With a Ticket in Hand

It is official! I'm going to China and the USA in March! I purchased my ticket (again with airline miles) to go UIO-MIA-LA-CHICAGO-SHANGHAI-HONG KONG-XIAN-SHANGHAI-CHICAGO-NYC-MIA-UIO. Yay! :D
Yes, the itinerary is a bit insane, but it is an adventure.
I'm so excited!!!!

Categories: China, film, travel

College App Time!

So tonight I spent the night going over my brother L's college app essays and it made me think back to my own time doing college apps 5 years ago (gah! Has it really been that long?). One of the things I was noticing as I was going though my brother's essays is his vagueness and lack of specificity when he was going through what appealed to him about the colleges and their programs. I was quick to point that out and told him to go and fix that right away. What he came back with were essays that were wonderfully illustrative as to why he wanted to go to a specific college. Their only problems on the second round were wordiness. Happens to everyone I guess.
Looking back on my own essays, I now see that the ones that got me into places were the ones that were specific and detailed how the university or the college would be a good fit for me and where I wanted to go and be and do. I was intrigued by Oberlin's nascent film program that I could help shape back in 2006 and its musical environment where I could learn to play the cello at a completely different and better level. Middlebury offered up a solid film program, some wonderful language programs, and the small college environment. Northwestern was one of the bigger schools I applied to (along with BU) and offered a much more technically-driven but focuses film environment near Chicago. Boston University also had a much more focused film program in a campus that was integrated into the city of Boston that offered the possibility of interacting with a large college student population from the 100+ colleges and universities in the Boston area. Swarthmore, where I got wait-listed, had a really nice small student population and student-faculty ratio and a very cool Engineering program that I planned to do in conjunction with the Film and Media Studies program I had set my eyes on.
Of course, I didn't end up at any of these places. I ended up at Vassar College. My top choice. It had everything I was looking for. An orchestra I could play in, a very good Film program, a varsity fencing team I could join, a good selection of study-abroad programs, a strong environment of female empowerment without being a girls' school, and even a dual-degree program with Dartmouth to do engineering (I planned to be a Film and Physics double major back then and then do the last year at Dartmouth to get an engineering degree). I remember one of my essays being about how I felt when facing an opponent in fencing and how that sort of applied to my outlook on life. I think Vassar was the best and right choice. My four years there were nothing less than extraordinary. And it was the things that I didn't plan on doing that were some of the most worthwhile - like figuring out two weeks into freshman year that I wasn't cut out to be a physics major and deciding to become a Chinese Language and Culture major instead (I swear I didn't see that coming! That was a product of the school's language requirement and the department head at the time, which I am convinced, could sell ice to a polar bear. But no, really, I really really enjoyed being a Chinese major even if those 3.5 years of language classes gave me a lot of grief. It isn't an easy language to learn!). At Vassar or through Vassar, I went to China, directed a short play, was in a short play, costume-designed for M's play, played the cello in a pit orchestra for a musical, participated in student government (became the dorm secretary), fenced on the varsity fencing team, played in the orchestra for 3 years, had private cello lessons from a fantastic renown cellist from New York City, took a religion course that blew my mind as it forced me to re-examine the relationship between religion and state and history, I screamed at the top of my lungs with the rest of the college at the end of each semester before exams, I saw a friend carve Obama's face into a pumpkin on Halloween, made maple syrup by tapping the trees behind my house with my housemates, went to more than one square dance, made about 4 or 5 short films, picked Hudson valley apples in September, had a snowball fight with our neighbors, made a webcomic, went for a walk at 2:30 am to find a student playing the didgeridoo, got distracted by the books in the library when I was supposed to be writing an essay, composed an electronic music piece, learned how to ride a bike with my cello on my back, and became a free-range vegetarian.
I made friends that were PoliSci majors that double-majored with biology and Art History majors that baked Challah for the Hungry every week and English majors that were interested in Native American lore and Environmental Science majors who played in the Jazz band. They taught me about the Utopian politics of Star Trek and Spanish churches/synagogues/mosques and Old English declension and invasive wild mustard on the farm and owl migration and DNA and the importance of knowing how to tie a good knot. I met people who never ceased to amaze me, and that's the best thing I took from Vassar. The wonderful people I met and what I learned (and keep learning) from them.
I hope that wherever L ends up, he will have a similar experience - one full of exciting surprises and people, new paths to tread, and new things to discover. Considering what he's written for his apps, I'm pretty certain that this will be the case.

