Wednesday, July 30, 2003
Mood: Jittery
Music: Five For Fighting - Superman

Cancun: Day 4
Water Water, Everywhere

Oky doky, so this'll be about my last day in Cancun. Then I can stop boring the hell out of everyone with my stories about my vacation and resume boring the hell out everyone with life back at home. So...onward!!

My last day in Cancun was pretty uneventful compared to the day before, but it was nice nonetheless. We went to a place called Xel Ha (pronounced "shell-HA"), where we basically did nothing but snorkel some more. At first it was kinda dull...there wasn't anything that I hadn't already seen when I went snorkeling the day before. And I still had crappy eyesight, so all I could see were colorful fish-shaped blurs. That's before I saw a couple of these suckers swim by:

It doesn't look like it in the pic, but these things were HUGE. And they were purty. :) Sure, I couldn't see them very clearly, but they were so big and colorful that there's no way I could've missed them. So I started chasing after them. And man....those mofos swim fast. They didn't look like it at first....looked like they were just kinda cruisin' through the water. But then I surfaced for a few seconds to wipe the fog out of my goggles, and by the time I'd dunked my head back in the water, *poof*! They were gone. Fast little buggers, I tell ya.

Anywho, so that's about all we did at Xel-Ha. Then we had our last meal in Cancun at some Crab House that was across from our hotel. If you ask me, food in Cancun sucks. And when it comes to me and travel, it's all about eating the local foods. Cancun failed miserably in the food department. Food was overpriced, bland, and honestly, you'd be better off cooking yourself a cup of ramen. Out of all the uber-expensive, unimpressive meals that I had in Cancun, the depressing part of it all is that the best food I had was bought for 50 cents. A little cup of flan from a local supermarket was sold for 5 pesos (read: 50 cents), and good god, that was the best flan I'd ever had. Creamy, soft, with the perfect consistency....and to think that my family plunked down 6 bucks for a yellow hunk of crap at a restaurant....psh. I'm sure local Mexicans would've thought there was something wrong with me for freaking out over 5-peso flan, but really....that stuff was damn good.

So anywho, Cancun was fun, the beach was pretty, the food was crappy, and travel agents are freakin' scary. All in all, one great trip. ^_^

Cindy blabbed at 09:03 p.m. |

Monday, July 28, 2003
Mood: Chipper
Music: Me First and the Gimme Gimmes - Tomorrow (punk cover)

Cancun: Day 3
Crashing Speedboats and Bullfights

My third day in Cancun was by far the most fun and interesting one out of the four that I was there. We started off by going on what was called a "Jungle Tour". There was no jungle, and it wasn't really a tour....we drove speedboats through a lagoon and across the ocean, and then we stopped to snorkel. And lemme tell ya, speedboats are freakin' fun. All you have to do is push down on a little lever to zip across the water, and pull it back to slow down. Sounds simple, eh? Too bad I was an idiot and ended up accelerating when I shoulda braked, so I crashed straight into my sister's speedboat. At first I panicked, but no damage was done, so yay for that. As for the snorkeling part, the water in Cancun is absolutely gorgeous. It was a clear turquoise, and the fish would swim so close to you that you could touch them. The only problem with snorkeling is that I've got the crappiest eyesight in the world, so when I had to ditch my glasses to go into the water, all I could see were pretty colored fish-shaped blurs....*sigh*.

Anywho, after the so-called Jungle Tour, we went to see a bullfight. I don't regret seeing it, but I'm not sure if I'd ever want to see another one again. I knew what I was getting into...they'd put a bull and a guy in a goofy suit into an arena, and they'd fight to the death. And most likely, the bull would die because nowadays no one lets people die in front of other people. I didn't think it would faze me so much...I figured that it'd be the same bull in my cheeseburger the next day.

