Summer, condensed

I'm actualy writing this from Argentina, and would rather write about interesting things like wrestling Guanacos but I feel like I should give the summer some closure:

It has been six months since I last left the United States of West Coast & Canada. A long six months of attempting to work and save money - did not happen, learn spanish - did not happen, and learn how to cook - also did not happen - It seems there is a pattern in my life of none of my plans being carried to fruition, this may indicate a problem.

This was my first summer in seattle as a legal adult (the past two I have been out of the country) and it exceeded my expectations by probably being just about the best place ever, besides Haad Rhin on New Years smashing buckets. Growing up on Bainbridge you don't really see much of Seattle other than the occasional shopping trip or dinner. Going out in Seattle is hard to wrangle because you either need to have a place to stay in Seattle or have the coherence to catch the 1:35 home, a rare feat of mental collection after too much belgian ale at Brouwers.

If I choose to go to law school in seattle (UW or SU), I would definitely move into the city, for sheeezy. After spending a summer here I can honestly say this is where I think I would like to be, at least for the next four or five years, but none of my plans seem to work out that well...

What I learned this summer about Seattle:

- Seattle is the best city in the entire world.

- The ballroom is a meat market that Charles From Party frequents

- Everything is more fun when you wear a turban

- Dicks is worth leaving the bar early for

- Mr. Tyler Bradley-Hewitt has very comfortable couches and should probably charge me rent

- We are incredibly lucky to live near such good coffee.

- Hiking / Camping is awesome and I am going to marry an REI man

- Skeet Skeet is interchangeable with the word skedadle

- The name of the burger place in forks is Sullies, this is a good thing to bet about

- Seafair is somehow impossible for me to make it to no matter how hard I try

About life:

- Going back to school might actually not completely excruciating, hence law school

- Be careful who you hook up with in Vegas, they might work for the DEA

- Don't sleep on doorsteps or your friends will kick you thinking you are a bum

- I am "impossible" .... I don't even know, but its funny

- Nannying is hard work... imagine if they were actually yours ... holy hell

- Sunroofs on cars periodically shatter, stay calm and don't touch any of the glass

-I am someone who needs a home, traveling forever is not going to be it for me

Ok.... now that I am done with that we can start talking about rounding up Guanacos!

Pictures:
Vegas with the Big Donz and Amir

Klehane Ridge hike with Natface and Corrine

Explaining a shotgun - I feel like most people have figured this out freshman year of college

Bay-Rut

Beach out at the ocean

Klehane Ridge Trail - Hurricane Ridge

Hurricane Ridge Visitors Center

Little trees in the Hoh Rainforest

Marmot Pass trail

Beach Salmon Bake

Prideaux Haven, BC

La Push or Bust!!

Soo, I finally caved and checked out the first twilight book form the library with the result of me becoming:

a. obsessed with twilight

b. obsessed with vampires and wanting a vampire boyfriend

c. reading all four books in under 48 hours

d. going to forks with Natalie on a spur-of-the-moment trip

Unfortunately for us they had closed the bridge, FML, so we had to drive all the way around...I don't understand how they can just close the ONE FUCKING BRIDGE TO THE PENINSULA!! seriously, how are we supposed to hike.

First sign for forks!!! notice that the nearest "town" is a hundred miles AWAY.. ponder that

We made it!!

Basicaly Forks is the shittiest town ever, even when its not raining, and is way to flat and farmy to be the setting for twilight, unfortunately there isn't any other life on the peninsula so they didn't have much choice. I've driven through Forks countless times on my way to the ocean and didn't even remember it so that shows you just how forgettable it is, and PS hollywood, they definitely don't have black or asian people there, just a lot of hicks. They do however, have awesome burgers at the burger place as you drive into town...like 15 different ones you can get, including a bella burger!!! The town marketing was a bit overexcited to have the sudden inflow of tourism with twilight themed signs everywhere:

We camped at LaPush and tried to find attractive indians (a la Jacob) or any indians for that matter - its amazingly hard to find indians on a reservation..which is incredible since it is a reservation... since we couldn't find ANYONE to hang out with since the bridge closure has cut the volume of campers by at least 90 percent, we just got in touch with nature instead and had a nice meal on our rock plates eating with out beach spoons we had found earlier in the day.

La Push is pretty awesome, rugged coastline with lots of seastacks poking up in the bays. It also has the best surf out at the coast so we got to watch some miserable looking surfers battle with hypothermia. These surfers later came into the burger joint where we were happily consuming our salmon and jalepeno burgers, gave us a bouquet of wildflowers they had picked and told us that they would "love to stay and flirt, but had to get going". Anyone who surfs the WA coast is either completely crazy of a huge badass so its too bad they couldn't stay and flirt, either way it would have been fun.

Nat getting pulled over by the tribal police...for doing 10 over. SERIOUSLY???!!!?!

Wear it Chief

In the last 24 hours I:

1. Spent an hour trying to decode the pictograms on the Ranier caps, a legit drinking activity

2. Rear ended a taxi

3. Made delicious mexican at 3 am and did not burn anything down

5. Shot two consecutive bulls eyes while simultaneously playing pool

6. Laughed at Teebs trying to hit on his supervisor

7. Wore it

8. Left my boots on the bus, then ran after the bus yelling till it stopped causing a scene

9. Spent the equivalent of four hours of wages on cheese at pike place

10. Got a job

11. Applied to teach in spain for a year

Sincerely,

Mundtface

For clarification... I didn't rear end the car, Derek did

VegAAS

VegASS...from a really long time ago...

