en la patagonia!!!!

Hello all!!
Much has transpired since my last entry. I´ve spent my first week working at the farm in Epuyen, been up many mountains, down many rivers. The work is good; lots of gardening, odd jobs, building, etc. It is a very relaxed place. The owner Gabriel is very quiet and a little distant, but his wife and son and lovely, and my three mates on the farm (mom and daughter from New York, and Noemie from Quebec) are great. We´re in a valley surrounded by mountains and pine forest. It´s much prettier even than this little picture I send you. Anyway, much to say, but I´d rather tell you all later in person than sit in front of a computer now, so be well and be seeing you in two short weeks!

desde Córdoba!!

I´m writing from my hostel in downtown Córdoba. Have a little time to kill so I figured I might as well write.
So, what a day yesterday! Woke up at 4:30 am to catch my bus from Mendoza to here. Spent a seemingly endless ride in and out of sleep, arrive here at 5:30 and immediately rushed from the terminal dowtown to the place where tickets for Manu Chao were supposedly sold. I get there and despite the fact that I called the day before and specifically asked if there would be tickets if I came by at 6 pm, they were sold out. Ok, no panicking, I still have a chance if I haul ass 20 blocks down to the stadium itself. I rush there full of nerves, arrive, and thankfully they´ve just brought the last batch of tickets. Now I rush back downtown to find a bed to crash in later, eat a bit, do a 180, and join the parade of hippies and punks and anarquist and rastas marching across the bridge to the show.
What a show!! It was completely absurd. Thousands of people packed in losing their minds. The opening act was a huge drum troupe dressed up for carnaval, who played and danced themes against police violence. Then on came Radio Bemba Sound System and Manu front and center. By the second song my clothes were completely soaked through with sweat, mostly not mine. For most of the show I was right up front and center, 3 meters from the stage, and that meant being smashed up against everyone around me, lifting crowd surfers over my head, planting myself against the waves of people pushing back and forth and writhing up and down every time a ska beat came around. It was raging fun. My only complaint is that it was hard to breath with so much humidity and smoke, and dehydration was endemic. I was fortunate to be generally bigger than the average argentine, so I could hold my ground and not get smashed, and still be able to see the stage and jump up for some fresh air now and then.
They played 3 hours straight, weaving all the themes into each other, and pausing only toward the end (during one of 3 encores) to let anti-mining activists talk to the audience. It was amazing- I´ve never been to a concert where the artist let activists talk right in the middle of the show, but then Manu Chao is just down like that (background: in the south of Mendoza, new gold deposits have been discovered, but extracting them would threaten to contaminate a huge portion of the regio`n´s drinking water, thus the slogan of the resistence is ¨Sí a la vida, no a la minería!¨).
So anyway, after waking up and eating a hearty breakfast at 2 pm, to day was spent wandering around this pleasant, if balmy city. Saw lots of huge cathedrals, art museums, parks, talk to a lot of interesting people here and there. Climbed up a huge cypress tree on a hill above the zoo and watched a great sunset. Now I´m waiting for my aunt`s friend who lives here to come by so we can visit, and then hopefully I can get some sleep before my bus back to Mendoza bright and early tomorrow.

despedidas y renacimiento

Hello all!
What a whirlwind month November has been! Many things to tell, little time. Last week was the end of classes at UN Cuyo. The weekend before I did my first fruit fast to help me concentrate on the 300 page book I had to read about political violence and ethnicity in andean countries. I just drank orange juice the whole day. It had mixed results concentration-wise, but it was definitely cleansing. So then I turned in my huge final report and now I just have an oral exam next week for my prehispanic culture class and my final for folclore dance. We´ve really stepped it up in the latter class, and we´re working toward completing a Malambo, which is basically a long improvised series of zapateo (see these links for examples that will raise your expectations entirely too much: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl5VQb3FOG0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvlVO9Tmy30&feature=related)
But, yeah, things are really winding down here. I have a little over a week left in Mendoza; next Saturday morning I leave early for Patagonia, land of mountains, lakes, and forests, and the farm I´ll be on until a little before Christmas. It´s getting time for many goodbyes. Monday and Tuesday I spent on the farm in Tunuyan for the last time. The last day we got up really early in the morning to go out into the desert and collect medicinal herbs. It´s amazing how many types of little trees and flowering shrubs are out in a landscape that seems barren from the highway. Later in the day we reinforced a tower we built and figured out how to lift three giant drums of water up onto it for a gravity-powered drip irrigation system. That night Azucena made mulberry pie, which was amazing, and then I said goodbye to everyone and rushed to barely catch the last bus back to town and rode back in a daze.
Last weekend our program went on a trip to San Rafael, a region a few hours south of here with canyons and rivers, along which the only vegetation grows. We went to a huge man-made lake with super green water and swam and slid down huge sandy cliffs on our butts. Our argentine guide taught us to play truco, an argentine card game similar to pocker, but much more complicated deceitful and fun. A few of us got pretty addicted. The last day we found a cave near our cabin and played truco in there and felt very guachesco.
Goodness gracious, now I rushing to spend time with friends in the little time that´s left. Tomorrow I´m off to Cordoba because MANU CHAO is playing in estadio juniors, which will be a completely insane show (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Vqd4rGcjg&feature=related). Trying to check things off my lists of things to do before I leave Mendoza, but a lot of things just necessarily fall by the wayside. It´s frustrating because there´s a lot of great things going on that I´ve just discovered in the last few weeks. Like, I ran across a community center in my neighborhood of african music where they have drum circles and dance lessons and the people are really great and chill. Still, I must say I´ll be very ready to leave Mendoza when the time comes. I need to get the hell out into the countryside, work, hike, get more sleep, and listen to more silence.
So this may well be my last post from Mendoza, if not from Argentina. Hope it finds everyone well, and before you know it I´ll be headed back to the northern hemisphere.

