BRASIL

PART 1 goodbye argentina hello brasssiww!

Sao Paulo: a colorful start to an epic trip

Farrah and I, the cheapasses we are, ended up arriving to every destination in Brazil at around 5 am to get the cheap red eye flights. We landed in Sao Paulo to our hostel (14 hours before check in) and passed out on some awesome bean bags until noon.

The next afternoon we walked around the city stupefied by the racial diversity. Coming from Buenos Aires, it was refreshing to see something different than Italian/Spanish descendents. It was especially awesome to see so many asian paulistas and refreshing to walk around without feeling that I was obviously a foreigner. On the other hand, watching us communicate was not so awesome but quite hilarious. The process generally followed three steps; we first tried “portuñol” (Portuguese and Spanish) to communicate with people, and then due to their confusing looks we would revert just to Spanish, and then finally to onomatopoeia and goofy hand gesticulations. Later that night we chilled with two Brazilian girls who studied at Berkeley at a local samba club. Some of the best live music I’ve ever heard!

HEE-OO JE JANNEIRO

We wake up the next day and take a 7 hour bus to Rio de Janeiro even though I thought Sao Paulo was cool and I’d like to live there short term. (Hard to believe I came to this conclusion even though we were there for less than 24 hours). An hour after getting off the bus, we somehow already get invited to a beach party with locals and are sipping beer and listening to some chill reggae music. It was awesome to be at my first beach and to do it with some fun Brazilians. I was definitely impressed by how open and warm people in Rio were. We had some nice extended conversations with people that night and I even played chess with this guy who studied abroad in Vancouver. It’s awesome how receptive they were to meet and help strangers—I would like to somehow let my life be more open to being interrupted. I feel that since I’ve been abroad, I’ve opened my life back up again and that has allowed me to meet tons of awesome people and build some deeper than usual relationships—I hope that I can bring some of this back to the states.

Rio was a blast, we ended up doing the two major beaches (Copacabana and Ipanema), going to the Pao de Acucar.

The last day we went to a favela tour which I definitely at first felt conflicted about. I remember learning about the concept of poverty tourism in development studies and I wasn’t exactly sure if I would commoditize their poverty to make it some sort of “experience” for me to blog about (which it kind of is). But Farrah and I realized we didn’t want to leave Brazil without at least some form of encounter with these communities. The actual tour was really interesting and totally broke down some of my perceptions from watching all those favela movies. When we first got there, I was actually scared to see BOPE Special Forces running through allies pointing their M16s but strangely enough, we found out later they were actually making a movie. We walked through the allies, saw breathtaking views of the city, watched kids preparing for their Carnival performances and visited an art gallery. The art gallery was filled with ambiguous messages about the pacification process as both violent but also as brining hope to these communities. The guide was especially helpful as he talked about all of the investments the government had been making in trying to bring favelas into the official economy as well as decrease the violence in light of the upcoming world events—the world cup and 2016 Olympics. For example, most of the favelas are going through “pacification” where they send in Special Forces called BOPE to basically take out the drug dealers and suppress violent outbreaks. They are also starting to build police stations at each favela and convert a lot of the unofficial/“stolen” public services such as water and electricity into formal services that can be monitored. To help the people transition, they are making them pay small “symbolic” fees in exchange for more efficient products like refrigerators that require less energy. Thus, it was pretty interesting to see not just a different part of Brazil, but a different part of Brazil that was changing every day no doubt in part due to an increasing international spotlight. I didn’t realize how dramatic the change was until we noticed bullet holes in the walls of certain houses and drug lord graffiti. While this was all a very surface level experience, I was glad I had at least been exposed to something beyond beautiful beaches and hot girls.

Salvador de Bahia

The next stop we made was Salvador, Bahia the center of Afro-Brazilian culture. Most of the population are descendents of slaves from Nigeria and Ghana when sugar was big in the area and they have preserved their music, dance and religion in a way that has created one of the most vibrant and interesting places in Latin America.

After doing some beaching for the first day, we walk onto the cobbled streets to find the whole city filled with percussion bands, capoeira dancers and live concerts. We squeeze between a cathedral and church to watch a live band, and then join a 50 person dance procession that is following a drumline. The procession ended at the town’s main square where there was more live music. There was so much going on that they were almost cancelling each other’s noises—it was almost borderline excessive! We eventually ended up taking a capoeira class where I was totally owned while trying to do held stands—I definitely would consider doing more of this when I get back to the Bay Area! It was a real work out.

The next day we went to Morro de Sao Paulo for a few days of paradise. We had endless amounts of Acai and Moqueca (a coconut soupy sea food dish), sat under the stars every night and whizzed past islands on speed boats. Also, Farrah has a knack for picking “interesting” hostels…turns out we stayed at a Jewish hostel where all the signs were in Hebrew and everyone was from Israel, haha! Even though this island paradise is one if not THE highlight of my trip, I’m just going to let pictures give you a taste of it:

this is the view right off hte boat: where jungle meets beach

moqueca: we ate this for breakfast, lunch and dinner. jk. but we had it with fish, then shrimp, then lobster, then fish, then shrimp...you get the idea

natural shallow pools to snorkle in the middle of the ocean!

Farrah and I definitely kept thinking “WTF are we loser students doing here!?”

It is definitely right now on my “top places for honeymoons” list.

We come back to Salvador to Christmas eve but the poverty in Salvador starts to make us feel…sadly uncomfortable. Looking back, I think it was such a contrast to the tranquil yet luxurious trip we had in Morro to suddenly come back to children and men begging for money or trying to sell us their artesian goods. There was one encounter with some guy who kept yelling “FUCK BUSH” aggressively at us to buy his wristbands that really left us in kind of a paralyzed awkward state for an hour where we just had to dissect our thoughts and our lifestyles and come to grips with reality. I later spoke with others about where the money usually went and found the typical responses: drugs, alcohol, and gang leaders. The whole situation always leaves me torn to ask What is my role in their situation, what should be my response? Is treating them like a person & looking them in the eye the extent that I could do? I realized that I personally can’t live a life of avoidance--that I want to be perpetually torn by these issues. If anything, these past four months have confirmed for me that it is more important to have a life that is meaningful than a life that is simply exciting. Traveling for the sake of traveling is awesome but neither fulfilling nor sustainable for me.

