Hullo from South

Ladiez!
Hullo.

Well, wull wull.

Currently I am in a hostel in Cordoba, Argentina´s 2nd biggest city. The Tango Hostel is full of people drinking beer and talking and smoking in the garden. Western music is playing- where is it not around here? - and there are recognisable Scots, Irish, English, American, Aussie accents outside.

It´s weird, being put back into this ´tourist´realm, after the last week of being an ´Argentine´. Thrown into the deep end without any sense of traveller empathy I´m feeling here. It´s easy to feel isolated in a country where no one speaks your language but you soon realise that there´s travellers everywhere. It´s so deceivingly authentic.

Cordoba pulls lots of tourists for outdoor sports- hiking, riding, skydiving/ handgliding and the like. The Sierra Cordobas snake their way around the western side of the city.

My placement is in Ascochinga, 60 kilometres north of Cordoba. I´m in Cordoba this weekend with five other Australians, taking some time out to explore the town.

The first week of placement has gone well. Michael, Rueben and I are staying at a mentally disabled house run by the church. The owners, Marta and Juan, are very nice. ´Los chicos´, the 24 dudes who are looked after there, are funny, intruding, annoying, interesting, loveable. THeir characters are very distinct. It´s hard to obtain too much information about the place, as no one speaks English.
I´ll probably spend my first month in Argentina there, and then go to Villa Allende, which is closer, about 20kms from Cordoba. There I´ll be at an orphanage. Three Australian girls are there now. They say it´s very full on, and difficult to maintain sanity/ privacy at times. This is after a week, so we´ll see how four months goes. I think it´s a matter of time to get used to that really. They´ve also said that there´s not much for them to do there- when we visited today they were quite bored. Again, I suppose as comfort grows, we´ll create activities and fun things for the kids to do. They live there 24/7 so understandingly life is pretty mundane. 300 kids! Bonza.

Life at Ascochinga so far is very tranquil. It´s so quiet, and a simple life is lead there. When we´re not helping paint the place or help in the kitchen or clean, we often head down to the ´rio grande´- pretty small creek on the farm- to practise Spanish in the shade next to the wild brumbies. Pretty sweet.

I got pretty sick this past week. Not anything serious, perhaps just a cold, but I slept for 2 days. I´m better now, Marta tended to me real good, but now I have a hoarse voice and I think tomorrow there´ll be none left of it.

I have not written about the finale phases of the Ginnivan adventure, but I feel it´s too far gone. Alas, in person.

This is about it for now, I suppose. It´s 12.30am now and there´s a possibility of us going out tonight. Thing is, clubs don´t open till 2am. It may be a struggle to stay up till then. We´ll see. Definitely tomorrow night is a must.

Love for you all, hope all is well.

ps. ROCK ON FOR YOUTH ALLOWANCE!!! Kudos from over here.

xooxox Georgia

nuffy

Ah! I see that it posted. Carry on.

arrrghhh

I just wrote a blog but it deleted!!!!!!!!!
However, all is well, I´m in Argentina. Never you mind! I will write when I have more than 2 minutes left at an internet cafe.

Love to all, G

¿¿como se dice??

Hola!

I write from the great southern land of Argentina.

Firstly I will say that it´s winter again for me. This is not pleasant! I came straight from New Orleans- balmy nights, summer dresses, flower fragrances wafting eternally, cut grass, warm rain, beer, beignets, general goodness.

Currently I´m wearing three layers, a beanie, bed socks. However, I tend to look on the brightside in that these 2 weeks left of August will be the last I´ll be seeing of winter for a whole year. Suck it up, boyz.

I forget when the last time I wrote was. And I can hardly click back -or atras- at this stage of my entry.

So, I´ll begin, say, at Memphis. Memphis is an interesting town. We caught an overnight Greyhound there from Chicago, which was interesting. A pretty bad experience actually- started off with hundreds of people crammed into a small, smelly bus station, getting yelled at by totally disdainful and apathetic workers. Leah said that the only people who catch Greyhounds are the people who cannot afford to travel any other way. Tickets were $25. I certainly felt as though I couldn´t spend any more on travel after our epic 22-hora journey on Amtrak.

