tokyo

oh look ! it's the Tokyo metropolitan building.

Photos, finally!

I borrowed a cord from a new friend so now I can upload pictures. I now realize that many of them are not in focus, so perhaps I should refrain from using the programmable mode on my camera unless I can be still and focussed while taking the picture.
This is the building for a certain branch of Buddhism that we passed on the way to Tsukiji the first time, a couple of Sundays ago. I got really excited because I thought it was the Nickolai Cathedral, the only Russian Orthodox church in Tokyo, because it had a dome, but it wasn't. Still, it's neat looking.
Possibly the snazziest looking bridge and escalator in the world. This was near the metropolitan center of Tokyo, there is a picture posted earlier of me from the top of this structure.
This would be the snazziest koban (police box) in the world. if you look closely you can see Alex and me reflected in it from the coffee shop window. The man sitting next to us was a very unhappy-looking fellow from the UK. I would have thought he had jet-lag but he said he has been here for several weeks... maybe he was just hung over.
I really liked this aquarium, but there was no way to get it without people in the way. I think my results were alright, even though maybe I didn't capture all of the lovely fish contained therein. This was also taken on that Sunday, and was in front of the Sony building of course.

Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table, because Chuck Norris only recognizes the element of surprise.
*sorry*
Possibly the most misleading thing ever put on a map- Godzilla Statue. In retrospect I think all of these photos were taken on Saturday. Upon referring to my earlier blogs I discover that these next pictures were taken in Hibiya Park, a most surprising and pleasing place.

Since the time I took this picture I have seen many inexplicable things, but this still perplexes me. Why would they put a statue of Romulus and Remus in Hibiya Koen? The answer: Why not? Just like the rune stone.

I loved Hanazono Jinja, especially the small fox shrine. And its stone lanterns:
And its stone foxes:
And its cute little fox shrine:
A general shot in the direction of one of the gates out of Hanazono jinja, on the left of the main gate is where I found the amazing kimono selection, on the right the kabuki photos.
That's all for now, I must sleep before more orientation tomorrow or I will just sleep through it.

Oh No! School Time!!!!

Well today has been very slow. My breakfast was leisurely because it was broken up into a bunch of different small dishes with lots of little things that were slippery and hard to grab. There was a little bit of fish, some miso soup, rice and that was about the extent of the things i was familiar with. There some slimy, kind of frothy and thick white stuff, some pickled things, a bit of wierd tofu with mushrooms, and something that might have been a fried omelet made of tofu in a non-delicious thick sauce. fushigina~
A comment on the hotel: it had a room at the end with natural museum type displays and a space shuttle that showed informational videos inside. I watched a really cute tufted-ear squirrel dig around in the snow for a while. Apparently winter is a major thing around here. I'm going to freeze to death. Also in the trees behind the hotel main lobby, there were three close pine trees decorated with two shiny eyes and a big red smile each. I think this was to make them resemble the town mascot which is a smiling pine tree draw cutely.

After that i got my stuff together and we went to Akita for orientation. I have a double room in the main dorm with a Japanese girl who I haven't met yet. I wish I had brought something to decorate my room with, it feels kind of lonely. There are lots of blankets provided though, so I should be ok for sleeping this winter.
This afternoon we took a campus tour in a group, basically the same stuff we saw yesterday but with a Japanese girl attempting to explain things in English. She was very brave. We also were introduced to some of the faculty, the Dean of Students is an American getting some kind of degree from UNM. A woman read the dorm guidelines and orientation schedule to us and then we went to dinner. The food in the cafeteria was actually quick alright, and you have 3 or 4 entree choices for dinner time, if all else fails I can always live off of the abundant rice and tea.

I did a load of laundry with Alex and now I should probably go check on it. If my computer will connect to the internet tomorrow I will add some pictures from today.