The next day my cousin Jay arrives in time for Christmas morning and the three of us go to mass at the cathedral in the town square for a nice morning praising God in Portuguese! It was definitely the strangest Christmas I had experienced yet but it was awesome to be there that morning with two of my favorite people in blazing summer weather in the capital of Afro Brazilian culture. I was blessed and thankful for not just the things I was experiencing, but also for God’s presence and friendship which helps bring color and meaning to these experiences. Of course, in traditional Bahian style, we headed to a super crowded local beach to finish off our Christmas celebrations.

barra beach christmas day

family together for christmas in brazil!

And of course part 1 of Brazil would not be the same without Farrah Moos, this random girl that I met in my Spanish class 2 years ago who I became acquaintances with only because we were trying to form a partnership between Ethical and ASUC senate (which borderline failed). But our message is that—don’t be too focused on results and achieving objectives with your classmates and acquaintances, sometimes you end up randomly studying abroad with them for 4 months then going on 2 week vacations with them. Hey if it could happen to us, it could happen to anyone haha. Anyway, just wanted to give a special shout out to one of my best friend that as we both now know, I can talk to for days and days on end about both meaningful and totally ridiculous stuff. We seemed to drift in and out of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at the same pace and at some points, we were completely on the same page in terms of thoughts like “me hungry; need to pee“—you know, real sophisticated emotions.

(PART 2 Su/Soh family time)

Chapada Diamantina: waterfalls and strange guides

So Jay and I leave Farrah behind in Salvador and head over to Chapada Diamantina, the National Park in Brazil that I swear you can go 10 times and still not know fully. Apparently, Farrah was an integral part of the group because we get on a bus that is supposed to arrive to the destination at 3 am and wake up in sunlight with the bus driver tapping us to get off at the last stop. We manage to make it to Lencois, almost get onto a 3 day trek with a group of Portuguese speaking Belgium kids but then ultimately back out to go to Mixila.

Our guide to Mixila was a guy named, Jaja, one of the weirdest guys I have ever met. First of all, while we were bargaining for the price at a local Acai shop he would just not give us a price and instead for 10 minutes kept commenting “Muito bom!”(very good) on how good the Acai was Then in the middle of the conversation he manages to say “five minutes come back” in English and then proceeds to just not come back to the store leaving me and Jay completely confused. Apparently this guy’s unorthodox negotiation tactics worked because we ended up just caving in and going with him. Secondly, while he is considered one of Lencois’ few “English” guides he ended up not speaking ANY language. Since I was the best Portuguese speaker in the group (go figure) he had to revert to just “onomatopoeia language” interspersed with random English phrases he learned like “bieeg fireee” and “many girls!” which was strange and often times confusing.

Here’s a picture of Jaja

The actual trek to Chachoeira da Mixila was probably the most unique trekking I’ve ever done. At one point, we had to scramble on rocks for 2 hours bare foot, and swim across a body of water at four points in the hike to get to this:

Everybody slipped and hurt themselves at some point in the hike, but we all agreed it was worth it. Apparently, Mixila was recently discovered and is not a trek that is even advertised in guidebooks. To top off our awesome experience we slept next at the top of a waterfall under some awe inspiring stars. Jay and I just laid there staring up, chatting about Berkeley, San Francisco, his MBA school—a universe completely foreign to us at the time. The stream was literally 2 feet to the side of our sleeping bags. I was torn between thinking how amazing it was and how much it would suck if I rolled to the side and fell in the water.

COPACABANA or COPACAMERDA?

We make it back to Rio for new years on Copacabana for a crazy party at the beach. David Guetta played an awesome set but there were SO. Many. DAMN. PEOPLE. While it was awesome, the copacabana couldn't compare to the beaches up north and I don't think i could spend many more of my new years in places like this. It was definitely not for the faint of heart because even pushing through to buy a beer would take you half an hour and a crushed rib cage. Things started looking up for us around midnight where we met some Brazilian chicks and guys and all the amazing fireworks went off. I couldn’t believe 2011 was over—it had been a helluva year—junior yr second semester, ZS, then a 4 month long hiatus where I traveled all around South America and allowed my IQ to drop a few points. The pinnacle of the night was when Jay and I climbed onto a soccer goal in the middle of the beach to get away from the swarming parasites right in time for David Guetta.

I would rate Rio part 2 probably a B since it rained and we also stayed in a hostel that was more than 2 hours away from Copacabana (since we are dumbasses and booked last minute for new years). We stayed at this place called Trek and Fly whose street nobody knew about and that was filled with strange people that actually LIVED there. The owner felt so bad that he would drive us around in his van to get us even remotely near a Metro. BUT since we did get some pretty good beaching done and I spent it with my cousin, I will bump it up to a B+/A-.

Before coming back to Buenos Aires, we spent a night in Sao Paulo with about 7 BBTs (Brazilian born Taiwanese) it was fun times but also quite interesting to watch their interactions with each other. They were all super successful—most owned their own businesses and were living the ritzy Paulista life. They treated us really well—they fed us endless Brazilian skewers and made sure we head a steady stream of alcohol in us at all times. Man, the life of Chinese barons in Sao Paulo.

Anyway, so thats the end of my 3 weeks in BRASIL. It is great to be back in Buenos Aires with my family in chacarita but I must say that brasil is my favorite latin american country that I will for sure visit again in the future!

PATAGONIA

Ladies and Gents, I have just came back from the. most. epic. trip. of my life. If you didn’t know, for the past 2 weeks, I decided to say F*CK school and bounce with my backpack to one of the southest regions in the world in Argentine and Chilean Patagonia to see the glaciers of El Calafate, hike through the trekking capital of the world “El Chaltén,” and backpack the w trek in Torres del Paine in Chile. Some of the best days of my life!

30 hours before leaving: sick, feverish

On Tuesday I woke up feeling off and I immediately started panicking. I hadn’t been sick at all ever since summer in Taiwan 2010 so this definitely was the worst timing possible. I felt feverish weak and couldn’t really keep down my food. Even 6 hours before my flight I just wanted to cancel my ticket and lay low in Buenos Aires—but, I trusted in God and something inside of me knew I wouldn’t regret my decision. So I leave my house with my backpack at 2 am to catch my 4 am flight at Jorge Newburry shaky, tenuous yet in a posture of prayer. The next few hours were a blur—I sleep in the café at the airport, on the floor in front of the security gate because it wasn’t open, at the airport terminal then on the actual plane before touching down in El Calafate. Stepping off the plane, I breathed in the chill and splendor of Patagonia and feel rejuvenated. We arrive at our hostel Che lagarto and I am pleasantly surprised by just how well kept the place was for a $9/night place. After a few hours of rest, I wake up and walk around a lake filled with flamingos and just think “God this place is too beautiful to be sick, this is going to be some epic epic trip.”

The next day we saw the Glacier Perito Moreno which makes the glaciers in Alaska look like small peas. I had no idea that there were glaciers that just extended on and on for miles and miles. Here is a picture:

On the trip I also met this cool South Korean student that was just traveling on his own, Jae Hyun. He was hilarious, spoke very little English and zero Spanish but was just going through South America on his own with shorts and sandals (which obviously didn’t work out too well in Patagonia). We chatted and then exchanged facebook and I became one of his 10 facebook friends. I just respected his courage to just travel alone and see the world with the ability to tolerate uncertainty and tolerate miscommunications.

The next day we leave El Calafate for el Chaltén, nicknamed the trekking capital of the world. The place is the quaintest little town with a population of around 400 people. Even though we get there at noon, we want to do a 7 hour hike right away. Still feeling sick and weak, I could not be less enthused but I used the same excuse “it’s too beautiful to be sick.” To my delight, instead of getting sicker, the physical exercise and fresh air rejuvenated me and after 2 hours of hiking I was feeling perfectly fine. The same phenomenon would continue to happen through the trip, every time I went hiking I would become perfectly fine—I’m not sure what it is, the endorphins, the sweat, God’s gift but it was awesome. The first hike brought us to Cerro Torre. Fucken’ breathtaking. I couldn’t believe the place was only 3.5 hours away and that I could still walk back for a hot shower and food.

Agape in the shower

Coming back I just felt an immense closeness to something. I had just been so blessed that I felt guilty for keeping it all in. Taking the hot shower, I realized that I was feeling closeness to God and that I couldn’t keep his blessings for myself. I didn’t want to live a life that just absorbed blessings, but that reflected/multiplied it. I want to build my life on a foundation that is beyond me and my reputation. I want to shift away from competition and towards compassion. The word that had been on my mind in the past few weeks, Agape, suddenly made sense. I remembered a quote I had written down from Coelho's "The Pilgrimage" a few days before-

"Agape is total love that consumes. The love that consumes makes everything else - absolutely everything - lose its importance. It is the love that consumes the person who experience it. Agape is much more than liking. It is a feeling that suffuses, that fills every spaces in us, and turns our aggression to dust."

The next day we went on a hike to Fitz Roy that some nice south Africans suggested to us. When we were about to turn back after 4 hours, Suze really wanted to go to the base of Fitz Roy which would be 1.5 hr scramble to the top. Even though it was cold and windy and at times we were walking in snow 4 feet deep, we eventually made it then saw this:

Torres del Paine

This trip was almost a disaster. We left El Chaltén 7 am to get a ride back to Calafate where we wanted to get a ride to Punta Natales to get to Torres del Paine. We arrive in Calafate at 11 am only to find that theres only one bus a day that goes to Puerto Natales at 8:30 am. Discouraged that we might have to waste two whole days just to get to Torres del paine and two whole days to come back to Calafate, we go to a hostel but eventually decide we would hop onto a guided tour bus that would leave Calafate at 5:30 am and then come back at midnight. But instead of coming back, we would get off the bus and start the W trek!! We quickly went to a grocery store and rental gear store and had one of the most stressful 6 hours of my entire life which led to fairly poor decision making as we later found out(lentils and rice for 4 days straight was a really bad idea).

The next few days were just filled with backpacking in awesome scenery with awesome people. I just want to give a shout out to my gurls—Farrah and B-shaq(Suze), my backpacking troopers and now some of my closest friends. We had plenty of quirky moments but also moments where we probably got to know each other a little too well (eating beans and rice every night while sharing a tent was not the best idea). And we always ended the day with some good beers and “tent talk.”

Every moment of the 40 miles we backpacked was filled with breathtaking lakes, mountain peaks, fields of flowers, etc. Here are some pictures.

the last stretch of the W, we were really giddy taking pointless breaks to roll around all over the place.

is there a better spot in the world to be cooking and eating rice and lentils? i think not.

i mean, what the hell is this....

tent time with delicious calafate ale.

The most epic day was Thursday when we woke up at 6 am and trekked until 6 pm. It was the first time any of us had done 12 hours with full loads on our back but the views were gorgeous and the Calafate ale at the end well worth it.

All in all, I had some of the best days of my life on this trip but I’m not sad that it’s over; I’m glad I was able to grow and learn more about myself and God. I just feel so lucky to be able have done something that such a small percentage of this world can do. There were definitely moments where I just said out loud, “what did I do to deserve this?” I’ll be sure to come back one day if I ever have a family and make them do some backpacking!

rosario, uruguay, and more

It’s been too long since I blogged but I really feel that this month flew by and I am now past the half way point of my study abroad! I have time today because it’s the elections so everything is closed because everyone is required to vote. Interestingly enough, they also prohibit any restaurants or stores from selling alcohol this entire weekend. In any case, I’m due for a post. So much has happened since Salta, I went to Rosario, Colonial—Uruguary, found a church in Martinez, parties, elections

Rosario—the river city with the most beautiful girls in Argentina.

As kind of a spur of the moment weekend trip, I went with Liz and Shannon to Rosario for two nights and three days. Rosario is a river city in the Santa Fe province of Argentina that is known for beautiful Rosarinas, a beautiful river and as the place where both Che Guevarra and Messi grew up.

Because we went on a long weekend, Rosario was COMPLETELY packed the whole weekend with porteños. When we went to the bus station to get our tickets, we totally lucked out and somehow found a way there and every hostel in Rosario was filled that weekend. The only reason we were able to get a spot was because the person handling the online transaction messed up so the hostel workers ended up sleeping on the couch while we slept on their beds. People were even paying to sleep on the floor and it was the most rundown hostel I’ve ever been in!

Anyway, it was a very chill weekend that we ended up spending with our Uruguayan friend, Jaimie. He moved to Buenos Aires 4 yrs ago to pursue film and has already come to Rosario around 14 times and was happy to tag along with us. Here are some pictures.

-monumento

-pictures on a boat tour by the river

-picture with our uruguayan friend, jaimie

Colonial Uruguay

For visa purposes, we also had to leave the country for a day so we went to Colonial Uruguay and spent a tranquilo afternoon walking around the town. It was just a cute city with not much to do honestly. I was bummed that we couldn’t go further in—I’d love to see more of the beaches and Montevideo. Here are some pictures:

-some uruguayans smoking weed(it's legal) and playing instruments by the calm colonia water

-chillin at a park

Church in Martinez

So I have finally settled into a church here in Buenos Aires. This all started when I felt that I needed some sort of community while I was here to process everything I’m experiencing as well as make some Spanish speaking Christian friends. I contacted Sarah who sent me the link of the UBUA website through which I came into contact with Pablo. Since ABUA doesn’t really have events, I checked out Pablo’s church and promptly met a guy named Lucas who was a guest guitarist that day.

Lucas speaks really good English and wanted to chat with me about California since he wants to pursue film in Los Angeles one day. We grabbed hot chocolate and churros covered in chocolate the next week and after 3 hours of chatting he invited me to his church in Martinez, a city right outside the Buenos Aires capital. It was awesome! Their bible study is totally different from what I’m used to. Over the period of an hour or so, they’ll go through over 50 different passages that they cover. Last week, they talked about the kingdom of God and if it was something that already exists or something to be strived for. It’s interesting that they view passages throughout the bible as a one part of the entire aggregate message and don’t really focus on dissecting particular words and sentences the way IV does. Another thing that is odd is that almost the entire fellowship is dating each other or is already married. When they found out I was a foreigner, they asked me if my wife came with me. Also, instead of going to a person’s house to watch a movie or play games, we all went to a German bar afterwards to drink and hang out.

Boliches

I’ve went to a few more boliches since but definitely feel that I’m starting to slow down on the night life. It just isn’t really for me. Last week I did have one of the craziest nights of my life at Club 69’s 30^th anniversary. It was a drag show with go go dancers on poles that moved around the entire club.

Anyway, I just came back from Iguazú but haven’t had a chance to digest everything. I’ll put a post up on Thursday before I leave for El Calafate, Patagonia. I’m going to be in one of the southest places in the world!

¡SALTA!

Hey yall,

I just came back from an EPIC trip to Salta, Argentina about 20 hours up north from Buenos Aires. Here is a little bit about my experience and some pictures I took (yes, I now actually own a camera).

A surprisingly pleasant 20 hour bus ride

My only previous experience taking the bus was taking the greyhound from Long Beach to Oakland on thanksgiving breaks, so I was expecting to rough it out in Buenos Aires. Boy was I wrong! The bus was super luxurious, Farrah and I got a seat on the upper deck of the Bus and the seats actually tilt back far enough and has a place to put your feet so that your body is making a 170 degree angle! Also, as always in Argentina you’re offered unlimited vino tinto (red wine) and vino blanco to make you sleepy enough. On the way there we sang Suze happy birthday celebrated with a good amount of wine. I woke up 11 hours later with only a few more hours left!

We arrive in Salta to a quaint city with beautiful colonial architecture, catholic churches, and a cozy plaza. The place felt so…unusually familiar. I was quickly flooded with memories of Xela, Guatemala where I had spent a week living in an apartment. It felt good to get out of the ‘Paris of South America’ and experience something smaller, more personal and calmer.

It’s-a-me-a-Mario!

The next day we woke up bright and early and went on a full day excursion up north. My group that I ended up traveling with the whole time was Liz, Susana, Suze, Jon, Farrah, Thy and me (yes, not many men study abroad). We all got in a truck with a guide named Mario who couldn’t speak a word in English. He was awesome. Not only did he know so much about geology, but he was hilarious and loved to talk about sexy women. I finally was able to practice my Spanish!

The day was a blur of unique natural formations. I don’t really even know how to describe the things we saw so I’ll just put some pictures up.

road on the way to purmamarca

salinas grandes, salt flats

7 colored mountain in purmamarca

Wine, canyons and delicious goats

By the end of the first day touring the north, Mario said he’d love to take us to Cafayate the next day and stay with us until we wanted to return to Salta to get back on the bus back to Buenos Aires. Apparently he had a date with some hot girls and his buddies. The 4 hour drive down was very pretty. We took a road called “Quebrada de las canchas” which looks very similar to the Grand canyon with unique formations and colors.

We stopped by a parrilla (bbq) restaurant and I ate a platter full of chivito (baby goat). It was finger lickin’ good.

In the afternoon, we went to some bodegas to do some wine tasting. While I’m the last person to be a wine connoisseur, it was cool getting free wine. I also bought two bottles of very solid Torrontes and Malbec for about $4 each. After we had enough wine in us, we rented some bikes and went on the most stunning bike ride I’ve ever been on through wineries, grape farms and mountains. Here is a picture:

The next morning I did some more biking with Jon, Suze and Susana and we wandered into this huge golf resort/grape farm that must have been 7 miles wide. It had its own restaurants, cafes, lagoon, etc. It was this strange paradise along the highway.

We met up with Mario around noon and he had told us that “Cuando estabas durmiendo, yo miraba tetas grandes.” Apparently, while we were sleeping last night, he went to see a wet t-shirt contest at a Boliche(one of many Mario moments). We finally headed down for some trekking in Quebrada de las canchas.

Dammnn that was beautiful. I forgot how much I missed hiking and trekking. It was surreal just walking down a dried up river and venturing up to the top of vividly colored mountains. I honestly could have done this all day but we didn’t have enough time. I guess that’s what my trip to Patagonia in November is for.

