love is

Love is missing the freckle on someone´s hand. The perfect curve of their ear. The rise and fall of their sleeping chest.

Love is writing the numbers 1 through 157 on a sheet of paper and crossing them off one day at a time.

Love is patience.

Love is encouraging growth. Love is allowing room for change.

Love is what spans oceans, filling dreams with visions of the future.

Love is realizing that no amount of travel could ever begin to fill the space in your heart created by that first kiss.

Love is watching someone step off a plane, and, even thousands of miles from home, feeling you´ve arrived back where you belong.

Love is the province of the brave.

hot toddy

It´s quite strange to put on flip-flops and a summer dress, walk outside into heat and humidity, and see Christmas-themed window displays.

I feel so far away from the holidays... I have no grasp on the fact that this Thursday is Thanksgiving. Or that Christmas is right around the corner.

I´ve never been abroad during the fall before... it throws me off to miss the crunching leaves and crispness of fall, and to not be there as the cold, grayness settles quietly all around.

I know that in a few short weeks I´ll be eating sitting by a twinkling tree, drinking hot toddies, bundled up in sweaters and warm socks, surrounded by the people I love most in this world... but for now it´s all some strange mirage that I feel will never materialize.

It seems my body will forever be attuned to the rhythms of life in the snowy corners of the Northern Hemisphere.

happy trails

Well, I'm back. I can't believe how quickly those ten days went... Alie and I really packed it in -- 50 hours on buses ridden; 45 miles hiked; 15 miles of mountain roads biked; six new kinds of micro-brews tried; lamb ravioli, goat-milk ice cream, and berry-topped Belgian waffles consumed; hundreds of photos taken; lots of fresh air breathed; and countless magnificent views soaked in.

It was an absolutely incredible trip.

We started in San Martin de los Andes, followed La Ruta de los Siete Lagos (The Route of the Seven Lakes) down to Villa Angostura, headed through Villa Traful to El Bolson, and ended up in Bariloche. Each place was more beautiful than the next. I'll give you a rundown of my "trip favorites" from each day, which I think should suffice to paint a nice little picture of the magnificence that is Argentina´s lake district.

Day 1: Cruising out of BsAs in the front seats on the top-level of a double-decker first-class bus... fully reclining seats, a hot dinner of meat and potatoes, wine, champagne, movies, and (singing along to) cheesy music videos from the 90s.

Day 2: A 13-mile hike up the side of a mountain, through Patagonian forest, and along one of the most beautiful lakes I've ever seen. The first view of it was one of my favorites of the trip... all silvery and ominous, laid out before us. Plus, we got to see wild horses and lots of sheep, and end the day with beer, brick-oven pizza and hot chocolate.

Day 3: Taking a tour of seven beautiful lakes, strung along the Andes, then hiking to an overlook and sitting for an hour, taking in the view -- two turquoise lakes, forest-covered mountains rising from their edges, eventually becoming snow-capped and forming the Chilean-Argentine border. As I looked out into the space before me, it felt as if my soul was soaring.

Day 4: Exploring the tiny, lakeside village of Villa Traful... eating lunch by a cozy, stone fireplace; sitting on a rocky beach, crystal-clear waves lapping against an old wooden dock; and climbing a windy overlook to watch the sun set over the lake. Then later, as I lay in bed, looking out the window at the most incredibly star-studded sky, falling asleep under the foreign skies of the Southern Hemisphere.

Day 5: Following the most beautiful, blue-green river I've ever seen as it snaked between mountains, all the way from Villa Traful to Bariloche, then winding along mountain roads looking out into rocky valleys below all the way to El Bolson... and eating a delicious dinner of lamb ravioli in a wild-mushroom-and-cream sauce, washed down with cold, hippie-brewed beer.

Day 6: Eating a breakfast of Belgian waffles and ice cream, then hiking up a big hill and along a ridge, taking in one of most fantastic views of the trip -- a stunningly blue river winding through a green valley, dumping into a lake surrounded by mountains on all sides.

Day 7: Taking a day off of hiking to eat excessive ice cream and watch The Motorcycle Diaries in our hostel.

Day 8: Hiking on a cold, rainy day through an eerily alien landscape of charred trees along a rocky mountainside, breathing in the smell of wet, green things and hearing nothing but the wind whipping all around us.