desde Valparaíso!

My, what a bustling last couple of weeks. What can I tell you? I´m writing from Hostal Polaco in downtown Valparaíso, where I been since Friday and will be leaving very early tomorrow morning, sadly. I just finished putting avocado on my poor sunburned nose and cheeks and ate a dinner of bread, many avocados (abundant and delicious here) and Chirimoya, one of the many fruits that exists only in the alternate universe of agriculture that is Chile. Chirmoya has grayish green skin with lumps like an artichoke, and full of delicious white flesh that is best described as tasting like mango and coconut combined. So delicious! Obviously. The hostel has been full of other travelers: frenchies, austrians, aussies, kiwis, all good folk.

Yesterday I met up with friends from the farm in Tunuyan who are en route to another farm in south Chile and we explored the city. And, what a place! Very much like San Francisco, but smaller and more working class. It´s basically an industrial port giving way to steep hills covered with pastel houses and churches and cable cars (just for touist use nowadays) and big globs of mist rolling in from the sea. The neighborhood I´m in is downtown and just soo artsy, yet somehow not that pretentious. There are murals lining every street- fantastic murals! Really strong colors and from all different artists, some trippy (bears in a mushroom castle), some channeling indigenous mapuche designs, many political- one showed a skeleton in a helmet with a US flag scything a field of flowers (subtle, eh?)and bore the message "They can cut down all the flowers, but they can`t steop spring from coming." On the street climbing up the the hostel- and I mean climbing, we´re talking a 60 degree angle- you pass Biblioteca Popular (People´s Library) Salvador Allende, where a guy in a red beret lets people hang out, read his lefty books and play instruments. He explained to me that Hugo Chavez has been key in his financing of most of the other left wing folks elected down here is the past few years, from Evo to Correa to Lugo. Needless to say, if I had to live in a city, Valpo would make the A list.

Then this morning I took a bus an half hour south to Quintay, a little beach town in the middle of a huge rolling landscape of hills and pine forest. Jesus, what a place. I spent the day hopping from rock to rock along the jagged coastline and watching the waves come and crash against the rocks and mist float up into the hills. I was still in a trance on bus back, blaring cumbia and all. Tomorrow it´s back through the mountains to my little corner of Mendoza, and to study my arse off for the two big exams this coming week. But then, besides finals, classes are basically over. But I had to come back to Chile one more time while I could.

What else is new? I don´t rightly remember. Last week was bustling; lots of asados (cook out), merriment, and intense classes. A highlight was last Saturday when we got back to Mendoza and walked into a Celtic music fest in progress. There was an Irish band from Buenos Irish Aires with an uillean piper! Unbelievable. Then the best part was we were dancing off to the side and a woman from one of the groups asked us if we could come and dance up in front of the stage to try and get people engaged, so up we went and did our best to step dance in front of thousands of people in the plaza. It was amazing, and I must say, having had some instruction in zapateo, I can apply a lot of my moves to step dancing. Needless to say, we stole the show, or at least borrowed it for a minute. After one set we were completely exhausted, and coughing from the smog from all the buses that pass the plaza, but well worth it.
Well, as always, much more to tell, but I must awaken painfully early toworrow, and my brain is pretty cloudy anyway. Last week already seems like a long time ago. So, wish me bon voyage and sweet dreams.

