Quarter Year

New Site

2008-12-05T20:11:00.001-08:00

We're now blogging at http://quarteryear.wordpress.com
Our food blog is at http://thechickenwall.wordpress.com

See you there!

Mike & Azure

A quick shout out!

2008-11-05T20:42:00.000-08:00

I want to give a shout out to California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, (almost Missouri and Montana), Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin for making me proud to be an American again. When we travel, we represent the United States of America and also we are represented by it. The people we elect to represent us and the policies that our government makes can't help but make an impact on the way people see us as individuals. The administration of the last eight years has fought, forgotten, vilified and alienated so many people that it made me ashamed to be from and to represent this country.

On Tuesday, with the election of Barack Hussein Obama, the feelings of frustration and at times anger over that last eight years were finally vindicated and as I wake up today and look back at that time, I understand what we had to go through to get to where we are today and I would not change a single moment of it for the joy and pride I feel today. It has yet to be seen what the full impact of the Bush Administration will have on this country and on the world, but if the only positive thing that he has done for all of us is to unite a country to vote for a man despite his race, his name, and his political party, then that is something I can be grateful for.

I can understand how monumental this election was for so many black people in this country and around the world. I know in my heart that it will change the way they look at their country and at themselves and that President Obama's education, knowledge, understanding, and acceptance will inspire so many others of all races to follow in his footsteps. But for me, this election was about something even bigger than race, it was about hope beating fear.

During this election and since 9/11 I have felt like a traitor to my country, or more accurately, my country has made me feel like a traitor for not believing that the world is a bad place, for not believing that people have bad intentions and for not living in fear. I must admit that I too was afraid, but for me the fear was of those in my own country. I couldn't help but wonder if the citizens of America were on a runaway train towards world war, where all of the passengers were under the spell of some crazy group think that led us to believe that everyone was out to get us and there was no way to fight back, but with weapons and hate. I felt isolated and helpless against what I thought to be the status quo, and padded my existence with the select few who I believed shared my sentiment. Among us, there was a collective feeling that our government did not understand us, nor did they want to. In fact the only thing that I felt our government cared about was keeping me afraid and isolated from those they deemed enemies, so that they could exert power over the people and eventually whittle down our rights to those of an Orson Welles novel. That was my fear.

The truth that I see in this world and truth that I believe Barack Obama sees as well is that people are generally good. We all want the same things -- to love and be loved, to be understood and cared about, to have our basic needs and those of our loved ones met. People want world peace and the right to live and let live and if these needs are met, we can achieve understanding and peace. No matter how many times people tell me otherwise, I will not waver in my belief of these truths. I can talk about the times when I have allowed fear to enter my mind (going to Brazil, Thailand, Colombia), but I know down deep that the only regret I would ever have is not acting in spite of that fear. I know that for many in this country, electing Barack Obama is a fear that has been realized, but I also know that some people went to the polls and acted in spite of that fear. For them, I am the most proud.

I listened to both speeches last night, as did much of the world and as I listened to John McCain's well delivered and very respectable speech, I thought about his campaign and how things might have been different for him if he had run his campaign the way he gave that speech. But just as I was starting to like the guy, he said one line that reinforced beyond a doubt that we had picked the right man to lead us. McCain simply asked all Americans, among other things, to "defend our security in a dangerous world" and I knew that we were not talking about the same world. My world and the world that we elected to believe in is one of hope and promise and is not so dangerous, but misunderstood and frustrated and it too looks forward to a brighter tomorrow.

Mike and I recently finished the series "John Adams" (in case you haven't seen it, it's really awesome). It shows how we came to exist as an independent country. How the people who built this country did so with compassion and intellect and the idea that everyone should have the chance to live however they want and to say whatever they feel. For a long time now, I have been feeling like the best thing our country ever did was be the best at marketing. We made a name for ourselves for being "the land of the free and the home of the brave" and for having all the opportunities one could ever dream of. In recent years, the devotion to the core beliefs of our nation have been put in jeopardy with the decline in voter turnout and the overall apathy that the average American has towards knowing and exercising their rights. It made me feel like we were disgracing the memory of the people who fought so hard for us and our rights. And it made me feel bad for all the people who look to the united states as a land of opportunity only to see that maybe the opportunities are only available to a few. I suppose I have always known that those feelings are unjustified, that when we go abroad, we can see all the ways that America has made us who we are--strong, ingenious, resilient and confident that we can achieve anything we set our minds to. But with the election of Barack Obama, we have shown ourselves and the world that we are still this nation of hope, opportunity and promise.

Some people say and will say that nothing has changed, no policies made, no economic recovery in our immediate future, but I have seen and felt the change. It is tangible. We voted a man with the middle name of Hussein to be our next president when we are engaged in a fear-driven war against the middle east. For us to join together on the basis of hope is the accomplishment in itself. The rest will fall in to place.

Most of all I am happy to have seen this day. I am so proud to be an American, I'm proud to have voted for something that means so much to all of us, I'm proud to have danced and sang with my fellow Americans on the street and I'm proud when I see the faces of people around the world who now have hope that the United States will no longer be a bunch of assholes getting all up in their shit. Nov. 4, 2008 is one of the top 5 best days of my life and I am not ashamed to say so. For the first time in a long time, I am not embarrassed to express my hope for the United States because I know that my president shares my hope. I believe that this country and this world is a great place and one that I am proud to be a part of. And for now, while we wait to see what happens next, I am content being patient and happy and proud for all of us.

O-BA-MA

2008-11-05T18:50:00.000-08:00

After the Democrat party at the Westin, we stood on the corner and hooted while others honked. When we drove up to Capitol Hill, Mike honked the whole way and we hooted. Then we partied in the street.

Here is one of many high fives given on Tuesday night.

Mike found this quote in The Onion, I thought it was funny..."Carrying a majority of the popular vote, Obama did especially well among women and young voters, who polls showed were particularly sensitive to the current climate of everything being fucked. Another contributing factor to Obama's victory, political experts said, may have been the growing number of Americans who, faced with the complete collapse of their country, were at last able to abandon their preconceptions and cast their vote for a progressive African-American.

Citizens with eyes, ears, and the ability to wake up and realize what truly matters in the end are also believed to have played a crucial role in Tuesday's election."

I love this quote from Jay-Z..."Rosa sat so Martin could walk, Martin walked so Obama could run, Obama ran so our children could fly"

Everyone gets a picture with Barack.

There always has to be one of me looking a little haggard while still keeping the outfit looking crisp, clean and white.

Thoughts about last night

2008-11-05T08:02:00.000-08:00

Every time I saw a black person I wanted to say something to them like, "I hope this starts to make up for the past" or "Thank you for doing this for us" (because, as my dad said, "If Obama wins, African Americans will be the heroes of this election"). But I didn't say anything like that, I just screamed loudly for hours. There was one Af-Am guy who talked emotionally about his 104-year-old aunt who voted for the first time in her life. He hugged his boyfriend and I saw that the odds were stacked further against him. But we're getting there.

This election, for a night, cut the albatross of subtle racism from our necks. Last night I saw that I have a long way to get over my subconscious racism, but I also saw what we're capable of doing in spite of it, that we can exile the worst parts of us.

At 1am, I saw a lonely black homeless guy and I wondered what this election meant to him. Does he feel bouyed? Does he feel included? Does he feel his life will change (if he so desires) now that a black man is president?

As for us, we danced among thousands of chanting, singing, screaming, flag-waving, shofar-blowing, random-stranger-hugging, kissing, patriotic, BEAMING people at Pike and Broadway. Beaming people. That's something I'll remember about last night - uncontrolable smiles. The ecstasy (actually properly used here) of the immediate victory lasted hours and hours and hours as groups of people broke out spontaneously into celebratory howls that moved through the crowd like cloud to cloud lightening and didn't flicker out as long as we were there. When we hugged, the sentiment we exchanged was, "Congratulations." The Star Spangled Banner was sung a number of times, chants of USA!, Yes We Can, O-Ba-Ma as well, also, "Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye" to Bush, though I didn't like the negativity of that one.

We honked all night, we watched the acceptance speech at the Westin with the Democrats, tears rolling down all different colored and different shaped faces. Someone passed me a much-needed bottle of water and I took a huge swig - and it turned out to be gin, which didn't quite quench my thirst. Az asked if I was crying because of the gin or the election. "Both." I will never forget last night. We can finally go abroad and be proud to be American.

And Azure and I from video we shot last night:
M: "What have you got there?"
A: "Pringles."
M: "Oh Pringles!"
A: "Kenny bought them for me because I Can."

National Anthem in Seattle

2008-11-05T07:47:00.000-08:00

Cassie and Shay

2008-10-18T00:18:00.000-07:00

Upside Down Trees and Powerlines

2008-10-17T00:45:00.001-07:00

Kauai was a business trip.

2008-09-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

If we saw a souvenir shop selling Koa we'd stop so Dick, Azure's dad, could try to pick up an account. He's a woodworker for a living, making these gorgeous jewelry boxes that often incorporate Koa, a wood native to Hawaii.

At one particular place a buzz saw buzzed and we walked around the corner to find the woodworker straightening up. His boombox blasted opera, which immediately affected the class of the place, while pictures of hot 80s women in bathing suits held up the walls, which immediately affected the class of the place. It was heaven. It was, at the time we arrived, my favorite place we'd been on the short trip. The shop itself was vast but nook-and-crannied by lumber and heavy machinery, with an old set of dusty drums stashed in a corner self-consciously. The dude was cool, all business all pleasure, and his shop was lush with personality as the jungles outside.

The DeMeule's website: Wood Design by DeMeules.

Kauai Vines

2008-09-28T11:54:00.001-07:00

Kauai Morning

2008-09-28T11:51:00.000-07:00

At 6am I followed the path out of the condo complex and asked directions to the beach. The dude told me it was too far to walk. I walked to the Hyatt and out to the beach to watch the sunrise. There must have been 30 people all doing the exact same thing - spiritually, purposefully, and they'll go back to work Monday to put a Kauai sunrise on their desks.

For my desk at my office

This area is Disneylandy, it's hard to escape. (Two real advertisements: 1) "Nature's Disneyland" 2) "Guaranteed Dolphins!") It's this ugly parody of itself, luaus and whatever. They're the things that made Hawaiian culture unique and whites adopted the practices innocently, as ex-pats do in countries around the world, then the original practitioners were shoved aside and now we have luaus and flowered shirts and mai tais as gestures to escape, not to the sanctity of a particular home.

It was hard to walk the beach and not let my anger rise with the sun, but I managed. I see what this trip is and how little potential it has for depth in only 3 days and I'm thankful for what I'm getting.

I forget how lucky I am to see the top of a cloud. Geographically, this is distinct from Polynesia and the land farthest from any continent on earth, and yet I'm here painlessly, watching Azure sleep.

Lake Tapps, Washington

2008-07-06T14:44:00.001-07:00

More photos here.

Flashback...

2008-06-28T21:13:00.001-07:00

Sunset too cold to swim, Bariloche, Argentina, originally uploaded by Michael Joseph Goldst... etc.

Quarteryear
The water is so clear. When I look out at the blue part of the lake it looks blue in a way that isn´t on a color spectrum, but has got to be described as a depth, like 100 feet blue or something. I remember seeing this effect on a ferry in the Mediterranean, looking down and not being able to understand it as a color, only as a depth.

Last night we went down to the shore and stood at a parking lot where a bunch of RVs were parked - a bunch of brilliant people who woke up this morning and saw 360 degrees of mountains and 180 of that blue water when they first opened their eyes. We stood there - last night - with the wind tearing across the lake and throwing the icewater into the air. It was 10:30 but still light because we´re south and west in the timezone. It was so clear last night, the air is so clean.

We want to go swimming, but our feet ache when we stand in the water for more than 10 seconds because it´s so cold. We´re trying to take pictures of the mountains, but of course we can´t do them justice. Every corner we turn we´re reminded of the best places we´ve been - Seattle, Tahoe, Northern Italy, etc. We´re freshwater fish, I guess.

Bariloche, Argentina

A shot from Lake Tapps

2008-06-24T23:41:00.001-07:00

Traveling Friends

2008-06-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

We've got a few friends on the road right now: Ben is in Thailand and slated to return on Friday, Autsy and Jade are in Barcelona, Laura Guyman is also in Spain and Nicole is in Morocco. Nicole started a new blog for the Mansh girls.

For all who are traveling: enjoy!

When I was traveling this year, there was one thing that kept luring me home, one image I couldn't shake from my head...

Another fave.

2008-04-26T00:59:00.000-07:00

Attention hog

2008-04-13T17:02:00.000-07:00

This is the picture I was talking about - the one where people smiled.

The Bride.

2008-04-12T12:22:00.000-07:00

The bride, anxious before the ceremony.

I'm getting all the photos organized from the wedding I helped Kim & Adam with. After looking at all the pictures, I realized I definitely shot with bias - looking for people who were sincere, unguarded, people that seemed to be responsive to the weight of the event. This unfortunately means my favorites happen to be not-happy looking pictures (and I do hate smiles) so be warned. I think there was a smile in one of them, though.

You have seen me around town (aka Enzo's Birthday)

2008-04-07T09:48:00.000-07:00

On our last night in Siracusa, we decided to head to the island of Ortiga for drinks. We had been eating at this place on the mainland, but decided three nights in a row was a little excessive. We walked up past the duomo and out to the waterfront and found a busy restaurant among all of the deserted ones. We sat down for a glass of wine and started talking. They gave us peanuts and crackers, but nothing like the spread we found in Siena (see chicken wall in about a week). As we sipped and talked, the people began to finish and move on. By the end of the second glass it was a pretty sparse crowd, but some guys were setting up to play music. At the start of our third glass, we were one of only two groups in the whole place. The other group was a father and son, the kid was probably 8 and was being forced to quit running all around and eat some food. We decided that we really couldn't let these dudes just sing to a completely empty restaurant, so we decided to stay while they played. Another reason that was thrown around was that maybe the owners would try to lure us with some free shrimp in order to get their only customers to stay.

So the dudes played and played, one was on a sax and the other on his laptop, but he would occasionally sing too. We were literally the only ones outside listening to them for a good 30 minutes or so before a group quietly came and sat in the back. Also, men had been coming and going for a while, but we didn't see them, since they had been going inside. At the end of the third glass of wine, they finally brought us an little plate of mixed meats, cheeses, olives and artichokes. We were seeing a little headway, but no shrimp yet. Maybe if we played with the kid or cheered for the musicians.

Then we got something that we totally didn't need, a bottle of wine from one of the guys inside named Peppe. Along with it came a note and since I am quite conceited, I will assume that when Peppe writes, 'Hello I am Peppe, I would like to know you, may I offer you and your friend a drink?' that I am the You and mom is the friend. I went in to thank Peppe and to ask him to come talk to us, but when he said he spoke 'un poco' english he really meant it, like in the way that I speak 'un poco' italiano, which is -can I have a room or where is the bathroom. The conversation went no where which was alright, since it was a little weird.

Around this time, his friend came out who did speak english and said 'you have seen me around town.' I don't know how other people would respond to this statement, but I just sat there in silence for a few seconds. I did not want to insult him, but no, we hadn't seen him around and he must either be extremely conceited himself or mistaking us for another blond mother daughter troop that was also in Siracusa. I ended up not answering before he pulled out his election flyer. All around Italy, the streets are littered with these election handouts of the candidates and their faces and the bus stops are plastered with giant, though somewhat creepy pictures of the political hopefuls. Ah, so he was running for local office! For those Redmondites, the Rosemary Ives of Siracusa -- Although he has yet to be elected.

We chatted for about five minutes before being asked to join in Enzo's birthday party, which meant going over and sitting near the now large group at the back and singing to this guy Enzo. Then we ate cake with Enzo and his friends before the group retired to hours and hours of karaoke. We hung out and Francesco (the political hopeful) would fill us in on things, like that Enzo LOVED to sing, which was why the 'band' was brought in. We endured a few hours of great karaoke performences by our new friends which included many english songs that sounded like someone had forgotten the words and was just humming. We drank and snacked and ended up walking back to the room around 2:30. Fun times. Felice Cumpleanos, Enzo!

Happy Birthday

2008-04-02T02:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my birthday and I was lucky enough to spend it in Sicily with my mom. It was raining a little when we woke p in Palermo on the northern coast of Sicily. The city was huge and overwhelming and since we only have a week left here and not wanting to spend all of our time figuring out the city and what to do amongst the grit and traffic, we decided to head south to Siracuse. It was great, about a 6 hour ride with a stop over in Catania. It rained hard all day, so the train was nice and warm, like being inside with a fire on a stormy day. Actually I couldn't have asked for a better day. I got to sit and watch the land go by. The island is very hilly and full of fields and abandoned settlements. the history here is more like Greece than northern Italy. The ruins date back to the 1st and 2nd centuries.

When we got in to siracuse it was around dusk and still pouring. We don't actually have a guidebook for Sicily, so our trip here has been based on a book of festivals, which was for 2007 and a beautiful (also free) hadout of coastal towns. We had spent some time in the book store translating some of lonely planet and writing down the addresses of place to stay. So, we headed out in the rain to find an internet cafe to check a map (a lot of the places in Sicily don't have info near the train station). There were pools of water in the street, so we got the cliched spray from the car and got completely soaked. After finding it on the map, we headed out in the direction that the people at the cafe had told us. We were bundled up in our scarves, soaking wet and just hoping they had rooms. We chatted about it having a tv and our own bathroom (such a luxury), but didn't actually believe that it would, but it did!!! The room is nice, it is right across the bridge to the island of old Siracuse, so it is great location and everything we need.

We got dry and set out for my birthday dinner. We were both excited for a good dinner of pasta and wine at a place called La Spiega (also our favorite place in Seattle), but it appeared many of the restaurants were closed, so we were forced to go to the equivelant of Red Robin. There was a big soccer match on, so the place was actually pretty full. Mom had a bacon cheeseburger and I had a veggie burger, which turned out to be really good. It was a falafel patty with fixings for a burger. All in all a good night.

Siracuse is really beautiful. It is a bright blue day today and we will walk to the ruins and probably end up spending 3 nights here. It is manageable and on the sea and close to some of the side trips we want to take. We'll try again for our big italian meal tonight, but even sitting there in front of the huge poster of Newport Beach, CA (which was taken about 6 blocks from my uncle and aunt's house) I had a very happy birthday. I feel so lucky to be here and lucky to be able to spend this time with my mom no matter where we end up.

Trust

2008-03-31T01:00:00.000-07:00

I don't have travelling experiences like this very often. Not since my friend Darren and I arrived in Paris for the first time in 2000 have I thought to myself, what am I doing here, what made me think I could just do this!?! My mom and I were totally unprepared for Sicily. We booked our tickets from the comfort of our home and gave little thought to that portion of the trip other than getting on the plane.

Tuscany was planned and easy, 2 nights in Venice, 3 in Florence, a night in Lucca and 3 on the road in hill towns around the region. All extremely beautiful and all totally easy. You can look up the street and expect that most people speak some or are fluent in english. There are tourists everywhere, you can't go anywhere without seeing others like you, which isn't a big deal, but it is easy, the road is paved. We had out guidebook and we were set.

Sicily- we arrived at 7am from Pisa on a flight that required us to be at the airport at 4am. Trying to be creative about our budget and realizing that we usually don't end up going to bed before midnight anyway, we decided to wait in the train station for 4 hours before our flight. Needless to say, we were dirty, hadn't washed our clothes in weeks and probably smelled like the homeless people we ended up hanging with all night.

The airport in Trapani was small and it was a Saturday. we got off the plane and confidently walked out to catch the bus. Elsewhere, Ryanair had provided easy transportation door to door to a place of interest, but this was not the case here. At this airport there was no information booth and no bus. We walked out and quickly realized that people were getting picked up by friends and family and everyone was leaving and going somewhere. It was at this point that I felt it, that we could possiblly be the only people in the whole place who were tourists, who needed to take a bus and no one spoke english. I kept checking the bus schedule, but it was different on Saturdays and someone had warned us that sometiems the busses just don't come in Sicily. A woman finally appeared and said she needed to take the bus. The thing is, in situations like this all you can do is trust people- trust that the woman knows what she is talking about, trust that the next bus, if not this bus will come for you and more importantly, trust yourself that what you are understanding from your 1 weeks worth of italian is giving you the correct information. The bus finally came!

All four of us got on, mom and I, the woman who was waiting with us and one other lady plus the driver. The driver was really charismatic and though he treated us like circus animals (Americans in Trapani? Why? What are you doing here?), he was very helpful. We told us where to go and even took us on the bus to a hotel he had reccommended in the city center (probably why the busses are never on time). He called his friend who spoke a very little english and picked him up to translate a little more for us. The hotel was great, right in the center of town, right where everyone strolled at night. He reccommended a place to eat that we went to and loved and we made it to the ruins at Erice that he had told us about. Had we not gotten on that particular bus, we would have never had the experiences that we did in Trapani.

