this is me

thanks to my best friend Google Reader , I read a lot of blogs fairly regularly. some are written by people I know, but many are just blogs by other people in DC that i stumbled upon in one way or another. some are useful in the sense that they give me ideas of things to do in the city, but many are just musings on life by other twentysomethings, and i find myself wanting to adopt their blogging style - expressing their thoughts, relating random experiences, no holds barred. a few things hold me back, however: a lot of the things i think about throughout the day and wouldn't mind blogging about are things i wouldn't necessarily want people who actually know me to read. that's definitely part of the appeal of the blogosphere - a sense of anonymity, and knowing/hoping that some random person might stumble upon some words you wrote and laugh or sympathize. and it's something that typing your thoughts into a random Word document that no one else will ever read will ne...

don't really remember how I found this blog but i can usually relate to what this other Emily has to say. especially today: "Like most overeducated and underemployed young adults in DC, I live paycheck to paycheck. I've never known anything else and, given my education and professional choices, probably won't know anything else for a long time. I figure I'll just marry rich and then justify my shallowness by calling it fourth-wave feminism. Perhaps I'll become one of those fabulous stay-at-home moms I see in Washingtonian who live in Georgetown and wear lots of Lilly Pulitzer. I'll run a "freelance lifestyle consulting business" where I charge clients several thousand dollars for advice such as "live in Georgetown" and "wear lots of Lilly Pulitzer."" EJ Takes Life

that you decide it is acceptable to wear a hair roller with your bangs wrapped around it out in public on your way to work? especially when your commute involves walking in/around/near Union Station, which is arguably one of the most populated metro stops during rush hour. i would guess the woman in question was in her mid-to-late forties. i like to think that no matter how pressed for time i am, and even if i someday end up using hot rollers regularly (which i doubt), let alone get bangs again (which i highly doubt), i will never leave the house with one still attached to my head. you never know when a stranger will find you intriguing and try to catch your eye, and then look up and realize you have a foreign object protruding from your forehead. then again, maybe she is 100% happy with where she is in life, relationship-wise, and has no reason to care what other people think of her as she walks to work in the morning. i, obviously, do not fall into that category. i made a class...

that may sound a little new-agey, but i think it describes what i'm trying to do with my life at this moment. the past couple months have been some of the busiest and most sleep-deprived of my life, interning 30 hours a week and working 3-4 shifts at the pizzeria. now that i've started working doubles on saturday, i find myself with more time during the week, but no idea what to do with it. i'm arguably in the worst financial situation of my life, dreading my first loan payment at the end of next month (happy new year to me), and therefore feel guilty doing anything that requires much money. but i also don't want to spend many more afternoons the way i did this past wednesday, napping and watching tv until bedtime. my internship has kind of stalled at this point as well. we're nearing the time of year where business tends to slow down, and my supervisor will be out of the office 4 out of the next 6 weeks. this week i have spent more hours trying to figure out ho...

family visits and work gets in the way. i'll go back to posting when there's exciting news to post. :)

today i have one of those sinus headaches that when really intense makes me feel insanely nauseous. not pleasant especially as I have dinner plans with a friend from high school tonight and my mom, cousin, and aunt visiting starting tomorrow. it's looking like i could be a salaried employee by December....here's hoping!

since i just found out about this today? don't know if i'll manage to post daily, but it's worth a shot. i could use more of a creative outlet these days. my friend Angel is at this moment interviewing for a position at my company where he would end up sitting right next to me. that would be beyond fun. here 's a link to a review of a concert i went to on Tuesday. if you haven't heard me gush about Ryan Adams, just ask.

"The three lead suspects convicted of murder and attempted murder [in the Madrid bombings of March 11, 2004] each received sentences ranging from 34,000 to 43,000 years in prison, although under Spanish law the most time they can spend in jail is 40 years. Spain has no death penalty or life imprisonment." (read the full article here ) I remember that day really clearly, and all the desperate phone calls and emails I received, as I was actually living on the outskirts of Madrid at the time and took those regional trains daily. I need to take the time to read what Spanish newspapers are saying about the verdicts, but that will have to come later...

yes, the girl who once said global warming was BS is creating a post in honor of environmental awareness. for those of you who had not heard, after viewing An Inconvenient Truth I retracted my previous BS comment and am now in the moderately concerned party that likes to keep aware of what's going on but has yet to participate in any specific action apart from recycling. While I doubt that I will go so far as to request that my cremated remains to be buried near my favorite tree so that I can become one with my personal tree , I was definitely concerned by the ridiculously hot weather during the first week or so of October and plan to deepen my awareness of what's going on environmentally as it comes up in the news. Check out Blog Action Day 's website for more information on their awareness-raising. and on a side note, crazy stat from last week - there are 54 doctors in the entire country of Liberia.

