godchild.

Sucre, Bolivia

the kids are all right.

I've been very confused lately. We flew from Saigon at midnight last Wednesday, had a 12 hour layover in Seoul, a 10 hour flight to Seattle, and somehow landed at noon on the same day we left?! My body responded in what I thought was a charming manner: like I'd had an adrenaline injection right to the heart. I cooked a couple of dinners and baked cookies, went running, got beers with some friends, read a whole book, cleaned and unpacked, went back to work on Friday on 3 hours of sleep (waking up at 4 am makes you feel like a superstar CEO or something)... until the weekend, when I totally crashed and slept til 1 pm both days. I think I might be back on track now, but I don't want to count my chicks and whatnot.

The truth is, a lot of my busy-ness has been a thinly veiled effort to avoid processing some of the things we saw in Asia. I've been having a stare-down with my journal because I'm not interested in discussing child labor and war atrocities with it quite yet, and I can't really think of anything else to talk about because those things have consumed my mind the past few weeks.

It's cliche to talk about the grinding poverty in a place like Southeast Asia because it's kind of like, "Duh. Find a new soapbox." It's obviously one of the least developed areas of the world, so what can you say about it that's unique? I don't have a new angle on it, but I was just totally struck anew by how the poverty in any given place is made so much more vivid when it's being lived by children. A few mental images that stand out in my mind:

Hmong girl selling bracelets in Laos: "You can buy 5,000."

There's no escaping child labor in Cambodia.* If you're white, you'll get swarmed by men lounging on motorcycles calling out "tuk-tuk, ladyyy?" and kids selling copied books and dime-a-dozen bracelets. They're relentless, because poverty makes people relentless. So many parts of Siem Reap and Phnom Penh were just cacophonies of garbage on stilts; huge teeming masses of people and stray dogs and dirt. There is a 15 km road from Phnom Penh to the Killing Fields, which is a chaotic study in development. As we scooted along in our tuk-tuk, a factory opened its doors for lunchtime and hundreds of face-masked young girls streamed out, having finished their morning stitching or gluing and preparing for an afternoon filled with more of the same. I wondered what they were making in the factory, what expensive items were being created cheaply so people like me can buy them for less. But I was soon distracted by a new olfactory assault, rising above the old fish and urine smells. We were driving over the river, into which was gushing forth a broad stream of aparently untreated sewage. On the shore, a garbage dump, on fire. And wandering amidst all of this, a shirtless 13 year old boy. What an apocalyptic scene this was, unpleasant for eyes and ears and heart. But our tuk-tuk zipped past all of this, leaving the tottering houses and shops on stilts above the river to fend for themselves.

"Being a baby is sooo BORING sometimes."

Later, after a long day scrambling up the wats, Amy and I set out with a mission to find margaritas at the Mexican restaurant in Siem Reap and ran into a couple of the same boys twice in a row, each time begging us to buy postcards from them. We chatted with them for a while and learned that Hou, age 14, and Phi, age 16, were a couple of the sweetest kiddos in the country. They had been selling bracelets all day without eating, so we took them to the restaurant with us and taught them the word "happy hour" and how to eat tacos. They had never had Mexican food before and Hou practically bathed in the salsa, he loved it so much. We asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up and Hou said "tuk-tuk driver!" while Phi chose, "teacher, and I want to start an orphanage as well." As we parted ways later, Hou said "thank you so, so much for dinner. Here is how we say it in Cambodia: Akhun, akhun, akhun." Later, they ran after us and pushed the little woven bracelets onto our wrists as a parting gift.

The next night, we saw them again. We had been drinking a bit of Angkor draft at dinner and feeling lighthearted, but that quickly faded as we wandered into a street food alley to buy the boys dinner again. We got swarmed by about a dozen other kids, and two girls holding a naked baby, begging for food and money. Fine, easy enough, we can buy noodles for ten kids and spend less than what we would have spent on a round of beers at home. The baby, though, was another issue. He slept peacefully throughout the turmoil, but his sisters gripped our hands with surprising tenacity and begged us for milk. Eventually they clung neatly to our torsos, all four limbs wrapped tightly around our waists, after they handed the dozing baby (who had long since learned to sleep amidst noise and motion) off to Amy. We had a 20-second span in which we thought, "OH MY GOSH, this is what Angelina Jolie felt like before she stole** Maddox!"