When we first got in, we went right to bed for 5 hours, woke up around 5pm and went for a walk all raround the city. We strolled with the crowds and tried to go to the restaurant, but it was full that night. we decided to order out pizza from this place that looked like a mob scene and spent 10 minutes getting up the courage to go inside with al those people who did know what they were doing, another 30 minutes waiting inside to get to the counter, and then 15 minutes waiting to be acknowledged when at the counter. After that another hour for the pizza to be done. I was scared to speak talian in such a large crowd of people, but my mom made me and I'm glad she did, it was good pizza. Sicilian style of course, we got proscuito and parmasean and took it back to our room and ate it while we watched Home alone in italian and went to sleep.

The next day was a Sunday, the most difficult of the days to travel on. Most things were closed and after finding our way to the station, realized that perhaps the bus didn't run. However, we recalled one of the train conductors saying something abot a feniculare and a 3K walk. We headed out of town toward something we thought we heard, passing all the people with their families coming out of church. 3K later, we found it, a large ski lift that went to the top of the hill, Erice! In the lift, we gave ample high fives and headed to the top. It was sunny and clear. teh town was beautiful, old and tricky. We found a bus back and made it to the reccomended restaurant that night for some local pasta. MMMMMMMMMMM Sicily.

Assailed by Buddhists!

2008-03-29T22:26:00.000-07:00

I wanted to start this post by describing people who live in Kirkland, but my vocabulary's not adequate so I'll assume you know about them. They're ridic, in short.

Nicole and I did hot yoga there today and I noticed that the brand of yoga I practice in Seattle is by no means the most yuppie yoga - it's way to the Chrysler side of Kirkland on the Yuppie Spectrum - and driving home in the snow we talked about whether it's a good thing that a philosophy/practice like this is being employed kinda emptily in a materialistic place. The answer was emphatically yes (I mean, YES!): Peace infiltrating mainstream culture is basically good, right? And more generally, I'd rather have an introspective Kirkland than, you know, whatever the opposite is. Cosmetic laser hair removing, for example.

With this Buddhism thing I've gotten squeezed from both sides and in the middle I'm trying to sort out the content. The individuals I met conjured the classic line of "Lord, please protect me from your followers," except there's no lord here. So it's something more like, "Basic Essence of the All Things, please protect me from the forms you might take." It's less funny.

I got this idea somewhere that practicing Buddhism gave you the same qualities of the religion, but I'm reminded that's not the case - that for as high quality as the philosophy sounds, it seems to clothe some angry naked people. A long time ago, in regards to Christianity and Judaism and Islam, I separated the spiritual message from the actual person, just like when traveling you have remember that an American is not his government (please, world, remember that). But I never made that separation for Buddhism because it's not an organized religion. I assumed that someone who practices Buddhism is into self-improvement just because they'd heard of Buddhism. But there's patience and there's Patience. There's acting serene and there's serenity, and the difference is whether the value is being cultivated or imposed. IMO LOL BRB.

What it comes down to is that if you take any collection of people, a lot of them are probably messed in the head somehow: guilt-ridden or angry or - the worst - self-righteous. And that goes for everyone from the Nazis to the Buddhists. Whether they're true Nazis or Buddhists is for someone else to decide. (actually, I'll be deciding that later, too).

To complete the squeeze, yesterday on The Conversation the topic was, "Religion: has it been good or bad for mankind?" Holy shit. I was expecting some real crackpots to participate but the callers were actually impressive and articulate. One idea stood out to me - that an organization puts its own survival above everything, and when it comes up against its individual members' best interests (in this case, personal spirituality), something has to give. This seems to be the strength of Buddhism, that it's so loosely organized, decentralized. But when I decided to leave the retreat they asked me a number of times to not start packing until everyone was in meditation... even though that would be 2 hours later. I waited, of course.

Lost in all this crap is the content of the whole thing, and I realize I have to keep an open mind to it because - as I said - a lot of people I know and love have gotten a lot out of it. But man, it's a lot of crap to wade through.

Backwards

2008-03-29T15:27:00.001-07:00

"The battle at Ingraham (High School in Seattle) is the latest fight over construction that includes the felling of dozens of big trees, an act that seemingly runs counter to city and state goals to increase tree cover for its environmental, economic and health benefits.

"'Trees are important, but the code and the policies have to be balanced with private property,' said Scott Kemp, a planner with the city's Department of Planning and Development."
[PI]

I'm Youtubing!

2008-03-27T17:54:00.000-07:00

Now we can start posting some of the videos we took on the trip. This one is from the Recoleta market.

My shot at the big time!

2008-03-26T23:15:00.000-07:00

When a rabbi yells at everyone to "Shut up!" everyone shuts up, or at least they should, in my opinion. And yesterday everyone did shut up when he yelled. He slammed his hand on the table and I flinched. "Show some respect!" The groom, sitting next to the rabbi at the long table, started again reading his prayer in Hebrew so quietly that I doubt anyone would have heard him even if it had been silent. There was such a crowd. Orthodox Jewish men - complete with black hats and long beards - packed the room, each trying to gather his own glance of the show: This young man who was about to marry the rabbi's daughter, who was he? Who was this kid claiming the absolutely stunning young bride, the bride with the smile that wrings adrenaline from your chest and who - I swear to god - could move objects with her eyes, if not set them on fire or make them explode. Who was going to lay in bed with her tonight?

But nevermind her, I suppose. She was in another room and I was among the men, close and listening, and I squeezed between them all to kneel in the cramped space not four feet from the groom exhaling his prayer. He rocked back and forth with the words. His eyes were open wide, looking past the book and past the table, almost directly at me, but past me and through the ground. I was a ghost again yesterday, like I went back to the retreat because I had forgotten something and returned invisible, able to stagger through these intimidating Jewish men without raising scrutiny, steeling myself between the onlookers and the main show. When the prayer ended we listened, breaths held, to the rabbi say some words. And finally, with his punctuation, the whole room launched into cheers, laughter, singing, clapping and dancing, circles and shouts and many hugs and handshakes. In between hugs and handshakes the groom beamed and poured a shot of vodka for a new relative. I was there with the camera, and I snapped away.

When Azure's cousins told me they were shooting an Orthodox Jewish wedding I begged them to let me be an assistant - I'd hold the flash or hold their equipment or move crap around or whatever... I knew there was a lot to do and I didn't mind the work, I just had to be there, I had to see this. How often does an orthodox rabbi's daughter get married? And besides, I'm still supposed to be at the meditation retreat, so anything I get to do is frosting. But as much as I insisted I be a water boy, they actually gave me a camera and told me to do my thing freely; They say they love my travel photos and so I brought those eyes to this event as well. Plus, the more pictures the better. They're in a business where they might take - literally - 3,000 photos a day because in a few weeks they'll have to present the cream of the crop as the new family heirloom, and it'd better be good. So the more the better.

I gave myself the job of catching things that were either behind the photographers (like older kids taking care of babies, or jealous sisters waiting jealously) or maybe I'd try capturing the scene as a whole. I liked this idea, so sometimes I wedged myself in a corner to take wide-angle shots of whatever chaos was going on. They told me the ceremony would be outside under a chuppa in this long, narrow corridor that led to the synagogue, so there was probably no way I'd get close enough to see the wine glass break or the bride unveiled. Even the guests wouldn't see much of the show (with the exception of the immediate family at the very front), so I had this vision that I'd work with what I had and maybe I'd stand way way far away, like across the street and up a block, and see if I could get an enormous wide-angle of the entire congregation huddled together against the walls of the synagogue with mountains and clouds in the background, maybe evergreens, maybe a couple eagles soaring as well. But it turns out the angles weren't right, the eagles weren't there.

So I scouted the corridor and found a solid option number two - around a corner was a chain-link fence that ended at a wall. I climbed the fence and stood on top of the railing then grabbed hold of the roof and pulled myself up. I dusted off my suit and walked back along the roofline to find I was looking down perfectly on the ceremony and the families and the rest of the crowd as it poured toward the center. I had the eagle's eye view. I could actually walk the whole length of the action unimpeded, ghostily, with a unique angle. I was so proud of my photography skills!

The chuppa obscured some of the scene, but I took some beautiful pictures: him, with his hands hanging down to either side of his black suit, next to her, with her hands clasped under the veil's long tail; I got a picture of Mom holding back the bride's veil for a sip of wine; and I got a picture of the groom's foot as it rises to break a glass while his wife's feet peak out from under her dress. It was fucking fantastic up there. I love being on roofs.

We met the families earlier during portraits. The groom's family was small, but the dad was this commanding dude with this huge beard (and belly to match) and he talked like he was speaking English in Hebrew. It didn't matter whether you understood him, you'd better answer the question. They were from somewhere on the East Coast - I think he was a rabbi too - and there was no mother, no mention of the mother. The groom was good looking, he had that compelling look of lively young eyes behind a long beard and hat brim and he was personable, smiling a lot, but following Dad's lead. After we did portraits of their family, they filed out and the bride's enormous family piled in.

But while I was in the back looking for something I peaked into the sanctuary - it was empty and dark except some natural light drifting down onto the alter. The groom was sitting there, alone, praying. I asked if I could take a picture and he said I could and my heart was totally racing as I set up. I wasn't really confident using Kim's camera but I fired off a couple shots. I hope they turned out. I was so nervous.

We didn't get to see much of the bride, but she was stunning... have I said that? I know brides are supposed to be the most beautiful people at the wedding, but I'm pretty sure she was the most beautiful person in the state, with Azure being in Italy right now. Her presence overwhelmed the scenes - the enormous family portraits were so clearly about her I can't imagine a jealous sister's wedding. But like I said, I didn't see much of her - the men and women were separated for most of the event.

I loved being around a big Jewish family again - it reminded me of my East Coast family community that's self-aware, self-contained, complete and whole. Other American communities seem to bleed into each other and let the edges blur. With the Jewish community, though - and I've noticed this at other events - it feels sufficient. Like the family and community are enough. The roles are set and known and expected, there's history and tradition and for the entire population there is a home no matter where they go. It feels circular, if that makes any sense.

Notes from my journal

2008-03-23T19:31:00.000-07:00

There was one really strange dude I talked to before the vow of silence - he was in the middle of a "career change," as he put it, having formerly been a grounds' keeper at a golf course but was now getting into gold prospecting (obviously), going from claim to claim in Washington looking for the gold. After the retreat he's going to head to Oregon for some claims there, then down to California to check out a new meditation center, and to look for gold in 49er country. He talked about a guy he met who had $200,000 in gold stashed in his basement but would bring it out every once in a while to show his friends. I was uncomfortable with the conversation and changed the subject. When he smiled there was serious black in between his teeth and he said he's addicted to coffee and when he comes to these retreats he can feel himself going through withdrawal, though there is coffee available. He'd also been addicted to alcohol for 25 years and it ruined his marriage, the meditation helped him out of alcoholism and the reconciled, though they didn't re-up. When I'd ask him a question, he'd think for about 3 seconds looking at me in the eyes, look down and think about it, then look back up and answer looking at me in the eyes again. It made me wonder how far his mind was from his body.

I found faultiness in my wiring too - for example, this sentence I'm writing right now I've probably said in my mind 30 times in slightly different ways with different emphasis. When I think a situation is interesting or worth recording I narrate EVERYTHING for my journal or other writing in my head... I think it makes me a good writer, refining constantly, but it also drives me nuts when, for example, I'm not allowed to write or talk to anyone for 10 days - the words just sit there bouncing back and forth, running like looped tape until I can finally let them spill out (in writing, usually) and then my head is empty and ready for new stimulus. The meditation was good because it not only showed me that I had this chatter going on, but I could also quiet it pretty easily if I need to.

I realized I'm much more interested in the outside (of my body) world than the inner journey - the disembodied head said that we shouldn't meditate outside because a breeze might obscure our breath. The times I was most affected, though, were when I was walking outside, early dawn and late dusk. At 4:30am on the first day I remember walking outside and just being in awe of these evergreens that dominate one side of the grounds, there's a little bench under one tree and some light rain was coming down, the sky just starting to fade from black to deep navy blue... it was GORGEOUS and we weren't supposed to meditate there. I mean, maybe we'd build up to it 8 days later, but I don't know.

I thought a lot of the other people were odd, but I was the one who ended up spending a lot of time standing, looking at those six trees lined up beautifully, towering at the end of the field, sucking in the rain. I stood there and blurred my eyes a little, looked through them and when I did that I could see each of them was moving very subtly, waving or twisting or bouncing, each one moving different from the others, but all six clearly alive and enjoying the rain. I turned my back to them and looked at the Center, the grounds where students were allowed to walk and the figures wandering, ghosts, wandering in circles. The place looked like a mix between a mental institution and a retirement home. Sometimes it felt like a prison - the full day I spent there was the longest day of my life. There was nothing to do but meditate and nap. I napped four times that day. FOUR! And it wasn't that the seconds were dragging on - I had nothing to look forward to, so I wasn't waiting for anything. The forever thing was in looking back - I couldn't distinguish 5am from 9am from 11am from 3pm... it all blurred together, but there was a lot if it (try focusing intensely on your breath and not being aware of anything else) and it was all in one day.

I had a number of different songs stuck in my head, most troublingly the Beyonce song, "Ooh boy you lookin like you like what you see, won't you come over and check up on it, I'm a let you work up on it, ladies let him check up on it, watch him while he check up on it, dip it pop it work it stop it check on me tonight" which must have played on a loop 300 times in my head and made me appreciate the emphasis on quieting the mind. I mean, I like the song, but once or twice at the most. Christ.

I was worried about talking in my sleep but I didn't, I'm pretty sure. I just snored some. The guy next to me did talk in his sleep, though, but it's amazing what you can let other people do when you couldn't possibly be responsible for their well-being - we just let him talk. It was his deal. There was a guy putting on his shoes and he stepped in them wrong, both feet at the same time somehow, and fell over right in front of me. I darted past him to put my shoes on while he thrashed around under a chair. I walked out the door without even smiling.

One guy did say something to me once, right as I was leaving. I knocked on the door for the manager and a guy who was meditating turned to me and said, "I think he's outside." I was totally stunned. It was the only time I saw the silence broken, the only time anyone even acknowledged me. It's really strange, of course, to be among these people and even if there's eye contact, you assume it's accidental. I didn't want that to be normalized to me regardless of how long I was there. There were probably 20 guys there and if 18 showed up on my front porch today I wouldn't recognize them.

It really was like the Dharma Initiative on Lost - the same furniture, equality and utilitarianism, complete with the leader girl who was creepy-cute, like they took an attractive girl and shoved monkey eyes in her head. The creepy-cute leader dude looked JUST like our alcoholic neighbor Scott, but acted JUST like my favorite elementary school teacher, Mr. Harris. Thinking about him I realized I'd been passed off from good male role model to good male role model throughout my school years - Mr. Harris to Mr. Orlando to BK (and of course my dad the whole way through as well). It made me feel lucky.

Only 8 days short!

2008-03-23T11:45:00.000-07:00

So, having a haunting experience is good, right? I was actually a little afraid of remaining fucked up from it - like having lasting effects from being "cut open" without being sewn back up, but I'm adjusting back to life just fine. When I left the retreat, as soon as I made the decision to go it was like coming up for air from underwater and I thought I'd just jump back into life effortlessly. I mean, to me, I'd only been there two of the ten days, so I couldn't have had THAT many side effects. So I escaped (it felt like that) and got back in the car, blasted the music, blasted the heat, rolled the windows down... then my mind started tripping and telling me to cut out the stimulation for just a little while. I realized that even if I didn't stay the whole session, I WAS just sitting there meditating silently for two entire days, which I guess is extreme. I hadn't done it for ten consecutive minutes before this week.

In the end, I was getting to like the meditations, but they scared me, obviously. I only had two really good ones when all was said and done - the first coming when, after a couple hours of practice, I was able to focus my mind on my breath and rode it like a swimming horse for about 10 minutes. I slept like a baby afterwards.

The next meditation was what changed my time there, what ultimately shook me out: it was the best one, the deepest one.

When you go to this retreat, they take away contact with the external, outside world, and that's fine. No phone, no email, no media. That's how humans evolved, so no big deal, and we all have weekends where we're holed up. It would be like camping sober, but I wasn't expecting it to be fun anyway.

But then they take away your immediate external world as well - your contact with other people. This would be a bit challenging by itself, but the mindfuck is that you're actually SURROUNDED by people, living in close quarters with them. The no talking rule extends to all communication, of course, so you can't talk nor gesture nor even make eye contact. You're cut off and you're just a bunch of ghosts wandering among each other, you're supposed to be completely alone. This had effects that I didn't see coming - without an outlet for communication, my personality just melted away and became totally unimportant. When I wanted to make a comment or I saw something interesting or I wanted to share with the guy next to me, "hey, this is kinda intense," I couldn't. I had to keep it to myself. In fact, there was no way at all to differentiate myself from any other blob of flesh or even from some other object. It meant that laughing was over with, since, really, you only laugh when you communicate or are stimulated by something outside yourself. Humor needs two things: a source and a responder. There was no humor here. Even smiling - I mean I smile sometimes when I think of something funny, like my cat falling into the bathtub, but how often do I LOL as the result of my own quiet thoughts - once a week?

Being a ghost was really fucked up when it was meal time - keeping your head down and walking past everyone, but with everyone. You sit at a table 6 inches from another person and you never know who you're sitting next to. As in, you never even know which one it is - that guy with the ponytail? That young guy with the dreads? The other guy with the other pony tail? The guy with the dreads in a ponytail? You never know because you never have to know because even if you DID know, it wouldn't matter to you because you can't talk, so you just sit there not knowing nor caring who's 6 inches from you, just looking at your food, being alone, looking at your food. I could have gotten up from my meal and walked away never having even glanced over or taken any notice that I might be sitting next to Bill Clinton.

So, that's all external world stuff. Then there's stuff that bridges the gap between external and internal - there's no entertainment like games and no books, journals or music - the external, personal things that give mental reference points. That's all taken away as well.

The toughest thing for them to take away, though, is your inner world of mind & thought because it's the only thing that the center can't put rules on - they can only adjust the environment and hope to affect your mind. Because I didn't have a journal, all my thoughts were like leaves blowing around in the air. I couldn't really catch them and hold them, there were too many and they were moving too fast. So I'd be thinking about the future - trips, home, my business, whatever, and think of something like, "I wonder what language they speak in Indonesia. I should look that up. But I don't have the internet, so I guess I'll wait, but I really want to know, because it would be cool to learn it, so I'll have to write it down so I remember to look it up, but I can't write anything down, so I'll just have to remember. But there's no way I'll remember something for ten days, so I guess I can't do anything about it..." I realized it was useless - that 10 days was a HELLA long time and there was no point to getting excited about the future. Getting excited, planning, the idea of building and creating something - those would all have to wait. I was here, I couldn't plan and I couldn't record my ideas. Just as my personality was pointless in a place with no communication, thoughts were pointless in a place with no outlet. So my big meditation breakthrough was when I realized that of all the levels of life - the outside world, the world immediately around me, my inner world - the only thing I REALLY had was at the very very center of it all - my body and its functions, no past to chew on, no future to plan. The world had lost communication with me, the people around me had forgotten about me, I couldn't even hold a thought. All I had was my breath, my pulse, my muscles. I was looking up at cellar door closing. I felt dead.

With this mindset, I went into the next meditation thinking, "All I have is my breath" not to convince myself, but because I was already convinced. It was an awesome meditation - for 45 solid minutes I was SO focused and in the groove and it felt great. I slept like a baby afterwards.

When I woke up I asked myself what had happened. Was this idea - "all I have is my breath" - a thought that I wanted in my mind? A value with which I wanted to nourish a world view? And besides that, was it even true? Emphatically, no. (I mean, NO!) I have Azure, my house & family, my job & travel, friends and food and the internet. And, even more immediate, I have myself: I've been feeling really good about myself - confident, healthy, sharp, smart, happy. This is the most centered I've ever been and it was ridiculous to come to a place of drastic changes - a place where a lot of people are having their own personal paradigm shifts - and undergo change I didn't want. I love life and am excited about things all the time, every day, and I guess I just wasn't ready to take the chance that I was trading in my current mindset for something undefined in the future. I know everything is impermanent, isn't that convenient for turning bad things good? If I'm happy, isn't that the point?

I like the people in my life, they seem to like me, I think I can relate to people. Many of the other students at the retreat were odd - a surface critique, I know, but these things are significant when you're submerging yourself for 10 days. The few I talked to seemed to be "dealing with life" rather than enjoying it. It made me wonder: I'm happy about my relationships with my friends and family, but how would we relate if I became odder? Is this a place that attracts odd people because it's safe or does the practice CREATE odd people? That's what I was really afraid of. Would being here make me weird? I guess I'll never know.

Religions (including Buddhism) start with the assumption that we humans are flawed, and we need to work toward perfection/salvation (Daniel Quinn). I just don't agree with that view - I think we are what we are and there's tons of beauty out there to be found or sought out. Who says we're flawed? Who says we're suffering? If I leave the birth-death cycle, do I get to listen to "Dictaphone's Lament" by Tycho, or do I leave that behind too? Now THAT would be a flaw.

