easyisboring

Is not all it's cracked up to be? Duh, I guess. I guess I don't know that many adults who come home to roommates screaming into their computers about killing zombies (Soren's playing Left4Dead, anybody who reads this is a video game addict? Probably not).

I started my "real job" this week. I like it. Weirdly, it's a lot easier than my fill-in job, with the SF Unified School District. This week I worked M, W, F at the Exploratorium (www.exploratorium.edu) and T and R at two different schools (Jefferson Elementary, in a 3rd grade room, and James Denman Middle, in a mixed "ED" room).  

And I find myself once again spread out across the board, with little to tie the things I do together (this is something we actually discussed at my Exploratorium interview) besides the fact that I do them.  Working as a substitute teacher's aide (being a teacher's aide is about as glamorous as working in a tollbooth, and being a substitute, well... I guess emotionally it's like working in a tollbooth without your respirator) for an understaffed, underfunded, and underorganized school district versus working in a relatively cushy position at a well-funded, well-infrastructured (I won't go so far as to claim that the Exploratorium is "organized", nor would any of the other staff there, I'm sure) and well-established museum of really neat shit, where there do happen to be a lot of kids running around, but my job requires absolutely zero interaction with them.

And the question is--are either of these things what I'm "supposed" to be doing?  There's plenty of pressure from the teachers who I meet, work with, and abandon after a day to get my teaching credential and master's degree in special education.  I could probably be happy doing that.  But my idealistic, theoretical, (selfish?) side thinks maybe I can do something grander--work this Exploratorium thing, get in on some badass projects, meet some famous scientists and do something interesting and unique that a few academics really get a kick out of and maybe some kids at this museum will run around and pound on an exhibit about it.

Can I do both of these things?  Special ed (this includes students with emotional and mental "abnormalities") is as foreign to me as the places I was visiting a year ago (yeah, that was a YEAR ago...) because I was always that annoyingly smart kid, latched on to school and learning and perfection as my coping mechanism... I wonder if I'd be more well-balanced (less neurotic?) if I'd acted out a little more when I was a kid, gotten in some trouble every once in a while...

Anywho, what to do, what to do. 

Was a winter in San Francisco. For the moment, I can legitimately flip-and-reverse our favorite quipper, Mark Twain. Today's November 16, and it's been over 70 degrees for the past three days in this ridiculous city I now refer to as home.

Mark Twain is still right though--it never once got this beautiful or warm during August when I was here. The really stunning thing for me is that all the trees are still green, the grass is green, and nobody's even preparing to hibernate.

Yesterday I spent the day tootling around downtown, the piers and North Beach, which I haven't done in a very long time (I think the last time I explored around there I was about 20, and visiting for a weekend). The thing that is great about cities in general is the high concentration of everything. Good stuff, bad stuff, it's all here, all in one place. And we have a beach, too, which is pretty badass.

It's foggy today--I can barely see the high-rise student apartments of San Francisco State that reside down the hill (a little less than a mile west) from our house... and I most definitely can't see the ocean today. The fog could rise by the afternoon.

I can't tell if I'm gearing up to be a meaningless twenty-something for a long period of time, but I'm starting to feel a little bit more comfortable with the fact that I don't have a full-time job, and might not have one for a while. I'm starting to enjoy the openness of my schedule, and find myself things to do, even if they aren't directly helping me pay my rent (ie: volunteering with an after school program, doing some pro-bono translation from English to Spanish, trying to be a volunteer mechanic at the Bike Kitchen).

Eventually these things will either distract me enough that I won't feel unfulfilled, or they will lead to me finding a "real" job of some sort, right? Let's hope so. I am still toying with the idea of graduate school, but hesitant to really stick my whole self into it, because I don't know how long it will take or if I'm ready for that kind of commitment. And what that really means is, I'm still holding onto my "freedom" (whether that exists or not I'm unsure) so I can move someplace else to be with someone important in a year, a few years, whatever the case may be.

A wise woman who I only knew briefly once told me that these long-distance serious relationships are mostly about compromise. She was getting a masters degree in Europe, while her partner lived in Lima, Peru. She said, "I'm doing this, because I need to, but then after it's over, I'll go where he is. I have to compromise like that, otherwise it isn't fair to either of us, to have this unknown amount of time and distance between us."

Regardless of whether I'm too selfish to make a compromise like that, it's not the only thing keeping me from diving straight into grad-school applications. I have vague ideas for awesome projects, but that's about it. I'm not sure what department I want to be in, I sort of what to do social work, but all my background is in environmental stuff, can these two things be merged, etc etc. I think I need to do some serious research to figure out the best way to approach my ideas and really wow whomever it is I want to study with with a badass and creative proposal.

AND I just started a new part-time job with the San Francisco Unified School district, as a substitute aide with special education. It's pretty intense, but I understand now why a good number of people I respect chose to work with children with special needs. So will that figure into this? I guess what I'm saying is that I need more time to decide. But applications are due either in December (in a month, basically) to start in the fall of 2009, or wait another year, and plan on starting in the fall of 2010... which seems eons away from where I'm at now.

