Project 365 – 2010

Despite the fact that from Tuesday on I had a real camera, I still found myself reaching for my phone to take pictures about 80% of the time.

I had a pretty busy week between work, and meetings/appointments. The next two weeks will be even busier, since the local colleges have their spring breaks I’m working a few extra shifts.

I had a really great Sunday last week!!! Church, lunch with Greg and dinner with the girls. Home-cooked food, good company, a clean apartment, relaxation…. I just have pictures from lunch, Greg and I made quite the spread! Chicken, rolls, green beans and roasted potatoes.

Ha, my pictures are so random and boring! One night I painted my toenails. Red. Then I took a picture. Which I’m now posting.

Wednesday was one of our sushi guys last day at the restaurant, he’s moving on to a different job. So I ordered the “tekka una don” (sticky rice with tuna, eel and unagi sauce) after my lunch shift. He made the biggest tekka una don ever, basically it was 5 tekka una don’s. So amazing.

That night we had a little going away party for him at the restaurant. I got some pictures of my amazing co-workers

Friday morning I made it out of bed by 8:25am to get a haircut! I’m growing my hair out, but needed a trim and needed my bangs fixed. I cut them myself a month ago, and they were looking rough. This is what I threw on to make it to my 9am appointment, I thought it turned out quite well (both the outfit and the haircut!).

Saturday was lovely. I slept in, went out to lunch with friends. Went on a motorcycle ride. Did some bargain hunting at Sherman and Lin’s. Worked the dinner shift and made great money. Went out with friends after work. Quite a good day!

I was super amused by these markers/pencils at Sherman and Lin’s. They just crossed out the number that there was supposed to be in the package and wrote on the number that there actually was.

I’m already past posting this on Sunday. I’m also very tired. So, once again I’m going to throw these pictures up here and run. Someday I might try to be a decent blogger.

Breaking news! The camera has been found! Jon emailed a few minutes ago and said, “I found your camera today, left it in a pair of pants, thankfully found it before I washed them ”

So, by Tuesday or Wednesday I should be taking pictures with a real camera!

In the meantime, I’ve been taking pictures here and there with my Blackberry, so that is what you get.

First, a confession. I’ve been watching this season of The Bachelor.

Total time waster, total guilty pleasure.

Monday was such a great day! I was coming off a great weekend in Michigan, and was a little nervous about my upcoming week, but Monday was just great! I met with the marketing director of KREMC (electric company) for lunch to discuss the video I’ll be doing for them. The meeting was awesome and I am just so excited about this video! Basically they want to interview people that were around “when the lights came on” in the county (1939). So I’ll be doing these interviews and then creating a documentary type piece on the history of electricity in Kosciusko County! I’m not very knowledgeable about history but I am so excited about this project! I can’t even write about it without a lot of exclamation points!! There’s also a possibility of a part-time marketing position with KREMC in the future which is exciting.

Tuesday I had another good meeting, this time with a financial advisor. We went over a lot of different things (life/disability insurance, planning for retirement, wise money management, etc…). It was really good! I have a lot to learn about financial planning, this meeting was a great start, and we’re meeting again next week!

At work that night one of the cooks came in (on his night off) and ordered this ridiculous salad, so that night I had to have it. It’s our mesclun mix with a grilled salmon filet, caramelized walnuts, candied strawberries, crumbled gorgonzola, dried apricots and a raspberry-dijon dressing. YUM!

Wednesday I worked lunch at the restaurant and had the night off! Nights off are fun, especially since I work 5-6 nights a week now. So, I went to see Avatar, I had no idea what it was about, had just heard the buzz that it was good. I was impressed! I don’t do particularly well with watching long movies, I guess I have a little bit of a short attention span, but I didn’t get bored at all during this 2 hour and 45 minute movie! Plus, it was in 3D which is awesome. I think I look pretty good in the 3D glasses

Thursday I was productive at home. I was almost out of groceries, but had some asparagus I needed to use so I made chicken and asparagus soup which I ate with the yummy roasted garlic bread that Jon made!

I also made a necklace which I debuted at work that night! It’s a lariat style and I’m quite pleased with it.

Friday I worked lunch again, and as we say at the restaurant, “we were hurting.” Busy, busy shift. I got home, ate my bento box and immediately went to bed (around 3pm). I woke up a couple times to reply to text messages, but eventually really conked out and woke up at 7:30pm and freaked out because it was super dark outside. I still had no energy so I went grocery shopping in sweats and then got coffee with a friend from work. This friend from work is a 17-year old boy and all of his church/school friends that we saw at the coffee shop thought we were on a date. Apparently I look young enough to be on a date with a high schooler? Or I look my age and I just look creepy enough to be on a date with a high-schooler? Regardless, it wasn’t a date, haha

I took a few pictures today of my post-church cooking/lunch extravaganza with my friend Greg, but I suppose those really belong on next week’s post.

