October 21

Wow... October 21. Time does go by... i should really stop worrying about that.

Last week was fairly straight forward. I slept in because I didn't have Spanish classes this week. Friday night I went to a salsa club with some people in my tango club. It was really fun, but it was Friday night, after my 2 hour modern class, and it took me forever to get there. Also, I've never danced salsa before (with people who actually know how) so I pretty much looked like an idiot all night. Sigh, fun though. I got home at about 5 am... dead. Saturday I basically couldn't walk up stairs... apparently salsa does a number on your quads. But my two engaged roommates were bbq-ing steaks on the roof and I got to spend some time with them and eat a nice lunch on the roof in the beautiful sunlight.

Saturday afternoon I met up with my friend Eli and we went to this theme park call tierra santa or Holy Land. Its a park dedicated to depictions of religion and Jesus. and yep... it was hilarious and completely made of plaster (or something similar). I was thinking about Emily the whole time because I think she would have found it ridiculous and a little creepy how some of the 'shows' consisted of scenes from the bible, in which the figures were all just placed out there, some of them moving like the Santa Clause dolls you see at Christmas, with fat cherub-like angels hanging from the ceiling, with the story read in Spanish from a record, and fancy lighting changes. Most of the park was just stationary figures set up with short passages from the bible on placards. There was also a synagogue, a mosque, the wailing wall, and for some reason a display of Gandhi. The writing in the plaster synagogue was not even Hebrew, which Eli pointed out, it was just funny looking gibberish. Neither of us can read Arabic so we don't know if the writing in the mosque was authentic or not. Oh, and on the hour there is a 'resurrection' in which an 18 meter high Jesus statue rises out of the plaster mountain in the middle of the park, with lots of Allelujah music and more fancy lighting, to 'bless' the people in the park. The park guide said he had 36 mechanical movements, but I only counted 13... of which most of them were just the figure turning 1/4 of the way around. He did however, at one point, close his eyes, lift his head, and turn his palms to the sky (as his arms were already, obviously, spread wide). Most of the time I couldn't figure out whether to laugh of be offended on behalf of Christians world wide. Wherever they didn't have something specific... there was a plaster donkey or sheep or camel. All of the figures in the park were life size. All the people working there, including the maintenance crew, were dressed up like you would imagine the people of ancient Jerusalem to be dressed. There was one stage where they did live shows and we watched some belly dancers do some slightly less than authentic dancing. The main dancer was decked out in hot hot pink. They did do some cool dancing though. The main dancer finished off the show with at least a minute of hard core head banging in which her really long hair was swung around in large circles. I still don't know how I feel about that.

After that I made my way home. I was supposed to meet some other people and go out some more but I had no credit on my phone with which to contact people and I was so tired that when I finally climbed the last stair to my bedroom I lay down and fell asleep.

Now it's Sunday. A beautiful day... of which I plan on spending doing homework and talking on the phone. I would like to go to a park but as my phone isn't working I would have to put a lot of effort into finding someone to go with me. We'll see.