Lol, oh momma.

My parents check this blog because this is the only place that they can see my pictures.

I skyped with my family yesterday and my mom told me that they had seen the pictures that I had posted.

I asked what they thought of them. You'd expect my mom to say that she's happy to see that I'm doing well and having fun and what not. ... Right?

Nope.

She says, "Ya know, in your pictures with your friends... I noticed that you look kind of chubby. When you come home, I'm going to run you to death. :D"

Oh momma. [Insert nervous laughter]

Speaking of nervous laughter, my grandma knows that I'm in Japan. She asked my parents for my phone number but they feigned ignorance. >_>; She's insisting that I go to Korea after my time in Japan so I can get the moles on my face removed via laser. And I knowww where that'll lead. "Since we're cleaning up your face anyway, why don't we get a little work done on your nose?"

D: D: D:

My parents haven't disclosed when I'm going to go back to the States either. Hhahahaha. I'm not kidding when I say that my grandma's the kind of person who would literally force me to get a nose job. :( People really think that I'm kidding or exaggerating but I'm not. My dad (her son) seriously said, "Yeah, she's the kind of person to do it... we won't send you to Korea after Japan."

@_@

Anyway, I have to finish my reading for my theater class. A 40 page long play. Not too bad. It's actually really interesting? And I have yet to finish reading the Robertson book on Takarazuka. It's been a very interesting study!

Peeeeace!

Boxing, Villa Grimaldi, y Acción de Gracias

This post is way overdue; about 3 weeks ago I should've put it up, but oh well.

Andrew and me boxing! Our friend Arturo from church is a boxer, so one Friday night we went to a park and started punching each other after a brief 5 minute lesson about boxing basics. We heard people in the pitch black park saying, "What are they doing???" Thinking that we were fighting for real. Well, Andrew and I were, at least. Jaja.

Andrew totally did not punch me in the face. I seriously couldn't stop giggling throughout the entire fight. It was too funny.

And here's me battling with Arturo, the expert. He had the height advantage over me, which stunk.

But I managed to get a swipe at his arm! Jaja!

Nicolas and Arturo, the professional boxers. Apparently Nico's dad was a boxer?

Graciela with Arturo. She's a feisty one! And a quick learner, at that!

After a wild round of boxing, Emily and I met up with Roberto to get Chinese food! This place is called Los Chinos Ricos, it used to be called Los Chinos Pobres. It's apparently the oldest Chinese restaurant in all of Santiago (in Barrio Brasil). We ordered Peking duck and sweet and sour pork. I was a bit disappointed by the Peking duck b/c it didn't have the crispy skin and it was marinated in a soy-sauce based marinade, which is all wrong! And I didn't see a single Chinese face on whom to use my Mandarin Chinese. :'(

Emily sure is creative with a pair of chopsticks!

Roberto with chopsticks. Chileans do know how to use them!

After a THREE hour dinner, we were still up for a night of carretear ("partying" in Chilean Spanish) so we went to La Casa en el Aire in Bellavista, a live music joint where they serve snacks and drinks. I had been there once before and I enjoyed the music and the chocolate milk (but not the cigarette smoke). This is Emily's tequila sunrise. Mmmm.

The caipiriña azul, which is a Brazilian drink made with said alcohol, a bunch of limes, probably blue food coloring, and sugar. Apparently it's a hard drink to make because you need the perfect amount of sugar or else the caipiriña will be too strong and make the drink nasty.

Emily and Roberto enjoyed it!

So that was a night of fatty carretear...I got home at 4 and had to wake up at 8 the next day. But it was nice to spend 6 hours just chatting about life. The next day, EAP organized a trip for us to go to Villa Grimaldi, a torture center/concentration camp during the dictatorship for people who were suspected to be against the Pinochet regime. Our tour guide was a torture victim himself but was so courageous to speak so openly about the specifics of the torture sessions he endured so that people will remember and know how humans can treat other humans as if they were inhuman. It also opened my eyes to the importance of human rights.