We stayed with a cool bloke in Memphis, played instruments (harmonica, guitar, autoharp) on his porch in our lovely dainty dresses. The town has an underlying edginess. We stayed in a lovely suburb but after one guy saying that there were many shootings and robberies and rapes and that kind of business the feeling came. That tends to be over the town and people live with that kind of fear daily. I don´t know, honestly, if it´s really that bad but we were definitely warned about a lot of things.

We visited Graceland, which was INCREDIBLE. Our visit happened to coincide with Elvis Week- probably too big of an ordeal to go into detail right now. However cheap and tacky the experience was (not literally cheap by any means) I left the tour complete with a greater respect for the King Of Rock- taking care of business.

From Memphis we amtraked to New Orleans. As youse can tell from my earlier statement of the place, it´s glorious. I only spent about a day and a half there, which truely wasn´t enough. It is such an alive place. Very romantic in how raw, how full of soul it is. We also couchsurfed there which was wunderbar and we went out with Justin and his incredible friend Horton- maybe the coolest person I´ve ever met. Cool in a ´I can´t believe you actually exist and are talking to me´ cool, rather than connecting with him on an everyday level.

And now I´m here in Buenos Aires! I´m a bit devo that I´m leaving tomorrow. That means about 1 and a half days total so tomorrow I´m planning on going for a big wander. Shall be fun! Today was a bit of a haze really.

Oh, and I think I got majorly ripped off by a taxi driver. He charged me $50, which is super expensive, even for Australian terms rather than Argetinian pesos. However when I confronted him on this matter he talked rapidly at me in accent-riddled Español which left me in no state to continue. Reluctantly I handed over the money and felt extremely jibbed.

The taxi also conked out in the middle of a 10-lane tollway, which was also a bit crazy. Afterwards the taxi driver simply pointed to a cattle truck passing and said ´carne´. Fair enough, really.

Ok so that´s about it, my time is pretty much over here. I´ll update again once I get settled in at Cordoba. So far, all is good.

Love to youse all.

Muchos besos!

Yorya

Antoine- He's from France

Hullo hullo hullo!

I write from Canmore, AB. I am reunited with all of the family for a three-day folk festival which has been likened to our very own Yackandandah Folk Festival, pulling all five of our clan here.

I write, slightly tipsy, after a beautiful lunch downtown with mum and three sisters. Drinking wine in the middle of the day with a good meal is something truely luxurious and pleasant. This afternoon mammoth amounts of mist were spewing over the surrounding Rockies so we're just back at the hotel for a breather/ digging out our relatively unused winter clothes.

I realise I haven't written since New York. I progressed to Saskatchewan's backblocks promptly afterwards which created quite the culture clash for myself. Meeting up with a pal there, Donell, I stayed with her for about 10 days. I worked with her for some days- at the Lloydminster Golf Course, serving drinks on the golf buggie (what a grouse job that is), doing a bit of exploring, before heading to Shell Lake for some camping and reunioning with her family. That was great, too short though, but just being able to hang out and swim in the sun and go fishing amongst the forest at sunset was just what I was a hankering for.

We then embarked on a road trip into Alberta, heading through Viking and Hanna and other such fun towns before stopping off at Drumheller- DINOSAUR CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. This was a freaking cool place and it was excellent being able to take the same pictures that Leah took there 6 months before me.

Then, in Calgary, I was reunited with parents. We went out for dinner with Donell and her brudda, before heading to the hotel to wait for Leah's arrival. Unfort., Pies' plane got mega-delayed and we weren't embracing until the next morning, but lovely, it was.

And since then we've all been hanging out as a unit. Time has absolutely flown by. We spent a couple of days in Banff, doing some walks, lazing by the wondrous Bow River, laughing at gophers (stupid gophers), eating fudge, all of these things. I got to live the dream of visiting Lake Louise, which was remarkable. We hiked 5 ks to a nice tea house nestled in the mountains, munging on scones and rose tea, before heading home and eating some nice quinoa and watching Goodbye Lenin!

We leave Canmore tomorrow for Montana. Myself and the sisters will be catching Amtrak to Minneapolis, before heading south and seeing where we wind up before I leave for Argentina on the 17th of August. I'm pretty excited for the new leg of this journey, if not nervous for my lack of Espanol. Will write more from the ol' US of A.

Muchos Besos

G.