Sitting atop a mountain during the trek, I thought of two things. 1. How God is a more creative and significant being than we’ll ever be. 2. I can’t believe this is my life right now. It was one of those moments like I don’t care what happens tomorrow, I’m content. I’ve experienced enough life. And just when I’m having this epiphany that I don’t need more anymore in life, Mario asks us if we want to go bungee jumping for $20. Oh hell YEAH I’m down. We drove to a beautiful lake and 3 minutes after getting out of the car, I was strapped in standing on the edge of a platform about to jump 350 ft into the water. I was on such a high from the trip that I honestly wasn’t nervous and just jumped—and man words cannot describe how sick the experience was.

Other than all the beautiful nature I saw in Salta, I think the other cool thing about this trip was meeting really down to earth Argentines at hostels. Whether it was Sergio, some bros from Buenos Aires that we went with to the Boliches or chicks from Cordoba, I felt that I was finally able to get to know the people of this country. I realized that when you travel, it’s just a more liminal environment and everyone is down to hang out and get more personal. Ironically, I made more porteño friends (people from Buenos aires) while I was in Salta that I’m going to get lunch with in the weeks to come. It’s awesome to practice my Spanish and also probe on some of the different perspectives they have.

some of the people at the hostel playing some drunk ping pong

All in all, I’d rate this trip an A and while I’m definitely glad to be back in Buenos Aires can’t wait for the trips to come! (October-Iguazú Falls and Colonial Uruguay. November-hopefully Patagonia.) I’m thankful for having this amazing time to just chill and travel though I’m sure I’m becoming more and more of a lazy ass every day, thank you Jesus!

Buenos Aires, beginnings

Hey everyone, I’m finally here in Buenos Aires, Argentina! I’m going to try to blog once every two weeks to recap some of the experiences I’ve had and the things I’ve learned. I don’t expect it to be quite as adventurous as my stories in Guatemala, but I’m definitely hoping to grow and have some eye opening experiences.

El capitán

The plane ride to Argentina was fairly smooth. The only crazy thing that happened was 20 minutes before we were about to land in Buenos Aires, I can’t find my passport! I was so nervous and told the flight attendant that I might have left my passport in our layover in Lima, Peru. For some odd reason she calls the Captain of the plane to come to my seat and the minute he arrives, he shouts “What is that!?” and points at this thing sticking out of a book I was reading. It was amazing…I thought to myself I could have had to forget about this entire semester so whatever else I get to experience from this point on is a blessing..thank the Lord!

Homestay experience: Chacarita

If you read my blog when I was in Guatemala, you know that my homestay in Antigua was a tortillería (tortilla shop) for the town with an outhouse for the toilet and bucket baths. This house is completely different! I have an awesome room that has a balcony and shelves for me to put all my stuff and we even have our own little common space for the international students to hang out. The only drawback is that it isn't in the safest area, and it is far from other places (45 min to get to class).

First of all, the people in the house are much more talkative and down to earth. There is a pretty good mix of international students and porteños (Argentines). There are six students (2 from Michigan, one from Oklahoma, one from Washington and one from Wisconsin), three daughters (16, 19, 21), one brother, and a mom. So there’s basically always someone to talk to (either in Spanish or English) or someone to do something with. Dinner time is awesome because we all sit together and speak Spanish and talk about all kinds of stuff—good restaurants to try, politics, things to do in Argentina, etc. In my first week, we’ve already managed to get into some heated debates where we’ve said some intense/offensive things. I just try to drink it all in. I’m actually very surprised by how fast everything from Spanish 4 (a year ago) is coming back to me.

It’s also awesome because the girls are about our age and go to Universidad de Buenos Aires(UBA) so we get a small “in” into the local scene. The first week there was a midnight parrilla (BBQ) where a bunch of porteños from UBA came and grilled all this delicious meat. People didn’t start eating until 3 am and heading back home until 7 am, loco! We sat in a circle and chilled, but I definitely had a hard time keeping up with them, understanding what they were saying, etc. It’s tough because I want to make some Argentine friends here, but it’s still hard for me to express my personality with the language barrier. I hope that by December, I can be comfortable enough with my Spanish to make people laugh and form substantial relationships.

Boliches & the night life

I’ve never been in a city that has such an intense night culture. First of all, everything is pushed back about 3-4 hours around here, including meals. I still remember the first night where I just sat in my room miserably starving, waiting for food until 9:30 pm (which is early by their standards). Also, whereas in the US, the bars close around 2 am, here a lot of the clubs don’t open till 2 am and people dance until 7 am! Some people who are really into the party scene have decided to change their sleeping habits so that they sleep after school from 3-10 pm, eat dinner, then go out again. My first Boliche experience was last Saturday at this place called “Crobar” where we danced to some crazy argentine electronica band until I felt like I was going to pass out. I got back to my bed around 7 am, in time to see the sun and felt completely exhausted. Needless to say, I felt so crappy the next day and getting around the city at night is a headache. The subtes(subways) don’t work and it can take up to an 1 hr a half to catch a colectivo (bus) and go back home.

Las Villas

Buenos Aires is definitely an amazing city with beautiful colonial architecture, parks, and plazas created by centuries of national favoritism and international trade. It is called the ‘Paris of South America.’ In the first week of the program, I was experiencing the city, going to theaters, bars, cafes, etc but knew that in this place of intense wealth, there was intense poverty. One of my housemates, Cass introduced me to a volunteering program called “L.I.F.E” that goes out to Villas (slum towns) that surround the city of Buenos Aires. These communities are basically informal settlements formed by migrants from the interior provinces of Buenos Aires who came for jobs but found that the urban development authorities could not accommodate them in the city.

I signed up and now do school support twice a week, which means basically helping children with homework, playing games with them, teaching them math, etc. It’s basically just an excuse to spend time with them and offer attention. It takes a while to get out to the villas, and we have to hire a driver from the villa to pick us up from the city because Taxis won’t go to these 'extremely dangerous' areas. Luckily, we all wear shirts that signify we are with the organization and everybody in the slum knows about us. It’s been a great experience so far encountering the praxis (intersection of theory and practice) and seeing how social, political and economic forces have created these settlements. These villas come in all forms. This past Thursday, I went to one called Ejercito Celestial.

This villa is an abandoned hospital that the city stopped constructing halfway in the process. It’s made of brick and resembles a huge parking garage. As you can see, none of the windows were constructed and there are about 50 or more families up there in their own mini city. It was definitely the oddest sight I’ve seen here.

