back in a land where i can communicate!

no, i'm not back in the states yet. i'm back in peru, in lima, and i can finally communicate with people again, and in spanish, no less! i had such a complex in argentina about my spanish. it got better, but it's nothing like here. my first two days here i had probably three conversations with people in spanish during which they mentioned how well i spoke or how clear my pronunciation was, which NEVER happened in buenos aires. it's good to be back in peru!

mostly. i'm also back in a place where i am a true novelty and definitely a tourist (as opposed to just most likely), so strangers are staring again. they stared in ba, too, but not quite as much as here in lima. and here random people keep trying to befriend me, which i've learned is not always as innocent as it seems. (yes, there's a story there. let's just say it started when i met a cute boy and ended with me losing my camera, sunglasses and a little bit of cash. i am a little embarrassed that i got taken in by him but, like i said, he was cute and he was pretty damn smooth. i thought i kept my guard up pretty well and didn't even consciously realize that i was trusting him until it was too late. learned that lesson!)

so no more talking to strangers here, which hopefully won't be too hard, since i'm heading back to san francisco tomorrow evening. i'm actually pretty excited to go home, but we'll see how long that lasts. for those of you whom i'll see soon, i can't wait! for the rest of you (if you're still out there), i do plan to continue this blog, since there are lots of things i never shared and photos i never posted. so more later!

yeah, i´m a smart one

i took my first subte (ba subway) ride today. i´ve been here a month and have only just experienced the joy of a buenos aires subway ride. it was fantastic, except that smart heather here decided it would be a good idea to go from the center of town out towards the burbs on a hot weekday during rush hour. oh lord. not good times...

nerd alert

i was watching television last night. you know, as a cultural study. i´ve found some lovely degrassi-esque shows for teens (that´s not the nerdy part - well, not the nerdiest part) and loads of fútbol and lots of american programs both dubbed and subtitled. i´ve found almost all the popular programs like gossip girl, ugly betty, samantha who, x-files, law and order, friends, the simpsons, etc. i´ve even found the most random movies - the fifth element, xxx, empire records, sweet home alabama, house on a haunted hill, uncle buck. you name it and i´ve found it. except for battlestar galactica. mock if you like, but it´s a pretty popular show. and damn good, too. so last night i was flipping through the channels and, lo! whast did i FINALLY FIND after being here for four weeks? battlestar galactica - subtitled. and, of course, i watched the whole thing.

seriously, that´s spanish?

first, a quick apology to everyone for being way out of commission the last few weeks. the internet has been less than reliable at my new apartment (but everything else about it is damn cool!) and i´ve been pretty busy, anyway. but i´m back! at least for the time being. so let´s dive right in, shall we?

i´ve been in buenos aires for almost a month now and have had a totally different experience with the spanish than i did in peru, for a variety of reasons. reason #1 - the cadence or rhythm of the spanish here in argentina is totally different from peru and mexico. it´s very italian, which has taken some getting used to. reason #2 - the ¨y¨ sounds are not pronounced as such. they are pronounced with either a ¨shh¨ sound or a ¨sjh¨ sound (as in ´asia´), or a combination of the two. reason #3- people here talk ridiculously fast. needless to say, my general response here tends to be not a comprehensive verbal reply but rather a blank stare followed by ¨¿cómo?¨ after peru where i felt like i was improving every second, it has been extremely embarassing, frustrating and humbling to learn to communicate with people here more by error than anything else. (though i can laugh about the interactions afterward, thank god.)

so today i was out taking a walk, on my way to the japanese gardens, when a group of four older folks stopped me to ask me a question. i immediately braced myself for the usual. the woman says one word to me. one word. it sounded like ´ici´, which means ´here´in french. i can´t figure out what she´s saying to me, why she would be speaking in french, racking my brain for anything in spanish that sounds remotely like that. nothing comes, so i break out my standard response - blank stare. she can tell i have no idea what she´s talking about and i mutter an apology in spanish and something about how my spanish is terrible. i walk away a little bit deflated. it´s one fucking word and i´m still useless. and they seemed nice, but were kind of chuckling like, ´well, shows us for asking the tourist in the first place. ´ then a flash of brilliance hits! the word isn´t in spanish or french - it´s in english! EASY! there is a huge home improvement store (like a home depot) nearby called easy. so i turn around, all excited, and say to them in my crappy spanish - ´the superstore?´ ´yes!´ they are just as excited as i am. ´yes, i know it! ´and i happily tell them how to get there. totally made my day!

