Mrs. Claus Takes a Vacation
My friend Linas just published his first book! If you don´t buy a copy for yourself, I will buy one for you for Christmas =) Here´s the promo message from Linas:
"Mrs. Claus needs some sun and surf. Why should Santa get to travel all the time while she stays home at the North Pole? It's time for a vacation! Leaving Santa to prepare for Christmas, Mrs. Claus hitches up a sleigh and sets her course for adventures around the world. Will Santa be okay on his own? Will Mrs. Claus make it back in time for Christmas? A fun new classic for the holidays, Mrs. Claus Takes a Vacation is perfect for the Mrs. Claus in every child's life."
Go get it!! Go get two!! What a great stocking-stuffer! Tell everyone you know! Tell everyone *they* know! Ask your local bookstore to order more! Every day! Grab as many as you can, and then "accidentally" leave them where everyone else in the store will see them! Hide the other Christmas books!
Or, if you like, you can order the book online. Go to
http://www.linasalsenas.com/, click on the cover of Mrs. Claus on the "Books" page, and that will link you to the book's page on Amazon. (If you go through my site to purchase, Amazon pays me a tiny kickback, which helps with the cost of maintaining the site.)
And I´m also super excited about his next book, Peanut, which will be available summer 2007! I´m so lucky to have such cool, super-famous friends =)
Abono verde
My friends and I wowed the crowd at the Peace Corps talent show with our Rebelde lip-synching and dancing performance. We closed the show to thunderous applause and a standing ovation! I don´t think that will ever happen to me again. From left to right: Joseph, my sexy Amazonian friend, having difficulties with the sexy pose instruction, me, Miguel, Maggie, and Calvin.
Normal, out of focus picture of the group. Some of my other friends had told me they were excited about our dance. And when the MC announced our act, he said, "And now, the moment you´ve all been waiting for. . . " He saved the best for last =)
Miguel has promised to make recordings for all of us of his original, Peace Corps omnibus 95 song.
Calvin and I showing off our mean air guitar skills.
Hmm, not quite sure what is going on in this photo, I think it might be our ending pose.
I was super excited about doing this dance, and I even dyed my hair red to look the part of Roberta, one of the lead singers of Rebelde. Someone asked me if I really dyed my hair just for the talent show. Umm, well, maybe. Anything wrong with that? The hair dye box said exciting red, but with my dark hair, I think it just looked slightly reddish.
Aren´t our homemade ties fabulous? They are made from a white t-shirt, colored red with a magic marker. My hair seems to be in my face in all these pictures.
Check out Joseph´s sweet Napoleon Dynamite wristbands! I am going to wear them for my Halloween costume. I think I am going to be an 80´s girl. Thanks Sasha for the wristbands!
There were supposed to be prizes for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place group, plus a special abono verde (green manure, which I think are plants that provide nutrients naturally to other plants) prize for the worst act. Miguel wanted to win the abono verde prize, and I wanted to win 1st prize. Well, no other acts entered the battle of the bands competition, so we won everything, and we were all happy. However, no one announced that we were the big winners, so I didn´t get a chance to give my acceptance speech. So here goes: Thanks to Susan, Tita and Alex for providing ties, blouses, and hair assistance. Thanks to Lily for costume assistance. Thanks to Leonor and Lucy, my friends from La Asuncion, who taught me most of the choreography for Soy Rebelde. Lucy came to the Reconnect conference as my counterpart (a community member who is supposed to work with me on my projects). We made a Rebelde sign and Lucy held it up at the end of our performance and cheered loudly from the front row. Thanks to our roadie Ben for help with music. Thanks to Landon for tech support. And a special thanks to all my devoted group members =)
Look at how synchronized we are! Truly amazing. We practiced hard to get to this point. And did some serious studying of Rebelde music videos. When Alex was here, I wanted to show her the Rebelde music video DVD, but I do not have a DVD player. I have become rather obnoxious after living here for more than 8 months, so I made the conductor on the bus from Santo Domingo to Quito play the dvd for us. I´m not sure if conductor is the right word. The word we use is "ayudante " for the man on the bus who collects money and tickets and takes care of music and dvds. The ayundante on our bus put on this lame Jean Claude Van Damme video (Wake of Death, not one of his good ones), so I asked him if he had any other movies, maybe some movies in English with Spanish subtitles, since Alex and Tita cannot speak Spanish. He asked if I had any DVDs, and I told him I had Rebelde, so he put it on and everyone on the bus had to watch the DVD with us. But it was better than that movie, and Alex got a chance to see the group we were imitating =)
Maggie and Miguel, portraying Mia and Miguel.
Katie and Aaron also danced in the talent show. Their dance was pretty funny, it started off as a traditional dance and in the middle of their song, a Daddy Yankee (reggaeton band) song came on, and they started booty grinding. It was hilarious!
After the talent show, there was a slide show with pictures of all of us and our adventures since training. That was super fun, since there was pictures from everyone. The people organizing the slide show also thought it would be funny to include some pictures of Pierre, so they put in the photo of Pierre relaxing in a hammock at my site. People asked, Who is that? And Maggie yelled out, that´s Ariana´s boyfriend! Some of my friends told me that Pierre is a hottie, which he and I always like to hear =) There was another photo of Pierre with some of the other volunteers in Cuenca. I figure Pierre is a Peace Corps volunteer by association, since he has met a bunch of my friends already, and has travelled around a bit and will visit a couple of more times and see more Peace Corps sites and projects. And he has to hear all my stories =)
La Perla
Pictures from the Peace Corps Reconnect Conference Talent show! Here´s Nick dancing with his girlfriend Yami, while the MC Miles sings "In the Eyes of a Child", a song from South Park: the movie.
My friend Miguel wrote and performed a song with funny anecdotes about some of the volunteers in our training group. It was soo good and hilarious! Miguel was definitely the star of the talent show, with his original song and awesome dance performance in our Rebelde act.
Here are some pictures of my hike with Maggie in the protected forest reserve, La Perla. The reserve is near my site, and I´m planning on working there maybe one week a month, helping out with some botanical and herpetological research projects. Here´s Maggie being a jungle woman, emerging from the leaves.
Check out the size of that leaf! It´s huge!
Sorry these pictures are all mixed up! Here´s another picture from the talent show. Aaron told a funny joke before his dance performance with Katie.
Here´s Maggie with one of the guides at La Perla, Placido. Placido likes to dress like Rambo for hikes, but he had already taken off his Rambo gear before we took this picture.
Cool fungus growing on a fallen log.
Maggie hanging out in a strangler fig.
Maggie climbing a ceibo tree!
My friend Linas just published his first book! If you don´t buy a copy for yourself, I will buy one for you for Christmas =) Here´s the promo message from Linas:
