snip snip snip

went the scissors, and i wasn't even afraid.

very near to 100% of the time i go somewhere to get my hair trimmed, i walk out the doors hating it. here that number seems to have gone up, since each hairstylist ive met doesnt really care much about what you want so much as about what they can make you look like and how they think what they want to do is the best for you. several months ago i started going to a place to get my hair cut where a friend of mine, and her aunt, had trusted. aaand the first time... went a little wobbly... ok... but a little wobbly. they just couldnt understand that i didnt want the to chop off my hair, that i was trying to grow it out and please just trim it and dont layer it to the max. a little sarcasticly they did what i wanted. the owner ended up coming over and finishing it up.. jeje .

fastforward to the 2nd time i went. i had a picture with me this time. and as i was waiting for the owner to come over and take the lead... he passed me up for a girl that was probably a more regular customer than once every six months or so, and that probably visited him for manicures and chemical hair straightenings and all, more than just a hair cut every six months. so... the girl that settled with me. did not understand me. even though i repeatedly explained, like this picture but not as short and not so layery. fail. i almost got up before she finished because she was about to cut layers past my chin. when she saw the tears on the edge of my eyelids... she... didnt stop. she didnt stop until i almost jumped out of my seat sure to cause a scene (i literally jumped) and said dont you cut another piece! after a day or two i realized the cut wasnt so bad, but it would have been had she not stopped cutting when i almost catapulted from my chair.

the third time i went was not long after that, they did my hair for our wedding. the owner and his wife. i had a really long conversation with them over me not wanting ringlets. because the style was supposed to be wavy... but i know how some hairstylists here like their ringlets. his wife did an excellent job.

then today.... several months later as he pointed out to me when i got there. he said "have you been traveling to the states because youve not been here in a while?" i said uhmm.... (how do you explain that you just dont get your hair cut that often, as often as you should?) so away he went, completely polite, completely not cutting away all of my hair and i, completely content. however ... i did venture into bangs this trip. and when i told him he could make them a little shorter than he had he was a little more than excited that i gave in. and when i told him i was thinking about cutting it shorter for the summer... he showed me exactly how he would cut it if i would let him. to my chin, "a little longer on one side... straigten it with a flatiron to give you a little more of a modern look" my hairdresser thinks i style myself like an old woman. well, we'll see come summer! end of the story... i got bangs and had a great time at the salon... and that never happens. either of those. i actually felt better about myself leaving than when i went it. cant hurt that they wash your hair and give you a 5-10 minute head/neck massage too. jejeje

a sunday.

taste test day....

in an effort to be healthier people.. we made fruit salad at home today. and in that process we had to make a decision about our topping.... there are many varieties of sweet trigo (smacks, like the cereal) which is what fruit salad is usually dusted with around here. i wasnt quite convinced of the advertising of the one julton chose. (left) actually neither of us had any kind of authority on the topic whatsoever. so we went with his choice and there was a smaller 'sampleish' bag we went with too... taste tests of both cereals on one plate with julton not knowing which came from which bag revealed that my first choice won in the taste category. jejejeje.

and...

on a random note. i have to announce a thank you... to both my husband and to God for putting him in my life. today was one of those days just enough out of the already out of the norm life we are sharing to remind me that hes the tacacho to my juane. (jungle food) today i was a little worn out emotionally/having a hard day. and he was there with open ears, great solid convicting yet encouraging advice, smiles that make you want to smile along, and reminders that im the 'perfect woman for him' and the 'compliment to his compliment' so... all in all i was feeling better than average after that conversation :) thank you Lord for crossing our international paths. its been perfect for my heart.

eggs. in a bag.

eggs. such simple little fragile things. that always come in such fragility entrusted crates. and never break in between the time you pick them out in the store and start to put them into their homes in your kitchen. never... oh wait...

it happen again.

and again.

and then... again.

most commonly eggs come in little this plastic bags... or little red nets... not nestled safely into their own little crates. well sometimes they do, but those ones are just expensive enough to make me, the buyer facing these two egg options... thinking to myself... sure why not save a little and just buy the ones in the bag. what could happen? splat. careless supermarket checkout chick. crush. careless taxi driver... " no thats okay i will carry this bag, its eggs.. no no señorita put them here its okay... " errrr....

i dont know how it happens everytime. but everytime and by everytime i do mean every.single.time. in my 5 month married life that i have bought a little bag of eggs. ive had a goner. im considering investing in the crates... but then what are we going to do with them when we have a bunch of egg boxes laying around? its time to start looking into craft options. if you come to our house and fine an 'artistic' display of egg crates strategically yet whimsically strewn across a wall.. just dont ask questions. you could however conclude that we no longer support careless egg handling.

pesto

today as i was thinking about making myself some lunch... my mind kept going toward making something a little healthier since my fruit juice this morning... ive been telling myself for a while that i need to straighten up my eating habits but i suppose actually getting those thoughts out and sharing them with someone other than myself made them a little more convicting. so i headed over to food gawker to try to find something that peaked my interest when i stumbled upon... pesto. theres lots of pesto recipes there everything from sandwiches to pastas to pizzas soups and salads...