in other news, spring has sprung here. the sun is out every day and it´s so hot that i learned today not to wear both long pants and tennis shoes, even with a tank top. the parks are gorgeous and the jacaranda´s are just itching to burst into bloom. it´s so nice and i´m so happy to be here! i´m sending sunny vibes to all of you with less than nice weather...

look, i'm back!

i am not entirely sure how more than a week has gone by without a peep from me. actually, that's a bald-faced lie. i know exactly how it happened. i arrived in buenos aires on sunday, october 5 and have been playing with my sister ever since. let me give you a rundown of what we've been up to...

* dining at ridiculously good restaurants
* staying out late (the 'until the birds start singing in the morning' kind of late)
* going to the argentina-uruguay world cup qualifier football game
* wandering around buenos aires - different neighborhoods, gardens, parks, etc.
* eating steak
* shopping (i have doubled the number of shoes i have here - brought four pairs with me on this trip and have, in the last week, acquired four more)
* enjoying spa treatments (i had my first hot stone massage) at our hotel
* drinking malbec and torrontes
* lounging around around fantastic hotel, in the room, in the lobby, a little by the pool (though the weather has been iffy)
* watching tango

good times have been had by all, but all good things must come to an end, they say. (i don't know why people say that - it's really not true.) my sister left argentina last night to return to chicago and i left our fabulous hotel this morning to return to hostel-land, which is more in my budget range. i'm currently looking for an apartment to live in for the next month, which i claim will help me save money on food. keep your fingers crossed for me that it actually will...

last days in peru...

it's exactly one month after i left the states and here i am preparing to leave peru. jamie and i left cusco yesterday (tear!) for a brief overnight in lima and are prepping and packing to fly to buenos aires today.

our last night in cusco was all good fun. we bounced around to many different places, but the highlight for me was certainly a lounge that luis and moses took us to called mushrooms. THEY HAD A POOL TABLE!! i hadn't seen a pool table in a month and almost had a coronary when i walked in. we sat down and ordered a few drinks but, before long, i left the conversation and was making new friends at the pool table. i even played a few games but was really nervous because they were all guys and i hadn't played in so long and my hands were clammy and they had no chalk so i SUCKED and lost every game, except for the last one and the guy totally let me win.

yeah, that's me not winning
but i've still got a winning attitude!

i still made a few good shots and had a fantastic time. i even met a bunch of peruvian guys and, random, a few from california.

other highlights of the evening
* dinner at fallen angel, running into kevin from boston, whom we'd met at another restaurant last week

this was a salad of red quinoa, tomatoes, fava beans, corn and andrean cheese
it was phenomenomal!

* seeing jesús, my spanish friend, again, at siete angelitos
* cards and beers at gypsy bar with my friend brian and a few of his friends
* dancing at siete angelitos with moses and luís

moses and luís

it was a good last night. i was full of good food, good drinks, good conversation and good feelings about my time here. i have totally fallen in love with peru - with cusco, with iquitos and with the jungle. and there's so much i didn't get to see! i'm excited to go to argentina but, as michael (one of my new pool buddies) told me last night, 'it's amazing in argentina, but you're basically going to europe now.' yeah, i know.

but that will be fun, too!

Hablas espanol muy bien!

Let me recount for you a conversation I have had over and over and over in my last three weeks in Peru. (My sister can even vouch for me on this one.) I’m writing it in English, but pretend it’s in Spanish, kay?

(Introduction, beginning of conversation - in Spanish - on a plane, in a restaurant, at a bar, wherever.)

