Filed under: Books, Random Observations | Tags: Books, diploma, hours, librarian, library, love, time, volunteer, work
Volunteering is something that many teenagers my age are acquainted with. In order to get a nice shiny seal on your diploma, you need to complete a certain amount of hours volunteering in places that the school deem fit. I think that the intended purpose of this is to teach you about self dedication and giving back to the community but the only thing that I’ve learned thus far is that I prefer painting flowers to butterflies on the cheeks of small children. Over the course of the school year I try to pick up a few hours here and there but a majority of my hours come from my gig a the library. Every summer since I started high school I’ve been clocking hours at my local library, playing the footman of the librarians.
On Tuesday I began my term and got to kick off the season by shelving the non-fiction book. Yeah! If you’re into the whole Dewey decimal system. (By the way it really isn’t fun if you haven’t caught my drift yet) According to this system each book is assigned a number depending on what genre it falls into. These numbers can be found on the spine of the book, but not always, and are printed in size 9 font. Dewey must have had fun creating his system because some of the genres were in the weirdest relativity. For example the books about love and umm… love making were right next to the books about coroners and death. I have to say though in spite of myself I actually had some fun. It was interesting to see what kinds of books people were checking out from the otherwise quiet section. Something that I found rather amusing was that a book called “How to Prevent Strokes” smelled like cigarette smoke. *sigh* The joys of irony.
I <3 Books (and libraries)
Filed under: Random Observations | Tags: anecdote, arizona, coop, eggs, green, illegal, little, men, mexican, mexico, story, travel, working
I don’t know why but lately I’ve been hearing a lot about aliens lately and not just the green ones either.I was talking with my Dad at the dinner table yesterday about his first job at a chicken farm and he told me about his fellow workers and their habits. Dad was born and raised in the Southwest and around the time he took this job he was living inArizona. Since Arizona is on the state borber line with Mexico more often than not you could find immigrants of illegal means about and working the low paying jobs, egg sorting being one of them. Immigration control made a show of going to these sorts of jobs and checking to see if everyone was on the right side of the border. The first time that control paid a visit to the coop blew Dad’s mind away. He was sorting through the eggs when suddenly he heard this whisle and all the Mexicans around him bolted. Apparently one of them kept watch for the cops and if he ever saw one of the sort he sounded the alarm and they would all crawl under the convery belt and hide in the chicken coops. This left Dad all alone in a room ful of egg when the officer walked in.
I’m not trying to diss Mexicans if that is what it’s coming of as, I’m just trying to wrap it around my head why people care so. Who cares if they creep over the border to work? They are doing the jobs that Americans wouldn’t want anyways. I think that it’s funny that the government is trying so hard to purge the country of them when they are the fundation of our economy.
I found this video this morning while surfing the web and I believe that it’ll produce a giggle or two. Ladies and gentlemen I produce our tax dollars at work…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nxHjA8QC18
Filed under: Photos, Random Observations | Tags: bazaar, collecting, collection, geeky, hobby, huge, lots, magic, mail, post, postage, Prague, stamps
One thing that I love about the bazaars here in Prague is that you can find some really fascinating stamps. One of my secret geek hobbies is stamp collecting and as an avid collector I’m always on the look out for interesting ones. I went to this one bazaar a few days and they were selling bags of stamps for 100 krowns, or about 5 dollars. I bought the biggest bag I could find and expanded my collection by 468 stamps (I counted them all… twice *_*) In this particular bag I definitely got what I was looking for, diversity. Some of the more memorable include the whale stamp from Russia, the Czech gun stamp and of course the near mint condition Adolf Hitler stamp. Grandpa, a fellow collector, took one look at it and said that one had some money on it. I thought that it was funny that money passed through some body’s hands in disguise and they didn’t even know it. One thing that I don’t understand about some stamp collectors is why they would collect one genre of stamps. Why would you only collect flower stamps and miss out on some cool Olympic stamp or a funny cartoon one. I love looking through my stamp collection because of the sheer variety of it. If you look through the pages you can see that the colorful, bright stamps of flowers and animals balance out the more sober, monotoned stamps of presidents and world leaders. It’s magical to see a stamp from Australia or Vietnam and think that a person wrote to somebody they knew from those places and now I have that connection they had together hidden away in my album.
Runners, and Castles, and Planes oh my!
