12/25/08 Merry Christmas

I am so happy, I am watching A Christmas Story on Youtube as I write this. A Christmas Story is THE christmas tale. It´s the best, I never tire of TBS 24 hours of Christmas story and have memorized mostly all the dialogue and every scene...I like movies and christmas movies are my favorite. I spent the day bogarting the TV and I managed to see part of The Holiday, which can, at best,be loosely considered Christmasey and The Grinch with Jim Carrey. The Grinch is hilarious with Jim Carrey, I had never watched it all the way through, but it´s awesome. I got a present yesterday from the hostel, it was a personal sized pan dulce and it was good. All was going well with my make shift movie marathon until the night reception guy came on and stole the tv to watch soap operas. Who is the customer here buddy? Whatever...be postive. I got my journal and sat down to outline my wonderful past 2 days. I got most of the way through christmas eve when i heard some loud mouthed Austrailian (all sorts of cuss words I´m sure you can think I might use)talking about me speaking spanish with an American accent and I got all mad and could no longer write nicely about my wonderful times travelling and just as I am writing this I am thinking maybe she was talking about someone else...even still that is just not nice! Stupid Rude drunk girl. There was a whole party taking place and she ran everyone off being obnoxious. Ah oh well, I feel better now. Ralphy brought me back to reality. It is christmas after all. I´m going to a spanish lesson tomorrow and some time next week I am going to go to another neighborhood and go yarn shopping and eat mexican food, I hope its good. I am having a wonderful time and just relishing taking in what I can. Last night people lit off fireworks for hours, it was so pretty. There were these paper lanterns on fire floating through the sky.It was so cool. I hope everyone had a good christmas! Have fun playing with your new toys and remember...don´t shoot your eye out!

12/15/2008

To the man in Iraq that threw a shoe at president Bush:
I assume you will be punished, but it shouldn´t be so. Thank you.

I found out yesterday that every argentinian person i know is a bush fan and they don´t like Obama. I feel so alienated. It makes sense, it´s very conservative here.

It´s business time, flight of the conchords is getting me through it.

enjoy the snow!

Random stuff i remembered...
a few days before i left brazil my dad was on his daily walk and he saw a little kid get his bike stolen by a guy with a machete!

there was a big demonstration, protest here and i went to a different neighborhood to go to the doctor. I got there just fine, but no taxi would take people back to my neighbor hood when i was done. My friend and I stood on the street for i think close to an hour when we found out what the issue was. The subway was also closed. I ended up taking a bus for the first time. The usual 10-15 min ride was an hour because the protestors had closed down so many streets. I saw demonstration later on the news and there were thousands of pèople there. They were in the Plaza de Mayo fighting against hunger.

12/10/2008

im sick, have been bad for 2 days and going back to bed i just wanted to let you know i wasnt dead

Today marks 4 months left in South America
my trip is 33.3% over and even though i am hella grumpy and wanna come home cause i hate being sick, i cant believe how fast time is going
hope you guys are good
send me some snow please

12-06-2008-midday

I decided to take a bit of exercise and headed out for a walk about town. I did a square around San Telmo, not all of it mind you, but about 45min worth of walking. I intended to spend a couple of hours, but it is really freakin hot today. I was sweating like a crazy person trying to get off a hold. Ladeda walking around on streets i havent been on before, run into a whole collection of homeless people in their little corridor of mattresses on the sidewalk and further along I go. I head to my destination which is this nice little park and I see a little kid sell some crack. He was like 11 maybe 13 if he had been really under-nourished his entire life. It looked like the little kid was the one holding and he was sitting on the edge of this park i was going to, there was a rock wall so he was raised up like 5 feet from the street. this teenaged gangster looking guy went up to him and picked up the sack and crossed the 5 lane street to deliver it to some scuzzy looking people who were all cracked out sitting outside this drug den complete with their own crazy homeless person hollaring all sorts of whatevers. So in the great scheme of things this little boy is a baby drug dealer and his even littler brother was with him, probably 5 or 6. It must be a family business. I only noticed this transaction because they were really tense and nervous, looking around all suspicious like. I really hope that little kid isn't doing the drugs. It's horrible.

After this i found a saturday market that was huge, but mostly only selling used clothes and shoes. On the upper portion of the park there was another little saturday market that was still setting up and it was just the kind we are used to. Artistic hippies pitching their wares, all the stuff was handmade and alot of it was really cool. I'm off to study. See ya guys later!

12/05/2008

SCWEEEEEEEEET.
i totally just paid $218 for a room for a month, how rad is that? awesome!

12/02/2008

i am going back to argentina tomorrow. some cool stuff happened that i can write about. i dont have time now, but i will try and write it up while i am on the bus and post it when i get back to my hostel. here are the last pictures of brasil. i might not be able to post pictures any more. hope you are well bye

11/27/08 happy thanksgiving

Hello hello, Happy thanksgiving. We are celebrating thanksgiving here tonight with a dinner with some of Sonia´s friends. We are gonna have beer chicken and rice. The people have a baby that i think is 2 and she is so cute and is always willing to play peek a boo so i´ll be entertained. I hope you are have a good turkey day and go out and do some shopping for me tomorrow. I think this is the first year in practically my whole life i wont be going day after thanksgiving shopping. I really like watching the fights and racing around, its super fun. Maybe a fight will break out and I can watch it on the news. Well in the spirit of the holiday I would like to say I am thankful for so much. I am so thankful i get to go to new places and see new thinks, meet people, and make new friends everyday. I´m mostly thankful for my warm, wonderful, and kind friends and family at home. Thank you for all your love and support. I miss you.

Coffee with the nice people from Argentina.
My dad made friends with tourists from Argentina. We had them over for coffee. They brought a cake that was exellent. It was fresh baked that day. Chocolate cake with dolce de leche(caramel) filling and the whole outside was covered in the filling and then it was coated in chocolate sprinkles. I haven’t been eating stuff like that here because sonia doesn’t like it and I eat what she makes. I saw that cake and couldn’t wait to get a bite. It was sooo sooo good. Thank you so much to jamil and betty! They are wonderful nice people and they told me to call them when I get back to Buenos aires and they will take me around town in their car and show me the sights. I am very excited about that.

We found out today that night before last some people broke into my dad and sonia´s garage. It´s on the first floor of the apartment building. We heard the noise, but couldn´t see anything out the window. Sonia and my dad went to get in the car today and the garage door was broken and the window of the car was forced open and everything was stolen out of the car. Stupid theives. I guess they are taking advantage of the police being in other towns dealing with the floods.

11/26/08

So Sunday I went to Sonia’s church. The universal church, ever heard of it? All I knew is that she goes 3 times a week and everyday she asks me to go. It turns out it’s like an evangelical church. Healing powers of the lord and all that. We were running a little late and things were well on their way when we arrived. I could hear the racket on the street before we went inside. The pastor had a microphone which he clearly didn’t need as all his exposed flesh was red from the strain of screaming so loudly and my ear drums didn’t hold up past the opening prayer. I couldn’t stop grinning so I went to the bathroom to collect myself. 5 minutes down, 1 hour and 55 min left to go. Shit, I thought, why didn’t I go to a short service? I popped a piece of gum to keep my lips busy and headed back out. This particular Sunday was during the worst parts of the flooding so the turn out, I’m told, was less than normal. Maybe 50-100 people were there. They stood up and say and held their hands up and did all sorts of things. They all lined up and got wine smeared on their faces by some guys in black Tshirts, I sat that one out. People gave money and they guy at the podium talked and hollered and say along to recordings of church songs, felt like bad karaoke. He made a face that made me wish I had my camera. It looked like really constipated south park character with braces. I know many of you can picture that. Those of you that can’t, I really think you could learn to appreciate the many joys of south park if you can get past your hang ups with it. So I chewed my gum and day dreamed away for a good hour and a half. I did refrain from blowing bubbles out of respect. Well, I might as well not lie, I blew some bubbles, but not as many as I wanted to and I did feel a little bad about it. The service was in Portuguese, but I still managed to feel guilty, a little. When it was all over people lined up and got little viles of holy some kind of liquid. The whole experience was weird and uncomfortable. I felt bad for all the people in there, buying in to all the bullshit, then I felt bad for being judgemental, then I rationalized…the whole thing was unholy. It felt like I was at kmart with a bunch of people that thought it was the shit. Crazy ass people thinking they are getting healed. Physically healed of whatever ails you. Ah, the power of positive thinking. God bless the placebo.

