my fridge after making anatomy, psychology, gerontology and chemistry my unholy bitch. who's too cool for school? it's me.

yeah, it's a little soft but it's so damn cute.

the kid on the left is playing with one of those find-the-ignition-LED things you get for your keychain. what a blue LED is doing in saharan africa i don't know.

there is no cool way to tell someone your hobby is cutting things out of magazines and making collages.

apple-C apple-V!

been sorting through some old takes as i organize my photo archive. this one's from 2005. henry rollins talked into it. henry rollins is awesome.

the host family gets ready to break the ramadan fast. that mat's usually where we ate dinner every night. s'a lot comfier than it looks.

warning: operating camera and motor vehicle simultaneously may be hazardous to your health.

a friend of my host-sister. it's likely that she's wearing nail polish on her lips. in west africa, any make-up is the right make-up.

hausa women line up at a Médecins Sans Frontières baby weighing.

zarma women (and alexis there on the right) drawing water in the afternoon.

some leaves from last month. the fall is by far my favorite time of year.

i don't know why there were 3 dozen roses lying on the sorting table of my apartment's laundry room, but here they are.

2 hemispheres. 11 countries. 4.5 months.

it seems like a dream. like it somehow didn't happen. was i really scraping pig stys two months ago? was machu picchu real? and how about our jeep breaking down at 4,500 meters in southern bolivia? hell, it's hard to believe i've spent the last week wandering around buenos aires.

buenos. aires. the most invigoratingly cultural city i've ever been. it seems like i should have something really profound to say for my last international blog post for a while. something inspiring to sum up the magnanimity of intercontinental travel. but right now i'm just excited to get back to see my friends and family. to celebrate my sister's 21st birthday. to go out to dinner at my favorite restaurant with one of my best friends. to go splashing around in alyssa's parents pool with some old college buddies, some rockin' tunes and, of course, alyssa's momma's cooking.

so, in lieu of kris' words of inspiration, here's a few things about buenos aires you might find interesting. i did anyways.

1. everyone smokes and you can smoke everywhere. you look especially cool if you do it while walking, and under age.

2. after a week, i still have no idea when/if argentinians eat breakfast or lunch. for that matter, when they sleep.

3. argentinians dress cooler than you.

4. 24-hour flowershops.

5. "I'm not into your passport photo, I just like your nose." 'you better, you bet' the who

6. argentinians love the simpsons.

7. 'take my breath away', in any context is hilarious. especially in a taxi at earsplitting volume.

8. batman and papa noel got drunk together yesterday. at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. i saw them first at the sidewalk cafe i had lunch at, then later near the palermo shopping district, and finally stumbling down the street together just after the streetlights came on. it didn't make sense to me either.

"you're coming back to america, kris. what're ya gonna do first?"

i'm goin' out for mexican!

see y'all soon.

i've been struggling with the best way to write about what its been like strolling around buenos aires the last week. there's been a lot of walking around, some museum hunting and some shopping as well, but nothing's seemed like it stood out as all that fantastic. but then it hit me. food! i mean, not literally, like a pie in the face but, well, you get the idea.

so here, in chronological order, are my adventures in buenos airesian gastronomy.

got here early wednesday morning. after a great night spent on a first-class bus i got my hostel and went for a walk-about. it's nice to just wander around and get lost on the first day, helps get the bearings. tried to find the modern art museum. couldn't. so my first meal:

wednesday

dinner wasn't great. went cheap and fast, but filling. breaded and fried fish filet with a whopping pile of french fries washed down with a Quilmes lager. awesome, but heavy food isn't the best idea before taking tango lessons. beer, however, is.

thursday

the next day i took a stroll. all the way to the hip and trendy palermo viejo neighborhood; home to argentinian couteur and some damn fine restaurants. lunch was spent at a sidewalk cafe. had the set menu of the day. the entrada: two chorizo-style chicken bon-bons. red pepper, chicken and spices in sausage sleeves lightly fried and served on a bed of arugula. the main course: beef brisket cuts marinated in honey, lightly smoked and served with wedges of something resembling a sweet potato. finish off with a coconut tort drizzled in caramel. the presentation on both was fantastic. all this with a nice glass of Mendoza Valley malbec. total cost: $7

friday

kept it simple the next day. went to the museum of history and another dedicated to turn of the 20th century house decor; this old french-style mansion with a beautiful dining room and sculptures by rodin all about.

