rickifranklin

Granada

2009-09-20T11:59:00.002-06:00

I stayed in the Albacanz...something like that, neighborhood. I talked to an american that worked at trader joes in california the whole trip. Could instantly tell he was american, by his teeth. Orthodontia is a dead give away, we have the highest dental standards. Got lost on the bus going to the hostel and ended up being a couple of hours late arriving. I stayed in a very very old area. It was small and a little scary. When I arrived to the hostel no one answered the door. So after all my anxiety of being lost and not finding it I get there and am disappointed again. Its a little place, I have no where else to go with all my shit. I am sweating and thirsty. I just sat down on the stoop and waited. there was people outside of little bar/restraunts and they saw me and got word the the hostel guy and he came running up about 15 minutes later. A lady I talked to on the bus came by and chatted with me. The hostel was gross and scary. I did not want to stay there at all! but he ended up giving me my own room with a key so i could lock it. It wasn't as gross as the first night in Ireland, but it was scary. And da daa da no air conditioning and no fan. I put up my stuff and walked out. I ran into the hostel man in the street and he told me to be careful of my purse, didnt speak a word of english. and he told me a good places to go for a nice view. And boy was it very nice, dirty hippies and thieves hanging around there though, you shouldnt go a lone at night like I did.
Oh I am remembering the stress. I stopped at the little corner store and got water and some food and it was a little gourmet shop is was so so cute and very cheap. i ate at the restraunt in the square. When you order dinner in spain they give you a free tapa. I order roasted pork loin. I waited for my fanta and noticed every table aorund me was eating snails...eww. Yet not to be out grossed bye the tapa they brought me. It just looked like some salad. peppers and cucumber and tomatoe and cabage. I picked at it and ate plain chiabata bread, that was homemade and fresh, and im eating the veggies, dipping my bread in the sauce, i go to pick up some cabbage and guess what....ITS OCTOPUS! I did the whole body shiver, it was a cross section of a suction cup thingy....ewwwwww!

Seville

2009-09-20T11:45:00.002-06:00

Its a little town. You need only 2 days. Lots of cool shopping. Lots of ceramic. Trolley for transportation and buses. There is a big canal that is nice for pictures and its a little cooler over there. The line for the bus tickets is really really long, but your next ticket at the city before. The lines are really bad. Also it is the most poorly organized bus station in the world. the ticket will say where your bus is supposed to come, but it will go anywhere but there. They are often late, so show up when it is just time to go and so you will only have to wait 30-60min. Hold on to your stuff too. The first thing you notice about the city when you go out...is its a desert, its so dry you feel all your moisture get sucked out. Then you see all the oranges growing on the trees and it's really cool. Go before summer, it was really so hot when I was there. Lots of stuff to walk around and see in Seville. Very old city with tiny narrow streets, keep an ear out for cars, you won't believe it but they do fit. Going to see the wall is pretty boring...its ugly, but whatever. There is a cool little park area buy it and I had to lay down on the bench and relax it was 110 degree and I was sunburned and like a 30min walk through skinny roads surrounded by buildings with no wind...there are ants in the grass though, beware. I remember being so so so hot. stopping for water like every few blocks. When in spain and out in the heat, drink Aquarius sports drink. Its made by coke. We should have it. It's way more delicious than gatorade and it really works. Blue is good and so is orange. Try not to buy food at the chinese stores, if its not expired it's close. Anything refrigerated, was not done so properly and it will go bad the day you open it. Lots of idiots at my hostel there. Everyone was 18. They were hiring a house keeper in exchange for free rent. I enquired and they wanted someone with an EU passport. Stupid. I went to starbucks and got a frapaccino. It was good, but they had the best air conditioning in the entire world! saw lots of old building, but I don't remember what they are called but I have pictures posted of them. Oh the saddest thing in the city was the horses. They have horse drawn carrages for tourists, tons and tons of them. I saw lots of horses with no water and foaming at the mouth...it was really gross and made me sad and angry. There was also an overwhelming amount of scooters. Whole parking lots just for scooters. some streets are too small for cars in the old part of the city and I didn't see many taxi's. Super good icecream stores and bakeries. Too granada!