Funny other things
I’ve been developing this sort of hump in the middle of my shoulders. Not a creepy quasi type thing, but that bit where your neck meets your shoulders. I see lots of people with em. I was particularly down about it one day. Thinking about aging and changes that take place within and without my body which then lead to thoughts of decaying and death. I was thinking about this while I was watching Garden State and I saw Natalie Portman in her underwear and she has a neck/shoulder hump too. It completely dashed my worry and sorrow at being a disfigured freak. Thanks Natalie Portman.

Really funny something else, or should i say weird to mildly odd/creepy

From mole

I have a mole than may need to be upgraded to a “third nipple”. I’ve had it forever, but just in the last year or so has it grown to the point that a former boyfriend acknowledged it’s existence. Since that time I have been very aware of it. It’s on my upper abdomen and I swear if it had an areola I could make some money off this thing. So why would I think it should be a third nipple? The reasons are 3 fold. Well, proximity to my other nipples is, undeniable. It is considerably bigger than many full-fledged nipples known to exist. It is sizeable enough to be tweaked and/or pulled. I don’t believe it to be worrisome as possibly cancerous, it’s been examined by a leading dermatologist, who regrettably was not available for consultation on this issue. It’s not the bad kind of mole, but it’s getting to be a bit too much for me. I mean, I don’t know if I could pull off a third nipple. I just don’t think I am that hip or stylish. I’ve decided on two possible solutions to this problem. I accept the development of the third nipple that is taking place on my stomach. Go all out. Nurture it’s growth and development. Dress it properly with an areola tattoo around the perimeter and eventually finding some way to profit from this malformity. The other more “reasonable” option is to have the thing cut off. I’ve posted pictures of the mole in its current state and what it could look like in the future to give you a better understanding of what’s going on. This would be one thing to trump the eyes on the back of the head tattoo. Why stop at one? I could get a full set, doggy style. I could pierce the "third nipple" even get implants put in to make the other tattoos look more real. I could be one of those body modification people. A dog lady or a cat woman… It would afford me the ability to nurture hundreds, neh thousands of kuricks of poo into bono-douche bags that would answer to me and I could rule the world! This “third nipple” could pave the way to my calling. As this is potentially a life changing event I wanted to share it with my closest friends as I dearly value all of your opinions. Thank you for taking the time to read this and enjoy the artists’ renderings. I hope you laughed. This much free time is awesome.

From mole

Santa Catarina

The flood
The state of Santa Catarina is still in a state of emergency as rains continue to fall on this already hyper-saturated land. Excessive rains have accumulated over the last 2 months causing the floods and devastations you can see still today, almost a week after disaster struck. In Itajai, a city that was drowning in 10 feet of water, is now facing problems of looting, vandalism, death, further illness caused by contamination, and no way to clean up the piles of sludge and mud left in the streets. Thousands of people are without homes. Some people have no homes to even return to. Those fortunate enough to have a 2 story home that still stands, must stand guard in unhealthy and unsafe conditions to keep their property safe from scavengers and thieves. Itajai, also lost a major roadway to a landslide as well as other cities such as Blumenau. 10s of thousands of people are without running water and those that do have running water are being warned of contamination and are advised to report for medical treatment if they develop any symptoms like diarrhea or headache after consuming water. Over 100 men, women and children are dead. Many washed down hills along with their homes, trapped in the rubble. You saw things of their homes in pictures taken from the beach in my previous post. A dresser, a kitchen table, an easy chair, a library of books all once belonging to numerous families caught in the worst of what has befallen the people of Santa Catarina. The smell in the air when you walk on the street is telling of the state of things. It smells rotten and dirty everywhere. On the beach animals lay dead from eating what has washed up or the animals themselves were caught up in the water and washed up in the sand and people are swimming in the water and laying a towel down to sun on the sand. For 2 days the water in the little bay was red-orange from all the clay from the hills flowing down in the rivers. The day before these horrid events unfolded I was driven around through some of the towns hit the worst. I didn’t have my camera with me, but the rain was pounding. The beaches were washing out, some roads were starting to wear and part of a hill slid off onto the road closing access to the port of itajai. We went home that night commenting on the intense rain. While we were eating dinner 2 feet of water accumulated in a side street next to the pizza planet. We drove up to the beach to make sure my dad wasn’t caught in the storm. All the manhole covers for the city drains were spewing water. It was surging up through the pools in the street. We didn’t find my dad out there, he was safe at home. We stopped to buy drinking water to have some in the house. We had a hard time finding a place to park that wasn’t a river in the gutter spilling a few feet over on the sidewalk and in the road. We went through another couple feet of filthy water to get into the garage of the building. Happy to be home we had no idea of the destruction that was taking place just a mile from our house. We didn’t know until the next day, but several homes and businesses in our area were underwater. In neighboring cities mudslides had trapped people from leaving and people and homes were being taken away into the water to the rivers and out to the ocean. Itajai is a big city with a university and working areas that were underwater for days. The rescue operations are immense. Supplies are being brought in now that the roads are open again. We only lost water for 2 days, most people are still without. Watching the news here is grim as the rain continues to fall and no one knows how bad it’s going to end up or if the end is even in sight. We were lucky to be this close to the beach, the water didn’t get trapped here, it ran out to the ocean. Everything is on hold for so many people. Lives lost and destroyed. They show people crying in the street. Peoples pets that survived roam the streets. I see parakeets and other pet birds flying around. People set them free so they could live or their homes were stuck by the moving earth and they made it out ok. People of all socioeconomic levels were affected, the very poor that lived in shacks on the side of a hill to the rich people that lived in affluent neighborhoods atop the hill. The president of brazil came and flew over these towns in a helicopter. The military is here helping and so are many churches. I hope that the worst is over I’m sorry for those that were hurt and still suffer. News article about the flooding click here

11/25/08

I´ll write about the weather soon

11/23/08

Well Santa Catarina is a state of emergency from all the rain. Yesterday it poured all day except for a few hours. Streets here were flooded like a foot deep. In other towns roads, houses, and hills are washing away. You can´t even use an umbrella because the wind is so bad it breaks. We couldnt really leave the house yesterday except for a couple hours. We went back to pizza planet and had pizza buffett. The road flooded while we were eating like 2 feet deep. it was crazy, i took some pictures today, i will get them up for you soon.

11/21/08

Big storm, lots of rain. I am making plans to leave probably in a couple weeks, idk

11/19/08

Boring. It´s raining, shocking huh? Supposed to rain the rest of the week, awesome. I got to see some old pictures of my dad today, hopefully i´ll put some up soon. Finally, all better today. I went for a walk tonight, on the beach. Wasn´t as breath taking as you might imagine. It was so windy i thought my umbrella was going to break. Still cool though. I am still way freaked out about seeing all these drug deals with barely no attemt to conceal what it is they are doing. and me like a dumbass keeps looking. Crack heads with a lack of paranio, i dont know what this is going to do to my tweaker-dar. Someone should send this to Linda, incase she hasn´t seen it yet. I dont have her email. and please send me her email too.

11/16/08-11/18/08

So i either got a stomach flu or food poisoning, but it was 24 hours of not fun. Really a lot of not fun. I was in bed crying for my mommy. All I saw for a whole day was bed and bathroom. Nothing like the fear of it never going away to make you miss home. Today it is sunny again, but not warm enough to swim and i´m pretty weak still anyway. I think i´ve probably comsumed only 200-300 calories in the last 48 hours. I feel a lot better now though. Whew. I figured out casting on and starting my hat, which makes me very happy. I just learned how to close it up and keep on going so i am excited to get home and work on that. So, as you probably assumed, not much to report. I did have some interesting dreams... the night i got sick i dreamed this big story about why i got sick and it was all part of this politcal plot and i was mistakenly poisoned(I think i had that dream cause i watched zorro 2 days in a row) and then last night i dreamed that I was hanging out with obama at a party and he was hitting on me and i was like, damn he´s kinda hot, I get monica lewinski now, but thank goodness nothing happened, but he wasnt wearing a shirt for some reason. Anyway then i was talking to my dad, but my dad was george bush, like literally, the president george w. and i asked him what i should do for a career cause i really want to go to grad school and he said grad school is for suckers and then he paused and said i should be a teacher. I got all happy and said thats kinda one thing i was considering. Then he left and i stole his truck , then realized i stole his truck and went to call him, but i only had my real dad´s phone number, not his...then i dont remember what happened. Weird huh? K bye and I am not pregnant regardless of what you may have heard from Anne the nurse or Bill.

