5:46
updatesss.
i moved to san antonio a little over a week ago, together with the aforementioned roommate i found on craigslist. things are proceeding along smoothly. i like her a lot, i think we’re well-matched. she’s fairly busy with school and her job at starbucks so we tend to miss each other a lot… works out well.
after a month and a half of pestering, i finally got one of my professors to submit the recommendation he agreed to write me… he sent it today. that was the last thing i needed for my graduate school application so yeah — submitted it right after, everything is in now. i hope they review it sooner rather than later; i’m almost certain i’ll get in but i’d just like the reassurance that i am here in SA for a reason (and not just casually wasting all the money i built up in japan).
job searching too… applied about 4 places so far. really would just like to avoid people as much as possible, and build up as many new references as possible (multiple part time jobs if i have to?)… i’m in trouble with references. living in japan for 3 years, everyone who can vouch for me is an international phone call away, and probably doesn’t speak enough english to be helpful anyway. and then everyone else from my prior work/volunteer history is at least 3, sometimes 4/5/6 years in the past… and i don’t feel it’s appropriate to list them anymore. i kind of just have to start fresh with really basic work, and slowly build upon that. :/ i’m a hard worker and i know i’m better than 99% of the other candidates, but they look better on paper than i do… and their references are in the country.
went on some adventures today! i remember my friend ash used to talk about geocaching, and somehow or other i stumbled upon the idea again recently. so today i looked up some geocache locations near me and went trying to find them. went to three different places, and one was a string of about 7 caches along a walking trail… DIDN’T FIND A SINGLE ONE. hahahaha i don’t know. i’m afraid to stick around in plain sight poking around trees and bushes for too long, it’s just an odd thing to do (geocachers call passersby "muggles" for this reason — haha)… and the damn things are apparently so small, you reeeeeally have to peel your eyes. i guess i’d envisioned they’d be about the size and shape of a shoebox or something… but nah it’s tiny little canisters, like a film canister. and without any experience i have no idea where to start looking — do they generally hang from tree branches? are they hidden inside tree trunks? or under rocks? or are they just in plain sight on the ground? i looked around quite a bit but i just never found any of them.
on the bright side, one of the locations was seriously awesome — not far from my apartment, right next to it actually, is apparently this old, abandoned pet cemetery from the 70s and 80s. just off the road but you don’t see it unless you’re actually looking for it, it’s so run-down… and it’s next to a motor home which is kind of a dodgy place to be. never found the cache but it was hauntingly interesting, and looking for it brought me to a place that i’d never have found if i wasn’t looking for it… so i’m glad.
i only had my crappy phone to take pictures with (forgot my "nice" phone, the iphone i have that’s still japan-locked… please get jailbroken soon iOS 7 <3)… and i don’t think they really do the place justice, i should have taken more pictures of the grave markers… and all the trash / broken stuff
while trying to find another cache, i went to a park that was just okay for park stuff but it had TRAILS in the back. trails! i had to go down the start of one of the trails to find the supposed cache and as i was tromping along i saw a deer! who would have thought? san antonio is pretty far south, i mean it’s almost mexico… i was walking by entire fields of cacti as well… i guess i didn’t know deer lived way down here, with all the cacti. i’ll have to go back and revisit those trails someday when it’s a bit cooler… very excited to see where they lead. the deer was an encouraging sight, there must be tons of interesting stuff in there.
all in all i’m quite content… i’m finally back on track, i have a life and a plan again now. i’d like to find a job so i stop feeling like such a worthless bum sitting around at home while my roommate is so busy… but no matter what, this is exactly where i’d like to be.
tomatta jikan ga, mata ugokidasu.
the time that was stopped has begun to move again.