tango

in buenos aires, one thing truly reigns ... and that is the tango.





brad and i went to a show while we were there before i flew out. amazing. so intense and dramatic. (i want to learn.)

and sadly, the videos i took are too big to upload onto photobucket.

what do you go home to?

i am flying back to the states in six hours. i'll spend a night in los angeles visiting my friend kathy from college (!!!!) and then on thursday i will go back to tucson.

i am sad to leave brad and south america, but i cannot even begin to say how excited i am to go home. to take a shower without flip-flops on for the first time in seven months; to sit on a couch; to watch a movie; to eat mexican food; to see my family and friends. brad and i keep joking about how weird it will be to have everyone around us speaking english and to be able to understand everything people say.

these next few months are going to be difficult: to try to transition back to a life of normalcy (but with a gaping hole inside) after living such an atypical life.

who knows what is next?

colonia del sarcramento

remember how i said that all of south america gets easter week off? apparently, everyone in buenos aires and in uruguay comes to colonia, a muy linda y antigua city just across from buenos aires. i say this because brad and i got off the bus and surprise surprise! there aren't any rooms in any hotel in the entire city (and there are probably like ... 100 hotels in the city).

what does one do when this happens?

we decided that we'd find some hostel to store our bags, beg them to let us shower, pack our bags, and stay up all night / sleep in a park. seriously, what else were we supposed to do? the real miracle is that the hostel we went to not only let us store our bags and shower, they also let us use everything common there – kitchen, internet, common room. which meant that we slept in the common room for a few hours (from about 3 am (when everyone finally went to bed) until about 6:30 (when people started cleaning)). (and yes, we had to pay, but not much). oh thank goodness. i wasn't looking forward to sleeping in a park.

but. colonia is lovely.



[old gate]


it's an old portuguese port city that underwent numerous attacks by the spanish, passing back and forth in battles for colonial power, before actually becoming part of uruguay. the barrio historico has great cobble-stone, uneven, and non-grid streets. lots of museusm, old buildings, beautiful plazas.



[typical street]


[street of sighs]




we really enjoyed wandering around and then, right at about seven, a huge storm rolled in.





(thank god that hostel let us sleep in their common room because it poured allll night.)

and as a final farewell to uruguay, here's a shop selling hot water for all those mate drinkers to fill up their thermos. ohhh i will miss that...

semana de la cerveza

everyone in south america gets easter week off. and in the town of paysandu, they celebrate easter by having a beer festival. what better way to celebrate easter, right? (although i'm confused as to why it's the week before easter ... because of lent and what-not, shouldn't it be the week after?)





really the best part about going to paysandu was all the live music and relaxing on the beach of rio uruguay.





people bring their mate to the beach. and at night while in the main festival area, they have the gourd in one hand and the beer in the other. i'm going to miss that. what a wonderful cultural identity thing.

la coronilla

about a week ago now, i left montevideo and headed up the coast to la coronilla, the town that brad has been volunteering in for the past few months. [he's working with an NGO called karumbe that researches juvenile sea turtles who forage in the algae/seagrass beds in the area during the summer. pretty cool, really.] of course, it's really good to see brad again, even if this time it's only for about ten days and then ... it could be thanksgiving until i see him again (but no more thinking about that one).

so i arrived in the midst of the "olimpiada tortuga" - a weekend thing the NGO was doing for all the local kids to find my boyfriend dressed up like a turtle (for more on that one, talk to him about carnaval), and was thrown in the next day to help "lead" the group through a treasure hunt thing. haha. let me just say that kids speak quickly and they are hard to understand. but i did enjoy running through the streets of coronilla singing our team's song (we were tortuga verde) and attempting to talk to the kids.



[our team drawing a map of where all the turtles are born, live, et cetera]


after the olimpiadas finished up, we had a free afternoon, so brad and i went up to brasil (just to the border town (chuy) – no stamp for the passport ... sad) so i could buy havaianas. hooray! i paid about $7 and they're like $30 apparently in the states. chuy's your pretty typical border town, except that unlike nogales, there isn't even a fence. you just cross the road and you're in brasil!

la coronilla is gorgeous. the town is adorable and the beaches are beautiful. gorgeous sand dunes and ... yea, really, really beautiful.







the next day, i went with brad and some other volunteers on a capture. the basic idea is to use nets to capture juveniles, collect basic data about the turtle, tag it, and let it go. i was really excited because i've never actually seen a sea turtle before ...





the one we caught was so small (for a sea turtle, only about four kilos) and ... yea so cute and ... it was great. i even got to hold her!

i'm glad i got out here to see where brad has been living and to help out with some of the stuff he's been doing.

montevideo

i do apologize for the over-all lack of posting.

i spent a wonderful two weeks in montevideo taking spanish classes and wandering around the city. it's a beautiful city – small(ish), tons of museums, beautiful plazas, interesting people, great cafes. overall a wonderful place; i really fell in love with it.



[plaza matriz – just near the academia]


four hours a day were devoted to spanish classes. my teacher didn't speak a word of english (ok, maybe "hello"), which made it ... quite challenging. very difficult to be able to ask questions – most of the time i wouldn't have the words in english, and so often ended up waving my arms around wildly to try to explain what i meant. always made for laughs!

the best may have been while i was reading a little dialogue and it starts with:

juanita: hola!

and i have really been trying to not just read the words, but to understand them as i read and so instead of saying "hola" i said some weird combination of "hello" and "hola" that came out like "heolla" making us all laugh. my teacher said, "y este es interference". oh goodness.

after two weeks i feel like i've learned a ton and yet am still remarkably incompetent. i still go out into the streets and can't follow what people are saying, still have to think about it everytime anyone asks me something.

sigh, it's hard.

what i really love about montevideo is that it has beautiful architecture and it feels a bit european but then is so decidedly uruguayon / south american that there is never really any question of where you are.



