AUTUMN’S ADVENTURES

I haven’t been updating as much lately because my brain is buzzing with a million different ideas and I haven’t been able to break myself from working on them to work on the blog. I apologize.  I probably don’t even have any followers anymore.  I’m also behind on posting pictures on my Flickr page.  I was good and did manage to get all photos from my 1.5 month travels onto Facebook so if you are friends with me you’ve probably already seen them.

To break it down in short form, this is where I was for 1.5 months and with whom:

• Cordoba, ARG - 10 days - with pal Bobby Carter
• Salta, ARG - 6 days - 4 days with Bobby, 2 days with Alexander.
• Tucuman, ARG - 3 hours - with Alex
• Rosario, ARG - 2 days - with Alex
• Buenos Aires, ARG -4 days - 2 days with Alex, 2 days with Alex and Shannon.
• Colonia, Uruguay - 1 day - with Shannon, Alex, David, Alex’s friend Abe and Abe’s friend Lee.

Of course I had to show Bobby, Alex and Shannon my new digs so they all came to visit me in Jujuy.  I took each of them to the north. I am beginning to be a really great tour guide of my home town!  I really liked seeing how they reacted to the places I took them. It was rewarding for me to show people new things.  Jujuy is a place of reflection and relaxation and I think I relayed that quite well to my friends.  They enjoyed a break from reality.

Now I am wiped out.  I’m happy to be done with traveling and back to working and a regular routine of yoga and the gym twice a week.  I’m not the type that enjoys living out of a suitcase for sure.  Since returning to Jujuy I have been a major hermit.  I stayed in my pjs and in my room for almost 2 days and 2 nights straight. I think the woman I live with thinks this behavior is a bit strange but I tried to explain it to her as best as I could that  I needed a super detox from all of that socializing and traveling — I needed to reconnect with myself!

Also, hanging out with Bobby, Alex and Shannon was really inspiring.  We talked about so many different things and I came away from those conversations with such great ideas that I couldn’t wait to get home and start working on them.  I felt that if I didn’t “download” my ideas from my head soon, it was going to explode.

Now I’m a bit more normal. I’m being social again after about a week of me time.  I’m trying to get out of the house at least once a day, whether it be for a walk around the city for exercise or for groceries, partially so the lady I live with doesn’t think I’ve gone nutballs crazy and chained myself to my bed for eternity.

I may go to Mendoza next weekend to visit Bobby again because he is there for an indetermined amount of time.  I really want to go when he is there because I like seeing my friends and it gives me a good excuse to go to Mendoza (other than the kickass wine).  We’ll see how I feel by Thursday and if I can handle another mini trip 14 hours south by bus…

When Alex and I arrived to Buenos Aires we checked into our “Bed & Breakfast”.  Alex had warned me that this B&B looked like someone’s apartment but I didn’t believe him because the website had such convincing photos that I thought we were staying in a nice place. I was wrong and was really pissed at the false marketing on the website.  This B&B looked more like some dude’s apartment, or some sort of hostel.  It was on the 3rd floor of an apartment building so we had to climb 3 flights of stairs to get up to it.  I was not happy.  The only thing that was true from the website was that the guy that ran the B&B was pretty hot.

I went bowling this afternoon for the first time in a long time.  The day was rainy and cold so I couldn’t do any exploring.  I had a lot of fun but I didn’t win a single game.  Fede kept calling me a tromposa because I kept stepping over the line and setting off the alarm and that was the only time I’d get a strike.    We ate hamburguesa completas, which is becoming one of my favorite foods here, and they were freaking delish [it contains fried egg, tomato, lettuce, cheese, etc...].  Tonight we went to a couch surfers barbeque (indoors because the weather was crappy still) and I met a lot of cool people.  I spoke in castellano for a good half of the night to a few people.  I was proud of how much I remembered but I know I probably sounded like a retard.  I mostly spoke with this one guy at the party because he was the easiest to understand.  I know the only reason he talked to me for so long was because he was hitting on me but I didn’t care — I was freaking speaking castellano and I didn’t want to stop.  I am really beginning to like Buenos Aires and I’m wondering if I should come back here to live for a while.  Fede is a great guy and Anette is wonderful.  Right now, though, I can’t stop smelling my feet.  These socks smell so bad for 2 reasons: #1-I’ve been wearing them for two days and #2-they are cheap socks.  Luckily I will wash my feet tomorrow.

Today was my first day in Buenos Aires.  I spent most of the day on the 86 bus that I caught at the airport.  It was extremely cheap (1.5 pesos) and the view from the window was a treat for the eyes.  I arrived to my Couch Surfing host’s apartment around 4 p.m.  The place was very cute and quaint.  The first person I met was Anette, a stunning blonde from Sweden (duh) with a great sense of humor and killer bangs.  Fede, my CS host, followed shortly thereafter.  He was very kind and have a very inviting presence about him.  Lastly I met Fiona, the 6 month old iguana.  I knew there was going to be an iguana in the house but I expected it to be much bigger.  This one was no bigger than an anole or a gecko.  We all spent a while talking over coffee and pastries that Anette had bought for us.  I worried about my travel stench and hoped I was the only one that could smell the 24 hours of travel on my body.  I don’t know what it is about traveling long distances that makes me smell so horrid.  I call it the “old skin” smell (to make this nasty description even worse).  After the “coffee talk” I freshened up and drank some wine.  We went to Palermo Hollywood for dinner and beer.  I had the most mouth-watering quesadilla in all the world.  First off, it had BACON in it.  BACON.  Next, it had veal (only the most tender and lean in the world), and of course it had cheese.  Loads of it.  These are my three most favorite foods at the moment.  I ate that shit like it was heaven on a plate.  GODLY.  Now I lay in my blow-up bed thinking about how wonderful today was and how every day from this point on will probably be just as amazing.  At the restaurant it hit me — I’m here, I’m really here in Argentina and I’m actually doing what I said I wanted to do.  It is so easy — why did I ever wait?