On not being in montreal.

So, the bad news is i won't be back in montreal at the end of march.
The good news is i´ll still be here.
I'm working until early may, taking two weeks to travel, and returning on probably the 18th of may. Debriefing on the 20th - 23rd.
I'm really glad to have another couple months to work on my spanish.

The other bad news, minus silver lining, is that i won't be going to school in montreal in the fall.
This is crushing to me, montreal is like a home and a mother to me.
But i feel like i've grown up there, and to live in the same place you grew up is kind of stagnatative, so it's sort of a good thing that i´ll end up in ottawa (hopefully) or halifax for a few years.
It'll help me grow as a person and all that kind of stuff.

Anyway, it's only two hours from Ottawa to Montreal.
I can see Montreal on the weekends. Ottawa doesn't need to know.

There's a lot of good music in Bolivia, but none of it makes it into my office.

every day i listen to love ballads, south america's answer to the love child of nickelback and 80s soft rock, artless piano (fake piano) melodies with a complexity and depth reminiscent of songs i was taught in early elementary school, plodding along at about 60 bpm like a faithful, arthritic dog, replete with those magical sounding wind-chime effects that you hear in every RnB song written after 1990, and before "turn the page" in childrens books on tape, and which will automatically make me hate, instantly and from the depths of my innards, anything that contains them.

the one positive side is if i don't listen to closely i can avoid understanding the lyrics, but this is less and less true every day.

i do want to re-emphasize, though, that traditional music in bolivia is really nice. i wish we'd listen to that.

Still not exactly about Bolivia..

work's been slow.
i found 43things.com
there, i was enticed into making a list of 100 things that make me happy.
surprisingly satisfying, not as cheesy as you might think.

1. the way light hits everything, esp in the morning and evening
2. walking through puddles
3. anything unexpected
4. hot loose tea in a glass jar
5. Charlie mingus
6. wearing big warm scarves
7. biking
8. biking in winter
9. old pianos
10. marching bands
11. plants, esp growing plants
12. warm friendly cats
13. synthpop
14. rooftops
15. exploring abandoned places
16. being completely alone
17. being surrounded by people who inspire me
18. waterballoons (globos!)
19. curious horses
20. second hand stores
21. loving and feeling loved
22. home-made bread
23. making things up
24. reproducible art
25. the swimming pool behind mcgill
26. swimming, in general
27. getting dirty
28. feeling healthy
29. my grandmother’s house
30. tiny things
31. huge things
32. challenges
33. hoodies
34. high-fives
35. fluorescent and neon things
36. people spontaneously singing together, even better if they don’t know each other
37. seeing people being inspired
38. dancing
39. wearing costumes
40. elaborate plans for simple goals
41. hide and seek
42. capture the flag
43. surprising people
44. smiling at strangers
45. being smiled at by strangers.
46. greasy spoon breakfasts
47. anyone over the age of 70, esp if they’re happy
48. the smell of construction sites
49. earthworms, slugs, snails
50. strange insects
51. watching birds in the mornings
52. ice cream
53. the honesty of little kids
54. old libraries
55. speaking Spanish
56. rumi
57. eating oranges
58. being spooned
59. hanging around in my underwear
60. jumping off of things
61. hand-made things
62. DIY
63. guerrilla art
64. tubas
65. trumpets
66. thick warm long socks
67. sleeping naked
68. my sleeping bag
69. guacamole
70. the smell of laundryrooms and Laundromats
71. dogs wearing sweaters
72. emir kusturica
73. banksy
74. gogol bordello
75. klezmer themed parties
76. almost any other themed party
77. alternative circus
78. slingshot (dayplanner, not weapon)
79. co-operatives
80. cutting my own hair
81. rearranging furniture
82. records
83. the quietness of sunday mornings
84. skateboard adventures
85. working on bikes
86. making things into other, previously unrelated things
87. drawing buildings, preferably old rotten ones
88. taking pictures
89. photoshopping pictures
90. silkscreening!
91. covering up or altering invasive public advertising
92. pot-lucks
93. playing drums
94. playing almost anything else
95. playing, in general
96. reflection (both thinking and mirrors)
97. water
98. cleaning (really!)
99. knitting
100. making lists (also really!)

Bork, Bork, Bork? (noht ebuoot bolivia)

I was looking through the language options of google today when i noticed, amongst, you know, french and spanish and whatnot, "¡Bork, Bork, Bork!"
curious, i clicked..
http://www.google.com/intl/xx-bork/

and then did a little research to learn that this was in fact a version of google translated into the language of a muppet character.
i was also happy, and relieved (how did i ever live without this...) to discover that there´s a muppet wiki..

http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/The_Swedish_Chef

oh, but it gets better... when i went back into the language ops to get back to english, i noticed there was also an option called "hecker bork-bork-bork" (in bork bork bork, of course.. plain old "hacker" in english) which appears to be written in l33t.

http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/

... just in case searching the internet in plain english wasn't geeky enough.

words words words

i feel like spanish is inherently more positive than english.  it comes out in the different meanings of words..  

for example, "to wait" in english has sort of negative connotations.. 

waiting rooms, waiting in line, waiting on someone, in the sense of serving them. 

in spanish, esperar,  "to wait", also means "to hope for".  

it's got a much more positive feeling.  

also, the word for "retirement" is jubilación..   (like, you know, jubilation) 

ju bil ation! 

(it's a great word, even in english)

Boiling Pits of Gloop! (from summer vacation near Uyuni)