God is nicer than you think

So I’ve had a huge chip on my shoulder lately. I’ve been mad at all kinds of things, perhaps most of all at what has been a disappointing fall so far: the weather has been warm, without the usual delicious crisp autumnal chill, and the leaves aren’t bursting into glorious color the way they usually do (we should be surrounded by dazzling crimsons and oranges and yellows by now). Facing the human steamroller behavior of someone I interact with regularly and feeling obligated to try things I’m terrible at haven’t helped. I’ve been letting God know how I feel pretty frequently, mostly silently, but loudly and with plenty of four-letter words one miserably drizzly evening.

Whence cometh the rancor? I made a major decision recently that was incredibly difficult. It’s been a long time in coming; for years I’ve been driving myself crazy trying to keep one foot in each of two camps. It’s a decision with important consequences, equally positive and negative, though the positive ones are in the future (right now they feel like they’re faaaaar in the future)  and the negative are immediate, far-reaching, and tremendously painful. These negative effects have had me absolutely furious. So when I was yelling at God about the leaves–well, it wasn’t really about the leaves.

I was talking with my counselor about this last Wednesday, complaining about the feelings of anger that I felt stemmed from my own lack of maturity. I was annoyed with myself because I couldn’t just “suck it up” and be a big girl. I’ve heard over and over, including from the pulpit, that if one has an Attitude of Gratitude one will feel grateful for one’s trials; that pain means yer doin’ it wrong; that an eternal perspective would cure my petulance if I were a more righteous sort of person. Hence frustration at being frustrated. And a belief that God was sick of me acting like a two-year-old.

But after a few minutes my counselor looked at me and asked, gently, “Are you familiar with the stages of grief?” That made me pause for a minute. She continued, “Anger is one of those stages–it sounds to me like you’re grieving.” Like, whoa. She then said that she supported my decision, adding that she thinks it will be very helpful in the long run–and then added, “It’s a loss, Sylvia–this is a loss. You can grieve.”

Apparently that was all my soul needed to hear. Suddenly so many things made sense; I had a visual of puzzle pieces dropping from the sky and snapping into place. This is a loss and I am grieving. The floodgates opened and I cried for the rest of the session, then sat in my car, sobbing, for another 45 minutes. As other circumstances came to mind, feeling like final nails being hammered into an unseen coffin, the sobbing was almost convulsive at times. Thoughts of “This is a loss and I am grieving” alternated with “Oh, my God” over and over. Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?

Realizing that I was grieving cast the situation in an entirely new light. It made me understand both the situation and God better. I had a distinct impression that God hadn’t thought I was acting like a two-year-old all along–that He understands much better than I do the pain of loss and the feeling that multiple doors are simultaneously and permanently slamming. God was OK with my swearing and fury and bitterness toward everyone I saw. He didn’t even give me a lovingly stern “It’s OK this time, but don’t do it again” warning. Instead, I felt that he said, “You’re grieving. Acting out of anger is expected. Of course the ultimate rules haven’t been relaxed, but this is what the Atonement is for.” (He may have even said, “Scream at me a little more. I can take it.” At least, that’s the way I’ve decided to remember things.)

So it turns out that my God isn’t a punishing or withholding God after all, but a merciful, loving, kind, understanding God. I think the adversary takes the lessons that are least applicable to me and tries to throttle me with them. I’ve long been terrified of accepting any imperfection in myself because if I thought I would then swing to the other extreme and become a thoughtless spiritual freeloader of the “eat, drink, and be merry” or prodigal son variety. But even the prodigal son received forgiveness, and Jesus told the woman taken in adultery, “Neither do I condemn thee.” Perhaps I don’t have to worry so much about being perfect, or “mature,” or whatever. Maybe the Atonement covers all that stuff.

Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (4)

Fishies in the sky with cubic zirconia

So this will mostly be a picture post recounting a few highlights of the past couple of months. I bought a few Groupons back in the spring and, of course, procrastinated the day of their redemption until it was almost everlastingly too late. Fortunately I realized this just in time and managed to schedule several of them for August/September.

For the first I only have one picture:

In case what I’m doing isn’t immediately obvious, I’m skydiving. Inside. (Outside skydiving is also fun, but I haven’t seen a Groupon for it yet this year. If I do, I’ll definitely go again.) It was cool to experience the power of 90-mph winds about 18 hours before Hurricane Irene was due to slam into us; I hadn’t had a reference for what really strong winds can do. I went home and moved the grill, all the trash cans, and everything else that could have been used as a projectile into the basement, just in case. (As it turned out, Irene was just a tropical storm when she blew into Boston, and we just got some wind and rain where I am. Our power didn’t even flicker. But I’m OK with that.)

