Pictures, part four

Those mountain goats aren't very social. More views of the glacier.

Pictures, part three

Looks like a highway. It's breaking off. That's me with my dad and bro. Looks blue.

Pictures, part two

Pictures of Bettmerhorn, clouds and stuff. It's cool.

Pictures, part one

Pictures of the fog.

Day Three

August 20, 2008, around 9 a.m. "Waking up with my head in the clouds" (this is the typed up journal entry)

Holy crap- I woke up at 9 and want to my listen to my iPod. I also want to go outside, both I am doing. But see, outside it's like...freaky. When I was opening the door, I could see white through the crack. I thought, it can't be that bleak. But it is. Everything is white. White. I can see a little bit of the cabin in front of us, but otherwise it is just a white void. Kind of awesome. I still hear cowbells and someone like cutting grass. It's almost...painful, I dunno...to look out-it's like you can't see anything and my brain doesn't like that. I've never experienced this. Mountain fog. There was a big rainstorm last night. It's also kinda cold. There's wisps of...of white air? The cloud blowing around and it reminds me of like...Harry Potter and the pensive. This is kind of cool. White is one of my favorite colors. I like this because it's like...just a void. You can see anything, or not see. It's almost like I'm not in the mountains right now. I couldn't tell. Ah, yes- I inhaled and smelled that fresh, crisp mountain air. Towards the ground is a more grayish color. I can see the grass well near our house. It's so weird. But insanely AWESOME. You guys, if you haven't already, should try to see a glacier in real life and experience this white void. I love that word-void. Nothingness. Non-existing? Ha ha! Life is goosd. Zach isn't up yet. Neither are my parents. I'm wearing my Slauson shirt. We're going home today. Probably leave at like 4. I can't wait to put this all in my blog and facebook! This is/was a really cool trip. I'm glad we did it. I'm going to take pictures of the whiteness now. You know, this would be a cool time and place to draw on the air like I saw in that one old Disney commercial thing. Anyway. I'm getting cold. I miss my friends- of course. But I'm going to stay out here because "touching the void" is like experiencing a complicated, not necessarily bliss. (Good movie.)

Later:

Well ok, now the void is receding. i can see more mountain houses and like another cloud or something. It's 9:25. I have goosebumps. The sky is still white, ground is gray. But the void will probably be all gone in a few minutes. I should like get my parents. (Later) Eh. My dad just woke up.

-----------------

That day I had yogurt for breakfast and the same stuff I had yesterday. Zach said his knee was too sore to walk and my mom was tired. So they stayed home, while me and my dad went on a small hike to the Bettmerhorn. My socks got wet from walking in the boot-room but I survived. It was a cool hike. The white void did not in fact disappear, and we went in and out it all along the hike. It was so frickin' awesome! You couldn't see a few feet in front of you, but then you'd walk a little farther and break out. It was fun. My dad read the signs along the trail about marmots, which were like mountain ground hogs. They seemed cool. The trail wasn't too hard, sort of steep at times, but fun. We talked about hockey, getting fit, marmots and other stuff. I took a few pictures. There were a few other people on the trail too.

At one point we weren't really on the trail. We could see the gondola but not the trail. So we just sort of walked straight up. But then we did get on the right trail and went up. There were lots of people at the top. I was tired. We rested a little bit and went up the Bettmerhorn, which was a slightly harder peak. More rock and climbing and it was steep. At some points we had to use a wire to climb up. It was somewhat freaky. Reminded me of Howell. Man, Howell was SO FUN. That was just great. I had to climb on these wooden bridge things and on one side would be a sheer drop. Eek. I wasn't like, "Omigod-omigod I'm going to die I'm going to die!!!!1" but I was still a little...you know. I just kept moving up, not letting myself get scared. It wasn't even that bad. For some reason I seemed to clear my throat whenever I went on one of those freaky wooden platforms. Whatever. So we had a great view of the glacier...again. And could see lots of clouds. I said to my dad one time, "It sort of makes you feel like you could just jump and it'd be pillowed," he didn't seem to agree with me though. I did feel like that sort of.

