Who doesn´t like a top ten?

Iquitos Perú Friday, February 29th noon

Okay, so I didn´t like blogging my journal entries everyday. A bunch of them are just boring, and no one would be interested in reading them. So instead, I´m going to only post the ones that people might find interesting. So expect blog entries about 2 to 3 times a week. This will make it easier for people to keep up with the blog as well, if they desire.

On the eve of the adventure I might as well come up with a top ten list of things I wish to do. It´ll be interesting to see how this list will stand up to the actual best ten things I do. Here goes:

10. Zipline through a rainforest.
9. Watch the sunrise on the Atlantic and set over the Pacific on the same day.
8. Visit the Mayan ruins.
7. Celebrate Cinco de Mayo in Mexico while wearing a sombrero.
6. See a jaguar, panther, or puma in the wild.
5. Do more hiking throughout the Andes.
4. Take a Greyhound bus from Texas to Alabama.
3. Learn to surf.
2. Relax in a Columbian coffee plantation while sipping on their finest.
1. Hitchhike in the back of a truck full of chickens.

Hopefully they´ll all get done, especially the top 5! Make sure to vote on which of the top ten you would prefer most! It´s to the right.

Iquitos, Perú Wednesday February, 27th 3pm

3 more days until the adventure! 3 more days. I just read my first journal entry from January 7th. I wrote it while on the plane to Lima, somewhere over the Caribbean. Aside from the horrible writing and penmanship, it discussed my goals for coming down here. Listed were: learning Spanish, traveling, learning tropical medicine, enjoying this culture, volunteering, eating healthy and getting into shape, journaling, and maybe learning to play a musical instrument. So far all but two of these have been met. Learning tropical medicine and playing an instrument.

So I´ve been volunteering here, but I don´t think I´m learning tropical medicine. That takes studying, and I don´t wish to do that now. I´ve decided that I´m very likely not going to live anywhere near here, so what´s the point? I can scratch that goal.

As far as learning an instrument...I CANNOT scratch that goal. In fact, this is currently the only regret I have in life. I wish I knew how to play an instrument! I could buy a cheap guitar down here ($50), but I´m not sure about lugging it around. As far as piano, that´s out of the question. Maybe harmonica? I´ve always loved the harmonica and actually bought a harp and book to learn back in high school. But that was back before I had any discipline. Who knows? Maybe I´ll buy one, or else I´ll have to prolong this goal until the States.

Blog Point:
1. In case anyone was wondering, post office lines in Perú are just as if not slower than in the United States.

Iquitos, Perú Tuesday, February 26th 9pm

Picture: This is just a cool picture, but I definitely look like a drug lord. For the record, I´m not a drug lord.

Countdown until the adventure begins: 4 days!

So the past couple of days I have been back studying Pediatrics. Back to the grind, not fully, but studying like 5 hours a day. And to speak honestly, it has been very refreshing! I´ve loved it! I love medicine and cannot wait to get back working hard in the hospital.

I just count this blessing as one that carries much weight. I love what I do, and that is so fortunate! I may be cursing these words later, but I´m looking forward to residency. How fortunate to have a chance to work hard and learn a trade that you love. Bring on that challenge, it´s not a challenge but an opportunity.

It´s been a while since I´ve done actual hard work. Not that studying pediatrics for 5 hours a day for three days is hard work, or anything close to it, but it has reminded me that I enjoy hard work. That´s the weirdest thing, but I do enjoy working hard. It´s part of me.

Blog Point:
1. So that date the other nite? We went out to eat at a respectable burger joint, as opposed to street burgers which might taste better. Well my friend Rhett came as well to eat, and as he bought my previous meal, I bought his that nite. So there were three of us sitting down for burgers, fries, and drinks. I picked up the whole bill. It was all of six dollars and a quarter. God bless the dollar!

2. So it´s hard to find bourbon or a good whiskey down here. When you do it´s normally Grants or something just terrible. Well I was shell-shocked the otherday when I walked into a cornerstore called Marthita´s. It´s a little grocery store that if you saw it in the States you would think, DO NOT GO THERE. Here it´s normal. Sure enough, Martha sells the nasty normal bourbon as well as Johnny Walker Blue Label!!! For those that don´t know, it´s like $150 a bottle wholesale! It blew my mind. The bottle retailed for $200. It is probably the most aged whiskey in South America as no one here will ever be able to afford that, much less go to Marthita´s in search of good whiskey.