had snacks for lunch. dinner at a nice, economic (cheap) italian place. napolitano pizza for one, loaded with cheese and a glass of the house red.

saturday

when in buenos aires, it's pretty much obligatory to do some shopping. after 5 months of wearing the same two pairs of jeans it´s a necessity. i've been lusting after a black, pinstripe suit for months and now i have one. I rule!

lunch was at a nice ceramics store slash cafe. i had the best caesar salad. extra points for the home-made croutons.

dinner was an ok steak, smothered in a mushroom sauce garnished with house-fried potato chips. the steak was bleeding red but a bit tough. the wine was nice, though. a fruity, full-bodied malbec by the Bianchi bodega. beth is excited.

sunday

spent the day wandering around the san telmo antiques market. its this great street market packed with old, european-import antiques; tons of designer shops selling argentinean couteur; and music everywhere. there were guys on guitar, guitar duos playing for tango dancers, full on bands with three accordions and strings. by far the best cultural day here.

speaking of argentine culture, a note about dining in the capitol: argentinians eat late. really late. for example, i went to dinner, starving, at 9:30. the only people in the restaurant until 10:30 were myself and a nice girl from oklahoma. i respect the idea of late dining; it makes one feel very cosmopolitan. my belly, however, is ready to get back to more reasonable dining hours.

the food was incredible. went to this nice italian bistro around the corner. red table cloths, bi-lingual servers in bowties. pretty stellar. to start i had a nice, light salad followed by an impeccable spaghetti in red sauce with strips of smoked salmon and generous helpings of red and black caviar. easily the finest pasta i've ever had. finished it off with a surprisingly delicious 'macaroni and cheese' ice cream.

today will be spent roaming around a few mid-town museums, maybe a little more shopping and probably some book reading - currently in the middle of malcolm x's biography. he was born in omaha. this would be something to be proud of if his family hadn't been run out of town by the klan.

i've finished my souvenir shopping, so all that's left is to relax and enjoy one of the most exciting cities i've ever seen. i'll be home at 11:30 inthe morning on thursday. go air canada!

i learned the basics of a tango last week with a nice (and beautiful) swedish girl.

as i write this, a local radio station is playing a lesser known single by the Cranberries.

you find when you come travelling that you tend to run into a lot of people who are doing more or less the same thing as you are. travelling the world. seeing the cultural centers. exploring ancient ruins. looking for a good time. from northern mexico down to patagonia, any city with a hot shower, cheap hostel and/or free breakfast is bound to have attracted some gringos for some reason or another.

i've been abroad for 3 months and 17 days. or something like that. that's a pretty long time. as y'all might remember, i agreed to this trip not a week after i flew out of africa last fall. i didn't know what i was gonna do that next week, much less next month or year, so when alyssa asked i said,"well, duh, of course i'm going with you."

since then i've logged dozens of hours on international busses, some good and some, well, i'm still alive anyways. it's been three months of new people, foods, experiences and all the incredible bits that come with a trip like this. and now its time to come home.

i've decided to cut the trip short by a few weeks and get back to nebraska. it's funny. despite carnivale in panama, the jungles of ecuador and even machu picchu right now i'm excited about buying lamps for an apartment and getting a job.

i know. i know. i used to be cool. i don't know what happened either.

so i'm gonna hang around northern argentina for a bit more. eat some steak, buy a suit in buenos aires, maybe visit a big ass waterfall and then next wednesday i'm flying to toledo, chicago and finally home sweet home.

it's been a helluva trip, but i'm really excited to see everyone back home. so angela, get my knife wrapped up, mom and dad, get excited about quinua soup and chile rellenos, and have no fear karly; i'll be home in time for your birthday.

seeing as how this photoblog of mine hasn´t had a photo on it in while, i refer you to alyssa´s blogspot page. she and her ibook have been reunited, which means photos photos photos. check it out.

as for me, i´m in northern argentina. i had the best steak of my life last night. it cost 6 dollars. then i went dancing with some cool english girls until 4 in the morning. life does not suck.

i´ve been thinking about coming home a little earlier than planned. updates to follow.

p.s. went with a different template for the ól bloggerino. this ones got a bit more character to it, wouldn´t ya say?

some of you will be disappointed. some of you will relax.

i didn't get to play with dynamite or with tnt last week. a bummer, indeed.

i did get to put on some goofy clothes and go trudging through an old, but functioning mine shaft, though.

