here are some basic pictures of the apartment. i bought paint today so i'm going to paint my room light blue and i made a desk out of a door for it too and now there's only one bed and obviously it will be different with my stuff in it. but so you have an idea. about a million people responded to our add but none of them are native spanish speakers so we're holding off before making a decision. plus today during dinner the colombians called us to say that they had gotten the money and so now wanted to move back in with us, but we've all changed rooms now so the only one open is this tiny one at the back of the apartment and they want to fit 3 people in it. they say the will sleep on the floor. so that's a little insane and the other girls are worried and think it will be too much to live with 3 boys. but speaking spanish is better than speaking english so i don't know. we have to decide saturday morning.

sike. no colombians. but we decided to keep the apartment anyway, right now its just the danish girl, Anne, and an American girl for 2 months named Sarah and we have to look for roommates. but it's still exciting and a relief. there is a giant living room with a long balcony and a small grill, fairly decent rooms, 3 bathrooms, a big kitchen, horrible mattresses, plants, a bike, really well located, on the 8th floor, and i don't know what else to say about it. But i'm not going to put up pictures until i move in and make it pretty, so maybe next week. signing leases and contracts in spanish is pretty fun. it took four hours to finally get everything worked out but now it's ours. !

I got an apartment!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! with 3 colombian boys and a danish girl (and el misterioso novio) pictures to come, i'm allowed to paint it! and it comes with a bike! (to share between 6) hooray! por fin.

Noticias from Debbie

We’re in our little apartment on Cerrito & Posadas, possibly one of the ritziest neighborhoods in BA, waiting for 2 Columbians and 1 Dane to show up so KA can start looking for an apartment with them together. Should be another exciting day in this bustling metropolis of 12 million. Since Fred has left, we’ve gotten down to tackling the practical daily hurdles like learning how to flush the toilet, avoiding new bathroom floods, lighting the pilot so as not to have to take cold showers and figuring out how to get the bus to stop if we don’t want to go another mile from where we intended to get off!

We love the buses though because they zip through the city (since they don’t bother to stop unless someone is halfway in the middle of the road waving them down) and we get to see everything that we are not going to visit like the huge Puerto Madera.

If you come to BA, all of the streets have names either of another country, so you see a tango show on Estados Unidos, drink coffee on Florida (I guess they think this is a separate country) or Mexico, and have a wonderful Italian meal on Arabe Seria. Otherwise you are on a street named after some famous male whose mausoleum you can visit at Cementario Recoleta. Every single name I had encountered over the past week I discovered again at the cemetery.

Here are a few pictures from our outings – tango show, street fair in San Telmo & La Boca (literally the ‘mouth’) & the “beautiful” Facultad de Filosofia & Letras – another clear indication of the sorry state of the funding for the humanities. Today we visit a colleague I met in Graz in a suburb of BA. We are thinking of you all in el Norte (basically, the rest of the world) and sending besos & abrazos.

BUENOS AIRES--BY FRED

Hello again from Fred, filling in for the real blogger queen. BA is huge. I forced Kellyanne to go to the top of the 23 story Intercontinenatal Hotel with me last night to see the city from above where we were immediately stopped as we tryed to casually walk by and pretend we were guests there. They let us go anyway--so much for security. I hope the pictures convey the scope of how big the city is. The road you see lit up is eighteen lanes wide! Which leeds me to cabdrivers and driving in general.


Lanes do not exist here. even though they are all nicely laid out for you to stay in your proper place, every driver and particularly the cabbies are constantly creating two lanes in one. The eighteen lanes mentioned above are really about 53 lanes. I really don't know how they survive-but they do. Also, there is no such thing as a pedestrian (or pedestrian right of way). Kellyanne tells me if you get hit---you pay for the damage to the car (in colombia) . Walker beware. Bikerider be even more aware. Not to many laws regarding mufflers either--it can be very loud. There seem to be alot of Ford Falcons and Ford/chevy pickup trucks, more of a vintage cariety. The subway system is good here and costs about 25 cents to go anywhere and any distance. They have beautiful tile work and murals in the tunnels.

more mundane stuff while I am on the subject: They haven't gotten anywhere near as far as we have regarding ADA laws for the disabled. the last bano (bathroom) I was in was barely big enough for me to get into--let alone a wheelchair. There is alot of beautiful ornamental ironwork on the buildings, particularly the balconies, lots of huge, 12' wooden doors with "big knockers" (brass). Beautiful tile work and murals in the subways:



Prices: (I spent an hour in a supermarket comparing prices while Kellyanne tried to register for classes)
a dozen eggs is about 60cents, a six pack of Bud is $3, a roast chiken $4, ground meat $1.5/pound, bananas 30 cents/lb, wine ranged from $1/bottle to $10 for the good stuff. we ate at a fancy restaurant today called La Brigade, which was recommended to me by travellers from Wyoming. A steak, a big salad, two cokes and two sprites plus a breadbasket cost about $23. By the way, grilled steak is supposed to be Argentina's specialty, but I have had it twice now and i still like US barbecued ribs better. let it be known that if i said that on the street here I would be hung in the public square.