11/15/08-the beach

OMG this place is awesome, I love it, I never want to go home! It is hot out, 85 with 80something % humidity, but we went swimming today! It was so awesome. 5 min walk to the beach, set our stuff down and into the water we went. It is some kind of holiday here and lots and lots of people were out. I put on a ton of sun screen and reapplied often, I don’t think I burned today. Sonia and I went out into the waves and swam and dived and splashed. My eyes burn from the salt, so does my mouth and my skin. My hair is all chunky and gross, but it feels awesome. I still feel like I’m in the waves, up and down. The water is so warm and it was so hot out that breeze felt good. Running after the waves and into them was more of a work out than I thought it was at the time, but my legs are sore now. Tomorrow if it’s nice I am going to go to a better beach with less people and cooler scenery. Summer is here, I’m told. Now I get it. It was so much fun! Happy month away from home to me!

Random things I keep forgetting to mention. A guy in Buenos aires laughed at me cause I talk like the movies. Shit, there is like 3 more, but I can’t remember them now. I still miss my ipod. And everyone at home. I took out my nose ring, a small volcano looking thing was growing next to it, so I dont think my nose was happy it was there. It wasnt me anyway. Hope things are going good.

11/14/08

It’s sunny! I had a busy day of sleeping in until 2ish and then watching 3 hours of tv til I was good and woke-up. I ate some toast for lunch, charged my pod and got some exercise on the stairs in the building. Oddly, not as fun as the stair machine at the gym that can distract me with it’s buttons and bright lights. I wonder if there is a casino gym somewhere? You could play slots and other electronic gambling games while you work out, that would be awesome. I bet they are in Nevada. I’m totally making a note of that. So yeah, then I got ready and went over to Mel’s house. I was 20 min late, oops. She started cooking before I got there. The apartment smelled so good when I walked in. She had ground beef on the stove(the ground beef here is like no fat at all maybe like 1-2%). Mel cut up carrots, tomatoes, onions and I cut up green pepper. She seasoned the meet with oregano or some Italian seasoning and salt, added a little tomato sauce not much though, it didn’t turn it red. Then let it simmer til the veggies were soft. Then we mixed up the panqueca batter in a blender. It was 2 cups milk, 2 cups flour, 2 eggs, and a teaspoon- a tablespoon of olive oil blended until mixed thoroughly. She got a nonstick fry pan and turned it on high, she put a little drizzle of olive oil in the pan. Mel poured just a little batter in the pan and turned the pan in circles to spread the batter evenly along the bottom. Each one took like a min to cook, they were thin and kinda crunchy in some spots. I filled each one with the meat and veggie mixture, rolled it up, and set in that pink dish you saw. When we were all done assembling Mel added some water to the meat mixture and spooned it all over the top of the panquecas. The moisture in the meat absorbed into the now super soft and fluffy panquecas and it was soooo good. We ate them with parmesan cheese sprinkled on top. MMM, yummy! Mel had also made some juice ahead of time. It was mango and a little carrot, blended with some water, and chilled in the fridge. It was really good, too. Then, came the dessert. I have to admit I was very frightened of it. The creepy looking black seed that resemble frog eggs and they were seeds. I took a bite and holy crap! It was, da bomb! So delicious. It reminded me of the rice pudding from Maduban, but if you put anise seeds in it and a little more tart flavored hints. The dessert was maracuja(All these spellings are assumptions) mousse. Holy fuck. It was soooo good, but it’s so bad for you and we don’t have the fruit in America so I am going to have to miss it for the rest of my lift. Maybe I could buy it on the internet…Anyway. Its made from the maracuja fruit which is yellow and inside is seeds and brighter yellow goo and fruit. You take it all out and put it in a blender, reserving some for a garnish. You add sweeted cream and the cream here is hard core, you carry it too rough and it turns solid, and put in some gelatin and let it sit in the fridge. It was the yummiest thing I have eaten here. The whole dinner was so good. I want to eat it everyday! After dinner mel and I walked back to my dad’s house and were supposed to go to a party, but the people never called and that didn’t work out so I tried to knit my hat again and screwed it up again… I gotta figure out how to start it.

11/13/08

I got my typical 11-12 hour of sleep. When I woke up it was pouring rain. Usually it’s just a drizzle or light rain, but today the gutters were full and rivers where flowing across sidewalks. We went to a new restaurant, a buffet, that was only R$4 a person and it was all veggies and rice. I took the opportunity to pay for lunch as I haven’t hardly paid for a thing yet. We shopped around this little mall afterwards and my dad bought me a little leather purse. We were in the place for like 2 hours and there wasn’t much to see, but my step mom or my dad get to talking to everyone we meet and things go slow. My dad met a man from New York and made friends. He married a brazilian woman too so they had a lot to talk about. Later on in the evening my friend Melina came over and we went out to dinner and then walked to her house. We hung out and chatted. Laughed and Laughed. We made plans to cook tomorrow and hang out again. I left there and went to find my dad. It isn’t hard he only goes 3 places and they are quite near each other. It was almost 11pm and it was coldish. I put my purse under my jacket so no one could see it, but all I had in there was my camera. I had my money and house key in my pockets. Good thing I prepared. I was walking on the sidewalk that runs along the beach and I saw all kinds of shit. People buying drugs, like witnessing hand offs and money exchanges and they aren’t buying weed, this is crack! OMG I’m by myself at night surrounded by crack heads and their dirty bitches, shit. Well I just walk and think of all the ways I could use the umbrella in my hand as a weapon. Don’t stare! I walk by a guy peeing in one of the surfers tents, right by the sidewalk. The ocean is like 100 feet away, really? Saw a couple crazies talking to themselves, I didn’t blend. Got throught all that ok, wondering where the hell the cops where, I see like at least 5 ever time I go out. I found out later that the drug dealers payoff the police and they get to chill on the far side of the beach. Well, I found my dad. He was singing at the Karioke place. The guy who owns the bar came up and asked him to sing with twist and so he did, can’t refuse your public. Then we went to the Capirinia place. There was an interesting mix there. The employees 2 guys and a girl, the street rat kind who walks around selling henna tattoos was there with a little cup getting the left overs of everyone elses drinks, some guy who owns a pizza place that I find flyers for all over town, some wasted kid who was pissed someone drew and eye on him, me sonia and my dad, and a drunk guy from chile who was on his third capirinia. My dad talked to the Chilean guy and found out he spoke Spanish and stuck him on me. “Practice your Spanish”, shit. That’s when I started blending. Sure, conversations starts off normal…then “you are beautiful, how old are you, don’t go to argentina, come to chile, it’s better. People in Argentina don’t know how to speak Spanish. You come and stay in my house. Ah, I want to marry you!” shit, dad…dad! So got a marriage proposal from the freak at the place. Then the talk became tattoos because the street rat kid was harassing us so we had a tattoo sharing contest and apparently the only thing that beats eyes tattooed on the back of your head is a full back piece. Shortly after that we left and headed home.

11/12/08 yarn day!

Tammy i found a yarn store and got more yarn. Well i didnt find it my step mom told me to go there, she said they were cheap. I went with my dad and well they had mostly shit. Not high yarn standards around here. She said its cause it´s so hot people don´t buy the wool. I found 1 wool acrylic blend that has pretty colors, but nothing fancy or fun like I had hoped. Doesn´t matter. I am going to head home and start knitting another hat. i´ll take a picture of the 1st one i made. it´s not gorgeous and its too big, but i´m always proud. i´ll tell you guys about the weather...it´s raining! Well almost dinner time, we´ll see if i have anything fun to add to this one tomorrow. I think my dad is going to try and get us back at the karioke place.