Furthermore, with this practice in particular, I'd never been a follower of anything like this - I'm either off by myself or leading. So the big brother thing makes me bristle. There was the disembodied voice on the speakers & the floating head talking in a weird, rhythmic way on the television, people sitting facing two revered teachers in the front who never actually spoke, a chant in a foreign language, a bow... for as non-religious as it was, it was religious. The head said this was a "technique" and I totally believe that it probably works when taught as a technique... but why talk all funny? It's another surface critique, but why did the disembodied head talk funny? He could have talked normal, but he didn't. If there is a rhythm of speech that's "normal" and "abnormal" and 95% of the people out there talk "normally," then why does he talk "abnormally"? Is it part of enlightenment, a place people reach when you start talking slowly and lose control of your lips? My feeling is that if you're teaching a technique and saying it's not a religion, you teach with the intent of being understood. This looked like a place of worship, though - why chant in another language? Why bow? Why did the leader talk like a hypnotist?

To be fair, I know not all Buddhist practices are alike, and this seems to have been an extreme branch. To be even more fair, I bailed after 2 days in a 10 day session for the reasons listed above, and so I didn't get the full story, though I also think it was a failing of theirs to not outline it. The disembodied head described it as a mind surgery, and "you wouldn't want to start a surgery, then leave halfway through." True, but I didn't want to go into surgery without a full consultation, either, especially a surgery I didn't want. I just wanted to sit quietly and listen to wise people talk. The disembodied head also called the people who leave early "weak," but I came to another conclusion independently - if I was going to succeed here, I was going to have to be strong enough to allow myself to be weak enough to accept the teachings without questioning them. I left not because I was weak, but because I didn't want to let myself be vulnerable to something I didn't understand.

To be fair, also, a number of people who I respect and love have gotten a lot out of this and I wouldn't have even thought about going if I didn't see the positive things it did for them. All I can say is that it wasn't for me.

I came home and immediately wrote about 7 pages in my journal, so there's a ton of stuff that was notable and I might end up writing some of it here as it occurs to me, but it would probably be better to just talk to me in person.

Learn Indonesian!

Tycho - Dictaphone's Lament

Rush hour

2008-03-23T10:49:00.000-07:00

3/19/08 We arrived at the Ryanair airport in an out-lying town of Venice around 5pm. Not knowing what else to do and being scared off by warnings that Venice is one of the moste expensive places in Italy, we thought about staying one night in the remoter town. Laziness, however had something else in mind and there being a bus with a sign to Venice for 6E tempted us to just step on and ride. We made it to the city around 6, completely dissoriented and found out that we were actually on the island, a complete surprise to us both. We found a stream of people going to and from somewhere and decided to follow it. It led to the train station, where people were coming and going in the dark. Honestly, I expected to hate Venice with its crowds and tourism, but this stream was real. It was people doing something, going to or from somewhere, leaving work to take the train home or arriving with bags. No one was buying glass crap or wandering aimlessly to the big attractions. Rick Steves, who I now think is a someitmes helpful alarmist (for various reasons) says the train station is nothing more than an area meant to rip off tourists and you should get away as quickly as possible. I found it the most authentic part of the island, I felt like I was doing something just be walking in the ant stream of other people doing things.

We made it to the train station without reservations anywhere and no idea where to look. They were no help, would only book hotels (meaning 300E a night) and finally pointed us in the direction of an internet cafe. They were a big help. The guy informed us that there were hotels with no stars and they lined the main road from the station. We found one right across the street from the internet place for 50E. It was in another building from the hotel and was obviously a converted flat in a back alley. We put our things down and navigated the small streets, going with the flow without a map. We found ourselves in St. Marco Square, a crowded Disneyland by day and fairly empty and glowing int he moonlight that night. I like the fact that people leave the city at night. It makes it feel so small after dark. You find yourself alone on a back alley and can undrstand what it was like way back when. We had seen a really cute and reasonable place to eat on the walk and surprisingly found it again on the way back after 2 hours of walking and getting lost.

The next morning, we woke up to shining blue skies, which were definitely not predicted. We headed up the road to a cafe on the canal right across from the fish market. There were people bringing goods to and from the shops by boat and the trash boats were out. Again, people were doing things on this particular alley, which made me so happy. An old woman sat alone at the table next to us. She was probably 80 and wore fur, as many of them did and would call to her friends, all of them over 70 and also wearing fur, who were heading to or from the market. Apparently 25 percent of the population is over 65.

We headed back to the hotel to get our things and meet Jamie at the place we had booked for that night. We took the water bus and found our way to the place. It was in a beautiful area near the hospital and the college. It wasn't on the route to or from St. Marco, Realto or the station, so it was relatively empty. The thing about the city is that you only have to go off the path 2 blocks to find yourself walking alone looking at the aged buildings, all impressive, all showing you a glorious time long ago without cars and when people took the time to make their homes beautiful and unique.

We met up with Jamie and mom took us on a self guided river tour on the public waterbus (OK, thank you Rick Steves for this). We saw the 7 storey mansions and the museums and the doors half underwater, where long ago people entered by boat. Venice itself is an amazing idea and it is wonderful that people took the time to make it real.

We went to drinks at a stand-up bar, drank wine and chatted for over an hour before heading to dinner. It took us a while to find the right place, some places were intimidating, only local men over 50, some were too hip, only well-dressed teens, but this one was perfect, the waitstaff was older and didn't smile a ton. There were middle aged people there, well dressed, but not too much. There were tourists from Austria and locals and us and it was perfect. We tried spritzi, which was tasty and got us a little drunk. All in all, I can say I was surprised and excited by the city and I'm glad we were able to start our trip with such fun memories.

Easter

2008-03-23T09:54:00.000-07:00

Thinking that Mike would be out of communication until next Saturday due to his silent meditation retreat, I thought that I had time to catch up on the blog-he is the only one who consistently bugs me about it. We'll I got word that he left, it wasn't for him, I'm sure he'll explain more later. Anyway, mom, Jamie and I are in Florence, our third night here. None of us are on a normal sleep schedule. The first night, Jamie was up until 4, I was up until 6 and mom slept fine, last night, Jamie was up until 6, mom and I slept until 4 and then couldn't sleep. I had been thinking about how nice it would be to walk around the major sites without other people there, so mom and I decided to take advantage of our early morning and went for a two hour walk at 6 am. As we expected, it was pretty deserted. We walked to Ponte Vecchio, through the Uffizi courtyard and into the Piazza della Signoria. We were alone most of the time, with the exception of a few other early risers. It was beautiful this morning again, sun with some clouds, but bright enough where the sun shone on the river, but illuminated the clouds and fog in the distance. It was so quiet and deserted, such a change from the day before when we had to push our way through the whole way on the same route. We walked quietly to the old doors of the city and back to the hotel by 8am.

At around 9 we went out again to watch the easter progression that the lady at the hotel had mapped out for us. We didn't really know what to expect, but we caught up to the route right at the end, which as we found out was the main event. We turned a corner and all of a sudden we saw these huge oxen all dressed up in their fancy outfits pulling large shrine. There were people blocking the sidewalks, like at a parade, so we walked with the shrine for a while through the streets to the Duomo where it finally stopped and set up a fireworks festival. We had made reservations the day before for Accademia at 10:30, so we had to go about a half hour before the fireworks were lit from the shrine, but it was really exciting to be in the crowd with all the bells chiming from the church and the drummers and trumpeters.

Accademia was nice, small for the hype, but it housed David and the slaves statues. I am usually not one for museums, but I must say David is one large and impressive man. All naked and looking good.

After our sleep part 2 (a four hour nap), we're heading out to dinner and drinks as usual.

I'm off!

2008-03-19T11:50:00.001-07:00

Don't be alarmed if you don't hear from me for a while. I'll be back March 30.

Point & Shoot touches.

2008-03-18T14:45:00.000-07:00

These were both taken on our little point & shoot (sony exlim, I think).

Now THIS is a photo. Darkened the corners and it wasn't hard to make the purple pop out.

Az did a great job cropping this one, it's such a more interesting picture than the original.

Here's that set for anyone who's keeping score at home.

More Retouches

2008-03-18T01:00:00.001-07:00

I'm sure you're all getting tired of these pictures...

This one we obviously cropped and brought out the background so it wasn't so disorientingly sparse. When we did that, his cap came out and completed itself as well. Since the most interesting part was, in my opinion, the left hand, we cut out a bunch of the background and gave it center stage. The picture, besides, wasn't about him standing awkwardly with the "stop objectifying me" pose as it looks in the spacious picture, it was more about his skin, beard and mate. The overall "dudeness" of him. The guy's a dude, and you gotta bring that out.

This is a picture from a couple years ago in Sagres, Portugal, and it remains a favorite among friends and family. The only problem was that as good a scene as it was, it was so so hazy. The magic of editing brings it closer to how I remember it - that sea is bluer, the bushes greener, the fish bigger (not pictured). After Az edited it, I realized he had a bag sitting next to him... had never seen that in looking at this picture for two years. I also like the way the rocks become interesting when they'd been unexceptional before. This is still a fave.

Home notes

2008-03-17T10:58:00.001-07:00

Azure just took off for the airport with Dick & Joanne - they're packed VERY light, which is impressive to see when you're not actually going on the trip. It seems so easy to pack light when you're the one who has to haul the stuff around and/or leave room for a shopping spree when you hit the ground, but from the other side I'm like, "Are you sure you'll have enough stuff?" Kinda silly.

They're heading to Chicago for a layover - where Az and I had a layover on the way back from Buenos Aires - then Frankfurt, which sucks. The next morning they're on to Venice.

I'm here alone at Little Home, part of the design in canceling my portion of the trip. On Wednesday afternoon I'm heading to Onalaska for the silent meditation retreat and even though I've got my reservations about Buddhism and, you know, closing your eyes during self-improvement, I'm trying to put those thoughts out of my mind and open myself fully to the experience. Part of the fear of buying in is that I'll brainwash myself - that somehow if I open my mind completely I'll lose everything that I am now and have to start from scratch. But whatever. Fear's not going to take away an experience from me. If I let that happen then the Buddhists have already won.

People have suggested over and over that I'll leave early... and I don't take offense to it because I don't really think of it as a "be strong!" kind of thing, but it never even crossed my mind to leave early. It's a 10 day retreat. They probably made it 10 days for some reason. Also, the whole point of this 'life' thing for me (right now) is to 1) experience as much as possible in the present and 2) learn as much as possible from those experiences. When I think of being here at Little Home alone I think of spending too much time on the internet. That's not really a reason to leave a retreat.

But, like I said, I need to drop the expectations. I might want to leave after an hour.

--

Before we went to South America I got really into reading traveler's blogs and I'd like to share a couple here:
Liz Clark is sailing around the world by herself and surfing in exotic locations. She just left Kirimati and I think she's going to be wintering in New Zealand, if I remember right. It's a great blog, but I wish she'd update more often.

Alabama Dan sold all his stuff and took off, he's currently in Indonesia, which is making my travel mouth water. I've spent hours reading his blog and looking at his pictures. He's a great writer in a stream-of-consciousness kind of way. I imagine he'd be great to have a beer with (like our president!).

These guys are building a cabin by hand somewhere up in BC - on an island I think. I haven't been paying close enough attention since leaving, but it'll be nice to catch up.

The Keturah is a ship that's sailing indefinitely. The Italian captain is currently in the South Pacific, heading up to the Philippines. His site is a little too self-promoting, but I guess that's what you gotta do when you're trying to get people to sail with you.

It was fun to come back from my trip and look up these folks to see where they've been and what they've done since we left. I don't know nor have I met any of these people, but I love reading about their adventures. I'm curious to know who reads this blog that's stumbled upon it randomly. Let me know if you're one of those people!

Some retouched photos

2008-03-16T10:42:00.000-07:00

Last night we got together with Kim and Adam and they showed us how to retouch our photos. I've always looked at our photos and thought they were good, but then compared to professionals on Flickr they look weak and I could never figure out why - it was disappointing. I thought maybe it had to do with the lens, which meant spending more money to get those results. Or maybe it had to do with the camera body, which meant spending more money to get those results. But it looks like a lot of it had to do with the fact that we weren't touching the pictures after they were taken.

After messing around with their program (Adobe Lightroom) for a while, Azure quickly got really good at it (as she does with these kinds of things) and here are some results - the first ones are the originals, the second ones are the retouches.

When I first saw this I thought it was a good photo. After retouching it, I think it's one of my favorites. Azure darkened the area next to the woman's forehead so that it separates the picture into two strong areas - the flowers and the face. Before it had looked a little flat, like the whole thing ran together. She also made the colors of the flowers pop out a little and brought out details on the stems.

This is one of my favorites - Azure brought out both the sky and the leaves and made the blacks blacker. I love looking at the shadows of the leaves on the other leaves. This one is borderline too retouched to the point the colors look too brilliant, but it's a step forward from the original.

This is the most stunning result - Az made this a cold pictures because, you know, it's spiderwebs in a cemetery on a metal angel's face. She also did the thing where you darken the corners and brightened it so you can see the face and words better. I love this version of the picture, it looks tangible and fragile in a way the original didn't. The webs just jump out of this photo.

Here's a link to a set where you can flip back and forth between the old and new.

Bariloche Moonrise

2008-03-14T21:53:00.000-07:00

Two more from this amazing night.

Best viewed large.

Best viewed large.

Rio Favela

2008-03-13T22:19:00.000-07:00

I forget the name of the favela, but here's a view from the hillside. Click here for the original size.

Tigre, Argentina

2008-03-13T00:15:00.000-07:00

I don't remember what this was, but they're obviously trying to preserve it. Yes, it's a real house inside glass.

Punta del Diablo, Uruguay - Beach boats

2008-03-11T19:44:00.000-07:00

Old man at Punta del Diablo

2008-03-10T22:39:00.000-07:00

A fisherman at Punta del Diablo

We got into town really late at night so we had no idea where we were or what the place looked like and we crashed on the guest beds of some friends we'd randomly met at a restaurant. After a late meal we went to sleep, able to hear the ocean the whole time. Needless to say, I was excited to wake up and look around, so right at first light I got up and grabbed the camera and headed outside. The first thing I saw was this guy walking toward me. I took hundreds of pictures at Punta del Diablo after this, but this is the first and the best, in my opinion.

Dresses

2008-03-09T22:13:00.000-07:00

At the San Telmo Sunday market.

Moonrise

2008-03-07T23:31:00.000-08:00

Warm moon over Bariloche.

Overwhelming stars

2008-03-07T07:59:00.000-08:00

Click here for the original size.

This gives me butterflies. When you scroll around, you can actually see the rotation of the earth. Not safe for workers.

Back in Seattle notes

2008-03-06T15:27:00.001-08:00

Azure and I had been touching less in South America and both of us noticed it subconsciously but didn't say anything. When we got back to Seattle it was back to normal, lots of contact. We figured out why: It's damn cold here. We're drawn to each other's body heat. In South America it was so muggy that we kept to ourselves to stay cool (and because we were covered in sweat most of the time).

The cold is also affecting my appetite: I'm eating a ton just because I'm cold and I guess my body wants me to fatten up.

On a bus in Argentina I sat next to a guy (who spoke perfect English) and told him how much I loved his country, the food, the landscape, the pace. He said something along the lines of, "Yeah, but the government is corrupt and the politics are all messed up and the economy is on a bubble..." and I realized how much more I was enjoying his country than he was just because I wasn't paying attention to the chatter. I've noticed that the more I pay attention to the chatter here in the states, the less I enjoy my time here. Haven't yet turned on the radio nor the TV since returning and Azure's avoiding her phone.

A flower in Ilha Grande.

Lasting Image

2008-03-05T06:39:00.001-08:00

On the bus from Ilha Grande to Rio we went past a little town with a couple soccer fields that had metal-framed, unnetted goals on either end. There were about a dozen white horses grazing on the fields. This is an image that keeps surfacing.

Sadness

2008-03-05T06:37:00.002-08:00

We made it back to Seattle safe and sound this morning. Our first order of business was going straight to Paseo's for a Cuban sandwich, and only after that was I ready to reacquaint myself with the PNW. I'd been thinking about that damn sandwich for months.

I wasn't happy to be back in the States, to be honest. Leaving Buenos Aires was painful because I had such an amazing time with my cousins and I didn't want to leave, I just wanted to get to know them better and eat at more new restaurants with them and continue our exciting conversations... but the plane was going to fly regardless. I had a knot in my stomach the whole way home just like the very first time I returned from a big trip in 2001. My first impression of the US was this: Headlines are used to generate fear, advertisements are used to create inadequacy. Pretty powerful one-two punch. I don't know why it stood out on this trip more than others, maybe we're in a particularly fear-generating period of our history. It's ugly, anyway, and I wish they'd shut up.

The highlights of the trip for me were:
Hostel 1004 at Bariloche. I could have spent all three months there staring at the mountains & lake.
The samba club on Florianopolis - a life highlight for sure.
The endless churrasco dinner in Rio.
The favela tour in Rio.
The pace of life in BA with Tom, Maya and Tally.
Being with Azure in Punta del Diablo.
Walking across Ilha Grande.

We'd planned on going to Europe this month, but I decided I wasn't focused enough for it so I'm staying home while Azure and her mom eat up a storm in Italy. (Everything's great between Az and I, don't worry). Inspired by my cousin Maya and our new friends Nathan and Annette, I'm going to be going to a 10-day silent meditation retreat later this month (3/19 to 3/30). I'm trying to keep an open mind about it, but I know it'll be challenging. I won't be allowed to talk to anyone nor write nor listen to music or read, etc. They'll feed me and provide a place to sleep, plus instruct me in meditation. I guess it's my way of extending the trip, extracting more from this quarter year.

Between now and then, though, I'll be back to washing windows and reconnecting with Seattle.

Thank you all for reading these emails and responding or not. You can still go to our blog where Az will write about Italy and I'll write about the meditations. Our pictures are at Flickr but not everything's uploaded yet. Check it again in a day or two. We took about 1500 pictures on the trip, so our work is cut out for us, only a fraction have been uploaded thus far.

I'll contact you again next Fall when I'm putting together the email list for our next trip. Until then, take care!

Ilha to Buenos

2008-03-05T06:37:00.001-08:00

I was pretty happy about our last day in Brazil - the last day on Ilha Grande. I was hoping to get some sun but woke up to find it overcast and even raining, as it had most of the time there... it's the rainy season. We got on the boat to head to the main surfers' beach that faces south toward Antarctica and it started clearing up a little. We had to take the boat because there are no cars on the island and we were tired of hiking through the jungle with soaking feet and tired legs, we'd hiked about 12 miles a couple days before. So we sat in the boat and made our way around the tip of the island. It dropped us off in this little "town" which consisted of no more than a couple places to eat on the beach and we hiked 20 more minutes between mountains to finally get to the beach.

It was a gorgeous arc of white that bent around a bay, there were probably 50 people there or so but we didn't spread out to get our own private area because we really didn't need to. I don't know - first of all, as great as private beaches are, it's more fun to people watch. Also, there was plenty of space, so it wasn't like we had to compete to be near the ocean. People just set down and relaxed.

The waves were great, I spent about 2 hours playing and riding the waves and the sun was out by then so we were getting one more dose of sun. My eyes stung from the salt.

The next day we got on a bus and headed back to Rio, then immediately got on another bus that took us to Buenos Aires over the next 40 hours. It wasn't as bad as it sounds - when you're resigned to spending a day somewhere, it's easy to find stuff to do. We talked with new friends, watched movies, napped, etc. The landscape through Brazil continued to be amazing - green, lush, rolling. I felt lucky taking the bus all over the place because we got to see how the land changed from Santiago to Mendoza, all over Argentina, then up through Uruguay to Rio and back across to the west. Brazil is so beautiful. Azure and I keep saying it deserves a trip of its own. We never once felt unsafe as everyone kept telling us we should. We never once got knifed or robbed.

We're back in BA now and I'm beginning to feel really sad about leaving here, actually. I want to go home because I love Seattle, the evergreens, my friends & family & work, but I love the rhythm of life down here, too. I'm not really ready to stop traveling. I'll send out another email next week when I get back, and until then check the blog.

On to BA

2008-02-27T04:26:00.001-08:00

We´ve had a good run in Ilhe Grande. Hiked, boated, swam, body surfed. We are all tan and well fed as we leave this place with many good things to say about the island. Mike, Autsy and I will be leaving Kenny in Rio today to embark on our longest journey yet--40 hours! Wish us luck. More pohotos when we get to Tom and Maya´s.

Finally, photos!

2008-02-25T05:31:00.000-08:00

I know it has been a while since we have posted new pictures, so here is a little taster from our day hike to the other side of the island.

Swimming in the ´Soldiers pool` just before reaching the prison town. We later rinsed off here before starting our journey back to town.

The kids play in the sand and build a pool for their fish (they later let them go unharmed)

Mike studying the fish at the mouth of the river. Merry Fishmas!

Autsy floating in the clear green seas.

