Of Sleepless Weeks and Linguistic Deserts

In Bolivia with Scott Lucas after a wonderful time in Buenos Aires and Northern Argentina and mmm... Cordoba! Between early morning desert mountain hikes, never ending parties in Cordoba at houses of random people we met, and all nighters waiting for the Bolivian border to open, freezing cold in our hoodies in an abandoned prison turned into a bus station waiting room trying to avoid 80+ loud Argentinians, Bolivians, and Israelis playing Jack Johnson on guitar and reading aloud their lonely planets, I haven`t gotten a good night sleep in weeks.
My Brain is learning how to work in ways it never has. Scott and I speak an equal mixture of Portuguese and English, and in public especially, people tend to not rip us off and are much nicer to us if we are speaking portuguese. My day though revolves around Spanish in this part of the world, and the fact that I am currently reading a Bukowski book translated into Spanish. Additionally, I am spending at least an hour a day learning Japanese. Between my Japanese on Tape (now in IPOD form) and my Learn Japanese for Spanish Speakers book I picked up in Buenos Aires and subsequently left on a bus yesterday in Potosi, Bolivia, I`m learning how to write a few characters and tell people that I don`t speak Japanese.
It`s one thing to learn a language, but when your mind switches between four languages on an hourly or sometimes minutely basis, it`s exhausting.
I`m flying to Colombia next week from La Paz, reallly looking forward to being back there. It`s a long road through Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico until I can even begin to ponder my move to Japan in July, but it`s not so bad.
Saudades.
Oh and New Pictures up (Lots of them) on Argentina2005 and Brasil2005 Albums.