Bye Bye Thyroid: One Year Later

I know, I know. You patiently wait for a blog post (or at least my dad does. Hi Dad!), and I finally post something and it's not even about an awesome oversea adventure. I will write one about my first year of grad school in the next week, but today we detour into non-adventure land. Well...not fun adventure land.

One year ago today, I got my thyroid removed.

It was my first major surgery, my first night in the hospital, and my first removal of an organ. So the anniversary is worth noting. Also, when I knew I was having surgery I wanted to see what the scars were like, and all I came across were horrible, horrible pictures. Like this poor woman:

Googling your upcoming surgery is like going to
WebMD for medical advice. It will be horrible.
And you've probably got cancer.

So, I figure I'd post mine for friends and family that might be interested, as well as poor scared people who might stumble upon these and be reassured that not all the scars are that big.

Plus, it's my blog and I do what I want. ;)

Roll the picture montage! (Also, this is officially the most selfies I've ever taken in my life.)

That's a face that says, "I'm scared shitless about surgery tomorrow. Let's take last pictures before I look like I had a botched decapitation." 

And that's a face that says, "Getting a tumor peeled off your trachea is not my idea of a good time."
Having friends come over and play Pandemic with you in the hospital, on the other hand, is a good time.

I'm still drugged enough I can muster a semi-smile for this picture before I go sleep another 18 hours.

The "Jesus, what the hell is wrong with your neck?!?" Stage. This would be why I wasn't allowed to lay back beyond a 45° angle for 2 weeks. That large lump o' swelling actually strangled me when I laid down. Fun times, fun times!

The "Not being able to leave my apartment when I don't have cable is lame" Stage. Also, some random bleeding.

Was still having dizziness problems, but otherwise out and about and back at work. Still got some funny stares.

Look at that cheeky grin! After patiently waiting for the bandage to decide to fall off like a good Anica, I was happy to see my scar. Looks like the more expensive surgeon was worth it. ;)

Swelling's almost gone (kinda), and the scar is looking good. Why do I look so miserable then? This is two weeks without any thyroid pills and one week into my low-iodine diet...aka Hell. 

Me today! Notice the slight change in wardrobe between Vegas June and Sweden June. :)
I usually think my scar is pretty obvious, but looking at the pictures, I think you can barely tell it's even there.

So, there you have it.

One thing I noticed: I've aged a LOT in the last year. I thought I had, but actually sitting here and looking through the pictures (including the less complimentary ones you aren't seeing)...it's kind of depressing. I shouldn't be surprised - there was the cancer thing, with surgery and radiation, and then the moving to a foreign country just two weeks after, starting grad school, and the whole not having a normal thyroid level until just two months ago. Nothing stressful really that would age a person. ;)

At least I've always looked really young for my age, so I think I'm still under the 34 I'm supposed to be. My advice? Don't get cancer. It's just all sorts of a pain in the ass.

Alright, next post will include pictures of foreign lands, I promise. :)

It’s an Anica-thing

In my six months in Sweden, I’ve noticed there’s two things I say rather frequently here, whether I’m talking to Swedes or other international students:

     1. “Well, it depends on the state…” when replying to some question about how something works in the US  

       (Most recent usage: Talking about age of consent)

     2. “That’s not an American thing, it’s an Anica-thing” when explaining something I do that is weird

       (Most recent usage: Me cooking bacon in water, which totally blew my corridor-mate’s mind)

Today we had an unexpected free day off from school – no lectures, no pressing projects or papers to write – just a day I could do whatever. As much as I am a nerd and love school, I do miss being able to just enjoy evenings and weekends without having to do any kind of work. (Or if I couldn’t, at least being paid, typically 1.5 times more, to have to do so. Much better than this homework racket.)

So what did I do, as a college student with a surprise day of freedom? I spent the entire day in the kitchen cooking things from scratch, of course! (It’s not really an American thing, it’s just an Anica-thing.) ;)

Does this have anything to do with Sweden? Nope, outside of that’s my location at the moment. I just love to cook and this seemed a good excuse to sneak in a picture of the beautiful lasagna I made I figured I’d share some pictures of just a normal day off here, lest you think I’m just sitting in Sweden all sad and depressed after my last post. 