Unfortunately, the bull fight was MUCH more gruesome than I thought it would be. They started out introducing the matador, and then they released the bull. The bull would charge, and the matador would dodge. Cries of "Ole!" rang out through the arena. Charge. Dodge. Ole! So far, so good. However, after letting the bull run around for a while, they brought out a blindfolded horse which was wrapped in several blankets. There was a man mounted on the horse wearing metal shoes, who was carrying a long stick. Once I saw the horse slowly walk out into the arena, I was thinking "What the hell? Did they accidentally let it out?" There were 3 other assistant matadors in the arena, and once the horse came out, they directed the bull's attention away from the main matador and towards the horse. The bull saw its target, sprinted, and dug its horns into the horse's side. The horse jumped in pain a bit, but since it was blindfolded, it didn't know what to do. While the bull was attacking the poor horse, the man on the horse poked it with his stick. Or at least I thought the guy was just poking the bull with his stick. Once the bull ran away from the horse, I noticed that it had blood dripping down its back. Holy crap, that wasn't just a stick....it was a freakin' spear. The assistant matadors directed the bull towards the horse again. The bull charged, and gored the horse again. This time the bull was REALLY digging its horns into the horse's side, and so the man on the horse took advantage of this time to stab the bull even more. This time I actually saw the spear go into the bull's back. The guy on the horse didn't just stab the bull with his spear. He practically tried to drill the spear all the way through. The bull bucked a few times in pain, but it just dug its horns deeper into the horse's side. The more it gored the horse, the more the man stabbed it with his spear. After the bull attacked the horse the second time, they led it back to the stable, limping. Holy crap. By the time the horse had left the arena, the bull had blood gushing out of its sides and its back. After that, the cries of "Ole!" stopped and most people were staring in shock.

The main matador waved his cape around and dodged the bull some more. Then two assistant matadors came out with these colorful knives and taunted the bull with them. The bull charged, and the matadors stabbed the knives into the bull's back. In the meantime, the main matador was still waving his stupid cape around. Oh, and did I mention that his cape was bright pink? Talk about being a big macho bullfighting matador. By the time the two assistant matadors had stabbed their knives into the bull's back, the bull's skin was almost completely red from all the blood that kept on spilling out. By this time, no one was cheering for the matador anymore. Most didn't know how to react, and others would cheer if the bull seemed like it might actually get a shot at the matador. The matador eventually grabbed a sword and stabbed that into the bull's back. That's about the only work that he did. He waved his pink cape around a lot, stabbed the bull with a sword once, and delivered the final blow after the assistant matadors directed the bull to run around until it fell down in exhaustion. Once the bull was down, the main matador took a knife, and repeatedly shoved it into the bull's head until it finally convulsed and died. The matador bowed, and the audience reluctantly applauded.

I'm not sure what it was that bothered me so much about the bullfight. I didn't expect it to be blood-free, and I didn't expect the bull to live either. I guess I expected it to be more of a one-man show, where the main matador would do most of the work, and there would be a few assistant matadors to help distract the bull if the main matador was going to be in serious trouble. At any rate, it was an interesting experience, but I don't think I'll want to see another one in a long time. RIP bull number 470-Tabasco.

Cindy blabbed at 05:21 p.m. |

Sunday, July 27, 2003
Mood: Hungry
Music: Louis Armstrong - Only You

Cancun: Day 2
Human Sacrifices and Head-Chopping Soccer

The main activity on my second day in Cancun was visiting a Mayan ruin called Chichen Itza. Very cool stuff...climbed a stepped pyramid, looked around at some temples and stuff. I think one of the most interesting parts of Chichen Itza was what I called the "football field". There was this walled field where these two donut-shaped stones were hung REALLY high up on the walls. The rings had to be about 30 some feet up in the air or something. Anywho, our tour guide explained that the field was used to play some Mayan sport where they would have to try to get a ball into the rings without using their hands. One look at that ring made Michael Jordan look like a midget. It must be hard enough to THROW something through the hole...I can't imagine how anyone would kick or headbutt something in there. So anywho, it turns out that the Mayans would play this game, and if your team won, the captain gets his head chopped off. WOOHOO!! You win the game and you lose your head!! Hehe, well, the head was sacrificed for the Mayan fertility god, so I guess you were losing your head for a good cause. Or something like that. :P

Oh, and another interesting thing about the Mayans is that they're suspected to be of Asian origin. Our tour guide told us that there were many physical and cultural similarities between Asians and the Mayans. They both had very little body hair, they both had the Asiatic eyes, the Mayan language is tonal, and they both had dragon- or phoenix-like creatures for good luck. I can't help but think that somewhere down the line, maybe my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandpa had his head whacked off in a game of Mayan soccer or something. Boy would that be a story to tell. Nyahahaha....so anywho....shOut oUtZ 2 mah MaYan hOmieS!!!