11/11/08

It rained,again. We made plans to go shopping at the big mall I hadn’t been to yet then see a movie and eat dinner. Well once everyone was finally ready we had to go to walmart first. I think my dad was grumpy from waiting for us to get ready. He was talking trash to all the other cars on the road and he wasn’t driving. I’m in the back seat just trying to be quiet and look at all the buildings. There is a car pulled half out into our lane and my dad says, in a thicker English accent than usual, “What the fuck you doin man?” Just picture a 67 year old man, you’ve hardly heard swear, saying with an accent all chopped up and improper like. It was hard not to laugh out loud. Walmart bought a supermarket chain called “Big” and didn’t change the name. I saw equate brand stuff though, so it must be true. We made it to the mall. We saw quantum of solace. Which is so action packed. I think maybe there was 10 min of dialogue in the whole movie, maybe 5 min. It was pretty cool. Not as good as that Angelina jolie assassin movie, but good action as far as a bond movie goes. We ate dinner before the movie in the mall food court. The little food places are like restraunts they had you menus and cook the food fresh. We had chicken, but it was thigh meat that was grilled in oil on a flat top with the skin on…I was different. I gagged a couple times. We had rice with black beans, French fries, and a cold salad of steamed broccoli, carrots and lettuce. My dad bought a couple of cheese burgers that were topped with some diced onion and bbq sauce. They were the places special cause they don’t have bbq sauce here. The burgers weren’t as good as burger king, it reminded me of a rodeo burger, but like half the flavor and the patty of meat was light colored like it was turkey…The black beans were hella good and so were the fries. MMM French fries. After the movie we had to rush home to feed the baby birds. Later that night my dad made grilled cheese sandwiches and I offered to make my own(many of you may know I like my grilled cheeses well done but not burned) he said no and feeling like I probably should tell my dad how to make a sandwich I left him to it. It put it on a plate and handed it to me. I opened it up the cheese slices were mostly still intact and not even warm. He grins and says “that’s what you call partially melted.” He always makes jokes like that. My dad is hilarious, but it’s my kind of humor. It weird realizing you are exactly like your parents.

So far this trip has taught me not to be afraid of international travel. A whole bunch of other shit along those same lines, culture and junk like that. The best thing, so far, is learning about my family. I didn’t spend much time with my dad, ever. Sounds totally cheesey, but my dad loves me. It’s surprisingly comforting. Partially melted. That is hilarious.

Oh now, lets talk about roaches. Hmm, where should I start? The ones in the street or the one that flew into my face? Let’s allow for some build up. So in Argentina I saw a roach walking in the gutter. In brazil I saw a roach running down the side walk and I saw one running out from under our garbage bin. Now, these aren’t like American roaches and they aren’t like those really nasty African ones from fear factor either. They are just like American ones, same color and shape, but they are big. Like bigger, beefier, and taller with their creepy legs all scuttling about. Nasty. So, I haven’t researched this, but some can fly. I don’t know if it’s the same bug or what, but it looks exactly the same and either I packed it here from argentina or the nasty thing came in my window or through the hole in the wall from the air conditioner. I’ll set the scene now. It’s my first or second night in brazil. I get into bed. I put on my headphones and my little eye mask thing and lay down to drift off to sleep. Some time later, I’m still away and I’m looking through the little hole that is the space between my nose and cheek. There is a lot of light coming into the room from the window. The jesus light is shining and the curtain on my window is practically transparent. From my left side I see a flash of brown and feel something hit my head. I immediately jump up and thrash around hitting off whatever it is. I rip off the mask look through the blankets and on the floor. I didn’t find anything so I assume I am just imaging the whole thing. I figure it was partially a fleeting dream and I send myself back to sleep. Get up the next day and don’t think about it at all. Hang out in my room sleep that night. The next day after that I get up and need something out of my backpack. I reach in just like I did the day before pull out one thing, nope that’s not it…Reach in again and look down and see a flash of brown with antennas wiggling. FUCK! I throw the bag on the floor and sit on the bed standing guard over it. My dad is in one shower and Sonia is in the other. I am alone. It was like 15-20 min til my dad came out. I called my dad into my room and told him there was a nasty bug in my bag and would he please get it. He starts asking me all kinds of questions and then I remember seeing my dad freaking out about bugs when I was a kid. He was scared too. And I mean it’s not like I’m at home and this is a regular spider. I can’t do this foreign monster in, I need rescueing. My dad looks in the bag and tries to give up. “It’s in there dad, I promise. It’s close to the top. It’s brown”. “AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” There is a scream, not from me. It came from my dad and I went running. I holler, “ did you get it?”, from the living room. Of course he didn’t get it the next 3-4 minutes was my dad and I taking turns screaming like children running from this GIANT freak bug with its gross antennas and you could hear it running on the tile floor, it was huge like 2 ½-3 inches long with it gross long legs. Then real help arrived. My tiny, probably not even 5 foot stepmom, comes in asking what all the yelling is about. We point out the bug and she got some tissue. I was amazed there was no way I would even image just grabbing it! She would have, but it ran under the bed and she got a can of bug spray and the roach was not long for this world after that. My dad was the clean up crew once it was dead. He used lots of toilet paper to cover it, then used a broom to sweap it into a dust pan and walk it to the garbage can. He squawked and screamed the whole time. He was better than me. I stood in the corner hoping he wasn’t gonna tease me by chasing me with it. He didn’t. Now that’s love, right there. Now my only bug worries are the mosquito-well the local bug that leaves bites the same as a mosquito but its something else. Apparently they are coming into the room at night, biting the shit out of me and then taking off. Smarter than American mosquitoes. No screens on the windows here and no AC. So itchy bites for me. It’s still raining, but it like it better than the sun. Ever since I burned on that cloudy day with sunscreen on, I’ve been scared. I bought a straw hat with a big brim and when it’s sunny I wear long sleeves and sun screen on my face. My dad has skin cancer. When I got here had all these sores on his face, arms and legs. Some doctor friend of his burned off the cancer spots with acid. I remember seeing my dad bathing in the sun at least a million different times. Last summer I took to it myself. I won’t be doing that anymore. Evil sun. I have way too many past sunburns. Bad, bad sunburns.

11/10/08

We had a full day of walking and random crap. Late that evening my dad suggested that we go to Karioke. Uh, so kicking and screaming we all got ready. We left the house at like 11pm and walked down to the place. We were walking and talking. I was asking my dad about how he came to America. We got there, to our surprise it was full of people. My dad and step mom really wanted me to sing. I told my dad from the 1^st day I was here I wouldn’t ever sing and if I did it would only be after I was shitfaced. So the beer started flowing. We waited and waited for my dad’s first turn and he got up on the mini stage and sang some Portuguese song, that apparently everyone in Brazil knows, because everyone in the bar was singing along with him. Then my step mom sang the first English song we had heard and she got a huge round of applause. I’m drinking my beer looking through the lists of songs trying to talk myself into getting up in front of all these people and singing. There was some drunk lady hustling tables for free drinks and she made our way to our table. I told her sorry but I don’t speak Portuguese and that’s the same tactic that my step mom and dad took. It totally felt like work. She gave up on us and moved to another table where she was practically giving lap dances. Anyway, it was at this time my dad got back up and sang the twist. I wish I had my camera. He was up there singing away, twisting, and shaking his ass. Oh my god it was so funny. Everyone in the place was laughing, cheering, and clapping along. It was quite a sight. We got thoroughly bored as it became clear tonight was not the night of my debut. We took off and my dad drug us down to his favorite little watering hole, the caparinia place. There are only 2 tables outside of this place and 1 of them was full of a bunch of people from Argentina. My dad is a total attention whore. He came up on this scene and stole the show. Talking to the people telling them all about how he was from England, then went to Canada, then went to US, then here, and this is my daughter from the states, she’s been to Argentina….on and on. So we were a party of people speaking Spanish, English, and Portuguese and one of the guys working at the place was playing music trying his best to get this little teenage girl to dance with him. My dad bought the people a drink and everyone took a million pictures and had a lot of fun. It was 1 when we headed home and everyone kissed and hugged goodbye. Walking back home my dad reflected on the evening happily. He commented on how nice it was to meet new people and all we had to do was say hello and talk to them. He said he was glad he sang the twist because it made everyone so happy. He seemed quite satisfied with the evening and himself, not in an outwardly boastful way, but more like a personal gratification. It’s really nice to see my dad differently. It was at this point my step mom crossed a street and all the alcohol she drank hit her. “I’m drunk, you never see this” I turned around to look at her hanging off my dad swaying back and forth as she walked. It was hilarious! My new favorite game is fucking with my step mom and dad through the other person. Well, mostly it’s fucking with my dad through my stepmom, but my dad is an ass sometimes especially to her. So we were walking and I see a bunch of lumber on the street and suggest that hey maybe we need this. My drunk step mom thinks that’s a great idea and she has to have it. So there is my dad and step mom arguing in the street over trash. It was hilarious (if you hadn’t noticed I was drunk too, well a bit at least) I’m cackling and snorting all the way home. The battle over the lumber ended with my step mom deciding on a random piece she could carry herself that had a hole in it her had fit into. It started to rain. She held that piece of wood over her head the rest of the way home. Typing this now it was way funnier when it happened and I really must have been drunk cause it’s not near as funny now. Eh.

