Rebecca A. Foster

(If you are related to me, maybe you don't want to read this.) I think some people come from kissy families, some do not. I come from a kissy family; I'm sure this was largely due to my mom's Chilean-ness. (Some of my clearest memories of visiting Chile are of being kissed by every old woman I saw.) I love that in Chilean culture, you kiss strangers upon being introduced. So friendly! (Maybe also other Spanish cultures, not sure.) In San Antonio, it is quite common for friends to greet each other with a kiss. I got used to this. In China, I had kissing friends and non-kissing friends. When the kissing friends met up in public, I wonder if we shocked the Chinese around us, who don't hug or touch upon greeting, let alone kiss. I noticed my kissing friends in China were mostly Italian or of Italian heritage, or from the East Coast. Are you a kisser? My non-kissing friends are REALLY non-kissing. Funny how that happens. When I was younger, I thought kissing was either...

I just realized, both of my recent recollections about songs from John Legend and Jay-Z both involve V. What will I write about when I actually get to the letter V? John Legend's album Evolver , one of my all-time favorite albums. Very mellow, very sensual, very engaging. The day V. and I left Chongqing was crazy ; when we got to Chengdu it was raining, we had ALL of our stuff we were taking to America with us (I had more than he did, though; love when girl stereotypes are true!), and in the long-distance bus parking lot I was in a shouting match with a Chinese illegal taxi driver about the fare to take us to our hostel. V. asked me in English if we could pay the higher rate just to get us there. (He's very non-confrontational like that. I was prepared to keep yelling for a while, haha.) By the time we got to the hostel we were wet, loaded down and I can only speak for myself here, but generally just tired of dealing with China that day. My qipao was dirty and I'd been so...

I used to try to override my intuition with non-logic, mostly because I didn't want to believe the things my intuition was telling me were true. In China, I learned to embrace intuition. It's a very large part of Chinese culture, to accept things that cannot be explained and reasoned and logically construed. Often this was frustrating for me; "This makes no sense!" came out of my mouth on maybe an hourly basis my first year there. Once I let go of everything having to make sense or be logical, I was much happier living there. Then it became another of our catchphrases, "TIC." This is China. That explains it. And that's enough. -That person approaching you across the parking lot in an unsafe manner? Yeah, it's good to be suspicious of that person and tell them to back off. You're not rude. Nice people don't approach girls alone in a parking lot. -That guy who tells you he is single, but so many clues point to him not being completely hones...

I had to take a picture to really illustrate Bunny. Our group of friends stayed in a condo just off of the main square in Jackson Hole. (For those who don't know, Jackson is a ski resort town in Wyoming, full of quaint little log-cabin style shops selling expensive stuff, most of it incorporating sheepskin and leather and/or moose. It's very cute.) We were there to go to this event ; we donated a quilt for the auction. The day of, I styled my hair in one of my favorite lazy-day hairdos, little buns atop my head: That evening I was trying to decide between keeping the little buns or shaking them out into curls. I kept the little buns, mostly because it turns out they fit nicely under my panda hat and I didn't care what my hair looked like. The event was fun! There was a live band, then a DJ. Around 1:30 a.m. we started dancing with a group of guys who all came to Jackson to work and be ski bums. Super funny, super fun, super good dancers. So I'm normally a kind...

I just like knowing I live in a world where Henry Cavill exists: I absolutely do not think he would ask me out.  Turns out I have very little to say about H's! A few quick hits:  1. High-heeled camel boots: (I take it back. Henry Cavill might be blinded by the beauty of those boots and make it happen.)  2. Hugs and holding hands 3. Hot baths The H's are kind of old-school and simple, but the classics never stop being wonderful, I suppose.  _________ In other news, our girls' weekend in Jackson Hole, WY was COLD but hilarious and I came away with a new nickname, Bunny. But I'll tell that story in another post. 

Swear on the bible, earlier this week I saw a picture of Jake Gyllenhaal in internet-passing and thought, "I bet there's a good chance if he met me, he'd ask me out." This means one of three things: 1. My self-esteem is waaay out of control 2. I'm delusional 3. I'm delusional I don't ever think this about famous people, but you know what? I bet if I met Jake Gyllenhaal in person, he'd want to ask me out. He looks like a bunch of guys I went to college with, and they seemed to like me just fine. It could happen! Hehehe. _____ I've accepted that Google pretty much owns me; gchat, Google voice, gmail-- everything they do, I love. Except Buzz. That sucked. But everything else is great. I actually get disappointed when I have friends who use yahoo and hotmail because then we can't gchat. Which brings me to my second point: I've noticed lately that men kinda dislike email. One guy I know, he'll always answer my emails, but he...

Those of you who have been reading this blog a while know that in San Antonio I lived across the street from a firehouse. Most homes in my neighborhood were gated estates set back from the road, but I walked everywhere I could and ran in my neighborhood at night, so the firefighters would often see me outside and we'd say hello, and then chat a bit, and then we became friends. One year I couldn't go home for Thanksgiving and when they found out, invited me over to have Thanksgiving dinner with them. I brought pumpkin pound cake and we had a delicious dinner. (Firefighters are awesome cooks.) I was pretty honored they'd ask me to join them, and it remains a memorable Thanksgiving. I'm sure it's the only Thanksgiving I'll ever spend in a firehouse. I feel like firehouses are special places; they are setup up just to protect and help. Especially after living overseas, I appreciate that we have these places, and people willing to serve in them. I think nothing rea...