It´s evening and I´m sitting in a locutorio writing this post and periodically leaning back in my chair to check out the sunset through the window. It´s an intense blend or orange and pink against the chalky blue lumps of mountain. I´m feeling pretty mangy because I had to get up at 6:45 to catch a ride with Azucena back to the city from the farm. That means not much sleep because I was up late tending the fire in outside the cabin while the others baked the round of bread for the week. My rewards for this violence to my body (lack of sleep): watching the sun rise over the desert, not paying bus fair, and being at the market to buy organic apples and carrots (rare specimens down here). The carrots are stubby, thumb sized, and reddish orange and have a fantastic sweet woody taste.
The last couple of weeks have treated me well. Besides farm life on weekends, I´ve caught some great reggae shows (said genre is BIG down here; I´ve seen more dreads here in the last months than I´ve seen in my whole life in the Midwest), discovered a pretty good micro-brew, read piles of extremely interesting, if exhausting works about Incan society and agriculture, about Mexican and Peruvian socialist leaders, and other good stuff. And I´m halfway through the Humanure Handbook- which is fantAstic! An American ex-pat who lives on a neighboring farm in Tunuyan loaned me the book, and she has a whole compost system set up based on it. Wow, I can´t believe I´ve been pooping in drinking water and filling landfills my whole life while I could have been creating rich soil. Well, always room for self improvement.
I´ve really gone overboard dipping my toes in different books at once. Here´s a list of books I´m in various stages of starting and completing:
1. Humanure Handbook
2. writings of Subcomandante Marcos
3. The Cosmic Race- by Jose Vasconcelos
4. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
5. Harvest of Empire- by Juan Gonzalez
Am I forgetting something? Pretty absurd, but better to have fingers in too many pies than to have already eaten all of them, right?
Well, many other things worth telling, but for now I think I´ll leave you with a typical day on the farm in Tunuyan, a Friday, let´s say . . .
I wake up gradually to the sound of the other volunteers creaking on the wood floor and clinking dishes in the kitchen. I lift the pile of cats off my sleeping bag, and eat a breakfast of bread, dulce de batata (sweet potato jam), tea, and a some oats if we´re lucky. We head out and starting the mornings projects like repairing fences for the hens or horses, collecting firewood, mud building, or hoeing and prepating beds in the garden. The air is dry and brisk, but things heat up quickly once the sun is high. The mountains across the way are the same chalky blue as the sky, with white caps. We work and hum and talk until midday. Then we gather tools and head back to the cabin, where Jorge conducts the daily yoga session on the grass outside. We stretch and do breathing excercises following his slow, treebeard-voiced instructions. Then we´re called to lunch by the smell of lunch boiling in a pot across the way- usually some blend of lentils or chick peas with squash and various greens from the garden. We eat and slowly descend into the after-lunch coma and spend the next hour inside away from the hot midday sun talking or reading. Nacho appears at various points, asking for help with a new project like his ¨house¨or repairing his ¨car.¨Eventually, we head back out to work, if we´re lucky, there´s work to do in the shade of the woods where they´re constructing new cabins for a planned retreat for artists, with the financial support of Marcos, an LA native and former NASA employee with an anger problem who was so fed up with US politics the last 10 years that he abandoned the country. He sleeps in one of the cabins and takes care of feeding the herd of the resident abandoned dogs that are always in train when he comes by. We work the rest of the afternoon. On really hot days (read, always from now on) we strip down and dive into the icey water of the irrigation ditch. It comes straight down from the mountains, and you can only stay in, gasping and shreiking, for about 20 seconds at a time, but man you aren´t hot for the rest of the day afterwards. As the day get on, we start to watch the spectacle that is the sunset over the mountains. Especially if there are some whisps of clouds, it is pretty amazing. Basically, it looks like a volcanic explosion over the line of peaks until it finally fades, and we gather tools and head back to the cabin. There, we put on the radio and a kettle and help make dinner, which is usually similar to lunch, but often Azucena makes pizza or noodles. We stuff ourselves again, wash dishes, play music (the banjo is now resident at the farm), maybe make a bonfire, maybe read and write in our journals, play with cats, make a fire for hot water to shower (only one Fridays), and eventually climb back into sleeping bags and sleep like logs.

So there you have it. Country life is good, city life aint bad either. And the weeks sure fly by. Tomorrow we´re going to a huge open air market that the bolivian immigrants put on- the only place to find piles of used stuff, anything from old instruments to clothes and tools. Then there´s a monthly folklore dance fest in a plaza east of my neighborhood and Evan and I are going to get some experience and brush up on our steps.
I´ve got two weeks of class until my second midterm, and then school is more or less over, and we wait for finals in late November. I´m off to Chile in two weeks to spend time with the ocean once more before I leave. Stay tuned for further adventures, and if you can, start pooping in a bucket. Sawdust is the key.

