Introduction

My last full day in Uruguay has been a rainy one, which I’m taking as a sign that today is a good day to finally start my blog.  I might as well start by answering some basic questions since my plans have changed so much and been rather vague the whole time that no one really knows what I’m doing here.  Where all am I going? What am I doing?  How long will I be gone?  Why am I here?  How can I afford this? 

The best way to answer all of these questions is, “I don’t really know yet.”  But I’ll try to give some good guesses and estimates.  I’ve just spent close to two weeks in Uruguay, and now I’m going to Argentina until December.  After that I’ll be taking a trip to Peru and someplace else with a friend who’s coming from the US for a few weeks, and after that your guess is as good as mine.  Likely options include Ecuador, Chile, or staying in Peru, but I don’t want to rule anything else out.  My current return ticket to the US is for May, but maybe I’ll come back before or after that, although it will probably be in that general time frame.  Here in Uruguay I’ve been traveling around and just having fun, but in Argentina I’ll be babysitting a one-year-old girl and living with her family.  After that I might look for some work in another country working at a hostel or doing something random.  Basically my goals here are just to have fun, speak a lot of Spanish, meet interesting people, and have some great experiences.  In most places that I’ll go I’ll be doing exchanges, in which I’ll do some sort of work (babysitting, working at a hostel, etc.) in exchange for room and board.  So most of my expenses will be covered, and I can always look for some English students to make some spending money.  While I do plan to take short trips to some of the coolest places in South America (Iguacu Falls, Machu Picchu, Galapagos Islands, etc), I plan to spend most of my time staying for periods of 2-3 months in just a few different places instead of spending the entire time traveling constantly from town to town.