Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Home Sweet Home

Nobody looks forward to going home like I do. And I mean NOBODY. My family goes to pick me up (with the dog), then I get home where I find the cat greeting us at the door, my room is all tidy and there is a chocolate on my pillow. My mom does that, she only does it for me because I don't think anybody else would notice. She also puts fresh flowers in my room, so beat that :-D

Funny story by the way... NOT. My plane home was delayed not 1, or 2, or 3, but 5 hours! At first the aircraft was simply late coming from its previous destination. After we boarded there was some "fusilage" malfunction or whatever that is, that only took a couple of hours to clear. Then a family inside the flight decides they want to get off the plane and so it takes another hour to locate their luggage from beneath the plane. Their luggage had to be located and removed from underneath the plane for security reasons of course. So finally we are ready to leave when a woman in first class starts up with an attack of claustrophobia, and no wonder, I mean we'd be sitting inside the plane for 4 hours!!! So it took another while to locate her luggage because she also had to get off.

When we landed the pilot said over the speaker "Ladies and gentleman welcome to Caracas. I understand that many of you aren't very happy with American Airlines right now, but we do apologize and perhaps you can find it in your hearts to come back to us soon." I thought that was funny. I got home at 2am, that wasn't so funny, everybody in the car was tired and cranky.

So last week I finished reading two different books. I love the feeling of finishing a book! sitting there for a few minutes going over everything that happened in my head, I also like to read the last page twice, just to make sure I got it right. The two books I finished were Memoria the mis putas tristes by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Eragon by Christopher Paolini. I read both of them in spanish and I realized I still read significantly faster in spanish than I do in english. I am not sure what to do about that... let me know if you have any tips for fast reading.

Anyhow, where I was getting at, Eragon was simply ok. The writer is very young and you can tell by his style, it was kind of corny at times. But enoug of that, Garcia marquez's book was wonderful! and really fun to read. It was about a ninety-year-old man that falls in love for the first time, with a fourteen-year-old prostitute of all people! His story takes you through his memoirs about being almost a century old and his first love. I mean, the first time most people "fall in love" is probably in their teenage years or early twenties. Imagine falling in love with ninety years of wisdom on your back, one can really choose the right words then. Anyhow, the protagonist is certainly likable and the book was short enough that I didn't have to put it down for too long before I finished it. Five stars.

2 comments:

Steve Hanna said...

I am going to comment on all of your posts. I like the reflective nature you describe when you finish a book. I do the same thing and often go back to look for key passages and stuff. This comment is getting pretty long. You should read Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, it's awesome. Keep on rocking in the free world.

Asirap said...

I also will comment! The first and last book I read in spanish was Don Quixote in high school, but the book by Marquez sounds interesting. Perhaps I'll pick it up and try another.