11/04/08/-11/10/08

Well fuck. I wrote this big long hooray for Obama and renewed faith in America and pride and screwed something up and it got deleted. You guys are probably Obama’d out anyway.So whatever, I had like 3 other days of blogs too that are now disappeared. Now I’m kinda pissed and burnt about it so the blog shall suffer. My dad and Sonia where gone for 4 or 5 days, but they are back now. The morning after Obama was elected Sonia’s mom passed away. She and my dad left that afternoon to drive all the way through the night for the funeral that was happening the next morning. I stayed here to take care of the birds. They sold a couple before they left and they took 3 with them so I was left with 3 adults, 5 babies and 4 eggs. Yesterday 1 of the babies fell out of the nesting box along with 2 of the eggs. The parents are really protective and all the birds hate me anyway, so it was a real pain in the ass getting everything organized. I opened up the nesting box to find that they had trampled 1 of the eggs and it was rotting and full of maggots. There were little flies in all the mess uh it was so gross. I didn’t notice it before because the box is really high and you have to get on a ladder to see in it and I would just open it and look at the babies and take out the poo and close up shop. I had to relocate all the birds and clean up there rotted sibling that was now a meal for MAGGOTS. EwwEwwEww. I wanted my dad and step mom to come home right then. So nasty. Another egg was no good it broke open and nothing was inside. There are 2 eggs that are intact, but I don’t think they are any good. We’ll see. Shortly after I got everything cleaned up my dad and step mom came home. Thank goodness. I washed my hands a million times, showered, and still felt gross. I hope the babies don’t get sick, but I don’t think they will. I’m not a big fan of birds, I mostly hate them. I told my dad don’t be surprised if they start saying, “shut the fuck up”, cause they heard it a lot-especially while I was on hazmat duty.

Observations of the people around here.

They call Peruvians, Indians. Babies are so cute, I don’t know why but they all look like baby jesus. Little baby girls get their ears pierced and they put gold bracelets on them. There is an abundance of gorgeous curly hair here. At least 75% of people have curly locks. I haven’t seen one natural blonde over the age of maybe 10. Everyone takes their time to do everything. We stop to talk to 100 people on the way to anywhere. If we go grocery shopping random strangers strike up a conversation like you are old friends. Everyone says I look very American and I don’t know if it’s cause I’m white or fat. The women here are gorgeous. So beautiful. They all wear horrible, tall, strappy sandals. They look so uncomfortable, but they rock em like they are going out of style. The men are mostly old and fat. The young ones are in-shape-ish with gross faces, hairy, and short. If you are a semi good looking single American man, oh geez, get on down here. Everyone else save your money and go somewhere else. People have been very nice and seem happy to meet me, but not a lot of people speak English. I can’t wait to leave. I’m only here to hang out with my dad and step mom. They are so nice and fun. My dad has an easier time to be cool cause he drinks all day. Sonia is just sweet and kind. My impression of brazil is that it’s a beautiful place. Great plant life, pretty beach and I really could care less about the rest cause I want to be in Argentina. So maybe I’ll come back again and fall in love, but it’s not happening this time. When I leave I will be sad to leave my family, but I will be happy to be away from this place. It’s over 80 today with humidity in the 80 percents. I miss our desert. It’s way better.

11/03/08-1525

Tomorrow is election day.I hope you voted. No complaining if you didn´t vote. That´s the rule and writing in Ron Paul doesnt count, Andrew. This little freak ass town i am in sucks. The people here are sneaky and it~s like a weekend get away place all the locals are kids or old people. On saturday and sunday you can barely walk the street, i feel like high school cattle again. I went shopping yesterday. Same shit they have everywhere else.Except one store sells religious figures that are covered in velvet. Bright orange velvet jesus and my favorite dark purple Buddah. I forgot to bring my travel sized Buddah,I was gonna put him in my pictures. :(

I got a pedicure for less than $5! The full foot scraping, cuticle maiming, nail paiting sha-bang. They did things that I am sure are illegal inthe united states. It was all preformed by a kid, too,well maybe a teenager. She was on the computer playing video games when we walked in. I was a bit nervous. She didnt speak english, i don~t speak portugues, and my stepmom left me there alone. She made me bleed twice(i´m both delicate and sensitive) but damn it my toes feel great! Best pedicure EVER! She did something with this tool that had this dull sliver of metal sticking off the end that i think i will miss forever. This "instrument" came out of this big pile of shit that looked like it had never been cleaned. I´m glad i got my tetnas shot. Now that i´m here I feel like i should have gotten more shots and better travel insurance. People dont seem to appreciate an american level of cleanliness. I know we go too far sometimes, but frankly i miss having hand sanitizer all over. The little food stand that my dad loves...numerous violations I can see from just sitting and starring at shit cause everyone else is talking and I have no idea what they are saying. My dad and sonia are no better. They play with their birds and then go make somethingto eat without washing their hands. Gross. And people here go to church to pray to feel better, I wanna hit em and say wash your fucking hands once in a while! And they leave food out all the time. No one washes their hands in the public bathrooms. The Atlantic Shopping(thats the name of the malls((shopping=mall apparently)))has the best public bathroom. The walls of the stall are granite with marble floors, they are always clean and have toilet paper.The door of the stall goes almost to the floor and next to the toilet is a big trash bin with no lid and it is full of shit covered toilet paper. Ah brazil.

Sorry for switching tenses all the time and run on sentences. Have a good day. VOTE!

11/02/08 4pm

who hasnt seen me in such a state? this is from that night out in BA
Peep the slide show.

11/01/08 5? maybe

I´m feeling better, today is a good day. I got up and went for way too long of a walk. My ass is sore after sitting around for a few days. i didnt drink that acai juice this morning and i dont have a headache. I think i was pulling a heather and getting a headache from the berry. So i´ll keep off it and see how it goes. I remembered something funny I forgot to tell you about. The dready mullet? if i told you about it already, sorry for repeating. But the lead singing of the band had a mullet, the top was really short almost shaved and the back was ugly dreads that were like in a big wave and down to his shoulders. I made a comment about how i~d never seen that before and the girl sophie i was with said all her friends in denmark had their hair like that! omg i wish i had gotten a picture. I have wind blown beach puff for hair today its gross and the water here...not so clean. i dont really wanna swim in it, bummer. Seeing this beach wasnt the usual awesome beach experience. I´m in love with the beaches of the pacific northwest, this one just isnt the same. Its beautiful. I like it, but I´m already looking forward to going home, eventually. I can´t wait to get back to argentina.

So portuguese...apparently its a legitimate language. millions and millions of people speak it, but you what i hear it and i think that someone is taking a southpark joke too far. starvin marvin might as well be clicking away for all i get out of it. I can say a couple things now, but damn, the list of pronunciations is 6 pages long! anyway yeah

10/31/08 evening time

Happy Halloween! I´m sick. I miss home. If i was in Boise I would be at a party or downtown drinking my ass off(and regretting it in the morning). Instead i~m sitting on the couch listing to my dad take a piss in the bathroom down the hall, he´s not a believer in shutting the door. I´m sick of feeling sick and if i´m not better soon, i´m bailing. This is a picture for you. I´ll put up more soon.