“Where are you from? (Blah blah blah, leading to, inevitably…) Where did you study Spanish?”

“The United States.”

“Ahh, really? You speak Spanish very well!”

“Well, thank you!”

At first I thought it was a joke. Yes, I studied Spanish from the age of 13 to 18. But from then on, though I lived in California, I never really practiced or studied or immersed myself, other than a few trips to Spanish-speaking countries, which account for a total of three weeks or so in a ten-ish-year period. It always came back enough to get by, but I wasn’t really that proud of my ability because of lack of upkeep, compounded by the fact that I compared myself to the people around me, native Spanish speakers and others who lived or studied in Spanish-speaking countries for years. Relatively, I was not good at Spanish. I had enough in the back of my brain, but never brought it to the forefront of my mind.

Enter my trip to Peru. Relatively here, as an American-born tourist who has never actually studied the language in a Spanish-speaking country, I am apparently pretty good. I try not to think about whom I’m being compared to, but I have had feedback about my pronunciation and general conversation skills, thank you. I've been here for for weeks (to the day!) and can feel it getting easier and easier, even in just a month. And on Tuesday my sister and I did an all day tour of the Sacred Valley of the Incas. The tour was in Spanish and English, and I realized that I could have gotten by with only the Spanish tour and understood about 95% of what was being told to me.

That was pretty uplifting, let me tell you. It’s rekindling a dream of mine that I haven’t had since I was in high school - to become fluent. I could have reached it then, and know that I can reach it now, too, with practice. And, I have to say, I really enjoy being able to communicate in another language. Sure, when I’m really tired (after a 4 hour train ride from Machu Picchu, for example) it’s challenging enough to focus in English, let alone converse in Spanish, but think about how many people immigrate to America and have that exact experience every day? And, in the states, people expect you to speak English - they do not cater to you as a tourist and try to speak your language. You are the one who has to conform.

This leads me to a realization I had my first week here, which has only been reaffirmed the more time I spend here. Though I’m incredibly excited about my time in Southeast Asia and Oceania next year, I’ve decided to shorten that trip from eight months to five or six. I want to come back to the states in June or July and then continue on to another Spanish-speaking country. And, I don’t know how many of you know this, but, biologically I’m a quarter Mexican, so where is a better place for me to go than to Mexico? I don’t know what exactly I’ll do - I have visions of traveling and art classes and cooking school and jobs in film - but I do know that this will be a great opportunity for me to strive for fluency and to explore my Mexican roots.

I'll keep you all updated as to what comes with this new realization, as I'm sure my thoughts and desires will continue to evolve over my next six weeks here. No matter what, it's going to be interesting!

a fantastically indulgent wednesday

i had a really great day yesterday. it was relaxing and indulgent and filled with new friends, great food, fantastic drinks and shopping.

since my sister and i have been doing a lot of walking and hiking in the last few days, our quads have been a bit sore. so we decided to start the day in the jacuzzi and sauna in our hotel. for two hours, we had private access to them, which were in a room at the top of the hotel with a fantastic view of cusco. she spent most of her time in the jacuzzi, while i scampered back and forth between the jacuzzi and the sauna as my whims dictated.

after the relaxation, we headed out to do some shopping, armed with our gift lists. i ended up finding a few things for people, but indulged in mostly shopping for myself. i bought a beautiful cream alpaca sweater that has a turtleneck so large it can also be used as a hood. i found a cute black and white and green hat and scarf set. and a cool gray hoody with incan patterns by a local designer. and some insanely cool beaded earrings. let me just say that i really need to stop spending money here, sor i won't have any left for buenos aires, and that would be a serious tragedy.

after our day of shopping, we had some down time at the hotel before heading to dinner at a restaurant called cicciolino, which had a menu of tapas and other mediterranean-influenced dishes, along with a fantastic latin american wine list. (now, let me take a minute to digress. i've had some pretty damn good food here in peru. the vegetables and fresh fish in the jungle, choclo con queso, superb steak, alpaca, piranha, cuy, amazing potatoes, even good chinese food. but the meal i had last night blew the rest of them away. seriously.) we started with a salad of smoked trout, manchego cheese, roasted wild tomatoes with a mustard dressing, which was fairly good (though the dressing was more oily than mustardy, which made me a bit sad because i love mustard.)