Categories: applications, college, L, M

Things That Hate Me #1

My left ankle.
Old fencing injury that I managed to aggravate enough tonight dancing at a club to warrant saran-wrapping ice to the ankle and being aided up the stairs by my dad at 3 am.
Joy.

Yeah. My ankle hates me.

Still has ice saran-wrapped to it.

Categories: anklr, club, fencing, nightlife

Amortentia

So this morning coming back from pilates (yeah, I get up at 5:30 am to go to a 6:00 am pilates class. No I don't know what the hell is wrong with me) my mom and I stopped at the bakery to pick up some bread because we'd run out of it yesterday and we would be needing some for breakfast. The place smelled heavenly. The bread was warm and just out of the oven. Freshly baked bread is one of the best smells in the world. For some reason, that got me thinking about what my favorite smells were and that led to me remembering Amortentia (a love potion) from Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince.

Here's the definition from Wikipedia:

"Amortentia is also known as a love potion and it gives the drinker a powerful obsession and infatuation with the giver of the potion. It is usually either forced upon someone or covertly given. It should be forewarned that the longer the potion awaits consumption, the stronger the effects will be, as seen in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when Ron mistakenly eats a box of Chocolate Cauldrons spiked with the intense love potion intended for Harry. The potion's aroma is unique to each person who consumes it, as it smells like whatever attracts each individual. It is the most powerful aphrodisiac of all. It can also be identified by its characteristic spirals of steam and its mother-of-pearl sheen."

As the definition clearly explains, Amortentia's aroma is supposed to be unique to each person, so it got me thinking what it would smell like for me. I decided it would smell like freshly baked bread, new books, grass, mint, and grapefruit.

What would it smell like for you? I'm curious!

Categories: amortentia, bread, harry potter, pilates, smell

Job!

I got a job! I'm a freelance translator. Working on translating a course catalogue for a university from Spanish to English! It'll keep me busy until March when I will head out to sell a film in Hong Kong and later visit Wei Ningqi in Xian and skip by Shanghai for a day.
Exciting!

Categories: job, translation, travel

Street Food

Some of the best street food I've had throughout the years (and the places I got them)!

(1) Burritos from El Matador taco truck in LA. Go for $5 a pop ($1 for tacos).

(2) Stir-fried noodles with sprouts from the guy with the wok behind Qingdao University. The guy will hold back on the MSG if you don't want/like it. Also available with rice or flat noodles. A lunch-sized portion that is unfinishable goes for 3 yuan (or about $0.45).

(3) Spicy tofu with flat rice noodles from the other guy behind Qingdao University. The guy will cut the noodles right before serving them and will spread a generous portion of peanut sauce on the whole dish and some lajiao (or spicy sauce) for good measure. Extra lajiao if you're my friend Tendai. A bowl of tofu and noodles will go for about 4 yuan (or about $0.60).

(4) Los Hot Dogs de La Gonález Suárez. A hole-in-the-wall hot dog place in Quito at the González Suárez avenue (right past Hotel Quito and right before the Guápulo road down to the valleys). You can get a hot dog with everything (onions, tomatoes, lettuce, ketchup, mustard, mayo, relish, and even pineapple marmalade) for about $1.50. Add an extra $0.25 for a glass of soda. They have both pork and chicken hot dogs so if you can't eat pork like me, that's a gift from heaven. They're open late (up until 4 or 5 am I think) and they make a great meal for when you've got the drunchies. In fact, if you're partying in Quito, chances are you'll end up at this place at some point during the night. Quiteños don't drink on an empty stomach.