[and part of me still secretly want to leave the country again...]

oh hey. i didn't forget about you after all, did i?

synopsis of the last six and a half months:
-got back to the united states, low-level culture shock ensued
-immediately got an expensive tattoo of an octopus carrying a unicorn (this is called "resettling")
-was a squatter in madison, wi all summer
-got "engaged" to be not married because the institution of marriage is a pile of horseshit, but loving somebody so much you think they shit rainbows every morning (he DOES!) is a good enough reason to spend money at art gecko
-had a preposterously fun and immature summer
-drove or rode in the car to tennesee, north dakota (and back to wisconsin), flew to CA, drove to WI, then drove BACK to CA
-"real life" kicks in: new apartment, new life, new roomates in san francisco, the "greatest city in the world" where i alternate between wondering what the fuck i'm doing here, hating it, loving it, getting excited about a job opportunity, then wondering if i'll ever get a real job.

i've been in san francisco living with bff soren, blb (best little bro) guthrie, and taryn, who i don't know particularly well, since the beginning of september. we have a view of the ocean, if i look left out my living room window i see the peninusla and all of daly city, if i look right i see the sunset district and the hill that i have to ride my bike either over or around to get to the more happenin' parts of the city.

the weather here is confusing. there are really only 2 seasons, but there's a lot of variation within them. july and august can be the coldest months of the year (weirdness) and winter is "the rainy season". a short bike ride from my house can reveal completely different weather.

soren (and jamie) pretty consistently tell me that i have to go through this transition period after college. i managed to put it off for a year traveling and distracting myself by living in madison with two fun and non-professional jobs and surrounded by a good number of people i love... the justification for moving away from such a glorious oblivion? 1 part feeling responsible as an older sister, 1 part adventure, 1 part running away from what i know (hey, it worked before).

my general conclusion at this point is as follows: the united states is kind of a shitsandwich place to live, in general. there are too many rules, too many imaginary things to be afraid of (and my paranoid hypochondriac ass sure does convince itself), and not enough jobs that have decent health insurance.

my recommendations:
my morning jacket's evil urges
ali baba's cave on valencia and 19th st (maybe it's 20th) for delish and cheap falafel
the muni fast pass for $45 a month
NOT the soy mochas at ritual, regardless of how snooty their coffee is, they don't use good soy milk, and the drinks are not fit to be consumed

por favor, drop a comment if you read this, i'm pretty sure this livejournal has been dead for so long nobody looks at it anymore.

we had an iguana named cozumel (cozmo for short) when i was a kid. we got him when i was in 3rd grade, and he grew to enormous proportion, had his tail surgically removed, and was peacefully put to rest (in the mississippi?) when i was a junior in high school.

this place is the whole reason we got the scaly substitute for a dog in the first place. cozmo was kind of an attention hog (this is coming from the only-child-to-single-mom in me), but i liked him just the same. i didn't have any other friends that needed an electric rock to digest their salads.

so here we are, i can't scuba dive much these days, because i have a bum ear (that's the verdict)... i'm going to try again today, but prospects are bleak, honestly. i think i just have really finicky eustacian tubes or something, which causes me extreme pain between 15 and 35 feet underwater, where you have to hang out quite a bit when diving. once i get down to like 45, things are ok, but that middle part is just a killer, and after one dive, 2 days ago, my ears are still acting pretty weird.

it is beautiful here (as usual) and touristy, but as far as i'm concerned, a reasonable buffer zone between ecuador and the midwest. and at least i can get a sunburn while i wait for my glorious return to the chicago ohare airport, where, goddamn it, my bestest friends better be waiting for me (last time i flew in the jerks picking me up were late--just kidding, guys, you're not jerks, but you were late).

so now, i have the summer of music festivals, painting decks, slinging espresso, and getting ready to move to the bay area ahead of me. i suppose i'll make a feeble attempt to keep up the blog, but if things aren't interesting, then i probably won't do much with it. but don't give up on me!

sort of. yesterday i had a freak out about the fact that we are leaving ecuador in three and a half weeks, and i´ll be back in the states in a little over a month. i am really excited to go home, see people again, and be a barista who makes more money in a day that i make in a week at my waitressing job here... but it is going to be sad to leave.

i am going to miss my house, which i have become quite comfortable in, despite the mold on the wall under the kitchen window that no matter how many times i clean it comes back after a few days. and the potato bugs that think they own the place, and climb into empty jars, jars with water in them, my coffee cup (empty and otherwise) to apparently just commit suicide, with complete disregard for the fact that i might want to finish that coffee... without protein enhancement.

but, even though i´m sad my trip is coming to an end, i accomplished what i set out to do--figure out what i want to do next. and spend all that money i saved up last year (and had to pay TAXES on, realizing i´d already spent all the money that was being taxed when my mom called me to tell me to first sit down, then send her a check for $400).

so this next week i´ll be saying goodbye to ecuador old-school, because toby is coming to visit. he arrives tonight--and we should be able to rock ecuador so hard, seeing as how we did the same just 4 jam packed years before this. i feel old. the other night nora and i looked at some photos of when i lived here in 2004, and i look weeiiirrrd... i´ve grown a lot since i was 20 and studying abroad. i´ve grown a lot since i was 23 and leaving the midwest for africa 6 months ago. and i´m sure i´ll grow a lot more...

as requested, here's a picture of our house.

it is sort of connected to this other house, and it's on a big hill, so this is the best view you get.

nora is in the window. i spend a lot of time in that window too.

woot!

