i've been listening to a lot of angels and airwaves lately so that i can remember last summer

hahahahaha...i'm so amused...my life has this way of repeating itself, whether i want it to or not

not that it's a bad or anything...in this case, it could actually be a very good thing, but still, i find it really amusing.

Which makes me think..do humans do this just out of habit? is this just the way that humans work, that everyone follows a pattern in their life without realizing it?

If you’ve ever read Cien Años de Soledad by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (and you really should read it if you haven’t yet), you’ll remember that there’s this one part where Ursula, one of the main characters starts to go blind, but by simply remembering everyone’s every day routine, she knows where everyone and everything is. When Fernanda loses her ring, Ursula only has to think of what Fernanda did that day that deviated from her normal routine to figure out where the ring went (even though she’s blind).

So what does this mean? What does this mean about humans? We were at the Parque Nacional in Uruapan yesterday, and there’s this random fish farm smack in the middle of this jungle-looking park. Lots of people stop there, feed the fish, and move on again. But I stood there looking at the fish for a long time. Because it suddenly hit me (even though it’s so obvious), that they all just move in the same pattern, over and over again. Even the ones who deviated from their pattern still went back to the same pattern again in the end. And I suppose they must be pretty content. What do they THINK about all day?

Does this mean that humans should stick to their daily routine all the time to stay happy? After all, don’t most people not like change in their routine? It makes sense that we like to be comforted by what we KNOW and what we’re used to everyday. But yet, we still take risks. We deviate from our routine and do different things all the time. And sometimes (a lot of the times), we get screwed over. Yet, this is what makes us progress and move forward. Is this it? Is THIS what makes us human, as opposed to everything else in nature?

I guess I'm just in a really strangely pensive mood right now.

ARGENTINA v. MEXICO, 3-0!!!!!!!!!!! It was SUCH a great game. Both sides played well, but Argentina clearly was superior...Mexico just couldn't get through them and just could not block any of the Argentina passes. Actually, it was kinda weird, because Mexico just couldn't score either....their first attempt bounced off the left goal-post, and it was like HOW did that not go in??? And then Nery Castillo did this beautiful kick that went over Abbondanzieri's arms, BUT then the ball LITERALLY rolled along the entire SIDE of the top bar and went out!!! It was really bizarre, and Castillo was MAD. Like almost-ripping-out-his-hair mad. Castillo is a great player though, and has been cutting through defenses like they weren't even there. I'm almost surprised that he didn't manage to get through Argentina's defense, but then again, Argentina has a such a ridiculously good defense that Abbondanzieri didn't really have to do that much during the game.

Argentina had SUCH beautiful goals though. The first one was a free kick taken by Riquelme that went wide and at first I was like "oh crap", but Sanchez dove for the ball anyways, which took him out of the box and let Heinze do this awkward little thing with his left foot that got the ball in!!! And the last goal was a penalty kick taken by Riquelme for a foul on Tevez that was just gorgeous overall. But my favorite goal was the SECOND one, scored by LIONEL MESSI!!!!! man, I LOVE that kid. Riquelme, once again, (Riquelme was definitely the key player of the night) fed the ball to Messi, who was being guarded REALLY closely by two Mexican defenders..and then Messi shoots PAST those two defenders and gets it IN the goal!!! Messi is such a small player though, that I always get worried that he's gonna get flattened by the defenders. In fact, there was one point in the game where Rafael Marquez fell on TOP of Messi and it was such a tangle that Messi ended up being completely flattened under three Mexican defenders hahaha. I do like Marquez, however. He's a great defender, and by watching the way he treats players on the pitch, it seems like he has really great character as well. A lot of players can get aggressive towards each other during games, but Marquez always helps people up and stuff, even if they're from opposing teams. I almost went crazy trying not to jump out of my chair and cheer, since uh, I was sitting in a bar full of Mexican fans. I did clap, though. The two Mexican bartenders were glaring at me like the entire second half haha.

