rain rain beautiful rain!

Last night, while Santiago slept, the rain that we have been waiting for since February--and REALLY waiting for since about a month ago--came to us. It rained and rained and now the mountains are gorgeous, covered in snow, and I can see clear to Puente Alto. This also means that I will run tonight, after class. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! WHEEE!!!!

I wanted to get "Rain Rain Beautiful Rain" by Ladysmith Black Mambazo but couldn't find it on YouTube or Google Video, so here's a little classic Gene Kelly instead.

another reason pbs is amazing

I thought this site was incredibly cool. I guess I'm a little behind on the times in the PBS department, it's kind of old, but so great all the same.

immigration hypocrisy

I think I spelled "hypocrisy" right. Whatever. Anyhow, there's an interesting piece up right now on Upside-Down World comparing the case of a legal Kurdish immigrant who was deported back to Turkey--a very dangerous and oppressive place for Kurds--despite complying completely with immigration laws and regulations, and Luis Posada Carriles, a proudly convicted terrorist who admitted to entering the US illegally but has been allowed to live in the country as long as he likes, with no legal worries at all. The article is here. I realize that such comparisons are not really worth much in any kind of fair or scientific sense, and Upside-Down World is certainly not one to shy away from ignoring aspects of a story in order to make a point (see their impassioned and misguided defense of Chavez shutting down RCTV--the repeated argument that it was okay because RCTV made Fox News "look like a kitten" doesn't really fly). But the point gets made all the same, and well. Our immigration policy is very, very fucked up in a lot of ways, and the recent bill hasn't improved it at all. Para Justicia y Libertad had a good post on this a week ago.

My host sister, Pili, has had a nightmare of a time trying to get a tourist visa to come to the U.S. in July (she'll be leaving right around when I do). Her process appears to be finally ending because Katty got back from her travels and, well, Katty knows everyone and their mother and will get this all ironed out right quick. That's how Katty rolls. But if Pili had been trying to do it on her own? Man, I'm not even sure she would have gotten it, and she's got freckles and is in grad school right now, she's not even a scary illiterate brown person. Ugh. Meantime, Michaela Sachs is in town and we've been texting the past few days trying to figure out a time to meet up. I'm going to give her a call today as soon as I get showered and dressed. Perhaps we'll get lunch? Speaking of showers, I'd better hop in, I'm pretty gross at the moment. Before I do, I feel the need to report that my back has been killing me the past couple of days, kind of constant discomfort punctuated by occasional "Ow shit!" moments. I'm sure it has something to do with yoga, and I'm going to ask Felipe tonight what I'm doing wrong that's causing the pain. Also why my hip flexors hurt when I'm doing inside-of-the-leg positions. Yoga is great, I'm so glad I have it because running is so far out of the question. I see people running every once in a while and think to myself, "Oh dear, that person has lost their mind. Poor lungs." Yes and Cori came over to Vale's last night again with Bessie and Chris and we had a very fun Spanglish time, plus a good salad made by Cori and Chris the expert chefs. Also Cori has no recollection of any Michaela, which kind of confused me. Would either of my parents care to clear up how this is possible? Joshy was in my dream last night, holy crap...

Wow, I'm in full on free-association ramble mode. Cool.

music wish list

As I opened the book wish list a couple of days ago, today I open the music wish list with "Rendezvous in New York" by Chick Corea.

going to a town

I'm not the world's biggest Rufus Wainwright fan. I get why some people are, his songs are sensitive and deep and beautiful, but for whatever reason he just doesn't generally strike a chord with me. The only song of his that I really love is "Beauty Mark," from his self-titled album. This song falls into the "songs that should give me goosebumps but don't" category, but it's really good and apparently pissing lots of people in the States, and that's excuse enough to share it.


(h/t C & L)

much better

Introducing the new, more stylish Barullo. More little changes to come. For a summary (I just typed "resumen" which is summary in Spanish...) of the weekend: Friday night I went with Vale to her favorite café, Granos y Hojas. It's a very cute little boutiquey type place, with fantastic hot chocolate and an impressive array of tea and coffee for sale. I really liked it. After that, we went for a couple of pre-gringo-party drinks, then to Líder for our contributiong to the party, then to the party. It was technically Jesse's birthday, but it turned into a real live Michigan-Wisconsin gringo party, with beer pong and flip cup and everything. But with a Chilean twist, seeing as a lot of Chileans came and there was also longaniza on the grill, and pisco sour. Vale had a great time, too, which was good because I had been a little afraid that she'd get overwhelmed by the gringo-ness. I forgot, however, that she works with 20 and 21 year old North American college students for a living.