It´s the absurd little details about Argentina that make this country so poetic. Walking back from the bike repair shop, I´m passed by a dump truck with dozens of people (looks like a couple families with kids, moms, teens, elderly people) seated on the rim of the bed. On the other side of the street a father holds up his young daughter without pants so she can pee in the sand by the sidewalk. I cross the old railroad tracks that divide my neighborhood from another section of the city. They were abandoned during Neo-Liberal reforms in the 90´s that determined that trains were no longer profitable enough, and now they form a belt of desert and rusting steel cars with grafitti in the middle of upscale neighborhoods; a welcome open space that serves as a de facto park during the day and a mugger´s paradise during the night.
It´s getting dark now, and my lack of sleep is catching up to me. Had to get up at sunrise on the farm to catcha ride back to Mendoza with Azucena in their noble jalopy loaded down with shelves and tables and baked goods for the Bioferia (farmer´s market). The poor engine was convulsing by the time we got into town, but we gave it words of comfort and gentle pats. The night before was break baking night, and I set outside the cabin and tended the fire in the mud oven while the others kneaded huge wads of dough into various forms. In the end there were bearclaws, baguettes, loaves with onion and rosemary, dried figs. Yesterday day we collected old scraps of trellises for firewood and prepared beds for tomatoes. It was hot enough in the midday sun that me and Federico took a dip in the icey water of the irrigation ditches. You just submerge yourself a few seconds, emerge squealing, then climb out feeling great and wanting to do it again. Jorge has been having more energy lately, and that means yoga classes every day after lunch. More wwoofers are starting to show up. Right now, there´s a girl from Connecticut, one from France, and one from New York. Two girls from Seattle were also there, but they were a little too Yanqui, and decided to leave after a week.
Speaking of Yanquiness, I caved to the urge and bought a poncho last week. Besides the obvious dashigness it imparts on me (think Clint Eastwood in Fistful of Dollars), it´s very comfortable for farmwork. I hoed a bed in just poncho and boxers (enjoy the double meaning).
Oh, and my poor bicycle, Rocia. The tires had a pretty worn tread when I bought them, but last Thursday they went entirely flat on me when I was deep in the south of town doing volenteer work, and I had to ride them flat way the hell back to the university and they´re pretty well shot, along with some other little pieces coming apart. Oh well, she´s in the shop until monday, and hopefully she´ll be healthy by then.
So the interesting thing about living near the mountains is that you can see a different climate in the distance- that is, it can be baking hot in the streets up Mendoza and you glance off into the distance where there´s two feet of snow. This can be tricky at times. Observe last Sunday: I was needig a day in the mountains, so I got up to catch the 8 am bus to Salto. It was chilly and spitting a little rain outside, but I bundled up. No problem. On the bus, half an hour later as we head west I realize that it has begun to snow. First a few flakes. Then more. Then so thick I can´t see the mountains through the white haze that has enclosed the highway. I arrive at my destination and climb off the bus. Snow up to may ancles and despite being in the mountains, I can´t see the peaks. The only return bus arrives at 7 pm, and I´m already shivering and soggy. Ok, so I stop into a roadside restaurant, pay too much for a bown of thin soup, and relish the woodstove before bundling up and heading for the path that leads up into the Sierra.
The rest of the day treated me pretty well. My body kicked into to high gear for heat production and I found a dry crevice under an outcrop of rock to eat lunch. It was amazing to peel an tangerine- an explosive orange against a landscape of solid white. By late afternoon I had gotten way up high using vegetation to shimmy up the mountainside, and the sky cleared enough to have a fanstastic view of the valley and other peaks. But, not being very smart, I did what I always do: kept climbing higher and higher saying, ¨Oh, I´ve got plenty of time.¨Along comes 6 o clock and I realize I´ve really got to turn back. But going down it much harder. Basically, it comes down to me having to pick my way clinging to thorny vegetation, slipping and landing on my tailbone innumerable times, and just sometimes just sliding down on my butt to go faster. Somehow I got back to the stop in time and sat dumbfounded feeling circulation return to my face and extremities and making a huge puddle all over the aisle. What a great day.

