Waste

2004-07-18 / 10:47 p.m.

Hung out with Pelham today before he moves to Hawaii. It was weird. It made me feel old.

Merry, a friend of my mom's, hosted a viewing of Outfoxed. I went and watched it, but didn't stay for the nationwide conference call chat thing with Al Franken. As much as I love Al Franken, I was depressed and had a sadly short attention span.

Either the internet connection or my computer is fucking up. I don't know what's wrong, nor why. I'm confued, but what else is new. I don't feel like writing at the moment anyway. Blah. Whatever.

Little things

2004-07-17 / 6:11 p.m.

I'm home now.

My mother cleaned up my room before I got back...that was really nice of her.

She bought me a shower radio that looks like a duckie too. One of his eyes is the on-off-volume knob, and the other is the frequency....This makes him looking in two different directions more often than not, and reminds me of Argentine president Nestor Kirshner.

I love my room. Really. I wish I could transport it out of my house, because it is badass. I have never once regretted painting the walls this color.

ummmmmm......nintendo.

Still haven't driven my car yet. I wanted to drive home from the airport, but mom vetoed this....said I was too exciteable.

And she had reason....killing time between flights, I drank way way way too much coffee.

I'm now trying to get used to non-international keyboards. The irony.

I answered the telephone this afternoon....in ENGLISH. There's a different flag here. I've gone from the one having a thick accent, to one having only a slight accent. Bed. So. Soft. Toilet paper: also soft. The Simpsons? Yeah, it's in English So is the checkout lady at the supermarket. I no longer have a separate telephone ring here at the house...so if you know the main number, call it...if you don't, write me and maybe I'll send it to you.

Full Circle

2002-07-15 / 1:04 p.m.

This afternoon, I will leave Caballito. Tonight, I will get on a plane. Nine hours later, I will arrive in Miami (really, really, fucking early...something to the tune of 6:40).

In my last morning here, I am bored. I�ve been watching television since I finished packing. Anyway, I saw something on Nickelodeon Espa�ol that really nicely tied together my experience as a foreign exchange student--Not only is Dora the Explorer dubbed into Spanish, but in the latin american version, TICO ONLY SPEAKS ENGLISH!!!! Crap. I laughed so hard I thought I was going to die.

Hot wax

2004-07-15 / 11:28 a.m.

Wooooowhee! It is a crying shame that I don�t have a lover, because my legs are smooth as a fucking baby�s butt.

thrilled and desperate

2004-07-14 / 10:11 p.m.

I�m feeling totally weird. Really, really, weird. I don�t know really how to describe it....though however i try is bound to be tons of fun on this unfamiliar internacional keyboard that doesn�t work all that well....

Most of the day, I was really depressed. The reasons for this are varied, and range from "very stupid" to "somewhat valid". Ah, ah, ah, but never fear, I still went out and soaked up all I could of good ole� BsAs, but still: depressed. I went to the MALBA, which is a museum of modern art from Latin America and walked around Palermo. I said goodbye to the waiter in San Carlos I hang out with, and I started consolidating my crap to pack tomorrow.

Now though, now I�m just feeling completely detatched from everything. Like my brain just gave up, got sick of thinking and worrying and just checked out. I�m still in one hell of a funk, but it�s like those thoughts have been pushed to the back of my mind. In the front of my mind: well, not much of anything, to tell the truth. I just keep zoning out.

Had one of those weird, random, ganas de fumar this evening (mood to smoke). Completely inexplicable. I don�t mind other people smoking, but as for smoking myself, I generally find the idea abhorrent. I find it nasty...gives you nasty breath, nasty smelling clothing, not to mention cancer...but sometimes I just smell cigarette smoke, and find it alluring. Go figure. So I bummed a smoke off the locutorio guy I�m semi-amigos with. Ganas gone. Completely. Weird. Thus concludes my...I dunno....4th or 5th cigarette ever smoked. The idea of smoking returns to being totally gross.

"I use the word totally too much. I need to change it up and use a word that is different but has the same meaning. `Mitch do you like submarine sandwhiches? All-encompassingly...�" (Mitch Hedberg)

So what else....hummmm....life here has gotten really slow. To give you an idea of how slow: the big event planned for tomorrow is getting my legs waxed. excitement. I�m hurting for human contact, is there anyone out there (who lives in Atlanta) who�s interested in doing something when I get back? Ah! Gawd. It�s so strange to think that "this weekend" I�ll be home. yikes.

Thus ends the incoherent and boring diaryland entry.

Like a vonTrapp child

2004-07-13 / 11:15 a.m.

