When I arrived in Buenos Aires at the beginning of February, it was the middle of summer. Literally. A month and a half after their summer solstice, it was hot. I biked to class with my shirt in my backpack, wearing jean shorts and blue sunglasses. I came back from long-runs at 9 o’clock at night, dripping in sweat. It was awesome.
It’s fall now. The trees are dropping their leaves, and I actually wear more than one piece of clothing when I run. Autumn welcomes fond memories of cross-country races in high school, fall crops from the farms, and Vermont’s brisk morning air that rushes into your nostrils as you greet the day.
I’m skipping spring this year, interestingly enough. I will not experience a vernal equinox in 2012. I’ll have lived through fall three times in a row, and while I’m not complaining in the least, something is missing. I can’t plant tomatoes. For a year, the days will neither progress toward being warmer nor longer.
When the east wind sweeps into Buenos Aires, the heavy air lifts and breathing returns as a gratifying simplicity. It’s a sea breeze without the salt air, and it’s much like New England.
Smell, sight, and the rest of our senses are what give us our memories. Though seasons are relatively long periods of time, after twenty cycles of winter-spring-summer-fall, I’m finding myself stuck in my ways. Can you blame me?
Studying for midterms while everyone else is cramming for finals, and finishing my base and racing 8ks while the other runners are finishing their track seasons and starting their time off detaches me from the northern hemisphere. In an age so connected via facebook, twitter, email, and what have you, being the exception gives me time to think for myself. A lot. I take what I may from the rest of society, but I process it differently than I did before. Nothing is really as it seems at first glance, and I’ve gotten a lot better at stepping back, and thinking before I start, say, or write something. Re-living autumn gives me a chance to re-live a semester, in a sense. While I experience the new, I also jump over that which comes closer to being normal…that which I would have emerged from as a completely different person.
In August of 2012, when I start another fall semester, it will be #3, and my last as an undergraduate. Three leaves in a row I’ll have turned over. That’s a lot of leaves to turn over in eighteen months, considering that these are catalpa leaves of sorts (they’re big). At the end of these four years, I’ll feel a lot older than I did in September of 2009. Seize the day once, and there you have it. Seize the day always, and you write your future.
People say that college flies by like an amazing summer. It most certainly does, but the speed with which it flies is completely under your control. If you fill your time with great memories, good people, and life-changing experiences, that first day of freshman year will seem a lot farther away than it would otherwise. If I were given the chance to tip off my 18-year-old self…to give him advice, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t change a thing.
Eurus greets my door,
this autumn morning.
“On with it!” he sings.
I pay heed, but what for?
Stop to ponder and wonder but gain no moss as you roll
alone and in good company differ they do not,
for you
are but a sole part
of their existence
as they are of yours.
Slip the cracks, he tells me.
Grab my hand but let me go,
for fall we will, as one...
windswept, wild, weathered, and free.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Am I living it right?
So it’s Saturday night, and after running ten miles this evening, I went food shopping, cooked dinner, and in between reading, writing blog posts, and listening to Crosby, Stills, & Nash, I felt old.
You see, while many people my age are out partying, I’m studying, reading and running. Isn’t that what 40 year olds do?
Jill put this in an interesting way:
Parties, specifically college parties, revolve around getting as drunk as possible, so you don’t remember anything, and think you had a good time.
That seems accurate. It’s funny that people call alcohol “liquid courage.” Sure, having a beer and chatting with friends is and should be socially acceptable, but I think it ludicrous that people can maintain the illusion that alcohol makes them more interesting. To be honest, I think it just makes them talk about non-interesting things, and have non-meaningful conversations, that are perceived to be profound. It’s almost like it provides a way towards a lower form of socialization. I stopped by a house party last night after trying some (bad as usual) Buenos Aires Mexican food, and found myself engaging conversations about nothing, with people whose perception of when to start or stop talking about a subject was distorted. Go figure. To be honest, I don’t dislike parties. I like socializing with good people. I just think that people should take advantage of a lot more social outlets than they do.
I’d much rather have a legitimate conversation with someone over dinner, or at a potluck than talk about next to nothing with someone I’ve just met (or someone I know who happens to be inebriated).
My point is that my generation’s socialization norms are flawed. We dismiss getting to know people via common interest, and think that friendships are made through alcohol. This of course doesn’t apply to everyone, but it’s unfortunately ever so common. I just wish people would spend time playing Frisbee, or having lunch during the day with other good people, as opposed to doing school work all day Saturday in order to go out that night.