Irene was kind enough to sweep all clouds out of the area as she left, so when I went for a sunset hot air balloon ride two days later, the weather was just plain beautiful.

(See the blue sky behind the balloon? I was IN that.)

I personally thought that a “splash and dash” (the technical term for letting the balloon basket hit the water before rising again) would have been wicked awesome, but the owner explained that the basket wouldn’t have time to dry out. So we had to be content with staying about three inches above the lake. Bummer.

A week and a half later, the sky above New Hampshire was again an incredible cerulean blue as my friend E?S and I set off into the wild blue yonder above Lake Winnipesaukee (wih-nih-puh-SAW-kee) in a gorgeous biplane (!!). The plane was built in 1991 using 1930s-style materials (yes, that propeller is made of wood).

The last aeronautical adventure took place yesterday, when I (kind of) got to help fly the smallest helicopter you’ve ever seen:

It’s basically an escape pod with a couple of propellers and a tail. Notice that there is no door. This was true during the flight as well, which was a little disconcerting at first.

Fishies the Pilot!

I just got to move the cyclic (think of it as the “joystick”–what makes the helicopter go up, down, left, or right) a bit. I wasn’t very good at first and kept accidentally pointing the helicopter at the clouds, but I got the hang of it. We flew over Gillette Stadium, which will soon be filled with fans of the New England Patriots:

I admitted to the pilot that I don’t know anything about football, and she was amazed–especially since I’m from the South. It’s true. I honestly have no idea what happens (or is supposed to) in most of the game. Touchdowns are good, as are extra points, and sometimes a team can score something that gives them just 3 points instead of 6. Beyond that I know nothing (please don’t try to enlighten me; on this subject I remain contentedly benighted).

Despite the clouds, it was a lovely day to fly over the lakes and forests south of Boston:

This was my last aviation-related Groupon; I went on a Groupon fast back in the spring, when I’d already bought a whole bunch of them and knew I wouldn’t have time to redeem any more. So my posts for the next while may be boring. In which case, my imaginary readers can peruse my weblog as a cure for insomnia…

Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (1)

Fishies out of water (or, ISFJ FTW)

Sometimes, when I’ve been feeling happy for a while, a feeling creeps in that says I’m in danger of becoming complacent. You’re becoming boring, it says; you’re not living up to your potential. So I decide that I need to change things up a little bit–meet new people, try new adventures. Maybe try to fit in a bit more with what I see as culturally desirable; try to become the sort of person who can “work a room,” or at least not stand frozen with a tight feeling in my chest and my mind spinning blankly as I survey a large group of people. Sometimes I even forget who I am and think that I’m making or have made great strides toward extroversion.

And so I go on a tri-ward campout with 200 people.

And spend the subsequent few days recovering.

It’s frustrating, sometimes, not to be able to do the things I see others doing and even enjoying. Surrounded by people who thrive on camp competitions (this year’s events included the Monkey Launch and kind of a human Boggle) and standing awkwardly amid throngs of loudly cheering teammates, it’s easy to forget that other introverts do exist, and to feel like the whack job with no sense of humor or team spirit. (I’ve since figured out that other introverts may, in fact, be there–but they’re so overwhelmed by the chaos and noise that they don’t feel like talking to anyone, either.)

Fortunately, God watches out for me. Someone I didn’t know all that well followed a prompting and asked me to go on a walk to a beautiful, quiet place by the lake when it became obvious that the environment was too much for me. For the rest of the time I was there, I enjoyed the wonderfully understanding company of several introvert friends who, knowing their limits, had wisely arrived much later than I had and thus hadn’t yet been overstimulated to the point of meltdown.

So as I mentioned, I’ve been convalescing for the past couple of days. I’ve re-read Jonathan Rauch’s brilliant essay Caring for Your Introvert and had some great talks with some terrific friends. I’ve promised one of these friends that I won’t attend the campout next year. I’ve caught up on sleep. And God has reminded me that he loves me for the ISFJ that I am, that he doesn’t want me to compare myself to others or fret that I’m going to miss out on something because I’m not outgoing or interesting enough, that I really do love my life these days, and that, though maybe I don’t have a vast circle of party-person friends, the ones I do have are absolutely wonderful.

Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (4)

Summertime… and the living is busy

Nothing insightful to say this evenin’, dearest imaginary readers.* I just wanted to explain, in just over 20,000 words,** why I’ve not written much for the past few months.

In June I went to Philadelphia with some friends. We did the usual touristy stuff, which was fine, as we were all in fact tourists. (We also took an impromptu tour of the Hood in Camden, NJ; I took no photographs of that adventure, as we just wanted to get ourselves out of that area without suffering high-speed lead poisoning, ifyouknowhatImean.)

In the City of Brotherly Love I got  some good advice from a bumper sticker (the fountain of all true wisdom):

Later that night we got ice cream from a real old-fashioned eatery with a real old-fashioned sodie-pop fountain!

Independence Hall was under construction, but Philadelphia didn’t want to deprive its visitors of photo opportunities:

The Liberty Bell was also in need of repairs, but Philadelphia didn’t try to fix this one for the tourists:

We also visited the Mütter Museum, which everyone in my family, at least, would find…

No pictures were allowed in the museum, unfortunately, so you’ll have to go yourselves. One of my favorite exhibits had two skeletons; the one on the left was a normal skeleton; the one on the right was the skeleton of a woman who had worn a corset all her life. SRSLY–who thought corsets were a good idea?! I bet the inventor had a Y chromosome; nobody with two X chromosomes would be that insane.

We went to the Cubs vs. Phillies game. The Phillies won, so the (non-authentic replica of the) Liberty Bell in the background rang:

The weekend after Philadelphia I had tickets to 6 Flags over New England, so I rustled up my awesome friend A?T and we set out to wait in interminable lines enjoy some roller coasters.

This was the first thing we did:

Bizarro was one of our favorites:

Note to future amusement park attendees: The best time to ride roller coasters seems to be in the late afternoon/early evening, when everyone else is eating or has already gone home. The lines were much shorter. Would that we had been privy to this information before our trip, but hey, now we know, right?

July then arrived, featuring, of course, Independence Day. Some friends came up from DC and I played Ultimate Boston Tour Guide Extraordinaire. Fortunately Boston makes performing such an office relatively easy. First off, we ran into some unexpected visitors while we walked the Freedom Trail:

Honestly, we had no idea this was going to happen. We were in the Park Street Church when we heard the drums and fifes outside and came out to find the parade. Have I mentioned that I freaking love this place?

On Sunday we went to the (free) Boston Pops dress rehearsal with 300,000 of our closest friends. We got there relatively late but managed to get a decent spot thanks to one of the extroverts among us (they’re so useful sometimes!). (And yes, a seat this far back definitely counts as a “decent spot.”)

One of my 300,000 friends (actually, she’s in the top 50,000):

We rowed out in a canoe to watch the fireworks from the river, which I had never done before, and which was AWESOME. A couple of other people had the same idea, so it took a few minutes to return our canoe:

Shortly after the Fourth of July one of my other favorite people came to visit from Finland, along with his wife. It was good to have part of the ol’ gang back together again, if only for a couple of days.

A few weeks later I moved. Moving is one of the most thoroughly un-fun events in the world, but someone did brighten my new apartment anonymously:

I went for a walk the week after I moved in, and found that Cambridge has a delightful array of randomness:

I always jump in this circle with both feet when I walk past it, which happens frequently as it’s very close to my apartment:

A week later I went with some friends to Tanglewood–it was Film Night and John Williams was conducting the Boston Pops, with Morgan Freeman guest narrating one of the pieces. Look reeeeeeally closely at the lighted area. See both of them, in front of the orchestra?

They’re there. Really they are.

Some other really great adventures began the next weekend, but as those adventures are themèd and one of the themèd adventures remains to be had, AND as this post is ridiculously long, you, my dearest imaginary readers, will unfortunately have to wait another couple of weeks. Perhaps in the meantime I can recount the story of a truly EPIC rejection that occurred when I summoned the courage to attend a midsingles conference in Washington, DC in July.  (I have been definitively crossed off a list, henceforth and forever, amen and amen; thus far I’ve been able to bear the disappointment quite cheerfully.) Watch for it…

_______________________________________

*Neither of hit counters for this site works, which is kind of frustrating for me (but could be nice for stalkers, I suppose).