My time at CMC before we drove out was basically a repeat of a typical college day: got into the airport, was picked up by Yohei, went to Ralphs, Purchased alcohol, grilled and drank on green beach, went to the apartments, blacked out, woke up on a couch (I think it was Kauhrana's) to Abby calling me at five am, stumbled back to Abby's, drove to vegas while drinking to keep my buzz at a non-hangover level.

The highlights of vegas were definitely Rehab, Bare and then the night we went out. oh and I didn't mention the MOST IMPORTANT HIGHLIGHT. wait for it....I got to eat In-n-out. NEI LEPSHI

Rehab: we got a Cabana since there were 8 of us, about 70 each, which was the way to go for sure since all of that 70 goes towards drinks and then you don't have to pay cover. We made friends with our neighbors who were very liberal with their Dom, and had awesome stories about getting kidnapped by MILF in the Philippines (thats the rebel group not the normal abbreviation). My not-ever-sobering-up plan didn't work so well since it made me more prone to passing out, which I did three times. It just looked like I was sunbathing though so it took them quite a while for the rest to figure out that I was asleep. Afterward I drunkenly ordered Ali to drive us to In-N-Out, which was the greatest experience of my life to this date. Better than the time when I found 3 grand.

Where: Hard Rock Hotel (off the Strip) $ 15-25 cover, $ 500 cabanas

The mothership of fun

me "tanning" at Rehab

Bare: Bare is the swanky "adult" pool in the Mirage; there's a daily person limit so on crowded days you either have to be hot as a girl or have enough money to pay the exorbitant 50 dollar cover for guys. We again got a day bed since we're pimps. The place got a bit over crowded since it was a saturday but it was pretty fun people watching since there were lots of trashy girls with their tops off making out with people. This one girl went through five different guys, and then the attendant told her she had to leave...it was hilarious.

Where: Bare at the Mirage, on the strip. $100 for chairs, 600 for day bed, 2,000 for cabana

Pure: Had a slight bit of trouble getting into Pure since the line was uber long and Perriface and I don't deal well with lines, but we luckily got behind a group that was getting ushered in VIP and just went with them. Pure is kinda a bitch to get in unless you have reservations or a table, or you are wiley like us. Wandered around for a while then found a table on the roof bar with a few cool canadian guys down from Winnipeg. Well, two of them were cool, but the one I got stuck talking to was an Emo, luckily he could take a hint and wandered off sloppily to find another girl who might possibly like his heavily manicured and highlighted hair, if there is such a girl, I doubt it. We all called him highlights the rest of the night..even his friends, I'm thinking the name might stick even after they go home.

Canadians

View of the Strip from our table

In the Jungle outside of Jet

This blog is about......

June -

While searching for jobs in the fall, china was nowhere to be found of my list of goals. I had never been to the country, to anywhere in Mainland Asia for that matter, and knew even less about the people, language, culture etc. I had taken Japanese for three years in high school, but at that point had been more interested in the boy sitting in front of me that the squiggly lines on the page in front of me. suffice to say, I did not emerge from that class with a grasp of the Japanese language, and even if I had, Chinese is a whole different story, although still using squiggly lines.

So how did I come to be in the situation that I am in now, moving to Beijing in a month? During the fall of senior year at CMC, everyone rushes around frantically submitting resumes and dry cleaning suits in the hope that they will be chosen by some consulting or investment banking firm to be a number cruncher for a few years. the vast majority of graduates leave with jobs at the end of the year, and it is something of an embarrassment as an economics of finance major if you have not secured a job by winter break, let alone graduation. As it was a quite nerdy school, interviews, offers, resumes and the like were great topics of conversation at parties; the usual who hooked up with who got replaced by who got interviews and offers from who. It was not unusual to see two highly drunk people contemplating the merits for their different offers from investment banking firms, much to the chagrin of the liturature major next to them, who had yet to get a job. Moral of the story: get a job or feel like a loser.

Anyway... after a night of resume dropping on monstertrak, I saw one last posting that looked interesting (the job was in China and I wanted to work abroad), and so although speaking chinese was one of the requirements for the job I figured I might as well apply for shits and giggles and wrote a great cover letter about how my knowledge of japanese (nonexistant) would surely help me learn chinese fast enough to work at the company. I completely forgot about the application and was astonished when a week later I heard that I had gotten a first round interview. Parties at CMC start Thursday night at approximately what time your last class ends, and as the phone interview was not till 9 I was going to be far behind everyone else. my brilliant idea to fix this was that because I thought I had no hope of getting the job since it required Chinese, I would simply start drinking before the phone interview as they could not see the bottle in my hand.

Amazingly enough, I interview very well while drunk and so I got second round interviews. This drinking while interviewing continued all the way until my interview with the partners, because at that point I realized there might be a slim chance I would get the job. After that it gets boring, no more drinking and interviewing, so I'll move on. Just making the point that I have no idea how I got this job since I: I drank during the interviews, do not speak mandarin, and do not know very much about technology which I would assume to be paramount at an IT consulting firm. I accepted the job which let me leave the ranks of stressed-out-and-insufficient-feeling-people-without-jobs, and started to learn Chinese, which is not as fun as the squiggly lines you draw in preschool amazingly enough.

This blog is going to be about anything crazy or fun that happens in china. If I hate it, then I will rant in here, if my apartment mates (three Chinese guys) are ridiculous I will write stories about them in here, if I accidentally eat a dog I will write about it, if I get eaten by an aardvark in Australia I will not write about it since I will be dead, but hopefully that will not happen, although Australia has the highest number of poisonous animals per person, fun fact!

ciao