The nap goes on

Well, Chaos toddled off to his carrier after a brief stop at the water bottle to continue his nap. Fuzzball stayed in the covered cat-bed.















She too sleeps in funny positions.

ferrets napping together

There just isn't much to be said...ferrets sleep in odd positions, often under blankets...how they breathe, I don't know! Chaos was napping and Fuzzball joined him.

Fuzzball's blood sugar

Well, I decided to test Fuzzball's blood sugar level today. That was an adventure. First I had trouble getting the monitor to the right screen, because I kept hitting the button to turn it on, instead of just putting in the strip. Once I got the right screen, I tried to use the pin-prick thing to get blood from Fuzzball. Nothing doing. Then I thought, OK, how about a sewing needle, so I tried that. Still nothing. I remembered that I had one sharp, so I drew a little blood and finally was able to get a reading, after having wasted one reading strip through so much handling. Fortunately, Fuzzball didn't seem to notice much of the pricking, except for the sewing needle and the sharp. Now I know how to do it faster the next time!

Anyway, her reading was 150, which is a bit higher than average, but well within normal female ferret range! I've been progressively giving her less and less of the steroid. I think she'll be completely off of it in another week or so. I have a friend who can keep me in clean sharps, so I'll be able to test her level periodically.

Behavior-wise, she seems to be pretty much back to normal. She's running around and seems to be napping much less than before.

She even has shown improvement: She used the litterbox!

Government versus Religion

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, Will, the other day on the phone, and he gave a good explanation of why religion and government should be kept separate. It went something like this:

The government is of the people, by the people, for the people.

The government is there to serve the people.

Religion is there to serve God.

Those in government should be serving the people, even if such service would not be in line with their view of how one serves God.
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Just a note, the "government of the people, by the people, for the people" is per Lincoln - though he also states that it is under God.

Anyway, Will's argument presents the interesting other side of the coin, making a similar argument, but from an agnostic perspective as the Bible:

Matthew 6:24 "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other." (although here it is specifically talking about money versus God)
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=MATT%206;&version=31;

Matthew 22:21 "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." (Again in regard to money)
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=MATT%2022;&version=31;

Will might not approve of how I've explained this. If this is the case, then most likely, there will be a comment to set me straight!

Fuzzball is really tearing it up this morning!

Well, there doesn't seem to be any lack of energy on Fuzzball's part. She seems really happy to be able to run around. It's kinda weird; she has her tail all bottle-brushed as if she didn't know the apartment anymore, but nothing has changed in here since last week. Weird.

Ah...she just found her favorite shawl to curl up in behind the chair. Good for her.

Chaos is currently cleaning himself in my lap. I bathed him yesterday, and he left me a token in exchange. I've decided that angry ferret urine is much more potent than happy ferret urine and thus much more difficult to get out of the carpet.

Hardware still functioning

I was petting Chaos while he was napping and felt something hard on his otherwise soft belly. I realized that he is still able to do the deed (it feels like a 1/2 inch uncooked curved spaghetti noodle, for those who want to know). I imagine that he was dreaming about someone small, dark and fuzzy. He twitched a lot, anyway.

They meet again

After consulting with the vet, I decided to reunite Chaos and Fuzzball.
































Chaos wasn't all that interested. Fuzzball approached him and they wrestled for a few seconds, ending in someone yelping and each of them going their separate ways.















Chaos went into the bed, and I put Fuzzball in with him. He got up and left. I put him back in and blocked the door. He calmed down and I got this picture. They stayed together until I decided to bring them back to my apartment.

They'll be staying in the rabbit hutch together for the next few days until Fuzzball is ready for the multi-level cage.

Fuzzball is healing nicely

Fuzzball's bruising has really gone down.

