I realized long time ago I suck at keeping up with a diary or blog. Oh well. Why dwell? One thing I find funny about traveling for so long is that one looses contact with almost everyone. I check my email and I have none except from my mother. You would think I would have from my girlfriend, but she's traveling with me. I expect one from friends and all, but I guess it's a two way process. Although I've taken initiative sometimes, but never get a response. :(
Oh well. I am also lazy in writting emails. I'll try more....

Changing the subject, check this out...

The picture that you see above was taken in Salvador, Brasil. I was hanging out with Sara and our new bahiano friend Jose. I took this picture when we were at Jose's favorite spot in Salvador (I forgot the name!!!). This is the best picture I've taken so far (for my taste). There is a lot more (Machu Picchu, Foz de Iguacu, Lago Titicaca, Uros, Condor flights, beaches in the NE of Brasil, Colombian Jungle, tigre in Buenos Aires, etc, etc, etc) but this picture I love for some weird reason. I feel it is me in that fishing boat.

i'll try to keep up with my journals....
Bueno, I suck at keeping journals. I am currently in Buenos Aires and I have to say I like this place. There is a culture of a lot of cafe, chilling, drinking tea, etc. there is a lot of meat, left and right. i love meat, i am a full carnivour. (spelling?) It waas veery interesting coming from Peru to Argentina. you notice the difference in race and social class. apperently here in argentina people have too much pride so they don't show that they don't have money. they try to dress in style even with the little money they have. we had dinner with a porteña by birth, and she explained that the change of economy of argentina has affected the culture a little, but that porteños don't want to believe what has happened.
speaking of dinner, we ate vacio and un tiro de asada. we drank vino de casa, pan y eggplant, y empanadas, todo por 10 $USD!!! para 3 personas! increible!

i dont know what my last entry was but we've done a lot in the past month. before BA , we were in puno, a city near lago titicaca (puma gris en quechua). the lake was amazinly clean! i'll have pictures after my trip, its annoying uploaading pics. speaking of which. my camara has a staiin on the lens...i took it to a service place for sony here in BA. i hope they can fix it! 50 dollars! i'm going to complain to sony once i get back to the states.

machu picchu has left a mark on us. we both have knee pains! after 46 km in four days with a lot of altitute and a lot of going up and down ... our knees didn't like it.

i finally got sick ... meaning i got that dreaded travelers diarreha. it wasn't too bad, 8 times in 24 hours.

alright, i'm tired. we got tix to go to the boca juniors game this wednesday fpr copa libertadores! i'm pretty excited!

Well, what can I say ... as expected I suck at keeping a journal. I didn't write anything while I was in Bogota nor Miami ... I'm going to forget everything I've done..... ok, I won't do it now, but I will force myself to write later on...
for now, an outline....

So I haven't written much lately ... I'm really bad at keeping a blog! I prefer traveling than spending an hour keeping up a blog ... specially when I have to pay for it. But I know that later on I will regret it. I remember reading somewhere that humans only remember 10% of their everyday, it might be less!!! So I'll try and keep a blog, if not, at least a notebook. The picture I posted here is of bad quality ... I'm taking pics of 5Megapixels and I reduce them to put them online.

Anyways, people in Nassau are GREAT! They are so helpful with everything! Today Sara and I got stuck in the southwest of the island (New Providence) with the moped we rented. The belt broke and we were in the middle of no where... around 5 people stopped to ask if we were O.K. A Texaco trailer stopped almost causing an accident with a huge tank of gas! But everything was ok and we survived....

Al fin! Another chapter in my life has been written ... Berkeley no more...at least not for a while. So I finally turned in my report and presented my MS project this past Monday. It wasn't bad at all, I was given very good feedback and some good questions were asked. I hope to publish part of the thesis, hopefully it all works out.

It was interesting how fast time goes by ... five years ago I was waiting anxiously the day I would receive Berkeley's decision to accept me, and now, I am off ... to see the world (or part of it) and move to the other coast ...

A VIEW OVERLOOKING SF

So right now is 1:03 am on Saturday March 19th, 2005. I have my Masters project presentation schedule for Monday 21st at 10 am. I am about to finish my report (or at least the first draft) tonight. Right now, some simulations are running that take forever! But after that, if the results are right, I can just plug them into my almost done report and voila! Masters report a la Gonzalez. Then I have to prepare my presentation slides, which I hope do not take long since I have a lot of equations to write. :(
But anyway, now that I have a clearer idea as to what's going to happen, I can finally start planning my trip....

So I found out that at least 20 of my friends from I House 2003-2005 will be in Europe this summer. I spoke with three of them today about meeting up with them somewhere in Europe. I think that would be soooooo coool!
If most of them could meet for at least a weekend somewhere in Europe, it would be awesome to have an I House reunion in a different continent!
:)

Ok, so we were supposed to buy our RTW ticket this week but it didn't happen. What has happened is that some plans have been changed and the RTW trip will have to wait to some other year. :(

I am extremely disappointed but hey, no worries. We will still get to travel and the reason for the change is a good one.

So I was browsing today the various options of flights that exists. It all started with the idea of going to Miami for a couple of days before we start our trip. We both have a free rountrip ticket using Southwest.
Well, then we found out. Hey, Miami to Caracas is only $174 one way with Avianca!!! Then I started looking for South American airpasses and called LAB (bolivian), Varig(Brazilian), and then I stumbled into LAN. So I called.....

So I started this blog for three reasons:

1. To keep a journal of my trip so later in life I can look back at this wonderful experience. I hope there is an easy way to download one's entries onto the desktop. I should have checked into it before....

2. To keep in touch with my friends and family. Last time I traveled it was a pain trying to keep in touch with everyone and people would get spammed, some people didn't even want to know about my trip. So, whoever is interested can come and read this. If you visit, let me know you care, leave a comment!

3. For anyone that is interested in doing a RTW, or is just interested on my travels. I hope I keep this interesting. So I don't know you but you like what you find here, leave a comment!

That said some entries in here will be for cause number 1, 2 or 3.
For example, this one is for me. Just to know why I do things and to remember the events that are going on before my trip.....