Portugal

2009-09-20T11:30:00.002-06:00

I got to borrow an adapter for my camera from the hostel in Lisbon. I ended up keeping it until I was at my last hostel in Amsterdam and then I donated it to them. I had a really cool roommate from Poland. The views were amazing. Lisbon was much cheaper than anywhere else I had been. But most of the stuff they were selling was crap. And clothes are still much cheaping in America, cause everything goes on sale. I never made it to the beach because the day I planned on going it stormed all day. I did see a great castle in the city and I saw a flea market at a church that was really big and cool. I never walked more in one day in my life. I don't know how much I walked but somehow it was all up hill. I rode a little trolly and of course got lost and ended up spending more that I needed to. I found the german super markets that are so popular in south america and spain and i guess even portugal. There was a party at the hostel for a girl who worked there and the food was amazing, but not better than the sangria. Portuguese food and wine is so so so so good. Worth it. The city is so beautiful and old and there are lots of great things to do outside the city. Good trains, subways, buses, and trollies. The only real issue is that not many people speak english, but they can understand spanish well. I stayed in and old old part of town. The directions to walk there involved turning left at the stop light. I laughed my ass off when I saw the stop light. It was about waist high pole sticking out of the ground with a red bulb and a green one, and there was just one in the 3 way intersection. I walk to that hostel was barbaric. It was climbing up up up with my 40+ pound backpack. I was so sweaty. Ah and to get to my room in the hostel I had to climb through a window. Seriously. The bathroom was so tiny. A toilet and a tiny shower stall and one square foot of floor space, literally and no fan. I really liked Lisbon and I would love to go back and visit more town on the south shore. When I took the bus to seville I passed the most gorgeous vacation towns and pretty beaches and fields of sunflowers....have you ever seen fields of sunflowers in 100+ degree weather. Its gorgeous and on the other side of me was the ocean shining bright blue with sailboats. It was the best bus ride. I should bring up, riding the bus is scary as shit, when you consider there are pretty much no signs anywhere so every time you stop you need to be worried if it's your stop and if you should get off. I would recommend finding out how long the bus ride should be to reduce your worry. Oh and drink maracuja flavor of fanta! Oh and get the cookies from the store in a package that are like cookie with a layer of cream and then chocolate on top....So good. Its not even funny. So Seville..

Madrid and Beyond

2009-09-20T11:13:00.002-06:00

Well I was in Madrid, It was hot, hot, hot. But my hostel was ok. I stayed with mostly nice and keep to yourself kind of people. I walked around the city and spent a lot of time figuring out what I was going to do next. Apparently I didn't take any pictures in Madrid. I went to a wonderful wonderful museum called the Reina Sofia. They has tons and tons of Spanish artist and south American and from everywhere,loads of things. Dali and Picaso were the big big things. I saw lots of Spanish art from the 80's looked a lot like the 80s. I walked alot in Madrid..I know I took pictures...I don't know what the deal is. I must have gotten sick of taking pictures. I think maybe I was paranoid about someone stealing my camera cause I had so many pictures already and I didn't want anything to happen to them. Its a shame. Pamplona was gorgeous! It was a real mix of old and new. Hundreds of years old town with a new city built around it. And they have this Citadel that was built to protect the city for war and it is still in tact. It's HUGE. Then Madrid. I went to a park in the city and all the paths in it were white sand. There was an english garden with topiaries and I laid down on a bench and took a nap. There was lots of shopping and government stuff in Madrid. The outskirts of the city had an Ikea and lots of car dealerships. I don't think I met any locals in Madrid. It reminded me a lot of a big city that could be anywhere in the world. The guy that worked at the hostel was from Argentina, he drank Mate like a fish. I tried all over the city to find....Ah I just remembered why I have no pictures! My camera was dead and I could not find an adapter to buy anywhere! Stupid digital camera not taking real batteries. Such a shame to not have pictures for that reason. Well I couldn't find out until I got to Portugal which was my next stop after Madrid.