The Ferret Report

Fuzzball:

Looking better, still in solitary. Monday, I'm supposed to be able to put her back together with Chaos, though I think I'll put him in with her in the small cage so that she doesn't have to climb from floor to floor for a while yet. I'm going to email the vet to get his opinion on this. She lapped up her steroid and pink stuff, with the help of FerreTone, right off the spoon, but I still had to force feed her the pain killer. It looks and smells kinda like soy-sauce, but tastes horrible! (What can I say...a drop was on my finger, so I tried it.) I pulled the pain killer/FerreTone mix back up into the syringe and squirted it into her mouth. *sighs* Fortunately for me, and perhaps for her as well, there is only one more dose of the painkiller left, so we won't have to fight over it anymore after tomorrow morning. Hopefully she is healed up well enough that it will be OK for her not to have any pain killer left over!

Chaos:

I had started taking the ferrets outside last week. Since Fuzzball's surgery, she's stayed home, but I've been taking Chaos out. On Wednesday morning, Mom (oh yeah...Mom and Dad were here for a few days, but now they're in Mexico) and I took him to the park. He really enjoyed that! Today, I had him up on campus. We walked around and he smelled a lot of probably new things. I think he was scared by the crows, though. He flattened himself on the sidewalk and looked up at the trees and about three crows started cawing at him (at least I think it was at him!). I decided to pick him up and carry him until we were out of range of the trees!

Of course, walking a ferret draws a lot of attention. Whenever we go out, people always want to see him and pet him. Fortunately, he's good natured enough that I don't have to be afraid of him scratching or biting anyone! I don't trust Fuzzball in that respect!

We came home and he took several naps, one of which on my chest while I read an article and another while I watched "The Motorcycle Diaries". Then he put himself to bed. I had to pull him out of his cage to take his belled harness off of him for the night!

(Footnote: Charlie is eating just fine - just thought I'd mention him, even though he's a fish and not a ferret!)

I just watched "The Motorcycle Diaries"

None of the film "The Motorcycle Diaries" takes place in Bolivia, the part of Latin America where I've spent the most time. It was based on diaries from 1952 in Argentina, Chile and Peru. It looks so familiar, though. It makes me sad to see how the situation of the indigenous people shown hasn't really changed much since then.

It's no surprise that Ernesto "Che" Guevara wanted to start a revolution after his travels. Sure, this is a fictionalized representation of his travels in 1952, but I would suggest that the situations portrayed were real enough. Uno se queda triste a verlo.

Smoking ban

Smoking is now banned in most public places, indoors and out, except for in designated areas in Calabasas, CA. There is a $500 fine for repeated disobedience.

One article about it.

Official ordinance.

In my personal opinion, smoking should be banned everywhere, because it is a health risk for the smoker and is additionally a dangerous annoyance to others in the area. Of course, a friend of mine pointed out to me that there is a degree of hypocrisy to this argument, since the same argument can be made against cars, but I'm not willing to give up driving. It will be interesting to see how this smoking ban plays out. I must say; it's nice to know that you can go out without coming home smelling like cigarettes! I hate having to wash my hair before going to bed.

In other news, the town where I live has a ban in bars and pubs. One bar owner is currently involved in legal problems because he has allowed patrons to smoke on two occasions. He says that he can't put his employees in danger by asking them to confront smokers.

Charlie the Betta

I've been pet-sitting Charlie while James is home for spring break. Charlie hadn't been eating for quite some time. We were starting to wonder if something was wrong with him. I suspect that it was the water temperature, and perhaps the bleach fumes in the air. Anyway, I've been leaving the window cracked and a lamp on him. He started eating Wednesday morning and has eaten everything that I've given to him ever since, even eating multiple times a day. Go Charlie!

It's official: Fuzzball hates me

While being resistant, Fuzzball has been civil up until now with the whole forced feeding of medicine thing. Today, however, things got a bit worse. She had gotten a bunch of nastiness out of her litter pan stuck to her foot, so I had to wash her feet. I put her in a sink with about a half an inch of warm water in it. Have I mentioned lately that Fuzzball hates being bathed? After washing her feet, I force fed her the rest of her morning medicine. I put her back in her cage, but wanted to take her out for something else. Anyway, when I reached my hand in, she bit me. She's never just bitten like that before. (In the past, it's always been a sort of love nip following licks.) I suspect that she'll never forgive me!

