Back in Santiago

We're back in Santiago and back to being vagabonds. Our time with our families in Puyehue was lovely, and it was a great way to spend the holidays. It was just so relaxing, and with everyone free to spend their time however they wanted, I think everyone had a great time. And we drank an absurd amount of wonderful Chilean wine, which keeps everyone in high spirits! Christmas morning (which was also Tristan's birthday) we went ziplining over the forest. It was a lot of fun to zoom over the river and trees, though I'll admit I had visions of myself crashing into a tree. But if I can roll down a volcano with an ice pick in hand, I can certainly fly over a forest in a harness. We spent our last full day down at the lake (Lake Puyehue), kayaking and navigating the paddle boats. Luisa and I could work on our steering a bit more, as at one point we crashed into a giant buoy. Oops. :) On our way back to Puerto Montt, where our flight back to Santiago was from, we all stopped in Puerto Varas for lunch and wandering. It was nice to go back to that town, as Eben and I didn't get to spend too much time when we were last there.

At any rate, here we are again. Tristan and his dad left way early this morning to conquer the Peruvian Amazon, Eben's mom leaves for Australia tonight, and my family goes back to New York tonight. So we'll be left alone again and resume our lifestyle of living off of empanadas and cheese.

I think seeing my family again made me realize how much I do miss them. We only have a couple more weeks left in Chile, and then I'll be home! Eben and I leave tomorrow for northern Chile, our first stop being the beach town of La Serena. Since this leg of the journey has pretty much been aimless wandering, I am of course starting to feel restless and in need of a project. It'll be good to feel busy again. But until then, I can learn how to surf in Chile. :)

And since 2007 is coming to an end, I just wanted to reflect on some things I'm really proud of since we first landed in Ecuador.

1. Going to the southern hemisphere for the first time... and straddling the Equator, simultaneously being in the North and South!

2. Machu Picchu

3. Crawling through the silver mines of Potosí, Bolivia

4. Navigating our way through the bus barricades of Potosí and Sucre, Bolivia

5. Seeing Patagonian glaciers

6. Climbing up the 2080-meter-high Volcán Villarrica and sliding all the way down

7. Ziplining over Parque Nacional Puyehue

And of course there have been the countless treks up intimidating mountainsides, learning that I can indeed live out of a backpack for 5 months, and proving to myself that even though certain people didn't think I was tough enough for this, I did it all anyway.

Merry Christmas!

I'll try to make this entry short and sweet. The rest of our time in Viña was really nice. It's a cute beachside town and popular vacation destination for Chileans and Argentines. We were unexpectedly awoken by small earthquake tremors one morning, which was a bit scary, but it didn't do any damage by us. Other than wandering around the town, we also did an afternoon of wine tasting in the Casablanca Valley, which was pretty sweet. More details in another post. We headed back to Santiago to meet my mom and Eben's brother, Tristan, and on Friday we all headed down to the Lake District to spend the holiday together!

We are now in Puyehue, staying at a very nice resort and being pampered like never before. :) Our days are basically a whirl of massages, hiking, swimming in one of the many pools (some are heated!), and horseback riding. Yay! It's fun to be together with our families (and Luisa's best friend from Vassar, Norma, and her husband, Kevin) and just spend this holiday doing fun things and relaxing. Our families head off a bit after Christmas, and then Eben and I are on our own again. Tristan will meet up with us again after he does the Inca Trail with his dad in Perú, and we'll explore northern Chile before heading back to Santiago to fly home! The time is flying by so fast!!!

Parents!

Ok, so the parents are here and life is good. A brief synopsis of what happened before they got here and then what we have been doing.

From Santa Cruz we went out to visit Montes Winery. We had a private tour with a very nice tourguide who gave us some of the premium wine to taste even though it was not included. The whole winery is built feng shui with music playing in the barrel room and all the energy flowing out of a fountain in the center of the winery. It is really cool. The wine was fantastic and we tasted four kinds: a cabernet sauvignon/carmenere blend, a cabernet sauvignon, a syrah and their premium wine the M. All were very good and are all exported to the states. We also had an awesome cab driver who pointed out all sorts of things inside and outside of the city on the way to the winery such as what school he went to and what different fruits and vegetables were growing in the countryside. It was a good day.

The next day we moved on to Pichilemu, the surf destination of Chile. We spent the day on the beach getting tan and also eating empanadas that are awesome and cheap. The beach is gorgeous, black sand stretching as far as the eye can see with big waves breaking over the sandbars out in the horseshoe bay. We relaxed the first day and then on the second day I took surf classes. In the morning was pretty difficult since we were out deep, the tide was high and the waves were big. It was only me and a 20 year old instructor who had been surfing his whole life. He was great. Then in the afternoon, I went out with him again and a few more people and it was much easier. We were catching the beach breaks and I actually made it up and stayed with the wave a few times. Hopefully this will happen more as we move up the northern coast of Chile in January.

Sarah is a friend of dogs. While I was surfing, she managed to befriend at least 3 stray dogs who joined her while tanning on the beach. One even followed us all over town, waiting for us while we did internet and everything. It was very cute.

Then the parents arrived. The last few days have been filled with food, touring and lots of wine. From barbeques in Santiago to cooking dinner in Viña del Mar, we are living the life. We have been staying with the sister of Sarah's dad in Santiago. It is a huge family and a huge estate and it was all parties with bbqs, paellas, going out to salsa and everything. We are in Viña del Mar right now at her other apartment. This is a seaside resort next to Valpairiso and is gorgeous. We have spent the last few days sightseeing during the day and having wonderful dinners and wonderful wine at night. Tomorrow we are going for a winery tour and lunch at Viña Casas del Bosque. My brother and Sarah's mom are arriving soon and we really look forward to it.

Life is good.

Penguin and glacier photos!!

Just a brief highlight of our journeys down south because we finally burned the gig memory card onto a DVD.

Penguins on a beach! Penguins on a beach!

More penguins!

Sea lions lounging

Our first attempt to trek through the snow... posing with the glacier sign!

Yay icebergs!

We of course have a lot more, but the internet here is too slow to upload more. But this gives you an idea!

Volunteer tourism

So I have just read Jennifer Conlin's article in the NY Times entitled, "Trips to Help Shape the World." It's briefly about volunteer vacations and these newish organizations that organize one-week (or more) excursions to some underdeveloped country, where you do some volunteer work and go on sightseeing tours withyour own guide and everything. It's a new twist on tourism intended to promote a sense of goodwill while still maintaining your tourist status.

Now, while I have certainly done a good share of sightseeing and relaxation on this trip, I feel like these volunteer vacations are contradictory and frustrating to anyone seeking viable volunteer options. Spend a week playing an African orphan and then dine in a 4-star restaurant? This is completely ridiculous. Organizations like Cross-Cultural Solutions ask that you pay thousands of dollars to spend a week in a location, not including airfare. Who can afford that? The people who actually want to do some good in a place can't just hand over $3000 for a 2-week placement. That's a 3-month budget for me. And forget about doing a long-term placement with one of these organizations. A 3-month placement with Cross-Cultural Solutions costs nearly $6000.

Furthermore, our great frustration with LIFE Argentina was that there was absolutely no continuity. Children who live in unstable environments need continuity, and they need to know that friendly faces don't just come and go every few days. While I think that some help and some support is better than no help and no support, long-term placements are ultimately going to be the best. The volunteer gets to establish a solid connection with the community he/she is working in, and the people become familiar with the volunteer and hopefully will learn to trust and respect that figure. These programs seem to ignore that basic principle, and at times the volunteer component of these "vacations" seems to be an afterthought. Volunteering shouldn't be a frivolous expense.

I think what my biggest problem with "volunteer vacation" organizations (sorry, Cross-Cultural Solutions, but you are getting the brunt of my disgust) is that at the present moment, these are the most publicized and easiest ways to volunteer abroad. (Volunteer South America is a great resource for free and low-cost options.) There is a severe lack of information about organizations that don't charge thousands of dollars for your services (and keep that in mind, CCS charges thousands of dollars for your mere presence in an underdeveloped country), and I fear that this is because there is also a lack of such organizations in general. What angers me the most is that while these organizations maintain that such high costs are necessary because they benefit the community you are working in, as well as pay for your food and housing (though not always), Eben and I know for a fact that such costs are completely unnecessary. Inti Runakunaq Wasin in Cusco, Peru, asks for a $50 donation, regardless of how long you stay (coincidentally, most volunteers are long-term). What exactly is CCS (and LIFE Argentina, for that matter) spending its money on? I smell a rat.

In a nutshell, if you're looking for a different sort of family vacation and happen to have an actual income that affords you the luxury of dropping several thousand dollars, then an organization like CCS can probably offer a neat way to spend your vacation. But if you want to do actual volunteer work, then these organizations are money-suckers that do little good for the world.

Bernardo O'Higgins and sunshine!

We are on the move once again, bouncing around from city to city. We've had lots of gray skies and rain, which is a bit of a bummer. Temuco, a city that is known for its Mapuche presence, was very large but kind of disappointing. Eben and I explored the Mapuche markets, but they were like most of the other markets we have been to. We only stayed there for a day before hopping on the bus to go to Chillán.

Chillán offered some much-needed sunshine. This town is the birthplace of Bernardo O'Higgins, Chile's liberator who has large statues of himself all over the country. We did some exploring, saw the earthquake-resistant cathedral right off of the gorgeous main plaza, and went to the Escuela México. The school was donated by Mexico after the earthquake in 1939 and has a library whose walls are covered by two large murals depicting the histories of Mexico and Chile. Very cool! We also checked out the indigenous handicraft market in town (more of the same).

After a day in Chillán we went down to Concepción, where O'Higgins declared independence. Yay! Concepción is a cute university town, and I really liked it there. Eben and I tried to check out the university art collection, but it was sadly closed (even though it totally was supposed to be open). Instead we weaved our way through the antique and used book market that was in the university plaza. There were so many interesting booths and was such a neat way to spend the afternoon. Eben and I managed to find some English-language books, which is always exciting in this country of Spanish-only books, so we stocked up a bit and had a little chat with one of the booksellers who had a great Latin American politics selection. :) Afterwards we went to the Galería de la Historia, which houses some really intricate dioramas of Concepción's history and several maté cups from Argentina (why? who knows). Upstairs there was an exhibit of local high schoolers' art, some of which was just okay, but there were a couple drawings that were awesome (mostly graphic design things, but very fun to look at).

Our journey to Santa Cruz, where we are now, was a bit of an adventure. We took a bus from Concepción to San Fernando, where we were told we could catch a colectivo to Santa Cruz. Except instead of going to the terminal in San Fernando (or any terminal for that matter), our bus dropped people off on the side of the highway. We have often been on large buses that stop on dirt roads or on the sides of highways to let people on, and occasionally people request to be let off at a random spot in the middle of nowhere. Never before has the bus actually refused to go to a terminal, though, in favor of staying on the highway. This was weird. So Eben and I stood there for a moment, unsure of what to do (hello, I am on the side of a Chilean highway), and then just started walking in the general direction of San Fernando. We eventually caught a colectivo taxi to the terminal and got our bus ticket to Santa Cruz, and I'm happy to report that we made it one piece. :)

So this brings me to Santa Cruz, a town where cars actually stop for pedestrians and where public garbage cans are made from used wine barrels. Arriving in any Latin American town on a Sunday is a bit frustrating because absolutely nothing is open. Neither one of our books (Footprint and Lonely Planet's Shoestring Guide) had a single hostel or hospedaje listed for Santa Cruz, and since the bus station was quite desolate when we arrived, we had no clue of where to go. Luck was with us, though, for when we popped into a video store to ask if they had any idea of where an hospedaje might be, the clerk was like, "Why yes, next door!" Sweet! So yesterday consisted of eating giant ice cream cones (apparently ice cream is important enough to warrant opening the store on a Sunday; the supermarket, not so much), drinking some carmenere (yum), and learning to play poker. Today we will be slightly more active and walk through some nearby vineyards and go on a vineyard tour later this afternoon. I like being in Wine Country!

Also, regarding Eben's last post, I have to say that rolling down the snowy volcano side was AMAZING. Yes, at one point, I completely lost control and was sliding down headfirst (then sideways, then on my stomach, then sideways again, then just flipping over and over...) with absolutely no control and an icepick in hand (not a good combination, folks), but it was the most fun I have ever had in my entire life. My God. It was every child's dream of the perfect Snow Day. Ahhhh so fun!!!!!!

The family starts arriving in 3 days! Goodbye, budget!!

4 towns in 4 days

Since Sarah last updated, we have been on a whirlwind tour of southern/middle Chile. We went through Castro, Puerto Varas, Valdivia and we are now in Pucon after 4 days straight of sightseeing and then hopping on a bus.

Castro, it is indeed beautiful, even if it is overcast. The reason we couldn't see the church before Sarah's entry was a big fundraiser for disabled children that was being held all over Chile. To raise money, they had a block long hotdog that they sold pieces of. The hot dog itself wasn't that long, but with a contraption made of 2x4s and a ton of baguettes, hot dogs, avocado, tomato and mayonnaise, the hot dog was really really long. We eventually did see the church and it was awesome, completely made of wood and very provincial or country. We also took a bus out to another town to check out that wooden church and that was pretty cool. It was an adventure since we took the local buses with very vague directions and no idea how to get around the town that we were going to. But it was fun and Castro was a nice little town.

Puerto Varas, a couple hours away from Castro and really close to Puerto Montt, this town is a big tourist draw for excursions on the lake and up Volcano Osorno. We spent the day walking around, hanging out by the beach, trying to find old crumbling mansions (with limited success). It it a very cute town that takes all of 20 minutes to navigate every block in the center. The church there is a copy of a church in germany, fairly exact except for the vivid blue ceiling on the inside. Since we weren't going to climb this Volcano, we went to Valdivia the next morning.

Valdivia is a university town that is awesome. First of all, we found the best hospedaje ever. This old mansion is falling down and looks like a haunted house, but you can rent rooms there. It has a creaky metal gate, crumbling stone steps, none of the floors in the house are level, it is fantastic. Second, down at the riverfront market there are a ton of sealions hanging out looking for handouts from the fishermen. They make strange noises and flop around. We went exploring looking for a fort, but we were unable to find it. Apparently there are a bunch of forts just outside of town that the Spanish built back in the early 1700s. I would like to spend more time in Valdivia later.

Finally, Pucon. This town is a very touristy town that, like Puerto Varas, is an excursion jump-off point. We are actually staying two nights here so we were able to do something today. The choices were endless from white-water rafting, kayaking, and canoeing to ziplining to volcano climbing. So we decided to climb Volcano Villarica. The volcano is active and smoking. However, we found out at the top that the smoke is pretty toxic, so while we stood at the edge of the crater, we weren't able to see very much because it stung the eyes and burned the throat. The climb itself was fairly difficult (for us who have never done this before) since it is all through snow and you have to carry a lot of equipment on your back including snowpants and jacket for when it gets windy at the top, crampons in case the path is too icy, an icepick, lots of food and water, a helmet, and other assorted odds and ends. We went at a pretty slow pace with well timed breaks, so it was very nice and then the best part was that we slid down from the top on our butts. We strapped some special slidy pants on over our snowpants and just took off. At various points, Sarah and I both went head over heels but it was a blast. I would climb up again just to slide back down.

We are now recovering from our climb and slide with various sore muscles and bruises here and there. Tomorrow we go on to Temuco on our journey up to Santiago to meet the parents in less than 10 days.

Back in Chile

Our time in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego was definitely amazing, but I'm happy to be back in Chile and on the move again. Leaving El Calafate was actually pretty difficult, as to get to our next stop in Chile, we needed to take a neverending bus. The flights we looked at were just too expensive, and U.S. citizens who fly into Chile have to pay an additional $100 reciprocity (damn you, United States). So Eben and I invoked our inner toughness and took the bus out of El Calafate. For 40 hours. Yes, 40 hours on 4 different buses (El Calafate to Rio Gallegos, Rio Gallegos to Comodoro Rivadavia, Comodoro Rivadavia to Bariloche, Bariloche to Osorno, Chile). In all honesty, it really wasn't that bad, though I was very happy to finally arrive in Chile and shower and have a real bed to sleep in. We only stayed in Osorno for a night, as our true destination was the island of Chiloé.

Our first stop in Chiloé was Ancud, where we spent 2 days. The drive in was very beautiful, with lots of lush, rolling green farmland. Ancud itself is a very small town with not much going on, but it's cute and the people are friendly. It rains quite a bit here, so Eben and I couldn't do too much (our plans to dolphin-watch and go on another penguin tour were squashed due to the weather). However, we had a nice time at the Regional Museum, which houses a nice history of the area, including lots of old artifacts and cool photographs of the area after the 1960 earthquake. It also has a small modern art museum in the basement, though honestly, I wasn't too impressed. The rest of our time we spent walking around in the rain and seeing the old fortresses along the water.

We just arrived this morning in Castro, about an hour and a half away from Ancud. This is another small fishing town, but it's known for its colorful houses on stilts along the water. There is also supposed to be a church with a beautiful interior along the main plaza, but right now there is some event going on, and the church is closed. Very sad. I'm not too sure what the rest of our day will hold, but I'm quite happy to just walk around and explore.

After Castro, Eben and I will head back the mainland and continue our northward journey up to Santiago. Our families start arriving in 2 weeks for the holidays, and I'm very excited to have Christmas in Chile! It will be nice to see family again and be together. I think it will be a little strange to not be at home (this is my first Christmas abroad), but we'll have lots of fun together anyway. :)

P.S. Sorry we haven't been uploading photos lately, but it's very difficult to find a cord that will connect to our cameras... stay tuned!

Ladies and gentlemen...

I am officially DONE applying to graduate school.

DONE.

DONE.

DONE.

aaaarrruughaaaaaeeerrrrrrriiiiiiigh

The title is approximently the sound that the sea lions make for no apparent reason. Our guide said that the sea lions can recognize the voices of their family and I certainly believe it since we heard a wide variety of strange, slightly depressing sounding noises from the sea lions. Pictures will be put up once we get them on a cd. Along with the sea lions, we learned about lighthouses, some birds, and got to walk around a little island learning about how glaciers shape the land and the variety of plant life growing at the bottom of the world.

As Sarah said, we were planning to do the tour mentioned above, some glacial trekking and visit the prison in Ushuaia. Well, the prison was pretty cool. We met a lady from Poughkeepsie who spotted us in the ever-present Vassar sweatshirts. We learned about some of the more famous (or infamous) prisoners, the labor that they did there and generally just checked out the unrestored prison. It was a great museum though with lots and lots of information, we would have been there for hours and hours if we had tried to read everything.

The glacial trekking did not work out as well as the prison or the sea lions. We made it up to the mountain via the chair lift (it is a ski resort in the winter) but everything is still covered in snow, including the glacier. So we couldn't walk on it, or see it for that matter. But it was still a cool walk, up the mountain trying to use the islands of no snow since we only had sneakers and not hiking boots. And then we walked all the way back down to town...our legs still hurt and this was 3 or 4 days ago.