This is a model of how the torture center looked back in the 70's before it was destroyed by the military dictatorship as a way to eliminate any traces of torture that happened, because it was fiercely denied that torture went on during the dictatorship. Now it's been reconstructed in a memorial park.

"Old parking area. Sector where one was tortured with vehicles."

This plaque explains why the park is here. At the bottom it says, "Never again in Chile will torture be repeated."

This held the remains of a boat...of something...I forgot.

This is a wall full of names of the political prisoners who had been in Vila Grimaldi. It was a huge wall.

It was a 7 hour tour, and it ended with a visit to the General Cemetery in Santiago, where many people "disappeared" (read: kidnapped and killed and dumped their body in the ocean) and killed are buried. This guy Orlando Letelier escaped to Washington D.C. but was assassinated by the direction of Pinochet--even in the US! The bottom of his grave says, "I was born a Chilean, I am a Chilean, and I will die a Chilean."

A small hill with an image of Jesus on the cross. Lots of people left notes for God.

It was interesting that the cemetery was divided by class. The front of the cemetery is filled with huge mausoleums of the rich with statues and marble and all that, but as you walk more and more toward the back, the poor bury their dead here. It seemed more like a plant nursery than a cemetery, as it was adorned with potted plants, plastic windmills, toys, and the like.

Barely looks like a cemetery, no?

Nameless graves.

The grave of Victor Jara, a famous Chilean singer in the 60's-70's who sang of social justice and criticized the US foreign policies in Vietnam. When the military coup happened in 9/11/1973, ushering in the Pinochet dictatorship, he was kidnapped, tortured, and killed. His grave is now in the back of the cemetery with "the people" instead of the elites. His wife wanted him to be buried in this sector of the cemetery because she believed Victor Jara would've wanted it this way--to be with "the people."

The wall with all the names of people who died or were tortured during the dictatorship. It was another huge wall.

The wall's description: "Memorial of the disappeared detainees and of the politically executed people. Victims of the period of the military dictatorship."

What's sad though is that there are still people missing, who disappeared more than 20 years ago and whose whereabouts are still unknown...

On a brighter note, the next day at church we had a thanksgiving service to give thanks to Pastor Antonio, so it was 2 hours of people presenting a poem, a Bible verse, a skit, or music to show thanks. I took pictures of the gringos performing :)Andrew and Christine singing "Mighty to Save" in Spanish.

GX (Generación Extrema), the youth group I'm part of at church, performing the "Everything" skit by Lifehouse. It was very well done and powerful.

Graciela and Francisca singing "Desde mi interior" (From the Inside Out...by Hillsong).

And an amazingly cute toddler named Emilia sat in front of me, and I had to take a sneaky picture of her as she fell asleep in mommy's arms. Awww.

Oh my!

Oh my!!!! I'm leaving Denmark in 2 months!!!! And for about 2 weeks out of 8 weeks, I'm going to travel! Haha wow...

Schedule:
- October 28th to November 1st: London with my suitemate from freshman and sophomore year in college, Loan Luu!
- November 12th: Mediasociology paper due. Booo....Gonna write about Joel Osteen. Haha gross huh?
- November 22nd: UC Thanksgiving Dinner in Lund, Sweden with UC students from Sweden! Sweden is just a bridge away! :)
- November 25th to December 1st: Hyan is visiting Copenhagen!
- November 27th to November 30th: Poland!
- December 14th: FIBC's Christmas Concert - "Forever Gloria! We Worship the Christ of Christmas"
- December 15th - 21st: Maybe Romania? My good friend Sylva is gonna go back home and she really wants me to come back with her! :) Maybe....
- December 22nd: FLIGHT HOME! :D

I can't wait to give everyone a FAT hug!

It's going by really fast!!! I'm gonna miss this place. For SURE, I'm gonna come back to Copenhagen some day...

Universidad de Chile pt. II

The Chilean grading scale is from 1 to 7. There was a joke that I heard once that said, "Only God gets 7s." haha.

Anyway. My first quiz grade...