Sore fingers!

I've played more guitar in the last hour than I had in the last six months! I picked this guitar up in Germany at a discount store, kinda like the dollar store (except of course with Euros), but they also had some things for more than a euro. This was only 35 €. This was one of my best purchases, I think!

Ratbaby doesn't like her medicine

Yesterday, Fuzzball lapped up her medicine without any problems. Today, I had to actually use the syringe to squirt it into her mouth. She's still pretty well drugged up. I'm hoping that she's not in any pain. Her belly is still pretty bruised up. Poor baby girl!

Ratboy really likes the Perkins bag

Apparently, the Perkins take-out bag is a special thing. It's made out of a bit stiffer plastic than your average plastic grocery bag. Chaos seems really, really, really happy to be thrashing around in it. Fun crinkly sounds. Unfortunately, a still photo just doesn't do it justice, but here is what I can offer.

The Public Museum

After dropping Fuzzball off for her surgery, we had some time to kill, so we went to the Public Museum. It was a pretty nice place, really, with three floors of exhibits. It was visually very rich.

My major complaint with it, is that while there were a number of cultural artifacts from all around the world, there was very little text discussing them. The text that there was dealt specifically with the artifacts and not with the people who created them. Many of the items were rather stereotypical, appropriate for a folk festival, however not very representative of the cultures at large. I am concerned that such an exhibit simply reinforces stereotypes about the cultures portrayed. Also, many of them blended the human produced artifacts with dioramas of wildlife. There was almost the suggestion that animals and people were really just the same (in an "other"=animal/simplistic sense), rather than pointing out the complexities of the various peoples.

So, very visually appealing. Not so educationally multicultural.

Fuzzball's surgery

Well, Fuzzball has had her surgery. The doctor said that he removed her left adrenal gland, but that the right one looked fine. He also didn't see any insulinomas and said that her blood sugar was fine this morning.

I've borrowed a blood-sugar meter from my dad, so I'll be testing her blood-sugar level periodically. The vet suggested that it might be possible/desireable to ween her off of the steroid that the other vet put her on for her low blood-sugar.

He predicts a full recovery.


She is supposed to be kept quiet for a couple of days, so she's in the rabbit hutch with lots of soft blankets, food, water, and a litter pan. She's already started eating again, though it took some coaxing to make her remember that she likes her food. Her appetite seems to be quite healthy.

Since my apartment is so small and James is out of town for the week, he's agreed to let me keep her in his apartment until she is able to be re-united with Chaos.

The doctor gave me amoxicillin (the pink stuff!) and a pain reliever to give to her for the next week or so. She doesn't like the flavor of either of them, but she really dislikes the pain-killer. I have to mix it with A LOT of FerreTone to get her to lap it up.

The poor dear is so drugged up right now that she stayed in my lap quietly enough to not only let me take the above picture, but also long enough for me to prepare her medicines. Usually, she is way too fidgety!

red politics

Ever notice that both the Republican Party and the Communist Party have red as their color?

"borrowing"

I have this ex-roomate who "borrowed" money from me. (Actually, he ran up a $300 phone bill and said he'd pay it back. That was about 6 years ago. He still owes me $150.) I recently found out that his mother had passed away and that he got a rather sizeable life insurance award. I was kinda hoping that he might decide that this was the time to pay back the money. So far, I haven't seen a penny. In his case, that's annoying but OK. Him not being in my life is worth the loss of $150.

More frustrating by far would be if he were actually a friend of mine. Can you imagine if you had a friend who borrowed money from you, had the money to pay you back, but didn't??? That would be really awkward, especially if said friend ever wanted to borrow money from you again!