10/26/08-10/30/08

i´m sick, i feel like crap i did some stuff and it was all boring and lame, mostly i watched movies and layed around. My dad thinks its just me adjusting, but it feels like allergies. Oh i did do some fun stuff i shouldnt be so negative. I got to talk to my friend Mel who lives here, she came over and it was really nice to see her. It´s weird when someone wants you to come somewhere everything about it is great and wonderful and then you get here and you start to hear the bad stuff. Everyone is sick all the time, it´s too hot, medical care is a choke, medicine is too expensive, all the people here are out to cheat you....eh. It hasnt been sunny once since i´ve been here, but i did manage to get burned really bad on a super cloudy day. I hope the sun comes out and makes me feel better soon. I´m totally not staying here as long as I planned though. I´m gonna leave the beginning of December at the latest and head back to Argentina. I decided that have to learn spanish. Oh and there has been development on the ipod front. The people at the hostel emailed me and they have my ipod! Can you believe it. I was so happy i could have cried. They also said they shouldn~t mail it because someone would steal it so i am going to ask them to hold and hopefully it is still there when i get back.

10/25/08 night time

I slept in til 10something and sonia made me fresh juice with acai berries and banana. We went for a walk on the beach it was cloudy but warm. She talked and telaked and i was lucky to catch half of what she was saying. She has a very strong accent and tends to speak mostly in portugues with english speckled here and there, even though she seems to be pretty fluent in english. We got some fresh mango juice from the place that we went to last night. I think it was seriously just mango juice, it was good, but they served it warm...We went out to a pizza buffet tonight. It´s called pizza planet and i tell you what, it was damn good. All fresh right out the oven. The waiters walk around with a pizza each and bring the pizza to you and tell you what it is and you see all these young brown men crusing the room with pizza it was awesome. I ate a pizza that was topped with peas and corn! i almost died laughing. It was so good all of it. Super yummy. I did make the mistake of consuming 2 cans of coke at 8 o clock at night and was up til 3 not able to sleep.
If you come to brazil go to pizza planet. holy shit, it was awesome.

10/24/08 the morning after

10/24 day 8 the morning after

We went through the border in the night. I’m in brazil. When I wake up the scenery is different. I got out my camera to take some pictures of cool haciendas and forest covered hills surrounded by a mist of fog. Everytime I took a picture the camera made a simulated shutter sound, so annoying. So I get to the menu and turn the noise off and adjust a couple other preferences. I’m all proud of myself and then “no image” pops up on the LCD. I deleted all my pictures. Everyone I saved from July. My trip to the Oregon coast, Kirsten’s shower, Julia’s shower, Kirsten’s babies, Stacy’s babies, Julia’s baby, Melissa and Pastevia’s going away party, my going away party, my boyfriend, Argentina, Plaza de Mayo, Cops walking around dressed in riot gear, Evita’s grave! Gone. It’s already not my day. I’m hella grumpy now. I turned the camera off. Put my eye mask back on.
I reclined my chair and went back to sleep. I hate the bus. Whoever thought of this anyway?

Arriving a total of 26 hours after departure. The bus pulled into the Camboriu bus station and I saw Sonia, my step mom, right away. I jumped up and was the first one off the bus. I straighten myself as best I can while I wait for my bag. Here she came! Hugs and kisses, then comes my dad. I’m so happy to see them. Not much time to talk Sonia rushes us outta there and we head to the car. First thing I do is get a shower and put on some clean(well cleaner) clothes. Off we go. The end of the block my dad’s lives on is on of the 4 major roads in the town. It is full of shops all pretty much selling the same shit. Most of the buildings look to be new construction a very different view than argentina. There is quite a bit of practicality in the architeture and design of the buildings here. The walls and doors of a lot of the businesses are huge glass sheets that run on independent tracks so you can position them however you need to allow for appropriate ventilation. Most of the buildings are 5-15 stories and they are all condos, apartments, or hotels. The bottoms stories are where the businesses are. i was happy to find 2 mexican food restraunts here. The easiest way to get to the beach from my dad´s house is to walk through 2 malls. Yes you can shop your way to the beach. It´s very beautiful here, my step mom calls it paradise. It has a postive energy and everything you could need(except for cheddar cheese) I was so happy to see the ocean I skipped across the sand and walked into the surf. The sidewalk along the coast is a mosaic of black and white with wave designs and sea horses and other ocean stuff. It´s a little bay, a very little bay and there is this tiny island in the middle of it that is covered in trees and it´s lit up at night. Every few hundred feet there is a kiosk selling corn on the cob(which is gross its old and dry, but doesn´t give me gas like our corn) and churros filled with chocolate frosting looking stuff. These kiosks line the entire beach and they all sell just that, nothing else. My dad took me to their favorite watering hole. we had capirenias and pastels. Caperinia is vodka sugar and lime and a pastel is a fresh made hot pocket. and fresh bread straight out of the over from the bakery. Went home at passed out, i´m a cheap date. I miss my ipod. :(

10/23 continued

The driver wished me a good trip and thanked me for the money. Perhaps his drivers training took place in a war zone, but a very nice man indeed. He was so warm I felt a little bad for entertaining the notion of the dock murder scene. I found my way through the station. Got through security. Everything is done. I have my ticket, my passport, I made it on time with just the right amount of money! J I sit down…relax. The lady next to me tries to be nice and start a conversation, but I don’t know what she’s saying. Could be Portuguese. We smile uncomfortably and then turn back to stare at the buses coming and going. Other people are saying goodbyes to their families. Some men and women are crying, well sobbing. I try not to stare and wonder about the reasons for their travels and if maybe they are saying goodbye not knowing if they are going to see each other again.

I’m an hour early I have time to kill. OH FUCK! What did I forget? You don’t remember? I set it up for you in the beginning. Ok, I’ll wait while you read back…….

Well I didn’t figure you would so here it is…I grabbed my bags and jacket, but not the single most import thing (besides my passport). I left my fucking ipod. IN A HOSTEL! I left my fucking ipod in a hostel. Shit shit shit. Should I go get it? No, no time. Do I change my bus ticket and leave tomorrow just so I can retrieve it and have no way of getting a hold of my dad to tell him of the change, unless he happens to check his email? Fuck, what if I do go back and someone has already nabbed it? I have to stay. Shit. I still have my shuffle, but my charger is this my ipod and my earbuds, shit. So here I sit, pissed and mourning. Not mourning the loss of some family member heading on some sort of mysterious journey full of opportunities for peril or perhaps merriment. Nope. I grieve for Sigor Ros, which would be perfect right now. I pout for Damien Rice, Ray Lamontagne, Iron and Wine, ODB, and 30Rock. Oh, tina fey, I’ve been falling asleep to the first season of 30Rock since April. No more Sublime, no more Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, no more save a horse ride a cowboy for those moments I just need to remember something funny. No more. Maybe, when I get to brazil I’ll call the hostel and they can send it to me? Yeah, totally no problem, right? With this thought I begin denial. I’m grieving, it’s a process.

During the bus ride I try to process that maybe it’s a good thing I lost my ipod. Maybe, it happened for a reason so I can’t hide under my headphones. (Or hide what’s beyond my inner ear buds…yeah, I’m that nerdy). Processing didn’t work. I’m sure you can understand. At this point I just hope it’s being loved. And it didn’t get wiped. Stupid thieving bastards, LEAVE my ipod alone!

It’s a process, no one heals over night.

