6 months later

A jew, an irishman and a travelling tattoo artist go to Sao Paulo. At least, that´s where I found myself six months after leaving California for Guatemala.

Miguel, the irishman, and I met in Guatemala and we reconnected months later in Buenos Aires. After rain and cold and snow in Argentina, we decided to head for the sun. We picked up a travelling buddy, Michel Luna, a tattoo artist from Peru. We immediately regretted our choice in travel partner when we went to the airport the next day. Next to our two backpacks, Michel had one large suitcase, a rolling suitcase, a large backpack, four large cases of CDs, another small backpack and a case for his tattoo materials (9 bags!!). After a day carrying around his CDs (no, he didn´t know about iTunes), my giggles got the best of me when the airline lost our bags. But I really started to laugh when Michel pulled a taser out in the subway, for protection of course, from the bag he carried on the plane. A taser. Really?!

Needless to say, we ditched Michel in Sao Paulo and since then Miguel and I have found our travel groove in Brazil.

Brazil, a country that was not high on my list, has been an amazing surprise. Alive with spirit and music and dance and culture, I have completely fallen in love. People are really friendly and open, and Miguel and I have spent much more time with locals than with travellers.

If you could just see where I am now...after four days in Sao Paulo, we headed to Rio, then further north to Fortaleza. Yesterday, we took a seven hour bus ride and then a one hour buggy ride to get to Jericoacoara. Jeri is a small town in the sand dunes; no cars, no banks, no roads. Just beaches and dunes. It´s perfect. It´s just where I want to be. I need to be still for a moment. I need to think.

It is amazing how lucky I am to be here...as I type, I can see the sand dunes and the ocean. People will start walking up the dune for sunset soon, and then gather to watch Capoeria (Afro-Brazilian dance) on the beach. People gather around drink stalls in the sand, where you can get a caipirinha for $1.50. Afterwards, it will be time for a meal of fish, rice and beans; all fresh, all for $2.50.

The overwhelming part is not that it is so easy and so cheap to find a small piece of paradise; the overwhelming part is that it took only one choice to be here. I won the lottery when I decided to travel. I won it all when I realized that you can be the richest person in the world, or the poorest, and still be exactly where you want to be.

It´s a powerful gift that I do not take lightly. It comes with the obligation of responsible travel. Six months later and I have doubts. I am tired of the same old travel conversations (Where ya from, how long are you travelling for...), and the lack of substance (one might say the vapidity) that can come from sightseeing and boozey nights out. I am not travelling to check things off a list, or drink my way around the world. I am seeing beautiful places, drinking with new and interesting people, but I am giving absolutely nothing back.

I realize that it´s extravagant in its selfishness.

I am the first person to preach the benefits of travelling, and yet 6 months later, I am questionning my own ability to make good from all this. There is a time for travel and relaxation (which I sorely needed and that I appreciatively take for myself), however, as the rest of my time travelling starts to take shape, so do my goals and intentions for the next 10 months. It´s time to give back to say thank you for all that has been given to me.

Yo, moi-même and I

I am at the very bottom, the very tip of the world and it seems a good place to start. I feel as if my journey has just begun. I left America almost 6 months ago, but this is where I feel it all begins. There is nowhere to go but north, and so I do.

I am absolutely deliriously happy to be on my own and I feel as if I came to the end of the world to find what I needed. I hiked in Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego, near Ushuaia, chatting to myself the whole way. I saw two people in three hours, and I hiked along the water and through grasslands that looked like scenes from The Neverending Story. When I came to the swamp of sadness, where Atreyu´s horse dies, I re-claimed it the swamp of happiness and I came back to my hostel with mud up to my knees and soaked through with snow and mist.

After Ushuaia I spent 20 hours going to El Calafate, crossing the border into Chile twice and getting a little tipsy on box wine in the bus station with a new friend. I continued on to El Chalten, a pueblo out in the middle of Patagonia - only 23 years old with no banks, dial-up internet and the pristine and free Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. I hiked to Lago Torre, where ice chunks from the glacier float in the lake. I cried on the trail because it is just so beautiful. In five years, this new little town will be overrun with tourists and paved roads.

I am shockingly low on money and I have the entire South American continent to cross with two and a half months until I touch US soil. I´ve never been so happy. I´ve never felt so lucky to be here, to be doing what I am doing.

Teaching

Well, for one, I quit.

Which feels amazing, I am not going to lie. Teaching English is a great way to travel the world, and I would recommend it to anyone that asks. I will do it again (but perhaps in a country where I am making a little money each month, rather than losing). However, my itchy feet are calling and I just had to GET THE HELL OUTTA BsAs!!!

And so my few observations on teaching. In homage to David Letterman...

TOP 10 THINGS YOU WILL OBSERVE TEACHING ENGLISH IN BUENOS AIRES:

10. Argentinians are absolutely ridiculous. They make teaching very easy as they are highly entertaining. They´re like Woody Allen with Italian hand-gestures.

9. Speaking of Woody Allen, this country is one big neurotic jewish community. In fact, it has the 7th largest jewish population in the world. Paranoia abounds.

8. The morning routine in offices is full of kisses. And, unlike kisses as greeting in other countries, in Argentina the kisses are LOUD. I mean, all you hear from 9 to 930 a.m. is sucky face noises. I kinda love it.

7. ¨Touch and go¨ means something very different in Argentina than in English. They use this English saying to allude to a one-night stand. Awesome, right?

6. For 6 hours of actual teaching, you spend 3 hours running from class to class, 3 hours killing time in between and approximately 1.2 minutes actually preparing your lesson.

5. Further to that, in an hour class you spend the first 5 minutes waiting for them to arrive (sucky face noises in the lobby, exchanging pleasantries with the receptionist); 15 minutes asking how their weekend was, another 15 discussing their children/wife/ex-wife/girlfriend/boyfriend; 20 minutes discussing superlatives/comparatives/past simple vs. present perfect or when you use i.e. vs. e.g.; and the last five minutes asking them what they are going to do for the weekend.

4. You make up definitions to words because either you have no idea what it means, or you are just fucking with them. And thus, lesson learned, you hesitate to use articles from the New Yorker.

3. No one really knows the the difference between a gerund and a present participle, especially you at 9 in the morning.

2. There is a very thin line between teaching English and being someone´s psychologist.

1. No one is safe from laughing like a child at students innocent blunders. The truth is, ¨sheet¨pronounced by a Spanish speaker comes out like shit. And that it just funny.