I usually try not to borrow large amounts from people. If they lend me a buck, I get it back to them as soon as I have it, usually the next day. Often times they say not to worry about it, but I try to pay it back anyway, just to make sure that I don't end up taking advantage of the person.

I've collected money before. I've asked people for donations to buy mutual friends plane tickets to Germany. I've also asked for donations to cover the cost of my rescued ferret's operation. However, this was never ever termed as borrowing. People who gave knew that there would be no financial return, just the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing you helped. It wasn't borrowing, though.

My neighbor James and I often lend money back and forth. It's usually a matter of "hey, do you have a $10 or $20 to put money on the laundry card?" or "oh, we're going to that store that only takes cash. Do you have any on you?" I'm more than happy to lend to James, because he always pays it back as soon as he makes it to an ATM, even if I tell him that he doesn't have to. It's a kind of trust thing.

Of course the greatest thing that happens with lent money is when the borrower remembers to pay you back, even after you yourself have forgotten about it. That's always good!

It's kinda weird how we use the term "borrow", at least in this part of the country. People say "can you borrow/lend me a sheet of paper?" In this case, it is possible that you will give the person a sheet of paper later to replace the one that you've "borrowed", but really, how often does that happen? There's almost never a 1:1 correspondence with these things. Worse of course, is when someone asks to borrow some Kleenex. No one expects a return of a "borrowed" Kleenex! (Used Kleenex=bad thing)

Rather than asking if someone will borrow me a sheet of paper (another fun thing...using "borrow" to express the "lending" side of the transaction - very common throughout language history, though), I ask if I can HAVE a sheet of paper. That signals that I don't intend giving it back, and that the person will have to ask me for a sheet of paper if that is the expectation. (Pleases and thank yous are of course still appropriate!)

I'm all for clarity of terms. If you don't plan to give it back, don't say you're borrowing it. If you asked to borrow something, then please, give it back!

More cuddling with Chaos

More cuddling with the Ratboy.










His little sandpaper tongue is making my nose raw!

Have I mentioned lately that Chaos likes chewing on plastic/rubber/vinyl?

So, I've got this dryer-hose for the ferrets to run through, but there's a slight problem. Chaos can't help but chew on everything that is anywhere in the neighborhood of plastic, rubber, or vinyl. He was chewing up the ends of the "tunnel", which was problematic, because little bits of the vinyl were breaking off and could theoretically get stuck in his digestive tract and kill him. I tried putting tape on the end of the hose, but Ratboy also likes to eat tape. So, just before giving up and throwing it out, I decided to sew some fabric around the end of the tube. This works. He chews on the fabric, but not on the vinyl! Chaos can now chew to his heart's content without hurting himself.

My fuzzy baby boy

Ratboy is such a cuddler. There's nothing like sitting back with this little bundle of fur against you chest, supported by your arm, much as you might recline with a baby. It's quite relaxing. I am a bit concerned about the little dear's health, though, because he always prefers to lick my nose rather than my chin or cheek, so he's exposed to every cold I get!

Male reproductive rights

I was just reading my friend's blog.

http://darkestgreens.blogspot.com/2006/03/parental-responsibility-for-men.html

She brought up the question of the rights of the father during a pregnancy. A woman can decide to keep a fetus or abort it, and the man is obligated to be a father and/or pay child support or not based on that decision. How much say does/should a man have when it comes to becoming a parent relative to a woman?

Charlie

The night before last, James and I went out shopping. We went to the petstore looking for litter for the ferrets. We looked at the beta fish, because James wanted a beta. They were kinda ugly. We then went grocery shopping. After grocery shopping, I offered to take James to Petsmart. He said he didn't really want to go. I asked him what he wanted to name the fish. He decided on Charlie. So, I told him that we'd go to the store and look for Charlie. If Charlie was there, we'd take him home. If not, we'd leave it. Well there was a large number of beta fish. James said Charlie was blue, so we looked at all the blue fish. After looking at every beta in the store, we found a beautiful deep blue beta with red tipped fins, kinda like this one, though with less red and more blue. We bought it and the lady put it in a bag in its little cup of water.


