we're off to south america. i'll be able to cross off another continent from my list. this trip consists of me, twiddle thumbs, and dani to brasil and argentina. i've always wanted to go to those countries but my excuse for this trip is to celebrate 100 years of okinawan immigration to both countries. i can't imagine how anyone living in okinawa 100 years ago could have come to the decision to leave so far away by boat to a land they might have never even seen pictures of. to travel first to hawaii and spread out. or to travel to some other country in latin america first and then hop around until you found a place you could call home. i'm sure a lot of people thought they would be away for a short time, save some money, and return home. just as was the case for okinawans in other countries and other immigrants around the world. but once you are in a new land, it can be hard to go back due to various circumstances. as always with such trips, i'm keeping handwritten notes and then go back to backdate compose blog entries.

get a mac!

to get down there, we flew from lax to dallas-ft. worth and then down to são paulo. while waiting for our flight at lax, one of the monitors that show flight information was down due to a failed drive on the pc connected to it. it was one of those "get a mac!" moments so i stood in front of the monitor, pretending to hold a sign (photoshop is handy). while we were doing this, an old man stared at the monitor and his boarding ticket, trying to figure out which gate to go to i guess. it was pretty funny. everytime someone started at the monitor, they looked really lost and it just made us bust out laughing really hard. when we were sitting at our gate, we saw a guy that looked just like the "i'm a pc" guy in the mac commercials. i was really tempted to give him $20 to go stand by the failed monitor drive to pose for pictures.

when we were in dallas-ft. worth, we took a break to eat some food. this is the first flight where they told us there are no vegan options (?!) so we're trying to manage the best we can. while eating some veggie burgers, we started laughing again because we were joking about all of our last names. if someone looked at the passenger list, they might think it's some elite rich kids travelling together. this is because my last name happens to be a rich family in america and my friends have names of mexican presidents.