Iquitos, Perú Sunday February 24th, Noon

Am I a bad person for going on dates to practice my Spanish? No, I´m kidding, but it is funny to me because there is a hint of truth in that comment. Any couple who speak different languages will tell you the quickest way to learn a language is to date somebody in that language. I can see how that´s true.

Several days ago I met this girl in a lab next to Eva´s lab. She is a friends with Eva´s coworkers, and they told me I should ask her out as she wanted to go out with me. Well me, being the person never to turn down a date, asked her out for Friday nite. Now we had a great time! We went out to eat, hung out in the Plaza (central square), and just had a great time. She´s smart, sexy, fun everything I would want in a girlfriend, but I know it will go nowhere because I leave in six days. She knows that too, which is obviously important. But nonetheless we went out again last nite, had a great time, and she wants to go out dancing tonite!

Well of course I´m not going to pass up a good nite dancing, especially in South America! So we are going out again tonite. And all the while I get to practice my Spanish for 4-5 hours a day when we hang out. Which begs the original question, Am I a bad person for going on dates to practice my Spanish? I don´t think so.

I do have one funny/interesting thing to say about our date last nite. I don´t mean to generalize, but I´m about to. As I´ve said before, I feel women in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru are much more romantic than women in the United States. Now, by no means am I knocking on women in the U.S., but rather showing a cultural difference. Here´s what happened yesterday. We are hanging out in a hammock having as what she described ¨momentos lindos¨, when she looks me in the eyes and starts singing to me. She has a beautiful voice, and the song was a Shakira song that I recognized. A romantic but not cheesy song. Now at the time it was really nice and as she said a ¨beautiful moment¨. All was well and it made for a great date.

But contrast that with America. If on a second date a girl stopped what she was doing, looked me in the eye, and started singing to me? ¨Woah babe, you´re trying a little bit too hard.¨ I don´t know, maybe I´m being unfair to American women, but I´ve been on a lot of second dates, never have I been sung to, and I would say I´m thankful for that. I think the word ¨cheeseball¨ might pop into my head, or maybe just the word ¨trouble¨. I just thought that was funny and wanted to write about it. With that said, I would kill to date a girl who has a good folk voice. So go figure :)

Iquitos, Perú Saturday Mom´s Birthday 11am

Well last nite my family celebrated my mom´s birthday! They of course went to Pablo´s, which is not only the only restaurant our family goes out to eat to, but also the restaurant we always go to for birthdays. I´m excited about becoming a regular at their bar when I return. Alcoholic? Just kidding, a regular so I can keep up my Spanish

I do wish I was at the party last nite! One major reason I took a year off was to find out if I could live apart from Alabama, apart from my family and friends. I have always had these dreams of living in exotic places. Whether they are in the United States like Boston, San Diego, Montana, or New York, or international places like Perú, Zambia, India, or China. I am also at a point in my life where I am going to have to choose if I wish to live in a different city within the US with residency coming soon. And after residency I will need to choose a place to live whether it be international or stateside.

With this said, I feel I have traveled more than the average American my age. I spent a summer (3 months) living in Zambia, South Africa and Rwanda. I spent two months traveling Europe, and now I have spent six months living in South America. I have also traveled extensively within the United States, seeing Boston, D.C., Chicago, San Fran, New York, the list goes on and on. And with that said, I love Alabama! I have spent 25 years developing an incredible family, more friends than I can handle, and several friends that mean the world to me! That´s a third of my life! Developing this wonderful life! Now I know if I moved away I would not be throwing away these relationships, they would always be there for me because they are good people. But why not enjoy them? Why not suck every bit of life and goodness out of these relationships? Is that not what life is about in the end?

So I was not intending to write all this, but it sort of came out. I am more and more thankful everyday that I have taken this year off because it has taught me that I need Alabama! I need my family and friends! And that, Lord willing, I will live in Alabama in the future. I can believe I´m even saying this, but it´s the truth!

I should be in Alabama now celebrating my mom´s birthday! I guess I´ll restart with my sister´s. :)

Blog Points:
1. I´m sorry the video didn´t work yesterday. Truly, it´s amazing. I´ll show anyone when I get home.

2. Saw some kids the other day. They were roller blading. Where? In the mud. Think about it.

Iquitos, Peru Thursday February 21st, 7pm

I just studied vocabulary for probably two hours and I feel my mind is fried. Anyone who has ever learned another language probably hates to study vocabulary. I know I don´t like it! It´s like the mail, it just never ends. You can never feel like you accomplished a lot when studying vocab. I guess I would never make it as a postal worker. I really have no news for today. I ended up not watching a movie the other nite, so I´m going tonite! Just counting down the days till we leave, which is eight!