University: We travelled out to where Kellyanne will be going to school. Note: the univerity is in many places all over the city. It depends what you are studying as to where you will be located. Her school is about a forty minute ride from where we are staying (which for those of you who have forgotten, is the posh section of town just a gold coin toss away from the Four Seasons hotel). The building which houses her university is nothing to write home about---but it does have writing all over it. Students are very political here and one method of communicating their message is with graffitti. Anyway, Kellyanne is working out the details, one of which is that university education here, even for foreigners is FREE. So I told her she can spend an extra $25/month on her apartment.

Recoleta Cemetary: they say there is something very similar in Paris. the pictures speak for themselves. The most famous person buried here is of course, Evita Duarte Peron. She is buried in the Duarte family site. throngs of people gather around her grave and she is the only one with fresh flowers every day. The closest thing I have seen to this is the famous cemetary in New Orleans--which is above ground due to the water table (that's if the cemetary still exists there). Anyway--this was an entire city of grave sites honoring the wealthy, the influential, and/or the famous with lavish structures, statues, and yes...streets.








We saw a commotion the first night i got here and went to check it out. the police were there and we thought it was a student protest. Then we realized that it was mostly girls and they all seemed to be in their teens and all were emmitting that high pitched shrill that only adolescent females can muster when they are infatuated with a rock star. Guess who it was? Ricky Martin! Kellyanne and I happenned to be in position to acually seem him (as opposed to the shrieking throngs) ...you can imagine how excited we were :)

I've learned not to refer to Kellyanne as "mi hermosa" (my sister)--that got a little embarrassing back in Costa Rica. She is now correctly labeled "mi hiha". She should be called "mi hiha La Traductora"...my daughter the translator. In conversations with our Doorman, ( who quite generously talks about soccer with me not fulling recognizing that I only understand one tenth of what he is saying) I successfully told him that the Boca Juniors loss the other night 3-0 was not "embarazado" but "verguenza", The first word would have implied his team's loss was pregnant, the second means the loss was embarrassing. So, my spanish has been elevated from that of an infant to possibly pre-school.

To end--let me say that Kellyanne and I got a free ride on the subway the other night. they waved us through. We asked why at the other end realizing that every station appeared to be free and the guard said "they had run out of change".

Note: Debbie got here safely, bright and early this morning. We visited the botanical gardens, the zoo--which was a riot but fodder for another blog, and a whole new section of town I had not been to.

fred's blog:

Hi--this is fred filling in for kellyanne.

I sent an email with pictures to everyone but I don't think it made it---so more pictures included here. I met KellyAnne on wednesday in santiago. It was beautiful flying down the backbone of the Andes and then seeing Santiago tucked into the middle. The pictures above and below are from Pablo Neruda's house--which was quite beautiful. KellyAnne had been to all three of his houses and knew almost as much as the tour guide (he is chilean but had spent ten years in new york and was quite a character. Pablo Neruda had a penchant for women, drink (3 bars and two bedrooms in the house) and things nautical, even though he wouldn't get near the water. He built a boat and kept it in his front yard where he presided as captain over the libations.


The best part of santiago was, of course, seeing KellyAnne and the family and friends she was staying with. The city was fine, generally clean, but I don't think you could really spend that much time there if you were't visiting someone. I think most people go to chile on vacation for the wine tours, to see Pategonia, to go mountain climbing, and for the beach.

The night before we left, Jorge and Marisol had a barbecue (asado) for the whole house, plus we invited Luke and Cory (friends of KellyAnne's from silver spring. The onwers prepared the barbeque and cooked up alot of vegetable shishkabobs for KellyAnne and others. The grilled meat was great...and should be even better in Argentina. KellyAnne (and Alaina--from Montana and pictured below, baked three peach/plumb cobblers. All were devoured. At one point I counted one Colombian, 4 Germans, 5 Chileans, 2 French, and 6 Americans (4 of which were the Silver Spring contingent). The night ended, as evidently every asado evening, with a ping pong tournament. I didn't do too bad but the chileans who owned the table were far superior. The last picture is KellyAnne with the owners on the day we left. They were very kind to KellyAnne and i think she left her mark on them as well. Our joke was that in ten years all Chileans will be having vegetarian asados due to her influence.