Blargh. I'm never typing like that again. *smacks self*

Cindy blabbed at 04:12 p.m. |

Saturday, July 26, 2003
Mood: Hot
Music: John Mayer - Man on the Side (the concert was AWESOME!!)

Cancun: Day 1
My Development of Travel Agent-phobia
WARNING: The entries for the next couple of days are going to be loooooong. You have been warned.

Bleh....so my first day in Cancun was kind of a waste. Before I go into my story about Travel Agent Phobia, I'll tell how we got into the mess in the first place. As soon as my family and I got off our plane in Cancun, a guy came up to us and told us where to find the van which will take us to our hotel. After that, he started telling us all sorts of other stuff about Cancun, where we should shop, what are the best places to visit, etc etc. So far, so good. Then he told us about some special deal where we'd get free tickets to a Mayan ruin called Chichen Itza if we visited this one hotel, ate free breakfast, and stayed for a 90 minute information session. Since we were planning on going to see the Mayan ruins in the first place, we took the bait.

So anywho, we arrive at our hotel, and my dad tells my uncle about the deal that we just got ourselves sucked into. Turns out my uncle got sucked into it too, so the next morning we went to the hotel for our free breakfast and 90 minute information session. Little did we know that this information session wasn't for the hotel, but for some travel agency offering insurance and all sorts of other crap. And boy were we in for a load of crap. My sister, my cousins and I wandered around while the parents sat through the session. Later on, we felt that the session would be over soon, so we went back to find the parents. They were sitting at a table with the travel agent yakking about god-knows-what while they had blank looks on their faces. We saw them get up from the table to leave, and we all happily walked over to them.

That's before we realized that they were to meet yet ANOTHER travel agent. Feeling discouraged, us kids sat down again at a table next to the parents, trying to find something to keep ourselves busy. Tick, tick...2 and half hours had passed. We were getting a little annoyed. Travel Agent 2 was still blabbing while the parents were looking bored, fidgeting and rolling their eyes every now and then. My mom was probably pretending that she couldn't speak English. Even though we could have just walked out, the whole reason why we were there was to get our tickets to Chichen Itza, so we were trapped. 90 minutes stretched into 3 and a half hours. Now we were getting REALLY annoyed. So we thought we'd be as obnoxious as possible. First we tried talking louder than the travel agent. Then we just started shouting stuff like "HEY! WHEN CAN WE GO?" across the tables. My sister went so far as to sit down at the table with the them, and "accidentally" knocked over a cup of water onto the guy's papers. Anywho, Travel Agent 2 fumbled, and the parent football was intercepted by Travel Agent 3, a middle-aged Mexican woman who reminded me of Joan Rivers. By the time she started talking, the parents had this look on their faces that screamed "get me the hell out of here". My parents had already gotten up and left the table, while my poor aunt and uncle were still sitting there, looking comatose. I thought I'd plop myself down with them, just to make things a little awkward for Travel Agent 3. Eventually, my uncle told her that everyone had told us that this information session would take 90 minutes, even though we were already approaching our 4th hour. Once she started spitting out a load of bullshit about how it takes 90 minutes to explain everything, I snapped.

Me: So if it only takes 90 minutes to explain everything, why have we been here for 4 hours?
Travel Agent 3: Well, we-
Me: Look, I find it TOTALLY unreasonable for us to be wasting our vacation so that we can plan 10 year's worth of future vacations.
TA3: Well, don't you want to save money? Don't you want to go to places like Hawaii and umm...Japan, and-
Me: Sure I do, but 10 years is so far off...WHY HAVE WE BEEN HERE FOR 4 HOURS?

I think after that she just kinda ignored me and kept on talking to my aunt and uncle. Eventually my uncle caved in and bought whatever crap deal they offered, just so we could get out of there. Travel Agent 3 smiled, spit out a bunch of faked compliments and thank yous, and told us that we'd be outta there in 15 minutes.

I guess Travel Agent 3 really sucks at measuring time, because 15 minutes translated to one hour. And during that one hour, Travel Agent 2 was hitting on me, telling me that I looked like Lucy Liu in Charlie's Angels. At one point he saw me with my camera and said asked for a picture with me so he could tell all his friends that he was with Lucy Liu. Oh, and this guy was probably in his late 30's or something. Creepy, I tell you, just creepy. 5 hours later, when we FINALLY left the cursed hotel, Travel Agent 2 shook hands with my parents, my aunt and uncle, and for some reason he shook hands with me as well. He said "See ya, Lucy." And then the freak winked at me. I wanted to break a Tequila bottle over his head.