"A recent finding by the civil service of Yemen found that up to 30,000 of its employees (out of 473,000) were ‘ghost workers’ who never showed up for work, or ‘double dippers’ who were on more than one payroll...The Ministry of Education (MoE) is reported to be one of the top ministries in the employment of ‘ghost workers.’ Often, teachers and administrators who are on the MoE payroll simply do not ever report to work while collecting salaries." (from USAID's Corruption Assessment of Yemen) yes, this week I am learning about Yemen...

since i'm learning new things every day at my new internship at Crown Agents USA , I figured i'll start posting some of the interesting things I discover. from mcc.gov: Paraguay has an estimated 300,000 registered taxpayers, of whom only 1,500 actually paid taxes in 2004. which helps me understand why Brazilians tend to say that if something is cheap or poor quality, it must be from Paraguay....

a song to make you happy

did i really see an alpaca as soon as i got out of the taxi? (yes, i wrote "llama" on the original post) cobblestone roads? 4 soles (it´s about 32 cents to the Sol here) for lunch or dinner, and 2 for breakfast? People dressed in the clothes i´ ve seen in history books? I get to see Machu Picchu on Saturday? 15 soles a night for the hostel? Adorable children running down the hills in their school uniforms? After tearing up at Extreme Makeover Home Edition while waiting for my room to be ready, I may end up crying of happiness. Lord knows I was ridiculously excited when I saw the Dunkin' Donuts in the Lima airport this morning. Hard to tell if the nausea I felt upon landing in Cusco was sugar overload or altitude sickness. There´s a reason I´ ve been dreaming about coming to Perú since I was 13. A week from today I will be somewhere between Miami and NYC. Yesterday I flew from Recife to Rio to Buenos Aires to Lima, and after arriving at midnight got back on a pla...

that i haven´t blogged at all lately - that´s due to trying to detox while at the beach, and also to the fact that this site was down and deleted half of my blog entries, so i don´t exactly trust it anymore. anyway, i´m coming home 12 days from today (the 22nd), and will be in Havertown for a couple days, then apt hunting in DC and hopefully visiting my best friend in Charlottesville. since i last wrote, i moved from that hostel in the middle of nowhere outside Salvador to one in a great neighborhood super close to the beach, and stayed there 3 nights. on Sunday i took a 10-hour bus ride to Maceio and was amazed at all the palm trees while we drove (like, forests of them). Maceio lived up to its reputation (given to me by a friend from Georgetown) - i stayed 2 nights in a slightly stinky hostel and then 2 in a great pousada one minute from the beach, and got plenty of sun. now i´m in Recife, and will be here until i fly to Lima on the 14th. from lima i´ll go to Cusco from the 15th to t...

happy august everyone! i am finally in northeast brazil , which is the area of the country that originally got me interested in studying brazil in the first place. i arrived in Salvador yesterday, excited to stay at my hostel close to the beach....only to discover that really the only thing near the hostel IS the beach (and a supermarket) and it takes at least 1/2 to get to the center of the city. that ´s what happens when you book hostels online. :) i think today i will go to the Barra area of Salvador and check out two hostels that are in a fun neighborhood and transfer all my stuff there tomorrow. rio was uneventful overall - it stopped raining Sunday night, so i went out to dinner with Priscila and Edna, and then Monday went with Priscila to work, wandered the Jardim Bota nico a little bit, had lunch with Pri , wandered a bit around the center of the city that i got to know pretty well when i took classes there in January, and then took the ferry home to.............take a n...

http://picasaweb.google.com/emilyrindone/ParanaguaCuritibaSaoPaulo at fla's house in Sao Paulo - it's been great. have to run but will write more later.

so annoyed with myself because after reallizing that posting the long blog entry i just wrote was taking a really long time and copying it so i wouldn´t lose it, my tendency to multitask got the best of me and i hit ctrl+C to copy another link and lost everything i´d spent the last hour writing. so in summary... i took lots of pictures in florianopolis on a boat trip that was really fun. here´s the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/emilyrindone/Florianopolis amazing dance show in joinville - i even took the time to translate the description from the program because it was so unique. here´s the website for the dance company if you´re curious. http://www.quikciadedanca.com.br/index800.htm i´ve gotten sicker since i got to curitiba and got some antibiotics today. spent most of the day on a boring train ride to Paranaguá that lonely planet recommended instead of exploring beautiful curitiba and am annoyed that i spent $63 (twice what the guide book said it would be) on a ride i didn´t enjo...