We woke up at 4 in the afternoon on Saturday and did practically nothing before popping Zoolander in at 11 and falling asleep right after it ended. Sunday, however, is proving dramatically more productive. I got to Rodrigo and Cecilia's around 12:20, thanks to an endless wait at Cantagallo for the local bus. The class went really well, Ricardo and Dani are both good students in their own way. Ricardo is hard working and enthusiastic; it's obvious he really wants to learn English, but he's not as receptive to the sound of it as Dani. She dallies and drags her feet, but she's got a great ear for pronunciation and I generally only have to correct her once or at most twice before she says the word with barely a trace of an accent. Vale got here around 1:30 with Cecilia, having gone first to church and then to the grocery store. Now we've all eaten lunch and the coffee is just finished. Oh, and today I also read a very interesting essay about the convergence/divergence debate in developed capitalist democracies. I think it's also the first thing I've read in which the authors come out and say, "we're institutionalists," and also give unambiguous, easy-to-remember names to the institutions they're attempting to describe. Refreshing. Anyhow, still got lots of reading left today, but now it's coffee time.

aesthetics

Also, I've gotten sick of Barullo's design and will be changing it sometime soon. Just so you're not caught off guard.

new (for me) blogs

I've decided to, well, not to take a break from Juan Cole and Greenwald and C & L and digby, but to start exploring the blogosphere a little more. The "mainstream" blogs--like those I just mentioned--are totally indispensable in their way, but they are also limited by their quantity and also by a certain moderateness. It's incredible, actually, that they're portrayed as crazy left-wingers by anyone at all, they're generally solid liberals who happen to be caught in a time when the discourse has shifted so far to the right that anyone left of center must be a bra-burning Hamas-loving baby-killing commie. They're not pushing the boundaries, really, they're just pushing back against media and governmental repression, inaction and incompetence. All this by way of saying, there is really interesting stuff in some of the more personal blogs, people just writing down what they feel as it comes. Kind of like me, but heavier on the commentary and lighter on the "this is what I did today". Two good ones that I just found are Unsane and Safe and The Quaker Agitator. So anyhow, I'll be adding those to my "places you should go because i like them" as I come across them. I put up Chile from Within and The Latin Americanist a couple of days ago.

On a related note, I've been having a bit of a debate with my friend Lindsay about the value of blogs. She is a centrist through and through--a huge Bloomberg supporter--who has not, as I and many others have, lost her faith in the media. We disagree on a lot of things, which is fine, life would be insufferably boring if everyone with a shred of intelligence agreed about everything. But blogs are a point where I think she's really wrong. One of these days I'll write down my thoughts about the worth of blogs, but for now I'll leave it by pointing out that our little debate (Lindsay's and mine) is interesting because when we talk to each other about blogs, we're really talking about the mainstream ones--the aforementioned plus many others on the left, and then Politico and Michelle Malkin (crazy psycho), et al. on the right--not about the thousands of small-time bloggers whose contributions, however small, to our intellectual discourse, are collectively a breath of fresh air. I live in one of the smoggiest cities in the world; believe me, I know the value of breaths of fresh air. So if you've got a couple of minutes, check 'em out.

as if we needed reminding

Keith Olbermann is the man. The Democratic Congress is, inexplicably, counterintuitively, shamefully, still its weak-need kowtowing self. Despite an ovewhelming mandate for a troop withdrawal timeline (close to 70% in the latest CBS poll), they can't seem to help themselves in capitulating to the disgusting "leaders," all of whom should have been impeached long ago. Watch this video.

book wish list, part 1

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, by Atul Gawande.

Milan 2-1 Liverpool

I'm not the world's biggest soccer fan by any means, but being in Latin America it's pretty hard not to follow these things at least a little bit. The match today was not very high-quality (the commentators kept talking about all the errors that were being made by each side, but especially Liverpool) but still, high-level, high-stakes soccer is beautiful to watch, and soccer fans are just as crazy and loud as any group of college football or basketball fans. Sorry, Liverpool, but Milan just outplayed you, like they were supposed to in 05. I wanted to root for you because you're from the English-speaking world, but Milan has two players whose names sound like "caca" and that's enough to win my temporary fandom.

And now, back to the reading I've been doing all day (even during the game--I know! My powers of concentration are legendary...) to catch up for Electoral Systems and for my test tomorrow in Armed Conflict.