Up next:

-Cultural musings. Why it is okay to show up 40 minutes to late to class in Argentina, why everyone here spends hours keeping up with news about politics and the economy, why food here isn’t very innovative, and why the public transportation/city planning is in some aspects, a disaster.

-My trip to Salta! (this coming Tuesday to Monday)

-My strange but refreshing experience at the Barrio Chino(China town)—being trilingual has never been so useful!

-the type of people I’m meeting here (either militantly liberal or intense partiers)

Weeks 7 & 8 Panajachel/ Goodbye to Guatemala

On the way up to Pana, I remember thinking there was no way that this place was going to eclipse my amazing experience in Xela. After pulling off to the side of the road to stop at the mesmerizing Lake Atitlan, my doubts were momentarily silenced. We arrive to the town with streets bustling with markets at every inch, street-side restaurants at every corner and gringos from all over the world. As it always is with Team Esperanza, we immediately engage in a provocative discussion with what we want to eat that night. The possibilities were really endless but we finally decided to settle down with this nice Uruguayan restaurant that has an awesome ambience—a pianist playing frank Sinatra, completely open air, endless garlic bread portions and last but not least a server named Raul who would sneak up behind me and yell “CHINO!” If you’ve been reading my blog, you probably know by now that I have become legitimately numbed to that word. Honestly, I don’t mind as long he keeps the huge portions for me going—we even ended up eating lunch together on my last day in Pana.

Kids on the street of Santander

The minute we sit down at the Uruguayan restaurant, a mentally challenged boy approaches us with about 20 woven bracelets in his hand. 5 queztaesl, he says. I smile and mumble a no gracias. Ten minutes later, he is still there except this time he is desperately saying “un queztal, por fa por fa” and now continues to ask for a smoothie, a sandwhich, and basically everything on the menu. We left that restaurant thinking this boy was perhaps the most annoying kid we had ever met. Turns out that this similar interaction would happen almost a hundred times throughout the next few days.

After about the third day, I was thoroughly desensitized—I ignored venders and kids when they spoke to me and waved my hand as if I felt molested. I was able to happily stroll the streets of Santander towards my morning coffee. Then I think it was one night where we found that very same boy sleeping in an atm machine at around 10 p.m. where I really just started to feel uncomfortable with myself—with the way these interactions were going. How could I forget that as christians, we’re called to be in relationships…with God and each other. I have yet to totally form and articulate my thoughts about this subject...talk to me later.


Desensitization and disconnection in San Ann.

We arrive to San Antonio on campaign day early morning to set up when an older lady suddenly falls hard on her side a few meters from us. We stand there in shock as she writhes and contorts her body around on the dirt floor. Petrified, we look up to see women on the streets in their guipiles gesticulating to their heads and waving their fingers. “No. No ayude, su cabeza es mala.” Basically, what they meant was not to help this lady—she was mentally ill and apparently did this often. We finally noticed that her fall had been worse than expected, a pool of blood already about a foot in diameter was forming underneath her body. What the fuck, I’m sure all of us were thinking. Still the villagers were shaking their heads telling us to back off, leave her alone. Amanda immediately knelt down and grabbed her hand while I ran to the farmacia with Annie to get hydrogen peroxide and lots of bandage wrap.

Cleaning the wound, I was inundated with thoughts of incredulity…but more than that, confusion. What was wrong with these people. What had happened to this close knit community, it doesn’t matter if this lady was mentally ill. Later we found out that this lady was prone to seizures and one time even fell into the fire while making tortillas. I remembered learning about the power of social pressures and how they can lead to desensitization in psych ap. The lesson had radically materialized here before our very eyes, the whole town had deemed the lady “loco” and was ready to ignore her and possibly even let her bleed to death. The incident reinforced the idea for me that I have to continually think for myself—to see things through my own perspectives. More importantly, I have to never stop treating people…well, like people. Needless to say, this was not one of our greatest campaign days.

CrediCapaz & Grameen bank

As most of you already know, chris, pav and I have poured in hours and hours over these past few weeks into our modified ROSCA savings model. When Greg approached us and told us that he was planning on launching our first cycle on September 1st, the model really came alive for us. This was something real, something tangible that was going to happen. I don’t know, it feels unreal to actually have contributed something—after years and years in academia, to actually derive something out of our education, our in-depth analysis and our effort and translate it into something that can make a substantial economic impact to the rural constituents of Guatemala. I definitely am going to be emailing SolCom in the coming weeks to find out the progress of CrediCapaz. I’m staying involved for as long as they let me!

Rewind about a week and there we were: me, Chris, pav, and Annie in the headquarters of Grameen Bank, Guatemala branch! (for those of you who don’t know, Grameen Bank is the first microfinance institution started in Bangladesh by Muhammad Yunus). We had a very intriguing conversation with the regional manager about microfinance, its scope, success indicators, and the formation of solidarity groups among the villagers. It was effin’ awesome.

The conclusion of Team Esperanza
It’s funny to think that after you spent every day of 2 months with the same 8 people, you will suddenly probably never see them again. Heading back to Antigua to rejoin the 20 or so other SEC interns for our final week in Antigua, it finally hit us that this was it for Esperanza, the craziest and greatest team on the face of this earth (half joking). There is literally too many memories to list here—from all those nights at the club where we went f*cken NUTS to Calle Ocho, to the 7 hour car rides where we never had a boring minute. I’ll never forget these guys, they were honestly some of the most zealous, brightest, dedicated, and charismatic individuals I have even worked with. I love California, there’s no other state like it, but as the only west coaster out here with Hannah, some part of me almost wishes that I went to school or lived in the East so I could see some of these guys again. Chris, Pav, Annie, Amanda, Kaveh, Tracey, Marjorie, siempre están en mi Corazón!.

Guate Guate, te amo.

8 weeks flew by like no other. I blinked twice, and it was over. The next thing I know, Hannah and I am sitting there in Miami International among LCD screens and English speakers with a hotdog and bag of chips in our hands. I’m going to miss everything about Guatemala, the good and the bad. The perpetual volcanoes and mountains layered across the blue skies, pollo buses, churrascos, the anarchy of the roads, the bucket baths, reggatone, bargaining at the markets, Yolanda (Antigua homestay mom), Isolina (nebaj homestay mom), Xelapan, Jeffrey, Gallo.

