I'm like that chick from Enchanted

Once upon today, I was sitting here:

Dutifully doing this:

When came wandering up a friendly woodland creature: Deer #9.


We chitchatted about the my astonishing lack of food suitable for woodland creatures.

And then snapped a picture to celebrate becoming new bffs.

And then deer #9 wandered off in search of other life-long friends.

I hope the next one has an apple for you, dearest #9!

The Tube of Me: CommunityChannel

Natalie Tran is the most hilarious, honest, your-mom joke cracking, sarcastic Asian-Australian that I have ever virtually met. I've introduced her to just about all my (English-speaking) friends, and we can just sit around for hours watching old CommunityChannel videos. If you get hooked on any blog channel I'm recommending, ducklings, get hooked on this one. Now you see, if I was a better person, I'd make that "one" vlogbrothers. But oh well...

Nat (yup, that's right, we's got our own little nicknames for each other. What now?) does scenes from her own life in which she generally plays all the parts, in different clothing, of course. I'm always amazed at how she can take odd, everyday situations and turn them into hilarity. Kinda reminds me of Seinfeld in that way. Warning: She can get a little dirty, friends, so you're prepared. But it's worth it, heh.

I chose this particular one because I can totally relate to it. Remembering directions= me getting hopelessly lost. Also, my friends in Peru all think I'm incredibly strange for using Google Maps so much. But it gets me there, so they really should be grateful.

I also recommend: The We Just Touched Awkwardly Song(LOVE) Too soon? (that one may require you remembering some current events from a couple years ago) No, YOU'RE so pretty ; Bending at the knees for love; and couples who make out around you.

There's so many more. How does one choose between so much greatness?

P.S. We're making progress with Sasha. She's starting to love me. Stay tuned.

Thou shalt not feed the winged rats

One of the most lasting memories I have from my high school AP literature class is our reading of the infamous Dante's Inferno. Not so much because I loved the book, but because I clearly recall the assignment that followed: Create your own Circle of Hell, complete with insufferable sinners and appropriately torturous punishments. Which is just now striking me as a very gruesome assignment...

My circle of hell was for that terrible blight on an otherwise sane and civilized humanity: the seagull feeder.

Some pampered seagull with horrible entitlement issues once stole a French fry from the box I was carrying in my arms. I knew who really deserved the blame.

In the circle 10 the punished were transformed into giant hot dogs and other beach food which were eternally floating in a sea of Coca Cola while human-sized seagulls dressed as lifeguards (? I don't know) blew really shrill whistles and swooped down to peck away at their edible bodies.

I thought of that today when I saw a woman in over-sized clothing sitting on the sidewalk feeding the pigeons on the street (from her hands: gross, gross gross). I was torn between breaking into a heart-wrenching Mary Poppins ballad or picturing her as a soggy hamburger.

What do they teach in high schools these days?

Where political arguments come to die

I hate politics. (Can I open with that? Do I have any politicians as followers?) Really and truly, hate them.

Mostly I can't stand how divisive they are. In the states, you can often immediately alienate/befriend a person, make them lump you into a whole list of categories, and then start them off on an angry tirade/deriding joke/sympathetic venting session all by simply naming yourself as a Republican or a Democrat. Ugh, it makes me annoyed just thinking about it.
So fortunately for me, we're in the throes of a presidential and congressional election here in Peru, and though the dynamics and woes are quite different, the yelling and name-calling still exists.

Or at least was most definitely existent after the birthday party a few nights ago, when the 11 o'clock conversation naturally turned to politics. I sat silently as they duked it out.

One man was arguing heatedly for a candidate named Alejandro Toledo. He only had two arguments, as far as I could tell: A) Toledo had been president before and hadn't left debt behind, and B) Toledo had been a Harvard professor. (Wikipedia later told me that "he was an affiliated researcher in the field of international development at the Harvard Institute for International Development" from 91 to 94. Which is still good, although, obviously, does not a good president make.)

Apparently he thought that that last bit meant that Toledo was well-known and talked about by people in the states. To contrast his candidate, beloved by Harvard grads everywhere, with the other presidential candidates, sadly unknown to Americans, he turned to me.

"Let's get an objective opinion. Dani, what do people think about Keiko and Ollanta Humala in the United States?"

My role in this little scene, I think, was to simply say "nothing," after which the defender of Toledo could turn to his assailants and say triumphantly "Ah ha! You see? Toledo wins again."

Alejandro Toledo may or may not be a good candidate. I honestly don't know. But I was tired and annoyed at not only having been dragged into the fight, but also so obviously used to prove a silly point. So I simply said "No one talks about any of these candidates in the United States."

Which pretty much took the wind out of his sails, so that I felt slightly guilty.