cicciolino

but my entree. oh, my entree... i ordered a seared tuna dish with a sauce of various chilis that came with mashed potatoes filled with huacatay, which is a lovely local herb. the tuna was perfectly cooked. the sauce was spicy and smoky and complexly flavorful. the mashed potatoes were substantial but not hard or lumpy, very creamy but not too rich. it even came with a garnish of a toffee candy filled with caraway seeds. ridiculous, i know, but fantastic and it complimented the potatoes rather well. i know my descriptions don't do it justice, but, trust me, it deserves to be at the top of list of 'the best dishes i've had in peru'.

so f-ing good!

after that, we had planned to head to a small bar in our neighborhood called siete angelitos, where they have live music every night. we ended up chatting with a couple from the yukon in canada on the way, and they joined us for a drink. we had a great conversation with val and danny, but they were tired, so left around 10:30. we stuck around, because the music was just starting. the band played mostly covers of old punk songs, and my sister had a fantastic time on the dance floor. (and leave i t to her to find the one person in the bar who was also from chicago.) i was content with chatting with my new friends at the bar. i met a spanish guy named jesús, a jewelry designer who has been living and traveling in south america for five years, and he in turn introduced me to all the people who work there, walter, amelia and antonio. there were shots of pisco involved, and even some jameson on my part. it was a nice night to meet new friends, and even see old ones! i ran into my friend brian, whom i met my first week here. he had just come back from sand boarding in ica (which i may need to do when i come back to peru for my last week here.)

danny, val and my sister, jamie

walter and amelia

jamie on the dance floor

baco, the guard dog at siete angelitos

all in all, it was a really great day. and we have another great one planned for today, too! we are going to the post office so i can send home this really cool picture frame i bought the other day. (i'm going to turn it into a mirror.) then we're hiking up to sacsayhuaman to see the ruins. and dinner tonight will be at another highly recommended restaurant called tika bistro, followed by dancing. it's shaping up to be another falling in love with peru kind of day...

on top of the world

my sister and i just got back from a weekend in aguas calientes/machu picchu. we took the train up on saturday and came back yesterday. it was kind of a crazy weekend, at least the first day, since our train broke down on the way up, which delayed us about an hour. and right when we were finishing lunch in town and planning to return to our hostel to go to the hot springs (there are hot springs in aguas calientes, hence the name which means hot water), it started pouring buckets of cold rain, so no hot springs for us. then we woke up on sunday morning, set for our day at machu picchu, only to find the water in our hostel didn't work at all, so there were no showers to be had or toilets to be flushed. d'oh.

BUT

we had decided to try to climb wayna picchu, which is the mountain to the north of the ruins of machu picchu (we were going to tour machu picchu after the climb). they only allow 400 people up each day, so we were awake at 4:30 am, on a bus up the mountain by 5:45 and in line by 6:30. we got in and it was seriously amazing!!

the line to climb THIS

it was a challenging climb
(especially for me, who hasn't had a gym membership since august and has been enjoying the culinary delights and drinks of peru for the past three weeks)
it took us a little under an hour each way

but we made it


and it was worth it - fantastic to be on top of the world!





machu picchu looks tiny, doesn't it?


my sister, jamie, with our canadian hiking buddies, virgil and nicki

so that was one of the highlights of my weekend. the train ride back also ranked pretty high, but more on that later. (let me just say there was a fashion show involved...) and i will get back to the jungle at some point, too, fear not.

My summer at camp - I mean, my Amazon jungle tour

Hi all
I'm back in Cusco with my sister. Sorry I have been so quiet, but haven't had much internet connection in the jungle. Hee hee. Anyway, here's the intro to my weeklong jungle trip. I will post more specifics about my activities and impressions of jungle culture in the next few days.
- H

What a crazy week I had in the jungle! I arrived in Iquitos on Sunday and was whisked off to a motorboat that took me an hour and a half down the Amazon River to the lodge where I would begin my jungle tour.

