random blogfest...

so first and foremost, huge props to my mom for joining my blog AND for figuring out how to add a picture!!! and a fantastic one at that! i haven't even figured out how to do that!!

so i get to go to the park on monday!! woop woop!! i'm going to jump onto a 5 day, two person guided trip that's going in. the guide is a chilean and knows everything about the park so that will be rad. weird to think about going on a guided backpacking trip but it'll be cool because i may be able to do some guiding later on this season (yay) so it'll be nice to see what exactly the guides do... mom, i'll get you a detailed itinerary so you'll know where i am the whole time, ha ha ha!

speaking of weird, that is the oddest word. what ever happened to the i-before-e-except-after-c rule?? highly ironic that weird ended up with such a weird spelling. apparently whoever wrote the dictionary had a sense of humor....

work is going swell. it's pretty slow but we definitely have the chilean approach to things. if i feel like taking a break, i just take off. if i'm the only one here, i just put a note on the door. if it's cold, i can hang out in the hostel next door where it's nice and toasty, and people just come find me over there if they need help. i'm slowly getting used to the long nights (during the busy season i'll be working until 11pm some nights!), it helps that everything here happens late so this is the norm rather than the exception to the rule! that's why they have the siesta - everyone stays out super late and then gets up at 8am and then takes a nap for lunch. it'll get busy any time now so things should pick up soon. until then i'm filling my days listening to fantastic music really loud and playing with the tents and trekking poles and other gear. it's a gear whore's dream here....which is really funny since up to last year, this building was a whore house! no joke! the madam was in here yesterday to pick something up.... so ha ha ha it's a fitting place for a self proclaimed gear whore....

it's really starting to feel like home around here. great people in the hostel! a few people have stuck around for several days helping out in exchange for free room and board. it's amazing to sit and talk to people and hear their stories. i'm really surprised at the number of people that have been travelling for over a year. how do they do it?? it's a bit rude to ask people if they're independently wealthy, but i can't think of any other way to travel for that long. well, when i win the lotto, i guess i know what i'm doing with the winnings! most of the people are from europe, the united states, australia, and new zealand. everyone has been rediculously cool. this hostel is by far the most comfortable one i've ever stayed at, and i've stayed at quite a few. people come in and just relax - there's such a wonderful mellow family feel to the place. and breakfast totally rocks - we have a breadmaker and the guys make fresh bread every day (it smells sooooooo good). i've got my own room for now; that may change when we get interns (ie travelers who are willing to help out for at least a month in exchange for room and board) later on in the season. but for now it's just me! we had a sweet cat, BC (mom, how weird is that - another BC cat!), up until today but he got the boot. he had a habit of going to the bathroom where he wasn't supposed to which really doesn't work in a hostel so he now lives at our friend scott's house just outside of town. so i'm bummed, he was a cool cat and slept on my bed last night and everything, but we'll be getting another one in a few days. if there is one thing there is no shortage of here, it's animals that need a home....

nights continue to be a bit rough. haven't really written much about that (hey i'm trying to make this a happy blog that people actually want to read). it's so strange to be away from everyone because it's really easy to convince myself that ry guy isn't really gone - i just haven't seen him in a while. and i haven't seen morph or my folks for a while either so it's not like i'm around everyone except for him.... but then i'll see a photo or hear a song and poof - a part of me is suddenly gone again and i'm feeling all broken. days are easier - i don't know anyone here all that well and would prefer if they didn't think of me as that crazy yank that walks around crying all day - but nights are something different altogether. some are ok, but some sure aren't. dad made a photo thing with a picture of ry guy from each of his 28 years and i still haven't been able to watch it. i've never been one to talk about tough things so now i'm trying this writing thing instead. and that's surprisingly easier than talking about things. but still therapeutic so thanks for listening, my captive audience.... i'll try to keep things cotton candy and fluffy bunnies but there are some days that i gotta get some things out and today has just been one of those days. but the nice thing about days like this is the knowledge that tomorrow will be better. i guess there's going to be days like this for a long time but every day we're all healing a little bit more and eight months from now we'll all be together - one big happy family again. and that's rad.

