I dont wanna come home

Well there is more to the story now. I went to the police and with the help of my wonderful friend, Maky, I iled a report for the things that were stolen. When we got back to the hostel we found out that another hostel in town had called and the guy was there. One of the hostel owners gave us 100 pesos and we hoped in a cab and headed over there. The people told us he wasnt at the hostel but he left a backpack so they thought he would come back. We were so excited we were bouncing around the back seat of the cab!
We got to the hostel and the girl working was very nice, but she was argentine and i couldnt understand a damn thing she said, but she gave me a free beer. Then told us that we had to wait for the guy to come back, then call the cops and if he left then we could open his bag, which was locked. Then, i went to the bathroom, when i came back apparently they changed their minds and they decided to open up the bag. They didnt have to go far too look for tools, the front pocket of the backpack was full of tool kits to break in to locks and bolt cutters of different sizes, I think he forgot these things on accident, because inside the bag, was that days newspaper. This was his decoy property so people wouldnt know he was gone yet.
I found out that he paid for his room in american dollars, MY money, damn. So that was my little adventure, it was fun. Never got anything back and never saw that guy. I thought i felt better knowing that he was a criminal and that this was his job, but after it being a couple of days, i like my other story better. I wanted to think that maybe he was a good guy and an opportunity presented itself(to still my shit) and after thinking and thinking on it, no one was around and nabbed it and after selling it and spending that money, he hoped that the guilt would go away, but for the rest of his life he would feel bag when he was reminded of it. Does that make me selfish? or materialistic? I think it means i cared way too much about the things he took, and i´m better off.

That was fun. On valentines day i went out with most of my friends to a bar that mimics a pub. We had some chicken curry, potato wedges, and lots of beer. It was super fun, best valentines day ever. Yesterday I was so hung over i slept until 6 pm at 10 me and justin went out for dinner and met up with some other people from the hostel on the street. I had a delicious burger and you guessed it fries. There is like a little mini carnival in the street on the weekends this month. People buy these cans of fake snow and just randomly attack people with it. I had been sprayed with this shit before and i was ready to take revenge. The street is blocked off from cars and it is full of little kids running around and everyone is happy not caring if they are hosed down with this wierd soapy shit. Percussion ensembles are playing and people in costumes are dancing, its chaotic and crazy fun! We got in a spray war and attacked lots of people and recieved the same, it was great!

hey hey

Well its been a little over a week since my last posting. Not been too terribly busy here. Went out to see el curioso caso de benjamin button and I LOVED it. So good and i found it very powerful, I cried or like an hour and me and my friend had to sit and calm down or a bit before we could even get up to leave the theater. I hope it wins some oscars. A couple of days after the movie I went shopping with another friend and we cooked a great dinner. While we and everyone else was otherwise occupied I got my ipod, ipod charger, universal plugin adapter, digital camera, and 200 dollars stolen out of my room. Yeah it sucks, no more pictures and i cant sleep without my ipod, and i sure would like my money...i still have my passport and my debit card so I dont feel like i can complain. I also didnt have my things locked up. You might remember I had to have my lock sawed off the locker because the genius I am locked the key inside. I guess I can be damned if i do and damned if i dont. I have a lock on my locker now, but i hate it. I have to get in there numerous times a day and I just dont like it. I shouldn´t have to keep people out. The guy who stole from me was argentinian. Today I have to go to the police and report him, eh. Maky is kind enough to come with me and I really don´t want to go. I´m hung over and tired. One of the hostel owners bought me a beer cause my shit got stolen and without eating dinner 1 1/2 liters was enough. Aww now the little boy, 5 years old, that is the son of one of the wonderful people who work at the hostel brought me a little childrens picture book in english and spanish and he is pointing out every picture and he is practicing english while i learn more spanish, how could anything be cuter!? I´m gonna go play with him now. See you guys in a couple months, I´ll be back soon!