Last of my travels

2009-09-17T22:16:00.000-06:00

lots of fotos

2009-06-28T08:04:00.001-06:00

really disorganized i will clean it up as i have time, but this is all the photos i have taken since i bought the camera
its cornwall, london, basque country, madrid, lisbon

pictures

2009-06-25T08:54:00.001-06:00

more pictures
most of these are from cornwall at lands end taken by laurence!
thank you

Spain

2009-06-24T02:09:00.002-06:00

I left the beautiful and gorgeous basque country to come to dry desert madrid. It is 40 degrees here, with is hot as hell, that is an exact conversion, but its not so back cause there is no humidity, i actually kinda like it better. I am staying at a nice hostel. I am going to walk around now and check out whats going on. Friday I am going to Lisbon, Portugal. Then i want to go to Seville and granada. I was hoping to be in france buy july 8th, but i dont know if I am going to make it! The weather is all sunny here for the next 10 days, i might stay in the south for a bit, though this warmth makes me hungry for the beach and there isnt one here :(
Hope everyone is well and getting ready for 4th of july, i am sad to miss the fireworks. Can you tell i have been speaking spanish for a week, my english sucks! Def not worse than my spanish though. I wish everyone was here with me and I miss everybody! Besos!

LONDON CALLING

2009-06-15T11:41:00.002-06:00

I answered! I touristed it up today in London. I had a great time walking around central london. I started at the london bridge where i got some cool pictures of the tower bridge. I got a picture of the monument, i still dont know what it is a monument of, but its was a big statue thing and other people were taking pictures so i snapped one off too. I then went to parliment and the little park behind it. I got some pictures of big ben and westminster abbey. I saw the horse guards at white hall and made my way to trafalgar square where i saw a beautiful collection of art at the national gallery. I started of course, with the impressionist and I got my first real live view of one of Monet's japanese bridge paintings and I also saw his only night scene painting. i saw more pissarro, degas, manet, cezanne, van gogh, renoir, gaugan, serat, it goes on and on, but i saw some really early works from the 1500s that i really liked, i just couldnt believe i was standing in front of a piece of fabric and oil that was so loved it has survived for 500 years and i am standing, feeling completely unworthy to be looking at it unapprovingly, cause i think it's ugly, but thankfully I know that its more important that it is than that it is attractive to me. It was a nice experience to be there. Oh how could i forget the Turner's! Such a range! realist to the point it could almost be a photo and then very very impressionistic and everywhere inbetween. I can't believe i skipped the exhibit in edinburgh. that is something I like about Pissarro too. So then i went on to covet garden, oh and i saw a huge giant bumble bee, from transformers 2. the premier is tonight here and the street was full of people waiting to see shia lebeouf or whatever his name is. then i went to garden green, buckingham palace and saw the guards. I had a lovely goat cheese and roasted veggie sandwich on ciabata, not at the palace more around the corner. I sat and read a little in my book and heading back to my friends house and now I must go and get ready for salsa dancing lessons! I hope everyone is well. Sending me some emails! I miss you guys!

Cornwall

2009-06-08T11:49:00.002-06:00

Tis a fabulous and wonderful place, har har! The weather today is not so good, but it motivated me to spend the time on the computer that i needed to and I got my plane ticket to spain purchased, so i will be heading to spain on the 17th of june, I am very excited. I have come down with some kind of chest cold/cough that is rather irritating and I hope it goes away quick, but I don't really have any energy and feel like poo! I had a great time visiting kirkintilloch and i took some pictures. It was a tiny little town, but had a long history. I visited the small museum they had there and learned about the mining industry, the iron molding, the cloth making, the canals, the trains, lots of stuff going on. the town is trying to become a tourist attraction so maybe you too will find yourself there one day. I walk along the road my aunt nan lived on so too one of my great grandparents i never knew and their families before that. I left scotland rather sad, i couldnt stay more, but excited to meet my relatives.
I arrived in St Austell, Cornwall, England on June 1st to warm smiles and hugs from my cousin janet and her husband victor. The next day i met my auntie phyliss. I ventured out to Newquay and had a good time walking around the beach all day in excellent weather. I bought a digital camera, i found a good deal in a random electronics store i popped in for no particular purchase. So i have been taking pictures and when i can i will put them all line for all to see.
I spent my birthday in the old school house in st austell. Everyone came over for a BBQ and we had loads of food! couscous with roasted vegetables, steak, ribs, kebabs, burgers, sausages, salad, fruit salad, beets, roasted potatoes, trifle, cake, and cocktails (mojitos to be exact). I had lots of fun and after i blew out my candles I was surprised with cards signed by everyone and a present of a pewter neclace with a gemini sign on it made here in cornwall from materials from cornwall.
That night I got into the mini cooper and headed to Penzance with Leah and Lawrence. We got in late and headed to bed. The next day we got up about 11 and had proper english breakfast of fried egg, ham , bacon, stewed tomatoes, toast, and mushrooms. Then we went to lands end, via a scenic view, park a bit off, then took a walk the final way. Had alot of fun seeing lands end and the cliffs and a ship wreck. then we came home to a proper english dinner of roast, roasted potatoes, carrots, brocolli, yourkshire pudding, gravy and horseradish-it was to die for. We all went back for seconds. Leah and Lawrence are excellent cooks, they spoiled me. Should have pictures soon, I'm happy and excited. Hope all is well.