All we could see at some points were just white clouds surrounding us. And then we made it to the top, or at least the top I wanted to be at. There was still another peak to climb but for some reason I just didn't feel like doing it. Besides, we were already at around 2,858 meters or something. We had a great view of everything. It was at times like this that you wish you were Maximum Ride. Seriously. I would love to just snapping out my wings and jump off the mountain, flying through the clouds. She did say flying in a cloud wasn't that fun, though. But whatever. There were clouds everywhere. Covering most of the mountains. It smelled nice, was sort of cold. I had some white chocolate. Looked through the binocs, took pictures. Then we went down. It was sort of freaky, but I got used to it. A lot like Howell. So then we took one last look at the glacier and took the cable car down.

We just sort of jumped on one, seeing as there wasn't anyone there to like sell a ticket. They were small-ish, could hold about 8 people. I took a short video, which will be put on facebook. And some pictures. It was a fun ride. Like 10 minutes. It was freaky sometimes (but cool) because sometimes we wouldn't see the rest of the cable in front of us through the fog. So it was like that movie "The Mist". But it was awesome. Then we met up with my mom and Zach and had lunch. We watched some Olympics, which was really fun. Then we rode the cable cars down and took the trains.

On the second train to Geneva, I mostly sat by myself but some people did share the seats. This lady rode a few stops and then got off. And then these two French/Swiss guys came and asked me something like, "can we sit here?" and I just nodded my head. One of them sat across from me and the other next. I caught the distinct whiff of cigarettes. Ugh. And then the guy across from me grabbed out two Heineken beers from this bag and gave one to his friend. They started talking and drinking. My music was pretty loud so I couldn't really tell what they were talking about, but they laughed a lot. And again, I had to sort of hide my lip-synching or not do it at all. Then the guy finished one beer and grabbed out another. He managed to drink two beers (they were big, too, mind you) in one sitting. Gross. Luckily they got off before Geneva and I didn't have to listen them anymore. They were ok, I mean, just sort of...drunk. Luckily I had Melvin with me. I was tired.

When we got the Geneva Cornavin, I put on Tally Hall. We waited for the bus and rode it home. I sat with my dad on those fold-able seats. No one had to give up our seats this time. I was tired. There were lots of people on the bus. Ugh. But eventually we got home. I had to walk over to a post box to drop off a postcard though, which was annoying because of my tiredness. But then I got in the apartment and jumped on the computer.

It was a great trip. I'm really glad we did it. Especially since school is really soon. Somehow, I don't really know how it happened, I have like a week till school. Ugh. But actually I'm looking forward to it because I'll meet friends and learn stuff. And it's something to do. Because I got like nothing done this summer. Ugh. Almost a complete waste. Sigh. But two months have gone by! So only 10 months left . Awesome! I'll add the pictures in the next post. I know they're long posts, and sorry, but they were long days. Hope you enjoy(ed). Oh and, my mom found her wallet. It was in some hidden pocket. So yay! And the Levins come back today. So we'll see them one FINAL time today. For like an hour. Yay. I guess.

Thanks for reading. Comments are appreciated, even bowed upon. Pictures in the next post.

Day Two

A bright light, resembling what I thought was yellow, banged on my eyelids. I was forced to get up, finding the window and door open and my dad standing near them. We all got up and after a little bit of delay, including watching some Olympics, went down to have breakfast. I had plain yogurt with muesli and corn flakes. And some bread with strawberry jam and a hard-boiled egg. After that we went outside with our boots. I inhaled through my nose, and the scent immediately made me happy. A cool, crisp, fresh whiff. So goosd. One of the best smells ever. Mountain air at 9:45 a.m. Just wonderful.

At 10:15 we started out on the big hike. We had to bring two backpacks, one of which me and Zach switched off carrying every hour or so. I started out with it. It wasn't too heavy. The trail didn't have hardly any steep parts at first and was mostly flat. Some Swiss Army jets passed us, which caused us to stop and look up. We stopped an awful lot on this hike to drink water and take pictures and whatnot. We talked about Italy, the science of clouds, and other assorted topics. We passed lots of German/Swiss people, and I maybe muttered a small "Guten Tag" once or twice. We saw a steep bike trail or two, which I would never want to do. There were lots of cows. And we also smelled that wonderful scent.