Filed under: Random Observations | Tags: art, city, graffiti, metro, paint, scene, spray, wall
In all cities (especially the major ones) you will find some degree of graffiti; Prague is no different. When I was little I thought that any form of the vandalism was a hideous blemish on the face of this speculator city. I even had a plan about how some Prague officials would launch a citywide cleaning to get rid of all the graffiti, with me at the head (I was weird as a child I know) As I grew up I eventually began to accept graffiti as a part of life and even have started to appreciate it as an art form. I’m not talking about the little halfhearted scribbles on the side of the wall though, I mean the really artistic pieces that look like someone put some real thought into it. A fine example of this would be this picture that we saw the other day as we walked out of the metro station. I marveled at the graffiti and couldn’t imagine how someone could make such a detailed piece using only spray paint and a wall while also not being spotted. Of course my Dad told me that the artist was probably hired to paint it but I still like to pretend that they did it under the cover of night, painting and looking over their shoulder the whole time.
Feel the City
Filed under: Le voyage, Random Observations | Tags: beauty, Czech, finger, house, middle, naked, nose, nudity, observe, plzeň, taboo, trip, voyage, weekend
The Czech Republic is by no means a remote island in the middle of nowhere. I’m not sitting here in a mud hut typing while my Grandma runs around with a bone in her nose waiting to cook up the next missionary that comes to our door. But compared to the U.S., there are a few differences that I’ve noticed in my years traveling between the two. The other day ago my Mom cooked up some corn on the cob just for a change in cuisine. My cousin, Nickolka, absolutely refused to touch it. This, in part, is because of a tradition that goes way back. In the old days when people walked around barefoot and kings and queens were not just of legend, corn was grown and raised to be fed to the pigs. A family that was reduced to eating corn was flat out dirt poor. This symbolism carried through the centuries and for the most part it was considered low class to eat corn. Even now, when corn is not just grown for the piggies, many of the older generations still won’t eat it.
Another thing that I’m sure would shock the socks off of most Americans would be the ummm… provocative pictures found in the daily newspaper. On any given day in most papers, photos of women in various states of undress (From shirtless to birthday suit naked) show up, smiling coyly back at you. These bare boobed goddess’s appear on every page from the cover all the way down to the weather section. Personally I’m not bothered by it and I don’t understand why it would for some Americans. For a country that brags so much about being the land where everything is possible why is there such a taboo on nudity? I’ve heard someone say that it’s so not to corrupt the minds of children but quite frankly I don’t think they care. The naked body is completely natural and shouldn’t be treated like something that crawled out of the sewer. Everybody has one so why the big deal?
The last thing that I’d like to address before I ramble on much longer is the difference between pointing fingers. A typical American would point out something using their index finger. Not the Czechs. Most Czechs I’ve seen punch out their pin number, point out things and scratch an itchy nose all using their middle finger. This phenomena I have yet to get over. Every time my cousin points something out I smile and giggle behind my hand because for me she’s not pointing out a cool looking bird, she’s telling it to fuck off 
Filed under: Le voyage, Random Observations | Tags: cheese, Czech, english, Language, maso, story, thought
As a small child growing up in a bilingual household, I thought that everyone else spoke some version of Czechlish, a mixture of English and Czech. I remember once when my parents took me grocery shopping with them, I tried to charm a piece of peperoni off the deli attendant. She smiled widely at my childish chatter and when I thought that I had her buttered up enough I ventured my request; “Can I have some maso?” Maso of course means meat but that poor lady didn’t know that. Her smiling face went blank and she blinked twice before asking what I meant. I indigently replied “Maso, you know I want maso.” After my parents caught on to my plans they apologetically explained what I had meant to say.
Now that I’ve grown into my language boots I know when to use Czech and when to use English though I fall back into the habit around my siblings. I asked my brother a few nights ago when we were having dinner if he would like some “sýr on spaghetti” Of course my brother knew exactly what I was talking about and bounced excitedly in his seat as I sprinkled cheese on his dinner. For my family it is normal to start your sentence in one language and end it in another and it was this quality that got me thinking today. Without my Czech I would only be half a sentence. I would also be missing out on alot of experiences that have helped me become who I am today. Because of my mixed heritage that I am able to peer into both and live in a world somewhere in between. Everything that I can’t find in American culture I can find in Czech culture and for that I’m grateful.