UPDATE
Here's a link to ESPN's coverage of the game. Soccer reporting is very different from, say, basketball or football reporting. It's kind of old-fashioned, reminds me of the way old Silver Chips game coverages from the 60s sound. "The speedy former Arsenal man was by far the Reds most effective performer and visibly rose in confidence after having one early shot parried away by Dida." Silly.

the second coming

Well I can't believe I'd lived to 20 years old and read Things Fall Apart twice without having read this poem.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-W.B. Yeats

been busy

Sorry for not posting in a few days, I was all fired up to write a great synopsis of the last few days, but something happened and now I don't feel that excited about it. Still, it'll be good for me to write a bit.

Thursday dawned with me throwing together our PowerPoint for the Armed Conflict presentation (the group members whose work I didn't yet have didn't send it until after I'd fallen asleep waiting the night before). Class rolled around, and after technicaly difficulties and the first group typically going overtime, it was our turn. But not only were we pressed for time, we didn't get to present to the professor because he was absent for unknown reasons. So we got the TA, who had no frame of reference for what's a reasonable length for these presentations. Every single one has gone at least 40 minutes, which the professor obviously knew, but they're only supposed to be a half hour, which is all the TA knew. So when ours went to 45 (and past the end of class, which is also common), she cut us off, and because we'd started late to begin with, we had to RACE through. I don't think we did as well as we should have or could have. Oh well, at least the essay part can make up for it somewhat (due this Thursday). That night, I went out with Jesse, a Wisconsin kid who was in my group, and some Michigan peeps to Budapest, a microbrewery on Bilbao. We cut up and laughed about how badly the presentation was gone and riffed on Borat and had a good time. Friday I spent reading and internetsing, before heading over to some other Michigan kids' (Sarah and Laurie) apartment for the Sam Tai-organized vegan dinner/party. Which was delicious/a lot of fun. I got very drunk and ended up sleeping over at Vale's.

Woke up Saturday morning and Vale and I had a very nice, very lazy and relaxing day, watching "Lost" season two on DVD (we finished and now basically HAVE to move on to season three because season two ended, well, awesomely. I spent the night again last night and this morning went home while she went to church with Lindsay. I read a bunch more (John Goldthorpe on divergent capitalisms in Western Europe in the mid-to-late 80s...dated and dense; give me the EU, already). Pilar and Pili and Kiko and Gabriel were cooking up a great lunch and invited Vale over to eat with us. So she got there in perfect time, around 3, with a delicious wine the name of which I forget. We ate and talked and laughed and it was, I shall uncreatively repeat, a great lunch. Afterwards, she got a call from Viviana, the director of COPA Viña, saying that a boy from there was missing in Santiago and could Vale go look for him. So I went to Starbucks to work on my part of the Nigeria essay and she went running off to the various bus stations. Unsuccessful there, she joined me at Starbucks and we spent the better part of the afternoon and evening calling every hospital and clinic possible and talking to Viviana and Isabel and Rodrigo (Katty's boyfriend the ex-detective). It was very stressful, especially for Vale. We finally left because there was nothing else to be done (no more numbers left to call OR to look up online...thank goodness for my computer and Starbucks wi-fi, and went to go find dinner somewhere. After a long walk and a relieving call from Viviana saying that she had found him, totally zonked out, in the airport waiting for his flight back to the states (I forgot to mention, there's something very wrong with him--the word breakdown got tossed around but it seemed worse than that), we ended up in Patio Bellavista, where we got a very nice dinner and ate outside in the cold. Too much noise inside, plus there were ostensibly space heaters outside. Anyhow, now I'm about to go to bed, but I'm feeling kind of down, so I'm going to leave you all with another video, this of one of my favorite songs of all time, which fits perfectly every mood I have, in very different ways: "This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)" by the Talking Heads.

pili met tipper gore

I forgot to mention this before, but last night at dinner Pili (my host sister) told me that she'd met Tipper Gore at work when the former second lady (Al has been here giving some seriously expensive lectures about global warming) came in to buy some wine. Apparently Tipper was very nice, had a glass with Pili, said she'd send her an autographed copy of Al's most recent book (or maybe it's one they co-got-it-ghost-written?), and spent a million pesos on 12 bottles of wine (about 2000 dollars). Much as Tipper Gore irritates me because her one big cause (at least the one people my age know about) was censoring a lot of the music that I like, I think it's pretty cool that Pili got to meet her. Then again all my friends who went to Sidwell have probably met the Gores, too, but whatever. We're in Santiago, it's definitely cooler than John McCain having been the last person to sign the Pinochet Foundation guest book before me and Katie.

the sky is contemptuous of us

Yesterday, it finally rained, for the first time in almost three months. But it didn't REALLY rain, it kind of drizzled for most of the morning. What we need is a day of steady rain. The sky knows this, but instead of giving us what it knows we need, it decided that our complaints about its smoggy state were worth nothing more than spitting on, so that's what it did. The smog is as bad as before, and it's sunny today. Damn it.