Well, everyone is gone now. Over the past few days, I�ve said �goodbye� to everyone who was left. (Too much) food and/or beverage commemorated the departure of my host mother, housemates, and friends; I�m now pretty much on my own for my last few days here. And so I�ve ended up kind of where I started: alone with a lot of time to think about stuff. While I love this city, and I wish I could stay here longer and travel more, I�m a little lonely�also, just like a few months back, the surplus time used for thinking and introspection and other such crap is kind of making me depressed.

Still, in spite of all this, I�m not exactly enthused about going home�though I think that since classes have ended and all my friends have gone, that it�s becoming less of a matter of wanting to stay, and more a matter of not wanting to go home. Bah. Oh well, you know what they say about all those good things, and how they always turn out.

I had this dream last night that I was planning to get married. The groom in the dream was physically and emotionally an amalgam of a ton of guys I�ve dated or had crushes on over the course of my life�somehow, I just knew this in the dream, though there were some very easily visible likenesses. Later in the dream, he just started to change completely from one guy to another. Anyway, for as interesting as the dream started out, it ended in a classic-type mild nightmare: the shifting groom decides to call the wedding off for reasons that I don�t feel like writing out, as they are painfully obvious indicators of my fears in the lurve department, and sort of pathetic.

I got my hair dyed yesterday. I was going to get highlights and stuff, but I didn�t feel like spending the extra money, as I can�t afford to maintain them in the states, and there really isn�t any apparent reason that I should put forth any effort to spruce myself up for my homecoming, as my mother and the cats could care less about my hair color (sulk). So I decided just to have them cover up the roots�though in retrospect, I wish I would have gone for something funky instead; the color now is close to my natural color, but I find it kind of ugly�hence why I started dying it in the first place so many a�os ago.

�What now, Brown Cow?� I ask myself�.and seriously, sitting here at my laptop, I actually said �What now, Brown Cow?� to myself, and I�m creeped out and my own creepiness. You know, it�s weird�.for as much time as I spent entirely alone in a silent house at home in Joja, I�m not as used to it anymore. It�s weird for me to be totally alone in the house here, as Diana and/or other boarders are usually in and out in the mornings. So I guess the rise in talking to myself is just part of getting used to being alone. But anyway, way too much digression without saying anything: What now�.I think I�m going to go take some fotos in the city center. Tomorrow, I�m thinking might be a good day to go to La Plata if the weather is nice, no se.

Finally

2000-07-12 / 9:06 p.m.

saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind this evening. Wow. I�ll have to write more about it at home and upload it later. But yeah, really great.

Iguazu

2004-07-11 / 5:32 p.m.

My fabulous trip to Iguazu Falls

The Bus

I was told by many people that traveling by bus was a good way to go, and it totally was. I paid 100 pesos, roughly 35 bucks USD for my ticket each way, whereas a plane ticket would have been a whole lot more, and I found the bus more comfortable than a plane�something about the sensation of driving is relaxing. I slept like an absolute baby�though I had a bit of help with that one. First of all, I bought some crazy herbal sedatives before I left�contained some herb called valerian as well as a mysteriously large dose of vitamin B1�and I was shocked that they actually worked pretty well; and they also served (surprisingly good) alcohol on the bus, which mellowed me out a bit. But yeah, the bus was super, super comfy and the service was great. The only bad part was Friday morning when we got into Iguazu; we were stopped at a road check FOREVER. Reps from MERCOSUR and the European Union were having some kind of meeting there, and so the security was super high. On the bus, they showed "Forces of Nature", which sucked balls; "The Patriot" which I hadn�t seen in a long time, and sucked less; and "Spy Game" which I slept through.

Thursday Afternoon and Evening

The hostel wasn�t super nice, but the important part was how cheap it was. We had a private room, and our own bathroom which was nice. It was clean and safe, though the heating was shitty and we froze the first night there. And, like most youth hostels tend to be, it was absolutely full of interesting people from all over the world. As we got there pretty late in the afternoon on Thursday, we spent most of the afternoon hanging out and shooting the shit with the other people staying there. Despite the fact that it was really pretty cold, some of us got it in our heads that it would be a good idea to take advantage of the pool there. That lasted about 5 minutes�.while exhilarating, hypothermia would have put a damper on the trip.

