Twinners

Up until Glee came out, I had only ever heard that I looked like Julia Roberts (three times), Jennifer Lopez (I disagree but Julie was adamant), some actress on Guiding Light, and Jennifer Grey from Dirty Dancing (not my favorite comparison).  One time my dad made a comment about Julia Roberts not being very pretty and I let him know (as I tried desperately to control my quivering lip) that I have had the comparison with her more than once.  I love watching the foot from mouth extrication process.

Lea Michele is of Spanish and Italian descent while I, on the other hand, am a whitey white girl direct from Mother England.  While she has the natural tan, I have to work on mine.  We both have the awesome dark hair and dark eyes that I love so much (which is probably why I love Puck!).  I love the comparison and would welcome a guest role on Glee as her long lost sister.  Of course, if you follow Glee then you know this is basically impossible because she has two fathers.....

Who is  your celebrity look alike?

Fill Your Bucket

Long story - get comfy.  I met an really amazing interpreter out here in Vegas.  She is not only a tip top interpreter but also a very kind and humble person to be around.  She and I had many opportunities to talk about life and love and she gave me some great advice.  She told me to do two things -

1. Put on my "open sign"

2. Make a list of my best and favorite characteristics and focus on those

I like the way she thinks.  To be truly loved, you must love yourself first.  There is nothing wrong with celebrating the things you love about yourself!  In fact, positive thinking never did any harm so I made my list and I look forward to adding to it.  I'm not going to post it because it is for me.  But I would like to challenge everyone to make their own list.  Love yourself and you will get a lot of love in return!

It's a lot like that game "fill your bucket".  Usually it's played/conducted in a group and you go around the circle and give compliments to everyone.  You fill your self esteem bucket.  I love.  Let's play it sometime!

Wow, I really scaled back on that story.  But I still hope you got comfy!  (let me know if you have questions about the whole "open sign" thing...)

I've never seen a monument erected to a pessimist.

- Paul Harvey

photo found here 

Fun Stuff for a Monday

I Have Landed!....?

I have been interpreting my hands off this week!  I am mentally and physically exhausted from all the work I've had.  Sometimes when I come down to Vegas I do jobs where I sit around for 6 hours and read my book attentively watch my client.  Not this week, oh no.

I have learned a lot about interpreting, about what I'm capable of and where I fit in this interpreter world.  I worked this morning and as I began I noticed two girls staring at me.  I thought they were just "those people" that can't stop watching the terp.  Then I saw them signing to each other.  Great.  No pressure at all.  Did I mention that I was working solo?  Awesome.  When the job ended the two girls cornered me and told me they were in an Interpreter Training Program and were using this as observation hours.  Gross.

But wait...does this mean I have landed?  People are observing me?  I'm awesome?

But wait...how did I do today?  Are they "those people" who are hyper critical of every thing I did and will bash me in their reports?  Ugh.

Identity crisis in the Nevada desert...hooray.

Glee-ful

Directions:

Please click here (I couldn't get it to embed) (boo)

When done, promptly return to my blog.

Read the rest of my post.

Discuss in comments section.

OK, if you're reading this then you're back and you watched the Glee video.  My thoughts -

love

Love

Love

LOVE!

I love - 

Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond

Puck singing Sweet Caroline to Rachel

Puck's darling smile during the entire performance

Rachel for being awesome and beautiful

Dale for thinking I look like Rachel

Rachel for having the coolest name ever

The actor that plays Puck, Mark Salling.  I want to kiss his face and let him sing to me

The fact that Mark was on an episode of "Walker, Texas Ranger" 10 years ago

GLEE!  I love GLEE!

        OK, let's discuss.  If you watched last night's episode, you know what happened and I'm feeling mixed about it.  The whole Rachel loves Finn and Puck loves Quinn went all topsy-turvy last night, but it also hinted that Finn loves Rachel and Quinn loves Puck.  For the longest time I wanted Rachel with Finn but last night convinced me that my dream matchup is her with Puck!  It works!

Please discuss.

Doppelganger Day

Today was SO odd! I kept seeing people that looked familiar but in a weird way. Let me explain...