Is this coming from some straight-edge athlete who thinks he has all of the answers? I hope not. But to be honest, I view this point (that I’ve pretty much exhausted) as a sign of immaturity. This is partially what’s making me feel old (and odd). I feel older than my peers sometimes, which is a first. I’ve always been the goofy kid that didn’t care what other people thought of me, but now people are coming to me with questions about life. They’re surprised at the fact that I cook, and at my independence. Why is this? It feels strange, to be honest.
The great thing is that I have amazing friends at home that I learn from every day, and I meet people all the time who have great things to say. It’s just that when I talk to people who don’t have anything to say (due to alcohol or what have you), it’s not fun. The worst is when people becomes less interesting with alcohol…especially friends.
When I look in the mirror, I see someone with long hair and an attempt at a distance-runner mustache. I know it’s me staring back, but it’s a different me. It love who I am, but growing so much in so little time, and realizing it at that, can be strange. I fill my time with as much as I can for a reason. The new changes me for the better, and helps me figure out who I am. I’ve said that so many times. But what if…what if…my glass is full for the time being? What if I need to step back, stop looking for things to reflect about, and just…be me? What if I’m living it all too fast, and those guys and girls who are going out at night are doing it right? I’m sure it’s not polarized like that. I know that there’s a happy medium somewhere. One of the people I look up to most in this world, Troy Woods, told me a few months ago that I’m was doing it right…that I am doing it right. For the time being, I’ll stick with that.
You see, while many people my age are out partying, I’m studying, reading and running. Isn’t that what 40 year olds do?
Jill put this in an interesting way:
Parties, specifically college parties, revolve around getting as drunk as possible, so you don’t remember anything, and think you had a good time.
That seems accurate. It’s funny that people call alcohol “liquid courage.” Sure, having a beer and chatting with friends is and should be socially acceptable, but I think it ludicrous that people can maintain the illusion that alcohol makes them more interesting. To be honest, I think it just makes them talk about non-interesting things, and have non-meaningful conversations, that are perceived to be profound. It’s almost like it provides a way towards a lower form of socialization. I stopped by a house party last night after trying some (bad as usual) Buenos Aires Mexican food, and found myself engaging conversations about nothing, with people whose perception of when to start or stop talking about a subject was distorted. Go figure. To be honest, I don’t dislike parties. I like socializing with good people. I just think that people should take advantage of a lot more social outlets than they do.
I’d much rather have a legitimate conversation with someone over dinner, or at a potluck than talk about next to nothing with someone I’ve just met (or someone I know who happens to be inebriated).
My point is that my generation’s socialization norms are flawed. We dismiss getting to know people via common interest, and think that friendships are made through alcohol. This of course doesn’t apply to everyone, but it’s unfortunately ever so common. I just wish people would spend time playing Frisbee, or having lunch during the day with other good people, as opposed to doing school work all day Saturday in order to go out that night.
Is this coming from some straight-edge athlete who thinks he has all of the answers? I hope not. But to be honest, I view this point (that I’ve pretty much exhausted) as a sign of immaturity. This is partially what’s making me feel old (and odd). I feel older than my peers sometimes, which is a first. I’ve always been the goofy kid that didn’t care what other people thought of me, but now people are coming to me with questions about life. They’re surprised at the fact that I cook, and at my independence. Why is this? It feels strange, to be honest.
The great thing is that I have amazing friends at home that I learn from every day, and I meet people all the time who have great things to say. It’s just that when I talk to people who don’t have anything to say (due to alcohol or what have you), it’s not fun. The worst is when people becomes less interesting with alcohol…especially friends.
When I look in the mirror, I see someone with long hair and an attempt at a distance-runner mustache. I know it’s me staring back, but it’s a different me. It love who I am, but growing so much in so little time, and realizing it at that, can be strange. I fill my time with as much as I can for a reason. The new changes me for the better, and helps me figure out who I am. I’ve said that so many times. But what if…what if…my glass is full for the time being? What if I need to step back, stop looking for things to reflect about, and just…be me? What if I’m living it all too fast, and those guys and girls who are going out at night are doing it right? I’m sure it’s not polarized like that. I know that there’s a happy medium somewhere. One of the people I look up to most in this world, Troy Woods, told me a few months ago that I’m was doing it right…that I am doing it right. For the time being, I’ll stick with that.
Bolivia
So after almost missing the bus to Jujuy, Argentina from Buenos Aires because I was busy buying bananas, I set out on the 20 hour lift to the north of the country.
Jujuy was a good first step in leaving the developed world. After doing a case study on Unilever’s detergent for “Emerging Topics in Marketing,” seeing people wash their clothes in the river lent some verisimilitude to my perceptions of the situation. On my morning run before leaving for Bolivia, I had to yell at a few dogs while running through the slums. Little did I know that while Northern Argentina is poor, Bolivia is a whole different world.
