This was actually kind of fun.

I may keep using this blog, despite the fact that it was for a school assignment and I've already gotten all the grades I'm going to get on it. It's kind of nice having a place where I'm allowed to rant about things. I don't really have anything to say at the moment, though.
Oh, wait. I suppose I do.
Nothing particularly interesting. But it's after one in the morning, I'm exhausted, and I'm still awake. Why? Because of world geography (which happens to be the same class that I was forced to create this blog for). You see, we were assigned countries (asian, for the most part) to do projects on recently. If we bring food from the country tomorrow, we get extra credit. I usually don't jump at extra credit opportunities, but for some reason, I decided that I wanted to do it. My country was Japan, so I decided to make Onigiri (rice balls; usually filled with something) because they sounded easy.
HAH.
Unfortunately, I didn't realize until AFTER I'd bought all the ingredients I needed that making sticky rice (asian rice, japanese rice... whatever you want to call it) takes a very long time. You have to rinse it about a billion times, then drain it and let it sit for 30 minutes to an hour, then soak it in a pot with water for at least an hour, THEN cook it, and then wait an eternity for it to cool. And then when you finally get around to making the actual onigiri, you realize just how sticky this rice acutally is! I had decided to try to make them the "traditional" way: simply molding them with my hands. That lasted all of three seconds. When I tried to take a small amount of rice out of the pot and form it into a ball, it got stuck to my hands. I could hardly get it off, let alone form it into a recognizable shape! Eventually, I discovered that this unfortunate mess could be avoided by placing a spoonful of rice onto a piece of plastic wrap and molding it through that. This worked especially well because I don't need these onigiri until tomorrow afternoon. After I finished with each rice ball, I simply wrapped the plastic wrap all the way around it to prevent it from drying out in the next 15 hours or so.
After I'd exhausted my first batch of rice, I realized that I only had 23 rice balls. I need at least 28, and I want to have a few extra. So I got to start the whole process all over again! What fun!
At this point, the second batch of rice should be cool enough to use. As soon as I finish this post, I'm going to go make even MORE rice balls!
Needless to say, I'm not going to be attempting this project again. Not on this large of a scale, at least. I suppose this might have been a whole lot easier if I had a rice cooker, but I don't. And if I were ever to obtain one, it would probably sit in the Corner of Unused Kitchen Appliances with my food processer and bread machine.

One Place I'd Like to Visit?

You're really asking me to pick one place? Do you realize how impossible that is? EVERYWHERE. I want to go everywhere! However, for the purposes of this blog post, I'll just pick a handful of places and talk about them some. I'm kind of a geek, so my reasons for wanting to visit most of these places are history-related.

First up: Scotland. Well, England and Wales, too, I guess. That general area. I'm oddly preoccupied with learing about my heritage, and everything I've found leads back to that island in the North Atlantic. I'm really interested in the history of it, partially because of my heritage and partially because I really love learning about the ancient tribes of Europe. It gets kind of frustrating because not much is actually known for sure about them, but that just makes it all the more interesting.

I'd also love to visit parts of the Middle East. Again, for historical reasons. Some of the world's most amazing early civilizations were located there. If you haven't noticed, I kind of have a thing for ancient history. I also find it interesting because that area is considered sacred by many of the world's most prominent religions.

Since the other two places were mostly because of my obsession with ancient history, I'll try something different here. I would love to go to New Zealand. Purely because of the scenery. It sounds like an amazing place. No big cities, so the destructive influence of humans is very much decreased. And the fact that it's an island (well, two islands, but you know what I mean) means that there are lots of interesting species that have evolved there.

Ok, so ALL of that sounded pretty geeky. But there are also plenty of cities I'd like to visit, mostly in Europe. Then again, the main reason that I want to go to most of them is because of their history. So... Never mind. I'm a geek and I love it.