ooohh mexico, it sounds so simple i just got to go

today i was in one of those moods where you just want to look at old pictures and swim in sweet nostalgia. you see, right now i am in salt lake. alone. working. while all my friends are up at school. my life is not so exciting at the moment. which is fine, but it makes me extra susceptible to getting caught up in old, fun memories. so today, i escaped the biting cold winds of salt lake for a bit and paid a little visit to mexico!

mexico=best. trip. ever. a family friend of ours is part of this non-profit organization that builds houses for homeless families in mexico and needed some hands to paint these houses during my senior year. he called the man who had just taken a group of us to india and asked him if he could round up some teenagers to come down during spring break. a few weeks later, the india crew was on another adventure, piled in a few cars, and quickly on our way south of the border. we all pitched in money for gas and had arranged to sleep on some church members' floors. we spent easter sunday wandering around phoenix and then blasted "mexico" by james taylor nonstop after we crossed the border, hanging our heads out the window and screaming the lyrics.

it cost almost no money, it was spontaneous, and it was with my best friends. we could not have had more fun. waking up at the crack of dawn to paint so we could have more time on the beach and saying things like "we'll sleep when we're dead!" rolling ceilings and cutting edges. taking breaks to lay on piles of garbage and cardboard to get weird tan lines from the splotches of paint on our faces and shoulders. playing soccer with little boys who's families were receiving the houses. laying in hammocks on the beach, eating melted starbursts, and being too lazy to go inside for lunch. drinking 3 pina coladas a day. spending a day at a resort and alternating between the ocean and the jacuzzi 5o feet away. me and sarah being ridiculously excited to order pina coladas at the swim-up bar. having to bring our wallets because we were not staying at the resort and didn't have tabs to put it on. going to the local church one night for mutual. eating fresh shrimp every night and.....pina coladas. eating in a private room at the blue dolphin and loudly singing "the pina colada song" with the restaurant guitarist and not realizing that the only other people in the room were tom wilkinson and his wife.

mmmmmmm....spring break.

ok, got that out of my system.

bye, mexico.

hello again, salt lake.

RIRL: celeb edition

being the celebrity gossip queen that i am, i used to look forward to mondays- the day our people magazine subscription came in the mail. now we don't get people in the mail anymore, so i have to stand in the corner discreetly at the grocery store and read to my heart's content, after which i usually buy a pack of gum so as to not be the lowest of all grocery magazine-hoarding freeloaders. now that i work at a nail salon, i am selfish and seeing as i work the front desk when the mail comes, i get to read about halle berry's mud-slinging custody battle with her ridiculously good looking ex before the paying customers do. i know. i must be the devil. so if you are wondering who will be watching the oscars tomorrow with bells and whistles on and who will be composing mental lists of best and worst dressed celebs, that will be me. and yes, i will be watching by myself because my usual oscars companion- mom- will be watching with her friends in some fancy hotel room. (happy birthday mom, i hope you're happy your daughter will be watching alone!)

so on this oscar sunday eve, i wish upon everybody lots of sparkly dresses and handsome men, especially myself.

the moment i knew my mom was not always there to save me

i am really dependent on my mom. like, seriously. she always knows just what to do when i don't. when i am in a rut, she flies in with her supermom cape and saves the day. in high school, we would stay up late at night together working on posters, projects, election campaigns. (she may or may not have taken 100% credit on a few of these.) she packed my lunches, did my laundry. even in college, i talk to her every day, ask her opinion, ask her for a motivational speech before a big test. i'm sure she knows when her caller id says "rachael" that this phone call is screaming "HELP ME."

that's why my semester in china was really good for my independence. i realized, "hey, i can take care of myself!" i learned how to take charge of a situation and fix it without anyone's help. more than once, i had to step up and make decisions when i would normally ask my parents what to do.

well, the true test of my independence came when kindra and i were traveling by ourselves. we had to book train tickets, hostels, flights, all kinds of things that people usually do for me. i did not realize how many little details of traveling we had to take care of. (it gave me appreciation for all the people who normally plan trips for me.)

anyway, kindra and i had planned to spend over a week in yangshuo, the backpacker's mecca of china. we found a little hostel online that looked pretty excellent at $2.16 a night and booked it. we had been on a high for the past few days, doing nothing but stupid 19-year-old things and just loving out reckless little lives.

we got to yangshuo and the high was sucked out of us like a dementor's kiss.