But oh man, it was such a great game....I wish I was in Boston watching it so that I could freak out with Jay and Simon over how awesome the players are hahaha. I can't wait for the Copa America final on Sunday! It will be Argentina v. Brazil. It will be a hard game to predict, as both sides are really good, and although Brazil suffered a shock defeat to Mexico in the opening of the Copa, they definitely have stepped it up since then and are definitely recovering their "jogo bonito." On the other hand, Argentina's been strong the entire time and Riquelme, Messi, and Tevez are all tearing it up on the pitch like mad. I love watching them play just because it's SUCH beautiful soccer. How can anyone think that soccer is boring! haha.

time for a new start, a new mind, a new view towards life. there's still time left to wipe it all clean and start over again.

there's nothing like true friends and family to be completely honest and put things into perspective for you.


because, in the end, it's really NOT all that bad.


in addition, there's nothing like music to just completely brighten your day. =)

i haven't done such boring and pointless bitchwork for a long time! pretty awesome. how awesome can it be that i'm literally bored to tears? i seriously feel stupider every single day after work because of the terrific inane-ness of the work that i get to do here.

for example, i was just assigned to look up the websites of this huge list of universities, companies, and government institutions in mexico, and then classify them into sectors: government, academic, industry, civil society. wheeee. i love doing work that i could train a skunk to do for me. at least that would make it more exciting.


luckily, boring and pointless bitchwork also means that i get to listen to music - a LOT. =) so there's definitely a lot of catching up on classical music, which is good. when i do actual work, i really can't listen to classical music because i get distracted and start analyzing the music and everything. anyways, hooray for music! that's probably what is keeping me still sane in this office!

I guess a lot of you have heard about this by now, but there was a landslide yesterday in Mexico, just about two hours outside of Mexico City. Apparently, it was because of all the rain here in the last week that caused the mountainside to collapse, but whatever it was, it buried a bus full of people under 100 tons of earth and rock. I don’t even know what to say. And even worse, the bus was mostly full of people from a poor town outside of Mexico. It just doesn’t make sense. Their lives are already hard enough as it is, why did this have to happen? There were KIDS on the bus too.

It could have happened to any of us. I saw the picture of where the landslide took place, and it looks eerily similar to many of the mountain passes we’ve gone through when we’ve taken a bus to places outside of Mexico City on the weekends. And yesterday we were sitting around celebrating 4th of July. And I was sitting around complaining about how Crespo might have to miss the rest of the Copa America tournament.

Sickening, ain’t it. How we’re all so preoccupied with our own lives that we neglect to take into account how much worse it could possibly be. It’s all so irrelevant in the big scope of things. I mean, we’re talking about people’s freaking LIVES. I don’t know anything more precious in the world than that. You can buy a Wii for a couple hundred dollars, and iPhone for a couple hundred more, and if you got a couple million dollars, you can even buy your own island. But you can’t buy a person’s life. And you certainly can’t buy many people’s lives.

Holy shit, there were kids on that bus….

And no, I don’t know why I’m getting so emotional over this. It’s kinda ridiculous and I don’t know. I just don’t know.

i just went into the bathroom at my office in mexico and saw a newly posted sign that said "favor de no tirar la basura del baño en la oficina."

roughly translated for those who do not speak spanish, it means "please do not throw trash from the bathroom into the trashcans in the office."

who the fuck does that in the first place anyways????

I’m sitting here in the office right now on my second cup of coffee for the day because again, there’s nothing to do and in fact, my hardest thing to do today will be to stay awake. This weekend was SO exhausting but so much fun!