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=42554120&l=bc400&id=8602808

jamie came to visit, and during that visit, i managed to steal a copy of keroac's on the road, which, consequently, is also in a way "stolen"--the book itself is bound, and like a normal book, but it is very obviously a bootleg copy of said book. it is weird, but i love it that much more because of it, i guess.

ecuador is awesome, sorry i've not been updating much. honestly, my life is not that exciting, on a daily basis. i spend a lot of time staring out the window at my amazing view (which you will hopefully be able to find in a link lower down, if i can get the damned pictures to upload). a lot of time. i work at a little cafe with a bunch of cool co-workers, who make the fact that i earn less than $3 an hour (thats after tips and my cut of the sales each night) less painful. they are awesome, and i wouldn't work there for free, but i work for no tips and shit pay without a real grudge, because i've made such amazing friends there.

i spend a fair amount of time thinking about what's going to happen when i leave, which now, as of a couple days ago, has an official date: i fly out of quito on may 14, spend a week in cozumel, mexico with my mom and john (yeah, we are scuba diving!!!) and fly into chicago o'hare (right where this whole adventure started so many months ago) at 11:32 PM on may 21. just so you all know. on continental airlines. go ahead and plan a big party in the airport for me if you want. i will spend at least a day in chicago, mostly because i want to, and partly because i think i won't make the last bus. obviously, it is the perfect chicago bread sandwich to my crazy world travel adventure. and my bike is still there, which makes me really happy. hopefully i still know how to ride--i haven't been on a bike at all since san pedro de atacama, chile; and haven't been on my fixed gear since i left in november. i miss you, 1983 blue trek!!!!

let's see, what else. this week nora and i flew to cuenca and chilled out there for a few days, we didn't really do much, but walk around, and went to see a movie, called the something something spiderwick. chronicles of spiderwick? it was a cool movie, in spanish. it would be boring in english, unless you are like 11. toby, you would like it no matter what. that's not meant to be an insult.

jamie and i went to the "amazon" but really we were just on the edge, in a weird little shuar pueblo, where there's a tiny nature preserve. as you will see from the photos (which are currently uploading, as far as i can tell) the trip was pretty self-involved. we spent a lot of time doing that annoying couple stuff, like staring at each other and making faces.

as far as the future goes, i'm planning to do a sweet repeat of last summer: bonnaroo (even more exciting lineup than last summer), working at barriques and some maintenance work on the side (moonlighting for more money in this case, i guess), crashing in jamie's room at phoenix, because he refuses to sleep in the big bed anyways, and someone ought to use it (but it might be leaving us before we want it to, because that bed is actually nahyun's, and nahyun is using nora's bed, and nora is gonna get that bed back from her... so if anybody has a double bed that they want to get rid of, let me know, or i'll be sleeping on a very uncomfortable futon this summer). THEN after the summer of working and rocking madison on my bike and going to as many music festivals that i can afford (they are addicting... flaming lips at 10,000 lakes fest!!!)

THEN, after all that crap, we are in theory moving to San Francisco. in theory, me, my little brother (who's not really that little anymore), soren, and possible others. really we'll probably find a house in oakland. i have some ideas for jobs to look for... there's some cool fucking stuff out there. any ideas, please let me know. i think i would be okay waiting tables for a few months, but really it would be nice to either be working construction (ya'll know me) or doing something that has a little more to do with my declared "interests" being ecology and peoples and making them happy and peaceful together. and gabriel garcia marquez too.

toby's coming, hopefully we will have a badass adventure at the end of april. then nora and i will go to the beach when she's done with class, then it will be time to leave. most of april i will be meditating, applying for jobs in california for the fall, and slinging mojitos at the bar. love to everyone.

photos finally uploaded: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2367336&l=9b789&id=8602808

so if you have facebook and youre friends with la norita you can see pix of our house in her newest album.

just in case youre dying to see them.

so, ive been in quito for a few weeks now. managed to find a job (though still havent heard from the prof from ucla that said he would give me biology work here) as a bartender slash waitress (mostly tending bar) at a cute hostel cafe restaurant (vegetarian!) bar in la mariscal (for those of you wondering, and then thinking, duhhhhhhhhhh thats where it is).