After a few hours the trail got a little more challenging. More rocky, more of a climb. It zig-zagged up the grassy mountain, allowing us a great view. There were lots of cliffs too, which were sort of freaky. We saw part of a glacier far away after a little bit. We also found some blueberries before lunch. They were goosd. We also used the binoculars and saw this one mountain house like right next to a cliff. Geez. After lunch, which consisted of yogurt, blueberries, bread, cheese and chocolate, we continued on the trail. There were some small shrines or whatever on the trail and also little plaques for people that died. Depressing stuff.

Then we finally got to see the main attraction.

It was like a bunch of dirty cream poured over rocks, making a smooth platform. With lots of dirt and brown. There was a small river flowing towards it, and some chunks of ice farther away from the main glacier. We walked down, getting closer to it. As I got closer, something made me say "woah". At first I just saw the white and brown-ish color. But then there was this blue-ish tint at the end, and it looked like a sponge. It looked like a blue-raspberry snow-cone. I took a ton of pictures and got to touch it. It was cold. Felt like a weird form of ice. This one guy had gone really close to it, like almost in it, but we didn't go quite that close. There were little caves and stuff. It was so cool! The air around it was chilly, but not that much. There was this water that was reddish (looked like cow blood) that flowed down the rocks. It was really slippery.

As my dad put it, we could see "global warming in action,". It was dripping, that's for sure. Dripping a lot. But it was still there. It was Europe's biggest glacier. Al Gore was right. I never doubted him, but this just proved it. Humans are stupid. We're smart in a way, but our decisions are mostly from emotion. This is stupid. What we're doing right now. What we're not doing, really. We eventually continued on the trail, leaving the glacier behind. I couldn't really figure out how I felt after seeing the glacier. It was cool, but I felt mad. I was sad. I was mad as heck. I could go on and on about how stupid we are. But I won't. Maybe in another post. But seriously.

Anyway. So after seeing the glacier up close, we could see more views of it from up high. The next trail we were on had mountain goats. At first my mom thought they were dangerous because they had horns, but then Zach was just like, "I don't think they'd let dangerous animals on this trail," so we just walked past. They looked kinda freaky though.

I walked pretty far ahead of my family because they were slow and I wanted to get home fast because it was supposed to rain. And this way I could stop to take pictures more. Then something interesting happened. I was walking ahead as usual, and saw two mountain goats a little bit ahead of me on the trail. I said hi to them (I say hi to mountain goats a lot) and tried to walk past. The bigger one (probably like the mom because there was this other smaller one) stopped and sort of bumped into me. I was sort of scared for a second, because I thought, this guy could push me over the mountain easily with those strong horns, but nothing bad happened. Instead, it started licking my jacket. It was somewhat weird. It just started randomely licking it. I said out loud, "Yeah, ok....um yeah...ok," somewhat loud. I looked over at the goat and noticed it's eyes. They were black and looked sort of happy. I started smiling and tried to push away the goat. "Um yeah ok, how about you go eat grass now?" the goat then like rubbed me with it's leg. My mom and Zach walked past, sort of laughing. It kept licking me. Then my dad came over on the trail and had some sense. He pushed the mountain goat away and said, "Go, go- he'll start eating your-" so I walked past the goat, hearing it baa-ing. My dad said that the goats probably got food from people, so that's why it was like eating me. Well, licking my jacket. That was funny.

So we just kept walking. I was ahead of the rest of my family still, stopping occasionally to wait for them. We passed some cows. Cows have very intimidating stares. I just give them my teeth smile and walk along. Finally we got to the town. It was getting dark and stormy sort of. We went to the restaurant where we got drinks the other day. It was goosd. I was hungry, but not as much as day one. I sort of fell asleep waiting for the food. I ordered a salad and Spetzla (I spelled that wrong). It's a german dish- sort of like eggy, batter-y, and bread-y. You normally have it with meat. It wasn't as goosd as how Omi (my dad's step mom who's German) makes it. But it was still goosd. I didn't finish all of it, and tried some of my family's dishes. I tried a chesnut from Zach's meal, and it tasted weird. Not sure I liked it. I also noticed on the menu that the horse meat came from USA. Weird. During the meal, we could see it getting darker outside and the storm coming in. When we walked outside, it was raining pretty hard. But the drops were small. It still was very wet.