Ushuaia was a great little town that felt at the same time like a fishing port and a ski resort town. That may seem a little bipolar, but it worked. From there, we caught a flight to El Calafate, in Argentine Patagonia. This place is also a lot like a ski resort town since it is all about tourism. The thing to do here is glaciers. There is a national park about 50km from town that has some spectacular glaciers. We took a boat tour today to see some of them. I have never seen anything like this in my life. The water is green because of the minerals from the melting glaciers, the glaciers are blue because the ice is so compact. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), there was a big break a few days ago and the sheer amount of icebergs floating around prevented us from getting very close to the big glacier (Glacier Upsala) and they also blocked the passage to the place where we were supposed to disembark for lunch and a walk around to see more glaciers and icebergs. The decision to come here was influenced by pictures an American couple showed us of the lunch location, with a small lake full of icebergs, a sunny day and a beautiful background. It is really hard to express in words how cool these icebergs were, and I'm afraid (although we don't know for sure yet) that our cameras didn't pick up the colors of the water and the glaciers very well. Either way, it was totally worth it.

At 4 am, we begin a 29 hour bus journey to Bariloche so that we can cross back into Chile near Puerto Montt. Briefly, our plan is to go to Chiloé and then up to meet family in Santiago in two weeks.

Land of Penguins

Our last day in Talca was quite pleasant, though we didn't actually spend it in Talca. We hopped on a collectivo (a glorified van that functions as a public bus) to a nearby town, San Javier, for a wine fair! The park it was held in was very cute, and it was fun to wander from booth to booth picking up snacks and trying out the wine. There were a few good wineries represented, but mostly I was not too impressed. Either way it was fun, and it was neat to explore the area a bit.

After that it was yet another overnight bus (they're just so comfy!) all the way down to Puerto Montt, the major stopover town for people going down to Patagonia. The town itself had some cute things like a plaza with lots of mosaics and an old wooden church, but for the most part it's nothing grand. We only stayed for a day before hopping on a plane to.... Punta Arenas!! It may have been cold, but it was definitely beautiful.

Punta Arenas is a city that deserves at least 2 days, though probably not much more than that. The center is gorgeous, lots of old mansions and a pretty plaza. It is definitely chilly since it is sooo far down south, but this is actually mostly due to the freezing cold winds. It feels fresh and clean, though, and you definitely get the impression of being somewhere very very far from home. Aside from strolling through the streets or checking out the Regional History Museum, the main activity is visiting the penguin colonies. It's a bit crazy to be in a part of the world where penguins live naturally (no zoos!). There are two options, Isla Magadalena (the ferry leaves only on Saturdays during the low season) or Seno Otway (a bus leaves every day). Due to scheduling, Eben and I went to Seno Otway, which is a bit smaller than the other penguin colony. The drive out was beautiful. The land is completely flat and seems to stretch on forever. We saw lots of interesting animals along the way, including hares, a llama-type animal, and some ostrich-like giant birds. The highlight, however, was definitely the penguins. Upon arriving at Seno Otway, we followed a path down to the water. Visitors are kindly reminded not to stray from the path, as this is Penguin Land, not People Land. We saw a few penguins along the path, standing guard over a burrow or just waddling around and being adorable. It was cool to be able to reach a hand out and touch the penguins (not that we did, but that gives you an idea of how close we were to some of them). Mostly I just enjoyed their funny waddle. :) At the water, we had to stand behind a wooden platform barrier from which we could spy on the penguins. The idea is to keep the people hidden so that the penguins don't get scared and think they are being invaded. There were maybe about 100 penguins frolicking along the shore. SO CUTE!!! And by frolicking, I mean they swung their little arms out awkwardly and waddled like a 2-year-old in a tuxedo, unknowingly making a certain 22-year-old American college graduate die with happiness.

While Patagonia was certainly proving to be awesome-tastic, we really wanted to go even further south to Tierra del Fuego.

Unfortunately, our two options on the Chilean side were Porvenir and Puerto Williams, both of which are fairly inaccessible. Essentially the only option is to fly, but even in low season the flights are booked solid for two weeks. Sad. Since you really can't come to Patagonia without seeing Tierra del Fuego, we got a little creative and decided to go back to Argentina to see their side. So once again, Eben and I got on another bus (#987 of the journey?) and headed for Ushuaia.

We arrived in Ushuaia last night after about 11 or 12 hours of driving. Lots of magnificent snow-covered mountains greeted us as we approached the southernmost city in the world (yeah, we're that hardcore). An amusing observation was that because we are so far south of the Equator, there are only about 4 hours of darkness. Walking around town at 9 pm is exactly the same as walking around at noon or 5 am. It's a bit unsettling at first to realize that the sun will just never stop shining at this time of year, but it's an interesting experience. It also means that we are closer to the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, so even though it is about 40 degrees, sunblock is essential.

So here we are. The southernmost city in this planet. On the agenda: trekking along a glacier, maybe some sea lions (visiting them, not trekking along them... that would be mean), and a visit to the old prison.

Not a bad Thanksgiving. :)

School Administration - The Same Around the World

Ok, so we actually did start teaching English on Tuesday. It was kind of a surprise that there were no more roadblocks that the Assistant Principal threw in our way, but he still managed to be kind of a jerk. In conversations with him before, he and Sarah's father talked about a little photo display/exposition of some of our travel photos. So we went to the trouble of getting them printed and then we matted them on some really nice paper that we picked up at an art supply store. All in all, while not much, the whole deal cost us around $20. Then we bring them on our first day and the secretary (who happens to be one of the nicest people ever) is in love with them and we go over everything with her. Then we find out our classroom and we go there to wait for the students. Just as we are about to start, the Assistant Principal comes in holding the photos all riled up. He starts going on about "what are these?" and "what am I suppose to do with these?" and "how am I supposed to understand what these are?" Apparently he had no recollection of talking about the photos and was also angry with us that we had not labeled all of them for him. I happen to think that the Machu Picchu photos speak for themselves and that in general, most of the other photos could have had a title or explanation but that it was not necessary. So, apparently, the work that we had put in getting these printed (and printed again since they overexposed everything the first time) and then mounting them on backing wasn't enough for him. However, after that day, he was nothing but nice to us. God only knows why he was so strange the first two days. Either way, it was a terrible first impression to give and it proves that incompetant administration can be found all around the world.

However, the students and teachers completely redeemed the odd actions of the assistant principal. Our first day was great. We divided the class into boys and girls. I had 5 boys and Sarah had 8 girls. All of the students were in their first year of studying English. This is (obviously) not the ideal group for a conversational English class, but this was the assistant principals idea of the group of students who would benefit the most from us. So we had all these grand plans of talking about and comparing life in the United States and Chile and talking about the school systems and university and everything. But we had to cut everything down so that these students could understand us and get something out of this class. We found out that they have an oral exam coming up in a few weeks and decided that the best idea would probably be to talk to them about things that we likely to be on the exam. So this included sports, family, school, neighborhood etc... The time flew and before we knew it, we were done with our first day. An English teacher had come in to observe us and we stayed for almost an hour chatting with her after class. She was dumbfounded as to why only beginning students were with us and also why our class was scheduled for 6-7 when the students actually end class at 6:15. Oh well, class still went well.

For the rest of the week, our classes were similar, but with other students who had heard about it and those from the first day who really wanted to be there. We had some more advanced students come on Wednesday and we talked to them about in depth about the university system and that was really awesome. It is good to know that the kids who did stay after school for this completely voluntary activity were actually interested in learning more and improving their English. We went over things like daily routines and what people want to study in university. We also tried to have them go around in a circle and make up a story by each person adding a sentence. It worked ok, but the level of comprehension and their confidence levels were not quite there for it to be really complex. I do believe that between Tuesday and Friday, some of the students showed much more confidence in trying to put together sentences and realizing that they actually did understand what we were saying even if they were not completely sure and that was awesome. For the last day (with all of three students who were awesome and dedicated) we brought in snacks and watched Harry Potter. It was a movie that all of them had seen and we stopped it a couple of times to ask them a few questions in English about the plot and the characters and what happened. Since they knew the story, it was easier for them to answer than some other questions and topics that we had been going over earlier in the week. All in all, it was a success. At the end, our difficult administrator thanked us and said that the doors are always open if we ever want to come back and that he had gotten great feedback from the students about us. So that was very nice of him. We enjoyed our time here and we wish that we could have spent more time here.

So, since our classes were only from 6:15-7 every day, we had ridiculous amounts of free time to kill. To begin with, this city is gorgeous. The houses in our neighborhood are all painted different colors (pink, blue, yellow, green, red, everything) and it smells like flowers walking around. In our neighborhood, it was kind of sleepy, but super relaxed and really beautiful. Also, this is the neighborhood that Sarah's dad grew up in and it was really exciting for her to see their old house and obviously, to work in his old high school. We spent a lot of time walking around and exploring the areas between our neighborhood, the center of the city and out to the east by the bus and train stations and the markets. This is also one of the wine producing regions of Chile and we were hoping to do something like what we did in Mendoza. After e-mailing 3 wineries, only one replied to me. So we headed out to Viña Calina, a holding in the Kendall-Jackson wine corporation, for our own private tour and tasting. They normally hold English tours at 4, but we figured that would be too close to class, so I was able to arrange to go at noon. This place is gigantic, some 140 acres and a brand new building for the offices and the winery. The tour guide was really nice and walked us around the winery showing us their different processes. The process of making wine is pretty much exactly the same from place to place, and the difference in wines is in the details which are hardly covered in these tours. She was a little surprised by us since she said that she had never had visitors as young as us. Regardless, it was a nice tour of a beautiful facility. And then we finished with a tasting of their Carménére (a grape almost exclusive to Chile) and their Cabernet Sauvignon. It was a good introduction to Carménére since neither of us had tried that grape before and we bought a bottle of it for further research...

Tomorrow we might be going to another town about 15 minutes away from Talca that has a fair/market every Saturday with a lot of the local producers for some more tastings. And then after that, we will be hopping on the overnight bus for Puerto Montt in the south to fly even further south to Patagonia. I am really excited even if it means that we have to pull out that sweatshirt that has been in the bottom of the bag since we left Bolivia more than a month ago.

Los Godoys de Chile

We have arrived in Chile at last, the last country of our 5-month journey. It's crazy to be here, and I'm really glad that we have 2 months to spend here. We spent our first night in Santiago with some of the Godoys. It was definitely strange to meet family members I had only faintly heard of, but nice as well. My aunt's house is gorgeous and in a *very* nice suburb, so I definitely can't complain. Eben and I were off the next morning to take the train down to Talca. What a beautiful journey! It was great to see the Andes again. I think this was the first time that we saw huge snow-capped mountains (or at least this time there was a lot more snow than in other countries). Either way, it was very enjoyable.

Here in Talca we are staying with a family friend. It's been nice walking around this little city, as it's where my dad is from! He set us up with a week-long position teaching conversation English at his old high school. We were supposed to start yesterday, but the Vice Principal was a bit of a jerk when we went there and told us he had assumed we weren't coming (???) and that he had told the students there would be no English conversation. Where he came up with that idea, I have no clue. At any rate, we *should* be starting today. More news about that later (assuming the Vice Principal doesn't again magically think we have fled the city ).

Talca is about 3 hours south from Santiago. It's technically a city I suppose, but very tranquil and not too big. It has an authentic feel to it, and I'm pretty sure that Eben and I are the only foreigners in town. ¡Que lindo! Accordingly, we have been speaking LOTS of Spanish. Yay!

Not a very eventful post. Lalala.

Wine and Spanish

Alternative title: "It tastes like grape juice!"

We left Buenos Aires, as we planned, Sunday night. We finally got out of that individualistic, fashion centered city. Not to say that we did not enjoy some of our time there, but it was certainly time to leave. Thanks to Agustin, we had an excellent time our last night at Ña Serapia and then again on Sunday at the Rose Garden. We took the bus to Mendoza on what had to have been the best bus ride of the trip so far. Not only did the seats recline about 160 degrees (almost like a bed, we could have paid more to have 180 degree seats), but we also received dinner, a vegetarian option for Sarah, wine and a movie that was not too loud in case we wanted to go to sleep. It was awesome. It is a bummer that there are no buses like this in the US or else I would be doing it every time I travel from Vassar to Detroit.

Mendoza is awesome. Most of it was destroyed in an earthquake about 80 years ago, so there aren't any old buildings, but it is still a really quaint town and easy to navigate. The central plaza has a modern art and design museum underneath it and there are all sorts of different plazas, some of them really beautiful, all over the city. And most importantly, it is also the center for wine production in the country. We have been drinking a lot of Argentine wines and so we were very excited to see some of the vineyards and wineries. Our first day was spent exploring the city, so that was pretty low key. Our second day was awesome. We met up with Cindy, Sarah's friend from Women's Chorus and we went with her and two other people out to have lunch at a winery about 30 minutes outside of the city. Well, the winery should have been 30 minutes outside of the city but our taxi driver had no idea where he was going. We were really worried about getting there because we thought that we had a reservation for this winery, Ruca Malen. So, taking the scenic route (which was really beautiful), we end up at the winery only to find out that we did not actually have a reservation and that we could not have lunch there. We were sent down the road to another winery called Septima. This has the makings for a really bad day, but everything worked out. We get to Septima and after a little negotiation, we were let into the winery. The place was an interesting combination of modern architecture with variations on Inca walls. However, the best part was that we were looking at the snow-capped Andes in the background of the vineyard. It was truly a sight to behold. The lunch was fantastic, a four course meal during which we sampled their Malbec and their Tempranillo. Both wines were excellent and the chef was very creative in making Sarah a customized lunch. We followed lunch with a tour of the winery and got to see all of the equipment that goes into making the wine. I would have liked more detail on the process itself, but it was a good tour nonetheless.

Upon our return, we took a placement test at the Spanish school across the street so that we could begin private Spanish lessons the next day. Let me talk about dinner first. This whole day was an excercise in indulgence and it was awesome. We went to the restaurant in the Park Hyatt, overlooking the plaza. We decided that we would continue the wine tasting with different glasses with each course. So over the three courses we tried one white (Tapiz Chardonnay 2005), one red (Doña Paula Malbec 2005) and one dessert wine. This is what life should be like. We spent about 5 hours sitting at the table and loved every minute of it.

Back to Spanish. Since I need to improve and Sarah wanted to work on the subjunctive tense, we took three days of private lessons here. The teachers were really great and gave us both exactly what we asked for in the class. I spent mine working and vocabularly and comprehension while Sarah worked on her grammer. It was much better than the classes in Cuzco because the classes weren't too fast for me or too slow for Sarah. Private lessons are awesome and I learned a lot about the left in Argentina and the new President and the hope that leaders such as Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales provide Latin America. It was good conversation and at a pace I could understand.

And the rest of the wineries: We had one ok day and one great day of wine tastings. On the first day, we rented bikes from our hostel with the ambitious plan to stop at four wineries all in one afternoon. This was thwarted however by the giant group of Israelis from our hostel also accompanying us (they took a long time to get ready to go) and construction at the meeting point. We all took the bus while the bikes were driven out to us. However, the man with the bikes could not figure out how to get to where we were and this was a problem. So while we planned to start biking at 12 or 12:30, we didn't actually start until 2, typical South America. Then we learned that Sarah, big bikes, South American roads and drivers are not a good combination. So the we were going quite slow. We did make it to our first stop, Tempus Alba, where we enjoyed six small glasses of their wines (merlot, tempranillo, syrah, malbec, cab sauv, and their reserve blend) along with some green olives grown on the premises. The first three were not great but the last three were pretty good. Sarah made the brilliant wine tasting comments, "this tastes like Welch's grape juice," and "the aftertaste is kind of like jolly ranchers." Either way, the vineyard was beautiful, the wine decent and we ended up running into our friend Kelly who we saw Boca with back in Buenos Aires. We then went across the street to another winery called Viña El Cerno. We had to wait a long time for a tour and when we did it was half in English and half in Spanish. All of the English speakers were young while the Spanish speaking half of the group was quite old and grumpy about the fact that they had to share a group with us and that the winery was catering to non-Spanish speakers. One guy kept on complaining and Sarah turned around to indicate that she understood everything he was saying and if not him, then his wife was certainly embarrassed because she then said "stop it, they can understand you." It was a good tour and an ok tasting at the end. Neither of the wines, a malbec and a cab, were very special. So it was a long day and rough getting back. We had to walk part of the way because Sarah and her bike were not getting along. But we made it onto the bus just in time because a torrential downpour started on our way back. We spent the night eating our picnic that we packed and never ate and watching x-men movies with the little kids in the hostel.

The next day of tasting was a million times better. We hired a car and driver for about $65 for the day. First we went to a winery called LaGarde that makes a wine we drank a few times in Buenos Aires. It is exported to the US also and is called Altas Cumbres. We heard of it from a NY Times article and it is quite good for its price. Around $9 or $10 a bottle gets a good malbec or cab. This is their lowest end wine. We had a very good tour of the winery with emphasis on how they make their champagne, but they can't call it that because they aren't in Champagne, France. After the tour we had a tasting of their chardonnay and a better malbec. Then we got lunch with an Altas Cumbres white and a malbec. Lunch was very good and they did a cool variation on lasagna for Sarah with everything assembled in a bowl and then put in the oven, so they were made individually.

From there, we booked it to Achaval Ferrer which was absolutely incredible. We were with a family from Texas and the French winemaker. The winemaker walked us through everything, tasting all of the different malbecs that they make. They make three single vineyard malbecs, all with the same methods, to let the differences in the soil come out in the wine, terroir, very French. They also make a malbec blending the three vineyards that is not as good and finally a malbec-cab blend that was quite good. For the malbec-cab blend we were able to taste from the barrel and from the bottle to taste the maturation process. And with the single vineyard malbecs, we tasted all of those from the barrel because they make very few bottles every year. Finally, we were able to go down to the barrel room and taste their cab franc straight from the barrel. And all of this was free for Sarah and I, absolutely incredible. It also turns out that one of the Texans is a member of the Stolpman wine club, which is where I worked a harvest as an assistant winemaker before going to Vassar. So he and his wife have tried almost all of the wines that I helped make with the exception of the PiedraSassi which was a separate label started by the two winemakers there. So that was really cool and we talked a lot about the Santa Ynez valley and we know some of the same people because they have gone out there to taste, etc... That was an awesome end to the day of winetasting. I would have loved to buy some of the Archaval Ferrer bottles, but for the ones I wanted (the cab franc or the single vineyard malbecs) it ranged from $50 to $125 per bottle. I am not going to carry around a bottle that nice for two months from the heat in Mendoza to the cold of Patagonia, it would be a travesty. But they are exported, so maybe when we get back...

That was a great finish to our time in Argentina. We packed our stuff after the tastings and we left for Santiago the next morning (today). Brief plans: we go to Talca tomorrow to teach conversational English for a week at a high school. Then it is down to the bottom of the continent and back to the cold.

Country hopping and the GRE!

Woo, the past few days have been very busy. We're now back in Buenos Aires but will hopefully leaving tomorrow night for Mendoza if we ever figure out how to buy bus tickets. I took my Psychology GRE this morning, and I am so relieved to be done!! The entire experience was a bit weird. I woke up insanely early this morning (my admission ticket said the test started at 8:30) so I could have time to flip through my review book one last time, eat a good breakfast, and get to the testing center (we had visited it yesterday to make sure I knew where it was) early, all that jazz. Well. Eben was nice enough to walk with me (mostly because I am a nervous wreck before standardized tests, and I probably would have mistakenly walked into a bus while reciting to myself the parts of the brain). So we're walking along, arrive at the testing center... and it's closed. Like completely locked up, the aluminum protective door thing has been drawn down, there is no sign of human life. Hmm. I started wondering if grad schools would still process my application without GRE scores on account of a closed testing center on Test Day. Thankfully the panic did not have too much time to set in because finally a security guard came and opened the building. Success!

So I'm sitting in the waiting room for someone to take me to the classroom... and I'm sitting... and sitting... watching more and more people my age trickle in for the GRE... By now it is well after 8:30, and while I'm not surprised that the test will not be administered on time (hello, we are in South America), my anxiety is slowly mounting. The nerd I am, I kept thinking of the Yerkes-Dodson law, which says that a certain amount of arousal leads to optimal performance, whereas too much or too little arousal is not so great for performance; in other words, being nervous is okay as long as you're not like crying and shaking (or conversely, completely unconcerned). So I kept reassuring myself that I could very well me at my optimal level of arousal/performance ability. Then I sat for some more. Finally at sometime after 9 am, a woman appears in the waiting area and says, "GRE? Come with me!" and the twenty or so of us scampered up the stairs. Then it took about another half hour to check everybody's IDs and registration numbers, put us in desks, read directions, fill out forms... the Argentine students had a great deal of trouble understanding the concept of a Scantron. You know how when filling out your name, social security number, etc. you have to write it in the assigned spot and then also fill out the corresponding bubbles underneath? They just didn't understand the bubbles. It took a while for the proctor to walk around the room and explain it to each and every one of them, and I just chuckled to myself-- who knew that a life of standardized testing could really come in handy? At least the Americans knew how to fill out the Scantron. :)

All in all, we didn't end up starting the test until about 10 am. There was a clock in the room that the proctor actually set back to read "9 am" when we finally started, which I thought was really weird. I was the first to leave, which always makes me nervous (am I too fast? the others too slow?), but I did double check my answers and go back to the hard questions. In the end, I'm still not sure how I did, but I think my review book helped quite a bit because a lot of practice test questions reappeared on the real test. And quite honestly, I don't care anymore because I am done with standardized tests!!!! CELEBRATION!!!!!

Now, back to other things. Uruguay rocked my socks, and Eben and I have agreed to go back at some point in the future and fully explore the country. We spent our second day in Colonia riding along the coast on a motorbike, which was fabulous. We explored the different beaches, saw the old Hippodrome (race track), and even the crumbling bull ring that is no longer in operation. What a rockin', bougy (bourgeois) place this must have been back in the day. Colonia is absolutely beautiful, the perfect hideaway. It's low tourist season now, so it really was just the perfect environment. I hope it's not chaotic in high tourist season because that would just ruin my pristine image of the town.

Montevideo was very different from Colonia. It's an actual city, though smaller and less hectic than Buenos Aires. It rained like whoa on our first day there, so we didn't get to do too much exploring until the second day. We did, however, see cool things like a gaucho museum and a crazy mausoleum in the center of town. We stumbled upon a big socialist party/rally the first night, which was pretty cool. There was lots of literature being passed around and even a big stage for musical performers. Eben went back to the rally to be a good leftist while I studied fun psychological things, so maybe he can write more about it in his next post. I did think it strange that there were so many police with drug dogs just randomly standing about, probably hoping to catch some hippie socialists smoking pot or something. OOH! Which reminds me, Eben and I saw two kids get patted down by police with two HUGE barking scary drug dogs on our second day. I don't really know how they caught, but they all of a sudden flung their hands to a wall with their feet spread, and one of the cops ordered them to empty their pockets. We don't know if they had been selling drugs or something, but it turns out they didn't have anything, so the police let them go. Kind of an intense experience, yet I found it very amusing. I don't know why. I really like the drug dogs and always want to pet them because they look like bears, but this probably jsut draws attention to myself. And one of the dogs might eat me.

Sorry this is such a scattered post. Next on our agenda is completing more grad applications (2 submitted, 982374 more to go!!), heading over to Argentine Wine Country, and then finally entering the last country of this journey-- Chile! My dad is awesome and has found us a possible volunteer stint at his old high school in Talca doing English conversation with the students. Nothing in confirmed yet, but hopefully Eben and I will be in Talca in about a week before going all the way down to Glacier and Penguin Land.

The moral of today's post is:
1. Be prepared to wait for a long time if taking the GRE outside of the United States. Other countries are not as time-obsessed as we are.
2. Applying to graduate school from outside of the U.S. is very frustrating and should be avoided if possible.
3. Both Argentinos and Urguayos speak with the same accent, but Uruguayos are cooler. Also, they drink way more mate and all times of the day.
4. Empanadas and good wine make life better.

¡Ciao!

Uruguay!

We are in Uruguay! Since it is so close to Buenos Aires, Eben and I decided that we needed to take the ferry over for a few days. Right now we are in Colonia, an amazing town that I could easily live in. It's pretty small and quiet, so while Eben and I were walking around town this afternoon, the only noise we heard besides our shoes on the cobblestone was the birds chirping. Amazing. Of course some areas have actual cars and noise, but for the most part it's just very serene. There are also lots of beautiful roses and other flowers, so everytime a breeze blows past you, you catch the wonderful scent of roses. With the cobblestone streets, seaside, crumbling old buildings, and rose gardens, this place is almost too good to be true.

I keep forgetting that it is the end of October because it is the middle of spring here, and it's been about 80 degrees every day. Today felt like the perfect summer day, not a cloud in the sky. We'll be in for quite a shock when we come back in January and are faced with the brutal New York cold! Until then, I'm enjoying every moment in the sun and eagerly await our next trip to the beach!

Tourists have the option of renting motorbikes, bicycles, or golf carts (yes, golf carts) to explore the town, but we've been enjoying walking. Maybe tomorrow will be a motorbike day. We originally were only going to stay for a day and then head over to Montevideo for a few days, but this place is too beautiful to leave. Sadly we have to be back in Buenos Aires by Friday, as I am taking the dreaded Psych GRE on Saturday morning in the city. Getting out of the city has made me realize that Buenos Aires, while beautiful and fun, is just not for me. I loved it at first, but once that wore off, I kind of decided that there are so many other places in South America that I would prefer to be in. I think our dislike for the family we were staying with may have had something to do with this desire to flee Buenos Aires, but honestly, I'm just happy to be in a new place. In a new country!

That's it for now, just wanted to profess my love for Colonia. :)

Shakespeare in the Park

This should have been posted yesterday (Sunday), but the website was acting up and it didn't quite work.

A quick update about yesterday just because it was too cool. After a long day of walking around, buying fake adidas, finding the local skateboarding place outside of the post office, we decided to check out the botanical gardens. First of all, there are hundreds of cats here that, as we found out, respond to the sound of plastic bags. We think it is because they think we were carrying food. I had my purchases in a plastic bag and felt like the Pied Piper with cats following us and coming to me everywhere we went in the park. Really, as soon as they realized that we had no food, they scampered away. But it was cool to shake the bag and have 6 or 7 cats come out of nowhere, trotting toward us across the gardens. But what was really cool is that we stumbled upon some outdoor theater. It was A Midsummer Night's Dream, in Spanish, in the park. Even with the language barrier (for me at least), it was clearly recognizable since there were sleeping couples in the grass, a man with a donkey's head and there was no question who Puck was (he was a grunge, punk-rocker). It was interesting and fun, they solicited audience participation (or just grabbed people, dragged them over and gave them props/costumes) for the play within the play and it was quite funny. Who would have thought that we would get to see Shakespeare in the park, for free, in Spanish, in Buenos Aires. Certainly not me.

Welcome to Argentina

In the last week, our, or at least my, opinion on our organization has changed drastically. I no longer like it and I believe that the problems it has may be and probably are problems shared by many internationally staffed NGOs. First of all, there is no consistency. For instance, out in El Jaguel, where we go to "teach English," LIFE runs their program two days a week. Only one person has been going there for an extended period of time and she only goes one day a week. Since she is the only one the kids actually know, she is the only one that they will really listen to. Kids are much smarter and craftier than we give them credit for. For them, we are like the substitute teacher that no one pays attention to. English teaching is a joke, I think I spend more time protecting myself because a kid named Gabi keeps trying to punch me in the balls. So while it is great to have so many volunteers being so enthusiastic about this, some consistency would really help so that the kids don't always see a rotatation of gringos who don't really have any authority. Second, the program is only two days a week. LIFE talks about trying to be positive role models for these kids. Again, it is a problem of consistency. How can you be a positive role model when you are with these kids for two hours, maybe two days a week, for two weeks and they see you as the substitute teacher? Third, they run four centers. When they can only devote two days a week to one of the centers, that tells me that resources are being spread too thin. I completely understand the desire to reach and "serve" more kids, but by spreading themselves out, they are partially creating the first two problems I spoke of. Finally and most importantly, it is all too obvious where their money is being spent. In Cuzco, Inti only had one center that contained the offices, the kitchen, the homework room, the workshops and all of the materials that the kids had access to. Here in Buenos Aires, LIFE rents a very nice office in one of the more expensive parts of town. Then, we go from there to the run-down, dilapidated soup kitchens that LIFE calls a community center for the afternoon with little or no supplies for the kids. We bring some worksheets, coloring sheets and some crayons. If we are lucky, we bring a ball to play with for the last 10 minutes of the afternoon. The birthday parties get more things, but it is only cake, balloons and small presents for the birthday kids (yes, it is much better than nothing). But what is frustrating is that Inti in Cuzco was an organization with far less funding and volunteers, yet they managed to provide far more in terms of supplies and art projects for their students. Inti was not without its problems, but at least it was right to supply things to keep kids busy rather than the same worksheets week after week, encouraging boredom and then acting up. I believe that the office here at LIFE is solely for the purpose of the volunteers, all of whom are international, and doesn't benefit at all the kids that they profess to help.

Other than that, Buenos Aires is a pretty awesome city. We have tried to do some siteseeing most mornings before work in the afternoon and have been fairly successful. We started on Monday morning at Recoleta Cemetary. It is a little strange to be doing cemetary tourism, but this place is pretty cool. It is all mausoleums built in every imaginable style.

