Saturday, March 19, 2005
The Mysterious Aluminum Face: Day 2
I awoke very excited today. All night long I had dreams of Southwestern foods I was going to be exposed to today. I was up early, but my hostess didn't get up until past 7:30 a.m. She apologized when she got up, and stated she was not feeling very well. We wouldn't be going to all the fun food festivals after all. Bummer. She really felt badly for being such a 'terrible host'. She promised before I left Tucson, that she would take me to her all time favorite restaurant. It is this inexpensive, authentic Mexican restaurant where you can eat all the salsa you want, and all the staff speaks Spanish as their first language (or at least is very fluent). Cheryl said she eats there several times a week because the people are so nice and the food so good. She had just eaten there last night before she picked me up.Most of the day Cheryl was working on building websites again. I was pretty bored with it, even though she did show me some cool things she created. She doesn't really know what she is doing so she gets very excited if something actually works.
I spent most of the afternoon outside on her balcony. She lives on the third floor in a large complex and has great views on 3 sides. I got to see the neighbor's cat who comes over and chases the birds off the balcony that Cheryl keeps trying to feed. The cat's name is Rocky, but Cheryl said he is more like 'wimpy'. He constantly talks very loudly to her while she is trying to work. She seems to really like kids and animals, so I was happy about that.
Cheryl decided to join me in the late afternoon. We played out on the balcony after a nice rain. Then, she had me sit on some rocks while she took these pictures of me.
You can see the mountain range behind me and lots of palm and pine trees. These mountains are called the Catalinas.
She also has a view of the Rincon mountains to the east. She told me the only reason she lives in this place is because the views are so beautiful with the palm trees, pines, mountains and green grass. Plus there is plenty of nature like wild birds who visit. I was surprised how most of Tucson is rocks, sand, dirt and cacti. My host is from the Midwest, so she said she really missed all the green but likes the mild winters here.
We had fun taking pictures. Cheryl then had an idea. She decided she would build a web page, called a weblog (or BLOG for short) in honor of my visit. She said she would post a daily diary of my adventures that I dictated to her, and would also post some pictures. That way my family back in Ohio could have a permanent record of my travels. I was very excited by this.
She decided to use a service she already uses, called blogger.com. However, when she tried to register 'flatstanley.blogspot.com', someone else already used it. So, instead, we decided to use this one!.
We were both curious who had the other site, so we clicked here. I didn't know there was another Flat Stanley out there also going on adventures. What's more, he is from my home state! He lives in Cincinnati and we read about his first days adventures. Cheryl said she would have liked his hostess because they write the same way and have similar humor.
Now to the really good stuff. Cheryl made me some of her organic chicken. She cooked it in foil. When it was ready to take out of the oven, boy did we get a big surprise. There was a mysterious face staring back at us! Cheryl asked me to grab her camera and take this picture.
What do you think? .
We thought of a fun project. Click on the first face and print out. Then, take tracing paper and draw the face with all the features (eyes, nose, mouth, chin, teeth, etc.) Then, take a flesh colored crayon or colored pencil, like peach, and color in the face. Add color to the eyes, lips, etc. Don't forget to add hair. See if you can make the face look like the Anime above. Good luck!