It´s funny how intuition works. I was just talking to someone the other day about how I hadn´t thrown up in years and how it was actually a fairly interesting experience. Yesterday, I wake up in my bed on the farm with wooginess in my stomach. I take my waking slow and go out to work, but nothing doing, I´m not feeling well at all. I head back to our lodging and Azucena makes me some infusion of medicinal roots to fix me up- little did I know that by ´fix me up´ she meant it would make me eject the contents of my stomach. The rest of the day was spent in bed feeling to weak to sit up strait. Finally, by 5 or so I summoned the strength to walk 2 miles into Tunuyan and catch the bus back to Mendoza. The bus arrives relleno, not a single open seat, so I sit on the floor in the aisle, clutching my backpack a plastic bag and feeling every bump in the road reverberate in my gut. One of the longer hours of my life.Oh well, that´s what you get for eating uncooked produce in a small town in Argetina.
The day before was quite interesting. We get sundays off on the farm, and I stayed longer this time because this next week I don´t have many classes, it being the quasi-spring break here. So myself and the three other workers on the farm decided to head for the mountains. We take a bus an hour to the south to a little town called Pareditas, having foolishly trusted a tourist guidebook that said that a volcano was nearby. We get there, find out that the volcano is at least an hour´s drive up into the altiplano and there aren´t any buses that go that way. Ok, so the mountains look fairly close from the service station where we are, so we start walking west along a country road and get way out in the middle of nowhere, nothing but fields of garlic and membrillo trees and desert. After an hour or so the road stops and we cross a field and encounter a fence, on the other side of which is a dense barrier of spiky desert vegetation, and those goddam mountains look as far away as they were an hour ago. We decide to cut our losses and sit down to eat by an irrigation ditch with a line of huge weeping willows. We´re way the hell out, and figure the owners of the land are nowhere to be found. But after a while a young couple with two kids comes along, leading horses. They say hello and set to work hoeing the field of oregano across the way. We decide to ask them if there´s a good place to visit nearby. They laugh and say there´s nothing, and add that they thought we knew the landlord and we probably shouldn´t be there. We take our time packing things up and then here comes the owner. A middle aged guy with curly hair and sweatpants and workboots. We expect trouble, but when he comes closer he welcomes us and starts to converse. Turns out he´s a professor of literature at the local finishing school. He says he was sitting in one of the willow trees just yesterday practicing nudism and he had a feeling that somebody would come, and here we are. He invites us to join him for coffee and we start a fire. We talk about a famous french pilot who crashed in the mountains nearby, an episode mentioned in the book Wind Sand and Stars, which one of the girls had read. He talks about the importance of spending time on this land to recharge his positive energy to attract coindicendes, which is directly related to the book I´m reading at the moment, the Celestine Prophecy, which I found a translation of in spanish abandoned on a bookshelf in my house in Mendoza, and my host mom wasn´t really sure where it came from. Maybe belonging to her brother? Anyway, we pass hours talking, and later he gives us a ride back to Pareditas, stopping to show us a little shrine he started to San Expedito, the patron of urgent miracles. He said he was in this place in the middle of the desert and picked up a red stone and asked San Expedito for help resolving family troubles, and his wish was granted. Since then, thousands of pilgrims have come and collected red stones along the pathway to the little wood shrine, covered with plastic flowers and a little statue of the saint. He says he doesn´t really believe in all of it, but it´s impressive how much it helps people to believe in such things. We return to the town, and are invited to return some other weekend to ride horses.
Other than that, not that awfully much is new with me. I took a midterm in my class of history of the political ideas of Latin America last week. It took 2 hours to answer five questions, but I think I nailed it. Last Thursday I spent all day helping a local non-profit organization that works with kids and young mothers to translate their application for a grant. They want money to buy five computers to teach job skills to young women- half of whom haven´t completed seventh grade.
Oh, and I almost forgot. Two weeks ago today I finally couldn´t take it any more and I bought a bike!!! I searched all through town and finally found the cheapest, rickityest, ugliest piece of crap I could find. It cost about $40. The front break doesn´t exist, it has one gear, the tires are almost worn through, the seat is like a rock, and I adore it! I decided to name her Rocia, after Sancho Panza´s donkey. She aint pretty, but I can get places so fast, and no more taking the wrong bus and ending up out in the boonies. I just have to take it easy. Argentina is up there with Italy for the most reckless drivers on the planet. There are virtually no traffic laws, or at least nobody cares it there are. So, you know, I take my time and don´t count on being seen. A little daily terror is part of a balanced diet.
And that´s the way it is. Yesterday marked the first day of spring, and two months since I got here. Almost halfway over already. Time just isn´t something that is paid attention to here much, so it sneaks by.

all right . . .