We eventually pried ourselves away from the group but felt silly as we walked away. So some kids got dinner-- big deal. What will they do for breakfast?

Today she may be a toothless Vietnamese girl, but she's leaving this one-horse town for Hollywood.

This brought us to the last, most disappointing thing we saw in Cambodia. Having made friends with another kid selling books, we bought "Buddhism Explained" from him one night in Phnom Penh. He rushed over to a middle aged man with a money basket on a bike to toss his cash in. Mom beckoned him back over to our table to ask what would happen to that money later. "That man buys my school uniform and pays my tuition and buys me dinner," our new friend insisted. Essentially the guy was a pimp reminiscent of the newspaper barons who were the source of the newsies strike (historical fact courtesy of Christian Bale). Shortly after, as we lingered over dinner, we heard a shouting match and saw another kid, whose block was being infringed upon by our friend and his pimp, trying to regain his book-selling territory. We watched wide-eyed as a grown man and a kid no more than ten fought loudly in the street, which ended with the man hitting the kid and throwing him to the ground. Wiping away furious tears, the kid regained his footing and kept screaming. All this, just so they can sell a few photocopied books for a couple bucks a pop. I am as speechless now as I was at that moment. What can you do, as a foreigner who doesn't speak the language, when you see such a thing happening? There really is no such thing as childhood when people fight as equals for the right to work.

*I've long since left behind the idea that it's terrible to let kids work. In most parts of the world, it's just a fact of life, and something that often provides education for them rather than preventing it. Although it's not ideal to let kids wander the streets at midnight trying to sell postcards, a better question than "how can we stop poor kids from working?" is "how can we make it safe and profitable for poor kids to work in order to attend school?"

**"Adopted."

agape home.

Well, it's been about 8 months since I've sent out a plea for orphans, so I figured it was about time to call on your infinite kindness yet again.
We met Patty, who helps run the Agape Home AIDS orphanage, our first day at the Eubanks, and were immediately huge fans of hers. She has a peacefulness and a gentleness about her that is unique to find. We tracked her down at Agape Home before we left Thailand-- here she is, as documented by one of the kiddos who got their mitts on the camera:
Agape Home provides holistic care for AIDS orphans (85% of the kids there have also been diagnosed as HIV+), including antiretrovirals that have vastly extended their life expectancy, job training, foster homes in the surrounding area, and a beautiful facility for them to call home.

There is also a Mother and Baby Home designed to allow HIV+ mothers to stay with their kids. We became quite somber at the sight of a woman who appeared very, very old wandering slowly around the facility, pregnant and clearly in the late stages of AIDS. Patty later told us that she is only 16 years old, and that since moving to the center and receiving proper physical and spiritual care, she has visibly calmed down. It's a sobering sight that makes me so, so grateful for an ever-wider spectrum of blessings in my own life, and I only wish I could do more to help places like this. Donating will help them expand their foster care capacities and job training facilities, creating a sort of village of support for kids who are moving out of the home, as well as help continue to provide the advanced medications, healthy food, and clean living area that are so crucial for these kids.

Will you join me in sponsoring one of these sweet kids? It's easy even to make a one-time donation; I included the link on the righthand side there! Much like the project in Bolivia, it's really nice to know exactly where your money is going and how effective it will actually be.

I'll leave you with the parting shot I got on our way out-- a little sweetheart who rushed to the window to bid us adieu with a huge grin. Oh, my heart!

byebye korea!