The argument continued, but I was not called upon to participate again.

The politician in question

There's a very select few people I will talk politics with. Aren't you all glad that this blog is not one of them?

Babies masquerading as dogs

Because they are dogs. I hope I'm not offending any babies.

Peruvian dogs, in my very American opinion, leave something to be desired in the affection category. It's not their fault. They haven't been trained in the art. But never fear, I've resolved to turn our dog Sasha into an American-style cuddle puppy. (And I said I wouldn't set goals! But who believed that....)

My strategy:

1) Get her to stop barking at me and to stay next to me for more than a minute at a time. Ok, so that doesn't have much to do with American/Peruvian. But it's irritating....

2) Talk baby talk to her at every opportunity. "Whooo's a good dog? Who's a good daaawwg? Sasha is! Yeeees you aaare..." Right now she thinks I'm pretty strange when I do that.

3) Pet and cuddle her. Even though she rarely bathes, and my hands look and smell like floor after I touch her. No one else pets her very much, especially not in the same way we pet our dogs while I was growing up. (I can't decide which of those is the cause and which the effect.)


This is a selfish mission. I miss dogs who come up to you waggle their tales and wiggling their butts cause they know they're going to be petted and pampered. I miss dogs who strain at their leashes in the street because every human they see is another cuddle-machine. I miss dogs who sit next to you like an old friend as you complain about a hard day and look into your eyes like they truly understand.

Writing this post has not helped that much.

These are the dog breeds I'd currently like to have in the distant future when I have the space and money:

Goldendoodle

Basset Hound

Dalmation
We had these growing up...and every time I see one I have to admit that I still have a soft spot for them.
Not all at once of course!

Who am I kidding? One trip to the SPCA and I'll be taking home whichever dog looks the most pathetic.

Happy Thursday chickadees!

Microwaves: Conspiring energy-suckers

I appreciate energy conservation. Truly, I do. Turn things off when you're not using them? Good idea. Unplug them? I'm all for it.

But! I'm wary of people who toe the line between careful and crazy. And there's been something about the combination of expensive electricity and microwaves in both the families I've lived with in Peru that has pushed them just a leeetle closer to that line.

Last semester my first host mother always wanted the microwave number left on zero. She thought it conserved energy. I tentatively raised doubts about this; she confidently squashed them. Whatevs. Or it would've been, but I could not for the life of me remember to do it. And believe it or not, it became a major point of contention and stress. I got up at 2 AM one night because I remembered that I hadn't left the microwave on 0, and knew I very well could receive an email about it the next day. I feel like I've told this story to about a bazillion people. Forgive me if you're one of them.

This semester my family goes for the much more logical route of unplugging the microwave, which does in fact save electricity. I'm fairly confident that I've never forgotten, but then, I don't really have much occasion to use it anyway. So that could be more of a lucky coincidence than a matter of pride.

AND YET, despite this success, I'm still catching flack on the microwave issue! Apparently, someone, someone else, in this house left the microwave plugged in the other day (come forward and name yourself!), and I have had no less than three very serious discussions about desenchufando la microonda.

Sheesh. Peruvian microwaves have it out for me I think. They rack up their numbers and plug themselves in while no one's looking. And then snicker at me with the toaster while basking in their stolen energy baths.

the rant about the disfunctional queue

I've recently discovered in myself a latent obsession with lines. Not as in geometry, and not as in coloring books, (although, come to think of it, I did abandon pages as a kid if the colors began to get out of their properly designated areas), but I'm talking lines of humans.

If I had to, I would pin it to elementary school, when whenever we ventured into the wilds of the hallways we had a line leader and a line follower, and everyone in between had to stay in their positions and not stray too far to the front or to the back. On pain of...umm...a warning? I don't remember. I was a strict line adherent.

Ponder the beautiful simplicity of the line principle: many people want to do something which can only be done by one person at a time. Walk through the hallway, ride an amusement park ride, use the bathroom. So we all stand one in back of the other, calmly waiting our turn, respecting the person in front and trusting the person behind to respect us.

Here's fun fact: Peruvians tend not to be quite as crazy about lines as Americans are, or at least as this American is. Forming them correctly, not actually waiting in them. As far as I can tell no one really likes that. Which is precisely the reason we're all so sensitive about our place in them.

I only reflect on this at such lengthly length because today I spent too much time waiting in lines. Lines the didn't line very well. Lines that only pretended to be lines. Lines in which the person behind me couldn't respect my place in line because they were not in fact behind me any more.


Especially at the photocopier. Nearly every time I go to the copier I end up wanting to smack someone. It has not happened yet. But it very well might.

No, you're right. I'm far too passive aggressive for that.