Ilha Grande

2008-02-24T15:06:00.001-08:00

We made it to Ilha Grande, a big island off the coast south of Rio. There are no cars on the island, only one and a half towns. Today we hiked 2 hours over the hills and descended to this little colony type thing where there used to be a prison (up until 1994) but now it´s a overgrown by the jungle, the prison was imploded. There appeared to be a few residents, but I don´t know if they stay there at night. It was cool to see a town reclaimed by nature.

Behind the prison is a beach where two rivers flow into the ocean, one on either side of the flat beach. It´s so flat that waves just roll and roll and roll perfectly in. We walked way out and never got in past our waists. I wish it had been wavier so I could have ridden them more, but it wasn´t to be. We spent most of our time at the mouth of one of the rivers playing around like 10 year olds, rolling on the sand, catching these little fish and keeping them in an improvised fish bowl, jumping off rocks, playing in the waves, covering our arms with sand. The place where the river & ocean met was this pool of turquoise water against a steep jungle wall where we heard these terrifying monkeys screaming like they were at war. Never saw them though. It was pretty idyllic, with the river going back into the jungle and our own little pool of warm water. The sun wasn´t really out much today, which was good because it meant we could play for hours without worrying.

We knew we had a long walk back, so we left at 4 to beat the darkness and stopped for a minute to rinse off at a place where a river pooled in the jungle, then we took a secret shortcut route through a bamboo forest which we all agreed was a little claustrophobic. When we exited the shortcut, a downpour started, again, just like Iguazu! We couldn´t believe it, we had just been telling Kenny about it earlier in the walk and now it was pouring and cold for the rest of the 1.5 hours. Our hands and feet were pruny, everything we had got soaked and our ankles were SO sore from walking in flipflops the entire way on the bumpy road. It was raining so hard that there was a little river running with us the whole time, the color of milk tea. When it rains like that, the area seems to expand upwards because everything has become so socked in, I just notice the height of the trees more. The jungle is darker.

We made it to town before dark, monkeys screaming in the valley, and everyone was packed into pubs watching a soccer game and staying out of the downpour. We got warm, dry and went to get dinner at our favorite little buffet place. It´s only 8pm here, but I think Azure is asleep in the room.

Favela Tour Part II - The Tour

2008-02-21T15:00:00.003-08:00

I´m not really sure where to start, so I´ll start from where the tour began for me - clinging to a motorbike taxi driver as he hauled ass up steep hair-pin turns, dodging busses and people and carts up the snaking main road in the favela. I was wondering how I´d feel when getting to the neighborhood finally, and I was surprised to find the feelings weren´t mixed at all, it was a very pure feeling and after a while I could name it: Relief. Not relief like, ¨Wow! I´m glad this isn´t as bad as I expected!¨ but more like when you´re relieved from your duties. The neighborhood we´re staying in is Ipanema, the fake boobs of Rio, and I was feeling a little sterile from the self-consciousness of it all. So seeing the grit and trash and life on the streets was a relief. It reminded me of Bangkok, of India, even of some grittier places in Europe, and it felt like travel again.

The guide lead us down into the favela, walking from the top of the hill down to the bottom, a couple hours total. This favela fills a little valley with 200,000 people crammed on top of one another, building house upon house upon house, up the hills as far as topography will let them go. All the land is actually owned by the government, but people don´t pay to build there nor do they pay taxes (except on the main road that carried auto traffic). The only thing owned are what people build, and people can build however they want with no regulations. There is the constant sound of construction - hammering, drills. At one point I was standing on the third story of a building looking down at two guys adding a new level to a building. One of the walls ran past the corner of another building - actually touching it - and it appeared the roof of the new one would be limited by where the neighbor had a ledge. I was watching the two guys trying to figure out how to install some kind of wire through this impossible corner, under the ledge. Good luck. Everything seems to be built that way - totally improvised. There was a power pole that was leaning against a building (from the weight of hundreds of people pirating the power) and the solution was to put another pole in behind it, leaving the other one leaning.

From the winding main passage there were a number of smaller passages that branched off, up or down steep, steep staircases. We had to watch our heads whenever we were on one of these little side streets because of the topography (imagine the door at the bottom of a steep staircase, by the time you´re on the bottom step the top of the door might still be eye-level). The ground was rarely easy to walk on - most of the time it was cement but often it was kinda like walking on the side of an unfinished sidewalk or sloped pavement.

The passages we walked through are too narrow for a car, but the guide said cars used to be able to drive there. I couldn´t imagine it - they´re barely wide enough for two sets of shoulders and with the way the buildings block out the sky it reminded me of the old city centers in Europe - improvised, haphazard, body-centric (as opposed to car-centric). In fact, I wonder if that´s how all the cities were hundreds of years ago. The top of the favela was pretty clean, I liked walking there (in fact, I really liked the whole neighborhood) but about halfway down it got really grubby with trash and water running all over the place. It didn´t smell good, either, and walking in sandals was probably a bad idea. Whatareyagonnado, though?

The gangs run the favelas, each favela run by one of the three main gangs in Rio - they bring drugs in and don´t allow internal crime because they need to keep the favela safe for the richer Rio residents to come and buy. Ninety-eight percent of the drugs being sold are sold to residents outside the favelas. The bigger problem in the neighborhood is alcohol. All of this is according to the tour guide, of course, I have no information other than what I heard and saw. Anyway, the point of all this is that if the gangs can control the crime and keep everything running, then why can´t they organize a group of people to go around and pick up the trash? That sounds naive, is it naive? And if not the gangs, then why not the mayor or its residents? I know I sound spoiled, but I´ve wondered this all over the world, including Seattle. Trash is nasty, why don´t communities mobilize themselves to clean up their neighborhoods? Why isn´t there a day, once a month, where everyone goes out and cleans their area? 62nd, Greenlake, the U District... Am I missing something? Isn´t this an issue of pride?

Anyway, there was stuff you´d expect to find in any town - three churches, internet cafes, clothing shops, sandwich places, etc. We stopped and had a ham & cheese sandwich on a roll that was literally taken out of the oven for us. That was damn good. With an orange Fanta, too.

As we walked down, the tour guide shook hands with EVERYONE he passed, said hello, smiled, talked for a bit. Everyone seemed to like and know him, they´d start conversations and joke with him. I think it was part of the business of keeping the tour in good graces with the residents, but also he walked the tour twice a day, and he´d worked there for six years, so I imagine he´s known some of the people for a long time and they´ve actually developed some kind of friendship. They seemed to welcome him and welcome us as well. We were never once asked for money, we weren´t harassed or anything. As far as I could tell, people didn´t mind us being there.

The people were exactly what you´d expect in any neighborhood - kids, moms, grandmas, guys hauling cement, shop keepers, young men hanging around, girls talking, old men watching tv or listening to the radio... just life. A number of times kids would start walking along with us, laughing and talking to us in portugese. At one point a girl, probably five years old, started walking next to Azure and me, and she looked up smiling at Azure and said, ¨Gringa!¨ as if she were pointing to a Penguin! at the zoo. We both smiled and Azure said, ¨Si! Gringa!¨ (it means ¨White girl!¨). Apparently the tour used to give money to help build houses but found out that people would then dismantle the houses and sell the materials. So they started donating to a nursery school, which we visited. Of all the parts, that´s the one that felt most uncomfortable - looking in the window at all the kids did feel too much like a zoo.

I have a couple overall impressions, things that will stick with me. First off, obviously, the structure of the city. It made me start to pay attention to the differences between a regulated, car-centric urban space vs. an organically conceived, body-centric urban space. I felt lucky to be seeing one of these amazing cities bursting with life and energy. I´ve not-so-secretly resented being born too late to see the European city centers before they had keychains made about them, and I feel like that´s exactly what I got to do yesterday. It WAS a beautiful space, it was amazing and impressive to see what they could do without land ownership, and I really liked the physical feeling of being there. I love exploring corners in new cities to look for surprises, and this was a place where you could explore forever and never exhaust them.

Second, there was a very strong sense of community there that was visible even to an outsider. Maybe it was because the passages were so narrow, but it seemed like everyone knew everyone. It was comforting.

Third, the living conditions. They only had water for half an hour every three hours and they walked among trash. The power supply was gerry rigged (jerry rigged?) which probably lead to a lot of blackouts. I didn´t get a chance to see it at night, whether it´s safe, but just last week a little 11-year old girl was shot in the neck by the cops (in a shootout with the gang), and I have no idea how often there are bullets in the air. (Though to read the Seattle papers these days is astounding - it makes me wonder whether I´m safer in the favela than on Capitol Hill or Pioneer Square). I´d love to know more about the security - I wonder if there´s a favela resident who blogs or has written thoroughly about it.

Finally, the outside impression. When I got in the car to go to the favela, we sat with a Dutch guy who said, ¨I hope we see some guns!¨ and a British guy who said, ¨I was going to go last week but I was too drunk.¨ I can see disrespect being a legitimate reason to not have tours there, but I feel that way about every place. Young Brits are the Ugly Americans of the new century.
On the Lonely Planet site a girl wrote that instead of taking an exploitative tour we should try to make friends in Ipanema with a person from the favelas so that we might be invited to their homes. That, to me, seems much more exploitative.
When we asked the tour guide about whether we were exploiting the people, he said that the people of Rio outside the favelas don´t have any respect for the place, that they think it should be bombed so they can start over (I can´t verify the accuracy of his report, though I do trust him). He said that this tour changes people´s impressions of the place, as it certainly did for me. We met a few Rio residents down here who thought we shouldn´t go.
When it comes down to it, I haven´t yet met nor read of a person who´s been on one of these tours that has been critical of it. I found the guide to be extremely respectful and knowledgeable of the place, all the time objective. I really enjoyed it and I´d reccommend it to anyone who can handle the hills.

If you read this far, thanks. I also learned a lot about racism, which I´ll write about on the blog sometime soon, but I´m a little exhausted now.

Note:

First of all, I wanted to note that I hate trying to understand a country by spending just two weeks, a city by spending just two days, and here I´ve tried to understand a neighborhood by spending just two hours. It´s simply not enough. (Imagine if someone tried to judge Greenlake in Seattle by spending a full day there, a day they didn´t know was Thanksgiving... a place can be completely different from one day to the next). I don´t claim to understand anything about this favela except what I saw in those two hours and what I was told. My goals in writing these dispatches are: 1) To sift through what I see for my own ordering, 2) To entertain my friends and family back home who may never get to travel here, 3) To hopefully provide a foundation for tolerance and empathy (but never, never pity).

Secondly, there are over a hundred favelas in Rio and we visited the largest and probably the safest as well. The fact that I went to this one, and would feel safe going back there without a tour, doesn´t for a second mean that I could do it in any of the other ones, though it doesn´t mean I couldn´t, either. I simply don´t know how one neighborhood differs from another, at this point. All I know is what I experience.

The tour we went on was operated by www.bealocal.com. Our guide was Daniel and I couldn´t be more impressed with a tour leader.

Still learning in Rio

2008-02-20T11:09:00.000-08:00

I´ve had a few experiences here that have stood out in my mind, that have kept coming back to me.

The first was when we went to a fruit & vegetable market in one of the plazas - the sidewalk was crowded with vendors and all sorts of food that was unfamiliar. Some of the more colorful stands were the ones with dozens of different kinds of peppers. A few stands had taken their produce, diced it up then wrapped it in a plastic bag for quick stirfry or salad makings. People gave out free samples of mangoes and papayas and other stuff I didn´t recognize. At one point I wanted to know whether the market would be there the next day so I walked up to a vendor and asked, ¨El mercado es aqui maña?¨ The market is here tomorrow? In Spanish. The guy looked at me and looked to his friend and said something like, ¨Why´s this guy trying to speak Spanish to us?¨ I felt pretty bad about it - it just slipped out, I forgot I was in a Portugese-speaking country. I recommitted myself to making sure I ask, ¨Fala Ingles? Espanol?¨ before starting with the language theatrics. Azure suggested we tack on ¨I don´t speak Portugese¨ (in Portugese) at the beginning, which is a good idea.

Later that day we went to the beach and I decided to try my hand at body surfing. Well, the waves were huge and the beach was strange, I couldn´t get a feel for the bottom, so I was really shy about it. There were only a few people attempting each wave, and they were really good, so I decided to sit back and watch rather than injure myself immediately. They ride differently than I have - I´d always gone straight down the wave, trying to catch it in the middle and go straight to the beach, but the guys here seem to catch it higher up and then ride the momentum down and to the side, like a surfer does. I tried it and it worked better - this way, when the wave breaks I barrel roll instead of crashing head first onto the sand, which my mom will be happy to hear. Also, as BK taught me 14 years ago (half my life), and I STILL remember, somehow, if I ride on my side with one arm extended I get the best hydrodynamics, as the guys here do, too. I have a lot to learn, I´m sure I´m screwing this up somehow. But my mind keeps coming back to how frightening the waves were when I first got there, the feeling that I was way out of my league in something that was so familiar - the water.

A couple nights later we went out to grab a beer at the corner bar while a big game was played out on TV. A guy came around selling peanuts and gave us a little sample. There was a bunch of miscommunication about the price and, essentially, I shook him off because I thought it was too much. Then I tasted the peanuts and they were amazing and I decided I had to have some. So I called him back over and misunderstood the price again. But this guy dealt with me in the most patient, respectful way, he just kept smiling. And the smile was so genuine. Our approaches to the same exchange were so different that it revealed a major differences between our perspectives. Ellen eventually reached over and gave me a couple coins to give him because I had become incoherent. I couldn´t believe what a monster I was, not only for haggling over a couple cents, but also because only once in our lives would this guy and I interact, and I took that one interaction and made it about money. Anyway, it also showed me how an interaction can be made much more positive by just being patient, pleasant, smiling.

So, this morning Azure and I went on a favela tour and - like the all-you-can-eat sushi we had afterwards - it´ll take some digestion before I really understand it. I´ll send out a detailed email probably tomorrow, but for the time being you can read my overly-defensive justifications below.

For good or bad

2008-02-20T10:09:00.000-08:00

Mike and I went on a favela tour today. Tours are not something that either of us choose to do on a regular basis. Perhaps a bus tour here or there when we are trying to kill time, but for the most part we do not fit into the target market of most agencies. To be honest, I was not excited for it. I wasn´t afraid like I thought I would be, but worried about the exploitive properties of being guided through an historically poor and reportedly dangerous neighborhood. I think the only reason that I decided to go was that I am always curious about how people live. I know that I could go without passing judgement good or bad about the place.

At 10am, the company picked us up to go to the base of the favela. It only took about 10 minutes to get to the base from our $6000USD per month apartment in Ipanema. We got out of the cab and each person got onto the back of a motorbike driven by one of the locals. Apparently this is a major form of transportation up and down the main road. I think my driver was showing off a little, since I was one of very few women who took the tour and was constantly cutting in front of the other bike guides and taking more chances than the others. It was a road that switchbacked constantly straight up the side of the hill. From the top, we walked down one of the main passages to get to the bottom. On the way, we stopped at an art gallery where some of the local artists had a studio. They taught classes for the local youth and other community projects. Later we stopped at a school for kids in the favela before making our way down to the bottom to be taken back to our apartment.

I don´t want to glorify this experience. Many people choose not to go and I totally understand and respect that. But since I went, I might as well share some of the insight I gained from this time.

Since my main goal in this tour was to promote my own understanding of the situation, I was totally the person who held the group up with tons of questions. I found the guide to be honest, open and he passed no judgement on the people who lived there despite being from one of the nicer areas. I´ll share the questions and answers with you. I think they are interesting.

Q. First question I asked--how does this tour negatively or positively affect the favelas and the people living there?

A. He answered by saying that there were no known downfalls to the tour. It promoted understanding and peace and that the tour agency contributed to relief efforts each week with some of the proceeds. Since the spread of knowledge, many foreigners had started community enhancement programs, like the school we visited, which was started and funded by Italians. He claimed (and I think there was only a little joking in this statement) that many people from Rio think the problem could be solved by bombing the area and starting over with more worthwhile structures and people. Very few people from the lower areas ever venture into the hills in their lifetimes.

Q. I heard that the favelas were run by organized crime, who ruled by exploitation. Is this true?

A. There are three gangs in the city. This particular favela was run by ADA (Amigos do Amigos). Approximately 1.5 Million USD per month are made from drugs each month. Only 2% of that is sold to people within the favelas. Most of it goes to the rich areas of the city. For this reason, the gangs control violence within the favelas, so that those outsiders feel safe enough to come in and buy their drugs. I forgot to ask if they threaten people and for what reason. I might email them that question.

Q. If I were to buy a home here, would I have any problems?

A. People might be suspicious at first. They could be closed off and skeptical, but once they got to know you there would be no problems. (The guide was really nice to everyone and most people would stop and talk to him or shake hands or want to walk with us. I could tell that they were actually familiar with him and that it wasn´t for another reason -- good time to bring up, no one ever asked us for money or tried to rip us off).

Q. Do people like living there?

A. Some of them want to get out, but many of them find it a good way to live cheaply and with a strong community, but still be within close proximity to the rich neighborhoods where many of them work. The education rate in the favelas is only around 55%, so I´m sure most people don´t know any other options, but the general feeling was that people were just living their lives, as Mike says, like everyone in the world did 400 years ago (except the favelas use electricity and other modern wonders).

Q. How much does it cost to live there?

A. The people who live in the favelas for the most part don´t pay any taxes. There is one main street that does, they get electricity, running water and some serveces. However, about 40 years ago, people just started building around the main street and have never paid taxes since then. They don´t have running water sometimes, but every 3 hours, the community pipes are turned on and people can go get fresh water. Electricity is pirated from the main lines, making the power poles look like massive spiderwebs of wires. Since they don´t pay taxes, they don´t get public services like police or mail, although when the police enter the problems start. The upper houses, which really resemble the small streets of southern Europe can be as much as R50,000 and the lower ones with the sewage issues as cheap as R3,000 to buy. ($1.75 = R1.00)

Q. What are the main social issues?

A. Education and child birth!!! Each woman has an average of 5 children. So many kids with many different fathers and a low education average leaves a lot of people who will never make it out. Brazil is obviously no different than many other poor and uneducated areas (including ones in our own country) in this respect. I can never get over this topic. If every country in the world put education (including sexual health) as their number one priority, this planet would be able to sustain itself for another 8 million years. Why don´t we ever learn that learning is what builds us up?

I´m sure I am forgetting some, so there might be a part two to this post. The bottom line is that despite what I thought before this experience, the three hours I spent walking through the favela today only helped to increase my belief that people are just living their lives. People want family and friends and community. They want to talk and laugh and communicate just like me. I am grateful that they allowed me to take my tour and learn about them. I´ll never forget it.

Favela Tour Part I - Justification

2008-02-19T14:03:00.001-08:00

I´ve been questioning whether I should go on this favela tour or not and it took me a while to really come to grips with going on it and not feeling exploitative. First of all, to get this issue out of the way, I don´t know whether the tour company exploits people or not, nor do I know whether the residents of the favela like tourists going through their neighborhoods to see how they live. I have no idea. I, personally, hated being quacked at by the people on the duck in downtown Seattle when I worked there, but that was just because they were quacking. There will be no quacking tomorrow. In a city of 200,000 nobody can speak for everyone, so even if someone did claim to know what the residents felt, it would only be true for a portion of them. I can´t sit here and try to hash out what they think of me. All I can do is approach it with the best (or neutral) intentions, and if someone takes offense to that the issue is their´s.

The tour company seems to check out - I´ve seen nothing but positive reviews of it online, and, in general, the only criticisms I´ve seen of the favela tours is from people who haven´t been on them. I imagine the companies do have to pay off the gangs to operate their business in the favela, but it´s not that much different than me paying taxes to operate my company.

The only thing I can do - the only real thing I can control - is my presence there. So, am I going in an exploitative way? I don´t think so. Going to see how people live in a different culture is exactly what I´ve been doing for the last howevermany years I´ve been traveling. It´s what I did in Paris and India and Israel and Thailand and Buenos Aires and now Brasil. On the other hand, this IS different: If the people weren´t extremely poor, I wouldn´t be going there. So there is something to it.

Is it bad to be going to a place just because the people are poor? In my opinion, a thing like this is only as bad or good as you make it. I could go there and look at them like animals in the zoo, but that´s not how I´ll approach it. I could go there and make them out to be noble or to pity them, but I won´t approach it that way either. The reason I´m going is the same reason I´ve gone to all the other places I´ve traveled: to answer the question/statement, ¨How to Live¨ (?/.) What it comes down to is that I´m consistently interested in the different ways people choose to (or are compelled to) live and make a living and this happens to be a neighborhood with a notorious reputation. I don´t want to go there with a mission, I just want to go see what´s there.

So, that´s how I justify my moral role in this exchange.

In broader terms, I want to do this because it´s an experience, and experiences are the cornerstones of both growing and living in the present. The more I can do of those things the happier I´ll be. (and, if I believed in making the world a better place, the next justification would be, ¨the happier I am, the happier I can make the people around me, and make the world a better place,¨ but ultimately my actions are nothing but selfish, so that statement wouldn´t be sincere.)

Well, that was auspicious

2008-02-18T15:00:00.001-08:00

So, I did get sunburned. In fact, as I was writing that, two days ago, the sunburn was gathering strength. It´s here now.