**1 picture = 1,000 words.

 

 

Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (3)

Putting off the natural Fishies

Mosiah 3:19:

19 For the ^anatural ^bman is an ^cenemy to God, and has been from the ^dfall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever…

Were this written specifically for, say, me, it would read, “For the natural Fishies is an enemy to everyone.” When I succumb to myself, I’m an enemy to God, of course. The natural me wants to think that this doesn’t matter—after all, I don’t have to interact with God directly on a daily basis; I’m not trying to impress Him. (The subconscious thinking goes, So what if God thinks I’m a jerk? He’s not in my potential friendship/dating pool.) The thing is, though, that when I’m an enemy to God, I’m an enemy to everyone else, too.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately as I’ve moved into a new apartment, as I’ve had an incredibly painful conversation with someone I cared about very deeply, and as a new roommate is moving in—a roommate who already has multiple graduate degrees from Ivy League universities and is a noted scholar in her field. The natural Fishies does not respond to new or potentially stressful situations (“stressful” defined as “anything that she doesn’t like”) with much equanimity. The natural Fishies is fraught with insecurities that engender prideful resentment; resentment builds walls faster than all the trumpeters of Israel can tear them down (with or without the six days of pre-musical marching).

Thus there’s little hope for the natural Fishies. However, the verse goes on to say that the natural man/Fishies  can overcome this enmity toward the world at large if he (or she) “yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.” Of these qualities, I tend to zero in on “humble” as all-encompassing. Someone who is humble is submissive, meek, patient, et cetera.

So, to be humble = kill multiple birds with one stone. Great! I can totally do humility. I think I suck at a lot of things. Drawing, for one. (Except cartoon rabbit heads, at which I am very very good.) Math, for another. And I can’t fix anything.

But the problem is that this isn’t humility. C. S. Lewis defines humility not as a “low opinion” of oneself but “self-forgetfulness” (see Screwtape Letter 14). The natural me rails against this idea; after all, if I forget about myself, who’s going to take care of me? (Or, rather, who’s going to make sure I get what I want?) Or worse—if I forget about myself, does that mean I’ll have to, like, pay attention other people? To see them as real people, with real feelings, who are just as important as I am?

It’s a tough order, to be sure. Humility as applied to daily living is really, really hard work. Pride creeps in everywhere—when someone else makes my brilliant comment in Sunday School and I become frustrated; when the conversation turns to international travel and I feel the need to mention visiting Zimbabwe; when a less-popular ward member strikes up a conversation and I desperately start thinking of ways to escape. If I want to have humility, I’ll have to actively seek the Spirit so that I can catch feelings and thoughts as they arise. I’ll have to remember to relax during church—do I really think I’ll miss out on a life-changing friendship or relationship because I missed my one chance to make an impressive comment? I’ll have to remember not to drop names of people I know or countries I’ve visited unless the conversation actually calls for them. I’ll have to actively change my train of thought from “how can I get out of this conversation?” when I’m talking to someone I don’t particularly like (or “yeah, but I bet she can’t do x” when I’m talking to someone more educated, talented, or attractive than I am) to “how can I show God’s love to this person?” I’ll have to forget about myself and seek to help others.

Holy cow, this will take a lot of work. Which means that the most humble people I know have probably worked extremely hard to become so. I don’t know if I’m that diligent, or sometimes if I even want to be. But these are also the happiest, and, not a-tall coincidentally, the most Christlike people I know—which helps them to serve others effectively. In my better moments, that’s what I most want too.

 

*One of my favorite quotations is from Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead:

When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me… you are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person. He would probably laugh at the thought that the Lord sent him to you for your benefit (and his), but that is the perfection of the disguise, his own ignorance of it.

Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (1)

I’m an aunt! (as of three months ago now…)

Lots of things to write about, but I don’t feel like I can write about any of them until I’ve covered the most important thing to happen in the past few years, which is:

The birth of a nephew!

JLP was born May 16 and is the most freaking adorable little ball of pudge I’ve ever seen. I love his seriously chubby cheeks. The day after he was born I bought a plane ticket home for the next week, so I got to meet him when he was 10 days old, and all I did (or wanted to do) for the entire weekend was hold the baby. Even after he peed on me (four times; no diaper is a match for this super-soaker kid). Sigh. Suddenly I’ve become one of those annoying people who keeps showing others pictures of their small relatives, but I just can’t help it, you know?

