Puerto Rico!

so I spent last week in Puerto Rico and it was totally wonderful. we had such a great time, we saw the most beautiful places and hung out with some cool people (and ate lots and lots of great food...mofongo!). I think I ate one form or another of plantains at almost every meal. they are so good. anyway, it was lots of fun. here is a smattering of pictures to give you an idea of some of the things we saw and did.


one of our first views of puerto rico as we drove around the town of naranjito, where angel grew up


after our trip to mayaguez, we went to this fabulous beach in cabo rojo


another view of the beach (that is the very southwestern tip of the island...and beyond that, the caribbean ocean!)


a view down the beach


adam, angel, katie and me


later that night, we went out to celebrate katie's friend's birthday. this was taken after we each had a couple rum and cokes.


the next day, we headed up the west coast and stopped in rincon where we saw some humpback whales that migrate here annually. it was really cool.


one of the beautiful cliffs in rincon


another beautiful shot of rincon


they also had a lighthouse and some really good pina coladas there


that night, we headed up to old san juan. this is an old fort called El Morro.


a shot from the fort towards the north coast of the island


angel and adam striking a pose


another beautiful sunset while we were walking around old san juan


the next day we headed over to arecibo to see the big radio telescope. here are the computers that are searching for "little green men". hehe. just kidding. on the left is the computer for the serendip project and on the right, you can see the feed for the seti at home project. (we also saw the computer that discovered the first pulsar)


we were very lucky because adam knew one of the researchers there, so we got a personal tour of the telescope. this picture is taken from the middle of the telescope.


some of you might recognize part of this from the movie goldeneye where james bond was fighting some bad guy. i don't remember. but the telescope is cool.


here is paolo (adam's advisor) showing us one of the new detectors. we are inside the gregorian dome at this point (if you know what i'm talking about - if you don't, don't worry about it, it's the big dome thing in one of the following pictures).


katie, angel, and me in the fun hard hats we had to wear while we were up on the telescope.


here is the cat walk that we had to climb up to get to the telescope. you can see the visitor's center for here where everyone else had to stay. haha! isn't it beautiful there?


here is a view of the dish from the cat walk with a shadow of the detectors and all that stuff (we were up pretty high).


back at the visitor's center, me and the telescope


another beautiful sunset at another beautiful beach


the next day, we travelled to the rainforest, el yunque. here is a view from an observation tower.


hiking through the rainforest


at one of the waterfalls


maybe angel really is a monkey?


at yet another beach, this time on the northeast corner of the island


katie and me


one more sunset


palm trees and the last sunset

midterms over, spring break here I come

okay, so I survived the week of midterm hell. what a ridiculous week! aaah! anyway, it's over now and I think I did alright. now I'm off to Puerto Rico for a fun spring break!

sunshine and "A" mountain

this has been quite a weekend. last week was a bit stressful in terms of school stuff, so I was very happy to have a whole weekend and no homework hanging over my head. friday night I spent with a good friend and some good conversation and music (one of the nicest evenings I've had in a long time). saturday I went to IKEA with katie and angel to try and spend the wonderful birthday present from my friends (you guys are awesome). then we went to in-n-out for some yummy burgers.

today the sun was out and it was a beautiful day. katie, angel and I decided to hike up to the top of "A" mountain next to campus. afterwards, we had a nice lunch at gordon biersch and then they had to work on some homework. I stayed at home and watched the academy awards. I am so so happy that both of the screenplay awards went to the people and movies I thought that they should (charlie kauffman for "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" and alexander payne for "sideways", both excellent movies). and johnny depp looked hot (too bad he didn't win). so that was good.

so here is a smattering of pictures from our little adventure today.