side note: kindra and i love hostels. LOVE them. there's something about the laid back feeling, the awesome people you meet that would not otherwise meet in a secluded hotel room, the unknown of who your bunkmates are going to be. and if it's abnormally gross? we take it as a challenge.

but this was so past gross, it flew to the sun and back and then did cartwheels around gross. it was a compilation of a few rooms that literally sat inside the mountain, only accessible through a dark, stony, narrow alley. there was laundry drying on the front desk, but already had a fresh coat of dirt on it due to the roofless reception area. mold oozed out of the cracks in the walls and water dripped on the already-slippery steps.

we put our bags in our room and went into town, neither stating the obvious to the other, pretending it was all part of the adventure. later, while getting in bed having met none of our suite mates, a scandinavian man silently crawled into bed next to us. we gave each other weak smiles that said "yeah, there's a scandinavian man in our room, but that's what you get with a hostel." plus, there were three other beds, we weren't going to be alone with him. oh, don't worry, we weren't: a drunk chinese man and two drunk australian men stumbled in and collapsed on the floor, giggling and shouting.

i. was. petrified. two girls and four grown men, three of which were smashed out of their minds. i thought i would die. if not here, then in the creepy, secluded alley. i seriously have never been so terrified in my life. i didn't know what to do. kindra and i went to the main desk to see if we could switch rooms. the receptionist wasn't there. he later told us he was at the bar next door all night and apologized profusely.

i wanted my mom. i wanted to go home and cuddle with her and have her validate me on how scary it is to sleep next to three foreign drunks. but she was not there. i fell asleep, exhausted from worry.

the next morning, we sluggishly walked outside, fell into sticky plastic chairs, and just stared at each other. we can't stay here. i didn't know where to go, though. we'd already paid for our room and weren't sure how to find something else. we were not familiar with the city nor the language. i was so single-minded in the idea that i needed someone- an adult- to tell me how to do this, to tell me how people normally handle situations like this, to guide me like a marionette on a string, that i did not realize that i am an adult. i take responsibility for me. if i do not want to stay in a hostel, i find a way out.

so i told kindra to pack our things. i marched to the front desk. i asked to be put on the phone with the owner and then firmly told him we wanted our money back and would not be staying there anymore. we stood outside, suitcases in hand, at a loss for where to go next. we remembered that a girl we had met a few days earlier in guilin had told us about her plans to go to yangshuo and the hostel she was staying in. we walked around and asked businesses where this hostel was. we boldly borrowed phones and made calls. after hours of searching, we found the "showbiz inn." there were exactly two beds available for 7 nights. we took them.

that night, we slept comfortably in a room with two cute british girls and, coincidentally, the american girl who told us about the hostel. when i woke up, i went upstairs to the roof, where there was free breakfast and a sweeping view of arguably the prettiest landscape in the world. it was not in a cave. there was not mold on the walls. i realized i could take care of myself...and it felt good.

what is that phrase that buzz lightyear always says?

i have nothing to blog about. deja vu? did i not write that line two weeks ago? well, i'm serious now. just in case all of one faithful reader (my mom) thinks i'm dead...i'm here to say: I'M NOT! even though my mom could peek in the dining room right now where the computer is to see that. so...here i am, alive and well. not dead.

speaking of which, i have an analogy for you! (ok, i wasn't speaking of which, but i'll tell you anyway.) you're watching the super bowl and you have two bags of chips and one delicious bowl of dip in front of you. you dip, eat, dip, eat, dip, eat until there are only small broken chips left in the bag. so you go to the next bag and dip, eat, dip, eat, dip, eat until there are only small broken chips in that bag. so you look in the first bag, and the chips look pretty big! big enough to dip at least. so you work on that bag some more until there are no more pieces big enough to dip. you look in the second bag and the chips there are definitely dip-able! you wonder why they seemed too small before. this vicious cycle goes on until there are no more chips at all. anyway, moral of the story is: the grass is always greener in the other chip bag. such is life, such is super bowl sunday.

in other news, i had a "to vs. two" realization the other day. but it was a BIG one. i was babysitting and we were watching toy story. i noticed that andy's new buzz bedsheets say to infinite and beyond. as in traveling to somewhere (infinite and beyond). wait. i thought it was two infinite and beyond. as in a huge number (the largest, in fact). my whole life i have thought that buzz lightyear says "two infinite and beyond!" does that shatter anyone's perspective on the whole world or is that just me?

that's all i have to say for today, but stay tuned to hear about my exciting lesson on the difference between which and witch!

to infinite and beyond!