Not the best pictures, since I wasn't planing on doing this and took them with my phone, but I'm just a food porn amateur. ;)

---------

I actually started off cooking a bit on Monday, which was a day I needed to work on a presentation and read some papers, but didn't have any scheduled at school time, so I was free to cook too.

I made some marinara sauce, the recipe of which is one of the only good things from being on that low-iodine diet hell over the summer. It's just tomatoes, onions, garlic, fresh basil, salt, pepper, thyme, and oregano, pureed as much as humanly possible and simmered for 2+ hours to make it less itchy. (Mild tomato allergy - less cooked and chunks gives me a rash.)

The internet tells me that the air added in the pureeing
is why my sauce is always orange instead of red.
At least you can tell it's homemade then, right?

That batch gave me eleven 1½ cup servings, which is the perfect to make dinner and have leftovers for lunch.

Today though, I started off making some breakfast burritos. This is my third time making these, and they are amazing. I do a big batch and freeze them, and then have a delicious and nutritious breakfast that microwaves in 3 minutes. 

Oven roasted potatoes, eggs, bacon pieces, onion,
bell pepper, and a little cheese = deliciousness

As I've never been much of a morning person to begin with, and now I have to take my thyroid pill on an empty stomach and wait an hour to eat, breakfast was becoming a major problem before this. 97% of the time I end up eating one while walking to the bus stop.

My beauts ready for the freezer. Freeze on a cookie sheet first,
then when frozen you can dump in a giant ziploc without having
to worry that they'll freeze together.

After those went in the freezer, I also made some Italian sausage (not pictured), then took a lunch break and made a bacon cheeseburger with some of the bacon left over from the burritos. :)

Then the pièce de résistance: lasagna.

This was my first time making a real lasagna, and it is quite an undertaking, but the goal was to be able to have a bunch in the freezer for those I'm-too-tired/lazy-to-cook days. (I walk past a kebob place, McDonald's, and grocery store on my way home from the bus stop, and honestly most of the time I cave is because it's been a long day and I don't have anything easy to eat at home.) 

They do have TV dinners and frozen pizza here, but that's not much healthier. Besides, I had a piece of lasagna when I first moved here, and they make it very wrong (which one of the Swedes I live with concurred as he saw I was making it right, so there). Instead of ricotta they use a béchamel sauce. No.

Ready for the oven. Also, Swedish lasagna noodles don't have ridges.
It makes it easier to layer in the pan, but I kind of miss the
festiveness of the wavy sides.

I went all out for my first foray into lasagna: homemade marinara sauce with homemade Italian sausage, spinach, ricotta, parmesan, fresh basil, and fresh mozzarella I grated myself. And yes, I enjoyed myself immensely, especially when it came out of the oven...

Isn't she pretty?!?

Don't worry, not quitting my day job to become a food stylist.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Next time more sauce, and I'll mix the spinach in with the ricotta instead of a separate layer like the recipe called for. It should also let me get more spinach in there without really affecting the taste. It's still pretty good though, and earned the approval of the meat-eating population of my corridor.

After dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow, I've got 13 little healthy instant meals in my freezer. Funny thing is this sounds like a diet tips blog post - Just prep ahead and easily eat easy all week! - but it did take up pretty much the whole day and would not interest most people. Me, on the other hand? I had a ball. 

In case you don't believe that spending 8 hours in
a kitchen makes me happy. That's a proud,
dorky lasagna mama right there.

I may have missed my calling at being a housewife on a homestead.

Hmm.

The day ended with a special surprise from the grocery store that completed the evening. 

When I was a kid, there was this commercial for this fancy ice cream thing that I longed to try, but we never did. (It was probably too expensive.) For years, I've dreamed of this dessert: 

LOOK WHAT SWEDEN HAS.

I didn't have the Fancy Feast glass goblets to eat it out of, but otherwise it did not disappoint. Kind of like a lasagna made with ice cream and thin chocolate layers. It's like part of my childhood is now complete. 

So there you have it, my random day off, from your weirdo friend. (See, life in a foreign land isn't all walking on cobblestone streets past 1,000 year old buildings and stuff. Sometimes you stay inside, after all.) 

