on many adventures

Well funny story, I complain about not having much to write about so I go out and get a life, but come to find out when youre busy doing stuff, theres no time to write about the stuff! and then comes a weekend day where you just want to relax chill out do nothing, maybe prepare for the exam next wednesday but oh wait i could blog instead! yayyy!!!  okay so, much has happened since I last wrote, including me becoming extra aware of how close my departure is and how mixed my feelings really are.  I really have gotten used to it here... but never fear, I am still comin to a city near you! :)
interesting thing casey did #1: Decided to try surfing... I figured, hey I saw Blue Crush and Lords of Dogtown, it shouldnt be that hard right? wrong. i got eaten by the waves. but I had fun in their digestive system and as such will definitely try catching that perfect wave in rhode island dudes, hang loose and cowabonga mann.

so yep, thats me, with a surfboard, and my friend allison, with her surfboard :) we didnt realize how much bigger hers was from mine until we took this picture... lol. so, I am guessing you readers out there wanna know how on earth we came across such fetching outfits with matching boards and those beautiful salty waves (olas en espanol) behind us... well, it all started when we came upon a poster in the office of our program.... it advertised a weekend excursion to a town not more than 45 minutes from Valparaiso, called Quintay.  We said, hey lets do it... then promptly forgot until I was bored in the ISA office a few weeks later and randomly facebook stalked and emailed the group, Nativos Quintay Surf.  Turned out it would only be 70 luca or about 140 bucks for two nights lodging, all the food, rentals, lessons and super fun we could want! im not an ad, really. so I say to allison, hey what are you doing this weekend? (it just happened to be halloween so there was a chance she had some wild debauchery planned out) but luckily she said nothing so I suggested we be surfers for halloween. and that ladies and gentlemen, was the first trip your casey jackson has ever planned out! i mean granted, all I had to do was email with them letting them know we wanted to go and when but still, I planned something, and for those of you that know me, thats a big deal. and if you dont know me, im not sure why you are reading this, but hey maybe Im like an internet celebrity or something? but nothing like tila tequila, maybe something like the sneezing panda?

moving on, we decided to find our own way to Quintay for an adventure and also for the cheapness of a colectivo.  A colectivo is like a shared taxi of sorts, so we stumbled around the bus terminal until we finally found the lovely quintay colectivos. unfortunatley we were the first there so we had to wait a while until more people showed up before they would bring us, but it ended being worth it, the guys we drove with were so nice and informative about the town. They explained Quintay is like a family, theres nobody who doesnt kno anybody if that makes any sense? imagine pittsfield. except with a caleta (fishing thingy where they gut the and we end here) and an ocean, which is expected if theres a caleta... surfing is like the skiing. so, we arrived and were quickly ushered into our room, at first it was alittle odd but we quickly moved on and moved in. The cabanas and restaurant were owned by the lovely mother of our surf instructor, the guys in the colectivo werent lying about the family thing. 