i promise, really, i will put up pictures of our house and whats going on in quito soon, at this point i have no excuse except for that i am just lazy about taking photos, and even lazier about bringing my camera and card reader with me to the internets. but, hopefully, my computer (civilization! macintoshies!!) will be arriving on thursday night (along with my someone who is coming to visit me), and that will make it easier to get these computery things done. (and it means i will get to listen to some music on my compy... nora has fabulous taste in music, but you can only get so far with the entire discography of bob marley and a whole lot of usher hits...)

it is good to be back in ecuador. i missed it, but it is winter here, and though we arent having the winter of wisconsin, it is fucking rainy and cold and our house is, how shall we say, moist. very moist. i am enjoying having my own house (really, it is kind of my first house that is "mine", the co-op was mine, but it also belonged to all those other 25 people, and we couldnt smoke handrolled cigs in our underwear at the kitchen table there...) and continuing to pretty much be on vacation, i work from 430 to midnight on mondays, wednesdays, and fridays, for pretty much not money, but all my coworkers are super cool, and a great group of friends to be lucky enough to get hired into.

we all went out dancing last night, and, just a reconfirmation for those of you wondering, its true. latinoamericanos can only salsa. they asses cannot dance to anything else... oh well.

i don´t usually go so far as to comment on such trivialties as "world news" in my ever-so-deep musings here. but seriously. have a look at this "frontpager" from today´s nyt website, and i just dare you to tell me this shit isn´t biased as HELL: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/world/americas/20castro.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

seriously. ugh. i don´t want to get too worked up about it (because obviously that´s already happening some) but the suggestion that castro "benefited" from US sanctions, because then he could blame all cuba´s economic problems on the "imperialists of the north" (their quotes, i´d have just said it straightout)... well, i´m not all that objective either... but at least i´m radical. (and really, really humble).

SO! i made it to quito, minus the contents of my stomach! traveling the last half of peru with a couple of fabulous women made my last week of travels, during which i was worried i´d just be anxious to get to quito and settle in, really really awesome. i was really sad to say goodbye to them, but hopefully i will get to go visit them in their homecountries or wherever they end up (so many people have these fabulous sounding international lives...)

we went to two different beach towns on the northern coast of peru, both of which were great in their own way. the interesting thing about these beaches is that they are "left breaks" something we don´t talk about much in wisconsin, since there´s not a whole lot of surfing, but if you can translate left break into something those of us from the land of freshwater and snow would understand... well, it´s just really awesome for people who surf goofy foot (snowboarders wakeboarders, you know what it´s all about). traveling with two other women opened up the opportunity to meet lots more people... i tend to not talk to other travelers a bunch, unless they put in the effort, (me and my loner attitude these days), but it was really cool to meet bunches of people everywhere we went, and since we were together, it was easier to make friends with other people. it was hilarious, because the story of how we met, even though we acted like best friends who´d been traveling together for weeks, made everybody laugh.

completing this leg of my journey, buenos aires to quito, all by bus, was pretty fantastic. i don´t plan to make the trip again anytime soon (a lot of sleeping on buses), but it was amazing. i met so many amazing people, saw tons of amazing things, and well, had a great time. there´s no one thing that really stands out, it was all just pretty crazy and neat and bizzare at times.

i´ve posted more photos (i know, finally) with some captions. the best one is definately the one of ciara and i, where she´s pretending to dump a bottle of wine in my lap, which is actually what pretty much happened when we went out to dinner in huanchaco (delicious peruvian mexican food at the surf shop). the cook´s son, who was sort of a waiter, but really just wanted to flirt with us, spilled a FULL glass of red wine into our laps, and then decided that he would just wander off and play some music... it was hilarious. hilarious. we rubbed salt all over the spill, and it came out without a problem (i wasn´t worried, i´ve got this great skirt made by rossignol, yeah, the ski company, and it seems pretty indestructible). anyways the photo is hilarious.

pix here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2350255&l=96292&id=8602808

the three of us also traveled from Máncora, Perú (even more north than huanchaco beach) to Guyaquil, Ecuador. we took the night bus, which was scheduled to leave at 9pm (so it left at 10). we got to the peru-ecuador border around midnight, and made it through peruvian immigraciones in about 30 minutes for the entire bus... but the ecuadorian ones were not as easy. it was actually pretty fantastic, we were standing there, in line, in the rain, surrounded by puddles, at 130 in the morning, and right we ciara and i are about to get our passports stamped and get back on the bus... they decide they need to take their one hour break and turn off the whole system. no, they can´t just finish our bus. the bus should have come earlier. but the border is open 24 hours a day? yeah, except from 130 to 230 in the morning. (so, 23 hours?, no it´s open 24 hours they say). so we got to wait, a fabulous hour, until 245 (230 means 245, jamie you´d do so well here) to get through immigrations for ecuador. in the rain. christwagons.