Some are in very good condition while others obviously have no one who comes to check up on them. Buried there is Eva Peron, and she has the best kept family mausoleum, always adorned with roses left by visitors. There is also a large feline population that takes advantage of the quiet and the genorosity of the caretakers (bowls of food are out everywhere). On Tuesday, we took it easy but then went out that night for Cindy's birthday party. Cindy sang in Women's Chorus with Sarah and is here on a fellowship studying Spanish. We went out with her and all of her classmates and had an excellent dinner and drank some great wine. On Wednesday we went to one of the best museums we have seen so far. It is the MALBA, and it is all Latin American artists of the 20th century. It has a Frida Khalo, a Diego Rivera, lots of political art and just very good in general. It also has a very well stocked bookstore although quite expensive since most of the books in English were imported. On Thursday we went to the zoo. We had been warned that we might not like it because the animals were caged there. However, it was not as bad as we thought it might be. The spaces were a little smaller than the zoos at home like the Detroit or Bronx zoos. and some of them were covered in fencing, but they still had some really cool animals like the white Bengal tiger that was less than a foot away from us on the other side of a glass barrier. You could also feed all of the monkeys, llamas, camels, deer, goats, etc... While we were there, we caught in a torrential downpour that soaked us to the bone. Sarah was wearing flip-flops, so she couldn't run without losing her shoes. We gradually made it to the exit of the park through the rain, seeing the rhinos and the giraffes along the way. It took a while to get a cab home and the driver was not too happy that we got his backseat all wet. Yesterday (Friday) we went to the Holocaust Museum. It was a good display on Jewish life before, during and after the Holocaust and also examined (although not in too much depth) Argentina's role in both accepting refugees and harboring war criminals.

On Friday afternoon, we were already on the train, waiting to go out to El Jaguel when another train pulled into the station and there was a flash of light and a small explosion. Nobody has any idea what was going on, but they stopped all trains going in and out of the station. So we were waiting around for a while, asking people what happened trying to figure out if we would make it out to the kids that day. One guy who one of our volunteers had been talking to in Spanish suddenly breaks into English and very succinctly says with a shrug of the shoulders, "Welcome to Argentina!" The train station is one of the few places in this city that we feel like we are in South America and that phrase I guess summed up experiences traveling through here. We have had a few situations like this in various countries (long airport delay in Quito because some plane blew a tire landing, bus strikes in Potosi, etc...). I think that the lesson is to be flexible and realize that things like this happen and thus, plans must change.

We will be leaving this city for Uruguay on Monday. We will do some more siteseeing today and tomorrow to catch some things that we missed. Also, there is the presidential elections tomorrow, so no alcohol is sold today or tomorrow in the whole country. They have mandatory voting and they don't want any drunk votes after a night of partying. Anyway, off to the market and then to the modern art museum. And we will update in Uruguay.

Pictures!

We've done it! All of our pictures are uploaded! You can go to htttp://sagodoy.myphotoalbum.com to see everything from Peru and Bolivia, and what we have done so far in Argentina.

Buenos Aires

Well, Buenos Aires is definitely different from anywhere we've been so far in South America-- except it is just like home. This city has a definite Manhattan feel, with bits of Paris being very clear as well. There are lots of Upper East Side-esque buildings, beautiful gardens, and plenty of open spaces. It's a bit overwhelming at times because there is so much to see just within the city that I really think it's impossible to cram everything in when we're working during the week. The people here have a cosmopolitan (and snobbish) attitude unlike other Latin American cities. Argentines are notorious for saying they are more European than Latin American, yet they are extremely proud to be Argentine. Walking down the street, everyone is dressed in their finest, and I'll admit that I feel compelled to dress well even if we're just doing some sightseeing. It's frustrating because I didn't come here to feel competitive about fashion, yet it's just the type of city that makes you like that. At first it's a bit overwhelming, but I'm comfortable enough now to not care as much.

Eben and I will be here for about 2 weeks, mostly doing volunteer work. We are working with a wonderful organization called LIFE Argentina (www.lifeargentina.org). This group is so different from Inti. First of all, the LIFE office is very clean and nice and located in a rather wealthy neighborhood. The organization has regular staff members, usually people around our age, as well as lots of volunteers. The volunteers are free to stay for as long as they want and pick which days they want to work. Some people are students studying abroad, and others are just passing through like us. There's usually a set schedule for the week's activities, and we can pick what we want to do each day. For example, on Monday we could do Juegoteca (recreational activities) or English/computer classes, on Tuesday we could do school support/computer classes or teach English, and so on. The volunteers gather at the office beforehand and then travel together to one of four slums outside of Buenos Aires where LIFE has a community center. While the area of Cusco where we were working was definitely not very nice, the slums where we work are a bit more dangerous. When we go to work, we have to wear LIFE t-shirts (slightly cheesy, but also pretty rock star) so that the neighborhood people know who we are and don't think we are silly lost tourists that they can mug. This rests on the assumption that they value the work we do with their kids, but so far so good, right? El Jaguel, the slum where we have been teaching English on Tuesdays and Fridays, is kind of amusing because it is set up just like a Long Island suburb (designated wide streets, blocks of houses), but all of the houses are made up concrete slabs and sheets of aluminum. There is also the occasional house that resembles more than just a shack, and they look like they could be decently nice inside. Eben said that the slums in South Africa are like this too and not too unusual, but I guess I just don't have much of a comparison to really know. It's nice to actually go into these communities and spend a few productive hours with the kids on their own turf, and it definitely is a HUGE contrast to what we see in Buenos Aires.

Besides volunteering, Eben and I have been relaxing and having a good time. The night life in Buenos Aires is INSANE. People eat dinner sometime after 9 pm and don't go out to the bars and clubs until 3 am. Then you are expected to stay out until about 7 am, sleep well into the afternoon, and do it all over again. Since I've had a cold all week, we have only done this once so far, but to be honest, this just isn't for me. I can't imagine doing it on a regular basis. I enjoy waking up before noon! Oh well. We've done other fun things like exploring the city and, most recently, meeting up with Cindy, one of the girls from Vassar Women's Chorus who is here on a language fellowship! It'll be nice to see more of her and have a fellow Vassar person to hang out with. Today we also met up with one of the LIFE volunteers, Kellee, and headed down to La Boca to go to the futbol game. La Boca was such a cool neighborhood. I was feeling a bit stifled by Buenos Aires because practically everyone here is white, and it can really feel like this city is devoid of the sort of funkiness that I love about NYC. La Boca, while still very very shite, is a bit of a rougher neighborhood with a few tourist-friendly streets. These streets are colorfully painted, there are lots of markets, and it's just so fun to walk around. We did that all afternoon before the futbol game, and it was just perfect. The game itself (Boca Juniors v. Estudiantes-- we cheered Boca of course) was lots of fun, though Boca definitely did not play as well as we had hoped. This stadium was a lot larger than the one in Quito, and with actual seats instead of benches! In addition, they cannot sell alcohol in the stadium because, as one vendor laughed at us when we inquired, "otherwise everyone would kill each other." Passions run high at these games. The police wouldn't even allow us to walk in one area outside the stadium because the visitors' entrance was there, and since we were all wearing the Boca colors, it just wasn't safe. Definitely a bit different from the games I've been to, but that's life I suppose. Futbol without beer is very sad indeed, but at least it saves lives?

In other news, we are slowly progressing with uploading our photos online! We've got most of Peru online, so feel free to go to sagodoy.myphotoalbum.com to see them. Hopefully we'll get up to date soon!

A Little Bit Gay

As Sarah left off, the bus ride to Argentina did not rock. To begin with, we left at 1 PM to arrive at 4:30 PM the next day. First we went from Sucre to Potosi, not bad, only 3 hours. Then waited for 4 hours until our bus left for the border. The road was unpaved, someone had their window open and it was about -15 F in the bus and we made some unnecessary late stops in the middle of nowhere during which the lights would turn back on immediately waking me up from the sleep I had only just begun. Then we arrived at the border at about 4:30 AM and the border doesn't open until 6 and it was still freezing outside. While we were half asleep, some touts for a bus company try to convince us to by our tickets for the bus in Argentina on the Bolivian side, swearing on God, their mothers and their families graves that the prices are no different across the border. Right we were to be skeptical and walk across the border ourselves to buy the tickets because they were half the price on the other side. The border on the Argentine side didn't open right away so we were in line for quite a while in no man's land waiting for things to get moving. Finally we made it onto a bus at 9 for 7 more hours of traveling. But, we finally made it to Salta and at the bus station was a guy who worked for the hostel that we were going to check out. So we got a free cab ride and a slightly discounted price for the beds at a pretty nice place.

Argentina was so different than Bolivia, it was shocking at first. Salta is a really beautiful colonial city but it is also very commercial and it was crazy seeing shop after shop of designer clothes for the first time since being at home. We went to the archaeological museum first to see the mummies that they have retrieved from the mountain tops on the border with Peru. They were very similar to Juanita in Arequipa, Peru, but possibly better preserved. This whole museum was about the mountain top rituals of the Incas and they had all of the artifacts that were also buried with the human sacrifices. Due to the extreme cold, these mummies have been frozen since they were left for dead and are in perfect condition: teeth, hair, skin, everything. We then went to Cathedral which was one of the more beautiful churches that we have seen in South America. It was not necessarily ornate, but it was grand. At the bowls of holy water, it also advised that use of holy water for the purposes of witchcraft is strictly forbidden.

We had an excellent dinner that night to treat ourselves after a long bus ride and a dinner of crackers and Fanta the night before. Then we left the next day for our flight to Buenos Aires at 1 in the afternoon. It is a bummer that we did not get to spend more time in Salta since it seemed like a really nice city and there were some more things both inside and outside of the city that would have been cool to see. But I suppose that there is always next time.

