Bolivia

Tomorrow I will be having my last day in Bolivia so I wanted to give the story summary of my time during this second week of my vacation:

-"I. KNOW. ENGLISH."
-Cat-land vs. Dog World vs. Lama County
-Lost but not upset, a new concept leading to "Grasias senior"..."Para que mi amigo?"
-Arrested at ATM
-Turning off lights to pass in blind corners. They don't teach you that at the DMV...
-Extra camera batteries and baby wipes
-Altitude sickness, like seriously.
-Low doors and banging heads
-The outdoor zoo and pretty lagoons
-Climbing rocks, kissing camels, and salty life
-Ensermo and Toyota only club
-Mama Julia and "Kill a fox, wear its nose" (you don't only have a stomach ache)
-Creepy bedsheets
-A cup of surprisingly good wine is pleeeenty at altitude.
-first sunrise since I was 8
-Train graveyards
-Using a string as a level
-Ella me controlle....una baila que boom boom boom...I'm the dancing maaaachine!
-"Oh no this is a carry-on part 2" (oh shit it doesn't fit...again). Wait why is everyone getting off this bus now?
-Hostel soup kitchen, open trunks, and Zanta Clause
-neither OSHA nor can-openers exist here
-Karma on a plane (old lady to Potosi and water and walk to hotel)

Feelings blurb:
In general I'm having so much more fun and success talking in Spanish than I thought. And I'm not talking about the general stuff like "how much is this" or "which way to..." It's such a exhilarating feeling to try and express complex ideas and make jokes in a new language. I already knew my Spanish would be good enough to survive but I'm definitely surprised how far I can take conversations. I've had conversations about politics of both Iran and US, I've talked about lifestyle differences in the US and South America, about love and relationships, and I've even been able to make some pretty hilarious jokes and make my usual wise ass comments. I definitely get really stuck in some conversations when I do not know some basic words, but I absolutely love talking about anything with the locals.

Also I'm pleasantly surprised with myself and slightly proud how well I have confronted my various mistakes or times I've been "lost" throughout this trip. Mistake one was leaving my jacket and wallet in Lima Peru and mistake two was leaving my altitude sickness pills in my hostel before going on the Salar de Uyuni tour. I got over both in about half a day, which for those who know me well would agree, is impressive. The altitude sickness thing though was actually really frustrating because I ended up getting reallllly sick but I still had loads of fun in the tour (whenever I wasn't sleeping). I mean I was at 10k to 14k ft. For three straight days and the nights were just horrible but all in all, I was still known for my dancing by the end of the trip sooo I didn't get slowed down tooo much.

And getting lost hasn't upset me at allllll in this trip, which I wasn't expecting. I just don't care when I'm lost and it's so much more awesome this way. I just keep walking around and going through different streets and talking to people and it just works out. During my first solo trek in Europe I was soooo frustrated allllll the time with being lost that I was slightly afraid of that same experience this time but it has been nothing but fun times while "lost."

Lima and getting to Potosi

Written on 12/19
So just fyi my blog is gonna shift ways a little. I'll be adding my feelings at the end of each buuut now I am adding a section that I'm gonna just list intros to some awesome stories I'm getting out of my travels. My hope is then in person, over a drink, or maybe just hanging out, I can share some of them with you if you particularly find any of them interesting :)

Stories in chronological order:
-Broken engagement and Sergente Peperimente salsa
-Spending time with CC, 3x marriposas, todos canales (de radio?) TRAAANQUILEE x2
-Day with British mate picking up dodgy rocks and awesome questions from him such as "What do you mean you can't chill? Like ever? Like what about right now?" And my absolute favorite, "When do you reckon protests start anyway?" and notable one liners "man I just wanna slap the chicle right out of their hands"
-My ID card being returned to me in the middle of the dance floor.
-Tinder South America edition, leading to bromance, leading to drunken packing and no sleep resulting in forgetting jacket and wallet
-Trek from Lima to Potosi on 4 hours of sleep in 72 hours (Lima 6am to Arequipa 6 hour layover, 1pm to La Paz 1, 4pm to Sucre get in at 6, 3.5 scary car ride in winding road to Potosi)
-all checked luggage gonna arrive next day? Oh this is a carry on don't worry, Roh Roh this is a tiny ass fucking plane, ready? Go...