So, I’m signing off. Hopefully when I have a camera, and more of a routine going, I’ll post more than once a week!

My brother lost my camera.

I ordered a camera (a cheap-o on Daily Checkout) about 6 weeks before my trip to Argentina.

It arrived at my house the day after I left.

Jon borrowed it and used it a little while I was gone.

It was last seen sometime between 2/7/10 and 2/13/10.

If you have any information regarding its whereabouts please contact me.

With that said, my week was busy and I only have a few pictures from the week that I took with my phone.

Work was busy! Tuesday night was actually one of the hardest nights I’ve ever had at work. It was just a high-stress, somewhat chaotic night with several big tables (28 top, 25 top…). We were moving tables from one dining room onto the porch, we almost ran out of chairs. Super crazy!!

I went to see Jon and Natalie and the doggies on Tuesday.

They cooked up some delicious tapas

I scheduled some meeting for the next 2 weeks. Tomorrow I have my first planning meeting for the video I’ll be doing for KREMC. Tuesday I’m meeting with a financial advisor to learn how to manage my money, and figure out the whole college loan situation. Next week I’ll be meeting with my awesome friend Monica from United Way and someone from Volunteer Kosciusko to begin planning videos for the Volunteer Kosciusko website. I’m definitely excited about the video work I have coming up!!

I had Saturday off work so I headed up to Michigan for the night. Sunday I went to my home church (Countryside Bible Church), it was wonderful to see everyone. My church family is such a blessing to me. After church I went to the Parker’s house for Ben’s birthday party and got to visit with people more.

The youngest Parker, Noah, was showing off his chin-up skills.

Then I headed home. It rained almost the whole way home. Now I am home. The end.

This week was sort of an epic fail on taking pictures I left Argentina early Wednesday morning and don’t have a camera at the moment. I’ll pick it up (and my winter jacket!) when I go see my brother/sister-in-law on Tuesday.

Friends of my parents came by one evening, bringing with them this sweet little girl She was a little fussy because she’s teething but mom said she’s usually an “unnaturally good-natured baby”!

We visited mom’s tutor to see the new puppies! So cute, all wriggly with their eyes closed.

This doesn’t even begin to show how beautiful it was flying above the clouds with the sun setting.

What did I do as soon as I landed in Miami? I got sushi!! The airport had a really nice sushi bar, it was yummy

I have no pictures from the rest of the week…

I worked Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. Good ol’ Valentine’s weekend. Thursday night was slower, which was nice, got me past my nerves of being out of practice. Then Friday and Saturday night we rocked it out, almost 200 (customers) each night, which is especially impressive considering most of those were tables of 2. We turned the tables 3-4 times in 5 hours!

I’m sort of unpacked, but don’t have the apartment cleaned up yet, that will happen tomorrow.

I ate too much pasta in Argentina. I returned to find that most of my jeans are uncomfortably tight So, I have decided to not just lose the few pounds I gained while I was there, but go ahead and lose the all extra weight I’ve had for awhile (20-25 pounds)! I’m doing the Weight Watchers online program. I like that it’s online, and I’ve done Weight Watchers before with success. I just started with it on Friday and really think it’s going to work well for me. If anything it’s making me simply make healthier choices and be more aware of what goes in my mouth. I also plan on getting back to the gym (and not just to use the tanning bed)!

Lastly, Happy Valentine’s Day! I went and saw “Valentine’s Day,” it was cute. The funniest part was the Indiana reference, considering I’m in Indiana the theatre had quite a reaction to it!

We took a day trip to La Cumbre this week. Had lunch at a great restaurant that was recommended by mom’s tutor, stopped at artisan shops along the way and even stopped by a hotel that Hitler vacationed at.

We had dinner at the Colle’s.

My parents took me to a Basque restaurant and we shared tons of seafood! Squid, octopus, shrimp (some big ones with the heads on), oyster and scallops (both still in the shell).

Saturday morning was clear so dad and I went to the Aerosilla. It’s like a giant ski-lift that takes you up to look over the city.

Last Sunday I caught some of the Colts game. It was in Spanish though, which made it a little bit more difficult to watch. It was funny hearing Peyton Manning being called “Payto Manny.” I didn’t get to watch the end of the game, but when I got back to the house I was excited to hear that the Colts are going to the Super Bowl!! And then disappointed because I realized I would still be in Argentina and therefore miss the real Super Bowl experience.