a couple pictures

2009-05-28T04:33:00.002-06:00

I took these of my friend sarah's facebook, but hopefully steve or ben will send me more photos so you can see, but here is a couple to hold you over! I hope you are all well, tomorrow i go to kirkintilloch!

Ah Europe

2009-05-27T06:27:00.003-06:00

I am having so much fun! I can't believe that I have been here for 3 weeks, it feels like 5 minutes! Last night about 12-15 of us from the hostel went out and had a fabulous time. We went to a few bars and had a few drinks. I was visiting with several americans, an austrailian, and some irish girls we soaked in some live jazz music at an after hours bar, it was great. There were none of those elusive scottish people about, I don't know where they are all hiding, I have only meet 2 the whole time I have been here. I have been told I will be emailed pictures from last night and if that holds true, you will soon be able to see me, finally. I have just a few more days here, I think friday I will be heading to kirkintilloch, the birth place of aunt nan. I am very much looking forward to that. The only thing about stay a while in a hostel is buy the time i get used to people and feel comfortable socializing is when their stay is up and its time to say goodbye, but its worth it to make so many friends all over the world. I splurged and bought a dress, i wasted 30% of my wages on one outfit, it's real cute though. These europeans dress sharp, I need to attempt keeping up. Its still cold and cloudy, damn UK. Hope all is well. I am thinking about everyone.

Another plan

2009-05-24T10:21:00.003-06:00

Plans, they are just flowing these days. Well, I guess it is more of an idea than a plan. I wanna see the northern lights! I just missed the season, but it's best between january and march and I wanna do it! Maybe in Canada, maybe in iceland, maybe in sweden or finland! If I don't do it next year I wanna do it before I die. Definitely.

plans...no

2009-05-23T05:51:00.003-06:00

I finally made a plan. I bought train tickets to St Austell, England. I am going to meet some family members for the first time. I am so excited I can hardly stand it.I come from a big family, but the problem is, I haven't met too many of them as we are spread all over the place. I really look forward to having a chance to talk with them and maybe we even look alike, that would be crazy! So, I will be heading out on June first, just 5 short days before my birthday, no plans for that. I am going to be 25. ugh. Just keep the razors away from me and I should be ok.

I am working at the hostel in Scotland and today is a day off and I am spending it in all of it's glory dicking around doing nothing. I plan on seeing the new x-men movie, which is all about hugh jackman on the big screen, i mean wolverine, i care about the story line, its not just about a giant hugh jackman stare-a-thon. That reminds me of brad pitt, too bad he doesn't have a movie out.

Anyway, there is lots of stuff going on at home that I wish i could be a part of, but alas, it is not so. I wish good luck to all who are endeavoring in new things and hope everything is as good as it could/should be. If its any consolation europe is really expensive and I will soon be in the poor house. I think in two weeks i have spent what took me 3 months in south america. The smaller my bank account gets the more and more getting a real job sounds like a smart plan. If anyone hears about a rad job anywhere let me know. I am not attached to any particular place. Somewhere warm would be nice. It's much colder here and I get burned from the wind. My nose always runs when I go outside and I miss summer! It gets light her at like 4 in the morning, I didn't realize I was going to be that far north. Well i really better get to this slack off day. Peace to all!