When we got Charlie home and got ready to put him in his new home. We took him out of the bag and found that he was not really as blue as we thought. Here's a picture of Charlie in his bowl at James' apartment.

We think it was the difference in lighting, but we never imagined that the blue fish would really be red!

Chaos either has a short memory or is a masochist.

Ratboy was just bathed a bit ago, but he's still trying to dig his way through the bathroom door. You'd think he'd associate the bathroom with horrible things. Go figure.

Ferrets don't like bathing

Ferrets don't particularly like being bathed. In fact, if it weren't for the slippery nature of wet porcelain, they would have jumped out of the tub and run away just as quick as their little legs could carry them. However, Chaos smelled like he'd gotten into something less than clean, so I decided to bathe him and Fuzzball too.


Most of Fuzzball's new fur is white/blonde, so when she is wet, she looks naked.



I like to consider this the chinese dragon ferret.













































Yeah...they really weren't all that happy with me. I thought that maybe if I bathed them together, they wouldn't hate it as much.



































































Chaos must be thinking: Does this water make me look fat? What do you think about the new hair-do?
























After I released them back into the wild...uh livingroom, one of them left me a calling card, telling me in no uncertain terms that they found the bath just crappy. Fortunately, the papers that he/she chose for this little present were the rough draft of the last exam that my students had to take and were therefore trash-bound at any rate. This just got the papers there that much quicker.


Such is life in a ferret home.

No freedom of speech in the high school classroom

A teacher has been put on leave for stating that some people compare Bush to Hitler, among other things.

Per CNN:
AURORA, Colorado (AP) -- About 150 high school students walked out of class to protest a decision to put a teacher on leave while administrators investigate remarks he made about President Bush in class, including that some people compare Bush to Adolf Hitler.

Here are a couple of quotes:

Bennish [Bush says] "It's our job to conquer the world and make sure they live just like we want them to," Bennish can apparently be heard saying on the tape. "Now I'm not saying that Bush and Hitler are exactly the same, obviously they're not, OK. But (there are) eerie similarities to the tones that they use."

The kid who recorded him: "He wanted us to question why a coke headed, alcoholic who's had all of his jobs have failed but one, and whose daddy bought him into office became the President of the United States," Allen said during the show.

Yes...please do question that!

Here's a link to the whole transcript of the lecture: http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004689.htm

Here's an audio link: http://secure.eonstreams.com/koa_am/GeoTeacher.mp3

I just finished reading the transcript. I think that I would have said everything that Bennish said, so I can't disagree with him. I thought that he hedged his statements as well as could be expected. I can't help but wonder how fair and balanced a similar lecture would have been from the father of the boy. In my experience, "fair and balanced" is usually applied to whoever does/says things in the way of the person judging whether it is "fair and balanced". It's very rare, perhaps impossible, to find an individual who can be truly impartial.

Bennish was providing an alternative perspective. Students need to learn that there is more to US History and foreign policy than what is presented in School House Rock and the news. If the students are paying any attention at all to the media and political banter in this day and age, they have probably already heard the administration's version of things.

Free speech, people! Free thoughts! Students should learn to be critical consumers of media, propaganda, and politics!

I'm concered abou the precident set by this. The recording and denouncing of teachers is problematic from the point of view of students who just want to be able to listen to the lecture later. Even when I was in high school, some teachers were skitish about having their lectures recorded, and they weren't saying anything controversial. (I've even read about people wanting college students to turn in college professors!)

Ultimately, I think the problem of this type of topic in the high school boils down to authority. Ideally, we'd want students to be able to listen to biased information and filter it to find the truth. However, this would mean telling them that the teacher isn't always right; something that I didn't realize until college. Telling them that the teacher isn't always right leads to authority problems, and with teachers being responsible for classes of 30 students (sometimes more, rarely less), the last thing that they want is even the chance of students not respecting their authority in any respect.