A few feet down the road from the restaurant, I saw a dark shape near my dad's foot. I recognized it after a few seconds and shouted out in a strange voice that didn't sound like mine, "FROG!!! FROG!!! It's a frog!!!" Then we watched as the big amphibian jumped it's way towards the restaurant. I looked over at my dad and we laughed. It was a big frog. Then my mom said, "'A see of frogs,'" quoting what Michelle said once, trying to say "fog". It was funny. So we kept walking towards our mountain house, getting wet. Then I saw another frog and yelled, "It's another FROG!!!!" It was so funny. Ha! Those were big frogs. We couldn't see the mountains at all that night because of the fog. It was cool. My shorts were really wet when I took off my boots. I took a shower and watched some Mr. Bean on the German TV. It was so funny.

It was dark outside, raining. That hike took us 9 hours when it was supposed to take like 6. Heh. So then I went to bed, sleeping happily.

Day One - "This is better than any movie"

We woke up at 7:30, and I maybe got enough sleep. I had some Special-K-like ceral; the box said something about a bikini. Then we had to rush out to catch our bus. We each brought a backpack and also brought a cooler and briefcase. I had packed the night before-clothes, iPod, notebook, camera, etc. My backpack was sort of heavy. We got on the bus, already with a few people. Zach and I sat on those fold-able seats in the wheel-chair section. Our parents were just behind us, sitting on the normal seats. But then this woman with a baby stroller came on the bus and my mom wanted Zach to give up the seat for her. Eventually he did get up, but this other woman sat down. I listened to my iPod on the bus. Some of the new songs I found on that site. It was cool. So then we got to the Gare Cornavin and bought train tickets.

Then our feet were pounding gently up the stairs and we got on the train. This ride was going to be about 2 in a half hours. I was sort of tired but didn't sleep. There weren't a lot of seats open but I did get a window seat. My dad was sitting across from me, talking about stuff. I did listen but then listened to my iPod a little. A Swiss/French couple, looking around grandpa/grandma age, got on the train and hovered near our seats. Then we realized they were supposed to sit where we were. So we had to move. Zach could stay but I think he moved. I then sat with my parents a little farther up, again getting the window seat. So I basically just sat there listening to music. I have a...habit, persay, to lip synch lyrics. It's like an instinct. I have pretty much all of the Beatles songs memorized, and lots others. But I didn't want to look like an odd teenager with a mouth-spazzing disease so I didn't. I did do it occasionally when I just couldn't resist the song, but I had to cover up my mouth with my hand. Anyway.

So we got off that train after a few hours and arrived in this Swiss town. They spoke German there. We got on another train, which was smaller I think and louder. I didn't even get to sit down on one of the normal seats. I sat down next to Zach on one of those fold-able seats. Listened to more iPod. We only rode 3 stops and then immediately got on a cable car up a mountain. The scenery majorly changed. Instead of Mont Blanc, we could see other snow-topped mountains. There was the Matterhorn here and stuff.

The first cable car had a dog in it. They were also bringing up supplies in it. My ears popped as I looked out the window. After that one we got on another cable car. This one had a bench so I sat down. Next to these two little girls. And I bet you can guess what they did, too. Sigh. One of them did stare a little, but then sort of stopped. Thank goodness. That is one of my major pet-peeves. So anyway. This one also had some dogs and supplies.

After being dragged up a mountain in rectangular prism-shaped pieces of metal, we arrived in our town. It was called Bettmeralp. Their slogan was: "Bettmeralp...the better alp." I could have thought that one up. But anyway. They translated almost everything in German, French, English and Italian. And the welcome sign also had some Asian language on it. So then we walked down the street, trying to find our mountain chalet. I saw lots of tourist-looking houses and stores but not a lot of people. There was even a co-op. I guess you can't go anywhere in Switzerland without seeing one of those.

