I want to first say that I’m all for airport security.  I don’t really care if it causes longer lines and if they have to check all sorts of things–shoes, computer, etc– to keep the plane safe.

That said, there are some things about airport security that just didn’t make sense when I had the pleasure of walking through those metal detectors earlier today on my way from Boston to San Francisco on Virgin America.  First, there was no line, so I thought, “great!”.  I’m going to be able to move right on through.  Not correct.  There were no travelers but about 7 bored secuirty personnel.  I get through and start filling my pockets back up with phone, wallet, keys, you know the drill.  Then someone comes up and says I’m going to need to check your messenger bag closer.  I say fine–it was one of those randomized check things.

I continue to regroup– I put on my jacket, my belt… — then another person comes up to me and says I’m going to need to check your shoes.  I laugh and say, “wow, things are really hopping around here. I must be one suspicious character.”  I say fine.  What in the world are they going to find on or around my casual white shoes.

This is when things are starting to get frustrating.  In my messenger bad, a very deadly looking little yellow umbrella is found.  I personally liked this umbrella– it was very bright yellow, very compact, and had a fun handle with a round happy face that was suspended in a tiny bit of water.  What better to brighten up a rainy day!  Out of the whole umbrella, they need to take this handle with the happy face.  I think, “really?” I take that back.  I actually say aloud, “really?”  I say, “but there’s a small enough amount of liquid in there that it shouldn’t matter.”  They explain that they need to take it because it falls under the “snow globe” category.  I laugh, and tell myself aloud, “I wish they were busier so that I didn’t get quite so much attention.”

The attention was great.  It was the fact that out of all of there carefulness, the little, yellow, suspended, snow-globe-like, happy face ball is what they picked to confiscate.  Now my umbrella is handle-less!  They didn’t take the much more weapon-like expandable umbrella-part with several sharp corners.  They didn’t even notice that I forgot to take my small bottles of liquids out of my suitcase.  I even asked them to try to explain why they just confiscated the least dangerous part of my umbrella, and they reminded me of this “snow globe rule.”

I’m done.  I just needed to get that out of my system.  On a brighter note, Virgin America isn’t bad at all.  Here I am on the plane with my computer plugged in and with wireless internet access.

I haven´t posted in a while I realize, but I can´t say that I haven´t tried.  The internet in Patagonia is not exactly fast.  In fact, in the last place we visited, El Chalten, the connection would time-out every time I tried to do anything on wordpress.  

That said, I will date the next couple posts as if I was writing them on that day so that it will hopefully be easier to follow.  For the big picture, we traveled to El Chalten in Patagonia on Christmas day, and then continued on to Calafate on Dec 29th.  Both regions have some awesome glaciers to view and are located on the western side of Argentine Patagonia.

I will also try to put some photos up… because describing some of the things that I´m seeing would almost be impossible.

Where better a place for a Jewish family to celebrate Christmas Eve than Buenos Aires, Argentina.  Most things were closed, but my parents and I did get a great suggestion for this place very close to our hotel.  Lola restuarant was a lot of fun, the food was great, and it welcomed the birth of Christ in a great way.

Walking home afterwards, although only 2 short blocks, was filled with so many fireworks coming off of every building and every street, that if we were more paranoid, it would have been easy to think that we were under attack.  It was also much easier to hear the fireworks than see them, which added an interesting element to the journey to the hotel.

We left Los Suites in the Recoleta region of Buenos Aires this morning and made our way to Patagonia!

I got a couple pictures up and I reduced the size so they should be able to load much quicker.  These are from a region of Buenos Aires known as Boca (¨the mouth¨). Enjoy!

The area was extremely colorful, and the streets were ridiculously photogenic.

Tango dancers:

We´re half way through day 2 in Buenos Aires, and we returned to the hotel to freshen up and drop a couple things off before walking around the city some more.  Today we visited the Jewish section of the city, and the equivalent to the Jewish Community Center.  We then walked around the area and visited a local synagogue.  

Afterwards, we grabbed a bite to eat at an Italian place.  The Italian influence here is very big and therefore there are many Italian restaurants to choose from.  After lunch we took a larger scale tour of Buenos Aires to get the bigger picture.  This is something that a lot of people would usually do first; however, we realized that it being Christmas eve tonight, there was going to be little open starting in the early afternoon, and so we wanted to make the most of what required things being open on our first day and a half here.

At the moment, I´m experiencing a couple technical difficulties uploading more pictures.  Also, I apologize that this pictures I put on the site yesterday were gynormous, and will try to figure out a way to reduce the size in the future.  I barely had the patience to wait for them to load, and they´re my pictures after all.

We made it!  After quite the journey that took us from LA to DC, then a four hour lay-over, and then down to Buenos Aires, Argentina, we are here to tell the story.  We even got some rest on that redeye flight from DC to Buenos Aires.  Although I must say that my dad´s sleeping pills really did the trick.

 The first thing we did after arriving and putting our stuff down in the hotel was we went to a silversmith´s workshop and saw his work and learned about his process.  The silversmith, Marcelo Toledo, was incredibly nice as he showed us around his shop.  The image below shows a piece that he is working on by weaving several pieces of silver together.

Below is another one of Toledo´s masterpieces.  This depiction of a woman is also made entirely of silver, while employing different techniques to achieve the various shades of color.  The hand in the foreground is of Marcelo, and it is intended to show the scale as well as ownership of the work.

This is the last photo that I will show for now of the silver shop.  It is a close-up of a vase that caught my eye as we were walking around.  Both the intricate details as well as the larger designs covering this vase are pretty amazing.

Below is a photo of one of the many views of Buenos Aires that we were able to enjoy on our first day of adventures.

My mom, posing for the camera:

Now, I´m about to take a nap to get ready for our next adventure.  Apparently, dinner here doesn´t start until 9pm usually, and getting an 8:30 reservation for dinner is pushing things a little early.  That said, we going to dinner tonight at 9pm to be followed by a tango show.  Tango here is huge!

Depending on internet access, I hope to write about some of the highlights of our adventures to Argentina this winter break.  On the trip are my parents and myself.  I will sincerely miss my sisters and their special friends, but I´m exciting about spending some time with my parents.  Such a task is easier said than done once leaving for college.

I hope whoever may stumble upon this site, will enjoy looking at the images and descriptions that I write.  And if it´s only me, than I´m still happy as having this be an easy way to keep track of some of the places I´ve been.

And any trip to Monterey would’ve been incomplete if I didn’t bring my camera along.  Click the photo below to see some of the pictures:

I haven’t posted in a while, but I realized that I never posted the final medal count from last month’s 2008 Beijing games.  Here are the totals from Stanford athletes–past, present, and future student-athletes.

And broken down by athlete…

[Thank you to the Stanford Athletics site for both graphics in this post.]

The Olympics are winding down…

Ryan Hall — Track & Field (M): Marathon [4:30 p.m. NBC Part of Primetime Coverage]

***

Here’s a picture of Ryan during his Stanford days: