time warp

Last night, our new friend Bruce asked us how long we’ve been in the country. I quickly (and slightly triumphantly) replied, two weeks tomorrow! Greg paused and said, no, I think it’s only been nine or ten days. And he’s right. We arrived in Mendoza two weeks ago this coming Tuesday. Wow. I could have sworn it’s been closer to three weeks or even a month.

I think the time warp is simply because life in Juneau had become pretty predictable—the days were flying by at the end. I knew the rhythms (and the language, for God’s sake!) and had a plan for each day. Here, everyday is a surprise. What verb tense am I going to learn in my class? How will I communicate with someone I sit next to on the bus? Where can I buy a newspaper? Why can’t I learn new words when people tell them to me; why do I need to see them to remember them?

And it’s a beautiful thing, really, this change of pace. I find myself breathing deeply and enjoying moments with my husband. I hear Spanish words I didn’t remember I knew coming out of my mouth. I am slowly remembering the grammar rules for the past imperfect and the ever-torturing subjunctive. I am slowly finding patience with myself...rather than being disappointed with how hard the communication still is. Poco a poco, I tell myself. Slowly, I am starting to believe it.

learning

The accent of the Spanish here is incredibly difficult for me. Maybe because I foolishly thought my language skills would pick up where I left them in Guatemala. Or maybe because Greg can’t speak a word, I feel pressure to be fluent for both of us. Or, really, the accent is like a lisped version of the Spanish I’ve heard before…Castellano, to be more accurate, is the language.

Amid my stumbling, I did manage to secure an apartment for us. What a rush! Conducting business in Spanish, signing a contract for one month, making sure both Greg & I understand the rules of the agreement. Shew! The gentleman who owns the apartment was, of course, very generous to me—spoke very slowly and used simple words. We are both really happy to be out of the hostel world. It’s a good thing, but we aren’t really clubbers and we’re more interested in finding a rhythm and a semblance of a life here than bouncing from one amazing place to the next.

So we’re starting here. We start Spanish classes on Monday. Greg is really looking forward to it, as am I. Somehow, I managed to forget my English-Spanish dictionary, so have a sparkly, new one.

And I taught my first English class on Saturday.—I substituted for a woman who had to be in Buenos Aires for the day. FOUR HOURS! Shew. Thank God for textbooks!

a late-coming addition

and here is greg's blog (se llama, "blogorito")...as always, a compliment to mine: www.barbegazie.com.

includes a picture of our new apartment.

arrival!

well! we made it. we have arrived in mendoza and are basking in the sun. it is the middle/end of winter here, but the short days are sunny and warm. our moods are swinging up and being reminded of balance.

we arrived in santiago, chile last sunday, to quickly learn that the mountain pass over to mendoza was closed--so there was no bus riding that day. we bunked into a hostel that happened to be across the street, chatting with the skiers from Spain and the traveling girls from Germany.

the next day, the pass opened and we crossed without hassle.

here's a funny thing about visiting chile: we had to pay a "reciprocity" fee upon landing. and now, for the LIFE of our passports, we can come to chile without paying again. interesting.

the drive over the andes was nothing short of incredible. i kept trying to think of places it reminded me of, but I couldn’t think of any. It was absolutely outside of my realm of experiences. On the Chilean side, it looked a little like the low scrub brush of eastern Oregon, but with more trees and greener. The steep-steepness of the andes was astounding—and I’m just glad I wasn’t driving our bus (or at all, for that matter. We passed through this ski area that goes right over the road! At the pass, we had to wait around outside to first leave chile and then enter argentina. I think that means that for at least 30 minutes we were literally in no country at all.

The landscape shifted quickly after we entered argentina—less snow immediately and the land we could see was this startling red. The first time I drove south on 95 from Maryland to North Carolina, I was amazed by the red land, but it was nothing like this. The semi-scrub of Eastern Oregon returned, but this time without the trees.

Driving into Mendoza, we spotted a Wal-Mart Supercenter on our left. Wow.

beginning...

