Machu Picchu

So this is a quick, single media note. I am in Aguas Calientes, Peru. I am still having a fight with my camera (not only is the focus off, the battery is totally wonky... did you get a warantee, Dad?). I did however manage to get a few really lovely snaps. And my friend, Daniela, who I met on Friday got some awesome ones. We walked up to Wayapicchu, which is the sacred mountain overlooking the city. It was about forty straight minutes of steep staircases in high altitude. So I'm exhausted. Fortunately, this town is called Aguas Calientes because there are natural springs here. So we're about to go sit in some geo-thermic tubs for the rest of the day. I am feeling really good right now. Still a bit preoccupied with logistics. But generally I have the feeling that everything is about to become really clear.

Things I Don't Understand About Christmas in Chile

1) The weather- Ok. I understand this intellectually. That the earth is on an axis that moves and sometimes the bottom of the planet is closer to the sun and the top is farther away. But today is December 24. I woke up this morning and put on jeans, a t-shirt and sunscreen. And the strangest thing is that they don't even try to adapt it. There are machines that blow fake snow in the department stores. If you get this message in time, please send snow and mistletoe.

2) Pascua- According to sources as varied as my high school Spanish text book and Wikipedia, Pascua means Easter. But apparently it also means Christmas. Santa Claus is Viejo Pascuero. I've asked lots of people how and why they came to call Christmas Easter, and I've never received a satisfying response. It just is. Nothing about the etymology of the word or the history of the celebration seems to justify using Pascua to refer to the birth of Christ. If someone could shed some light on this mystery I'd be much obliged.

3)Bagpipes- Maybe it's a strange coincidence but some guy around the corner has been playing "Amazing Grace" on a bagpipe the whole damn day. I don't know what holiday that is appropriate for (Veteran's Day?) but it's certainly not Christmas. Quit it, dude. You're only making things more confusing.

Anyway, I hope you all have very merry christmases or at least happy days today and tomorrow. And that you're warm and with people you love. I'm going to go make ceviche and a peach tart. One nice thing is that I don't have to eat ham.

Sign of the Times

So my dad has a tendency to give some very random gifts. It's almost like he gets flustered in the middle of shopping by how many girl-y things he is expected to buy (for my mother, sister, me...) and just grabs at jewelry and small electronic items (flash drives really are excellent stocking stuffers though!). Anyhow, this year he got me this bottle of champagne:



Which is actually really nice, not because of my love for the Dutch designers Viktor and Rolf, but because I really love champagne and feel an intrinsic connection with rose (imagine the accent, please) especially due to my name* (which my father also gave me, so it's sort of all just a big circle). The point is that my dad, of all people, fell for the bizarre marketing of a bottle held upside-down in a plexi-glass box. To add more confusion to the matter, the box is not even a perfect rectangle! It tapers at the bottleneck end, making it impossible to wrap! And my father is obsessed with gift wrapping!** All of this brings me to the point: although I have had this bottle of champagne in my fridge since christmas, I have never felt like there was reason enough to drink it. Clearly, when I am not able to find a reason to drink champagne in nearly two and a half months, I (and the world at large, perhaps) suffer from a general malaise.

*Contrary to common wisdom, there are many rose-like things that I enjoy and don't find at all cliche (accent, again) as gifts. Rose champagne, roses themselves, these are all great gifts!

** My father has pieces of paper he uses to wrap christmas gifts that are fourteen years old. One year he challenged himself to use as few pieces of scotch tape as possible. He actually wrapped a fairly large gift using only the adhesive from a stick-on bow!

Is my inability to form meaningful goals the cause or merely a symptom of the fact that I am currently flipping between reruns of How I Met Your Mother and Star Trek: The Next Generation? And maybe also the fact that this sort of thing happens often.