Estas lagrimas no son tristes...

One doesn't travel to Mendoza, Argentina, without planning to check out the local wine scene. Wine is the name of the game around here. Despite that, my friend Michael and I blew off our one day in Mendoza to do paragliding instead of wine-tasting. However, determined to at least try a sip or two, I managed to secure cards that awarded us two free "flights" at a local well-established wine tasting room in the evening.

Dan, a maths teacher from Cambridge, happened into our lives and our hostel dorm room as we were getting ready to head for the wine. His luggage had not successfully made the trip with him to Mendoza, so he was a bit aimless and stuff-less. We figured he could use a little Malbec to make him forget about airline incompetency, so along he came and we all enjoyed a good laugh and quite a few marvelous wines. Plus I got to try out my new wine-tasting lingo in Spanish.

In true poetic fashion, the "legs" of a wine are not called "piernas" in Spanish, they are "lagrimas." But these tears are not sad ones...

I ain't yo momma...

Can you see the family resemblance?

While waiting for what seemed like an eternity in the Buenos Aires bus terminal, I noticed a fellow backpacker wandering around and had a sneaking suspicion that he was headed the same direction as us - Patagonia.

Three hours or so after our bus was supposed to have left the city, it finally arrived at the station and my instinct was confirmed - James got on board and we all were headed for Puerto Madryn. When we got off the bus the next morning, he had no place to stay yet so we suggested the place we were planning to head to. Low and behold, a little while later we ran into him at our hostel. Seemed like there was no sense in arguing with fate, so he joined Michael and I and for a couple of days we had a happy little band of 2 Brits and a Yank enjoying the sights of the peninsula.

Our second day in the area we went on a day trip out to the Peninsula Valdes with a guide, Hugo, who had the perfect combination of geniality and knowledge. Amongst the group was an Argentine family with 3 very cute little girls. I was chatting with one of them as we were whale-watching on the shore, and she asked me if I was James' mother. A little dismayed, I informed her that I was not in fact anyone's mother. Then she asked me if I was his girlfriend. Because that's the next logical conclusion if I'm not his mother, apparently.

Had we but world enough and time...

After traversing Japan with my good friend Bradley as my partner in crime for 3 weeks, we finished up in Tokyo for our last weekend and decided we needed one final hurrah. So I gathered the troops - mostly former AJETers still in the area - and we hit up one of my favorite spots in Nichome, Arty Farty.

For the uninitiated, Nichome is the "gay district" of Tokyo and Arty Farty is about as gay as it gets. So imagine my surprise when I happened upon Ben, a not-gay Londonite who had just arrived in Japan a few days earlier on business and had unwittingly followed some of his new colleagues into a gay nightclub on a Saturday night.

Unlike a lot of people I know, Ben took it all in stride and didn't even seem particularly bothered by the guys that were hitting on him. I was a little more his type though so we ended up hanging out for the rest of the night. When the sauna-esque sardine-can dance floor got old, we bonded over 4am curry and my casual use of Andrew Marvell poetry in conversation. It's not every day some girl quotes 350-year-old poetry to you in a taxicab in Tokyo I guess, but more importantly, nor is it every day that the person listening catches the reference.

In his words, we got on like a house on fire, and then I buggered off back to the States. But strictly speaking, he's not an SSF anymore, because in May of 2008 I went to London!