Hi world. Happy New Year. Go ahead, hate me. It probably won't happen as much as I hate myself for once again not updating in yet another 2 months. How am I even?!?!
It probably comes as no surprise that one of my New Year's Resolutions is to get caught up in this. I really don't want to skip months of stuff happening, so I'm gonna put in the effort to actually get through everything from the past. This post, though, I feel like I should get the most recent weeks over with instead of starting directly after what I'd been talking about last month, since we were in Mexico last week.
Yep-er-ooni! The day right after my last final, we got on a plane to Mexico and came back Christmas Eve. (I didn't throw up on the plane either time, thank goodness, and the second was just about the smoothest landing I've ever been in! Now I know that eating chips and being distracted by a game while going down does wonders for my stomach.) Unlike the couple other times we went to Mexico since I started this blog, it was just about a week instead of three, and we also had Captain with us! And it is the first time we've gone during Winter Break (though I heard that we'd come in December once when we were babies, which I guess doesn't really count)!
Plan for this post: Add to something I'd mentioned in the last post in case I forget to later, then start at Finals Week until the present (with, hopefully, an official record of my 2018 Resolutions). That'll wipe out three weeks and a wee bit more, which is super cool.
Okay, remember the list of my four "Sanders Sides"-esque characters? A little bit after posting, I started working on what their names would be. I ended up deciding that I wanted them to all be flower-related (but not all lily-related specifically because that limited my options more), and that I wanted them to sound good in an American and Mexican accent. After a whole lot of deliberation, this is what came out:
Adult/Mestiza=
Rosalind ("pretty rose"). I got this from wanting to give her something related to my career interests; when I came across the name Rosalind Franklin, it was suddenly super obvious. I'd considered modifying to Rosa or Rosalinda for the ease of saying it in Spanish, but I didn't want all the characters to have the same ending on their names, and it just seemed to fit a little more as Rosalind. Appearance-wise (will I ever attempt to draw them? Who knows), I think she'd stick to having her hair in a braid (they probably won't be static about hairstyle, so it'd change between normal braid, side braid, twin braids, etc.) and wear the things that make me feel a little more grown-up, like blouses with pencil skirts, flannel/blouses with dark denim, maybe dangly earrings?
Kid/Creep=
Azucena (lily/iris, "innocent heart", "white and pure"). This is, of course, heard more in Spanish-speaking countries (though it comes from Arabic, which is cool). (I ended up seeing/hearing the name a couple times while in Mexico this year when I don't remember ever hearing it before. Weird how stuff works out like that.) Besides having appropriate meanings for her traits (aligning with the innocence of children and the irony of her being creepy sometimes), it also reminds me of "azucar", the Spanish word for sugar (probably from Arabic, too, from the sound of it). She'd probably be called Cena (hehe, "dinner") more often, though, since it seems like it could be a bit of a mouthful. Appearance would definitely be pigtails and half-space buns (I didn't know they're called that until recently?) and that kind of thing, along with... Hm. I suppose there'd be some dresses, though I didn't really wear dresses outside of church and special occasions as a kid, and there'd be more colors. Now that I've slowly gotten rid of more of my really old shirts, I have less access to those kinds of things, but I could probably do my best with the stuff I've still got that's pink, related to Hello Kitty/cartoons, etc. and have something sufficiently girly/childish to work. She'd be the most likely to wear my old Claire's jewelry and the like.
Love/Fangirl=
Florie (from Flora- you can figure that one out). It seemed kinda weird to give someone a name that doesn't really have meaning beyond "flower" (even though I know someone named Flor- don't tell her I said that), but the opportunity for a nickname made it sound more... namey, I guess (and helped with the "not same ending for all the names", even if it is a nickname-name). It gives me a cheerful and artsy vibe, right where this character would be just about all the time (besides when she was crying over angsty fanfics, but let's not talk about that), yet it also seems open enough to interpretation and different personalities that she wouldn't really be held down by certain expectations like the name "Azucena" would. I think she'd wear hats- since my hat collection continued to grow this year, she'd have a lot to work with and show off. She'd also be more inclined to wear braver outfits, and she'd be the sole owner of my anime T-shirts among the four.
