Thursday, July 29

Sears Call Center

I woke up this morning with the sun shining in my face, at the same time I heard it thundering and raining outside. It was one of those really funky rainshowers. I then ventured downstairs to make some breakfast and found my mom talking on the phone. Every so often she would say "Repair Service", "Dryer" etc. I figured she was talking to the Sears automated call center to get someone to fix our dryer. Then she started yelling "Help" and "It's not the pump, it's the belt" into the phone.  After a couple of more minutes my mom just slams down the phone and makes this weird annoyed face. I just burst out laughing cause it was so funny. After agrueing a couple more times with the automated call service my mom finally gets someone on the phone. By that time my sister, my mom and I can't stop laughing. It was just way to funny. These automated call centers are simply stupid.

Today is chill day at this house. That means I get to finish reading "Angels & Demons" by Dan Brown. Awesome author. Bad thing he has only written 4 books so far and I already read 3. But my mom has this awesome bookshelf with tons of books. It's like heaven. Tomorrow we'll probably go to Astroworld and Saturday we will finally for the first time ever go the to the famous Clute Mosquito Festival. :) We'll see what that's all about.

Monday, July 26

Tubing and Pilates

So a certain friend and roommate of mine always talked about once she transferred schools she wouldn't be doing her homework or anything but instead would be tubing down the river all day long. I have been keeping a close look at her blog and noticed that she always plans but never actually ends up going tubing and she has been there about two weeks now. I think this is just hilarious. Geez Audrey freaking go tubing since you always talk about it. Oh man this is making me smile. My indecisive roommate. :) Love ya girl.

Another funny thing happened today when I went to my Pilates class. I tell ya that class is killing me. My stomach and my shoulders never hurt so much. Bad thing is that my shoulders are not suppose to hurt... *shrug*....*ouch* But back to the funny part. My instructor, her name is Joannie, could be Lauren's sister. She totally reminded me of Itz. The way she looked and talked and the way she could just burst out and do something totally funky at any moment. It made me smile but that smile quickly faded away when Joannie made us do the 20th corkscrew and my stomach cramped up. Good thing is though that I already lost 2 pounds. Wohooo, go me.

Thursday, July 22

Quotes & Random Stuff

Yesterday my brother's friend Ben from Germany arrived. He is gonna stay for about 3 weeks. This is gonna be interesting. Two 14 year olds in one house for that long ;)

I'm back on my workout plan. I went to Yoga yesterday and it almost killed me. I hate being out of shape. :/Today my sister and I are gonna go try out Pilates.  And then it's probably gonna be some running on the weekend and Pilates on Sunday and Yoga on Monday and so on and hopefully I'm gonna lose those 5 pounds rather quickly.

After I picked up my lil bro and Ben from the skatepark yesterday we saw this absolutely ridiculous truck. It was a red F-150 with a cover on the bed. But the ridiculous part was the rear spoiler on the cover. It was hilarious.

To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting.
~STANISLAUS I

 
I would like to beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms orbooks in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.
~RAINER MARIA RILKE

 

Tuesday, July 20

Germany

Finally back from Germany and wow I didn’t know this much could happen in two weeks. I think in a nutshell this year was the suckiest and funnest trip to Germany ever. It all started when we finally for the first time ever left the Amsterdam Airport. For years now we had been changing flights in Amsterdam but never actually stepped one foot outside of the terminal. Everything went rather smoothly until we got to the country with the worst post office clerks ever and the worst traffic ever: Belgium. That day was just simply horrible. My dad had to deposit money in a Belgium bank for the Visa the next day. But no bank in the EU-Capital wanted to exchanges dollars for euros. My parents ended up exchanging it at an American bank and then deposited the money at the post office. A nice post office where you draw number 115 and the number now serving is 23. My dad ended up going there twice which was cause enough for his dislike of Belgium post office clerks. This alone took a very very long time since parking spaces are nonexistent in Europe and my parents had to walk everywhere. Add to this extremely horrible traffic and the fact that you have been up for 30 something hours and all you want to do is sleep which my sis, my bro and I did for about 3 hours in the car parked somewhere in Brussels. The next morning we went to the US. Embassy to get our Visas which was no problem at all. The tricky part then was to get out of Brussels. It took us an entire hour to find the right Autobahn. At one point in time we were stuck in the middle of an intersection with cars all around us honking. Nobody cared if it was green or red or where the lines were. It looked like on of those chaos traffic scenes out of a movie. It was absolutely ridiculous. Before we could head back to Germany we had to stop by the Amsterdam Airport to pick up my dad’s credit card he had forgotten there.