Speaking of pictures:

(this is the one I printed and framed and set as my desktop wallpaper)

These days JLP looks uncannily like my older brother as a baby–at least from the (far too few [hint hint]) pictures I’ve seen. It’s hard to not just buy plane tickets and fly down there; however, as this isn’t feasible at the moment I’ve contented myself with creating a line item in my monthly budget dedicated to spoiling him. He has to know who his favorite aunt is, after all. (Sorry, KLPH, it’s not gonna be you.)

Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)

The Samaritan woman would have shopped at Walmart

My belovèd little baby sister* sent me a message this week about members of her ward in the Dallas area getting political in Church meetings. (She, like me, isn’t particularly political but is definitely left of center; Texas has a well-deserved reputation as a red state.) It indirectly made me think of members who may have an attitude of ”well, we wouldn’t want a Democrat in our ward anyway.” That made me think of the idea that many people (myself sometimes included) have of who would make a good member of the Church, and that led me to think of the Samaritan woman that Jesus met at the well.

Religious art generally depicts this woman as physically beautiful and generally virtuous-looking (see http://goo.gl/MLfwV, http://goo.gl/JxYM9, and http://goo.gl/EYQUz). She has flawless skin and a rapt, accepting expression. She’s dressed nicely. She probably speaks well, free of jarring regional accent. She looks like a Relief Society president or an innocent young mother.

But is this accurate? Personally, given her history and her remarks during and after her conversation with Jesus, I’m inclined to think she’s one of Those People who some of us wouldn’t want to associate with. In reality, she’s probably poor. After years of hard living she probably has some teeth missing and is dressed in, if not rags, then some cheap imitation of nicer clothes. She may have a loud, braying voice and a grating accent (London’s East End, anyone?). She’s probably not wearing heavy makeup but that’s just because it hadn’t been invented yet.

In short, this woman looks like who she is–a member of not the lower, but probably lowest class. Or, even if she isn’t a member of the lowest class, she probably doesn’t look like a sweet innocent woman (the painting at http://goo.gl/sW15D may be a more accurate reflection of her attitude). When she talks to Jesus, she doesn’t seem particularly respectful. “You don’t even have anything to draw water with, and you think you not only have water, but you’re better than Jacob, the great patriarch?” Her next words could be equally skeptical: “All right, fine. Give me some of this water then.” After her conversation with Jesus, she runs around saying “Come, see this man who told me all about my life.” I can picture this woman on Cops, or leaning over her back fence to gossip with a neighbor, or in a hair salon in a financially strapped Boston suburb. Christ’s disciples “marvelled that he talked with the woman” (it was probably akin to seeing a well-dressed businessperson talking to a homeless person). Is this the kind of person we want showing up at our Sacrament Meeting?

Well, yes. Any missionary can tell you that it’s not generally the “respectable”-looking people who are interested in the Church. Some people may not ever conform to our ideas of respectability after years of Church membership. Some may even be liberals, for heaven’s sake (the horror!). That doesn’t mean we don’t want them around or that we should weed out these “undesirables,” whether consciously through overt criticism or unconsciously through inappropriate political remarks during meetings. All God’s critters got a place in the choir, right?

 

*This belovèd little baby sister is six inches taller than me and likes to wear high heels.

Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (4)

This is the church; this is the steeple

Faithful readers may recall that my favorite chapel burned down on May 17, 2009. Salt Lake was on the phone with the stake presidency while the building was still burning down, saying that we would rebuild.

And we did. I went to watch the re-placing of the steeple, which is an exact replica of the original steeple (only in metal instead of wood [metal=less likely to, like, burn]). It was done in three sections, and I missed the second one, but I was happy to get some pretty good shots of the action.

 

This building was just re-dedicated last Sunday, much to my delight, and I’ll post about that when I can–but I’m trying to do things chronologically (I’m an editor; I get paid to be this fastidious), and I haven’t even written about my freaking adorable nephew yet, so, all in good time. Since I think I just have imaginary readers anyway I’ll pretend they’re all nice and patient.

Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (1)

Let it snow

Lots of Bostonians love to h8 on winter, which I simply do not understand. Cold is wonderful. One can always put on more clothes, and cold generally makes me want to move. Heat, on the other hand, pretty much makes me want to die.

Much to the delight of my soul and my arm muscles (which got totally toned in January [but did not stay that way, unfortunately, once the snow stopped]), we had a succession of blizzards during the first month of the year. Not just snowstorms–real honest-to-goodness nor’easters complete with howling wind and driving snow. Feet and feet of snow. I shoveled snow for a total of between 10-15 hours in January. This is OK with me. I was ready:

Good thing too, since I had to push pretty hard just to get the screen door open:

We forged on, eventually creating some pretty big piles:

 

Because our driveway is long and narrow, we soon had no place to put the snow and had to throw it over that 6- or 7-foot-tall fence:

Can you tell where I usually park?