The proposal I was working on on Monday was rejected by the TA for Sistemas Electorales, and I suppose, in retrospect, that she was right to. So I'll have to rethink that--I'd like to stick with the super-presidentialisms of recent Venezuela and the U.S., but maybe add Russia, or conversely study the way party cleavages break down in very homogeneous societies...something. But once again I find myself with a bunch of work to do this morning, this time for the Conflicto Armado presentation on Nigeria tomorrow. I have to be down at San Joaquin at 3 with my part of the presentation basically done. Ugh. Oh well, it's all right, I've just got to buckle down and do it, it's not that hard--I'll only be talking for like four minutes anyway.

In other news, I think Cori is going to come over tonight to Vale's with her friend Bessie so they can practice Spanish with us; apparently she learned a ton the last time she came over. Vale practically squealed she was so happy when I told her, she really likes Cori and she also really likes the idea that her home can be a place where people can feel comfortable and learn things. She's an amazingly hospitable person. And now, the Niger Delta must command my full attention. Wish me luck.

okay, so i couldn't help myself

Had to read Glenn Greenwald first, which led me to THIS POST by Digby. Another worthwhile read, if utterly different from the Levi story.

before i get down to business...

...today, I wanted to share this story, "A Tranquil Star," by Primo Levi. It's short and beautiful and profound. Check it out. And now, a proposal for a comparison of three electoral systems, any three, followed by info-gathering on why Nigeria doesn't work. Should be really interesting, I just wish it didn't have grades attached. Speaking of which, I thought Louis Menand's piece in the New Yorker this week about college was a little weird. More on that later, if I have time/feel like coming back to it.

happy mother's day!

As for my own mother, I send all my love to you today, far away though I may be. For the rest of you, here's a video about the origins of mother's day, produced by what seemed to me to be a very worthy organization, especially today, Mother's Day for Peace.

pre-emergencia ambiental

The title of this post is a phrase I learned a couple of weeks ago from Pilar Mamá, and translates to "environmental pre-emergency." As far as I can tell, we've been in this state for the past two weeks in Santiago; it basically means that the air conditions have gotten so bad, due to accumulation of smog due to lack of rain, that certain vehicles are no longer allowed on the road and various factories have to cut back slightly on production, in an effort to reduce emissions. I can no longer see the mountains a lot of the time, there is instead a curtain of mountain-colored (roughly pinkish-purplish-grayish) smog hanging over the city in all directions, although the concentrated section clearly moves throughout the day. It better rain soon, because this is NOT helping my cough. Let alone the breathing capacity of the entire city. THIS is the number one argument for Transantiago--once it starts working, fewer people will drive and a smaller, more efficient fleet of buses will dominate the streets, leading to a dramatic reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

In other news, I felt a big breakthrough with my Spanish the other day. In Armed Conflict class, we've just started group presentations on current/recent internal conflicts. Yesterday the first groups went (my group, Nigeria, presents a week from tomorrow), and the second one was on Ivory Coast. The group didn't do a very good job explaining the role of France in the conflict there, why the French army was so directly involved and for how long. So I asked them to clear it up. The way I introduced and phrased the question was complicated, but it spilled out completely correctly and without my thinking about the phrasing at all. It was apparently a good question, the professor got involved in the response, clarifying what the group couldn't, and then asked me directly if my question had been answered. It had, but that really doesn't matter, what matters is that in situations like that I am feeling more and more comfortable all the time. It's mildly exhilarating.

That test I thought was on Tuesday is actually tomorrow, so I should probably get back to studying. There's an absolute crapload of material (in excess of 1400 pages), even summarized (thank you, Max Ravesti, for putting together the summary group) it's a lot to review. I'm doing okay on it, and I think I'll be prepared tomorrow, but man, is there a lot to keep in mind. Next up: Peter H. Smith's "Los ciclos de democracia electoral en América Latina, 1900-2000." Here goes...

another really good song

I'm in my last day of convalescence, tonight I'll have to go back home and tomorrow, I've got a test in the morning and it's right back into the swing of things. I'm feeling pretty good, still coughing a lot but now it's just a run-of-the-mill, throat-tickles kind of thing, rather than painful coughing.

