Excellent internet distractions for the passive or active mind.

In Argentina, I have learned to waste time like it's my job. Procrastination (ironically, there is no word for it in Spanish) has become my pass time and hobby. I've developed no useful or useless talents in all those wasted hours. But I have discovered some wonderful distractions for those who need a break.

Bus Attendant kickin' back on the job. (Patagonia trip)

For the active mind:

BBC News: my favorite source of world news, witty headlines, and interesting bits of information I didn’t need to know.

Sporcle: Thousands of trivia quizzes/language puzzles on almost any subject. Use it to “study” stuff like geography. Convince yourself it’s an intellectual endeavor and therefore not procrastinating, really. And to anyone who thinks it sounds too lame, I dare you to find this site and play only one quiz. Go on, try!

 Hyperbole and a Half: Funniest Blog EVER!! Updates are rare but the archives are amazing. Laugh so hard the person two tables over gives you the stink-eye!

Grouchy Rabbit: This one gets into the “active” category based on sarcasm. Witty one-liners in 6 categories: Tips for Success, Facts, Signs things are going so well, Realized, To-do List, and Definitions. Much preferred to MLIA or similar. Also see its sister site: Dear Blank, Please Blank.

For the passive mind:

The Day in Pictures, BBC News: It’s a real treat and doesn’t feel like you’re no wasting time!

StumbleUpon.com:  You know how Google reads your email and gives you relevant ads? Well, StumbleUpon is a Google franchise where you voluntary tell them what you’re interested in and click the Stumble button. StumbleUpon then presents you with a website relevant to your interests. It sort of works and the possibility that the next one will be better makes it an excellent time-waster.

White People Problems.com: This one requires less brain power than Saturday morning cartoons.  It’s Stuff White People Like back when the blog was a whinny high school vanilla. Most of the lines are a bit immature but hey when you’re looking to not think… (Note: Problems tend to apply generally to the middle class of all races)

LoveGivesMeHope: It’s a chick-flick in a paragraph. If you’re a sucker for chick-flicks then you’ll love it. You only endure chick-flicks, you will die on this site.

Gamble:

Dinosaur comics: There is severe fluctuation in the brain power necessary to enjoy Dinosaur Comics but regardless it’s your daily dose of AWESOME!

"I went to Argentina one time and everyone was just seemed to be sitting around. It was beautiful!" -- You, Me, and Dupree

Birthdays in Argentina/ Reflections on being 20

Argentines are big on birthdays. Here are a few stories to give you an idea:

On my host-sister’s birthday the phone rang off the hock because there are few things more rude that forgetting to “saludar” (greet/wish-well) a family member or close friend on their birthday.

When my host-brother-in-law turned 35, his parents took the 8-hour bus over the mountains just to come to the birthday dinner.

One morning in early June, my host-mom told me she hadn’t been able to sleep the night before because it was my birthday and the house was so dirty. She checked when my birthday actually was and was able to get to sleep again. I still don’t know what the cleanliness thing is about though.

I told my host-mom that I was going to go out for dinner with friends for my birthday. Without missing a beat, Pirucha said that she had been thinking I should have 4-5 girls over for tea at 5:30. Going along with this plan turned out to be a great idea. My host-mom broke out the china, served us made-from-scratch hot cocoa, 2 types of argentine cake, and there was cheesecake and dessert wine for a  “second course.” It was absolutely lovely and delicious.

Now I’m 20-years-old and I have a few reflections to share with you:

1.       Being 20 makes me feel older. Something about dropping the ‘teen’ makes me feel like a more legitimate adult. Argentines come of age at 21 so studying abroad at 19 has earned me some funny looks.  Saying you’re 20 is much better.

2.       Being 20 makes me think about being 30. 1 decade, 10 years, and it seems like a million things to get done. Cultural expectations in America (if I remember right) assume that by 30 I should have or be near to having a: house, mortgage, car, husband, steady job, retirement plan, and maybe a baby. Your twenties just seem to be a busy time!

3.       Being 20 makes me think of being 10. I am a decade removed from my childhood. 10 years apart from the kids I work with. Looking back, 10 years seems a lot longer than when I’m looking forward.

4.       Being 20 makes me think about the drinking age. I went abroad, could legally buy and consume whatever I wanted, had a birthday, came home, and still can’t order wine in a restaurant. I’m in drinking limbo! But I am very glad I didn’t have an anti-climatic 21^st birthday in a country where the legal age is 18. Better by far to wait it out and enjoy getting carded next year in America.

5.       Being 20 makes me feel younger. Well not exactly younger but it makes me feel very young. At 19 I was still getting used to the idea I could vote. At 20, I’m comfortable with calling myself an grown-up but realize how far I have to go before I deserve the title.

Sorry there weren't any pictures this time!

Bariloche...no one's really sure if this is still in Patagonia

Great hiking day!

Patagonia wind

The best chocolate shop in the chocolate capital of Argentina

Puerto Piramides, the coast of Patagonia

Sea Kayaking!

Very thoughtful dog

We saw a penguin but I couldn't get a picture

Gaiman, the Welsh village of Patagonia

Still just pictures

Princess Di was here!

Tea time!

Chapel Bethel, Gaiman

Tea number 2! I could live on this stuff!

Wales and Argentina

Yr Hen Ffordd B&B where we stayed

The first house of Gaiman

At the end of the Earth: El Calafate and El Chalten Pictures

I'm afraid it's just pictures for now. Stories may or may not follow later.

El Calafate: Flamingos??




Perito Moreno Glacier







El Chalten, a hiker's paradise 



Personally, my favorite vista of the entire trip



Cerro Fitz Roy



This mountain is on the front of the Argentina travel guides!!

It was the first snowy day of the year when we arrived.

A Bit Over Halfway: impressions of study aborad in list

Note: The following is a list of stuff. Inanimate objects have every right to be offended by their place or absense from the list. People do not.

Stuff I love about Argentina:

1.       Café con leche y 2 Medialunas – Medialunas are little sweet croissants that are so yummy I almost never order anything else in a café.

2.       My host family

3.       Local Wines

4.        Broad Mendoza sidewalks with big shady trees 

5.       Tango classes

6.       Empanadas

7.       The Mediotarde – mandatory snack around 6-7pm

8.       Cheap Transportation as long as you don’t fly

9.       Kioscos – walk up convenience stores on every corner

10.   Siesta

Stuff I hate about Argentina

1.       Disorganization in university, government, business, life

2.       How little professors and students care about their classes

3.       Buses that don’t come or don’t stop

4.       Being late to almost everything

5.       Price of imported goods. We got it easy in America.

6.       Smoking everywhere

7.       Intense PDA everywhere

8.       Lack of work ethic

9.       Being just a little sort of speaking Spanish

10.   Spanish verbs (not Argentina’s fault but still)

Stuff I miss about America

1.       Churches of sound doctrine

2.       Climate control

3.       Cocoa powder…and all the desserts you can make with it.

4.       Vegetables/salad – they exist, they’re just not very common

5.       Driving (controlling my own transportation destiny)

Surprises:

1.       Argentines seem to be loyal first to their city (Mendoza, Buenos Aires) and then to the    country.

2.       I cannot find Che Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries in any book shop in his native country.

3.       No one really dances Tango outside of Buenos Aires.

4.       Argentines think of themselves as white rather than Latino.

5.      Even with the internet, US-Argentina communication is infrequent for this student...hint hint friends.

Solo in Santiago

I seriously enjoyed my last trip to Chile. Valparasio was one of the loveliest cities I have ever seen and Chilean empanadas are just a big win.  So when my plans to go to Valle de la Luna over the Easter holiday fell through the Wednesday before I decided to do something spontaneous and very stupid. I bought bus tickets to Santiago de Chile for the next afternoon, booked a hostel, and went. By myself. Traveling alone is never very safe and my better judgment would not let me be over just how idiotic crossing international boundaries alone in South America must be. I’m 19. I went anyway. Nothing bad happened and for that I thank God.  Here are the fun highlights:

When I got to the terminal in Mendoza I found out my mini-bus wasn’t running that day. So they gave me a ticket on a real bus that left a half-hour later. This worked out great because I got a whole row to myself, comfy seats, food, and movies, for the 15 passenger van price. On rare occasions the disorganization down here plays to your favor.