This morning we went up to that statue of Christ the Redeemer you see in all the postcards and it was pretty impressive. It´s as tall as a 13-story building, apparently, and the entire thing is mosaicked in these small, triangular tiles. The view from up there was amazing, you can see why Rio was settled in the first place... bays and lakes everywhere. The city is in a gorgeous location.

My mom asked me to write more about what we´ve been eating -- every day I´ve been having at least one acai (ah-sah-ee) juice with granola. It´s a purple berry that grows on a palm and it´s very high in antioxidants, higher in fact than blueberries and cranberries (though I´m still eating a couple tablespoons of cranberries every day, this batch brought down by Kenny). The acai isn´t too strong in flavor, except that the juice is very very sweet because they pour sugar into the thing. I´ve also been drinking a lot of coconut juice because it´s apparently good for the skin.

Last night we had dinner at a Portugese restaurant, though to be honest it didn´t seem any more anything than any other restaurant here. So I´ll call it Brazillian. It was a buffet, as a lot of the places here are, and I had grilled salmon, lobster in cream sauce, a wheatberry-like salad and a piece or two of california roll. The buffet, however, was not all-you-can-eat -- it was by weight. We ended up spending quite a bit per person, when all was said and done - about $20.

On the beach we found a place that sells these great sandwiches of grilled meat, onions and special sauce on a soft roll. Unfortunately I won´t be going to the beach for another day or two with my burn. Or maybe I will and I´ll just stay in the shade. There are stands selling coconuts and sandwiches and drinks all up and down the beach, not to mention vendors walking around and always asking if you want whatever they´re selling -- shrimp, fried cheese, acai, beer, empanadas... lots of options.

Ellen and I are cooking tonight (last night we went to that buffet) and - as a surprise for our housemates - the appetizer course will be Pringles with beer.

Rio, still

2008-02-17T09:37:00.001-08:00

We´ve spent the last few days doing the same thing - waking up and taking a morning walk on the beach, then coming back to meet Autsy, Joey, Kenny and Ellen at the apartment. After breakfast today we went down to the beach and hung around under our umbrella, occasionally getting food from one of the beach vendors. I´ve been in the water a lot, getting a lot of sun but no burn yet. I shaved my head, by the way. It was just getting to be too much.

At night we´ve been eating at home - we split up into pairs and each is responsible for dinner one night. Last night Auts and Kenny made some ginger chicken with rice, black beans and cucumber salad. Way good! Tonight Ellen and I are in charge.

Ipanema

2008-02-16T05:30:00.000-08:00

We are in Rio finally. It was a long bus ride, but we made it fine. We got to the apartment that Kenny had found for us and it is amazing! The first day we walked around for a while and took a nap around 8pm, always a good idea. I didn´t make it up after that, but caught up on sleep. Kenny and Joey and Ellen went out for food around midnight. The next day after heading to the market and having lunch in, we went to the beach. What a scene. So many kinds of people, totally crowded, just like you see on the travel shows. There is something for everyone. Some of us swam a lot, others sat under an umbrella and had some coconuts, some had beer. I feel like we are living the life. Seven more days. I can handle that! Oh, and the morning volleyball scene is really cool too. I am horrible at playing in the sand, so I just watch in awe. Maybe I´ll try one of these mornings.

Taking this level to another angle

2008-02-13T06:32:00.001-08:00

We've decided that from now on we're only posting pictures of Azure and I making the romance. We just think it'll generate more viewers. Enjoy!

From Autsy's Camera

2008-02-13T02:32:00.001-08:00

On our anniversary, a picture of me carrying Az into the sea, from whence she came.

6 Years!

2008-02-12T10:20:00.000-08:00

Today is Azure and my 6th anniversary!

We love each other very much.

Here's a picture of us hungover from Buenos Aires.

I love you Sweetie!

Goodwill & me

2008-02-11T20:04:00.000-08:00

There is so much more good in the world than bad. I feel stupid saying that I was afraid to enter Brazil. I was afraid of Southeast Asia and all of South America, I was probably even afraid of Europe the first time I went. I can't help it. I hear the bad, I fear the worst, but everytime people are better than they are worse. In BA, we saw a young guy steel a woman's bag. He ran by us and I could have reached out and grabbed him or tripped him, but the woman didn't seem concerned, she was in shock. I didn't know if it was her son playing a trick. One man chased the kid down the street, two others stopped to help. Mike and I watched the kid run back and pointed as we ran toward him. Another man grabbed him and held him while a couple more helped. All in all, there were 8 good for 1 bad. In Porto Alegre, 4 people told us to be careful, no people assaulted us. When we got to Florinopolis, we didn't know where we were going or how to get in touch with Vivian, since our bus was 2.5 hours late. The taxi driver took us to a hotel to check our email, explained to the front desk guy what we were doing and allowed us to do it for free before driving us directly to her house. He never once tried to rip us off even though we thought he was at first. We never communicated in the same language and the entire time he was patient and helpful. Vivian, a girl we now call by first name was a complete stranger who let 3 travelers stay with her for free. She has taken us around and shown us her life here. People want to talk, they want to hear about your life and they want to tell you about theirs. Where there is communication there is peace, where there is understanding, there is acceptance. I cannot say enough good things about these homestay programs. I can't even begin to explain how much understanding, compassion, and knowledge I have gained from traveling.

Each year I get these three months to stop my life and figure out how I have grown in the past year. I can insert and rearrange the things that I have learned and use this time to practice the things I want to get better at. It is like a very long New Years resolution. This year I see a definite transition from the self-consciousness of my earlier years, to an acceptance of the way I am. I think that goes along with our age group no longer being the future. As before there was a perception that I had to do something amazing with my life and that our generation had so much untapped potential that needed to be utilized, now I can just sit back and tap as much or as little potential as I want and let the kids have all the expectations put on them.

Dirty old girl

2008-02-11T17:37:00.000-08:00

I really thought my days of hard travel were over. For years I have said that I was too old to do the hostel thing, too comfortable to take the long bus over a short flight and too picky to sleep just anywhere. I think this trip has proved that none of these are the case. As I look back on the last 2.5 months, I can see how this trip has reinstated the backpacker in all of us. So, before we find ourselves in the comfort of a luxurious penthouse in Ipanima for two weeks I want to write about some of the less than glamorous times.

First, I must start out by saying that I have known Autsy for almost 10 years now. We lived together for the first two years of college and have remained close ever since. If there is one thing I know about this girl it is that she likes to be clean. She requires an intricate regime before entering her bed, feet are not allowed anywhere near her pillow of course, she has a whole entourage of showering soaps, and is just generally happier when she is clean and fresh.

That being said, this trip has proven that she can roll with the dirtiest. Since meeting up with us, we have realized that all of us can tolerate the feeling of having extra layers of dirt from all different sources on our bodies at the same time. When we were in Puerto Piramides, the hostel didn't have running water, well they did, from 7pm until 9pm and you were allowed a 3 minute shower, but we realized that it wasn't even necessary. We would wake up in the morning, drive around on the dirt roads for about 5 hours until the car was completely covered inside and out with dust. We breathed dust, there was dust in our hair, on our skin, and in our clothes and the whole time no one complained. We just lived in it because it was what we had to do.

Autsy, with all of her cleanliness at home, has accepted it more than anyone. She has fewer clothes than either Mike or I, which is a big deal because I am a pack Nazi (I wouldn't even let my mom take more than a school sized backpack when we went to Europe for the first time). Autsy is currently traveling with 2 dresses, a pair of stretch pants, some athletic shorts and a sweatshirt. Her "Bus Dress" is nasty, as it has been her only outfit for the long bus rides since we left BA and her other dress is a white sun dress that is slowly browning on the edges. But still, she never complains.

We have taken so many 8+ hour bus rides, I can't help but think the plane ride home will be a piece of cake. Our new friends Nathan and Annette are planning to go on a 10 day silent retreat. Part of what you learn is that there are things in life that you can't control. We often deal so little with discomfort in our day to day lives that it is difficult to deal with when you are faced with it. The meditation is meant to force people to deal with it and accept their situations. For me, the bus rides have done this, and we saved money on the course. We have taken in this order, an 8 hour, 16 hour, 2 x 10 hour, 2 x 16 hour, 18 hour, 14 hour, 16 hour, 5 hour, 4 hour, 7 hour, 9 hour, Thursday we take a 20 hour, and we will willingly end up riding for 40 hours between Rio and BA. It has been uncomfortable. It has been long. You get dirty and it smells bad sometimes and you can't move much. There is nothing to do, except sit and look out the window or listen to music (which I don't have), or watch the aweful movies, but we always survive. Yeah, it is a little bit horrible, but you realize how fleeting it is and you start to accept it.

On our most recent bus ride, we had to sit in the back near the bathroom. Autsy had the seat with a view into the bathroom when the door was open, while Mike and I sat behind the door when it was open. At one point a man went in to the bathroom and sat down to do you know what. The door did not have a strong latch and at one point it flew open, exposing him to the whole bus. Front and center sat Autsy. I couldn't see her face because she refused to turn around and face the man head on, but for those 15 seconds or so when the door swung open and neither the man nor I nor Autsy could reach the door to shut it were some of the most entertaining moments for me. I could tell that everyone should have been extremely uncomfortable. I mean, how often do you see or are seen by a complete stranger while sitting on the toilet of a bus bathroom, but Autsy has been away from "normal" standards for a long time and as much as she wanted to be shocked and grossed out, I don't think she could be. It is not abnormal anymore, these situations are almost expected. And when the girl in front of her puked all over the floor, almost on her foot, she just rolled with it because when you are out here for long periods of time with complete strangers existing in the same space as you, this stuff just happens.

**PG 13 paragraph**
Our time at Iguazu falls, well the time when we weren't hanging around in terrential downpours with no protection, was spent at a highly recommended hostel that is one of the most popular in South America. It is beautifully built and has great common spaces, including a very nice pool. The problem, as with moth other highly recommended hostels is that it is also a place where many 18-24 year olds go when they are in heat. The first night was great, the three of us had our own room, the second night we passed out from exhaustion, but the third night was right out of that Seinfeld episode where Jerry gets to ride first class and meets the hot model while Elaine has to ride coach next to the guy who snores. Mike, being the luckiest one in our group, got into a 4 person dorm, while Autsy and I found ourselves in an 8 person dorm that was located in the hallway to the other dorm rooms. It was loud and hot and even though some people are courtious, some of the others are not. Mike felt sick (probably from the hostel buffet that was covered in flies, which we all chose to eat anyway) so he went to his room. His roommates took care of him and gave him medicine, while Autsy and I stayed up with the mating teens and drank a few Caprianhis before heading to bed. It was the hottest of the nights and we were in close quarters with everyone else in the room. I managed to sleep despite the heat (I really can sleep wherever, it is a skill), but Autsy was still awake when the couple in the upper bunk across from me (and no, there isn't supposed to be a couple sleeping in one single bunk bed) started having sex. Yes she could hear everything. Yes, there was skin to skin. And yes, it happened twice. The second time, the girl (not) sleeping under them flipped on the light, so they stopped. The next morning there wasn't even much fuss. None of us had slept for much of the night and we all had a 16 hour bus ride ahead of us, but we all hopped on and enjoyed the view from the front.

The thing about all of this is that it makes our lives back at home seem so luxurious. I mean we aren't living poorly here. We are having great times, but we are living much differently. I'll leave you with the things that I think are the most luxurious on this trip.

1. The first shower after a week in the dust
2. The first bed sleep after an overnight bus
3. Spicy foods (Neogri, Sudestada)
4. A nice bathroom with all of the following: toilet paper, soap, water, paper towels
5. Tom and Maya -- everything about them and their lifestyle is luxurious, slow coffees, good medialunas, amazing house, good work space, knowledge of all the good places to eat

Vivian

2008-02-11T17:26:00.001-08:00

This is Vivian and her dog, Jungi.

Mike's hair update

2008-02-11T13:52:00.000-08:00

After two months of travel, I know we are long overdue for a hair update. You can all rest assured that Mike's hair is happily tucked away in a headband for most of its waking life. No leather yet, but we'll see. His hair actually ended up achieving the goal set for it -- to make him look like an Argentine soccer player. When we were traveling in Agrentina, his hair style could be seen on many or most of the male youth in the country. While there, he purchased two headbands and has been wearing the second pretty much everyday for the last few weeks.

The dilemma is this...Once we crossed the border to Brazil, people no longer had long hair. I know, shocking. People here opted for shorter, probably cooler dos. So the last couple days there has been talk of sending it back into the sea from whence it came (though I think quite a few vacationers would think it was kind of a disgusting site, throwing some guys hair into the water where they were swimming).

Today we went to the city center while Vivian was at work. And Mike, as always, found the local group of old men playing Dominos together at a table amongst the crowded streets, minding their game rather than all of the tourists around. He watched them for a long time, so long that they started talking to him. They asked him where he was from and then guessed first Uruguay, next Argentina, Chile, and Italy before guessing the USA. They then asked him if he wanted to join their game. He declined, but kept watching for a while longer. I know he felt good that his goal had been achieved and at that moment wanted to keep his long locks. As he says, there is something respectable about a man with long hair and a beard. I've never heard that before, but alright. Only time will tell where the hair will end up. I'll keep you posted.

Lisboa beach

2008-02-11T13:12:00.000-08:00

Vivian drove us up the coast today and stopped in a little town that's supposedly like the Azores (and if so, I want to go there, too). We went down to the beach and watched a guy cleaning oysters at an oyster farm, then we drove to a lookout point where we could see the inlet down to the city. I was more interested in the fruit everywhere - within sight there was a bannana tree, an avocado tree, a fig tree, a coconut palm and a kiwi tree (not to mention the oysters down the street and a horse in the pasture behind us). In a world of such abundance, why did we ever start locking up our food?

I forgot to mention that at the Samba club there were all these beautiful young women enjoying the music who clearly wanted to be asked to dance, and there were a bunch of idiot guys standing there alone. I couldn't believe it! Any of the women would have been thrilled to fall into a guy's arms if he'd just made a move!

Somehow I was reminded of this while driving along the coast this morning, going past all the mountains that were still untouched, pure nature, jungles tumbling down the hills like uncut hair. Something in my body ached to go up there when I saw it, in the same way I felt looking at girls when I was in 7th grade - like I wanted to be near them and I wasn't sure why, really, but it seemed natural and they probably smelled good.

There was an enormous mall at the foot of a mountain, at the foot of a favela, and I thought it would scar the landscape, but somehow the mountains endured - they looked beautiful with no concession to the commerce.

Just a few things that been runnin through my head

2008-02-11T12:52:00.001-08:00

Toxic chemicals found in saliva and urine samples from kids on MI, a result of, you know, putting chemicals on our food.

Toxic chemicals, harmful to reproductive systems, found in saliva samples of babies, a result of, you know, putting chemicals on the babies.

A man is walking from Britain to India without using money. He's part of the "Freeconomy" movement, which posits that "The more we accumulate wealth, the more it leads to a breakdown of community". His blog is here.

I had this great idea for a bag that can be used as a safe while traveling so you could leave your passport or camera in a hotel room without worrying. Well, turns out it's been done, and I want it!

A quote from Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe. Context: he's on a deserted island.
"I frequently sat down to my meat with thankfulness, and admir'd the hand of God's providence, which had thus spread my table in the wilderness. I learn'd to look more upon the bright side of my condition, and less upon the dark side, and to consider what I enjoy'd, rather than what I wanted; and this gave me sometimes such secret comforts, that I cannot express them; and which I take notice of here, to put those discontented people in mind of it, who cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them; because they see and covet something that He has not given them. All our discontents about what we want appear'd to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have."

The best day ever. Florianopolis.

2008-02-11T03:15:00.001-08:00

View Larger Map

(We're in Florianopolis, a city on an island that's barely not touching the mainland of Brasil. We're staying with a girl named Vivian who we met through globalfreeloaders.com.)

Vivian took us to this gorgeous beach on the south end of the island today and to get there we had to wade across this river that was a deep red, almost brown, like it was stained by tea leaves. It was knee-deep at the most and you couldn't see your feet on the bottom when you were wading, I could only vaguely make out whether my next step would be on sand or into deeper water so I followed a sand bar in the middle of the river, followed it all the way to the mouth, all the way to where the waves from the sea were breaking and I could feel cold water pushing in. There I finally waded across and saw this corner of water where the red from the river was swirling with the green of the ocean and the yellow sand and it looked like someone's interpretation of a drug dream, like kaleidescope water circling.

After that we went and sat down at a restaurant under a huge shady tree on the beach and Vivian ordered for us the "Sequencia" - an onslaught of seafood that included crab cake-type things cooked inside a crab shell, fried; shrimp fried; fried fish; chili shrimp (that you eat with the shell on, a first for me), a fish stew, a salad, french fries, rice, beans and other stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting. Azure and I body surfed after all that, then we napped on the beach, then I body surfed again. I love the sea, I don't know why it takes me so long to remember that.

Vivian made vague threats about dancing for tonight and I wasn't looking forward to it because most of my dance experiences are like this: (loud, bad music in the back ground) Azure says something to me. "WHAT?" Azure repeats herself and I still can't hear her. "WHAT?" Then I get dehydrated and go home. And the music is awful the whole time.

Tonight she took us to a Samba club and I feel like, once again, the universe has been holding out on me. The club was actually a wooden house hidden behind these huge sand dunes with a hot little room packed full of people, young and old, dancing and sweating in rhythm with the most beautiful pulses of drums, they were dancing and chanting along as a group and it felt ecstatic. I felt ecstatic. The drummers were fantastic, so talented, they'd speed up in the middle of a song, out of nowhere, and even though I don't think I've danced samba before in my life, I was buoyed by the music, by closing my eyes and trying to feel the drums like I imagine good dancers probably do. Azure and I worked the entire time on dancing with each other - not just together - and I think we were getting better by the end of the night. There were some great dancers there. The band was sitting at a table on the dancefloor so it felt democratic and anonymous but at the same time like we were watching this special group of artists who were sharing their talent. The room was hot even with the fans going and when we looked outside we could see the dunes silhouettes towering and a hard rain coming down all night, keeping rhythm outside. The four of us moved over to the corner and between songs we'd stick our hands out the window to feel the rain and wind, all of us completely aware, I think, that this was a defining travel moment. The rhythms were just amazing. You know how I was so impressed with the tango band that had no drums? Well, Samba is like the yang to that - a music that's all drums, like it's the skeleton that was extracted from music, leaving Tango as the flesh. I just can't believe I've gone so long in life without knowing about these things.

Floripa!

2008-02-10T13:36:00.001-08:00

The city of Florianopolis is half on the mainland and half on an enormous island just off the Atlantic coast of Brazil. It's stunning, its raining. The island has a ton of mountains so the roads wind around valleys except for the ones that go straight up hill in the favelas. We're staying with a girl named Vivian (who we found through globalfreeloaders.com) and I asked her why the favelas are in the hills. In the US the hills are where the expensive houses are because they have the best views, so why is it the opposite here? She didn't have an answer. I wonder if it has to do with being literally marginalized. The favelas are actually beautiful here. They look like the hill houses in Cinque Terre.

We spent today at the beach, which I'll write about in my email tomorrow.

Beautiful Places

2008-02-08T06:30:00.001-08:00

Every once in a while I come across a place that takes my breath away with its natural beauty:
2001
Paris
German Alsace
Western Washington (my first time seeing it with fresh eyes

2003
Northern Israel
Vancouver Island between Nanaimo and Tofino

2005
Tuscany
Southern Oregon

2006
Koh Pha Ngan, Thailand
Mekong River in Laos
The northern mountains and valleys in Thailand, near the Burmese border

2007
The area south of Iguazu
Uruguayan coast between Monte Video and Punta del Diablo
Bariloche and around

Up the coast of Brazil

2008-02-08T06:09:00.001-08:00

We had the option of taking a 20+ hour bus ride from Buenos Aires to Florianopolis, but we figured we could save some money by trying it a different way - taking national bus lines all the way up the coast. We left BA a few days ago and took the ferry across to Monte Video. We stayed there one night and I really liked the city, I found it intimate

The next morning we got up and took another 4-hour bus ride along the coast to Punto del Diablo, the fishing village we visited a couple months ago on the Brazil border. It sucked this time around - full to the brim with tourists, higher prices and... shudder to think... FAMILIES. That was the last straw. We had planned to stay two nights, but we left after one. PdD was great before high season.

So yesterday we took a bus to Chuy, the town that straddles the international border of Uruguay and Brazil, then caught a bus up here to Porto Alegre. Already we can feel the difference in the people, in the city. It´s much more manic, there is a lot more racial diversity. We are only going to spend one more night here, then we´re off again to Florianopolis.

The bus from BA to Florianopolis cost about $136 USD and took about 22 hours. Here is the breakdown of how we did it:
Buenos Aires to Monte Video on Buque Bus: $48 USD, 3.5 hours
Monte Video to Punto del Diablo: $13 USD, 4 hours
Punto del Diablo to Chuy: $2.5 USD, 1 hour
Chuy to Porto Alegre: $35.5 USD, 8 hours
Porto Alegre to Florianopolis: $31 USD, 10 hours (due to awful traffic)

So we ended up doing it for $130 USD, 26.5 hours. Well... I guess it was pretty close. We also spent more on hotel rooms than we would have if we´d just stay in Florianopolis, but live and learn, I suppose. Something we´re pretty proud of, though, is that we´ve traveled the entire southern part of the continent by land, meaning we´ve gotten to see how the environment changes from one place to the next, gradually. There´s no disconnect that you would have by flying and missing what´s between cities (as we´ve been doing for the last few years), so we´ve seen the west coast turn into the Andes to the high desert to farms to BA. Up into the jungle, down into the lakes, out to the arid east coast, into the beautiful pastures of Uruguay, then up into the lush Brazilian landscape. It reminds me of Thailand, here. After traveling this much, everything reminds me of something.

Random additions

2008-02-01T18:01:00.000-08:00

When I bought this, the woman said, "I don't know the name for this thing in English." I responded, "I don't think there is one."

I was inspired by an artist I saw at the Bellevue Arts Fair who had this picture of a market scene in Africa that looked so realistic I felt I was there... A very powerful photo. I think it had to do with the angle of the shot and the lens size, so I tried here to see if I could pull off the same trick.

I was excited about this picture because of all the different light sources: the outside light, the lights inside the cabin coming through the windows, the moon in the sky and that reddish light from the town bouncing off the clouds.

I love this one - Elephant seals.

One of my favorites

2008-02-01T17:44:00.000-08:00

Skinny dip pictures!

2008-02-01T17:37:00.000-08:00

From the full moon swim:

Valdes Penninsula Wildlife!

2008-01-31T14:41:00.000-08:00

View Larger Map

Yesterday I was happy to look out and see that it was dawn, but I went back to sleep for 15 more minutes. I woke up again and threw on my pants and went to wake up the girls - I was in a guys' dorm and they were in the girls'. We had a crappy breakfast but were excited because we were going to Punto Norte, the furthest point on the desert penninsula. A two hour drive to see, hopefully, orcas that rode up in the waves and snatched seals off the beach.

We got in the car and started across the desert, still early in the morning, still what I´d call dawn, as the sun made long shadows and felt cool. We saw all sorts of wildlife on the drive, more than we´d seen the day before. We saw the regular llamas and sheep, but in addition we saw foxes and packs of emus crossing the road. The highlight was when a jackrabbit saw us coming and went sprinting ahead of the car. We pulled even with him - going SIXTY kilometers per hour! I was hanging out the passenger side (of my best friend´s ride) with the good camera and I managed to snap two really good shots of the thing, background blurry and all. It´s really a great picture because I think it´s very rare that people get to take a picture of a sprinting jackrabbit at the same speed.

We got to the North Point but unfortunately the tide was low (fun little miscommunication with the rangers). We got to see the elephant seals, though, which are nasty creatures. They´re essentially sacks of guts, poorly designed, constantly grumpy. They were screaming at each other and fighting all the time, not a quiet moment. There were some dead pups being fed on by birds, the mother occasionally scaring them off, but the birds did eventually get the best of the carcass.

From there we drove, pretty uneventfully, the rest of the way around the penninsula, the trip took about 4 or 5 hours on dirt roads, in all. We stopped at one point to look at an enormous salt flat, empty and hot looking. We couldn´t go out onto it because of a fence, but it was cool just to be on the "shore". Autsy drove us back safely to the town for some lunch and a siesta.

When we woke up Azure and I went for a walk around the hill on the west side of the town to, you know, see what was there. It turns out that the ground dropped 20 feet down to the beach and the only way to access it was by lowering yourself down a rope. I was excited to do it, of course, but azure didn´t want any part. I liked how the beach was in plain view but almost inaccessible. It felt private. After I lowered myself down I saw there was a wall of mussels that was kinda a cave carved out by the waves and I saw the reflection of water on the ceiling even though the tide was low. I tucked my head in to investigate and found a little puddle with stuff sliming around in it, but the cool thing was I stuck my head in a parabola, so I could hear whatever was behind me, and I swear I heard a whale squealing. I didn´t see it, though.

Anyway, I climbed back up the rope and walked a little along the edge of the cliff looking at fossils in the ground. There´s this weird phenomenon at Piramides where the ground you´re walking on is all old mud that has fossils in it, so you´re literally walking on thousands and thousands of visible fossils the whole time. I imagine that when it rains, the top layer of the ground erodes and some of the fossils come loose.

After dinner I demanded that since we were so close to the desert and it would be a moonless night we should drive way out away from the lights and look at the stars. We took off just after sunset, and I´m glad we went so early because when we got to a lookout point, the sky was alarming... It was a clear, clear night and when you looked at where the sun had set, you could see the curve of the earth in the atmosphere where the dark sky and stars met the blue. I could see all the colors of the rainbow in the remaining band of sky. It was, I imagine, the most pure sunset you can see. No interference from land or pollution or dust or clouds. Just air and light.

At the same time the stars were appearing dozens at a time, so many that I looked at Orion´s belt and wondered why they picked those three out of the handfulls around them. We saw four celestial events: a plane, a satellite and two shooting stars. One of the shooting start tore a light blue streak slowly across the sky, only Autsy and I saw it. The Milky Way was cool and I had one of those moments, laying on my back on the ground, where I could actually imagine we were on a ball in the three dimensional space of the stars, that the black sky had depth. Times like that you feel like you´re not looking up, but out.

I managed to take some cool pictures, I guess I´ll see how they turn out on the computer. I´m really excited about them, but I don´t know if the smaller stars will come out they way they looked last night. I mean, I´m sure they won´t, but it would be cool if they did.

That arc of blue.

It came out well.

60 KPH!!

Fossil mud.

Desert in the morning.

Shut up!

Click here to see more wildlife pictures.

Autsy´s blog

2008-01-27T17:42:00.000-08:00

For those of you who don´t, do check Autsy´s blog. She has some great posts and writes a lot even when we don´t. She has a great pictoral post of our time in and around Bariloche called ¨Fun for all.¨

Everyone loves pictures of water

2008-01-26T14:49:00.000-08:00

Again, all these photos can be found here.

Algae

100-foot blue

Shallower blue

Pornography

Circle vs Line

Many Menagè-a-trois

2008-01-26T14:42:00.000-08:00

Ok, so that was a completely unnecesary title, but Tom and Maya say that the more racy the title, the more hits we will get. It is also a tribute to our favorite hostel worker, Juanny Depp, whom Autsy has referred to in her posts. The night we went for the moonlight swim, he said, ¨After the swim, we can have many menage-a-trois¨, of course he meant orgy, but didn´t know the word, but the idea of the thirty people on the beach clustering up for many of them gave us a giggle. I love messed up translations.

Since my partners in travel have been very good about updating regulary, I thought I would just do another played recap. I´ll try to estabolish myslef as the big picture girl, while they can write about the details.

Thursday of last, the three of us hop on a bus to Bariloche. The ride is ok, except for the very loud Jack Black movie playing. If I haven´t commented on the state of the movies of the overnight busses, I should. They are horrible. I mean 2 of them were on the Seattle Times movie critic´s list of the 5 movies she wishes she could forget. The drive was beautiful, desolate for much of it and then out of nowhere comes trees and huge lakes. Our main goal for heading was to escape the heat and get some good lake swimming in, but like most places on this trip, it was not what we expected.

The first day there, it was cool and windy. The town, as you can see in Mike´s photos looks quite German, set on a hill sloping down to the water. We went to the rocky beach the first night and realized why we hadn´t seen anyone swimming in the lake -- it was haultingly cold. I mean, my foot cramped as my toe was barely touching the water. Perhaps I even gave a small yelp!

The first night we spent in a double room, Autsy and I on the bed, Mike on the floor (he offered!). It was really nice of the guy to give us the room, many people wouldn´t have allowed it. We really noticed how nice and relaxed people were when w got there. We think it might have something to do with the climate. That day we got our first glimpse of Hostel 1004, which has been raved about by both of my companions. The minute we stepped foot in it´s luxurious common room, we knew we had to stay there. Having no space avalable for the next 3 nights, we made reservations when we could get them and looked for a car rental place. The next morning we found the cheapest deal in town and headed to El Bolson.

In El Bolson, there were a lot of Hippies. Everyone had a backpack and people were all over the streets and the plaza. It was a small town set between two mountains. It actually looks a lot like North Bend, in a valley, with hills all around. Since we had a car, we were able to drive out of the center to a great little place in a the middle of a big garden or park or something. It was cute and made of great wood beams and had the nice wooden details that makes a place charming. We went to town and got to eat at what seemed like the most popular area in town. First had locally made beers and ice cream at an outdoor table, while doing some good people watching, then had diner inside. The food was pretty good, but we had to go back because Mike and Autsy had been having ¨stomach issues¨ since the buffet at the Iguazu hostel -- another hazard of travelling, but we have been pretty lucky.

The next morning, we asked for another night, but they were full, so we decided to hang out at one of the nearby lakes and swim before returning to Bariloche. At breakfast, we picked up a fourth, a girl named Nadia from LA, who was spending time in a desert in Chile by herself to become happy again. Of course a long story, but detail is not the name of my game. We took her to the lake, which was f-ing cold as well, but Mike, Autsy and I were determined, so we went in to the stares of all the other people on the beach. More yelping and we mad Nadia take some photos of us for proof. I wish I could blog temperature, but this computer does not have the ¨feel function¨ yet, someday. We stopped at the cerveceria for some lunch before heading back to Bariloche. Stopped at a lake, Mike skipped rocks and took some photos. He is becoming a self-proclaimed ¨nature photographer¨, but much of the wildlife he captures is Autsy and I (see the photo of me eating the burger in his post).

Made it back to Bariloche, had a nice dinner, stayed at a nice hotel, left the next morning for the 7 lakes tour, which we ended up messing up and taking the longer route. It was beautiful, both Mike and Autsy learned how to drive stick and both took some really hard terrain. Stopped at some remote lakes, ate at a remote town, drove on dirt roads for probably 4 hours, almost ran out of gas, found a cute place that ended up being more than we thought, and turned the car in Monday morning. Having a car in my experience is always worth the extra money. Everytime we rent one, the feeling of freedom is tangible and we are always sop light and happy having control to stop wherever we want.

We cheacked in to the best Hostel ever and spent the next 4 days hanging around the town. We took a trip out to Llao Llao, which is the fancy hotel out on the point, our view was better and we only paid $13 per night versus $390 for the cheapest room. We met a bunch of cool people and got most of their cantact information. We cooked dinner in every night, which was a great experience because most of the 30 other people staying in the hostel did the same thing, so there was a sense of community and there were new people to talk to without having to go out. We went to the vegetable stand every night and cooked fresh veggies or had salads. Every morning, they gave us an oatmeal concoction for breakfast that was great. We went out for lunches and spent the days either walking around town or heading to the local rocky beach, the one that I dipped my toe in the first day, but now we would actually go in since the moonlight splash. It broke the seal in a way and we went in everyday following that event. At night, we could sit out on the balcony of the hostel and look at where the houses on the hill hit the water and across the lake to all of the untouched shores. From our room, we could see the lake and the moonrise and the plaza, which unfortunately came with a lot of teens playing really loud, not very good music at full blast from their cars. Who knew sound travels up so well.

The last night was a little sad, they had a BBQ, not for us, but sort of because we had asked about it. We got prime seats for the view and the weather was so warm we could sit there until well after sunset. We kept asking ourselves why we would want to leave, it was so good to us, but it was time. We caught a bus to Puerto Madryn last night, got in at 7am, a better idea in theory than in practice. Everything was shut down in the small beach town and we waited around until 9:30 to find a place. It is what all beach towns are in the summer, crowded and commercial, with lots of bad restaurants and families trying to have a good time together. It made me realize how little experience I have with this culture, as we never seemed to, and still don´t travel much in the summers. We have a car reserved to drive down and see some penguins and up to see some whales. In a way, I´m glad it is so different from Bariloche because at least it isn´t a lesser version of something great. The landscape is different and the feel is opposite. We are spending tonight readjusting, using the internet and catching up on some sleep that we lost on the bus last night.

For fun, here is a picture Mike took of Autsy and I on the last night at the Hostel. These are our prime seats for the BBQ.

Awe-inspiring views

2008-01-25T09:17:00.000-08:00

All of these can be found here

Hostel 1004 swim

2008-01-23T05:26:00.001-08:00

From the 10th floor we watched the full moon come up last night, enormous and orange and visibly rising. The moon drew a path between us starting at our window and dropping down onto the windshields of cars below where it disappeared and reappeared with traffic. It then went white onto the stones on the beach and reflected broadly as a yellow band across the lake. It ran on the opposite shore, up the silhouettes of mountains and finally ended in some clouds where the sky glowed. We could find the moon no problem, we were connected. We could walk there if needed. Slowly the full moon rose and the night felt like an event - like we might be there the one and only time this happened.

The doorman at the hostel organized everyone for a moonlight swim, we´d leave at 11:30 and take a plunge together. He said that this was, in fact, the first time they´d ever done this with the hostel, so maybe it really was the one and only time. I like to think so.

--
There was a woman from Sacramento who didn´t go. Later that night, we´d be talking on the balcony and she´d tell me the stock market fell hard yesterday, the Feds dropped the rates again and the dollar plummeted against the Euro.
--

We left in a large group from the hostel - the elevator could fit 7 at a time so we emerged on the ground floor in clumps until finally everyone was down and ready to go. It was cold out, and from earlier swimming we knew the water was freezing, barely tolerable. None of us was really looking forward to the actual act, just the momentousness of it - that we were spontaneous and present. Isn´t that travel?

It would be, I realized, one of the most beautiful things I´ve done - and I´m glad I realized that on the beach beforehand because it made it much easier to go in. We took off our clothes (we were wearing bathing suits, unfortunately), stepped out of our sandals onto the stones, and we cautiously walked down the beach. I waded into the water yelping, everyone else was screaming and splashing. You could see the bottom, the moon being so bright and the water so clear, and I thought some people might break their toes on large rocks if they went running into the water.

I dunked my head under and all my skin went numb. The water was shocking, it was literally breathtaking. I stayed in maybe 30 seconds, just enough to enjoy watching everyone jump around in the moonlight against the mountains, then I scurried to get out. Az and Autsy came in a bit after me, so I left them back in the water, screaming and howling themselves. When we were all standing on the rocky shore the air and wind felt so warm that I actually let myself dry without using a towel.

Bariloche & the Seven Lakes Tour

2008-01-22T12:57:00.001-08:00

Hola everyone!

The morning after I wrote the last email, we left the hippieish El Bolson (taking with us an American named Nadia who we met at breakfast) and started back on the 4-hour drive to Bariloche. On the way we stopped and hung out at the rocky beach on one of the lakes. I skipped stones and talked politics with Nadia while Az and Autsy waded and paddled around in the freezing water.

We made it to Bariloche, managed to spend the night in a nice French-themed hotel (which we wouldn´t have been able to afford with less than 4 people) and the next morning headed out of the city, leaving Nadia behind. We were going on the Seven Lakes Tour, which is a 180 kilometer loop north into the mountains, past lakes and rivers and streams and ponds and valleys, etc.

We had half a tank of gas when we passed the gas station, the first half had taken us 250km, so we figured we were fine. What could possibly go wrong? We turned off the paved highway and drove next to a river into this valley that was untouched - there was some of that deserty brush and a lot of pine trees. I seem to remember seeing a house or a barn or something, but I don´t think there was one in the first valley. We were actually in more of a canyon, I guess, with rock formations on either side. We were talking about what it would be like to spend a night out there, mountains blocking out all the city light, no sounds, no traffic, no planes overhead.

The valley turned and we started an ascent. To our left was another rock formation, like Mount Si, but smaller, and there were all these strange trees at its base: they were large like evergreens but half the tree appeared to be dead while the other half was alive and well. It was haunting, all those skeletons mixed in. The dirt road continued to wind up the hill, through the strange trees, hairpin turns. Every corner we had a view down the valley. Finally we crested the hill and, guess what, another green valley relaxing in front of us, the dirt road ahead, the river next to it. We drove down into the valley and I took my turn driving, my first time ever driving stick shift, if you can believe that.

We came to a bridge that really looked like a) it wasn´t fit for foot traffic, let alone cars and b) the tire paths were too wide for our little car. Having never driven stick, I couldn´t afford to hesitate so we gunned it across the bridge. No problem.

After a few hours in and out of valleys, mostly alone except the occasional vehicle going the opposite direction, we finally came to a cluster of buildings that I think was a town. It was on a little hill that dropped to meet the foot of an enormous blue lake, and we stopped for food. Azure and Autsy had burgers, I had a ¨milanesa,¨ which is a piece of pork breaded and put in a bun about half its size. Of course we´re in Argentina, so of course they put ham and cheese in the pork sandwich. We sat outside in the sun, though it´s chilly here in the mountains, and the restaurant played a nice mix of Celine (I can´t figure out how to spell this) Dion and Christina Aguliera (I can´t figure out how to spell this).

We hopped back in the car with Autsy driving, and I think it was about this time that we realized we were running low on gas. It was also about this time that we realized that way back when we turned off the paved road, we actually turned onto the dirt road running on the NORTH side of the river, not the south side as we intended. In other words, our 180 kilometer loop was actually going to end up being about 280.

The ride from there on was kinda a blur. I kept glancing at the gas gauge every 3 seconds and occasionally out the window at the lakes and valleys. Autsy was driving, but Azure soon took over because she´s the most experienced of us three (and actually the only who had driven stick before this trip) and would hopefully be most economical with the gas. It´s tough on a dirt road to coast, the rocks slow you down. She´d try to speed up to 55 mph (we estimated) because we seemed to remember that was the most efficient speed, but there was always a reason to slow down, like another slow car or a weird curve.

Another half hour worrying about the gas and we passed a turnoff that we had thought was 40 km behind us. That was bad news. I was sure we weren´t going to make it because the road took this weird route around the top of a lake instead of the other way. The dirt road just never seemed to end and we kept getting stuck behind slow drivers. The car was absolutely soaked in dust, inside and out. It was crisis time, I started envisioning my night of hitchhiking into town, buying a gas can, buying gas, hitchhiking back out to the car and driving out of the mountains, hopefully making it back to civilization by sunrise. I wasn´t excited about it.

Finally we came to the paved road and there was only 7 km to go, but the gauge had long been in the red. Azure relaxed on the coasting thing (I think she figured that worst-case scenario we´d only have to hitch hike a short distance) but I got on her case, saying that coming up even 100 meters short of the gas station would mean pushing a car 100 meters.

Anyway, we turned a corner and finally, like the beacon of hope it was, the gas station came into sight. What a relief! We made it to the pump without incident. Then that evening we made it to a little hotel that was lovely and ripped us off, then the next morning back into Bariloche. We´re currently in a wonderful hostel on the top floor of the tallest building in town. It´s an eyesore from the outside, but probably the nicest views in the whole city from the inside.

Much love,

Mike (& Azure & Autsy)

I know it was our fault, but...

2008-01-21T05:59:00.000-08:00

I never know how much of the bad parts of traveling to put in this blog. I usually feel like an idiot a lot of the time and it is hard to share all those times with all the people I know. I mean, I have been traveling for how long and I still make the same mistakes. The other reason many of these moments don't make it up are because I spend a lot of time rationalizing things while traveling, so much so that by the time I get to a computer, it has been so worked through that I don't even care to mention it.

This morning I got up to pay the bill for our perfect little house in the valley to find that the man had quoted us in US dollar. That means, our cheap cheap place is now not cheap, in fact it is three times what we had thought. The really frustrating part is that we had expressed our dismay at the price and he nor his daughter made no effort to clarify. We kept saying 100 pesos, and they kept responding Si, 100, but no currency. At no time did they find it necessary to clarify even though we were in obvious disbelief. Another frustrating thing is that they quoted everything else in pesos. Breakfast, tours, etc. WTF!!! We even had a whole conversation about how everything else in the area was so expensive, around 200-300 pesos and he kept insisting that his was so cheap because it was so small. Anyway, I never know what to do in situations like this, so I paid him his stupid money and went back to the room. Later, the three of us returned to express our issue, knowing full well that we would not get anything, but at least we were heard and I got to fight with someone in another language.

On the drive back to Bariloche I went through a whole spectrum of emotions. I am stupid, always ask the currency. I shouldn't have paid. (BTW, does anyone know what happens if you just don't pay? Do they prevent you from leaving the country or anything if they have your info?). The emotion that stuck for a long time was obviously anger, he had taken a great night that would have been remembered as very fun and peaceful into an issue about money and getting ripped off. In the end, we settled on revenge. For those of you who don't know me, I am not extremely vengeful, but if I have all this time on my hands, as I do when I am travelling, why not. We had a long discussion about what a rightful revenge would be. My innitial response was to steal this picture from the cabin that I absolutely loved, but it was nailed to the wall. Of course I probably wouldn't have gone through with it anyway, but I tried for a second to get it. We left without taking anything of course.

