Happy Thanksgiving, North Americans!

     As I wake up at 10 am, I realize it's the first Thanksgiving in years that I have nothing obligatory to do, no turkey to rush into the oven, no linens to iron, no bathrooms to clean, no harried last minute shopping to do, or send Dan to do and no tables and chairs to bring up from the basement, arrange, rearrange and arrange back again.  It's all being done elsewhere by others and I'm feeling that increasingly familiar prickle of loss vs. relief, a relief that isn't the "great sigh of" type but more the "well, how about that" type, so maybe relief isn't the right word at all.
     I use to say that Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday, our only obligation being to eat, drink and be merry but in those days it was my mother who did most of the work and we happily gobbled all day ignorantly blissful of how much work was being put forth for that twenty minute dinner.  I cherish those memories of each Thanksgiving spent with my Uncle "T" and Aunt Eunice and my four cousins.  My mother and Aunt Eunice would spend the day in the kitchen together while the rest of us played games, watched football, ran around outside, even threw snowballs a couple of years and generally just came to the table when the food was on it.  As we got older we would help with setting or clearing the table, thinking what a huge contribution we had made on the dinners behalf.  After hosting several Thanksgiving dinners where most of the guests participated by bringing a dish, baking the pies, setting the table and doing the dishes, the jobs that my mother would have done mostly by herself, I was always left exhausted.
     As a person in my twenties and thirties I would wonder why anyone goes through all that work for what return exactly?  The intangible parts of the day were lost on me.   We thanked god for the food and for those we have to share it with, wedging this third party into the deal.  All this work and god gets the credit?  Of course, I missed the bigger picture, the forging of memories, strengthening of bonds, the building of our own cultural connections etc...that is left for the elders of the tribe to think of, plan on and execute.  Now being an elder, especially with the passing of my own mother and grandmother, the very careful and important task of handing down these traditions along with their significance falls to me and my siblings. This is part of the loss I'm feeling right now, the obligation that gives us a purpose to the day, that sets this day apart from all the others of the year.  A day of hard work with an intangible return.  A day picked out of the year to celebrate family, friends and food and how much we love all those things and how important they are to us.
     Happy Thanksgiving! 
  

If I had a camera.....

     So it is day .......what......5? already in Paris and how many pictures have Nate and I taken? Zero.  That's right.  No pictures of the Luxemburg Gardens and the great children's play park there, or our lunch by the Eiffel Tower or our wide eyes at La Grande Epicerie or our puzzled faces in the Metro. These are now all left to our memories alone.
     The apartment that we're renting for a couple weeks  is on the fourth floor, 3rd etage ici, approached by circular, center-slanting marble stairs.  We have a small, no, miniscule kitchen that one can barely turn around in.  We've stocked up on coffee, tea and chocolate and really, not much else...which is good because anything else would be impossible to prepare.  We've done one load of laundry in the washer/dryer, taking about 12 hours to complete a cycle with fully dried clothes. 
     What is it that makes a Paris apartment so uniquely Parisienne.  Why do their sloppy bookshelves look better than our sloppy bookshelves, their cracked plaster more shabby chic than our cracked plaster?  Without a doubt, they've cornered the decor market on gold, maroon, olive and black with bits of that Versailles blue sprinkled about...those same colors of all the old Moulin Rouge posters.
     We visit the boulangerie around the corner in the morning and over-purchase coma inducing croissants, pan au poire, and other things that I don't know the names of.  Here, Nate knows the weakness of my willpower and deftly orders before I have a chance to object.  I sent him this afternoon, by himself, to buy some pizza-like thingys for lunch and in minutes he returned with a duplicate order of this morning's fare.
     So far, no one has allowed us to try our French.  As soon as the bonjour is out of my mouth, they are speaking English.  Perhaps it's our smiles that give us away.  The French as a whole seem pretty dour when walking about and carrying on their business in public.  A smile will get you nowhere here, nor will one Euro.  Touted as one of the most expensive cities to live in in the world, I am now deliberating whether or not to purchase anything here at all (with the exception of chocolate, of course).  Most of our clothes we've been wearing for seven months now and are becoming increasingly transparent.  I was going to buy Nate converse sneakers yesterday, but they were 70 Euros.  Ouch!  We had a mock argument and got the hell out of that store but not before I had to purchase a few Star Wars Legos.  I thought it was a good trade.  Boys trousers were 85 Euros and sweatshirts 65 Euros....where is the Marshall's of Paris?  I'm going to try Marks and Spencer in a few days when I've recovered from sticker shock.
     By the way, Happy Thanksgiving.....missing you all!

The Great Time Suck

     Sure it's November already and I haven't posted since Nate's birthday in September.  Where does the time go?  I'm not sure but I know that it has something to do with San Marcos, convergences and maybe a black hole or two.  I even think it has something to do with the house we are staying in.  For the last two days, our friend, Marta, has been staying at the house, falling into its dreamy spell and questioning what day it is and "How could that be?"  She left today aided by Andrea, our Shamballan friend, rescuing Marta from the great time suck.
     I feel that I need a bit of a rescue as well and so I've booked tickets to Paris for Nate and I, to get away from this place and gain some perspective and also to meet up with Dan after he's done his stint somewhere off the coast of Africa.  I hear Paris is gorgeous in late Fall.  From there we'll head south to the Riviera, perhaps to Venice and then to Croatia....that's the plan in my head so far.  We've got a few months to meander about.
     It feels like time is on our side, but I've found the opposite is mostly true, taunting us as we try to be productive and sneering at us as we try to relax and perhaps laughing at us as we try to make sense of it all.  And if time has an energy, just like everything else, perhaps it also can be manipulated, its march slowed by, I don't know, maybe something as simple as our attention.
     Another blue sky, warm winded day here in San Marcos. It's afternoon and I'm still in pj's, wondering where the last 6 months went.

Encuentro de Mujeres

Getting ready for the 4th annual Women's Meeting to heal the planet....and eat really good food.

 

 

Nate's Birthday Pictures

 After more than a month of preparation, we  celebrated Nate's 9th birthday with a few friends, a massive carrot cake and a new volleyball net.
Pictured here is Nate's friend, Lucas, who moved to San Marcos about the same time we did. 
Why a month?  Well...the cake pans came from Cordoba, the sprinkles from Cruz del Eje, the Volleyball net from Buenos Aires, the ball from Cordoba, the ketchup and candles from La Cumbre, etc...all collected in bits and pieces over a few weeks. 

 Here is Ona, our guest for a week or two.  She also enjoys volleyball and won Most Improved Player. 

 Our big, flat, vacant yard is perfect for volleyball! Thanks to Clay who lent us these polls and put it up and to Stella who bought the net for me in Buenos Aires.  It took a village to pull together this feat. 

Service! Eva, Nate's Spanish tutor, powers one over the net. 
We had a lovely day after the clouds cleared.  A day earlier, hail, gale force winds, thunder and lightening blew through the area bringing cooler temperatures and a little green grass. 

Signs of Spring?

     Just as in the northern hemisphere, in San Marcos, the flowering of fruit trees, peach and plum mostly, signal the onset of Spring, while the Quebracho trees are turning red on the mountain resembling Appalachian  fall foliage.  It's true the vegetation doesn't know what's coming or going... seeming as confused as I am.  Cold, blustery wind at night with temperatures in the 30's and 40's are followed by hot afternoons spent hiding in the shade. I dip a toe out the door in the morning to see what the day's dress code should be, settling on three layers that will get me through the day. 
     The houses here are built to shield themselves from the intense sun that brutalizes them in the many months of summer, having no windows on the northern exposure and deep window wells with heavy shutters on the other sides.  So for those of us that show up in the fall and winter, inside is cold and dark with no penetrating sunlight until almost noon.  Every day I am surprised when I wake up at 7:30 or 8:00, 9:00 or even 10:00, when it's cloudy. The roosters crow and the dogs bark all night, so besides an alarm, there is nothing to rouse me except the need to pee or eat.
     I do realize for someone who is use to four distinct seasons, that I must learn to detect the smallest changes that quietly say "Yes, today is different from yesterday and it will keep changing until such time that it changes back again."  I visited Hawaii in early Spring one year and I remember seeing flowers everywhere and someone saying, "You should see it in the Summer!" and my mother-in-law, who lived on Oahu,  telling me that the temperature drops from a perfect 85 to a chilly 82 in the winter.  But I guess these nuances become greater when that's all you get.
     I'm told that it gets really hot here in summer and that makes me nervous, for a hibernating bear is released inside of me when my own temperature soars, ask anyone who's ever done a craft show with me.  What I'm hoping is that the difference between the heat now and the heat then is so subtle that only those who live without those four distinct seasons describe these small fluctuations using the same range of vocabulary we Northerners do. It's so cold! (Really 65 degrees)...It's so hot! (87 degrees).  Well...as I said, that's what I'm hoping.  Like the Inuit's word for snow or Seattle's words for rain, should there be 100 words for heat?  No, there's no time for all that heavy thinking. In heat, all heat, we just like to nap and that's what they do best here.  It is now 1:31pm...siesta time...thank god.