They drove us down to the beach to check it out, where we proceeded to psych ourselves out looking at the fountains of anger coming from the sea. we walked back to the cabana, about a mile or so, not to bad. and so went our first day in Quintay. the juicy stuff starts now, when I explain how the ocean ate us and spit us back to shore. first of all, while we were trying to get our wet suits on, no one explained to me that the zipper goes in back so I of course but in all my effort to put it on backwards until allison starts cracking up at me tells me Im doing it wrong.. nice of her to tell me after all the pulling and stretching hmmm? after we managed to wrestle the suits on, we made our walk down to the instructor who had us draw imaginary surfboards in the sand, and practice the paddling and getting up motion. i saw this on blue crush in that scene where they taught the football players how to surf, so I knew it was legit. then we were paddle ready and headed out to sea. once we were catching waves, with the help of our instructor Cano, it was pretty fun. even tho we were essentially body surfing as we were not even kneeling yet... altho that wasnt too far away, after a few waves we decided to try to kneel and eventually stand up, we failed at the standing but are now experts at kneel surfing. and that is how pretty much the rest of the weekend went. Sunday night, the second night we were there and the first night after surfing, was Halloween. we were wiped so we didnt go the raging awesome discotec right below our bedroom... use your imagination, but we did walk the town, see what was up and we came upon trick or treaters.... apparently the custom got here around 4 or 5 years ago. well, these little "adorable children" ahem, really take the trick or treat thing seriously. Not that mother brought me trick or treating much as a child, but it was a fun night of candy hunting, no anger no spite not much scare... silly rabbit, how mistaken you are. these little ones, held up the trick part or as in spanish "dulce o la basura" or something along those lines which means sweets or trash.. not really a good tranlsation, im sure youll live. so back to the walking around, we decide to head back and turn onto the dark cross street to get back to our cabana when a stampede of screaming children come running at us throwing waterballoons in our direction at a friend or enemy it was hard to tell. poor kid, what if water didnt go with his costume, we cant all me mermaids and michael phelps for Halloween. so I see these kids wanting a new target, and like hell and i going to fork over my newly bought lollipop in honor of halloween, so I bolt, unfortunatley it revealed I am a terrible friend as I left Allison in my dust with the demon children behind her. oops! funny anecdote no? well I am full of them! :) okay so that about sums up Quintay and surfing, moving onto Pucon and the wonderful ISA planned trip down south.
I was extremely happy for this trip as I really wanted to go south, to the pategonia for instance, but ran out of time and or money. Pucon is a town in the south known for tourism, it was kind of a mix of mont tremblant and killington, and thats not really a mix as theyre the same, you get the picture. the trip down there involved a 12 hour bus ride through the night and ending with waking up in Pucon and being put onto another bus to go tour around for the day. but it was worth it, we got to see a waterfall, salta de china, and the volcanoe from a distance which is really anywhere in pucon but they brought us to a specifc place where new years eve something like 50 years back, 15 minutes to midnight the volcano exploded but didnt destroy the town because of a hill that diverted the lava. happy new years?!  and we also got to see a mapuche farm. It was really funny watching all the other people on the trip interact with the farm, alot of them admitted to never having seen livestock in their life. and then the cursed guide said hed give free white water rafting tickets to whoever could catch a sheep... so half the group went galloping towards the poor scared sheep and it was sad. but this isnt a sad blog update so moving on.

This lovely woman made us sopapillas and tea. Mapuche is the Native American of Chile

this was the cabin we stayed in

The two nights we were in Pucon, we had to cook for ourselves, and somehow my cabana ended up being the one where everyone came to shower and eat and hang out when they werent sleeping or rafting.
sidenote: i went white water rafting, it was super fun, cold and awesome. unfortunatley i am a cheapskate and didnt want to pay 20 dollars for the dozen or so photos they took of our raft so I have no proof. but hey isnt my word worth enough? so the food. I have another funny anecdote, although I will most likely get in trouble with one and be told i am terrible by a few others for sharing. but hey, if that bothered me, well idk and hey this is as much for posterity and memories as it is to let you all know whats up, but moving on, so there was a lot of cooking and purchasing of food that went on with the group of friends.  We had all bought our own rations for the weekend although some had coupled up with others to make stuff together, for example I made soup with allison. and junk food with allison and james. but we all had our own cheese and milk... that is until one friend, we'll call her daureen.... decided she wanted to make grilled cheese's and flan.. but to make said dishes she used the contents of the fridge, i mean hey nobody was using it at the time right? but then, when it came to light what had happened, like for example when a certain casey wanted a sandwich but had no cheese, or when others wanted some hot chocolate from leche (milk) it was mysteriously missing. Its nothing terrible in the grand scheme of things, but I could have really gone for that sandwich, and I know of atleast two people who wanted some cereal and hot cocoa but were left in want. thankfully however the flan was for everyone and up until the minute we left it was being shov.. i mean offered. so the joke of the trip became, got milk? no but i got flan!
what is flan anyway? i mean i love me some jello but why would someone go in and ruin jello like that, really nasty substance i must tell you, or maybe i was just biased. i am a jello lady after all. so that pretty much sums up my last few weeks, its been super fun.  I go to the beach anytime i can inbetween classes or after to catch a few rays. and by that i mean spend a few minutes out there get burnt and hurt for days. i will have leather skin when i grow old simply from this trip, but it will be worth it when i come back the winter wonderland with tanned glowing skin. i promise! anyway, i hope all are well and look forward to seeing everyone!!!

love, Casey J.

ps pictures, as always

salta de china

signature pose at the mapuche farm

little piglets, fresh reminder of isabel and why I don't like pork

laguna azul

oh whoops, i almost forgot to mention we went to the thermal baths in Pucon. sooo relaxing <3

did you kno the volcano near pucon is the 2nd most active one in latin america? i do now...