So. Finally found the time and motivation to catch up and get things back up to date. So much to tell . . impossible . . must summarize:
1) Two weeks ago I went to Chile. The ride there was quite the trial. So, earlier that week it had snowed and thus the pass through the mountains was closed. Finally it was reopened on Thursday morning, which is when I left from Mendoza. Ah, silly Noah. I forgot that all the people who had been stuck one side or the other for the five previous days also wanted to cross. The result: the bus got within a mile or so of the border pass way up on a mountain road, feet of snow on both sides, about 1 pm. Then we stopped. There were hundreds of vehicles winding away in a line ahead of us. Long story short, we remained in that bus for the ext 6 hours, moving forward a few feet every now and then. It was dark by the time we got into the huge, chilly cast iro terminal building to have our luggage, documents, and persons thoroughly searched for any trace of raw agricultural product (or weapon, while they were at it) that might cotaminate Chile´s production. I got to Viña del Mar at midnight and slept in a rented room across from the bus terminal. Ah, but no it gets better. The next morning I reached my destination, the small coastal town of Maitencillo, deserted at this time of year, and a little hostel/b&B on top of the cliffs looking down on the sea. The next two days were spent enjoying the aforementioned to the fullest. The first day was chilly and cloudy and I walked along the beach, sniffing, examining bizarre caves, rocks, and marie flora, capped off by the most amazing sunset I´ve ever seen in my life. The sky went on infinitely. It was like taking one Missouri sunset and stretching it out over the surface of the earth like a balloon. Everything was lit up with an intense dark yellow. On the way back a wave came up to where I was balancing on a slippery rock and knocked me over. I cut open my shin and got soaked from the chest down. Fair exchange for a great day. On day 2 I followed a horse trail by a pine forest on the tops of the cliffs way down the way until I found and descended to a beach completely sealed off from the rest by cliffs. It was lined with caves and the sand was covered with tiny crab hatchlings that disappeared under the sad when I got stepped toward them. The cliffs were covered with all kinds of wild relatives of potatoes, radishes, cucumbers, and parsely among others. The trip back to Mendoza was much less trying- the argentines seem much more apathetic about quality control of their agriculture. And when I got back to my neighborhood in Mendoza that evening with the sun setting I felt the first sense of this place being my home, and not just some extended weih station en route to somewhere else.
2) The last two weekends I´ve been going out to a farm an hour outside Mendoza that I discovered through wwoof, and it´s been just what I needed to get relief from city and classes. It´s called Madre Tierra (see www.elperegrinorganico.com if curious) and it produces vegetables, is bordered by several organic apple, cherry, and plum orchards, and is populated by a chaotic assortment of chickens, dogs, cats, horses, one sulky bull, one nutritionist, one yoga instructor, the free spirited little childrens or the former two, two aging american ex-pat hippies, and whatever volunteers like myself who come through. Recently sculpted abode huts, wood-heated shower, and a view of the Andes until the trees leaf out, and swimmable irrigation ditches are among the accomodations. I expect to be heading out there just about every thursday afternoon and coming back with Azucena (the nutritionist/matriarch of the farm) every saturday morning for the market in the city; it´s just what I need to recharge my batteries and quiet my mind after a week here in the city.
3) And, classes. Yes, I´ve got some. Two interesting history classes with mounds of reading and smart argentines, one on pre-colonial America, one on the writings of leading American (read: Hispano-America) political figures. Other than that, I´ve got the most laid back mandatory spanish class in the universe, and a class of Folklore dance, which is fantastic. Folklore is the old-time dance of the gaucho. Basically, Folkore is like Flamenco, but more less severe: like the difference between elegant english country dance and an appalachian hoedown. The best part is the zapateo, or tap dancing part (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjn4n2cRZ_g for a rough idea). My professor, Don Antonio, is a tiny old man with a white moustache and vest. Of course, when I return, free folklore lessons will be foisted upon one and all regardless of interest level.
And that´s the way it is. Be well all, and stay tuned.

PICTURES!!!!

Sorry to go so long without a post, but I didn't want to break my promise. So, let's see. Starting with the top left and across the rows: 1) Me up above the patio where I have to go to get cell phone reception when inside the house ( I could go outside, but that would require shoes). 2) My humble abode with instruments and books strewn about. 3) Fun with Camilo's prodigous ears. 4) Alicia y Camilo (my mother and my 'little brother'). 5) A nightime view of 2776 Cayetano Silva, a beautiful sight after walking 20 blocks from downtown at god knows what time of night.
Well, there you have it, some visual accompaniment to my posts. Thanks to my generous friend Cameron who loaned me his camera. I'll have much to write soon, so stay tuned.

whew!!