Has it been more than a month already?

Independence Day on July 9th, with some local dancers.

I'm sorry it's taken so long to post...not through a lack of activity but really it's hard to get a good enough connection to upload any photos.  We've mostly been busy getting down to the business of just carrying on day to day activities, which in San Marcos means shopping for food, preparing food, resting after food, dishes, rinse and repeat.  I'll upload a couple of pictures that will give you a nice overview of lovely San Marcos Sierras.

Gaucho Rodeo

Gaucho Parking

Main Street of San Marcos during Independence Day Parade

Nate's Spanish Lesson...while Ferdenand nibbles on some flora.

Our neighbor's horse

Beginning of Independence Day Parade

Crossing the Finish Line.

San Marcos River

San Marcos River in town

Valet Parking

Catching up in San Marcos

This is a typical house in the pueblo...we buy health liquors here as well as things I can't pronounce or spell.

This is the playground in the Plaza del Pueblo with the Sierras in the background.  This must be during siesta time since usually there are lots of children.

Another cool car....

.

This is a bus stop in a nearby town of Rincon

This is a common site...sometimes they have a cart. 

The tourist information booth as you come into town.

A rare bird.

The San Marcos River in the canyon west of the town.

Nate's new passion, the alto sax made from a gourd and bamboo.  The sound is amazing.

Another picture of the playground...

Wacky Stuff

Argentina is where old Ford Fairlanes go to be restored.  They are everywhere.

Yes, There is a Hippie Museum and this is what you can expect to find there.

The first completed wall of vina paz.

Nate's message in a bottle.

Steady...steady....

San Marcos' own Hippie Museum

Pizza oven design-built at Shambala Farm.  It's grrrrrrrreat!

The Land of Meat and Honey

Ok, Ok, I don't have any pictures right now.  That's because Dan and Nate are off exploring a permaculture farm near here with the camera and I'm at our current residence nursing a cold.  Where is here?  The land of meat and honey...San Marcos, Argentina.  This town was the last stop on our bus ride from Cordoba.  We went through numerous cute towns and I couldn't wait to see what San Marcos was going to look like.  All of a sudden, the paved road stops and dirt road begins, lined with trees and a small craft show, we'd arrived in hippyville.

It's been known as a hippy town since the 70's, in fact we went to the Hippy Museum yesterday and had an amazing tour of a small, handbuilt cottage that housed very well loved 60's and 70's roll and rock memorabilia.  Yes, that's roll and rock. Most of the memorabilia was from Latin American folk artists, which I didn't recognize and a couple of old Beatles albums, with ragged edges mounted behind plexiglass.  We learned about where the peace sign came from and looked at display cases housing pieces of the Berlin Wall and jewelry from the good ol days.

Out behind the little hut was an enormous wall of wine bottles, each with a hand written note inside. Each carefully siliconed and then cemented in place to form a large peace sign from the green and clear glass. Nate filled out his note and stuck it in the bottle, placed it on top of the wall and went off to do another.  He had a lot to say.  The note is our communication to future generations, our message in a bottle.

