day 101: would you like to travel abroad to learn about new things throughout the world?

Yes, of course! I would love to visit other countries and I used to want to go into anthropology. I want to visit many places.

( 365 Day Meme )

LiveJournal seems down again, so I will have to re-post this later.

I forgot to mention on our last day in San Francisco Michael and I went to an art gallery. Some of the work was really good. There were some abstract works I liked and others that were quite blah to me. I really liked this one artist who did an art nouveau style of women with butterflies. There were also sketches by Rembrandt and Chagall. There were a lot of paintings by an artist who did plays on words featuring animals ("My ass is on the line," "booze hound," "A ray of hope," "cash cow," etc.). Those were fun to look at and try to figure out. Michael said that the cityscapes by one artist weren't as good as mine! That made me feel good about myself. A cityscape is what won me a national art award in high school and my art professor in college said I could make a living in Europe just painting the cities and selling them on the street (a street artist, I guess, which I have seen in New York City and now San Francisco).

I've always loved architecture and my mother and I both thought that would be a good career for me if I were able to do school and work a job. I've always loved houses (as a young child I would read books of blue-prints and catalogs of houses for sale), I love art, and I'm pretty good at math. Architecture would have been a pretty practical career to go into for me... Oh well, I can't handle the stress, people, or pressure so it's a moot point.

Today I was worried because we had to take a bus and then the subway and I was worried about transitioning. I also often can't understand the driver over the intercom and we did almost miss our stop coming back from the zoo. Michael also lost his directions and had to search for them in the subway station, but he found it. We went to the San Francisco Zoo today and spent several hours there. We didn't buy anything, due to the costs. It was really nice to see the mother koala holding her baby:-) I don't know if I've ever seen a koala in-person before. We took tons of pictures and I will post them to Facebook/here after we return home. I was quite cold earlier today, though I was warm on the trip home. We got off the bus a bit early to walk to the pizza place Michael had food from Friday that I really wanted. I had two slices and felt very full and had some stomach cramping walking around after that:P We then walked up Lombard Street and took pictures from there (it's very high up and a great view). Then we walked back to the hotel, where I am now. I've been eating watermelon and pineapple. Michael walked to a nearby pizza restaurant to order himself a pizza (he's obsessed with pizza).

Tonight we're going to walk along the wharf and take pictures of everything lit up for night. Michael saw it last night when he went back out to Walgreens and I didn't see it. We also forgot to bring the camera when we walked the wharf yesterday early evening, so tomorrow we'll take some pictures of that during the day and go to the aquarium. Because of how crowded the buses get in the late afternoon and the gum chewing making Michael need to listen to his mp3 player (due to his OCD) I'm going to ask my mother if we can take a taxi back to the airport tomorrow. Public transportation went pretty well here, but we've almost missed stops and we will probably be on the public transportation around the time people are getting off work tomorrow and that sounds way too stressful.

Overall, today has been good:-) I've been a lot less obsessive (just worrying about the public transportation stuff). I'm not having my people obsessions at all! I think it's due to the change of scenery, because even when I kept busy socializing or volunteering I would still have bad obsessions back home. The best place for me back home is my mother's boyfriend's house.

Overall today has gone well, though it's been thoroughly exhausting. I tried to go to sleep at 4pm yesterday because Zyprexa makes me need 10-12 hours of sleep a night, otherwise I vomit when I force myself up. The flight was at 7:15am. I took 15mg Zyprexa, 1mg Klonopin, and 2 Benadryl pills and still couldn't sleep at all. I took Zofran at 4am and some Ritalin LA at 4:30am and then I felt good. My mother drove Michael and me to O'Hare Airport. The line wasn't too long and security went fine. They checked my purse because I had a roll of quarters in there. While killing time before boarding Michael and I bought an orange Hi-C from McDonalds (and that's what I drank to take Dramamine (motion sickness medication) right before the plane. We also went to the Dunkin Doughnuts stand where Michael bought a doughnut and I bought a blueberry muffin for the 4+ hour plane ride. The plane ride was uneventful. There were lots of empty seats in the back, so the person who had our aisle seat left to go sit with husband in the back and Michael and I were able to spread out. We played an incredibly long Uno game that I eventually won. I also did some reading. I only really had motion sickness during take off and I didn't vomit (yay!)

Then we went and got our luggage and found the BART line heading in the direction we needed. We just made the train! Then we found our connecting bus and just made that, too. Unfortunately on both the train and the bus it was very difficult to hear what was being said over the intercom, which was unnerving. And the signs at the BART stations weren't as clear as the ones in Washington DC's metro. We made it to Fisherman's Wharf, though, which is where our hotel is located. Our room was ready when we arrived. It was also super hot here. I'm lucky I wore a tank top under my sweater so I could take my sweater off. I didn't even bring sunblock because my moisturizer has spf30:( I hope I don't get more freckles and moles... My mother told me it would be cold, so I basically just packed sweaters. I have one t-shirt I added last minute. But it did get colder this evening and it's supposed to be colder tomorrow...