In Hamburg we visited a couple of friends, went shopping, ate currywurst and had a wonderful surprise party for my parent’s 25th anniversary. The party was absolutely fun. My parents were totally surprised and even more surprised to see a couple of people at the party they hadn’t seen in years. Of course they hadn’t seen me in years either so it always was. " You are Gaby’s oldest daughter. My gosh in don’t believe it. You are so big now. " But all in all it was a very fun party.
We then drove down to stay with my aunt near Cologne. I finally got to see my second cousin Celina for the first time since she was born last December. She is soooo adorable. I’ll put pictures up as soon as my dad downloads them on the computer. And the wedding of my cousin was totally wonderful. Her dress was really pretty and the party afterwards was really nice too. The food was awesome as well. But it was a lot of organizing, stressful but fun. And again pictures will follow as well.


This morning when we got to Duesseldorf (the airport we normally fly out off) we meet my cousin (the other one that didn’t get married) who was dropping of her boyfriend that was flying to Greece. When we tried to check in the lady at the desk told us that we weren’t listed. We checked with another guy at a different counter and he told us that whenever the lady in Houston cancel the Amsterdam – Hamburg flight (which we didn’t need since we wanted to drive to Brussels from Amsterdam) our returning tickets (Duesseldort-Amsterdam and Amsterdam-Houston) were canceled as well. And I tell ya what’s a great feeling…standing at the airport and getting told your flight tickets have been canceled. The problem was solved rather quickly though because there were still five tickets available on the Amsterdam-Houston flight and instead of flying to Amsterdam we drove. The taxi only took two hours and we made it well on time for our next flight. You gotta love Europe for being so small sometimes and you gotta love the Dutch, they are a cool and beautiful people. The rest of the trip was pretty much routine. So all in all it was pretty cool and adventurous trip that ended with me getting a cold, losing my tan and gaining 5 pounds.
(5 pounds in 2 weeks, I still can’t get over that *shaking head* I gotta get back to the gym)

Monday, July 5

Highlight of the day

So the highlight (literally) for today is that I discovered my first grey or more like white hair. I am 20 for Buddha's sake!! Anyways, I'm blaming this unusual discovery on a pigment dysfunction of some sort. I can't be getting grey hair yet, that's impossible. Ok, gotta finish packing. I'll talk to everyone when I get back in two weeks. :)

Go Greece

Yesterday as I predicted the Greek National Soccer Team coached by Otto Rehagel (awesome German coach) won the European Championship by beating Portugal 1:0. SWEEEET
We also sat on our roof and watched the fireworks at Dunbar Park. It was quite fun and I'm sure crazy looking with the entire family sitting on the roof. Later on we went to the beach and blew up a couple of our own fireworks. Including a homemade bomb that Brian made. It was pretty sweet and almost professional looking. Everybody from Lake Jackson was pretty much at the beach since it is outside the city limits and we got to see tons of cool fireworks including burning dunes. Later on at around 3 or so we went to IHOP. I love IHOP at 3 o'clock in the morning. :)

Today is my mom's birthday. We already had a very nice relaxing breakfast and later on I'm gonna make Danish Cheesecake for her. My mom is so cute. I love her.

Tomorrow I gotta get up at 3:30 am to fly to Europe. We are flying over Detroit and have a 5 hour layover there. (I hate Northwest Airlines) and then we will fly on to Amsterdam. And for the first time in about 5 years I will actually get to see more of Amsterdam than just the airport. I have been to the airport at least 20 times but never to Amsterdam itself. Anyhow, we will get our rental car there and then visit one of our Dutch friends on our way to Bruessels. We will stay a day or so in Bruessel and get our Visa renewed (with the exploded guinea pig picture) and check out the city for a bit. Then it's back to Hamburg. We will stay there for a bit, celebrating my sisters Bday and going shopping etc. Then we will drive down to Cologne and Visit my family, go to my cousins wedding and Celina's Baptism. We will fly back on the 20th. This sounds like one cool roadtrip with lots of parties. I can't wait.

Saturday, July 3

Nutcase

My brother is running around the house drinking hot chocolate and singing:" Have a holly, jolly Christmas, It's the best time of the year." in the middle of the freaking summer. And my Dad called me an exploded guinea pig when we were taking passport pictures. I tell ya my family is a nutcase.