Back in town we ate our first vegetables, other than potatoes, since we left Buenos Aires.  Most of the food is local and organic.  San Marcos is located in a nuclear free zone and also a GMO and pesticide free zone.  Fantastic!  They are also known for their incredible honey.  The stores are lined with it and most people here make their own honey.  Their other export is olives, which are delightful!

If you want to open a business where you barely have to show up, here's your place.  Shops open sometime about 9 or 10, close around 1pm and reopen sometime around 5 or 6pm.  Siesta is serious business here. 

It is winter here now, so tourism is low.  We basically have the town to ourselves and our choice of bungalows to live in.  Given the sheer amount of rentals, it must get really busy here in the summer.  The two rivers that are close by are mostly dry now, but evidence shows by the steeply arched bridge, that it must get pretty high come rainy season.  But right now it's sunny and in the 60's during the day and in the high 50's at night.

It's past siesta time, so I must sign off.  I think that's a rule here.

Ahhh, beautiful Buenos Aires.

Parrilla ...for....3?

     As we are about to land in Argentina, Nate looks out the airplane window and says..."It looks like Pennsylvania."  He couldn't have been referring to the flat landscape so I had to probe deeper.  It was the houses, perfectly placed along orderly paved streets by highways with signs and traffic that seemed to stay in their respective lanes.  So different than what we'd gotten use to in Peru. 
     Buenos Aires reminds me of so many different cities rolled into one.  Beautiful architecture, lots of shopping and cafes, quaint neighborhoods, fantastic food and wine, subways and bars that never seem to close and amazingly affordable.  I wouldn't say it's the polar opposite of Peru, but more like the prince and the pauper, brothers separated at birth, even speaking differently.
     We've had some great meals...with vegetables...green ones...hard to find in Peru or dangerous to actually eat.  Here we took a picture of the grilled meat from our neighbors table.  This was after they'd finished a good portion of it.  They eat a lot of meat here!  And it's tasty!  The wine has been great and sometimes the same price as a bottle of water con gas.  For breakfast we have croissants with butter and dulce de leche which is a creamy, thick caramel that I can't stop myself from licking off the plate. 
     We will most likely leave here tomorrow for Cordoba and then, if there's time, down to Patagonia.   Another 10 hour bus ride that will show us the interior of the country.   I love to see the city but quickly want to get out into more open spaces and see life in the small towns.  Buenos Aires doesn't have many green spaces, in fact according to the tourista map, they call either side of the train tracks a green space.  We will look for a park today and let Nate run off some excess energy. 
     There's been no decision yet about returning mid-June, we'll see how things progress here.  I hope you are all well and eating your seaweed.  I miss you all.
Jenny
    

Drying Coffee -Road to Tarapoto

Sea of Moto-Taxis.  Sounds like being in the center of a beehive.

Gocta and other Falls after a rain in Cocachimba. You can see that the falls are in two parts.  If they were just one, it would be the 3rd tallest waterfall in the world.

Almost at the base of the Gocta Falls

The Chachapoyas Fortress of Kuelap

Hidden bones in the walls of Kuelap.  Friend or Foe? Hmmm.

Every house had its own Guinea Pig runs.  Keep your food close!

A view of the falls from our balcony.

With the exception of after a rain, Gocta's waterfall just becomes mist at the bottom.  This mist is what kept villagers from ever visiting the falls thinking an evil Mermaid lived at that base.  Discovered by a German hiker in only 2006, it's now the 16th tallest waterfall in the world.

Reconstruction of a typical circular house in Kuelap.  The Chachapoyas built circles as opposed to the Inca rectangles.

The Fortress is thousands of years old and has housed many different civilizations and used for many different reasons until the Spanish banned living at such high altitudes.

Nate at Kuelap overlooking the crazy road to get there. Directly opposite Nate, on that road, is about 1.5-2 hours away by car. Two minutes by hang glider. Kuelap sits up 2600 meter high, approx.

Nate's Picture of Turkey Lurky

The stairs of Kuelap. Enemy soldiers would have to stand on another's back to get up the tall steps and as they did, they got picked off one by one allowing the fortress to be defended by only a handful of warriors.

Pressing Sugar Cane.  The juice comes out quite brown.