And after all this, I can still say that I adore winter, and I’d rather be too cold than too hot, and I love snow, and going for a walk when it was -7°F was way awesome. Now summer is here, and I’m quite a bit less excited about the weather, but I hope to make the best of it. Next week is the Fourth of July and THAT will be AMAZING.

 

Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)

One month, five countries

Am finally getting around to writing about November, which was pretty much all-around awesome, travel-wise. I flew out of Boston on October 31 and landed the next day in Stockholm for a friend’s wedding later that week. I stayed in a cute little red cottage in Nynashämn, a tiny island to the southeast of Stockholm, riding the Pendeltåg (commuter rail) back and forth from the city center. I haven’t any particular adventures to report this time; the highlight was spending time with my friend HJG and her tiny tiny tiny baby K (who was born two months premature and was the size of a newborn even though he was technically five months old). I also haven’t any pictures to post this time; my camera was broken.

The day after the wedding my friend OTF and I flew to Germany for the sole purpose of driving really really really fast on the Autobahn, which was pretty much one of the funnest things I’ve ever done. My camera was still broken and OTF’s was later stolen,(1) so I have a very few iPhone pictures of Berlin:

Brandenburger Tor

Berliner Dom

Wicked awesome Mercedes

Sweet car, no? OTF and I had been driving a Mercedes, but it sho’ didn’t look like this one. Maybe next time. With this car we could actually break 250 km/h (the fastest we could go in our car was 237 km/h (147 mph), which was still way cool).

So about a week and a half after I returned from Sweden/Germany, this same friend (OTF) and I headed down to Brazil/Argentina/Uruguay for a week and a half. I had gotten my camera fixed by then, but . . . I forgot to charge the battery . . . aaaaaand I forgot my charger. AARGH. Again, OTF’s camera had been stolen previously, so at this point we just have a couple of pictures with my camera and some shots from his iPhone. So here’s Rio:

The incredible library (the shelves adorn all four walls, and they really do go up that high):

Typical market street, complete with crowds (this was a while after a random mime whom we hadn’t noticed had suddenly grabbed OTF’s behind while shouting loudly, making me shriek and jump halfway to the moon and thus providing entertainment for dozens of very amused bystanders):

And here we have some apartment buildings (these went on endlessly):

The handiwork of some–shall we say–specialized electricians:

And some food from a corner vendor (it has an actual name which I believe translates to “random [stuff] on a plate”)–look closely and you’ll be able to see beans, rice, noodles, french fries, breaded/fried meat (allegedly beef), lettuce, and tomato:

After a couple of days, we flew to Iguazu Falls, which are 2.7 km long and just freaking amazing. I only have a few pictures (I seem to have deleted several of my favorites–aargh). For scale, look on the right edge of the first picture, about 2/3 of the way down. Those tiny little orange things are in fact very large rafts that seat about 25.

After Iguazu Falls we flew to Buenos Aires, where OTF took some more iPhone pictures but has not yet sent them to me (hint, hint). We then took a ferry and a bus to Montevideo, Uruguay, and spent the night and part of Sunday there before flying back to Rio. (We had to re-book ferry tickets in Buenos Aires after we got to the landing for the first company on Saturday and were told that the ferry wouldn’t be running that day because “the boat broke.” Nobody seemed to think it was any big deal; they just sent us over to a competitor. The companies must be in cahoots.)

Our last day in Rio we went hang gliding, which was IMHO better even than skydiving, because I felt like I was really flying (we got to swoop and everything!). I SO want to do it again. The only mildly scary part is running off the edge of a platform into the nothing:

But it was AWESOME!

On the other side of that landmass jutting out at the end of the beach is Ipanema, where we stayed the last night, and just up the beach from that is Copacabana, where we stayed the first two nights.

So there are of course way more stories than this, but the intimidating thought of all those stories is part of what has been keeping me from writing about this adventure at all, so, if you want some more stories, you’ll have to ask nicely in the comments. Which I’m sure you’ll be happy to do, right?

(1) We thus have no photographic evidence of how fast we drove, which is a bummer, but also no video evidence of my very loud four-letter reaction when a driver pulled over right in front of me when I was doing 225 km/h, which is probably a good thing.

Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (4)