Filed under: Le voyage, Random Observations | Tags: away, packing, Prague, run, sister, stress, trip
Just about 24 hours and we’ll be leaving for Prague! My mom set it up so that we will be leaving at 11 o’ clock… at night XD I quote my friend when I say je serai fatiguee, and for all you people who aren’t cool enough to take French that means you should invest in a snazzy French dictionary. Today was pretty much the predeparture stress day.My mom was freaking out about packing, ticket, luggage etc.(understandably cause I am too) and to add to the stress factor was my sister’s break for freedom. Right after lunch my sister, for this story let’s call her Thing 1, had a full blown melt down. Thing 2, my other sister, had apparently stolen computer rights when it was Thing 1′s turn and that set her off like a bomb. I don’t know if there were any horomones involved (because she’s at that age now) but there was screaming and yelling and much throwing of semi breakable objects. My poor mother must have gone into overload because from what I understand she locked Thing 1 in the bathroom and told her to chill out. This may sound like typical preteen behavior but stick with me my story gets better. Thing 1, still in a blind rage, throws open the window and crawls right. Mind you this is a small window I won’t say tiny but small and my sister is quite leggy so the fact that she did this without making a sound is pretty remarkable (not that I am encouraging this at all 
) Mom lost it and called Dad to ask him what to do about our little runaway (Both Thing 2 and I agree that she was going to call the police and decided not to) She was convinced that Thing 1 had run halfway to New York already (Cause damn can that girl run) and sent me to scout out the neighborhood for her. As it turns out that she was sulking on the far side of the house all along and hadn’t gone anywhere. And that’s pretty much my day in a nut shell We did go to this beautiful park but that’s a story for another day.
Filed under: Random Observations | Tags: cleaning, dust, float, got, mop, skin, zombies
and if you don’t I’ll share, happily. Since I didn’t have to go to school yesterday (hahaha school is out for the year) I thought that it might be a good idea to get some of my cleaning out of the way. Going with the no corner left behind technique, I started to scrub down my room yielding a damp towel and a trash bag. That was until I got to the dresser. Living on top of my dresser was a colony of little (For the most part), gray dust bunnies :O As I was uh… relocating my visitors I remembered an interesting fact; about 70% of the dust you have floating around your house is actually flakes of dead skin cells. It makes you wonder what the other 30% contains. Fairy dust perhaps? Or maybe dirt trekked from the monsters hiding in my closet (which I recently cleaned just to let you know) Or even, to put a Dr. Seuss twist to it, every speck of dust is an individual universe that drift in our universe which in turn is just another speck of dust floating around and landing on some wardrobe in a far off galaxey. Kind of puts things in prespective for you doesn’t it? All this thinking made me come to this strange conclusion about dust bunnies. If they are made up of 70% human skin cells which were, at one point alive then technically dust bunnies are zombies… So now doesn’t that motivate you to clean the house from top to bottom with a swifer mop. If your not careful the second you turn your back they’re going to get you!!!
Filed under: Random Observations | Tags: cereal, drive, Flash, prize, Star, Suprise, Trek
I don’t know how many of you have noticed but they are giving away free STAR TREKFLASH DRIVES in cereal boxes now! They look really awesome in a geeky, obsessed Trekkie sort of way. If you send in a mere 8 of these token located on the back of a certain cereal box then you receive your very own one-of-a-kind handy dandy flash drive. The only problem with that though is the final send in date is the 30th of June and I am leaving for Prague on the 16th, a place most likely devoid of said American name brand cereal products. Which means in the space of… what is that now 5 days ?6 days? I would have to eat a total of 5 boxes of cereal. I love cereal but I’m afraid I don’t love it that much…
If you think about it, the idea of putting a prize in the box of a product is simply ingenious. You could make millions giving away cheap, plastic toys that you could manufactor for a buck. The express “You have to spend money to earn money” definitely applies in this scenario I think. If, for example, you give away a series of toy cars in a box, people like me who are irrationally compelled to complete every series they own will buy dozens and dozens of those boxes in hopes of completing the set. Voila, the fondation of economics. I am pretty sure that at least once in your life you’ve purchased something just to get to the toy inside and don’t tell me otherwise cause you know it’s true
A familar tempting offer