The last few days of Korea were a whirlwind of packing up Ames and getting her out of her apartment, going out to bulgogi meals in an embarrassingly eager fashion, and JIMJILBANGING. Jimjilbangs are Korean spas where you wander around naked, sit in rooms of increasing heat and try not to think about that Nancy Drew book where someone locked her in a sauna right before she solved a mystery involving a basketball team, lounge around in pools that range from icy to hot potato, and leave feeling like the most relaxed human on earth.

Oh, and this is my sister being super cute even when I spy on her in between airplane seats.

tongsaeng, onni and omma go to school.

Reunited and it feeeeels so gooood! is the theme song I'd like you to hum in your head as you take a gander at these photos.

Well, after a 12 hour flight alongside every unhappy Korean baby ever born, we finally made it to Seoul and were greeted by my leetle seester (my "tongsaeng"), and no one needs to worry: she is as pretty and cool as ever.

Our first stop this morning was to find out what she's been doing at school all year. Here she is, infiltrating the young, pliable minds of her Koala class with propaganda such as "The Itsy Bitsy Spider."

I suppose now is as good a time as any to start telling you funny kid stories, since I know that's why you're here in the first place. Allow me to introduce you to our new friends, June and Edward, who are the first two candidates to come home in my backpack. Amy informed us today that last week, she overheard a conversation in Korean between these two BFFs that, loosely translated, went something like this:
June: "Did you just fart?"
Edward: "Nope."
June: (crawls over to put his face next to Edward's backside) "Because it smells kind of bad here. I think you farted."
I don't even need to tell you how hard that made me laugh at lunch today, and even though these two didn't understand what the joke was, they giggled along with us with their sweet little faces all lit up. Oh MAN, I think I'm in love again!

So here's a universal fact: kids love cameras. They think you are really cool if you have one and they want to hang out with you. This brings us to the photography portion of the school day, when my Canon got hijacked by rowdy Korean 6 year olds. Here's a photo montage:


practicing their SLR skills in front of the mirror with Miss Amy's older sister ("onni").









lunch, as interpreted by Joon.










Mom ("omma"), as interpreted by Alex.








Checking out some shots of Bolivian kids their age with no idea what they were looking at. Perhaps you have noticed that I look like a bag lady in this photo-- that's because I'd just escaped from the Meysun Beauty Salon, which consisted of two aesthetics-minded boys who ran up to me and said "PLAY?!" only to promptly lead me to the plastic set of salon tools.
Here they are "curling," "drying," and "brushing" my hair and also putting on a full face of makeup with the plastic lipstick. Here's a quandary: how does a 6 year old Korean boy know how to do eyeshadow and eyebrow shaping? Not to mention paint his own nails for real? That's something to think about.







To conclude, an avant garde idea: does this pensive child look like he was born a chopsticks expert? It would appear so.














But closer review proves otherwise. Apparently you can purchase beginner chopsticks, like training wheels for Asian kids, that have little finger holes and spring-lock action. Does it get any cooler than that?!

liveglocal.

"Oh man, every time I hear about a new non-profit starting up, 25% of me just wants to tell the do-gooders to pull their heads out of their asses and link up to something that's already being done rather than reinventing the wheel every single time." -Anonymous dude, telling it like it is.

Usually, that's my first reaction to brand new non-profits too-- like, cool job guy, way to make it look like you are such a saint among men when really you could be more effective finding another fistula/illiteracy/gang/ingrown toenail prevention group and joining forces with them. Which is why I'm so excited that some cool people started LiveGLOCAL because it's not only an original setup, but something brand new in the areas they work in. Let me expound on how proud I am of these people by listing a few of my favorite things in the world, ever:

1. Books and being able to read them

2. Kiddos

3. Organic coffee
4. Documenting life via photography

LiveGLOCAL, in a nutshell, does the following: support local coffee growers in Laos by purchasing beans for resale, and the One Bag One Book campaign donates a book to schoolkids for every bag purchased. In turn, they are seeking to expand the base of non-profit involvement by using the coffee as a fundraiser base, so everyone wins: kiddos get books, more direct trade coffee gets sold, and talented people like Pavel* get to move to Laos to take pictures and keep the train moving.