[plaza independencia]


[palacio salvo]


[sarandi, the peadronal]


[the rambla]


what i love the most though is the mate. every single uruguayon is walking around with a thermos and a gourd of mate. every. single. one. we even had a mini "how-to-prepare-mate" lesson in spanish class. it's wonderful. and they bring it everywhere. mate at work, mate while grocery shopping, mate at the beach, at lunch, at breakfast, at night. it's a social event – people are always sharing their mate gourds and i just love it. mate itself is alright – i think it tastes a bit like grass and would really only drink it here if it's offered, but the cultural aspect is just hilarious.



[mate gourds]


and there are the horse-drawn carriages that pick up the trash. i really liked those too. such a wonderful idea. great way to create jobs, keep the city clean, cut back on emissions, and keep a hold of a traditional lifestyle in uruguay (horses = guachos). the carriages are tiny and just absolutely piled with trash bags.





and i just like this picture:





i think that coming here after the philippines was one of the best decisions i could have made. it is a wonderful transition back into a developed country sort of life. it's still different and new so i'm not so instantly overwhelmed by the US. i blend in (people here are a lot more white than i expected), there are interesting things to see, and it's a good ... change from the philippines.

i keep waiting for the moment that i will be laughing about the ridiculousness of the philippines and feeling good about my experiences there. it hasn't happened yet ... i don't miss it. and that makes me sad. shouldn't i at least sort-of miss it?

but i love it here, and have now met up with brad and we're travelling around a bit. i leave here and return to the states in four days. i ... can't believe it. i'm excited to go home, although sad at the prospect of leaving brad again and scared about the overall lack of ... any plan or clue about what's coming next. but i'm sick of wearing the exact same clothes (i realized my chacos are the only pair of shoes i've owned and worn in seven MONTHS. let me be a girl and say that i miss my shoes back home. and my clothes) and living out of a suitcase. home will be nice. i miss my family and friends. i need to figure out how to afford to get out to boston.

meat fest

it's a meat-fest and a half in this country.





some of, apparently, the best quality meat in the world – and a steak costs around 200 pesos. that's about $10. i know ... all you meat eaters are drooling, and i'm here and don't even eat it!

the colors of the sound

it's official – i love buenos aires: colorful, vibrant, so alive; what a wonderful city.

it's hard to describe, but somehow i feel more comfortable, more at home here (latin america) than i did in the philippines. i don't even speak the language, but it just feels right here. i love the whole vibe of life, the culture, the people.

(true, the philippines and argentina (latin america) are hardly comparable, but still. i feel different here than i did there.)

the weather has not been cooperating (rain rain) since i arrived and neither have most of the museums in buenos aires that i wanted to visit (all closed for renovations or on the day i planned on going there), but i'm still following my usual travel plan: have a general plan of what i'd like to see that day and then go wander the streets until i find whatever it is i'm looking for.

that method worked especially well for me in buenos aires because each barrio has such a unique personality. of course, the city is massive and so i barely saw any of it.

la boca and san telmo were probably my favorite barrios and when i come back here with brad right before i fly back to the states, i think i'll try to stay here (and i still have to see a tango show!). both have an artistic history and a huge cafe culture, more so than governmental sorts of things. tango, futbol, and color reign supreme in la boca - all the buildings and walls are covered in art (or graffiti, depending on your opinion).





san telmo has wonderful cafes and heaps of antique shops – if anyone's looking for a gramaphone or old phone or toy soldiers or chandeliers or ... antiques, let me know! on sunday, there is a huge open market with wonderful stalls full of all sorts of trinkets you never knew you needed.





in general, the city is very european, and has wonderful architecture, tons of plazas, and parks. perfect for a nice sunny day (which sadly never came). one of the main plazas is plaza de mayo - beautiful buildings and a great cathedral (plus a few closed museums, sigh).





and, as per usual, i had to go visit the famous cemetery (cemeterio de recoleta). one, i really enjoy wandering through cemeteries, and two, this one is full of famous dead people (the only one i knew was evita). it's all mausoleums – which i find eerily fascinating.





and nearby is this very odd sculpture – a massive flower whose petals actually close at night!





all in all, i could have spent a month in this city and still not seen half of it. this is the problem with traveling – there is just not nearly enough time to see everything and fully appreciate or learn about a place. so i suppose that all those museums i didn't visit and barrios i didn't see are just an excuse to come back again :)

i am now in montevideo and starting my spanish class. when they say no english is spoken in the classrooms, they really mean it. this makes it a bit difficult when i have no clue what a word means – lots of gesturing wildly and fumbling with my oh-so-limited vocabulary. already though, after just my one day, i feel a bit more comfortable. the main problem is that the "ll" is pronounced with a "ch"/"j" sound here, so the transition to mexican-spanish could be a bit hard. oh well.

even though montevideo is small, i'm glad i'll be spending two weeks here. i did absolutely nothing today (i'm staying at the academia dorm and am the only one, so it's wonderfully quiet), but plan on actually doing some exploring tomorrow. here's hoping the weather clears!