Apparently not relaxed enough

As I noted in an earlier entry, with each passing day I'm becoming more relaxed. However, according to Argentine standards, I still have progress to make.

To make a long story short, my family decided to take a raft trip. We were told to meet at 9:30 a.m. and that the drive to the put in would be 2 hours. After the approximately 13 stops... sometimes just for a smoke, sometimes to buy food for the asado (BBQ) following the raft trip, somtimes to pick up a guide, sometimes to drop the guide's kid off at his grandparent's house... we didn't actually start the raft trip until 5 p.m. (no exageration). After the first two hours of slight annoyance, we remembered we were indeed in Latin America and we ought just to go with it. We sipped the mate when offered and hung out in the sun while waiting. The day turned out to be very enjoyable. The rafting was great fun, the people we met were extremely nice, the asado was especially tasty and the flavor of rural Patagonia was calming. One more lesson in my life long goal of learning how to relax.

Fotografias

The trail sort of disappeared, leaving us a bit confused and with no other option than to bushwack our way up Mount Falkner

Taking a break

Before launching our rafting trip

A self-portrait by the river

The view from our hike up Mount Falkner

Relaxed

For those of you who talked to me on a regular basis this past fall, you know that I often thought about waking up in the morning, drinking a cup of coffee, reading a book, perhaps taking a hike and basically enjoying the day however I so choose... free of obligations. This hope, so elusive during my final semester in school, has finally become a reality. I am relaxed!

Patagonia Photos

On Christmas day we took a beautiful hike up the side of Cerro Colorado. It was a great hike... although a bit windy up top.

The view from the top of Cerro Colorado

Brad, quite literally, running down the side of Cerro Colorado

A view from a hike we took along a lake

It's called the lake district for a reason... lakes are everywhere!

A pretty flower

A hike in the rain on our first day in Bariloche

Dad packing up our rental car. Although my belongings all fit into a 28 lbs. pack (a fact I'm very proud of), the rest of my family went the "comfortable vacationer" route, making for some cramped quarters in the car.

Lupin are everywhere... meaning hillsides of purple!

A new name?

I've titled my blog "From North to South," but perhaps it could more aptly be named "From shortest to longest day of the year." Happy (belated) solstice! A special salute to my friends shoveling snow in Alaska!

Day one in the Andes

Did I happen to mention to any of you that I get to spend the next number of months wandering through, around, below, on, and perhaps even above the Andes Mountains? What a surreal realization! Day one in Patagonia and already I'm in love (that's with it raining all day which means I have yet to see the peaks). Today we took a hike that paralleled a waterfall. Below, a lake seeped through the forest and peaked out through the fog. We also enjoyed some of the fabulous, locally produced wine and meandered through the downtown part of Bariloche (which more closely resembles a European city than a Latin one). As I pass by all the signs pointing toward the ski resorts, hear stories of the snow still caked on Cerro Tronador, and see the snowy white photos on tourism pamphlets, I have to admit that I've all but made up my mind to try to stay through winter (Anyone want to visit?). Okay, I realize it's day one, but let's just say the thought of it is already crystallizing (no pun intended). Anywho, I'll get some photos posted in the coming days... hopefully offering a taste of the incredible beauty I've found in this far southern land.

Buenos Aires

An old man plays the accordion on the street--it's drowning melody mixing with the pop music emanating from the modern store front. Taxis mix ubiquitously with traffic--all full, leaving a street lined with frustrated hailers. Shoes chatter on cement sidewalks--each announces the wearer's fashion proclamation. The hot sunlight falls off the tops of skyscrapers-- it lands in the people-lined crevasses below. Colorful, cacophonous, chaotic.

A few photos of the big day

Joshua after he moved his tassel

Giving a little speech

Mingling, hugs and congratulations

All smiles

First images from Argentina

Calle Florida in Buenos Aires

Street vendor

We spent over an hour in this cell phone shop trying to purchase a phone... yep.. back to Latin American ineffciency

A nice dinner... it was beefy!

The sink and surge of memories

I've said a number of times over the last few weeks that instead of trying process all that's going on, I'm simply going to let life happen. Maybe because of this, I wasn't prepared mentally for this return to Argentina. I was mentally prepared to start an adventure--travel with just a backpack through the mountains--but not to return to Argentina.

At age 16, my thee months as an exchange student in Argentina proved to be a difficult period for me. There were definitely great moments, wonderful friends and amazing opportunities, but the lows were particularly low.

As is normal with the passage of time, many of those lows have sunk deep into my subconscious, while the highlights linger on the surface of my memory. So to suddenly have them surge up again caught me off guard.

It does makes me realize though how much I've grown and changed over the last five years. Instead of being intimidated by the idea of living abroad, I thrive on its challenges and rewards.

An Autobiography

It seems fitting that the last assignment I'd have to do at APU is a philosophical autobiography. (Not only is this school all about self-reflection, but as graduation looms nearer it also seems like a pertinent time for self-reflection). I thought I'd share my final paper...


