Barenaked Ladies (get it?)

It's been one week and I am exhausted. Living in a city is great, because there is always something to do. The only problem is that there is always a group of people going out to do it, and I am compelled to sacrifice sleep for the possibility of a fun night out or the chance to explore a new barrio. I've been to museums, plazas, clubs, all sorts of restaurants, shops, street fairs, cafés, used almost every subway line and am in the process of deciphering the system of colectivos, or busses. Not to mention going to our program headquarters at FLACSO everyday for orientation sessions and class selection periods. It's definitely my own fault, and I could easily say no the next time a concert or shopping trip comes up, but where would the fun be in that? It's easy to get swept up in the hustle and bustle of the city, and our program coordinator was not lying when she told us Argentines in BA, or porteños, don't really sleep. Ever.

So, what specifically have I been up to? A few days ago, I joined a gym, which I think makes me a legitimate city dweller now that I can say "my club.." Unfortunately, my conception of what one does at the gym is very different from that of the rest of the female clientele. My idea of a workout involves sweat, strain, and comfortable clothing. The porteña idea looks more like this:


That is actually a picture from the gym website (http://www.gymfitnesscenter.com.ar/fotos.html) Sometimes they will actually put clothes on, exclusively small and tight so they can just walk around the gym with their personal trainers and look great because they don't actually have to work out to look that way. It's a little ridiculous, but also kindof funny.

Sometime next week I might try and get in on a pickup soccer game, and ton of people on the program play soccer so there's also the option of renting a small 6 v 6 field and getting a group together for that. Everyone seems really excited in general about each other and being in BA, and I'm glad I'm making friends from other schools instead of sticking within my Georgetown bubble (which would be easy since about a fourth of the program is Georgetown kids).

The only bad thing that's happened so far hasn't even happened to me, but still makes me feel terrible. Last night right after a girl left her cab to go into her apartment, 3 men on the street cornered her, put a knife to her throat, and robbed her. She was literally 10 feet away from her front door. Things like that are obviously horrible, and a sobering reality check for anyone who thought Buenos Aires would be the same as Suburbia, USA. I've been careful about asking the cab driver to wait for me while I open the door to go inside, but last night's incident definitely reinforces the idea of safety in numbers and smart traveling.

But other than that, the city is great and I'm seeing more and more every day!

Home sweet home!

I don´t have time for a long blog post, but I just wanted to get some things down so I don´t forget my first few crazy days here in BA. My host mom, Leticia, is a single woman with 2 grown children and 3 grandchildren. But don´t let that fool you...she is an active, funny, social butterfly who looks like she´s max 45. We live in swanky Palermo, where there are a lot of fun restaurants, cafes, parks, movie theaters, cute boutiques, street fairs...basically everything I could ever want. AND she cooks me two meals a day? I must be in heaven.
We´ve been doing a lot of orientation stuff (signing forms, learning about public transportation, and later today starting our spanish placement exams), but we´ve still had some leftover time to explore the city. Maggie and Alex are still techincally on their traveling tour and are hanging out in BA since they don´t start their program for a few days, so it´s been cool mixing new program friends with familiar faces. We´ve been going to restaurants and museums and stuff together, which is really cool. We all came over to my house last night (because my host mom is super nice and let me invite a bunch of friends over) and watched the Oscars. In Spanish....good practice I guess.
Classes don´t actually start until somewhere between March 16th and April 1st I think, so hopefully I´ll be able to discover more about BA in the next few weeks uninterrupted by homework and classes (noooo)

***UPDATE***

I FOUND PICTURES. THIS IS THE ICE CREAM BANDIT:



I guess she wasn't wearing a Dora the Explorer shirt, and I don't know where her "dad" was while these pictures were being taken, but whatever...

The Ice Cream Bandit

I only have a few hours left in Chile, and although I've still been having a fantastic time, all this traveling is definitely starting to catch up with us, in different ways. I'm (hopefully) getting over a cold right now, and it seems like everyone is just generally more tired/strung out than during the exciting first few days of this trip.
Arica was great, and definitely an upgrade from Puno. We hung out on the beach for a couple days, cooked some pretty great meals for ourselves, and then on the last day took a surf lesson. It was only my second time trying but I think I did alright. Alright meaning I only drank Pacific ocean water a handful of times, hit myself/someone else with my board twice, and hit my head on the ocean floor just once. Our instructor made us do all this yoga and jogging before even getting in the water which I think passersby thought looked funny, but they were sadly mistaken because actually we looked really, really cool in our wetsuits. Seriously.