Tomboy/Insecurity=
Calla (type of lily, "beautiful"). Okay, two still ended up about lilies, but picked for good reasons. What got me to choose this one is not wanting a boy-ish name for the tomboy (felt kinda cliché, and more realistic for her to end up with a pretty girly name, I think) and the
alternate meaning- if spelled Cala, it fits Spanish pronunciation and also lines up with the Arabic word for "fortress". I dunno, having something about this character being tough despite being made of insecurity sounded really nice. She just leaves her hair down (loose low ponytail when necessary), and wears a lot of T-shirts (especially my Spider-Man shirts) and my black fishnet gloves (which Florie would occasionally steal). If she wore any jewelry, it was probably most often black and/or Spider-Man,
Alice in Wonderland, or
Nightmare Before Christmas-related. I hope she'd wear If she ever wore anything besides a T-shirt (like a dress- thinking along the lines of the black and dark blue Alice dress I own), it was probably from Hot Topic.
I realized later that I'd also kinda neglected to consider the spiritual aspects of these characters, considering that's a pretty big part of me too. I found that Azucena had a strong faith (because a childhood experience fueled and continues to fuel my testimony in prayer), Florie tended to flip-flop between doing stuff to add or distract/detract from testimony (probably distract more often, though, because she gets distracted a lot), and Calla cares the most about increasing the testimony. I also feel I should mention that Azucena looks up to Rosalind and my sister fiercely (because, even more than I do now, I would follow my sister around like a little puppy when I was little- she was my best friend and my biggest role model), and Calla plays music more often than any of the others.
Whoo, I think that's everything for that now. (Oh, maybe I could say now that I finally let myself go somewhere I never thought I would- I tried reading a Sanders Side fanfic a few days ago. Even worse, I
liked it. I still just don't like shipping anybody with anybody [though I've heard there's such thing as Roman x Roman, which is probably hilarious], but the fic had a lot of good stuff about it that made me press on. It was angsty, heart-breaking, cute, and Roman played a part even better than I could've ever imagined! I don't know how to feel about how I still don't have a favorite character in Sanders Sides... But now I like all the characters even more after that fic. Maybe I should just say that Thomas is my favorite and be done with it.) Now onto Finals Week!
Wait... first thing on the list for that week needs more explanation. Okay, so I met this guy who I have just now decided to dub Math Nerd (because he's a math ed major, but I'm just doing the name teasingly) while I was- ironically- doing my math homework on a couch in the student center on campus. He came by and said that he was doing a podcast project about different students' opinions on math (AKA if it's important and stuff), so I gave a surprisingly eloquent answer about math about how it's one of the ways to explain things about the world (since that's one of the big take-aways I'd gotten from math camp back in high school, that some people think better in words and others in numbers, and they're both valid and important ways to express the same thing), and we talked a bit more because he was impressed by my coolness (I know, how could he
not be impressed?) and then he asked me if I wanted to go out for lunch with him sometime. Despite how I was supposedly not gonna date this year, I ended up saying yes. I mean, partly because I was startled because I'd only known him for 5 or 10 minutes, but also... I dunno, he just seemed like a cool guy, and there wasn't really any harm in saying yes. Of course, that was a little worrisome, because that's exactly what I'd thought with that kid (Brandon) I went out with in the summer...
Thank goodness, he turned out to be pretty different. He kept his space besides when we hugged at the end of the dates, and didn't go saying stuff that felt like he was already assuming we're boyfriend and girlfriend (though the girl who got our orders definitely was thinking "This is a date"). He was chill and easy to talk to, and both of us were excited to keep the conversation going. It felt a lot less like what I thought dates were like, it was more like we were just new friends wanting to get to know each other more. We talked about our families, interests, and made lots of silly jokes.
The first date was going to a pizza place off-campus for lunch, and he'd walked me to my next class afterwards. The one after was Monday of Finals Week, spent by going bowling (I won the game, doing better than I expected, but only by 10 points or something) then getting a little snack at Kneaders (I've never been to a Kneaders before!). He found out just how germaphobe I can get about sharing food, but he still convinced me to try a bit of his drink before he started drinking it himself (it was like hot chocolate, but didn't use cocoa? It was pretty good, since it tasted like white chocolate and raspberries). I had a fantastic cream cheese brownie that made me glad I didn't live close enough to a Kneaders to gorge myself with one of those daily.