Blog Point: 1. I have been waiting for an uninteresting journal entry to publish this blog point. It marks not only the first video blog point, but also the blog´s first ever posted video! Very exciting! I´m not going to explain it more than to say this is the greatest firework ever created. 25 feet of Bamboo and fireworks. That´s all it takes. Make sure to watch it till the end.

Iquitos, Peru Wednesday February 20th, 11pm

Well today came and went pretty fast. Part of that was due to the great teaching session I had this afternoon and another part was due to Tom Sawyer. The teaching session was about three hours today with a student Marianella. it´s obvious that she really wants to learn English, so I am glad to teach her. It´s funny because she works in a lab so she knows words like incubator and centrifuge, but I had to teach her words like ¨also¨. Couldn´t you just imagine a child learning the word centrifuge before the word also? I don´t know, but I would think the word ¨also¨ should come around age 4. If I had a 4 year old throwing around words like ¨malaria strains¨ I would be a bit nervous!

Well Tom Sawyer passed the day with me today as well. I´m sad he´s gone because that marks the last of the books in English! But boy what a good taste he has left. I simply love Mark Twain and rereading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is kin to watching Forrest Gump. It´s just goodness and more endearing everytime. I say it is my last book in English, but I still have The People´s History of the United States on Sundays, and I can always buy others, but having already read 5 books in English this trip, it is time to start the Spanish! Lord knows my Spanish needs to improve, and books are good for that. I´m half way done with a translated Twain´s Prince and Pauper, then I´m going to read Robin Hood in Spanish. Then on to Cien Años en Soledad by Gabriel García Marquez! I´ve always wished to read that book in English, so the Spanish should only make it better!

Well, I didn´t see the eclipse tonite. It was too cloudy here. I hear the next one will come in 2010. I´ll have to see that one! I´ve seen shooting stars, comet showers, and nearly been struck by lightning (it knocked me down), but I´ve NEVER seen an eclipse! I guess it will just be all the sweeter when I see one someday.

Iquitos, Peru Tuesday February 19th 7pm

Picture: The is me and a llama. Which in my opinion rocks. I put this picture up though because it shows my backpack. Granted it´s not full, but it´s the backpack that I´ve written about below.

Wow! I´m so ready to start my adventure! Iquitos is this great city and offers me so much, but all I can think about is what lies ahead. These next eleven days are probably going to pass slowly. I just talked with somebody today who spent more than a month in Columbia and just fell in love with the country. I hear that time and time again about Columbia. I´m really damn excited to get there!

I packed my pack today to see if everything would fit. Worth noting, I am only taking one backpack! It´s amazing how much ¨stuff¨ we accumulate back home, that we don´t need. I re-realize this when packing for a three month adventure and all I have is a backpack a little larger than the one I wore to high school. I do want to note what I am carrying as I imagine I would be inclined to read this later in life:

-5 pairs of underwear -my chaco´s -1 pair of jeans -1 lock and chain
-4 pairs of socks -my tenis shoes -2 pairs of shorts -1 travel pillow
-4 t-shirts -3 books -1 head lamp -half a towel
-2 button down shirts -1 dopp kit -1 journal -1 pair of swimtrunks
-1 deck of cards -1 pullover -1 Auburn ball cap

And last but most importantly, one hammock! Granted I am hitching the travel pillow and chaco´s to the outer part of the bag, but I´m still impressed that everything else fits! It´s not a big backpack! Anyway, writing about this is only making me more excited! I´m going to see a movie tonight at the cines, likely in Spanish, surely for a dollar and a quarter! Let me know if I´ve forgotten anything!

Iquitos, Peru Monday February 18th, 7pm

Today has been pretty chill. I worked this morning as I do every morning, save Sundays, at the Health Center. There is a nice doctor, Emerson, that lets me shadow him every morning from 7-11. It´s nothing exciting, but I do get to listen and speak in Spanish for four hours a day. And that is what I was looking for.

I´ve also decided to tutor English for the last two weeks that I´m here. I´m giving lessons to about 4-5 friends/employees of Eva´s lab from 4-8 in the afternoon everyday until I leave. We just made a schedule and already I´m practically full! It´s great seeing people wanting to learn English! So that should be fun and rewarding. Hopefully I can teach them some good English as well as give them a southern accent!

