Suda conmigo hasta el amanecer...

Sweat with me until the sunrise

I´m writing from La Juanita today. I have a considerable amount of downtime here, especially today, because the boss is out of town until later tonight. I have to get ready for the overnight at the bakery, so after this I´ll lay down and get some shut-eye before I sweat the night away with Alejandra. I´m excited for it because I like all the talking with her and she always opens me up to things I never knew or would have considered. Lorena, my volunteer coordinator, is like that too. Every time we talk, she ends up saying something that makes me say wow. Basic things that I should think about, but don´t, because I´m not a sympathetic person. Example. The other day, Kendra and I met this crazy Chilean guy at Piola. He was alone and we started talking to him. He was really wompy, everything sucked and simple problems had no solution (like, he always goes places alone so he hates traveling. Why don´t you bring a friend? or make friends there? No, he didn´t want to make friends, he preferred to be alone, cooking, but it´s boring). He kept wining about this and that, and we were laughing about it, and he was coming on a little bit strong to Kendra. Then the next time, at Piola, we were laughing with the bartender about how tragic this guy was, and he told us that the guy just found out his wife had been cheating on him. Then we felt bad. We were laughing about it again with Lorena, and she just said ´you never know the moment in someone´s life that your paths are crossing´. So simple, yet so profound, right?

It´s always interesting talking with Lorena, or anyone that has been through the past couple decades here, because their perspective is fascinating. The country was once one of the richer in the world, and then BAM! 2001 comes, the economy crashes, and formerly well-off people have nothing and forget about the others! The peso was equal to the dollar, and it was cheap for them to visit the US, and now it´s a crazy priviledge to be able to save enough money to leave the country. The subsequent national attitude is astounding, and it´s a great lesson for me (or anyone), about cutting losses and how the country is moving on with what´s important. Sometimes without having that which is important, ie food and houses for masses of people. I can´t ever complain about our economy again, as much as I liked whining before. I never struggled, I just wasn´t able to have as much as I wanted. Change is constant - never say never, never say always... you can´t, or shouldn´t count on anything. Argentinians, as a bunch, are in a state of blissful realism about this. It´s precarious, but kind of nice, because everything is relaxed here and people concentrate on enjoying life´s beauty rather than complaining about how nice things used to be. If you´re good today, you enjoy today. You don´t know what comes tomorrow, and hopefully it´s good, but if it´s not, at least you enjoyed today.

Maybe all of the uncertainty lends some explanation as to why the night life is so amazing here - people are just enjoying the hell out of it all. I hope I can hold on to some of this spirit when I get home, shit, for the rest of my life, because it makes things so much easier.

The weekend was a little nuts. I went out to Amerika, a massive club, on Friday night with this Brazilian friend I´m off and on with. People are just flaky here. But we had a great time, ran into some other friends, and it was a crazy night all around. Really crazy. So I got home around 7.30 Saturday morning, slept the night off as best I could, and Kendra and I had a chill drink close to home that night. She´s a little sick so I was glad to not have to go out and get crazy again. Last night we went to La Plata, a suburb, for the Festival Internacional de Folclore -  a bunch of Andean music, Argentinian Folk, choripan, and chill vibes. It was a really nice, calm concert going on in a huge park, and the crowd was so incredibly chilled out! Choripan is a  grilled chorizo sausage in a bun. Chorizo + Pan (bread) = choripan. Delicious.

So I have this... project... I´m working on in my own personal life, involving a certain someone who works at a shop near my house. I´m at the point where I can say most of the things I´d like to say in Spanish, or at least get the idea across, but at times that´s still not enough... like when you´re trying to be fly with someone that makes your eyes twitch a little because it´s so nice to be looking at them. Hahaha. Anyway, all I mean is that, once I get home, I think I´ll never be shy again because I´ll be able to say whatever I want! But it is motivation to keep learning good stuff, and I´ll grill Alejandra tonight and make her teach me this kind of good stuff.

So my planning continues for the month of May. I have yet to book a flight, because I want to make sure I don´t try to stretch myself too thin. I´m thinking a week in Central Argentina, seeing Cordoba and Mendoza, then up north to hit maybe Salta, on the way to the Bolivian border, where I will cross to Villazon. From there, I´ll see the Salares de Uyuni (the salt flats) in either Uyuni or Tupiza, whichever I make it to, work my way up to Lake Titicaca and La Paz, taking about a week and a half for Bolivia because I´m scared I´ll get altitude sickness and need time to enjoy it. Then to Peru-Machu Picchu and various ruins around it, some hiking and what have you. Then I can shoot up to Lima, most likely, to catch a flight from there. I´m still trying to see if I can work Ecuador into the trip, but the way time goes here, I don´t want to risk it and have to end up stressing about time. Transportation here is really amazing in the sense that you can get to almost any point from anywhere, but the timetables operate on an other-worldly frame. For me it´s chill, I´m on vacation, and if I have to bum around a border crossing or bus station for 6 hours, I can find a conversationalist and shoot the shit no sweat. But that´s the reason I don´t want to stretch myself thin, because once you´ve got a set date for something, you can´t enjoy it as much. Anyway, with that plan, I´ll see a lot of awesome things.

So now, in the just over three weeks I have left in BA, I´m going to sell some things I´ve accrued (funny I actually have extra stuff now) to buy a new bag that I can travel with. At the coop they have market days, so I´ll bring my stuff here and sell it for cheap, or maybe I can even trade clothes if someone is selling bags. Who knows. Alright, I feel like I´m just rambling on about nothing, and I think it´s because I´m tired. I´m gonna find a corner to curl up in here and get ready for the night shift!