heaven

in el bolson, lil hippie town and i love it. live music everywhere! saw the best band last night. i think i need to move here. sorry port townsend!

bye bye baby bariloche

Leaving Bariloche tomorrow morning. Its so crazy, I only have 2 weeks left with all my class, then we split up. I'm going to miss this family. Today I went on a secret mission with Kelsy to the piercing shop. Second time getting pierced in a foreign country. Then we stopped one last time at Mamuschkas. I made a mamuschka stencil and we stenciled everyones clothes yesterday. I had to go overboard and by 4 bottles of spraypaint, so I'm determined not to let any go to waste. Working on a Riki Oh stencil. We had an amazing empanada party last night. I was so over empanadas, but they are delicious when you make them yourself and use fresh ingredients. Katrina and I took an epic nightwalk and painted the town. I'm in the strangest locutorio/comic store right now. My favorite one has been full all day so I braved the rain and found this one, and its completly deserted and half the computer buttons don't do what they say they will. So I will be far away from internet for the next 2 weeks, then will be in El Bolson on the 29th to meet up with Pete and Nessa. I've wanting to go to El Bolson for months! Oh, and Naomi is coming home May 16th! And she's working with me all summer! I'm so happy about this. I miss her way too much, its been tough. Anyways, miss everyone. Trying to distract myself from ever feeling homesick but you know, can't always be helped. Love you!

ughh..

Last day of spanish class was really annoying. I spent hours yesterday putting together the cutest presentation about Mamuschka, interviewed the shopkeepers, and even bought 35 pesos worth of chocolate to share with the class on cute mamuschka napkins but instead of doing our presentations, our teacher had us fill out worksheets (that we could have totally done on our own time) for 3 wasted hours! And so we had like 5 minutes left of class and she has us go around and just say where we went. Ami had written a song for the project and I was going to help with that too, plus hearing where everyone went in the city and who they interviewed would have been a lot more interesting then filling out a f-ing worksheet. Yeah, I dunno why I was so irritated this morning, could be the 3 nights of insomnia or the fact that I forgot to slap on a patch this morning. I booked it out of there and instantly felt better after getting a face full of sunshine and mountain breeze. Walked around town with Ami and we both bought really soft and adorable handmade underwears and hoodies. Now I´m off to go track down some spraypaint, which will make everything better.

patience...i lack this when i´m hungry

Grrr, why do they have to close the kitchen right when I get done with spanish class and am totally starving! It doesn´t help that it was pouring today and I refuse to wear my ugly poncho walking to the other side of the city where my class is. I need to find a decent secondhand raincoat. I doubt my tent is waterproof, which worries me because I´m camping in the mountains for the next 2 weeks. Luckily there are many other tents I can crawl into. I feel off today. Like I couldn´t settle down last night, even boring podcasts couldn´t put me to sleep for the longest time. I can´t remember my dream, but they´ve been kind of disturbing lately. Like I wake up and I tell myself to forget them because they are unsettling. And I feel sick but have to put together a presentation by tomorrow, and memorize 50 plant and animal names in spanish. But at least our final exam is going to be eating empanadas and singing spanish songs. I just learned a lullaby about how if you don´t fall asleep little baby then the white devil will come eat your legs off.