at the most amazing fudge and jam shoppe the ladies were soooo sweet

rootbeer floats one day because the local supermarket had a&w in for a change... i blame my float addiction to Opa!!!

the capsule that brought the miners up, its on tour of all the plazas de armas so i got to see it in Valpo! much smaller than i thought

so proud i finally got it on right

of course mono went shopping

wishing she was with you

As I have not written in some time, I feel it is my duty as a young traveler to update those who care on my life and such thus far since the last post. Nothing much has happened since the jam packed weekend of the 18th. Well thats a lie, I have not done much but much has happened. As you no doubt read and saw on all the news's (correct word? doubt it but moving on) the 33 miners were rescued the other day. it really was incredible watching them come up one by one.  I, however, (dont tell) did not stay awake for the entire thirty some odd hour rescue.. I enjoy sleep. alittle bit more than ever here in Chile which is strange, but lets not get off task. The miners: all of chile was waiting for this since August when the mine collapsed and then later the pocket containing them was discovered.  One of the people in my pension even deemed it respectable to fast for the miners, 33 days, one for each miner.... only the fast was just for lunches... and he sometimes ate lunches so he had to start over... but his intentions were very nice, hes not even a large guy so it wasn't a copout excuse for anorexia. 
At the same time as all the hype about the miners was going on, there was a hunger strike for the Mapuche (the indigenous group of chile). They are fighting for better rights and such, I wont bore you with a contemporary history lesson, you can google it, or check out wikipedia but lets just say theyve been treated much like the native americans, and in some cases worse (so i am told and have read). muy triste, (very sad). But just as the news stations did, we shall overshadow that movement with talk about Chile and its unity after such disasters as the collapsed mine and the earthquake earlier this year.  It really was an incredible warming experience to be apart of, almost wishing I was apart of Chile too....
Speaking of which, i feel it is my duty to be honest. So before I even began choosing a place to go for my semester abroad (otherwise known as the 5 month long vacation) I was told by all those who had spent a semester in another country how amazing the experience is and how memorable, that they wish they could go back, how they had a family and the best of friends during their time.  I was shown pictures of my friends and guides of their weekend excursions, cleverly holding up the leaning tower of pisa or climbing a mountain or swimming in the ocean and I could not wait to experience all these amazing scenes for myself... When I began looking where I wanted to set up these amazing pictures, I had just gotten back from a 2 week trip around Panama and Costa Rica with some of my closest friends. We had the most fun, and although it was a very structured 'educational' trip, i loved every minute of it. Most of my close friends were also planning a trip abroad and as most of us are Spanish majors, Spain was the choice place to visit. But I, in an (for lack of a better adjective) angsty mood, desperate to 'strike out on my own' (as it had so well worked for me when I chose to go to Bryant because no one I knew in high school would ever go to a conservative business school like it) I decided I could never go to spain, I needed to have my own experience, I was selfish, wanting to have unique photos. So, luckily Spanish has an entire continent and some change of countries to choose from... after all, Id had a blast in Panama and Costa Rica? I tried to find a program for Panama, but unfortunatley Bryant does not support Programs there.  And although I liked costa rica, I felt Id seen that and began to look alittle further south. I knew Venezuela, Columbia and Bolivia were out soley for safety concerns expressed by parents and people of the sort, Peru is cool, but isnt that just all farms? Argentina is festive, but they have that weird jjyave accent..... Brazil? oh wait thats not spanish... hmmm what about Chile? I mean I love Pablo Neruda, after being introduced to him by my spanish teacher in Highschool for the poetry recitation competitions I loved his work... and my finance professor was from Chile and he was always talking such amazing things about it.. so i did a minimal amount of research, discovered I could ski the andes and swim in the pacific ocean within the same week if I wanted... I was sold. It only solidified my decision when I asked around where everyone else was studying abroad and no one had chosen "my" country. WIN! .....right?