Feelings blurb:
I just can't stop smiling, which in many ways doesn't make sense because I have had 4 hours of asleep at night, mixed in with some napping on rides, for past 72 hours and the only thing I've eaten have been an amaaaazing empenada and a shiiiiiittty bread thing they gave out in my first flight. Yet I feel fantastic, in a broken down but alive, hungry but satisfied sort of way. Also I'm having one of those moments where I'm like man, I'm in fucking Bolivia. This feeling of holy shit I'm actually here and doing OK is exactly why I love traveling. I do have to say though I'm also at over 13,000ft of altitude in the highest city in the world (Potosi) so I'm pretty sure that's got me loopy a little too but before about 20min ago when I finally got here this was one of the toughest days of traveling I had ever experienced by far. However I can feel how far I have come since my 6 weeks across Europe. I used to despise these travel days but I love them now cuz I realized I can meet the most random people and get chance to talk to complete strangers on my mode of transportation.

In general my takeaway after 4 days here is I must say I absolutely love the people and culture here. I wish I could transplant the culture to America and keep the "luxuries" we enjoy like Internet and usually not broken houses and nice amenities. But the fact is people are sooooo happy here. What richness they lack in dollars they more than make up for in culture. I  general people here are always talking to each other and are so friendly. Like the default is talk to everyone you meet rather than be quiet, in every situation. I've seen complete strangers turn to each other and make a joke of a situation, laugh and suddenly start talking about whatever it is they are talking about and not like for a minute, like they keep talking like they already knew each other. It's so contagious that I eagerly use my broken Spanish to join in the conversation and they love talking to me and never make me feel shitty for my Spanish and it's an amazing feeling to connect in that level.

Aight gonna go pass out and hopefully soon find Internet to actually post this.

Mexico City to Lima

I have a five hour layover before my flight to Lima so I figured I can add some stories as I lay on the floor of the airport in Mexico City. Overnights at airports are interesting to me specially as you see the airport go quiet for few hours then come back to life while I just get drunk from lack of sleep.

Anywho, so as soon as I got here there was a lady screaming and crying at the top of her lungs at the terminal and giving new definition to the word wailing. Never heard anything like it. You could hear that shit from across the airport I kid you not. Not really sure if this is standard practice here but finally like after ten minutes police came over and talked her down. It's like dude, I understand you're upset, I'm allllll for emotions brah, sometimes you just wanna cry but screaming like that is pushing it. This ain't the wild aaaand I'm jealous cuz sometimes I just wanna scream like that too. Specially when trying to surf the net on my phone and LTE is down so I'm surfing at 3G speeds. Bloody murder I wanna scream.

Anywho, in other news, I think I briefly mentioned that I picked up a book called Wild by Cheryl Strayed. I bought it kind of on a whim while picking up snacks at San Diego airport. My first reaction was dude this is a chick story, but it's funny how things work out. Just today I was saying I'm a noooob for not buying snacks ahead of time and having to pay airport prices but while buying snacks I grab one of the best books I've read ever. I'm already 50 pages in and it's exactly the book I wanted and needed right now. That shit speaks to me like no book has since I guess Harry Potter and the Goosebumps series. Who remembers those Goosebumps books? They were legit...

In general it's a story about how Cheryl ends up walking 1,100 miles of the Pacific Coast Trail after the death of her mom from cancer and her separation from her husband. To be honest, I've pretty much teared up or cried every time I've picked it up. Although unlike the bloody murder screaming lady I do my shot quietly and discreetly. Lol. I think the anxieties and excitements of travel are putting my emotions on edge but it's also a great story. I feel like it mirrors my travels and motivations for this trip in its own little way. I wish it was longer than 300 pages cuz I'll finish it before end of the week probably.

Anywho, gonna go read more. Can't wait to eat something in Peru tomorrow! Gonna num num the shit out of some ceviche. All I've had today has been a bag of Harribo gummy bears and a turkey sandwich that was half as good but twice as expensive ($11.50) as it should have been. Fuck you LAX, take my money. Also I'm thirsty as shit and everything is closed.

-Z

SD to LAX

I think this post will be relatively mundane as I'm just waiting at LAX waiting for flight to Hermosillo and then heading to Mexico City. I get in Mexico city by 10pm and taking off to Lima Peru at 3am Tuesday. Probably won't be posting until Tuesday night or Wed so I figured to share my small little experiences so far.