Blog Points:
1. Women here dress differently. I´m not sure if it´s just the lack of jobs, so when people get a job they dress well, or if women just want to look really sexy all the time. Two examples. One, the lady who pumped our gas the other day was sure enough wearing a MINI-MINI skirt. Two, we stopped into a different gas station the other day to buy a drink. The woman behind the counter running the gas station was really cute and was wearing this 1970´s airline stewardess outfit. It even included that thing that went around their necks. Can you imagine that in the States? I can´t.

Iquitos, Peru Sunday February 17th 3pm

So it´s Sunday and with Sunday comes The People´s History to The United States, which I read every Sunday. I wish every single American could read this book as it will open your eyes to a different telling of our nation´s history. This week I read about The Mexican War. I was quite ignorant as to the excessive brutality of that war. Though Mexico drew blood first, we were already stationed on their land provoking war. It seems the war was only fought to expand our land and destiny.

I was surprised to read the strong feelings of manifest destiny that our country had to help justify the Mexican War. Many teachers, politicians, and pastors believed in the war to be able to spread the superior white culture. This was also expressed when we slaughtered the Native Americans and is still expressed today. I think it is important to see how this idea of a superior culture was embedded in our ancestors and is still with us today. I have seen time after time where the white Western European or American still believes that their way is the correct way. It is practiced in business everyday, in medicine, in almost any field. It is also interesting to think how that was not the case of the Mexicans or Native Americans, as they accepted many or our practices. Reading about this crusade during the 1840´s seems brutal and vulgar in ways that could never occur today. Yet today we are still forcing our culture on others, whether through killing or not. It was just surprising to read how much killing we had done in the past for this cause.

Last night was more than I could handle! At 3:30 I was falling asleep in my chair waiting for my burger to come. Just call me a mamita!

Iquitos, Peru February 16th 8pm

Picture: I slept here for four days. Literally people six inches to both sides of me and people sleeping on the floor below me. It was nuts.

I guess I´ll try out my journal entry from yesterday. The journal entries should get more interesting once I leave Iquitos in two weeks.

Today was a day of sentiment. It started off by Trey, my brother, being online for a gchat. We chatted for about an hour, and it was just great catching up with him. He is one who my admiration runs incredibly high, so anyone who knows me, knows that was a great way to start my day. Then Eva told me I could find a phone at her office where I could call the U.S. for free! So with my mom´s bday being only a week away, I called my folks for about twenty minutes! It´s always good to hear their voices.

This afternoon I sat with three students who are trying to learn English. We practiced my conversational Spanish for about an hour and then I helped them with their basic English for about an hour and a half. They are very polite and definitely want to learn English so it is a good co-op. I´m looking forward to doing it again!

Tonight we are going out! I´m excited because it should be more than I can handle. Dancing down here is completely different than the States. Full sweats, not the pants, but sweating, and such good rythym. It should a damn good time!

The New Blog!

Well I have some exciting news! I was debating on waiting two weeks before posting it, but I´ve decided to go ahead and do it. My cousin Merrill, who lived with me last semester in Quito, is coming to Peru in two weeks. I like to say that he is coming to pick me up to go back to Alabama. Only catch is that we are headed back to Alabama by land! Traveling through 11 countries in what I hope to be 13 weeks, we are traveling by bus, boat, train, and foot until we get to Alabama!

So as you can see the blog has changed a lot already. What I think I´m planning on doing, or at least I´m going to start out doing, is just publishing my journal entries. I´ve been keeping a journal ever since I left in January 7th, and I´ve written in it everyday but one. This should be easier for me and more informative for whoever wants to keep up with the journey! If there isn´t a computer around, I´m just going to type my journal entries from days past in the blog whenever time allows. I´m excited about this. We will see how it works.

Plus I might try to add a picture or two everyday. Just random pics to make this blog more exciting. Oh, and the blog points won´t go anywhere!

As far as my journeys to Pantoja, Peru and traveling by boat from Pantoja to Iquitos, yall will just have to get those stories over a beer. They´d be better over a beer anyway.

The picture above is from the boat. They didn´t tell us we needed to bring silverware so I widdled that spoon and used it for four days!

Blog Points:
1. Apparently Rey Misterio is very popular here. Or at least the baseball caps express that opinion. Awesome.

