Change for Change

I just spent the last couple of hours rolling all the coins that have been collecting in the water jug in my room for the past four years. Yes, I know there are now machines in which one can dump large quantities of change and it counts it all for you then spits out bills. But I wanted to go old school. Plus, and this is the main reason, I'm cheap. Those machines take like 10%, right? The total came out to just under $150. That would be $15! You know what I can buy in Bolivia for $15? At the very least, several beers. Actually, I'm going to use this money to pay for my first week of Spanish classes in Ecuador (I'll even have money left over for 2 nights in a hostel!). I plan on taking two weeks of spanish, 4 hours a day for 10 days. Hopefully that will get me through the subjunctive tense. If so, four years of saving change will make quite a change.

Broke (but not broken)

*whew*

My credit card is breathin' heavy. It's gotten a good work out this week. I just returned from a three day weekend in Boston to visit a college friend. While not an expensive trip, it did add to the balance. On Monday I paid off my balance for the Galapagos trip (and flight). Then on Tuesday I put down a deposit on the Inca trail to Machu Picchu AND bought that travel insurance I've been trying not to think about. And last night I paid for a Typhoid vaccine. Done?

Not quite. The mother of all payments comes next month when I pay the balance for the Antarctica trip. Expenses on the actual trip will seem cheap with all of this paid in advance. I hope.

Uno Más

After a happy hour one night a few weeks ago I came home and started flipping through my Lonely Planet guide to South America. This happy hour included several drinks and I was fairly inebriated. As I flipped through the guide, the thought occurred to me that if I had only two more weeks I could be a bit more leisurely in my travels instead of rushing around to everything. I could better acclimatize myself in Cusco before the hike to Machu Picchu; there would be no rush from Titicaca to La Paz to meet my friend and make the most of his short vacation; and after Antarctica, I could slowly make my way back to Buenos Aires with a few more days spent in the Lake District. It made perfect sense at the time – and I was sure my boss would agree. And so, at 2am, I shot off an email to her work address stating as much. Mind you, I was still inebriated. I passed out shortly afterwards content in my genius.

The next morning, quite sober, I immediately recalled what I had done the night before. My boss was already kind enough to A) give me 3.5 months of leave to take, as she put it, a "sabbatication"; and B) extend that 3.5 month sabbatication, once before, by an extra week to accommodate my trip to Antarctica. Now I had the nerve to ask for two more weeks?

I sat sheepishly behind my desk later that morning as she walked into my office staring at me with what appeared to be disbelief (if not amusement). I half grinned and started to say something before she cut me off with a retelling of how bad the last few days had been on her side of the company. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Then she said she received my email and would give it some thought and get back to me.

Monday she got back to me. She thought an extra week was fair. I whole-heartedly agreed and wanted to hug her for not firing me on the spot. My return date is now March 1st. But with the leap year I get an extra day at that. And now I have an extra day to acclimatize in Cusco...