(We also looked...strong?)

Our hostel was also amazing, and our host, Kurt, was basically the man. Much better than the hostel we're at now in San Pedro de Atacama in the Atacama desert. Fun fact: Atacama is the driest desert in the world. Seeing as how water is thus a problem in this town, they shut it off at certain times/whenever they want, an inconvenience for those who enojy brushing their teeth, showering, flushing toilets, etc at night. Despite the not-so-great hostel, SP de A still turned out to be a great town to visit. We went sand surfing, which is just like snowboarding except that if you put any weight on your front foot, things like this happen:

After sandsurfing, we were taken out to the top of a mountain to watch the sunset, a really nice idea in theory but it was super windy/sandy, so I don't think anyone actually watched the sunset as much as turned their backs away from it and the wind and gradually noticed it getting darker. It was also cool to go up there with the guys who took us, who were locals and brought us to a not touristy spot so we wouldn't be bothered by other people. They were like our cool Chilean friends who were hanging out with us sandboarding and watching a sunset, but that we also had to pay 25 bucks each or else they wouldn't hang out with us. Some of my favorites from the top:

(Walking up to the top)

(View from the top, Bolivian mountains in the background I think?)

(Sunset!)

Today we leave for Calama, where we stay and night and then fly into Buenos Aires. We're only there for a couple of hours though, and then we take a ferry over the Uruguay for the end of our trip. We've all been killing time in our own way, and me and Sarah took a walk outside the town and just admired the beautiful surroundings for a little bit and played around with our cameras.

(Houses where people visiting Atacama stay in when they don't want to pay for a hostel)

(View from right beyond the touristy part of town)

Finally, I guess I should explain the title of this post. I just bought some mango ice cream. It's very good. As I crossed the street from the ice cream store to the Internet cafe, a cute little girl being held by who I assume is her father, but may have been her Ice Cream Pimp, stuck her adorable little tongue out and reached for my ice cream.
"Aaaaah!" she said. It was very enderaing. As they approached, I felt I had no choice but to give her some of my as of yet untouched ice cream, which she happily ate off of the very same spoon I was going to use myself. BUT, instead of being satisfied, she and her ICP proceeded to hound down my friends, demanding a share of whatever treat they had purchased for themselves. ICP of course manuvered the streets with the ease and confidence posessed only by those who have been doing this sort of thing for years.
Anyway, this girl slobbered all over everyone's ice cream treats without so much as a thank you from either her or ICP, and I just wanted to warn anyone thinking of visiting Atacama to be on the lookout for a girl, about 2"3, dark complexion, pink Dora the Explorer T-shirt, and dangerous appetite for treats that are not hers.

Rounding out Peru

So we didn't actually end up visiting the ruins in Cuzco because we are feeling pretty exhausted, so instead we went out for a really great lunch at a hole in the wall place overlooking the whole city, and then went exploring. The girls went shopping for a little bit while the boys walked back to the hostel, and I got a few pieces of jewelry for pretty cheap. I'm glad we took the time to walk around and see more of the city, because I didn't have that great of an impression of Cuzco when we arrived, and I liked it a lot more after walking around some.

(The view right next door to the restaurant we had lunch at)

(One of the nicer areas of Cuzco)

Also, fun fact: apparently it is Carnaval time in South America. This means that young boys buy plastic balloons at the local stores, fill them with water, and throw them at me. We got hit by a few different groups...they would sneak through alleys and follow us, and then ambush us from the front in a group of 5-10 people. When we tried to go buy some water balloons and get our revenge, the woman at the store refused to sell them to us. Conspiracy.

My debit card wasn't working for a while but I got it fixed, finally, although I guess I'm not 100% sure because I haven't tried to use it yet. I haven't really had the time to, because we left Cuzco yesterday morning at 6:45 (I'm really starting to get sick of waking up so early), and have been busy ever since. We took took a 10 hour bus to Puno, which is a town on the border of Lake Titicaca. The bus we took was cool because it made 3 or 4 stops at really interesting/beautiful places, like old Incan ruins unlike the ones we had seen earlier in our trip, and the highest point on our route called Abra la Raya (it was so cold! And there was snow on the mountain peaks, it was so weird to see in a country that is in summer).