the tour was great. it was a group of about 8 of us and our tour guide Fredi Silver (not sure if that's his real name). after being outfitted in our grey overpants, matching jacket and super cool helmet complete with headlamp we were ready to head out into public. we made a quick stop to pick up a backpack's worth of gifts for the miners (more on that in a bit) then piled into our bus and up the mountain we went. this one in fact

half way up we came to a stop outside the two-meter high entrance to the santa maria mine, one of dozens of mines operating. 500-year-old cerro rico mine was the heart of spain's silver lode with native workers pulling up tons of silver to be sent to europe. the mine was so prosperous the city of potosi became the largest city in the americas, and one of the largest in the world. there was so much silver in its mines the town's name was, and still is, a spanish idiom for ostentatious wealth.

but then the silver ran out. this is where we got our civics of cooperative mining lecture.

bolivia's mining industry was nationalized during the revolution in the 1950s. though the silver vein is all but non-existant today, there's still lodes of tin, zinc and other minerals to be pulled. The miners are organised into cooperatives and lease their respective sections of the mine from the government for a fee of 6% of their earnings. each mine is run by 30-40 miners who can set their own hours but often work a slaves pace given the saturated tin market.

so here we have several dozen miners, ranging in age from 13-55 (at least that i saw that day) working long hours in poorly ventilated mine shafts with nothing but hammers and dynamite. and they let us gringos put on helmets and have a look-see.

after paying government fees, cooperative fees, etc., doesn't allow for a lot of luxuries. here's where those gifts we picked up earlier come in. the tour groups bring in bags of small luxuries to give the to the miners you come across on the tour. it's sort of a "thanks for letting us watch you work your ass off" thing.

ours included.

- a couple bags of coca leaves: coca leaves are legal in bolivia, cocaine is not. the miners chew the leaves for energy and concentration. the miners don't eat anything but a few large handfuls of coca leaves during their work shift. bad luck, they say.

- a couple packs of cheap, hand-rolled cigarettes

- a three liter bottle of orange soda

- a miner's gift bag including, (1) stick dynamite, (1) bag of tnt, (1) four-minute fuse, and (1) detonator.

- 96%-proof alcohol distilled from sugar cane. 1 liter good for six heavy-set miners on a friday night. comes in a plastic jug not unlike that 2-dollar anti-freeze they sell in gas stations. our guide says it's only consumed on days-off and special occasions, but the the plastic bottles scattered all over the mine suggest otherwise. most of the deaths in the mine aren't due to cave-ins or toxic gas but to alcohol related falls.

so armed with all this we clawed, clambered, shimmied and spelunked our way through the 30-meter deep mine. the main passages were barely tall enough to stand in, and the mines arteries were often barely large enough to squeeze through. i'm not a claustrophobic person, but when you realized you're surrounded on all sides by grimy rock and breathing thick, dusty air several meters underground it's easy to get that panicy feeling.

but i survived. we all did.

i'm still not quite sure how i feel about offering up third-world working conditions as tourist attractions. the miners seem receptive to the steady stream of curious gringos, but that doesn't do much to change the feeling that this isn't somewhere a lanky kid from middle america should be. the workers are independent, sure, but it's hard to believe that work like this is totally voluntary. especially for that 15-year-old kid who was definitely not new to the job.

from potosi, about 4,000 meters up, i'm off to uyuni to visit the salt flats. the andes are beautiful, no doubt, but i'm definitely looking forward to getting down to some more reasonable altitudes. until later.

I ended up staying an extra night in Sucre to check out this group of dancers performing a free show at the 3 of February theater. (they love to name plazas, theaters, restaurants and cab companies after dates. it's a bit like calling memorial stadium July 4th Stadium. go figure)a couple observations i wrote down in my brand new, nerdtastical pocket notebook.

- the theater's smallish, three tiers. the floor with seats and boxes. a loge level with more box seats and a gallery level.

- despite it being a free show, the people in the gallery are definitely younger, rowdier and seem of a lower class than the snooty, and pushy, middle class folk with seats on the floor.

- as the theater fills up they play some awesome 90's era singles over the PA. nothing says traditional-dance like 'smells like teen spirit' and 'the kid's ain't alright.'

- there are few things more entertaining than watching stuffy, uptight and generally well-endowed women shove their way through a bolivian crowd. especially when that crowd is digging on some local dance steps. agressively polite with a smattering of spite and indignation.

obligatory shout out - this post is dedicated to another awesometastic travel companion, ms. rosie freeman. by far the coolest girl from the isle of white i'll ever meet.