so, the bus that was scheduled to get into Guyaquil at 7am got in at 930, but that was just fine with us. we had breakfast in the mall-like bus station, and headed into town. the crazy thing is that i was just walking around downtown guyaquil with daniela (my friend from sweden i´d been traveling with) and another guy from california who we met on the bus, and we ran into Nora!! i´d talked to her on the phone, but we didn´t think we were going to see each other until later, it was fabulous. crazy fabulous.

i stayed with nora at some friends´ house in guyaquil, and we went out for delicious (well, the first time) ceviche and cerveza ecuatoriana (pilsener, wow it´s amazing). the next day nora and i got up early and took a bus to quito, which i enjoyed, for the most part, except for the part where i was puking into plastic bags and we drove past an oil truck tipped over (and people not running away, which is what i´d have done, but running towards it, to get the oil in buckets. think of that visual), and another truck tipped over on the mountain road up to quito (toby, if you ever read this, you know where i´m talking about. eeeh)

our apartment is super cute, i haven´t taken any pix yet (because now it´s just strewn with my crap everywhere, which is driving nora crazy) but when i´ve got my shit a little more organized, i´ll take a bunch of photos and post them so you can see how beautiful the place is where we are living. i´m hoping to start some kind of job, hopefully something with a prof from UCLA that does research here, soon. it should be badass. it is good to be back in quito... i missed this place.

hola todos

i´ve been lucky enough to meet up with some great new friends, one from sweden and one from ireland, and have been hanging and traveling with them for the past few days. it is nice to have new friends who seem like old friends.

mmm... i am almost to ecuador. peru is pretty awesome, cooler than the last time i was here (in 2004). i only am sort of sunburned... i am trying to be most careful. i met some sweet friends in puno, on lake titicaca, a few weeks ago (i will post on this laterz), and hung out with them one night in lima, which was great fun.

from lima, i took the bus to trujillo, where we visited some ruins and mostly were lazy on the beach (and it was awesome). now we are in mancora, almost to the ecuador-peru border... for more beach time. i will meet nora in guyaquil on saturday!!!! and from there we go to our apartment in quito, where i hopefully will have some kind of job with a prof from UCLA that works in ecuador.

hope everyone has a great vday, i spent my morning in a natural hot spring covered in kind of stinky mud, supposedly good for my skin... we´ll see....

today i went back and forth across the peru chile border a few times (why is not particularly important).

upon my final arrival to peru, i embarked on a long conversation over the internet about the "future" and what that could possibly be... which only made me less sure of what is really going to happen to me--where i am going to live, what i am going to do, whether or not i will go to graduate school, and what i would try to study once there... etc.

after that, i worked my way to the city center of tacna, the border town at the very bottom of peru, rumored to be the most patriotic city in peru. it was once captured and held by chile for a number of years, before the city decided (for better or for worse, i suppose) to become part of peru once again.

in the center, as there usually are in "developing" countries, there were a number of young boys scattered about, shining people´s shoes. i´ve never actually talked to any of them, though i´ve seen them in lots of cities, i´ve never worn shoes that would require or even be possible to shine, so we had little reason to interact with one another. today should have been like that sort of day--i was wearing sandals with fabric straps, nothing there for them to shine. but two boys, and one in particular, persisted. i was writing in my journal in a picturesque square (as they tend to be), and they sat down on their little wooden shoe-shine thingies and attempted to "clean" my sandals. i didn´t want them to--i think they´d have used something black that would come off in my bag when i shove my eternally dirty sandals into the bag.

this one little boy was so sad. he just sat there in front of me with his sad eyes. i talked to him a little bit--but the truth is, i didn´t want to get to know him, because i knew that his story would be too sad for me to want to know. is that selfish of me, to want to avoid learning information that is going to make me sad and that i know i can´t do anything about?

he was eleven, and doesn´t have any brothers or sisters, he just lives with his dad. i didn´t ask him his name or what he does in school--because i am afraid, and i guess i know for pretty sure, that he doesn´t go to school, and that it is possible, maybe even likely, that his father has less respectable work than shining shoes--or maybe he does the same.

i didn´t give him any money--i´m not sure if he asked for a handout directly, because he mumbled and held the canister of kiwi shoe polish in front of his mouth when he talked. he asked me "entiendes english?" (do you understand english?). i answered honestly, and asked if he understood english. he didn´t answer, but then talked about another language, i think the indigenous language of the southern region of peru--but he mumbled, and i didn´t really understand what he was talking about. this confirmed for him that i didn´t understand a word of that language, to which he was indifferent.

then he just sat there, in front of me, silent, looking sad. i tried to be nice to him, told him to look for work someplace else, because my shoes were always dirty. he moved to the other side of the little square, fairly close still, when a father sat down with his maybe 1 year old son and 5 year old daughter, and let another boy shine the baby´s shoes and his shoes. then i got to feel like even more of a jerk, and watch this other kid earn 1 sol (the cross-language connotation of the name of the peruvian money is something i still have to get my head around) for shining a tiny pair of shoes and a grown up sized pair of shoes. One sol is about 30 cents US. i guess so is one soul, when it comes to these kids.