Upon arrival in Buenos Aires, we were picked up and brought to the apartment we are staying in. It is the apartment of the director of the program and her two kids. This place is quite nice, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and an awesome living room with a balcony. It is also in one of the trendier neighborhoods in the city. We were shown around and then told that there was going to be a birthday party later (starting at 12 or 12:30) and that we would all go out around 3. This nightlife is ridiculous, I don't know why things are so late, but if you can sleep all day then by all means it is awesome.

The birthday party was pretty fun, awkward for a while and then we started talking to a couple of guys. One person that we met is the perfect example of Argentina, or more precisely, Buenos Aires. Argentina was playing South Africa the next day in the semi-finals of the rugby world cup. At least one person at the party was wearing an Argentina rugby jersey. This kid is wearing the South Africa jersey. We were talking for a while and then I ask him why and he replies with a shrug, "It matches my shoes, I'm a little bit gay." Brilliant. We ended up going to a club around 3 and staying there until sometime after 5 at which point Sarah and I left early leaving everyone else there.

Sunday was a day of recovery, with a little food shopping and watching rugby and that is about it. We found a great bar the day before that is a brewery, so we went back there for the rugby game which Argentina lost and we wandered home for a ridiculously long nap that ended around 12:30. Since Monday was a holiday, our hosts went out but we stayed in and watched tv until going to bed, super exciting.

We finally got out to do some sightseeing on Monday only to find most things closed because of the holiday. But we walked from our house all the way into the center of town to the Plaza de Mayo in about 2 hours. Along the way, more random encounters! We ran into the couple that we did our Machu Picchu tour with and had a little chat with them. It is strange that even though we take different routes, we can still run into the same people weeks after first meeting.

We checked out the Cathedral on the north side of the plaza first. To begin with, it looks like the Pantheon with the very shallow triangular roof and pillars out in front. Inside is very beautiful though and very well preserved and taken care of. Inside is the tomb of Jose de San Martin, a general that helped win Argentina's independence. His grave is guarded by soldiers like those outside Buckingham Palace, the ones that don't move but look pretty cool. Like Salta, the church was not too ornate (with the exception of the altar of solid silver) but very grand. All that walking is quite tiring and the weather wasn't great, so we went back home until dinner.

Tuesday was our first day of work here. We had to go into the office a little early for our entrance interview, just to know a little about us and what our interests our and how we can best help the organization. There are a lot of foreigners volunteering there and you can sign up for whatever activities you want to volunteer for each week. It is a pretty cool system. We opted for English tutoring our first day. We went out to El Jagual, a slum on the outskirts of the city, to a little building (it is a stretch to call it a community center) for our English classes. The kids are all between about 5 and 12, so it is not actual English lessons. We had the older kids go over animals using word searches and then quizzing them while the younger kids pretty much just sat there drawing or playing with Sarah's earrings or the tiny puppy that one kid brought in. In the end, we just ended up playing a game outside with a ball that the coordinator brought with her. It was a lot of fun and we will be going back there on Friday to work again.

I am going to leave off here because it is a pretty long post and Sarah will continue soon.

Otherwise, we have dynamite

Woo, what a whirlwind of activity! New cities, new countries... let's start with Potosi, Bolivia. As Eben wrote, Potosi used to be a huge mining city and the wealthiest city in South America. Once the silver dwindled, though, the rich Spanish colonists moved out, leaving Potosi a bit economically depressed. Mining is still popular there, but most of the silver is now gone. The city itself is quiet (absolutely dead on a Sunday) but quite beautiful with its pedestrian streets and remaining colonial mansions. My dad described it best when he said that 30 years ago when he was there, he kept waiting for a Spanish knight on horseback to appear around a corner carrying a lance. It may sound a bit odd, but it really does feel like that! Although I don't know what Potosi was like decades ago, I just have a feeling that not much has changed.

Being in THE mining town of South America, Eben and I were eager to actually explore the mines and get a taste of what defines this town. We had a tour guide, Efra, who is 30 years and a current miner (since age 13 I believe). He gives mining tours during tourist seasons and works in the mines when there aren't any tourists. We donned protective clothing(rubber top, pants, and boots) and a helmet with headlight. We also had bandanas to wear across our face to guard against breathing in too much dust. The miners themeslves don't wear all of this gear, and I doubt they would be much better off even if they did. The typical miner starts his work our of tradition: all of the men in the family before him were miners, and thus he himself must be a miner. They typically drop out of school after about 6 years and head to the mines for the rest of their lives. Meeting a miner above age 50 is a rarity, as these men suffer horrible health from breathing in toxic dust. Their lungs are barely functioning.

To prepare for our trip deep into the mines, we first stopped at the miners' market, where we could buy soda, coca leaves, and dynamite (!) the give out to men we met along the way. Efra also took us to a small processing plant where the goodies are cleaned and processed. The big thing was, of course, the actual mine. Entering it felt a bit surreal, as it was quite dark and cold. It quickly become quite tight, and it was difficult to breathe with so much dust artound us. We were lucky enough to talk to quite a few men. The first, Don Luis, had the cough of death from mining since age 12. He's not expected to live more than a couple more years. It was interesting to see these men at work, pushing carts full of rock , chiseling into the mine shafts, huge wads of coca leaves in their cheeks to keep them going (the coca curbs their appetite and gives them energy, as they work for maybe 13 hours straight with no food-- eating in the mine means eating toxic dust as well). They were happy to see us and answer our questions, a brief resipte from their hard work. We were in the mine for about 2 and a half hours, sliding through mine shafts (I lost my footing and literally just slid for about 10 feet) and crawling through tight spaces. It was all a bit surreal. The bandanas helped us breathe a little bit, but mostly my throat felt on fire from being coated with chemical dust. Woo! Several people had to leave the mine tour because it was too difficult to continue, but I'm proud we made it all the way through. I don't know how the miners survive day to day because I felt as though I would suffocate if I spent another hour down there. It's no wonder their life span is so short.

Efra said that as he became older, he questioned his father about his lifestyle choice. Why would a father tell his son to drop out of school to become a miner? His father said he regretted making that choice for Efra, but that mining can be more lucrative that many other professions in Bolivia. When you're living in poverty, waiting 12 years for your education to pay off just isn't an option. Efra himself has a 6-year-old daughter, Gabriela, who he wants to stay in school. Women don't work in the mines, but many still don't finish their education. What was very telling was Efra's uncertainty over whether he would want a son of his to become a miner. He knows quite well that becoming a miner means a difficult (and shortened) life, but it's difficult to break tradition. He said he probably would encourage school over mining, but that very well may change. I think it's important to realize that this really isn't a selfish or spiteful choice (to encourage mining over school) but rather a demonstration of the reality of life for Bolivians. You need to survive as best you can, and the benefits of an education aren't apparent or fast enough for these people. Efra said that life under Evo Morales wasn't any different, that he is just another man making empty promises. Education still isn't compulsory (or if it is, it's not enforced), and it's not valued enough. For things to change for the children of miners, Efra says, education has to improve. The Bolivians are not masters of many things, he said alomst bitterly, but they are masters of corruption. It's easy for us as foreigners to idolize Evo and call him a revolutionary, a coca farmer who became a President, but the harsh reality is that actual change must occur. So far, it seems, that has not happened. Not in Potosi.

Being down in the mines wasn't entirely depressing, though, though it was a reality check. Efra was a hilarious guide with a great sense of humor. It was cool to be adventuresome and shimmy through narrow mine shafts (even if it probably did take 6 months off of our lives). And at the end we blew up a watermelon with our extra dynamite. :)

¡Huelga!
After a couple of days in Potosi, it was time to head up to Sucre on a short bus ride. Or rather, that was the plan. The reality was that on Wednesday, the local bus drivers went on strike to protest fare changes and barricaded the entire city. The long-distance buses could not leave the city because the roads were barricaded with local buses. We did find a taxi driver who said he would drive us to Sucre (like 3 hours, more like 2 when it's a crazy man driving) and break through the barricades. Woo hoo! We drove around the city, faced barricade after barricade, and finally forced our way through. So we drove through some windy roads at about 9834 miles per hour, and arrived just outside of Sucre when...

MORE BARRICADES! That's right. The local buses in Sucre were on strike as well and had formed a barriacde around the city so that we couldn't enter. Eventually we threw on our backpacks, walked through the barricade, and found a very smug taxi driver on the other side who offered to drive us the rest of the way (when you're the only way into town, you also have the pleasure of overcharging your passengers). Alas, we begrudgingly handed over our painfully high taxi fare and entered Sucre.

For all the trouble of getting there, Sucre was worth it. It is a very white city lots of gardens and benches: the perfect lounging space. Walking around was very peaceful, and it was good to be in a city that wasn't as hectic as La Paz. Sucre has a decidedly European feel. It marked the end of indigenous South America for us, which was of course sad, but it was exciting to see this very different side of the continent. We really only had about a day to enjoy the city since we had to book it to Argentina to start work, but we did manage to walk around a lot and....

see dinosaurs!

This part of the entry is dedicated to Cassie Kirk, dinosaur enthusiast and talented Soprano.

Dinosaurs used to live in South America. They walked all over the place, ate some trees and fellow dinosaurs, and eventually died. All of this is well and good, but about a decage ago (I may have just completely made that up, maybe it was like 30 years ago) a cement company just outside of Sucre was digging around and found some giant footprints on the side of a mountain. Whose footprints? Bigfoot? Papa Noel and his reindeer? No no, my friends, they were dinosaur footprints. A billion and one years ago, that mountainside was bottom of a river. The dinosaurs pranced through the river, and the sediment eventually formed fossils of their giant footprints. Tectonic movements eventually forced the river bottom to become completely vertical (either that, or dinosaurs could walk up walls Matrix-style), so the dried up mountain side is dotted with brontosaurus prints. Cool! There is a cheesy/awesome dinosaur park across the way (you can't actually go up to the footprints because they are being protected by UNESCO, though high-power binoculars allow you to see the details-- whoa!) with life-size dinosaur replicas based on fossil and skeletal information. Dinosaur specialists helped design the models, so they are actually as realistic as they could possibly be. We learned which dinosaurs lived in the area and what they ate, but mostly it was fun to take pictures with the T-Rex and pretend we were being attacked. Dorky? Of course, who do you think I am?

