Thursday, November 27, 2008

runnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

dearest dear loves of my life:
someday i shall return to the US. perhaps next fall, or the spring after that. and after that, i will run a half marathon. not like right after that. at least three months. perhaps six months. and i think nancy foo will do it too, because you get free beer at the end. and i want everyone else to do it too. or at least come to watch. but preferably to run. we can pick a city. and meet there. and stay in a fancy hotel with a hot tub. yesssss.
i love you all.
kt

Friday, November 21, 2008

a note about mendoza, argentina

we have been here a few days now. some things i have noticed: mullets are cool. not like the 40-year old man in the US who wears nascar muscle tees and cut-off bleached jean shorts and is still wearing the same mullet he got in 1985. no no. the mullet here is worn by the popular kid in high school. and everyone else. and they´re bad mullets. like the whole top/front of the head is buzzed and then there is like this pantene commercial hanging off the back of the head. and this haircut is worn with pride. i blame maradona, who i guess is a really famous pro soccer player. i had never heard of him before coming here. but he´s on the news everyday it seems. and he has a mighty fine mullet himself. so every little boy who wants to grow up to be a pro soccer player (which is just about every little boy) cuts himself a pro-soccer mullet.
also, the traffic rules seem to be a bit different than i´m used to. by that, i mean that they don´t exist. this is what happens at intersections (which are almost all one-way): many many cars come at the intersection from two directions. they lean their heads wayyy far to see how many cars are coming from the other way (which is perpendicular to the street they´re on), and how fast they´re going. then they judge whether they can be first to cross or not. i´m not sure how that is decided. because sometimes it´s who gets there first, other times, it´s who is the bossiest driver i think. so basically, no traffic rules, just a keen sense of potential collisions. which makes being a pedestrian quite dangerous. probably more dangerous than being in a car.

also, today we bought a mate. which is a special tea cup. and the straw to drink the tea is called a bombilla. and we bought the tea, which is also called mate. i think i want to have a special mate tea time everyday even after leaving argentina.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

mendoza

we´re in mendoza now, for a couple weeks total, til nancy foo´s parents arrive. we left la stala on sunday, we got dropped off at the bus station and we took an hour long bus ride to mendoza. we were thinking we would stay in a nice hotel for two or three nights to relax. so we found this hotel called balbi. relatively expensive. it was supposedly a three star hotel. for 240 pesos, which is about $75 or $80. i was thinking that for $80 in argentina we´d be in the lap of luxury. not so. there were two twin beds in the room, one painting on the wall, a little desk, a night stand. and a bathroom. i guess that is a bit vague for a description of quality. but basically, you´d get way better quality in the US for $80 a night. there was a bidet in the bathroom though. this is only the second bidet i´ve ever seen. and i didn´t know how to work it, so i decided to figure it out. there are three knobs on a bidet for those of you that don´t know...i didn´t. and i turned the one closest to me (i was on the side of the bidet, this was just a test run) and the water came out with some force. and it sprayed all over the bathroom and the ceiling. dang. and i was like ´nance, uhhh what do i do? i just got water all over the ceiling. should i wipe it off?´and she just said ýou got bidet water on my towel´. oops.
anyway, we decided the quality of balbi wasn´t high enough to spend $80 again, so we went to look for hostels and such. and we had this flyer that a girl on the street handed us the day before. on our way to balbi. so we went to check out the place on the flyer. 100 pesos per night for two people. we get shown to the room, which is an apartment that you can rent daily, weekly, or monthly. the room has a double bed and two twin beds and a fridge and a kitchen with dishes. amazing. we can cook. yessss. so we decided to stay there while looking for a longer term option. like two weeks or a month.
so for two or three days we stayed there and frantically searched for an apartment with furniture. the lady that works at the place we were staying knew somebody with an apt. we looked at it. 1800 pesos per month. which, by the way, is ridiculous. i think that may have been the tourist price. but we were desperate because the oven didn´t work and we were paying 100 pesos per day and the apt would be cheaper. so we decided to stay at the expensive apt but only til the end of november. so its not as bad.
anyway, now we have another crappy apartment in mendoza. i am learning that any accomodation that we rent here is going to be of relatively poor quality. i´m sure there are some really nice places for like $1000 per month. or more. but it seems like everyplace looks nice, but has several appliances that dont work. or leak. or do something else wrong. but i´m not used to closely inspecting a place before moving in. like checking to make sure the air conditioner works, the fridge works, all the lights work, the toilet doesn´t leak water all over the floor. i think that where i´m from, that´s a little rude. but apparently it´s necessary here. dang.
sooo, we´re wandering around mendoza for a couple weeks. its a nice city. we found a little market, like a farmers market. there are 4 or 5 produce stands there. but get this: you aren´t allowed to touch the merchandise. you get a number and tell them how many kilos you want of whatever and they go get it for you. but the food is all sitting out and looks like you would pick it up yourself. but no. you don´t.
so today we´re trying to plan the next 6 months or so, and also do laundry. that´s it. oh also, i want to eat popcorn. so three goals for the day...
the next 6 months: foo is trying to stay out of the US for a full year so her work visa can be renewed for another 6 years. if that is what we´re doing, then i think we´ll work our way up through south and central america, wwoofing along the way for three weeks at a farm, til april 23, when foo can fly to canada and stay for 3 months, and i might go there, or might go to MO to hang out with the family for a bit. then foo can re-enter the US after july 23. so we have to plan what countries we want to wwoof in along the way.
what else about mendoza? the ice cream is really really good. folks are generally really friendly. we´ve been so busy finding a place to stay we haven´t gotten to explore too much. so i guess we´ll start that today.
when we were looking for a place, we had to call a lot of people to ask if they had stuff to rent. by we, i mean i had to call. and understanding spanish over the phone is much harder than in person. but after the second or third call i realized it isn´t so hard. and it was much better from then on.