Our mountain chalet was called Garni Slalom. It was pretty big. The receptionist person knew like 4 languages. Pretty much everyone here did that worked somewhere. She told us our room would be ready at around 2. It was like 1. So we had lunch outside, with a great view of the mountains. Yogurt, bread, cheese, crackers and peanut butter. I hadn't had peanut butter for a while. It was so good. It reminded me of when we did that peanut butter quality rating unit in math in 7th grade. That was fun. Sort of.

After chewing various foodly items and swallowing, we checked in to our room. It was number 31, the very last one. We had to climb up 3 staircases which weren't that bad. The room was sort of smallish. The first door on the right was the bathroom, then it was me and Zach's room. We had separate beds and a TV. Then our parent's room also had a TV. It was cool. Then there was also a small deck. Small as in: could fit our whole family, but that's pretty much it. It was cool. There were some Olympics on; soccer with Brazil and Germany. We watched a little and then took a small hike. The trail was well-paved and several small trucks passed us. Some other people were also walking.

We passed lots of restaurants, mountain chalets, and had a great view. We were going to do this loop-route which would take "a few hours," says my dad. He says that for pretty much any hike, so it meant nothing. But yeah so it was fun. There were a few more people farther down the trail. It switched to a more grassy and mountain-y kind of trail. We got a great whiff of some cow cologne. Made me put my nose under my shirt and say ew a few times. My sweat smelled better, amazingly.

Anyway. So we just continued hiking, passing cows and people and a golf course. Then, something exciting happened. A couple was coming down the trail and we were going up it. So we got to the side to let them pass, and it worked. But then my mom was like really close to the woman, trying to move out of the way. But her camera case came off her shoulder and rolled down the small hill towards the golf course. It rolled for a few feet, but my mom just stood there watching it. We all sort of just watched. The couple we passed stopped and stared too. It rolled all the way down into the golf course. It was only like 10 feet down. Then Zach went down to get it. And later my mom checked it and the camera still worked. It was like a 500 dollar camera, but the case was terrible.

I took a video of part of that and will probably upload it to facebook. Anyway. It was funny, sort of. We kept hiking. Passed a group of like school kids on a field trip or something. They reminded me of some of the people back at Slauson sort of. At this point, we could see part of Europe's largest glacier. The real hike for that was tomorrow. I was looking forward to it, I guess. But back to this one, Zach really wanted to go on a cable car but my mom felt strongly about him not. So there was a huge argument, and my mom just blew up. Perhaps I shouldn't mention this, but she used very colorful language. She said one word about 10 times in the span of about 5 minutes. Then she walked ahead of us and avoided us for pretty much the rest of the hike. Sucked.

We got back to our town, passing this lake that was really cold but still had some people in it. My dad, brother and I went to this place to get a drink. I got a coke, which was just gorgeous. We got sort of lost trying to find our mountain chalet but found it somehow. I was super hungry. And tired. We met up with my mom and tried to find a restaurant. The first one was closed, the other one too expensive, and then we found one that had pizza, pasta and crepes. The guy spoke some English too, but he mixed some French when talking.

My stomach felt so empty, the grumbles feeling like little inpatient pokes. We ordered, me getting salad and this pasta dish that I hadn't had before. I finished a plate of salad in about a minute, everything tasting good. I also had a piece of bread and drank lots of water. Eventually our food came, hot and ready to be digested. My dish was like a bowl of lasagna with spinach, cheese and something that tasted like potato. It was sooo goooosd. I just kept eating, my teeth happily biting down and throat swallowing with glee. It all just tasted so goosd, and I cleaned that bowl clean. All that was left was a little bit of tomato sauce on the edges. I was tired, getting hypnotized easily. I got some ice cream for dessert and my stomach still didn't have that feeling of complete, utter fullness. But that was good.