Akita Achieved

I am currently in a very nice hotel in Akita called Plaza Crypton wearing a yukata, having just had a very nice bath, and making green tea. This luxury cost around $54 person, but it includes breakfast and we didn't really have much say in the matter anyway. It's definitely not so bad compared with the hats I was man-handling yesterday, my favorite of which was a $190 black top hat thing that was neatly asymmetrical. After being out until the trains started running again we hurried home, grabbed a quick nap and headed towards Haneda at 7:30 to catch our flight. We made it just in time but I was so tired I slept through both the bus and plane rides. We were all befuddled when we arrived at Akita airport, which is really tiny and cutely decorated with northern Japan-ish stuff. There wasn't really a plan for what to do once we got here, so after Katrina got hung up on by a man at AIU who only spoke Japanese, we sat about for a bit feeling frustrated and stranded. Not very many people here speak even a small quantity of English, so I suppose this is one sure way to improve my travel Japanese. This place had been mentioned by the people at Akita so I asked about it at the information desk and found out it was both close to the airport and close to the school. We got a taxi ride with an old man who chatted with us but was more difficult for me to understand because I suppose he spoke with an Akita accent. This hotel gave us a discount on the room for being AIU students and on dinner for being students in general. It offers traditional Japanese meals served in the cute little bowls and round boxes with small assortments of different things in each. In the restaurant there is also a traditional tatami room to dine in but I was sure if it was open for use, so we sat at a regular table.
Before dinner and check-in time we killed 3 or 4 hours wandering round the AIU campus. We just walked into one of the open buildings and toured some of the class rooms, a game/play room, the library, and the computer lab. When we went into Komachi Hall, the dormitory where I will presumably be living, we were pounced on by an old man, made to fill out a visitor registry and get tags, then introduced to a student who gave us a tour of the facilities. The facilities are substantially smaller than that of UNM of course, there are only 500 students, and some of the buildings are somewhat shabby. We met some of the freshmen students and hung out with a girl who had spent a year in Kansas prior to returning home to finish high school. I wish I had been brave enough to do something like that.
Tomorrow is orientation so I will have more info about how it's going to be at AIU then. Now it is time for me to finally recuperate from a couple of nights out on the town in Toyko. The most exciting was Friday night when I went with a girl from the hostel to a club called Womb (pronounced "oomb"). They set up a skateboarding area on the main floor so that some famous local skaters could perform. Unfortunately they were terrible and only managed to get about 1 out of 6 tricks without falling. Everyone seemed very excited thought, but I suspect it had more to do with the team spirit type thing than anything else. After the skaters two guys came out and did many BMX tricks, and unlike the skaters they were very good. I was much impressed by the ways the guys could balance on various parts of their bicycles, etc.
Sleep time now. maybe more and pictures later

Catching up Quick

So on Monday night I met some people in the common room of the hostel and we wound up talking about music, etc, and playing cards until around 5am. Alex got up around then and we decided to make another attempt at seeing the fish market. Pictures were taken this time. I think that this extra-early hour was what lead to it being very calm and reasonable.
So I saw more fish and had a tuna set for breakfast. The fatty tuna is really good. Afterwards I went back to the hostel, didn't sleep, and then went out to the Tokyo National Museum slightly later in the afternoon. It was so hot and humid outside that I thought I would faint before I made it across Ueno Park to the Museum. There were good scenes to photograph, like Japanese Christians leading a prayer thing in front of a bunch of homeless people. They even mimed Jesus getting his feet washed by Mary Magdalene and then him carrying his cross up the hill and getting nailed to it. It was very odd, especially since these were young Japanese people and old homeless people in a tableau of music and dancing. I didn't even manage to take pictures of the architecture of the museum's various buildings- and they were very decorative also.
I really enjoyed the museum but it would have been much better if I hadn't been so tired and ill-feeling. There were many lovely pieces of ceramics and calligraphy works that were entirely lost on me. They did have a game section that was very interesting and included segmented metal dragons, a snake, and a hawk and a shell matching game. There were also what I suppose were like role-paying games for the career of an official or a samurai. After seeing the archeology exhibit that started in the earliest Jomon period, I decided I would be better off going home to sleep, so I missed the trip to Roppongi Hills.
On Wednesday we all slept in late and then did a split load of laundry. I was really surprised how quickly the laundry dried in this really humid weather. In the afternoon we went to Shibuyu, which was the epitome of quirky Japanese shopping district. We went into a thrift store called Chicago which wasn't very thrifty, but was very interesting. I found most of their fashions horrifying but I suppose the were OK looking on Japanese people. At the insistence and with the help of Alex and Katrina I tried on a fabulous kimono for young women. I will add the picture later. They helped me put on the whole outfit from inner shirt to obi, but no one could manage to tie my obi properly so I just held t while the picture was taken.
Then we went to Kiddyland which was hilarious. I got some good souvenirs for people so I feel like I have accomplished some of my mission for Tokyo. They had fan items for everything from Carebears to Naruto- it was highly amusing and also very overpriced.
On Wednesday night we engaged in a mission to go karaoke and we did. Until around 2:30 when Dylan got us kicked out of the place because he was wandering around bothering other people. After I spent at least five minutes making sure that I understood that we were being kicked out, we sang 3 more songs before we left. However on the way out we lost Dylan and while Katrina was settling the bill I went to try and find him. This resulted in me getting separated from the rest of the group and spending the next 2 and a half hours on the roof of a 9 story building. After dawn, which wasn't picturesque at all, Dylan and I caught the first train back to the hostel at 5am-ish. I never thought I would be so high up in Japan, or on a Japanese building. It was a very interesting experience, especially since it was practically next to the Ueno Station so it was very industrial seeming. Today I slept until 1ish and then we fiddled around until we went out to the hostel we will be staying in Friday Saturday and Sunday. Nico is staying there tonight and he was the one who recommended it, since Alex and I had only reserved rooms in this hostel until friday and we couldn't get rooms for the rest of the weekend. It is in a much more central location for seeing the sights of Tokyo. Tonight we were going to go see the Pillows, but of course since we didn't get tickets ahead of time it was sold out. Nico managed to get a scalped ticket and the last I saw of him and Dylan they were trying to buy another one. I ate the most disappointing meal of my stay in Tokyo tonight after we parted ways. Alex had decided she was hungry and ready to go back to the hostel and I and everyone else were just hungry. So we wandered back to the station and ate at an Italian restaurant. After the bad meal it was too much work to find another decent club so we all went back to the hostel. Now I am listening to a bunch of people speak french while I type.