Guitar + Ferret = Oops

I got an email from a guy who had been to my website (the one that I can't access, because someone changed my Yahoo password, and apparently I gave them a fake birthdate when I was a kid...oops...), asking me for the chords to The Fisherman's Song. I suspect that I'd worked out chords for it before, but I couldn't remember. Also, my entire binder of sheet music disappeared the last time that I moved with a bunch of other stuff, suggesting that a whole box went missing. Anyway, I pulled out a guitar, something that I hadn't done for months, and certainly not since having the ferrets.

While I was trying to tune the guitar, Chaos kept trying to sniff it, but finally got bored and went to eat. When I started playing, he climbed up on the chair and tried to sniff it. I'm not sure what happened, but he jumped back really quickly and fell to the floor. I suspect that he got his nose buzzed on the strings. Oops. That'll learn 'im.

If anyone is interested in the chords to The Fisherman's Song, they are:

Em D G Am
Em G Am
Em D G Am
Em G Am Em

German "Apples to Apples" game!!!

The Apples to Apples game has just been released in German! I've got myself a copy of Äpfel zu Äpfeln ordered from Germany!

Dad is home from the hospital

Dad came home on Tuesday night. He was in again this morning for tests. He's less than comfortable at the moment, but the doctors don't seem too concerned. Hopefully he'll get better soon.

catch and release and other fishing related topics

Letting Fuzzball down after taking her out of the cage reminds me of releasing a fish or other aquatic animal back into the water. One second she's there in your hands, the next she's gone. When you put Chaos down, he just kinda hangs out for a second until he wakes up, and then he ambles away.

I've found that fishing for ferrets is a fun game to play with Chaos. If I dangle the little leather braided leash handle over him and make it jump, he tries to grab it with his paws and his teeth. Once he gets a good grip on it with his teeth, he can remain dangling in the air for a good 30 seconds, which apparently isn't long enough for my camera to wake up and focus. Not surprisingly, Fuzzball is off in her own little world in this respect too. While Chaos goes wild, Fuzzball just ignores it as if she didn't even know it was there.

Here are some random fuzzy photos for your amusement.

fact vs fiction

Some researchers in England are trying to profit from THE DA VINCI CODE.

I am of the opinion that anything published in a non-fiction context is considered research and is protected by copyright in the context of non-fiction. However, using a concept of "science" or "history" in a work of fiction should not be, and as far as I am aware is not, restricted by law anywhere.

Imagine if I decided to write a work of fiction (i.e. a novel) about the "Hobbits" from Indonesia. (Yeah...it will never happen, but just imagine!) Would the researchers who discovered the archeological remains have any claim to any revenues generated by my book? No, I don't think so.

Keep it straight, folks. Fact or fiction (or at least fiction or non-fiction).

progress with Fuzzball?

Yesterday I was holding Fuzzball and she bit me on the cheek. This was the first 'oral' contact from her in a long time. When I first met her, she would lick you three times on the cheek and the bite. The last few months, she's not licked or kissed in any way except for when I had FerreTone or olive oil on me. Last night, she didn't lick at all; just bit.

This morning, I gave her her medicine and held her for a bit and she actually licked me on the cheek without biting. I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe she's deciding that it's not horrible to be held afterall. Or maybe it was a fluke. We'll see.

Why on earth would anyone be a historical linguist??? - or - Why would anyone pay anyone else to be a historical linguist?

Being a student of linguistics, but the child of a blue-collar worker and a psychologist, I am often torn between academics and practicality. Linguistics. Who cares? Especially historical linguistics (an interest of mine, but not my focus). Sure, it can be fun and interesting, but so can laying back on the grass watching clouds go by; no one wants to pony up any money to pay someone to do that!

Myself, I'm what's called an applied linguist. That means that we take the theoretical and make it practical. In particular, I am interested in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). My goal is to understand languages and the way that we learn them in a way that will help us find the most efficient and enjoyable ways to learn them. I can deal with that. It's got a practical application.