I don't really know what to say besides that I had a lot of fun (
now I get what my mom and sis were talking about) and we'll... just have to see where this goes.
Oh, I also talked to my adviser that day, and one of my questions was... were there actually other people on campus in the same major as me? And thus, I found out there were 54 of us in total declared as a Cellular/Molecular Biology major... which is kinda weird to think about. I didn't realize I'd be in that much of a minority major-wise, which feels almost embarrassing, but I also kinda like it... At least I know there's not really
that many people that I'd be competing with when I'm trying to get a job, I think?
After that, I mostly just tried to study my butt off for my finals. I managed to get an A in chem, B in biology (I'm gonna check out what I got wrong for that one because I was hoping for a bit better, but my grade got massively curved so I still ended with an A), and 100% in trig(!!!). That means that I barely made it through the semester with As for everything!... except my bio lab. That one's an A- just because I hadn't checked the deadline for rating individual contributions in my group. I was
this close to maintaining a 4.0, which would've been sooooooo cool. *slowly facedesks miserably*
Right after my last exam, I went to try to get my room clean and have everything I could possibly want to bring for Mexico or chilling at my mom and dad's place. (I'll be honest, there's some stuff I still haven't bothered to touch, and we're going back up to my apartment tomorrow... Oops. The struggle to be useful is real.) I also ran up to campus again to meet with my Fiction Writing professor so she could pass me back my last assignment.
I might as well talk about it now, that... the most astounding thing ever happened for my last short story in that class. I'd struggled a lot to write it, and spent hours on it, and it still never got even close to a point where I felt it actually made sense and that it was good. The first draft was missing explanations, and both drafts were missing a consistent POV and letting the characters speak for themselves in the right way (yeah, I still get so wordy with the narration, something I think Carter needs to work on too). I felt like I was kinda reaching a new low in my writing, and proving that I wasn't actually getting any better (or, at least, that the deadline was making getting any better in time a near-impossible feat). I figured it was my own fault, too, because I was trying to do something different with the POV (make it more omniscient and objective, not delving into thoughts) just to prove that I could (when I knew it wouldn't entirely work out) and come up with the backstory
as I wrote, which is great for discovery and all but not so much when you want to have a coherent story completed within a couple days. Everyone who read it in the class all confirmed what I already knew (though they went on longer than I was expecting about the good things about the story, which I hadn't expected, and it meant a lot more than I think I could ever express),
except the professor. Even more than my previous stories, her comments seemed focused on entirely different things than my peers, and she apparently loved the story?!?! She'd mostly just wanted me to clean up the writing style! (Well, and admitted that the POV was a problem, of course, but it wasn't her focus). She even went as far as to tell me that she wanted me to submit this story into a student competition advertised on flyers in the building! She'd repeated that on the last day of class the previous Friday (where she brought us soda and bagels from Einstein Bros. and they were delicious), and I asked her a little more about what kinds of changes I should be focusing on so it could stand a chance in the competition (the winners would be put into a little literary journal). I was supposedly gonna work on that over the break, but I really couldn't get myself to do that... I think it might be because it was technically school-related and my brain hissed at it like a vampire at the sun. I've got the entirety of this month to submit it, so I'm hoping I'll be able to take advantage of the light couple weeks of the semester to hunker down and try to make the story as good as my professor thought it was (or had the potential to be).
Anyway, I ran back home, shivering and excited and anxious about the short story, and tried to finish up everything before my dad got here. Everything but washing my dishes got done, so he just stood by and chatted with me while I did that. We ended up going to the campus store for the calculus book I needed for next semester, then started the drive back home. We listened to classic rock/grunge/etc. and talked about who knows what random things, and we also stopped at an Amish store that my dad wanted to check out (and shared a sub sandwich to go that was pretty good). Once home, I ended up hanging out with my sister for a while, checking that we had everything for Mexico and making food for right then and watching
Corpse Bride (take that, Ash!) and such. It was pretty nice, just hanging out with my dad and sis, because things were about to get cray-cray the next day-day.