The Amazon is huge. I mean, of course it’s one of the longest rivers in the world (there are debates as to whether the longest is the Amazon or the Nile), but it’s ridiculously wide, too, at least to me someone who grew up on the West coast of the US where the big rivers probably aren’t even a third as wide as the Amazon (I’m guessing).

Pretty wide, huh?

The sun was about an hour from setting and there were lots of white puffy clouds that slowly turned orange and pink. It was truly fantastic.

On the boat ride, I started thinking about the fact that I was visiting the rainforest, a dream of mine since I was eight years old reading the kid’s version of the National Geographic magazine and obsessing over tree frogs and the environment. So we’re speeding downriver and I start to think about how wild the jungle really is. Anything can happen there, more so than at home, where life is predictable. Maybe because I keep it predictable, or maybe because routine just keeps it that way. But I could sense there would be an openness, a freedom in the jungle that I really looked forward to, no matter what came my way. (Though, luckily, I did not get bitten by anything worse than a mosquito, I didn’t get attacked by jaguars and I didn’t get any bad parasites from the water - I hope). But I fell in love with it. I haven’t slept as well as I didn’t when I fell asleep to the sounds of insects, frogs, nocturnal birds and the rain (because it is, after all, a rainforest, which means always expect rain). I didn’t even mind the cold showers. I felt at home with the green things all around me, the ferns and mosses, which reminded me of Seattle and the Olympic National Rainforest. There was something about arriving there that was like coming home, even though nothing was really familiar.

I had booked a tour that took me to three different lodges in seven nights. The first two nights, I was in a lodge where all of the buildings were open air (bar and dining area were screened in, everything else was not) and covered in thatched roofs. There was very minimal electricity that they only used for the fans, the blender at the bar and the power cords for charging camera batteries. My room was open - no individual ceiling, no window, no screen - and my bed had mosquito netting.

My room at the first lodge

At night everything was lit by kerosene lanterns, even the pathways leading from place to place. It was incredibly romantic. I had a private, attached bathroom with a flush toilet, but no hot water. My mom would have viewed it as her own personal hell. I loved it and felt like I was at summer camp for adults.

Since I had arrived so late (I got in just at 6, which was right as it was getting dark and starting to rain), there was only time for an orientation of sorts by my guide, Cesar, who would be with me the whole week, and some time to unpack and unwind before dinner, where I would meet the others in my group. We were a group of six, including a father, Jack, and his two kids, both in their early 20s - Sarah had just graduated from Lewis and Clark and this trip was her graduation present, and Nick had just finished culinary school. Then there were Russ and Rebecca, a married couple my age from England on vacation while Russ was back from Afghanistan. And me.

We had our dinner, which was fantastic - the food at this place was so good, always some kind of protein, rice and beans and veggies, always locally grown, fresh fruit and juices. Every lodge we went to, it was as good as before. After dinner we all wandered to the bar for a drink, beers and pisco sours. It was such a strange feeling, it being 8:20 pm and way too early to go to bed, but not having any electricity, television or internet to entertain us for the night. Russ made a joke, “What did people do before television? They went to bed at 8:20.” We actually did have live music - our guide and other staff were jamming, playing Peruvian and other Latin songs on the guitar, maracas, cajon (a Peruvian box that is beat like a drum). It was nice to slow down a bit - I felt much less overwhelmed than usual. And when I did get to bed, man, did I sleep well that night in the pitch black with the jungle sounds, especially with the soothing sounds of the rain outside.

Next post: itinerary, notes and more photos!
You can also find some photos on Facebook - http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=57768&l=43bb6&id=622011179

machu picchu

Here are some photos for you all of my trip to Machu Picchu yesterday... More will be up on Facebook as soon as I have a fast enough connection.

Me and the gorgeous view
(doing some nerdy thumbs up thing- I know...)