so i started perusing the pesto recipes (which are also of abundance there...) what did i find in common? .... pine nuts. turns out you can (according to various cooks from the internet) change up the basil for parsley... but they were all pretty serious about their pine nut ingredient. toasted or not it was in almost every recipe. so i headed to the store.... and came back.... and intended to try the recipe without pine nuts. because half of what each recipe called for.... was the same price as almost a whole chicken. so... i couldnt reason myself into buying them for a meal i was making for myself.

another disadvantage? the lack of a food processor. which i wasnt so worried about since im pretty sure i have memories of a friend making pesto with just a blender. well. my next mistake. the basil kept getting stuck in the bottom of the blender.... and was being very stubborn. i probably added more olive oil than necessary to try to get it moving... oops.

well i did a little research. and i added another reason to my list of why i want to visit italy/greece. the best pesto comes from a place called liguria in italy. because they have the best basil. i want to visit liguria. its also said that ligurians believe the best method to making pesto is the age old method of grinding it together with a mortar and pestal (but they dont vary away from the pine nuts....) so... since im pretty sure those are quite less expensive than food processors. im thinking my wrists are going to get used to the ligurians favorite way to make pesto...

to be continued...

a thesis

before: two college law students preparing to make their final educational speech... waiting for the 'judges'... putting the final tweaks on the powerpoint... an hoping that dad doesnt walk through the door to make things more nervewracking...

after: two legally authentic lawyers happily relieved that the that final hour is over with their very proud father :)

yesterday Jultons sisters presented their thesis at their university for their title to be lawyers. they spent the past year preparing their paper and presentation, and yesterday before three professors (and myself and another friend) they presented their thesis. and they did a superb job. well, from what i understood. there was a lot of lawyer jargon im not sure that i would have even understood if it had been in english. but they must have done a good job, because afterward it didnt take the professors long to meet to decide that they passed!
this is a random photo from the university.... that totally tricked kenedy and i as we were walking in to watch the girls present. its actually just a piece of propaganda for the school about how you can 'reach' your goals if you study there... upon walking in kenedy said hey look at that guy... and as we got closer and closer i kept saying but kenedy... hes not moving.... and as we climbed 4 flights up and got a little closer we saw that it was actually a doll strung to the building... hmmm

jugo mixto

an orange, papaya, strawberries and pineapple all make fore a pretty delicious juice...

i have not been eating that healthily recently. in the past eating alone were some of my healthiest eating moments... but somewhere in the process of getting married things changed. i do pretty well making food for the two of us... but when lunchtime comes around... or an hour or so after lunch time (when i realize that im really hungry because i didnt realize an hour earlier that it was lunchtime) comes around on the days that julton works later in the clinic... ive been really lazy about being healthy. thats pretty selfish. but... im hoping that a breakfast of fruit juice makes up for at least some of the damage...

its been a terribly long time since ive posted. sorrrrry. im not exactly sure why that is so i really cant give a worthy excuse. ive actually sat down to write several times... and not finished. actually i think ive done that with emails and phone calls and appearances and communication in general recently. so if youve expected an email phone call or appearance from me in recent weeks and ive let you down... at least you know you arent alone? sorry for that. i promise i havent dropped off the face of the earth and im actually doing quite well. perhaps since everyone around here is taking vacation in some form or another my mind slipped into vacation mode along with them without letting me know.

weve been doing really well and have been pretty busy. the move went very smoothly. but its just incredible how much stuff you can pile up in a small amount of time. were on the fourth floor again but have windows facing the city this time, so we can actually see a lot. were still settling down in here, where does this go and that go sort of thing. i like the new apartment for several different reasons, we get to have dinners with Jultons sisters more and just see them more often in general, although we only moved a few blocks technically we are still running into more people that we know, we have a washing machine (yay!!!!) and were going to be painting and adding personal explosion (as julton says) style to our new place since it didnt come predecorated. i might be as excited about the last option as i am about the rest combined...maybe.

we just got back from a weekend trip to moyobamba... which was just great and wonderful and relaxing and all things good and too short. i felt like i could breathe! and other than the string of discos that have accumulated in recent years on jultons families street (really its a ridiculous amount) it was pretty quiet at night. jultons 4 year old little cousin wouldnt even look at me when we first got there.... but after bonding over cartoons we were soon off conquering all things 4 year old wonderment. then he got a little grumpy with me when i disappeared to take a nap... which i did a lot of... which is hard not to do when there are four, no five, people in the household saying just go lie down and rest... after theyve fed you ALOT of (great) food. we ran around on the moto in the day and spent the evenings in the front yard with his granparents and other relatives that happen to walk by. it was jultons first time back in too long, and his first time back as a doctor. so he spent a lot of time off to the side talking with people about this ache and that pain. he liked it. hes in the right field.

we came back with lots and lots of maduros and lots and lots of other moyobamba food. candy and peanuts and peanut butter and snacks and cakes. so now we are spending time trying to get that eaten up and adjusting back into our jobs. Julton has been giving more talks around the clinic or churches to pretty captive audiences recently. One of his first was on the topic of adolescent children and i asked him what experience he had with that that they would want him to speak on it.... but then the most recent was about menopause so.... i said... well, you are the doctor, we'll just leave it at that :)

i think that pretty much wraps up things around here lately... waiting eagerly for spring or summer or anything but this cold weather to get here....

i leave you this sunday with one of my favorite sunday songs. we sang it a lot in the last church i called home in the states before i moved here.

happy sunday! i hope you are having a restful day.