Sweet Gofer

I want to eat this but have not yet. It is available at out friendly neighborhood 7-11 but every morning I say to myself that there are multitudinous options better than convenience store waffles available for breakfast. So once again I had an onigiri- but this time I waited until I was on the train. I devoured it in public like a barbarian- it was a self-wrapping one, but I opened it wrong so it got kinda messy. The train ride to Kita Kamakura was very interesting. There were more real Japanese people on the train, instead of the perfect and well-polished people I had been seeing on the train it Tokyo. It's just amazing how different it is outside of Tokyo. Yokohama was very industrial and had the epitome of huge soulless apartment buildings. I would never want to live in a place like that, but I suppose people do what they have to. I bet many of them commute to TOkyo for work. I looked at the cost of housing and it was unbelievable. In a real estate business window I saw a tiny 1 bedroom 3 floor house for around $300,000- the bottom floor was the garage and I guess the middle floor was the living room.
So I have no idea what or why this is, but it was really cool to be riding the train and see this huge head sticking up out of a passing hill.
We got off the train north of Kamakura (at Kita-Kamakura) and strolled through the land of temples and shrines. The first place we stopped was a former nunnery and shrine for widows called Tokeiji. I spent a lot of time taking pictures of the many grave stones all over the hills behind the main complex. Some were very old and some were quite new and shiny.
The forest and hillside was very lush and beautiful. There were ferns growing everywhere and really tall trees- i know there were cyprus and pines and a bunch i couldn't identify.
At that shrine there were mostly old people. It might also have been because it was very early in the morning when we got there. As the day progress we saw more young people. The only gaijin were saw were at the Daibutsu and at the station.
We stopped at a little gift shop after the first temple because I had to get a fan. Fans here are really expensive and the one I got was $21, which is in the low range for fans
that i've seen thus fan. However it was very worth it- it was so hot and humid and the breeze was only intermittent. I also understand why handkerchiefs are so necessary. Your face winds up slick with sweat so quickly here and it is far more civilized to use a handkerchief to wipe your face than your shirt. The woman in the shop was very nice and happy to talk to us about the weather in Japanese. I was pleased that I understood most of what she said.
Next was Jouchiji Temple where there were very scenic traditional house style buildings as well as graves and statues. I found a sign that said, in english,'the god of happiness is waiting for you in the cave" so i followed it and found the god, Hotei. A little old man and a little old woman were on their way to Hotei at the same time as me. The woman asked me where I was from and we had a small conversation about weather and Akita. Then I was about to take a picture of the Hotei statue but she said not to and showed me that I should rub his belly instead. He was a very fat and jovial smiling guy with droopy ears and pointing finger that had been rubbed shiny like his belly from being touched. On the way to Hotei I found a cool statute of Kanon in a cave.
Also there was supposed to be a special well but I couldn't find it and it was hot and everyone was reading to go find something to eat.
It was 11am and we were the first customers there. All three of us got the soba and tempura set lunch. It was very delicious. The waitress was also really cute so I asked if I could take her picture, I bet she thought I was very silly. I also got a soba(buckwheat) beer that was better than any of the other beer I've had here- but I discovered it is made by Rogue brewing, which explained both it's price and its tastiness.
We stopped at En-noji Temple next, it is the shrine for the lord of Hell. There were many detailed sculptures in the shrine, but no photos were allowed- so no photos to post. Enma-ou was in the middle of the far wall and flanking him, around the wall of either side were various judges and minions associated with the process. I got an ema, wooden plaque, with Enma-ou on it because it was quite decorative.
Afterwards we went on a really long and winding trek through Kamakura to find Egara-jinja, a shrine that students make pilgrimages to in hopes of getting help with academic success. It was very difficult to keep walking past all of these interesting look places, but it was a pretty long walk and we needed to stay focused in order to get to the places we wanted to go before we became too exhausted to keep walking.

