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!