:)

You can’t go home again

They always say you can’t go home again, that what you hold as memories and nostalgia for your past places of being is something that can never be returned to. It will only ever live in your memory, will never be a manifestation of reality again. You can try to go back, but you will just end up disappointed in the long run, because that home you yearn for no longer exists.

It’s a depressing thought, but one I’ve experienced before, with summer camp. It was the happiest times of my childhood, but no matter how much I miss camp, what it was for me is something that will never again be. I’ve revisited my old camp and felt wronged by the changes they made, felt saddened that the girls going there today were never going to know the experience I had. I’m sure the counselors that left the camp when I was young had the same feelings though. I spent twelve summers at a place that will be entering its 67^th summer this year; the fact I have emotional investment is almost as guaranteed as the fact things will not be the same. That’s another thing they say though, right? The only constant is change.

I’ve been quite sad the last twenty-four hours, and it seemed to come from nowhere. I’ve spent all of today at home, in my pajamas. I slept over twelve hours, skipped Swedish class, and didn’t work on a paper that’s due sooner than I want to think about. I’ve cried at least four times today, one of which I kept asking myself, “What’s wrong with me?” It’s as if I was thrown heavily into deep PMS (only I’m on medication to prevent such atrocities), and it’s taken me all day to figure out what is wrong:

I’m homesick.

The worst part though, is I’m homesick for a home I can’t return to.

It’s multi-faceted, really. Part of me is homesick for my life in Vegas, your standard variety homesickness. Not for the city per se, because you know I have a love/hate relationship with my hometown, but for the comfort. I miss being able to buy ice cream at 2am or know where to get great Chinese food. I miss knowing what hikes I could go on to get away from it all to rejuvenate my soul. I miss driving away stress with the windows down, singing at the top of my lungs on a large stretch of deserted highway. I miss knowing a town so well.

More so I miss the friends I had there. With yet another friend getting an amazing job out of state (congrats Amanda, well deserved), it means there’s one less reason for me to ever go back. When I think of the friends I miss the most, the ones I keep in contact with regularly and would want to visit…there’s soon only going to be maybe three left in Vegas. Lots of old friends, coworkers, and places to see, but my base of closest friends now requires a cross-country road trip. Having those friends in one place is a home that doesn’t exist anymore, and won’t ever again.

Another thing not waiting for me in Vegas is my mom. Even though I’m going on 3½ years since she passed, there are still a lot of times when I really wish I could talk to her. When I was in Korea, especially towards the end when I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of my job and back home, we talked 2-3 hours several nights a week. Her practically nocturnal sleep schedule worked perfect for me living abroad, and I think I severely underestimated how important being able to call a friendly voice from back home is. With the 9-hour time difference, I’m stuck with weekend evenings for anyone not local.

As I’m making summer plans to go volunteer on organic farms, I think of how my mom and I talked about having a small farm someday. A cabin in the middle of the woods, with a cow named Bessie and two pigs named Bacon and Pork Chop. (I didn’t say we weren’t twisted individuals…) With her disability payments and Section 8 it was something that we might have been able to financially pull off. Now it’s just another dream that will never be realized. I guess you can also be homesick for a home that never was as much as one that has disappeared.

I’ll never be able to go back home to my mom, and that hurts. I used to call her when I was upset, and now writing has sprung up as a mediocre substitute. It’s a way for me to get it out to make me feel better though, so it’s become a habit.   

I know this is probably not what you want to read about. I only end up posting these, when I do, because sometimes I think you should know where my mind is. Fun adventures with amazing pictures that make you jealous I’m here and you’re stuck back home seem to be the norm. This certainly wasn’t what I was expecting to post on my 6 month anniversary of being in Sweden.

It’s life though, and my lack of posting is not all negative; as living here has become normalcy instead of a novelty, there’s less to share and less pictures to take. Contrary to what this break in several months of silence might suggest, I’ve been really quite happy the last few weeks.

But an adventurous life overseas is still a life. There’s ups, downs, happy accidents, disappointment, joy, the whole host of human experiences. They just come with a Swedish accent now.

I’ll post pictures again – there’s the visit to Iceland before I got here, events during orientation week, and Christmas in Prague to share, and spring break is just around the corner.

Today though, I really miss all of you, and I just wanted you to know.