All I wanted was for him to not get the same amount of money that he decieved us about. We had planned to return to the place, but after this, we would not. I can credit that as him losing what we would have thought we would have spent that night. So the rest of the revenge is that I make one reservation and not show up, that will do for me.

The problem is that each time this happens, people like him take away a little more of my trust in society. I mean to be clear, we talked to him for a long time this morning. I said, at no point did you say it was in US dollars. If you were in the middle of the United States, would you expect to be quoted in British pounds or Reals? And even though we asked repeatedly about the price, you felt no need to clarify? He said it wasn't his fault that we didn't understand and maybe he is right, but it wasn't like he had quoted a price and we said, fine. He qouted the price and we were like, really? Really? No, really? For real? Really? I don't understand, really? 100 pesos? SI SI SI SI SI SI!

Mike had a great idea in the car which we have neither the patience nor the vengeful nature to execute, but is still fun to think about. Since this man takes little pieces of our trust in people's honesty and full disclosure, we could take away his trust in reservations. If we bombarded him with fake reservations, everytime he wrote one in his book, he would have to question whether it was real or not. He probably would just set up a system for figuring it out, but that little effort is the same as our extra little effort to check people's stories.

PS. I know that 100 USD for three people is cheap, but I get really really really wrapped up in going cheaper and cheaper.

We are now back in Bariloche at Hostel 1004, which has a great view and we are paying-checked and rechecked and written down and paid in advance- a nice room for a reasonable price that we will be in for a few days. The last 7 days, we have slept 7 different places, which is extremely tiring and it will be nice to sleep in and see something in depth.

Something great about traveling is that most problems can be overcome easily with a nice bitch session, some big beers and good gelato. Beer and gelato to come.

I wish I could bottle firsts

2008-01-20T15:51:00.001-08:00

There is nothing like the first time for anything. The other day when we were renting a car, the woman told me my spanish was good. She was the first one to say that and it´s not, but that´s ok, I was flattered. And yeas, I am bragging now, but who cares, it made me feel so great (ps. today I was almost in tears because my spanish was so bad). I know I will spend the rest of my time here trying to get the same compliment, but it will never be the same. We drove around today and had to look for housing late again (around 7pm) in another touristy town. Lately we have been paying way too much for being unprepared, but tonight we were determined. We went to a place that was very expensive, in a valley and very beautiful, but still way too much. We told him it was too much and that we would head toward Bariloche to find cheaper and he went off about how everything was that price, but full. Ok dude. The next place we went, they give us our own hut with a loft and a kitchen for 1/3 the price. Mike wanted to call the guy to brag, but unfortunately my spanish is not quite at that level. Anyway, the first minute I found out that Autsy was not mistaken about the price and that we could have this cute little place for the night, was unbeatable. Fortunately, when we travel, there are so many of these moments. I think that is why we go away every year. So many firsts and so much pure joy for such simple things. Like a shower and some scotch, which I am going to partake in right now...

Have I mentioned it´s gorgeous?

2008-01-20T15:16:00.001-08:00

We just spent the day driving many hours on dirt roads through untouched land, passing no other cars. Every corner we turned revealed another stunning mountain, a strange rock formation, trees I´d never seen, valleys relaxed in front of us. We´re on the north shore of the lake that Bariloche touches. We found a little cabin (cabaña?) for cheap cheap and we´ll spend the night here, rushing back to Bariloche tomorrow morning to return the car.

Patagonia! (?)

2008-01-18T18:01:00.001-08:00

I´ve been meaning to write for a few days now, but we´ve been busy, been on the road. If you check our blog you´ve already seen that we went to the impressive Iguazu Falls last weekend. Azure described the excruciating details in a long post.

We got back and spent a few days with Tom and Maya in Buenos Aires, getting clean and resting up for our current adventure. On the last night there, Tuesday, there was an amazing electrical storm that had the sky pulsing with lightning - none of it was a shocking crash like a heartattack, but it was more constant, arhythmic flashes scattered through the sky, like an irregular heartbeat in light with rumbles. It went for hours, there are pictures.

The next evening we caught a 20-hour bus down to Bariloche, one of the best places on earth. I think we´re in Patagonia. We rode those 20 hours through sparse land that could have been the ugly part of Eastern Washington. At the 19 hours, 45 minute mark we came over a hill and saw the beautiful city of Bariloche resting on the edge of a lake, in a field of mountains, what a welcome. The water is so clear. When I look out at the blue part of the lake it looks blue in a way that isn´t on a color spectrum, but has got to be described as a depth, like 100 feet blue or something. I remember seeing this effect on a ferry in the Mediterranean, looking down and not being able to understand it as a color, only as a depth.

Last night we went down to the shore and stood at a parking lot where a bunch of RVs were parked - a bunch of brilliant people who woke up this morning and saw 360 degrees of mountains and 180 of that blue water when they first opened their eyes. We stood there - last night - with the wind tearing across the lake and throwing the icewater into the air. It was 10:30 but still light because we´re south and west in the timezone. It was so clear last night, the air is so clean.

Anyway, we rented a car and we´re now in a town to the South called El Bolson, another idyllic place, but there are more hippies here. We wanted to go swimming, but my feet ache when I stand in the water for more than 10 seconds because it´s so cold. We´re trying to take pictures of the mountains, but of course we can´t do it justice. Every corner we turn we´re reminded of the best places we´ve been - Seattle, Tahoe, Northern Italy, etc. We´re freshwater fish, I guess.

Take care,

Mike (& Azure & Autsy)

The South

2008-01-18T17:32:00.001-08:00

I´m on a really slow computer, but just wanted to update that Autsy , Mike and I headed out Wednesday night on 20 hour bus ride to Bariloche in the middle of Argentina. It is located in the Lakes District, which means it is surrounded by lakes and the Andes Mountains. We got in around 4pm and it was actually cool. Temperature-wise. It felt a lot like Seattle in early summer and we all mimmeduiately felt happy and at home. No more humidity. We stayed the night in town and booked the hostel we wanted for Monday night, so we decided to kill the time in between by renting a car and driving around. We made it to a town called El Bolson, which is a beautiful 2 hour drive south. The worth of the car is immeasurable. We got to stop whenever we wanted to take photos or dip our feet in the clearest water I´ve ever seen. I have been around mountains before, but it seems like they rise so fast here, you can look across the valley and see the exact point that you could reach your hand out and touch the mountain.

El Bolson is actually a place that we had intended to go because a friend of our friend Nicole told us about an organic farm she stayed on here, but we just came and got a nice room in a bed and breakfast set on a huge garden. Tomorrow, we´ll drive to a lake and hopefully do some much needed lake swimming. The locally-made beer here is great and it stays light until well after 10:30pm. More updates and photos to come.

Electrical Storm, Buenos Aires

2008-01-16T07:02:00.000-08:00

There was a beautiful electrical storm last night - flashes all over the sky every half second. I took hundreds of photos, having to set the exposure to 2.5 seconds and hope that in that time something would happen. Results below:

Cloud texture, I love this one. You can see the lower right is getting brighter.

Gothamish.

Industrial sky - again, this was at night, though it looks like dawn or something.

Night city.

The good bolt. If you zoom in on this one there are some strange "pieces" of light, like a lightning bolt that happened at one point.

Chacarita Cemeterio, Buenos Aires

2008-01-15T14:50:00.000-08:00

I visited another cemetery today, this one was more enormous and poor people could be buried there.

Many of the graves have little hedges over the coffins.

This grave had a cherry tomato plant growing on it, with ripe tomatoes. (No, I didn't.)

A brick wall with plaques. I don't know where the people are.

A more interesting part of the wall.

Tough to see, but there's a line of ants going in and out of this tomb.

A part of the enormous basement.

Water Water Water

2008-01-14T18:56:00.000-08:00

I know people are most drawn to pictures of other people, but I still like non-people pictures. Here are some of my favorite water photos from Iguazu Falls this weekend.

Fall's Edge

Droplets

On a plateau under the falls

Power

More droplets than stars

Wet rock

We stood there!

Picture Adventure - Brazil Iguazu

2008-01-14T13:23:00.000-08:00

We set out on our full-day Brazilian adventure on a very nice path.

No biking today, the weather is too bad? Ride or walk? The group decides to walk half-way before being picked up.

We set out on the 4.5km walk through the jungle.

Why are you doing this to me?

A little rain makes Autsy happy.

A lot of rain makes Mike pee.

You want us to ride now?

Finally, shelter! We can wring out our clothes...the driest we will be all day.

Everyone is wet.

There's food on that boat?

Huddled like penguins- for 60 minutes on the boat. Communication is cut off when Autsy's camera dies immediately after this photo was taken.

Another 4.5 hours without dry clothes and the van finally picks us up to go back to the hostel. What a day!

Miserable Joy

2008-01-12T10:35:00.000-08:00

We are standing huddled together like penguins in a boat during a rainforest style rain. We have been wet for over 3 hours and there is more to come. I am so cold and miserable, pants are too cold to wear, we are in the middle of the jungle and there is no way out. All I can do is accept the situation and be grateful that I will remember this for the rest of my life with people I love.

Yesterday, Mike, Austy and I went on the ¨Full Day Brazil Adventure¨ on the Brazilian side of Iguazu falls, which included biking, kayaking, hiking, and a fast boat trip into the falls. Since the day before had been about 90 degrees, we packed ready for a day of heat, lots of water, tank tops and shorts. We took Mike´s small bag for personal items, but it wasn´t large and since we assumed they would give us plastic bags for the wet parts, it wasn´t waterproof either. We were thankful that it was overcast when we woke up at 7am for an 8am pickup because the biking was first. We thought we would escape the heat at least until the kayaking. Our pickup got to the hostel around 9:30 and we crossed the border fine, picked up some more people along the way and got to the park around 11am. We then had to pay more for entrance (we had already spent $60 per person for the day, which doesn´t sound like a lot, but is a ton down here), so we were a little irritated.

We walked along what seemed like a dock in the jungle for a little while and got to a dirt road. We were told that we couldn´t bike due to the weather. It was barely drizzling and I thought about saying something to them about being from Seattle and how this was nothing, but didn´t want to be ¨that person¨. We had the option to walk or get a ride in this open jeep and one woman was like, we might as well walk, so we all sort of followed along, even though Autsy and I are pretty much the laziest people and would have much rather been transported on beds if given the choice. It was to be about a 4.5km walk followed by a 4.5km open jeep ride, so we started walking. At about 1km it started to rain. At 1.2km it started raining hard and at about 1.5km it was a torrential downpour and I mean torrential. It was exciting at first, a nice break from all the heat and humidity we have been having down here, but the sky just kept getting darker and darker and it just kept raining hard. After a while, there was no more road, it was only 2 rivers with a small path in the middle that was extremely slippery to those of up wearing flip flops. It wasn´t so bad, you know, just the average day walking 3km in a shower, no big deal. The jeep picked us up and that was when it got worse. The rain was so strong still and we were not under any cover, so the speed of the jeep made it colder, wetter, and more painful. The worst part at this point was that we were going farther into the jungle and this was only the first activity.

We stopped at the boat port on the river, which consisted of an open air hut and some bathrooms. There was no food and no more clothes. We couldn´t just turn around and catch a cab out, we had walked and jeeped and now had to boat to our next stop. I would have to say the only reason the three of us willingly left the hut for the boat was that they told us there was food on the boat. Such a cheap trick, but it worked. We spent about 6 minutes extremely content as we ate our lunches and then proceeded to clean out everyone else´s lunch box as they passed them to the back to be thrown away. People were actually throwing away food when we were stuck in the jungle, we couldn´t have that, so we salvaged it all. We waited in our tank tops and wet shorts for the rest of the group and then took off to the kayak center. This was probably the darkest time for me, I can´t account for Autsy or Mike during this time because I was curled up in a ball shaking on my seat for the next 20 minutes. I looked up a few times when Mike pointed out a bird or something on the shore, but it was pretty bleak. We got to the kayak place and about half of the group decided to go. Not us, though afterward, we found out the water was really warm, but at this point we were almost dry and it would have made us colder to get in and out. The three of us huddled together in the middle of the boat to keep warm and it worked. Sort of. It had been 3 hours of total wetness, how warm can you really get when you know you have another 3 to go.

Another boat ride, another jeep ride and we get dropped off again at some station in the jungle and don´t know what to do. I want to point out another important detail of this day--at no point on this trip did it seem like any of our drivers or guides knew what they were supposed to do with us. It appeared to be everyone´s first day and after a constant series of walkie talkie conversations with other people, they would hastily wave us in one direction or another. The communication was not stellar and there were people speaking their second or third language to others also speaking their non-native language. We were waved onto a bus by our second guide, which I am still not totally sure was the right bus, but we followed our group to the falls to walk on the path to see the falls. It was about 4:30pm and it was the first time we actually saw the falls. I still wore no pants and we were all still extremely cold. We joined to other tourists who had taken the bus in from the park entrance and were all happy and excited to be there. On the bus we heard an announcement in Portuguese and then in English about some wildlife that was very hungry and to not let it bite you or to feed it, possible large mosquitoes or some crazy rabbit animal. I always panic a little when we go somewhere new because everyone has horror stories, we were warned about the mosquito problem here, sometimes they create huge pus-filled welts, there are none, but I was still scared. For some reason, I still always believe them. Anyway, it turns out they were simply the Brazilian version or raccoons, most of them drinking Fanta out of the trash or running around digging holes. Nothing to be alarmed about.

We walked around for a while and took another bus back to the place where we would take the fast boat into the falls. By this point, I had bought a poncho and was wearing it over my wet shirt, but it kept the wind off. I tried to convince Autsy and Mike to get one, but they decided to stay strong. Whatev, I was happy. We took another jeep trip down and got on the boat with about 8 other people. It could have accommodated more, but due to the weather, most people had gone home. The driver started out fast. It was still raining, so it was hard to look up because it would it you in the face. He was swerving all around and Mike made the comment that he was driving us towards rocks , which was supposed to scared us, but since no one could look up, was completely lost on this group. He drove us so close to the black holes and finally into the falls. I could see Mike shielding his face and looking up. I opened my eyes once and it was awesome. We were directly under them, looking up at the most powerful waterfall in the world. Every time we would turn or bump, Autsy would yelp, and we later heard her again on the video that they took of us, that we considered buying to You Tube, but later thought we would recreate at some point. Another Truck ride back and we were still wet after 6 hours. We waited for the others and took the bus back to the hostel.

It was an exhausting day. We all slept like rocks, even though Austy and I were in a dorm with some loud guys who came in really late. I couldn´t care less. Today, with pleasant weather, we did the Argentine side. We did it cheap and took the city bus there and back. We walked every path in the park and took the water taxi to thisland. It was a complete day. We got a little burned and took some great photos. In most respects, it would have been the perfect trip to the falls, but to us, I´m sure we will remember our Brazilian adventure when we think of this place.

One last note... Both of the camera´s we took with us (Autsy´s and ours) broke at some point during the wet day, so photos will be pieced together from ours, which died first, hers, which died a little later, this Danish couple we met, who we had take photos of us after, and from today, when we went back under much more pleasant circumstances. Those photos will be up as soon as we can get them up, probably Monday or Tuesday.

Hope all is well with everyone. We love and miss you.

Iguazu

2008-01-11T02:03:00.001-08:00

Hola -- We made it to Iguazu via 16 hour overnight bus that was better than it sounds. We´re off to see the Brazilian side of the waterfalls today, doing a full-day tour that includes all sorts of fun stuff. More later!

Mike

Email 6: A day in the Life, BA

2008-01-08T20:57:00.000-08:00

I wasn't really sure where to start with this email, as daily life in BA becomes more unremarkable, but I know I love reading about ANYTHING written by travelers when I'm at home so I figure I should make the email happen.

On Saturday we woke up in our friend Nathan's apartment. The futon was lumpy so Azure sleept on half of it while I sleept on a single mattress on the floor. It worked fine, the air conditioner is a must and the sound puts me to sleep. It gets bright and hot early here, by the time we woke up (11am) it was already in the 80s, it had been bright since 6, but they have these metal shutters here that can block out 99% of the light so you can actually sleep until the afternoon and have no idea what time it is. On Saturday we took a cab to Rob & Autsy's hotel, then crossed the street for the same breakfast we'd had every day that week: the "Training" breakfast... fruit salad, yogurt with frosted flakes, toast with cream cheese, a shot glass of orange juice and a cafe con leche (latte). I rarely drink lattes when I'm at home, but I rarely go without one a day here. The cafe is in the lobby of a hotel and it's on a main street corner. It has enormous floor to ceiling windows and reminds me a lot of a Parisian cafe. The waiters are idiots.

We went to Recoleta Cemetery that afternoon. I went in and took a bunch of pictures (which you can see at http://quarteryear.blogspot.com) while Rob, Autsy and Azure walked around the flea market that's set up outside. It's actually a very nice part of town and the flea market has a ton of stuff, from hand-made leather goods to clothing and art and bags and lots of things you'd never even imagine. A couple weeks ago I bought a nice white jacket that I'll definitely be sporting at home. The market is pretty well known, I think, and I've met a lot of Americans there. When we were on the see-saws, Rob and I traded jokes with some guys from LA who were next to us. One of the guys started asking me about our trip and where we were going, but that's no fun. It would have been better to just joke a lot then go our separate ways. There's an art in developing travel relationships. Many are transitory, occasionally one is special. Recognizing the context of the encounter helps you figure out the nature of the relationship. The guy who asked me about our plans was a young traveler, new to the pace.

After taking my pictures, we met under the huge tree - Rob was playing some guitar in the park - and went our separate ways. I think both couples went back and had a siesta to escape the ridiculous heat of the day. It's been in the 100s here. At 7pm Azure and I went to El Alamo, the American bar, to watch the Seahawks. Rob and Autsy arrived about 20 minutes later. The Alamo has this smart promotion where women drink for free (yes, for free) M-F, and men drink for cheap all the time. I got a cheap whiskey or six, Azure had her share as well. We watched the Hawks intently at first, then a little distractedly in the middle, then intently at the end. Rob and I had great conversations throughout the night, as per the usual.

That night I met a dude from Omak, Washington. He was amazed not only that I'd heard of Omak, but that Azure and I had been there about 6 months ago. It blew his mind. He had dreadlocks and was rooting for the Hawks, so I made him for some kind of hippie Seattlite, but he was Eastern Washington through and through. He asked why we went to Omak and I told him it was to look for "Apocalypse property..." you know, land we could run to if things weren't going well. He was way into it - "That's exactly it, man! Everyone on the East side of the mountains knows that's going down a lot sooner than anyone thinks, it's coming SOON and everyone on the West side is going to be screwed!" He said he was 1/3 Native American (impossible) and his French side had been in Omak since the 1500s. How? They came over with the Vikings. The Native American side was there for 20,000 years, which is before the last Ice Age. I joke and judge, but all my historical knowledge is informed by misogynist & racist industrialists, so what do I know.

After the game we went to a restaurant called Sudestada that makes Southeast Asian cuisine, though it's more of a modern take on it, in my opinion. It's tough to cook here - I had this idea one night that I'd make a stir-fry in Valparaiso and got together onions, peppers, asparagus, mushrooms and chicken. We took it to the kitchen but the knives were SO dull that I literally used a spoon to cut some of it, even tearing up the mushrooms and peppers by hand. Then they didn't have a frying pan, so we had to use a pot. But the pot was so thin that it burned really quickly on the gas stove, so we had to put water in the bottom and cook everything together on low heat (as opposed to timing it right). The result was the same bland shitty veggies we'd been served throughout Chile. The tools design the craft, I guess. Sudestada was good, I think I may have made a drunk fool of myself, but I was entertained.

It occurred to me while writing this that we're living a life very similar to the Parisian ex-pats in the 1920s - Ernest Hemingway specifically is who I know about. They'd have breakfast with a friend, then take a cab to have lunch and a drink with a friend, then take a cab to have more drinks with more friends, then take cabs to have dinner and drinks with friends. We're not really taking part in actual BA culture, I believe, but we're kinda living on its surface like a slick of oil on a pool of water. We're just living luxuriously and playing. We could never ever know BA the way I know and love Seattle nor the way Buenos Airesians know their city. I can love Paris but it'll never be mine. Buenos Aires is a great city and we're really enjoying ourselves, probably in a way that many people here couldn't.

It's tough to write about the things we see around us because we're getting used to shot glasses of tonic water with our coffees and putting your hand straight out to hail a cab and all the other minor things I can't remember right now. Something I remember distinctly about applying for colleges is that I wanted to go away because I not only knew the fastest route from point A to B in Bellevue, but I also could do it with my eyes closed. I didn't notice the beautiful, impressive things in Bellevue/Seattle (like evergreen trees... I hope you're all taking time to enjoy them in the wind), and I felt I needed to go away to appreciate that. It's true, I think, and thank god it's temporary. I appreciate Seattle more and more every time I go away and never do I think I wouldn't want to come back. Nothing touches the beauty of being surrounded by lakes and mountains on all sides, nothing. But getting to know a new place is so rewarding... I never had any concept what a street looked like in BA. It's so empowering to go to these new places and not just sit there and cry... to actually function.