10-23-08-1900

Today is travel day again. I wish i would have waited to buy my ticket to brazil, but eh I´m excited to see my dad. Of course, i procrastinated and didn´t pack until an hour before I had to leave. I got everything done and still had 30 min left til i absolutely had to leave. So I figured I should be clean for my travels and jumped in the shower. Everything is done. I´m all packed and my ipod is getting it´s final charge at the charging station, plug in dealy by the door. I´m showered and dressed. I feel excited to go. I said goodbye to my new friends. I checked out of the hostel. They gave me a free minihostel membership which will give me 10percent off if i come back again or stay at any participating hostels. I´m bouncy and ready to go. I grab my backpack, my purse and my jacket. i ran out the door happy to have made some new friends and excited to start a new adventure. Walking down the street with a spring in my step dispíte the 30lb backpack on my shoulders (yeah i brought too much). I am hoping that i can get to the bus station by taxi for the last 15 pesos I have. I walk to the major street, past a news stand with the regular topshelf porn displayed right in front. I got to pondering the differenced between this culture in Argentina and my own and really it´s the similarities that peak my interest the most. I´m thinking this as the turn the corner of the news stand to make my way to the curb and i see a woman holding her 2-3 year old little girl under her armpits and around her knees angling her in such a way that she is peeing on a tree growing out of the sidewalk.
In the street. In the middle of the city. I looked around and another women was kind of eh... but didn´t seem too bothered and I looked back at the little girl and her mom shook her off and pulled up her little baby pants with out even wiping her off. Ewww. WTF. That´s when my blinking began. It´s all I had. I don´t know these people. What if i start shaking my head and this lady pulls out a knife and cuts me. I mean she let her kid pee in the street-on a tree-a little girl, who knows what kind of violence she will allow her children to witness. So, I blink. Letting this this thought and many others turn over in my head as i wait for my taxi to approach.
Getting to the bus...So the station was further than i remembered and I only had 15 pesos(5 bucks) So I am begging some force, unknown to me, to let me get all the way to the station. The taxi sits at red light after red light. I am watching the meter go up and up. Climbing in 20 centavo incriments. The driver, perhaps sensing my worries took it upon himself to talk my mind off my money troubles by continuesly risking my life with movie style, high speed chase type mad driving. There were no lanes in this drivers eye, the road was his. No semi-trucks, no speed zone could stop him. No ease of the horn would help us in these times, blasting it was best, shit laying on it even better. We bobbed and weaved like a fucking pinball through traffic liken to 1-5 between seattle and everrett. There were people on bikes, in the road. Si I got to worry about me and the people on the bikes and awww...there was a doggy, on the sidewalk, running with a hurt leg that he was holding up close to his body. This dog got me back to thinking about the differences in culture that occur because of lack of means and accessibility and how it´s fucked up that I know in the swtates that dog would be "rescued", caught and treated and sent to a foster home with dogs until it would be adopted, which would be soon, after all its trendy, just because, like me, everyone would go, "awww....poor puppy". All of this would happen to this dog yet and thousands of others yet kids come into the hospital being abused and fucked with and we tease them for 2 weeks and send them home. Means, accessibility. Who´s cause do you get behind? How do you decide what´s worthy? At what point do you accept a sense of powerlesness? I guess we get busy, we can only do so much...Shit, i can´t believe I am not dead. I´m thinking all this way faster than you read it and way way faster than i typed it out. I´m whipping around town at the whim of my driver, who scares me, and could for all i know be dragging me the long way to bleed me of a couple more dollars. It´s overwhelming. I´m starting to freak out. Just stop, I think. Who the fuck cares if i have to tell him to stop at 15 pesos worth of time? I´ll figure it out. I can walk. So I calm down POOF. in the firing of some super essential synapse that qued the WTF sequence "you need to chill" wooshed over my brain like a wave. Ok, we are at 12 pesos now and I don´t see the bus station. The stop lights are closer and closer together and the traffic is getting thicker, I am afraid we will be mounting the car next to us during the next turn...fuck....Then i see it. AHHHHH....did you hear the music? was it harps or angels singing? Terminal de omnibus! Woohoo. Then we drive past it. I begin preparing my spanish in my head...ayudame means help....all the while picturing my body being found on a dock...shit....this is fucking stress. "Terminal Omnibus" sign hangs in the sky over our lane of traffic. Relief is quick! Damn i gotta calm down. no one is going to kill me-the meter is at 14 shit. I wanna tell him to let me out know, but i´m in the middle of like 12 lanes of traffic. Ok, i gotta tell this guy. "To tengo solamente quince pesos." which i doubt is correct, but i hold up the money. He says its ok, we are here. Sure as shit, i take a look around and there we are. k more for this one but i gotta go, finish later. i miss everyone!

10/22/2008-1945

My last day in Buenos Aires. I am sad to be saying good bye to this city, I am definitely going to come back after brazil to learn spanish. I never understood how important it is to know multiple languages. Almost everyone in this hostel knows 3 languages! 3. i thought that was something that only happened in movies. I ventured out today and visited the Plaza de Mayo, google it. It was so old and beautiful. Veterans were protesting in the square and they were beating drums and police where everywhere groups of them marching in riot gear it was kinda weird I was looking around to see if maybe something was happening and I didnt get it, but no everyone was happy and playing, its just how they do. I then went to Av Santa Fe for some window shopping in la Recoleta. I went to the cemetario de la recoleta and saw where evita and thousands of other argentinians are laid to rest. I ate at mcdonalds, which was stupid expensive, a kids meal with an extra water was 8 american dollars. but omg. they make the kids cheese burgers plain. but they toast the bun and melt the cheese, it was like the best burger ever! i wanted to go buy 5 more! the fries actually tasted like potatoes! it was the best mcdonalds food i've ever had i think. I walked and walked and got some pictures, I´m still working on getting them off my camera. I got stuck on the subway during rush hour with an upset stomach....that was fun. Now I gotta go pack to see my dad! A good nights sleep and a 24 hour bus ride and i'll be in Brazil! I can´t wait to see the beach!

10/21/08-1900

I just woke up from my second nap of the day. I sat around watching movies all day catching up on sleep. it has been dark, cloudy, thunder, lightning and rain all day. The rain late up late in the evening and i ran to the store for some more water and cup o noodles, yeah! I bought oreos too, but they aren´t the same...lazy days woot.

10/20/08-1700

Being in a hostel kind of freaks me out. I feel like a patient at franklin house, the only thing missing is daily vitals. I´m in a building where i don´t know anyone and I really don´t know why they are here and at least once a day someone comes up to me babbling and I have no idea what they are saying (much the same as the interaction between a pt and his dr). Sometimes I´m checking peoples shoes for laces, i haven´t seen any zip ties yet and the only attention seeking i´ve observed appears to be normal.
I left the obelisco hostel today, i didn´t like it there too much it was formal and lame. I came to Hostel1one in a different barrio, san telmo. I was so tired from my binge drinking hostelmates that i didnt notice i was at my stop until the last second, when i jump up with all the strength and nearly fall backwards and then lundged at the door just in time for it to slam shut on the only jacket i brought with me. Some very kind girl helped me pull it back inside before the damn train started going 100 miles an hour. I then got a lecture in spanish about how i shouldn´t do that, it´s not safe, you should stand up and be ready....and lots of other stuff i didnt understand because the speech was in spanish. So i sat down redfaced and embarrased and rode until my stop came back up. The hostel was a ways from the station so i walked and walked....and got lost and got directions. The streets were covered, absolutely in shit! Dog shit everywhere, it was nasty! So after wading throught the dog shit and walking 3 blocks too far, i found it.
Hostel 1one. It is a minihostel. It's like a big apartment in this really cool old building. It has exposted brick and beams, way high ceilings, wood floors, lot's of fire places, and then gold chandeliers from the 60's with plastic jewels, all mismatched furninture, and its own little grey and white kitty. The other travelers are really nice and laid back. A guy from colombia, a guy from basque country, a girl from brazil, and another girl from denmark, another guy from peru, and there were some italians, but they left. There is one living room and everyone pretty much hangs out there together. i feel much more comfortable now. I am so hungry though I haven´t eaten more than breakfast since friday. i'm going to the store. Oh this is so funny. The rules for the tv and computer:

The music and television are there to be used by the guests but please respect others by only using the TV and CD player at these times:
Sunday to Thursday until 01:00 am
Friday and Saturday until 4:00 am

0400...
2 of the girls invited me out for drinks with them. We went to a little smoke filled bar and met a bunch of people. I talked to a guy from the Sudan for a long time, he was really nice. We laughed and played after a few beers i wasnt as nervous to speak my horrible spanish. Then we proceeded to get drunk and went back to the hostel and collected more people and went to a club. They had a local live band and the drummers bass was a box, it sounded good though. then they played like american pop music and it was dancing time. People arent as skanky dancing as in the states and girls put up with a lot more shit and they do it nicely. it was very fun, but at 4am another guy from the hostel and I called it quits while the others carried on. What´s crazy is these people stay out til early morning and then get up and go to work at a normal time, they just dont sleep. crazy.