(Dorky sidenote: To get to the dinosaur park, we rode in the Dino Truck. A pick-up truck with dinosaur claws coming out of the front hood. I just can't make these things up.)

So the dinosaurs rocked, Sucre rocked... the bus ride to Argentina did not rock. But right now it's time to watch some Argentina v. South Africa rugby, so that story will have to wait until next time. :)

La Paz

The day after trekking Isla Del Sol, we caught the local bus (cheaper than the gringo bus) with Ellie to La Paz. The scenery is amazing even if the road is extremely bumpy and winding. Also, on the local bus, we stop in the middle of nowhere to let people on and off even when there is no indication of any sort of bus stop. It is pretty cool how this works that you can flag down the bus in the middle of the countryside with no problems. I would not like to find out what would happen if the bus was full. We had plenty of space, so there was no problem, but I can also imagine the bumpy, windy road to La Paz with people packed into the aisles, making it uncomfortable for everyone involved (like the buses in Quito). Anyway, we got to La Paz without a problem and found a hostel called Adventure Brew. It has its own microbrewery, kitchen access, places to hang out, tv room with dvd player, pretty much everything you could ask for. We decided to dorm it for the first time on this trip and it was fine. We were with good people in our room, including a kid who will be attending Bard in the fall and on our last day, a Vassar grad (02) showed up in the room next door to ours.

Since we arrived pretty early, we decided to do some exploring and wouldn´t you know, we ran into Jackson again. He and his group were about to go to the World Bank for a presentation and we decided to tag along after his program director gave it the ok. First of all, it was all in Spanish, so it was a little difficult for me, but I got the general gist of the standard propaganda that the World Bank spews to make itself seem positive, helpful and indispensible to developing countries. There was a lot of talk about the Millenium poverty goals yet the economist refused to give even a working definition of poverty here ("Poverty is like love. You can't really define love, but everyone knows what you mean when you say you're in love"). He did talk about increased urbanization but mostly in terms of how this affects government expenditure and thus loans taken. To say that loans need to be taken in order to pay back loans is one of the more ridiculous things he said. This was quite interesting since it is not an everyday experience and it is a look into one of the shackles of neo-colonialism. They were also bragging about how their money was used by the government (World Bank conditional loans) to build so many meters of bridges and kilometers of roads and whatnot. And what also was kind of frustrating was their position on bilingual education. They said that they want to increase educational access for all, but in Bolivia, which has large indigenous groups that don't necessarily speak Spanish, there should be education in the native language in addition to Spanish. His response to this question was that it really depends on the situation and that it is fine when the indigenous students make up 100% of the class, but that when they aren't the full class, then it shouldn't necessarily happen because it is an unfair advantage (gift, privilege, not quite sure what the right word is) over the other students. The program director also invited us to other events with the study group, but we didn´t make it to any others. Regardless, the experience at the World Bank was a good one just to see what they are doing here and what they have to say. It is also slightly difficult to believe that they really know what is happening on the ground level when they are based in an incredibly nice office in the business center of La Paz, so clearly removed from the poverty that is evident less than a mile away.

Jackson and his group had annother presentation to attend, so we left for dinner (BBQ) at the hostel and a sampling of the beers made there. They had a kolsch style, a bitter and a dark bock, all of which were very good and a welcome change from the somewhat unexciting pilseners that are all over Latin America. We then met up with Jackson and some of his friends for hummus, pita, spinach pies, hookah and chilean wine at a Lebanese place relatively nearby.

In the morning, we tried to have an ambitious start and promptly failed to get out as early as we had planned. We followed the walking tour given by our Lonely Planet guidebook and it took us through a lot of the places that we had explored the day before. It was mostly markets, but they were pretty awesome. There is a witches market that sells everything from llama fetuses to love potions, all sorts of charms and home remedies to stuffed cats and owls. This place was awesome to walk around just because of the strange variety of things, however disgusting some of them might seem. We also went through markets selling more traditional knicknacks and knockoffs. Sarah got a small backpack since hers is starting to fall apart and I got a hat because this altitude makes the sun so much stonger. We made it down to Plaza San Francisco and this place is nuts. It is chaos to a degree that I have never experienced. But it also has all of the street food one can possible ask for. Fresh orange and grapefruit juice is about $0.20 a glass, Salteñas (mini meat or chicken pies) and Tucumanos (fried pies with potatos, onions and either chicken or hard-boiled egg and all sorts of different sauces)are about $0.15 each, stuffed potatos with meat are around $0.30 and there is all sorts of different fresh breads, fresh popcorn (sweet or salty), roasted peanuts for very very cheap. We ate just about every single lunch on the street while we were in La Paz. Then at night, just like the street meat in NYC, there are stands with kebabs, burgers, sausages, hot dogs, fried eggs and french fries.

Enough about the street food, I tend to get carried away because it really is incredible. We also went into the museum adjacent to San Francisco that allowed us access to the crypts, the choral rafters, the roof of the church and a very impressive collection of religious art. The religious art of South America is similar to that of Europe, but also contains elements of indigenous beliefs and is quite cool. There are still some Franciscan monks living there, but they have ceded most of the area to the museum. After the museum, we also checked out the presidential palace and the cathedral in Plaza Murillo. From various revolutionary attempts and coups, the presidential palace is still pockmarked from bullets. The cathedral there is gigantic and very nice, but overwhelmingly gigantic. After dinner that night at an Israeli restaurant, with grand plans to go out to meet up with Jhinuk (co-worker from Cusco volunteering here too), we decided to take a short nap that didn´t end until 2 am, thus negating the evening plans.

Our third day was spent at museums. We checked out the Museo de Instrumentos Musicales, owned and operated by Ernesto Cavour, the famous Bolivian folk artist. It was a magnificent collection of ancient, new and novel musical instruments (the five guitars in one shaped like a star or the combination charango/guitar). Quite a few of the instruments were also open for use so we got to try some different things that were pretty cool. We then went to the National Art museum with a standard religious and colonial art collection and a very cool Bolivian modern art collection. However, the coolest part was a temporary exhibit of photographs, mostly by Latin American artists, of painted bodies. Some of them were painted so that half of the body was a skeleton, or muscles while others were really imaginative. There was one of two women, one of which was painted like a pillar, so well that it took a little while to figure out it was a person and the other woman was leaning on the pillar. Unfortunately, we were kicked out of lunchtime. We saw most of it, but never made it back to spend more time there. We also went to the Coca Museum, documenting the uses of the Coca plant over the centuries. It is amazing that the cultures here have used it for thousands of years as a medical plant and for work while the Western nations have used it for recreational drugs and thus are putting pressure on Bolivia to abandon Coca use even though it is completely different here. Yet another example of culturally insensitive foreign policy when the root of the drug production problem lies in the demand of the industrialized nations. We called it a day after that and went back to the hostel for a comfort day of movies and pizza delivery. It was awesome to have a day like that since we haven't had one since we left home.

Our fourth day was rather frustrating. It was a day of errands. We had to go up to the bus station, only to find everything closed for lunch and then we went to the post office for the 2 hour process of sending two packages back home. There were all of 5 people there, including us, trying to send packages, and I cannot figure out why something that should be so easy should take so long. But they had to be packaged properly and have the right forms filled out and on and on and on. Then they refused to ship Sarah's package because it didn't weigh enough. So even though mine was a full 1.5 kgs heavier than hers, mine also cost about $10 less. Where is the logic in that? After that debacle, it was street lunch and back to the bus station. One window of the company we bought our tickets through said I was not allowed to buy tickets for tomorrow's bus but then right next door I was able to do it without a problem. Things are so frustrating sometimes. So once again, it was another relaxing afternoon. We finally met up with Jhinuk for dinner at our hostel and it was great to see her and hang out. She is starting on a giant mural this weekend so it is really cool that she gets to put up some public art.

The next and final morning of La Paz, we packed our stuff, checked out and got into a van for a day trip. There were a few frustrating things. First of all, we are staying in the annex of the hostel, only a block away, but even though we told the travel agent, he did not relay that information and the guide was kind of angry that we weren't at the main location until we showed her the receipt with the annex written on it. Also, we were supposed to have been provided a snack, but the agency never gave it to the guide and the guide also decided not to mention this until we were really hungry in the afternoon and asked where the snack was. AHHHHHHHH. Otherwise it was really cool and beautiful. We went to the top of a mountain called Chacaltaya (5,600 meters) that had snow(!) on it but amazing views of the other mountains and the countryside and even La Paz. On a clear day, they say that you can see Lake Titikaka. It was not much walking, but still really hard because of the altitude. We then drove to the south of La Paz to the Valley of the Moon. It is called that because the landscape really looks lunar, it is amazing. Apparently it is all river sediment, extremely hardpacked, that was formed when the river was much higher. Pictures will really have to do the explaining for me, because I don't know quite how to describe it. Let it be left at the fact that it was really amazing to see something so strangely naturally formed like this.

We then went back to La Paz, ate some lunch (finally, since there had been no food and the tour ended at 4 pm), and relaxed until our bus. With the help of sleeping pills and a relatively smooth road, the overnight bus was not that bad. We arrived in Potosi around 6:30 this morning and will be here for two days before going to Sucre. This town is known for its former glory as a silver mining town and used to be one of the richest in South America. So we will check out the mines and write more later.