(5) Grilled corn on a stick with chimichurri sauce and then topped with mayo and cheese at Montañita, Ecuador. Sounds gross, right? It is actually really good and not that greasy. Again, a great drunchie food. Also good to just sit and chow down at the beach. A normal-person sized one will go for $1, but if you're extra hungry, the big ones go for $1.50.

(6) Empanadas de viento (literally, Wind Empanadas) from Montañita. Wind empanadas are just empanadas with cheese inside of them. But the cheese sticks to the wall of the things so they seem like they're hollow or just have air in them. Usually served up sprinkled with a little sugar on top as per tradition. They go for $1 for a huge one.

(7) NYC pretzels. Served with mustard. 'nuff said. Forget how much they go for.

(8) Nutella crepes off any vendor in Paris, France. Back in the day when I visited Paris, they went for about 1.50 Euro a pop. They might have gotten slightly more expensive since then, considering this was 8 years ago.

(9) Empanadas de morocho at the Atahualpa Soccer Stadium in Quito. They're the kind of thing that is dripping with grease and will probably give you a coronary if you eat more than one of them in your life. Also, you really don't want to know what the hell it was fried in. But for $1 you'll taste some of the best (and crunchiest) empanadas this planet has to offer.

(10) Vlamaase Frites (fries) off of a side street behind the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam. For 1.5o Euro (about $1.95) you can have a klein (small) paper cone full of thick belgian-style fries with any of the 30 sauces offered at the little hole-in-the-wall. I recommend eating them Dutch-style with plain and regular mayo on them. You can add a second sauce for an additional 0.30 Euro.

Categories: Amsterdam, chinese food, foodie, LA, Paris, Qingdao, Quito, Restaurant Review, street food

Montañita Dreamin' (aka Happy New Year)

So, first things first:

Happy 2011!

I've been avoiding posting mostly because it feels weird to publicly acknowledge the fact that it is no longer 2010 for some oddball reason. Don't ask why.
Anyhoo, today's post was written in my trusty reporter-style Moleskine notebook (love them!) back on Monday on the airplane that was taking me back from Guayaquil to Quito after spending about 6 days in the Ecuadorian coast doing basically nothing.
So here goes:

It is under bizarre circumstances that I found myself spending New Year's Eve amongst a bunch of hippie surfers (most of which were, bizarrely enough, Argentinian) and my good friend from college MJ in Montañita, Ecuador (aka Hippiville, Ecuador or Party Central, Ecuador). It started out as a double-intentioned trip. My now legal but still sort-of-an-idiot teenaged brother L and 3 of his friends al decided that they wanted to go spend my brother's birthday and New Year's Eve in Montañita. He sort of conned me into it because, you see, everyone's parents all agreed that they felt better about this hairbrained scheme if I, the responsible college-grad sister, tagged along as a chaperone/insurance policy or as they liked to call me: "contact person". I agreed to it partially because I have a heart and my brother would be insufferable if he wasn't allowed to go and also because it would give me a chance to show MJ some of the nice Ecuadorian beaches. Also, all of this could be sort of digested with a side of an endless supply of cebiche and $3 mojitos. I wanted those mojitos. I wanted to erase the memories of what has, without a doubt, been one of the most challenging and tumultuous years I've lived through. Here's a small crossection of what I've gone through in the past 9 months alone:
(1) The breaking up of a 3 year, 8 month relationship that tore my heart to shreds,
(2) Graduating college in the middle of a recession,
(3) Saying goodbye to my best friends not knowing when the hell I would see them again,
(4) Trying and failing to put together about 3 film projects,
(5) Asking a studio exec a really dumb dumb question.
I mean, it hasn't really been a bad year per se, just a challenging an unnecessarily hard one. I've grown up about 10 years in the last 9 months. Crazy, no?
Yeah.
Wouldn't have believed it myself. Nuts.
Anyhoo, back to my story.
Of course, my idiot brother realizes a day before departure (meaning, on my birthday) that his applications for college are nowhere near done and that leaving for Montañita the next day would be an ill-advised move.
I decided to go anyways. I had the tickets and the hotel reservations and why the hell not? I choose $3 mojitos and Argentinian surfer hippies. Not to mention that I expected a bunch of Australians and Americans to also be overrunning the place. I do not object to tan, muscular surfers.
Needless to say, the view in Montañita is great in every possible sense of the word. I didn't have a bad time. I sat around on a beach chair during the day with my kindle in hand, reading to my heart's content. At night, we drank mojitos and danced on the streets with the rest of the crazy surfer hippie crowd.
New Year's Eve was a bit anticlimactic. We were on the beach when a group of surfers run past us and dive into the water at midnight. Meanwhile, they danced around with their surfboards, bobbing them up and down like some ritual. There were also a lot of effigies made to look like characters from Toy Story and Shrek that were being held up in the air before midnight. Presenting the sacrifice to the crowd.
Oh yeah. Better explain that.
You see, Ecuadorian tradition dictates that at midnight on New Year's Eve, we burn an effigy of something or someone to start the new year. It symbolizes the death of the old year, and the purification of all our mistakes or whatever. In Quito, you'll see a lot of the effigies resembling politicians or important public figures. Presidents get burned a lot. So do Ministers of Economy. Sometimes, though, effigies are made to resemble other things - like the three-eyed aliens from Toy Story 3 or Puss in Boots from Shrek. Why anyone would want to burn that alien (it is SO cute) is beyond me, but whatever.
Anyways, that's why we saw all those effigies being paraded around. They were, of course, burned at midnight.
The other anticlimactic bit was that the stupid surfers were so drunk and high off their asses that did the countdown 5 minutes too early. That was pretty bizarre. I did call my fam at the stroke of midnight though. And I also called M and N a few minutes after (I forgot to bring S and J's numbers...stupid me! SORRY).
After that, MJ and I drank another mojito and a piña colada, ate a grilled corn with mayo and cheese off a street vendor (MUCH MUCH better than it sounds...aww those things were so so good) and then sort of went to sleep. Then woke up the next morning and did some more sitting on the beach and reading.
On Jan. 2 we headed out to Guayaquil.
Not a big fan of that city. It is really nice, don't get me wrong (they have a lovely airport, bus terminal, roads, beachfront, etc) but I think it lacks a little character and personality that Quito has. Quito is a bit like NYC that way. NYC has character, which is what makes it a great city.
Anyhoo, we stayed at a really nice hostel (Manso) that is really more of a boutique hotel. Great location, great rooms, great rates, great service. The bad thing about it was that it cost almost the same as our hotel in Montañita.
Wait, no. That's not a bad thing. It is a bad thing for the hotel in Montañita. Don't get me wrong Hotel Bar Pizzeria Tsunami (yes, that's what it is called) is not bad. It is the 2nd or 3rd best-rated hostel in Montañita on TripAdvisor. It had a clean room, a bed, a fan, and a private bathroom.
It just wasn't exactly worth $25/night per person.
Let me rephrase that.
It WASN'T worth $25/night per person.
But it was ok for a beach trip like ours. All you really need is a bed and a shower and you're good. I just wish I could have opted for another hostel. Oh well. Live and learn.
But now I'm back home in the capital. Slightly darker (for like the first time ever, mind you, because I never tan. I just burn. And come back looking like a goddamn shrimp) and slightly more relaxed, ready to get a fresh start on a new year that promises financial and business success (according to my horoscope everywhere. And the Tarot cards).
Hope good things come out of 2011. May it be better than 2010 was.

Categories: 2011, Ecuador, Guayaquil, Hippie Surfers, J, L, M, MJ, Montañita, N, New Year's Eve, Quito, S