Get up, Stand Up....

Leaping through a few pocket full of weeks I must recount some of my newest adventures. It has been harder and harder to pull anchor in the places I arrive when it takes a few deep breaths to enjoy the dinamic people and magnificent sencery that I have encountered. It really wasn't much of a suprise when my days in Santiago were drifting by as summer blew through and autumn leaves began showing their multicolored hues. I had not found any useful groups or organization that were accepting volunteers to reconstruct Chile. It seemed as though the administration was less than functional and an evident mismanagement was sneeking in through the frontdoor. There was a shift in power from their beloved Dr. Michelle Bachelet to Sebastian Piñera of whom has the dark shadings of a capitalist and odd markings of a Bush the third. The earthquake and all the erroneous governmental responses in producing hard facts and some serious follow-through was swept underneath the carpet with television and news practically wiping it clean from the screen so to speak. I decided that it was high time I skipped out of town though leaving behind some amazing friends and oh but of course those other whimsical personalities that float through in all my chapters. I put together some of the pesos I had earned and bought myself a direct ticket to Mendoza, Argentina. I arrived well in the night, tired and a bit anxious to see what Argentina was going to bring to the table. Joni, the mendozinian couchsurfer zoomed in with his peculiar carefree aura and took me to his spacious though a bit bedraggled casita. Its strange to cross borders, frontiers that seperate not only countries but the daily culture of foods, slangs, or the sheer character of the person. Argentians are much more forward than your average Chilean and have the tendencies to be a bit more shrewd. Their european heritage leaves a pretentious fragrance in the air. The couchsurfing barriers were surfacing and though I admired Joni for his adventurous parasailing ways I found little in common and felt myself battling between staying in Mendoza or heading for the hills. I ran into an old friend, Emi. Emi is a very talented juggler of whom I had met in Cusco, Peru. He always seemed to be seeking new ways to reflect his art. He offered me to stay in his house of which I have been in for a couple of days and can feel a very peaceful energy that trims the walls. The house sits roughly 8 blocks for the Plaza de Independencia which is where the artisanal fair sets up daily. The house has no electricity or functional pipelines so a bath or the flushing of a toilet is really out of the question. It has 5 rooms with a patio outside but lacks a serious degree of dedication and cleaning to put it all in working condition. Being so thoroughly rustic I had decided that the house was well worth the changing of enviroments. I feel like I have a moment to learn a bit more from the distict rays of art that us as humans are capable of. For the moment my plans are to produce a bit more so that I can keep a decent art display and venture out a bit to test other waters. The days of intiation are about to begin!