foo seems a little happier, i think. being super independent, i think it´s hard for her to live completely by someone else´s schedule. like on the farm. and i don´t think all farms are so consuming of time. just this one. it was like 50 or 60 hours per week, and free time was always with the family inside because it was dark outside by then. and we didn´t get to choose what or when to eat, or when to shower, or what to do in free time even. so having this apartment i think works better for her.
i also like the freedom aspect. but i think i´d get bored if we stayed here for a month, which was the first plan. bored because i don´t have a life here, or friends, or a job. but it´s good for now.
so we´ll head to santiago on the 28th and pick up nancy foo´s parents. then i guess stay in santiago for a couple days before heading back to argentina.
much love,
katie

Monday, November 10, 2008

cansada

hello, dears! we´ve been at la stala for a month now. and we´re both tired and dirty still. but i think my spanish is improving. and foo´s is for sure. on friday foo stabbed herself in the eye with barley. and she got the chunks out but her eye was still hurting so i was like, let me look, i´ll take out whatever is left. and so i was looking at her eye and trying to poke my finger into it to brush out what looked like fuzz on the brown part of her eye. and i tried to get it out and her eye kept fluttering and her eyelid sort of turned inside out. which is kind of gross looking. but then after a few minutes of this i realized it was not fuzz in her eye. it was the tissue of her eyeball which was torn away and sort of floating on her eyeball. so good thing i didn´t touch it with my finger. we tried to go to a specialist that afternoon, and laura, the host lady, drove us to the hospital first. we were walking in the door and another family was also heading that way, and then laura kicked it into mom-mode and walked faster to get ahead of the family. she pushed in front of the three year old entering the door, knocking the poor kid in the head with her purse. then she went up to the window, first in line, of course, and knocked on it and then on the wood desk til finally the lady came out. the hospital doesn´t see patients with eye problems. bueno. so we go to a specialist office, where there are three women working at the reception. and no doctor. and he won´t be in at all today, or tomorrow. ok, so we leave and i ask why there are three receptionists and no doctor. one to serve the mate, one to get the water and the other to drink it. mate is a tea, btw. pronounced mah-tey. so we went to two more specialists offices, which were both closed, and finally we just went to a little medical clinic. the doctor shined a flashlight in foo´s eye, which is very sensitive to light, and said he doesn´t think it is serious, but go to a specialist. bueno. so it´s friday afternoon and the only doctor working in the whole city that day says go see someone else. saturday foo woke up with a whole lot of gross greenish goo on her eyeball. and a lot of pain opening and closing her eye.
this conversation happened:
katie: does your eye hurt?
foo: no. it just feels like something is stabbing my eyeball all the time.
right...
so that day was rough. sunday she woke up with more goo. and more pain.
today, monday, we went to the specialist. who looked at her eyeball and dilated it and looked at it again. and said basically there´s nothing in it, it´s just scraped. and he gave her a prescription for eyedrops. so we´ll see how that goes.

i´m thinking we´ll move on from this farm this week. maybe stay in hostels for a couple weeks and rest, then foo´s parents are coming.
´
that´s all the interesting news for now....