Friday

We rose and shined pretty fucking early to catch a bus to the park. We ended up reserving the most comprehensive guided tour of the area, which was pretty pricey, but worth it. Because it�s such a touristy place, it ended up being an expensive trip; between the tour, park admission, and food I spent a good bit. Anyway, enough about money. We started out the day walking and looking at the biggest part of the falls, called �Garganta del Diablo� (devil�s throat). It was HUGE and VERY NOISY. I have never seen a waterfall that massive. The path that leads to it in the park takes you very, very close�.which is really cool, except that we were instantly soaked. Unfortunately, the morning was cloudy, windy, quite cold, and generally miserable. Now, I�m a really good sport about stuff on trips, and very low maintenance, but if there�s one thing I can�t stand, it�s the combination of being cold and wet. So afterwards, we were all a bit cranky and uncomfortable.

After garganta, we took the first of two boat trips. This one was the tranquilo one where you kind of just mellow in a raft and look at nature and animals and stuff. Unfortunately, I saw very few animals�.only a few tropical birds. The scenery was nice though, and it was more comfortable to sit on a raft than to walk around in our wet clothes.

After the uneventful, but pretty boat ride, we took another path to look at other parts of the falls. Lo and behold, the sun came out a bit, and it warmed up a good bit. I don�t think I�ve ever been so glad to see clouds part, because I was fucking FREEZING. Anyway, this is where it really got amazing�.I took about a million pictures, and while they generally came out really good, they don�t even begin to reveal just how massive the chain of falls are, nor how lush and green the surroundings are. The views on this path were particularly great, and I was just blown away by the beauty of it all.

It was really getting warm afterwards, so we sat outside and ate lunch while we dried out a bit. After a long lunch in the sun, we started on the last leg of the tour. First we took a truck ride through the jungle. That was super cool, but I was disappointed that we didn�t really see any animals. There are monkeys, Jaguars, tropical birds, snakes, crazy boar-type animals, and a menagerie of other exotic animals in this part of the selva, but we didn�t really see any. I had my hopes up really high too�.ideas of seeing a monkey riding a jaguar, wielding a snake or the like, I dunno. But no, very few animals were seen, and I was teased by the intriguing squawking of unseen, yet undoubtedly brightly colored and interesting looking birds. It was still cool though�.again, very green, very thick.

After the truck, we got on the boat that took us right up next to the falls. We knew we were going to get very wet, and it was still really cold out, but everyone told us that getting drenched was worth the view � it was. The view was incredible, and with the sun out, there were bright rainbows everywhere. It was truly picturesque. I�ll upload more photos when I get home, because they�re really something else.

After the boat ride, we were VERY cold and soaked to the skin. There was another boat that took us over to an island, where we changed clothes and dried out a bit on the beach. We hiked around the island for a good bit, and got a good view of the Brazilian side of the falls. Again, absolutely beautiful. My mind, working with its feeble vocabulary in Spanish and decaying vocabulary in English, can�t do it justice.

Speaking of English�..

Speaking in English half the weekend got me back in the swing of making terrible puns. While David was eating a delicious alfajor (al·fah·�hor), I busted out with: �Your mother hangs out with a lot of prostitutes, but she�s always the alpha-whore.� Later, I created one even worse�.as the people in our hostel made plans to hang out together that evening; I said something to the tune of �I hope it isn�t a hostile party.� I was sober too, that�s the worst part.

Saturday

It was lovely outside Saturday, sunny and way warm. This is strange, considering it was almost freezing in BsAs, and it snowed in Mar del plata for the first time in 13 years. Anyhow, we unfortunately didn�t have time to go back to the park to see more of the falls, much less to time to try to sneak over to the Brazilian side sin visas�.We decided to walk to the triple frontera between Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina, as it�s really close by. It was anti-climactic, but at least I can say that I�ve seen Paraguay and Brazil now. Woooooo.

Bus part II: La vuelta

I met a charming couple on the bus on the way back. They were coming back from some religious convention, but it was okay, because they kept the evangelizin� to a minimum, and we mostly just talked about fun stuff, language and accents in particular. They were fun to talk to and I was glad to have someone to chat with, because the movies were horrible on the way back�.First, they showed �Showtime�, which I actually watched. After dinner, they played a French film, but I couldn�t see the subtitles very well without my glasses, and wasn�t able to lay comfortably with my glasses on, so I gave up on watching the movie, drank my before-bed-whiskey on the rocks and went to sleep.

It was really a great trip, and it made me even sadder to leave. I wish I had time and money to travel more in South America, as there�s so much I want to see!!!! Unfortunately, we can�t always get what we want�.But yeah, the trip was great.

As for now, I�m going downstairs to have my final Asado with the family, and so begin my final days here. ::sigh:: Chau.