So yeah. CapSis and I did the whole thing with the airport and plane, and when we arrived we were quite exhausted (and irritated because the people on the plane hadn't given us the little paper you're supposed to fill out to give to customs, so we got held up a lot longer than necessary to get that done). Nonetheless, we all filed into the car with my aunt and cousins (and I ended up basically sitting on top of everyone in the backseat because there wasn't enough room) and while everyone else chatted, Captain was just staring out the window, fascinated by Mexico City (none of us blamed him). I still kinda was, even after all this time, more-so because we ended up going through a couple areas my sis and I had never seen before. Cap got the chance to see nice parts, not-so-nice parts, and the overall insanity of traffic in the city on his first day, which apparently rattled him a lot ("I'm never going to complain about traffic back home again," he swore). It was nice to see that he was already getting to see the differences in culture and enjoying it, despite being tired as heck and scared for his life on the road.
Though I still didn't talk all that much in the car compared to all the other women, I actually
did participate in the ongoing conversation more than I ever have before. It was so weird, because I'd rarely been particularly comfortable talking to this side of my family, especially the adults; apparently, I've finally become a bit more comfortable after all. Likely because I've improved the slightest bit at Spanish over the years, and maybe being an adult myself (and having to learn to adult a little at college) helped too? I dunno. Whatever the case, it's honestly a bit of a relief.
The next day we all ended up going to my little cousin's birthday party for the day... which people were not happy about. Especially my sister. Which, I mean, I totally understood, because she didn't want to use time where she and Cap could be exploring something new and unheard of in the US instead of being at a fun center, nor letting him get a little overwhelmed by meeting a lot of my family at once at their craziest... I ended up spending quite a bit of the time at the party hanging out with one of my other little cousins (I don't think I have given them nicknames, huh?... Sorry, fam), the one who loves Mario and El Chavo and is one of the youngest of the cousins (not sons/daughters of the cousins, like the birthday boy), just talking and bowling (along with CapSis) and stuff, so at least we still had some fun.
Later that day, one of our adult cousins decided to make it up to us by taking us to Coyoacán. We got some really yummy street snacks, saw a whole motorcycle gang gathering with people dressed like biker gang Santas, watched a guy dressed up and dancing like Michael Jackson (and my sis and cousin got invited to join in the act for a bit, which was way cool), and went on a little trolley trip that went through the streets of the town and a lady narrated some local legends (which were in general pretty weird, but I liked a couple of them). CapSis were pretty in love with the place, saying that they'd like to live there someday.
Next day, another cousin (probably have mentioned her before, that she knew more about American culture and loved Hello Kitty and such? She was one of the adults in the family I'd had an easier time talking to as a youngster) took us to Tepotzotlán (AKA Tepo) to go through the museum/old school church there and enjoy the stuff being sold nearby like snacks (got my first try of
gorditas de nata and now I want them forever), clothes, and trinkets. Captain probably got the most clothes-wise, and seemed to really love the stuff he got.
There was also an old lady with pipe cleaner figurines (I got a grasshopper figurine of that kind in Querétaro years ago) that came up to us and pretty much got to selling one of them to us by... shamelessly flirting with Captain. Everyone kept cracking up, and he turned red every time something she said was translated to him. So yeah, I got a butterfly from her, and I doubt any of us are going to forget her selling point... (Captain loved this town too, but my sis teased that it'd probably be best to not live there since the old lady would surely find him again.)
After that was my sister's birthday! Since it turned out a lot of touristy places close on Monday, though, it was mostly just chilling and taking a break at my aunt's house. We all visited the internet for a while (I think just about the only time I ever did during our trip, though Cap was using data almost all the time to look at Imgur all the time, and I wondered more than ever how my sister could stand that), and my cousin made some delicious carrot cake cupcakes. ...Carrot cupcakes? Whatever, they were so good. We also ate some birria, too, if I remember right.
Oh, and I think I found out then that my nieces/nephews (I just don't get what to call the kids of my cousins) watch some pretty good shows, as they recognized the buttons on my tiny bag immediately. You know, the ones from Comic Con forever ago? They started naming off the symbols on Bill's circle and stuff like that. They didn't seem to recognize Doge, though, which I'm kinda thinking could be for the better, since that means they're not like my American cousins and entrapped in the dark world of internet memery at their young, delicate age.
