Well we haven´t gone to Uruguay. We have stayed in a different house/apartment/hostel every single night however. We´re hoping that the place we go tonight we can stay for the next 3 nights.

I´ve been very impressed with how friendly the people here have been. Whenever we go to some house we stay and talk for like 5 hours. Not an exaggeration. It really reminds me of China. Josh knows quite a few people so we´re always staying and talking with people, it´s not like we´re just backpackers going to some foreign city and staying in hostels by ourselves and exploring the city. Though we have done some of that, a lot of our time has been spent with friends.

So a new thing here that I´ve never seen before is a little something new in the bathroom. It looks like another toilet, except you don´t sit on it, you squat over it and water sprays up to clean you off!! hahaha. You´re supposed to wipe first and use this just for the final touches. Apparently the Argentines like to make fun of some other group of people (not sure which) who don´t have these and say that they think it´s a shower. The water sprays up and it takes a long time to take a shower! hahahaha. oh boy. If you know what this thing is you´d understand.

Well Jeff is getting in on the 7th, so we have a couple more days before he gets here. We plan to visit La Plata tomorrow which is just about an hour and a half away from here. Then on the 8th after Jeff gets here we´re gonna go to Bolivia.

I´d like to upload some photos but I really doubt that´s gonna happen because it´s just too much trouble. I´ll definitely have photos online when I get back.

Well time to go get our stuff and move to the new hostel!

Well I made it safely all the way to Buenos Aires, as you might have guessed from the title! The flight to Houston was awful however, I got a excruciatingly bad headache on the way down. It has kinda bad last night in BA as well, but this morning it is now fine.

Buenos Aires is very warm right now. It´s really nice to get away from the snow and freezingness of Indiana. I´m wearing shorts and a t-shirt. It was raining and kinda cool when I got here, only about 70 degrees, but today it´s prolly around the upper 80s around 11 in the morning. There´s lots of mosquitos so I´m wearing bug spray that we bought from a marketplace run by Chinese people. Actually most of the marketplaces are run by Chinese. I spoke to this one lady in Chinese and then she asked me in Spanish if I spoke Chinese. Well duh! Plus I didn´t understand that she was asking me that, Josh had to translate to me that. So then Josh told this Chinese woman in Spanish that I only spoke Chinese, so she finally started talking to me in Chinese. I think she was just so shocked.

Well we are trying to contact Josh´s bank back in the States to activate his debit card so we can use it here. We need to go now and make reservations for a boat trip to Uruguay. Seems like that might have to wait until Tuesday and we´ll stay in our crazy hostel for another night.

Yeah that’s right! I’ll be on my way down to the beautiful Argentina this time tomorrow. Funny thing is, I’ll be in the air on new years. I’ll be flying over time zones and I won’t know what year or even decade it will be! I’m not entirely sure what to think about that. Maybe if I’m sitting next to some pretty girl on the flight I’ll get a kiss for the new year!

I’m all packed. I have two bags, one of which has my clothes and deodorant etc. The other has my cameras. It’s a small regular sized carry on and a good sized camera bag, so the size difference is minimal. I don’t need much, even for a month long trip! Flight leaves around 5pm tomorrow and I get in to Buenos Aires about 10:30 the following morning. That’s around 17 hours if my math is correct. Not so bad since I’m used to 24+ hours going to and from China. The weird thing about this trip is that I’ll be just one or two time zones different; when I go to China it’s 12 or 13 time zones away.

Well that’s all for now. Next time I write it will be in a new country, a new year, a new decade!

I am starting my life as a photographer and this blog is going to be me documenting the travels that I embark upon. My first trip will be starting on December 31st, 2009. I’ll be traveling to South America for a full month. The countries that I plan on visiting are Uruguay, Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. I’ll be bringing back around 30GB of photos and also a limited amount of video just for fun. I’m really looking forward to this trip and I hope to be able to post several times over the month that I’ll be gone.

I’ll be on this trip with Jeffrey Mudge and Josh Greenman. Both these guys graduated from Taylor last year with me. All 3 of us lived in the Soup House for 2 years together. Josh grew up in Argentina and Bolivia and is currently working down there. He’ll have the month off in January when we’re down there so he’ll be our acting guide of South America! What better way to tour a foreign country than with a great friend who knows the language and can help us get around and see the real sites, not just the tourist sites.