"A" mountain, so named for the big letter on its side, in honor of Arizona State University. go sun devils!


some cool rocks


the view of the part of campus where my office is from the mountain


me and katie on the A


some other mountains in the distance


katie, angel, and me at the top, above downtown tempe

puerto rico!

guess what? I'm going to Puerto Rico for spring break in just a few weeks! how exciting is that? one of the other grad students is from there, so we are going to stay with him and his family and everything. it should be great. I really really need a vacation (right now) and will need one even more by the time it finally comes around. I can't wait!


picture me here in just a few weeks!

happy birthday to me!

so yesterday was my birthday. I am now officially old (24). le sigh. but, actually, it's not so bad. I had a really great time last night. I invited a bunch of people out to dinner to celebrate. we went to Rula Bula, this irish pub that has great food. I, of course, got the fish and chips (soo good). we also had lots of guinness, black and tans, and some irish car bombs as well (a shot of baileys dropped into some guinness). after dinner most of us headed over to another bar down the street where we had some more drinks and lots of fun. I hope you all had as much fun as I did. thanks for a great night!


the whole gang at dinner (rula bula, an irish pub on mill avenue). adam, brian, steve, keely, mike, alec, oscar, angel, katie, me, hwi, and tedman


starting the evening off right with a few irish car bombs


katie and me being silly (how else could we be?)


katie, angel, and me


adam, with some very good desert


over at the cue club (the bar we went to after dinner)


adam and me


angel and brian


me and brian

skiing pictures!

snow outside the cabin


the cabin, amid the snowfall


a bright, cold, sunny morning


the gang at bree's hideaway


the fun drive home


more snow


and more snow

it's groundhog day!

"what if there is no tomorrow? there wasn't one today." -Groundhog Day
yeah so I love that movie. it's so hilarious. and interesting. bing! but yeah, so Phil saw his shadow and we have some winter to deal with, which for me means more days of high 60s and sunshine. wow that sucks. hehe. just kidding.

so I haven't posted in a couple of weeks and here is the reason: school is back in session. ugh. yeah, I've been crazy busy. but I did have fun the two weekends in between so far.
the first weekend after school started, I and some other of the grad students went out to Queen Creek to do some hiking and rock climbing. it was very beautiful and a perfect day for being outside. we all had a good time.
last weekend, I, Adam, Katie, Angel, Oscar, Hwi, James, and Mike went skiing up at Sunrise in the White Mountains in eastern Arizona. it was so much fun! it was my first time skiing ever so I took a lesson, which worked out pretty well. I was able to go down the green slopes by the end of the day with no problem. it was definitely easier than snowboarding (where I was on my ass every five minutes - not so fun). they had a bit of a snowstorm the day we were up there, so it was totally freezing by the time we were ready to leave the slopes and head back to the cabin, but at least Angel was able to make his first snow angel! :) I have some pictures, maybe I'll put them up tomorrow.

also, as a side note, I have just recently switched browsers to Mozilla's Firefox which I must say is excellent (the best part - it imported all my bookmarks and stuff; and I can tab now. woo hoo!). those also already using this browser will notice that I have fixed this site's html so that it now looks as it did before in explorer. look, the sidebar is actually on the side now! ahhh, and everything is as it should be. fantastic.

three day weekend? nope, just the end of winter break

well, it's been a fun four weeks off. tomorrow I head back to school to try and learn some more. my last weekend of freedom went something like this:
friday: hung out with katie and adam. went to the mall and picked up my christmas present: a bose iPod sound dock. it is sooo beautiful and sound completely amazing. ahh, happiness. we also got some chipotle and then went searching for a tv and dvd player for katie to buy so she could live in the 21st century like everyone else.



saturday: slept in a tiny bit, then went to target with katie and bought stuff. later that night, we went to anderson's in scottsdale to do a bit of dancing, 80's style. we dressed up a bit, as you can see in the picture below (note my side ponytail. hehe). it was tons of fun and I'm sure we're going to go again soon, but next time we are going to bring along the whole gang whether they like it or not. :)


me and katie vogue-ing before going out 80s dancing

sunday: slept in a bit more and then went to IKEA with katie and finally bought the poang chair that I have wanted for like two years. yay exciting. then we did a bit of grocery shopping and watched the end of the golden globes and some bartending competition that was really cool. I am really glad that "sideways" won for best picture comedy even though I absolutely adore charlie kaufman and "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" and wish that it could have won as well. oh well. that's life.