They also educated me on
Yokai Watch, which sounds somewhere between
Pokémon, Ben 10, and
Natsume's Book of Friends. Weird.
Next day, we visited a
tianguis in a town on the way to Teotihuacán (I think the place was called Choyacuac or Coyoacuac, but don't quote me on it), where we ended up finding some more clothes, then me and CapSis went to see the pyramids. I had the fortune of stepping on one of the steps wrong literally the moment we were entering Teotihuacán, which didn't seem all that serious, but it hurt enough that I was like "Yeah, I guess I won't bother climbing any pyramids today." (It also hurt quite a bit the next day, possibly a little more, but at least the day after
that I pretty much felt fine again.) Captain, though, because he's a show-off mountain goat with rippling muscles, went up both pyramids like it was no big deal. Like, seriously, he went up and down the Sun pyramid (the
big one) in 10 minutes total. My sis and I were really mad. My sis went with him for the Moon pyramid, so he went a lot slower to keep at her pace and keep her steady. They also bought a Christmas present for Cap's parents, Cap's brother, and me (Aztec calendar, necklace, necklace, respectively). We ate good and cheap at a little restaurant just about right across the street from the ruins after. (Oh, and we also found out that there was a lady that gave an intro on a couple of the crafting methods of the Aztecs, like all the uses for the
maguey and how they sculpted obsidian and such, which was pretty cool.)
So you know how I like movies like
Corpse Bride and
Nightmare Before Christmas, right? And how my sis started getting me to watch some of Tim Burton's other famous works since I was... around 6th grade, I think? Yeah, so we found out that there was a recently-opened Tim Burton exhibit in Mexico City, and since the price was looking like it'd be a whole lot cheaper than if we waited for it to come around to the States (since it sounded like a travelling exhibit to me), CapSis and I went. It was really cool! It contained information about Burton's life and tons of cool sketches and stuff that none of us had never heard of, and had a really impressive collection of drawings from when he was creating and finishing movies and other projects, and of his own personal projects or even just random one-off doodles that were super cool to look at. Captain seemed to be in a really weird, quiet mood for most of it, though, and my sis and I weren't entirely sure if it was just because he was just exhausted (all of us were, considering not the most comfortable sleeping arrangements in the world were made available to us) or what... I'm hoping he still enjoyed himself at least a little bit, because that exhibit was one of the coolest ever. (Even better, my mom had found a couple T-shirts a girl was selling nearby that are totally
sick! One was a close-up of Emily from
Corpse Bride, another of Edward from
Edward Scissorhands, both in sepia and covering most of the T-shirt, and they seemed well-made too.)
Getting there, we'd just used an Uber (we got on Ubers about four times while in Mexico, which felt weird to me because I've never used one before, but it looked like it was generally a little cheaper and more reliable than normal taxis), but the way back involved using
public transportation. More specifically, I think we'd gone onto the
metro (they nearly shoved us off the train because it was so full!), then into a
combi to get near the house. Hey, at least Captain got to experience more about life in Mexico, right?
Thursday was another chill day, since my sis had ended up feeling too sick to really go anywhere for most of the day (and Cap probably needed to try to catch up on more sleep, the poor thing). And so, we were hanging out more with our cousins. One owned the apartment Abuelita was staying in (has same name as Cap, which is kinda funny), the other was the same that I was playing with at the birthday party. Besides doing stuff like playing on my DS with my little cousin and doodling other little games with him in my blue notebook (he was such a cheat, and he had to nerve to call
me one! I showed
him!), we also ended up going for ice cream at the nearby La Michoacana (we went through all the effort of naming all the flavors, and Captain had the nerve to just pick Cookies and Cream instead?!?!) and going to Walmart for a bit. Though my little cousin can become a little... much sometimes, it was overall a pretty nice day.