yay for cyber cafes that let me download Picasa. here you go! http://picasaweb.google.com/emilyrindone

and while this super new computer let me copy the pics from my camera directly on to the computer, the security settings are set so that i can´t download ANYTHING that will help me upload pictures any faster than a snail´s pace. So, I will add a few pics to this blog (if i figure out how) and try to get you the rest later. so the falls....no words for them. I liked the Brazilian side better for the panoramic view, and for the fact that you can stand like 10 feet from the Garganta del Diablo (where the most powerful water is) and get splashed by it rather than just looking at it from above. may have been the coolest thing in nature i have ever seen. when i was eating lunch some butterflies hung out with me for a while so i took some up close pics of them too. the Itaipu Dam was pretty impressive - the sound and light show was short and cheesy, but there was a short documentary that gave the history of it being built and how it produces 90% of Paraguay´s energy and 20% of Brazil´s, et...

at 12:15 i embark on a 20+ hour journey to Iguazu Falls...and it will all be worth it. we´ll see if i can overcome my typical motion sickness and read some on the bus; if not, i will be watching lots of movies (provided they show more than one) and dozing off and on, and hopefully my ipod will keep its charge. Co rdoba has been relaxing...it was so cold the first day and a half that i stayed inside a fair amount - thus the pictures i uploaded - if you didn ´t get the link let me know - and finally invested in a scarf and gloves. of course yesterday it was a lot warmer and i didn ´t need either piece of warmth equipment at all, but they may come in handy until i get to sunny Rio. I took a few pictures as I explored the city, and realized that maps are often deceiving - walking from " nueva cordoba " where i am staying to the center of town takes maybe 10 minutes. i´m nearly finished Love in the Time of Cholera - they´ ve boarded the ship, for those of you that have read i...

officially. as in, it snowed yesterday and today. i´m wearing a longsleeved shirt under a shortsleeved shirt with a hoodie and a fleece over it and i´m STILL cold inside this internet place. i am going to have to break down and buy a scarf and gloves even though by the weekend i should be in warmer weather. but i´ ve been thinking that it´ll get warmer for the past few days and have been wrong, so it´s time to spend the pesos on the warm paraphernalia. the only problem is that today is Argentina´s independence day, so most stores are closed. please keep in mind as you read this that i haven´t had anything besides most of a pack of Maria cookies (i don´t really know how to describe them - they are thin and a little sweet and great with hot drinks) since about 7pm last night. you all deserve a proper update so i´ll do what i can before either 1)my fingers freeze or 2) my stomach starts growling out loud. when i last left you (before the 21 wines in 8 or so hours email) i was about t...

and the apostrophe key on this keyboard doesn {t work. (case in point). other than that, though, life is good! Sunday morning I went to the famous fair at Plaza Dorrego , but it was way too touristy for my taste, so i didn {t stay long. Caught the bus to the bus station and bought a ticket for an overnight trip to Mendoza - about $60 including dinner and breakfast, which i figured was a great deal since i was traveling and having a place to stay at the same time. Headed from the station to the Buquebus ferry terminal and caught a ferry to Colonia ...and had my first "apparently i don{t understand spanish as well as i think i do" or "i don{t ask enough questions" experience of my trip - i had thought that the combination ticket i bought allowed me to get off in Colonia , hang out for a while, and then head to Montevideo, but the bus to Montevideo ( MV ) was waiting directly after i got off the ferry....and figuring i was kind of exhausted for an afternoon of wander...

well, sort of. tomorrow i plan to take a ferry over to Colonia and Montevideo, in Uruguay, and stay the night, but i´ll likely stay one more night in BsAs before I head to Mendoza on Tuesday. I´ ve seen a lot in the past 48 hours... yesterday I did head to the cemetery in Recoleta , and found Evita´s tomb...nice and understated, although there were plenty of plaques on it. It´s a neat cemetery, and I sat down and journaled a bit before I decided I was hungry. Ate in a restaurant not really worth mentioning, and then had my first taste of Argentine gelato - which they say is supposed to be as good as Italy´s because of the Italian influence here. It was pretty good. Found some more wide avenues to walk around, went inside the Modern Art museum for about 20 minutes (i´m still not big on museums...), and then headed over to Palermo, which is the most ´bohemian´ area of town. Lots of cute boutiques, cute buildings, nice cafes....sat and read for a while. Took the Subte back to near (...

why people rave about BsAs, that is. i learned today that staying the ´old´ section of San Telmo means i´m staying in the area with the skinny streets with not much life....i got out farther north and west today and it´s a totally different city. wide avenues, lots of trees, culture.... at my boyfriend´s good suggestion i´m going to wait a few days to write more so that i can write a significant blog entry, but i forgot to share this observation yesterday: -the stoplights turn from red back to yellow before they turn green. i have a feeling that would confuse me if i was behind the wheel.