When we finally got to Egara jinja there were a bunch of school children there for some kinda of ceremony. After a special meal some men pick up the big golden thing in the middle, I think it is a kind of shrine, like the ones carried at matsuris. We watched them carry it down the hill and in the direction of the children's school, while the children followed chanting.
After Egara jinja we went into Kamakura proper to find a post office for Alex to change her traveler's checks and figure out the best way to get to the Daibutsu. On the way we stopped and got soft-served green tea and sweet potato swirl ice cream. It was very refreshing after wandering around for so long in the heat. The green tea ice cream was appropriately green and the sweet potato was a nice lavender. I liked the sweet potato flavor best. I also got a strange light purple packet labeled "Sweet Gofer."While we were in the post office I opened it, it turned out to be a cute cookie thing with sweet potato filling, and passed it around. Japanese sweet potatoes are purple and are called "imo." I got bag of sweet potato chips and they were very purple as well.

We saw the Daibutsu and took pictures of it and of people and Katrina followed a small child around in an attempt to get a picture of the back of his Tshirt, which had a beetle on the front and said "Dorcus." On the back it said something about this bug being the owner of big jaws. It was a very silly afternoon.

I'm tired of writing now. and i'm still behind on what happened Monday and haven't even begun Tuesday.

I Sat Across from a Pretty Girl on the Subway

Well today I woke up astonishingly late- 9:30- because I made myself go back to sleep after I woke up at 6. That means I spent over 12 hours unconscious. I have felt more awake and together today than yesterday, I didn't feel like I could lie down and sleep for a million years at 11am today, an obvious improvement. I was greeted with an onion and something filled onigiri and a canned cafe au lait, since Alex had taken the trouble to get me an onigiri I felt obligated to eat it despite its filling. The first order of business was to spend two hours in transit to Shinjuku and then Hanazono-jinja, a shinto shrine, where there was also a fleamarket every Sunday. This was quite an ordeal because the station I had carefully planned to get off at was not the one we reach, not quite sure if this happened because I wasn't paying attention or if that stop was not reachable by that particular train- we used the stop later to go home.
I did eventually manage to figure out which street we were on and which direction we needed to head in, I love the frequently posted area maps. This set of shrines, there was a big one, a small one and a few extra fancy-looking buildings, cut a right angle path through the middle of busy city block in Shinjuku.
This was the smaller shrine seemingly dedicated to the foxes. There were some very nice statues on either side of the inner shrine with an adult fox and kit. I took pictures but of course I am unable to upload them, so I shall persist in using Alex's until I resolve this issue and back-fill my photos.
The flea market was actually a very small affair with perhaps ten vendors, all of them older people content to sit back and let people look. There was one couple that had an amazing selection of kimonos, yukatas, haoris, obis, and even a pair of long hakama. There were many exquisite colors and patterns but I had to remind myself that I had to be able to carry anything I bought with me, or else I would have gotten several very beautiful things that would have cost $30 or less. I have no idea why some that seemed top quality to me, like a black kimono embroidered all around the bottom with a multicolored pheasant and decorations, were put in a large sale pile. However, I did get a bunny yukata that is extra cute and a black men's haori as a gift. The only other things that stood out to me was an interesting album filled with old pictures of kabuki actors, the cover was velvet and the pictures were all silvery so that they looked like they had a layer of metal. There would be a page with the person in their normal dress and then one with them in costume, sometimes a scene and then two people in it on the next facing pages. They all looked so somber and melancholy, but elegant. I bet they were taken prior to the '50s just because of the way their regular clothes looked. Another thing I that struck me was a tsuba, the guard on a katana, that had a scene with a lone wolf on one side and then a skull on the other. I found it very appropriate.
The temple was closed, as were all of the other temples we stumbled across today, but I still made an offering and rung the big bell. There were many wooden plaques off to one side with people's wishes written on them. This is an example of one from the temple in Shinjuku-Chuo-koen. Cute yes?
We found our way to this one after we went to look at the Tokyo Metropolitan Adminstration Building which was very large and shiny. I will post a picture of it later, but in the courtyard in front of it there were many bronze statues, almost all of them of women, in a semi-circle facing a fountain that was not on. There was no explanation posted for them, but this one reminded me of Idunn and her golden apples.