2. I´m sitting next to a friend whose name is Odelio Perfecto. No lie. Kid is bound to succeed.

Enfermedades

So I´m not sure what kind of immune system I´ve got. Good? Bad? Militant? Prankful? Just not sure. Obviously it is a mix of my mom´s and dad´s, but I really just can´t figure out why it does what it does. I know that sounds kind of funny to open a blog up with, but see I´ve been sick for the past five days. And for that reason, I haven´t blogged like I said I was going to. For four of those days I had fever of about 100.5-101.5. Not like part of the day either, but for 96 hours straight. I did not feel good. I checked my email and such, but if I had written something I feel only Sylvia Plath may have enjoyed reading it before she sticking her head in the oven, or was that the Wolfe girl.

But now I´m feeling much better. This whole day I have felt back in my usual spirits. So I decided to go to work this morning with a doctor that I´ve been introduced to here in Iquitos, Peru. Well we are seeing patients and all and one comes in complaining of headache, muscle cramps, fever, abdominal pain, lack of energy, and paleness since Saturday. Now I am almost laughing out loud because those were all my symptoms! Then the doctor says to her, you probably have Dengue Fever. Now that thought had definitely crossed my mind because it is endemic here, but it is still rare. I was looking at the charts and it was like 5-10 people each week get it at this clinic that sees, what? over 1000 patients a week?

So I take the girl to the lab and she starts testing for Dengue. The test for Dengue is they put a blood pressure cuff on your arm, inflate it to more than half of your average blood pressure, then they keep it there for five minutes to build pressure, and then they take it off, if you have more than 20 petechiae (little bits of blood under your skin) you have Dengue. While we are waiting I ask the nurse about this test because we don´t see Dengue in The States. The nurse tells me that it´s an excellent test but you have to be between days 5 and 7 of the illness. And I´m thinking, ¨My fever started Saturday making this 1,2,3,4, dangit the 5th day. But I´m all right now, I feel good, can´t have Dengue.¨ Well she does it and her test turns out negative. I then tell the nurse what happened to me thinking it was funny it was the same as this patient, and she tells me to sit down cause we´re checking for it. (Apparently they have a Dengue study going on and need all the samples they can it.) Well so they inflate the cuff and after what seemed like an eon but turned out to be 35 seconds, my hand was fast asleep, and after what seemed like forever but turned out to be five minutes, she took off the cuff. I look down and see what could have been an army of at least 50 petechiae! Diagnosis: ¨+¨

Well now what I said about my immune system earlier being a prankster is because I feel this is all a joke. Here I am in my last year of medical school learning about these rare infections of sorts but treating all the common colds, bugs, and diarrheas of the world. I am a healthy person. At one point I went seven years without throwing up. Yes all of high school and three years of college without throwing up one time! Sometimes during that stretch I wanted to throw up just to remember what it felt like. (Probably on the list of worst desires ever.) I never get the commmon cold, I never take ¨sick days.¨ It just doesn´t happen unless something rare happens. I got a Urinary Tract Infection my senior year of college. Sounds simple right? Wrong, UTIs in 20 year old healthy males are almost unheard of. I´ve had four since starting medical school. What else have I had? Shingles. The same shingles you get if you are over 65 or have late HIV. So weird. What else since medical school started? Malaria. (Which I might add hear that Dengue is like a 10k compared to Brad Denney and I´s Malaria marathon.) And now Dengue Fever.

Maybe the med students who read this post will enjoy it more, maybe you enjoyed it, but it was on my mind, and I felt I needed to explain why I hadn´t written in a while.

I have a new plan for the blog that I´m excited about! I´ll show yall tomorrow or the next day!

Blog Points:
1. Riding down the river that we spent nearly 6 days on boats riding down, we passed what looked like a hotel on a boat. Someone pretty witty must have painted the name of it´s front, as it read ¨Floatel¨.

2. I called home a few weeks ago to talk with the folks, and when I dialed the number I dialed the following 0012059675859. (Now that is my mom and dad´s number. No Prank Calls!) After dialing the 001 a light popped up saying United States, and I thought, wow what a smart phone. After dialing 205 another word popped up. Was it Alabama? No. Apparently phones can spell well or are a bit confused on geography because it came up as United States: Alejandria. Though Alejandria does have a good ring to it...