Anyway, we've updated our blogs a couple times and have uploaded a bunch of photos to Flickr. The set linked below ("Recent") is a selection of our most recent uploads, so you don't have to sift through the crap to find the good photos.

I hope everyone's happy and healthy!

Take care,

Mike

Quater Year: http://quarteryear.blogspot.com
Chicken Wall: http://thechickenwall.blogspot.com
Flickr (Recent): http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikegoldstein/sets/72157603670152526/
Flickr (All): http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikegoldstein

The major players

2008-01-07T20:26:00.000-08:00

Just so you know who we've been rolling with for the past few weeks, I decided to do a character sketch of all the major players, who interestingly enough were all at the same restaurant last Tuesday in many ways out of coincidence. It is a huge city, but small if you have the same favorite places.

Maya & Tom Frost
Maya is Mike's maternal first cousin. She and her husband, Tom moved to BA almost 2 years ago. They met while teaching abroad in Japan in the 80s and have 4 daughters (in age order- Taeko 21, Tara 20, Teal 18, Talya 17). They lived and worked in a suburb of Portland until 3 years ago, when they decided to move to Mazatlan, Mexico. After a year there, they found that there wasn't enough of a life there or at least one that they wanted, so let their youngest daughter, Talya pick their next city of residence, since she was the most influenced by the moves, being the only one still attending high school. She picked BA and here they are. We have been staying with Tom and Maya off and on for the past 3 weeks. When we got here, we though we were going to stay for a couple weeks and get an apartment of our own. Those thoughts soon vanished when we figured out how amazing they were and how nice they were to us. They have a great 3 bedroom apartment in the Belgrano neighborhood of BA. There are several photos taken here, including the rooftop BBQ that we used on Christmas day. Since they have a spare bedroom, we have pretty much moved in.

Talya Frost
The youngest of the sisters, she is the only one that still lives at home here in BA. She is finishing her 2nd year of college here (similar to running start) as a 17 year old. She has so many stories about her high school experience because she has never actually been to high school in the states, only in Mexico and Argentina. She is now fluent in Spanish and takes care of us all in that respect. She is extremely mature and patient and hopes to work in conflict resolution. She is applying to colleges now, so it is fun to see what she is doing for her essays, which has sparked several interesting stories, being enrolled in a Mexican high school without speaking Spanish, traveling through India when she was a 2nd grader, etc.

Teako Frost
Taeko visited for 2 weeks, but left on Saturday. She currently lives in and works at a free health clinic in Harlem, where she counsels patients. She encounters more life-changing situations each day then most people encounter in a lifetime. She has an extremely high tolerance for stress, which helps her tremendously in her job.

Nathan Livni
In the interest of full disclosure, Nathan is the ex-boyfriend of our really good friend, Aviva. Yo Aviva! After they broke up, but I'm not sure because they broke up he moved to BA 2 years ago. We had met him when he was living in Seattle during a couple different game parties. Mike and he have the jewish bond going, but other than that and those few amazing nights of Mafia playing, we didn't really know Nathan that well. We met up for the first time at his apartment and I'm pretty sure he had no idea who we were from the emails. It didn't really matter. He turned out to be an extremely interesting and friendly guy. He is currently working here in IT or something that sounds a little boring, but is also really into his side project, which is creating murder mystery type events, but without the murder. He is really into creating games that don't necessarily reinforce the "us versus them" mentality. This is a long-discussed topic that is really interesting that I won't get into here because I don't transcribe my conversations. We ended up staying with Nathan for 4 nights to give Tom and Maya a break and to get to know Nathan better. It was really nice and were able to have some great evenings together.

Steve Nelson and Crew
I met Steve at Evergreen Junior High School in Redmond Washington. We were friends through HS and into college. We had lost contact, but through the miracle that is Facebook, reconnected a couple months ago. It turned out that he was going to be traveling in S. America for 2 months starting at the end of December. He and his 5 friends spent this last week in BA, but are leaving tomorrow. It was nice to see him when we did and will maybe see him again throughout S. America, possibly in Brazil. Stay tuned.

Autsy and Rob
Autsy, whose real name is Jennifer Sung got into BA last Tuesday. We lived together for 2 years in the dorms at UW. She now lives in San Francisco and got laid off from her job in November (don't worry, the good kind, she is still getting paid and she had been hoping to get laid off for 2 years now). She and her boyfriend, Rob traveled with us in Europe the winter before last and we stay with them whenever we go to SF. Rob is leaving on Wednesday to go back to work (he didn't get laid off) and she will be traveling with us for 2 months until the end.

Hopefully, this quick reference will be helpful when reading this blog- past present and future. It is these people that have defined the trip for us. More so than the culture shock, the language, the food or the city. They are the reason that this blog goes unupdated for days at a time, we are just having too much fun with them.

Cemetery desserts

2008-01-07T14:04:00.000-08:00

One more set of pictures from Recoleta.

Well-guarded

Decay

Multi-media tomb

Boundaries

More grand decay

A reflection in broken glass

Cemetery Structures

2008-01-07T08:49:00.001-08:00

Here are some photos that show more structural stuff from Recoleta.

The shadows of some crypts on the path

Here's two paths, one with people and one emptied.

Someone left a ladder up, so I climbed up on top of a crypt to get a different perspective.

The "Crypt Apartment."

This is the top of the crypt apartment, looking up.

A sky that felt like swimming.

Nature creeping in.

2008-01-07T08:15:00.000-08:00

I just love Recoleta Cemetery - I could spend all day there. It's cool because it's such a major tourist attraction in such a small space, but you can easily find corners to be alone.

I liked photographing the little plants that were growing from the crypts - nature creeping in where it was meant to be kept out. In general, I like when grand visions decay. Here are some more pictures from Recoleta.

A spiderweb on some iron details on a tomb.

Lots of cats there. Here's one that was stretching.

A little plant growing out of a cross.

A fern clinging to the cracks.

An angel hindered by spiderwebs.

Angel face

Email 5: PVD in BA on NYE!!

2008-01-01T21:13:00.001-08:00

New Year's last night was so perfectly New Years it couldn't have been any other night. We were getting all amped up to go to a Paul Van Dyk rave and got there at 11pm. We'd been planning to do the countdown among all the ravers and when the clock struck we'd scream with the best of them and dance a little harder, maybe streak or something. Upon arrival, however, we discovered the venue didn't open until 1am (welcome to Buenos Aires). So we had a crisis on our hands: one hour to midnight and nowhere to celebrate. And the city was a ghost town, seriously. Empty streets, gated up restaurants, it's not like NYE in the States. The young and beautiful apparently spend the first part of the night with their families then go out later, around 3am, to party until dawn (welcome to Buenos Aires). We didn't know this. Lesson learned.

So we managed to find a cab and convince him to take us to a neighborhood that's usually bustling, but we got there and most of the restaurants were dark, and the open ones wouldn't let us in. Invitation only (and/or we were dressed inappropriately). We started walking, thinking maybe we'd find something on a main road. We walked through shady areas where you knew you were completely safe even though theoretically you should be cautious- nobody would be lurking in the shadows in a ghost town. Nobody was out. It was empty. If there were people in the shadows, they probably would have been skiddish, malnourished ravers who didn't know what to do with themselves until midnight (who might have been as dangerous as muggers), but nobody was there.

With about 20 minutes we made it to another restaurant that had a private party. They wouldn't let us in, wouldn't even let us have any water on this 80+ degree night. With 10 minutes to go we passed another little neighborhood that was completely shut down except for some lonely security guards watching the countdown on TV. We turned a corner and had one last shot, a restaurant Monica knew that might be open. Expensive, but open. With two minutes to go we spotted it.

The six of us stepped into the entryway and got the attention of a waiter. Could we come in and get a table? It was a set menu for about $80 USD... so, no. One minute thirty seconds til midnight. We asked if we could maybe come in and have a bottle of champagne. The woman went inside and disappeared. We waited in the entry way of the restaurant as the seconds kept ticking. One minute. She reappeared to offer champagne at $18 USD per person. We could have a little table and some champagne, but we really only wanted to be inside with other people for New Years, not necessarily the expensive drinks. Was it worth $18? The clock ticked to 20 seconds. She stood in the doorway waiting for our decision.

At 15 seconds we stepped back out onto the sidewalk, under the awning, a security guard watching us because we were dressed for a rave but standing outside the fancy restaurant. At 10 seconds the waitress stepped out as if to make sure we weren't going to try to come back in and ruin the countdown for the paying customers.

We were out of options. If we had walked any direction we wouldn't have been anywhere, we would have been among gated telephone shops and dark corners. At least under this awning we could see other people... it's just as I imagine that in a massive expanse of desert you'd sit by a rock because the only other option you have in the desert is to NOT sit by a rock. So you might as well sit by the rock.

We stood there half under the awning as the clock ticked to midnight ... 3... 2... 1... and struck not with an explosion, but rather in the same way a candle flickers quietly to a strand of smoke.

To be honest - 100% honest - I loved it. I love when the world reminds us that our plans and lives aren't ours to tinker with in the first place, and trying to own our fate is like trying to coach cats. Because when all was said and done, my wise-beyond-her-years cousin Tally took us to one of the more beautiful things I've seen on the trip. I'd never been to a rave, and when we finally did get in - closer to 1:30am - we were laying on our backs in a field under, looking at stars, listening to moving music coming from a world-class sound system and finally among excited, welcoming youths. We didn't make it to dawn, which would have been pretty cool, but I loved the experience nonetheless. It was so warm out and there was a breeze. We got to dance and look at the stars on New Year's Eve, but the valuable part of the night really could have happened any night of the year.

Love you all,

Mike

Wild Night Out

2007-12-31T22:23:00.000-08:00

We spent our New Years countdown outside a restaurant trying to get champagne because everything in BA was shut down. What did you do?

Our night started out as all great New Years eves start out, with big plans and Paul van Dyk rave tickets. For those of you who don't know who Paul van Dyk is, you are obviously a big loser. And by that I mean, I had no idea who he was either until Tally told us he was one of the top 5 DJs in the world, not #1, but maybe #2 or #3.

But to start at the beginning, we made a 6 course Italian meal for the family, bruschetta, salad, pasta, chicken, trifle, fruit and cheese plate. However, after overestimating the amount that we could eat, we made it through 4.5 courses. Nonetheless, it was really tasty and fun.

We had been researching when and where the rave took place for a couple days and decided that it started at 10pm near the polo fields in BA. Being good Americans and not wanting to stand in line, we decided to get there at 10:45. We show up at the venue ready to rave out and are told that the event didn't start until 1am. So now we are stuck out in the fields with nowhere to go for the countdown. The funny thing about BA is that New Years is a family event, much like Christmas is to us. It was shut down. I mean, we walked for 45 minutes and found not a single place that was open and accepting people without reservations. All of the big bars were completely dark and not even the kiosks were open. When we finally found a place that was open, they told us that it was a $230 peso per person charge for a set menu. One thing that is worth mentioning is that BA has been about 90-95 degrees during the day and was still 85 degrees at 11:55 when we walked up to this restaurant, so we were all sweating profusely. Needless to say, the people who had paid $230 for their meal were staring at us in the entrance while we stared in at them and their champagne and the TV that had the countdown on it. The clock struck 12 and people lit off a ton of fireworks in the street, stopping traffic in many situations, and we were just standing in the doorway of this nice restaurant squinting at the TV on the back wall.

We finally gave up our search for beer or champagne and got a cab back to the rave, getting ripped off a third time in one night on cab fare. We stood in line for over an hour with all the other ravers before getting let in to the polo field. I must say that even after walking around for so long in the heat and waiting in line for so long, it was worth it to see the huge screens and lights and hear the music in the outdoor venue. We sat on the grass and the wind was strong and cool and we could watch the place fill up and come alive. It was really a sight. We sat there for a long time, admiring and critiquing the fashion and dancing, got some drinks, and danced a little before Mike and I decided to leave. I think we are getting or have been old for a while because we value comfort and sleep. Not that we minded any of it. We have learned not to expect great things from New Years, it is always fun in ways that you don't expect it to be and for that reason we are still excited for it. We rode the bus home "early" (we got in at 4am) and the city had come alive. The streets that had been empty and shut down when we were looking for anything to be open were packed and there were tons of cars and people all over. This city is so crazy because everyone knows exactly what they are supposed to be doing and exactly what time they are supposed to do it even though people are chronically late. I guess it just works well that way.

When we got home, we got to snack on leftover chicken and pudding before showering and getting to lay in our nice comfortable bed. Then our night ended as it should, with Mike taking whatever drug we happen to have with us (in this case Valium) and smiling for ten minutes before falling into a deep sleep. Happy New Year! 2008 is going to be great!

A reflection on Christmas before the New Year

2007-12-30T14:18:00.000-08:00

I talked to my mom on the phone today and like all of you that are reading this blog right now, she reads this blog. She said that she read Mike's recent post about Christmas and wanted answers, she wanted to know what I said in response to his question, what is the meaning of Christmas. I don't know if this question is interesting to people because it is actually interesting or because it is clearly undefined. First, I must make the disclaimer that I do not mean to say that I represent the general Christian consensus on this matter. In fact, on this trip, I realized that I could more easily pretend to be Jewish based on knowledge than I can pretend to be Christian. This has actually given me a bit of anxiety when we pass a church and people want to go in. I have felt twice on this trip like a fraud. If someone asked me even the simplest of questions about Christianity, I could not answer. I mean I can't even formulate a hypothetical question here to not answer because I don't know enough to not know.

But I do celebrate Christmas at home. And I try to celebrate in some way or another when I am abroad, even though I am with my Jewish boyfriend, which as you can imagine always brings up some discussions.

Having been away from home for 4 of the last 6 Christmases, I find that the simple answers to the question, what is the meaning of Christmas have sort of faded. I know what I miss. I miss my family and being inside and it being cold out and eating a big dinner with my extended family. It always sounds so fun when I talk to them and they are all hanging out getting ready to eat. I miss waking up on Christmas morning and having nowhere to be. We stay in and eat breakfast together and watch Die Hard or another holiday movie, like Die Hard 2. We don't go out to the store or to a friends house or to work. We usually make a fire and sit there. So, from what I miss, I would say the spirit of Christmas is defined by being with your family when it is cold outside and warm inside.

But that sounds too simple. What about the spirit of giving and charity, which my mother so eloquently brought up when I didn't really answer her on the phone either? Well, I did like getting presents for people, that is/was fun, but that is so fleeting. They open them and then it's over. What about the spirit of charity? A lot of our friends do extra charity work around the holidays, but I can't honestly say that being removed from the in your face charity ads in the states that I really even thought about it anymore than I usually do. Except when I was specifically trying to figure out what it was about Christmas that makes it Christmas. There aren't a ton of people collecting money that I can see and it seems to be business as usual here. The shops are a little more crowded, but nothing too crazy. Thailand was the same. There was a night market and a tree, but nothing special, no extra charity there either. I think France had some of the red pots, but not being a native French speaker, I didn't get all of it I'm sure.

The point is, I still don't know. The reason Mike didn't answer the question in the blog was that I didn't answer it in real life and even after a long discussion with the other Christians on Christmas, it turned out to be just a discussion and no real answers. I am finding that it means something really different to everyone. I realize how much it means to Mike that he is not a part of it and how much it means to so many others that they are, but it is still just a huge blurry blob of feelings that really is nothing at all. It really makes me think about the power of tradition and I realize that that is the spirit of Christmas--tradition. It is whatever you have done for years and years.

Unfortunately for me, my traditions will never mesh with traveling. This year was close, I was with a fun family drinking and eating at home, but it was still 80 degrees and we cooked meat on the grill instead of turkey or ham and we sat outside until after dark. Similar, but not my tradition. Mike is lucky, his Christmas tradition is transience and solidarity, which are both easy to find while traveling. Now I guess, because I have to end every blog on a positive note, I am glad that I have spent enough Christmases away to know what I miss. It makes it easier to recreate those experiences and times at home on days that aren't Christmas. Every year when I come home from traveling, we make the following day Christmas, we do the same things that we used to do on the actual day and spend the day as a family and it is great. I get to have the chance to see that it really doesn't matter what day you do it on, you can always have those feelings. I get the chance to slow and see that you can spend the day with your family or volunteer at a food bank or have a fire and buy people presents on May 10th or Aug 8th, you could even have Christmas everyday. Although I am sure you would start to miss other things, like the good old 4th of July!

Tom presiding over the grill. Xmas 2007 in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Mike at the market. Xmas 2006 in Mae Hong Son, Thailand

Celebrating Xmas the right way with treats and liquor. Xmas 2006 in Mae Hong Son, Thailand.

In the phone booth with "Sizeo," our xmas tree. Xmas 2005 in Paris.

Unsober on Xmas with Sizeo, Autsy and Rob. Xmas 2005 in Paris.

Mike with Russian. Xmas 2004 (Mike in Goa, India, Azure at home).

If Xmas is a feeling, we celebrated for 2 months with Kim and Adam at the Chateau in St. Julian L'Ars, France. 2002.

Yeah. St. Julian L'Ars, France 2002.

Thailand stuff is up

2007-12-29T14:05:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, we uploaded emails from last year's trip and added some pictures, and now they're up on the blog. Look on the left side and you'll see some posts from 2006 and early 2007 - those are updates from Southeast Asia. If you weren't on the list because we didn't know or like you at the time, now's your chance to live it for the first time.

Enjoy!

The dog saga

2007-12-29T13:14:00.000-08:00

I was walking down the street in Punta del Diablo one morning and passed a dog without giving it any notice. I suddenly felt him hop up on my leg a little in a way that was so amazingly clear, amazingly communicative, as if to say "Hey! It's me! Remember?," in the same way someone might tap you on the shoulder. I looked back and he was wagging, smiling and I did recognize him as the dog that had been hanging around our house, that we fed every-once-in-a-while. He'd lay under Azure's chair while she was reading and outside our door when - probably - he was bored.

Hola.

The day before I had gotten spooked by a guy I thought was following us in the town. Turns out he was just weird, we think, and not a threat, but it occurred to me I should feed the dog more often so he would become loyal, protective of us so that if something did happen with the guy or any other guy, he'd be there for us.

It makes sense that it's an agreement, an exchange, a relationship. We're used to money-based exchanges so I didn't register this as a non-monetary exchange because one party appeared to be begging for food. But when I looked at him that morning he didn't have the ashamed, deferent look of someone who takes whatever he can get without giving back - he looked like someone I'd established a relationship with, a business partner with whom I'd dealt honestly. It was not begging, it was a trade, and he'd already been keeping his end of the bargain. I just hadn't realized it.

On guard.

I indicated that I remembered him and he should follow me on my walk - I was going to take pictures at our rock - so he came along and hung out for a while. He followed me back to our house and laid down on the patio (never crossing in) while I ate breakfast. At the end of breakfast I enforced the exchange by grabbing the prior night's leftovers and put them outside for him.

The exchange was our food - which we recognize as a commodity and vaguely as currency - for his time and protection. Not all animals can protect but every single animal has time. It's the one resource every being is given equally and will continue to have throughout its life. We've traded away our share for other commodities, and we work hard in life so someday we might be rich enough to have it again.

Over the next few days the dog would show up on the porch at dinner time or we'd see him in town and he'd hang out with us for a while. There was one day of drama when another dog - one that looked like Lassie - was curious about us and our dog was really standoffish. The Lassie dog made friends with our dog, but I didn't want any part of the new relationship (not much different than I am with humans) because I wanted to show our dog that I was loyal to him.

The drama!

It only makes sense in developing any kind of relationship with any animal that time-given will be a major component of it. It's a gift, the only gift that we recognize as a commodity that can actually be given by someone with no material possessions.

We never got to say goodbye to that dog, but we're pretty sure he'll be ok without us. It's a tourist town and the dogs are probably just as used to the 1-week relationships as the grocers are, and are probably just as hardened by it. Mid-way through the week we saw him hanging out at another little house, getting scraps from another couple. I wonder how many of those relationships he's developed.

That's him on the morning he hopped on me. He thought he was majestic.

Something to look at

2007-12-27T19:47:00.000-08:00

Punta del Diablo moonshine

I learned a lot about using our camera in Uruguay and this is one of my favorite pictures - a 15-second exposure of the ocean at night (this was late, no sunlight in this picture). It's too grainy, and I think that's an ISO issue... still learning, but I like it anyway.

That night the land actually looked like the edge of a sphere - a rock rolling in space - and the horizons were thresholds instead of limits.

The first time I got on an international flight alone I saw all these people (especially in business class) who seemed, somehow, to be participating in the most broad sphere of human communication... the bankers who regularly go from Singapore to London to Bombay and watch CNN and read the Herald Tribune in the top floors of nice hotels... international people's chatter. I remember admiring them because they traveled these enormous distances as if it were nothing special, I remember wanting to be like them. I, in fact, made a goal that by the time I was 30, I wanted to be traveling internationally like it was no big deal, a weekend trip.

But I can see what a curse that would be, to not be in awe of something special. When I looked at the horizon that night in Uruguay, I felt like I could see the broadest sphere of communication, and CNN was not involved.