You recognize this guy?  It's Al, the creepy (villain) toy collector from Toy Story 2.  There was a guy at one of my jobs with the exact hairline, facial hair, glasses and sloppy clothes as our pal Al.  I could not stop starring!  How often do you see a real life human that looks like a cartoon character?!?!

There was another guy who looked like a perfect hybrid between the dearly departed Billie Mays and country singer Alan Jackson.  (a moment of silence for Billie, please)  He had a shoulder length curly mullet and a long angular face like Alan.  He had the loud, enthusiastic voice and dark hair of Billie.  Again, I couldn't stop staring!

Finally, I saw a guy that looks like how I expect my cousin, Paul, to look in a few years.  It was WEIRD!  He looked like a 32 year old version of Paul.  Freaky day.

See what I mean?  They all looked familiar in a weird way.  Fun, exhausting, odd, odd, odd day.

Memories

The Monopoly game is going on at McDonalds right now. I typically associate it with Christmas time, but I guess they needed to increase store traffic or something, so they are doing it now.  It's a clever idea, I'm sure it increases their revenues quite a bit.

Whenever I think of this game, I think of Christmas shopping with my mom. When we were little we would each get to spend a day Christmas shopping with my awesome mama, one on one. We weren't exactly the richest family on Earth so we never got to eat out, except for on Christmas shopping day when we were allowed to pick a fast food restaurant of our choice. I ALWAYS picked McDonalds. Always.  I can't even explain the agony of choosing between a caffeinated soda or a milk shake with my meal.  Believe me, I thought about it the whole week before we went.

We would collect our Monopoly game pieces and scour the floors for any errant piece, just in case our winning piece had been carelessly dropped by another Mickey D's patron. Sometimes if we saw one by someone's feet my mom would toss a coin in that direction and I would retrieve the coin and game piece.  It was so fun!  We would laugh and strategize over hot french fries.

We never won anything except for fun mother/daughter memories. Yep, all worth it.

I found this on PostSecret a while ago and I saved it because it just struck me in a way I couldn't explain at that time. Now, it is even more applicable to me, to Rachel. I am looking forward, with a positive attitude, even though I have no idea what lies ahead. 

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. 

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

The Trip - Cambodia

I went to 4 countries on the trip and I have only blogged about one, Thailand. So now here's the story of our excursion to Cambodia. We were only there for two short days. It was amazing! I would go back in a heartbeat! Our main objective was to see Angkor Wat, the largest religious building on Earth. Google it, it's incredible! I wish we would have stayed longer, but it was a fantastic trip either way.  One thing I will NEVER forget is the heat!  I have never sweated so intensely in my life, gross, I know.  I even sweated between my fingers and I thought that was a physical impossibility.  

Enjoy my trip through Cambodia - 

We saw monks everywhere and I was glad that they have priority seating at Asian airports

Our awesome mate, Clarke, traveled with us to Cambodia as well.  He bought us medicinal masks at the airport...we got more than a few nasty looks.  We had fun :)

Beautiful view from my window on the plane

This was SO sad!  There were billboards, stickers and posters all over Cambodia about child sex trafficking.  They varied from the sticker statement above to posters of sweet Cambodian faces saying, "Protect our national treasures".  Heartbreaking!

Our first day we went to a floating village.  This was on the way out.  From the mainland we took an hour boat ride to the middle of a lake where all the houses are on stilts

These darling little girls and their mom were residents of the village and caught a ride on our boat.  The girls were SOOOO cute!  That's my friend, Britta, making a new friend

See...stilts.  The village was HUGE!

View from the floating restaurant where we ate lunch

Everyone got around the village by boat.  It was so cute to see the kids paddling around.

After the village they took us out to a submerged forest.  I have NO idea how these trees grow in the water, but they do, we drove right through it!

Cambodian countryside

Delicious fruit at the night market.  So colorful and strange.  There are fruits there that I could never invent in my wildest dreams

Angkor Wat at sunrise.  We got there at 5:30am and it was totally worth it!  Angkor Wat is the main structure but there are tons of smaller temples surrounding it.  This used to be the capital city.  At the time that Angkor Wat had roughly 1 million inhabitants, London only had 50,000.  This used to be a thriving city that fell into disrepair.  Google it!

