink because a season ticket holding friend had a few open seats near them. I must say, the game is a lot more exciting from row 3 next to the goal with pucks flying and players getting checked right in front of us! It was pretty awesome, although, sadly, the Kings lost. 

Joel of the Jungle

My little brother Joel is currently at boot camp in Fort Knox, Ky, and I've been missing him a lot lately, so I've decided to do a posting in his honor. 

The summer after my senior year of college I really wanted to take a trip to Costa Rica, but really didn't want to go alone, so I worked out a deal with my parents that as a graduation gift to me they would pay for my little brother's flight so he could go with me. :)

We spent two weeks in Costa Rica and did far too much to tell all, so here's a quick glimpse of our trip and a testament to how awesome my little bro is. 

We saw volcanos...

 

...climbed dormant volcanos with practically non existent trails...

...befriended some strays...

...were stalled by a herd of cows...

...took a bird watching tour... 

(As the only Spanish speaker in the group I got to ride on the moto with our guide.)

(The others rode in the land cruiser.)

...saw many birds, including the Quetzal... 

...napped in hammocks...

...and took in some beautiful sunsets.

Joel was a great travel buddy.  He was enthusiastic about everything I planned and happily filled the role of being my body guard as well. 

Que mono  tan mono!

This was the most active Sloth we saw.

Everywhere we turned was someone with a machete!

:)

Everything we did was amazing but I think we would both agree that the ATV tour was the most memorable. 

We followed our guide to a river, parked our ATVs, walked through the ankle deep water, and embarked on the trail leading to a lovely waterfall.

While we were hiking it started POURING and we watched this waterfall double in size in a matter of minutes. Long hilarious story short, we ended up having to ford the river to get back to our ATVs! 

This trip tops the charts as one of my favorites and I am so glad that Joelie was able to go with me. I miss that kid. 

All Hallows Eve

Halloween is one of those American holidays that seem to intrigue  non United States Citizens. I gave a presentation about it to my students in Spain and they thought the whole thing was just ridiculous, although part of that may have been because they only understood every 4th word I said. I tried to explain the people don't only dress as ghost, goblins and witches, but that you can dress as anything, and the more creative the better, but all I got were blank stares.  I think that the pictures below could have been useful visual aids in my lesson. 

Last year my roommates and I  hosted a party at our place. My friend Katie and I were Disney Princesses Gone Wrong... 

Sleeping Ugly

Snow White Trash

(ex) Roommies! 

Now that I live on my own in a cozy little apartment it seemed wise to find a bigger venue to celebrate Halloween. The West Hollywood Costume Carnival seemed like a prime option as several blocks of Santa Monica Blvd. are closed off for the festivities that they claim as many as 500,000 attend.  The evening begins with a parade at 6pm but that seemed far too early to arrive so we opted to skip the parade this year and showed up later in the evening. 

This year's costume: American Gladiators!

 Blitz, Boomerang, and Bonanza

Due to the massive crowds, and partially blocked off streets that are guaranteed to cause chaos in LA, we decided that taking the bus would be the best option to keep everyone sane.

Fortunately for us, the #4 Metro line has a stop walking distance from a friend's house and goes directly to West Hollywood.  This was the first time I've used public transportation in La apart from taking the Blue line between LB and downtown. Quite honestly, I'm sure the experience will never be matched. The bus was already packed with fellow Carnival goers when it arrived and everyone started cheering as we boarded.  My awesome friends got the entire bus to sing "Happy Birthday" to me, which then segued into Journey, Sublime, and "I will survive," which was initiated by Frankenstine's Bride. 

 

The festival was great, the costumes amazing, and my friends were fabulous! Love you guys!