After we all finished, we stepped outside and started walking home. Outside was a perfect blue, the air coolish and warm. Calm. We could see some stars, not much. We walked over to this church on a hill and watched the moon rise. We had missed the sunset, but this was almost better. The white-yellow coin in the sky floated up quite fast, while we watched on a bench. We were all silent, appreciating this awesome moment. I said out loud after a bit, "This is better than any movie," Something clicked then. I realized something, had something then. I discovered something but I don't know what.

I felt contentment, happiness when I got back. We had to take off our boots before we went inside the mountain chalet and could put on slippers. I didn't though. At our room, I had fun brushing my teeth and went to bed. This was a good trip.

Sigh.

Well we just came back. I got about 44 new emails, most of them from facebook. It was cool. And then I checked my blog, and whatta-know. Thank you to those who commented. See, my deal is, I just don't know if people are actually in fact reading this. But I've heard people are. So I will still pretend people read it. Sigh. So, the trip was really awesome. I will write it up soon, and add some pictures on here. I will put the many, many, many pictures on Facebook. Sorry to those of you that don't have one/don't want one and therefore cannot view them, but I will still put some on here.

The posts will probably not be that long. It was a great trip. I'm going to make a list of my top ten favorite hikes this year. I already have 4.

I have terrible news. Not concerning you of course, but my mom had her wallet stolen. Or lost. When we were in Geneva, about to take a bus to Ferney, she says she felt a slight bump and found her backpack zipper very slightly open. So then she had to call people, and all that. Sucks. So yeah. Awesome trip, probably awesome posts.

Thank you to all who read my blog. I really appreciate it. I think I have about 10+ possible readers. Awesome. So yeah. The posts will probably be up tomorrow. As well as pictures. Trust me, it was very very cool.

Overnight hiking trip

Tomorrow we have to wake up at 7:30, ride the train somewhere and stay at this place and hike. We'll be back Wednesday night, so I'll be gone like 3 days. I'll write about it when I come back and add the many pictures I will take. We'll see Europe's largest glacier. Wow. I think we'll take a total of like 3-4 hikes. Lots of cable-cars. The train ride should be like the best part because I'll get to listen to music. Ha. No but seriously. I'm sort of looking forward to this trip, because it's something to DO, but it's going to be hard/tiring/boring at times. Probably Becca's blog will have like 50 posts by the time I come back. I'll have to catch-up quickly. So yeah.

Ah, and let's see... my last 8 posts have gotten no comments. A record! Sigh...

Seriously, guys...

"Some strange people visited us last night..."

Last night, my mom's friend, Michelle, and his wife, Isabelle drove over to have dinner with us. We had visited them at their house 4 years ago. Their kids are grown up now, and were in this circus. We got to see them in that and it was really cool. Michelle is fluent in French and knows a lot of English, (still has a small accent of course) but Isabelle knows only a little bit of English. So Michelle sort of translated to both sides. It was cool. I didn't talk much, but did say a few small French phrases. I only understood the conversation about a fourth of the time maybe. I caught little snippets. Luckily, some of it was in English. They brought a fig pie for dessert and these caramel squares. And some wine. My mom made spagetthi with a pesto/mushroom sauce. I tried some and Zach had plain pasta. "Rubbery" is a good word to describe mushrooms. They don't even have that much taste, but are quite squeaky. There was also some broccoli and chicken. Ah, yes, the chicken. There was much discussion over the different pieces of chicken (my mom had made different parts, like she didn't cut it from a whole chicken). After a little bit I went to my room and downloaded songs to my iPod. Dude, you guys have to check out this website: free and legal mp3 downloads. Go to the left hand side and click on "other mp3's". It's really cool. So anyway. I have 900+ songs on Melvin now. Amazing. So then after dinner, we had that wonderful fig pie. It was quite good. Then they departed at around midnight and I went to sleep shortly after. It was awesome. My parents mentioned my blog, so they're probably reading this. My mom said, "You guys will probably appear in her blog tomorrow," and Michelle added something like, "'Some strange people visited us last night....'" which explains the title. It was fun.

