"When I came home from prison..."

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

Sorry, Mr. McCain. I can't let that go. I laughed when you said that. I know it's not funny that you were a prisoner of war, but maybe you should have said that instead of seeming to elude to a stain in your past.

The debate was fun to watch. I watched the beginning and then had to stop to eat dinner, but then we went over to Nathan's and had a debate watching party. We enjoyed watching the little audience reaction graph at the bottom of the screen, mainly because we didn't really know how it worked and because we liked watching it spike when Obama spoke, and then curve down whenever McCain opened his mouth. Again, sorry. But I was a little disappointed in Obama, with the whole bracelet thing. Big deal. You're above that. But it was a lot of fun, and I'm excited to see more.

On that note, I received my absentee ballot last week and I voted today! I'm so excited about this election (though, unfortunately, I could care less who is going to be the new Director of Zone 4. I don't even know what that means), and I'm excited that I can vote and make a difference. Well, hopefully make a difference. We'll see who actually gets elected.

What I'm really excited for, is the Vice Presidential debate this next Thursday. Joe Biden is going to eat Sarah Palin alive and (unfortunately or not) it's probably going to be funny. Sorry again, McCain, but just because Sarah Palin is a woman, does not mean that I will vote for you. You insult me by assuming that any woman in the White House is the right woman. Frankly, I am terrified that he will get elected and then something will happen to him and Sarah Palin will be leading our nation. I'm all for women in leadership, but not women who deny knowledge of the charging of rape kits in their city, and women who refuse to speak with the media so that we actually have an idea of what they know (those are the same person, by the way).

Finally, I wish to extend a heart-felt thanks to Tina Fey, whose brilliant and somewhat uncanny representation of Sarah Palin on SNL brought joy to my heart and laughter to my lips. Thank you for returning to the show to give us an accurately ridiculous interpretation of the hockey mom who should not be a Vice Presidential candidate. I salute you, Tina Fey.

For all of you who wish to view this gem, here is the link (I can't figure out how to post the video on here, sorry). Tina Fey as Sarah Palin. SNL might just be funny again.

Thank you all for tuning in to the political views of Rebekah Jon Whittaker. Tune in next week for more somewhat biased and not-totally-researched opinions on the future of our government. Till then, shalom!

And don't forget: "I can see Russia from my house!"

One more week...

...and a thousand more fingerprints. I'm very tired, and I hope that I find out if I'm hired again soon. That way I can plan my vacation, and I'll be getting paid more (which is a definite bonus).

I watched the Hours a couple of weeks ago. I just finished reading the book again, and although I liked the movie for itself, I really disliked it as a film of the novel. Everything was all wrong. I understand that it's very hard to make a film out of a book that is mostly thoughts and ideas with hardly any dialogue, but nothing was as it should be. The casting was wrong, the characters were wrong, even the whole theme was slightly off. It lacked...sincerity. Or reality. Something was missing, something that made it a genuine story of three women whose lives are intricately connected. I didn't like it. I was also suddenly struck with how much I do not think that Meryl Streep is pretty. Not at all. Her mouth is too small. How strange. But there were a few things that I liked about the movie. The music was phenomenal. I thought that it fit the film perfectly. And Nicole Kidman. She was absolutely brilliant. She was the only part of the movie that I thought fit right. I couldn't even really tell that it was her. Because it wasn't her. It was Virginia Wolff. She was absolutely incredible, and watching her was the best part of the movie. The rest of it was ok, but nothing like the book. And now I almost regret seeing it because I don't want to associate the two. Oh well. It is done, and I have my opinion.

I also just watched the Great Mouse Detective. Now there is a great movie. Not only is the casting phenomenal, but the style and the music (oh, the music!) is tremendous. Quite a nifty little film, though I can see how I was so scared of the Big Ben scene at the end. It is a little frightening.

I have been having such strange dreams lately. There was the one a couple of nights ago, where I dreamed that there was a man standing at the side of my bed, wearing a white lab coat, and for some reason I was really scared that he was there. I kept trying to turn on the light so that I could see better, but the electricity wasn't working (this was also the morning that my set alarm clock didn't go off), so I woke up really scared and I couldn't sleep for a long time. Then I had one another night where I was at a high school, visiting some old friends or teachers or something, and I was wearing this weird 80's outfit. The part I remember the most was we were standing in line in the cafeteria, and I climbed up on a railing and looked over a counter to where Sara (from La Grande) was sitting on the ground with an Asian-looking girl and they had somehow gotten cake on each other. I laughed and said that they should rub it on each other, and some small middle school boys said, "yeah, that would be hot." I climbed back down and turned around to the line again, a little annoyed, mostly because I had been thinking the same thing. Then last night I had a really weird dream, where I was trying on all of these different sun dresses (I liked the green one best, but it had long sleeves, so I got the white one) and hanging out by a pool with all of these weird popular people. Then there was an area of the house that used to be a kitchen (but was now separated) and it was filled with snow and there was a young boy huddling on the ground in there. I took his face in my hands and I asked him if he was homeless. He said yes, and so I had the kitchen rebuilt for him (it was kind of like those sped-up parts of movies) so he could live there. The last part I remember of the dream was that Liz and I were cleaning out a cave filled with trash that had belonged to Davey, that we were using for some reason, and there were a bunch of people with Horner Hornets sweatshirts and beanies. That's all I remember. Weird, huh? I wouldn't want it any other way.