Fall in Lund

According to the international student newsletter I get, today is considered the first day of winter and the traditional start of ski season up north. (I would say I agree, given the temperatures. Brr.) Before fall is officially over here in the southern part of Sweden, I thought I'd share with you what the season looks like here.

This is only my second time living in a deciduous forest, and when I worked in Vermont my job ended just before leaf-peeping season, so this is my first fall among leaves changing colors. I have to admit, I do like it - since traditional seasons have always been something characters experience in books but not what (my) real life was like, I feel like I'm living in my favorite novels from growing up. :) (I might even have my first white Christmas!)

Best part? You know all those nice, old buildings with the ivy crawling up them? Those change color too! :) 

I don't seem to be the best at taking fall color pictures, since I think everything looked prettier in person, but this will give you an idea. Enjoy!

(Yes, that building on the left looks like a castle. Just another day in Sweden, ho hum.)

This is the entrance to the Ecology building, where my classes are.

I don't know why, I just really liked this gate and the little tree.

This one was the most disappointing picture. The leaves were golden yellow and there 
were these bright red, contrasting berries that made it look really cool. Oh well. :)

These were my favorite, and I walked by them every day to get to class. The picture is a little better this time, 
but they're these amazing different shades of red that almost seemed to glow. Not sure what this plant is, 
but I want it in my yard when I finally get a house just so I get to see it in the fall.

The main school library, which is awesome enough in the summer.

But look at how pretty it gets in the fall!

Different angle, summer shot

Two weeks after the other fall shot. The ones that turned red first have fallen off (near the top), but now there's oranges in the mix too.

A Tour of My Dorm

Alright...so obviously I'm still not good at this blogging on a regular basis thing. On the plus side I've been doing all my homework and getting good grades in school? :)

I've gotten your (not so) subtle hints that you want to hear/see more, so I'm going to try to make a concentrated effort to post at least once every two weeks. I don't know if I'll have enough interesting things to keep up that schedule; there was a massive amount of blog-worthy moments the first week or two, but now it's just becoming normal life. (That's right, the cobblestone streets and century old buildings barely earn my notice now. Such a terrible life I live.) I'll slowly go through and post pictures and details of some of the early stuff though, so I should have blog fodder for a while at least.

Anyway, enough apologizing - onto talking about my living quarters ala Sweden. :)

I chose to live in a dorm, or corridor as they call it here. Unlike the US, you don't have a roommate, which is a vast improvement on the dorm situation, and the rent is pretty cheap - I pay ~$350 a month total, and that includes internet and free laundry. I thought about a studio apartment, but decided against it because then I would just be in my fully contained room and never meet my neighbors, whereas a corridor I could mingle and get some culture and all. (Plus, it was cheaper.)

I opted for corridors that were a mix of Swedes and international students (why come to Sweden if you're not going to mix with the locals?), and had at least their own toilet, since I've decided that having to be decently dressed and walk down a long hallway to pee at 3am is not really something I wanted to do for two years.

I got placed in Parentesen, so named because our two buildings form a parentheses around a courtyard. It's got a really great central location, and I do really like the 19 other people that live on my floor. Most of them are Swedish, so I'm getting some of that culture I wanted, regular language immersion, and have people nice enough to explain what I can and can't recycle or translate the instructions on food packages. (Googling msk will not tell you it's the Swedish abbreviation of the metric equivalent of tbsp.)

That being said, there are definitely some things I really don't like about living here. First and foremost, I ended up in the party dorm...again. Which being the only non-drinker in the party dorm at 18 was fun enough; now I'm 33 and even less into the party scene. Lucky for me I have probably the quietest room location and sleep like the dead anyway, so it's really the fact that most Friday and Saturday nights I can barely access the kitchen that bugs me the most.

Which would be the thing I hate the most about living here, and probably something I should have thought about more - I miss having my own kitchen. A lot. The one here was downright disgusting when I moved in, but that's at least getting better and no longer induces rage every time I cook. (Which, if you've ever witnessed the constant dish-monster in my sink at home, is hilarious and somewhat hypocritical, but there's a big difference between my mess in my own space and other people's mess in a shared space. I'll have you know the longest one of my dishes have sat here was an hour.) :p Anyway, I think it bugs me a lot because I love to do big cooking on the weekend (I made pot stickers from scratch yesterday!) and the kitchen is at its worst weekend mornings after late-night shenanigans.