On Monday we had a sushi party! We had Pablo and Oscar over and laid out a ton of ingredients and made sushi rice and had a blast rolling our own sushi

It has been so hot this week. It’s not even cooling down at night so we’ve been pretty miserable. We tried to escape the heat by going to Cordoba but everywhere we went the power was out, which meant no AC. I did buy a ton of stuff though. I got a bunch of jewelry making supplies; leather cord, alpaca wire, some other random stuff. Then at the mall I got a ton of clothes at this store where almost everything was 50% off, I got two shirts with these cute ruffles and buttons, it reminds me of a ruffly tuxedo shirt.

That night we had Nestor, Graciela and Oscar over for a delicious asado!

Friday night we went to watch live Argentina folk dance!

We ended the week with lunch at a friend of my parent’s house. They also had some neighbors over, an Argentine who married an Italian woman and they had the most beautiful little girls. Long, curly brown hair and the brightest blue eyes, and so sweet!

One more week in Argentina and then it’ll just be boring pictures of Indiana.

This will probably be the best week of the year for Project 365 because we took a bajillion pictures and we’re in a gorgeous part of Argentina.

We drove to Mendoza on Monday, over the mountains! We spent the week at a nice little hotel called Soltigua Apart in the city of Mendoza. Some days we spent in the city, but 2 of the days we drove to other parts of the Province. On Thursday we went to Lujan de Cuyo and on Friday we went to Tunuyan.

Sunday, the day before we left, we had Pablo and Oscar (two guys with Word of Life Argentina that are spending their summer term working with the church in Carlos Paz) over for asado. We ate the most delicious beef and chorizo and grilled veggies!!

The drive to Mendoza was gorgeous, but long… There aren’t many road signs in Argentina and we got a little lost and it added a couple hours to our trip.

Our first full day in Mendoza we wandered around the city. My favorite part of that bottom picture is dad’s fluffy hair, hehe

On Wednesday we drove up to Cerro de Gloria, a monument in honor of the Army of the Andes that liberated Argentina, Chile and Peru. This spot also overlooks the city of Mendoza. We were amused by the shiny gold noses on a lot of the statues, do people rub the noses?

On the way to Lujan de Cuyo the streets were lined with people waiting to see the Dakar vehicles (this happened to us on the way to Cordoba last week). We had lunch at a little restaurant and a bunch of the Dakar vehicles stopped there and one of the Dakar motorcycle drivers was parked right outside the restaurant! Mendoza is known for the vineyards and wineries, this is an excellent place to grow grapes for wine. Many of the vineyards use hail-nets to protect the grapes.

On Friday we went to Tunyan, another area especially known for vineyards, it’s closer to the base of the Andes and absolutely beautiful! We ate lunch at “la Posada del Jamon” (the Ham Inn!), it was really delicious. Then we were able to see Clos de los Siete, a really interesting winery that’s actually a partnership of 7 owners with 5 different wineries on the property. 50% of the grapes go to the “Clos de los Siete” label and then each winery uses the other 50% of their grapes to make wines under their own labels.

Ahhh, Saturday was a good day. I bought a bunch of glorious Argentine leather! I’ve been looking for leather boots for a couple years now, these aren’t exactly what I had in mind, but I absolutely love them. The purse matches the boots and it’s sooo beautiful and soft! It’s giant so I can actually use it as a laptop/book bag. And the jacket, oh the jacket! I tried on so many jackets this week, so many different styles from really classic blazer style jackets to trendier, more casual jackets, but this one is just perfect. I really wanted a biker-style jacket with lots of zipper, and the leather on this one is so amazing!

So that was our week in Mendoza! We saw a lot and walked a lot (and ate a lot, and shopped a lot), but we also rested some.

Another week in Carlos Paz. A couple dentist appointments. Some walks. A lot of sleeping in.

This is the little building that my parent’s and the Ramirez rent to hold church services in.

Some more pictures of the half dried-up lake. The top picture shows what used to be a dock, and the middle picture is the boat ramp.

You can’t tell very well, but the guys in the car have a myriad of noisy instruments. They were cruising along making a ruckus, it was cute.

The peach tree in my parent’s backyard! There are tons on the branches, and tons all over the yard.

One night we made sushi!! Mom and I tempura fried some shrimp (I need supervision when frying, last time I tried to tempura fry something I set my house on fire). So we had tempura shrimp, plain shrimp, snow crab, spicy mayo, mango and avocado, which resulted in some delicious rolls! Our rice didn’t turn out very sticky, and we didn’t have a rolling mat, and we’re not exactly pros, but our rolls turned out halfway decent.