Well I have since been thinking about that state of mind.  I am very much a person who loves new experiences and being on her own. I am afterall an only child (1) and the daughter of my mother (2).... explains alot.. but after spending these past 3 months on my own in Chile, I have come to find I am not having the experience I had hoped for, while I am on my own having my own personal experience and I have met some amazing people that I will be sad to see go, I see no reason holding me to chile the way it has been explained to me that a semester abroad clings to you after you return home.  Afterall, the friends I have made here are gringos (from the states- mostly) which means when I go back they do too, so its not that great of a loss. I feel no love within my host family, with the exception of my amazing house keeper (but really more than that) Rita, she has made me love Chile more than any person experience or photo I have taken here.  She will be the reason I will be sad to leave.
I write this as a cautionary tale, for those of you who might choose blindly their time abroad.  Had I done the right research (I didnt even read the handbook of the program before coming) before committing I might have chosen differently.  I do not regret my choice, it has helped me come closer to finding myself and finding who I am and who I want to be. I have enjoyed much of my time here and it really is a beautiful place that one day I hope to come back and explore, possibly when I have more spendable money so I can travel throughout more than just the surrounding areas of Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. 
I suppose I began to realize these thoughts growing and manifesting in my behavior. I found myself reminiscing about the university I couldnt wait to get away from for a semester, I realized my only activities were to get ice cream and to go out at night, I saw myself spending more and more time alone. Although I have always enjoyed my alone time, it has never been this much before.  I find myself walking along the boardwalk for hours just thinking and wondering how long is left.  It was when I noticed that thought in my head that there was something wrong and that I needed to find something better to do with my time than to count down the minutes (53 days 3 hours and 56 minutes...) but that is a terrible way to spend time. So I made a conscious decision to enjoy the rest of my time here... until I looked at my next months calender and realized its final exam time and every week I have a test from here on out while I manage to fit in a 10+ page paper on god knows what for my history class.
I think (and this is about to get psychoanalyzing in this joint so take a step back) the reason I have not found the happiness I saw in those pictures I saw of previous study abroad students is that I have not allowed myself to develop a life here.  Knowing one has an expiration date makes it difficult to make any real relationships. I have my gringo friends as I mentioned and they are amazing people I am lucky to have met, but I feel many times when I meet a Chilean they are hesitant to be my friend. They have seen so many gringos come and go that they understand I am not here for long, so why invest the time to become friends? I have let this be my credo and it is unfortunate.  Rather than living in the moment as I came here to do, I have been listening to the ticking clock countdown to when I must end my life here and jump back in the one that kept going with out me in the states.  It is difficult but I hope to overcome this, I really do not wish to resent my time here, Valparaiso is a beautiful city and its people (most) are wonderful and warm.  From here on out I refuse to check the expiration date when I make a new friend. As I am being reminded in almost all of my classes, it is a globalized flattened world we live in, with phones, facebook and email, the thousands of miles dont seem like much.... except when you really want that hug from mama bear.... ahem anyway, with the new spring I am refreshed on my view of Chile and my time (life?) here.
I hope you the reader do not take this as a woe is me post but more of a realization. An acknowledgment of a mistake, an acceptance of the consequences and making lemonade out of the proverbial lemonade. My time here has not been wasted and I will come home a refreshed (tanned as it is spring here :P) reevaluated young person, not quite ready to start life yet, but hey thats still a year and a half off, lets not rush things. 
What I am trying to say is I miss all of you at home greatly and can barely stand a second when I am not surrounded by the warmth of your love and able to appreciate you all for the amazing friends and family you have all been to me. I truly am blessed to have you in my life.
love casey j. <3

