The last bit of time in Boraceia was good, but there was an English couple coming to take my place. Fortunately the Spanish girl in Boicucanga bailed, so I moved there for my final week of teaching. It was awesome. There were two Australian broads and a German guy there and we got on well. Maybe too maybe. I got Jennie Bingham levels of familiar with people, becoming an absolute creep and completely removing the brain to mouth filter. The classes were up and down, some of them not too promising but some of them were amazing. My favourite was one with Cecilia and Tomas who knew way too much about the world and were too funny to be 14 years old. “Would you rather have looks, money or brains?” “Brains” “Why?” “If you're hungry you can't eat looks or money.” No more beachAs I was on the bus leaving Boicucanga to go to Sao Paulo, I wrote a bit in my book. I'm not normally sad when I leave places and I thought I had no special connection to this one, so I find myself surprised to be feeling the way I am now. I'm not really sure why I'm sad. The last week has been great. For the first time since Trujillo I've felt like I've had people that I've met on my team. There have been other people on my team at other times, but they've always had someone else even more on their team. Maybe this shouldn't be surprising because they are the first Aussies I've met in a while and I've always loved Germans and Poms. Plus I know there are many good times ahead for them here that I wish I was part of. On top of all this, I love some of the students and see so much potential in them which makes my perspective of the world so much brighter. It's too bumpy on this bus so I'll sleep now and write more later. I can't help but think that all the things I'm good at compared with most people, I'm still not even close to the people in the fields. That is to say that I seem to have chosen to be mediocre at everything useful. I like to seem impressive to people that aren't interested in a particular topic, but when it comes down to it, what am I actually good at? Whether or not this is true, it's definitely why I've done nothing useful with my life so far and why I keep putting off the decision of where to focus my attention. I'm looking forward to going to the US and travelling with my sister. Only 11 days to go. Though for the first time as I leave a place, I'm not super excited about my next few steps AND I don't feel like I'm ready to leave. Well that got depressing, didn't it? I can't believe I wrote that. I guess it just shows what mood I was in, which is the point of writing in a book in the moment. Suffice to say that my current outlook is much more positive. More on that later. Sao PauloI basically saw none of Sao Paulo. At the airport I looked a bit lost and some young fella came up to me to see if I needed help and he got on my train and took me all the way to my station with good chats about the state of things in Brazil. I'm not sure how much it's been in the world news, but some stuff has been has been going down in Sao Paulo. I wasn't there for the stuff happening, but the political situation was interesting to hear about from someone without an idiotic mainstream opinion of it. The kid's name was Luiz and he works in or studies actually I think tourism. He seems to have a great grasp of the real effects of tourism, beyond the cash injection. He was talking a lot about how simply seeing a foreigner subtly reminds people who don't travel of what's out there which ultimately promotes growth. Anyway, my Couchsurfing host wasn't at the station yet and while I was standing around for maybe five minutes, I had another person come up to me and ask if I needed help. People are super friendly here. My host and I basically just hung out for a few days and while he was at work I caught up with House of Cards. Underwood so dark. Ecuador Primera VezThen after flying through Panama and Bogota, I arrived in Quito. I spent a week gardening at a B&B in Tumbaco which to be honest wasn't much fun. Redeeming this experience was the Elon Musk autobiography and Scott Hall telling me that there have been two new seasons of Trailer Park Boys that I haven't watched yet. Elon Musk to Ricky and Lahey. What a contrast. Also, I got in touch with an old friend and made some plans. More on that another time. After gardening I moved to a Couchsurfing place in Tumbaco. Cari, her kids and I went to some thermal baths in Papallacta one night which was amazing, though I had another little altitude experience. I was a bit hungry and dehydrated from the baths and at one point I got out and went to my stuff, then all of a sudden I couldn't see and had to sit down. After that I was fine though. Since then there have been a few other people come to stay here too and we've had good chats about various things. Cari believes in crystals and energy which is clearly idiotic and I tell her that, but we talk about it like it's just a different way of defining some real things. She also taught me how to massage someone using the feet and standing on them and stuff. That was fun. The plan was to wait for my sister (Bub) in Quito until Wednesday the 30th, but she's decided to meet me in Mexico in three weeks instead. Now I've come to Bogota (cheap flight 36 hours in advance) and I'll probably spend the next week between here and Medellin which is hear is fun and also isn't cold. ColombiaI flew to Bogota and ended up in a penthouse couchsurfing which was unexpected. I really only had one full day there, on which I did a bike tour. I still love cycling. It was good to see a lot of Bogota too, and I wish I was there longer. There was lots of cool graffiti on the bike tour. As it transpires, I have flown to Medellin which apparently gringos love. I think it's OK. Apparently the women are better looking here too, but I tend to disagree. I'm going back to Bogota on Tuesday. New Future PlansI got enough advice from enough people from the last post to decide that I shouldn't go back to Uni and I should start with the useful stuff now. My plan is to return to Australia around the middle of June (after the California Primary, GO BERNIE) and get a job. There are three types of jobs I could get:
I think this can work because I currently feel like 168 hours in a week with 40 at work, 50 sleeping and 15 doing things like commuting, showering, shopping and eating leaves me a lot of time to do other useful things instead of playing Dota and drinkin', both of which I won't be doing. That's even if the work is just for work. If the work is something I really love then I can spend way more time on that. I know I should add 20% to everything because that's they way it'll turn out, but I'm demonstrating my current levels of optimism. I've come to the realisation that if you want to do something, you need to do it. So I'm planning on doing that. I'm pretty sure I'll be heading to Melbourne, so if you are from there and reading this and you know of a good social enterprise or something that I'd be interested in (something like cycling), then please let me know. In Other NewsAt the Quito Airport they make you take your shoes off for security. I'm fairly sure that there's only ever been one shoe bomb attempt in history and that failed. Well done South America security. I know, you need to do it all through the US too.
Also, I've been booking a lot of flights lately because the buses are super long and sometimes not even cheaper. Anyway, I decided to work out how many flights I will have been on from London in October to my arrival back in Australia in June. If you don't count transfers, it'll be 15. That's a lot. I should think about my environment impact. I'd better start doing something good soon.
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Chris JonesJust a guy going for a bit of a documented ride. Archives
May 2018
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