I would highly recommend you go to the website and watch the video of Tyson explaining his vision and be inspired. It's incredibly moving to hear a teacher telling him how thankful she is for their help, and that she had never been helped by anyone like that before. The launch party last weekend was a beautiful collection of a couple hundred successful and passionate people, who are also some of my most favorite people alive, and I'm genuinely excited about the project because they aren't reinventing the wheel-- they're inventing a lot of it for the first time, and it's going to be so exciting to see how far this could go.

http://www.liveglocal.com/

*Photos courtesy of Pavel Verbovski, Esq.

my new buddy.

These two solemn little boys watching a blimp hover over the track and field event today were very serious about watching pole vaulting. They didn't smile very much. I felt old and uncool next to them until Daniel asked me sweetly "Como te llamas?" after looking over curiously at my camera.

Daniel and I would be good friends, I think. He asked me lots of questions like, "What's it like in New York?" and "Why is the Peruvian runner so slow?" and "Do you know how to speak English?" ("Big. Loud. Fun." "No one can beat the Colombian runner today." "I'm getting there.")

He told me he had been in love last year, when he was eight, but his girlfriend moved away. He asked about what it was like to live in Seattle and why I was in Colombia. And finally, he scampered off, but not before leaving us with a bright break in his serious demeanor.

nutrition, volcanoes, and chicken trucks

Our last stop in Ecuador has confirmed that we absolutely love this country. We were fortunate to spend the weekend watching another friend of a friend, Kenji, work his PeaceCorps magic with a group of native kids from the outskirts of his village of Cotacachi. He runs roughly a million programs aimed at environmental education and protection, and we tagged along with his gang of teenagers to see Volcan Cuicocha and one of the only crater lakes on the continent.

We rode in the back of a truck up the mountain and made friends with the kids with questions like "If you could eliminate any one food from earth, what would it be?" Food is a universal, right?

Not really. Here is Jefferson, age sixteen. He wears clothes that would fit the average American 5th grader and before we made him our pet, guessed him to be about 9 years old. Kenji gazed at him sadly when we asked about his story.

"He's from a wonderful family from one of the communities but his growth has been majorly stunted by poor nutrition. He has been raised on rice, potatoes, and water. They don't have milk or fruit, and very rarely meat, to supplement their diet, and it shows." Kenji brings the kids fruit to try to combat their malnutrition, but it can't replace widespread education about how to grow the area's original crops again.

Here are some really beautiful faces. I think the kids (and for that matter, the parents) in the Otavalo area are some of the most amazing-looking people we have seen so far.

Jessica carries the heavy solemness that seems to characterize so much of the countryside. The girls are shy ("Feminism does not exist here!" insists Kenji when we make a joke about having a girls-only truck to head to the volcano. Machismo isn't always obvious, but Betty Frieden definitely hasn't yet hit the bookshelves). They were tired, and seemed to be inside their own heads for a lot of the day. I wondered how much was due to their personalities and how much

could be because there were two gringas around.

We've loved Ecuador and could spend months in any one spot... but "the road north" calls us...

there are worse crimes than kidnapping.

I promise this won't turn into a blog that only talks about how cute kids are, because that's kind of creepy, but I have to show you these little ones from the orphanage. This place is run by German nuns and usually when we show up there are babies strewn all over the floor. I can't really handle it and

would rather be at the guarderia, but look at these little faces! We may or may not show up at SeaTac with one of these guys in our backpack.

Here are Marta, who cries next to her twin brother Marcos at every naptime, Ilse, whose two-month old smile would just kill you, and "Shark Fin," who is NOT letting FAS get him down or stop him from having a cool fauxhawk. Nosir.

a belated feliz navidad

Christmas in Sucre was full of picana (the national holiday dish that contains whole ears of corn and up to three kinds of meat), a huge pot of mulled wine that we used to drown out how much we missed our friends and family, and watching Carla open her Christmas presents and try to be feminine with her new doll. We're lucky to have Jorge and Lumen, our surrogate parents here, but it just wasn't the same having Christmas entirely in Spanish and not having my momma there to hug.