Then we toddled off to the Shinjuki-Chou-koen where there were great big crows (ravens?) some nice plant-life and what seemed to me to be Homeless Town Tokyo, not a block from the Metropolitan Buildings. It is always very unnerving to see poverty directly adjacent to well-groomed affluence. Tokyo is applying to be the Olympic host for 2016, and will be according to the banners hung from their shiny, new, official buildings.
The hunger set in at the park and so we had a Sri Lankan lunch at "Court Lodge" near the Shinjuku station- my set lunch came with savory rice that had green peas, raisins, and cashews in it. Desert was chai and mango pudding:
Afterwards I convinced Alex to venture into Isetan- it is in my mind the most fabulous of all depa-to. On the way there we came across a set-up for 3 bands outside a movie theater and saw one of them play. Minx Zone had two girls and a guy and their music was quite delightful, I will buy one of their Cds if I ever find one. I have a picture of them on my camera. In Isetan I took a sneaky photo of the food floor this time, i think it turned out alright but i'm not sure since i can't upload it. everything i said about Matsuzakaya goes thrice over for Isetan. It was more beautiful and more fabulous and bigger and had more interesting stuff. There were amazing sparkly tights that i thought seriously about purchasing until I remembered the usual size issue. In the jewelry department the stuff I was most taken by was actually the least expensive, but still exorbitantly pricey. It mostly resembled costume jewelry with lots of sparkles and flowers and leaves in blues, greens, and purples.
We returned to the hostel early again because it is very fatiguing to walk around all day in the heat and humidity. There I met the other UNM student for Akita- Katrina- who is actually from Florida but has been at UNM for a year now.

This blog was finished a day later because my laptop died while writing it last night. Everyone went to sleep slightly before it died so I was forced to retreat to the lounge to read. I didn't actually manage to fall asleep until around one and was awoken, much to my dismay, at around 5am when 2 girls in my dorm got up and started a process of moving around that lasted for around an hour and a half. - skip to next entry

