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| the time is 10:43pm and i just heard it run by very quickly...
point proven
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| So every night, between 9:30 and 10, there is an ice cream truck that drives by playing the tune (that i know as) "Do Your Ears Hang Low?"
This truck is very reliable to drive by... but it kinda gets me thinking... it only drives by late at night. How many ice cream lovin kids with very cool parents would be out this late to buy ice cream? I highly doubt its enough to support an ice cream truck to drive around at these gas prices.
so my conclusion is that it is indeed not an ice cream truck, but a Crack Truck that makes a very good living in our gang infested neighborhood.
golly i love chicago!
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I miss my little princess, Chelsea Morning... she was such a good dog for us, as a family, for over 16 years. She was old and had lived a very good life of sleeping, eating, and being pet. She was a bit on the dumb side, but i liked her that way.... she was flexible because of it, making her the only animal out of many (less fortunate) pets to survive the McKenney family. She was cute... especially when she got excited and wagged her hind end around, making her look like a flopping jelly bean. Aw she was a good dog....
but alas, old age and sickness hit our dear princess rather suddenly and the costly operation was out of the question... so we (or more my mom and rich) decided it was best to put her down.
i still get hit with a pang of sadness when i see the dogs in the airport... i don't know why its just the airport that hits me hard... because i see dogs on the street all the time and we have one here in the house.... but it makes me tear up and smudge my makeup when i see kids with their canine family members...
i just gotta remember that Chelsea lived a very good life... there are so many dogs in the world who have never experienced an ounce of love... and chelsea got loved and spoiled by the boatload. I miss her...
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| ALSO! i just found out that my friend from Puebla, Adriana, is teaching deaf students in the Port of Veracruz ceramics... she says that it was my influence that moved her to work with los sordomudos (the deaf-mutes). I'm so excited to go and visit her class one day!! She also wants me to send her some videos of signing in ASL to help her out with her kids. So, thats my new mission, to find some useful videos to send her  | | |
| just got back from a tour of veracruz, mexico. My mom and i went to the port of veracruz, in the southern part of the state, and spent 1 night and one fake night there (the fake night is cause we got in ridiculously early from the all night bus on the first day). We took a tour of the city, watched the Jarocho dancers in the Zocalo (or town square), and ate our fill of seafood. The city is beautiful, but since its on the coast, its quite warm and humid.
Then we tramped up north to Papantla, the town of Vanilla and the Voldadores. I don't believe there is another town in the world that does Vanilla horchata the way Papantla does it. They also have El Tajin, the archeological site, about 20 minutes (on a chicken bus) from town. My golly, that site is absolutely amazing... i was in such a grumpy mood till we got there because i had been wanting to go there for a year and a half but never made it... and it felt like my mom was trying to do anything possible to avoid going into the site (i know its not true... but it felt like it). Once we got sunburnt and saw as much as we could handle, we headed back to papantla to watch them initiate "Cumbre Tajin" which roughly means "Celebration of Tajin", the festival that we had no idea was happening the week we were there. For that reason, the hotel cost about twice as much as it usually does. This was my second time in papantla which was my second time papantla was having a huge celebration that filled all the hotel rooms.
Now, i must admit, this is something i've recently noticed and find quite odd... but when i am in large groups of people for a long period of time i get emotionally drained and stressed out. This festival wasn't helping... so for that reason (and a few others) i convinced my mom that we needed to go to Jalapa. It was nice to be back where everything was familiar, there weren't such large crowds, and it was significantly cooler (because Xalapa's in the mountains.... where veracruz and papantla are not). We did the standard stuff, walked around town and through the university, then went to the museum of anthropology and callejon de diamantes. My mom loves (and i can't emphasize that enough) that Callejon... or Artisan Alley. We ate at a comida corrida and hung out with a few others from the hostel. It was basically a walk down memory lane, but without any of my friends because they were all gone for Semana Santa (Easter week is a huge deal down there... most people get the week off)
The next day we were off to Mexico City (or DF, districto federal) to catch our flight. We left at 2:30 am and took the red-eye bus into the city... since we got there so early, we went to the Frida Kahlo museum. A girl from the hostel who lives in the area, Coayacan, told us to not be scared of the city and gave us directions... so we took the metro there and meandered through the town till the museum opened up (if any of you have traveled to mexico, you'll know that nothing believes in being open early... or early to our standards.... the world starts moving around 9am, when the coffee shops finally open). After i let my mom roam the town square for a few hours (like i mentioned above, i can't handle large groups of people when i'm over tired) while i watched the bags at a semi-secluded corner of the square. Then we ate and caught a taxi to the airport!
