hooloovoo writes…

2312, by Kim Stanley Robinson, is a great book, as long as you’re into a specific kind of science fiction. Luckily, over-researched hard sci-fi is one of my favorite genres. 2312 seems to exist in the same universe at his acclaimed Mars Trilogy, but you don’t have to have read that for 2312 to make sense. Like most of Robinson’s books, the world-building is as important as the plot.

2312 is set in 2311 and 2312, when humanity has spread to Mercury, Venus, Mars and over 19,000 moons and asteroids. Each has been terraformed in a variety of ways, ranging from importing soil from Earth to flinging asteroids at a planet to make it spin faster. Earth, however, has been devastated by climate change and is in bad shape. Oh, and with longevity treatments people routinely live to be 200 or more.

Swan Er Hong is a Mercurial artist and eco-designer. At the beginning of the book, her grandmother has just died. The story is essentially how she deals with her grandmother’s death while trying to carry out her last wishes in regards to the future of the solar system. Which is a terrible summary, sorry. She meets people and does things, but it’s difficult to talk about the plot without giving things away. There are terreria, which are hollowed out asteroids used as spaceships, they’re very cool.

One of the highlights of the book for me was the book’s ideas about how concepts of gender and sexuality would change in a society where people can easily be whatever sex they’d like. Additionally, I really enjoyed the governmental/economic world-building, and the musings on how living in a post-scarcity solar system would and wouldn’t change human nature. There’s also a fair bit of science, though I think less than in some of his other books.

My biggest complaint about 2312 isn’t very big, and I’d like to pre-emptively acknowledge its ridiculousness: I wish there was less plot. The plot isn’t bad, it’s interesting and there are parts with great imagery, but I wanted to hear more about how things worked and less about Swan’s angst. Although, if there actually were less plot, it would stop being a novel become something like a history textbook, which might be less compelling. I didn’t dislike the characters, but there also aren’t any that I really liked. Additionally, if you’re looking for a true sequel to the Mars Trilogy, this isn’t it. There are references, but Mars is the least important planet in this book.

Basically, if this sounds like something you might like, then you’ll probably love it. I really enjoyed it, to the extent that I think I’ll reread the Mars Trilogy next and then read this again to see if I missed any references.

I’m at the new school in Coronado now. It’s pretty fancy and intense. But it’s going well, I think.

One of the sections of the DELE test is to write two essays of about a page and a half each. In 80 minutes. It’s hard. I did a practice test the other day, and after my professor corrected them, I figured I should do something with them so the corrections would stick in my mind. So I typed the first one up. I’ll probably do the second one tomorrow. Going to post this one here, mostly to show off.

The prompt for this was something along the lines of “A friend is coming to visit your country for a month. Write them a letter telling them about the country and giving suggestions for places to visit.”

¡Hola!

¡Que buenas noticias! Estoy muy alegre de que vas a visitar los Estados Unidos. Hay muchos lugares muy interesantes aqui. Porque eres de Canada, no es muy complicado visitar. Pienso que el tipo de viaje mas divertido es el tren. No es posible ver todos los Estados en tren, pero es posible ver una gran porcíon. También, es muy fácil de tomar el tren desde Vancouver hasta Tacoma.

Creo que el mejor tiempo para visitar los Estados es en Septiembre. Ya hay clima agradable. En Tacoma, el pasado Septiembre, hubo más sol que en el verano técnico. Y en el este de los Estados Unidos, Septiembre es el mes que empieza el otoño. Las hojas son rojos y amarillos. Por supuesto, Octubre es una mes muy bueno también. En general, hace más frío que en Septiembre, pero las hojas son más bonitas y hay una fiesta nacional muy grande y tradicional: se llama Halloween. Es el treinta y uno de Octubre y es muy divertido. Y si estas en Tacoma para este día, puedes ir puerta a puerta a pedir confites, conmigo y con mi hermano.

Hoy muchos cuidades muy interesantes en los Estados Unidos. Voy a explicarte desde el oeste al este. En Seattle, hay dos lugares muy importante para visitar. El primero es un mercado histórico que es siempre popular con ambos: turistas y ciudadanos. Se llama Pike Place Market. Tiene muchas bodegas de tiendas pequeñas y fincas. También hay una pescadería que es famosa porque cuando una persona compra un pescado, ellos lo tiran al cajero. También en Seattle está el “Centro de Seattle.” Allí, hay un museo que me gusta mucho. Es el Museo de ciencia ficcíon y el proyecto para experimentar la música. ¡Ellos tienen la pistola de Tank Girl! En la parte más vieja del centro, está el “Space Needle” y una fuente grande.