Other applied linguists work on such projects as language recognition programs for computers. They're the people who have you to thank for all those automated menus that let you talk and not just punch in numbers when you call in to customer service. (For better or for worse!)

Synchronic linguists work on mapping language in terms of syntax, morphology, phonology and other structural stuff. Said linguists try to establish models of language that applied linguists often make use of. So, OK, we can keep the synchronic linguists as useful, even though their work is primarily theoretical.

Then there are historical (diachronic) linguists. History of language. Did Latin American Spanish come from the dialect of Andaluz and do we care? I've struggled with the practicality of historical linguistics, but I've found a few reasons why they are worth while. First off, if you want to read historical documents, you need to be able to read the language that they were written in. That's pretty practical. Second, through historical linguistics, we can see what kinds of changes languages are capable of going through/producing and so we can use them to do a reality check on the work of synchronic linguistic models.

Another branch of linguistics also deserves mention. This is sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics applies linguistics to real people and real situations. It looks at questions of social interaction. For example, a sociolinguist might deal with the question of which English speakers get subtitled (often the black guy and not the white guy, even if the black guy's dialect is equally understandable). Also, sociolinguists can look at linguistic politics. What's the deal with English Only? Is it a good idea? What are its motivations? What are its potential ramifications? This brings us back to applied linguistics in SLA. How well/quickly can one reasonably expect an immigrant to learn a new language?

So, yes, linguists do stuff outside of the theoretical realm that can justify a paycheck. I'm still working on finding a practical reason for Literary Studies, though.

Another strange dream

Well, the advantage to not sleeping well is that your mind produces rather interesting dreams and you can remember them even after you've woken up, though the details fade rather quickly.

Last night, I dreamt that I was visiting a family in Bolivia, but it was an American house and the surrounding area was much more like Germany than anywhere I've been in South America! I remember asking the Bolivian hostess, Teresa, to be able to borrow the cellphone that I had mailed to her. She lent it to me, and I saw that I needed to get a new calling card for it. Then I went out to find my friend, Claudia, a German woman who hasn't answered any of my emails for over a year now, leading me to wonder if I can really still consider her a friend. I was walking through some sort of shopping area, though whether it was a German shopping street or an American style mall, I couldn't say with any certainty. Anyway, I saw Claudia. She had cut her long red hair, but it still made her recognizable. I followed her into a lecturehall and got her attention. She was overjoyed to see me. We went out and talked and hugged and stuff. It was great.

Then the dream shifted. I was back at my hostess's house and my parents were there visiting. We decided to go driving and one of my parents was behind the wheel. We drove into a blend between a Bolivian and a German city center, the more German the closer to the center we got. I was playing the tour guide for my folks. Then we stopped at a store. It was some sort of grocery store, I think. It wasn't really American, but not really German either. They didn't require a deposit for the shopping carts. After walking in past the registers, it became more of an open-air market with a lot of different stands and stalls. It looked more Bolivian, but it was German language. We went into a jewelry shop and were looking at the wares. I decided to buy a necklace for my mom, but since she was there, I tried to conduct the transaction in German. However, the German speaking shop keeper kept trying to do it in English. There were a few people behind the counter. Mom decided to buy something with a $50 bill. Then, for some reason, we needed to borrow something from a shop, a pencil or a cart or something, and they demanded a $200 deposit. Mama gave them the deposit, used whatever it was and got her deposit back. At the checkout at the front of the 'store', I was paying for everything using Mom's money. When I pulled the bills out of the wallet, though, two $100 bills were fake. We went back to the stall that had demanded the deposit and found that one of the shopkeepers was dead. He had taken our real money and given us fake money in return. The other shopkeepers were shocked to find our two $100 bills in the dead man's money box and they returned them to us.

This time when I was out and about, I saw Claudia again, however this time she ran away from me. Very sad, really.