But as our Christmas present, you wonderful people gave us over $1500 for the kids at Ciruelitos, and we couldn't be happier. THANK YOU so much for the help; they are already planning to get the roof and windows fixed (these summer storms are not gentle, and building repairs are much needed) in addition to feeding the kids for the next month.

AND PLEASE CHECK THIS KID OUT! The day after we started raising money, he showed up with this Seahawks hat on! He had no idea what it was, but we took it as a sign that we were meant to be at Ciruelitos. On a side note, if anyone is interested in a solar panel project, the girls are working on getting the government papers filed to start a greenhouse with a solar panel to start growing their own vegetables onsite. We can't stay to help, but if anyone has an interest in sustainable development projects on a micro scale, this place is a dream. Your help was just so humbling and generous, and the only glitch we have found is the fact that Bolivian banks are extremely difficult to work with. Other than that, Ciruelitos sends love and they are grateful for everything you've done!

Go Hawks.

Ñanta.

If you’re a child worker in Sucre, you spend a lot of time wandering narrow sidewalks, dodging screeching horns and roaming dogs while you beg tourists and locals alike to let you shine their shoes, sell them a pack of gum, wash their windshield. If you wander the side streets just off the main plaza of Sucre for long enough, you may come across an unassuming black garage door with handpainted lettering that announces your arrival to Ñanta. On one side of the door is your real life: spending long days trying to earn enough to go to school or support your family. On the other, a leafy overhang peacefully welcomes you to the one spot in the city that provides escape from the intensity of premature responsibility.

It’s impossible to walk a block in Sucre without tripping on a handful of child workers. Their lives are a paradoxical mix of hustling for a few bolivianos and acting as their own boss while trying to stay kids for as long as possible. This is where Linda de Jong, the Dutch owner of Amsterdam café, comes in. Tall, blonde, and fluent in three languages, she’s been Sucre for five years and is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to looking out for the child workers. She was travelling through and ended up staying “for the kids!” Like most travelers who pass through, she began by working for an orphanage, and phased into working for Ñanta shortly after. Amsterdam Café, a cozy spot on San Alberto and Calvo, is a welcoming watering hole which directs all profits straight into Ñanta.

Ñanta has become the city’s biggest ally for the hundreds of kids who are forced to pay their own way in life. Linda recounts the story of Ñanta’s beginnings, when they began with about 25 workers coming to the center on a daily basis. Help was basic—a little money here and there to make ends meet, and cooking when they didn’t have food. Support and funding was raised by home countries of the volunteers, who hailed from several European countries.

In 2002, they realized that building an organization outside of foreign volunteers would be crucial to continue the work of Ñanta. Extranjeros who were only in Sucre for a few weeks or couple months at most simply couldn’t fill the role of local stability. The search began for Bolivians to work with the kids on music, artesania and cooking, as well as drawing and writing for the Ñanta magazine, which is created entirely by child workers on a quarterly basis.
Ñanta now supports roughly one hundred child workers on an average day, with up to twice that for special events and on weekends, when many kids come into the city to work. Word of mouth amongst the workers spreads quickly in the plaza, particularly since the center provides three meals a day for the kids. Workers pay 50 centavos (roughly 7 US cents) for a meal as a symbolic way to take an active role in the center and pride in their participation. The center also offers support for schoolwork, continuing education, and recently added information studies to their curriculum. There are also several sports for the kids to participate in, including football and swimming. Ñanta Magazine, Jallpa, is produced every few months and created entirely by the teenagers and children working in Sucre. A local press prints the magazine and the majority of customers are the tourists passing through the city.

