look what i bought yesterday!

Tucuman

so I'm coming home in an hour and a half! but i have a little time now and i wanted to write about tucuman, where i went for Easter week. because it was crazy. this is what i wrote when I got back from it: this weekend was a pretty big adventure. like adventure adventure. it makes everything i've done so far not even seem remotely adventurous. it began on wednesday night when after not sleeping for a week i threw a pair of pants, 2 shirts, and my sleeping bag in my backpack and took the 18 hour night bus to Tucuman to see Gonzalo but i didn't sleep then either because i was talking to a woman from Buenos Aires who lives in my neighborhood. so its been literally a week without hardly sleeping and i'm imagining a weekend relaxing with his family or whatever for easter but i get there and he tells me he's organized for us to go camping with some friends for a few days. which i think sounds great until we get to his friends house to plan when we're leaving and what we need and they start talking about where we'll go. and gonzalo asks if we can go to siambon. and his friend says, yeah but it will be about an extra 8 hour hike! an extra 8 hours! that means we're already planning on doing at least 8 hours! and i don't have any shoes or anything. but whatever! so we go. and meet his friends on the bus and they are old! like could have been my dads! and we got off the bus and the first thing we did was cross a river up to our waists! and i only had one pair of paints! and then we crossed the river 28 more times! but holy shit it was fun. so it was me and four boys, or i guess they were pretty legitamately men. fording rivers, camping in mountains, having mate with mountain people, talking about neitsche. etc. man it was beautiful and so great to be out of the city and in nature. i was super weird and withdrawn and just in myself and the landscape but it was really relaxing and pretty much the craziest thing i've ever done in terms of outdoors excursions. and the mountain people who's fields we camped in were really interesting and totally matriarchal and had lived remote in the mountains for generations and generations. i was generally too tired by the end of the day to ever talk to them but it was sick to show up at someone's house in the middle of the mountains after walking without seeing anyone for 8 hours and go into a hut and sit with a bunch of women cooking over a fire and drink mate with them. we spent a bunch of freeeezing nights shaking with cold and not sleeping at all so never sleeping until the sun came up and wasting half the day afterwards trying to wake up. but that is never a problem for me. and we swam in the river and just drank water right from it (and i don't have parasites!) and man i don't even know what to say. it was probably the most bizarre weekend of my life talking about che and philosophy and religion and sufjan stevens and having lucid dreams and life discussions and being the only girl and only non argentine, non spanish speaker, the weakest, the youngest, the only one not from tucuman, the only one not super into outdoors activities and hiking. i don't even know, but they took care of me and i felt sort of like the daughter/princess but it was good and they were impressed that i made it and we had fun. then the last night we set out too late so we had to cross the river up to our waists at night 8 times. and a rock fell on my foot and i was wearing gonzalo's mom's shoes which were way too big and there were lots of rocks in them and they hurt a lot but i ignored it until we finally got back and found a campsite and i turned on the lights and what i thought was mud all over my feet was actually blood. eeeew. gross! i don't even know. walking in the clouds and i found a giant snake! and on the last day i found out that gonzalo's friends really were old. one was 38 and one was 21 in 1992 when for six years he rode on bike all through south america and the usa and canada. one was 22 and gonzalo is 28 so it wasn't like everyone was super old, but when would i have ever thought i would be camping with dudes who were 18 years older than me. that's weird. but that is just what happens when you are out of the us i guess. so that's tucuman in breif. i didn't take too many pictures but here are a few.

tucuman tucuman tucuman! i'm excited. and look, even though i quit so it doesn't really matter, one of the websites that i reviewed was really happy with my review:
March 26, 2007.
"Killer Startups posts a review of Kumquat; without having spoken to us, they seem to have nailed the concept pretty much dead-on (we begin to think we may actually be communicating)"

oh yeah, and i quit that lame internet job. what was i thinking? i need a job where i am out in the city and speaking spanish not spending my days on the internet writing in english. (but if you want to read funny reviews of websites that i wrote you can go to killerstartups.com!) so i have 10 resumes in spanish and next week when i get back i am going to go pass them out and find something to do.

I'm going to Tucuman in the north on wednesday to visit my friend Gonzalo for a week! I met him in ecuador and we travelled in colombia and he makes documentaries and is coming to live in buenos aires soon but right now i get to visit him and his family in Tucuman for easter and go camping in the mountains! Also I am most likely coming home to maryland for a week. what! holy shit, no way! i know. probably the 21st of april to the 30th. so you have to come see me. because also most likely i am not coming home again until christmas. as in staying here for another semester and graduating one semester late from bard. yeah, kind of a big decision. but really not so big. haven't i known i was going to decide that forever? being here for only four months just makes no sense among a million other reasons that i can tell you if you ask me. so those are the big pieces of news. also exciting: i found 10 gold beautiful picture frames in the trash last night that i am excited to make art in. today i went to a giant design/fashion expo at the convention center kind of by accident but it was entertaining. and i had indian food for the first time in months and i randomly met a bard graduate who lives here in buenos aires!

i love buenos aires so much right now. where else could you have a horrible headache and be overwhelmingly tired but still happily stay up until 4 in the morning without even realizing it was happening? one of my other colombian friends had some people over tonight so i said i was exhausted but would make an appearance since he lives on my same street 8 blocks away. so i got there and what were they making? arepas! which i ate every morning on the beach in colombia with ola and have been missing. and the people here are just soo nice. i didn't know anyone there except juan but they all sat and talked with me as if i was their main friend and the reason they were having a party. and every slang word they used they stopped and explained exactly what it meant and why they say it. so we sat speaking mangled spanish all night sucking on wads of coca leaves brewing in our cheeks to keep us awake. and then i left and walked home and ran into a group of wasted kids who gave me fernet branker and walked me to my apartment and endearingly called me a mother fucking asshole so they could show off thier mastery of english curse words and invite me to their birthday parties. buenos aires, en serio, te encanta.