so one final story before i head home from work (this whole working next door to where i live is awesome - best commute of my life!!!). the weather continues to amaze me here. i lived in new zealand, where they have songs about "4 seasons in 1 day". well, dear kiwis, you guys have got nothin' on natales! so i was lying in bed the other morning listening to the breakfast talk (my room is right next to the kitchen so i don't even need an alarm clock - i just wait 'till everyone else gets up and then i do!). and i heard someone talking about it snowing outside. no way i thought! so i got up to investigate, and sure enough, it was snowing! not too hard but before too long is was really coming down! it wasn't sticking on the ground but there were some big snowflakes! so i jumped in the shower and ran into my room and got dressed so i could go to the market before work. threw on all of my warm wet weather gear - wool shirt, down jacket, gore-tex jacket, gloves, fuzzy hat....the works. came out of my room and walked outside to find.....stunning sunshine. blue sky and everything. seriously, it had been less than a half hour and it was sunny and not warm, but totally pleasant. hmmm..... so i went back inside and put my gloves and gore-tex back and put on my sunglasses instead. walked a few blocks to the market and had all sorts of fun on my first grocery shopping trip (more about that one another day). came out of the store maybe 30 minutes later....and it was snowing. no blue sky whatsoever. so then i walked a block to the fruit market and got a few things and walked back outside...... and it was sunny again. stayed sunny for most of the day and had to be at least in the high 50's (sorry i haven't switched over to celsius yet). so new zealand may have 4 seasons in 1 day, but we've got 4 seasons in 1 hour here!! the nice thing though is that if the weather is crappy, as long as the wind is blowing (which is pretty much all the time), you can bet that it won't be crappy for long! but man oh man, it's REALLY hard to get laundry done! how are you supposed to put all of your laundry out on the line to dry when there's a good chance on any given day that it'll rain or maybe even snow sometime??? so when y'all come down to visit me, don't be surprised if i'm wearing dirty clothes... really it's not me, it's the weather!!

until later friends, thanks for being there. be kind to yourselves and each other and i'll see ya on the flipside, coke :)

natales night life

went to a fashion show last night. two things i've picked up on really quickly here - time means very little, and things at night start really late. the fashion show was a fundraiser for a local charity and was held in one of the bars. it was supposed to start at 10.30pm. since everyone takes a siesta from noon until 2 or 2.30 or 3 or whenever they feel like going back to work that day, they also all work until pretty late. so people don't eat dinner until 8 or 9pm. and if people are going out after dinner, they usually don't head out until 10 or 11 and oftentimes well after midnight. so the show last night was supposed to start at 10.30. when we were still at the hostel at a quarter to 11, i figured we'd be pretty late. we finally headed over a bit after 11 and that's when i figured out that time means very little. we were 45 minutes late and were the first people at the bar. (i've also figured out that if someone says they'll be there at 2, they won't be. they may show up around 3 or 4, and no one really cares. people show up when they feel like showing up and it's all good. and if someone says they'll be stopping by later, they actually won't be stopping by at all.....) so we got a drink and tried not to get too overwhelmed by the cigarette smoke - it's been a looooooooong time since i've been in a bar that still let people smoke in it and everyone here seems to smoke. after a few drinks, peole finally started showing up (most of them seemed to be my grandma's age) and the fashion show finally got under way. by this time, it was after 1am and i really started to understand that things at night start really late! it can be a lot of fun to look at things here through gringo eyes. the people setting up the show made a walkway with tealight candles and all i could think about was the fire hazard and which wall or person was going to go up first...... but there were no fires and the night progressed without any trouble. there were several teenagers modeling pretty modern outfits. towards the end, they started wearing more traditional outfits and the last guy to come out was wearing nothing but tight white boxer briefs and some sort of small sheepskin thrown over his shoulders. yes, it was my favorite outfit. then he and one of the girls each grabbed a napkin and did some sort of traditional dance around the bar (sorry, i don't know what it was....). every once in a while i remember how different life was just a week ago and this was one of those moments. it's 2am, i'm in a bar full of smoking grandmas, and there is a young man dancing around with napkins in his hand wearing nothing but boxers and fur. so there you go. fashion show natales style. this morning came awfully early (now i understand the siesta - everyone has to take a nap after staying out drinking until 5am) and now i'm at work watching the rain and wishing we closed for the siesta too......