Working

2009-05-21T01:57:00.002-06:00

I got a job in a hostel. Guess you gotta be at the right place at the right time. I am making 300 dollars and free accomodations for working a week. Today is the 3rd day and it's going good except I am not sleeping well, but hopefully tonight I can catch up. Lots of people here are sick so i need to be well rested to fight off their diseases. I still haven't figured out if/when I am going to go to my aunt nans little town. It's gonna be kind of a bitch, but i probably should. I have to find out today when i am going to be done working and buy my ticket to go to england which i think will be about a week away. It's wierd to be working when I have't done it for 8 months, but this is even less work than my last job. Its been fun hanging out with all the people. I didn't get to go outside yesterday, the weather here is cold and cloudy, as a general rule. I wanna get to the beach soon! I don't know what my plans are, haven't figured anything out yet. Hope everyone is good. Oh and my friend Julie and Al welcomed a baby girl into the world on monday, congrats to them!

Leaving Belfast

2009-05-16T03:38:00.002-06:00

I am so sad to be leaving ireland, i really hope that i can come back again some time, there are lots of things i would like to do yet. At the same time I can't wait to get into edinburgh. I am leaving to catch a ferry soon and then i will be taking a train. This will be one of the few times i have ever been on a train and i am scared, I have an assigned seat and i don't like that too much. Trains scare me, but I am going, it'll be ok, right? I started reading a cheesy romance novel, but its not dirty or anything, i think i have read like 400 or more pages in the last 2 days, in little tiny print. I am still working on my head band, its almost done. I did find one that was left in my room at the last hostel and i washed it and will be wearing it, score for free stuff! I have been abandoning stuff everywhere i have gone, of course I packed way too much. I still don't know what my plan is, but if my spending continues I might be home sooner rather than later, this UK is a pricey beast, especially considering that I just came from 6 months in south america. I hope everyone is good! I'll talk to you in Scotland!

last day in Cork

2009-05-13T10:23:00.002-06:00

I went to the blarney castle, where they have the blarney stone that you are supposed to kiss to gain eloquence...i didnt kiss it, its a rock you have to hang over a 5 story drop to kiss and it looked scary, i was already terrified from all the stairs and the heights, lots of other people didn't kiss it either. It was scary, and its not even the original blarney stone. But i was in a real castle and i walked all around the grounds and threw it pretending i was some fancy oldn time lady in a gown and it was really fun. I took a walk around a lake and i was the only one out there and i saw a fox, i walked right past it. I found some cool postcards. I meet some new girls in the hostel from texas and we went out for a couple of drinks they were really nice, just on a short holiday before they go back to school. Today was the first rainy day in a while, I went to a place called an english market and it was like an indoor saturday market and i found a yarn store. So i bought some local yarn and i am knitting a head band to hold my hair back with all the wind and cold weather. so i am about 1/4 of the way done with that and i sat around for a few hours and watched some movies, tomorrow i head to Dublin and then Belfast about 7 hours on the bus, I hope to mostly finish my headband on the bus. I do have to say the people in ireland have been amazing, kind and happy to talk to you. I wish i could have seen more things, but i will just have to come back another time and check them out. I want to see connemara, the aran islands, and cliffs of moher, but barring some huge natural disaster they will be there in the future. I'm a little nervous being alone and going to a new country but i am sure i will be fine! Hope everyone is well.

Cork Ireland

2009-05-11T09:02:00.002-06:00

This place is awesome! I am now travelling alone and so I hopped a bus I headed to cork and I am so glad that I did. I went to the Jameson Distillary today in Medleton. Then I walked around the little town and it was so cute and nice I strolled through a park and sat on a bridge over a little creek. Its so picturesque. I stopped and bought a couple of those throw away cameras so i can get some pictures of the view out my window of the hostel, its on the 3rd floor on a hill and its really nice. A big city all surrounded by green farmed hill divided with low stone walls. I feel like i am in every story i ever read or watched based in Europe. Its truly beautiful. Tomorrow I am going to go to the Blarney stone. Oh, i almost forgot, you look off to the side while on the bus and you see a castle, happens all the time. Crazy! It's a great place for a family vacation, highly recommended. I'm off to knit a head band, the wind is stong and my hair is a sufferin'. sorry i can't put up pictures.