It's really not that bad though and I'm getting used to it. I'd say I'm happy living here 83% of the time, which is pretty good. I have been a bit of a hermit (my easy default), but I'm trying to spend more time in the common room. I think it'll be better once I start learning Swedish and can maybe understand some of the conversations. :)

So, what does this place actually look like? Well, let me take you on a tour!

Here's what my view looks like without the sun glare:

That about covers it, I think. Let me know if you have any questions, and I'll post again soon(ish). :)

Just a Taste: Walking to and around Campus

Hi everyone!

So I have a lot I want to share with you - the two days in Iceland, different things I've done in Sweden so far, a tour of my dorm room, etc. Hell, I even wanted to post a few recipes that worked really well during my LID thing and the tiny house I stayed in in Colorado.

Problem is I'm still in the crazy busy phase, so I'm going to slowly roll out the posts over the next few weeks as I get more time...which is probably better anyway, since there's a ton of really interesting things to share right now and it's going to taper pretty quickly. (Homework assignments are probably not that fascinating for you.)

So for this first post, I'm going with a quick batch of some pictures from around campus and my walk to it, to give you a little something. (It's also the quickest thing I can put together, and I know it's been a couple of days already.)

I like to call these, "Look, I'm in Europe." :)

The building where we did all the stuff on Arrival Day.
That's right, it looks like a frickin' castle.

The building we had our General Information Meeting in.

The LUCSUS building, where my classes will be.

Fountain in front of the above building. In case covered in ivy
wasn't enough pizzazz and old-world charm for you.

That's just a few of them; you can look at the entire album here if you're so inclined. :)

LID Day 1: Anica starves to death

Yesterday was my self-inflicted Day 1, but I was too weak at the end of the day to tell you of it.

Why self-inflicted? I'm waiting on insurance and assistance to go through, and usually they schedule stuff out after that's situated. However, since I'm only in Vegas another five weeks, and the process from starting this diet to getting treatment results from the doctor are about a month, I am running out of time. So, I started yesterday, so that when they do get everything squared away, I'll be ready to go without delay.

So, Day 1 was...painful.

Day 1 Plan:

• Breakfast: Egg white and veggie omelet
• Lunch: Salad with homemade Italian dressing
• Dinner: Chicken stir-fry
• Snacks: Fruits and nuts

Day 1 Actual:

• Breakfast: Egg white, bell pepper, onion, and potato scramble
• Snack: Apple
• Lunch: More egg white, bell pepper, onion, and potato scramble
• Snack: Pecans
• Dinner: Chicken "fajitas"
• Snack: Bite of a biscuit

What happened:

Well, I was definitely not quite prepared, and the snafus in the system certainly didn't help.

Lunch plans got derailed because the last time I bought some key spices I bought the ones in little tin cans (they were on sale). I'm not supposed to eat anything canned, since the linings contain iodine, and wasn't sure if the tin cans did or not, so using them was out. Since this would have turned my salad dressing into just olive oil and white vinegar, I had to nix the lunch salad.

Would you want this to be 2/3 of your meals
for the day? Yeah, I didn't either. 

Breakfast wasn't bad, though it would have been better if I crisped the potatoes up a bit more. It wasn't, however, good enough to eat for two meals of the day, so I only ate half of what I should have for lunch.

By the afternoon, while I was chomping on my pecans, I felt pretty crappy. It's hard to judge how much is from not being on my thyroid meds for a week, and how much was from being under 1,000 calories for the day at 5pm, but neither are exactly conducive to dancing a happy jig.

I was out of food at that point, unfortunately, until I got home to make dinner. Downside to this diet is I have no outside the home options, with the exception of a piece of produce from the grocery store. Any other kind of diet attempt and I would have broken down and eaten a myriad of things after work and just restarted the next day, especially since I was running on empty and that's not healthy. However, turns out wanting to do everything to kill all your residual cancer cells is much more motivating than trying to look better for swimsuit season. Willpower prevailed.

