rafting through arequipa

GREAT SUCCESS: Peru let us in. We headed straight for Arequipa, the city surrounded by volcanoes and built of ash, mostly because we heard there were Andean condors all over the place, and we're into birds the size of humans.

Plans for the Colca Canyon were thwarted, however, when we accidentally stayed out dancing with some Brazilians until 3 am and our 3:30 am departure for the canyon just was not. going. to happen. We rerouted and decided to go whitewater rafting instead.

You know what's a fun idea? Trying to kick a hangover and stay alive on a river at the same time. I can't believe how inept I can be sometimes. Here we are in the most saggy-butt wetsuits ever created, getting ready to hit the class 4 rapids with little to no clue of what was going on. The highlight of the day was when peer pressure forced us to leap off a cliff into the raging rapids and swim for safety. I AM NOT A STRONG SWIMMER, PEOPLE. Luckily, I didn't get swept away and emerged from the river missing one sunglass lens and my hangover. Not a bad way to spend our last morning in town, overall, and we left Arequipa to head to the coast with stomachs sore from laughing at ourselves.

Check out our traseros. Unisex wetsuits: wassup.

all the fashion news you can handle at one time

Ladies and gentlemen, here is your Buenos Aires fashion report:

Let’s start with the old ladies of this blessed land. These women know exactly what they’re doing with proportion and details. If you are an aging yet fashionable woman here, here is your uniform: a puffy blouse tucked into a pencil skirt, paired with slingbacks. Red lipstick. And bling, wherever you want to wear it. We pass 80 year olds in the street who look more pulled together than Carolina Herrera and Anna Wintour combined. And always, ALWAYS, pairs of old lady friends show up at whatever café we’re in looking like the newest issue of Elderly Vogue. We have seen countless little sets of amigas with palsy and manicures whispering secrets to each other over tiny empanadas. Elderly of Bs. As., I salute you for looking classier than every Florida retiree in existence and for reminding me that there is room for style after a certain age, and it doesn’t involve matching sweat combos with kittens on them.

These cranky old bats are not indicative mood-wise of most women here, but they do have scarves and pearl earrings. Note the sneaky angle of the camera as I tried to document them without igniting their wrath.

Next up: dear baby Jesus and all his holy angels, where did all these MEN COME FROM? These men who know how to wear a three piece suit like they’ve been doing it since toddlerhood? I’m flying them back to the States so they can teach seminars with titles like “How to Tuck In Your Shirt 101” and “Shoe Polish and Irons: What You’ve Been Missing Out On.” Or “Even If You Aren’t in the Fortune 500, You Can Look Like a Damn Supermodel Just Walking Down the Street.” It’s jaw-dropping, the miracles these guys work with a decent tailor and a well-placed belt. Oh, and impeccable bone structure on each and every one of them doesn’t hurt either. I keep wanting do some street photography to show you what these men are doing to our sartorial standards but I get SO SHY whenever I see one of them coming my way. Just use your imaginations, people.

However, even in the city of a thousand fashion hits, there is at least one MAJOR miss. Now this unfortunate look can be seen on all ages, body types and confidence levels, which is part of why it’s so upsetting. Here we have a classic example of the Pants That Will Not Be Contained:

Yes, what you have seen is a tight ankle/calf situation leading up to a baggy thigh area, complete with pockets that don’t fall with the rest of the pant. Combine this with color choices from magenta to tennis ball green and friends, we have a fashion disaster on our hands. In their natural habitat, these pants can be seen most often with their cousins, the infamous Dreadlocked Mullet and Nonsensical English Phrase on a T-shirt. This look can be described as “horrifying.”

This concludes your live Bs. As. Fashion rundown. Signing out,

IWWAADCBEDTNRJ
(I Wear Wrinkled American Apparel Dresses and Cowboy Boots Every Day and Thus Have No Room to Judge)

someone give us a house, please!

Ok, ok, the ghetto is glamorous in the movies but when you accidentally live there in Buenos Aires, it's not as fun. Traipsing all over town to find apartments in legitimate neighborhoods is a) good for the glutes and b) really hard for two girls who like eating cheesecake and sitting down a lot. Today we tricked our new friend Jamil (born on Caye Caulker in Belize, raised in Guatemala City, yoga fanatic) into wandering around with us into Palermo.

Jamil, two miles in: "Ay Dios. I should be doing less meditating and more exercising."

This is Jamil's face after he saw Amy Winehouse in her drogaddiccion phase. Emotion was palpable. It was like telling a kid there's no Santa Claus.

Luckily, covering dozens of miles on foot was worth it. We now have an apartment to live in starting on Monday and the happy memory of a cute little Argentinian boy who gasped, "MIRA... que lindo vestido!" to his mom and swung around to watch Marlo's long dress swish by him. At least someone around here appreciates the fact that we brought cute dresses!

prep.

South America is exactly one month away. Departure feels imminent, but first there are shots. There are visas. There are verbs to remember how to conjugate so we say "catch a bus" instead of "have our way with a bus." There are hippy names to invent for ourselves so we can fit into the place we're living in Buenos Aires (we saw pictures of bongos. People who are not Matthew McConaughey still play the bongos! I'm as shocked as you are!). From now on, please refer to us as "Moon Flower" and "Peace Wart."

Last week, Marlo spent the 8 am hour buying "underwear we can wash in a river that will dry in ten minutes!" and tear-away Adidas track pants. People keep asking us how prep is going-- at this point, six months in South America is looking like a camping trip with Kopachuck Middle School, Class of 1998.

My 15 Minutes!

I read the Sartorialist and Garance Dore religiously. Thank goodness someone in Boise finally noticed.
http://www.boisestyle.com/2009/05/saturday-style_9451.html

TOO MUCH

I am spending this evening cleaning my closet. It's a parallel exercise with cleaning out my thought life, as well. I'm trying to get rid of the things that don't fit me anymore, belonged to a different time of my life, and that aren't really items I'd like to take with me.

I have way too much stuff.

I sit surrounded by piles of t-shirts, skirts, and pants that I forgot I ever had. I have duplicates! I have near-duplicates! How much stuff can one body wear at once? I'm feeling convicted as my head is increasingly filled with contradictory visions of my life--

One vision has me, with my backpack that holds a month's worth of worldly goods, contentedly skimming the surface of the earth with a few shirts and forgetting that I ever needed more.

The other vision has me wearing the beautiful dresses I always crave, going to fancy places and laughing lightly at things that aren't really real, but are as tempting and transient as cotton candy.

I don't need all these clothes, I don't need so much of what I have and I am tired of the self-absorbed rants that my bank account brings out in me. I'm reminded of the Sermon on the Mount, and especially am moved by the Message translation of 6:25-29;

"If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don't fuss about what's on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds. Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion—do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them. "

I crave a life of simplicity even as I seem to accumulate more than I need or can even use. How much is too much?