monday: slept in a little bit. cleaned up the apartment some more. listened to music. went out to dinner with adam (to rula bula - this cool irish pub on mill avenue). and now I'm going to bed so I can wake up and pay attention in class tomorrow morning. ugh. when is spring break? ;)

a marathon, a movie, and a "new" bike

ahh, this week has been so nice. no classes, no homework, no guilty conscience about work I should be doing. it will all start again on tuesday, but for now I am happy. and I've been getting a lot done, which is quite surprising. the weekend was pretty busy because my mom and step-dad were here and I had to do stuff with them. they both ran the marathon on sunday morning (and my aunt and uncle ran the half-marathon) and I cheered them on for the last two miles (on my bike, but still). on saturday I sort of wished that I was running again, but after seeing them struggling along those last couple miles, I forgot all about that. hehe. I will stick with my 90 minute soccer game, thank you very much. I still don't see why anyone would want to run for 3 to 6 hours just to say they did that. but anyway, that's just me. we all had a pretty nice weekend I think, and it was definitely nice having them take me out to dinner.

monday I woke up at 9am again (I was still a bit jet lagged over the weekend) and started cleaning up my apartment. tuesday I did a whole lot of nothing (except some more cleaning). wednesday I went to school and met with the professor I'll be teaching for this semester. that was fun. wednesday night, adam and I went to see "a very long engagement", the new movie by director jean-pierre jeunet (the guy who directed "amelie" one of my top five movies of all time). the movie was pretty good, not as good as amelie, but still quite moving. it really shows the horrible parts of war (in this case, the great war, world war I (or as kurt vonnegut says 'the world's first unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide')). I didn't really think that they developed the main characters enough; so while you really really wanted audrey tautou's character to find her fiance, you didn't really understand why. but it was still a beautiful film.

today I got a lot of stuff done. I picked up my bike from the bike shop where it was getting a tune-up. and let me just say, it's like a whole new bike. i'm so happy and wondering why I didn't do this sooner. I was having problems with the chain and it's all completely fixed. so yay! and I also spent the afternoon attaching a rack on the back so now I can carry more groceries and books. yay for that as well. I also now have a light so I won't get a ticket when I ride home in the dark. today ended with soccer practice (we have two new guys on our team that are really good, so I'm excited about that). maybe tomorrow I'll make it over to the mall to get my ipod speakers. maybe.

back in the states

so I made it back to the u.s. yesterday afternoon (or night, depending on what time zone my head was really in). I lucked out again on my flight and had the seat next to me empty. yay for that. I also watched a bunch of movies (alfie - good, before sunset - really good, napoleon dynamite - pretty funny).

so, the last two days in london went something like this:
Tuesday: started off at Tower of London which was really very cool and interesting. I saw the crown jewels (they had a 350 carat diamond!) and some old buildings (some where people were murdered even) and stuff like that. after that I headed over to the Natural Science Museum and the Science Museum which were both interesting in their own way. the Natural Sci Museum had this collection of 22 million different species all contained in little glass jars. it was both gross and cool at the same time (my favorite was the jelly fish). the Science Museum was a bit disappointing, but it's also very hard to please someone with a huge background in science anyway. they did have the actual Apollo 10 capsule, though, which was neat to look at. after that I went to Harrod's which completely blew my mind. it was the most amazing store I have ever been in. they had literally anything you could ever want. and it was all organized so nicely and everything. besides the usual clothes, accessories and such, they also had a full pet store, a sporting section that had a room dedicated to each sport (well, the important ones anyway, like soccer (football), rugby and cricket (which I still don't understand, nor care to), and others), a huge designer jewelry section, and most amazingly of all, they had these food halls that had literally any kind of food you could ever want or need. there was a full butcher section, and then next door, a sushi bar, and then a cheese bar, and then a krispy kreme, and then a chocolate room, and then a tea/coffee room. it was incredible. anyway, I bought some english tea and made my way out of the maze back outside. after Harrod's I headed to the British Library where they had a really cool display of old books and manuscripts and such. they had two of the three oldest greek translations of the bible, the original magna carta, the first folio of shakespeare's works, some of leonardo da vinci's notebook pages, an original copy of newton's principia, beethoven's 9th symphony in beethoven's handwriting, handel's messiah also written out, some of the beatle's handwritten lyrics (with certain words change and things like that. it was fascinating), plus lots of other things I can't remember right now. it was very cool. at that point I was exhausted and headed home.
Wednesday was my zone 2 adventure (zone 1 is central London in terms of the tube). I started out by going north a bit to Abbey Road to follow in the immortal footsteps of the legendary Beatles. I met some nice people from wisconsin there who helped take pictures. the bad thing about Abbey Road is that it's a pretty busy street, so you kind of have to play pickle with the traffic in order to get a good picture. we probably walked across the street upwards of 10 times. hehe. oh well. after that I headed southwest to Greenwich to see the old palace and the Royal Observatory. the observatory was really cool, because besides having some old telescopes and longitude measuring devices, it also had the prime meridian (the line that divides the east and west hemispheres). so, I have a picture of me standing in both hemispheres at the same time. it was cool. after that, I headed back to London and went up to Camden Town and the markets there. it was pretty neat, and also good that I didn't have any spending money (since my suitcase would have been too full). then I went over to Portobello Road markets in Notting Hill and walked around there for a while. later that night, we went to a play, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), where 3 people perform (sort-of) all 37 of Shakespeare's plays in just 97 minutes. it was hilarious.
Thursday morning I headed back over to Heathrow and got on my plane (which left on time, thank goodness). and now I'm back here. I'm going back to arizona tomorrow and then school starts back up on the 18th.
some of the 315 pictures I took during my trip will be posted sometime next week on either this site or my other one. I'll let you know.