Made it home and cooked dinner, which was pretty good. The "fajitas" were boneless, skinless chicken thighs, bell peppers, and onions, eaten out of a bowl. I had forgotten to buy a lemon and it turned out my chili powder had salt in it, so the marinade was missing a couple ingredients, but overall it was good. I mashed avocado into it as a lazy guacamole and for some added calories, but it just made me think how much better it would be with sour cream. I made double, so I have something for lunch tomorrow, though it'll mean a meatless dinner since I put all of my meat allotment for a day in each serving. (6 ounces is not that much.)

I wanted to make bread, for more food options for the next day, but it takes too long for a weeknight, so I tried biscuits. Took a sample bite when they came out of the oven, and they are surprisingly good for not having any butter or milk in the recipe. Add some honey and it should be great as a snack tomorrow.


Plans for tomorrow:

• Go to Whole Foods and get fresh ground peanut butter (forgot when I was buying the chicken)
• Find and make some kind of granola bar as an emergency ration for the afternoon
• Find more recipes/options for meals

Problems on the horizon:

Getting enough calories in a day. Contrary to people's assumptions due to my size, on days when I don't eat out, I most likely am not eating enough calories. Last time I sat down and calculated I was only getting ~1600 day, which for my size is rather low. Now that we've more or less cut out meat and all dairy products, most of what I'm eating is pretty low on the calorie scale. I'm going to have to get creative to probably hit that 1600, let alone an amount I should be eating.

I made it though - Day 1 down! :)

Low-iodine Diet: The Basics

As part of my cancer treatment, I'm getting radioactive iodine. Basically they take out all they can when they do surgery, and while my surgeon got it all out, since it had spread to two lymph nodes and my tumor was "stuck to my trachea," I need the radioactive iodine to kill off any pesky cancer cells left behind.

It's not bad, from what I've read; take a pill, be in quarantine for three days while you're radioactive, body scan 7-10 days after, and you're good. Possible side effects most people seem to complain of is nausea and things not tasting right for up to six months. (One man said everything tasted soapy. Let's not do that one.)

In order for it to be as effective as possible, you must be on a low-iodine diet for two weeks ahead of time. Since your thyroid cells absorb iodine, if you starve them of it for two weeks, they will suck up that delicious radioactive version like a cult's death kool-aid and cease to exist.

So, you ask, what has iodine in it? The short answer: EVERYTHING.

It's actually shorter to write what I can eat, versus what I can't. 

I can eat:

• Fresh vegetables, frozen ones if there's no added salt...Minus spinach, cruciferous vegetables, celery, potato skins, soybeans (and everything made from them), and most regular beans that I luckily hate anyway
• Fresh fruit...Minus cranberries, strawberries, rhubarb, and dried fruit
• Fresh meat from the butcher case with no processing (outside of grinding) and no additives (Hello Whole Foods)...Minus all seafood and organ meats and only 6 oz a day :(
• Egg whites
• Unsalted nuts and nut butters
• Grains and cereals that are unsalted, unprocessed, and additive and preservative free
• Bread, if I make it myself with no bad ingredients (like milk, eggs, etc)
• Oil
• White vinegar
• Natural sweeteners, like honey and maple syrup, up to 2 servings a day...Minus molasses
• Spices...Minus any with salt in them or in their title
• Herbs!
• Small amounts of non-iodized, non-sea salt
• An assortment of beverages I don't drink anyway. (That's right, I can't eat 2 of 3 ingredients for ants on a log, but I can drink Sprite and coffee. Not right I tell you.)

It actually looks like a lot of variety when you put it that way. A lesson on trying to see that glass as half-full, perhaps?

Today was my self-inflicted Day 1, which I will delve into tomorrow! :)

Hello?

What have we here? Six years, and I'm finally posting again!

I don't think anyone checks this but my dad (Hi Daddy-o!), but since I will be moving to Sweden, and this seems to be the place where I post of my international adventures, I thought I'd dust it off.

This time around I make no promises to post regularly, since we know that doesn't happen no matter what I say. (Maybe it'll be better with the pressure off?) I will try to write less and put more pictures, since I am a verbose individual but no one really wants to read as much ramblings as I have. I'll also try not to be a perfectionist on it, as going through several drafts and edits for a blog not only seems silly, but was a main contributor to not posting regularly.