(o sea, gigantes, como dicen en chile).

just a short note to inform everyone that i did in fact watch a bit of the big ol supor bowl (the owner of this hostel seems to be one of those guys that likes any sport he can watch on tv)

and the scent of dank lingers... this morning i asked the girl in the kitchen if that was what i was smelling, and she denied it and looked offended.

then i found a roach in the matchbox.

that is not a metaphor. either she was a liar or just not very inclined in the olfactory reign.

anyways i am hoping the giants win, at least they are from a real state, not just a stupid region. ugh.

and tomorrow i´ll go to peru.

ok. it is hard to get started, particularly since i keep forgetting words, first i forget them in spanish, then when i try to remember the word in english, it escapes me as well. so bear with me.

first, a week ago i was in cape town, south africa. at first glance, the city is amazingly beautiful, with gorgeous architecture and an incredible pleateau (table mountain) and a bunch of gorgeous beach--atlantic ocean and indian ocean. i was lucky enough to have friends of family there, who graciously and generously put me up in their house for two nights, picked me up from and dropped me off at the airport, and told me the best sights to see for my one day in cape town.

i took the funny cable car gondola thingie to the top of table mountain (super touristy, but the appropriate place for someone like me to end up) and hiked around in inappropriate shoes for a few hours. the view and the landscape, all of it, blah blah blah, were beautiful. i was exstatic to be in nature with a view of the city. i proceeded to take one of those dorky tour buses (you know, the red ones that are open on top and have a goofy tour guide with a microphone) from the bottom of the gondola all around the cape, a buena vista of the richest parts of the city. holy crap, it is sort of like sausalito california, only more so.

little by little, throughout the day, it dawned on me that, as someone from the states, used to seeing the disparity between white folks and black folks, there was something familiar but even more fucked up going on in this city. talking with my hosts a little bit, i re-learned (what i should have brushed up on before my arrival but in the face of all the craziness in kenya did not) about the apartheid government that destroyed entire neighborhoods in the city (where now nobody will build anything, even though it is in a prime location) in order to separate black people from white people.

even in the "post apartheid" cape town, the separation is more evident than anyone would like to acknowledge. i don´t know the specifics, but was a more than a little surprised to hear the term "colored boy" in reference to a black high school graduate. maybe that´s ok in south africa, but jeeeeezus.

the morning of jan 20, on the way to the airport, we passed through the "townships" which is the nice name for slums where all the black people live. it was like going from san francisco immediately to the slums i´d seen from the train across tanzania. such a stark difference, and so much tension. you can see it in people´s faces who live there, both black and white.

so, cape town was weird. and beautiful, and ugly. and, weirdness upon weirdness, in the airport (which is as modern as any in the us), i bought a post card that is a picture of the slums with the mountains behind it, as though that were some sort of cultural treasure... super weird. i´m still trying to process that.

upon arriving in buenos aires (PS air malaysia, the airline from cape town to buenos aires, is amazing), i found myself a hostel in barrio san telmo, the older neighborhood in ba famous for, what else, tango. i got in around 5pm on sunday afternoon, just in time to catch the end of the super feria, with crafts and tango dancers and a dude playing the harp on a street corner. it was classic, a nice introduction to argentina, and a nice welcome back into the western hemisphere. things are more like home, even though i remain far away.

buenos aires is cool, neat, etc. i didn´t stick around, but did have time to see their museum of modern art, which is awesome (a frida kahlo, diego rivera, and remedios varo - the first of hers i´ve seen in real life, as well as a crazy exhibition by a b.a. artist named oscar bony, look that dude up, he is NUTS).

i took the 24 hour bus ride from buenos aires to santiago, chile, where i am now. it was the most comfortable bus i have ever been on, hands down, but despite that, still managed to fill completely with nasty exhaust smoke 2 hours into our trip, (i thought it was going to explode and kill us all), at which point we had to stop, call a mechanic and wait 2 hours for them to fix the bus. this is my life.

santiago is amazing. i am staying with mi cuñada, which means sister in law, though our relationship is slightly more distant than that--lola, who is awesome, is a dear family friend considered sister of the husband of the daughter of my mother´s long-term partner. so she´s my cuñada. she has a beautiful loft in barrio brasil en santiago, a super sweet neighborhood with lots of fun stuff going on. we hit it off as friends right away, with similar opinions on life and politix, etc.

it is summer here in the southern hemisphere (sorry snowbunnies in wisconsin). on wednesday i will leave santiago and head north to a small oasis in the desert called san pedro de atacama, hang out for a few days, and continue north via puno, perú (to see lago titicaca, that´ll be major body of water number 3 if you don´t count the indian ocean, because really i´m interested in freshwater--after lake victoria and the river nile). from puno, i´ll head to lima, switch buses, and hopefully make it to quito within a few days. i am enjoying the travel, but i am also getting anxious to be in quito again, with nora, where we have an apartment, she says its a sweet fixerupper. ah, how i love the fixeruppers.