Anywho, the moral of the story is: Travel agents are scary, and never, EVER go to the Sunset Royal hotel in Cancun. ;)

Cindy blabbed at 12:32 p.m. |

Friday, July 25, 2003
Mood: Exhausted
Music: Shakira - Antologia

I RETURN!!! Cancun was awesome. ^_^ I didn't get to see the drunken orgy that everyone told me Cancun would be, but it was still a great trip overall. I snorkeled, visited Mayan ruins, watched a bullfight, even snapped at a travel agent. Anywho, I can't explain the whole trip in one entry...I think everyone would slip into a coma if I did that. So I'll split the day-by-day account of the trip into separate entries. But just to get a rough outline of what's been going on in the past 5 days, I'll just make a random list of thoughts and comments:

• I've never had so many guys whistle at me or hit on me in my life. Actually, I've never had any random guys in the streets whistle or hit on me, EVER.
• It's even weirder when random guys hit on you while you're with your mom.
• The beach water: looks gorgeous, tastes like crap.
• History lesson: The Mayans used to be stargazing hippies before the Toltecs came along. That's when the cool stuff began....you know, human sacrifices and head chopping...the fun stuff. :P
• Tequila shots are actually pretty gross.
• If you ever go to Mexico, stop by a local supermarket and buy a cup of flan for 5 pesos (50 cents). You won't regret it...trust me.

Bleh, ok, so that makes the trip sound kinda uneventful, but I'll promise I'll provide details later. In the meantime, I'm going to take a nap...then I'm off to the John Mayer concert!! W00t!

Cindy blabbed at 01:25 p.m. |

Sunday, July 20, 2003
Mood: Excited
Music: Perry Como - Papa Loves Mambo

Gone to Cancun. I'll be back at the end of the week. Adios, mis amigos. ^_^

Cindy blabbed at 03:53 p.m. |

Saturday, July 19, 2003
Mood: Mellow
Music: The Mars Volta - Inertiatic ESP

I haven't logged onto AIM in a while. Yes, I, the AIM-dependent freak, have somehow broken away from my lifeline. And you know what? I didn't die. And what's even weirder is that once I got off of AIM, I just didn't feel the need to log on. I think I just had a religious awakening. Either that or I've suddenly developed a social phobia.

Anywho, I'm leaving to got to Cancun tomorrow evening. I'll be there for 5 days, and I'll be there with family. So far, everyone's reaction to that is: CANCUN?!?!? You're going to Cancun with your family??? Bwahahaha, yes, I'm going to Cancun with my immediate nuclear family, along with a portion of my dad's side of the family....I'll have to quote my cousin when I say that "I don't really see our family there", but I think it'll be quite interesting. I only took 2 years of Spanish, so truthfully, my Spanish sucks. And the only word my mom knows in Spanish is "AMIGO!!" Todd told me that I'll be seeing a lots naked and drunk people there. Put all that together, and I think we've got one hell of a family reunion. But I won't say anything yet....more details when I come back. *grin*

Cindy blabbed at 11:12 a.m. |

Thursday, July 17, 2003
Mood: Goofy
Music: Simple Plan - Addicted

In spirit of the John Mayer concert next week, I changed the song at the top appropriately. Enjoy. ^_^

Anywho, on to the blog entry.

I'm one of those dorks who will take advantage of automatic sinks, dryers, etc. and will wave wave their hands in front of them and laugh maniacally as water shoots out without having to turn a spigot. So when I saw an automatic trash can at the mall, I spazzed out. I stood there in the mall's food court, waving my hand at a big plastic box that would open and say "Thank for keeping our environment clean." I'm just glad that there wasn't anyone waiting to throw their trash out. Or maybe they were just frightened at the sight of an idiot randomly waving at a trash can. *shrug*

Oh yeah...I bought a new pair of Converse Chuck Taylor's, since my current pair is turning into a useless hunk of canvas and rubber. But anywho....the big question I wanted to ask is: Does ANYONE out there know how to lace the shoes straight across like they do in the ads? I like to keep my Chucks properly laced, but I don't know how. So any information on that would be greatly appreciated. And you all probably think I'm a moron for not knowing how to lace up a freakin' pair of shoes. I hate you all. :P

Cindy blabbed at 04:48 p.m. |