Travelling Dayssss......

2009-04-10T09:07:00.002-06:00

I am leaving my hostel at 5pm today (friday)and I will arrive home in Boise at 6.05pm, saturday. With time changes it will be about a 28 hour trip including layovers and a 2 hour bus ride to the airport. The thought of the hours and hours of travelling are keeping my mind occupied so I haven´t gotten sad yet, which I am glad about. I feel like its the end of an era, silly maybe, but so it is. I haven´t done anything I didn´t want to do for the last 6 months. It´s been great. I learned a little spanish, which i hope to improve upon in the future. I made some great friends who will be dearly missed, but I must see again! I had a great experience here. Thank you Buenos Aires! I´m out.

A Present from David

2009-04-03T16:00:00.000-06:00

Mosquitos DIE!

2009-03-23T01:19:00.002-06:00

I have been laying in bed tossing and turning trying to sleep and right when i am just there...I start itching, everywhere. I hate the mosquitos that live in my bed! Sometimes i lay down in the middle of the day for a little siesta and i see them sleeping, but i can´t bring myself to kill them, cause they are asleep and i feel bad killing them then. So being itchy really is my fault. Its now 430am and i am awake, which i take as a good sign as i´ve spent the last couple of days asleep trying to get over whatever this sickness is that i have. It´s gotten warm here again, it´s back up to like 80 90something degrees. I look forward to feeling better and enjoying the city before I come home. Enjoy the beginnings of spring!

knitted hat and new leather bag

2009-03-12T09:07:00.002-06:00

From buenos aires with Aoife

i made that hat! I finally did some shopping! I found a great leather bag. It met the designer in her shop and saw all the wonderful things she has created. She showed us that the leather was real by taking a lighter to it, it was so cool. I had seen the bag the first time i went to La Boca and i new it should be mine! I am super excited to have it.

new pictures

2009-03-11T15:47:00.002-06:00

Pictures, pictures, pictures! Read all about it! Been walking around a lot shopping and checking stuff out. Mostly going to places i didn´t like the first time and finding that I really like them now. Prehaps it is because of the change of company, but who can be sure!? i´m really having a good time in Argentina and I am really going to miss it when i leave. I am super excited to go to Europe, but in a bit of a limbo and I can´t really do anything to prepare for it right now. I am tired of living in the hostel, its loud and I am not getting enough sleep, i feel zombified for hours every day trying to wake up after sleeping only 4-6 hours when i can usually sleep for 8-10, no problem. It´s been raining alot, but its not too dreary, cause its not 100 degrees anymore.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeu

2009-03-07T05:18:00.002-07:00

From Buenos Aires

look at my tattoo

From Buenos Aires

aoife and me

It sucks i got my camera stolen, cause there are lots of pictures i would like to take with my departure coming up. I think i will see if i can borrow one from a friend for a day or i might just stop running away when people pull their cameras out. It looks like a great majority of my friends will be leaving next week, so I am sad about that. I went to Avellaneda and it was nice, i got to sleep all night, it is so quiet there. Macarena was nice enough to walk me around and we went to a little street market so she could buy incense and the guy working the booth handed me a stick and tried to give it back to him and he said ¨no no, un regalo para voz¨ it was a present! I also got to go to the bank to get change for the bus and get a bunch of shit from the guy working. There is a shortage of coins, still, but you still can only pay for the bus with coins. I understand the little shops giving me shit, but the bank, I wanted to say come on dude its not your money. Ah and then yesterday was a most beautiful and perfect day outside, it was so nice! I went for a walk to my favorite park, the park that i always see something wierd or disgusting but i keep going cause it is so pretty. I saw a grown man piss on a tree, I saw all the junk and everything! Can you imagine!? so gross. The greenery was nice though, it rained for a couple days and then they turned the sprinklers on, all the grass is green again, it looks gorgeous.
I went to Recoleta with Maky and we ate burger king. I got a Texas whopper in buenos aires, and it was sooooooooo damn good. Fast food in other countries rocks! Don´t worry tammy, I am going to china town today and i am gonna eat from a street vender. I hope everyone is well and i wish you could luck!