Well, I guess I'd better be going. I'm trying to decide if I want to stay up and watch the final two episodes of the first season of House, but since tomorrow is Saturday, what the heck? Why not? So, till later, my friends! I'm off to O.D. on House, M.D.! Shalom!

9/11

The world is unfair. Things like going to the dentist and shaving your legs are such ordinary things, so mundane, while there are people who woke up this morning crying because there is someone missing in the bed next to them, or in the next room, or down the street. There are people crying because two towers fell this morning, and I cried for one quiet moment before going back to taking fingerprints to allow people into the United States. There are people crying because they were there this morning, walking to work or buying breakfast, and they saw the smoke and the fire and the planes.

The world is cruel. I thought, how I hoped, that I would be one of those people who goes their entire life without seeing a dead body. And yet as we passed that bus that had crashed into the mountain and saw that car that no one could have survived in, I saw the man sprawled on the street and I cried. I cried because seven years ago today thousands of people lost their lives clinging to steel and concrete and hundreds of people gave their lives digging through the rubble to bring pieces of their loved ones home. For seven years people have been trying to forget and struggling to remember the last thing they said to their husband or their wife, their sister or brother, their mother, their father, their aunt, their uncle, their cousin, their next door neighbor, and the man they never invited to their parties. For seven years the rest of us have been living our lives, laughing just as loudly, cursing just as strongly, hating just as fiercely. Shouldn't we be speaking less, crying more? Why did we survive and they die? Why were our meaningless lives spared when, seven years ago today, innocent men and women had their lives stolen from them in a cruel and painful way? How can we live our insignificant lives while people are crying because seven years ago today, they stared in horror as the tower that held their loved one crumbled?

The world is distant. I wasn't there this morning, when the sky was filled with smoke and fire and the screams of dying souls. I wasn't there when the buildings fell and the streets jammed and the calls kept coming. I wasn't there when the flag was flown and the police and firemen and volunteers swarmed over the smoldering ruins to find those who survived and the bits of those who didn't. And I'm not there now, while the nation stops in silence for the men and women who died seven years ago, and for the men and women who have died fighting since.
But I was there when the museums and monuments was built. I was there when that woman told us about her son, the man with the red bandanna, who rescued countless people and never made it out. I was there when the other woman told us about how she used to work on the 93rd floor of that tower, and how her department had moved to a different building a week before the towers fell. I was there when there was a hole in the sky and the blue shone down where there should have been towers. I was there, and I cried.

Why do they call it Labour Day when you get the day off of work?

I am sorry that it has been so long since my last post. Life has been very busy and very tiring, and I just haven't gotten around to posting. I am sorry that I didn't report on the Copan trip in detail, but there are pictures on my Facebook if you want to look at those (and more coming soon!). And there will be more pictures from this trip; one of the guides brought a camera and he's going to give us all of the pictures he took soon. And he took some very good ones. And also please ignore any typos or spelling errors. I'm tired and too lazy to read through this whole thing to check for errors or edit my sentences. Usually I like to do that (I generally don't like the first drafts of my work), but not today.

But now on to the last trip! Since last weekend was a three-day weekend, Mary and Dad and I were kind of discussing what we should do on Monday. We never really talked about it, though I suggested going up to La Tigra to go hiking, because Melissa didn't have the day off of school (she has half of the American holidays and half of the Honduran holidays; it's strange). So I was just planning on some sort of day trip. However, on Thursday or Friday Melissa and I were informed that we were going to Tela for the whole three-day weekend, and that we were leaving Saturday at 7:00 am. I had been receiving emails all week (as did everyone else in the Embassy) from the Spanish Instructor about this Spanish Immersion tour that was going to Tela for the weekend. Tela is on the north coast of Honduras, about a 5 1/2 hour very bumpy bus ride from Teguc. I didn't think we were going, because it was very expensive and the schedule was very full, and I don't really enjoy vacations where you can't sleep in or have much free time. When I found out that we were going (by telling the parents that I wanted to talk about the weekend and being informed that we had already paid for it), it wasn't going on the trip that was upsetting. It was the fact that we never discussed it as a family. I know Melissa is not technically an adult yet, but I feel that we deserve to be treated as adults and as responsible members of the family when it comes to making those sort of decisions. I was just upset that we never sat down, as a family, and said, "hey, here are our options. If we don't want to go on this trip, what else can we do?" We never had that discussion, and that (plus the fact that I had to get up earlier to go on vacation than I normally do to go to work) made us all a little grumpy come Saturday morning. (*The trip turned out all right; nothing like what I wanted, but there were some good elements.)