The night I spent in Jujuy was fine…I ran along the river, and had dinner with some Dutchmen who had been working on an organic farm in the area. They were paid $350 pesos per week, fed three meals per day and housed for the whole time. Not a bad option if you’re looking for something to do. I would try that for a stint or two if I had the time.
I walked across the Argentina-Bolivia border from La Quiaca to Villazon, paid US $135 (in perfect bills) for my Bolivian visa, and caught a bus to Tupiza. I had dinner with more Dutchmen, a Spaniard, and a Canadian who I met in the hostel. Here I started to not drink the water.
The next morning, I hopped on a bus to Uyuni, Bolivia. Dirt roads, cows, farms and other livestock lined the route. At one point we had to fill in a stream with rocks so the bus could move along. I can’t imagine trying to make my way across Bolivia in mud season.
“Big sky” is an understatement on the altiplano. With so little light pollution, you can see everything. I only knew one southern constellation that the time, but nonetheless it was very impressive. In Uyuni that night, my run to the train graveyard upped my tolerance of dodgy places. Lo interesante is that if something happens, there’s no one to help you but yourself. All of the police are beyond corrupt, and you can’t just leave such a geographically-isolated place.
I took a one-day tour of the salt flats. Totally sufficient. We stopped in at the train graveyard on the way. It’s probably coolest at sunrise, but c’est la vie.
I was hoping to buy a hand-woven alpaca sweater, but everything was machine made, and of reasonably poor-quality. I picked out a purple hooded sweater. The armpits are already ripping, but I can sew them back together.
The expanse of white was mind blowing. You have to be there to really get it, but hopefully this will help:
It’s like standing in the middle of a frozen lake, except that you’re on the bottom of the lake, and all of the water has dried up. In some places, there is in fact water under a meter or so of salt. It flows subterraneously and bubbles up in the “Eyes of the Salar.”
From Uyuni was the eight-hour bus to Potosi. My iPod saved me on this one. Music that you share so many feelings with helps with being alone. I travel alone for a reason, as it’s hard to find people who would be tolerant of moving along at the brisk pace I take. It has its advantages, but being the only American in the midst of people who I tell that I’m from Canada, and having to be constantly alert is mentally exhausting. Traveling through Bolivia let me take another step in being travel-savvy, to say the least.
Potosi is famous for once being the richest city in the world. The Spanish extracted “enough silver to build a bridge from South America to Spain,” and the city is still known for its mine. There are daily tours, which I opted out of. Asbestos dust, arsenic gas, and dynamite in a MINE in BOLIVIA with ceiling held up by wood are not appealing to me in the least. Everyone was all psyched about the mine, but after asking people who came back if they would do it again, and receiving a firm “no” for an answer from everyone, I’m happy with my choice to not go.
Meat market in Potosi:
If this grosses you out, just imagine the smell.
I slept surprisingly well at 14,000 feet. No problems.
So other than the mine and an old national mint museum, Potosi doesn’t have much. I continued on to Sucre, which was a landfill, and caught a bus from there to Samaipata.
Places like Sucre seem to be one step up from Haiti. Foreign direct investment and selling to the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid is a must here. Argentina’s private recycling firms would serve the region well. I’m not informed enough to comment on the economic situation further. That will come in time.
The 14 hour bus ride to Samaipata was… Yeah. I’ll leave the details to a good imagination. Sitting in a bus seat for 14 hours, on a winding, bumpy, mountainous dirt road was the flip side of the highlight of my trip. The best part was not stopping for 6 hours to use the bathroom. An actual plus was eating 15 bananas along the way.
Arriving in Samaipata at 0300 was…good? At least I wasn’t on the bus anymore. With very little sleep, and delirium setting in, I finally found a hostel after walking around the town alone for a good hour.
In Samaipata, the food… With an extensive organic farming community, and bananas at 60¢ per dozen, things go well. The exchange rate doesn’t hurt either. Paying the equivalent of $7 for a pitcher of starfruit juice and a large chef salad is something no one should ever complain about. This was also at the most expensive restaurant in town; at other meals I opted for the $2 chicken and French fries off the street, or just bananas for next to nothing.
It's a quaint little place:
Six miles outside of Samaipata is the pre-Incan site, “El Fuerte” (The Fort). Very impressive, all of it.
About a mile outside of town is a rehabilitation center for injured animals. As they say, many choose not to leave, and it’s a very interactive zoo. Upon entering, Simon the spider monkey climbed up onto my shoulders. We spent some quality time monkeying (I’m sorry I had to) around.