Me gusta mucho el noroeste, pero la ciudad más historica es Washington, DC. Allí está el instituto del Esmitsoniano. Este tiene 19 museos, desde el Museo del Nativo Americano hasta el Museo de historía natural. Mi favorito es el Museo de vuelo. La otra cosa más interesante de la ciudad es el gobierno. Pienso que es difícil de obtener una entrada para ver el congreso, particularmente si eres extranjera, pero no es imposible.

Me gustaría si quieres visitar mi casa por algunos días. La ciudad Tacoma no es muy histórica, pero hay unos museos. Y nosotros tenemos una sala de visitantes. ¡Espero verte muy pronto!

Hasta luego,

Maddy

This is the main street of Orosi.

This is the church in Orosi. It’s the oldest church still in operation in Costa Rica.

This is my school.

Me at an overlook of Orosi Valley.

This is partway up the volcano.

Me, Etta and Katie.

Look at this great view!

You can sort of see the other side of the crater.

The ruins of the oldest church in Costa Rica. There’s a weird perspective thing going here, I don’t know how I did that.

I’m arty!

And my camera takes decent macro shots!



Wow, today was crazy busy. I got up at 6:45 to do a tour with a couple of other students from the school. This cool Costa Rican dude who does tours and drives people to the airport drove us all over the region. I have lots of pictures, but they probably won´t get posted until tomorrow or Tuesday.

First, we went to the Irazú Volcano. It was kind of cloudy, so we didn´t get to see into the largest crater, but it was really cool anyway. We drove up to the top, which is over 11,000 feet. The drive was actually one of the coolest parts of the day, because it´s up through this very green farmland, and clouds up near the top.

Then we went to Cartago, and drove past the ruins of the old church, and stopped at the Basilica. It was fairly cool, but the really neat part was a drumline (sort of) that was performing in front of the church. Then I had a snowcone. Basically. It was like 11 am, but all the Costa Ricans were eating them so I decided it was reasonable.

After that we went to a waterfall and then the ruins of a really old church. Like, it was first built in 1575. There was a decent amount of graffiti on it, and I was kind of bummed not find anything newer than 1951. While we were there, I bought this amazing corn tortilla with cheese. It was made fresh there, and it was hot and crispy on the outside and the inside was practically fluffy. And it had natilla on it, which is sort of a cross between yogurt and sour cream. It´s tasty.

Then we stopped at a field of coffee, and Luís, the driver, explained a bunch about how coffee is grown. And then we went to this house made of bamboo that had all these little statues carved out of coffee wood. That was probably my least favorite, but we didn´t stay there very long.

The whole thing was fun, though a little overwhelming. My Spanish is much better than the other students I was with, and Luís doesn´t speak much English, so I did quite a bit of translating. That was cool. Also I´m a bit sunburned, which is unexpected. Particularly given that it´s now back to raining.

Anyway, I think I´m going to put most of the pictures on facebook eventually, but I´ll put the best few on here in the next couple days.

Hi,

So, I really meant to update with what I did last weekend. But then I, uh, didn’t.

Anyway, it wasn’t that exciting. On Saturday I took the bus to Cartago and then another to San Jose. (I meant to take the 9:30 bus, but it left at 9:15 and I ended up hanging out at the internet cafe until 10, and then I took the 10:15. No idea when that was supposed to leave. The bus times here are very approximate.) Cartago was much less confusing when in the sun than when it was pouring down rain. I stopped on the way to the bus and got a batido natural, which is essentially fruit blended with milk or water. I had a fancy one, pineapple and coconut milk blended with ice cream, milk and ice. Basically a virgin Piña Colada. Very tasty. Anyway, I found the buses for San Jose and took the one to San Pedro. I spent really a lot of time wandering around looking for a certain store, which I never actually found, but I did buy Magic the Gathering cards in Spanish, which was the goal.