Torrance Blues

I touch down in LAX and finally reunite with my family and friends. I ate delicious Chinese sea food, had coffee with Rob, zhich, funyun, Elena, shayna. The reunion was happy times, but I can’t ever remember feeling so out of place in my life. The only way I can describe it is….right now, everything is just.... muted. The conversations, the 405 traffic, the restaurants. I feel like Frodo Baggins when he finally returns to the shire after his entire quest to destroy the ring and just feels incredibly out of place in midst of the normalcy and the merriness of his old town. "How do you pick up the pieces of an old life? How do you go on? When in your heart you begin to understand, there is no going back."

I guess the question is what to do I do now? I can’t seem to “just chill” like I thought I would be able to. I have about a month till Cal, not enough time to get a job. I’ll probably spend some part of the day reading books, studying some Spanish ( I have enrolled in Spanish 3), to IV leadership summer reading, spend time in prayer, try to figure out how to mobilize kids at cal to make a social impact overseas.

And so here ends the story of my summer in Guatemala. About 2 months ago, I was a depressed and parasite infected boy having diarrhea in my bathroom stall who would give almost anything to be back in the states. Now I can proudly look back and say…it was worth it, holy crap, it was so worth it. Thanks everyone who followed this blog, for the prayers, for the thoughts, for the support. I hope that some of you, through vicariously experiencing my trip to Guatemala will be encouraged to venture out and explore! Get uncomfortable, ] and push yourselves out to the uncharted. I don’t just mean to a foreign country, but just throughout life in general. Take risks, live passionately, get diarrhea!

un abrazo,
Iueh

NUMBERS

50+ The number of times that we saw something so ridiculously absurd that all we could say was “It’s Guate”
50+ The number of times a Guatemalan has pointed incredulously at me and said “CHINO!”
6 The amount of toilets I clogged in Guatemala
15+ The amount of toilet rolls I ended up finishing in my homestay in Guatemala
100+ The number of times Calle Ocho or Te Amo was played on the chicken buses in Antigua.
2 number of visits to Antigua Hospital
30+ Amount of meals consisting purely of beans and tortilla
60+ Amount of ice creams consumed either from Pollo Campero or Saritas. (notice multiply ice creams a day)
50+ Amount of soda bottles consumed(many places cheaper than clean water).
10+ Hikes to beautiful caves, waterfalls, crystalline spring waters, hot springs, etc.
1 Marriage Proposal
3 Drunken sunday homestay parties
1 late night skinny dipping session

The Real World (Guate style) Week 6 Satellite Site: Xela

“This is the true story... of nine adventurous college students... picked to live in an apartment...work together and have their lives taped... to find out what happens... when people stop being polite... and start getting real...The Real World (Guate Style)”

So we arrive to Xela, also known as Quetzaltenango, and find out that we are staying in a bombass apartment. The living room itself was about 5 times my dorm and even though I had to double up with Chris, it was honestly one of the better, if not best living conditions I have had in my life. In fact, I kind of like having a roommate (Albert, if you're out there, I miss you.) Living in the apartment has definitely been an amazing experience. I’d like to think of team esperanza here in Xela as a reality tv show with that narration opening every episode. But unlike the Real World, it’s been great living with each other—there really is esperanza love. We might have had one dispute because we literally went through 3 toilet papers in a day, but that was promptly fixed when someone just jacked a whole roll from a nearby restaurant. The apartment also has wifi so I’ve been pretty wired for the past few days. It’s weird, I can’t be without it for more than 6 hrs now and I actually feel….connected to the world once again(what the hell is going on in California?, palin, and just the GOP in general?).

Xela is a beautiful city, pervaded with bustling market places, bars and salsa clubs. From the looks of its architecture of massive columns decorating most of the buildings, the city is definitely very colonialized. There is also a bakery called Xelapan where you can literally buy all the bread and pastries to feed yourself for a week under 3$. I drop a dime or so every morning for breakfast. Last, but definitely not least, there is…..(wait for it, wait for it) MCDONALDS! I can’t believe so many good things can be packed into one of our work sites.

Who wants to be the next Iron Chef?

The weeks leading up to Xela, we were all extremely excited about how cooking was going to be fun—how we would make Chicken Parmesan, Linguine, and a bunch of other gourmet dishes. Now this all sounds very cute…a group of college students scurrying around the kitchen stove throwing ingredients here and there while excitedly jumping up and down saying “this is gonna be good!” Sadly enough, we discovered abruptly Monday night that quite frankly, we suck at cooking. In fact, all we could actually decently cook was pasta, which we had for 2 nights straight. I hate bland food and carbs, and for the first two nights, I flirted with the idea of just buying 3 hamburgers or chicken sandwiches from mcdonalds. By Wednesday, my diet consisted of xelapan for breakfast, 2 medium pizzas for lunch, and 3 hamburgers for dinner. Mcdonalds had become my primary source of protein and nutrition, and you know that’s bad news bears when that statement rings true. So what did I learn from this experience? One, I love my mom very much. And two, I need to learn how to cook. I’ve never felt so pathetic in my life. Josh, Austin, Tim, ya’ll best be learning to how to cook this summer.

Spanish schools and Weaving Co-ops

One week-long Spanish school, called El Portal, supports single destitute mothers and their children so that they can pay the fees to attend school. Unfortunately, the school’s business has not been even breaking even. They need to increase their students per week by an average of 11 just so they can support these 6 mothers. Due to h1n1, and just the overall downturn of the economy, less tourists are traveling to Guatemala, let alone Xela. On top of that, there are plenty of Spanish schools here which have way more resources, more university connections, etc. We’ve been trying to offer support as to how to cut costs in unnecessary areas, and how to leverage their social agenda to attract more students. (Sidenote: talk to me if you want to learn Spanish in Guatemala so I can give you their info)

We’ve designed a brochure for them, and tried to get them on the major tourist networks such as lonely planet guide and what not. I like to consider myself an out of the box thinker, so when I looked at their somewhat bleak situation, I figured, why don’t we just try to train the single mothers to be entrepreneurs so they can support themselves and their kids to go to school. That way, we bypass the middle man (El portal) so they won’t be having trouble paying their own bills and supporting these women. I’m not sure how good this idea would go over for an organization that has built so much time and effort into this cause, but I told Luke this after our initial meeting.