Actually, I went over to the other students’ house several times this week…On Wednesday, T.C., Reggie, Leah, and I went over to an Irish bar (yes, they have some really random ass Irish bars in Mexico…) called Celtics to grab dinner and then watch the Mexico-Brazil game. Unfortunately, Mexico won by 2, and the goals were all in the first half…they were great goals, not gonna like, but I’ve just never really been a fan of the Mexico team, seeing how my favourite team, Argentina, is like one of their enemies, haha. I’m so excited for Copa America!!! I REALLY wish I was in Venezuela right now ahhh. I am SO happy that Argentina won their first game against the US. It’s such a shame that the US national team is actually pretty good, but no one in the US really cares. I actually didn’t watch the entire game..after the first half I was so emotionally drained (from both soccer and from personal issues) that I just couldn’t watch the rest of it, plus the game was tied at that point – NOT GOOD. Haha luckily David told me the final score later on, so that made me happy again =). Then on Friday, I went to this random MEMS meeting at UNAM but left early…naturally, I got lost again, so I asked this one weird dude who happened to be the only person standing around for directions. As always, I ended up stuck talking to him until the bus came. He was kinda odd and kept asking me questions like “so do you have a boyfriend?” and “so when you are getting married?” (I’m not joking! He ACTUALLY asked me that and I have NO idea why he thought I was getting married…..). Anyways, I finally escaped. I don’t really remember what else happened during the week, but on Friday we had originally planned to watch Ocean’s 13 en español..that didn’t really work out because we looked at the wrong movie times, so we just sat around the apartment for a while before going out. SO hilarious. I brought over my $3 200 mL bottle of Bacardi that I’ve had for weeks, and T.C. and I finished it off almost completely just in one hour (ok..actually T.C. finished most of it haha). There was lots of hilarious picture-taking. Then it was going out and around the neighbourhood looking for bars and clubs. And we couldn’t find any! So we ended up going to La Pata Negra, which is apparently a club that Luis and T.C. have been to many many times. We met this one Mexican dude and his Venezuelan girlfriend and the Venezuelan girlfriend’s Venezuelan friend, who T.C. quite successfully hit on. Unfortunately, the Venezuelan girlfriend’s Venezuelan friend’s ex-boyfriend, who also happens to be the Mexican dude’s brother, also showed up and then fell in love with T.C. or something. Hahahahah. And then REGGIE! Ahahhahaha. For the sake of not embarrassing poor Reggie, I won’t post about what he did on Friday night. But it was hysterically funny and we took many pictures with T.C.’s camera.

On Saturday we took a bus to Taxco to look at the silver shiny things that they have there. It’s about a 2 hour drive from Mexico City, so we took this nice cheap charter bus there – I love how they gave us water and peanuts for the bus ride lol. Taxco was pretty and relaxing and we also took this cable car ride above the mountains! The view was incredible. Leah and Reggie were saying that it looked a lot like Europe. Overall, Saturday afternoon was a lot of walking around and enjoying the pretty sights. We decided to head to Cuernavaca at night to check out the nightlife (apparently the clubs there actually have people our age, and not the age of old people). It wasn’t too bad…I’m not the biggest fan of clubs and stuff, but it was still super amusing to go, especially if it’s free. This one club was so WEIRD. There were actually GUYS dancing on the tables! I mean, wow. One guy we were watching even took his shirt off and started swinging it around hahahaha. Upon which, Reggie was like “ok, we’re getting out of here.” We finally got back to the hotel at 4 or 5 am. OH yea, we stayed in a NICE hotel, credit to Leah! All the rest of us were like yea, we’ll stay whatever, but Leah really wanted to stay in a safe hotel, even if it cost a little more. It actually turned out to be a GREAT idea, because we got a double for like $135…split it between 5 people, and it’s dirt cheap for how ridiculously nice it was. I can’t even remember the last time I’ve ever been in a hotel this nice. They even had a ridiculously awesome breakfast buffet in the morning, and a pool. It was awesome. I sat around on the deck with the others and watched them drink Coronas…it felt like we were in Miami or something – definitely not Mexico. The boys + Leah stayed around in Cuernavaca for a while on Sunday but I went back to the city earlier to just kinda relax – plus I REALLY wanted to beat the Sunday traffic.

I think we’re gonna all try to see if we can get this Wednesday off for Fourth of July, and maybe go to Six Flags next Saturday! Yes, I know, it’s definitely not something very Mexico-ish to do, but it’s nice to be American every once in a while. =). Meanwhile, back to trying to stay awake in the office. I really hope they let me have Wednesday off, but it’ll be hard to ask because uh, I don’t do anything at work anyways. Seriously, I have never worked so little for such a long time in my life, and I’m not really sure if I prefer it or not.