From there, I took the bus to the center of San Jose and then walked to the hostel. Walking between the hostel and downtown is a mistake that I kept making all weekend. I’d think “Oh, I could take a bus, but then I’d have to wait for one. It’s easier to walk.” Except the walk is like a mile and a half and hot and there’s nothing interesting to see. But I got there eventually. I stayed at the Galileo Hostel, which owned by a couple of young Americans who are very cool. I spent a decent amount of time just hanging out at the hostel. It was nice to talk to people in English for the first time in a couple of weeks. On Saturday night I went to a local diner type restaurant for dinner with this girl from Houston who was in the same dorm room as me at the hostel. I actually ate there the next night too, because it was nearby. And they had all sorts of ice cream stuff. I had an ice cream soda.

Sunday I walked around in San Jose and went to the National Museum. The museum was interesting, but I’m mostly interested in recent history and they didn’t have very much about that. But it was cool. I tried a typical Costa Rican drink called granizado con dos leches, which is like a strawberry granita with a layer of powdered milk in the middle and condensed milk on top. It was rather odd. I think it would have been better if the granita had been more flavorful.

On Monday morning I went to register for the DELE test. At 10 or so, I headed over to the office of the school that offers the test. It ended up being two blocks from the hostel, which was way easier than I was expecting. It’s in an office building that also houses a couple of embassies, so I had to sign in before I could go up. Once I got up to the office, I had a hard time explaining which test I wanted to take to the first couple of people I saw. Not so much a problem with my Spanish as that they weren’t very familiar with the test. Finally, they called the other office of the school and I talked to the director of their Spanish program. (All in Spanish, which I’m pretty excited about.) First she told me I’d have to come to the San Pedro office, but once I told her I was already in the Centro Colon office, she told me I could wait until 11, when the person who knew about the test would be there. So I went to an internet cafe in the same building and hung out for a while and then went back, and got registered without too much drama. I did have to use carbon paper, for I think the first time in my life, to make two copies of each form. That was odd. After that I went to what is, I think, the only restaurant in Costa Rica with a gluten free menu. I had reasonably tasty massaman curry. Then I caught the buses back to Orosi. I got back around 3.

Since then, I’ve been doing pretty much nothing but Spanish. I’m about 2/3’s of the way through the second of two workbooks that they have here. We’re doing the subjunctive, which I haven’t done before, but I think I’m picking it up reasonably quickly.

Next Saturday I’m leaving Orosi, and I’ll spend a night in San Jose before heading to the next school on the 24th.

So. That’s my life. I’m doing a tour of various scenic things on Sunday, so I should have pictures to post on Monday or Tuesday. I keep forgetting to charge my camera, so I still haven’t taken pictures of Orosi. Probably I’ll do that Sunday too.

Today has been better. Yesterday kinda sucked though. I think I might go somewhere this weekend, if I can think of a fun adventure.

My classes are now in the morning, which is handy I think, though it means I have to get up at 7. Today we had like normal class for the first hour and a half, and then Gloriana (my teacher) and I hiked up this big hill so we could see the whole town. We would have gone higher, but I didn’t have my inhaler on me and I felt kind of asthma-y. After that we went to her uncle’s sort of farm thing. It’s really cool. He has horses, pigs, chickens and tilapia, and grows oranges, limes, mangoes, bananas, and some other stuff. At least one kind of squash. In a rectangle of land like half a mile by like 300 feet. On a hill. It was way cool.

Sorry Dad Dude, didn’t bring my camera. And it turns out rain is difficult to take cool pictures of. Soonish though.

I´m in a weird mood. (Oh, and I apologise for the accents instead of apostrophes, I´m at an internet cafe.)

I maybe got glutened this morning? There were corn tortillas, and I think tortilla factories here are more likely to have cross contamination problems. I had a weird headache thing earlier that is usually a sign of gluten, but I don´t know.

The family I´m staying with is really nice, but I think the whole homestay thing is kind of stressing me out. Like, I´m worried I should be hanging out with them more or something instead of reading and doing homework in my room. But I also don´t want to be in the way. And I´m doing reasonably well at understanding people when they´re talking to me, but when they´re talking to each other it´s too fast for me to understand, which is kind of awkward, sitting there with no idea what´s going on.

Also, people keep asking me what I´m going to do that day or this weekend, so I feel like there´s kind of all this pressure to like have adventures and cultural experiences and stuff, and I don´t really feel like it. I probably will eventually, but at the moment I´m pretty satisfied with doing lots of Spanish homework and messing around on my computer at the school and at the house.

…Okay, you guys are stuck with half a blog entry, because I´m like tearing up in the internet cafe and I´m not into that. Damn it.

Though it should be noted that up till last night I felt fine, so who knows.