today

Buenos Aires

all the pictures are up! don´t feel obligated to read all this.I woke up and found that i had pulled a blanket over me in the night, this is a very good sign. The weather was again, gorgeous! Right now there is a thunder storm and really pretty lighting, but it is hot and muggy. They got the air conditioner fixed and I am already addicted to the proccessed air. Last night I watched a local soccer came instead of the superbowl, i really only like the party that surrounds the super bowl and the commercials, not so much the game. I did see a couple minutes of the last quarter but thats as long as it took me to get bored. One of my friends was passed out drunk on the couch when i woke up and upon seeing that i was instantly grateful for not attending the party the previous evening. I eat breakfast and went back to bed for a short nap, then dressed and headed to the park for a walk. The weather was great with a nice breeze. I took my usual route through the park, enjoyed the trees, pretend not to hear women make fun of me being american and ignored the men being gross and inappropriate. While i was walking down a flight of stairs I saw a homeless guy emptying a colostomy bag into the trash, by see i mean, i saw the bag and poo/vomit slosh/drip out and fall like 18in into the trash can, in the middle of the park for everyone to see and smell. Ok moving on i thought, i go back up the steps and see some of the wild cats that live in the park. One was blind in one eye and the other one was crossed, it hobbled really low to the ground and was much dirtier than the other gross animals and it had a lot of bugs in its fur, it was so sad. I finished my walk and headed to find a bench in the shade to relax and read a bit in the book i had picked up off the shelf on my way out the door. I got comfy and a homeless man came up to beg off of me. I didn´t give him anything and i couldnt understand half what he said and he obviously didnt speak spanish but i smiled and laughed and he offered his hand and i took it, he kissed my hand and went off to work someone else. I decided to start reading my book before anyone else came up to bother me. The book was a collection of reviews of other books, but randomly there was one poem in the american book titled Buenos Aires, how odd right? It was published in the 60s and described an american mans visit to the city. The description of the city was bleak and sad. Leaving a reader who had no other knowledge of the city to think it a horrible place to visit. I was glad that times are better here now, the government is more stable and the economy has improved. I do feel bad that the city was portrayed so badly. It was obvious that the author didn´t want to be in the city, he didn´t want to like it. Then i flipped through the rest of the book. It was awful. All these people giving their impression of places, people´s lives, people´s works. Hardly a word of it was nice or even thoughful on an emotional level, nor was it ever objective. What a shit job. I lump the critic into the same category as insurance people and people who work in marketing-bastards. Whatever happened to "if you can´t say anything nice don´t say anything at all"? Sometimes, i think we just need to shut the hell up. So, that is how i have interpreted this happening of this book coming into my life. Anyhow, so this got me pondering the inherant positivity and negativaty in the world and our lives. Then I saw a homeless man, with huntingtons choreah. He was very thin and had the physical ticks, i forgot what they are called. He was trying unsuccessfully to put his shoes on. the heels and toes of his socks were completely open and he had condiment packets in his shoes for cushioning. After a min he gave up on putting on the shoes and decided to use them for a pillow and try for a nap. I watched, wishing there was something I could do to ease his pain, some way I could help. I wondered why he was on the streets what was his childhood and adult life was like. It reminded me of a line in the poem I had read not long before. It said the poor of buenos aires were "invisible". As i remembered this and spun in around in my mind, I noticed the pairs of teenagers making out in the park, the old men playing chess and laughing, the young parents eating on blankets while their babies napped in the shade of a tree, I saw all the dogs off their leashes playing with the other dogs like they were old friends catching up. Speckled in the middle of all this joy and life is a homeless guy emptying his colostomy bag, another with huntingtons choreah, more still airing their blistered feet and fondling their bag that holds all their possessions. Then I saw a pigeon missing two little pigeon toes. Poor little pigoen i thought, but he was walking around, hanging out, didnt seem to miss the little toes. These homeless people weren´t complaining they got to be in the park hanging out in the beautiful weather. You can wallow or find the positive, learn the lesson and move on, or dwell and be miserable. That damn park always does this to me. Buenos Aires puts everything in your face. Luxury and high end living and turn around and its really medically or mentally ill homeless people suffering, or shitty ass parents forcing their kids to beg so they can take the profits and buy drugs and abuse their children, or freaking 9 year olds selling crack, or a 6 year old girl squating and taking a piss in the dirt right in front of everyone! All of this i have seen in this park. It has beautiful trees and lots of stairs good for making exercise. It also has a little playground for kids and on the weekends it has a market full of cool stuff. I am always happy, excited, scared and sad to be there. It is everywhere here. In the states, big cities force out homeless and poor, pay their bus fares to just go somewhere else, take them to a not so nice part of town so they are out of the way. We like that, out of sight out of mind. I guess you can´t make someone want to live in your society the way you want them to, the way that is "acceptable". They say, some people just don´t want help and its true, I have seen this. This method of shipping them out hardly seemed any worse than the learned indiference that is taking place on the streets of the south american towns/cities I have visited. Invisible, was a correct observation. I don´t know where I am going with this anymore. I have a thousand thoughts and they are getting all mixed together as i just freeforall this. I think maybe i just wish I could make everything all better. I don´t want people to suffer. I don´t want anyone to hurt, not even the pigeon or the blind cat. For a long time i didn´t watch the news because it was always bad, murder, death, hate. If i don´t watch it I dont think about it, problem solved. This is not right. Not seeing it doesn´t make it go away. It doesn´t make my world, our world, a better place. It merely creates an alternate plane of existence where you are no longer living and breathing in reality. I think we do this too much. Out of sight out of mind right? We can summarize life as bits of ugly mixed with bits of beauty strung out over the years. You can´t have one with out the other and trying to do so creates something unnatural and unwanted. I think it is important we take every opportunity to learn and grow, it´s not always going to be pretty. I hope that didn´t get ranty or preachy, it was just what i thought about today. I read a book when i got home from the park, the timepiece. Its fiction, which i normally dont´like to read, but i have read all the nonfiction books i have available to me. It was very good and touched on some of these points, i had some really beautiful, straighforward, enlightened quotes. i can´t remember them now, but it got me thinking. I rounded out the evening with a game of skipbo! I played me, a peruvian, a brazilian, a columbian, and dude from the bay area. Everyone really liked it. I taught them, "there are no friends in skipbo". Travelling is awesome, you should all stop what you are doing and go!