We were on a tour bus sort of thing, but it was kind of older, so though it did have televisions, it didn't have a bathroom and the air conditioning stopped working a couple of hours into the trip. I slept most of the way, and we stopped at a rest stop/restaurant called Bongo's for breakfast. They had a buffet style and it was actually pretty good. Their pinapple was better than it is here in Teguc. There was also a lot of cheap crap for sale, including some very ugly and very tacky t-shirts, which none of us bought. After we had satisfied our hunger, it was back on the bus to Tela! They did show a couple of movies. I didn't watch them because I was sleeping, but I think it was Evan Almighty and The Devil Wears Prada (*which is interesting, and you'll know why later).
When we finally got to Tela, we checked into the hotel, put our things in our little room (which was one of four in a sort of house; they were all next to each other and they were actually quite nice), and went to lunch. The hotel is very nice, which is probably why it was so expensive, but we were in the older part. They are remodeling and were working on some newer buildings on the other side (we never heard anything). The first thing we noticed when we got there is that it is very humid and warm. It wasn't too much of a problem, except that I was wearing jeans, one of the only two pairs of pants I had brought (which proved to be a problem) and I was anxious to get into the water. However, we had a trip planned soon after lunch.

We all got back on the bus and drove a little way out of town to a botanical park called Lancetilla. I have no idea what that means, so don't ask. We sat in the bus for almost half an hour outside of the entrance, because the guy at the front decided that there was no one in the park so it was ok to close it, and we had to argue with him to let us in. I think because of that, our visit wasn't very long. We saw this crazy tree coming in (second picture) that had all of these weird hanging bird's nests in it. The tree was standing alone in a kind of field, and we have no idea what type of birds they were or why they decided to only roost in that tree. The world sure is full of mysteries. Also, strangely, there was a lot of bamboo in this park, but it was very beautiful, and there was one section of the park where you had to walk through a tunnel of it. There was also this crazy weird spiky plant. All in all, it wasn't that exciting, but it was pretty, and it was nice to walk around after being in a car all day. When we got back, we ate dinner (all of the meals were in one restaurant, and they were all buffet, which was kind of nice) and then Melissa and I decided to go swimming. No, wait. I think we went swimming before dinner. I suppose it doesn't really matter. Anyway, it was already dark, and so we went swimming in the pool (of which there were two) and this pool was freakin' awesome. There was a little kid end, with a platform with slides, and then a middle, with bridges and a little islands with palm trees that were like showers and a slide, and then the far end, that had a volley ball net and a bar. There was also a section of the side that had fountains coming out of the ground, like the thing outside of the Crate in Medford. Melissa and I enjoyed ourselves, mostly sliding down the slide, which we discovered was really fun to do on your stomach (though it was also painful; I still have bruises on my hips). After that, we were so exhausted that we just went to bed.

The next day was very interesting, and a lot of fun. After breakfast, we took a van (*not recommended; we were sitting on benches on the side of the back of this van, and there were no seatbelts. We also took this van to "Miami.") to a place in town, right up next to a delta, where we all got life jackets and got into a boat to visit Punta Sal. However, soon after, we had to push this boat across a sand bar so that we could get into the ocean. This was actually one of my favourite parts of the trip. We had to push the boat into the waves, and I helped everyone get on, and as the waves came higher and higher, I gave my cell phone to Melissa (after realizing that it was in my pocket, which was getting covered with waves. Oops), and then when everyone was in, I jumped up into the boat. Then we drove on the open sea for about 35 minutes to get to Punta Sal. This was awesome. I have never traveled on the open sea, especially in so little of a boat (see picture below; above is Punta Sal), and it was wonderful to ride the boat and look out into the ocean and see nothing but sky and sea. I loved watching the swell bob up and down, and I realized how wonderful and loving the ocean is, and how kind of a mother she is, housing so many millions of creatures. It also made me realize that I never want to be shipwrecked on the open ocean.