Holy Crap

2009-03-03T08:07:00.002-07:00

It´s March 3rd! Why is it the beginning of my trip when i didn´t like it and i just wanted to come home the time went so slow and it seemed like i was going to be here forever and now that i am having fun and really like it everytime i turn around a week has passed? It´s finally starting to cool down a bit and I get around outside with out getting burned to a crisp in the first 10 minutes, but with the cool down we are getting rain once or twice a week and you can´t even go out in it. A couple of days ago it was like 80-90 degrees and like an hour after it started raining, we got ice cube hail, it wasnt little white balls, they were little chunks of ice. Some of the locals had never seen hail before in their lives! I pretty much do the same thing everyday, so I can´t really think of anything rad or story worthy. I´m going to my friends house in a scary neighborhood on thursday. They still have mafia there and its really dangerous at night. We are going to watch eternal sunshine for a spotless mind/on a spotless mind whatever and we are going to the tattoo shop to get some new earrings, then this weekend I am going to china town! I hope you guys are having fun and i´ll see you in April.

I dont wanna come home

2009-02-16T05:57:00.002-07:00

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

2009-02-11T06:29:00.002-07:00

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

2009-02-02T18:14:00.005-07:00

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

2009-02-01T06:59:00.001-07:00

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.

1-19-2009

2009-01-19T10:33:00.000-07:00

uruguay

1/10/09 post armenian food

2009-01-10T13:56:00.000-07:00

We have pictures, but this computer doesn´t have picassa so i have to add them all individually and there are like 200-300 pictures its gonna take some time, but here is a link and i will let you know when they are all up

01/09/2009-Un Asado experience

2009-01-09T19:28:00.000-07:00

Asado is BBQ. It´s more plain and simple than we do it. No herbs, spices, sauces, marinades, or propane. Just straight meat and coal. It is very delicious. You get a huge grill and smother it with cuts of meat i´ve never seen before right along side different kinds of chorizo and blood sausage. There were 2 vegetarians at the table. The cook for the evening upon hearing that these people don´t eat carne(beef) went to the grill, returned, and filled there plates with sausage while saying "it´s good, not carne, only chorizo". Me, being me, was picking apart my food, making sure it was cooked well and ripping out big chunks of fat. On my second helping of chorizo i´m in sausage heaven. It´s so good and salty and what! it´s got cheese in it. It´s oozing some creamy delicious white cheese. I ask what kind of cheese is this? and i hear "no, como se dice en ingles", i give a good swallow and say "fat?" after a few more exchanges of phrases, it is decided, yes I am indulging, it straight up creamy melted FAT! You know when you get a coffee from starbucks and it leaves that film on the inside of your mouth because they use real cream... i feel like i had a Venti breve. So sick! I don´t know why people can´t just lie to me. Another weird food related item, my friend anthony from peru, eats the chicken bones and cartiledge. Its really shocking the first time you see someone do that. Ok bye bye now