In addition, we’ve met up with this one weaving coop, to help them paint their place and refurbish it. Although quite honestly, they aren’t going to be having many tourists go all the way out there to buy some woven goods. Perhaps what would be more helpful would be to set up some sort of distribution channel so they can export to the states.

A Hard Day’s Night (And I’ve been working like a dog)

Coming off of two lackluster campaigns in Antigua and Nebaj, I finally had my breakthrough campaign experience last Saturday in a town 2 hrs out of Xela. On Wednesday, when Kaveh and I were doing publicity, I already sensed something different. We were really forming substantial relationships with people who had legitimate eye problems and were eager to be helped. Arriving there at 8:30 am on Saturday, we immediately found out we had the SWEETEST site based in the town’s hospital. The whole vision/product campaign immediately quadrupled its legitimacy in the town’s eyes. On top of that, we already had about 25 people waiting outside. We knew we were in for one hell of a day.

Immediately, we got crackin’ and I (get this) got my own private doctor’s office to perform the eye examinations. I’m not gonna lie, I was scared. I had never done this alone before and I felt so much responsibility on my shoulders. Granted, comprehending slurred and rapid spanish was difficult. But maintaining focus and diagnosing people with the correct eye problems, providing the appropriate solution and ultimately selling them necessary products was more difficult than I thought. Needless to say, after 4 hours of this my head was literally spinning.

I’d like to say I was pretty independent and could handle all the patients by myself, there were so many occasions where I just couldn’t assume anything. I had to ask Luke or someone else with more experience to determine the correct problem. I can’t stand the thought that I might screw someone over or waste his or her money on something that wouldn’t help. Personally, I find that you can’t give people just what they want; you have to give them what they need. What’s sad for a lot of these people is they have eye problems behind our capacity to solve. It’s difficult explaining to people that glasses won’t help, that nothing we have here at the campaign will help and that they need our doctor contact in the city to get surgery or something to that affect.

Nonetheless, I have to say this has been my favorite campaign yet. The people were so amiable, so responsive, and valued my advice so much to the point where I felt the gravity of each word fall from my mouth. On top of that, all the girls and woman were incredibly kissy, I’ve never really been into the whole hug and cheek kiss thing here, but now I’m sort of liking it. Results-wise, this campaign was one of the most successful in the Xela region yet. We sold over 40 glasses, and completely sold out of the eye solutions, some solar lights, and a water filterer. The only bad part (and probably an also integral part) about the campaign was that our assessor, or woman entrepreneur we were supporting decided to quit. She had come off of a lousy campaign a few weeks before, and even though we made her more than 2 months wages in a single day, she decided this wasn't for her. When I heard this, I was infuriated...she had not contributed a single thing to the campaign. Chris and I decided it would've made a hella more sense to take her profit from the campaign and use it to pay the DJ at La Rumba to play calle ocho 90 times straight(and that makes no damn sense at all). The lady only tried this entrepreneur stuff because a peace corp volunteer pressured her into it. Whats hard about development work is that you can't just go to a country and push and pressure the people into doing stuff. There needs to be mutual exchange of information and both the recipient and the consultant have to be passionate and take initiative.


America , F*CK YEAH!!

I’ve never felt so patriotic till I had to spend 4th of july in a third world country. In all honestly, I do love America. We decided to demonstrate our patriotism by obnoxiously singing American songs like “Proud to be an American,” "Star Spangled Banner", and even some Team America (Don’t ask me why). Luke, who’s from Liverpool, couldn’t take it and left after about 15 min. After the patriotic festivities, Pav, Tracey, Chris, Luke, Dan and I decided to celebrate our beloved nation’s independence by going clubbing. We went to a bar then went to a club called “Rumba” to which we immediately requested that the DJ play some Calle Ocho. We freaken rumbaed that club up hahaha. I even met a friendly Guatemalan chica, patricia who spent some time in Venice, CA learning English or something. Though she probably thought I was quite pathetic as I awkwardly gyrated my hips to the lively salsa music. I gotta add this to my checklist of things to do before leaving Guate: learn salsa.

Pathetically enough, I have decided not to climb the highest volcano in Central America due to feedback from other groups that this was in fact “the worst experience of their life”. Four of them, Kaveh, Marjorie, Annie, and Amanda left last night at around 10 pm to climb so that they could reach the summit for the sunrise. It’s going to be lame when I go back to the states and people ask “omg did you climb volcanoes in Guatemala that sounds so hardcore!” to which I will answer…”no…..not really. I just ya’know, used internet.”

Spiritual Epiphanies...expecting God in the unexpected

So a few weeks ago I made the claim that I was here in Guatemala to offer long term sustainable solutions to the poor. I had been laser focused to producing actual results and to solving complex problems associated with poverty that I had refused for the most part, to view this as an experience. But in essence, my whole experience here in Guatemala has just been an opportunity for me to meet God in the most untraditional places. It has really allowed me to see that we have a multi-dimensional, multi-faceted Creator. Examples where I have encounted God:

-through developing close relationships with amazing individuals with different interests, morals, lifestyles, and perspectives. Their dedication and passion to development work has really reinforced the idea for me that God manifests himself in people of every religion and culture, whether atheist, muslim, or Christian. I have definitely experienced God’s love through witnessing the moral impulse of all humanity.

-through finding peace in the midst of frustration with this program as well as myself. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I had a very different idea about how this program was going to work and who it was geared towards helping. I also overestimated just how much I was going to contribute to the country of Guatemala. Nonetheless, forcing myself to really wake up each day with a sense of purpose as an act of worship has really allowed me to find God in almost any circumstance—whether after a lackluster day in which I felt nothing was accomplished, or after an amazing campaign like the one we had on Saturday.

-in isolation. Isolation from a fellowship or church has forced me to see God through in my own eyes. To really develop a relationship based on my own experiences and my own testimony. Instead of having a community as a crutch, I’ve really been forced to understand the depth of my spiritual poverty and to deal with it and pray about it. (perhaps more explanation later)

I'm back in less than 2 weeks. It's been one hellof a ride! I miss you all....I'll see you guys soon! Leave comments.