Linda’s voice gets louder as the conversation turns to specifics of the children’s lives. Their jobs are as varied as their histories: shoeshiners, gum sellers, windshield washers, market vendors, brickmakers, singers on busses, house cleaners, nannies, cooks, and newspaper sellers are frequently children barely into adolescence. Although many of them attend school, “survival comes first, and school comes second” in their lives. She estimates that about 99% of child workers arrive from surrounding countryside when their parents relocate to create a better life for their families. The reality upon arrival, however, is that speaking only Quechua prevents them from finding work and the entire family has to take part in bringing in income. Since children usually pick up Spanish more quickly than their parents, they find work faster and have to act as the major breadwinner as well as translator for their families. In addition to the difficulty of attending school and earning enough to make ends meet, there are more subtle impacts of working so young that ripple under the surface. When a boy of 12 or 13 is providing most of the family income, the role of the father gets lost and confused and family structures deteriorate faster. The independence of working on their own also makes it difficult later for the kids to work in more traditional jobs, since they are totally unaccustomed to having a boss and a schedule.

The challenges these kids face are immense, but made more manageable by a place that provides some food and encouragement before they head back out to the streets. If you’re travelling through Sucre and want to help, your options are myriad. “Come and drink!” Linda laughs, and perhaps the easiest way to help the cause is by showing up at Amsterdam, having a beer and spending some time with Linda herself. Although most travelers’ budgets are stricter than hefty donations will allow, if you have a few bolivianos you can stop by the café and will be warmly welcomed. For those with more time, volunteering at Ñanta (minimum of six weeks) will plunge visitors directly into the kids’ lives and is time well-spent—this rowdy bunch of hard-working, grimy kids needs every bit of affection and attention they can get.

For more information on Ñanta and upcoming projects, check the website or email Linda at lindadejong10@hotmail.com.

preteen commentary

Children: should be seen, not heard. Can I get an amen?


Sometimes, I could REALLY do without the brutal honesty that the underage set insists on providing. Marlo and I were at a party for Ñanta (more on my new favorite non-profit later) today and a group of six 13 year old dudes asked us, "So, why do you two girls have flat chests? What's the deal there?" OKAY, thanks for the commentary, punks! "Porque eso es como me hizo Dios," was the only thing I could think of to tell them as I dissolved into laughter and repressed memories of middle school.

Later, before I headed into my last English class here to help Victor and Mauricio learn the difference between "kitchen" and "chicken," I had some free time to spend with my favorite 6-10 year olds. As I was providing overly elaborate Spanish explanations of how awesome Seattle is, 6 year old Nicolas looked at me thoughtfully and cried out, "You have really green eyes!" Then Brian, a chubby, sweet 8 year old who takes great pride in knowing he shares his name with my best friend, interjected, "AND a beautiful face!" and ran over to give me an enthusiastic hug with his head on my shoulder. Okay, okay, what I said earlier about kids shutting their traps might not always hold true.

soo yummy.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for the donations to Ciruelitos! What generous friends and family we have, we are so grateful! Here's a little one chowing down on the chicken, rice, and potatoes you bought for him this week. I love how he goes from loving it to exhausted to loving it again! Sometimes you just gotta take a breather!

We are still putting every dollar to good use here, and it's not too late to throw in a little bit! Happy one week countdown to Christmas from sunny Sucre!

bolivian babies: now on your christmas shopping list

Check these adorable kiddos out! No, you can't buy the babies as gifts, but you can help them have enough to eat between now and February. They get food, you don't have to adopt them, everyone wins.

Here’s the deal: Ciruelitos Guarderia is a little nursery/daycare in the valley outside of central Sucre that is funded by the Bolivian government 10 months out of the year. Unfortunately, the government cuts off funding for December and January, but the kids have nowhere to go because their parents are mostly poor workers who get ZERO days off. The women who run this place are absolutely the most lovely people you will ever meet, and decided to keep working without salary in order to keep the kids in a safe place during the days. Fox Institute, the language school Marlo and I are working for, has raised enough to pay the women almost as much as they normally make, but there’s no money to feed the kiddos. Marlo and I are working on getting them set up for the next two months with at least enough food for the roughly 30 kids that spend their days there, but we can’t do it by ourselves.