Me and Britta

Delicate carving on a wall

He was just reading and praying.  Awesome.

Lawn mower.  Seriously.  There were tons of people with a rake in one hand and a machete in the other and they were cutting the huge Angkor Wat lawn by hand!  Back breaking, to say the least!

One of my favorite temples, Bayon.  There are smiling faces of the king everywhere!

That is one smiley king.  My battery died while we were at Bayon and I didn't have my charger.  I strongly suggest looking up info about Angkor Wat on the internet because it is so overwhelming and impressive.

Hey folks, I'm on a brief blogging hiatus because I'm in Vegas for 2 weeks. The hotel I'm staying at charges a lot for internet access and I'm cheap. I can do minor things on my phone but definitely not blog.

I love you. Text me!

I'm not that girl...yet.

I'm Having This Sort of Life

The Trip - Thailand

I've been back for six days and am just now getting to my blogging. I have thought about doing it almost every day but I haven't wanted to until now. I feel like I'm different now - not a major difference but some things happened on the trip that have changed my outlook on life, on myself and on others. I don't want to get into the things I learned about myself, they're TOO personal.

One of the most important things I learned is that I really do believe in God. I saw Him everywhere. He is in the smallest details of this planet, in the tiniest ant to the largest mountain range. I know we are all His sons and daughters because I saw Him in everyone I encountered. In their beautiful smiles, their helping hands and the amazing children who would laugh and wave with us.  His divine nature could not be hidden.

We spent the first 10 days of the trip in Thailand. I'll blog about the other countries separately. So here goes...

This is a view of Phi Phi Don Island where we spent a few days.  There are several islands in this island chain but this is the only inhabited one.  The Phi Phi Islands were hit exceptionally hard by the tsunami.  When it was all over there was only two hotels left standing, everything else was gone.  It is devastating when I have seen the living that goes on here to know that just a few years ago it was gone as was a lot of lives.  The people here are so special, they are quick with a smile and a helping hand.

Thai pancakes are probably my new favorite food!  They are a really crisp crepe with a topping or filling.  I loved the chocolate ones (of course) and the savory ones as well, like potato and cheese.  They were cheap too!  About $1 each.

One day we went on a longboat tour of the other islands.  The first stop was Monkey Beach.

Click to enlarge if you want to see the sheer delight on my face.  The monkeys were a bit intimidating because they would see food in your hand and then several would start encroaching on your personal space...scary but totally cool.

On the same tour we were able to go snorkeling in secluded coves and swimming in private beaches.  It was breathtaking to say the least.  Even professional photos by National Geographic don't do these places justice, their beauty and magnificence cannot be captured on film.  

I am now addicted to Thai food.  Granted, this is fried rice but it was still the best food I've ever eaten in my life!

We traveled by longboat almost everyday and I felt like they became the symbol of the Thailand part of the trip.

Leaving Phi Phi for Ao Nang we rode a ferry for four hours.  This is just a view from the ferry.

We were there during the rainy season.  It rained SO hard!  

Sunset at Ao Nang

Arriving at Railay

Long story time - on Railay there is an East and a West side.  The West side is really nice - it's where all the fancy resorts are and the nice beach.  The East side is the opposite.  The beach is gross, the hotels/hostels are cheap, and the food is sketchy but cheap.  We stayed on the East side and to get to the West side we had to walk along a path through some woods.  At one point there is a gang/family of monkeys that lives in the area.  They are scary!  They are not scared of people anymore.  They would run right up to us, in front of us and behind us (extra scary).  Needless to say, I am no longer a fan of monkeys.

The beach on the West side.  I took this while we were eating lunch one day.

Sunset was amazing!

My favorite photo of the entire trip.  

Muay Thai is their national sport and we were able to go to a local match one evening in Railay.  It was pretty intense!  The guy I picked won the fight :)

More to come soon on the rest of the trip!