dogs, dogs, dogs!

so there are a lot of dogs here. packs of them in fact. i had heard about the stray dog problem but wasn't quite expecting them at the airport. but when i walked out of the airport in punta arenas to wait for the bus, around the corner runs the biggest damn german shepard i have ever seen in my life!!! he ran down the sidewalk, across the street, and into the parking lot. i'm starting to hyperventilate, thinking i'm about to be eaten, and no one else even batted an eye. can't really see that happening back home - 150 pound stray attack dog runs by and no one even tries to get their kids out of the way..... where i'm from, there was a lady at work that wet herself when someone's pet dog escaped out of the elevator onto the sewing floor and ran around. no joke. so anyway, here it's a bit different. there are dogs everywhere. i can look out the window of the hostel and see anywhere between one and five dogs. at all times. and they're not (for the most part) grungy looking dogs. there's a lot of purebred looking dogs running around. i keep thinking "oh someone's pet got out" until they run by me and dart away if i look like i might come near them. i'm hearing a lot of horror stories about the condition that some of them get in and i have a feeling that i'm going to struggle a lot because there isn't a whole lot that i can do to help them. we put out a little dish of food each night to help some of them eat, but there are so many that you really can't help them all. and you know what the problem is???? in chile, it's considered terrible to get a male dog fixed. getting a female dog/cat/whatever fixed is no problem and the local vet will do the surgery for only like $20 (the government pays the rest). **side story, we were walking through town and there was a little tin house looking like it was about to fall over and there was a piece of paper taped to the window and Bill says "oh that sign says that the guy that lives there will fix animals". um.....i think i understand why vets here only charge $10 to treat an animal but in the states it costs $300 just to look in their ear......okay back to the story** but no one will get their male animals fixed. the reasoning goes something like "well i don't have to get my male dog fixed because he can't have puppies". for reals. so now there are dogs running around all over the place, sleeping on the sidewalks, barely making it across the road, etc. cats too. and travelers find stray puppies and kittens all the time and bring them into the hostel saying "look we found this poor little kitten and it's starving and can you take care of it" and what they don't realize is that if we took them all in we would have 38 cats and 29 dogs. so we have to tell them no. can any of you picture someone coming to me with a starting kitten and me telling them that they have to put it back on the street??? yea, me neither. i think i'll start looking for a solution now......anyway until next time take care of you and i'll see ya on the flipside! :)

buenos dias!

good morning everyone! gorgeous sunshine here (again) at the bottom of the world. amazing!!

so i got here just fine. when i got off the plane in punta arenas (flight #4....), we had landed a bit late and i missed the bus that i was supposed to catch that would take me to natales (2 1/2 hours away). so i figured, hmmmm.... maybe there will be another one??

so began the bus epic. i was waiting outside and it was awfully cold and this wonderful woman comes up and starts talking to me. now, i thought that i had at least a sorta basic grasp of spanish. up until a couple of weeks ago anyway, and since then i've sorta fallen apart. but i figured i would be able to understand a word or two.....um, no. not a word. so this woman is talking to me and i'm telling her that i can't understand and only speak a little spanish, which is making her chat even more. so finally she says "frio" which i did understand. that means cold. and she grabs two of my bags sitting at my feet and walks off. so i figured i should follow. grabbed my stuff and followed along feeling like quite the idiot.....she walked into the airport and put my stuff down and we waited together for the bus from in there. much warmer. we continued to try to talk and i eventually got across that i was supposed to be on the ferdinand bus at 5.30. she eventually got across that there would be another bus in an hour or something like that. so then i figured i should call the guys i'm working for to let them know that i'm not on the 5.30 bus.