OMIGOSH- COLDPLAY CONCERT????!!!!

I was listening to music on Facebook, and found out that Coldplay was on tour. I glanced the cities, most of them in like Paris or whatever. But then- there was a show in Lyon, France which is relatively close to Ferney!!!!!!!! And so then I tried to find tickets but they were like 100+ Euros. That SUCKS. It would be on August 4, which might be a school day for me. Ugh. But it would be SO FRICKIN' AWESOME to see Coldplay in concert! I mean, I'm not really a huge huge fan, but I like a lot of their music. And I mean, I haven't actually been to hardly any big concerts. But it's probably unrealistic. Sigh. I'm going to keep looking for tickets.

Update: found some for 45 Euros. Not tooooo bad...
And I found some for like 53 Euros. This is probably not going to happen. 'Cause like, we'd probably get 2 tickets, which would be like 100 Euros, which is 160 dollars. But at least I can fantasize.

More pictures

Where the US sits in one conference room, an awesome painting inside the UN, where we have to go in for security checks, a Ghandi statue down the street from the UN, the car entrance to the UN across from the fountains.

some pictures

Security guard, conference room, a microphone and our tour guide.

The U.N.

Today we had a tour of the United Nations in Geneva. We had some trouble finding the entrance to tours, but eventually found it. We had to go through light security and then my mom had her picture taken for a visitor's pass. My mom is known to have...not the best pictures of herself, but even she herself thought that was the worst picture of her. But it was funny. So anyway. We passed this small gift shop and when my mom asked in French if she could speak English, the lady was like, "Of course," which pretty much all the other employees here said when we asked them. We walked down this sidewalk to another building and sat down in this area that reminded me of an airport. The next tour was in 10 minutes. So we just sat and waited. There was a gift shop in a corner and a few people. I took some pictures outside. It was raining today. Supposed to rain for like 3 more days or so. But anyway. Then this black-haired guy called out, "English tours over here please" or something. So we, with a whole bunch of other people, got up and followed him. He explained the rules: no eating/drinking, using a cellphone, etc. during the tour. We also couldn't take any videos inside the building, which really stank. I wanted to take at least one and put it on facebook or something. Oh well. So yeah. He said the tour would take about an hour.

It was pretty interesting. We got to sit in a few conference rooms (just like we saw on TV!) and see the cool rooms and stuff. I took lots of pictures. There were a lot of paintings and murals and stuff, which were quite cool. We also got to go through this tunnel thing, and the guide explained about the park in the UN. There was this guy that donated the park or something, with 3 requests. He wanted to be buried in the park, which he was (the guide was about to say "parking lot" when he explained this -ha) and he also wanted there to be peacocks. I didn't see any though, but the guy claimed there were some. He also wanted the park to be open to the public, but they couldn't allow this now. The security is really tight and the public can't go in the park, which stinks. But yeah. It was really cool to sit in the conference rooms- it seemed so real. Ok, it was real, but I mean, it's different to see pixels compared to actually being there.

There weren't many questions asked, but my mom did ask the guy two questions. He explained that the UN isn't a global government, and it can only do what the people inside it can do or something. He made it sound just so...convenient and perfect. Well, not really. I couldn't blame him. But I do like the idea of the world being united. I mean, seriously, who gives a care what frickin' country you're from? Aren't you kinda, uh, all humans? And all, um, living in the same world? Whatever. War is seriously stupid. The tour guide said that in war there really are no winners, it's just who loses less. I agree.

After the tour (it didn't seem that long at all) my mom and I went into the gift shop. I got a cool poster showing a dove flying up with an "A" in the mouth, going towards the word "PE CE", filling in the A. And then at the bottom were the letters "W R" for a space for A, except the A was going to make peace. I also got a few postcards. Then Zach went home by himself, and my mom and I walked out and went to the Gare Cornavin (train/tram/bus station). I bought some valve/slide oil for my trumpet at this music store and then I took the bus home. I was so darn hungry. I didn't really have lunch because I had such a big breakfast (my second crepe). I listened to my iPod on the way home and then uploaded the pictures on the computer. I'll add those in the next post. It was fun I guess. Nice change from spending the whole day on the computer.