Day 9: Biking 15 miles, up and down hills so big I thought my lungs might explode, through a national park that looked like it could very easily house the Loch Ness monster... cruising down hills with Andean Condors swooping above me and mountains rising up endlessly next to me and crystal-clear lakes in front of me, thinking to myself, "I'm in Patagonia. Look at all the beauty around me. Look how lucky I am."

Day 10: Sampling delicious chocolates in Bariloche's Swiss-inspired chocolate shops before boarding the bus back to BsAs, then having an entire bus ride to reflect on all the places we saw, and all of the adventures that lie ahead.

A truly incredible, lasting-memory-making, photo-opportunity-packed, good-for-the-mind-body-and-soul trip.

Lucky am I indeed.


(A note on photos: my dinosaur of a computer is being obnoxious, so unless I can coax it into behaving, you all might have to wait for photos until I return to Mpls in a few weeks...)

out of office

Tomorrow I'm off for Argentina's lake district with my friend Alie. We're going to spend eleven days hiking, kayaking, and exploring some mountain towns and hippie havens. I won't be back until the 21st, so these next couple of weeks are going to be pretty light on posting...

... and once I do return to the blog world, I won't be around for long. When I get back to BsAs I only have five days until Andy arrives, and then will be on another little hiatus. But do not fret!! I plan to continue blogging even after I return home. There are quite a few posts I haven't yet had the chance to write, and I think they'll still be applicable even after I leave Argentina.

And then there are always the post-being-abroad learnings, thoughts, realizations and memories that surface days, weeks, months, and even years! after one returns home. Basically I'm going to be blogging until the end of time.

So, my loyal readers, do not give up on me. Blogging is so much more fun when I know there are actually people out there reading what I'm blabbing about.

Have a great mid-November, and I'll keep you posted (literally).

love ballads and free wifi

I'm currently sitting in a cafe, using free WiFi, drinking strong coffee and eating croissants, watching a soccer match on TV, and listening to so-bad-they're-almost-good 80s and 90s love ballads. I've been here long enough that I've heard "Lady in Red" three times. These are the kind of moments I'm going to miss.

iguazu falls

Nothing prepared me for Iguazu Falls. I had seen photographs, watched videos, heard countless stories about its jaw-dropping scenery. I knew I was in for a treat, but didn't realize that "treat" meant "one of the most incredible experiences of my life." And not just a visual experience either. A full body, all senses on deck, dumbfoundingly amazing experience.

Iguazu Falls is a waterfall system made up of 275 falls along 1.67 miles of the Iguazu River, on the border between Argentina and Brazil. The falls pump between 350,000 and 400,000 gallons of water over their nearly-200-foot-tall edges each second. Do you know what that sounds like? It's deafening. The power of the water vibrates through your entire body.

The first panoramic view I saw of the river valley and its endless wall of water stopped me in my tracks. And it wasn't just the waterfalls. It was the entirety of the valley: coffee- and cream-colored walls of water, roaring and foaming and spraying and falling; the way the mist created from the falls floated above the river, hanging in the treetops of the rainforest and creating rainbows overhead; emerald green vegetation clinging to walls of wet rock; dense rainforest filled with butterflies and iguanas and tucans... the sheer power and immensity and beauty of nature on display. It was absolutely breathtaking.

There is a part of the park where you can walk up right to the bottom of one of the falls and stand at its base. The spray coming off the waterfall was so heavy and thick that it made it difficult to breathe; all I could see and hear and feel was pounding water. I wanted to stand there forever.

Then there was La Garganta del Diablo, or in English, The Devil's Throat. A horseshoe-shaped cavern of gushing water that seems to fall forever because the mist is so thick all you can see is a white wall of water particles that shoot up into the sky like geysers. And, because it's South America, you can stand right on the edge, on a metal platform through which you can see the water rushing beneath you, with only a few waist-high wooden guardrails standing between you and the bottomless depths of the mouth of the devil himself.

The first time we experienced La Garganta del Diablo was during a full-moon tour of the park. To get to the fall you have to walk half a mile over the river on those same see-through metal walkways. To walk over moonlit rushing water, with the silhouette of the jungle in the distance, and hear the crashing water before you can even see clouds of mist rising towards the moon, was indescribable. It was eerie, and magical, and profound. It made me feel so thankful, and so insignificant, and so sad I couldn't share what I was feeling and seeing and breathing with those I love most.