Once at the airport, everything was easy-breezy... we got seats in first class and drank our ways to LAX... where we ran like bats out of hell to the united terminal (roughly one mile from the international terminal) to catch the last flight of the day to SFO. Once we got to the gate, life was good as we got our seats. In SFO, we dragged our tired little selves and our huge backpacks to wait one hour for the bus.... remember, our day started in Jalapa, at 1:30am.... and i had been out till 11pm the night before with an old friend. At this point, i was supprised we didn't kill each other and we rolled ourselves into my apartment at 1:00 am.
after checking flights for my mom to take back to pennsylvania the next day, we finally went to bed... only for me to be woken a half hour later by the crew desk to send me to Taiwan.
i'm sure you can imagine how excited i was to hear that in a few hours, i'd have to stay awake for another 16+ hours serving people  Not just any people though... but several hundred Taiwanese people who don't speak much English and have very different cultural norms when it comes to touching (or pulling or poking). As much as i love the international flying, i would have paid someone to let me have their Dallas 2-day trip.
so, just a few short hours after i went to sleep, we woke up and sent my mom on her flight to chicago and i headed to briefing to find out i was working in "The Village" aka, Economy... yee haw  . One flight attendant just calls economy "Hands and Mouths".
Oh, and the babies on this flight! Now, we flight attendants aren't bothered too much by crying babies... it kinda helps us stay awake.... but what a crying baby does to other people drives us up a wall. First, it makes the mom walk around the cabin the entire flight... not a big deal except when we are doing a service. Secondly, it keeps people awake and wanting to get away from aforementioned baby... so they are standing in our galley, crowding us and talking and asking for drink upon drink. Now, i know its my job to provide them with anything to make them comfortable, but i'm cranky and my galley is becoming a large crowd of people. I thanked the lord when we hit a few bumps and the captain turned on the seatbelt sign. Shortly after my prayer of thanks, i gestured out "Seat Belt" to all the non english speakers and shuffled them all back to their seats. Phew...
we arrived in Taipei and i had a fabulous layover of doing basically nothing. After i slept forever, i walked around the neighborhood and met other FA's for lunch at a local buffet style restaurant... we went to the market (funny story there) and back to the hotel to sleep. Ahh.. it was a nice layover.
Ok, my funny story at the market. This little market isn't like most markets... most markets have one of two common themes, clothes/shoes/purses or food. This one had a fish stand next to beauty products, next to shoes, next to mystery meats, next to chickens, next to preteen clothes. Can you get a good picture of what this kind of market looks like? Well, a vague idea is more than enough. So i was walking down, looking at shoes and clothes and stuff and i hear a "skwaaaak". I look straight up to see a man holding a black chicken by the feet and bending the head all the way back to the feet so he can hold them both in one hand, then he takes a knife to the neck and i cover my eyes. Once i look back, the head is dangling and the man is laughing at me.
i don't believe i can go to Taipei without seeing one animal be killed.
i'm not a vegetarian or an animals rights activist or anything.... but as i was browsing the non-animal related items.. i never in my life expected to look up and see that.
Well, that was my long adventure.... now i'm just recovering and waiting for the crew desk to give me the Hawaii turn i see on the list of potential flights. A "turn" means we go to Hawaii and back in the same day.... yay.... just what i love, a long haul of vacationers!
(hehe, i promise, there are flights that i do enjoy very much... but everything gets annoying when i'm tired and trying to pack for a move)
i should leave it at that and go to the gym. Hope you enjoyed the stories!
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