Crap, only 2 weeks until school...

Then what is there?

The New Yorker had always been somewhat intimidating and sophisticated to me. I would only look at the cover, flip to the back page to the caption contest and maybe glance through at the pictures and small comics. I'd only understand the comics about 75% maybe, and didn't really pay attention to any articles. But then I decided to try an article, seeing as it seemed interesting. The first New Yorker article I ever read completely was in a Media Issue, about this YouTube star (Little Loca) and how being popular on YouTube is like dangerous. It was a good article, but the length always gets me. Then today, I picked up one of our many New Yorker magazines that my dad brought along and flipped through to find an article to read. I saw this awesome picture of the Milky Way from the New Mexico desert, and read the title of the article. It was about light pollution. I began reading.

Sophisticated is a very good word to describe New Yorkers. The writing is the kind that makes you sort of think twice about your vocabulary. It's good writing. Sometimes complicated, but well thought-out nonetheless. Anyway, the article was satisfactory. I'm interested in astronomy and I like star-gazing. It talked about this group that makes rules for night-light. It's pretty sad how people looking up from the Empire State Building platform won't be able to see even 1% of the stars Galileo could see. I remember coming home (in Ann Arbor) after a long night and seeing the lights in Slauson on, to protect against robbers. But the article went on to say that, actually, if you turn off the lights, you'll be able to see the burglar better because they'll use a flashlight or something. I mean, seriously, our eyes can adjust to the darkness. I like it when it's dark. I like to see the stars. I don't like to be with a lot of lights. Star-gazing is totally under-rated, and I haven't seen half of it. In our cabin in Canada, there's a pretty good view of the night sky, but there are just so many mosquitoes. Do us a favor and turn off your lights, ok?

So then I just thought, after reading the article, that people need to experience more. Or something. I would hate to have a steady job, always having the same schedule, my middle-aged life controlled by people paying you for getting money. People need to start thinking outside of the boxes. Boxes like houses, cubicles, computers, pizza boxes, etc. There's more to life than money. There's more to life than society. It's actually all a catch-22, because it's like, people wanted the future people to have a system that helps future people and that organizes, and helps people just move on with their life. That's society. Day after day, spending money, trying to make money. Year after year, making money, spending money. Decade after decade, people dying, you dying. Your remaining family pays money, dies, etc.

I mean, gosh, why can't we just like, STOP and THINK for our sake? Instead of always following a schedule, why not ride your bike somewhere random, walk around, handing out gum (influenced by Becca) and then stay the night in some field, looking at the stars? We've made a world that is way too systematic, too stereotypical, too expected and too planned. I don't like it, frankly. All of these stupid rules that don't let me just LIVE my frickin' life! All of these expectations! All of this money and economy-influenced lives that I'm supposed to get involved in. Screw credit-card bills, screw cutting your grass just to look normal, being normal is over-rated. I say, "weird" is the new "cool". Just live, be yourself, have fun, think outside of it all, stare at those stars, write about it, go to a football game, hug your friends, write them letters and smile. Because when you're finally going to die, you know that at least you were you at least once.

Life is choices. Plainly put. But then it gets complicated, because I think about how I did something bad, and how that something should have happened, and it did, so just let it be and don't say it's bad. Because it happened. And what happened happened. Because it happens.

You could choose to do something important and meaningful in your life. That'd be really cool. Maybe you choose to focus on a sport, or instrument. Because you like it. Hopefully. Or maybe because that was the only thing you could afford or can afford. Hopefully you'll choose, or have chosen, to do something along the lines of human nature. Being mean to someone is not nice. Being not nice makes people not happy. Being not happy makes people not like life. And so you just ruined (at least) part of another human's life that could have done something to help other humans. Or animals. Or just the world. Hey, that's another thing. The world is a big place, lots of people. Lots of animals, living things. It's alive. It matters. You could very well be born a cardboard box, let alone a polar bear. We'll never really know. We'll always really think.

I have a new favorite color. It's whatever I see when I close my eyes.