so began the phone epic. i had a pocket full of random coins. and a piece of paper with phone numbers on it (thanks owen and jenny!!) including country code, region code, and a bunch of other numbers. and a pay phone. with all directions in spanish. there were some helpful pictures on the phone that only served to confuse me more. i finally figured out that the phone wanted 100 pesos. which happened to be all i had in my pocket. awesome! so i put one in and started dialing numbers. i was hoping the phone would have some sort of phone number on it so i would know how many digits i was looking for, but no luck. i figured that i wouldn't need the country code since i was already there so i just dialed the region code and the other digits. the phone started beeping. hmmmm. maybe in chile the phones don't go "ring ring", they go "beep beep"? well after a while the beeping stopped and i hung up and my 100 pesos dropped into the coin return thingie. don't think that was the right number. so i tried again. put in my 100 pesos and dialed just the last group of numbers. and the phone started beeping again...and then rustyn answered! YES!!! i had made my first phone call in chile and was oh so proud of myself! rustyn explained that since i missed the 5.30 bus, they didn't have a reservation for me on the later bus and there was no guarantee that they wouldn't be full. so i just had to hope that there was room. i tried calling the bus company, but for some reason i couldn't get the phone to take my 100 peso coin. wtf?? it worked fine before.... then i realized that there are different 100 peso coins here. the older ones are larger than the newer ones. and the phones only take the older large variety. i guess they decided not to change the phones when they changed the coins....and i was out of the larger coins. so i crossed my fingers that the bus would have room, and the phone epic was done!

and so we return to the bus epic. rumor (and my terrible spanish) had it that there would be a bus at 7. sure enough, right at 7 a bus pulled up. i was ready with my spanish phrasebook in hand. everyone rushed up to the bus and a guy started throwing everyone's bags into the storage area under the bus. i went up to the guy and tried to ask if i could buy a bus ticket. he didn't understand a word i said. so i had to show him the damn phrasebook (yup, i was that person). he didn't really say anything but he started putting my stuff under the bus so i took that as a yes. so then i got on the bus and tried giving the bus driver my 5000 pesos. but he didn't seem to want to take it and everyone else getting on the bus was squeezing around me and i really felt like a fool so i just went and got a seat. as it turns out, in chile you get a seat so that the bus/boat/whatever can start moving and then you pay whenever they get around to taking your money. so i eventually paid and off i went to natales! the bus was really comfy (sorry mom, no chickens) with seats that reclined and a bathroom and everything! i tried so hard to stay awake to see everything around me but after close to 40 hours of traveling at that point, it was a losing battle. but at least the epics were done and i was on my way to my new home!

so now i'm here and it's wonderful. went for a walk in the sunshine yesterday to see the town. wow i've never felt so conspicuous in my whole life. as it turns out, i'm really tall and my hair is really blonde and my clothes are really colorful. so i smiled at everyone staring in surprise at me and explored the town. amazing place. there's shops everywhere that seem to sell a little bit of everything. i walked as far as i could towards the mountains and then turned and headed down to the water. the mountains are unbelievable. you can see glaciers across the water that look close enough to walk to (they aren't). they're all covered in snow (it snowed in town two days ago so there was snow in the hills still) and are incredibly impressive. can't wait to get to know them better! there was a massive military boat in the water which everyone laughed about when i told them it was there. apparently chile thinks that they have to be ready for battle, although there really isn't much of a threat from anyone at all. but just in case anything happens, there is a great big grey military boat and it has a helicopter on it and everything. i continued exploring, and all of the shops started closing. we had reached the noon hour. when just about everything (except for our hostel/rental shop) closes. and doesn't reopen until 2 or sometimes 2.30 or sometimes 3 - just whenever the people working there feel like coming back to work. i'm quickly realizing that things get done here whenever people feel like getting them done and if it's not done today, you can get it done tomorrow. i mean really, what's the rush?? ended up back at the hostel without getting too lost (major accomplishment) and spent the rest of the day checking out the rental shop (was a whore house up until last year when erratic rock bought it.....so we may be renting more than tents and stoves, ha ha ha), hanging out with the travelers staying at the hostel, and trying sorta to unpack. my room is called the cave and it's wonderful. bed is super comfy and has a ton of blankets and comforters to snuggle under. totally doesn't make up for the fact that toof and ducky and buddha aren't sleeping in bed with me, but it's nice to sleep well. am hanging out today again and will probably start working tomorrow or the next day. and should be able to get to the park (torres del paine) soon. it sounds life altering. something tells me it will be.

