Friday, February 1, 2008

Things begin to smooth...

First and foremost, I have to give so much love to all of you out there who have left posts; Cates, Dustin, Jenny, Kate, Sagar, MLW holluh atch´you (your words could be no more beautiful and uplifting). They´re very exciting to read and quite encouraging. Well, here we go. Once I was finally in the hostel it was a bit chaotic trying to figure out the system of living there, very different from here, but FINALLY got checked in. The setup in these hostels are so right on. Guys and girls share rooms, wild eh?!!? It was me, two girls from France, a Brazilin guy, and two guys from Chile. We got to be buddies quite fast, thanks to the guitar (man I´m happy I lugged that thing down here.) As Ive said in the past, music has the ability to cross ALL language barriers. The girls asked me to play a couple of songs, make note everything in Spanish at this point, so with no hesitation I did. The the Chileno and the BrazileƱo listened as well. They all enjoyed it, clapped and made me feel so welcome, and then proceeded to invite me to have dinner with them, boom!, connection made. At the hostel, which only costs 8 bucks a night, HOLLLLUUHHHH!!!!, has two fridges, and a sink and oven for everyone staying there to cook with. A frickin´ great setup no doubt. In the evenings it gets quite busy with all the folks down there but it´s great because supper time is essentially social hour. Everyone shares with whoever they´re with as well, wine, food, whatever, so right on. At this point there is another German girl who had already been there for right at six months, I understood almost all that she said, the one French girl was another story, quite hard. The other French girl had an intersting setup, a French dad and Dominican mother, so she spoke Spanish fluently was much easier to understand. So we all eat and share some wine and the Spanish is unleashed full fledged. Still a struggle for me, and I commented a 1/16th of what I normally would in a conversation, but I kept up, kind of. Long story short here, I got to become great friends with these folks as a few days passed. We took a couple trips through the city together, to the mountains, and spent most evenings sharing supper. I will elaborate more on this later. This one guy named Stefan, from Germany, remains to be, hands down, the biggest character I have encountered yet. He´s forty, homeless, has a twelve year old, speaks some of the most broken Spanish I´ve ever heard, but is so frickin´chill it´s ridiculous. He spends most of his time travelling, and works a couple months throughout the year in Germany to save up for travelling, but has no home there. I´ve grown to love this guy and will elaborate more on him later as well. I´m workin´on getting some photos up, so hold strong, I´ll let you all know asap. Much love to you all, talk to you soon!

1 comment:

Leah said...

Oh, Jonah! Everything sounds amazing and it doesn't surprise me that you have already made friends and connections..you are the king of relationships! Thank you for replying to my email..I will send you a copy of the release once it is written. Thanks for keeping us all updated..I'm thinking of you often! -Leah