Guess where Kim is..

so....lots to say since i last left off (and i swear, one day i will finish off the rest of my SE Asia blog...still lots of awesome stories to tell you guys)

i came home, went to new york for a weekend with Alanna, went home for a week, then went to Edmonton to visit a grad school...it was superb, and i´ll be moving out west in june!

now, on the fun note...since i figured out all the grad school stuff, and i still had two months to myself, i decided to fly to south america. yes...i am currently in buenos aires, argentina, where i am learning spanish, volunteering with a company called LIFE argentina, and enjoying the life of the locals, (porteños)...

already i´ve fallen behind on bloggage....i´ve been here for a week and so much has happened!! i´m living in a house (rez, essentially) with approx 20 other people who are in various stages of university, learning spanish, working, or volunteering...pretty much everyone is an american, and i´ve learnt to live with it :) hahah, but really, a lot of the people in my house have turned out to be cool people, and apparently a new batch of people are coming in this weekend...woot!
so...south america...i didn´t do any research at all before coming here, but it´s a pretty damn sweet continent. buenos aires is a fairly modern city, with really unique neighbourhoods, really wicked people (they are apparently the most egotistical of all the south americans, but they are really helpful and nice people), cheap food (steak, steak, steak, steak...for like 5 bucks), great wine (a bottella for 2 dollars), and a nightlife second to none. people are super fashionable here, but everyone looks unique, so it´s fabulous. the main things i had to get used to were :

1) the spanish...it´s really different from everywhere else, and since i didn´t speak any spanish when i got here, i´ve had to learn quickly!! luckily i´ve been taking 4 hours a day since i got here, so it´s improving rapidly...4 hours of someone speaking to you in a foreign language is pretty intense though, by the end my brain is leaking out my ear. i´d suggest 2 hours classes to anyone who ever wants to do them...
no worries though, over the past few months i´ve gotten really good at communicating via arm flailing, so that helps too. man though, these porteños speak freakin´fast....and they drop their ´S´ when they speak so it´s even harder! (like..they would say ´whi-key´instead of ´whiskey´)

2) the late...and i mean LATE nights. people eat dinner around 9pm here (at the EARLIEST), but often i don´t eat until 11 at a restaurant! and then, the bars definitely do not start until 2pm, and even that´s a little early to be arriving. so, basically you get home at like, 8am.

3) the meat...they LOVE meat, and it´s so ridiculous cheap and amazing here...steaks are huge, juicy, and amazing.

4) the lack of peanut butter...but luckily i´ve got someone bringing me some from australia in a few weeks!

so far i´ve gone salsa dancing (and i´m in love with it..will start taking lessons next week), hit up some of the wicked markets in the barrios (crazy cute neighbourhoods with tons of character), gotten lots of cab driver´s numbers (the women here are not .... fun? they are really nice, but in that laid back cool kinda way, so people seem to really like the incessant chatter, despite that fact that is super broken spanish), been introduced to some of the best food i´ve ever eaten, volunteered at a hospital playing with kids on dialysis, in a poorer neighbourhood where we´ve given the kids birthday parties, and teaching english.
last night i hit up the casino with some friends and it was fabulous...we played blackjack cause it involved the least knowledge of spanish vocab, and i won 72 pesos...which is about 25 bucks.. which is like, 3 good steak meals with wine and dessert. unfortunately the 3 chicas i went with all lost their money, but it´s all good, it was still worth it cause they keep serving you free drinks...hahah :)
the only thing that´s been crappy so far has been the weather...it was perfect, then started raining...and when it rains here, it freakin´POURS... my friend and i got caught coming home from sushi one night, and we were about 2 minutes away from home. we decided to wait for a second before heading out into it, but then the streets started flooding...i´m not even kidding. water was gushing by in rivers and coming out of door stoops in waterfalls. in the 2 minutes it took to run home i managed to take a dive in the middle of the street and got completely soaked. luckily, it only lasted one night, but it´s been a steady rain ever since...can everyone please cross their fingers for me and hope for the sunny weather to come back?
anyways, pictures will get posted early next week...my camera and this computer aren´t compatible apparently...i´m going out of town this weekend to mendoza with some friends...to wine country. danger.

the honking ceases - halong bay

just to get away from the bustle of Hanoi, a few friends and I headed off to do a boat trip through Halong Bay. As was all of the tours in Vietnam, it was very...well...touristy, but my only intention on the trip was to relax and enjoy the peace, so i put up with the cave viewings (lots of neon lights and stories how some of the structures bring good luck etc etc etc...nothing compared to walking through a pitch black cave on your own, in constant fear of falling down a bottomless pit, a la Laos.) we slept on the boat, we ate on the boat...visited a cool floating village (yes, the people live in houses that float on the water). little boats full of food and goods were constantly up along our boat, with cute ladies trying to sell us food and fruits. unfortunately, we had already hit up the oreo and liquor districts of Hanoi before going on the trip, so we were loaded with food, so we didn't get to do any bartering with the boat ladies.

my question is: where do the dogs get to play? seriously, there were lots of dogs, but since the houses were floating on water, there was no green space (clearly.)

we braved the cold (yes, it was actually quite cool) to sit up on the top deck and enjoy the misty view, but most of the time we spent warming ourselves inside, eating candy and drinking whiskey.

a very relaxing trip.