We decided to walk to Chinatown (1 mile), but we got lost several times. It was very tiring. Chinatown was nice, though! Interesting shops and food (though I'm not adventurous about food and there was a lot I would not eat). And everything there is so cheap! I bought myself a large cream puff, 4 pork dumplings, and 1 large pork bun for $6. I was stuffed and when we left to go get Michael pizza I only had a small bite of his and didn't want any for myself. But then as soon as we got back to the hotel I was no longer full and desperately wanted the pizza Michael had!:( It's a long walk, but maybe we will do it again before we go home and I can have that pizza. In Chinatown I also found a pale pink polar fleece zip-up sweater for $10. It didn't have the same logo as my mother's sweater (she also bought one in San Francisco and I've wanted one since then) -- it has "San Francisco" embroidered across the front. Later when walking around the streets neighboring Fisherman's Wharf I saw other pink fleece sweaters that just had a small logo, which I would have preferred:( But I still like my sweater and will wear it tomorrow!

This evening we returned to the hotel for a short while then walked over to Pier 39 of Fisherman's Wharf. There are street performers blasting music full of bass and it's really bothering Michael's OCD. We saw the sea lions and Alcatraz in the distance (it's funny that in the mist and from a distance Alcatraz looks almost like an enchanted castle:P). We looked around the shops and took some pictures. We ate Ben and Jerry's ice cream -- two smalls cost us $9.50! What!? The small was *really, really* small, too. I'm also rather craving IHOP now (it's next to the hotel). But I'm going to try to control myself.

Tomorrow we will probably go to Japantown via bus. Michael wrote down some directions for that. I will try to have some kind of Japanese food there that is cheap (maybe some noodle dish or something). Then the next day we will probably go to the aquarium right on Pier 39 (very close to us). We also walked around the area tonight and saw a whole lot of seafood restaurants. And Hooters. And McDonald's.

Now I think I'm going to write a couple emails and read and take my medications and go to bed. I hope everyone is well:) I'm quite sore from all the walking today because I'm really out of shape:(

Yoga went well. I didn't find it difficult, except for the "tree" pose, because I apparently lack balance. I will have to work on that. The positions requiring more flexibility, though, I did well on. It will probably be my last class:( I don't think I will have transportation next week unless I can convince my mother to drop me off and pick me up. The weather tonight was terrible. There was snow and rain and lightening and thunder. I couldn't see the roads. I was quite terrified on the trip home. We made it home safely, obviously. I just ate dinner and I'm having dark chocolate peanut butter cups. I forgot another book Michael gave me around Christmas time/my birthday, so I started reading that -- Song of the Magdalene. It reads quite fast and it's short. I'm tired now. I probably won't go to bed too late. My anxiety is gone now that I am home and things are okay.

I took a Klonopin because I was feeling stressed out earlier, and it helped. Amber emailed me back and wants to talk over the internet through a chat program! She used to use a webcam with me and I have a webcam on my laptop so maybe we could do that too. I don't know if I have a microphone on my computer or if I need to buy one... When I try to search for a microphone on my computer I can't find one, but I found a way to record sounds and it worked when I talked to my computer, it's just my voice was very faint... Does that mean there is a microphone since there was sound and something just needs to be adjusted? Thinking about all this is part of what made me anxious, even though I do desperately want to talk to Amber.

I've also been thinking of Iowa lately (where I went to college). I'd really like to go back and look around Cedar Rapids and Iowa City and maybe stop back at the college itself and eat at the snack bar. Maybe April would want to come with;-) Maybe even Phil, too. We could stay overnight at a hotel... My mother used to take me to a hotel every block break when she would visit me there. I miss the cornfields (though we have them in Illinois south of where I live). I miss the harvest moon I saw one time on a trip back to campus. I miss the little shops. I'd also like to return to Salem, Massachusetts and Washington DC, but those would be more expensive trips. I wish my aunt hadn't moved from Bethesda to an isolated part of Florida:( Michael wants to go to New Mexico and I want to go to Arizona. There are so many places I would like to go, in and out of the U.S.!

I think I'm getting constipated again and needed Ibuprofen for the abdominal pain. I won't use more laxatives until I see my doctor on Monday and find out what she says about all my sickness. Maybe this problem will be resolved by then, anyway. My more flu-like symptoms have been better today, though I had bad stomachaches all night (again, could be related to IBS and not this flu-like thing I've had). But I am feeling better in a lot of ways! I hope I sleep better tonight. I finally finished reading a library book Michael has to take home with him on Sunday and hopefully tomorrow I will get started on writing penpal letters (actually, I may start one right now as Michael mows the lawn).