We went to the Castillo de Chapultepec the next day, which involved a whole lotta public transportation again, to and from, though at least it was much less crowded at that hour. As usual, the castle was awe-inspiring and even more rage-inducing. (We saw a sign that seemed to say that it was built on top of where once stood a church, and that church had been built on top of the base of a knocked-down pyramid. We'd also learned that about the church at Tepo. Thank you, Europeans.) Los Niños Héroes is still the biggest piece of Mexican history that... well, I guess I can't really say it's my favorite because there's a lot of unjust death in it, but it's a piece I care a lot about. I feel like I'll end up starting a really long rant if I don't just move to the next topic, so let's press enter twice.
Much like when we'd visited the castle when I was 10 years old, we went up into Chapultepec's streets to look at all the vendors. We ate
tortas and a couple other snacks, and watched the
voladores right across from the National Museum of Anthropology, but... attempting to conquer that monster of a museum will have to wait another day.
Once back home, we chilled (or, in CapSis's case, slept), besides when one of my cousins came to visit (the one we call
el Güero) with his 5-year-old daughter. She's cute, but she also got cat hair in my previous Play-Doh and gave all the women in the house makeovers that resulted in all of us getting lipgloss inside of our mouths... And the sparkles hadn't entirely gotten off my eyes until the next time I showered.
Our final adventure took us to downtown Mexico City to look at Bellas Artes, go through the Torture Museum (man, traumatic and even
more rage-inducing towards early Europeans!), and look at some of the artisan works sold nearby. Ooh, and we also saw a couple groups performing tribal dances and gazed out over the Tenochtitlán ruins. They've uncovered a lot more of them since the last time we were in the area, which made it slightly less sad than then, but still- you guessed it- rage-inducing.
Abuelito, plus a couple aunts and cousins, were over at Abuelita's by the time we got back. I ended up listening to Abuelito talk for a while. It worked out better than usual, because he didn't immediately assume I knew who he was talking about, and seemed to not mind too much that I mostly didn't really know what to say back. Much like my dad, he just likes to talk. He told me about how he managed to get himself an invitation into a giant family reunion with one of the former presidents (because they share a last name), which he swears was a big reason why his retirement papers got processed within a couple hours instead of years. He also told me about a famous crime boss who once lived just a couple houses down, and finally got caught after his disappearance when the police found him taking a dump in a bush. At a point, though, I was getting sick of being in a just-about one-sided conversation and took my escape when one of my cousins appeared.
That night, CapSis and I got introduced to some cousins we'd never met before, which was weird since they were all in their twenties... They made good tacos.
That's pretty much everything vaguely important up to when we got back to the airport... I guess, besides that we were given
ponche a couple times, I tried to write Azul (and, inadvertently, something that was probably more TAU in general), and read a bit. I got most of the way through Book 1 of
The Zodiac Legacy (still don't get what the Boar's power had to do with boars, but
okay, Stan Lee) and a couple chapters into the Spanish version of
The Psychoanalyst by John Katzenbach. Oh, and we ate more junk food than I'd like to admit. Oh, and we thought it was interesting to see houses with Christmas lights and Christmas trees in major plazas (usually made of metal, though).
Ugh, I already miss Abuelita... I'm so glad we got to see her.
Ah! Going along with how I'd been trying to write some TAU, I also ended up doodling a bit. I really wanted to draw after the Tim Burton exhibit, seeing if I could kinda draw in a style inspired by his, and just kinda started thinking "Ooh, TAU+Tim Burton=awesome creepiness!" Right then, I realized that I'd never tried to draw Alcor before... so, despite not having any references, I tried to draw him. (I mean, you just gotta remember a couple major features and know basic human anatomy to get a picture of Alcor to come out right. Unfortunately, I done-goofed on the anatomy part the first couple times... I'm not even gonna show those doodles.) I also did a doodle of Henry, which I really liked except that for one tiny thing. I might insert a pic of it in my next post.
The best one by far was one I did on the plane back home. Just messed up a bit the nose, but it came out pretty good considering it was just pen.
(Bonus sepia filter, which seemed appropriate for Alcor's gold and black color scheme.)
I sent the doodle to the TAU blog last week, actually, and it appeared on January 1st, which I think is pretty cool. They also added a pretty funny caption, though it involves a swear word so let's not repeat it.
Okay, I know I said I'd talk about the weeks after within this post, but I'm gonna call it quits for today and post this then get to those over the weekend. I already took days to finish this one, and I'm not gonna let it sit un-posted any longer.