We got into Puno at around 5, when we realized that we happened to be visiting during the exact time period where they celebrate "Virgen de la Candelaria", which I just looked up and is actually a lot more interesting than I originally thought. It celebrates a statue of the Virgin Mary that magically was able to protect itself when others tried to do it harm (paralyzing a man's arm when he tried to throw a stone at it, for example). Apparently Puno is one of the biggest three celebrations of this in all of South America, which we definitely did not know before planning our stay here. People come in from all over Peru and neighboring countries to partake in the celebration; already we've run into the owner of the hostel we stayed at in Cuzco, and a girl we met who organized the trivia night we went to a few nights ago. There are daily parades, fireworks and big parties and dance competitions in the street which is awesome, although the influx of tourists has made prices go up a little (not that things are expensive...today I had empanadas, a 2.5L bottle of water, bananas and chocolate for 1 dollar). It's fun, except not this morning at 6 am when the parade started up again. I am not sure what their reasoning was behind banging on drums through streets at the crack of dawn. Actually, as I write this they've started again. When do they sleep!? I tried to upload a video which is taking forever so I got frustrated, but take my word for it, it was cool.

We took a boat out to visit some of the floating islands today; it's super weird that people are still living the way the inhabitants of these islands are. Their houses are made from this bamboo-like stick called tortora, and it covers the ground as well. Literally all they have on the island are houses, if they need a doctor or education or anything they have to go in boats to the mainland. We had a tour guide who sat us down on the island and explained to us pretty much everything about the islands, and then after she was done the local inhabitants each approached a few of us to invite us into their (tiny!) houses, made of tortora and tarp. The man whose house I went into told us about making it and then showed us a bunch of crafts he and his wife made personally. It was pretty awkward because none of us wanted to buy the overpriced merchandise he was trying to guilt us into purchasing, but he was sitting in front of the door and had been really nice...eventually I bit the bullet for everyone and paid 20 soles for an alpaca wall decoration thing, which if it wasn't worth it for the quality of the cloth itself was at least worth the price of my escape.

(Us eating crazy grass stuff that the locals chew on. Also, a boat they made out of tortora to get to the mainland)

Tonight we're probably going to go out to a bar or cafe and try and catch some of the festivities, although I think tomorrow is the main event. I'm going to have to be careful with my money for the next couple days though because I only have less than 40 soles left (about 13 bucks), and that needs to last me all of today and tomorrow. Next we're taking an overnight bus into Chile to go to a beach town, which should be a really nice change of pace from all the activity we've been having. It will also be nice to not have to wear a sweatshirt and raincoat everywhere too, especially since I only brought one sweatshirt down here with me. Gah beeaacchhh!

Peru - Day 2

So I'm finally here! Me and the rest of my group (7 people in all) flew into Cuzco where we spent the night, then bused over to a town called Aguas Calientes so that we would be closer to Machu Picchu when the first bus left at 5:30 am the next morning. We got up bright and early so that we could get there before all the other tourists, and it was definitely worth it. Machu Picchu is one of the most breathtaking sights I've ever seen, and the relative lack of tourists in the whole village made it seem even more special. Here's what it looked like from one side:


At 10, we hiked up an adjoining mountain called Huayna Pichu (spelling?), which was definitely really challenging because of how steep it was, the occasional rain showers, and the high altitude which made breathing difficult. Also, I'm not exactly a seasoned hiker, but finally gasping my way to the top was totally worth it. There was a great view of all of Machu Picchu and the surrounding mountains, which was really cool. The original plan was to hike back to our hostel from there, but we ended up buying a bus ticket back, catching a train back to Cuzco, and for the most part everyone passed out either on the train, an hour after getting back in to the hostel, or both.

(Us at the top of the mountain!)

We also met some cool other travelers who are staying in our hostel in Cuzco, and met up with them at Machu Picchu, which was fun (they're in the picture above). I really like how friendly everyone is, and open to making spotaneous plans and taking unplanned trips. It's a much more exciting way to see new things than trying to plan out every last detail. We're going to visit some more ruins tomorrow, and then I think we're going to try and leave Friday morning for Lake Titicaca (I can't wait). Hopefully some of our new friends come along too!