01-07-09 post spanish lesson

2009-01-06T17:50:00.000-07:00

Holy shit i can´t believe that it is 2009! I haven´t written in a while, sorry. I´m very lazy. I wanna say, straight away, happy late birthday Grandpa, I hope you enjoyed it! and happy early birthday Ryan! To auntie Teresa-yes i still call you that behind your back-i decided to spend a long time in Argentina because I really liked it. When i came to south america all i had planned was a plane ticket arriving on october 18th and departing april 10th and i knew that i wanted to go to brasil to see my dad. I have ended up staying in Argentina, in buenos aires, because its totally rad. I want to spend as little money as possible here in south america because i hope to travel to europe and i have plans to road trip with my friend david for the summer/fall. buenos aires is cheap compared to us, a lot of people speak english and there is loads of stuff to see and do. I also happened upon a fabulous hostel full of wonderful people, most of whom i feel priveledged to know. I am learning some spanish, a little everyday, in hopes of being more prepared when i travel to places were the people only speak spanish. It looks as though i will be going to uraguay soon, maybe in the next week to visit a friend from Germany. I´m so excited, they have beaches there, lots of nice beaches and as it is in the 90s and humid almost everyday here, i could use a break in the way of the ocean. In feb/march i hope to travel to chile and peru and maybe bolivia, equador, and columbia. I would also like to get around argentina some more, its a awesome country with lots to see. I´m having a great time and loving every minute of being here! I have taken lots of pictures and hopefully i will be able to put them up for all of you. Ok I think that answers your guestion and catches everybody up. I had a great new years and I hope you all did also. I have been spending the last week shopping and walking to different places in the city. I ventured to Tigre by train and that was fun. Public transportation costs like 25 cents a ride, its crazy awesome! I eat delicious food everyday, but for the last 2 days i have had smoothies and french fries, what could be better....mmm my love for fried potatoes continues, though i have given up chocolate(heather, tell betty never to come here, there is no dark chocolate) and chips. I´ve only had one hamburger and it wasnt near as good as ours. The hot dogs are awesome though, they are called super ponchos and i dont know what kind of mixture of processed meat they are made out of, they are delicous. I´m getting browner, but i have a total farmer tan cause everytime i go out i cover up as much as i can, cause i hate sunscreen. im brown from the elbow down, half a calf and top of my foot and around my neck, its just makes me look like i dont bathe, its hot. I found an american/european fancy mall that has a tiffany and a MAC. At first i was really excited to be in the mall, but then everything was American and just the same as at home and i hadnt seen it in so long it made me sick. I had to get out of there, it was so much to look at and it was all lame. It was horrible, but then I saw the MAC(you know the makeup store) on the way out and my inner american came out and i decided it was all crap but the MAC was ok...silly i know. An american guy showed up and the hostel a few days ago and he is the same age as i am. It was very odd to be around him. He was from berkley and said "hella" and fuck every other word and was so sarcastic like typical young american guy. I started swearing again and being sarcastic, it surprised me how fast i just fell right back into that way of speaking. Hes gone now and my mouth is a bit more appropriate now. The longer i stay here the less i want to go home. My trip is very close to half over and I feel like i´ve barely started my journey. love and kisses to all my family and friends. To those of you that use this blog as an opportunity to check up on me and see how i am doing: I miss you and please feel free to email me and tell me what you are up and what is going on in your life. I could really stand to hear some stories. Besos. Gracias para todo haces. Te extrano mucho. No espero a ver sos.

12/25/08 Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T18:21:00.000-07:00

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

2008-12-14T17:44:00.000-07:00

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

2008-12-10T11:21:00.000-07:00

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

2008-12-06T08:17:00.000-07:00

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

2008-12-05T04:56:00.000-07:00

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

12/02/2008

2008-12-02T13:00:00.001-07:00

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

2008-11-27T13:05:00.000-07:00

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

2008-11-27T12:53:00.000-07:00

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

2008-11-27T12:43:00.000-07:00

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

2008-11-25T16:49:00.000-07:00

I´ll write about the weather soon

11/23/08

2008-11-23T09:45:00.000-07:00

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

2008-11-21T15:01:00.000-07:00

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

11/19/08

2008-11-19T15:45:00.000-07:00

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

2008-11-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-11-16T12:04:00.000-07:00

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

2008-11-16T12:03:00.000-07:00

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

2008-11-16T12:02:00.001-07:00

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!

2008-11-12T13:15:00.000-07:00

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

2008-11-12T12:49:00.000-07:00

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

2008-11-12T12:48:00.000-07:00

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

2008-11-10T12:10:00.000-07:00

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

2008-11-03T10:24:00.000-07:00

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

2008-11-02T11:27:00.000-07:00

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

2008-11-01T13:29:00.000-06:00

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

2008-11-01T13:23:00.000-06:00

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

2008-11-01T13:16:00.000-06:00

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

2008-11-01T13:09:00.001-06:00

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

2008-11-01T12:59:00.000-06:00

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

2008-11-01T12:57:00.000-06:00

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

2008-10-28T10:33:00.000-06:00

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

2008-10-22T16:45:00.000-06:00

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

2008-10-22T16:38:00.000-06:00

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

2008-10-21T11:50:00.000-06:00

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

2008-10-21T11:18:00.000-06:00

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

2008-10-21T11:05:00.000-06:00

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

2008-10-19T08:03:00.000-06:00

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

2008-09-06T13:51:00.000-06:00

I'm coming soon!