Tina's wanderings around the world

During this trip, I have been exposed to a lot of ugly things. Poverty and the great disparity between the rich and the poor, pollution, ugly travelers and tourists (not physically, mind you), intolerance and prejudice, massive machismo, excessive alcohol and drug use (why are we running away from reality?), theft…I certainly don’t mean for this to sound like my trip has been negative, but there are an abundance of things we are generally only exposed to via the media whilst not having a concrete sense of what these things look like and mean in the real world. We are able to keep these “ugly” things at arms’ length without letting them enter into our realities. As a traveler, I also have that option—to keep these things at a distance and not let them affect my world, my point of view, and in essence me. Not taking these things into account, especially when I am face to face with them, and ignoring them…obviously this leads to ignorance. I have ignored so many things in my life, and the...

Today I experienced the biggest amount of excitement since moving into this house--we finally fixed our wi-fi! I literally squealed with joy when I saw that it was working. Solitude, here I come! So be prepared for some more regular blogging (though they may be accompanied by pictures with lines through them--at least for the next two weeks--long story). You don't even understand how excited I am. I am sitting on my bed right now, in occasionally broken silence with my roommate as we both drink tangerine Emergen-C from our water bottles, reveling in the fact that I can sit and listen to MySpace music. Cannabis College by the creativeness of fantasy husband number one, Jason Mraz. Then I interrupted the glorious silence in the room to exclaim to my roommate: first, that Joshua Radin has new songs, then that one of them is with Ingrid Michaelson, and then that they're touring together right now. It turns my insides into confusion, because I'm so ecstatic to hear their music ...

Well, I haven't managed to find quite as much "me" time as I had hoped. I have recently completed week two of living in this new apartment and my energy level is still wavering like crazy. I still find myself justifying my need to be alone to nearly every single person in the house, when really I shouldn't be learning about it. But luckily I find myself alone in my room nearly every night which gives me some reading time, relaxing time, some whatever the hell I want to time. Though I will say that I've met some good, interesting people! First and foremost, my new favorite person in BA, Camille, a French ballet dancer, and her equally wonderful boyfriend Anthony. Camille and I bonded over a joined effort at making apple crisp (with, unfortunately, a lacking recipe), and then sat and drank wine outside and found that we are very similar in our energy levels. She and Anthony were the only other people in the house that didn't find it necessary to go out and party...

I have spent some time searching for different places I would like to volunteer with here in Buenos Aires, and my two attempts at finding places to volunteer with have been met with disappointment. The first place that I emailed, that looked very promising and got great reviews. It’s a non-prof whose goal is to basically bring joy into the lives of low-income (poverty-level) children. They arrange birthday parties (did they call my name? what?) and all kinds of other events, and it seemed like a great organization. However, they didn’t write back to me for a month and a half. Very lame, and this did not instill a lot of trust in me. On top of that, volunteers have to buy a shirt (whatever, not a big problem) and pay for taxis to go to each of their assignments. Taxis? Hello? Um, taxis are not exactly an inexpensive form of transportation, and I can’t say that I was too excited at the prospect of high tailing it around in a taxi…so I decided to leave that one be. The next place I looked...

Okay, sorry for the slight hold-up in finishing the story of Carnaval (which was over a month ago…whoo, that’s just a slight postponement!). There may very well be some large holes in my memory, so apologies to Jon, Kari and Marcus if I left anything out. Let’s see, now where were we…oh yeah, sitting on the bus from Iguazu to Rio, tightly holding my bag (by the way, totally just bought two mini-padlocks to lock up that bag while I’m on buses from now on—I also bought a headlamp, which is probably my coolest purchase since Marcus convinced me to buy yet another pair of silver shoes…). So there I was, floating in a state of bliss, thinking about my Australian and the impending visit with friends from home. So happy! My bus arrived in the seedy Rio bus station where I was greeted straight away with the weather that would define the rest of our time in Rio—clouds and rain. I went straight away to wake up Jon and Kari by jumping on them in their hostel beds. That was the plan, anyway, but ...

 I can't seem to make myself sit down and write about Rio! Every time I sit down to write about it, other things come out. Marcus, primarily, then some other rants (see below) and catching back up with the stream of consciousness that hasn't quite made it through my fingers and into written form for such a long time. But I feel like writing about now, and a few thoughts I had about today.  First, I went and got my haircut. Um, being in Buenos Aires amongst the trendsters is getting to me, and apparently my way at getting back is by going out and getting layers and bangs. Ha, take that, bitches! I don't think I won that fight...   Also, I am still camera-less, so there is no picture I can send as of yet. My day was industrious, though, because not only did I get a haircut (an errand I've been putting off since I was in Lima), but I also bought some running shoes! Yes, a very important step I needed to take before I could begin my attempt at losing some of the travel baby...