So, in the interests of keeping it short, I'm going to briefly mention things that I'll be probably posting about soon, with more detailed posts to follow at some point.

As mentioned above, I'm moving to Sweden, on August 18th to be exact. I'll be earning my Master of Science in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science at Lund University. 'Cause why not? ;)

Before that happens, I'll have a nice, shorter than I was hoping for, two day whirlwind in Iceland. I hear they have a museum filled with nothing but penis specimens from every mammal in Iceland. (Worry not, there will be pictures.)

And before I can really think about all that, before the packing and whatnot, I've got to get this thyroid cancer thing wrapped up. Surgery was good and is done, next is the radioactive iodine treatment, and then I should be all clear.

That's what you're going to hear about first, because it seems blog worthy. (Or maybe I just need to journal.)

You can always come back in a month for the fun international travel pictures. :)

Engrish!

I mentioned before that I was going to eventually do a post on Engrish, and here it is.

To refresh your memory (we'll pretend you've read everything I've ever written religiously, of course), it is rather cool here, Japan, and probably other Asian countries to have things written in English. Think of the prevelence of kanji tattoos that people have in the US - same kind of thing. However, being that a vast majority of the population can't read what it says, it tends to not make much sense. This is known as Engrish.

(As an aside I read an article once on how a Japanese tattoo artist in the US was tattooing the wrong thing on people. On a girl's stomach he tattooed "Insert General Tso's chicken here" and on a big burly guy that wanted strength or some other macho man thing on his arm, he tattooed I like to wear women's underwear or something like that. Kind of funny, if you think about it. Internet people, internet. If you must follow this trend, find what you want it to say on several different sites, then take it to someone who knows the language and ask them what it says without telling them to make sure you've got it right. Geez.)

So I bring you my Engrish collection thus far. Some are better than others, and they're not all strictly Engrish - I added ones of signs and stuff that I thought were just written interestingly which could be Engrish or could be cultural. Oh, and the best Engrish of all time is at the end, so keep reading. I've retyped what things say in case it's not easy to tell from the smaller pictures - all quotes are, of course, exactly what the original says. ;)

First, we have a full wall sign outside a bar:

Can one ever remember love..It's like trying to summom up the smell of rose in acellar. tou might see arose, but never the perfume.

Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but look together in the same direction.

In the alley by my apartments:

After Childbirth & Fatness Clinic

I don't know if it's Engrish, or if they're just blunt like that.

On a shirt:

Celebrate Space will have opportunity talk with international

Yes, talk with international badly though. :)

The trashcan in my bathroom:

I was so happy when I knew that friend is very valuable mean.

Yes, and it makes me feel better everyday to throw my garbage into it.

Not really Engrish at all:

The n just wore off...but I thought the fact that something said "ew heaven" funny.

A pencil sharpener/eraser combo (that refused to take a decent picture):

I'm a good Magicion! I Can Make Happy Everyone~!! Like That~!!

In my subway station:

Warning: Steps Ahead

Not Engrish per se, but notice the location of the sign...I think at that point I'm well aware that there are steps ahead.

On a hoodie (taken with my camera phone. Must remember to always have camera when I go shopping here):

naughty Beagle

That naughty boy will be punished because he keeps camping about to people

Is there a beagle camping version of Mario I don't know about? Did I ever mention how copyright infringement really doesn't seem to exist here?

On a store window (also taken with my camera phone, which really doesn't help trying to read it):

BANC is producted in the early 2000. It is a fruit, which was made by the home playlists and from United states of Kingdom. and guarenteed by huge numbers of mania. and entertain cutter sense and a lovely colorful logo.

On the subway:

Seats for the handicapped, old, weak, pregnant woman, or accompanied with baby

Another probably not Engrish, but I like how they say those seats are reserved for the weak. Also, notice the really deformed shape of the pregnant woman's stomach. She should get an ultrasound.

And the best Engrish of all time, on a t-shirt someone bought (I would have bought one myself):

call-to-arms for all chunkily-penised boys to do her right and do her good - still mattered.

I think the pink ballet slippers really help to get that message across as well.

So that's what I have so far. Hope you have enjoyed. :)