Age 10. I am in South Africa. My body levitates with the awe of watching four male lions devour a zebra 20 feet from the car that shields me. Life and death become instantly tangible, instantly natural. I experience the vibrant purple of Jacaranda trees in full bloom. But I am struck, struck by an image that embeds into my soul. A shanty town, built with cardboard and corrugated plastic, falls into an engulfing diamond mine. I begin to understand poverty.
Age 15. I am in Spain. I am with my family on a road trip. My senses are twisted, distorted by the maze called Madrid. My intellect is twisted, distorted by the opulence of those who once ruled. An organ reverberates through a cathedral. Sunflowers stretch as far as the eye can see. A tenth century monastery hides beneath a cliff. People from a dozen nationalities share supper in a high mountain hut. A Candyland castle teases my taste buds. Remnants of Christianity, Judaism and Islam crisply, colorfully blend. A jigsaw puzzle. Life’s jigsaw puzzle, piece by piece, begins to build.
Age 16. I am in Russia. I trail our guides through Moscow. Olga, the exchange student who stayed with us, and her family have invited us to visit. I ride the subway system that carries more passengers than the New York and London systems combined. We ride just to see the underground cathedrals. Each subway station swallows us in stunning mosaic masterpieces. Stunning…stunned… realizing forced labor was used to build this labyrinth. Sugar and salt. The sugar of St. Basils cathedral spiraling upward in dance. The salt of red square eventually, inevitably evoking images of a regime since fallen.
Age 16. I am in Argentina. I ride a bus from Buenos Aires to Rosario where I will spend the next three months as an exchange student. Alone for the first time, I’ve been stripped of linguistic and cultural fluency. My emotions yo-yo. I commit every social faux pas. I slam car doors. I learn to shut them gently when a taxi driver starts cussing at me. I make friends. My Spanish becomes less disjointed. I begin to laugh. I use laughter as my weapon against loneliness and awkwardness. I grow. I grow independent. I grow adaptable. I grow perceptive. In the end I take off the navy blue school jumper, kiss my friends on the cheek one last time and breathe in the magnitude of the experience.
Age 18. I am in New Zealand. I hike through valleys curtained in waterfalls. I traverse the toe of a glacier. I swim through a glow worm sprinkled cave. I kayak over rolling waves under the singeing sun. I experience a country free of lawsuits and litigation. I spend New Years with my family sipping champagne in a restaurant perched above the city. I talk for three hours with a girl from Israel—another perspective on a dynamic, complicated, ever-shifting, yet stunningly gorgeous world.
Age 19. I am in El Salvador. I touch the cherry on a coffee plant for the first time. I pick pineapples with my bare hands—prickly. I plant bamboo shoots. I start to link the food I eat to the ground squeezing through my toes. I walk numbly through the town of El Mozote—the scene of a brutal massacre. I look into a gulf made by a U.S. made bomb. I hear, first hand, the stories of those who suffered. I feel sickened by political “cause.” I see hope: pride for a well-maintained irrigation system, attention to the preservation of a cloud forest, energy pulsating through a futbol stadium. A passion particular too Latin America begins to develop.
Age 20. I am in Vietnam. I travel with a group of students and seven veterans. I visit a school, hospital and home for Vietnamese affected by Agent Orange. I sit at the feet of two veterans who have tears streaming down their face, both of them exclaiming that “there ain’t no reason to go to war.” I sit around a breakfast table with three veterans. I don’t eat. They relate memories of combat, special operations and returning home. A bond, solidified by a few glasses of rice wine, develops between us.
Age 21. I am in Guatemala. I am on my own for five months, scared and happy. I attend Spanish school and volunteer. I travel via chicken buses so jammed that breathing is a chore. I buy mangoes and avocados for pennies from the sprawling market right outside my door. I climb the volcanoes piercing the fertile air. I fall in love with people—not a person but humanity as a whole. I spend hours talking, sitting and talking. I listen to the experiences others share. A Mam couple in the park tells me about their farm in Almolonga. The Spanish school director tells me about receiving death threats at age 13 because of her active opposition to the government. A dear friend from Germany daily relates the triumphs and trails of working in an orphanage. Stories too numerous to count, sometimes heart wrenching, sometimes gut wrenching.
Age 22. I leave for Argentina in a week. It is my birthday today and I am struck by the impermanent nature of life. Much has changed within me since I was last in this country. I saw a sign on a friend’s wall this morning. It read, “Grow where you are planted.” Traveling teaches me how to do just that. How quickly the necessity of life’s “necessities” disappears when I am wandering the world. I’ve been to twenty countries total and I have an insatiable thirst to see more. I definitely believe in the saying, “not all who wander are lost,” for I wander, but I feel far from lost. From traveling I have learned many things. I have learned that there are obstacles, but never road blocks. I have learned that my daily tribulations ought not to be taken too seriously. I have learned that people are good. And I have learned that freedom and simplicity make phenomenal guides.

December Musings

I feel washed in the realization that I have one week of school left... not just until Christmas break or summer break or until I take off for a semester abroad (although I am taking off to travel abroad), but until school is done.

Nineteen year later...whabam...college graduation.

I don't deny that graduate school may be in my future, not my immediate future, but nonetheless in my future. But at least for the next little while, I'll read whatever it is I myself feel compelled to read. I'll come home at the end of the day not to mounds of homework, but to my own creative impulses. I might even get to go skiing every single weekend, because I might in fact be able to go out to the slopes without blowing of 7 other "obligations."

Not to say that I don't look back on school... life for that matter... with a reminiscent feeling. What can I say, life has been and is good! But I'm ready for the change. And even more so, I'm ready to wander around Argentina. Yep, a life of backpacking in Patagonia, sunbathing on the Atlantic Coast and catching up with old friends seems downright nice in this given moment.

Cheers to freedom, simplicity and possibilities!