Upon arriving in Santiago I bought a map, found a cab, and headed to my hostel. The cabbie hadn’t been driving for 30 seconds when we come upon about 10 men in ski-masks throwing flaming bags of trash into the road and trying to jump in front of my cab. The cabbie made it past them but only just. Welcome to the big city.

On Good Friday I fell in with 2 Canadian sisters and a British girl and we spent the day wandering the city. It was very nice except for the fact that it was raining buckets and no one had an umbrella.  The entire country was closed for the holiday. No museums, no cafes, no shops. Only the Cathedral, the fish market, and thank God the supermarket, were open. Lunch at the fish market was chaos. Once we were seated at an indoor fish restaurant this drunk guy started trying to hit on one of the Canadians. She was trying really hard to get the Spanish and so I translated such ingenious pick-up lines as “I want to be a tear on your cheek sliding down into your mouth” and “Tell her I said, I’m a man and she’s a woman.” Worse, the drunk had his hands on my shoulders and beer-breath in my face as he insistently gave me lines to translate. There was nowhere to go! The other girls said later that the look of disgust on my face was comical. Finally another table flagged down an over-worked waiter to make the drunk go away. Most uncomfortable 5 minutes in recent memory.

Saturday was my only day running around alone. I decided to use the morning to find the English-speaking, affiliated with the PCA, church for Easter service. This turned out to be a wonderful idea since it took me about 2 hours to get there from the hostel (with getting lost). It’s out at the very last stop on the Metro line 1 and the neighborhood isn’t the big city anymore. More upper-middle class suburban. It was like strolling around Chapel Hill except for the very visible Andes. This Metro stop is also home to the most enjoyable artisan market I have yet encountered in the Southern Cone. Real Artisans who sell really cool stuff in a gorgeous rustic/artistic maze of shops, alleys, and gardens. 

I had to rush back to the hostel to go white-water rafting. This was a good $40 decision. The other 4 people were not other young people but a family from Buenos Aires. Once we got to the rafting place a Chilean family joined us. Can you say Spanish practice!?!  It was a nice sunny day and I was very grateful to be there, enjoying what God has made. The Andes are every bit as mysterious as I wanted them to be and during the rafting trip they were faded in and out of either mist or smog but I wasn’t about to ask. It was a easy course and they had a camera man driving ahead in his car to take action shots of the rafters. I paid $5 for those pictures. Good deal!

Easter Sunday: My alarm didn’t go off. I ran out of my hostel dorm at 8:15 and frantically told the desk guy to call me a cab (service at 9:15, 40minute drive). I got dressed and packed in a rush. All the presents I had bought by now wouldn’t fit in my backpack so I had to carry them in a plastic bag. No shower, dressed in the dark, toting plastic bags…I have never felt or looked more like a bum. The cabbie made the same mistakes I did on Saturday getting lost up by the last Metro stop. I finally got the man to listen to me and turn around. I made it into the church at 9:05 and sat my bum-self down in the back. The pastor came to greet me and after “Hello, where are you from?” he asked, “are you moving?” Yep, bum. But a happy bum. It was like two hours of home. And it was Easter so double points.

The service ended with about 2 hours to spare until my bus back to Mendoza. Where better to kill some time than in the super-cool Artisan market? 11am Easter Sunday = almost every shop in the market is open. I’m not sure that Chileans put as much emphasis on Easter as we do despite the chocolate eggs in the grocery. I’m not complaining though. I gladly gave those irreligious shops my business and tip.