3. This is good. I saw a brand of children´s underwear the other day. They were wrapped and packaged about like you would see Fruit of the Loom or Hanes in the States. There was a picture of this kid, a little bit chubby, probably 12 years old, wearing nothing but his briefs on the front of the package. What was the name of this underwear brand? I think Poot of the Doom or Stains, anything would have been cuter than what it was. The brandname was Stripper.

Nuevo Rocafuerte

Wow, I just have so much to tell, and I simply cannot do it in one
blog entry. The reason I haven´t blogged in a while is because for
the past two weeks I have been in a place where there has not been any
internet. In the middle of the rainforest. How I got there and more
importantly how I got here, Iquitos Peru, has simply been one of the
best adventures of my life. So I´m planning on blogging like three or
four times this week in hopes to catch up. We will have a blog about
Nuevo Rocafuerte, Pantoja, the boat ride, and finally Iquitos, so
yeah, I guess four blogs in four or five days. Pictures are to come
soon, maybe later today.

Well, so we went all through Ecuador to a town called Coca, where I
blogged last. Then from Coca we took a 12 hour boat ride (a simple
skip down the river in comparison to later) to a town called Nuevo
Rocafuerte. I had been planning on working in Nuevo Rocafuerte for
like a month, as I had a contact in the little hospital they have
there. The town is a lot like Mayberry on first impression. There
are about 300 people that live there, one restaurant, one bar, one
police station, one health center, and about 300 canoes. In
Switzerland I think the people get issued a knife when they turn 16 or
something like that. In Nuevo Rocafuerte they probably have a similar
tradition except with canoes made out of trees. There are no cars, as
there is nowhere to drive, but plenty of canoes.

I would liken Nuevo Rocafuerte to the American Frontier back in the
day. Now I know I wasn´t around for the 1849 gold rush, but I have
seen the movie Lonesome Dove, Dances with Wolves, and more importantly
put in countless hours into the legendary game, Oregon Trail. The
family I lived with had a farm that grew bananas and rice. In their
backyard they had tons of chickens, ducks, hogs, banana trees, mango
trees, coconut trees, papaya trees, and a dog. I mean, they really
lived off the land. The father, Cesar, also had a tool shed about
back where I am sure the hospital probably does its neurosurgery. If
your motor to your canoe breaks down, it´s not like you can take it to
the shop, you´ve gotta fix it. Also, you can´t just go to the grocery
store or the market, because there isn´t one. I mean this place was
amazing.

Well I got there and after five days of working in the hospital I
realized we were averaging like five or six patients a day. There
just wasn´t a lot going on in the hospital. I asked if this was
normal and found out that they are just a really slow hospital. Now
six people a day in the hospital would be a dream come true if I was
on call at Children´s in Birmingham. But here where I need to practice
my Spanish (learn my medical Spanish), it is just unacceptable for me.
That coupled with it being painstakingly boring in that town led me
to go ahead and go to Iquitos, Peru where I knew I could see many
patients. (In fact my first day is tomorrow and I think I´m seeing
like 20 some odd in the morning.) I thought the trip to Iquitos would
take something like four days. I was wrong. More later.

And some Blog Points:

1. While in route to Nuevo Rocafuerte this person stops at a house in
the middle of nowhere and takes his luggage off the boat with him.
Two suitcases, one he is carrying, the other on his back. He sets the
first one down and unzips it after he gets off and a puppies head
sticks out of the bag. It was oh so cute. Well it climbs out, then
another, then another, then another. I can´t remember, but I think
six puppies crawl out of that suitcase. So, if you are planning on
taking your dog with you to South America, no need buying a crate.
Just put it in your suitcase.

2. While working in the hospital, I worked with this one girl who
added ¨ita¨ and ¨ito¨ to every single word she said. Adding ito and
ita to the ends of words is a way to make a word smaller and more
affectionate. Instead of saying Hola amigo (hey friend) you might say
Hola amigito (Hey friend (younger or smaller) and buddy). It´s
endearing and I love that aspect of the language. But the other day
we were talking with this mother and infant. Well she says Por favor,
saque la rop¨ita¨ de el. Please take off his ¨little cute clothes¨.
Then keeps saying it and then we get to his diarrhea, well she says
Como es su cacita? That is basically like saying What is his little
cute poopoo like? No. Nothing affectionate about that.

3. The other day my friend Bjorn was taking a bus and had his luggage
underneath the bus. When he arrived at his destination he feels like
his luggage smells a bit. When he questions the driver, it turns out
that a pig peed on it while both the pig and bag were riding under the
bus. Only in South America.

chao,

stewart