In other news, I finally spent the last of my iTunes gift card money today, on "Dimanche a Bamako" by Amadou et Mariam, a blind duo from Mali. The record was produced by Manu Chao; he also sings lead vocals on this track, "Senegal Fast Food."

okay, okay, one more for right now

Last one, and then I gotta go do some work. "Earth Jam" by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.

guau!

Okay so apparently that worked, and how! I can't believe it took me so long to figure out how to embed videos, it's so easy. I think I'm going to try and make it a semi-regular practice to post videos of music that, well, that I like. Maybe once a week or something. That's a great start. Okay, before I get back to work, I have to share this, "Holy shit, this actually HAPPENED!??!??! WHY WAS I NOT INFORMED," moment with you all: Chick Corea, Bela Fleck and Bobby doing "Spain." I will now go rock back and forth in the corner.

embedding youtube videos

Just want to see if this works, so...here's one of my all-time favorite songs, Bobby McFerrin doing "Drive."

domino effect, take 2

In all the obvious comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, especially as regards the right-wing delusion about how the old war ended and how this one ought to ("We'll succeed unless we quit"--see Keith Olbermann on that gem), why is it that no one is pointing out that the new Republican talking point about how losing Iraq would create a ripple effect of new terrorists all over the Middle East is an awful lot like the so categorically disproven domino effect that led us into Vietnam (and Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, even Chile, indirectly)? It's painfully clear that our presence in Iraq (and Israel/Palestine, and Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia) encourages the rage and resentment that produces the terrifying and incredibly sad violence that so many people, who might otherwise be peaceful, are perpetrating there now. Their main complaint, right now, is that we're still there. Just like we radicalized a huge group of Vietnamese communists into using terrorist and guerrilla tactics against us and each other there, we've radicalized a huge group of Iraqis to do the same in their own country. It seems like the quagmire in Iraq, and the rhetoric surrounding it, rhymes more and more with Vietnam all the time.

to see, or not to see? spider-man 3

Thought the absolute polar-oppositeness of these reviews was hilarious:

Stephanie Zacharek at Salonin a lovefest for Sam Raimi...

...and Anthony Lane at The New Yorker absolutely tearing the movie a new one.

Now I've GOT to see it.

feeling better today

My fever has not returned today, and the headache and joint pains are pretty much gone. My cough has changed, too, it's more frequent but wetter and less painful. Also, swallowing is easier. On the flip side, I got my first bloody nose in a long time about fifteen minutes ago. Not much of one, I'm still breathing it out of existence, but it's somewhat persistent. Also, I re-read the post I put up yesterday...Do I normally make that many grammatical and spelling mistakes? I mean, what a mess! Hopefully it was just because my brain's been fried for the past few days and I don't usually write like that.

Cori sent me a Facebook message yesterday saying we should hang out, which is true, because it's been forever. I said I wasn't supposed to go outside and she wrote back this morning that maybe she'd bring some chicken soup over. Gotta love good friends. I've also realized that Blogger is time-stamping my posts an hour earlier than I actually write them, which is a really huge, huge problem for me. Call in the National Guard. Vale just got back from some errands--depositing her paycheck, picking up some groceries and some more "Lost" Season 1 DVDs--so I guess we're about to have lunch. That's about all there is to report; today has, expectedly, been rather boring and low-key.

i have the flu, or, there's nothing to do in san juan on a sunday

First of all, I'd like to point out that I added Glenn Greenwald to my links. He's an awfully good alternative to TF and all the other pompous jackasses who circle-jerk each other on the hallowed Op/Ed pages of the major newspapers. Really, check out those links. They're pretty good. And Salon is a much better news outlet than, say, The Wall Street Journal.