lunch is ready and i'm still in my pajamas....gotta run. pictures and video to come. till later, take care of each other and i'll see y'all on the flipside. :) coke

yay!!

the eagle has landed!!! i'm here!!! all sorts of amazing stories to share....but the sun is out, the weather is gorgeous, and i may have a ride on the back of a motorcycle into torres del paine so stories are going to have to wait! this place is RAD!!!!! woop woop! :)

i'm here!!

hooray i'm here!! well, i'm in santiago anyway! flew from seattle to new york and then to santiago. still have to fly to puerto montt and then to punta arenas and then i take a bus to puerto natales and then i'm home!! 10 hours and i'll be there, woop woop!!

flight to santiago was way cool - pretty spacious and each seat had it's own tv and you could watch any movie or tv show you wanted! i'm reading the third stupid vampire book so i didn't use the tv much but it was nice to have the option to watch a movie if you wanted. they even had office space and garden state!! got to santiago and was shocked to find that just about all of the signs in the airport were in spanish and english! didn't think i'd see much english but i was wrong! figured out where to pay the entry fee (thanks owen and jenny!!), got through the police checkpoint, found my luggage, didn't get stopped by the adorable agriculture dogs (three labs, so cute!), made it through customs (had to stop after i went through because no one even asked me a question when i went through and i thought maybe i'd missed it...but that was really it), figured out where to get my tickets for the next two flights (not easy....), didn't get charged for the extra luggage (wasn't able to get it down to 50 pounds....more like 80....), and got really confused trying to find the gate for my next flight. gave up after searching for a while (there's only like 10 gates so it shouldn't be that hard.....) and changed into clean clothes, brushed my teeth, and found a little cafe with a WI FI ZONA. figured out how to get online and now all is well! still have no clue where the gate is but we don't board for an hour so i'll figure it out at some point......

interesting things so far:

• there is an awful lot of english around. a lot of the advertisements are only in english which is really odd. but very helpful if you're not fluent....
• the first place i found to eat was......Dunkin' Doughnuts. for reals. like i said before, the airport isn't very big and i've already found not just 1, but 2 dunkin' doughnuts. apparently chileans really like doughnuts.
• when i logged online, my computer suddenly spoke spanish. everything was en espanol and it took me ages to figure out how to change it back to english.... the computer didn't automatically change the time to the new time zone but it somehow decided to start speaking a foreign language.....
• when you have a blue tooth mouse in your bag, it's a good idea to have it turned off. every time i stopped typing and went digging in my bag, the curser started moving around and i thought someone had hacked into my computer. drove me nuts until i realized that the mouse was still turned on and i was the one moving the curser......
  
• the soap operas on television here are even worse than they are in the US.
  
• the mountains here are AMAZING. i've seen a mountain or two in my time and these just took my breath away. flying into santiago was amazing. the airport is surrounded by green agriculture fields, tin shacks, and scattered buildings. it's totally flat and the Andes mountains rise up out of nowhere and beckon. it's almost like salt lake city, only the mountains are much closer and they stretch out in a line as far as you can see. they're incredible. i can't wait to get back in a plane so i can see more!!
  
• as long as you're willing to take a few risks, everything will work out just fine!

alrighty it's time to resume the hunt for the gate. wish me luck!! i'm going to attempt to put a video on the blog - OR gave me a really wicked ipod as a going away present and it has a video camera on it!!! thank you OR!!!!! i don't have any video of chile yet but i took a video of my dog owen (aka toof) so let's start with that one. sweet!! :)

on my way.....

en route to chile!! in new york right now - very confusing place. am about to call and cancel my cell phone (you can all delete the number - it won't be mine anymore....) and then jump on the plane for a million hours and then jump on a couple more planes and then hop on a bus and then i'm there!! 32 hours of fun fun fun! will get an update out as soon as i can - until then take care of each other and i hope to see you soon!! will see ya on the flipside... :)