Tokyo wears me out

i'm in Tokyo and have been for over a day now. It is very.... foreign, familiar, interesting, overwhelming. I like using the metro and trains, it works well so long as you have a map. One big irritant is that many streets, major and minor, are unlabeled. It greatly impeded my navigation abilities.
When I awoke for the first time this morning it was 4AM here, but I was wide awake. Fortunately I was able to go back to sleep despite the atrocious snoring of my dormmates. Then at about 6:30 I heard Alex getting up- she's in the bunk above me and from Abq- thought might as well get the day underway. We had decided the night before to go to Tsukiji to see the fish market and get some fresh sushi breakfast.
I was way too befuddled to do more than locate the place and stumble around looking lost and scared. There were thousands of trucks and flatbed carts zooming around, as well as pedestrians and men pulling non-motorized carts. There were many many Styrofoam boxes with fish and ice in them. There bits of squid floating in water, octopi all curled up into round balls of suction cups, and the occasional tank of water with living fish, usually brown flat fish, in them. There men in rubber boots busily engaged in their trade and few not so busily waiting for others to come to them. I was overwhelmed by the variety of what was being sold. The biggest chunks of fish I saw were probably tuna, and they frozen and being cut with table saws. I even saw mollusks whose shells I would have been delighted to find on the beach- wonder what they were and how they taste.
In many places the cut up fish were in trays of water tinted red with their blood. It put me in mind of the fact that some people don't consider fish meat. There are so many odd notions in the world and we just go on creating more. For instance I felt very uncomfortable and intrusive wandering around in amongst the busy people and their fish. Other foreigners who had the same idea for an early morning excursion didn't look nearly as lost or worried as I felt. Maybe it was the jet lag causing me to be overly distressed.
In any case, the goal for the end of the venture was a certain restaurant recommended highly in the guidebook, however we ultimately settled on one that had a line, but of reasonable proportions, that served set meals of nigiri. After seeing all of the fresh sea-life less that 20 yards away I was ready to eat anything thrown down in front of me. My reasoning being that if they were preparing it so close to the source it was least likely to hurt me. Sadly I don't know the names of some of the things I ingested- many of them more on the strange side of texture and flavor. Something very white and smooth was also very firm and hard to chew- and I know it wasn't octopus. I got a piece with huge orange fish eggs that filled my mouth with goo as they burst- it tasted ok, but the sensation was unnerving. The oddest was a mushy off-white thing with a bit of silver skin that the chef warned should not be eaten with chopsticks because it was too soft. It was served with a puddle of the dark sauce that is usually put on eel. The mushiness was a bit much for me, but like I said, I trusted it because I know it was fresh. It was an expensive but delicious meal.

After we found our way out we went to Ginza which was very near at hand. It was time to experience the great "depa-to." We arrived at Matsuzakaya 20 minutes before opening but there were chairs in the entry-way to sit on. Being at a store when it opens has always weirded me out but this was worse because there were lovely chipper people behind every counter saying, "Irasshaimase" and "Ohayo gosaimasu." All I wanted to do was to peer curiously into the immaculate cases at the beautifully presented merchandise, but people just wouldn't stop greeting me cheerfully, so I just hurried by feeling exposed. We started with the basement floor for foodstuffs. I love food, especially beautiful food, and there so many exquisite things in the cases that were both appealing and utterly strange to me. I have resolved to return to a depa-to and get so food from their amazing selection. There was everything available from peaches the size of my two fists to sushi trays to precise 4inch high fruity parfaits. That obviously leaves out more familiar things, and also more strange things like the various pastes and dome shaped jellies for sale. I now wish for a picture dictionary to help me identify the things I see and order from menus.
This depa-to also had a section with kimonos for sale, the nicest ones priced in the thousands of dollars. On the same floor was a ceramics section that made me feel weak in the knees. There were little bowls 3inches across of unspeakable beauty and values. One that I liked in particular was a range of clear blue-green to turquoise in color depending on the thickness of the glaze, with a narrow-petaled flower formed in the bottom. Oh the glory of the perfection of the pieces, I wish I could have taken a picture.
Speaking of pictures, I feel like I am cursed when it comes to my camera. My memory card that I ordered didn't come before I left, and I discovered that I have left my USB cord for my camera at home when I was in San Fransisco. So at the end of my adventures for today I went to Akihabara, Electric City, and got a 1gig card for approximately $30. oh well, I can at least now have more than 20 pictures on my camera at a time.
It's me overlooking Ginza, taken by Alex. I looked as tired as I felt.

After Ginza we went looking for a shrine, which I think we found, but it was disappointing. On the way to Hibiya park, is was necessary to stop at what was labeled "Godzilla Statue" on the map. Sadly it was really only about 4 feet high. I left feeling cheated, what sort of terrible creature makes and installs a tiny bronze Godzilla statue in a small park for no good reason? Hibiya koen, however was everything I had hoped for and more. It was lush and green with old trees and the deafening sound of cicadas everywhere. There was a big pond and many benches to sit on and reflect on the old wall left over from when Tokyo was Edo.
There was also a statue of the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, which confused me. Then there was the rune given to Japan in 1957 when Scandinavians made the air passage to Japan over the North Pole.

Must end this abruptly because I am falling asleep. I can't be allowed to sleep for another 2 hours at least so I need to wake myself up.

Some Pictures from Earlier this Summer

These are some of my favorites thus far, so I might as well post them.


I love the sky in New Mexico so much. These were all taken from my house, either on the roof or in the front yard.