geekin out

I am totally enamored with my new ipod and find new uses for it every day like incredible podcasts for music, story telling and spanish learnin, free apps, like seafood watch and lunar calendars. Plus I can call home on it. I can listen directly to soundcloud or watch movies on it too. Its like this little pocketsize computer. Alright, enough, but I´ve just never had new electronics before. I was the last person ever to get a mobile phone and all my ipods were used. So anyways, my birthday party on Friday was incredibly fun. I came home from the coffee shop at around 8 after doing a bunch of homework and found everyone grilling food outside. There was wine tasting and mimosas, and a huge dinner accompanied by indian music videos. They gave me a pink tanktop that says i heart brc, which means bariloche, but also stands for black rock city. Its been so sunny and beautiful this past week. Last weekend I went hiking with some friends and camped by a river. That night was the best sleep I´ve had in a while. In the morning I just didn´t want to get up because the sound of the river was so soothing, but the sun started beating down on the tent and I had this dream that I was trying to undress to take a bath but every time I pulled off my shirt there was another one under it. I called Lindsey for help and she brought some scissors and started cutting my clothes off, but there kept just being more and more layers underneath and started freaking out because I was so hot and trapped. I finally woke up and jumped out of my sleeping bag. I made some incredible pesto the other day with Terra. We went on a walk and found a cheese shop accross from a pasta shop, and got inspired for some italiano food. So excited that I got my ticket! Now I just need to get a ticket to Prague. I´ll be gone for a little over 2 weeks, wish it could be longer, but I´ll probably be so broke by then and that euro is stronger than the dollar so that´ll suck. I can´t imagine how I´m going to go back to speaking Italian. I can just see myself trying to communicate in broken spanish and getting nowhere. But I really don´t care because I´m so excited to go back there! And I get to see baby Micah! I was just looking at some pictures of him and his cute little cheeks and I just really wanted to hang out with him. So happy that I will be able to.

obsessions

Alright, last night I dreamt about feathers a third time! When I was little I used to dream I´d be walking along finding odd coins and the further I walked the more I would find. Well its like that but now its feathers, and I want to cry when I wake up because I don´t have them anymore. This weekend Amy traded me the most incredible owl feather she found for one of my belts. For now its being kept on the makeshift alter in our room. Damn, its so pretty...

gracias

tengo hambre!!!

Killin time while I wait for the kitchen to open. I`m back in Bariloche for two weeks learning Spanish. Found the best coffee shop with cafe irlandes for only 8 pesos so I`m making good headway on homework. Kitchen is open, bye! False alarm, five more minutes. Sooo hungry! So, dale, my bus ride here was a mess. Some guy almost hit me because I didn`t want to give him money, but then he stopped himself and only kicked a plastic bag in my direction. But at least I had the Last Days that Lindsey sent me and my new ipod complete with savage love, so I was pretty content. We were stuck in traffic for hours because of a car race. People lined the highway for miles to catch a glimpse of the race cars on the way to the race, and these cars just so happened to be surrounding our bus, so we crept along as people ran infront of the bus to take their picture with the cars and the drivers. When I finally got here I went straight to mamuschkas for some paco, I mean chocolate. Kitchen open for reals.

condor de los andes

So I never really got around to writing about Bariloche and I have some time to kill so here it is. We stayed at the coziest hostel with a view of the water. I could watch the sunset from my bunk. The town is beautiful, surrounded by mountains and full of chocolate shops. There is a mexican restaurant that is actually good which is totally amazing! Our class went white water rafting and we took on some level 4 rapids, but had a guide always shouting orders, kind of like a drill sergeant, which totally killed most of the excitement. I would so love to take that river on with a two person raft and my dad. We went on a couple of plant walks, one with a local university student and the other with a doctor who studies the medicinal uses of plants. We had some days off which were spent doing equal parts homework and mischief. Okay, maybe a little more mischief, I snuck to the top of a church bell tower. But I also spent a lot of time at outdoor stores and preparing food for the 6 day hike. The first day of the hike were totally what I was expected, a beautiful walk through the forest on a clear path, then camping by a river. Day two we cleared the timber line. Day three was absolute maddness. We climbed straight up snow and then rocks. Having a heavy pack throws off your balance so much. I learned how to rockclimb! But I had to be rescued once. Then we slid down skree on the other side of the mountain, every step sending you down an extra meter and causing mini avalanches. Day four there was snow, 90 mph winds and we had to summit another mountain. We had to kick step up the snow (we didn´t have any kind of equipment other then bamboo walking sticks) and drop down whenever the wind gusts hit or be totally knocked over. Felt so good to make it to camp. The last two days were back in the forest, the only big excitments being some river forging. We got back to Bariloche and pizza and beer were in order. Then we took a bus to Chile, through a snowy mountain pass. The bus was sliding off the curvy steep road and the driver was busy counting money and drinking mate. We had one of the best class dinners ever, full of live music and pitchers of beer and ordering mishaps involving tripe soup. I really love Chile, and can´t wait to spend a month there looking at tide pools. Alright, I´m kicking myself off the computer. LOVE!