Another (howler) monkey whose name I didn’t get (she wouldn’t tell me) took a nap on my lap. I suppose other primates enjoy contact with other beings just as much as humans do.
That night I caught a taxi (40 Bolivianos = less than six dollars) to Santa Cruz. There I spent time catching up on my reading for school, and eating lots of salad. After not eating fresh vegetables (washed in non-potable tap) for about five days, greens, reds and purples were where it was at. Santa Cruz is completely different than the rest of Bolivia. Hollister and Abercrombie are common, and one third (fact check me) of Bolivia’s tax revenue comes from the city. Prices are higher, and Bolivian yuppies speed around town in their SUVs and Mustangs. People beg on the streets in Quechua, and franchises are common.
I arrived in Buenos Aires on Sunday evening, in need of some social-contact and a good door.
I’m now a completely different person than I was two weeks ago. It’s not about running around on giant beds of salt or playing with monkeys; it’s about getting there, and reflecting on the life you lead, and your own moral fiber. Originally, my parents weren’t keen on me going to Bolivia. It made them very uncomfortable, but after sending a book of emails on how everything would turn out all right, and that I was competent enough to go by myself, I got the go-ahead. One thing I thought I was ready for was the uncertainty or “sketchiness” of Bolivia. It required that I develop a whole new level of awareness very, very quickly. Let’s just say my peripheral vision and barometer of place-you-should-not-be risk are a whole lot better than they were in January, and March (last month) for that matter. It’s going to be very strange to return to UVM, and not have worry about leaving my laptop around in Kalkin or the living room.
Meandering through a third world country makes you call into question everything you care about, and thus love it all that much more. Pentathlon, school, family, friends, and the life ahead of me now hold a new level of clarity…or at least they will for a little while. Was it because I spent a week thinking? Was it one continuous long-run, or was I living in a dream? -Not a dream in the Madrid sense (lack of weather and thus lack of feeling), but a dream in that things could change so quickly, with every decision seeming so critical in the short term. Everyone I’d met that had traveled through Bolivia said “go to Bolivia.” I took their word for it. What I came back with however, was something completely different than I expected, and all things considered, I won’t soon give it back.
Jujuy was a good first step in leaving the developed world. After doing a case study on Unilever’s detergent for “Emerging Topics in Marketing,” seeing people wash their clothes in the river lent some verisimilitude to my perceptions of the situation. On my morning run before leaving for Bolivia, I had to yell at a few dogs while running through the slums. Little did I know that while Northern Argentina is poor, Bolivia is a whole different world.
The night I spent in Jujuy was fine…I ran along the river, and had dinner with some Dutchmen who had been working on an organic farm in the area. They were paid $350 pesos per week, fed three meals per day and housed for the whole time. Not a bad option if you’re looking for something to do. I would try that for a stint or two if I had the time.
I walked across the Argentina-Bolivia border from La Quiaca to Villazon, paid US $135 (in perfect bills) for my Bolivian visa, and caught a bus to Tupiza. I had dinner with more Dutchmen, a Spaniard, and a Canadian who I met in the hostel. Here I started to not drink the water.
The next morning, I hopped on a bus to Uyuni, Bolivia. Dirt roads, cows, farms and other livestock lined the route. At one point we had to fill in a stream with rocks so the bus could move along. I can’t imagine trying to make my way across Bolivia in mud season.
“Big sky” is an understatement on the altiplano. With so little light pollution, you can see everything. I only knew one southern constellation that the time, but nonetheless it was very impressive. In Uyuni that night, my run to the train graveyard upped my tolerance of dodgy places. Lo interesante is that if something happens, there’s no one to help you but yourself. All of the police are beyond corrupt, and you can’t just leave such a geographically-isolated place.
I took a one-day tour of the salt flats. Totally sufficient. We stopped in at the train graveyard on the way. It’s probably coolest at sunrise, but c’est la vie.
I was hoping to buy a hand-woven alpaca sweater, but everything was machine made, and of reasonably poor-quality. I picked out a purple hooded sweater. The armpits are already ripping, but I can sew them back together.
The expanse of white was mind blowing. You have to be there to really get it, but hopefully this will help:
It’s like standing in the middle of a frozen lake, except that you’re on the bottom of the lake, and all of the water has dried up. In some places, there is in fact water under a meter or so of salt. It flows subterraneously and bubbles up in the “Eyes of the Salar.”