Oh man, it´s the first week of classes and now I realize that I´m in college again and this hasn´t been some bizarre, prolonged vacation. This is our ´´shopping time´´ which means we go to a bunch of classes and then pick 3 or 4 to take in addition to our mandatory spanish class. So far I´ve gone to 2 history classes and 2 theatre classes. The history classes are very tranquilo and pretty similar to our classes here; a room with 30-50 people and a professor lecturing. Insterestingly, so far all of my professors have been women. Cool, eh? The theatre class I just got out of was quite interesting. It had a focus of voice techniques and basically we spent the class doing various stretches and breathing and vocal chord exercises on the floor. All the students were, well, you know, theatre people just like in the US. All of them full of goofy, exuberant, awkward energy. It was pretty fun, seeing as how I was the only norteamericano present.
But enough of school, let´s talk about this last weekend. Wow. What a pair of days, especially saturday. So first we went on the group-sponsored winery tour. We went to a huge winery that had a great view over the dormant grape wines to the snow-capped Andes. Then we took a tour through the huge complex that went way down into the basement with the stacks of barrels and bottles of 80 year old wines. We drank samples all along the way that were really heady. Wow. The one strait out of the barrel was the best. Really thick and intesely woody. Kind of a bouquet of old newspaper or something. But good. Go figure. Then we took tango lessons from the most stereotypically italian guy you can imagine. Greasy hair, mole, profuse chest hair, etc. It was a good time.
Then there´s Saturday night. A group of us went to see Godwana, a reggae band from Chile. The concert was at the biggest boliche (nightclub) in South America, and it wasn´t hard to believe that claim. It was like an indoor stadium with bars and balconies and ridiculous lights. Anyway, the band was fantastic! Especially the singer. They all radiated such good energy and driving rhythm and not one person in the stadium wasn´t dancing. You all should check them out on the web. I{m sure they have a myspace or something. After the show, we stayed and danced to goofy techno and regueton hits in the most packed dance floor I can imagine until something like 5 am. And getting back to downtown Mendoza was quite the fiasco, but we got home somehow.It was absurd. Needless to say, I didn´t do much on Sunday. I did go see a local choir that sang some really bizarre, interesting pieces by local composers.
Well, there´s much more to tell, but I want to go home! I´m starving. Hope this finds everyone well. The next post, I promise pictures. Really.

Saludos!!
So, I´m rather overdue for an entry. About all I´ve said about Mendoza is that I´m here, and that I had the flu and was passed out the first few days. Well, now I´ve been here more than a week so lets see. Mendoza is a funny city. On one level, it´s gorgeous. To the west you can see the blue shadow of the mountains. Along every street runs ditces called acequias that carry water from mountain springs to water all the huge old trees that line virtually every street. The most popular is one that must be related to a sycamore- the leaves are a little different, but it has the same puffy balls of seeds and the same white bark with gray splotches. But yeah, even now, in the height of winter, it´s beautiful. I can´t imagine what it´ll be like when all the leaves come back. Every now and then, though, you come across a lot that isn´t irrigated, and are reminded that this would be a desert. The ground is like chalk and the plants are dry grasses and various bizzare cacti.
Then there´s the strange class consciousness. There are a lot of very fancy houses with patios and orange trees and tiled courtyards. But thing is, all the fancy houses are fortified. They all have black metal gates, bars across the window, barbed wire. There are a lot of clay walls that have shards of broken glass glued to the top. It´s not that this is a violent city. People generally do not own guns. But there´s a lot of theft. And when you get outside of the upper middle class neighborhoods where my family lives close to the city center, there are some very poor neighborhoods where the houses have stone walls and sheet metal roofs and broken windows. Also, there was no anti-littering campaign here during the 60´s. So the idea of not just throwing you´re trash in the street is pretty new here. The streets are pretty inundated with bottles and papers and whatnot.
But thus ends the bad things about Mendoza. Otherwise, it´s quite a place. Every single child plays soccer in the street. There are street signs with the image of a soccer player in the same way we have ¨drive slow: school zone¨signs. There´s a bus stop on every corner. Not that that stops Noah from taking the wrong one now and then and ending up on the opposite side of the city, but let´s say public transport is the norm, not the exception. The buses are huge and clunky and you´ll go flying when they take off if you don´t grab the bars fast. There´s also an electric trolley, which is much quieter, but no less clunky.
When I first got here, it seemed like American music was everywhere. The most random ten year old pop you could imagine. But actually, it´s getting better. ´The bus drivers generally play cantina music or requetón hits, or some tango-infused tecno. Whatever they play, you can get it involves an accordeon (sp?).
Two myths about Argentina debunked:
1. You have to eat meat all the time.
Untrue. It is true that most people eat a ton of meat, but there are vegetable stands on every street corner with tomatoes, cabbage, eggplant, strawberries, oranges, potatoes, etc., and generally it´s domestic produce, even in the winter (how nice to be by the ocean). Plus, since I have a single mom, she can be very accomodating (I still get to eat a bowl of oats every morning!!). Also, there´s a huge indoor central market where you can buy almost any kind of bean or grain or nut (peanuts, or maní, while not cheap, are available, and I carry a bag with me at all times). The only foods that don´t really exist here- nut butters and bread that isn´t white. Oh Uprise, how I miss you.
2. There aren´t any Indians- all Europeans.
Maybe true in Buenos Aires, but here there are a lot of Indians. They may not be officially recognized people still living on tribal lands, but I would say 50% of the people on the street have predominantly indigenous features. I definitely stick out more than I expected with my sandy brown hair and lily white skin. Yes, there are other people who look like me, but they probably are about as common here as Asians in Columbia. Not exotic, but not on every corner either.
Ok, blah blah. Last thing I must tell is how I spent yesterday afternoon. I finally got the hell out of the city (it´s a beautiful city, but still loud, a bit polluted, etc.). I took a 1 hour bus ride to a place called Potrerillos in the mountains. Basically, it left me at a lake in a valley with mountains on all sides. Not snow capped. Not that deep in the mountains. But huge. Think Arizona. Anyway, I waded into this crystal clear, frigid lake and then walked up to the edge of one of the mountains and started climbing. 15 minutes later I was way the hell up high and had a view of things very distant, including snow-capped peaks that turned pink as the sun went down. Ahh. When the day to day here gets me down, I´ve got that.

