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updates this month reggae makes the world go round 12.23.04 curse that mocha latte 12.22.04 the evil robots 12.21.04

reggae makes the world go round 12.23.04 00:36 awesome. so today i've been a busy little bee, in things that don't involve website updating. yet i've still managed to post for your viewing pleasure stuff from pucon, glacier pictures, and our hike through parque nacional los glaciares. i broke chronological order (i still have more pictures to post), but i wanted to be able to post my fun list tonight. so the pucon stuff is from a walk we took in search of waterfalls; the glacier pics from a couple trips, one of which involved a bit of hiking and the other of which involved a boat and a lot of nice little old argentinean ladies who thought we were cute and charming. and a lot of looking at ice. the hiking pictures...rock. i didn't find my unused roll of film so there are only 3, from a 3 day hike. ah well. the landscape was amazing though. amazing, where you have to pronounce amazing with wide eyes, waving arms, and a long drawn out emphasis on the middle syllable. try it. ok. so now you know the proper adjective. if you are unsatisified with the pictures i have, check out adam's photo page, maybe he's posted some of his. hopefully. because wow. and another wow is, wow, we didn't die. the time we spent in chalten (this hike, plus an evening hike and the first attempt at glacier trekking), we hiked about 75 kilometers. that's 45 miles. in 3.5 days. yay for feeling hardcore. so needless to say, we were a bit exhausted to carry on a coherent conversation on the last day, which is how i came up with my list of ways to amuse yourself. i was pleased with myself, in a deliriously exhausted sort of way. and i wrote it all down (what i could recall) in my journal and here now present it for your amusement. ~helen's definitive list of ways to amuse yourself while hiking thorugh parque nacional los glaciares~ 1. since you have no music, try to mentally play an entire album. 2. fail (or, meet with marginal success with "bloodsport," "give up," and "bari"). 3. wish you could beatbox. 4. wish someone who could beatbox was hiking with you. 5. think obsessively about how to phrase #4. 6. look up from the trail and gawk. 7. trip because you weren't watching where you were walking. 8. get some water (glacial runoff!) because your mouth is dry from gawking. 9. think about how to say everything your'e thinking in spanish. 10. pensar en come decir todos sus pensamientos en castellano. 11. practice rolling your r's, even though you're pretty good at it by now, because a) it's fun and b) it lends a nice symmetry to the semester (reference "around town") 12. curse your thighs and wish it wasn't uphill. 13. curse your knees and wish it wasn't downhill. 14. praise the heavens it's flat. 15. wonder if argentine patagonia was considered as a filming location for LOTR. 16. remember what your glacier guide said about the lenga tree (grows everywhere in the park) growing everwhere in new zealand. 17. feel like a geek for thinking so much about LOTR. 18. feel more like a geek after remembering how much you thought about dune in the atacama in october. 19. keep track of how many flies eliot kills (10.5). 20. wonder how he can kill so many flies when you've not had any buzzing around you. 21. guess how many times you and the spaniards who went glacier trekking with you will pass each other (4). 22. wonder if you'll still say "hola" every time you pass each other, or if eventually you'll say "chao" (no). 23. invent wild theories as to how the crazy lenticular cloud formations you're seeing form (the real answer is here). 24. plan this list as your next web update (heh). 25. realize you won't remember it and plan it as your next journal entry. 26. mentally debate the merits of writing said entry in the pen you stole from the hotel in buenos aires vs. the SOAR pen you bought in the recinto. 27. remember that you vowed to only write your journal in spanish. 28. think again about how to say everything in spanish. 29. pensar de nuevo en come decir todo en castellano. 30. decide to make a journal exception, and to use the SOAR pen. 31. invent burch field research seminar appropriate lyrics to "the 12 days of christmas" [note: i had help on these; it was a group effort on the failed glacier trek, but i record them here for posterity]: "on the 12th day of christmas, mr. burch gave to me... 12 hours clubbing 11 crazy tarheels tentacion [a chilean soap opera] 9 in casa trece [the house nine of us shared] 8 megameters [we were 8000 km from home while we were in la serena...yeah, i'm a dork, i know] 7 nights of homework [total] 6 lovely ladies 5 b-team boys 4 meter mirror 3 broken telescopes 2 burch professors ...and a semester in la serena." 32. wonder what mr. burch's first name is (we later decided it should be lucius). so there you have it, in all its goofy glory. hope youv'e enjoyed; this update has now reached staggering proportions so i think i'll end it here. top

curse that mocha latte 12.22.04 01:43 ok so i lied about the stories going to be posted; i'm too lazy. but i'm lazy for a good cause...i just posted ten bazillion pictures. so entertain yourself with those for a while. the additions are: a last look from cerro tololo, volcano climbing pictures from our trip to the lakes district, random pictures from that same trip, and some more from the penguins tour thing that i've already posted a few pictures (not of my own taking) from. so enjoy. maybe tomorrow there's hope for me posting stories? maybe not. we'll see. for now, there is getting in bed and hoping to sleep. top

the evil robots 12.21.04 12:23 EST hey, yeah, check that out, EST. i'm back home in good ol' chatham county, nc. it's a bit colder here than in la serena and buenos aires. and a bit duller, truth be told. good to be home though, i s'pose. it's been strange so far, actually. it doesn't feel like chile ever happened. it's like i've picked up my life right where it left off after august, just neatly sliced a chunk out of it and stuck it in chile. probably once i get back to school it'll feel a bit different, once i see everyone else from the trip around town and in my classes and so forth. until then... i'll just carry on feeling disoriented. been working, sleeping, reading (actually, rereading old favorite books, like i always tend to do when i get home...this week's was carl sagan's contact, an excellent and quite worthy read, reread, rereread, rerereread...), did a bit of visiting when i got home but don't feel unloved if i've not made it to everyone yet, there will be time, i promise. saw ocean's twelve, it's a fun way to pass an evening if you haven't yet. and hmmm let's see...guess that's about it. i suppose the real point of this update should be to regale you with pictures and stories of patagonia. there are lots of both, and eventually i'll get around to them. have to say that the sheer volume of pictures in this round of developing (it cost me 40 bucks) means that you'll not get them all, but i'll go through this afternoon and pick some out. same with stories, though those didn't cost me anything to develop...i'll mentally go through some and pick them out. i know one off the bat, but for consistency's sake i'll post it with at least a couple accompanying pictures. that's the eagerly anticipated (by a few anyhow) "definitive list of ways to entertain yourself while hiking through parque nacional los glaciares." so cool your heels for a few hours if you're one of those few eagerly anticipating it. not like it'd be hard to do, because it's been so long since i've updated at all that you're probably getting used to not seeing anything new and exciting here. why'd it take me so long? customs. they had my computer until, well, this morning. or at least someone other than me had my computer until then, and i wasn't cool enough to learn the hard way (i was corrected earlier: the l33t way) to update this page. but now i have it back! and will merrily update my way into exhaustion! after lunch, and a nap. so, until then, chao. top