From Uyuni was the eight-hour bus to Potosi. My iPod saved me on this one. Music that you share so many feelings with helps with being alone. I travel alone for a reason, as it’s hard to find people who would be tolerant of moving along at the brisk pace I take. It has its advantages, but being the only American in the midst of people who I tell that I’m from Canada, and having to be constantly alert is mentally exhausting. Traveling through Bolivia let me take another step in being travel-savvy, to say the least.
Potosi is famous for once being the richest city in the world. The Spanish extracted “enough silver to build a bridge from South America to Spain,” and the city is still known for its mine. There are daily tours, which I opted out of. Asbestos dust, arsenic gas, and dynamite in a MINE in BOLIVIA with ceiling held up by wood are not appealing to me in the least. Everyone was all psyched about the mine, but after asking people who came back if they would do it again, and receiving a firm “no” for an answer from everyone, I’m happy with my choice to not go.
Meat market in Potosi:
If this grosses you out, just imagine the smell.
I slept surprisingly well at 14,000 feet. No problems.
So other than the mine and an old national mint museum, Potosi doesn’t have much. I continued on to Sucre, which was a landfill, and caught a bus from there to Samaipata.
Places like Sucre seem to be one step up from Haiti. Foreign direct investment and selling to the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid is a must here. Argentina’s private recycling firms would serve the region well. I’m not informed enough to comment on the economic situation further. That will come in time.
The 14 hour bus ride to Samaipata was… Yeah. I’ll leave the details to a good imagination. Sitting in a bus seat for 14 hours, on a winding, bumpy, mountainous dirt road was the flip side of the highlight of my trip. The best part was not stopping for 6 hours to use the bathroom. An actual plus was eating 15 bananas along the way.
Arriving in Samaipata at 0300 was…good? At least I wasn’t on the bus anymore. With very little sleep, and delirium setting in, I finally found a hostel after walking around the town alone for a good hour.
In Samaipata, the food… With an extensive organic farming community, and bananas at 60¢ per dozen, things go well. The exchange rate doesn’t hurt either. Paying the equivalent of $7 for a pitcher of starfruit juice and a large chef salad is something no one should ever complain about. This was also at the most expensive restaurant in town; at other meals I opted for the $2 chicken and French fries off the street, or just bananas for next to nothing.
It's a quaint little place:
Six miles outside of Samaipata is the pre-Incan site, “El Fuerte” (The Fort). Very impressive, all of it.
About a mile outside of town is a rehabilitation center for injured animals. As they say, many choose not to leave, and it’s a very interactive zoo. Upon entering, Simon the spider monkey climbed up onto my shoulders. We spent some quality time monkeying (I’m sorry I had to) around.
Another (howler) monkey whose name I didn’t get (she wouldn’t tell me) took a nap on my lap. I suppose other primates enjoy contact with other beings just as much as humans do.
That night I caught a taxi (40 Bolivianos = less than six dollars) to Santa Cruz. There I spent time catching up on my reading for school, and eating lots of salad. After not eating fresh vegetables (washed in non-potable tap) for about five days, greens, reds and purples were where it was at. Santa Cruz is completely different than the rest of Bolivia. Hollister and Abercrombie are common, and one third (fact check me) of Bolivia’s tax revenue comes from the city. Prices are higher, and Bolivian yuppies speed around town in their SUVs and Mustangs. People beg on the streets in Quechua, and franchises are common.
I arrived in Buenos Aires on Sunday evening, in need of some social-contact and a good door.
I’m now a completely different person than I was two weeks ago. It’s not about running around on giant beds of salt or playing with monkeys; it’s about getting there, and reflecting on the life you lead, and your own moral fiber. Originally, my parents weren’t keen on me going to Bolivia. It made them very uncomfortable, but after sending a book of emails on how everything would turn out all right, and that I was competent enough to go by myself, I got the go-ahead. One thing I thought I was ready for was the uncertainty or “sketchiness” of Bolivia. It required that I develop a whole new level of awareness very, very quickly. Let’s just say my peripheral vision and barometer of place-you-should-not-be risk are a whole lot better than they were in January, and March (last month) for that matter. It’s going to be very strange to return to UVM, and not have worry about leaving my laptop around in Kalkin or the living room.
Meandering through a third world country makes you call into question everything you care about, and thus love it all that much more. Pentathlon, school, family, friends, and the life ahead of me now hold a new level of clarity…or at least they will for a little while. Was it because I spent a week thinking? Was it one continuous long-run, or was I living in a dream? -Not a dream in the Madrid sense (lack of weather and thus lack of feeling), but a dream in that things could change so quickly, with every decision seeming so critical in the short term. Everyone I’d met that had traveled through Bolivia said “go to Bolivia.” I took their word for it. What I came back with however, was something completely different than I expected, and all things considered, I won’t soon give it back.
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