02-01-2009

Holy crap! Its february! I can´t even believe it. I checked the little date corner of the computer a few times. Not a lot has been happening. I´m just hanging out, kinda waiting to go home, I have made the mistake of getting really excited for my next adventure before my current one has ended and now I just day dream all the time. I am still planning on arriving home April 11th, thought I currently only have transportation as far as Seattle. I am hoping to head to europe May 1st or close there to and spend 4-6 weeks hanging out in England, scotland, france, spain, germany, poland, switerland, italy, and morrocco. We´ll see what happens with that, nothing is offical yet. Hmm what has take place since I arrived back here from uruguay? I smoked my first cuban cigar, it was delicious. We´ve had bbqs and birthday parties. I made a scarf and a pair of wrist warmers and I ve started knitting a purple hat, thats unfortunately not for me. I am going to a bar to watch the super bowl tonight, maybe. I went to the movies last night and saw the spirit. It was an ok movie, but we went to a theater in Recoleta and it was so new and clean and nice. We walked in and it had that new theater smell and I was so happy and my friend looked at me all weird and I said, this smells like america. I was happy to be in a familiar setting. This movie theater was on 5 floors! Next saturday we are going to belgrano to go to a china town, i´m excited. The heat has stayed away for a week and it has been wonderful. I´ve slept through the night and not woken up covered in sweat. We have been able to sleep with the windows closed so my mosquito bites are healing and I havent gotten any new ones. The last time i did get new ones however, it was about 15 bites and they were all on my face including one on my lower lip and one on my eye lid. The mosquito bites here swell up, i woke up from the discomfort and looked in a mirror and burst into tears. but they mostly went away in one day which is the bonus of argentinian mosquito bites, if you leave them alone, they don´t last long. Thats about all for now. I am continuing to add photos to the buenos aires set from a couple posts previous to this one, so you can look at it for updates, still like 100 more to add. I miss you guys and I can´t wait to see you.