We took off on Friday morning heading to Mendoza, Argentina with only one thing in our way----the Andes. I only included one picture here because they seemed kind of repetitve. Most of the snow had melted by this time. It was a very long climb up on the chilean side but for some reason was much easier funnelling out on the argentine side. I have never seen anything as incomprehsibly ineffecient as going through customs directly in the middle of the andes. The whole bus ride was supposed to take six hours to Mendoza but it took 8 hours because we spent 3.5 hours sitting in this absurd setting: something like a giant bus terminal at about 13,000 feet. it was pretty, but pretty insufferable at the same time. KellyAnne slept and I manage to scorch my bald pate taking a nap out on one of the big boulders.

We finally got through and made it to what turned out to be a fun and festive mendoza--the wine capital of Argentina.



Mendoza was mobbed with mostly local people there for the festival. Luckily, KellAanne was able to secure us the last room in what turned out to be a great bed and breakfast with wonderful hosts. We got there at last, dropped our bags and had dinner and a bottle of wine. The pictures are from the festival. Lot's of regional beauty queens vying for top honors as queen of the entire festival. Our B&B host's daughter was one of the queens and is pictured below. Then we had to catch an all night bust to Buenos Aires that night (last night) so we never saw the winner. I was sick with coughing spells the whole 13 hour ride so it was pretty miserable for me----but buses here are very comfortable and entertaining (for instance, the ride began with everyone playing bingo!) They also showed movies and very poor music videos.

I sat next to a woman from South Africa who had just climbed Acacongua (sp) the highest peak outside the Himalaya chain and one of the mountains that people refer to when they talk about climbing the "seven summits". She is the only woman from South Africa to have ever climbed it!

We crossed miles and miles of pampas (the Argentine plains--plenty of beef out there) in the pouring rain. We made it to our rental agent's office and had to wait over an hour for them to get there (along with a guy from wisconsin who comes twice a year fro tango lessons). We are now firmly entrenched in a very nice apartment which we have for two weeks in one of the wealthiest districts in BA. Buenos Aires is many blogs unto itself. let me just say it is massive in scope and somewhat overwhelming right now.

For those interested (Brooklyn/Patrick and others), we could not get tickets to see Boca Juniors, who played today. We watched the game on tv and they got trounced 3-0, as did river plate. Poor showing for the BA futbol teams today.

Fred

my dad is here! and we're leaving for Buenos Aires tomorrow morning. we had a last big asado bbq at the house with marisol and jorge and everyone who is living here now (coincidentally a girl from the farm is staying in the house too) and we baked peach plum nectarine crisp and grilled lots of vegetables and now are having a ping pong championship and its really fun for my dad to get to see everything.

carnaval is basically over now and i didnt take any pictures cause i think it was pretty certain that my camera would be robbed if i took it out of the house. we spent most of it in barranquilla which is one of colombia´s biggest cities and really trashy and ugly but friendly and now we´re in Taganga, a fishing town on the coast where the people are even friendlier. so we spent a bunch of days in barranquilla with a colombian couple Ronnie y Ladeies and the sweetest baby i´ve ever seen Ronnie Jr. there were lots of parades with dancing and funny costumes but mostly it was just realy sponsored and there were also lots of trucks with dancing naked women advertising beer or headache medicine (colombia has the most breast implants of anywhere because plastic surgery is really cheap) and the official stuff didn´t really feel at all like a festival for the people, you had to pay to sit in a chair and watch the parade and you had to pay to go to any of the tent parties afterwards, actually the official slogan of the carnival is ¨quien lo vive es quien lo goza¨which means that you only can enjoy it if you spend a lot of money. but when you got away from that part the streets were full of people and every single house had 10 or 20 people sitting outside on the porches dancing or listening to music at the bars on the corner. so leideis and ronnie took us to the south where the used to live and we all danced and they all laughed at us for not being suave enough and we learned the stories of their lives (they are black market perfume makers among other things) and then they told us that we were their only friends and asked us to come back in june for the baptism and be Ronnie´s godparents and that was kind of weird and sad but mostly we just had fun together and spent all day yesterday at the beach with the baby trying caribbean sweets and eating fish. on our way to taganga we met some argentinian guys and split a cab there and then we got there and every hostel was full so we are staying in their place now which is on the top of a hill overlooking the town in this giant domed house made made of palm leaves in the indigenous style. some italian man built it for vacations but then he got sick and went back to italy so now it´s for us and we really lucked out and it´s only $2.50 each. i´m only writing all these things because i´ve been waiting hours for some pictures to load but it looks like it´s not going to happen. i go back to bogota on saturday and then even bigger things start to happen like school and parents and moving. that is really soon!

