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Ecuador Culture, Cuisine, & Natural Features of the Mainland
Recently, I returned from Ecuador and have spent much of my time since sifting through the hundreds of photos I took. I went with two of my good friends with a group of ten photographers in total, and I was one of only two people who used their phones as the main camera. If there’s one thing I learned about photography while I was there, it’s to take tons of pictures and select the best ones later. Take pictures of everything of interest, everything that might be of interest, and from different areas of focus and from different viewpoints. I ended up with hundreds of pics, most which I love.…
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‘The Lonesome Crowded West’ by Modest Mouse
This week finds me going back to one of my favorite times in music, 1997, an absolutely incredibly good year for music which saw releases like Björk’s Homogenic, Elliott Smith’s Either/Or, Built to Spill’s Perfect from Now On, Daft Punk’s Homework, Ween’s The Mollusk, Pavement’s Brighten the Corners, Buena Vista Social Club’s self-titled album, and one of my personal favorite album’s of all time, The Lonesome Crowded West by Modest Mouse. I’ve heard the songs on Lonesome described as ‘hypnotic’ and I can definitely relate to that. The Lonesome Crowded West is the second album from Modest Mouse, following This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think…
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Shoplifters (2018)
Father and son team Osamu and Shota Shibata, respectively, are experienced shoplifters, working together with hand signals to procure some items from the supermarket in the opening scene. Clearly, they’ve done this before, they work well together, and afterwards, the two look happy just to be together. They stop at a street vendor’s stall to buy some warm croquettes, and then on their way home, they see a frail, young girl, who they’ve seen before, sitting alone in the cold. We soon learn that her name is Yuri (played by Miyu Sasaki) and she is around four years old. Osamu offers her one of their croquettes and lets her come…
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Natasha’s Strawberry Shortcake Pancakes
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Perfect Days (2023)
With films directed in at least five different languages, perhaps most notably the Spanish language documentary Buena Vista Social Club; the primarily German language film Wings of Desire; and 2023’s Japanese film Perfect Days, Wim Wenders is no stranger to international work. This has shifted my radar a little bit more in his direction lately as I look for more foreign films as part of my language learning process. But that aside, Perfect Days is a quiet masterpiece that I would recommend to anyone. Capturing the spirit of zen, Perfect Days is a slice-of-life style film which follows Hirayama, a Tokyo public toilet cleaner who appreciates the everyday, especially music…
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Soft Serve
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Pimsleur Level One Lessons Completed!
This week I am very happy to have completed my Pimsleur level one courses, consisting of 30 half-hour lessons each (of which I took four times each to total two hours per lesson) in Vietnamese, Japanese, and Spanish. The lessons suggest that you take each one until you’re 80% familiar with them, and then move on, so taking them four times each ensures that I’m well over the 80% mark for most of the lessons and just at 80% for a few of the more difficult ones. Since I started taking these level one lessons last fall, I’ve noticed a big difference in my language skills, especially in conversation and…
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“Natasha’s Honeydew Melon Cake” Oil Pastel
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Happy at Home and in the Garden
While my trip to Ecuador was incredible (and I’m working on a long post on it), I was so happy to see my family and fur babies again, not to mention that there are certain creature comforts that I missed, like my shower, my coffee, and my own bed. But I know that my pets were taken care of very well by my daughter and her friends while I was away, and they even got the cats a fruit stand, which Steven LOVES (and so do I)! This weekend was exceptionally nice to be back, because I got to celebrate Mother’s Day by going to the Oddities & Curiosities Expo…
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Good Vibes Only