Una llama

The main town area

Some of the stepped gardens

More stepped gardens

Agricultural area

A cute lizard

The sundial is up there - very important for the Winter Solstice

Houses

For more photos, check out my Facebook album - http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=58538&l=79a17&id=622011179

a national peruvian dish at an irish pub?

Don’t laugh, but it’s not even been a week and I’ve already visited an Irish pub.


Call me lame but my guidebook said the food, especially the steak, was really good. And this evening I was craving some good food and beer, though not necessarily traditional pub food. (Good thing, because, though the menu was a crazy mixture of Peruvian dishes, pasta, pizza, curry and hamburgers, there was no fish and chips or shephard’s pie to be found.)

I totally hit the jackpot with the lomo saltado, ‘jumping beef’, one of the national dishes of Peru.

It’s a fairly simple dish of sautéed beef with tomatoes, onions and cilantro with French fries. Mine came with rice, too. And my guidebook wasn’t wrong about the steak - it was damn tasty (especially with beer)!

what exactly am i doing in peru?

(From Sunday afternoon... Just getting back online.)

It’s siesta time here in Cusco, so I’m taking a break from the hot sun and the crowds. Today there was a big celebration in the Plaza de Armas that involved bands, parades of different army/military personnel in uniform, flag raising, schoolchildren and speeches. (I have no idea what it was for - I keep forgetting to ask someone.)


I’ve been seeing the sights here in beautiful Cusco and wandering a bit, but have some other plans cooked up for the rest of the five weeks here in Peru. For about the next week I’m in Cusco, during which time I will continue to explore the city and the surrounding ruins (Macchu Pichu, Sacsayhuaman, Tambo Machay, Puca Pucara and Qenko).

Next weekend I fly back to Lima, where I’ll meet my sister. (That will be the day that I miss the USC-Ohio State game. Don’t think I’m not going to try to find a way to watch it, but I know it’s probably just a pipe dream.) My sister and I will go to Iquitos together, which is in the Northeast area of Peru and home to the Peruvian Amazon. I’m doing a week-long jungle tour, which promises such activities as canopy walking, piranha fishing (I know!), hiking, sleeping in huts, boating and searching for pink dolphins. And the last three nights are in a resort-type lodge with a pool and wi-fi, to ease my way back into civilization. Isn’t that nice? When the tour is over, we’ll be in Iquitos for an afternoon and night, which just so happens to be the last day of the annual raft race when everyone returns from a multiple-day float down the Amazon, so we’ll be there just in time for those post-race celebrations!

Back to Lima we’ll go for a few days to see a soccer, sorry, football match before flying to Cusco. We’ll take a little under a week to see Cusco, Macchu Pichu (I’ve heard I’ll be happy to see it twice) and the surrounding Sacred Valley. My sister is into markets, so I'm holding off on shopping until she arrives. At some point we'll take the train to Puno, which is the Peruvian city closest to Lake Titicaca and the floating islands. We’ll be there for a few days before returning to Cusco, then to Lima so we can head down to Buenos Aires and start a new adventure!

If anyone has any recommendations, suggestions, questions, comments, I'm all ears!

Bienvenidos a Cusco! (finalmente)

Here I am in my first days in Peru!! It’s day 2 in Cusco. I’m stealing wi-fi from someone somewhere so I have the luxury of being in my hostel bed typing this blog. It’s kind of awesome!

(Here I am on the map.)

Cusco is pretty cool, too. It is insanely beautiful, surrounded by these lovely green high hills and has fantastic narrow streets with lots of Spanish colonial architecture.


I slept all day yesterday (between being up late packing and not sleeping much on the airplanes, I had 5 hours of sleep in 48 hours) and had to repack today so I could actually find things that I needed, since I didn’t organize very well while packing late into the night. But I did get out on the town last night, which was fun. I went to a great reggae show in San Blas with a couple of people from my hostel, which was awesome! I didn’t get to see the whole thing because we took off for a house party. It was kind of a cool group of people who work at this school for underprivileged children - half Peruvians who work there and run it, and half foreign volunteers (mostly Americans but I met a couple people from San Martin, which was randomly cool). It was an intimate group of 15 or 20 in a really cool loft apartment. We danced the night away and good times were had by all.