(and old post that I am just posting now)

I’m at the airport in Los Angeles. The airport. All around me, languages fly and my white skin makes me a minority. And so it begins. The languages flow over my body, into and around my ears. It feels like a blanket or a set of headphones—all encompassing and oddly comfortable.

The Spanish piques my ear, but I have to focus all of my attention to understand half of it. That is both petrifiying and exciting. I wonder how much I’ll be able to understand five months from now.

I feel sort of numb…like I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing, but I’m not exactly unsure, either.

denver

ah, i've had a glorious last few days.  water-skiing, soaking up the sun, relaxing at the lake.  the last week in watertown has been a salve to my juneau-weary weather sensibilities. my skin has regained a summer hue and my spirits are high.  

i'm not doubting out decision to leave alaska anymore.  

so juneau was a good place.  on a sunny day, there is no better place on the planet.  i made a couple nice friends and was actually sad to say good-bye at work and to rachel & steve.  all the while, i was doubting myself and this move, not sure that bad weather should be a reason to leave some place where g&i had good jobs, nice people, and plenty of snowboarding.  

one week into the sunshine, i'm far more confident. even if things go bust in argentina, its good to be "Down South," as we called the lower 48 in juneau.

here's the low-down on the plan: g & i are headed back to seattle tonight & then we're going to roadtrip to san francisco to check out some schools (& its looking like, see nate!) and see how we like the bay area. and then we leave for argentina on the 16th.  actually, we fly into chile & will bus over the andes. we've connected with a school there to teach some english in exchange for spanish language courses.  we're going to base ourselves out of mendoza for the start.  an up & coming wine region!

more to come as we embark on this adventure!

vamos aprender espanol en argentina

so, it's for real.  greg & i are headed to argentina.  we've quit our jobs, cleaned the apartment, shipped our stuff (literally, a TON; 2,000+ lbs.  wow.), and flown to beautifully humid & sunny sodak.

we're here for a some time with the fam and some long-anticipated water-skiing!!  wahoo! and then we're off to seattle for a couple days and then leave for argentina mid-month.

at which point, i'll change the title of this blog to the oh-so-creative "kate goes to argentina":).

i think we both leave alaska with mixed emotions.  g loved the fishing and the mountains.  i feel incredibly lucky to have seen such remote parts of alaska and value a couple new friendships and had a wonderful snowboarding season.  but its too much rain and i find myself relieved not to have to make it through another summer here.  its not the alaska winter, it's the southeast alaska summer--no reprieve from the rain.

i feel like i'm betraying my midwestern roots by hating the weather so much.  where is my ability to make the most of cruddy weather?  to not be scared indoors?  to tool around outside, ever-optimistic about the weather? 

well friends, betrayal or not, i'm done with this weather.  long live sunny summers!!

cleaning up after ourselves.

I did it. I scrubbed my favorite apartment ever down from floor to ceiling. I think I only cried once. I found corners and dustbunnies I had no idea existed. I swept wood floors more times than I want to admit. I showered without a shower curtain in order to scrub more thoroughly. I crawled under the bed cubby and ran out of paper towels half-way through the windows and mirrors. Oh well, can’t be perfect.

It started on Tuesday, in full force. Sure, before that, Greg had done some work on the floors and cabinents—and, thankfully, all of our stuff was already headed South on Alaska Marine Lines. But seriously. It was up to me to bring home that security deposit, a final lynchpin in our plans. It was like stumbling around a spooky fun house. Everywhere I looked there seemed be a monstrous project. Where to begin? The wood floors? The bathroom? The freezer (what is in that yogurt container?) or fridge?

And just when I’d start to feel like I had it under control, I’d find something else—the junk drawer full of tools, the wood stove I’d completely forgotten would need a thorough clean, soot and all.

At one point, one of the new neighbors from Florida actually offered to help me. I must have looked pathetic. And the next day the other neighbor asked me if cleaning really is a full time job? He meant it as kind chit-chat, but it felt like a scathing attack on my inability to finish this project.