a screen shot of the live feed I was getting on my laptop

my practice has gone alittle down hill after not doing much yoga here.. whoops

some friends and i posing for a "hipster" shot

I got to go back to Horcon <3

Finally swam in the pacific, only kind of freezing.. similar to maine.

my future house. in Zapallar Chile

at the human rights and history museum in Santiago, really impressive

no mas peanut butter!? oh wait, I have another jar.. yay!

street of my future house haha!

Bicentennial Weekend in Chile

Well as some of you might have learned in your travels, the 18th of September is Chiles 4th of July.... except cooler. I mean independence day is fun and all in the states but nowhere near the level of fun-ocity and diversions and happylicious that 'fiestas patrias' is.  fiestas patrias literally translated is patriotic parties.... the week leading up to the weekend of the 18th the streets were lined with chilean flags... it was impressive and I dont think I will ever be able to forget the chilean flag after this past week....

My Future Home

This is in Horcon, a small fishing village about an hour outside of Vina del Mar, Valparaiso (my city)'s sister city.. if that makes any grain of sense i will be pleased. Anyway you can see all those lil dots of red white and blue, yep that would be the chilean flag taking over the scenery. Since Ive skipped to friday Day I will back track later and just go with the flow for now... this is Horcon, as I said. It was once a hippie community in the 70s and is still filled with much tiedye and free love. I went with three gringos I met here who are volunteering at a school in Vina.  So we get to this incredible little town (back plan is to come live here :) and its perfect, when we walk down towards the beach we are passed by this Pocahontas looking chilean.  As soon as our feet hit the sand, our shoes are gone and we begin walking along the beach, not sure where we are heading but we keep walking. It is a beautiful day and we are walking on the beach, it was perfect. 

We finally found a spot a less than a mile down the beach, a cove of sorts. it was our own private view of paradise, I know how cheesy that sounds but its the beach people... how do you write about a beach without sounding cheesy?  we layed there for hours just relaxing and ended up meeting some nice Chilean students from Santiago on break visiting the town too. they invited us to come hang out at their place and told us about the nude beach just a few minutes further down the beach from where we were from... i cannot lie, I was a little happy we stopped where and when we did. That would have been a bit abrupt for a relax on the beach day. Once we had enough of the beach we began our trek back, I think it was more of our stomachs telling us to head back to town.  Once there the three girls got very distracted by a fonda or display along the boardwalk...

I mean look at all that tiedye how could we avoid being drawn to it. it was here that we met our Pocahontas, she was fabulous.  I wish I had gotten a picture of her. After we made our purchases, and had made the guy of the group a slight impatient, we decided upon a little shack of a restaurant with a view of the ocean. When we had finished eating we found our tired happy way back to Vina... where I got a message from a friend about checking out the Ramada again. (1: a ramada is a fair of sorts with lots of food, alcohol, vendors, rides, games, all around celebrations.... 2: this is what I skipped earlier in favor of the horcon tale, I had been told so much about the Ramadas going on this weekend that I simply could not wait to go to one "hello my name is casey and i have no patience" So i  called up my friend James and asked if he wanted to check it out.. at 4 on a thursday... why shouldnt it be poppin yet right? doesnt tunbridge fair start on a wednesday? well needless to say after walking for hours trying to find the illusive "sporting club"where it was being held, our tired feet arrived -through the back illegal entrance we found out....- to find that the ramada was still being set up... there were things going on, however we were pretty sure we were the only non ramada workers walking around... whoops! we werent about to wait for this party to start so we went to get ice cream at the most amazing place in vina Bravissimo, with the intentions of heading back once it got dark....

But look at that monstrosity of a delicious savory meal... Yeah when we were done and it was dark, all we could think about was getting home to eat something real. delicious but deadly. So alas, we missed opening night of the Ramada in Vina... but never fear this parentheses story is done)

So as I was saying, James texted asking if I wanted to try the Ramada again. How could I not? its like a mini non agricultural and crack infested version of the tunbridge worlds fair? of course I am going to find a caramel apple! So I convince my friends from the Horcon trip to come with us and we make our way to what is sure to be a night of super excitement. Even though the sun has sucked much of our energy level and we are dragging feet alittle, we walk excitedly down the aisles stopping and admiring all the cool things offered. 

There is an aisle for meat .... and there is chicha, I had been told by my chilean friends that these are the two things I must have if I am to say I participated in the festivities of fiestas patrias... Chica is a type of wine with fruit, i cant explain it. It is quite delicious but also far too sweet for anybody to drink more than one glass without feeling as if they have just chugged liquid candy. Well there were tastings throughout the ramada for chicha, my friend Jim and I gladly participated, not wanting to miss one aspect of the chilean culture. We found one that wasnt that bad so I asked the girl (and i mean girl, she couldnt have been more than 13 selling alcohol) if I could have one, thinking that the 1500 peso price listed (equals 3 dollars) meant one glass... that sounds right no? no. she took my money and handed me a bottle... only after Jim had made fun of me asking if he thought id get a bottle or a cup... so I now had a bottle of something far too sweet to drink on my own, in a ghetto style bottle with a weird stickyness and a homemade cork... 1) i was not about to walk around drinking from this bottle 2) i was not going to be able to finish a bottle on my own  3) alcohol is not allowed in my house so I am not about to bring it home... thankfully Jim offered to help me drink it. 
The volunteer group left the ramada shortly after that, we were all exhausted after a full day of lounging on a beach ;) so it was James and I left to wander.  We decided we had to try an anticucho (kabob) if we were to say we were at the ramada..
Don't we look like we are having soo much fun! I know, we were. Well after we checked that off our list, we continued wandering and got a little caught up in the game section, never fear mother, your constant anti carnival game speeches played over and over in my mind so i wasted no money in that section, however it was very interesting to see what the toy of choice was for the ramada goers... for the underage it was light up multicolord devil horn headbands... and for those of an older age but not necessarily better judgment, the prizes were bottles of different types of liquor.. At one game if I got my pingpong  ball on just the right cup, i could have won a bottle of tequila, at another i could aim my ring to land on a bottle of my choosing, from chicha, to whiskey and rum, to anything else you can imagine.  I take back my previous statement of the Ramada being less crack filled than Tunbridge fair...

Not a great distance from the games, were the rides... Now I am a big one for carnival rides, even the most sketchy ones with the creepiest looking attendants but there was a little alarm going off in my mind when I looked at these rusty crooked unbalanced but newly painted death traps. unfortunatley i listened to my gut, never a fun path to travel, but i am in one not half dead piece. look if you will at the second picture of the ferris wheel? does that not look like it is leaning?

Once we were filled with chilean tradition and celebrations and ready to settle down for the night in preparation for the even bigger festivities tomorrow morning, we began to walk to our respective bus and metro stops... but not before running into a scene straight from mary poppins

It was quite fun, and i hope to see this type of thing again. I am just lucky I had my camera ready :)
oh I must share this photo with you as well, perhaps it is the reason we got lost on our first attempt of finding the ramada on thursday..

yes my friends, that says 3 1/2 oriente..... poor planning in my opinion :P

Wow, only one night down of this incredible weekend.... i should learn to be concise...
When I arrived home, late for me, everyone was in bed but there was a mountain of meat waiting on the kitchen table thawing... i mean mountain

kinda ew...

but my family was so sweet, knowing i dont eat pork they set aside my own little mini steak for the days asado (bbq). There was so much food being prepared when I woke up the next morning. pictures will follow this blog like last time. all morning the women prepared and made the house ready for friends to come celebrate.  there was churripan, this drink with white wine, fanta, and peaches that was super sweet but pretty good, pebre (a salsa type sauce), alot of meat obviously, and the usual potatoe salad and corn and such. two other gringos that i had never met ended up showing up with one of the families. they are studying in buenos aires but were visiting on of their old host families. Although we spoke in english alot, it was nice to have somebody else who was experiencing this for the first time.  Other than a slight difference in the food served, it was pretty much like any 4th of july bbq you have been to. Except, since my mama chilena is a but older, there were no crazy drunk people running around dancing queca and singing the national anthem... for this I was a bit sad but it was a very nice day.  By the time everyone had left, I was exhausted so my family told me to rest because they would be taking me to the fireworks in vina later. No sooner did I rest my head on the pillow did i wake up to the booming sound of the sky exploding, aka fireworks... when my family returned, they apologized and said they didnt want to wake me up. Oh well, alot of my friends here videod them so the next morning i was able to watch a little 2 by 3 version of the fireworks. i mean once you have seen fireworks youve pretty much seen fireworks. theres never a surprise but it wouldve been nice to go with the family.


The rest of the weekend was a little less crazy but still alot of fun. I walked around alot and took the perfect tourist picture, that everyone and anyone who has been to vina del mar has taken...

whats the time?

so i visited the beach near my house and walked to vina and shout out to my german familia, I found a castle for us...

roughly translated: In 1905, the industrialist german, lord Gustavo Adolfo WULFF!!! Mowle ordered construction of a stone chalet in this place in a french/german style with two towers and two terraces which was inaugurated in 1908. Not until 1916 was it transformed into a castle thanks to the work of the architect, Alberto Cruz Montt.  In 1959 the I. munipilaidad de vina del mar aquired the property for preservation and declared it a national historic monument on sept 20 1995.

yep thats one of our towers :)

Now onto the handful of pics I am obligated to share for those of you who luckily do not have facebook and are therefore safe from my ridiculous amount of foto uploadage...