The beauty in this first night in Cusco is that I was really sad to leave my friends in San Francisco. I’m the type of person who mourns an end before it’s really over. I started being sad about leaving San Francisco in June or July. I know at least ten people who can tell you stories when we’d be out, a group of friends, hanging out at a bar or a show or someone’s house and I would realize that it was all going to end. All of it. And I wasn’t ready for it to be over. I kept thinking, ‘What am I doing? Why am I leaving this to go be alone in an unfamiliar part of the world?’ And my friends, good sports that they are, would talk me off the ledge and tell me how much fun I would have, what cool people I’d meet, etc. And I knew they were right. (And thank god they were.)

Next post - my Peru itinerary, which includes such activities as piranha fishing, Macchu Pichu and football in Lima

surround yourself in your own reality

hi all

i have a few other blogs to post later when i can get my computer on wi-fi, but, for the time being, i want to pop in and give a little update. i left for sea-tac (the seattle airport) at 6:15 this morning and am now (after a short stop in st. louis) waiting for a plane to LIMA!! which boards in about two hours. once i arrive and get through customs, i hop a plane to cusco. so as of 9:00 am EST tomorrow (sep 5) i will be in peru and starting the trip! which probably means sleeping a lot to adjust to the altitude.

speaking of sleeping all day...
ARIES (March 21-April 19): "Like an ox-cart driver in monsoon season or the skipper of a grounded ship, one must sometimes go forward by going back," wrote novelist John Barth in The Friday Book. Consider using that approach, Aries. Retreat may be the strongest move you can make right now; surrender could turn out to be a masterstroke. But in order to get the most out of this strategy, you've got to keep your ego from injecting its agendas into situations. Don't act out of shame or pride; don't humble yourself excessively or be burning for revenge. Be objective, neutral, poised.
i love rob brezsny's weekly horoscopes. especially his random references.

more to come later...

sf to sea - 14 hours in a uhaul

because i had to be back in seattle by monday at 7 pm, my road trip from sf up north was a whirlwind. it was a typical drive with a uhaul - stuck in the right lane - and a typical drive with heather - passing the slow traffic.

there were some random things i found entertaining. i loved the road sign in oregon - 'corvallis, 8 miles - lebanon, 5 miles'. then there was the gas station in random-town california with the teenage boys hanging out in front, because what else do you do on a sunday night in august, right? lucky they were there, because they spotted the trash can fire that the attendant had to put out with a fire extinguisher. my favorite, though, was on sunday around 11:30 pm when i stopped at a motel and wandered around the totally dark, creepy property for a few minutes before finding the sign on the office saying 'monthly rates only - call for information'. turns out i was about 100 yards down the road from my happily-lit, reservation-confirmed motel. i did manage to escape without getting hacked to bits by a movie villain, thank god.

my camera battery was dead, so i've included some mobile photo highlights of trip.

sunrise over the 5

(don't know what time, but it was about half way through the first rockstar energy drink)

popcorn clouds in nor cal

portland, or

more in portland


wouldn't be washington without rain, right?


welcome to seattle

the hopeless romantic

it's 8-7-08, which means my LAST DAY OF WORK is tomorrow!!! i can't even believe it has come so quickly... then next week i get to pack my heart out before heading up to seattle to prep to leave in early september. woo hoo!!

in other news, my friend desiree will be joining me in my last week in buenos aires - yay!! it's official - she has tickets and everything. my sister is going to hang out with me for a few weeks, too, but more on that later, since nothing's confirmed yet.

a question to ponder as i prepare to leave sf

i'm not very good at the 'most' and 'best' questions. you know, 'what did you like most about the movie?', 'what was the best part of the vacation?' i tend to start with a few things i fell in love with for different reasons and inevitably end up talking about anything that was remotely interesting to me, which is usually everything.