here i am, back on the western side of the world (as it were).

aires is as beautiful and amazing as any latin american city ive been privileged to encounter. i am actually really enjoying traveling by myself, it means i get to do whatever i want with complete disregard for whatever social norms there may be... which means i got to eat a ridiculous lunch of spanish tortilla and dawdle about town pretty much all day.

i´m off to a concert with a friend of a friend who lives here, it should be interesting. and ive booked my bus ticket to santiago de chile for this wednesday (in 2 days!) leaving at 530pm. badass. i wanted to get there before my contact leaves for vacaciones the first week of february. awesome.

i will post some reflections of cape town, where i spent a day, in due course. it was a very weird place to be.

i leave for argentina tomorrow, so here're the long awaited EAST AFRICA photos!

hopefully they can somewhat speak for themselves.

http://wisc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2335880&l=16a98&id=8602808

i suppose it is important to note that when i left for my trip through both west and east africa, i did not do any sort of in-depth research on the political situations of the countries that i would be visiting. whether this was a wise decision or not(part of me wants to claim it was because i'd rather have a more "objective" view of the places i visit, not one that is shrouded by the opinions i'd formed based on limited amounts of information, but that would mostly be bullshit, because really i was just doing other stuff before i left for my trip, no other reason than that); i'm unsure.

margot informed me of the impending presidential elections elections in kenya, a country i'd deemed fairly developed and safe compared to what i knew of niger and cote d'ivoire. we planned (smartly, on her part, not mine) to be out of kenya and well into tanzania during kenya's elections, "just in case". we had also planned originally to return to kenya shortly after the new year, a plan that has changed (and changed again, and again) due to violence that is both politically and ethnically charged in all of kenya. travel by land throughout the country is not safe (which is what we'd been planning to do).

with the slight and selfish disappointment that comes from having our plans changed comes much more of a sense of adventure and the realization of my nievete (spelling? hmm) about the state of the world, politics, and the things people are driven to do when they are faced with injustice. (create more injustice? i am still naive). according to the dar es salaam guardian (the english-language newspaper i've chosen as my favorite here over the last few days), kenya was once a source of stability in an unstable region, and the fact that it has dissolved this quickly after a very new attempt at democratic elections (the country has only been independent from britian since 1963, and hasn't held democratic elections much since that independence was "granted") is debilitating on the hearts and minds of many east africans, africans in general, and, i suppose, proponents of colonially installed "democracy" throughout the world (maybe i hope would be a better word choice...)

margot's done quite a bit of research on the political systems governmental configurations of kenya in her time here, and i am very lucky to be traveling with someone who knows much more than i do about the history of colonial rule and its aftermath. the incumbent president, who has been accused of rigging the december 27 elections (it's pretty obvious), is a member of one of the tribes in kenya that had been favored by the british during colonialism. those who supported british rule and institutions during that time were rewarded, and those reward systems and mindsets, as well as the uneven distribution of land, power and wealth (also remnants of colonial times) have remained in kenya, even though it is now "independent".

the opposing party's candidate, who i would venture to guess really did win the popular vote in kenya (but we all know those don't really matter anywhere, don't we?) is a member of one of the tribes that was not favored by colonial rule, and of a tribe whose members live mostly in the more neglected regions of the country. those people, already neglected by government support because of the framework set up by colonialism, are responding to the injustice of a stolen election with violence, towards members of the tribe of the incumbent president. so who is the bad guy? everybody? or nobody?

this is where it gets complicated. margot and i have been talking about it lots and lots during our time here in dar es salaam (it is a pretty cool city, not as beautiful as mombasa, but we've found some sweet spots), which as been extended by yet another day by the train being delayed. we were supposed to be heading northwest to mwanza this evening, but (hopefully) will be on that train tomorrow evening. i've had this problem with trains in the US, so i guess i'm not surprised, really.

from mwanza we will get on an overnight ferry that takes us across the southwest "corner" of lake victoria to bukoba (still in tanzania). from bukoba we will travel by bus to kampala, uganda. kampala is supposed to be super-cool, and is about an hour away from jinja, where we will hike to the source of the nile (who knew this? it starts in uganda and flows NORTH to the sea... since when do rivers flow north??). we might go white-water rafting near jinja as well (but no promises, my insurance doesn't cover rafting).

we are safe, out of harm's way, so don't worry. we hope that the situation in nairobi is such that we will be able to safely fly into nairobi airport on january 16 or 17, and catch our currently scheduled (and paid for) flights out of nairobi on january 18. we have 2 other friends from madison who are flying into nairobi on the 16th, as well, so our hope is for them, too. they spent the last few days in nairobi, and are now in mombasa.

sorry for not updating more!

i've been busy, so let's do a "nutshell" (tis the season, you can pretend to be "nutcracker") post.