got a good night´s sleep so i headed out of the hostel before 10 this morning. kinda tired now, but here are my initial thoughts about this city: -as i mentioned before, it has a very European feel to it (i´d read that somewhere before, too.) Avenida Florida feels like walking somewhere in Madrid. -people don’t clean up after their dogs. i´m sure that will catch up with me soon. -their meat is indeed very good. i paid the equivalent of about $6.50 for a good piece of steak today, and plan on going to this place called Siga la Vaca (follow the cow!) tomorrow where it´s an all you can eat kind of place. mmmm meat. -substantial pollution here. more than any other foreign city i´ve visited. -shopkeepers and waiters are very friendly and curious - always asking where you´re from, making little jokes, etc. -the Mothers of the Disappeared (look them up if you don’t know your Argentine history) still march around the Plaza de Mayo at 3:30 on Thursdays. i was there around that time, but another...

my flight from Miami didn´t take off til 1:20am or so, so I got in to Buenos Aires (from here on BsAs) around 11am. A private car drove me directly to my hostel for about $25...and then when I got there they didn´t have room! Luckily another hostel in the Hostels International chain was just 4 blocks away ( Tango City , and they had plenty of space. The cost is about $8/night, with breakfast AND dinner included, and they have all sorts of activities you can participate in. Tonight is a ´tango experience´but i´m not sure i´ll be up for much after traveling so i think i´ll find a tango show on my own later. not much else to report yet except that BsAs feels like a European city so far, which means I feel comfortable already....and staying in a dorm-style room means i´m sure to meet some interesting people.

Buenos Aires is only one hour ahead of here (DC) so the jet lag shouldn't be too bad, and maybe it won't be hard to catch some of you online (if i make time for that). :) less than 3 hours til take off!

Obviously up late on my last night in the states. Sleeping til noon will do that to you. :) So tomorrow night at 7:23pm my flight leaves for Miami, and i head to Argentina just before midnight. For at least the first four nights, I'll be staying in the historic San Telmo section of Buenos Aires, at the Hostel Inn. From there it's on to: in Argentina Cordoba Mendoza Iguazu Falls in Brazil (places I'd like to visit) Rio Grande do Sul Rio de Janeiro to see Priscila again Sao Paulo to see Fla's family Minas Gerais Brasilia (maybe a networking experience there!) Salvador de Bahia Recife in Peru Cuzco/Machu Picchu Lima as you can see, i don't have many firm plans....but i'm excited about that. excited to speak spanish and portuguese, have some time to myself, meet other world travelers.... i'll write more when i'm on the other side of the equator!

I leave a week from today for my 9 week trip through South America! Right now I'm sitting in my mess of a room, trying to figure out how to prioritize which things to do first. More soon!

Pizzeria Paradiso, Georgetown - m4w - 32 Reply to: pers-301463305@craigslist.org Date: 2007-03-27, 3:56PM EDT Looking for Emily, the bartender---We started to small-talk about Georgetown...You're a Latin American Studies Master's Student, I'm an English teacher...I should have asked (and flirted?) more than I did. Love to hear more about you and your studies... Plus, there's the GU-Ohio State game on Saturday....

and mixed feelings about coming home...i have definitely gotten much better at portuguese, and i think a couple more weeks here would make a big difference...but i´m really ready to get back to my life in DC too. I will upload my pictures when i get home and send you guys all more info about the last week of my trip!

one to go. i think i´m making decent progress - definitely feeling moore comfortable speaking, and i went out with Priscila and some of her friends last night and they all said i speak really well...hopefully i´ll make the most of my next 5 days of class. i emailed the director to see if it was possible to put me in a class with more of a focus on speaking, rather than just grammar out of the book that i can pretty much learn on my own, so we´ll see. the challenge of being in a small class is that if one person doesn´t understand, or is slower, it holds everyone back...and i feel like the class isn´t as fast paced as i want it to be. nonetheless, it has been a good investment! it´s been a rainy week, but i have wandered Rio´s downtown a bunch. the one afternoon it was actually sunny i hadn´t brought my bikini, and since i take a bus and then a ferry ride across the bay to get home, which takes about an hour, i decided to just sit at a table on the beach at Copacabana, drink a bee...

more than just alliteration...it really is beautiful. i wonder if it is the hilliest country in the world (or if hilliest is a word, for that matter). despite an 8+ hour car ride that should have been maybe 3 from the beach to the airport yesterday, the scenery has been gorgeous -- the beach i stayed in near Ubatuba was very secluded, not super touristy since it´s so hard to get to and i´d guess you have to have some money to rent a house there...we stayed at a house of Flavia´s family friends that they´ve known all their lives which is about a 2 minute walk to the beach. It was fairly rainy for most of the time i was there, but i managed to get some funky tanlines none the less....i´ll be sure to share pictures when i can. seriously, that´s the one thing i really want to avoid each time and i always end up getting them. i did buy a brazilian bikini...but the least skimpiest you might ever find. here even hugely overweight women walk down the beach wearing next to nothing, and no o...