someone asked me today what i'm going to miss most about san francisco. um, that's a tough one. of course i'll miss my friends, coworkers and neighbors - all the people who have made up my little world here for the last five years. the way it takes k an hour to find the right outfit before going out. the way that s talks about early morning hours as 'one am in the morning'. and the way that c and i both violently react when we see cute dogs. i'll miss that i know these people so well because we've been so close for so long. and i'll miss the people i didn't get a chance to know that well, the people that i never took that extra step to pull in closer (but probably should have).

and the city. this amazing city that gives me a bear hug when i return from out of town. all of her many neighborhoods each with its own personality, style, likes, dislikes. the way that each feels different, and mine always feels like home. and being able to see the golden gate bridge from the roof of my apartment building. and the way sutro tower looks with a crisp blue sky behind it versus being half covered by fog. i love getting ready for work in the morning, being in my bathroom and hearing the different sounds of the electric 6 bus, the diesel 43 and the N on rails as they make there way around town. i love the strings of colored lights at murios and the dim atmosphere (but NOT the new booths) and mike and nick and casey and pbr tall boys and shots of jameson. i'll miss wandering around the park on sunny days and being with all the people, getting coffee at the boulange, staring at downtown from the kitchen window at work, watching the buildings under construction grow. i'll miss running into people i know in random places. (and i love that i know enough people to randomly run into them - it's taken me a while to get there.)

i want to write here, 'but, most of all, i'll miss X.' but there is no most of all. i'll miss lots of people and things for lots of reasons. i'll miss anything about this place that has touched me in some way, which is basically everything.

(and won't it be interesting to see, in another two months or so, what i actually do miss? will it be this moment sitting here listening to the fog horn and the buses go by, or will it be something i never expected?)

the background

the story isn't new to everyone, but it's new to me (which is all that matters, right?). i love to travel and have always wanted to go on a worldwide adventure or live abroad or something of the sort. i've had a few opportunities, but at the time there were reasons not to go, and i've since been waiting for the perfect moment, for someone to go with or something to go for. couple that with procrastination and, honestly, a little bit of fear, and you can see why it hasn't happened. i'm realizing, though, that the reasons not to go are only going to increase as time goes by and the perfect moment isn't as important as the actual moment, which is now. and, as they say, whoever 'they' are, there is no time like the present. so off i go.

here's the general itinerary, which is quite rough, yet.
early september 2008- fly to lima, peru. hang out there for a few days, before continuing on to buenos aires, argentina.
i'm thinking that i'll stay in buenos aires and live there for a few months. i've never lived abroad, only gone on short tourist vacations, and want to take some time to get to know a new city. i do intend to travel some - to macchu picchu with my mom in october (yay!), then short trips throughout argentina and uruguay and maybe a week in brazil, depending on time. of course, if i get there and hatch up a better plan, i'll adjust accordingly. as it stands, i'll be there until mid-november, at which point i'll come back to san francisco for a few days, and then head up to seattle for the holidays.

the second portion begins in early january with a cathay pacific business class flight (i love my frequent flyer miles - they allow me to be a huge airplane snob and avoid flying economy on long haul flights) to hong kong, where i'll be for two weeks, with a likely trip to shanghai as part of it. then in late january i'm off to bangkok, thailand.

now here's where the confirmed plans stop and the wandering really kicks in. i have a general thought about where i'll go, illustrated in this fabulous itinerary i created on the oneworld website.


this is a hazy idea of what i'm thinking - start in hong kong/bangkok and make my way down through southeast asia, indonesia and on to oceania. i may go to india if my friend meets me there, and will add in nepal to visit another friend, if i go to india.

actually, as i'm looking at it, i see this is an incredibly ambitious itinerary, because i'm only going from january to june, which i'm now thinking isn't enough time. but i have to be back in june for my ten year high school reunion, otherwise i'd stay over longer. hmm...

at any rate, i am not traveling with hard rules or deadlines, so i will figure it all out along the way. whatever it turns in to will be what is right at that time, and i hope to have the discipline to write about it all here along the way. aren't you excited! (of course you are.) so am i!