conjugating in my sleep...

the title sounds sus, but its not...

hi kids, how are you? Hope this find you well. I havnt really moved very far since my last writing, im currently living in Salta, Northern Argentina. Since last time, ive just hooned up north, passing many cool rock formations and much cactus action. The scenery is rad up here, its pretty much total arid desert, heaps of shrubs, cactus and rocks, rocks, rocks. When i first pulled into Salta it was 35 degrees and dry. A really nice change form down south where i had to wear my snowboard pants for weeks straight...

So i got here just before the weekend 3 weeks ago, and stayed in a hostel for a couple of days...in my dorm there was only one other guy, from France...i used some of my spare time to repair a hole in my jeans, at which time french mate came back, and he too had a whole in his shorts, so we had a great time doing a bit of sewing, comparing techniques etc... great fun...

Yeah, went to church on Saturday, and depsite not being able to speak the best spanish, met some really cool people. Got invited home for lunch by a young married couple who could speak about 10 words of english between them, and i have ended up living at the blokes mums place every since. Its heaps of fun, and a great way to learn Spanish, at first, it was really difficult as all of them spoke pretty much no english and I very little spanish...but they were making such an effort to learn english to make it easier for me...funny as...i came back from an arvo run and they were all crowded around this massive spanish-english dictionary trying to learn words...cool as. I have since put bits of paper all round the house with the translations on them so we are all learning together... fun times...spanish is a cool language but its quite different to english in many ways...for example, each verb has about 40 different forms depending on who your talking about and in what tense...thus the challenge is conjugating the right verb for the right instance...i conjugate verbs in my dreams...

The family i live with, live right on the outskirts of the city, in the lower income area. I increasingly find that the people who have the least in terms of material possesions are almost always heaps more generous than the rich. The house we live in is all concrete, about a foot thick...the only wood are the door and window frames...the rest solid concrete. No carpet, rugs or anything. The house is always cold. Its like a big concrete fridge, even when its 30 degrees outside you have to wear a jumper inside. Really great family, and they wont let me pay board or buy anything...so i have to get up early and race the mum to the markets and buy everything before her...i have recently repaired an old bike from under the house, so of late i have been winning the early morning market races...( a got a puncture this arvo..might be a battle in the morning...)

The family insist i stay here for my birthday, and they have some sort custom in which everyone in the house pulls the ears of the birthday person for the age they are turning...they love this joke and talk about it almost every day at some point..they cant wait...i told them im going to sneak out and run away the night before...

so ill stay here about another week before heading north too meet up with jazz and for a change of scenery. Its been heaps of fun here, i am sort of a local celebrity here, with kids coming and crowding around my internet booth staring at the strange language i type in, or waiting till i finish and mobbing me to play football with them...(theyre good)...so ive made heaps of friends in age range of 6-10....(and even my own age as well!) fun times!...anyways hope this post finds you well. take care kids. andy