3.5

That's a D+.
Are. You. Kidding. Me.
Same class that I cried to the prof in office hours. (Note to anyone who is thinking of studying en Universidad de Chile: Do not take Historia Social de Latinoamerica if you suck at Spanish or you'll end up like me.)
I don't know what to think; I need serious help in Spanish.
I came here thinking, "I want to challenge myself in Spanish and read and write in Spanish. I know it'll be hard, but I love a challenge!"
Not anymore. If there's an opportunity to get reading material in English, I am all over it as long as it gets the job done. Spanish is way too hard.

More pictures-- Odaiba & Okutama

Long story short, I ended up sleeping from 4 PM until 12 AM today. @_@;; I've been really tired the past two weeks.

Since I'm up, I figure that I might as well post pictures again! It's been a busy weekend. Went to Odaiba, a man made island made by the Tokugawa government. Then today, a couple of us from TMEFC went to Okutama to meet up with the rest of the English department that had a retreat this weekend! We couldn't join them for the whole weekend (it was too much monies) but we were able to be with them today! (Okutama, as beautiful and rural as it seems, is still part of Tokyo. :D)

On the Yurikamome Line. In other words, the monorail to Odaiba! That's the Rainbow Bridge. :D The monorail goes on that!

We passed by the replica of the Statue of Liberty. It's really tiny.

This was actually before we saw the Statue of Liberty. Sorry, the pictures are a tad bit out of order. This is the famed Fuji TV building. We were supposed to stop by and see it but we were really hungry. D: This was taken on the bridge.

On our way to the Miraikan (I will explain what this is later), we happened upon this sculpture outside. There were no signs that said do not touch or do not climb so we figured that we'd climb it! It was really sturdy, so no worries!

The 未来官(Miraikan)! Mirai means "future," as in the distant future. (As opposed to shorai, which means the short future, e.g. the next few years or so. If you ever take Japanese, keep this in mind! It confused me for a while.) The Miraikan is short for "National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation." Hhahaha. It's a very hands-on museum so a lot of parents bring their kids there. There are exhibits on life sciences, space, robotics (there was this cool robot named Asimo! I'll post videos later.), and a whole bunch of other stuff. There was a dome theater too! :D

This really cool globe thing was hanging in the Miraikan. The clouds move! And the earth "rotates!" It was so cool. :D

This was obviously in the life sciences department. Yeah, DNA replication! This is tRNA doin' it's thing.

We left the Miraikan and started to make our way towards food. There was a field of flowers and the girls couldn't resist it. I decided to take my obligatory flower face picture.

This is where we ate. It's a shopping center called Venus Fort. We ate and wandered around a bit, but not for too long. This is how the inside looks like. There are no windows in this shopping center so that the lighting can be controlled. It's very faux European but it's really pretty. :)

Then we went to the Toyota City Showcase. Basically a lot of cars by Toyota. And games like this for free. :D You only get to do one lap, though. And if you can't finish a lap, then you only have three minutes or so? I finished a lap. :D

There was this precious oldman in a suit and sneakers. It looks like he's doing well. Hahah.

We went on the giant ferris wheel. This is us at the top! You can see the Yokohama ferris wheel in the distance (the little white orb on the horizon to the right).

This is us, making our way down. It was a quick ride-- 16 minutes!

This was early this morning at the Ogikubo station. We were very excited about waiting half an hour for the train. (This is a horrible picture. I tried taking it but my face got cut off and we're totally off center. But because it's so epic fail, I think it's hilarious.)

Ah, we arrived in Okutama safely! We thought that this was the bridge that we had to cross. We were very, very wrong. Needless to say, we got very lost getting to the retreat site.

But somehow, we still made it. :D

This is after the service. We were making our way back to the station. That's Amy that you see there. And the Trail of Death. The trail that you need to go up in order to get to the road that leads you to the retreat site is seriously one of the steepest inclines that I've ever walked on. It would make for good skiing/snowboarding. It's a really short trail but it was so, so painful.

Well, that's the end of that. It's now 2 AM and I haven't washed up or showered yet. :D So I need to get crackin' on that and then it's bed time again! :D Bye bye!