10/19/08-i don´t know what time

Today was a busy day. During the night the clocks went ahead, today is the first day of summer, and it is mother´s day here. The hostel serves breakfast. It was cereal that is kinda like frosted flakes, coffee, tang, tea, and 2 kinds of bread.The bread comes with3 condiments: butter, dolce de leche, and some dairy substance that was like a swiss flavored cream cheese, but the consistency of gummy nacho cheese-sounds gross but it was really good.
Buying a bus ticket. It costs 90 centavosto ride the Subte(subway). Because it was sunday some of the smaller station entrances were closed. I went all over before i found out i was just on the wrong side of the first building...dedeede. Bonus though, i got to see more of downtown. There are alot of huge buildings and advertising everywhere and shit tons of burgerkings. The malls downtown are called galleries and it is basically an extention of the shitty shops on street. I heard that better shopping is outside the area, so there is hope. Once i finally got into the Subte I headed to El Retiro which is where the Omnibus station terminal is located. On the walk out of the subway I saw a kid sleeping in this concrete hole behind this big adversitesment board. It scared the shit out of me, it was sad. I didn´t know which way to go, but I just went. Happened to be the correct dierection after a few blocks of wading through a huge crowd of people, hot dog vendors, bakery´s, a mercado, a butchery all sorts of stuff I found the place! It was so exciting just to arrive at the place I wanted to go! Hooray I navigated! The bus station is bigger than the boise airport. I found the international companies and found the best price and bought myself a ticket! the bus ride will take 24 hours and it cost 120 american dollars. I sprang for the fancy seats that lay all the way back :) On they way out of the bus station there was a dog sleeping in the middle of the floor, everyone just walked around it, no big deal. When i headed back to the hostel i found my favorite gum at the news stand, trident splash strawberry lime, es muy deliciosa!
Benefits of International Travel. I realized today that as long as I am in South America I am not going to see any patients that I know. It´s so comforting. It´s really fun to practice spanish, everyone is really nice when i screw it up. hehe that reminds meof the girl that i bought some socks from. She was ringing the socks up in a computer,pushing all these buttons and is starting to look frustrated, then she called out for the other girl working in the store. She comes over to me , sighs and said,"ah, I screwed it!" It was so goddamn hilarious. I almost cried and then i felt bad and told her how to say it right.
Other travelers. I met a girl from New York who said that crime was bad here. She said on her first day some guy tried one of her friends bags and then another girl she met had been robbed twice in just a few days. She was snobby and upity though. I don´t think i need to worry about what a girl totting around an armload of Christian Lacroix bags has to say.
Travel tip! Study up on local fashion trends. Lack of doing so will severely diminish the accuracy of your GAYDAR. It´s pretty metrosexual here, more than i´m used to anyway. If you are a hostelling international member you get10% off your bus ticket fares,I learned that like an hour after i bought my ticket. Ask for discounts. If they say no you can always find something to pee on just so everything is even... :)
The night. I was in a room with a bunch of alcoholics They were up and down and in and out, i got shit for sleep! stupid hostel full of kids.

10/18/08-1400

I arrived in Buenos Aires. After my final 10 hour flight, uck. I'm glad that's over and I am already dreading the return trip 6 months from now. I retrieved my backpack and bought some money at the airport, don´t do that unless you absolutely have to, the exchange rate was soooo bad. Just bring american dollars, almost everywhere in the city will take it. I paid for my room and bus ticket, and socks with american money, i had to stop though, cause now i have too many pesos from all the change. Which brings me to another travel tip, don´t forget your credit card when you go out! I went shopping on La Valle, it is a pedestrian only street, lined with shops and restaurants. There is a lot of diversity here. Older people were dressed really nice and teenagers were in tshirts with piercings all over their faces. The hostel obelisco is old and fancy. It is all marble and white and grey. I was in a single room today withthe tiniest bed ever,but it felt so good after being stuck on all those planes. I mostly slept all day, nothing cool to report.

10/17/08-1330

Where: In the air
Destination: Houston, Tx

People have been very accommodating so far. I'm still in the states. I got sandwiched between a whole gang of people with kids and babies, but i think the 1 mg of ativan, Heather talked me into extended my tolerance. I got 2 hours of sleep at home last night. I arrived at the airport shortly after 5am. It was a really nice morning, still dark, but brisk and dewy. Sitting and waiting at the gate I saw some familiar faces. I saw the guy with the really tall hair that works at the watch kiosk at the mall. I saw a sitter from the hospital and one of the security guys from al's, we didn't chat. Seeing them was my last goodbye to my people, boise folks. I passed the time before boarding by sticking on my motion sickness patch on, that can be difficult, i found.

Da Da DAAAAA....Then it became time to Board. Time to go. Leave. Spend all my money that took me a year to save. I'm keep telling myself, "you're not gonna die, you're not gonna die". Then i think no, gotta be positive right, " the plane ride will be fun and you will arrive alive" then the word alive reminds me of being dead and I have to start all over. Positive affirmations don't work at 5 in the morning when you have to get on a plane.

Flying. I got my own isle of 3 seats on my 6:20 am flight to Seattle. It was pimp. I was sad that they only offered orange juice or coffee during early morning flights. I have a habit of only drinking 7up/sprite while in the air. It started when i was little and traveling with my parents. I've done it every flight I remember being on. It's fun to carry out my small tradition while in the air. It's like one of those old nescafe commercials. I sit back, sipping and thinking of that first alaska airlines flight. I recall the seats, which seemed large and comfy at the time and so rad because they reclined. Then i think of the tiny cups, even smaller than these southwest ones, they had a very rough textured exterior. Inside the cup was always...tiny icecubes and fucking 7up. Southwest and ruined my trip and hexed me! I want my pop! Everytime I would slowly sip my 7up making that 4oz last longer than any McDonalds 12oz size. I think i was 8 or 9 the time this image of 7up in the tiny cup stuck in my head. As i've grown older the experience of air travel had become less magical and more terrifying. Scariest of all, is the plane crash...all the different ways it could play out, but the one stays constant, I die. As an adult my connotation of flighing went from adventure and excitement to dread and dismemberment. I understand the risks and benefits of flying just as much as the next person. Traveling by air is a logical solutions to transportation needs, but logic doesn't keep that plane up in the air and it does nothing to quiet the anxiety. Surprisingly my emotions quite easily relieved by a tiny 7up with tiny cylindrical ice cubes and a baby cocktail napkin. Thought blocking, rationalization, not even extreme sleep deprivation can help this paranoia. But a fucking pop, a damn 7up conjures up a positive childhood memory of safety and happiness. These thoughts appease my mind and quiet the nerves, every time. A breakfast flight...disaster. My mind is a pussy and I gotta work on growing some balls. I was gonna close with an ode to this 1mg of ativan coursing through me, but my 7up just arrived. Thank you continental. I feel better. But they can be to blame for any of you reading this garbage, continentals inflight movie is spacechimps followed by everybody loves Raymond, but I hate him. Anyhow, I got outkast in my ear and B.O.B. reminded me of how i watched the sun come up.

Sunrise. When i got to seattle i had to retrieve my pack from baggage claim because I was switching airlines. I checked in for the next fight and checked my bag and went back through security. I passed though into the food court of the SeaTac airport. The back wall of this food court is a massive 3 stories of glass. It looked out on the runway right where the planes took off. The wall was lined with wooden chairs, benches and 1 lone rocking chair. It was oversized and a smooth ride. I watched the sky go from nearly black to dawn and hazy mist and then mostly sunny blue sky. Snowy mountains peeked through the few clouds. I sat, rocked,and watched for 30 min. The last time i watched the sun come up I was 18 and I only did it because a guy i liked asked me to join him. I found the experience peaceful, inspirational, and motivational. I think this trip is going to come with some change on my part. I wanna enjoy the world and not be so busy the grandeur is lost on me. I'm so blessed and lucky the universe has provided so well for me. I have that churchy love of god feeling, you know when you're so happy inside you wanna cry. I'm so thankful for my friends and family, my loved ones. Thank you everyone for your time for me and taking the time to teach me to be a better and happier person. I am better for knowing all of you. Thank you for laughing at my jokes, sometimes a lot of work goes into them. I hope i don't lose my place my place in your lives, but i'm not too worried.

Stressmares. I woke up from a couple min nap. A tiny stressmare it was something like, "dont forget to tell David..." I felt the stress from the weeks and months of preparing for this trip. I don't have to worry anymore. Deep breaths, Deep breaths.I'm here for the moments, the opportunities of everyday.

Thoughts from the writer, me. I wasn't all together sober when i scribbled this in my journal, but i decided i gotta put up everything, drug induced or not. And i'm not spell checking or proofreading. Good luck.

South America

I'm coming soon!