This weekend, extended to four days because May Day was on Tuesday and the universities (which means COPA, too, because it is in a Universidad de Chile building) closed Monday as well. Vale and I decided to go to Mendoza, but she'd been there a few times already, so when we got there we figured we'd go somewhere else that sounded cool and that she hadn't been to, i.e. San Juan. The town bills itself as the gateway to Argentina's own Valle de la Luna, and all the pictures we saw of it were pretty and nice. So we hopped on another bus and made reservations at Hostel Triasico (a reference to Valle de la Luna, which apparently has lots of fossils). On the bus, we saw a very strange movie called "Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing and Charm School," which had an absolutely great cast (Marisa Tomei, John Goodman, Mary Steenburgen, Sean Astin, Adam Arkin, Donnie Wahlberg--who's terrfic, by the way--and even Danny DeVito) but didn't really work. Anyhow, we got to San Juan, took a cab to the hostel, and basically went right to bed. Not very comfortable beds. The next morning, we ate the scanty (and I do mean scanty) breakfast and walked around. San Juan is booooooring. Also, Valle de la Luna is FIVE HOURS AWAY. not exactly your ideal day trip. So we packed up and headed back to Mendoza that afternoon.

After lots and lots of calls (thank you, long weekend and beauty-salon-workers' convention--I'm not kidding), Vale and I found a hostel and took a cab there. It was the worst hostel I've ever been in, bar none. In fact, it's not even close. The mattresses were nothing more than two-inch-thick foam pads, with eighth-hand, hole-filled sheets, a bathroom that brought to mind a very dirty locker room and, if this is even possible, a worse breakfast than the one we got in San Juan. To top it all off, I'd started to cough a lot Sunday night, and by Monday morning, when I woke up unbidden at about 6:30 and couldn't fall back asleep, I was feeling like crap for real. We found another hostel, a bit more expensive (still not THAT expensive, but really, why does everyone say that Argentina is so cheap? It's like one of those things that someone says once and then everyone believes it and repeats it until it becomes gospel), and moved over there. I was feeling really bad at this point, so as soon as the room was ready (hours and hours after they said it would be) we took a nap. We woke up around 3 and Vale needed to go change money. I'd told her I'd go with her, but I was feeling terrible, coughing a lot, having trouble swallowing, aches in all my joints, and so stayed in bed. About an hour later she came back and decided to take my temperature. Guess what? 102.6 Fahrenheit. Oh BABY. But it had gone down to about 100 a little while later, and I was damned if I was going to get all the way to freaking Mendoza and not go see the prime attraction, Parque San Martin. So we walked over there, gingerly, and then walked around the park as the sun was setting. I have some nice pictures, I'll put them up as soon as they're on the computer. I needed lots of breaks. We ate dinner at a kind of crappy little restaurant and that was basically it. Tuesday morning, I was feeling much better, the fever had all but disappeared (99) and so we took another walk around the town, which I actually liked. It's interesting and has at least two good cafes. I wish I'd had more time to explore the myriad parks and plazas and the Independence Theater, which looks very nice and apparently beautiful inside.

Tuesday afternoon, we hauled ass once more to the bus station, bought tickets on the only line that still had tickets (May Day, everyone going home), and settled in to wait. The bus, first of all, was not a bus but a large van, which is apparently not that unusual for Argentinean bus lines. I started to feel shitty again as soon as we got on, and when Vale took my temperature again around 7 it had gone back above 102. Customs was a nightmare, it was freezing and dark and the guards stopped Vale and searched her bag because one of the dogs (Chile's customs is very serious about not bringing agricultural products into the country without permission, thus many dogs) smelled the remainging smell of the apples that she had thrown out before we left Mendoza. Ugh. At least they showed good movies: "Heat" and "Saturday Night Fever." We got to Stgo absolutely JUST in time to get on the last metro train. Finally, I got home.

Blah blah blah I went to the hospital today, once again with Saint Isa. I have a bad flu, I got some drugs (antihistamine, light non-ibuprofen painkiller and antiinflamatory) and an order to change environment temperatures as little as possible, i.e. "Do not go outside if you can help it." If it gets worse or doesn't go away by Sunday, it's back to the doctor. Once again, though, I was pleasantly surprised by A) the professionalism of the staff at Clinica la Catolica and B) the cheapness of it all. Including the prescriptions and the full checkup with two nurses, a resident and an attending, it cost about 60 bucks. Crazy. Anyhow now I'm at Vale's, the drugs seem to be working at least a little and I'm going to go to bed. Oh, in all my whining and complaining about how much the trip sucked for me (and it doesn't look as bad up there as it was, believe me), I forgot to mention that on Sunday night, Vale fell on one of Mendoza's treacherously uneven sidewalks and badly sprained her wrist. So she was at a different hospital this morning, dealing with that. Awesome. That's all for now, good night, maybe the next week be a better one.