My friend Rachael had to leave on a bus early Monday morning, but I didn't depart until that afternoon, so I decided to head back into the park alone. I arrived early, and was one of the first people let into the park. I headed straight for a place I had seen the day before - a bench on a small platform perched on top of one of the falls, in the shade of a palm tree, with a view of the entire valley. I sat for over an hour, drinking it all in; watching as hundreds of butterflies danced around my head and birds glided in the rainbow-filled air. I saw so few people that at times I believed I had the entire park to myself. Just me and my thoughts, soaring and tumbling with the steady rhythm of falling water.

When it was finally time to go, I had trouble saying goodbye. I felt the same way I feel when packing up and brushing off sand after a long day at the beach - sad in an empty kind of way, knowing something beautiful is over, forever lost except for the small bits and pieces that will remain in my memory. I've learned that it's hard to hold on to the feeling of an experience - that images remain, but the actual feeling almost always seems to fade. Very few moments plant themselves deep enough to keep from being washed away with time.

All I can do is hope that Iguazu Falls knows how to beat the odds.

the history of love

One of my favorite books - quite possibly my favorite of all time - is called The History of Love. The gracious JD introduced me to it last year, and let me borrow one of her copies. I read it, loved it, shelved it (with the intention of returning it). Then, when I was packing for Argentina, I decided to bring books that I'd already read and had become favorites of mine... my reasoning was twofold: 1) I knew I'd like them, so I wouldn't be wasting precious packing space with bad reading material, and 2) they'd be a form of comfort, like a pair of worn sweatpants, but for the mind.

Okay, I feel like I'm backtracking. The point is, the first time I read the book, I loved it, but I didn't feel completely blown away, like I thought I might after hearing JD's reaction to it. But then I spent my first week in Argentina sitting in a corner booth of a little cafe, drinking coffee, watching the city go by on the dark, cold, winter streets, feeling lonely, and re-reading The History of Love. I was enamored, engrossed, amazed. So pulled in that I let my coffee get cold as my hot tears fell onto the worn pages of this beautiful book.

I'm not going to give you a review, or a summary, or a character analysis, because to me this book can't be reduced down to any of those things. To me it is love and loneliness and longing and loss... humor and tenderness, friendship and fragility. It is all that and so much more, expressed in thousands of letters arranged into sentences that echo through your mind long after they've passed your lips.

So, when I decided to do a listening comprehension exercise with the students at San Tarsicio, I couldn't help but choose an excerpt from this book. I chose a section that briefly describes a love story that begins in Poland and ends in America during World War II. I thought it might be a little too deep, a little too difficult to follow, especially for a bunch of pre-teen Argentine kids. It makes me so happy to say that I was sorely mistaken. I read three pages to them, and I have never heard that classroom so quiet. They were on the edges of their seats, looking at me with wide eyes, their lips tight lines of bated breath.

It was one of the most peaceful, beautiful moments I've had here - sitting in front of a classroom of impressionable children, the windows open to the sounds and smells of springtime, my favorite book in my hands, reading out loud. I wanted to share a part of myself with my students before I left, and although talking about Minneapolis did that on some level, reading a book that defines the emotions I felt my first weeks here - a book with pages salty from my tears - seemed so much more meaningful. Most of them will probably forget me, and The History of Love, but my hope is that I, and those three pages, have somehow secured a place among their already-fading childhood memories.

I've been waiting until the end of my stay in Buenos Aires to read The History of Love for a third time. I want to see if it will hold a different meaning for me at the end of my time here than it did at the beginning; I want to touch the same pages that I did nearly five months ago, let the same words dance through my mind. I've thought about going back to that same little cafe, but somehow that doesn't seem right - I haven't been there since those first dark days, and maybe there's a reason for that.

Instead I think I'll sit in the sunshine in the city's rose garden, my favorite place in Buenos Aires, with a smile instead of tears, a heart aching with joy instead of loneliness, and the knowledge that I -- that we -- will look back on these past few months as just one of many chapters in our very own history... a history with an excitingly large number of pages yet to fill.