50 pounds of ridiculousness....

so there's nothing like finding out a week before you move out of the country that instead of being allowed to bring 2 bags weighing 50 pounds each, you can only bring 2 bags weighing 50 pounds total! well, at least i haven't started packing for the trip yet..... but you know, i think it's one of the greatest developments so far. you wouldn't believe all the crap i've bought so far to take with me. foo foo shampoo, extra food, 3 jackets i don't need..... then there's all the stuff that i've had forever and haven't ever used and for some reason it made sense to carry halfway across the world with me! i think one of the ways i've been dealing with leaving a ridiculously familiar place and moving to a place where nothing is going to make sense (at first anyway) was to surround myself with everything that i could possibly need to be comfortable, just in case i can't find it in chile. but where is the sense in that??

if i bring all of this crap i've been carrying around with me to a country where people are living just fine with what they have (which is a fraction of what i was planning on bringing), then what's the point in going? haven't i learned anything from living in a country where the average citizen spends a bunch of cash they don't have on a bunch of stuff they don't need only to find that their lives are empty in spite of it all?? how on earth does having useless material possessions bring a sense of comfort to my life?? it's never really made sense to me, and yet here i find myself right in the midst of it all. and even worse, i've been planning on taking that useless mentality to south america with me. heading south is my opportunity to abandon any connection between physical possessions and positive emotions. i'm hoping to appreciate how people get by with only what they need and find joy in their lives because they understand what is truly important, and what doesn't really matter. i'm hoping to learn to find joy in connections with the people around me and comfort in opening myself up to new experiences. i'm hoping to restart my life again in a style more befitting to my nature, and more beneficial to the world around me.

so hooray for the 50-pounds-total rule! hooray for going through the piles of stuff in my room and figuring out what i really can't live without for the next several months/years/decades! hooray for leaving behind the shackles of a broken mentality and looking forward to new beginnings without 100 pounds of extra baggage dragging me down. hooray for the start of a new awareness of importance, relevance, and joy. hooray to a life that rises above physical possessions and revolves around friendship, culture, and community. hooray for it all, hooray for it all!!

one week and counting....

5:30am and wide awake....

ahhhh.......5:30am. great time of day to be up. those of you that know me well should be laughing.... i can't even get out of bed until close to 8am most mornings! but this morning was a bit different. this morning i woke up and started thinking about the adventure coming my way and i couldn't get back to sleep. needless to say, i'm a bit excited. 22 days!!

i was thinking about riding a bike around town. the hostel has bikes we can borrow and i figure it'll be the best way to explore the town. i've seen pictures of the town - lots of colorful tin buildings and pretty small (population 20,000). it will be cool to be able to ride a bike around to see where everything is and to start getting to know the place.

am a bit concerned about the language (and the fact that i don't speak it). i haven't been keeping up on my rosetta stone since i moved outta my apartment a couple of weeks ago....still trying to find everything that i packed up and trying not to unpack all of the stuff that's going to patagonia with me. it's not working well. i have been making wonderful progress on watching Harry Potter en Espanol though and i'm sure that will help me a lot once i get down there!

realized yesterday that this is my last weekend in town - am out of town for the next 3 and that's it! big mix of emotions - i feel for the first time in a long time that i'm doing what i'm supposed to be doing, but i'm also figuring out that i don't have enough time to do everything i want to do before i leave, and definitely won't have time to see all of the people i want to see. and i'm not really sure when i'm coming back so that makes me sad. i'm no stranger to moving, but this is the first time in my life i feel like i have a "hometown" and it's going to be tough to say goodbye to all of the people that i've come to know.

but it's going to be amazing to start life over as well. i guess you never really get to start over, but giving up everything i've worked on for the last several years and moving halfway across the world has got to be close. don't know the language, don't really know anyone, don't know what i'll be doing, and don't know when i'm coming back. it's a lot of don'ts but it adds up to one of the greatest opportunities and adventures in the world!! i'm looking forward to slowing life down, figuring out what is important, and what isn't. to getting to know people more than just on the surface, getting to know a culture so removed from what i know, and figuring out who i am and what i'm supposed to be doing with this crazy thing called life. i think i'm ready.

trekking in patagonia

so as soon as i get to patagonia, i get to go on a solo backpacking trip. i've gotta do some sort of a trip through the Parque Nacional Torres del Paine so that i can talk to all of the travellers about the treks through the park. i've been so busy with everything else that i haven't had much time to read about the treks. but the other night when i was supposed to be sleeping because i thought i was getting sick, i read about the treks for hours (i was writing all of the distances on the map and it took a while to convert the kilometers to miles....) and it was so exciting, i woke up healthy the next morning! so check this out - there are flamingos in the park!! real flamingos! they're called flamenco chileno (chilean flamingos) and they're bright pink because they feed on the aquatic insects and small molluscs found in the saltwater lakes in the park. rad.

the park is 100 km north of Puerto Natales, which is the town i'll be living in. the area was established as a Parque Nacional in 1959 and declared an international biosphere reserve by Unesco in 1978 (same year i was born.....coincidence???). the park is famous for its glaciers, craggy mountains, glacial lakes, wind, and superb trekking. the glaciers in the park are appendages of one of the largest continental ice fields in the world - the Hielo Sur (aka the Southern Patagonian Ice Field; 14,000 sq km and stretches 320 km from north to south). one of the highlights is the Glaciar Grey, which terminates into the north end of Lago Grey. A wall of ice 200m thick continuously drops blocks of ice, some as big as houses, into the lake. The icebergs are blown by the wind to the shoreline where they melt. You can hike on the glacier and as long as the icebergs and wind aren't too dangerous, there's a boat that makes a trip down the lake. i think i'm going to have to check this place out.

more about the park to come.....

welcome to my new blog.

this is my new blog. it's my first blog and i have no clue what i'm doing. but i think it's going to be great. i'll use it to stay in contact with everyone while i'm living in south america!!