This is everyone on the boat. The people in the row behind Melissa were not part of our group. They were actually engineers from Wyoming on vacation and happened to be on the same tour as us. We told them that we worked at the American Embassy, and to call us if they ever lost their passports. Punta Sal, when we got there, was very beautiful. We went right up to the shore (which was about two inches wide) and disembarked so that we could hike through the jungle. Unfortunately, nobody ever told us that were were going to be doing any hiking, and so most of us were in flip flops, and we had two broken flip flops within the first ten. I think everyone managed all right though. Our guide, Alberto, told us that generally it would be ok, but if he started running to run too, and not ask questions, because he had seen a jaguar and wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. We didn't see a jaguar. However, we did see howler monkeys, that we woke up and got yelled at by them because of it. I think one of my life goals has been fulfilled. I have seen a monkey in the wild. How cool. We did take one little detour, and went and stood in a little bay, where apparently Captain Morgan buried some treasure (which is why they really don't let anyone in there) and where the land curves around to form the bay. I was looking out of the entrance, and into the sea, and I realized that what I wanted more than anything was for a pirate ship to come around one of the sides of the bay just then. It didn't happen. When we were finished hiking, we got back in the boat and dropped the other tourists off on the other side of the island (at a house; don't worry, we didn't abandon them) and we were supposed to go snorkling there, but the water was too murky, so we ended up just going back. We helped push the boat across the bar again, but then we realized that our hotel was just down the beach, so most of us walked back.

After eating lunch and taking a short nap, we all met up again to go visit this Garifuna community called Miami. Melissa didn't go because she wasn't feeling well, and it's a good thing she didn't, because we were in that crazy van again, but this time we were driving over really bumpy, sandy roads with a crazy crazy driver. Dad (who, by the way, has a cracked rib, from falling on it while playing Ultimate Frisbee) was in a lot of pain, so he rode back in the nice truck. That had seat belts. And air conditioning. But Miami was ok. It was really awkward, because there weren't a lot of people around, and we literally just walked through their living spaces. Each family would have a different building for cooking, for sleeping, for gathering, and we just kind of walked through it all. It was awkward. And there were lots of sand fleas and I got bitten up the wazoo, because although I did put bug spray on, I then rolled up my pants and took off my shoes. Silly me. Above is a picture of the little village.

After walking around for approximately fifteen minutes, we got into another boat, and this time toured a lagoon. It was rather pretty, but by that time I was really tired and a little sick of boats, but everyone was going so I didn't have much of a choice. We saw these cool tangle root trees in the water (above) and then we saw some cool birds (mostly egrets, pelicans, and cormorants, but we did see this cool pink bird, that had a flat beak). The best part about that trip was that the sun was setting behind the edge of the lagoon, so we got some good pictures of that (the first one, and then I like this one because of the pelican in it). So by the time we got back into the cars to leave, it was dark. Our van got stuck (of course), so we had to all help push it out, and then we got to drive back on that same bumpy road, only this time in the dark, which is a lot scarier in my opinion. However, we made it safely back to the hotel, with just enough time for dinner. When we got to the restaurant, however, we found that it was no longer buffet style, and we were the only ones there. I think it was because since it was an American holiday tomorrow, we were staying an extra day, but all of the Hondurans had to go back to work. But I had some Parmesan chicken and a virgin lime margarita and quite enjoyed myself. Melissa and I were going to go on a walk after dinner, but it was really dark on the beach and crabs kept pinching her (her, not me) and so we just went to bed.
But you see, a vacation at the beach is not a vacation at the beach until you go swimming in the ocean. We had no time to do that before, because we were always off doing other things, but I was determined to spend time in the Caribbean before I left.

And so, the next morning, even though I could have slept in, I got up early and went to breakfast so that I could play in the ocean before we left that morning at ten. I should have gotten up earlier, because breakfast took longer than I thought it would (pancakes with cinnamon sugar; I've never tried that before, and it's really good) and so we got a grand total of 45 minutes in the water. Pooh. But it was enjoyable while it lasted. We swam out to meet the waves, and toward the end, the tide was coming out and so we would be pushed toward the shore by the incoming waves and then (sometime simultaneously) we would be pushed back towards the ocean by the outgoing waves. The water wasn't really clear, but it was still refreshing and still fun.

After playing in the water, we went back to our rooms, showered and packed, and then got back on the bus to go home. Another long drive, and this time they only played one movie (Ratatouille, which is a really good movie) and we got home at about six in the evening. Long day, long trip, and even though it wasn't ideal, there were some elements that I enjoyed, and so it was all right. This is a picture of me and Dad swimming in the ocean. Go Melissa (she took the picture) for getting the big boat in the background. And now that I'm looking at this picture, I am realizing how strange and fake Dad and I look. We look like Legos. And our arms are at almost the exact same angle. Weird. So yeah. It wasn't the best trip and I wish we had discussed our options before diving into something like this, but it was kind of fun. And we got to practice our Spanish a little bit with people from the North Coast (who are hard to understand, for me) and with the Spanish instructor.
Well, I guess that's it for now. I was going to write about a couple more things, but this is long enough as it is, and it would be changing the subject, so I won't go into that. Stay tuned for now, and you can always go on Facebook to see more pictures. I love you all, and hope you enjoy reading about my adventures! Oh, and I'll get some pictures of the house up here soon. Love to all! Shalom.