Dear friends: what better time than the holidays to help people out who don’t have very much?
The upside of donating to Ciruelitos is that literally 100% of your hard-earned dough goes straight to the little ones. Seriously. Marlo and I go to the market with the girls who run the place, they haggle for every last boliviano, and literally work miracles in feeding so many kids with so little money. You have my personal guarantee that your cash will be spent on weird food that Bolivians like.

Examples of how far US dollars go:
--$10 will buy enough red meat to feed the kids for a week
--$7 will buy enough chicken for a week of soup
--$20 will buy enough vegetables and pasta for the week

In conclusion, don’t forget that God’s wrath knows no bounds and He is reading your mind right this second. That’s right, we would be so grateful if you'd just click “donate” to the right there and give us a day’s worth of latte money so everyone can have a Feliz Navidad.

Sincerely, your local nunnery

¿me saca la foto?

in over our heads.

Here’s a story about the time Marlo and I decided to get creative with what we call “The Budget.” Let it first be known that despite a few too many empanadas and café con leches, we are doing quite well in sticking to our budget in the most expensive place in South America. Let it also be known that we walk everywhere and that can be exhausting, ok?
We had spent a ridiculous day in Palermo. We wanted to see the Islamic Cultural Center and just happened to arrive there at the exact same time as two busloads of old ladies. These were not your average old ladies; they were exactly who we want to be in our eighties: well-dressed and obnoxious. They had no idea what was going on, and our tour was punctuated with loud questions like: “What happens if you are walking down the sidewalk when it’s time for prayer?” and “What level of heaven can women get to?” (Dear Elderly: get your world religions straight). They also enjoyed barreling into us to get a better view of the prayer room and interrupting us when we were trying to ask questions ourselves. Ok, ladies, just because you speak better Spanish than we do doesn’t mean we can’t have a turn too! Shoooot.
Exhausted by old women, we headed for the Planetorium to see what kind of space show they have (my dream jobs that will never happen, in order of likelihood: 1) paleontologist 2) next Stephen Hawking) 3) Olympic figure skater). It was our lucky day, because an entire school had gone on a field trip to the exact same showing of History of the Universe! So in one fell swoop we went from battling cranky old bats to battling 8.3 million middle schoolers with ice cream cones (and thereby becoming the cranky old bats ourselves). Of course, as soon as the show started and we spent a few minutes whispering about how much we hate kids, we promptly fell asleep and missed the whole thing. We woke up in time to get a rundown of all the planets, make awkward eye contact with a middle schooler who judged us for snoozing and call it a day.
Ok, so knowing about all the extra work we had done that day dealing with various age groups and coming to terms with our own misanthropic tendencies, could anyone blame a girl for peeking into a fancy bar on the way home and thinking, “Martinis would be a good life decision right now”? I think not! With the helpful encouragement of my friend Marlo, we walked into the fanciest bar in downtown Buenos Aires and ordered two dirty gins with extra olives.
About halfway through our drinks, we took a looksy and noticed that we were the only people in the bar not wearing suits, the only people under 40, and the only women.
“What the hell. Did we just walk into a gentleman’s club?” Marlo hissed at me. Wide-eyed, we took stock and saw no strippers, decided to finish our drinks and take our mismatched travelling outfits out of there. This is about the same point in time when we began to realize that we probably couldn’t afford to pay for our martinis. Whoopsy! Real panic set in as we came to new awareness that this was no dive bar and we tried to remember how to say “WE CAN WASH DISHES! DON’T PUT US IN JAIL!”
At this point I’m sure you’re very nervous for us but fret not, I’m not writing this from the back of a kitchen in the business district. Luckily, conversation was begun with two suits at the bar about relative merits of local fútbol teams, and we somehow ended up on their tab. Thanks, business dudes in a fancy watering hole. Sorry for treading in your territory, we shall not make the same mistake twice!