it´s carnaval! everything is sparkles! and i got robbed! (for the first time!) but it was only the hotel key and i felt them do it so we ran home and everything was fine except that the stupid hotel didn´t have an extra copy of the key so we had to wait all night for the locksmith to come and drill open the lock and then we had to pay for it all. but it´s carnaval and there is glitter and tacky costumes everywhere and i am going to go enjoy it.

p.s. have you read pilgrim at tinker creek by annie dillard? i´m finding it to be one of the lovliest most wonderful books. i want to read aloud every line and call you and share how alive it makes me feel.

we went to playa blanca, a beach a few hours from cartagena, for a few days with linda and andreas (caroline´s friends from high school) who are funny. the beach was the carribean so turquoise and beautiful and we slept in hammocks under the stars(which is not as romantic as it sounds. mostly it´s just freezing and windy and your legs and arms go numb and you wake up at 7 am to toothless ladies screaming ¨ensalada de fruuuta¨ in your sleepy face and not leaving for 10 minutes even when you breathe bad breath on them and tell them you can´t eat fruit when you are asleep so why are they insisting.) but it was kind of really touristy there of course and the vendors were crazy and wouldn´t leave us alone and we ran out of money because everyone felt bad if they weren´t good tourists buying lots of things all the time. and i thought i couldn´t take it anymore but we couldn´t find any boats to take us back to cartagena so instead i went snorkling and saw the most beautiful fish i´ve ever seen in my life and almost got washed out to sea because i couldn´t take my face out of the water for hours they were so amazing. then i sat on the beach with watercolors and painted five year old pictures of fish and all of the people selling stuff stopped and watched me and told me the names of all the fish i drew and i painted fish tattoos on them and they told me one day they would marry me and my eyes.

i´m in cartagena and it is HOT. i mean HOTT. it´s also super touristy and there are lots of stereotypical americans saying stupid things like ¨look an iguana! i´m gonna go grab that fucker¨ or ¨dude, quick! four chicks are getting on that boat. hot!¨and i feel kind of uncomfortable and i don´t really know what to do about it. i bought some watercolors and that´s fun but basically all i can manage to do every day is stand up and take a cold shower and then pass out on the bed again from heat exhaustion. but maybe i´ll get some motivation soon and do fun stuff. the last nights in bogota were nice. we went out and met really nice colombians and had a good time talking to them even though they were crazy. but who´s not. in bogota they don´t stop at red lights which is not so surprising but when the light is green EVERYBODY stops and waits for the people with the red lights to go through. also if you need to make a phone call there are people on the corners with cell phones and you pay them 10 cents a minute and you can use it. also remember bill nye the science guy? well he is pretty smart and makes complicated things simpler and explained moons and tides really well here: http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Features/Columns/?article=BNTides>1=9033 .moons were a pretty prominant part of farm life and are pretty fascinating. so if you think so too, you can read about it! it has a lot to do with when the best times to put seeds in the ground are and other things. did you know colombia´s the third largest recipient of US military aid? coming here our bus got stopped for like an hour in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere in total darkness. man i almost had a heart attack. but actually its pretty calm right now and i feel safe.

i´m in bogota! i like it a lot. but it´s fall and cold and even though i´m on the equator i feel more like i´m at home than i have so far down here. driving from ecuador to bogota looked just like the drive to bard except for the extra big mountains and cumbia coming from the radio. it´s been so long since my last fall and this one is really unexpected. i didn´t realize how much i appreciate seasons. it makes me kind of miss it and i´m excited about settling into Buenos Aires and fall there. i can´t wait to get a job and wear sweaters and cook and go to shows again. we´ve been travelling for the past few days with 2 guys from argentina and one of them is moving to buenos aires in march too and he was funny and piolo and it will be nice to see him there. but colombia is exciting too! now we´re here and hopefully going to stay with caroline´s friends, but maybe ola and i have to stay in a hostal cause there are 5 of us (including a swedish pop star. ooh) i think we´re gonna stay here for 10 days then go to cartagena for a week and go along the coast for a little and then come back and fly home. i´m learning lots of swedish and speaking lots of spanish too. like this is hoe you sing happy birthdaÿ: ja ma han leva ja ma han leva ja ma han leva uti hundrade ar ja visst ska han leva ja visst ska han leva ja visst ska han leva uti hundrade ar! oh i have to go. i never write about what is really going on, lots of other things too. now we´re making earings out of beans and feathers and having crazy conversations with people from here who think bush is the best world leader and are mad at me that i don´t respect him. ...

safely in colombia! i´ll write more soon