and since I didn't put these up before, my new years resolutions:
1. eat healthier and exercise more (well, duh, isn't that on everyone's list?)
2. watch less tv and read more books (well, I haven't watched any tv yet and I bought 3 books yesterday, so I think I'm off to a good start)
3. study more
4. finish my websites (hopefully this will happen next week when I have nothing to do)
5. cook more often (and also, eat less fast food, if possible none)

london!

happy 2005 everyone! I spent the new year's celebration in London, at a club near piccadilly circus. the fireworks near the houses of parliament (big ben) and the london eye were really amazing; maybe some of you saw them on tv later on.
well, I have been a good little tourist, doing lots of fun touristy things. after getting back from scotland on thursday night, friday we went to the houses of parliament and saw the famous clock tower holding big ben. we also went through westminster abbey. I saw sir isaac newton's tomb(?) and memorial and lots of other peoples as well. there was a poet's corner with lots of famous wordsmiths there as well. after that, we headed over to trafalgar square and went to the national gallery. I saw some nice pieces of art there.
saturday took me to the tower of london (although it was closed) and the tower bridge (which was very blue and also very pretty). then I wandered over to the tate modern museum (a modern art museum) which was really really great. I also walked by shakespeare's old globe theatre and then across the milenium bridge. after that I took the tube over to piccadilly circus and walked over to leicester square (where it started pouring down rain - but only for a little while - the stupid tourists all bought umbrellas, but I knew it would stop soon). then I walked back to piccadilly circus and walked down regent street to oxford circus. they have this really nice light display on that street which was great to look at.
sunday we got up early and went to buckingham palace to watch the changing of the guard. it was sooo crowded! and cold! the ceremony was pretty interesting, but I wasn't at the best vantage point. but oh well. after that, we walked over to hyde park which was very nice and also saw kensington palace before heading to notting hill to get some lunch (fish and chips...yum). then we took the tube over to the somerset house and watched people ice skating and falling on their asses (we were going to do it too, but it was all booked up for the day).
today (monday) I went to st. paul's cathedral to have a look around. I climbed up all 530 steps to the top of the dome (the third largest in the world) to get a magnificent view of the city. it was very tiring, but definitely worth it. after that, we took a ride on the London Eye which was also really cool. the weather turned out perfect so I got some really amazing pictures (speaking of which, I have already taken almost 300. hahaha).
the plan for the next two days: tower of london, abbey road, british library, harrod's, a play and greenwich. if I can fit in camden town markets I will do that as well, but I don't know if it will happen. because of the holidays, lots of things have been closed when I wanted to see them, so it made everything a bit more difficult to plan. anyway, I am a master of the underground tube now, so I'm sure I'll be able to manage it.
my favorite thing about london: most of the museums are free.