LOTR

Yesterday my parents and I went to Houston to listen to the Houston Symphony Orchestra play the Lord of the Rings Soundtrack. It was unbelievably beautiful. I love the Orchestra and Lord of the Rings.

"A free heart is a heart delivered from the gusts and the storms of the affections and passions; the assailing touch of grief, wrath, hatred, fear, inequality of love, trouble of joy, pain of sorrow fall away from the equal heart, and leave it a thing large ,calm, luminous, divine." ~Sri Aurobindo

Friday, July 2

Germany

We can finally fly to Germany. My dad called this morning and said that they are gonna sent the travel letter to Germany so that we can reenter the country when we come back on the 20th of July. When my mom told me I replied:"Wohooo, I'm excited" and my sister replied:"Wohooo, Underwear" ...Just to make that clear. My sister and I love the store H&M, they have the best underwear in the world and the store only exits in Germany...I think there are a couple in New England too. But who wants to go to Boston if they can go to Germany. ;)

Since the weather today is absolutely nice and sunny I'm going to the beach with my mom and sister. Later :P

Thursday, July 1

Just a couple of random things for my daily update

Greece beat the Czech Republic in the semifinal and is now going to play Portugal in the finals. Wohoo, Go Greece. I predict that they will win cause Greek food is awesome.

I took my history final today, which means I'm done with history except that I still have to take an entire semester. I hate history.

We haven't gotten our travel letter that says we can leave the country yet. We better get it by Monday otherwise we can't go to Germany.

It finally stopped raining down here. About time after 18 days of rain. So tomorrow I'm going the beach. :)

In proportion as our inward life fails,
we go more constantly and desperately
to the post office. You may depend on it,
that poor fellow who walks away with the
greatest number of letters, proud of his
extensive correspondence, has not heard
from himself this long while.
~HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Wednesday, June 30

Free Stuff

My Dad somehow changed the phone service so that now it runs over the internet and it's a lot cheaper. My mom and dad were then arguing about if long distance is free or not with this set up and all my dad replies is:

"The only thing that's ever free is death and that's only for the person dying."

Even though it's sad all I could do was burst out laughing. That is ultimate wisdom right there.

Tuesday, June 29

Draft

Today as we were talking about the civil war in my history class our teacher mentioned that there is a bill in Congress right now that will reinstate the military draft by spring 2005. This draft would require everyone including women between the age of 18 and 26 to serve for 2 years. And college and Canada this time around are not a way to escape the draft. The reason why it is kept quiet is because of the upcoming election. Go figure, that's typical politics. Now the draft is most likely not going to happen because it would reduce the quality of the military, the training is too long and it would simply cost too much but just the thought that it might happen scares me. It really scares me.

Fun Times

I just got back from my roadtrip to DFW. It was fun and it was really good to see Amy and Lib and Lib's family. And it was really good to get out of Lake Jackson. Now just a couple of random thoughts.

Dallas rush hour sucks just as much as Houston's. Especially when you look down that hill on I 20 and all you can see is nonmoving cars all the way to the horizon. Ridiculous I say, absolutely ridiculous.

DFW floods just as much as Houston. It was amazing how one can have a lake in their backyard when there normally isn't one.

Toby is one crazy dog, but cute I have to admit.

$8.50 for the movies is just ridiculous but yeah for student discounts. $4.00 for the movies in the evening is awesome and both Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Terminal are good movies.

Grand Theft Auto has to be my favorite video game ever because I suck so bad at it, it's really funny to watch. Oh and the nail gun mode is awesome.

Car covered in tons of bumper stickers look kinda cool, Fort Worth's downtown is really cute, the Radio Shack Headquarters is insane and the guns up Jesus rocks.

Frisbee Golf is really cool too and once again it's another thing I suck at.

Oh and whoever orders 45 burgers at Wendy's at 10 o'clock at night should be shot.

Now it's time to read 3 chapters of history and go to class. Wohooo

Friday, June 25

Roadtrip

I'm going to visit Amy in Fort Worth today....Wohooo. It's gonna be fun.


Thursday, June 24

Wohooo

German riots after Euro 2004 exit
Thursday, June 24, 2004 Posted: 0836 GMT (1636 HKT)

HAMBURG, Germany -- About 150 German football fans went on the rampage in the northern city of Hamburg after their team was eliminated from Euro 2004.


You just gotta love those soccer hooligans. They never dissappoint you. Oh and yeah blame Cananda for the flooding down here.