I love the random interactions that happen frequently when traveling. I've already had three and I've just gotten from SD to LAX.
First, On the short flight to LAX I met a guy who was traveling back to Saudi Arabia for the holidays. He was a student at SDSU studying computer science. I always find it fascinating how people from all over the world come just to study at our universities.

My other two interactions were much more interesting though. Airports are always a challenge and I had to change terminals at LAX. On my way to the airport shuttle I met this frantic looking guy who also needed to change terminals for his flight to Africa. I told him he should follow me since I was doing the same thing and there is ways airport shuttles. He said no and ran off in the other direction. Sure enough I found the airport shuttle. I can totally see myself being in his position when I'm in a different country though but also I think I've started to figure out airports a little finally.

And the final interaction was actually most interesting. I may have already gotten conned out of $20 but this one older looking Indian gentleman came and sat next to me and told me a story about how he missed his flight to Chicago and was going there for medical reasons and changing his flight costed $86 more but he was $36 short. I didn't really feel like arguing and gave him $20. Not sure if he was sincere as when he got off the shuttle at his terminal I noticed he picked up his luggage with too little effort for how big it was. Maybe it was empty and I got taken but I figured to start my trip off with some good karma I guess. If he's lying that's for him to live with and if he needs money bad enough to con then he needs my money more than I do I guess. Let's mark that off to ignorance is bliss and hopefully I actually helped someone. When I was in Germany a similar thing happened to me at a train station. This young guy's story was that he got robbed and needed money to buy a train ticket back to his home town. It was like $40 or so I gave him but I actually believed his story because he appeared way more distraught. This Indian guy today at LAX in hindsight wasn't tooooo convincing.

Anywho,  I got a new book at the airport called Wild by Cheryl Strayed and I'm gonna read that as I get through the flights. The book is about her journey of self discovery as she backpacked through the Pacific Crest Trail. Figured it was appropriate. Gonna be reading that now.

Also first rule of international travel, take snacks with you when you're gonna be at airports for over 24 hours. I've had to pay airport prices for everything. Noooooob mistake.

-Z

Pilot Post

Hi my friends and family,

Just to set you up from the start, if you only care about how the places I'm visiting look, well you should just follow my Flickr (here). No I'm not gonna make this all sappy the entire time but at times this blog may get personal and maybe a better title would have been "Today I Felt..." because I'm gonna try to give a pretty uncensored account of the feelings I have during my trip. Good or bad it'll go here.

Why all the feelings talk? Well as many of you who are close to me know, I've been on this emotional self discovery binge the last few months after separating from my girlfriend of three years. I didn't grow up in an environment that encouraged or taught me about the importance of my feelings and was in many ways felt discouraged to share those feelings. Much of it comes from the fact that as a 9 year old immigrant to the US I had to deal with a lot of tough moments being picked on and bullied and feeling like an outcast even with those I considered my closest friends. And, my Iranian culture and family dynamic were not very conducive to sharing feelings, particularly negative ones, so that didn't help. So for much of my life I bottled up most my negative emotions even with those closest to me, unintentionally building a wall which kept me from enjoying the amazing support available to me from my incredible family and friends.

Well I'm deciding to change. I want to become more in tune with my feelings and comfortable sharing them with those around me. For me just as much as this trip is about me traveling, seeing, and learning about some amazing places in South America over the next three weeks, it's about me using the world as my backdrop as I explore and learn about myself. I know all that sounds really corny and mushy but just six months ago all I knew about my feelings was that my feelings were either good or bad and that for a long while I hadn't been feeling good. I couldn't really identify how I felt and why I felt it and as a scientist (and having the history I mentioned above) it was hard for me to share something I was so uncertain about and was so negative, so I bottled it up for over a year, hoping it would solve itself.

Now I'm learning to identify the type of feelings I have and to share them with my friends and family. In this short time of sharing I have realized the majority of the uncertainties and anxieties I've had lately about growing up, my career, and my future are shared amongst all my friends. I've also learned that the vulnerability you feel when sharing your feelings is a great opportunity to really discover who your real friends are and how much they are willing to do to help you. This has been an amazing discovery for me akin to feeling like the proverbial alone on a boat only for dawn to break and realizing you're in a mass of people. However, I still have a lot of work left to do on myself with three weeks to get started!

Anywho, from this point on this blog will have a less explanatory tone like above and be more travel oriented. Which is peeeeerfect timing actually because I'm juuuust about to take off from San Diego on the first leg of my trip to LAX.

Love you all!
This is really happening....eeeeeep.

-Z