i left niger on time, on december 12. i spent the morning wandering around ouagadogou, burkina faso (because they wouldn't let me check in to my next flight when i arrived there). from burkina i flew to abijan, cote d'ivoire, and was fortunate enough to make a very kind and generous friend at the airport, who later helped me a TON.

once in abijan, i was unable to make my connecting flight to nairobi. this, as some may know, is my worst nightmare--i die a little bit inside every time i miss a flight. so, i did what any good white female-bodied pirate would do... i started to cry. i also was able to run around the airport frantically for a bit, before catching a shuttle (and getting conned into buying a worthless phone card) to the hotel my aforementioned friend said he was staying at.

so, i can think about my time in abijan two ways--a big, annoying layover in an expensive hotel, or an interesting two days in a city i'd never dreamed of visiting... it is a little bit of both. through the wonders of the internet and cell phone technology, i was able to get a message to margot, so she wouldn't be disappointed to not see me at the airport the following morning. i managed to find kenya airways' office in abijan (with the help of some very kind strangers who tolerated my intolerable french) and get the ticket reissued for the next available flight, which was friday (monday, wed, and friday flights are all they've got to nairobi).

the hotel had a pool. it was nice. the ivory coast is a quickly developing country, that three or four years ago was considered so dangerous that they didn't even bother to put useful information in my africa guide book about it. now it is fairly safe, for a big economic hub in west africa, and pretty expensive compared to niger and even burkina faso. in retrospect, i am glad i ended up there, even though it cost me some extra money, because i made a friend who i have a feeling will be an excellent contact person later in my life.

once finally in nairobi, margot and i hauled through the city and packed for the coast. we took the night bus to mombasa, and quickly jumped onto the morning bus to lamu, an island just off the central coast of kenya. we spent 4 days on the beach, lazing about, usually without another human being in sight (there were a few camels and donkeys). it is definitely one of the most perfect beaches i've visited in the world, for swimming and sunning. i got a sunburn with spf 50 all over my body.

from lamu we boated and bussed back to mombasa, and spent two nights at margot's "uncle's" house (he is actually a cousin of her host father in kisumu, kenya). they were very kind and generous, and drove us into town three days in a row so that we could discover mombasa. it is a beautiful old city with islamic influences in architecture and culture, which merges with the swahili culture of the region. major highlight: we visited an old swahili musician in his weirdly familiar apartment (dirty, minimal furniture, lots of ashtrays and used coffee cups and soda bottles, and dudes hanging out who just woke up at 3 in the afternoon). it was surreal, listening to his cd's (we bought some) and watching a dvd of some performances that had been filmed on zanzibar island. he was a very cool guy.

our friends who'd been traveling with us up until this point then embarked for nairobi, while margot and i stayed on an extra day to catch the morning bus to dar es salaam, tanzania. it was about a 9 hour trip, but the roads were MUCH better than the road from nairobi to mombasa (we also had better seats on the bus). it cost $100 usd to get into tanzania, so we promised each other we'd make the most of it. we were picked up at the bus terminal by a friend of a friend of an acquaintence of our former travel partner (who'd headed back to nairobi). he owns a guest house, but since it was xmas eve (we're up to yesterday, now), he put us up in the guest wing of his house, fed us xmas eve dinner with his new inlaws whom he'd never met before, as well as breakfast this morning. it was all at once fun, incredibly awkward, and an insight-providing experience. being the second time we've stayed in someone's home so far in east africa, i'm learning the "cultural norms"... which include some absence of eating utinsels, and a great deal of what seem to me awkward silences, but what margot assures me is "normal".

this morning, (xmas morning!) we were incredibly happy to wake up to fresh mangoes, bananas, and watermelon with white bread, margarine and instant coffee. if i put some honey in the instant coffee, i can choke it down just fine. mr. goba drove us into central dar es salaam where we booked dec 30, 31 and jan 1 at the YWCA... the most highly recommended hostel in dar by my (so far pretty unreliable) lonely planet guide. the woman who was in charge was having breakfast, and she was pleasant enough, for xmas morning at work.

we took the noon ferry (sadly, the fast tourist ferry, not the fun slow one i'd hoped we would be on) to zanzibar today, where we found a sweet guest house with a kitchen where we can cook, and breakfast included for 12500 T-shillings per night. that's a little less than $12 USD. (thanks jamie for your help with the currency exchange rates... and i'm sorry again for waking you up).

so, all in all, it's been a pretty crappy xmas. i mean awesome. i hope everyone's holidays are as salty and sandy as mine. we had coconut vegetables for dinner tonight. and if you're wondering, we are living 9 hours ahead of central standard time in the US, that's why my xmas is almost over while you all are just starting to eat three kinds of meat and yams with little marshmallows.

low resolution... but at least there here!

http://wisc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2314600&l=49cfd&id=8602808

rumor has it my last post was "dense". sorry. take it one day at a time.