Wednesday, June 23

Stupid Czechs

Ok, this is what I said in a convo to Laura during Germany's game against the Czechs today. "Give me Germany in the quarterfinals or give me death." Hmmm, I guess that means death. So I take that back. Instead I will just blame Canada. Blame you Canada that Germany can't get the ball in the goal. There, I feel much better now.

I hope my back is gonna feel better too after Yoga tonite. I love Yoga. Besides climbing it is my favorite....hmmm, you can't really call it a sport. But anyways I just love it.

July 6th my family will fly to Germany or to be more specific to Amsterdam. From there we will drive to Brussels and get our Visa renewed on the 8th. Then we will drive all the way up to Hamburg and chill there for a couple of days and then it's back down to Aachen for my cousin's wedding and the baptism of her cute little baby Celina on the 17th and then it's back to the US. It is all gonna be a lot of fun but it all depends on one simple, small thing. If we don't get our travel letters from the BCIS then we can't leave the country, which means we can't go. Stupid bureaucracy....y'all better make it quick.

Lately I have been feeling rather weird which I normally do over the summer. It's probably because I actually have lot of time to think, to contemplate which I usually don't do during the school year. I feel lazy, sad, yet grateful,lonely and once again trapped. I feel trapped not because I'm down here in Lake Jackson and all my friends are somewhere else, but because I somehow can't find a way to vent my feelings and thoughts. I have been writing in my journal every night to try to make some sense out of my thoughts and feelings. But it isn't really helping. I once again seem to be waiting....waiting for something...someone...but I can't figure out what. I just wanna be happy, truly happy, not just something that's temporary but it seems like a very long and difficult road to get to that point and I have been getting quite discouraged. I'm to the point of just giving up somehow. But then I came across this quote.

I learn every day of
my life, learn it with
pain I am grateful for:
patience is everything.
~RAINER MARIA RILKE


Patience truly is everything and it is something I don't posses.....yet.

Ok, now I'm depressed. Today is just not a good day. Yoga here I come. Time to relax

Tuesday, June 22

Blame Canada

My brother and I were talking about the Euro 2004 and I said that Germany absolutely has to beat the Czech Republic to get into the quarterfinals. My brother starts singing: "Stupid Czechs, stupid Czechs" then shortly after that switches to "Blame
Canada, blame Canada, blame Canada!" I thought it was hilarious, but it is a good strategy. If Germany doesn't make it to the quarterfinals then we can blame Canada.

Monday, June 21

The usual daily update.

The common sideeffects of every drug...tiredness and nausea. Not the best feeling in the world, but I'll get over it.

History test tomorrow. Should be just like the last one thus I'm not worried about it.

My brother and his girlfriend are really cute. They didn't see each other for an entire 10 days b/c Rachel was at some camp. My brother was in one of the grumpiest moods ever during that time and he gave Rachel the biggest hug at the movies today. Totally cute.

I had some extremely good seafood yesterday at Willie Joe's down at Surfside Beach with my entire family yesterday evening. I love seafood.

Visiting Amy in Fort Worth this weekend. Fun....

Oh, that reminds me. It's time to take my next penicillin. Yuck, I really hate those pills.

Sunday, June 20

Bunch of Quotes

The six cubit body
contains the origin
and the dissolution
of the world.
~BUDDHIST SAYING


"Whenever I meet even a 'foreigner,'
I have always the same feeling:
'I am meeting another member of the human family.'
This attitude has deepened my affection
and respect for all beings."
~His Holiness the Dalai Lama


With a wish to free all beings
I shall always go for refuge
To the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha,
Until I reach full enlightenment.

Enthused by wisdom and compassion,
today in the Buddhas' presence
I generate the Mind for Full Awakening
For the benefit of all sentient beings.

As long as space remains,
As long as sentient beings remain,
Until then, may I too remain
And dispel the miseries of the world.


A lot of friends have been writing about love, serenity, and happiness in their profile lately and it makes me really glad to see it. Life is just unbelievably awesome.

On a good note. My teeth are still doing great or more like the lack of my teeth.

On a bad note, German only tied Latvia 0:0 which means that we now absolutely have to beat the Czech Republic to get into the Quarterfinals. We shall see if that is possible.

Saturday, June 19

Iron Chef German

So I made some awesome chicken fricassee today. My entire family loved it. Maybe by the end of the summer I can call myself Iron chef German. Haha, that would be too funny. Anyways, this is only the first day after surgery and I'm already eating solid food. Go me. Anyways, my dad and I are gonna fix my computer. Later...