4 eyes you say?

turns out my eyes are tired. at least thats what the doctor says. actually... im not sure if he was a doctor. but he looked pretty professional with his own glasses and sort of office in the back of a glasses store on the street that has back to back to back glasses stores for a few blocks, all with their own ...doctors. i never stop learning. my headaches have gotten worse recently and i noticed that it would be around the time i started using my computer (which ive been working on more recently). so i said... i think i need glasses again we should go to the eye doctor. (this seems to be a reoccurring theme in my life... i have glasses and i dont then i do and then i dont. maybe i should just stick with them and stop trying to convince myself that i dont need them?) julton said... i think you need glasses we should go to the store. to which i responded.. dont you mean the eye doctor? julton: yeah, the store. me: (completely confused) you mean you dont have eye doctors? what do you do if you need glasses? julton: yes we do, i think there are some in lima, but if you need glasses you just go to the store. me: well..... lets go then.

we were downtown (one the street with all the stores selling glasses) and julton took me first to a store that also is in the malls. well, they had really bright lights and magnifyingly fearful mirrors the combination of which made me want to cringe as i looked at myself in pair after pair of glasses. the guy helping us was not afraid to tell me which glasses were definitely not for me im surprised he didnt just take them off my face. he also kept saying (can i?) and adjusting the glasses on my face. because i like to wear my glasses like a grandma (is what julton said) "we just dont wear them like that anymore julie" .... me: "but I wear them like that..." (besides if i wear them where he and the guy helping us was so insistent about, they get to friendly with my eyelashes. you just cant be a serious eye glasses wearer if your glasses are too close to your eye lashes now can you? well, in the end i felt too pressure with all the lights and mirrors and the pushy assistant. so we left and continued walking down the street. and with luck, the next store we walked in was great. the lights werent so bright and the mirrors werent so scary. and i ended up with a pair of glasses.

and theyve got bling.

i suppose that we could have continued walking and found the same pair without the bling. but i didnt have the energy to search. and the store was sweet to me. ( the girl ran up the street to their sister store to try to find me the same cut glasses without the bling "oh... you want something a little simpler?...hmm" she asked me that with this look of complete surprise. if you look close the lenses dont go all the way to the frame on the outside edges. ooh. edgy. i assure you thats not a mistake, they make them like that. and apparently i buy them like that. julton kept picking out pairs that had frames around the top half but not the bottom.... which is exactly what his look like. and i kept explaining to him that i didnt want to look like his twin.

so, for all of those that get to see me when im working on my computer, or talk to me on my computer, you get to see me in my new specs. sorry for all of you i see in the sunshine. :)

i wanted to share this last picture with you for a few reasons...

1: notice the eyebrow raise to keep the lashes away from the glasses when worn 'appropriately'

2: my hair has gotten long. really long. and wavy. werid. my hair was always so straight that my mom couldnt 'f made it curl with curlers and a curling iron and and a gallon of hairspray if she wanted to. and i think this is the longest its ever been. maybe to the length it was when i first got my short hair cut. my dad would never let me cut my (very) long hair until one day i proclaimed my right to adolescent short hair (regret).

3: notice the coffee cup. theres a couple of things significant about that cup. were moving... tomorrow! surprise! so... ive been boxing up everything this week to take over to the new apartment, and taking out the dishes (like that mug) that the owner first put in the apartment we are in now. and... that mug has coffee in it. yum. well, half coffee and half milk. im trying to be careful. i was always in love with coffee, i still am. it just seems to have fallen out of love with me. i stopped drinking it for a while while i was working at the school because it made me more antsy than normal. since im not teaching at the school anymore i thought it was safe to go back to the coffee.... it thought otherwise. it makes my heart race like we are just falling in love again. julton doesnt think that i should drink caffeine at all, but im trying to be optimistic and drink very weak coffee with lots of milk in hopes of that effect wearing off one day very soon in my future.

other things very soon in my future... we're taking some trips! im excited because with all that bronchitis business a while back my lungs were complaining that it was high time to get out of the city for a while. at least one of the trips are going to be outside the city. next weekend we are going to moyobamba for the weekend to visit with jultons family. goodbye trujillo pollution, hello moyobamba green fresh air jungle goodness! im really looking forward to this. a 13/15ish hour bus ride is worth the fresh air and green grass and rain and sunshine and jungle food.

sadly the trip after that isnt into a fresher place, its to lima which is a bigger city than trujillo. but im looking forward to it. a friend of jultons that he has known for a long time is coming to visit so we are meeting he and his family in lima for a visit. im looking forward to meeting someone that has known julton for a long time, most of his friends here have only known him for 7 or so years, since he moved here for school. i wonder what stories this friend is going to have? :)