desde la cama

Well, what an interesting last few days. So, let´s just say our group checked out the nightlife in Buenos Aires on Thursday night and by lunch on Friday I had a migrane and a fever. When we landed in Mendoza that evening I was approaching delerious, but my host family was very understanding. Anyway, I spent the entire day Saturday sleeping except getting up to eat breakfast and dinner, which took an amazing amount of force. Fortunately, with all the sleep, water, oranges, oatmeal, etc. I´ve been improving so that by yesterday evening I had enough energy to string my guitar and banjo and go for a walk. I´m just about to start orientation now in downtown Mendoza and I just have a nasty cough and drippy nose left over, so I probably didn´t have H1N1, but rather some other bug associated with the change of climate (not to be confused with climate change).
But enough whining. Let me introduce my family. We have Alicia, a 51 year old who is very caring and wonderful (even talked to her cousing to order a huge bag of oats for me- what more could I want?). Her brother, Alfredo, is an electrician and has a workshop across the courtyard from my bedroom (yes they have a courtyard shared with the neighbors with various ferns and citrus trees and all that good stuff, a place where I will be spending a lot of time playing instruments and such). Then there is the cocker spaniel, Camilo, who is completely insatiable. He leaps into you laps and demands love non-stop. But it´s ok because he has big floppy ears and doesn´t bark unless the doorbell rings.
Things are pretty nice. Mendoza is gorgeous even in the wintertime, if a bit littered with bottles and such in the street. You can see the shadow of the mountains from downtown. Well, more later. Hope to have pictures sometime soon.

desde Buenos Aires!

It´s day 2 in Buenos Aires. Making this post from the hotel lobby. It´s been a whirlwind last 36 hours. Buenos Aires is a HUGE city with so many stylishly dressed people walking purposefully and so many hustlers. It´s unfortunate that virtually every conversation I´ve had with a friendly Argentine on the street has always eventually turned to some sort of scam or charity that they are supposedly collecting money for. The good news is that my spanish is good enough that I can make it at least 30 seconds into a conversation without being asked, ¨So, where are you from?¨ I just walked to exchange my currency and ran across a highland bagpiper in a plaza. He wasn´t very good, but it has really made my afternoon so far. Really looking forward to getting to Mendoza by tomorrow night and having a home. The hotel is nice, but I haven´t been able to unpack or string my instruments as of yet, because 1 more flight is still on the way.
Visited older neighborhoods of La Boca and San Telmo, which were really nice. Lots of pastel colored tenements and restaurants extending into the avenues and pigeons and chubby cats lounging around. So far the food has been great and not all that much meat. Hooray.

heading out

Wow, my first post as a blogger. How momentous. Anyway, today is the last full day at home. Spent all morning jamming clothes and toiletries (sp?) into my bags and spent the evening cutting yet more chard and the first purple beans. In a minute I'll eat a huge dinner of trout and canteloupe and beet greens and try to get lots of sleep after I try to figure out how to take apart the damn banjo to fit it in carry-on.
Tomorrow is going to be a long day. Airports are right up there with hospitals among desolate places to be, but I've got good books to keep me company.
Well, my next post will be from the Southern Hemsiphere, and probably much less casual that this one. Sorry if the first is a little banal. But God is in the details. Or is it the Devil?