Your words resonate with me. Reminds me of myself when I first met you.

We need these transitory experiences to help appreciate everything that is worth embracing.

Thanks for sharing a poignant story.

*hugs*

I’ve been thinking about you lately too – I miss you terribly. I’ll certainly make time for us to go to Mangrove if you like! I’ll be near Newcastle for a while around that time of year. We’ll make it happen and I look forward to giving you a proper hug. ^_^

Much love. <3

I will be home for 24 days December 12-Jan 4th.

If possible I would like nothing more than the chance for us to meet up and say very little. Maybe we could go to mangrove mountain? You have no idea how much i think about that place, and while we spent such little time there when you introduced me to it i feel like it was a great experience.

Simple things. Kayak in the water, walk up the mountain…not talking in the evening. You introduced me to something special, something that now I wish was just around the corner.

I’ve been traveling a lot recently. Atlanta at the moment, Minneapolis next Thursday…Boston, Kansas City, Winnipeg, Pasadena, LA and much more have all been on the cards recently. The sense of home is faint, but i’ve been fortunate in that I have started to build a home with someone who enjoys the quieter moments and somehow manages to accept the lifestyle i’ve chosen (or maybe the lifestyle ive accepted?)

Anyway…i would love for us to do an old times thing if you have time. You’re such an important person to me and I dont think i’ve ever properly told you that, so i will make a major effort to show you that when I’m back around. You always do it for me…i dont know why or how you manage to be so kind but I am truly thankful for it.

I just went to Pomaire yesterday, and have now found this entry of yours on a search. I was curious to see what others had said about this charming little town. You’ve described it well, and nothing’s changed there since your trip, except perhaps for the construction of a horribly out of place, two storey squared off building in bright blue, that sells handcrafts, I think. I say “I think”, as I had absolutely no desire to go anywhere near it. (It certainly wasn’t there on my last trip to Pomaire in 2007.)

All the best from Santiago,
Andrew.

When I’m not using social media, I get an immediate shift in who my friends are. I feel like I have less friends, but that I am so much closer to them than I was before. Seeing people becomes so much more exciting. Being alone in a room or on a beach (or anywhere really) changes – you’re forced to be in your own company. You have to like yourself immensely to live without distractions like social media.

It’s a love/hate relationship for me. If I get bored, it’s the best for filling in time. But sometimes there’s nothing better than being forced to sit alone with your thoughts. To talk to someone and look them in the eye without checking your phone. To deal with awkward silences using other methods. To think for yourself instead of ingesting other people’s information. To stand in the water at the beach and realise that if you took away the phone, the computer, the car, the job, the house, the bills, the drunken nights out, that you’re just an animal being held to the Earth with gravity. There’s nothing more precious than realising you have no distractions unless you want to have them.

Nationalism confounds me for the same reason those in the armed forces have my unending respect, and awe, and sorrow, and pity.

Succinctly: It is easy to be yourself, and nothing more, and to claim that is a noteworthy thing. It is hard, perhaps the hardest thing, to be someone you are not for the sake of others. Not right, or wrong, but hard.

Every day I am thankful that I don’t ever have to find out what kind of person I am, or what kind of person I am not. I’m thankful that I get to sit here, feel that I am a good and just individual, and type that I ‘believe in peace’. It’s easy for me to type, but it’s all built upon hard, terrible things that will be forever on someone’s else’s conscience, in their nightmares, weighing heavily on their families from one generation to the next.

We’re not remembering heroes, or glory, or righteousness, or victory: these are all ways of implying that those who served got something in return – that there was a payoff and therefore we don’t actually owe them anything. “Dulce et decorum est” etc etc etc. But we do owe them. We owe them remembrance because we are the ones who get the payoff. Every single fucking day.

Anyway, thank you for the pause for thought this gave me. Moved by it.

I have spent 2 months here looking for work and as I don’t speak spanish very well this has been really difficult as I couldn’t just get a job in my profession as it had been relatively easy to do in New Zealand.

I also found as soon as I stopped traveling I became really homesick for my friends, family and the familiar. About two weeks ago I started to really stress out because I couldn’t find a job and would wake up every morning with my heart racing at the thought of what I needed to do that day in order to find a job and the fact that my money supply was nearing 0. I started to question if I had made a huge mistake in deciding to stay in Buenos Aires and not return to New Zealand.

I now have three jobs, one in a hostel (La Rocca) one teaching english to a nice porteño (although he has a strange arm stroking habit) and another working for a call centre. And although it is probably not as lucrative or comfortable or sensible as what I could be doing in New Zealand, I am facing a whole new set of complications as well as learning a whole set of new skills and another language.

From this experience I think maybe it’s not going home that makes you think, but simply stopping. After having ever changing countries, scenery, beds, friends, etc. for 6 months the relative quiet of staying in the same place for more than a week gives you time to really think about what you’re doing and a chance to worry about the future, although I didn’t have to face the same issues around going home like friends who had changed, moved on etc.

I have tried to enjoy every moment of the experience and to keep in your mind that things are constantly changing. It has taken a while but I have managed to make La Rocca, even though it’s a hostel, feel something like a home, and also make new friends and find jobs. I’m now at the point where I feel like Buenos Aires is the place where I belong, well at this point in my life at least…
Suerte
Maria